The Shadow Cabinet (12 page)

The project had become an obsession. He had too little time. Always the first to arrive, always the last to leave, he spent twelve to thirteen hours a day in the special-watch catacomb. His weekends were no longer his own. In his race against time, he wasn't aware of the ghost he'd become. His hair was thinner, his face grayer. He was slightly stoop-shouldered. The flannel and tweed suits he'd fancied since his Harvard graduate days had given way to cotton wash-and-wear, whatever the season, the better to ease the dry prickly heat of the windowless, low-ceilinged cubicles that had become his tomb. The pebble-grained oxfords had been replaced by black electrician's shoes with ripple soles, which he'd purchased in an army-navy store in the Pentagon mall on the advice of a Navy chief he'd overheard one day in the Pentagon cafeteria. The chief had been rambling on to his luncheon companion about the ripple soles and how they eased the hemorrhoids, prostate spasms, and muscle aches brought on by the impact of the Pentagon's miles of concrete corridors. Nick Straus, who experienced similar complaints and had been to a doctor to find relief, immediately folded away his
New York Times
, pushed his tray back, and rushed down to the mall to buy a pair.

The others in the section saw nothing unusual in his habits. They'd discovered a mild little man who could be trusted to stay behind and lock up after they rushed off to join their car pools or their racquetball partners, someone who would make sure that no safes were left unlocked, no classified documents forgotten in an out box or on a desktop, and that the coffeepot in the anteroom was unplugged, rinsed out, and ready for the following morning's brew. A few of his younger, more vigorous colleagues in the special-watch section, those late to arrive and quick to depart, might have attributed his long hours and his willingness to substitute for them during their weekend or holiday duty hours to some kind of domestic problem, to an unhappy life or an unathletic physique, or simply to that Jewish melancholia they saw lurking in those sad brown eyes. He'd been retired from the Agency, eased out by an aggressive beltway defense consulting firm, four of whose senior staff had joined the Reagan administration, but was rescued by an old friend, Leyton Fischer, a prim, fussy deputy in policy and plans at the Pentagon who was searching for experienced Soviet specialists to improve DIA's analytical base. But it was a nonpolicy position, after all, a humiliation for a man of his talent and experience. So Nick Straus seemed to the others in the section a pathetic case, a man desperate to succeed but who wouldn't, already beginning to fade into inconsequentiality, a man who, had he not become an intelligence analyst, would surely have become a scholar or librarian, and perhaps with better success, a shy, solitary little mouse, hidden behind the wainscoting.

On his knees now in the corner of Colonel Dillon's office, the bottom drawer of the combination safe open, Nick Straus tried to force the borrowed folder of NSA intercepts into the drawer. His face was damp, his palms wet. The phone had rung twice. He thought he heard a footfall in the anteroom, and got up quickly to look. The anteroom was deserted, but he heard footsteps in the corridor beyond. He waited until they passed and returned to Dillon's office. He couldn't force the file folder in: the drawer was crammed with documents. He searched for the metal release on the rear panel that held the files upright, but the panel was flush against the back of the drawer. He pulled the drawer forward as far as he could and discovered a tattered manila envelope, folded double, thrust awkwardly into the end of the drawer. After he removed it, the borrowed folder slipped in. He unfolded the thick envelope to return it to the drawer and saw the red crayon notation on the flap:
Eyes Only Intercepts: No Dissem
.

He couldn't recall seeing the envelope earlier and now he opened it curiously, removing a bundle of tissue copies of NSA and FBI phone intercepts. Puzzled, he carried them to Colonel Dillon's desk and leafed through them. Most were transcriptions of phone conversations dating from the early seventies. Some were direct phone taps; others were NSA intercepts of domestic and transatlantic telephone circuits. The participants included various executive agency bureaucrats, including State Department, ACDA, Pentagon, and White House officials, a few senators and their aides, congressmen, defense industry lobbyists, political pressure groups, and a handful of foreign embassies in Washington.

