The Osterman Weekend: A Novel

  “Right. See you then.” Tanner pushed another button and dialed his home number.

  “Hi, darling.”

  “I’ve got to hop down to Washington this afternoon.”

  “Any problems?”

  “No. ‘Routine but urgent’ was the description. Some F.C.C. business. I’ll catch a shuttle back to Newark by seven. I just wanted you to know that I’d be late.”

  “Okay, darling. Do you want me to pick you up?”

  “No, I’ll get a cab.”

  “Sure?”

  “Very. It’ll make me feel good to think Standard’s paying the twenty bucks.”

  “You’re worth it. By the way, I read the reviews on the Woodward Show. You’re a regular triumph.”

  “That’s what I wrote across my jacket. Tanner the Triumph.”

  “I wish you would,” said Alice quietly.

  Even in jest she could never let it go. They had no real money problems, but Alice Tanner forever thought her husband was underpaid. It was the only serious argument between them. He could never explain that to seek more from a corporation like Standard Mutual meant just that much more obligation to the faceless giant.

  “See you tonight, Ali.”

  “Bye. I love you.”

  As if in silent deference to his wife’s complaint, Tanner commandeered one of the news cars to take him to LaGuardia Airport in an hour. No one argued. Tanner was, indeed, a triumph this morning.

  During the next forty-five minutes, Tanner tied together a number of administrative loose ends. The last order of business was a call to Standard Mutual’s legal department.

  “Mr. Harrison, please.… Hello, Andy? John Tanner. I’m in a hurry, Andy; I’ve got to catch a plane. I just want to find out something. Do we have anything pending with the F.C.C. I don’t know about? Any problems? I know about the public service features but Cranston said we could hold on those.… Sure, I’ll wait.” Tanner fingered the telephone cord, his thoughts still on Fassett. “Yes, Andy, I’m here.… Pages seventeen and eighteen. The signatures.… I see. Okay. Thanks. No, no problems here. Thanks again.”

  Tanner replaced the phone and got out of his chair slowly. Harrison had added fuel to his vague suspicions. It all seemed just a bit too contrived. The F.C.C. filing had been complete except for the final two pages on the fourth and fifth copies of the document. They were merely duplicates, important to no one, easily Xeroxed. Yet those pages had been missing from the file. Harrison had just commented:

  “I remember, John. I sent you a memo about it. It looked to me as though they had been deliberately left out. Can’t imagine why.…”

  Neither could Tanner.

  3

  Monday—3:25 P.M.

  To Tanner’s amazement, the F.C.C. sent a limousine to meet his plane.

  Cranston’s offices were on the sixth floor of the F.C.C. Building; at one time or another every major network news director had been summoned there. Cranston was a career man—respected by the networks as well as the changing administrations—and because of this Tanner found himself resenting the unknown Laurence Fassett, who could say with indignation, “… Cranston had no authority to make such a decision.”

  He’d never heard of Laurence Fassett.

  Tanner pushed open the door to Cranston’s waiting room. It was empty. The secretary’s desk was bare—no pads, no pencils, no papers of any kind. What light there was came from Cranston’s office door. It was open and he could hear the quiet whirr of an air conditioner. The window shades in the office were down, probably to keep out the summer sunlight. And then, against the office wall, he saw the shadow of a figure walking towards the door.

  “Good afternoon,” said the man as he came into view. He was shorter than Tanner by several inches, probably five ten or eleven, but very broad in the shoulders. His blond hair was cut short, his eyes set far apart beneath bushy light-brown eyebrows. He was, perhaps, Tanner’s age, but without question a more physical man. Even his stance had a potential spring to it, thought Tanner.

  “Mr. Fassett?”

  “That’s right. Won’t you come in?” Fassett, instead of retreating into Cranston’s office, crossed in front of Tanner to the door and locked it. “We’d rather not have any interruptions.”

  “Why not?” asked Tanner, startled.

