Mrs Nixon was dressed in a two-piece check suit with a short jacket and discreetly below-the-knee skirt. Her white shoes had a low heel. A chiffon neck scarf completed her outfit. Tania hated doing fashion. She had covered the Cuban missile crisis, for God’s sake – from Cuba!
At last the First Lady was whisked away in a Chrysler LeBaron limousine, and the press pack dispersed.
In the car park Tania saw a tall man wearing a long, threadbare coat in the spring sunshine. He had unkempt iron-grey hair, and his lined face looked as if it might once have been handsome.
It was Vasili.
She stuffed her fist into her mouth and bit her hand to suppress the scream that bubbled up in her throat.
He saw that she had recognized him, and he smiled, showing gaps where he had lost teeth.
She walked slowly over to where he stood, hands in the pockets of his coat. He had no hat, and he squinted because of the sun.
‘They let you out,’ Tania said.
‘To please the American President,’ he said. ‘Thank you, Dick Nixon.’
He should have thanked Dimka Dvorkin. But it was probably better not to tell anyone that, not even Vasili.
She looked around warily, but there was no one else in sight.
‘Don’t worry,’ said Vasili. ‘For two weeks this place has been crawling with security police, but they all left five minutes ago.’
She could restrain herself no longer, and threw herself into his arms. He patted her back as if to comfort her. She hugged him hard.
‘My,’ he said, ‘you smell good.’
She broke the embrace. She was bursting with a hundred questions and had to restrain her enthusiasm and pick one. ‘Where are you living?’
‘They gave me a Stalin apartment – old, but nice.’
Apartments from the Stalin era had bigger rooms and higher ceilings than the more compact flats built in the late fifties and sixties.
She was overflowing with exhilaration. ‘Shall I visit you there?’
‘Not yet. Let’s find out how closely they’re watching me.’
‘Do you have work?’ It was a favourite trick of the Communists to make sure a man could not get a job, then accuse him of being a social parasite.
‘I’m at the Agriculture Ministry. I write pamphlets for peasants explaining new farming techniques. Don’t pity me: it’s important work, and I’m good at it.’
‘And your health?’
‘I’m fat!’ He opened his coat to show her.
She laughed happily. He was not fat, but perhaps he was not as thin as he had been. ‘You’re wearing the sweater I sent you. I’m amazed it reached you.’ It was the one Anna Murray had bought in Vienna. Tania would now have to explain all that to him. She did not know where to start.
‘I’ve hardly taken this off for four years. I don’t need it, in Moscow in May, but it’s hard to get used to the idea that the weather is not always freezing.’
‘I can get you another sweater.’
‘You must be making big money!’
‘No, I’m not,’ she said with a wide smile. ‘But you are.’
He frowned, puzzled. ‘How come?’
‘Let’s go to a bar,’ she said, taking his arm. ‘I’ve got such a lot to tell you.’
*
The front page of the Washington Post carried an odd story on the morning of Sunday 18 June. To most readers it was a bit baffling. To a handful it was utterly unnerving.
5 HELD IN PLOT TO BUG DEMOCRATS’ OFFICE HERE
By Alfred E. Lewis
Washington Post Staff Writer
Five men, one of whom said he is a former employee of the Central Intelligence Agency, were arrested at 2:30 a.m. yesterday in what authorities described as an elaborate plot to bug the offices of the Democratic National Committee here.
Three of the men were native-born Cubans and another was said to have trained Cuban exiles for guerrilla activity after the 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion.
They were surprised at gunpoint by three plain-clothes officers of the metropolitan police department in a sixth-floor office at the plush Watergate, 2600 Virginia Ave., NW, where the Democratic National Committee occupies the entire floor.
There was no immediate explanation as to why the five suspects would want to bug the Democratic National Committee offices or whether or not they were working for any other individuals or organizations.
Cameron Dewar read the story and said: ‘Oh, shit.’
He pushed away his cornflakes, too tense now to eat. He knew exactly what this was about, and it presented a terrible threat to President Nixon. If people knew or believed that the law-and-order President had ordered a burglary, it could even derail his re-election.
Cam scanned the paragraphs until he came to the names of the accused men. He feared that Tim Tedder would be among them. To Cam’s relief, Tedder was not mentioned.
But most of the men named were Tedder’s friends and associates.
Tedder and a group of former FBI and CIA agents formed the White House Special Investigations Unit. They had a high-security office on the ground floor of the Executive Office Building, across the street from the White House. Taped to their door was a piece of paper marked: ‘Plumbers’. It was a joke: their job was to stop leaks.
