The Rewind Files Page 17

  “How long does a screwdriver take around here?” Liddy bellowed from the other side of the room, and Beth threw up her hands in resignation. Dean winked at me. I added a splash more vodka. Beth buried her head in her hands. Dean coughed to conceal a laughing fit. I filled the glass to the top with orange juice and carried it carefully over to Liddy so it wouldn’t spill.

  “Old family recipe,” I trilled girlishly. He took a long swig, spluttered and choked and almost spit it out. Dean, Beth and I watched to see what would happen next. But he burst out laughing, and took another long, hearty swig.

  “This one’s a keeper, John,” he said to Dean, and went back to his sandwich.

  “Thank you, Miss Bellows,” said Beth in her most formal voice. “That will be all.” And she stood and walked me back to my desk. She closed the inner door behind her and hesitated, as though about to say something.

  “Who is that creep?” I asked.

  “Nobody,” she said. “He works for the campaign. And don’t call him a creep.”

  “What have they been doing in there all day?”

  “Budgets,” she said. “Liddy’s involved with the campaign’s finances and Dean had some questions about the reports. That’s all.”

  “But—”

  “That’s all, Regina.”

  She looked worried, and I was feeling more warmly towards her than I had in a long time, so I did something very unlike me.

  “I could help,” I said.

  “What?”

  “You have a stack of messages to return,” I said, pointing to her desk. “Let me go in there and take notes for awhile and give you a break from Liddy and his elevator eyes.”

  “Elevator eyes?” she said in puzzlement, and I wondered if it wasn’t a slang term that existed yet.

  “Yeah, you know, when a guy’s eyes go up and down, like this?” I demonstrated for her, perfectly imitating Liddy’s hungry leer, and I swear to God, she almost laughed.

  “No,” she said. “But thank you.”

  “Really, I don’t mind,” I said, and I moved back towards the door slightly. Instantly our camaraderie vanished and she was chilly Beth Rutherford again.

  “Back to your desk, Miss Bellows,” she said. “Your help isn’t needed.”

  “I wasn’t trying to—”

  “Stay out of that office,” she said. “I mean it. Don’t barge in there again.” And she swept back inside, closing Dean’s door behind her.

  I didn’t see any of them for the rest of the day; they were all still in there with the door closed when I left at five. As I typed up memos on Dean’s behalf to a trio of presidential aides who were caught accepting pricey Omaha porterhouse steaks from a beef industry lobbyist, I ran Beth’s words from earlier that day over and over in my head, trying to puzzle them out.

  On the one hand, of course, they were perfectly true. I did know nothing. I had seen nothing. She had very neatly silenced Liddy in the office, when he had tried to start talking again while I was still in there. And her description of their meeting as “something about budgets” was vague enough to cover any number of things. Every task Beth assigned me was as dull and trivial as this one was.

  Was that to punish me – or to protect me? It suddenly occurred to me that there were all kinds of reasons she might want me sitting out here typing up beef memos while Dean and Moustache argued on the other side of the wall.

  I wondered what the notes in her steno pad said.

  I wondered what she knew that I didn’t.

  I wondered why Dean was sweating and nervous.

  And I wondered what our office was involved in that nobody wanted the new girl accidentally mentioning to the FBI.

  * * *

  As puzzled as I was by it, though, I was grateful for Beth’s heads-up. It was only a week or so later when my name came up on the reporters’ list.

  They were very cautious. They waited until I had turned onto G Street and melted into the end-of-day pedestrian traffic several blocks from the White House. I was grateful for this courtesy, until it occurred to me that there was little comfort to be found in their assumption that I was being watched. Still, I thought it best to act natural. When I heard a male voice say my name behind me, I swallowed my anxiety and turned around as with as much casual nonchalance as I could muster.

  Everything I knew about 20th-century journalists I had learned from 20th-century films. I think I was expecting a pair of grizzled old newsmen chomping cigars and thrusting their notepads in my face while calling me “sweetheart” in thick New York accents. So I was startled beyond reason to find myself face-to-face with two perfectly ordinary guys, not that much older than me.

  “You’re young,” I said, startled into rudeness, and the one on the left grinned widely. He had the kind of country-club handsomeness that would age well, with brown hair that curled just a little in the back and unexpectedly warm eyes.

  “Let me guess,” he said. “You were warned off us.”

  “No comment,” I said.

  “I’m Bob Woodward from the Washington Post,” he said. “This is Carl Bernstein.”

  As partners, they didn’t match. Carl had dark hair that he wore very long, and where Bob had a kind of easy grace, Carl looked a little rumpled. Still, quite unexpectedly, I found that there was something about them both that I liked immediately.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I can’t talk to you.”

  “We won’t take up much of your time, I promise,” said Bob.

  “I’m on my way home,” I said.

  “Walking?”

  “Yes.”

  “Can we buy you coffee?” said Woodward, “And then maybe give you a lift? I’m just parked a few blocks away.”

  “No comment,” said Beth’s sharp voice in my head.

  “Don’t make it worse,” said Calliope’s.

  “You never think about the consequences,” said my mother’s.

  Tick, tick, tick, said the HIO meter in my pocket.

