Marion Smoak was the head of protocol for the White House, or so the printed message delivered to my home by one of the compound Lincolns indicated. The time of the event, to be held at the San Clemente Inn, located not more than a mile from the Nixon residence itself, would be dedicated to Pat Nixon’s birthday ball, which wasn’t referred to as a ball at all. The Nixon ‘gathering’ of family and friends would go down at six p.m. the following Wednesday. I was to report to Chief of White House Protocol Smoak after his arrival at El Toro Marine Base was to be scheduled. I was not to be driving, but a passenger in the vehicle so that I could be instructed on how my wife and I were to appear, act, enter and leave the event without the benefit of a written invitation or appearing on any list of participants.

My wife wasn’t pleased with the unsigned note.

“It’s as if we’re low-life servants too unimportant to be recognized as human at all,” she said, holding the note in her hand after reading it to me twice. I sat across the dining room table, with our daughter Julie sitting on a chair next to my own.

Julie held her ragged over-used and always slept with doll named Matilda. The pull string had been pulled by her, as it was being done right then, so many times that all the tape machine buried deep inside the doll’s body would say was “you are so charming,” in its scratchy, squeaky and rather-irritating voice.

“You are not a servant,” I countered, when she was done going through the note once more. “I am the low-life servant. You are merely the wife of the low-life servant.”

“Smoak? Her name is smoak? Really? How’s that pronounced”. Smooack or smoke like a cigarette?”

“You are so charming,” Matilda said, Julie looking up at me with a glint in her eye, but not pulling the string immediately again, instead waiting with her small right index finger in the metal ring, all ready to go.

“I can’t stand that doll,” my wife said, finally putting the strange note down on the table. “I can’t stand Smoak or any of it. Why in hell did I ever want to go in the first place? You have a beautiful suit. All I have is a collection of expensive junk I’m supposed to throw together to impress whom? We won’t even have name tags or any of that, I presume.”

I had no answer for any of her questions, but also realized I was not expected to have any. Our presence at the affair had been forced upon us.

Haldeman as part of our ‘deal,’ and the result was his, probably unplanned, way of getting back at me.

I looked over at Julie and gave her a big smile. She seemed not in the least bit bothered by how upset her mother was. She pulled the ring at the end of Matilda’s string and let it go.

“You are so charming,” came out once more.

“Marion’s not a ‘her,’ I’ve been informed,” I said, gently, shaking my head while trying to get Julie to pay attention to the fact that her mother was about to go off the deep end. “Marion went to The Citadel between the wars but I don’t know much else. I presume he wants to fill me in on how to act at the gathering, so we don’t embarrass ourselves or the president…or his wife…or even Haldeman.”

“That prick, and don’t tell me to shut up about him. You only speak of him like he’s some sort of resident out there on that spit of land who resembles nothing more or less than Frankenstein without the electrodes sticking out of his temples to give him away. What kind of name is Haldeman, anyway? Haldeman, Smoak, Ehrlichman and Kissinger. They sound like a bunch of those lunatics who caused World War II.”

“You are so charming,” came from Matilda.

“I’m going to kill that doll,” my wife said, getting out of her chair.

I grabbed Julie by her left arm and guided her toward the bottom of the stairs leading up to our bedrooms.

“Take her up and hide her,” I whispered urgently into her ear as she dragged Matilda along on the floor beside her. I noted, as she half-turned to look back at me, that there was a barely perceptible smile on her face.

Losing Matilda, if my wife was to make good on her threat, would throw all three of our lives into misery for days to come, I knew, not that that would actually happen. My wife loved Julie even more than I, if such a thing was possible.

“You’re at fault for this whole mess,” my wife said, as I retrieved the note.

There was no time printed on the message that might alert me as to when I was to be at the compound to make the trip out to El Toro to greet him, which meant that I’d have to visit the compound to find out, which I didn’t really want to do unless somehow or in some way the dead Marine mystery was to clear up.

“You are so charming,” came very softly down from the upstairs of our apartment.

“Jesus Christ,” my wife said, her voice finally under control and much quieter than it had been. “Can’t you simply take the proceeds from the bribe you accepted to buy her a silent teddy bear, or something?”

