The Henderson Equation (29 page)

"He was privy to all sorts of things he never used.
Toward the end, before the crack-up, he was being compromised all over the
place."

He didn't want to hear, he told himself, suddenly panicked,
his own anger rising.

"He and Kennedy were buddies."

"That's no secret."

"He knew things."

"I'm sure he did."

"Things that he never told you."

Nick doubted that. Was it possible? She was heading into
fertile ground.

"You look skeptical," Myra said. "I'm
convinced he knew all sorts of backdoor things, especially during the Kennedy
years. No, he didn't confide in me. But there were bits and pieces that only
the years have put together. I'm sure, for example, that he knew about the Bay
of Pigs in advance and he was privy to all sorts of CIA things that he
deliberately kept out of the
Chronicle."

"That's just supposition, Myra. I was around,
too." He was trying to remember. "We've always been asked to shut
things out on the grounds of national security. They're still trying. What about
this morning? It's all a crock of shit, Myra. And you know it."

"Charlie kept it all to himself." She looked at
him. "He adored Kennedy. He would do anything he asked."

"Maybe," Nick said. "In those years you
could still believe the national security ploy. Maybe. I didn't have to know
everything." But he did know, or thought he knew, all about Charlie.
Indeed, he and Charlie shared unbearable burdens, he thought, remembering that
time in the funeral parlor. Even in the Kennedy days when Charlie would slip
out to the White House or meet the young President in his place in Virginia, or
Cape Cod, or Palm Beach, he always felt that Charlie had told him everything.
It wasn't the keeping out of things that bothered him. Rather, it was not
knowing, the knowledge that Charlie had done it without his knowledge. That was
Myra's point, the wedge inserted between the living and the dead.

"Even if Burt were involved," she said, embarking
on another tack, catching a wisp of wind from another direction, "which I
don't believe, would it matter now? It's all over. 1963. That's an age away.
Even if, by some strange fluke, you could dredge something up, what would it
prove? That he was acting on the orders of the President, that he was doing
something to help the country, even if it was patently immoral. In those days
it was perfectly acceptable to excuse the immorality..."

"On the grounds of national security."

"Nick. You know how I feel about the CIA. All the lies
and sham. All the horrors that were done in our name. I'm against it. I don't
need any special credentials. It's just that there were people in those days
who did these things and were victimized, just as we were, as Charlie
was."

Charlie again, he thought, watching her method of pleading
with growing interest, glimpsing the stubborn passion beneath the façade of
calm.

"If he
was
involved," Nick said, feeling
the morning's weariness return, "then it deserves to be told. Now! Before
the man becomes president." He felt the paper folded in his pocket and
pulled it out. "See," he said, holding it up in front of her.
"Look on the lower right." He waited for her to read it. "I'm
not exactly out of control on this." He felt stupid justifying himself,
wondering why she did not merely fire him, since she had the power and he had
been taunting her to use it. Or was he simply testing the limits of his own
power over her?

He watched her stand up and walk to the bar where she mixed
another beaker of martinis, pouring the liquid into fresh glasses. He emptied
the dregs in his own glass and took another from her.

"We've worked together so well these last few years,
Nick," she said.

"Yes, we have, Myra." He tried to read her
implication. Was it a warning? Or was this a sign of her narrowing vision, the
consequences of too much power, too many victories? Or was she merely
validating her ownership, asserting her right to possession? That, he knew, was
the heart of the problem, his problem. He had become what he could never own.
The
Chronicle
had seeped into his brain, his tissues, his cells. He was
its living embodiment. He was the
Chronicle
. His blood had turned to
ink. The drinks must be getting to him, he thought, shivering.

A news aide brought in the first street editions and laid
them on the edge of her desk. Reaching for the top copy, he opened it and began
to study the words, the habit drowning his agitation.

"How terrible!" she sighed, looking at the
pictures on the front page. Suddenly he longed to be in the city room again,
the comfort of his own domain. He started toward the door.

"Do we have an understanding, Nick?" she asked
gently. He had resolved to act as if he hadn't heard, but her tone was
compelling.

"Haven't we always, Myra?" he answered, feeling
the full measure of his helplessness.

Seeing Charlie in the environment of the
Chronicle
for the first time came as a shock, as if his friend had remolded himself into
a totally different shape. They were still in the old building then, and
Charlie's office, glass-enclosed, looked out over a crowded city room which,
compared to that of the
News
, seemed a hodge-podge of misdesign. Desks
were crowded together, people bunched against each other.

"I've reworked things a bit," Charlie had said,
noting his confusion.

It was an unfamiliar format. The traditional desk system
had been scrapped.

"It looks funny. But it works better," he had
said. It was an odd sensation seeing Charlie in the center of the storm, in
full command, totally absorbed, barking orders.

That first day, Nick had felt clumsy, an appendage, the
center of a vacuum, with activity swirling about him as he floated rudderless.
Charlie paid little attention to him, working nonstop at fever pitch.

