Legacy: A Novel Read online

  Legacy is a work of historical fiction. Apart from the well-known actual people, events, and locales that figure in the narrative, all names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to current events or locales, or to living persons, is entirely coincidental.

  2014 Dial Press Trade Paperback Edition

  Copyright © 1987 by James A. Michener

  All rights reserved.

  Published in the United States by Dial Press Trade Paperbacks, an imprint of Random House, a division of Random House LLC, a Penguin Random House Company, New York.

  DIAL PRESS and the HOUSE colophon are registered trademarks of Random House LLC.

  Originally published in hardcover in the United States by Random House, an imprint and division of Random House LLC, in 1987.

  eBook ISBN 978-0-8041-5152-8

  www.dialpress.com

  v3.1

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  The Starrs

  Jared Starr 1726–1787

  Simon Starr 1759–1807

  Justice Edmund Starr 1780–1847

  General Hugh Starr 1833–1921

  Emily Starr 1858–1932

  Richard Starr 1890–1954

  Rachel Denham Starr 1928–

  Norman Starr 1951–

  The Constitution of the United States

  Excerpt from Alaska

  Other Books by This Author

  About the Author

  The Starrs

  My bad luck started just before Christmas 1985. But at the time, as so often happens, it seemed like good luck.

  I had graduated from West Point just in time to join the final fighting in the rice paddies of Vietnam. Returning with a chest full of medals, a few earned, most routine, I married Nancy Makin, a girl from Maryland whom I’d been dating whenever I found myself with stateside duty. We had spent our first three years of married life in the Panama Canal Zone, where I had the shameful task of watching as Jimmy Carter gave away that marvel of engineering to the Panamanians. My father, a colonel in the Army Reserve and a noted hero in World War II, called it mildly ‘the most traitorous act of any American since Aaron Burr.’ And believe me, considering what Aaron Burr had done to our family as well as our nation in the early 1800s, that was a savage indictment.

  It was in Panama that I mastered Spanish, which led to further assignments south of the border; and in Argentina, Chile and especially Guatemala, learning firsthand about Communist subversion on our doorstep.

  I was never gung ho in my work against the Reds. That’s not my style. I don’t like to be out front unless war’s been declared and I’m in charge of troops. But no one had greater aversion to Communism than I did, after the butchery I’d seen in Nam and the cruel behavior in Guatemala.

  I’ve never known whether it was my familiarity with Latin American Communism or my Spanish that accounted for the unexpected promotion, but on 10 December 1985, I received orders to leave my duty station in Cartagena, Colombia, where we were trying to stanch the flow of cocaine into the States, and report to the Pentagon.

  Nancy rejoiced at what she called ‘a long-overdue assignment,’ not only because it meant a promotion, which I needed if I was ever going to make colonel, but also because it allowed me to rejoin her in Washington, where she had established our permanent home. I appreciated the new job because I would be working with men who had been in my class at the Point or on duty with me in Nam.

  My duties were well matched to my experience: liaison with the various military commissions from South and Central American nations, anti-Communism in general, and exciting duty with Vice-President Bush’s special task force on drug smuggling. I met Bush only a couple of times, always in a crowd of officers, but from my earliest days in Colombia, I’d had a favorable opinion of what he was trying to do.

  And then, just before Christmas, I was suddenly handed the exciting news: ‘Starr, an opportunity like this doesn’t reach down to tap a major very often. Your Spanish and all, or maybe it’s your strong record in Guatemala. Anyway, they want you for a stint at the National Security Council.’

  ‘Am I qualified?’

  ‘The Army wants you to go. Demands that you go. Too damned many Navy and Marine types over there.’

  ‘My duties?’

  ‘Cloak-and-dagger? Who ever knows?’ He was a two-star general, and he half saluted before I did: ‘Keep your nose clean this time, Starr. We want you back. Men like you are too precious to lose.’

  His last words spoiled the good news, because they reminded both him and me that my promotion to lieutenant colonel had been sidetracked. Normally, an Army officer, if he’s good, expects regular promotion up to the rank of lieutenant colonel. The real weeding out occurs in the jump from light-chicken to full-chicken. As my West Point bunkmate Zack McMaster once said in his poetic way: ‘Any asshole can make light colonel. It takes a real man to handle the next leap.’ He had left the service after only two years, for it had become clear that because of his outspoken manner, he would never hack it.

