Crooked (16 page)

“The results won’t be what you expect,” Gregor said. “You’ve got a wolf in the fold, Mr. President. I should know; I’m carrying his blood. Didn’t your vice ever tell you?”

“What? Dick, what does he—” Eisenhower began, but before he could finish the question, I pulled the trigger and shot Gregor. There was a brittle pop, and his body twitched. I shot him three more times as Arkady sprang forward, hefting a bust of James Madison in one hand; Tatiana had drawn from somewhere an engraved silver dagger. Suddenly Gregor inhaled, and then shrieked. The sound was shrill and yet thunderous, impossibly loud, not at all human, like the braking of a massive industrial steam engine. We staggered back as the sound came to an end. Hunt was on the floor. And then Eisenhower held up a hand.

“There’s a lot of strange things out in the steppes, I’ll grant you,” Eisenhower said into the silence. He talked like a Kansas schoolteacher, but somehow the room was held. Gregor didn’t move. “And after 1917 they started coming back, didn’t they? There’s the Great Worm in Tunguska, and what’s at Arkhangel’sk, and the pine men, and that which you tried to put down with the bomb in ’49.”

There was, oddly, a cold wind blowing, a lot colder than a Washington November. I smelled, of all things, snow. Snow was weeks away. And the windows were closed. The Oval Office doesn’t have any corners, but somehow darkness began creeping in. Eisenhower coughed and spat something onto his desk that bounced away. A pin.

“The men and women who founded this country were very odd indeed. You remember them as naive idealists in funny hats, but they were hard people. They believed in the devil and they believed in spirits and there were things they found here that made a lot of sense to them. Those first years, a lot of them died but a few didn’t.”

The wind picked up and it got darker. I heard creaking pines and there was a scratching at the window.

“Why is it so cold?” Hunt muttered.

Eisenhower, I saw, was shaking. He gave a wet cough and spat out another pin. His face was a pale mask, brows and black eyes. His crooked ears looked not comical but alien, or as if he’d been taken apart and put together slightly wrong.

“Devils in the forest. You could have another name for it. The Black Stranger. The people who started this country made a deal, and they drove a very hard bargain.”

In the dark it wasn’t Eisenhower’s face at all now. It must have been a trick of shadows that made it seem like the walls weren’t there, that it was just forest. And I saw a face looking at me through the trees, bobbing slightly, as if it belonged to someone walking toward me from an impossible distance beyond the walls.

“Do you know where you’re standing, Ambassador?” I heard Eisenhower say. “This room burned in 1928. There are rooms in that wing that are still burning.”

The being in the darkness began to run and for a moment I was alone in a primeval forest in the night. I knew in my bones that there wasn’t a building or a human face for a thousand miles. A heavy footstep crunched in the snow behind me and I screamed as the panic became unbearable.

Abruptly it was bright again, morning now, and I was back in the Oval Office. There was no trace of the stranger, but Eisenhower was sprawled forward on his desk. I ran to him. He looked at me, then at Hunt. He mumbled a few distorted words that I’m pretty sure were “Get that son of a bitch Nixon out of my office.”

The next twenty hours or so may have been my first term as president; I’ve never been quite sure. Eisenhower was unconscious but not officially incapacitated and no one bothered to sign anything to the effect that I was in charge.

“There is some impairment in speech and motor control but I believe he’ll recover. Were you there when it happened? Was there a particular stress involved?”

“N…no. Not at all. I was working in another room.”

Eisenhower still knew me, more or less. He evinced a complete grasp of domestic policy and international relations. He seemed to have lost only that knowledge of which he was sole possessor, the key to America’s grand strategy of supernatural geopolitics, along with any awareness that there was such a thing.

The old discipline of American magic died with Eisenhower’s stroke. Knowledge saved and passed on for two hundred years had disappeared in an instant. I could only guess at what had been lost. Ritual initiation. Modes of attack and defense. Eisenhower claimed to have killed Stalin—how? And there must have been a history, a secret chronicle of the greatest empire the world has ever known.

