Tucker's Last Stand (2 page)

Seated in the Oval Office, he talked about the report he had had from “Secretary McNamara—back only a few days from 'Nam, you know, and he says we going to lose all fucking Indochina unless we stop them at the Trail.” The President then paid the legendary Rufus a handsome compliment, stroking him as if he were a long-lost brother, and was clearly distracted by Rufus's failure to purr: Rufus was that way, laconic, formal. Everybody who had ever worked with him knew that, and Blackford permitted himself a smile as President Johnson worked, like Jimmy Durante on a reluctant nightclub audience, trying to get it to swing with him, Durante lifting his chair and bashing it down on the piano. LBJ soon gave up on Rufus, and turned now to Tucker Montana. “Montana,” he said, “you got one Medal of Honor already. I'm prepared to give you another one, but I want you here alive for that, so don't take any of those crazy risks you're famous for.” Tucker Montana was not displeased that his name was known in the White House. Blackford, who knew nothing about Major Montana's past, except what he had just heard, did know that it was one of Jack Valenti's jobs to give the President useful biographical data about the men and women who came to see him. Addressing Blackford now, the President said simply that he knew the esteem in which Blackford had been held by “my predecessor.” Blackford bowed his head ever so slightly. “One of these days I'm gong to bring you in and hear you tell me yourself about the time you spent with Che Guevara. Son of a bitch is takin' Castro's revolution to South America; hope they catch the bastard, string him up.”

LBJ lifted his right index finger ever so slightly, and Valenti, looking out for the signal, rose, followed quickly by the three men he had brought in to the White House. The President rose too. “McCone says you'll be in the field within a week. I've told him to report to me
directly
what recommendations you come up with.” He extended his right hand to each of them. With his left he opened a drawer and pulled out a fistful of presidential tie pins, money clips, and cuff links, dropped them in Valenti's open hand and said, “Jack, you give these distinguished genelmen some of these souvenirs.” He nodded his big head, and walked out of the office ahead of his guests.

The sun was directly overhead and the little scouting party huddled under the shade of a tamarind tree. Ma Van Binh sat at one side of the tree trunk with his two Vietnamese porters, who put down the radio and photographic equipment and laid their rifles alongside his. They ate the rice from their moist sacks silently, taking sips from their water gourds and exchanging only at long intervals a few words in Vietnamese. Behind them Blackford was thinking over the question. Montana wanted to know why we hadn't raised hell with North Vietnam for violating the two-year-old treaty guaranteeing the neutrality of Laos.

“Because they know we have no means of enforcing it. I mean, we have no means of enforcing it that we're willing to use.”

Montana was silent for a minute. Then, “Why don't we make them?”

Blackford swallowed a draft of water and leaned back on the tree trunk, removing his large-visored sun hat and using it as a fan. “Well, that reminds me of something that happened when I was at college. There was a professor there, political science, bright as hell and ornery as hell, loved to twit his colleagues, ACLU types. A faculty meeting was called to protest the prosecution in New York of the Communists rounded up under the Smith Act, the Foley Square trial—you remember that?”

“Yup. I was in Japan. Just before the Korean War, right?”

“Nineteen forty-eight, I think. Anyway, for an hour or so it went around the big table in the faculty room, all the professors talking about the unconstitutionality of the Smith Act and so on, and then they came to my mad professor, Willmoore Kendall, asked him what he thought about it. And he said, ‘You know, there's an elderly Negro lady who cleans up my Fellow's suite every day and this morning just before I came over here she said, “Professor, is it true that there are people in New York who want to overthrow the government by force and violence?” And I said, “Yes, that's true, Mary.” And she said, “Why don't we run them out of town?” ‘Now, that lady'”—Blackford was imitating the Oklahoman-Rhodes scholar accent of his old tutor—“‘that lady knows more about politics than any full professor in this room.'”

Montana laughed. And then he paused. “What's the equivalent? How would you run the North Vietnamese out of town?”

