11:50

 

1.

After Midnight

...A jostling crowd gathered under the bright lights to watch the dignitaries leave.  MacVeagh waved and shook his head at the Secretary of Defense, who offered him a ride in a Pentagon limousine.  Instead he walked bareheaded into the frosty March night.

        As he turned left on 16th Street, heading toward Lafayette Park and the White House, James F. MacVeagh felt on good terms with himself and even relatively at peace with the world.  In his chosen profession, politics, he had risen as swiftly and as effortlessly as a kite in a gust, and the glitter of the Gridiron dinner seemed a minor summit for Senator MacVeagh.  

At age thirty-eight, a first-term senator, he had been placed at the head table and now he was summoned to the White House for a private midnight drink.  In Washington terms, he was in, very much in, and while his status did not surprise him, he was buoyed by it.  

The whisky and wine mingled smoothly in his big frame and the chill wind on his cheeks contrasted with the warmth within.  He ran a hand through his tangle of black hair as he passed the imposing headquarters of the AFL-CIO, with its illuminated lobby mural of gilded toilers, and he began to whistle a song from the Gridiron show, "I've Got a Feeling I'm Falling."  The lyric had aptly characterized the rapidly descending political fortunes of Vice-President Patrick O'Malley in the wake of revelations about his part in the federal sports arena scandals.

        MacVeagh cut through Lafayette Park, where mounds of snow from last week's storm still had failed to thaw.  He noted a tiny sign in a flower bed and bent over to read it in the light of the shrouded moon.  "Tulips sleeping here," it read.  MacVeagh made a mental note to use the phrase in a Senate speech.  Such souvenirs of imagination in the vast, gray federal bureaucracy merited recognition....

Why Jim MacVeagh for a Saturday night visit?  He knew the President well, had advised him on midwestern strategy in the campaign, but he was no confidant.  Come to think of it, was anybody?

        But MacVeagh felt too carefree for fretful speculation.  He jaywalked across Pennsylvania Avenue, and nodded to the White House policeman guarding the high iron gates of the west entrance.

        "Jim MacVeagh," he said.

        "I know, Senator," said the guard, standing close and inspecting his face.  "We got a call from the house."

        MacVeagh walked up the curving driveway past snow-topped Japanese yews bordering the drive like ermine balloons.  The west wing was dark, but the center of the mansion threw a circle of light in which the great elms, preserved from blight by constant spraying, cast shadows of embroidered linen over the snow. 

 A gardener had shaken the snow off the ancient boxwoods in front of the portico and they shone bright green, as with new leaves, in the light of the hanging lantern.

        Inside, in the museum-like foyer, MacVeagh was undoing his scarf when a young man with a swarthy face walked toward him.  He was grinning, his teeth white as limestone in a rainstorm.  MacVeagh recognized him as a member of the White House Secret Service detail.

        "Luther Smith, Senator," he said.  "Don't bother taking your things off.  The man went to Camp David and I've got orders to bring you along."

        "Camp David!"  MacVeagh looked at his wrist watch.  11:50.  Camp David, the presidential mountain retreat built by Franklin D. Roosevelt under the original name Shangri-la, was 80 miles away in the Catoctin range of Maryland.  That meant two hours over icy roads.  "Good Lord, did he say why?"

        "No.  We don't ask," said Smith.  "All I know is that he just left and I've got orders to take you by your home for a change of clothes and then drive you on up to the lodge."

        "Orders, huh?"

        "Orders, sir."  Smith grinned again with his flash of white teeth.  MacVeagh liked the man.

        "All right.  Let's go."

        A long, purring limousine waited on the curved driveway.... ----------------------------------------- [end / excerpt]

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{Night of Camp David.  A novel written by Fletcher Knebel.  1965 - Harper & Row.}

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