Taft had pieced it together once, Eisenhower had said. But from what? I went back to the meager White House library, but it was useless. The knowledge was gone.

“Mr. Kennedy, I
apologize for intruding, I know it’s against protocol. I wish to explain to you why I must be allowed to win this election.

“I believe—I am quite certain—that we are engaged in a shadow war against the Soviet Union, on a level beyond what the public has knowledge of. I believe the Soviets have weaponized monstrous entities from the Precambrian era and occult forces beyond the comprehension of our present-day science that may soon eclipse the striking power of our conventional and nuclear capabilities, if they have not already done so. These have already been deployed in the European and Southeast Asian theaters, to terrifying effect.

“Furthermore, it is—excuse me, I’d like to finish. Furthermore, I believe that our own nation is also—thank you for your continued attention—engaged in its own occult arms race, which may or may not be firmly under our control. I’m the only man capable of—excuse me, sir—of comprehending…of…there is nothing funny about this. Nothing funny at all. If you’d seen the things I have, you’d understand that the walls of our everyday reality are perilously—perilously—

“Very well. Very well, if that’s your response, I will see you in the television studio for our scheduled debate. And may the best man win. I assure you, it will not be you.”

Kennedy didn’t know anything, and what this told me is that he could not be allowed to be president. But what did Jack Kennedy have? He’d been to Harvard and he was freakishly handsome. He had coasted on his family’s money into a lazy career in the Senate while I strove and scrapped for power. He was exactly the man I’d been training to beat in my fifteen years in politics. I was going to take him apart, like I’d taken apart Jerry Voorhis and Alger Hiss.

Two years ago I was the heir apparent. I’d played it almost perfectly. I spent eight years in the White House as vice president during what was little short of a golden age. Eisenhower’s plan wasn’t finished, but he had done so much. The interstate highway system stretched across the nation, projecting a new utopia of motion, dynamism, thrilling euphoria. It was as if Americans finally understood what the twentieth century was for, and we, Dwight D. Eisenhower and Dick Nixon, had built it for them, together.

And we had also built a heroic drama. An encroaching shadow. The previous year I’d gone to Moscow to face down its evil vizier, Khrushchev. We’d debated the merits of our respective worldviews in front of the camera. Never mind what the cameras didn’t seem to pick up—the hissing, buzzing sound that intruded whenever Khrushchev spoke. The insistent voice in my mind that told me to run, that panicked me, the entire time I stood inside the monumental architecture of their great city; the sense I had that something inside the Kremlin was deeply wrong. I’d smiled for the cameras and pretended a gentlemanly rivalry.

Yes, Eisenhower had turned on me. Our late-night talks were forgotten. He barely knew me; I was only the populist shit-stain and political hatchet man that he’d recruited in order to win the 1952 election and then sidelined. I was a necessary evil, and the fact that I did the nasty jobs he assigned only confirmed his impression of what I was good at.

They said I had the flu the night of the debate. I remember very little of my state of mind that evening. Just images.

I remember shaking hands with Howard Smith, the moderator. Then the studio man called out, “Thirty seconds to air,” and I hurried to my lectern.

I had a momentary, confused impression that a bird, or maybe several, had gotten into the studio. The sound of wing beats kept coming back, but my eye could never quite follow where it was. It was almost impossible not to look.

“Twenty seconds.”

Handsome Kennedy smiled at me with his irresistible grin and even in that moment I felt drawn to him, felt a little gleeful that it was just me and him up there—everyone’s seeing me up here with Jack! Although the grin was also slightly knowing, like maybe he understood something about these goddamn birds that I didn’t. Like once again there was a sucker in the room and it wasn’t Howard Smith and it certainly wasn’t Jack Kennedy.

“Ten.”

A last-minute glance at Pat, waiting backstage along with my campaign staff, wearing a look of well-intentioned, sympathetic, supportive concern that a loved one puts on to convey the earnest belief that you’re about to humiliate yourself in public.

The hell with that. Yes, Jack wanted the title, badly. He wanted me thrown out. But he’d never competed at this level and he knew it. They counted us down and then we were on the air. The first presidential debate on live television.