Blackford changed the subject. “The President wants to control the traffic on this highway, that's true. The North Vietnamese shouldn't be on it in the first place, but then they shouldn't be in South Vietnam, the way I figure it—”

They were distracted by the sound of the helicopter approaching. The rotors were deafening as the large OH-13 Sioux began to squat down. It had reached a hovering station only a few feet above the ground when they heard the shot coming from the bushy ravine below. One of the pilots slumped in the cockpit. Montana snapped orders even as his own rifle began to spit fire into the densest bush to the right of the plane.

“
Cover cover cover move your ass Binh
!”

The three natives were on their stomachs firing. Blackford had only his pistol. He leaned over and shouted to Montana.

“
We'll have to run for it
.” Montana needed no instructions in guerrilla technique. He slapped Binh on the shoulder. “Tell your men to continue firing, you run into the chopper with Mr. Oakes. Resume firing when you get there. Tell the other guys to begin running when we pick up your covering fire.”

Montana, Binh, and Oakes ran the fifty yards, then crouched beside the helicopter, firing into the ravine. The two guides rushed forward. The second one was stopped by a bullet a dozen yards before reaching the chopper. Blackford started back to fetch him and was floored by Tucker Montana's heavy fist. “You mind your business goddamnit, Oakes. Get in the chopper.” Montana himself, crouching his huge frame, went back and dragged the wounded guide back, as if he were light as a child. Binh was firing now from the open window of the helicopter. Blackford fired, and then pulled up the wounded guide as Montana shouted to the pilot to take off. The helicopter rose quickly and Blackford reached over the cockpit seat to help the copilot, whose head was far over, the chin thrust down, the flying helmet on his lap, where the man had put it just before a bullet entered his right temple. Blackford turned to the pilot on the left. “You want me on the controls, Jeff?”

“Nahr,” he said. “I can handle it. Just check the radio signals for me.” He handed Blackford his clipboard. Blackford studied it. He stretched over the copilot to adjust the radio to the frequency for Checkpoint Alpha at Savannakhet. Then he took a knife from his belt and cut away his rolled-up sleeve. With the strip of cloth he bound the wound of the dead flyer. The bullet had entered one temple and come out the other. He found himself thinking, oddly, sadly, Well, at least we were firing in the right direction. After binding the wound he leaned back in the second row of seats. In the rear cabin, Binh tended to the shattered knee of his guide. Suddenly, at two thousand feet of altitude, the air was cool. “Welcome to Vietnam, Mr. Oakes,” said Tucker Montana.

2

April 5, 1964

Aboard the Yai-Bi-Kih

En route to Cincinnati, Ohio

The senator stretched his legs and set his heels on the edge of the empty seat opposite him in his chartered 727 jet. He rested his sunburned hands on the table as he read over the text of the speech he would give that night in Cincinnati. The airplane had passed through the turbulence and now no motion was felt, except for the quiet purring of the engines. His young speech writer, Fred Anderson, sat on his right, making notes on the carbon copy where the senator indicated, as he read out loud, minor changes he wanted—“Not ‘President LBJ.' President Johnson.”

“How about, ‘My predecessor, President Johnson'?” Freddy asked with a smile.

Goldwater released a quick grin, going back to the text. Goldwater continued reading in a monotone, interrupting himself from time to time to comment on the speech, or on something a passage he was reading reminded him of, and Fred Anderson knew through experience when such interruptions were an invitation to counter-remarks by him or when he was simply supposed to listen. Or when, catching the eye of Bill Baroody across the aisle, it was especially appropriate for him to say nothing, on issues or ideas the campaign manager did not want commentary on.

“What does Lodge think he's going to accomplish, leaving Saigon suddenly? I've knocked out Rockefeller, he's gone. All the liberals can come up with is Scranton. The city of Scranton, Pee Aye, is, I suppose, named after the first Scranton? When did that happen, about the time of the Pilgrims?”

“About then,” Baroody grinned, drawing lightly on his pipe.

“But I mean, why Bill Scranton? I'm not sure he'd set even Scranton, Pennsylvania, on fire.”

“He did pretty well when he ran for governor of Pennsylvania.”

“He reminds me of Adlai. Freddy? Does he remind you of Adlai? I wish you'd give up that pipe, Bill—smells like a war chief's teepee in here.”

