Make Russia Great Again: A Novel Page 15
Blyster didn’t laugh. It occurred to me he might be Catholic.
“They’d like to talk to you.”
“Who?”
“The FBI.”
“What about?”
“Rome, Herb.”
“Oh, honestly. Is that necessary?”
“Normally, I’d say no. But Italian immigration swiped what appears to be your passport on the day of the shooting. There’s no photo attached, oddly. But it was your passport.”
“Hm. That is strange.”
“Look, Herb, you don’t have to tell me anything. Actually, it might be better if you didn’t. But it’s the FBI. And they’d like to talk to you. What do you want me to do?”
I thought: What would Katie say? I channeled her.
“Well isn’t that something,” I said. “Another FBI coup attempt? The deep state never rests, does it.”
Silence.
“I can’t speak to that, Herb. What do you want to do?”
The answer was: jump out the window. But as my office was on the ground floor, that wouldn’t accomplish much. Another end-of-life option was violently banging my head against the desk. Maybe Jeff, my Secret Service buddy, would lend me his Glock 9.
I heard a voice, the voice of my late mother: Schmuck, get a lawyer!
I groaned, as I often did when Mom dispensed advice. But she was usually right. And we wonder why so few young people these days are inspired to go into government service.
28
Their names were Winchell and Wheary. FBI agents come from the same mold: late thirties, athletic, polite, respectful, declining coffee but thanks. I was hoping to hear This is strictly routine, Mr. Nutterman, but instead got a boilerplate warning about the importance of not lying to the FBI.
“You’ve heard of Martha Stewart, sir?”
“Yes,” I said. Who hasn’t heard of Martha Stewart? (For God’s sake.) I could have added that my wife, Hetta, was a huge Martha Stewart fan. Subscribes to all Martha’s magazines, loves her recipes, all the nice touches. Putting bay leaves in your pillowcase.
“Then you’ll remember that Martha Stewart went to jail not because of the stock transaction, but because she lied to the FBI?”
“Sure you don’t want coffee? So you were saying?”
“Mr. Nutterman, were you in Rome last Tuesday?”
“Now that you mention it, I think I may have been. I’d have to check my calendar.”
“So you were in Rome?”
“Is that a crime?”
“No one’s accusing anyone of a crime, Mr. Nutterman.”
“Sure you don’t want a cookie?”
“Were you involved in a shooting incident just off St. Peter’s Square?”
“Well, that would depend on your definition of involved.”
Meaningful “bingo” glances between Special Agents Winchell and Wheary.
“Mr. Nutterman, are you the person being referred to as the mystery monsignor?”
“That could be within the realm of possibility.”
“Is that a yes?”
“Depends on your definition of yes. It’s not a no.”
More rapid eye movement between the G-men.
“Sir, may we ask: What were you doing in Rome?”
Good ground, here: “I was on a sensitive mission on behalf of the president of the United States.”
“Can you tell us what it was about?”
“Now, gents, as I said, it’s sensitive.”
“Was the purpose of this mission to meet with someone?”
“Well, I didn’t go to Rome to feed the pigeons.”
Frowns.
“Mr. Nutterman, were you involved in the shooting?”
“More like present at. And let me tell you, gents—Churchill was right. It is exhilarating, being shot at without effect. Damn near crapped my cassock.”
“Would you be willing to talk to the Italian authorities about it?”
“Absolutely not. You saw what they did to that poor American girl, Amanda Knox. Look, guys—no one died. Besides, I was there on a diplomatic passport. On a confidential assignment, so I and the—ahem—president certainly hope we can rely on your discretion. And now”—I glanced at my watch—“if you’ll excuse me, I’m afraid I’m a bit busy running the US government. Give my regards to Attorney General Barr. We’re all huge fans, here. Thanks for coming in.”
All in all, I felt I’d handled it rather well. And without a lawyer sitting there, breathing at a thousand dollars an hour. Surely it looks better when you don’t have a lawyer there, saying, “My client doesn’t have to answer that. Back off, Gestapo pig.”
