I happened upon Pumphrett in Lafayette Park, where I had come to witness the straggling few Never Trump protestors. There they were—all crinkled khakis and Lululemon—half of them shouting slogans, the other half busily thumbing their devices. The slogans were mildly diverting—universally tolerant and hate-filled at the same time—but with little really new afoot on the protest scene, my attention was drawn to a man taking a hefty swallow from a hip flask at a nearby bench.
I recognized the flask before the man. It was a hand-beaten silver number engraved, as I knew well, with the Pumphrett family crest: central shield abated flanked by hawks sinister and emblazoned with the family motto: Quidquid Sum Adversum Eam. We had often stolen fortifying nips from it to survive Professor Wagstaff’s Latin class at Choate, where Pumphrett and I had both matriculated—he, it must be said, more obsessively than I.
Rumor had it that a Pumphrett ancestor has amassed the family fortune sailing the Middle Passage; whatever the source, the resulting swag had been immense—enough to finance the crest, the flask, and a surprising number of Ivy League degrees. Unhappily, that legacy was latterly much depleted, along with the heir himself, who now noticed my approach.
“Pumphrett,” I hailed. “What are you doing here? I thought you were safely ensconced at State.” I had managed to have a note passed to John Kerry during a brief transit of Andrews Air Force Base begging that Pumphrett be inserted into Foggy Bottom’s Middle East bureau on the usual grounds that—innocent as he was of any knowledge of the area—he could bring “fresh” eyes to the problem (see “The Pumphrett Papers,” vol. 2). Kerry’s shrug had been taken as assent, and Pumphrett had moved to State from Defense soon after.
“Apparently, it had not gone well. Up close, Pumphrett looked haggard. “The State Department is like a tomb,” he grumped. “You’d think the building was empty. But then you hear that constant, maddening drone coming from the endless rows of identical doors. Not only that, but you have to flee the place to get a decent snort.” So saying he proffered the flask to me. Then he brightened: “But I will soon be paroled.”
“What are you talking about, Pumphrett? You just got there.”
“Yes, but…” and here he glanced around furtively and his voice fell to an urgent whisper, “…this morning I was summoned into the presence of Eric Trump. He’s really the transition chief, you know, not this fellow Pence. All hush-hush, of course. Eric—he asked me to call him Eric—is so impressive. That rigidly disciplined blond hair, those steely eyes, that strong jaw, those Aryan features—the word that popped to mind was Heydri…er, that is, masterful. Yes, masterful, that’s it. We took a walk out to the Jefferson mound while he described the golf tee to be built there. He said the new team liked the cut of my jib. Then he offered me a job.”
“At the White House? For President Trump?!” I was gobsmacked, as we Anglophiles say, but perhaps I shouldn’t have been. After all, Pumphrett at Choate had possessed a youthful enthusiasm for the politics of post-Weimar Germany, collecting paraphernalia from the period and even wearing it to what I had assumed at the time were costume parties. Still, I was indignant at this turn of events and rounded on the suddenly smirking Pumphrett.
“But you said Trump was a pimp.”
“I never…”
“Yes you did. I remember exactly. It was at Schmedly’s party. You said Trump was a bloviating ignoramus with the morals of a goat. Everyone agreed, of course. We all had a good laugh about it.”
“You’re confusing me with…”
“No I’m not. And you signed one of those letters denouncing Trump as dangerous wing nut.”
He could see I had him dead to rights, so he decided to cop a plea. Fixing me with the wet-eyed, imploring gaze of a wounded spaniel, he adopted a wheedling tone. “I may have said some things along those lines, Cushy, but it was just male badinage. Locker-room banter. You won’t rat me out, will you?”
Cushy had been my school name, for reasons upon which I refuse to dwell. By using it now, Pumphrett was invoking the loyalty of a fellow graduate. It is an iron-bound tradition among us Choate alumni that a request so made cannot be refused. Still, I could not let him off so easily.
“But how can you do it?”
“He’s changed since I said those things.”
“Schmedly’s party was only a month ago!”
“Yes, but who knew then that Trump would actually win?”
In Pumphrett’s eyes, winning had gentled Trump’s condition. “Did you see him in that meeting with Obama? He was, well, maybe not dignified exactly, but not actually ranting. And he’s only going to round up three million illegals now, at least for the moment. The other eight million can wait, albeit uneasily I suppose. And he’s reconsidered defending NATO. Oh, perhaps not Estonia, but is that even a place? And I’m not the only one. There was a line out the door all pushing and shoving.”
Pumphrett was obviously seeking my absolution. I gave in to the inevitable. “So, what’s your job going to be?”
“Well, Eric says that eventually I’ll be the one to crush ISIS. I have Middle East credentials now, thanks to you. Only a month’s worth, of course, but that seems to make me senior man after Flynn, and he’s nuts. I have to prove my mettle, so to begin I’ll work a strange graveyard shift. That’s what they’re calling it, for some reason. The hours are from one to three a.m. I’m to sit in an anteroom upstairs in the living quarters monitoring a machine. It has something to do with nuclear weapons. I asked, but Eric said it would be better if I didn’t know. Anyway, if I see a certain combination of symbols coming from inside the presidential chambre, I’m to respond: ‘message garbled, please repeat.’ Then I’m to call Ivanka. Without delay.”
“And if she doesn’t answer?”
“I’m to unplug the machine.”
“When do you start?”
“Right after the inauguration. First, of course, I have to be interviewed by Frank Gaffney, who’s checking everyone for Muslim extremist tendencies. Frank has a keen nose for that sort of thing. He finds extremists in places you wouldn’t expect. Almost everywhere, in fact. But if I pass Frank’s sniff test, Bob’s your uncle.”
That put a different light on it. “Pumphrett, I think you should take the job,” I told him. “They need experienced, flexible, willing people. You were always flexible, as I recall. Willing, too, more than was good for you.”
“But how about those comments I’m alleged to have made?”
“Some will be pardoned and some punish’d, Pumphrett, and I have a feeling you’re now safely in the former category.”
“Oh, thank you, Cushy. I knew you’d see this in the proper way. But there is a problem. What if they ask me to do something contrary to my principles?”
I patted his arm. “Frankly, Pumphrett old socks, I think that will be the least of your problems.”