Текст книги "The Manchurian Candidate "

Автор книги: Richard Thomas Condon

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Текущая страница: 13 (всего у книги 20 страниц)

Thirteen

RAYMOND’S MOTHER CALLED HIM FROM THE Idlewild Airport. She wanted him to have lunch with her. He tried to think quickly of somebody whom he could say he had to have lunch with but she said he was not to stall her, that she was well aware that he disliked people too much to be stuck for an hour or more at a luncheon table with one, so he could damn well show up wherever they let ladies eat luncheon at the Plaza Hotel at one o’clock. He said he would be there. Beyond having acknowledged that his name was Raymond when she had first spoken, it was all he said to his mother.

She was hard at work making a scene by bossing the maître d’hotel, a table captain, and two waiters at a table that faced the park in the big corner room when he arrived at the Plaza at ten seconds before one o’clock. She motioned him to stand beside her chair until she finished her oration about exactly how they were to stuff the oysters into a carpetbag steak and that she would not tolerate more than eleven minutes of broiling on each side, in a preheated grill, at four hundred degrees. The waiters bowed and left. Raymond’s mother gave the maître d’ the full glare of her contempt for an instant, then spoke to Raymond. “I ask you to imagine a restaurant,” she said, “which does not list Clos de Lambrays or a Cuvée Docteur Peste!” She waved the man away, with bitterness. She permitted Raymond to kiss her on the right cheek, ever so lightly, then motioned him to his chair at the table for four, not at her right or directly across from her, but at her left, which made it impossible for either of them to look out of the window at the park.

“How have you been?” she asked.

“Fine.”

“As am I. Not that you asked.”

“When I heard you ordering a steak stuffed with oysters I had a clue.”

“The steak will be mainly for you.”

“Sure.”

“Johnny is fine.”

“You mean his physical health, I presume?”

“I do. And everything else.”

“Is he in a jam?”

“Of course not.”

“Then why are we here?”

“Why are we here?”

“Why are we having our annual meeting?”

“I am your mother, which is a sufficient reason. Why did you ask if Johnny is in a jam?”

“It occurred to me that you might have decided that you would have use for my column, which has so carefully disqualified itself from ever printing Johnny’s name despite the fact that he is an assassin, pure and simple. An assassin of character and the soul. He reeks of death, you know?” Raymond exceeded his own gifts for being obnoxious and impossible when he was with his mother. His brushing gesture worked for him almost all the time, punctuating his haughtiness and scorn. His posture was as attenuated as liquid being drawn up through a drinking straw.

His mother closed her eyes tightly as she answered him. “My dear boy, one more column of type in this weltered world spelling out Johnny’s name would not be much noticed.”

“I’ll remember that.”

She opened her eyes. “What for?”

Raymond, when he was with his mother, always felt a nagging fear that he was gaping at her beauty. As they spoke, whenever they met, his eyes searched each millimeter of her skin for a flaw and weighed each of her gestures, anxious that he might discover some loss of grace, but to no avail. He was dismayed and gratified to fall back upon the mockery of her pretense at disappointment because there had been no Clos de Lambrays or Cuvée Docteur Peste, which so failed to find harmony with the fact that Johnny Iselin drank bourbon with his meals.

“Mother, in God’s name, where did you ever hear of a thing like a carpetbag steak? Johnny found it, didn’t he? Johnny had to find it, because in the world’s literature of food there couldn’t be a dish which expresses his vulgarity better than a thick, contemptuously expensive piece of meat pregnant with viscous, slippery, sensual oysters.”

“Raymond, please! Watch your language.” She leered at him.

“It’s disgusting and he’s disgusting.”

“The reason I asked you to lunch today, Raymond,” his mother said smoothly, “is that I have not, actually, been entirely well and my doctor has suggested a trip to Europe this summer.”

“What’s the matter with you?” He stretched out the diphthongs of the drawl until its sounds reverberated nasally into his soft palate, thinking: Has there ever on God’s earth been a liar like this woman? Does she at any square inch of her mountainous vanity, conceive that I can be had through the delicate health appeal? Will she produce a forged electrocardiogram? Will a malpracticing doctor with an even gaze suddenly happen to discover that we are lunching here? She would never pull anything as crude as a faint, but she could play a great scene with any given kindly old physician who had been coached in his lines.

“The doctor was a fool, of course,” his mother said. “I went to the Leahy Clinic and to the Mayos for two separate checkups. I am as sound as a Swiss franc.”

