The Henderson Equation (2 page)

It was not uncommon for a sliver of memory to intrude at
odd moments, even now, while he was rereading the editorials for tomorrow's
paper. He had edited them brutally, much to Bonville's disgust. Although he
sensed that he had been right, the tension over what he had recently observed
happening to Myra was making him act erratically. The understandable elation of
victory, he had thought at first, a kind of giddiness. After all, they
had
toppled a corrupt President, made him resign, as if his act were an extension
of their will. But that was two years ago, and for Myra the euphoria had
persisted.

"If we can break, we can also make," she had said
repeatedly, although Nick had ignored it. Perhaps it was the environment in
which the sentence was uttered again yesterday as they lunched in Myra's office, a tiny dart, projected with a glass of milk in midair. Again he had tried
to ignore it, discovering at that moment that it was no longer idle fantasy.

"Let's not get carried away. We can help shape. But
you cross a Rubicon when you think you can 'make.' Shades of William Randolph
Hearst.... He tried to make himself president ... he tried to make his girl
friend a big star."

"I don't want to compromise principles. I want to help
underpin them."

"Hey, Myra," he had said, "sober up."
He had wanted to say something about Napoleon getting bogged down in Russian
winters, to treat it lightly. Hell, he had felt the same way at times. But he
had ignored it and it did not dissipate. It was, in fact, growing stronger in
her mind.

That morning she had handed him a list. His eye quickly
caught the categorization; all prospects for the grand prize, the presidency.
He looked over the list and tried to look thoughtful.

"Who do you think?"

"Too early to take bets." He was determined not
to appear to take her seriously, not on this score.

"Think about it. Who stands for what we believe?"

He tried to deflect her thoughts, looking at his watch.

"I'll be late for the editorial conference."

"Well talk later then," she said.

"Sure, later."

He knew that the tension would make him irritable, would
hamper his clarity. Bonville, the least perceptive of the five men in the early
morning editorial conference, had ignored his mood. The others had sensed it
and backed away from a confrontation on any subject.

"I'd like to embellish my original piece on the
defense budget," Bonville said as they poked through an agenda of lead
editorial possibilities. Bonville had a hunched, sunken look. He was pale,
unhealthy-looking, with an affected way of holding a cigarette, the lighted end
thrust upward even when he puffed on it. High cheekbones with eyes inset,
skull-like, made him look ascetic, an image he seemed to cultivate, along with
the established legend that he was the
Chronicle
's resident radical
intellectual.

"How so?" Nick had asked. He watched Peterson,
his ruddy cheeks palpitating near the jawbone, light blond lashes blinking in
nervous warning.

"It seems the moment for sharper attack. Tomorrow,
hearings begin and the Defense Secretary testifies. I think he should know we
have honed our stiletto. The initial thrust." He paused and looked into
Nick's face with a slightly contemptuous sneer. Bonville saw people only as
wafer-thin playing cards. Nick supposed he himself was the ace of spades in the
Bonville deck. "I think we should come out for a fifty percent
across-the-board defense cut."

"You're not serious?" Nick asked.

"Deadly," Bonville quickly replied, pausing and
turning now to his colleagues around the high-glossed table, neatly ringed with
coffee cups and yellow legal pads.

Nick felt the slight tremor of his lower lip, a signal that
anger was stirring. Peterson had noticed. Nick searched Henry Landau's face,
stained deep tan by a southern sun. Landau's eyes broke first as he scribbled
on the pad. It was his first day back after a month's vacation. He was being
cautious.

Landau was his own handpicked managing editor, as Nick had
been Charlie's. He had been placed into the empty slot, as Nick had inserted
everyone; an extension of his own intelligence, a note on the keyboard. He had
been brought in from the competing paper five years before.

Nick had sought talent and perception, guarding against
emotional commitment, the thing that he had had with Charlie. Landau was a
gamble, a roll of the dice. "I need clarity, intelligence, vision,"
he had told Landau, hoping that the unspecified requirement of emotional,
distance would be, somehow, grasped. He had hinted at loyalty as essential.

