Mark Coffin U.S.S. Read online

  Table of Contents

  Dedication

  Characters in the Novel

  Book IChapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Book IIChapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Book IIIChapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Book IVChapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Afterword

  A Novel of Capitol Hill

  Allen Drury

  MARK COFFIN, U.S.S.

  A Novel of Capitol Hill

  Allen Drury

  Back in print! The epic story of a Senator’s rise and fall. Mark Coffin of California was barely thirty years old when he won a startling upset victory in his race for a seat in the U.S. Senate. A bright, handsome, energetic idealist with the passion for decency in government—he thought his honesty and dedication would see him through anything.

  But Washington, DC was all too eager to teach him the hard lessons of gamesmanship and compromise. Neither Mark Coffin nor his wife were prepared for the words that Washington had in store for them: the bizarre sex scandal that would threaten to destroy not only Mark Coffin’s career and his personal life, but all of the political reforms he was fighting so desperately to achieve.

  Mark Coffin, U.S.S. is a magnificent novel of Washington politics—an insider’s view of power at the top, shown through the eyes of vivid, fascinating, and humanly likable characters. From the master of spellbinding political fiction, author of Advise and Consent

  ***

  Smashwords Edition - 2014

  WordFire Press

  www.wordfirepress.com

  ISBN: 978-1-61475-081-9

  Copyright © 1979. Allen Drury.

  Originally published by Doubleday & Co.

  Copyright © 2014, Kevin D. Killiany and Kenneth A. Killiany

  “Citizenship,” previously unpublished, Copyright © 2014,

  Kevin D. Killiany and Kenneth A. Killiany

  We would like to thank the Hoover Institution Library and Archive for the care with which they have maintained our uncle’s archive and their assistance in making previously unpublished material available—Kevin D. Killiany, Kenneth A. Killiany

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the express written permission of the copyright holder, except where permitted by law. This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination, or, if real, used fictitiously.

  Cover photo by Kenneth A. Killiany

  Cover design by Janet McDonald

  Book Design by RuneWright, LLC

  www.RuneWright.com

  Published by

  WordFire Press, an imprint of

  WordFire, Inc.

  PO Box 1840

  Monument CO 80132

  Electronic Version by Baen Books

  www.baen.com

  ***

  Dedicated to

  The valiant young who, filled with

  the disillusions of a decade and

  the hope of the ages, still come to

  Washington determined to Make It Work

  ***

  Characters in the Novel

  In Washington

  Mark Coffin, junior senator from California

  Linda, his wife

  Linnie and Markie, their children

  Brad Harper, Mark’s administrative assistant

  Mary Francesca (“Mary Fran”) Garcia, his secretary

  Johnny McVickers, his former student and friend

  James Rand Elrod, senior senator from North Carolina, Linda’s father

  Arthur Hampton, senior senator from Nebraska, Majority Leader of the Senate

  Herbert Esplin, senior senator from Ohio, Minority Leader

  James Monroe Madison, senior senator from California

  Janet Hardesty, senior senator from Michigan

  Kalakane (“Kal”) Tokumatsu, senior senator from Hawaii

  Mele, his wife

  Clement (“Clem”) Chisholm, junior senator from Illinois

  Claretta, his wife

  Richard (“Rick”) Duclos, junior senator from New Hampshire

  Pat, his son

  Bob Templeton, junior senator from Colorado

  Lisette Grayson of ABC

  Chuck Dangerfield of “Washington Inside”

  Bill Adams of the Associated Press

  Lydia (“Lyddie”) Bates, a hostess

  Chauncey Baron, the Secretary of State

  Admiral Sir Harry Fairfield, the British ambassador

  Pierre Duchamps DeLatour, the French ambassador

  Valerian Bukanin, the Soviet ambassador

  Charles Macklin of California (“Good Old Charlie”), a Cabinet nominee

  Hamilton (“Ham”) Delbacher, the Vice-President

  The President

  In California

  The governor

  Harry P. Coffin, publisher of the Sacramento Statesman, Mark’s father

  Margaret, his mother

  ***

  Book I

  ***

  Chapter 1

  The machines chatter, the big boards blink, the arrows dart, the markers move. Two anchormen, two anchorwomen, “persons” in another dispensation, peer brightly out of the television screen, chattering away like fury to one another—and to such of the American people as may be listening.

  A good many millions are, right now, for this is Election Night.

  So-and-So is creeping ahead here.

  Such-and-Such is falling behind there.