Raymond’s resentment of her made him feel as though steel burrs were forming everywhere under his skin. I am going to lose this, he thought, just as I lose them all with her. I am being blindfolded as I sit here and she will win if I cannot anticipate where she is leading me. Oh, what a woman! What a beauty she is and what a dirty fighter. She is where the world should spit when they seek to spit upon Johnny Iselin. How can I forget that? How can I look into those serenely lovely eyes, how can I be so deeply thrilled by the carriage of her exquisitely wholesome body and grow so faint at the set, the royal set of that beautiful head and not remember, not always and always and always remember that it encases a cesspool of betrayal, a poisoned well of love, and a city of deadly snakes? Why am I here? Why did I come here?

“I am glad to hear it,” he said. “But I distinctly remember you telling me you had not, actually, been entirely well. Just a few seconds ago. In fact, that was exactly the way you phrased it.”

She smiled at him with forbearance, showing rows of perfect white teeth. “I said—oh, Raymond! For heaven’s sake, what does it matter what I said?”

“I’d like a drink.”

“At lunch?”

“Yes.”

“You generally sulk if people drink at lunch.”

She tilted her head back and made a repulsive kissing sound with her pursed lips. A waiter sprinted toward her so rapidly that Raymond thought the man had decided to kill her, but that was not the case. He came to a point beside her and stared at her abjectly as though pleading for the knout. Raymond’s mother had that effect upon many people.

“Speak up, Raymond.”

“I would like to have some beer. Served in the can.”

“Served in the can, sir?” the waiter asked softly. Raymond’s mother snarled and the man shrilled “Yes, sir!” and was off.

“And who is the more vulgar now?” she asked in a kindly tone. “How about a can of beans, opened with a hatchet, with the can of beer?”

“Mother, for crissake, will you please tell me how come we are having lunch today?”

“Oh. Well, this fool of a doctor whom I shall expose as an alarmist, I assure you, told me that I should go to Europe for a change and whether it was from the wrong reason or not, it did plant the idea. So, since I can’t go alone and since it would present too many security difficulties for Johnny to go with me, I wondered…and I most certainly expect you to accept for professional reasons as I will be traveling as a full, accredited representative of the Appropriations, Foreign Relations, and Finance Committees—I will be representing the Senate, you might say—and I will be there to remind the forgetful rulers of Europe and England that the United States was established not as a democracy but as a Federal Union and Republic that is controlled by the United States Senate, at this moment in our history, through a state-equality composition designed to maintain this establishment and that it exists, in the present moment of our history, to protect minorities from the precipitate and emotional tyranny of majorities. That means, of course, that I will be able to get you into places and cause you to be adjacent to people which neither your newspaper nor your column could reach in a decade of Sundays. I assure you, before you answer as to whether or not you will consent to accompany me, your own mother, on a tour of Europe at no cost whatever to you, that there is no one in the British Isles or on that entire subcontinent of Europe whom you might decide that you would like to meet—and for reasons of publication should you so choose—that I cannot deliver to you. Should you also decide that you would enjoy extending the already influential syndication of your daily writings to other languages and to foreign newspapers and opinion-molding periodicals, I should think that could be arranged. Furthermore—” Raymond’s mother was wooing him as she had wooed Johnny Iselin. Raymond’s own father must have been a dreamer, indeed, to have lost her point so far back in the thickening fullness of her youth.

“I would love to go to Europe with you this summer, Mother.”

“Good. We will sail from West Forty-sixth Street on June 15, at noon, on the United States. My office will mail you the itinerary and hotels and indicate the shape of appointments and meetings, business and social. Would you like to see the Pope?”

“No.”

“I’ll do that alone then.”

“What else?”

“Isn’t this carpetbag steak absolutely delicious? Eating it is an absolute sexual experience! What a marvelous conception—steak and oysters, I mean. Johnny eats it all the time, you know.”

“It figures.”

“Is there anything I can get done for you in Washington, dear heart?”

“No. Thank you. Yes. Yes, there is something. I have a friend—”

“A friend? You have a friend?” She stopped chewing for a moment and put her fork down.

“Sarcasm is the cheapest kind of a crutch to humor, Mother.”

“Please forgive me, Raymond. I was not attempting sarcasm. You must believe that. I was startled. I had never heard you mention a friend in your entire life before. I am very, very happy that you do have a friend and you may be sure, darling, that if I may help your friend I most certainly will be overjoyed to do so. Who is he?”

“He’s a major in Army Intelligence in Washington.” Raymond’s mother had whipped out an efficient-looking looseleaf notebook.

“His name?”

He told her.

“Academy?” He said yes.

“Would full colonel be what you had in mind?”

“That would be fine, I guess. I hope there is some way it can be done without PI being stamped all over his personnel file.”

“What is PI?”

“Political influence.”

“Of course they’ll stamp PI all over his personnel file! Are you out of your mind? What’s wrong with letting the Board know that he happens to have a little muscle in the right places? Sweet Jesus, Raymond, if it weren’t for PI some of the brass we call our leaders would be the oldest crop of second lieutenants in military history. I swear to God, Raymond,” his mother said in extreme exasperation, chopping savagely at a large gooseberry tart that glistened with custard filling, “sometimes I think you are the most naïve of young men, and when I read your column, I am sure.”