“I see what you mean, Barry.” Baroody ignored, as always, the repeated protests over his pipe. “Yeah, he reminds me of Adlai.”

“But”—Goldwater laid down the speech and was asking the question now directly—“that does
not
tell us why Lodge quit Saigon. It isn't as though he had settled our problems there. It's a goddamn mess and it's going to get worse.”

Baroody leaned over and faced the candidate diagonally. “Don't you see, Barry, he's coming back here to help Scranton. Rockefeller will finance the whole thing. And they have exactly one objective in mind, and that's what we've got to keep our eyes on. They want Ike to come out for Scranton. That's about the only thing that would keep us from getting the nomination.”

“Eisenhower said he was going to stay neutral, didn't he? Didn't he say that twice?”

“Yes,” Baroody said. “Ike said that twice. But he also said exactly—” He looked at his watch a full second before reminding himself that it was hardly necessary to do so in order to say, “—exactly six days ago he said that as far as he was concerned, the race for the nomination was open until the day the Republican Convention named a candidate. You hardly overlooked that snub, Barry. You hammed it up for the picnic crowd in Phoenix, let them stick an arrow out behind you. Made a fine photo, looked as though it was coming right from your back, not from your armpit. Shot in the back by Ike—the message got through.”

“Yes,” Goldwater said. He turned to his right. “Freddy, have we got anything nice in the speech here”—he shuffled vaguely through the pages he hadn't yet read—“about Ike? Maybe you can work in something about how he won the Second World War single-handed. Or maybe something about how he anticipated the Indochina problem at the Geneva conference in 1954 which is why we have no problem in Vietnam today.”

“Quiet, Barry! Where Ike is concerned, We Are Not Sarcastic Ever.” Baroody turned his head to Anderson, to make certain that the injunction had got home to the blond young speech writer with the horn-rimmed glasses and the slightly cheeky expression on his face, even when working at highest tempo. Goldwater looked up again from the manuscript.

“Say, Bill. Did you see in the last issue of
National Review
where Buckley proposes I tap Ike as my Vice President? Kinda cute, that.”

“If you think so, you and Buckley are the only people who think it's such an interesting idea. For one thing, it's unconstitutional. The Twenty-third Amendment says no one can be President more than twice, and since a Vice President is directly in line to become a President, then that's unconstitutional. It's that simple.”

“Bill”—Fred Anderson interrupted, stooping over to reach into his briefcase—“actually, I think you could be wrong about that. By the way, it's the Twenty-second Amendment”—he flipped open his well-worn 1964
World Almanac
—“and what it says”—he turned the pages—“is … No person shall be
elected
to the office of President more than twice, et cetera. Hell, a Vice President who becomes President because the President is shot—excuse me, Senator, just making a theoretical point—hasn't been
elected
President. Suppose the President
and
the Vice President were shot and the Speaker of the House was next in line, but he had already been President twice—are you saying he wouldn't qualify? Or are you saying that he wouldn't qualify to serve as Speaker because he might just end up being President, and that's against the Twenty-second Amendment?”

“Goddamnit, Freddy, you sound like a Harvard debater.”

“Bill, I
was
a Harvard debater. But does that make my constitutional reasoning wrong?”

“Well,” Goldwater interrupted, “it's not a crazy idea, let's face it. I'm not sure I'd want to be the person to suggest it to Ike, that he come back into government as a second lieutenant. But it would take care of the inexperience bit, and the Goldwater-wants-to-go-to-war—you've got to agree on that, don't you?”

Baroody drew on his pipe, and his dark, puffy Lebanese-inherited features contracted as he communicated an urgent wish to stay on the point. “The point is, Barry, that's an out of-this-world suggestion. But it is true we've got to keep Ike neutral, and there's one thing Lodge said in Saigon yesterday that helps.”

“What did he say that helps? I don't remember ever hearing Cabot Lodge say anything that helped anything. Except maybe Cabot.”

Baroody pulled the clip from the folder at his side. “He said, he said, let's see … ‘I cannot see how Vietnam could possibly be a presidential campaign issue. It involves the Eisenhower administration and the Kennedy and Johnson administrations and the Truman administration.'”