Cam had not known they planned to bug the Democrats’ offices. However, he was not surprised: it was quite a good idea, and might lead to information about sources of leaks.
But the stupid idiots were not supposed to get themselves arrested by the Washington fucking police.
The President was in the Bahamas, due back tomorrow.
Cam called the Plumbers’ office. Tim Tedder answered. ‘What are you doing?’ Cam said.
‘Weeding files.’
In the background, Cam heard the whine of a shredder. ‘Good,’ he said.
Then he got dressed and went to the White House.
At first it seemed that none of the burglars had any direct connection with the President, and throughout Sunday Cam thought the scandal might be managed. Then it turned out that one of them had given a false name. ‘Edward Martin’ was in fact James McCord, a retired CIA agent employed full-time by CREEP, the Committee to ReElect the President.
‘That does it,’ Cam said. He felt crushed and devastated. This was terrible.
Monday’s Washington Post carried the information about McCord in a story bylined Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein.
Still Cam hoped the President’s involvement might be covered up.
Then the FBI stepped in. The Bureau began to investigate the five burglars. In the old days, Cam thought regretfully, J. Edgar Hoover would have done no such thing; but Hoover was dead. Nixon had installed a crony, Patrick Gray, as Acting Director, but Gray did not know the Bureau and was struggling to control it. The upshot was that the FBI was beginning to act like a law enforcement agency.
The burglars had been found in possession of large amounts of cash, new bills with sequential numbers. That meant that sooner or later the FBI would be able to trace the money and find out who had given it to them.
Cam already knew. This money, like the payments for all the administration’s undercover projects, came from the CREEP slush fund.
The FBI inquiry had to be shut down.
*
When Cam Dewar walked into Maria Summers’s office at the Department of Justice, she suffered a moment of fear. Had she been found out? Had the White House somehow discovered that she was Jasper Murray’s source of inside information? She was standing at her file cabinet, and for a moment her legs felt so weak she feared she might fall.
But Cam was friendly, and she calmed down. He smiled, took a seat, and gave her the adolescent up-and-down look that indicated he found her attractive.
Keep on dreaming, white boy, she thought.
What was he up to now? She sat at her desk, took off her glasses, and gave him a warm smile. ‘Hi, Mr Dewar,’ she said. ‘How did that wiretap work out?’
‘In the end it didn’t give us much information,’ Cam said. ‘We think Murray may have a secure phone somewhere else that he uses for confidential calls.’
Thank God, she thought. ‘That’s too bad,’ she said.
‘We appreciate your help, all the same.’
‘You’re very kind. Is there something else I can do for you?’
‘Yes. The President wants the Attorney General to order the FBI to stop investigating the Watergate burglary.’
Maria tried to conceal her shock as her mind reeled with the implications. So it was a White House caper. She was amazed. No President other than Nixon would have been so arrogant and stupid.
Once again, she would find out most if she pretended to be supportive. ‘Okay,’ she said, ‘let’s think about this. Kleindienst isn’t Mitchell, you know.’ John Mitchell had resigned as Attorney General in order to run CREEP. His replacement, Richard Kleindienst, was another Nixon crony, but not as biddable. ‘Kleindienst will want a reason,’ Maria said.
‘We can give him one. The FBI investigation may lead to confidential matters of foreign policy. In particular, it may reveal damaging information about CIA involvement in President Kennedy’s Bay of Pigs invasion.’
That was typical of Tricky Dick, Maria thought with disgust. Everyone would pretend they were protecting American interests when in reality they were saving the President’s sorry ass. ‘So it’s a matter of national security.’
‘Yes.’
‘Good. That will justify the Attorney General in ordering the FBI to back off.’ But Maria did not want it to be so easy for the White House. ‘However, Kleindienst may want concrete assurance.’
‘We can provide that. The CIA is prepared to make a formal request. Walters will do it.’ General Vernon Walters was deputy director of the CIA.
‘If the request is formal, I think we can go ahead and do exactly what the President wants.’
‘Thank you, Maria.’ The boy stood up. ‘You’ve been very helpful, again.’
‘You’re welcome, Mr Dewar.’
Cam left the room.
Maria stared thoughtfully at the chair he had vacated. The President must have authorized this burglary or at least turned a blind eye to it. That was the only possible reason for Cam Dewar to be working so hard on a cover-up. If someone in the administration had okayed the burglary in defiance of Nixon’s wishes, that person would by now have been named and shamed and fired. Nixon was not squeamish about getting rid of embarrassing colleagues. The only person he cared to protect was himself.
Was she going to let him get away with it?
Was she hell.
She picked up the phone and said: ‘Call Fawcett Renshaw, please.’