  Laurence Fassett looked about the room. “Yes. Yes. I see what you mean. Good point. Come in, please.” Fassett walked in front of Tanner into Cranston’s office. The shades of the two windows overlooking the street were pulled all the way down; Cranston’s desk was as bare as his secretary’s, except for two ashtrays and one other item. In the center of the cleared surface was a small Wollensak tape recorder with two cords—one in front of Cranston’s chair, the other by the chair in front of Cranston’s desk.

  “Is that a tape recorder?” asked the news director, following Fassett into the office.

  “Yes, it is. Won’t you sit down, please?”

  John Tanner remained standing. When he spoke it was with quiet anger. “No, I will not sit down. I don’t like any of this. Your methods are very unclear, or maybe too clear. If you intend putting anything I say down on tape, you know perfectly well I won’t allow it without the presence of a network attorney.”

  Fassett stood behind Cranston’s desk. “This is not F.C.C. business. When I explain, you’ll understand my … methods.”

  “You’d better explain quickly, because I’m about to leave. I was called by the F.C.C. to deliver the public service hours projected by Standard Mutual—which I have in my briefcase—and to sign two copies of our filing which your office omitted sending. You made it clear that you would be with Cranston when I arrived. Instead, I find an office which obviously is not in use.… I’d say you’d better have a good explanation or you’ll be hearing from our attorneys within an hour. And if this is any kind of reprisal against Standard Mutual’s news division, I’ll blast you from coast to coast.”

  “I’m sorry.… These things are never easy.”

  “They shouldn’t be!”

  “Now hold it. Cranston’s on vacation. We used his name because you’ve dealt with him before.”

  “You’re telling me you intentionally lied?”

  “Yes. The key, Mr. Tanner, is in the phrase you employed just now … ‘I was called by the F.C.C.,’ I believe you said. May I present my credentials?” Laurence Fassett reached into his breast pocket and withdrew a small black plastic case. He held it across the desk.

  Tanner opened it.

  The top card identified Laurence C. Fassett as an employee of the Central Intelligence Agency.

  The other card was Fassett’s priority permit to enter the McLean complex at any hour of day or night.

  “What’s this all about? Why am I here?” Tanner handed back Fassett’s identification.

  “That’s the reason for the tape recorder. Let me show you. Before I explain our business I have to ask yon a number of questions. There are two switches which can shut off the machine. One here by me, the other there by you. If at any time I ask you a question you do not care to answer, all you have to do is push the OFF switch and the machine stops. On the other hand—and, again, for your protection—if I feel you are including private information which is no concern of ours, I shall stop the machine.” Fassett started up the recorder with his switch and then reached across the desk for the cord in front of Tanner’s chair and stopped it. “See? Quite simple. I’ve been through hundreds of these interviews. You’ve got nothing to worry about.”

  “This sounds like a pretrial examination without benefit of counsel or mandate of subpoena! What’s the point? If you think you’re going to intimidate me, you’re crazy!”

  “The point is one of completely positive identification.… And you’re absolutely right. If it was our intention to intimidate anyone, we picked about as vulnerable a subject as J. Edgar Hoover. And even he doesn’t have control of a network news program.”

  Tanner looked at the C.I.A. man standing polite
ly behind Cranston’s desk. Fassett had a point. The C.I.A. wouldn’t allow itself to use so blatant a tactic on someone in his position.

  “What do you mean, ‘completely positive identification’? You know who I am.”

  “It should give you some idea of the magnitude of the information I’m empowered to deliver. Just extraordinary precaution in line with the importance of the data.… Did you know that in the Second World War an actor—a corporal in the British army, to be exact—impersonated Field Marshall Montgomery at high-level conferences in Africa and even some of Montgomery’s Sandhurst classmates didn’t catch on?”

  The news director picked up the cord and pushed the ON and OFF switches. The machine started and stopped. John Tanner’s curiosity—mingled with fear—was growing. He sat down. “Go ahead. Just remember, I’ll shut off the tape and leave any time I want to.”