Once more, I had nothing to say, other than attempt to absorb the bitterness caused by the reality the invitation and instructions portended.

“And what have you got yourself, and us involved in, anyway?” she asked, after taking a few more breaths to consider the situation.

“What are you talking about?” I replied, innocently, but knowing she could only be referring to one thing.

“Reread the note,” she said, with a slight sardonic laugh.

I read the printed half page again, once more aware that, in some ways, my wife’s intelligence and instincts outperformed my own. There was nothing at all in the wording or potential meaning of the words and phrases that stuck out at all to me. I looked up at her with a questioning expression.

“Why has Mr. Smoak indicated that you are not to be the driver of the limo when you drive them back and forth to El Toro all the time?

Why would it matter? While driving, you would be in the driver’s seat of a near silent Lincoln, while he would be in the passenger seat next to you, if he so chose. So, since that logic has been tossed out the window, what do we have left?”

“What do we have left?” I replied, feeling dumber than a post.

“He wants to say something to you and he wants a witness,” my wife said, lowering her voice in a conspiratorial way. Whoever the driver is, well, he or she won’t be somebody who’s either a regular at the compound you work out of or likely anybody you’ve ever met before. So, my question to you remains, “what have you gotten us involved with?”

Her words burned into my brain. It was so apparent, and I’d completely missed it. Maybe she was wrong, but there was no other explanation for the way the note was worded, much less why the thing had been printed and delivered at all.

“Low-life servant doesn’t seem to be fitting, as my status with these people,” I said.

“They’re not people,” my wife replied, getting up to walk over to the sliding glass doors facing out toward Avenida Cabrillo. “They’re not people like any we’ve ever met or been around before. I’m willing to bet that the ‘gathering’ as they are strangely calling it, will be remarkable only in what doesn’t happen there and will not be said. Haldeman didn’t have to give in to your extortion. He could’ve ignored you, which means that, because he didn’t, he has more he needs from you. Our job, our life really, has a lot to do with trying to figure that out, not to mention the rest of the stuff you’ve managed to pile on since coming home from that awful war.”

“I’m sorry,” I breathed out. She was right about everything, but the war part hurt.

The last thing I wanted in my entire existence was to bring that war home to my family, friends or any of the ‘real’ people who lived, worked and played in the surreal world I’d returned to. When she’d blown right by me at Travis, while I was laying on that gurney and wanting her so badly, the staggering event had seemed imaginary. I could not have changed so much as to be unrecognizable, not to the closest person in my life over the prior four years. That would have been impossible, at least to my mindset at the time. We’d both laughed it off and moved on, as there was so much other stuff to be concerned with at the time. But, after a lot of time being back in the world, I’d also come to understand what the Gunny had been trying to teach me. I would not be the lieutenant who departed the valley, any more than I would be the college kid and young husband to the woman I loved. I was somebody else working my heart out to try not to be somebody else. The happy go lucky kid I’d fashioned myself to be in high school, once leaving South Chicago, and then in four years at St. Norbert College had been interrupted a few times by the harsh vagaries of life, like serving on the Daniel J. Morrell and losing all those guys well before I ended up in the A Shau, was not something or someone I could go back to being.

“Sorry for what?” my wife asked, beginning to realize I taken every word she said in deadly earnest.

I remained silent, not wanting to make a mistake and take the conversation to somewhere I couldn’t get it back from. I’d never told my wife anything about what had happened in Vietnam and she hadn’t asked. She knew nothing of the A Shau Valley or that such a place existed on the planet. She knew nothing of the Gunny, Zippo or any of the rest of the Marines I’d served with, or who lived and who didn’t. It was like I was reborn in the hospital while I was in San Francisco and the many months between Fort Sill and arriving in that place had been merely a sort of limbo…a place of healing and recovery along the way. I knew I couldn’t go there, to any of it. Maybe one day but I knew I was a long way from that day. I’d become mission oriented and either deliberately or by the vagaries of life around me, ended up running several missions at the same time. My needs were reduced to the sun, the wind, the surf, the ocean waves, my wife, my daughter, my few friends and the missions.