  “You know, it’s interesting to see, Mary, how the Blah-Blah faction in the state of Boo-Boo seems to be overcoming the threat posed by the candidacy of Blip-Blip—”

  “Yes, Mike, and of course the ethnic vote has undoubtedly had a lot to do with the apparent victory of Blub-Blub in the rural areas of downstate Ho-Ho—”

  “To say nothing of the triumph of Baa-Baa in the industrial areas of upstate No-No—”

  “Right! And, Peter, as you know, we can’t expect that third district to come in for Milkswitch, though the latest returns would seem to indicate that Pooplepot is gaining rapidly in the key city of East Whambledump—”

  “Where naturally, Eloise, Mayor Squilch is bound to have some influence, even if he has announced that he will finally retire in 1999—”

  In other words, the usual stuff—“the customary crap,” as they refer to it privately among themselves—while they try to fill in those yawning hours and hold that yawning audience with talk, talk, talk, charts, charts, charts, computers, computers, computers, Importance, Importance, Importance …

  But suddenly the anchorpersons find something that really intrigues them:

  “Let’s go to California for a moment, gang! Our man, Joe McGinnis, is out there in Los Angeles right now at the headquarters of the underdog candidate, young Mark Coffin. How does it look in California, Joe?”

  A face: young, earnest, pontifical, bearded, shots of City Hall and the Music Center behind.

  “Mike, we’re beginning to get some smell here of a possible upset—something that could have a direct bearing on both the fate of young Mark Coffin and the fate of the presidential candidate himself, who’s beginning to drop very narrowly behind, as you know, all across the country. Now as he comes into the Far West and we begin to get the votes from just-closing California pre
cincts, we’re beginning to get just a hint—it’s only three precincts so far out of California’s more than two thousand, you know, Mike, but some people here seem to think it’s significant—that maybe young Mark may pull ahead in this dramatic race between youth and age. And that if he does, he might just conceivably-just possibly, Mike—pull through the presidential candidate with him. Wouldn’t that be something, if the whole presidential election were to be decided by the fate of the youngest senatorial candidate in the country, California’s dynamic and attractive young—”

  “Thank you, Joe, we have to return to New York now for a minute. Joe’s young, too, folks”—a fatherly smile—“and he can’t seem to keep his enthusiasm for young Mark Coffin out of his reporting tonight. And I must say it’s hard to blame him, when you consider this young man who virtually has come from nowhere to grab the political spotlight in the most populous state in the Union.

  “You will remember that just last spring the party nomination seemed sure to go to Charles Macklin, district attorney of Los Angeles County. Opposing him was the most recent ex-governor of California. It appeared the present governor would have to choose between them, thereby possibly compromising his own promising political future. But with a real stroke of political genius he stuck his thumb into the teaching ranks of the political science department at Stanford University and pulled out the plum of young Mark Coffin—so young, in fact, that at the time he was only twenty-nine, and as of this very moment, though he appears on the basis of early returns to be winning the Senate seat, is still a week away from his thirtieth birthday, the constitutional age at which a senator can take office.

  “In the months since he won the nomination with the governor’s help, he’s become perhaps the most appealing, certainly the freshest, face in the whole gallery of national politics. And now if he can pull the presidential candidate in with him—

  “Mike, Mike! Joe’s on the line again and he says Mark’s now leading 10,253 votes to 9,981, with five precincts reporting. He says they’re going crazy out there!”

  “Yes, Mary, that really does look like a trend. It’s true we still have more than two thousand precincts to go, ladies and gentlemen, but if this trend continues, our computers should soon be predicting a victory for young Mark Coffin. And with him, perhaps, the new President of the United States as well. What a dramatic event that would be! But now let’s go to Chicago for a minute and see what’s happening out there in that hard-fought Senate race while we await further word of this dramatic upset that seems to be in the making in California—this upset that may well decide not only the California Senate seat but the presidency as well.

  “Bob McClendon out there in Chicago, how are things where you are?”

  Their voices fade into the background, turned down by a firm and even impatient hand. (Yet, really, why should he be impatient? It’s his fate that’s being decided, isn’t it?) Their ever-so-animated, earnestly smiling, earnestly mouthing faces continue to grimace. Robbed of voices, and with them of Importance, they are abruptly reduced to what they are, little people on a little screen in a living room—a living room casual, comfortable, unpretentious. Through a window in the distance the gleaming floodlit tower of the Hoover library on the Stanford campus accentuates the night. There is an air of excitement, here, too, but it is subdued, cautious, sensible. Nobody here has much faith in computers, long-range predictions, the desperate time-filling burblings of commentators. Everybody here is hopeful but not yet really daring to hope too much: in California the night is still young and there is a long way to go.

  Instinctively the occupants of the room—a lithe and beautiful girl of twenty-seven, an earnest college kid of twenty, a pleasant-faced man in his sixties, his equally pleasant-faced wife—turn to the fair-haired, level-eyed, good-looking young man seated before the television set with two sleepy youngsters, Linnie, seven, and Mark, Jr., six, on his lap. Aware that they expect him to say something, be it inane or sensible—just something, on this fantastically important night for them all—Mark Coffin of California (Not even elected yet, he tells himself wryly, and already I’m calling me Mark Coffin of California) smiles and says,

  “Well, I’m glad they’re optimistic.”