  “I understand. That’s your privilege—up to a point.”

  “What do you mean by that? No qualifications, please.”

  “Trust me. You’ll understand.” Fassett’s reassuring look served its purpose.

  “Go ahead,” said Tanner. The C.I.A. man picked up a manila folder and opened it. He then started the machine.

  “Your full name is John Raymond Tanner?”

  “Incorrect. My legal name is John Tanner. The Raymond was a baptismal name and is not registered on my birth certificate.”

  Fassett smiled from across the desk. “Very good.”

  “Thank you.”

  “You currently reside at 22 Orchard Drive, Saddle Valley, New Jersey?”

  “I do.”

  “You were born on May 21, 1924, in Springfield, Illinois, to Lucas and Margaret Tanner?”

  “Yes.”

  “Your family moved to San Mateo, California, when you were seven years old?”

  “Yes.”

  “For what purpose?”

  “My father’s firm transferred him to Northern California. He was a personnel executive for a department-store chain. The Bryant Stores.”

  “Comfortable circumstances?”

  “Reasonably so.”

  “You were educated in the San Mateo public school system?”

  “No. I went through the second year of San Mateo High and transferred to a private school for the final two years of secondary school. Winston Preparatory.”

  “Upon graduation you enrolled at Stanford University?”

  “Yes.”

  “Were you a member of any fraternities or clubs?”

  “Yes, Alpha Kappa fraternity. The Trylon News Society, several others I can’t recall.… Photography club, I think, but I didn’t stay. I worked on the campus magazine, but quit.”

  “Any reason?”

  Tanner looked at the C.I.A. man. “Yes. I strenuously objected to the Nisei situation. The prison camps. The magazine supported them. My objection still stands.”

  Fassett smiled again. “Your education was interrupted?”

  “Most educations were. I enlisted in the Army at the end of my sophomore year.”

  “Where were you trained?”

  “Fort Benning, Georgia. Infantry.”

  “Third Army? Fourteenth Division?”

  “Yes.”

  “You saw service in the European theatre of operations?”

  “Yes.”

  “Your highest rank was First Lieutenant?”

  “Yes.”

  “O.C.S. training at Fort Benning?”

  “No. I received a Field Commission in France.”

  “I see you also received several decorations.”

  “They were unit citations, battalion commendations. Not individual.”

  “You were hospitalized for a period of three weeks in St. Lô. Was this a result of wounds?”

  Tanner looked momentarily embarrassed. “You know perfectly well it wasn’t. There’s no Purple Heart on my Army record,” he said quietly.

  “Would you explain?”

  “I fell out of a jeep on the road to St. Lô. Dislocated hip.”

  Both men smiled.

  “You were discharged in July of 1945 and returned to Stanford the following September?”

  “I did.… To anticipate you, Mr. Fassett, I switched from an English major to the journalism school. I graduated in 1947 with a Bachelor of Arts degree.”

  Laurence Fassett’s eyes remained on the folder in front of him. “You were married in your junior year to one Alice McCall?”

  Tanner reached for his switch and shut off the machine. “This may be where I walk out.”

  “Relax, Mr. Tanner. Just identification.… We don’t subscribe to the theory that the sins of the parents are visited upon their daughters. A simple yes or no will suffice.”

  Tanner started the machine again. “That is correct.”

  At this point, Laurence Fassett picked the cord off the desk and pushed the OFF switch. Tanner watched the reels stop, and then looked at the C.I.A. man.

  “My next two questions concern the circumstances leading up to your marriage. I presume you do not care to answer them.”

  “You presume correctly.”

  “Believe me, they aren’t important.”

  “If you told me they were, I’d leave right now.” Ali had been through enough. Tanner would not allow his wife’s personal tragedy to be brought up again, by anyone.

  Fassett started the machine again. “Two children were born to you and Alice Mc … Tanner. A boy, Raymond, now age thirteen, and a girl, Janet, now eight.”