It was only when the street edition had finally been
delivered to Charlie's desk that he saw his friend unbend, lean back, put his
feet on the desk and his arms behind his head.

"Another day, another dollar," he said, watching
Nick. "What do you think, kid?"

"I think you're working your ass off."

"Yeah, ain't it loverly?"

It seemed in retrospect to have been a Thursday, since the
paper piled on Charlie's desk was unusually thick.

"It looks prosperous as hell," Nick had said,
thumbing through the pages.

"Food day. We've really had to scratch to fill it
up."

Later, Charlie had taken him on a tour. He remembered that
it seemed endless and that Charlie seemed to know everyone who worked for him
by first name, and that all who greeted him seemed to take pride in the
operation.

"We're building the best goddamned paper in the United
States," Charlie had said, repeating the phrase over and over again as
they roamed through the building.

"It seems awesome," Nick had commented.

"Nothing to it," Charlie had responded proudly.
"And we're well in the black."

Nick was content, in those early days, to stand in
Charlie's shadow, follow him, learn the rudiments of his special brand of
personal editorship.

The move to Washington had brought other benefits. Charlie
had given Margaret a job as feature writer on the woman's pages, which had for
the moment brought a respite from their bickering. Even Chums had settled into
their new life with contentment.

"You see, Charlie came through for us," he
taunted Margaret, who was silent now.

But mainly those first months at the
Chronicle
served as indoctrination into the mysteries of the Charlie he had not known
before. He had given Nick the title Assistant to the Managing Editor, much to
the displeasure of the rest of the staff. It was, after all, an intrusion, the
insertion of a total stranger into what had been a tight family group. He could
feel their mistrust and aloofness.

It was not unnatural, he thought. He was, he knew, a
contrivance of Charlie's friendship, pure nepotism. If Charlie saw the staff's
reaction, he said nothing, having endured his own sticky journey as the
Son-in-Law.

To complicate the adjustment, Charlie gave Nick no specific
duties in the chain of command. As he saw it then, Nick's role was to watch
Charlie, to observe carefully. Charlie pursued his editorship frenetically,
with consuming concentration. Hardly a moment of his day was given to any
activity other than to feed the
Chronicle
's greedy hunger for
information.

Only when the building began to vibrate with the workings
of the presses did he allow the old wisecracking Charlie to emerge. But even
that was a brief respite. The delivery of the street edition would set him off
again and he would bury his eyes in the inked pulp, flipping each page swiftly,
commenting often into the telephone, as he continued to refine and reshape the
day's offering.

Sometimes Charlie was hard to follow. It was as if he had
calibrated his mind only to the special rhythm of the
Chronicle
. Every
word, every phrase, every sentence seemed to carry a special meaning, an
important note in a full orchestration, the complete conception of which was
carried only in Charlie's mind. And when a single note was off-key, Charlie
could catch it instantly. Like the incident with Lighter.

Charlie had spotted it first as a buried paragraph in a
New
York Times
story under the by-line of a Pentagon reporter. It referred to a
new missile delivery system now under active consideration by the military,
soon to be submitted for congressional approval.

"Goddamned son of a bitch," Charlie muttered
under his breath.

"What is it?" Nick had asked.

"It's Lighter." He was referring to Martin Lighter,
the
Chronicle
's Pentagon reporter.

"You'll see," Charlie said, relishing the
mystery. He picked up the phone. Through the glass, Nick could see Lighter stir
in his desk in the rear of the city room. Looking up at Charlie's glass office,
he rose and began the long trek toward them. Charlie waited, absorbed, his eyes
narrowed, gathering the threads of the planned confrontation.

"What's up, Charlie?" Lighter said, confused by
his editor's somber mood.

"Have you seen the
Times?"

"Of course." Lighter exuded a sense of pedantic
superiority. He was the
Chronicle
's military affairs reporter and in
Washington that carried with it all the geegaws of rank and prestige, which he
bore with appropriate arrogance.

"There isn't a single reference to it in any of your copy.
Obviously, it's one of the most important military stories percolating."

"Yes, it is."

Charlie looked at him, his frown deepening as Lighter's
veneer seemed to harden. He was a thin, balding man, with glasses perched low
on the bridge of his nose and thin lips which curled with indignation. There
was also the air of the old-timer about him and the usual contempt for the
youngish hotshot editor, the Son-in-Law.

"Then why are you sitting on it?" Charlie asked.

"I gave my word," Lighter said. Charlie's anger
began to seep through his studied control.

"Your word?"

"My word," Lighter repeated. "You don't
think that anything goes on around there without me knowing about it, do you?
It's my beat, remember?" He had said these words with no attempt to hide
his contempt for Charlie's questioning. "Obviously the
Times
man
broke his word."

"Or never gave it."