“What’s wrong with my column?”

She held up her hand. “Not now. We will reorganize your column aboard ship in June. Right now let’s make your friend a chicken colonel.” She looked at her notes. “Now, is there anything—well, anything negative I should know about this one?”

“No. He’s a great officer. His father and grandfather and great-grandfather were great officers.”

“You know him from Korea?”

“Yes. He—he led the patrol.” Raymond hesitated because mentioning the patrol made him think of that filthy medal again and of how much his mother had made that medal mean to Johnny Iselin and what a fool she had made of herself at the White House and later what a fool Johnny had made of himself in front of the TV cameras and press cameras at that goddam, cheap, rotten, contemptuous luncheon where he had been humiliated, and all of a sudden he saw that it would be possible, too, for him to take a little bit of her skin off painfully and to kick Johnny right between the eyes with the medal nailed to the toe of his boot so that he, Raymond, would finally have a little pleasure out of that goddam medal himself, finally and at last. He was patiently quiet until she sensed the meaning of his hesitation and took it up.

“What’s the matter?” she asked.

“Well, there is one thing which the Army might figure as negative. In the past. I think it’s all right now.”

“He’s a fairy?”

“Hah!”

“This little negative thing. You say you think it’s all right now?”

“Yes.”

“You don’t think you should tell me what it is?”

“Mother, are you going to put Johnny up for the Presidency at the convention next year?”

“Raymond, shall we make your friend a colonel or not? I don’t think Johnny can make it for the Presidency. I may go after the number-two spot.”

“Will you enter him in the primaries next spring?”

“I don’t think so. He has too much strength for that. I don’t think I need any popularity contests for Johnny. Now—about the negative side of the major.”

Raymond folded his hands neatly before him on the table. “He’s been in Army psychiatric hospitals twice in the past year.”

“Oh, that’s all,” she drawled sarcastically and shrugged. “And all the time I thought it might have been something which could present a problem. My God, Raymond! A psycho! Have you ever seen what that looks like when it’s stamped across a personnel file?”

“It’s not what you might think, Mother. You see, due to an experience in Korea, a very vivid experience, he has been suffering from recurring nightmares.”

“Is that right?”

“What happened to him could give anyone nightmares. In fact, it might even give you a nightmare or two after you hear it.”

“Why?”

“Because it’s quite a story and I’m involved in it up to my ears.”

Her voice picked up a cutting edge. “How are you involved?” she asked.

He told her. When he had finished explaining that Marco had decided to demand his own court-martial to prove falsification and collusion in conjunction with the conferment of that Medal of Honor, savoring each word and each shocked look on his mother’s face with great and deep satisfaction, she was the color of milk and her hand trembled.

“How dare he?”

“Why, Mother, it is his duty. Surely you can see that?”

“How dare the contemptible, psychoneurotic, useless, filthy little military servant of a—?” She choked on it.

Raymond was startled at the intensity of her attack. She brought her fist down on the tabletop with full force from two feet above it, in full tantrum, and the glasses, plates, and silver jumped and a full water pitcher leaped into the air to crash to the floor. Everyone in the dining room turned to stare and some stood up to look. A waiter dashed toward the table and went to his hands and knees, fussing with the sopping carpet and the fragments of heavy glass. She kicked him in the thigh as she sat, with vicious vigor. “Get out of here, you miserable flunky,” she said. The waiter stood up slowly, staring at her, breathing shallowly. Then he left abruptly. She stood up, breathing heavily, with sweat shining on her upper lip. “I’ll help your friend, Raymond,” she said with violence in her voice. “I’ll help him to defame and destroy an American hero. I’ll cheer him as he spits upon our flag.” She left him there, striding rapidly through knots of people and attendants, shouldering some. Raymond stared after her, knowing he had lost again but not knowing what he had lost. But he was not dismayed, because losing was Raymond’s most constant feeling.

She went to the manager’s office in the hotel. She brushed past his secretary and slammed the door behind her. She said she was the wife of Senator John Yerkes Iselin and that the two people then meeting with the manager, two barber-pinked businessmen each wearing a florid carnation, would oblige her by leaving the room. They excused themselves and left immediately, vaguely fearful of being proved Communists. She told the manager that it would be necessary to use his office and his telephone and that it would be necessary for her to have utter privacy as she would be talking about an emergency matter with the Secretary of Defense at the Pentagon, and that she would greatly appreciate it, in fact she would regard it as a patriotic service, as would indeed her husband, Senator Iselin, if he were to go to the telephone switchboard in person and direct the placement of the call to the Secretary, reversing the charges, and standing by at the operator’s shoulder to make sure there was no eavesdropping on the call, a natural and human tendency under the circumstances.