  “My son is twelve.”

  “His birthday is day after tomorrow. To go back a bit, your first employment after graduation was with The Sacramento Daily News.”

  “Reporter. Rewrite man, office boy, movie critic and space salesman when time permitted.”

  “You stayed with the Sacramento paper for three and a half years and then obtained a position with The Los Angeles Times?”

  “No. I was in Sacramento for … two and a half years—I had an interim job with the San Francisco Chronicle for about a year before I got the job at The Times.”

  “On The Los Angeles Times you were quite successful as an investigative reporter.…”

  “I was fortunate. I assume you’re referring to my work on the San Diego waterfront operations.”

  “I am. You were nominated for a Pulitzer, I believe.”

  “I didn’t get it.”

  “And then elevated to an editorial position with The Times?”

  “An assistant editor. Nothing spectacular.”

  “You remained with The Times for a period of five years.…”

  “Nearer six, I think.”

  “Until January of 1958 when you joined Standard Mutual in Los Angeles?”

  “Correct.”

  “You remained on the Los Angeles staff until March of 1963 when you were transferred to New York City. Since that time you have received several promotions?”

  “I came east as a network editor for the seven o’clock news program. I expanded into documentaries and specials until I reached my present position.”

  “Which is?”

  “Director of News for Standard Mutual.”

  Laurence Fassett closed the folder and shut off the tape recorder. He leaned back and smiled at John Tanner. “That wasn’t so painful, was it?”

  “You mean that’s it?”

  “No, not … it, but the completion of the identity section. You passed. You gave me just enough slightly wrong answers to pass the test.”

  “What?”

  “These things,” Fassett slapped the folder, “are designed by the Interrogations Division. Fellows with high foreheads bring in other fellows with beards and they put the stuff through computers. You couldn’t possibly answer everything correctly. If you did it would mean you had studied too hard.… For instance, you were with The Sacramento Daily News for three years almost to the day. Not two and a half or three and a half. Your family moved to San Mateo when you were eight years, two months, not seven years old.”
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  “I’ll be Goddamned.…”

  “Frankly, even if you had answered everything correctly, we might have passed you. But it’s nice to know you’re normal. In your case, we had to have it all on tape.… Now, I’m afraid, comes the tough part.”

  “Tough compared to what?” asked the news editor.

  “Just rough.… I have to start the machine now.” He did so and picked up a single sheet of paper. “John Tanner, I must inform you that what I am about to discuss with you comes under the heading of classified information of the highest priority. In no way is this information a reflection on you or your family and to that I do so swear. The revealing of this information to anyone would be against the interests of the United States Government in the severest sense. So much so that those in the government service aware of this information can be prosecuted under the National Security Act, Title eighteen, Section seven-nine-three, should they violate the demands of secrecy.… Is everything I’ve said so far completely clear?”

  “It is.… However, I am neither bound nor am I indictable.”

  “I realize that. It is my intention to take you in three stages toward the essential, classified information. At the end of stages one and two you may ask to be excused from this interview and we can only rely on your intelligence and loyalty to your government to keep silent about what has been said. However, if you agree to the third stage, in which identities are revealed to you, you accept the same responsibility as those in government service and can be prosecuted under the National Security Act should you violate the aforementioned demands of secrecy. Is this clear, Mr. Tanner?”

  Tanner shifted in his seat before speaking. He looked at the revolving wheels of the tape recorder and then up at Fassett. “It’s clear, but I’ll be damned if I agree to it. You don’t have any right calling me down here under false pretenses and then setting up conditions that make me indictable.”

  “I didn’t ask if you agreed. Only if you understood clearly what I said.”

  “And if that’s a threat, you can go to hell.”

  “All I’m doing is spelling out conditions. Is that a threat? Is it any more than you do every day with contracts? You can walk out any time you like until you give me your consent to reveal names. Is that so illogical?”