  My promotion had been held up twice because of an incident in Chile. Information I was picking up on the street, where I moved about in civilian clothes, led me to believe that one of our clandestine exercises was bound to backfire, allowing a gang of real murderers to sneak behind the American flag while they continued their dirty games. I protested in an embassy meeting, failed to get attention, and sat down to write a forceful memorandum. My grandfather, having undergone two messy divorces in which his ardent letters betrayed him, had summarized his experience in a pithy command: ‘Do right and fear no man. Don’t write and fear no woman.’ Forgetting half of this, I drafted a memo that turned out to make my superiors look bad. Infuriated, they had blocked my advancement.

  Zack, who had turned to law after his nonproductive fling with the Army, had enrolled at Columbia Law, graduated high, served as clerk to Justice Byron White of the Supreme Court, and gone on to become one of Washington’s street-smart geniuses who know where the bodies are buried. But if he did a lot of manipulating, he also did much pro bono work. When my promotion was blocked by the bad vibes from Chile, he advised me: ‘Starr, if you move to another command, keep a low profile and do a superior job. Then not even your enemies will be able to hold you back.’ My assignment to the NSC proved him right.

  But his urgent phone call this morning put an end to that strategy: ‘Starr, old buddy. You’re in serious trouble.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘A Washington lawyer is supposed to know everything.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘The Senate Committee on the Iran deal wants to interrogate you. You’ll be notified today.’

  ‘Zack, I’ve had nothing to do with Iran.’

  ‘The angle isn’t Iran. It’s the contras.’

  Suddenly my mouth went dry, for the contra affair was much different from the Iranian, and this time I could not paint myself as lily-white. There was, after all, the Tres Toros affair about which rumors had begun to circulate, and I would not feel easy being interrogated about that. ‘You better come on over.’

  ‘Wouldn’t it be better if I stayed away from the White House? Your home maybe?’

  Today, twenty-four hours later, I can recall every thought that assailed me in the fifteen minutes it took Zack and me, by different routes, to reach our condo in Georgetown. First I clarified my mind as to Iran: Did the Iran project touch me in any way? Never. I knew vaguely that something was under way—but details? I never had a clear word from anyone. How about Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North, did I really know him? I heard from everyone that he was a fine dedicated patriot, but I never had
direct contact with him on anything to do with Iran. On Iran, I am squeaky clean.

  But how about Nicaragua? Now, there I did bump into North a couple of times. Strictly professional, strictly within the law, so far as I know. I reported to him twice on the effectiveness of the contra effort. Tried to brief him on the bad cocaine situation in Colombia, but he was too occupied with other things. Did I ever receive orders from him? Never. Did I ever propose Central American actions to him? Never.

  But if I wasn’t on Colonel North’s team, and I wasn’t, what in hell was I doing in Central America from Christmas ’85 to Christmas ’86? I’m so damned security-conscious that I won’t even spell out in these notes the gory details. All I’ll say is that even at Tres Toros, my actions were inspired by patriotism, my conviction that Communism is a deadly peril, and my belief that the free world must not sit back and let the Reds run rampant. But if I knew nothing about Iran, I did know a great deal about Nicaragua, and I approved ninety-five percent of what we were doing down there. And then, as I approached the street leading to our house, my stomach turned to ice, and I found myself saying aloud, as if my wife were sitting next to me: ‘This is not going to be easy.’

  When I entered our house I was relieved to see that Nancy wasn’t home. Explaining complex things to her is never easy, because she has the habit of interrupting with questions that probe embarrassing alleyways.

  When Zack arrived, it was as if we were back at the Point. He even wore his three-piece suit with the trim appearance of a uniform, and like always, he seemed to keep four steps ahead of me. I was glad to have him on my side.

  After clearing a place on our table for his papers and yellow note pad, he said: ‘Let’s get right down to cases. Do you consider yourself guilty of anything?’

  ‘Like what? Traffic violations?’

  He looked at me almost with contempt, and in a harsh, unfamiliar voice said: ‘I mean this Iran mess.’

  ‘Never touched Iran even remotely.’

  ‘You can swear to that?’

  ‘I just said so, didn’t I?’