"I won't be a flunky, Nick," Landau had said in
interviews that had gone on for weeks.

"Do you know how to lose gracefully?" Nick had
asked.

"Yes," Landau had said cautiously, after a long
pause. "The same way I take my victories."

Nick had liked that, and the chemistry had worked better
for his self-imposed distance.

"For once, just once," Bonville continued,
"let those bastards come in and justify every last nickel of the
taxpayers' money. Not just cosmetics this time. Let them prove the cost of
every lousy little bullet, every goddamned G.I.-issue condom. It's one thing to
criticize like gentlemen. I think we need a much more finite weapon. I think
that the
Chronicle
's asking for a fifty percent cut,
fifty percent,
would put them on their mettle." He looked around him, searching for
reactions among the cards. Perhaps, in his own odd method of perceiving, he saw
something affirmative. He continued.

"I think we've been too bland. Biteless. We have
wasted our national sustenance on adult toys, not to mention the blood of our
young men. No, I don't believe that fifty percent is the practical end result
in this fiscal year, although I personally believe it to be correct. But the
Chronicle
's
demand of fifty percent would be enough to send them back to the cutting
room." He held a black pencil in the air, made a circle, then speared it
through its center, a dramatic flourish, signifying finality.

"I think we should attack the defense budget,"
Nick said evenly, remembering that the assemblage was not a democratic forum,
purely advisory to him, "but asking for a fifty percent cut--there's an
air of fantasy about it."

"It
is
a bit much," Peterson said, his
ruddiness deepening. "Frankly, I can't see why we have to be so
specific."

"Clear, specific stands," Bonville said, almost
in mimicry.

Nick had always insisted on the clarity of specification.
"We don't make abstract charges," he said again now. "We don't
bury malicious hints. We don't make unspecific recommendations, unless we
clearly label our own ignorance at solutions." Nick had made it a litany.
It was amazing how many times it had to be reiterated, repeated, burned into
the human brain. He hardly dared to blink his eyes, fearing the betrayal, the
ignoring of his caveats.

Peterson had looked at Nick with some slight loss of
aplomb, then quickly recovering, he said: "Percentages seem so abstract.
Why not simply urge cutting off specific programs?"

"That leaves us vulnerable to attack by the war games
buffs," Bonville pressed. "The military science boys. That's just it,
the damned war business is not a science at all. For every tactic, there are
five opinions on its use. For every strategic scenario, a thousand variations.
I don't want to tell the gentlemen of the Pentagon how to play their hopscotch,
I'm only interested in the conceptual, the broad picture, the essential
stupidity of bleeding our resources in obsolete causes and egocentric internal
empire building and bureaucratic bullshit."

You fucking eloquent bastard, Nick thought, the anger
finally hissing through the containing membrane. He saw Landau's eyes smiling
at him in agreement.

"Bonnie," Nick flashed, his jaws tight,
"every time I hear your rhetoric I give special thanks to God for
inventing erasers on pencils. You take a perfectly legitimate policy, the
holding down of the defense budget within reason--reason, Bonnie!--manageable
limits!--enemies do exist, you know, they really do--you take our policy, twist
it, exaggerate it, then vomit all over it. Now go back to your cell and write
the editorial and if I see one fucking overstep, I'll kick your ass to here and
sundown."

He could see Landau looking down at the yellow pad,
embarrassed. Peterson flushed and Bonville simply stared in haughty outrage.

Nick was annoyed by his sudden tantrum. Such an outburst
was stupid and unnecessary. Ordinarily, handling Bonville was a game, a
stretching exercise. He had appointed him to the editorial committee under
Peterson because he wanted the outer edges of the Left doctrine to be heard. He
had deliberately sought out Bonville, welcoming his sometimes ridiculous
intellectual posturing.

"Bonnie," Nick said, seeking to placate the
stunned and pouting Bonville, "easy on the acid." He smiled, knowing
that the attempt at lightness simply hung in the air like pollution. They
passed quickly to other editorial matters.

After the meeting, he followed Landau to his adjoining
office.