Raymond paid the check and wandered about the lobby looking for his mother. He concluded that she had left so he went out of the hotel on the Fifth Avenue side, deciding to walk back to his office. When he reached the office he found a message to call Army Intelligence in New York. He called. They asked if he could help them locate Major Bennet Marco. Raymond said he believed Major Marco was presently at his apartment, as he was visiting him in New York. They asked for the telephone number. He gave it to them, explaining that they were not to give it to anyone else, then felt silly having said such a thing to professional investigators. He got busy after that on a call from the governor’s press secretary and the three check-up calls that were made necessary by that call. When he called Ben at the apartment there was no answer. He forgot about it. That night, when he got home at six twenty-two, he found a note from Ben thanking him and saying that his indefinite sick leave had been canceled and that he had been recalled to Washington. The note also urged Raymond not to question Chunjin in any way after he came out of the hospital.

In Naples, in the summer of 1958, in discussing the most powerful men in the world with Leonard Lyons, the expatriate Charles Luciano had said: “A U.S. Senator can make more trouble, day in and day out, than anyone else.” The condition as stated then had not changed perceptibly a year later.

Fourteen

WHEN LIEUTENANT GENERAL NILS JORGENSON had awakened that morning, a celebrant of his fortieth anniversary in the United States Army, he had been euphoric. When he left the office of the Secretary and the further presence of the Army’s Congressional liaison officer, he was dismayed, cholerically angry, but mostly horrified. The general was a good man and a brave man. He locked the doors when he and Marco were alone in his office, then demanded that Marco confirm or deny that Marco had planned to request a court-martial of himself to enforce a public investigation of circumstances involving a Medal of Honor man. Marco confirmed it. The general felt it necessary to tell Marco that he had known Marco’s father and grandfather. He asked Marco what he had to say.

“Sir, there is only one person in the world with whom I have discussed this course and that was Raymond Shaw himself, at his apartment last night, and it was Shaw, sir, who urged the course and originated the conception. May I ask who has made this accusation to the Secretary, sir? I cannot understand how—”

“Senator John Yerkes Iselin made the accusation, Major. Now—I offer you this because of your record and the record of your family. I offer you the opportunity to resign from the Army.”

“I cannot resign, sir. It is my belief, sir, that the Medal of Honor is being used as an enemy weapon. I—if the general will understand—I see this as my duty, sir.”

The general walked to the window. He looked out at the river for a long time. He went to a casual chair and sat down and he leaned far, far forward, almost bent double, staring at the floor for a long time. He went to his desk and took a chewed and battered-looking pipe from its top drawer, plugged tobacco into it, lighted it, and smoked furiously, staring out of the window again. Then he went back to the desk and sat down to stare across at Marco.

“You not only will not get the court-martial but I am advising you that you will have no rights of any kind.” He snorted with disgust. “On my fortieth anniversary in the Army I find myself telling an American officer that he will have no rights of any kind.”

“Sir?”

“Senator Iselin is the kind of a man who would work day and night to block the entire defense appropriation if he were crossed on a matter as close to him as this. Senator Iselin is capable of wrecking the entire military establishment if an investigation of his stepson’s glorious heroism were permitted to go through. He would undertake a war upon the United States Army which would be far more punishing and ruinous than any ever inflicted by any enemy force of arms in our history. To convey to you the enormity of the responsibility you carry, I have been ordered to tell you this, and it violates everything I stand for. Under orders, I will not threaten you.” His voice trembled. “If you persist in urging your court-martial for the purpose of examining Raymond Shaw’s right to wear the Medal of Honor, you will be placed in solitary confinement.”

Marco stared at the general.

“Have you ever had to threaten a private to force him to police a yard, Major? The Army, as we have known it, has heretofore functioned under a system utilizing orders. Do you remember? I must now tell you that I have not been permitted to consider this conversation a travesty on both our lives. I have been ordered not to halt at merely threatening you. Senator Iselin has decided that I was to be ordered to bribe you. If you will agree to ignore your honor as an officer and will sign a paper which has been prepared by Senator Iselin’s legal counsel which guarantees that you will not press for the investigation of this matter, I am to advise you that you will be advanced in rank to lieutenant colonel, then effective instantly, to the rank of full colonel.”

The nausea rose in Marco like the foam in a narrow beer glass. He could not speak even to acknowledge that he had heard. The general took a paper from his blouse and placed it on the desk, on the far side of it, in front of Marco. “So much for Iselin,” he said. “I order you to sign it.” Marco took up the desk pen and signed the paper.

“Thank you, Major. Dismiss,” the general said. Marco left the office at four twenty-one in the afternoon. General Jorgenson shot himself to death at four fifty-five.