Watergate (33 page)

“Your family loves you,” said Rose.

“I suppose they do,” Nixon replied.

The navy steward poured some California wine and then retreated to a discreet distance, leaving the two of them to their shrimp scampi.

Last night, the boss had made a spur-of-the-moment decision to come up here—and had shanghaied her along—after a grueling day-trip to Mississippi, where he’d dedicated a new naval air center to John Stennis, who was once more up and around. Rose knew the pillars of the temple were coming down, as in those old biblical movies, and she knew that the president didn’t want his family around during what could only be an awful weekend. This morning, Saturday, she’d found out that Pat and the girls had stayed awake most of Friday night, before deciding to send Tricia, visiting the White House from New York, up here to Camp David. She’d surprised her father at lunchtime, prior to a meeting he had with Bill Rogers, whose reputation for probity appeared to be giving him new value within the ruined administration.

Rose had never liked Tricia as much as Julie (no one did), but she had to give her credit. She’d arrived in a no-nonsense, acting-her-age outfit and took up no more than fifteen minutes of her father’s time, telling him that his family would support him no matter what he decided. Rose did have to wonder if she’d worked in a brief, special pitch to get rid of Ehrlichman, with whom she’d clashed long ago, and who regarded Tricia as a nasty piece of candy stuck between two teeth.

But there was no time to dwell on such things. Since getting here Thursday, Rose had been telling herself they
could
still fight their way out of this, just as they had with the Fund, when Eisenhower dangled the boss over a cliff and a few days later hauled him back in.

“Reverend Peale called,” she said, as she sliced a shrimp in half. “Around five.”

Nixon, enough at ease with her to mop up the sauce on his plate with a piece of bread, nodded. “I haven’t been able to return it.”

“The power of positive thinking.” Rose quoted the pastor’s famous title with a slow emphasis, as if to declare:
That’s all you need to survive
.

In the silence that followed, she thought about the March 21 tape, imagining what might be on the hundreds of others made at the Wilson desk. She wanted to tell the president, before the steward brought them their plates of sorbet, that all those tapes needed to be destroyed, immediately. But she couldn’t bring herself to speak: it was presumptuous, and right now the boss’s ego was more fragile than the bubbles sparkling in the wine.

She had questioned him only once—months before the break-in—about the relentless production of tape. He had mumbled something about “historical importance” and she’d said nothing more. All right, maybe these tapes would just end up locked in some library vault, but she still couldn’t imagine sending them even that far out into history. It would be like mailing someone a page from her steno pad instead of a typed letter. Maybe the retired president did want them only for help in writing his memoirs. But would he really destroy them afterwards? She doubted it. In truth, she hadn’t thought the matter through any further than he had, because she never wanted to think about turning sixty years old out there in San Clemente, working with him on those memoirs away from everybody else and every other place she knew.

“You know, Rose, domestically this country can run itself.”

“Oh, I agree.”

“But somebody has got to run the rest of things. We should have started bombing North Vietnam two weeks ago. Christ, the cease-fire violations! You should see the satellite pictures: the Ho Chi Minh Trail looks like the San Bernardino Freeway. The amount of supplies and weapons they’re sending south is unbelievable—and you can thank John Dean for that. If we send one plane into the air, the Democrats will scream their heads off that it’s a plan to distract everyone from ‘Nixon’s Watergate troubles.’ ”

“Then,” said Rose, “I suppose the North Vietnamese can also
blame
John Dean for not getting their reconstruction aid from Congress. Those louses on the Hill are determined not to support you on
anything
.”

Nixon laughed. “You know, I thought I’d be feeling guilty when I met with Thieu out in San Clemente the other week. I mean, I
know
they got the short end of the agreement. As it turned out, I barely had time to talk to the son of a bitch, let alone feel bad for him. Sorry,” he added, as the steward set dessert in front of them.

Rose smiled. He always apologized for these slips into profanity, when they both knew her own speech could be more salty than his.

Eating his sorbet, the president returned to the catastrophes at hand. “Haldeman wants me to put Rogers in as attorney general. Kleindienst certainly can’t keep the job; he’ll be lucky if he doesn’t get indicted with Mitchell.” When Rose offered no reply, he pushed the dessert away. “I keep thinking of Arthur,” he said, with a studied softness. “Two days before he passed away. ‘If I should die before I wake, I pray Thee, Lord, my soul to take.’ He recited it in my mother’s arms.”

Rose had often seen him self-pitying—he was entitled!—but this reference to the dead
younger
brother instead of to Harold, the dead older one, alarmed her. She couldn’t remember him being this maudlin, even at the end of ’62.

“You need to destroy John Dean,” she said. “And you need to get rid of those tapes.”

She was eager to get into that practical, emergency mode where she functioned best. Holding her dessert spoon, she could feel the itch to grab paper and pencil and start making a list of all the phones and desks that had been wired back in ’71 and now needed to be disconnected.

The president, not waiting for the steward, poured himself some more wine. “What about Bob?” he asked.

She bit her tongue and called upon her will power, deciding that she would not indulge herself. She would recommend only what was best for the man in front of her. “If you get rid of everybody, then the whole pack is guilty—and you look guilty, too. But if you make John Dean out for a liar, everybody else may end up okay.” None of them knew what that fragile-looking little operator had been saying to the prosecutors since he’d gone to them two weeks ago.