I called Blyster to report in but he said he didn’t want to know.
I called Secretary of State Pompeo. One of the nicer aspects of being White House chief of staff is that cabinet members have to take your call.
“Mike,” I said. I could hear him bristling. (Pompeo rhymes with pompous.) He prefers to be called “Mr. Secretary.” Likes to throw his weight around, and does not lack for weight.
“Her-b,” he said, making it sound nerdy, like something you flavor soup with. “What can I do for you?”
“Just wanted to check with you. Is the mission of our embassy to the Holy whatever—the Vatican—to embarrass the president of the United States?”
That got Mr. Secretary’s attention. I heard pores opening, sweat bubbling up, trickling. By the time I hung up, I was confident Ettore and Massimo and any other blabbermouths on the embassy payroll there, including Her Excellency Madame Neuderscreech, were about to be fitted with muzzles and a short leash.
That night, Hetta made a quiche for dinner. It was excellent. I complimented her, as I always do, and what do you know? The recipe? Martha Stewart.
29
Why the Republican National Committee chose to hold the convention in Charlotte, North Carolina—in August?—was beyond me. (I was not involved in the decision.) As a hospitality professional, I was appalled. Why not just hold it in a Turkish bath? Had no one considered the impact of that swampy southern heat and humidity on Mr. Trump’s complex coif? Answer: obviously not. I get that siting a convention is a political decision. Still. This would not have happened on Herb Nutterman’s watch. That said, you could feel the excitement building. It was palpable. Like the air in Charlotte in late August.
The damage from Oleg’s biweekly episodes of The Apprentice Does Moscow had been far less than I’d feared. They were actually proving highly popular, at least among the male portion of the base. At the rallies, chants of “Lock her up” had given way to “Keep America hard!” We tried to tamp that down, but Mr. Trump slyly encouraged it.
Not everyone was cheering, mind. Word from the East Wing was that the first lady was “not thrilled.” And who’d expect her to be? But pro that she is, she kept her game face as she stood by Mr. Trump’s side—not holding hands, everyone noticed—looking straight ahead with that icy-cool, Slovenian sphinxy stare.
I wondered: What’s goes on inside that gorgeous head? Is she thinking: Am I the luckiest girl on earth? Or: Beam me up, Scotty. Sometimes it looked like she was thinking, I envy the dead. Not an easy read, Mrs. T. It can’t have been much fun for her when Oleg released the video of Mr. Trump “interacting”—the verb Katie and I had devised—with Miss Slovenia.
Katie sensitively reached out to Mrs. T to see if she wanted to spend some “girl time” with her and Ivunka at a spa where they immerse you in jellyfish—apparently very rejuvenating. Mrs. T declined, saying she needed to practice her convention speech announcing her new cause: training highly attractive young women from third world countries to spot fake jewelry. The anti-cyberbullying campaign never really got traction.
* * *
I worked on Mr. Trump’s acceptance speech with our speechwriter, Stefan. Stefan is a highly skilled wordsmith, but I felt that the early drafts were—I don’t want to say “harsh”—a bit overedgy.
Mr. Trump was certainly entitled to make the convention a victory lap. Still, I felt tha
t lines like “I will unleash apocalypse on our enemies!”I and “John McCain rots in hell, where he will soon be joined by Mitt Romney, a devout Moron!” while appealing to the harder core element of our base, might scare the children and frighten the horses, as the saying goes.
Speechwriters, being writers, tend to be—I don’t want to say “hothouse orchids”—protective of their prose. Stefan resisted all my suggestions. As he saw it, I was painting mustaches on his Mona Lisa.
I suggested changing the McCain line from “rots in hell” to “John McCain and Mitt Romney and I may have had our differences, but John was an American hero whom I hugely admired, and Mitt is a fine man.” That went down like a gallon of prussic acid.
For reasons perhaps best left to psychologists, Mr. Trump loathed John McCain. Despite heavy opposition from the navy, he finally got them to decommission the USS John McCain and sell it to Bolivia, for ten bolivianos on the dollar. It was far from clear what landlocked Bolivia intended to do with a destroyer, but I was done arguing with the president about it.