Among them he recognized the defense consulting firm he'd worked for briefly after he'd been retired from the Agency. The firm's founder and board chairman was there, General Gawpin, who'd been recently selected by the White House for a senior position with the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency. Les Fine, a former Senate staffer, Kissinger associate at the National Security Council, and now the Pentagon's deputy arms control strategist, was also named.

He paused over a phone intercept of a talk between Les Fine and an unidentified military attaché at the Israeli embassy, fearing the worst:

Fine: We've got to get him off the Geneva delegation right away; he's giving us problems.

Attaché: I know. We've tried. Why don't you talk to the senator again, get him to call ACDA?

Fine: I've tried, but he wants to wait. The point is, Afghanistan is box office these days and we've got to make the most of it while we can, finish them off, bury any possibility of reaching any agreement, whether at Geneva or anyplace else.

Attaché: Box office? (Laughter) Whose line is that?

Fine: Mine. The point is to use it to the max. We don't want to let them put us back in the box again, like they did in '73; never. We can't live with that.…

Straus read on in dismay. He could understand those who opposed arms control, détente, or any easing of international tensions out of ignorance or their own barbaric fears, but he couldn't forgive those far more sophisticated minds who opposed it in pursuit of their own narrow realpolitik, as this attaché and Les Fine were doing.

He didn't know the man the two were conspiring to remove from the Geneva arms talks. It hadn't been Straus but it might have been, and the memory of his own misfortunes returned—first banishment, then retirement, and most recently dismissal. He sat for a long time at Colonel Dillon's desk, reading through the phone logs and finding additional fragments of an informal kind of conspiracy, organized by a few tragically misguided zealots and ideologues working under diplomatic or humanitarian cover.

As he left the suite that night, his eyes rested for a moment on the old poster hung near the Xerox machine:

SUPPORT MENACHEM BEGIN'S NEW IRGUN
!
DEMOLISH DÉTENTE
!

He decided, as he closed the door, that he might have to do something about that.

2.

Rita Kramer had been waiting alone in Wilson's borrowed office when he returned from the Fairfax County courthouse that afternoon. Her raw presence was already in possession of the second-floor suite, as inescapable as the scent he'd identified in the stairwell and in the gold-carpeted reception room. She seemed more subdued that day. Her dark eyes and wide mouth were as flawlessly made up as before, but she was tired. Her auburn hair was drawn severely from her forehead and temples, small shadows lay like bruises under her eyes, and the harsh light of the office betrayed a coarseness high on the cheekbones that cosmetics couldn't disguise. She'd arrived in a taxi and wanted to see Grace Ramsey's house for a final time. It was the only house she'd seen that interested her, even if the price was too high, and if she didn't negotiate a contract soon, her husband would arrive from Los Angeles. She didn't want to spend another week looking at houses and she had no faith in her husband's taste.

“We'd end up in some blintzy bachelor condo, and that's not what I want,” she said. “Maybe Artie's got a lot of things going for him, but taste isn't one of them.”

They talked for a while in Wilson's office and waited for Mrs. Polk to return, but Mrs. Polk was delayed and Wilson drove her out to the Ramsey house himself.

“I might have known you were a Democrat,” she said as she saw the bumper sticker on the old station wagon. “Where'd you get this bomb? Something left over from the Carter campaign committee?”

The day was partially sunny, with broken clouds overhead, driven from the north.

“I didn't mind getting away from L.A. for a while,” she told him as they drove away, “but I'm not that crazy about Washington, not yet, anyway. I told that Georgetown broker Artie wanted to be on the Potomac and she showed me Alexandria, Georgetown, and Capitol Hill. Artie wouldn't live there. He wants to see the Potomac when he gets up in the morning—that's the last thing he said to me before he put me on the plane in L.A. He's patriotic that way. He wants the goddamned Potomac in his backyard, wants the Washington Monument and the Lincoln Memorial there when he gets up in the morning, like some grade school kid.”

“You could find something in Georgetown.”

