Capital Crimes

4

KATE TOOK A DEEP BREATH and began, using the voice she used when briefing the president, not the one she used when giving her husband bad news. “Christmas three years ago, when you were deciding whether to run, we were in Delano with your folks. Do you remember that I had to go somewhere on business?”

“Yes, you took the car, and I thought it was very odd, but I’ve been trained not to ask questions when you say 'business.'”

“The business was Ed Rawls. I had a letter from him that morning, addressed to your parents’ house, asking me to come to see him at the Atlanta Federal Penitentiary.”

“And you went to see him?”

“Yes.”

“Why on earth did you do that? It would certainly be against Agency policy, wouldn’t it?”

“Not if I reported the visit, and I did. Something in the letter made it necessary.”

“What was in the letter?”

“He knew about Joe Adams.”

Adams had been vice president at the time, and only the day before, he had invited Will and Kate to Camp David for brunch and told them that he was in the early stages of Alzheimer’s disease.

Will was stunned. “Jesus, you and I had only known about it for twenty-four hours, and I thought we were the only ones. How could a man in prison get that information?”

“He wouldn’t tell me. He did say that all sorts of things went on there that no one on the outside could imagine. He said there were prisoners there with cell phones. For all I know, he might have been one of them.”

“I’m glad you didn’t tell me at the time,” Will said.

“There’s more. Freddie Wallace also found out about Joe’s condition and leaked it to a columnist, probably Hogan Parks.”

“Why didn’t Parks use it?”

“Because Ed somehow got to Freddie and threatened to expose his relationship with the black woman, if he let Parks run the story.”

Will shook his head. “This is insane, all of it. A man in prison knows the most intimate secrets of the vice president and a United States senator?”

“You have to remember who Ed is, or rather, was. Of all the people I knew in the Agency, Ed had the widest range of contacts in government and the press. In those days, he could find out anything, track down any rumor, scare anybody to death, if he had to. He was not the sort of man you’d want for an enemy.”

“I suppose not. But why are you telling me all this now?”

“Because of the real reason Ed wanted to see me in Atlanta.”

“Which was?”

“He wanted a presidential pardon, and he thought if he helped you win the election you might come through for him.”

“This is the craziest thing I ever heard of,” Will said.

“Except that he did help you get elected. In fact, you could say that without his help, you would not have been elected.”

Will blinked. “By dealing with Freddie about Joe Adams?”

“Exactly. He got a letter to Freddie, threatening to expose his relationship with the woman if he used the information about Joe’s health. Freddie somehow figured out where the letter came from and had Ed thrown in some dungeon part of the Atlanta pen for a week, but when Ed got out, he managed to convince Freddie that he had the wrong man, and he continued to write to him, having letters sent from other places. He kept his foot on Freddie’s neck for months.”

“And he expects me to pardon him for that?”

“He does.”

“And how do you feel about this?”

“At the time, I thought he was crazy, and I told him so, but he actually did the things he said he would do. Think back: During the summer before the election, after the president’s stroke and Joe’s becoming acting president, what would have happened if Freddie had managed to expose Joe’s illness and the fact that Joe had told you about it? I’ll tell you: Joe would have been forced to resign, you would have been disgraced, and the speaker of the House-your opponent in the race-Eft Efton, would have become president.”

Will thought about that. “I suppose you’re right.”

“So, looking at it from your point of view, and incidentally, mine, Ed Rawls performed a valuable service for his country by keeping that shit Efton out of the White House.”

“You have a point,” Will said. “Was Rawls the one who leaked the story about Freddie and his lover later on?”

“Yes, but he did it with a light touch, so that it could never be substantiated. Freddie denied everything, and it all went away.”

“And what would the CIA’s position be on a pardon for Ed Rawls?”

“Until recently, dead set against it, but that position is softening.”

“Why?”

“Because Ed still has friends at the Agency, and because I’m now director of Central Intelligence.”

“So you’re sympathetic?”

“Ed is not well. He’s had some health problems, and he’s seventy now. He still has that house on the island of Islesboro, in Maine – you remember, I went to visit him and his wife there once?”

“Yes, vaguely.”

“He says he wants to die there. If it were up to me, I couldn’t deny him that.”

“Kate, I might as well pardon Aldrich Ames or that FBI agent who was selling stuff to the Russians for years and years. It would be worse than that stupid pardon that Bill Clinton granted that fugitive in Switzerland on his last day in office.”

“Will, I can’t tell you that this is politically feasible; all I can say is that, if you felt grateful enough to Ed to pardon him, I could make it all right at the Agency. Certainly, you couldn’t do it during your first term. You could pardon him on grounds of ill health. All I ask is that you think about it. Neither of us has to mention this to anyone else.”

“All right, I’ll think about it,” Will said.

There was a sharp rap on the door, and Cora Parker stuck her head in. “Mr. President, CNN has something on Senator Wallace’s death,” she said. “Shall I turn it on?”

“Please, Cora.”

There were four television sets in the Oval Office, tuned to the three major networks and CNN. Cora switched on the CNN set.

A reporter was standing a few yards from a rustic cabin beside a lake.“… and the senator was standing in the kitchen, only a few feet from the window.” He pointed, and the camera zoomed in on a smashed windowpane. “What has a lot of people in Washington worried is that Senator Wallace was rumored to have kept extensive files on various people in government and that the information in those files might find its way into the media. According to the rumor, only J. Edgar Hoover had more dirt on more important people. Now back to the studio.”

“You think that’s true?” Kate asked.

“I wouldn’t put it past Freddie,” Will said. “And next week, I’m going to give a funeral oration for a man who did everything he could to destroy my political career and my reputation.”

“If Freddie kept files like that, who would have them?”

“I haven’t the faintest idea,” Will said.

IN CHESTER, South Carolina, Elizabeth Johnson opened a desk drawer in the den of her home and took out a key. She went down the stairs to her basement and to a pile of boxes in a corner. She moved one, exposing a small filing cabinet, the kind that holds index cards. Tentatively, she inserted the key into the little cabinet and pulled open one of the four drawers. She switched on a light, illuminating a row of precisely filed cards, all of them labeled with the neatly printed names of some of the best-known, most powerful people in the country. Freddie had always been a splendid record keeper.

Elizabeth had meant to look through them, but instead, she stared at the cards as if they were a poisonous reptile. She closed the drawer, locked the cabinet, and went back upstairs. Instead of returning the key to the desk drawer, she went into her bedroom closet and pushed aside the clothes hanging there. She opened the wall safe that she had bought to keep the jewelry that Freddie had given her over the years, then she put the file cabinet key inside, closed the safe, and returned the clothes to their original position.

She would wait awhile, until the furor over Freddie’s death had died down, then she would burn all those index cards in her fireplace.