“It’s enough,” I blurted out, before stopping.

“Enough of what?” my wife said, suddenly looking concerned.

“Enough for right now,” I replied quickly, covering up where my mind was taking me and trying to avoid mistakes in communication that could only go to places neither she nor I were ready to go.

I looked at my watch.

“I’ve got to go to a meeting of the Dwarfs after I get over to the compound and find out what the particulars of our attendance at the gathering are going to be since it doesn’t look like the Chief of Protocol is going to be much involved with that or our presence there. You have to be right, since I don’t think these powerful people bother to have meetings between such ‘low-lifes’ as we have to be with anyone with the title ‘chief.’”

“Great,” my wife said, leaving the table to head for the kitchen.

“You have the compound, appropriately named, and then the Dwarfs, again appropriately named, before you head out to supposedly escort someone who’s a Chief of Protocol, who’s probably not that at all, and finally you’re scheduled for Beach Patrol, as a commander, which you are certainly not, and with a new recruit who also seems to be anything but that. Where, in this mixed mess of ominous fakery, are we, Julie and I, supposed to fit ourselves in.”

I sat in silence, knowing full well that she wasn’t expecting an answer simply because I had nothing to come back with that might make any sense.

“You better get changed,” she finally said, rattling some pans and crockery around in the nearby kitchen. “Your selection of uniforms are laid out on the bed, all that’s missing is your now fake Marine Officer’s uniform which I’m almost sure you’ll be wearing again.”

I left the table and headed upstairs, ruefully reflecting on just how cuttingly accurate my wife’s conclusions could be when put together in a single, seemingly matter-of-fact delivery.

Getting into my compound rig was simple and easy since it consisted of only a white long sleeve shirt (no French cuffs or presidential inaugural ball cuff links) my best formal trousers, outside of my single blue suit which I’d yet to wear, and the sport coat I’d been able to purchase for my life insurance sales training. I did smile at the insurance thought. It was the only area of my life my wife hadn’t thrown into her analysis of the disjointed mess I’d made of our lives.

I quietly went down the stairs toward the front door. My wife was still doing whatever she was doing in the kitchen, and I’d seen nothing of Julie. I silently opened the front door to make my exit.

“You are so charming,” squeaked down the stairs I’d just come down.

“Thank you, Matilda,” I whispered to myself as I closed the door behind me.

I drove the Volks to the police department back parking lot. I needed Pat to call the Dwarfs together for later in the day, those that could get together. I didn’t see what new conclusions the group might come to but I had become used to having people that gave the appearance of liking me around.

The Chief wasn’t in, or at least his car wasn’t in his spot, although Lieutenant Gates definitely was, since his distinctive Marauder was sitting in the single handicapped slot next to the Chief’s.

Pat sat in her usual place, the Chief’s door behind her open, but then it always was. In case he was in I spoke in a low tone.

“Can you call the Dwarfs together for around five?” I asked. “I’ve got to get out and pick up the Chief of Protocol, whatever that is, around then I think, but I’m not sure. I don’t know Elwell’s hours or even how to get hold of Richard yet though.”

“I’ll take care of all that,” Pat said, with her usual aplomb and smile. “Find anything on the yacht?”

I wondered what it would be like to conduct a confidential investigation instead of what I and the Dwarfs were up to. The town, the department and even the compound in some ways, was a sieve of fast-traveling information. How Pat even knew about the yacht having been docked at Dana Point by the Navy…or whatever outfit had sailed it over from San Clemente Island, I had no idea and wasn’t going to ask.

“The fact that it’s there, and returned in the condition it’s in plus a little more, is significant, but I don’t know how significant,”

“The Chief of Protocol,” Pat mused, pursing her lips. “That would be for the birthday ball in a few days?”

“It’s called a gathering and I have no idea about what protocol really is except I have to pick him up at El Toro when I’m told later today,” I replied, wanting to give Pat as much data as I could without going too far.

I needed all the help I could get if I was going to ever find out anything substantial or, barring that, somehow keep my jobs, family and friends in one piece. There was simply no way that nosing around a presidential assassination could be considered anything but dangerous. The conclusions from official sources had been made and those would be defended, I was sure. That Oswald had killed Kennedy had been something I’d accepted early on but had ever so slowly come to believe was a total fiction. What really happened was anybody’s guess, but stuff just kept coming at me that I couldn’t ignore.

