Stuart Woods: Below the Belt

Will turned his body more toward Stone. “I want to tell you a story, some of which you’ll already know about.”

“All right.”

“Would you like a drink? We have Knob Creek.”

“Sure, thanks.”

Will opened a compartment in front of them and extracted two glasses, some ice, and a bottle of the bourbon and poured them both one. “Happier days,” Will said.

“Are these not happy ones?” Stone asked, taking a swig.

“Think of this as the first day of the election season,” Will said, “though we have a long way to go. The election season is never happy, just frenetic, and often depressing.”

“I suppose you’re right. What’s the story?”

“It begins on a December day in Washington more than ten years ago. We were flying down to Georgia for Christmas, so we left our house in Georgetown and drove up to Silver Spring Airport, where we kept our airplane, at that time a new Piper Mirage. As I was doing my preflight, a marine helicopter set down next to us, and a young officer got out and told me that the vice president would like us to join him and his wife for breakfast at Camp David.

“We arrived there and met Joe and Sue Adams, and after some small talk, Joe got serious. He told us that they had just spent a few days in New York, shopping and going to the theater. There was more to it, though — Joe had had some medical tests, most of them in their suite at the Waldorf, and the results were troubling.”

Stone nodded and had another sip of his drink.

So did Will. “He told us, in the strictest confidence, that he had been diagnosed as being in the early stages of Alzheimer’s disease, and that he hadn’t told anybody else.”

“I never knew that,” Stone said.

“No one did, for a while. Remember, this was eleven months before the election, and the President couldn’t run again. Joe was everybody’s favorite for the nomination and the election.”

“That, I remember.”

“Joe told me that I was his personal choice for President, and he wanted me to announce almost immediately.”

“A big surprise.”

“An enormous shock. I’d given thought to running, but I didn’t expect to do that for another eight years. Joe said that he would announce in another month or so that he would not be a candidate, but he didn’t want anyone to know why. He was giving me a heads-up to give me time to get a team together for an announcement of my own.”

“That was very good of him.”

“He knew that George Kiel, the minority leader in the Senate at the time, would jump right in, and that he, being better known than I, would be the immediate favorite. Anyway, we went back to our airplane, flew home, and I talked with my folks about it. They were all for a run, and eventually, as you know, I came around. Something odd happened, though, while we were still at the homeplace. Kate received a letter there.”

“Why was that odd?”

“Because no mail had ever been addressed to her at my folks’ house. She borrowed the car, disappeared for about four hours, then returned. She said it was business, and I knew better than to ask any more. She was deputy director for intelligence at the CIA at the time.”

Stone nodded. “Did you ever find out where she went?”

“Yes, but not until after the election. The letter was from a man named Ed Rawls. Does that ring a bell?”

“Of course — a CIA mole for the Russians. He went to prison for it, and you later pardoned him.”

“Right. At that time he was in the Atlanta federal prison. Kate had been responsible for exposing him, and she went to see him.”

“Why?”

“Because he alluded to Joe Adams’s illness in the letter.”

Stone sat up straight. “But you had only learned about it that morning, right? And you and Kate were supposed to be the only ones who knew.”

“Right again. You can see why she went to see him.”

“I guess I can. How the hell could somebody in a federal prison know about this almost as soon as you did?”

“We never learned how he knew, but Ed was a brilliant intelligence agent, and he knew an awful lot of people, even if most of them weren’t speaking to him anymore.”

“I guess not. Why did he want to see Kate?”

“Because he wanted a presidential pardon, and he figured that if he helped get me elected, I might give him one.”

“That must have seemed pretty breathtaking.”

“It certainly took mine away when I finally heard about it. So, let’s skip ahead a few months: I got the nomination, largely because Joe Adams called in some favors that helped us swing the California delegation at the last moment.”

“I remember. I was at the convention, and it was a squeaker.”

“Right. I was losing the battle for the nomination because I had sworn to accept the recommendations of a study committee on whether to close a huge base in California. George Kiel had made the same pledge, but he told a lot of California delegates that he would renege on that promise if elected, and keep the base open. Joe managed to find out that the committee was going to recommend that the base remain open, so George’s promise became meaningless.”

“How’d Adams find out about the committee report?”

“Ed Rawls found out and told Joe.”

“Did you know about this?”

“Not at the time. All I knew was that everybody, including myself, wanted me to take George’s offer to run with him on the ticket — everybody but Joe Adams. He urged me to turn down George’s offer and go for the nomination, but he wouldn’t tell me why. I took his advice. Then word somehow got out that the base would not be closed. Most of George’s delegates from California swung to me, and I got the nomination.”

“And, in due course, the presidency.”

“Right.”

“All because of inside information from a traitor to his country?”

“Right, though I didn’t know it for a long time.”

“Wait a minute,” Stone said. “A while after you were nominated, the President had a stroke and died a few days later.”

“Correct.”

“And the vice president, Joe Adams, became President.”

“Correct again.”

“But he had Alzheimer’s? And you knew that?”

“I did. I had a very difficult time with the decision, but for a lot of reasons I kept my mouth shut, and Joe served out the term with distinction.”

“I never heard any rumors.”

“Few people did, because Ed Rawls had a hand in keeping Joe’s secret from becoming public.”

Stone sucked in a breath. “And when did you find out about that, Will?”

“Yesterday.”

“Who told you?”

“Joe Adams.”

Stone sat back in his seat. “I don’t know if you knew this, but I know Ed Rawls from Islesboro, where my Maine house is. We sort of worked together in solving a series of murders on the island.”

“I didn’t know that,” Will said, “but that could actually be helpful in all this.”

“All what? Let’s get back to your story.”

“Did you know that Ed Rawls was Kate’s mentor at the Agency?”

“I may have read that somewhere at the time she exposed him.”

“They were very close, and she was devastated when she found out what he’d been doing.”

“What, exactly, had Ed been doing?”

“He got caught in a honey trap — photographs and all — and the honey turned out to be a Soviet agent. He was near retirement, and the Soviets blackmailed him into giving them CIA secrets. Ed was smart enough not to give them anything damaging, but they kept a close rein on him, and one evening when two of our people who had become suspicious were following him, they rumbled his Soviet watchers, shots were exchanged, and our two people died. That, in the end, is what sent Ed to prison, even though he had no knowledge of either the Soviets or Americans following him. Except for that, he might never have been prosecuted. When I learned of the circumstances, it made it easier for me to pardon him.”