“Washington's a jungle after dark—don't you read the papers? I don't want to get mugged; I don't want potheads or black guys jiving me when I walk down the street, either. I looked at this town house on Capitol Hill, did I tell you? There were mom and pop tourists from out of town parked all over the place—these tacky campers.” She opened her purse and took out a cigarette case. “What I want is a little privacy, someplace with a little class where Artie can entertain his political and business friends and feel good about it, not like some little Lithuanian fur trimmer who'd cut his wrists to break into the big time. It's about time word got around. Artie's arrived.”

“Georgetown's got privacy,” he said.

“Are you kidding?” she said. “There's no privacy down there; they'd kill him in Georgetown. Basically Artie's a very low-key guy, very informal. He'd walk down to the deli on a Saturday night in one of those crazy sports getups of his and someone would bring him home in a doggy bag, potato salad and all. Don't you read the papers? Anyway, I spent four days with those Georgetown real estate women. They've all got Bryn Mawr accents, like the old Kennedy crowd.”

“Bryn Mawr. Is that where you're from originally? Pennsylvania?”

“No. New Jersey. Why?”

“Just curious. Where in New Jersey?”

“A small town; you wouldn't know it.”

“I'm from a small town myself—down in Virginia.”

“Goody for you. So what's that explain, your small-town manners?”

She was holding a cigarette between her fingers, unable to find a light. “Sorry.” He gave her a package of book matches.

“Where do you live, anyway?” she continued, her voice gathering disapproval as she remembered her futile attempts to get in touch with him.

“Out in Virginia. It's an unlisted phone.”

“That's what I mean. A real estate lawyer with an unlisted phone. You're a little weird, Wilson, like that Matthews who shows me the Ramsey house that day and suddenly takes a powder to Florida, like this lawyer for Grace Ramsey who won't show his face.” She watched him, waiting for a reply, but Wilson said nothing. He didn't intend to get into another brawl about the price of Grace Ramsey's house. “Anyway,” she said, “maybe Artie would seem a little weird to that Georgetown crowd. They'd break his heart down there. No privacy, no views, back gardens about as big as a hot tub, and all your neighbors looking in.…”

Her voice died away and they rumbled on in silence. Traffic was light at that hour of afternoon and Wilson had had the same curious feeling that had frequently come to him since he'd left the Hill that he ought to be someplace else—in a staff meeting, taking notes at a hearing, marking up a piece of legislation.

“What kind of business is your husband in?” he asked.

“Don't get nosy.” Surprised, he laughed, and she turned immediately. “What's so funny?”

“You tell me he's Lithuanian, an ex-fur trimmer who wears crazy outfits and might get his heart broken by the Bryn Mawr crowd down in Georgetown and you tell me not to get nosy.”

“You mean I'm inconsistent. Maybe. Artie says the same thing sometimes, that I'm too impulsive, too personal, that I talk too much sometimes. But that's just the way I am. Artie does a lot of things. He's got a garment factory in L.A., only it's not really a factory. He has an interest in this computer software firm out in Van Nuys, a couple of nursing homes, an FM station. Real estate too, out in Palmdale. I can't keep track.” The car had grown warm. She lowered the window and let the fur coat slip from her shoulders. “But he's also very patriotic.”

“You've said that a couple of times,” Wilson recalled. “I've been trying to figure out what you mean.”

“Just that, patriotic. He wants to come to Washington to help out. What's so strange about that?”

“Nothing. You mean help the government?”

“The administration—help get things back on the track.” She was watching him suspiciously. “What'd you think I meant?”

“I wasn't sure. There are a lot of California patriots in town these days—ex-actors, ex-producers, ex-advertising people. All of them want to help out, like this former movie man with the big hit a few years ago, the one that expressed the Republican mood out in California. Reagan was so impressed he brought him to Washington to head up the U.S. information service.”

“What film was that?” she asked mistrustfully.

“
Snow White and the Three Stooges,
” Wilson said. “Now he does all his filming in the White House cabinet room.”

She smiled but didn't laugh. “Very funny, but I wouldn't want Artie to hear a crack like that. Edelman told me you used to be a government lawyer. What did you do—harass the taxpayers for IRS?”

“No, just a nine-to-five bureaucrat, like most of the people around here.”