"Of course he did. I know Jack O'Brien quite well. He
probably used it because Senator Bowker of New York is head of the Armed
Services Committee of the Senate and it was conceived as a kind of trial
balloon, to test the local waters."

Charlie watched him, his anger rising. "Around
here," Charlie said slowly, "you give your word only to me. You are
responsible only to me."

"I gave my word to the Secretary of Defense."

"You have no authority from me to give your word to
anybody. As editor of this newspaper that is my option. Not yours."

"Don't you think that's a bit dictatorial?"
Lighter asked, his contempt rising fearlessly. "My success is built on
these confidences. I'm a responsible reporter. If I violated their confidences
they would shut us out of a wide range of legitimate information. After all,
they're in the business of guarding our security. Frankly, Charlie, I should
think you'd be more mature about this."

"That makes you an accomplice in their
shenanigans."

"I think that's a rather strong word. I can't be a
good authoritative reporter if I am not in their confidence. You can't expect
me to reveal all my knowledge."

"I certainly can. How am I supposed to make editorial
judgments if you keep me in the dark?"

"You have to trust my judgment," Lighter said,
lured somehow into feeling he was getting the upper hand.

"Are you telling me that if I asked you this minute to
empty your mind of all your little so-called confidences as to new weapons
systems, manpower plans, planned base shutdowns, and all the other intriguing
bits of information, you would refuse to give them to me?"

"Probably."

"In other words, I buy what you give me on copy paper.
Take it or leave it."

"You have the option to reject my copy."

"But how can I make an intelligent judgment if I'm not
privy to the background information?"

"You've got to play it as it lays."

Charlie stood up to his full height. He towered over
Lighter, who still faced him bravely.

"Listen, you turd," Charlie said. "You've
become nothing but a damned flack for them, a goddamned conduit for anything
they want to do. You've been bought, you dummy, by their insufferable deference
to your egomania. I won't run my paper like that. We're adversaries, not
cohorts in league against the public's right to know."

"You're being naïve," Lighter said, swallowing
his words, betraying the first signs of fear.

"I decide," Charlie said. "You either accept
that or you can't work for the kind of newspaper I run."

"If you were around Washington as long as I've been
you'd understand," Lighter said, trying to recover his flagging courage.

"Thank God I haven't been. Lighter, you're working on
the wrong team. You should be a damned government flack, intriguing with them
on how to perpetuate the bureaucracy."

Lighter swallowed now, his thin lips tightly pursed,
feeling at last the weight of his defeat.

"You're too fucking big for us, Lighter," Charlie
pressed, turning the knife. "You don't seem to understand what we've been
trying to do here. Kick open a few windows. Let in some fresh air."

"Muckracking," Lighter said, obdurate now, having
reached the outer edge of his courage, his last line of defense. Despite
Charlie's power over him, he was not bending easily, not accepting graceful
defeat. Nick had to admire his last-ditch effort to vindicate himself.

"There is room on this paper for only one final
arbiter, one editor." Lighter stood silently, obviously taking refuge in a
stubborn pride. Nick felt compassion for the older man, staring bravely into
the mirror of his defeat.

"I'm sorry, Lighter. You're being reassigned as of
now."

"Obviously I couldn't accept that," Lighter said,
his voice cracking. But Charlie betrayed no mercy.

"You know where the door is."

The words hit Lighter now with almost physical velocity,
his body bending briefly to absorb the blow.

"If that's the line you're establishing you'll have to
fire half the staff."

"If that's what it takes to follow the disciplines of
this newspaper, then so be it."

Lighter's eyes moved from side to side, as if searching for
a clear exit. But before his body could move, he held out his hand. Almost as a
reflex, Charlie took it.

"I'm sorry, Lighter," he said.

"You're in command," Lighter said, making an effort
to remain rigid, to keep intact all symbols of his pride.

When he had gone, a forlorn figure despite his attempts to
preserve a sense of dignity, Charlie fell into a chair.

"That was tough, kid," he said.

It was a flash of compassion, quickly dissipated. Charlie
stood up again and paced his glassed-in office in agitation.

"You see what I mean, kid. It's not like newspapering
in any city in the world. They're always out to use us, subvert us. I've got to
be on my guard all the time." He looked at Nick. "You see why I need
someone around that I can trust. Wheels within wheels. I'll root it out of this
place if it's the last thing I do."

The incident with Lighter did begin a kind of ideological
purge within the
Chronicle,
bloodlessly achieved, since not all the
offenders were as stubborn in their views as Lighter. Charlie had wisely chosen
to undertake it without formalization, encouraging a kind of philosophical
exchange of views on how the bureaucracy would be covered without undermining
the delicate balance that could block their already established conduits. It
was Nick's first major assignment. Ironically, it had never ended, since the
natural consequences of human contact made the idea of being a true adversary
workable only in the abstract. Human confidences persisted, would always
persist. As Charlie might have learned, it was impossible to be God.