“Oh, I think everybody will be there,” Pat said. “Who would possibly miss it? Maybe only your wife since she has to look after Julie.”

I cringed inside. Although my respect for my wife’s acumen and applied intellect was huge, I didn’t want her mixed up in wherever the whole thing was going, although I wasn’t certain why.

It was nearing mid-day and there was nobody on the roads around town. San Clemente had been a small sleepy seaside town only a few years before, but the purchasing and opening of the Casa Romantica by Nixon had begun to change everything. San Clemente was being noticed and the results of that were impossible to predict as time went by.

The compound was as it always was. Two Marines at the gate and I could just make out the Staff Sergeant inside a small booth that had appeared out of nowhere only a few days before. Why it hadn’t been brought in before was a mystery to me, as the Southern California sun beating down on the Marine guards was very hot and the back of the compound, where the gate was located, was almost totally protected from the prevailing, and cooling winds coming in from the nearby ocean.

The guards waved me through, both saluting smartly. I nodded back and pulled past them, noting one of the black Lincolns out and ready to go, sitting just aside of the big doors into the estate. There was no driver in the vehicle that I could see or anyone else around.
I shut the Volks down, having parked it as far in the back as I could. The red Volks was totally out of place in the lot, with the number of staff cars and limos all lined up, waiting to serve whoever might have need of them and have enough authority to command them.

One of the big doors opened, as if operated automatically and somehow sensing and approving of my approach and entry. I knew the doors were not automatic, however, as the Secret Service was not secret about their operations, unless it involved stuff going on with surveillance of the outside areas around the entirety of the estate. The door closed behind me, pushed by one of the two agents obviously assigned to that kind of deadly boring duty.

The agents didn’t say anything and neither did I, my long practice in dealing with them having taught me that they generally knew nothing about visitors, all of whom were pre-cleared before ever even being allowed into the parking lot and would give out even less if asked or encountered. Possibly, real notables might get more than the totally impassive analytical treatment I received but I wasn’t at all sure about that. I walked the hall, waiting to be diverted toward the single door leading into Nixon’s personal residence, but my accompanying agents made no move to guide me in that direction.

Haldeman was not as his desk but Ehrlichman was.

“Mr. Ehrlichman,” I said, standing at near attention in front of his nearly bare desk.

Neither Haldeman nor Ehrlichman kept much on their desks, according to conversations I’d overheard by some of the agents, because they feared that someone passing by or stopping to see them might memorize any documents they might have exposed. I waited for Ehrlichman to look up and take notice of me. I knew he liked me, just as I knew Haldeman did not, but I also felt like there was something about me that intimidated him, which I could not understand at all. I was nobody, other than the totally weird and almost untitled servant he, Haldeman, Mardian and most likely McGruder used for crummy little tasks that, for reasons known only to them, they couldn’t assign to more important and better-credentialed employees. While I waited, I was reminded of the Stoner bit of evidence Hoodoo had pulled from the yacht at the San Clemente Island Pier. That was just the sort of little ‘slip’ of a revelation both Haldeman and Ehrlichman worried about.

“You’re here,” Ehrlichman stated, raising his head to balance his chin on the entwined fingers of his hands raised up from spread elbows resting on the desktop.

I simply stared at him. Had he practiced the look and positioning to accomplish some reaction? I was there in front of him so there was no point in responding to his statement. I waited.

Ehrlichman gazed back and forth past me, only his eyes moving.

“There are no recording devices in the compound, the residence or the vehicles used to transfer notables to and from El Toro,” he said, his words spoken so quietly that it was almost impossible to make out the meaning.

Once again, there was nothing to be said. I’d never had the slightest suspicion that there might be recording devices anywhere nor why the existence of such things would bother me.

“Smoak’s arriving in an hour and a half,” Ehrlichman went on, his voice becoming more one of regular conversation. “He’s an ambassador, so treat him accordingly.”

