Thomas Mallon - Finale - A Novel of the Reagan Years

“This whole thing is overblown. Did you hear Meese today? What they thought was ten million dollars was probably only four.”

“I’ll bet it’s still more fun here than at the Bushes’!”

The vice president, whose own Christmas party was taking place later tonight up at the Naval Observatory, was widely believed to be in a worse position than anyone else, given his ties to Max Gomez and the greater likelihood that he, rather than Ronald Reagan, would have had some hands-on knowledge of the arms movements. If the Democrats fell short of impeaching Reagan, they could still make unthinkable the idea of electing his vice president to succeed him.

Anne and Anders took their plates and cider cups to a spot by the wall that put them within earshot of Maureen Reagan and Frank Fahrenkopf and a few others from the Republican National Committee. “It’s just like the president suggested,” one of them was saying to Ronald Reagan’s daughter. “If they really wanted to get the truth out fast, they’d give immunity to North and Poindexter.”

“And that,” said Maureen, “is exactly what the Democrats don’t want! Not when they can drag this out through ’87 and into ’88.”

The man who had teed up this response nodded flatteringly, as if Maureen were expressing an insight no one else had attained.

Not realizing that this woman was the president’s daughter, Anne had let her focus drift to a young man on the other side of the group. He had just popped a cookie into his mouth as if it were a single kernel of popcorn. Once she recognized who he was, Anne decided that she should alert Anders.

His eyes and Nick Carrollton’s met at the same moment, and after a second’s hesitation the young man tried to disappear into the cluster around Maureen. But his unceremonious “Hi!” to the president’s daughter produced a burst of displeasure. “Are you proud of yourself?” she asked him.

He didn’t understand.

“That videotape the first lady made for the Hawkins campaign. You were involved in that, weren’t you?”

“Yes, but…”

“Well, you should have taken better care of it, and not let it get tangled up in some stupid scheme to embarrass Pamela Whatshername. Do you think, with all the troubles we have right now, that we need to be reading about dirty tricks, from our own side, in Vanity Fair ? We don’t! We don’t need another little Donald Segretti making things worse!”

Nick was too young to remember this peripheral Watergate prankster, but he tried to think as fast as he could: Terry had wanted to show him something in Vanity Fair this afternoon but been too out of it to make himself clear. Nick could also remember messengering that Jimmy Buffett tape to somebody, and thinking from the attached note that it was somehow tied up with the footage they’d shot of Mrs. Reagan. But there was no time now to figure all this out, let alone explain. Maureen was already walking away from him, moving her entourage back toward the crab cakes.

Finally, after noticing Anders, Nick found a place to put down his cider cup and left the room.

“Anders,” Anne finally said, “you need to tell me—”

“It’s just what it looks like.”

“Romantic troubles? The end of an affair?”

How, he wondered, could she phrase it so casually when he was so ashamed to be living it?

“Can we walk?” he asked.

Out in the hall there was no sign of Nick. They moved past the red-jacketed Marine violinists and down the staircase to the first floor, where Anders excused himself and went into the men’s room: he would be sick if he didn’t splash his face with cold water. He left Anne in a small room near the library, a space that drew visitors in with its portrait of Jacqueline Kennedy. A few minutes later he found her standing two pictures away from that one, in front of Pat Nixon’s quietly shattered expression.

“This is what politics does to people,” she told Anders.

“From what I can tell, he’s become a better husband than he used to be.”

“I’m not just talking about the Nixons. I’m talking about you. I don’t know anything about that boy, but I know you should be working someplace where you’re as free to run after him as away from him.”

After getting their coats, they walked out into the mild night and, though they’d seen enough Christmas trees inside, decided to make a circuit past the giant one on the Ellipse.

“I’ll probably be looking for a job after New Year’s,” said Anders. Frank Carlucci, the new national security advisor, was determined to remake the NSC. The innocent would be going, along with the truly guilty and the inadvertently guilty. “Hitchens called me this afternoon. He’s telling me to quit, to become a source for this article he’s writing. A chance to ‘reinvent’ myself, he says. I can leave my job; give a fair account of my views through him; present myself as some odd type that—”

“I don’t think you’re odd at all.”

After a pause, Anders said, “His name is Nick.”

“I remember,” said Anne.

“He’s in the same sort of mess Peter’s in. There’s money parked with him, too. And there are probably more of them. Hitchens seems on his way to figuring it out.”

“Peter’s not going to know he’s in any trouble,” said Anne.

“Why?”

“Because he’s going to be dead. I’m leaving for Dallas tomorrow morning — I’m going down for the end. We’ll be the only ones to feel the shame of whatever foolishness—”

“But you’ll come back, won’t you?”

“When it’s over. And then I’ll think about things. What exactly am I accomplishing at WAND? About as much as one could with that magician’s wand. I don’t know.”

He gave no thought to saying I told you so, to making her admit that it had always been more complicated than she believed. He took hold of her tightly and buried his face against her shoulder, getting a scratch from a Christmas pin that had been on her coat since last year in Owosso. “You’re wrong about everything,” he whispered. “And you’re still the only person who ever makes sense to me.”

Anne stroked the back of his short haircut. He couldn’t seem to get hold of himself; he kept murmuring, “ I’m sorry, I’m sorry. ”

“For what?” she asked.

“I don’t know.”

They completed their round of the huge lawn and crossed Seventeenth Street. A homeless man lying against an office building reached up and asked for help. Anne gave him two White House macaroons that she’d intended to bring to Texas as novelties for her children. Anders noticed the gesture and began to cry again. As they walked away, she took his arm and tried to lighten things by saying, “I was going to give him a dollar, but I knew you’d say ‘he’ll only spend it on drugs.’ ”

“Let’s get a cab,” said Anders.

“Let’s get two,” she responded.

“Why?”

“Because you’re going to go see Nick and help him. I’ll call you from Dallas.”

John Hinckley accepted an extra piece of pumpkin pie and displayed what his parents took to be an encouraging, if intermittent, interest in the football game on TV. With one quarter to go, the Redskins led the Rams; Hinckley himself had three hours left on the pass granted him by the hospital’s Forensic Review Board. It had allowed him to enjoy Sunday dinner here in Reston, Virginia, at a house maintained by Prison Fellowship Ministries. Gordon Loux, the man Chuck Colson had picked to run the organization, sat on a couch with Hinckley. Elsewhere in the room, Mrs. Loux and the assassin’s mother quietly showed each other family photos.