“Good evening,” the moderator began. “The television and radio stations of the United States and their affiliated stations are proud to provide the facilities…” I tuned him out for a moment. Why was it so incredibly hot in here? Why did Kennedy want to go to the moon so fucking badly? Why couldn’t I focus?

“According to rules set by the candidates themselves, each man shall make an opening statement of approximately eight minutes’ duration.” What was going on with his droning intonation? He sounded hypnotized. Which was ridiculous; no one was hypnotized.

Kennedy talked first but I wasn’t listening, just going over my own stuff in my head. The opening statement was easy. I was coming off an eight-year golden age; Kennedy was a Democrat and basically Harry Truman. Done and done.

The first question went to JFK, about his youth and inexperience. I almost smirked but cut it off. Pat was signaling to me. She kept touching her face like there was something wrong with mine. Didn’t she realize that I couldn’t see my own face? I risked a glance around the room, but there was no mirror. Why wasn’t there a mirror?

“Mr. Nixon, would you like to comment on that statement?” I had no fucking idea what the statement was. No. I glanced over at Kennedy. It was really quite hot, but he didn’t seem to be feeling it.

Question to me. “Now, Mr. Vice President, your campaign stresses the value of your eight-year experience, and the question arises as to whether that experience was as an observer or as a participant or as an initiator of policy-making.” What were they getting at? That I was no Eisenhower?
The arcane secrets of the presidency are hidden
from you, aren’t they, Mr. Nixon?
Of course not. I have plumbed their depths, I said. Or words to that effect. I tried to look right into the camera.

The hour seemed to stretch on, telescoping into two, five, ten. Didn’t everybody know 1958 was a recession year? I seemed to see a translucent form now, dimly phosphorescent, a slow wafting tendril like that of an enormous sea anemone probing the television studio. Then another. I tried not to flinch as they drew closer. Did no one else see this? It was outrageous, and I planned to lodge a protest.

By this time I was hearing phantom laughter every time I spoke, and the studio smelled of lemons, the same lemons that fell on my father’s farm and rotted and burst. It smelled of dust and sickrooms, and I didn’t understand how my mother could be operating the camera and my two dead brothers the boom mikes. And I hadn’t prepared note cards for any of this.

Kennedy was still smiling, handsome as ever, so fucking handsome, and in a fleeting moment of clarity, in and around my explanation of the inner workings of the Soviet economy, I realized what that handsomeness was. I realized that maybe the camera showed me too clearly, that it showed my face too clearly, and everyone could see I had witnessed things I didn’t want to think about. I’d put these things in a place inside myself, a dark shape against the sun. Kennedy didn’t have a place like that, and that’s what everyone loved about him. He just beamed at you.

I glanced over at my supporters, a knot of people gathered off camera. Brows all furrowed except one, Pat’s. Was she smiling? A wicked little smile I’d never seen before.

I saw Eisenhower’s face in the audience, his eyes pleading, trapped somewhere far off. I saw Alger Hiss. I saw my father, young and healthy, a sack of lemons on the seat beside him. I gripped the sides of the lectern, bore down on every word. I deserved this victory. I was the man who knew the real world, the man who’d bled for it. The country needed a man who knew the darkness inside it and the darkness beyond. It was me. I was going to save everything.

I was reading
in the news about Kennedy and the Cubans and how he’d saved the day again when my secretary gave me a message about my dry-cleaning, a fanciful mix-up about suits and handkerchiefs, and a number to call back. It was an old signal out of our playbook, but I remembered it. Handler-to-agent priority sign,
We need to talk,
the numbers translating to a place and time.

Pat and the kids were out, and the press people just weren’t that hungry for Nixon stories, but I still made the time for a countersurveillance regimen that took up an hour of my afternoon: driving up and down West Hollywood and parking on a side street before walking to the diner on La Brea. I would be late but I wanted to show up clean. I was relieved, frankly. If anyone could get my career back on track it was Tatiana and her contacts. I’d almost stopped thinking of it as a betrayal; it was just how I did things.