“Yes, sir,” I replied, wondering where this Smoak (which Ehrlichman pronounced as ‘Smoke’ so at least I wouldn’t mangle that in the man’s presence) was ambassador to, and also why Ehrlichman was bothering to tell me.

“Go get him,” Ehrlichman went on, finally seeming to relax as he dropped his hands to the side handles as he sat back in his office chair. “You’ve got a driver, and Smoak will have an assignment for you. The gathering for the president’s wife will begin at 6 p.m. on Wednesday. You and your wife will show up in the parking lot of the compound here to be taken to the Inn an hour early. There you’ll sit in the lobby and wait until the president’s ready with the receiving line. You’ll get the nod from the Secret Service to enter and be the first one through that receiving line. Once inside, you and your wife will enjoy what’s there and make whatever small talk you want, although nothing of what you, or anyone else here does, is something you want to discuss with anyone. Your official reason, in fact your very identities, is the same. You are friends of the family, and nothing more, even though you are not friends of any family dealing with White House operations, staff and certainly not the president or his wife.”

I looked down at him, my eyes unblinking in shock. I’d never before heard the man say much more than five or ten words at a time. His presentation gave me every indication that he’d memorized it. I’d taken in every word he said, and I knew I’d be able to repeat it to my wife without error or omission, but the lingering question that overlayed everything was not going away soon, I knew. Why? Why was he revealing such things to me?

“If you have no questions then please see to picking up Ambassador Smoak,” he ordered, his tone one of dismissal.

“Only one thing, a question, sir,” I replied quickly, not fully understanding why I was asking the man anything at all after the delivery of his lengthy diatribe.

Ehrlichman sighed, his shoulders sloping as if he was tired or hoping I’d just get out of his sight and do what I was told.

“I’m to be given an assignment by the White House Chief of Protocol, but you just told me everything I need to know about the gathering. I’ll do as ordered, of course, sir, but following your orders isn’t exactly a mission or assignment.”

“That’s not a question,” Ehrlichman replied, although I felt like his response was one he’d made in order to think about what I’d said and then carefully give me some sort of answer in return.

“Brezhnev’s coming here,” Ehrlichman whispered, once again looking around. “That’s classified at the highest levels. Smoak’s not coming about the gathering. He won’t even be there.”

Ehrlichman once again bent forward and looked down at the thin stack of documents before him. I had a hundred questions, but his last words were an abrupt dismissal, and I knew it. I turned around and headed for the parking lot, my mind in a whirl. Leonid Brezhnev, I knew from watching television news, was Chairman of the Communist Party in the Soviet Union, and therefore, for all intents and purposes, the leader of the world’s largest country.

I walked down the hall toward the big doors alone, wondering about what was happening to me and where everything was going. As if the Dwarfs, the Kennedy thing, the yacht, Richard’s weirdness, the lack of listening devices and so much more weren’t enough, now I was about to have something to do with possibly the most powerful human being on the planet.

The limo was waiting just outside the door. The Secret Service agents closed it behind me, even though I’d stopped two feet outside it.

“Good to see you again, sir,” the Marine Staff Sergeant who’d driven me places twice before said, opening the rear door of the Lincoln for me.
He was wearing civilian attire, not dissimilar from my own.

I got in, shaking my head, but only to myself, as I thought of my wife’s comment about Smoak needing a witness. Whatever he was going to have to say I didn’t think it was going to be something I liked or wanted to hear, not that it mattered anymore. I was in for a penny, in for a pound, and I knew it.

“They pulled me off duty to help you out again,” the sergeant said, upon closing my door and getting behind the wheel of the idling Lincoln.

I said nothing, leaning back into the soft leather seat. Mardian had used a word for people like he and me, as we’d sat by the resident pool one day. Player was the word he’d used for those who ran secret and not so secret errands, and more, for those in power.

The Staff Sergeant was about as real as I currently was when wearing my Marine Officer’s uniform. The Staff Sergeant was, in reality, just like me. A player. Both he and I, however, much more resembled pieces, than players. We were pieces on top of an infinitely complex board game of chess, where we were almost certainly disposable pawns, and unlike Julie’s pull string Matilda message, we were anything but charming.

<<<<<< The Beginning |