In the end I did manage to get Stefan to dial back some of his more incendiary rhetoric. We changed “Charlotte suffered horribly during the War of Northern Aggression. But look at her now!” to “Charlotte. Incredible city. Hot enough for you?”
Ten days before the convention, everything was going smoothly, when the Washington Post—and may it rot in hell—came out with a real humdinger:
PANTS TRIED TO PERSUADE CABINET TO INVOKE 25TH AMENDMENT, REMOVE TRUMP, SOURCE SAYS
On the holy shit scale of one to ten, this was a twelve. Katie’s reaction, right out of the gate, was, “Well, at least it’s not another ‘Mike Pants Worships at Satan’s Altar’ story.” But not much comfort there. I was deluged with calls from frantic cabinet members denouncing the story, offering to chop off their pinkie fingers—anything—to demonstrate their loyalty to Mr. Trump.
The nut (I choose the word carefully) of the story was that the vice president and twenty-two cabinet members had convened at Camp David to “participate in a nuclear war game scenario. Whereupon, Pants announced that the president had ‘gone completely off his nut,’ and passed around a document for them to sign invoking the amendment and removing Mr. Trump from office. A majority is required. According to the Post’s source, “the motion failed by three votes.”
Well.
Most vice presidents, confronted with a story like this, would start gibbering like a chimpanzee and hurling the feces. Not Mike. Good old stolid, evangelical, non-Satan-worshipping Indiana Mike merely shrugged and said in his tranquilized monotone, “That’s not my recollection of the meeting.”
Mr. Trump was livid. And who’d blame him? He wanted to fire “every other” cabinet secretary. Stefan told him that’s how “you know who” would have handled it. (Danke, Stefan.) Fortunately, Jored, Ivunka, Katie, and I convinced him that a “night of the long knives” going into the convention would make for terrible optics.
“Fine,” he snorted. “I’ll do it after the election. Fuckers.”
There was something smelly about the story. In the history of the vice presidency, there has never been a more—I don’t want to say “supine”—team player than Iron Mike. But there was also something odiferous about all the denials. And the timing.
The Camp David meeting had taken place the day after the infamous press conference in Helsinki at which Mr. Trump drew gasps by saying he believed Mr. Putin that Russia didn’t interfere in the 2016 election. Not a high point.
And I must say, I’ve always found it interesting that a few weeks before the story broke, former UN ambassador Cricket Singh spent one whole hour in the Oval with Mr. Trump. Just the two of them.
Mr. Trump gushed after the meeting.
“She’s terrific. Smart. Hot. Brown. If we ever need a replacement for Mike, that little Indian is at the top of my list.”
Hm. But I’ll leave it at that.
I. I also worried that Mr. Trump might have difficulties pronouncing “apocalypse,” which at first he thought was a Caribbean dance.
30
Caramella buzzed to say that former speaker Salamander Neuderscreech was on the line. My bowels shriveled. There could be no good reason for this call.
“Sally, what a pleasant surprise,” I lied. We’d met years ago when he and the current Mrs. Neuderscreech were guests at Farrago-sur-Mer. He was miffed at checkout to learn that his stay had not been comped. I mollified him by taking off the minibar charges, which were considerable, indicative of an insatiable appetite for macadamia nuts.
“How are you, Herb?” he said with a somewhat oily inflection.
“Busy, as you might imagine, what with the convention approaching.” For a hopeful, fleeting moment I thought he might be calling about tickets or VVIP arrangements. Alas.
“We missed you in Rome. What happened? Cly had a great day lined up for you. We had Brunella Piccatta seated next to you at the dinner.”
“My apologies to Her Excellency,” I said. “Some wires must have gotten crossed. It was an in-and-out visit. We only let the embassy know out of courtesy. Let us know if you’re coming to DC.”
“Actually, I’m here.”
What joy.
“I’d like to stop by. Out of courtesy.”
“It would be great to see you. But it is a bit busy at the moment.”