  But they found out McCord worked for the C.I.A., said a voice in my head that belonged entirely to me. They might know lots of things you don’t know yet. They could be useful friends to have.

  “You can talk to me right here,” I said, quietly praying this wasn’t a terrible idea. “I don’t want to be seen getting into your car. I could get fired for that.”

  “That’s fine,” said Bob.

  “Although I don’t know what I can tell you,” I said. “I’m brand-new. I’ve only been here a few weeks.”

  “We were told you were a straight-shooter,” said Bob. “You have a reputation for being honest.”

  “According to who, exactly?” I said. “That’s remarkably charitable.”

  “We were given to understand that you’re the kind of person who would speak candidly if you had something to say,” Bob said, deftly dodging my question.

  “Ah,” I said. “Because I’m new. I haven’t been here long enough to form any loyalties and I’m more likely to spill because I have so much less to lose.”

  “Not at all,” said Carl reassuringly.

  “Yes,” said Bob at the same time.

  There was a silence.

  “You should rehearse better beforehand,” I said.

  “We won’t use your name if you’d like us not to,” Carl said. “This is all background.”

  “And we won’t print anything that isn’t verified by multiple sources,” Bob added. “We’re not going to hang you out to dry.”

  “No, you won’t,” I said, “because I can’t tell you anything.” I turned and started to walk away.

  “We just wanted to ask you a few questions about Gordon Liddy,” Bob called after me, which stopped me in my tracks. I turned.

  “So you do know him,” said Carl.

  Shit.

  “I don’t work for him,” I said. “I work for John Dean.”

  “You won’t be telling us anything we don’t already know,” said Bob. “We’re just looking for confirmation. If that mak
es you feel more comfortable. We’re not asking you to rat out your boss.”

  “What do you want to know, then?” I said cautiously, heart racing. If they were hoping I would be a confirmation source, then they were probably about to tell me something that their editor had deemed too explosive to print without independent verification. I considered turning on my Comm to let Calliope hear, then decided against it.

  “We already know about the slush fund,” said Carl. “And that Liddy had oversight of it.” I kept my face carefully expressionless and waited for him to go on.

  “And we know the burglars were paid in cash from that fund,” said Bob. “So what we’re trying to confirm is whether Liddy has been seen since the burglary in any meetings with the President’s senior staff.”

  “Why would that matter?” I said, voice neutral.

  “It matters whether Liddy was acting on his own or not. Given that he’s on the payroll of the Committee to Re-Elect the President.”

  “We’re not asking you to tell us anything we don’t already know,” Carl said again. “We have reason to believe that Liddy came in recently to meet with John Dean.” He looked at me for a long moment, waiting for me to speak. I didn’t. Bob tried again.

  “Say we were putting together a story that said Liddy had met with John Dean since the burglary,” he said, “can you give us any reason why we shouldn’t run it?”

  I almost told them everything then and there, but something stopped me. Not loyalty to Dean, certainly. Not fear of exposing my real mission. No, what stopped me was remembering the way Beth had looked at me when I offered to go take notes and she blocked my way to the door. She had kept me out of that office for a reason, and I didn’t know whether she was hiding something from me – or trying to keep me safe.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “There’s nothing I can tell you.” Carl looked disappointed, but Bob just nodded, like I had given him exactly the answer he expected.

  “Here’s my phone number,” he said. “In case anything changes, or you want to talk.”

  “That’s very unlikely,” I said, but I could feel all three of us wondering if it really was.

  * * *

  “What did you do with the State Dinner purchase order files?” said Beth the second I walked in the door the next day.

  “Good morning to you too, Beth,” I said as I hung up my coat on the rack behind my desk.

  “Good morning. What did you do with the State Dinner purchase order files?”

  “I dropped them off with the Head Chef’s office yesterday morning for a signature,” I said. “Like you asked me to.”

  “No, you didn’t,” she said. “He just called. He didn’t get them.”

  “Well, I don’t know what to tell you,” I said. “I put them right in Lillian’s hand.”

  “We need that file today,” she said. “Mr. Dean needs to get it to the State Department’s budget office.”

  “I know.”

  “Expenses for state dinners can’t be billed to the regular kitchen accounts.”

  “I know that, Beth. You told me. And I took care of it.”

  “Check on your desk again,” she said.

  “It’s not here,” I said. She glared at me until I finally threw up my hands and gave up. “Fine,” I said, half-heartedly rifling through my files. “Not here, not here, not here, not—”

  And then I stopped short. Because even though I knew I hadn’t left it on my desk, even though I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that I had delivered it to the correct office and put it directly into the hands of the Head Chef’s assistant, there it was, staring up at me. I picked it up and stared at it, too absorbed in my own puzzlement to notice Beth’s look of triumph.

  “What are you waiting for?” she said. “Go deliver the file.”

  “Fine,” I said. “Tell Lillian I’m on my way.”

  “Lillian’s out today,” she said. “Just hand it off to the first person you see in a service uniform and tell them it’s urgent. Go.”

  I went.