  “Aren’t you?” asks Johnny McVickers, the college kid lounging on the rug beside him.

  “Not yet,” he says soberly.

  “Daddy’s going to be President!” Linnie announces, at which they all laugh.

  “I believe you, baby,” says her mother, Linda, starting to serve the coffee and sandwiches she has just brought from the kitchen. “But one thing at a time.”

  “Won’t it be wonderful if he owes the presidency to you?” Johnny McVickers asks. “He’ll be obligated to you for life!”

  “I’m not so sure, Johnny,” Mark replies soberly, “that I want a man like that to feel he’s obligated to me. I doubt if it would make him love me. I’ll feel better if he takes California on his own. I’ll just think about me and not worry about him, for the time being.”

  “You’re going to make it,” Linda says confidently.

  “Think so?” he asks, taking her hand and looking up at her.

  “I just talked to Daddy in Washington. He’s at national headquarters. They’re all convinced you’ve got it sewed up.”

  “Great,” Mark says dryly. “That’ll do it for me. Is he convinced?”

  “Yes, he thinks so. By a very narrow margin—but then, you know Daddy. He always was a conservative.”

  “I’ll bank on Senator Elrod’s judgment any time,” Mark says.

  “Except on a few defense issues,” his father remarks with a smile from the sofa across the room.

  “And a few foreign policy issues,” his mother echoes, beside him.

  “That’s right,” Mark agrees crisply. “On those, we may have some differences. But that’s our personal problem.”

  Actually, of course, it’s more than that. In a grand library in Georgetown it’s already being discussed by three men who will have much influence on Mark Coffin’s senatorial career if he has one. The host is Chauncey Baron, sixty-three, a New Yorker of supreme and icy elegance who has been in and out of the State Department for the past three administrations in one capacity and another. A towering man with a fierce mustache, a frigid gaze and no patience with the fools of this world, of whom he perceives himself to be surrounded by multitudes, he looks the perfect Secretary of State and, in a two-year stint with the previous administration, proved himself to be.

  Chauncey is entertaining two of his oldest and dearest friends tonight, Senate Majority Leader Arthur Emmet Hampton of Nebraska and Senate Minority Leader Herbert Esplin of Ohio. Art Hampton is sixty-eight, a spare, dry, decent, patient, compassionate and tolerant man who understands his colleagues’ foibles with all the brilliance of a Lyndon Johnson but treats them with all the discreet refusal to take advantage of a Mike Mansfield. Herb Esplin, sixty-five, is a florid orator, a sly wit, an outwardly easygoing, backslapping politician whose amiable aspect disguises one of the most sophisticated political minds of Washington.

  The three have known one another for many years, sometimes allies, sometimes opponents, veterans of many a battle on the Hill and in Foggy Bottom.

  Muted by Chauncey’s hand, as impatient as Mark’s, the anchor-persons bubble silently but ever-so-brightly away on the television set that temporarily dominates the room. Chauncey ignores them as he approaches his guests, drinks in hand.

  “Is young Mark Coffin going to make it?”

  “I just talked to his father-in-law at national headquarters,” Art Hampton says. “Jim Elrod says Mark’s going to make it by the skin of his teeth.”

  “And with him,” Herb Esplin says, “your distinguished candidate for President.”

  “Whom you, as Minority Leader of the U. S. Senate,” Chauncey says, “just can’t wait to welcome to the White House.”

  “We’re going to cut him up in little bits and pieces and spread him all over Pennsylvania Ave
nue for the crows to eat,” Herb Esplin says cheerfully, “and not even my dear friend the distinguished majority leader of the U. S. Senate will be able to put him back together again.”

  “Well,” Art says, “since I’ll be leading my gallant little band of seventy-three against your overpowering force of twenty-seven, I think perhaps I’ll be able to.”

  “Ah well,” Herb says with airy good humor, “we’ll see. Are you going back to the State Department, Chaunce? Or are you going to remain a private citizen so you can keep on chasing all those Hollywood glamour girls you like so much?”

  “Who says I like Hollywood glamour girls?” Chauncey demands blandly. Herb hoots and Art smiles.

  “Come on, now, Chaunce,” Herb says. “Don’t kid your old pals here. Yon stern and dignified austerity hideth a suave pursuer, methinks. That’s why we all keep book on you. It’s intriguing to see how many young ladies can be successfully seduced by state-manship, profundity, world-shaking decisions and all that other crap you handle so beautifully.”

  “Well, at least,” Chauncey says, “you admit I do handle it beautifully. So who cares what else I handle?”

  “Absolutely right,” Herb agrees jovially. “So, are you going back to State?”

  “If I see this in Jack Anderson’s column tomorrow morning,” Chauncey Baron says sternly, “I shall shoot you both. But yes, I think I will be nominated—if Mark wins, and if he carries the President in with him.”

  “How will it feel to be Secretary of State for the second time?” Art inquires.