“Oh, I think you’ll want to hear what I have to say, Herb.”
Actually, the last thing I wanted to hear was whatever he had to say. But in he came.
I hadn’t seen him since he and “Cly” had left for the Eternal City. Sally was always portly, but from his considerably more ample figure, it appeared he’d been snout-deep in the pasta and the macadamia nuts.
“How is Cly?” I asked. Out of courtesy.
“She’s in heaven. She’s got His Holiness eating out of her hand.”
“Wonderful,” I said. “Then we’ll be able to count on his support in the next world war.”
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“We had a bit of excitement recently,” he said.
“Oh?”
“A shooting. In St. Peter’s.”
“That is exciting. I heard something about it. St. Peter’s. Is nothing sacred these days?”
“You heard something about it?” He chuckled unpleasantly. “Herb. You were there.”
“I was?”
“It happened the day you were in Rome.”
“Now that you mention it, that’s right. I heard about it on the plane, flying back. Dreadful business.”
“Il Mysterioso Monsignore,” he said. His three-hundred-pound body jiggled like an outsized Jell-O mold. And now, with the lunatic glee of a carnival barker, Sally unveiled his agenda.
“Our security people tell us Italian immigration has a photo of him at Leonardo.”
“Really? Well, good.”
He grinned. His pudgy face, beady little eyes, and bared teeth gave him the look of a malevolent Pillsbury Doughboy.
“I’ll give it to you straight up,” he said. “I think the president should drop Pants from the ticket and replace him with me.”
This I hadn’t expected.
“Gosh, Sally. That’s rather a big ask.”
“Pants is baggage. Between the satanism and invoking the Twenty-Fifth? Come on. Devil worship and mutiny? How do those two factors help the president?”
I didn’t see much point in arguing it on the merits, there being no merits. So I gave him my standard “I’ll definitely pass it along to the president.”
“Oh,” he said with an evil pixie grin, “I think you can do better than that, Monsignore.”
“Should I take that as a compliment, Sally?”
“Any way you like,” he said.
I considered.
“For a miracle like the one you have in mind, you’d need more than monsignore mojo. If the pope is, as you say, eating out of Cly’s hand, wouldn’t he be a better advocate with the big guy upstairs?”
I was tempted to shut this pantomime down by telling him the truth: Sally, the president doesn’t like you because you talk too much and you spray food. But there are times when truth is a luxury.
“Assuming,” I said, “that the president prefers to stick with his devil-worshipping, mutinous VP, is there some other position in the federal government that would be of interest to you?”
He received this with a thoughtful look of now we’re talking.
“The second term is going to present unique challenges in the field of foreign policy,” he said.
I inwardly groaned as he embarked on a tour d’horizon.
“Secretary of state?” I interjected. “You’d be fabulous.”
“I think so, too,” he modestly agreed. “See, if you look at history in terms of alternating concentric cones—”
“Sally, you had me at monsignore. I’ll do what I can. But for miracles, you’re going to need the big guy.”
“Why is a miracle required?” he said, suddenly peevish. “I’m by far the most qualified. And if I may say, the most…”
I perceived that there would be no stopping this bulldozer tour d’horizon on the theme of the wonderfulness of Sally Neuderscreech. I let him blow on. And blow on he did. Of the seven cardinal virtues, Sally had dispensed with humility. Maybe he was a “cafeteria Catholic,” the type who picks and chooses off the doctrinal menu.
I informed the president, whereupon he launched into a tour d’horizon (my third of the day), enumerating the many reasons why he loathed Salamander Neuderscreech and how he could go rot in hell along with McCain. I said I couldn’t agree more, but that detestation alone didn’t solve the objective problem, namely that we were being blackmailed. Sally had made it pellucidly clear that if a plum did not fall off the Trump Tree into his lap, he was going to take a chain saw to it.
The president looked at me.
“I’m not being blackmailed. You’re being blackmailed.”
Presidents inevitably adopt the so-called royal we, as in “We have accomplished great things.” When things go south, they invariably switch to the second person, as in “You have brought disgrace on my administration.”