a disquieting emotion

 

What Would Happen If the President Of The U.S.A. Went Stark-Raving Mad?

That is the tagline that appears on the cover of the novel, Night of Camp David.

The book was a "bestselling political thriller" in 1965, according to the Penguin Random House website, and although it was out-of-print for a while, it came back into print in November of 2018, "back by popular demand."

        When I first saw it on Amazon, I recognized the cover art -- I had seen it somewhere, long ago.

At first I noticed things about it that seemed a little bit -- quaint.

First -- "stark-raving mad."  That's an expression we don't hear very often now.  But the book was written in the 1960s and then, it was an expression people might use.

The other thing was the title, Night of Camp David.

OK.

Saying it in -- sort of a -- ponderous, doom-studded tone:

Night.  Of Camp David.

Like -- what -- Camp David is -- spooky, now?

------------------------------- [excerpt]

Smith motioned him into the back seat.

        "You might as well get some shut-eye," he said.  "It'll be after two when we get there."...

        He awoke with a flashlight shining in his face.  When it had been lowered and he had rubbed his eyes, he saw a Marine sergeant saluting briskly from the steps of a log guardhouse.  The snow lay deep here and the towering firs were silhouetted in the fragile moonlight.  

A snowplow had cleared the road, leaving ridges almost two feet high on either side.  The forest was thick, no wind stirred, and only the crunch of the car's tires could be heard in the hush of the night hours.  Smith stopped the limousine before the largest of a cluster of wooden buildings. ...

        ...Hollenbach rose from the sofa and began pacing the floor.  On one turn he clicked off the floor lamp, leaving the room with only thin moonlight, reflected from the snow outside, and the lazy orange tongues curling from the fireplace.  The President's features were shadowed, but MacVeagh felt eyes searching his own in the half-light.

        "You don't understand a man like that," said Hollenbach.  The words hurried from him as though fleeing an unseen enemy.  "His own future is nothing compared to his objective....He's out to grind me down....All right.  I'll say it...to destroy me....What does Patrick O'Malley risk?  He's fortunate to be vice-president.  

Even that office stretches his limited talents....He had nowhere else to go....So let's face facts.  His entire aim was to soil me, to rub some of his mud off on me, to make people think that I'm the kind of man who winks at sordid political payoffs in his official household...."

        Hollenbach came close and MacVeagh felt uncomfortable, as though he had unwittingly intruded on another's privacy.  A disquieting emotion nettled him.  Outside the snow lay blank and cold.  MacVeagh saw a dead tree, its branches missing.  Then he noted that the trunk moved and he realized, with relief, that it was a guard, probably a Marine, on duty.  The man blew on his hands and moved away, out of eye range.

        Hollenbach walked in small, nervous steps to the big window.  He stood there, mute, looking at the gray mass on the horizon.  For a minute the ticking of the mantel clock and the pop of burning logs were the only sounds.  

Then MacVeagh heard a familiar, booming laugh, so deep in tone from such a thin, wiry body that it always seemed to come from some hidden spring of resources.  Hollenbach returned to the sofa and slouched in the corner.

        "Forgive me, Jim, for getting so worked up," he said easily, "but the man has always irritated me...."

__________________________

{Night of Camp David, by Fletcher Knebel.  1965.  Harper & Row}

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