The Hellfire Club(108)



“So what’s going to happen to Strongfellow?” Bernstein asked.

“He’s over and done,” said Charlie. “You see the unnamed Republican congressional aides quoted in the story saying the party leadership is looking around for someone else to run for the seat in November?”

“Why did he lie?”

“I don’t know,” Charlie said. “I don’t know if he’d be able to explain it either.”

Charlie wondered whether the Hellfire Club had leaked the information to the Post or if it had been shared by his dad or his associates, whatever they called themselves. The Post story depicted Strongfellow as either delusional or criminally mendacious. There really wasn’t any acceptable explanation; even the most benign version suggested serious emotional problems.

Ann Whitman appeared at the far end of the lobby and spoke to the receptionist, who motioned to Charlie. In her forties, trim and attractive in a no-nonsense way, the president’s secretary strode purposefully toward him.

“Congressman, we’re ready for you now,” she said.

“You should probably get a cab back to Capitol Hill,” Charlie said to Bernstein as he got up to follow Whitman. “I don’t know how long this is going to last.”

Bernstein nodded, stood, and smoothed her dress. She seemed to want to say something, but no words came out.

“It’s okay, Bernstein, we’ll talk more when I get back to the office,” he said. She nodded, and Charlie followed Whitman out of the reception area and down the hall to the Oval Office.

Charlie had met Eisenhower once before, back in 1948, when the retired general and hero of World War II had been president of Columbia University. Attending a reception honoring students and faculty who had served in the military during the war, Charlie was one of many who stood in line to shake the hand of the former supreme commander of the Allied Expeditionary Forces in Europe. At the time, Charlie was pursuing his PhD in American history, and Eisenhower, then fifty-eight, was just beginning what would be an ill-fated tenure at the Ivy League school. Their interaction lasted maybe thirty seconds—handshake, information about the company Charlie had served with and where, photograph, “Thank you for your service.”

“Come in,” the president said now when Whitman knocked on the Oval Office door, his voice as flat as the Kansas plains where he’d been raised.

Eisenhower hadn’t changed the Oval Office decor much after moving in a year and a half earlier. The walls were gray and the rug was a blue-green; he’d even stuck with the Teddy Roosevelt desk that Truman had brought out of storage. At the opposite end of the room, an immense floor globe stood before the fireplace, on the mantel of which were thirteen miniature flags. To the president’s left sat a smaller version of the famous Seated Lincoln sculpture.

The only touches from the new resident of the office hung on the wall: photographs of a clean-shaven Abraham Lincoln and a uniformed Confederate general Robert E. Lee were displayed to the president’s right, Lincoln slightly higher than the man he had defeated. Across from the president, adjacent to the fireplace, were oil paintings by John James Audubon, one of a woodpecker and one of an oriole. Over the mantel hung a painting of a pueblo village in New Mexico. Charlie noticed that one painting by the door—a mountain landscape—was signed DE, the artist no doubt the man behind the desk, who was busy signing a stack of papers as Charlie walked in.

At the edge of Eisenhower’s desk was a small display case featuring twenty-four stones, each taken from a place where he’d once lived, from Fort Sam Houston to Gibraltar. Next to that was a glass block on which was inscribed the Latin phrase Suaviter in modo, fortiter in re—“Gently in manner, strong in deed.”

“Have a seat,” the president said without looking up. An aide standing next to him handed over and retrieved document after document. “Just need to finish signing these, whatever they are.”

Charlie regarded the man, who seemed much older than the last time he’d seen him in person. His charisma and likability were unmistakable, but his body was more slope-shouldered, his appearance now more grandfatherly than fatherly. He had defeated Hitler and Hirohito but he was no match for Father Time.

Eisenhower completed the documents, and the aide waited for Eisenhower to dismiss him, which he did, quickly and politely.

Now it was just the two of them in the room. Eisenhower took off his glasses and placed them on his desk, then stood up and shook Charlie’s hand.

“I’m told we may have met before. At Columbia?”

“Yes, sir,” Charlie said.

Eisenhower nodded and walked from behind his desk to take a seat on the deep red couch; he invited Charlie to join him in a chair across from him.

“They’re about to build a putting green out there for me,” Eisenhower said, waving a hand toward the windows. “You golf at all?”

“Poorly and infrequently.”

“Ah. Well, the rest of us do it poorly and frequently. Your way is probably better.”

Charlie grinned. Eisenhower had been his commanding general in France and his college president at Columbia, so he was having difficulty escaping the feeling that he’d done something wrong and had been called to the principal’s office.

“Your father tells me you’re thinking of returning to academia,” the president said. “That it’s been something of a bumpy ride here.”

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