When I got there she had nestled herself in a booth in the far back corner and was nursing a coffee; she wore a pale trench coat and scarf, despite the weather, and sunglasses. She gestured for me to sit.

“Sit down, Mr. Nixon,” she said, and coughed into her napkin. I sat down opposite her.

“Sorry I’m late,” I said. “I wasn’t followed.”

“I know. You do a good job.”

“Are you feeling all right?” I asked. Closer in I was a little shocked by how bad she looked: too much makeup, hands shaking, squinting at me.

“Just a cold,” she said. “Is the air travel, too much.”

“Where did you go?”

“Havana. Is bright in here, yes? Too much sunlight.” It was four in the afternoon and the sun was starting to go down behind the hills. It wasn’t bright at all.

The waitress brought me coffee and I ordered an omelet without thinking. Tatiana watched her until she was almost back to her station before saying anything to me.

“What have you got for me, Tatiana? What’s the plan?”

“Is no plan. Not for you anyway. American assignment is concluded now.”

“What do you mean, concluded?”

“‘Principal agent is no longer positioned to provide quality intelligence. Does not merit further expense or attention at this time.’”

“Now, just wait—there’s a lot I can do. The California governor’s race is coming up. I have a really good chance there.”

She smiled at that, an odd smile. I imagined that this was something closer to what her natural smile had been, before she put in her hours in the mirror in a Leningrad dormitory. For a moment I felt a flash of her vulnerability. Of how physically small she was and how much effort she had to put out for the likes of me.

“Is a good thing about you, the ambition. But you are no longer active agent for us. Your status is revised to sleeper. They do not lose your file, if that is what you are hoping.”

“No…no. But what about you? Us? Arkady?”

“Is not strictly relevant but American posting is finished for myself and Agent Arkady. We return to Moscow. Finished. Done.” She made a sweeping-away gesture.

“What? Why?”

“Recalled for debrief and reeducation. I am too long in United States, much risk of ideological weakening. Catching flight in two days.” She broke off with an ugly round of coughing. She spat in her napkin, and the waitress looked up.

“You’re leaving?”

“Don’t be sentimental, Dick.”

“I’m a little surprised, that’s all. It’s been fourteen years. Where will you go afterward? A new assignment?”

She shook her head, took out a cigarette but didn’t light it.

“I don’t know. If I knew I could not tell you anyway. My case goes under review. I am gone a long time from home office. Stalin was still alive when I left Russia. The people who hired me have been shot. The people who shot them have been shot. I must go and meet the new Kremlin and find out what they wish of me.”

“It’s a purge, isn’t it. You could be killed. Or sent to Siberia.”

She gave me a level look. “I am Russian intelligence. I survive a long time in this job.”

“You don’t have to go.”

“Of course I do.”

“You don’t! You could stay here. Defect. You and Arkady. It would be so easy. I know all the right people. I don’t understand why you didn’t do it years ago.”

“That is what you would do, yes? People like you, it is natural.”

“Like me? What people?”

“I work with many people like you. People who are afraid, who are greedy, who do whatever they want to spare themselves. You lie to your wife. You spy on your country. It is easy to make those people behave as I want them to. You think you are a spy, but you are only a liar and a coward.”

She lit her cigarette, finally. I cleared my throat.

“You’ve got to know by now that I love you,” I told her. “If you stay in the U.S.—we could get married. You could get citizenship.” I said it before I could think it through. Would I really divorce Pat? Some days it was all I thought about. Some days it seemed like it would be the act of an insane person. My whole life would be gone. But otherwise Tatiana was going to leave. And probably get killed. Was she telling the truth?

She looked at me for a long time.

“I do a real job on you, Nixon, I see that now. I’m even a little sorry for it.” She stood up to go, belted her coat.

“Don’t go,” I said.

She stopped for only a moment. “Business is concluded, Nixon.”

“Will I ever see you again?” I asked.

She shrugged. “People live a long time. I hope you enjoy your life, Mr. Nixon.”