“There’s only one good reason
not
to get rid of everyone,” said Nixon.

“Let me hear it.”

“Because it’d still be too little too late.”

The following afternoon, Sunday, he fired them anyway—both Haldeman and Ehrlichman, in that order, after summoning them to Camp David by helicopter.

While he was still with the latter, Rose met HRH on the path near Witch Hazel Cottage. He was carrying Mary Baker Eddy’s Christian Science book, which she supposed was like the Bible to people of his persuasion. She was trying mightily, and failing, to feel sorry for him. She didn’t know what to say, and she left it to him to speak instead.

“Rose, I obviously won’t be in anymore, but he’s going to talk from the Oval tomorrow at nine p.m.” He paused, uncertainly, before adding: “He’s exhausted and on edge.”

She felt her jaw clench. She didn’t need Bob Haldeman to tell her Richard Nixon’s moods.

“Tomorrow night,” he continued, “I would instruct the switchboard not to put through any calls after the speech. The calls will all be supportive, but they’ll crank him up further, and he’s likely to say something indiscreet that will find its way into the papers.”

Yes, thought Rose. You
would
instruct the switchboard, if you were still the chief of staff. But you’re not. She wanted to ask who his replacement would be but even now wouldn’t risk looking inconsequential by admitting she didn’t know.

She could see him reading the hard look on her face, taking it to mean she would keep the switchboard uninstructed and that calls would keep going through.

“Bob, I wish you well,” she said at last.

“Thanks, Rose. The same to you.”

No embrace, no handshake. He just walked away with Mrs. Eddy.
We have a cancer—within
,
close to the presidency
. Did he think they could cure it without a doctor? Get rid of it with prayers to Mrs. Eddy’s version of Christ? The cancer wasn’t even the most pressing danger. There was a blood clot—John Dean—racing toward the boss’s brain.

She watched Haldeman recede. No, she was not enjoying this moment that she’d imagined so often and in so many ways; his comeuppance was too small a piece of the general calamity. Turning around, she walked
toward Aspen Lodge, wondering how much more “exhausted and on edge” the boss would be after getting rid of Ehrlichman, too.

Ron Ziegler was on the porch. She liked him. He ought to be just another Magruder-style junior executive—he’d even started his work life at Disneyland—but there was a soul, she thought, behind the hooded eyes. As soon as she got up the steps, he put a gentle hand on her shoulder. She’d been to a hundred Irish funerals in her life, and she half-expected him to say, “I’m sorry for your troubles.”

She’d been, as a matter of fact, to a wake in Pittsburgh only two weeks ago, and had learned, when she got back to Washington, that Dean had tried to track her down while she was gone—in order to set up a last appointment with the president without having to go through HRH. At that moment she had known there really was no more administration; the team was scrambling off the field in a dozen different directions, leaving Richard Nixon by himself.

“Is Ray Price around?” she now asked Ziegler.

“Yeah. They’re going to start work on the speech before dinner.”

“I’m not sure that’s a good idea.”

“It isn’t,” said Ziegler. “The boss doesn’t have the strength.”

“He’ll get it back,” said Rose. “But not tonight.”

After a pause, Ziegler told her that Kleindienst had been fired, too.

“Who’s the new AG?” she asked.

“I’m not sure. I’m not sure the president knows yet.”

Rose chewed a corner of her lip and pretended to look at the ship’s model on a table across the room. She’d been hoping to hear that Rogers had been named. Now she had a sick feeling as to why she’d seen Elliot Richardson strolling the grounds an hour or so ago. She’d assumed he was here on some couldn’t-wait Defense Department matter, but that seemed unlikely now.

A minute later, she and Ziegler were surprised to see the president emerge, alone, from the lodge’s main room. Tears ran down his face, and they realized that Ehrlichman had already gone out the back door.

“You know what he said?” asked Nixon. “He wanted me to tell him how to explain all this to his children. I couldn’t think of an answer.”

“You don’t have to,” Rose snapped. “That’s not your job. You need
to go on being president, dealing with North Vietnam and Russia, not John Ehrlichman’s kids.”

“Rose is right, Mr. President,” said Ziegler.

At this particular moment Nixon’s self-pity was a mere overlay, a kind of plastic transparency protecting the authentic anguish visible beneath. His hurt almost glowed, and it rendered Rose and Ziegler speechless.

“I told him I’d hoped I wouldn’t wake up today,” the president continued.

Rose looked at him, wanting to strangle the ghost of little Arthur, which she could sense hovering around. She took a single reflexive step forward, as if she were the corner man in a boxing match, about to lean in and slap the fight back into her boss.

Nixon turned away from her. He sighed and shrugged his shoulders, affecting a sudden indifference. “I may tell Ray to put a line in the speech that says I’m resigning, too.”

All at once Rose felt remotely hopeful. His theatricality had taken over; he was
playing
to her and Ron. Maybe he could still find the wherewithal to play to Congress and the country.

Pat Nixon stubbed out a cigarette before picking up a phone she was certain had no tape recorder attached to it.

“Operator,” she said, “this is Mrs. Nixon. Please get me Mr. Thomas A. Garahan in New York.” She gave the Madison Avenue address and hung up, and as she waited for the connection to be made, she pictured Tom behind the tray table in his study, drinking a second cup of coffee after having eaten his dinner with Cronkite.