  The White House was divided roughly into thirds. The part you think of when you think of the White House is the Residence, with the West Wing on one side, where the President and his staff work, and the East Wing on the other side, which houses the First Lady’s office and many of the public reception rooms.

  The lower floors of the Residence are a labyrinth of oddities, with everything from a florist to a bowling alley. I was headed towards the kitchens when I passed the Flatware Room and noticed that the door was open and someone in a uniform was inside. How weird would it be, I thought, to live in a house that had a flatware room? I decided to take advantage of the opportunity and sneak a peek.

  “Excuse me,” I said to the back of someone’s head, and he turned around. It was a young African-American man, probably around my age or a little older, tall and lanky and, I noticed with relief, wearing the formal uniform of one of the White House butlers.

  “Oh, good,” I said. “I hope you can help me. I need to get this file to—”

  “Close the door,” he snapped at me. I was too startled to respond, but looked behind me to see if he was talking to someone else. “Close the door,” he repeated. “People work in this hallway.”

  “Good Lord. Fine,” I said, not even bothering to hide the irritation in my voice. “So sorry to have bothered you.” I stepped back into the hall and began to close the door behind me.

  “With you on this side of it, Agent Bellows,” he said, exasperated.

  I froze, with my hand on the doorknob.

  I looked at him.

  He looked at me.

  I stepped back inside and closed the door.

  “You,” I said.

  “Yes.”

  I sized him up again, with different eyes, wondering if I would have spotted that he was from my time if he had never said anything. But I knew it never would have happened. He might have passed me in the hall a hundred times and I would have missed it.

  I had been looking for someone who looked like Detective Barlow – someone in a suit, someone who wore authority comfortably.

  But in 1972, in the White House, who was better positioned for deep-cover espionage than a butler? It was brilliant. He could move invisibly in and out of rooms with the First Family, with heads of state. Nobody would even notice he was there, because he was a black man in a uniform and nobody would be looking at his face.

  Which is too bad, because it was a handsome one, in a boy-next-door way, with sharp eyes that I could tell would miss nothing. Even though we still hadn’t quite decided if we liked each other yet, it eased something inside me, just a little, to know there was somebody else in this building on my side.

  “You got me in big trouble with Beth Rutherford,” I said.

  “I didn’t mean to.”

  “You couldn’t think of any way to set up a meet that didn’t make me look incompetent?”

  “Well, I’m sorry,” he retorted. “I’ve never had to do this before. I’m a historian, not a super-spy.”

  “You’re a butler.”

  “I’m a butler for the White House. I’m a historian for the Bureau.”

  “Great. So neither of us knows what we’re doing. What’s your name?”

  “Agent Carter Hughes,” he said. “Listen. I don’t have long, but I need you to tell me what you said to the reporters.”

  “Have you been following me? Oh my God, is everyone in 1972 following me?”

  “What did you tell them, Agent Bellows?”

  “Nothing,” I said. “I didn’t tell them anything.” He seemed to relax at this somewhat.

  “Okay. Good. That’s good.”

  “Don’t you want to know what they told me?” I asked him. “About the burglars being paid out of a secret slush fund that the President’s re-election committee controls?” I was pleased to see that he was astonished by this, pleased that I had obtained information he had not known.

  “You saw the papers, right?” I said. “That ex-CI
A guy they nabbed at the break-in, James McCord, he was working for the re-election committee too. The committee washed their hands of him and said they didn’t have any idea what he was up to in his free time.”

  “Really.”

  “Yeah, but I don’t think the reporters believe that,” I said. “They’ve found out that this secret pile of cash exists which they think Gordon Liddy controls, and what they’re trying to figure out is how many other people would have known where that money was going. And, I suspect, whether it’s just people at the campaign or people at the White House too. That’s why they wanted to talk to me. They wanted to know if, after the break-in, Liddy came in to meet with Dean.”

  “Did he?”

  “Yes,” I said. “Right away. First thing that Monday. They were holed up in Dean’s office all day, shouting at each other. I think Dean can’t stand him. He was afraid of something, and I think Beth was too. But I didn’t tell the reporters that.”

  “Good,” he said. “We don’t want them snooping around and interfering with our own investigation. They’ll just get in the way.”

  “But what do I do if the FBI asks?” I said. “Beth said to answer ‘no comment’ to the reporters but that I was supposed to be honest with the FBI. What do you think? Should I tell them?”

  He stared at me.

  “What do you mean?”

  “The FBI is questioning staff in the West Wing,” I said. “Beth told me. You didn’t know?”

  “No,” he said. “I didn’t know.”

  “Agent Hughes—”

  “Carter.”

  “Carter. What the hell is going on?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “The President is tense. So is the senior staff. Everyone is acting strange.”

  “Here too?” I said. “Because the junior staff in the West Wing is going crazy. There’s something in the air. Everyone’s walking around wondering what everyone else knows.”

  “So what’s our next move?” he asked.

  “Can you go anywhere,” I asked him. “Or do you just work in the Residence?”

  “Just the Residence,” he said. “But I can get to you.”

  “How?”

  “There’s a tunnel through the subbasements that connects all three wings together. If you can get to the West Wing’s ground floor stairwell, next to the men’s room, I can find you.”