Page 353 of Edge of Eternity (The Century 3)

He had undoubtedly planned what to do next. Moving quickly, he ignited the gas fire, put a Mozart string quartet on the record deck, and assembled a tray with a bottle of schnapps, two glasses, and a bowl of salted nuts.

They sat side by side on the couch.

She wanted to ask him how many other girls he had seduced on this couch. It would have struck a wrong note, but all the same she wondered. Was he enjoying being single, or did he long to marry again? Another question she was not going to ask.

He poured drinks and she took a sip just for something to do.

He said: "If we kiss now, we'll taste the liquor on each other's tongues."

She grinned. "All right."

He leaned toward her. "I don't like to waste money," he murmured.

She said: "I'm so glad you're frugal."

For a moment they could not kiss because they were giggling too much.

Then they did.

*

People thought Cameron Dewar was mad when he invited Richard Nixon to speak at Berkeley. It was the most famously radical campus in the country. Nixon would be crucified, they said. There would be a riot. Cam did not care.

Cam thought Nixon was the only hope for America. Nixon was strong and determined. People said he was unscrupulous and sly: so what? America needed such a leader. God forbid that the president should be a man such as Bobby Kennedy who could not stop asking himself what was right and what was wrong. The next president had to destroy the rioters in the ghettos and the Vietcong in the jungle, not search his own conscience.

In his letter to Nixon, Cam said that the liberals and the crypto-Communists on campus got all the attention in the left-leaning media, but in truth most students were conservative and law-abiding, and there would be a huge turnout for Nixon.

Cam's family were furious. His grandfather and his great-grandfather had both been Democratic senators. His parents had always voted Democrat. His sister was so outraged she could barely speak. "How can you campaign for injustice and dishonesty and war?" Beep said.

"There's no justice without order on the streets, and there's no peace while we're threatened by international Communism."

"Where have you been the last few years? When the blacks were nonviolent they just got attacked with nightsticks and dogs! Governor Reagan praises the police for beating up student demonstrators!"

"You're so against the police."

"No, I'm not. I'm against criminals. Cops who beat up demonstrators are criminals, and they should go to jail."

"There, that's why I support such men as Nixon and Reagan: because their opponents want to put cops in jail instead of troublemakers."

Cam was pleased when Vice President Hubert Humphrey declared that he would seek the Democratic nomination. Humphrey had been Johnson's yes-man for four years, and no one would trust him either to win the war or to negotiate peace, so he was unlikely to be elected, but he might spoil things for the more dangerous Bobby Kennedy.

Cam's letter to Nixon got a reply from one of the campaign team, John Ehrlichman, suggesting a meeting. Cam was thrilled. He wanted to work in politics: maybe this was the beginning!

Ehrlichman was Nixon's advance man. He was intimidatingly tall, six foot two, with black eyebrows and receding hair. "Dick loved your letter," he said.

They met at a fragrant coffee shop on Telegraph Avenue and sat outside under a tree in new leaf, watching students go by on bicycles in the sunshine. "A nice place to study," Ehrlichman said. "I went to UCLA."

He asked Cam a lot of questions. He was intrigued by Cam's Democratic forebears. "My grandmother was editor of a newspaper called the Buffalo Anarchist," Cam admitted.

"It's a sign of how America is becoming more conservative," Ehrlichman said.

Cam was relieved to learn that his family would not be an obstruction to a career in the Republican Party.

"Dick won't speak on the Berkeley campus," Ehrlichman said. "It's too risky."

Cam was disappointed. He thought Ehrlichman was wrong: the event could be a big success.

He was about to argue when Ehrlichman said: "But he wants you to start a group called Berkeley Students for Nixon. It will show that not all young people are fooled by Gene McCarthy or in love with Bobby Kennedy."

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