"I flipped, right?" Nick asked. Landau slipped
behind his desk, looking at him through calm brown eyes.

"You missed me," he said, the tanned skin
crinkling on his forehead.

"It was a lousy trick to leave me to those jackals.
Did you rest up?"

"Fit as a fiddle and ready for love. You look as if
you could use a rest, Nick."

How could he explain the necessity of standing guard?

"I've spent the time busting egos. Everybody around
here is becoming a hot dog. They all want to write books now."

"It's your monster. Remember, I opposed setting up
Wentworth's operation."

Wentworth had been hired as an in-house literary agent in
the aftermath of their ultimate victory, the unseating of the hated President.

"I still say it's better to control it from the inside."

"We're a newspaper, not a glory factory. I can smell a
book germinating in Bonville."

"It's not germinating. It's hatched."

"You're encouraging their egocentricity, Nick. It's
only going to make it tougher on us."

He wanted to explain about Myra, the subtle beginnings of
change in her, but he held back.

"You play catch-up. I'll see you later," Nick
said.

Back in his office, he started to thumb through the
New
York Times,
casting his eye for possible follow-ups, briefly noting how
they treated aspects of the news. He found it difficult to concentrate. Things
seemed vaguely awry, a distorted image, a modality changed. Was Myra meddling with the
Chronicle's
calibration? Making, not breaking. He had
himself set the dials, as Charlie had done, years before. Had he really found
the balance between power and responsibility? Was Myra suddenly beginning to
tamper with the settings?

He tossed away the
Times
and looked over the front
page of that morning's
Chronicle,
carefully studying the headlines, then
swiftly reading every word. Was their point of view subtly expressed? Were the
sentences tight, the words clear, the information accurate? It was, after all,
the measure of himself, the manner in which he perceived the world, its
humanity and justice; its fairness and outrage; its honor and decency. It was
he who had constructed the frame, and while there was great latitude in
scribbling on the canvas, the frame was still the frame, quite finite. Let them
scribble. Let the ink run. Let the passions roar. Let them write their reviews,
express their by-lined opinions, rail away at gods and demigods, but never,
never
could a single errant scrawl go beyond the frame, his frame.

Looking up, he saw a blonde young woman standing in his
doorway, a long thin finger raised, like a schoolgirl asking to leave the room.
Beyond her he could see that Miss Baumgartner's desk was empty and that the
girl, Martha Gates, had taken the opportunity to get his attention. She had
been hired a year before, in the second wave of a staff protest urging more
women on board. Nick had responded to keep the peace, although his private
revenge for the pressure was to pick the most attractive of the bunch that
flooded in on him.

Martha Gates was tall, slim-hipped, with long shiny blonde
hair parted in the middle and resting lightly on her shoulders, a picture of
madonna innocence, but she had proven herself a damned good reporter.

"Got a minute, Mr. Gold?" she asked sweetly,
showing even polished teeth.

"Make it quick," he snapped.

"I've stumbled onto a yarn that's rather
sensitive," she said, stepping haltingly deeper into his office. He was
certain she knew she was violating the traditional chain of command.

"Apparently the First Lady's assistant, a Mrs. Ryan,
is on the take of a foreign lobbyist, a Mr. Kee. It's not that she's in a
sensitive spot, but it looks like a clear violation of the White House code of
ethics. It seems that Kee and the Ryans have gone on trips together and my
informant tells me the trip was paid for in cash by Kee's girl friend."

"Who is the informant?" Nick asked.

"I have this friend who works for Pan American. She's
the one that made out the tickets. It's all a coincidence, really. Washington's such a small town. And she has a friend in Puerto Rico at the hotel where they
stopped. Actually, it was all so blatant."

The fools, Nick thought. The arrogance of power and
position. It was Washington's most rampant disease. Didn't they ever learn?

"I want to do this one myself, Mr. Gold," she
said, obviously fearful that the assignment might be given to someone with more
rank. He understood.

"All right, Martha."

"I can't tell you how much this means to me, Mr.
Gold."