  Zack pushed himself away from the table, took a hard look at me, and said: ‘Look here, soldier. You could be in deep mud, and to save your neck I need to know the absolute truth. You know how men like you stumble into fatal error? Lying under oath. The Feds double back ten years later, confront you with your earlier perjured testimony, and throw you in the slammer. Tomorrow, before the Senate Committee you’ll take an oath, so I’m going to question you today as if you just had. And if you lie, you go to prison … for a long, long term.’

  I am amazed at what I said next, but it was the reaction of a man who had always worked for a limited government salary: ‘How much is this going to cost? Your legal fee, I mean?’

  ‘Starr! My firm is doing this for free. Because I know you’re honest.’ He stopped. ‘You got problems, Major. I’m here as your bunkmate.’ Now he got down to business: ‘I’ll take your word that it wasn’t Iran that got you into trouble. So it’s got to be the contra connection. Tell me about your role in that beauty.’

  ‘You’re right, it must be Nicaragua. But I can’t go public with much.’

  ‘Before this is over, I assure you, you’ll go very public.’ And he began to bombard me with many questions, and such intimate ones that quite often I had to say: ‘That one I can’t answer. National security.’

  Once he stormed: ‘I’m your lawyer, dammit! I have to know.’

  ‘Not that, you don’t.’

  So we agreed on a procedure that didn’t please him but which we could live with. We reviewed my Army career, my near court-martial, my delayed promotion, my unceasing fights against the two enemies Communism and drugs, and my publicly acknowledged work for the Security Council in Central America. But concerning the secret operations, I would not allow myself to be questioned. This infuriated Zack: ‘Dammit, Norman, I can’t handle your case unless you give me short, honest answers to three questions. One, were you pretty deep in the contra affair?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Two, did you ever do anything illegal?’

  ‘I always had authorization.’ I hesitated, a fact which he noticed, then changed my answer: ‘Better make that, I always thought I had.’

  ‘Three, could a civilian jury find you guilty of anything?’

  ‘If the facts were presented to them with a twist, yes.’

  Zack stopped. Dead-cold. Not even his motor running. He went to the window, studied the street as if afraid we were being watched, and I could see that he was trying to devise our strategy, but then he laughed in his old red-headed way and came back to me as if he were starting an entirely new conversation.

  Grasping me by the shoulder, he said: ‘You’re in a dangerous position, old friend. The public smells blood on this contra affair and they’re hungry for victims. But there may be a way out.’

  ‘There better be. I do not fancy a prison term.’

  ‘It’s my job to see that you don’t get one. If you lose, I lose, and in this town, I cannot afford to be seen as a loser.’

  At this point Nancy came in through the front door. Five feet one and eighty-percent high explosive, she was lugging two big brown paper bags from the supermarket, and before she could put them down she saw Zack, ran across the room, and gave him a hearty kiss: ‘What brings you here, Counselor? According to the papers, you keep a lot of irons in the fire.’

  ‘None bigger than this one, Nancy,’ he said, and he invited her to join us. ‘The bloodhounds are after your old man, and it’s my job to get him safely across the ice.’

  ‘Serious?’

  ‘Very.’

  ‘The Iran affair?’ My wife is a clever woman, always willing to make leaps in the dark.

  ‘Worse. The contra affair. Central America.’

  As I had done earlier when Zack threw those loaded words at me, she sort of choked, grew pale, and disclosed much more than I had: ‘Anyone who worked closely with the contras, and Norman did, has got to be under suspicion. And since Norman …’

  ‘Stop right there!’ I interrupted, and Zack, looking at both of us with the familial affection he so often displayed, especially since his divorce had left him without a real home of his own, said: ‘Relax, you two. Let me do the worrying.’ And he left our house with a very worried look.

  Jared

  Starr

  1726–1787

  At six-thirty Friday morning our doorbell jangled, and it was Zack: ‘Couldn’t sleep. Kept devising alternate strategies, came up with about eight, none outstanding.’

  When Nancy joined us in her bathrobe she said: ‘Join the club. We couldn’t sleep, either.’ And when she brought out the coffee she said, as she handed Zack his: ‘You will keep us out of trouble, won’t you?’ and he said: ‘That’s my job.’

  He didn’t waste time on social niceties. Sitting with both hands clasped about his cup to keep them warm, he asked: ‘Norman, didn’t you tell me once at the Point that some of your family, I mean one or two of your ancestors way back, weren’t they involved in the Army? Our national history and all that?’

  ‘Nearly all of them.’

  ‘Refresh me.’

  I went to the bookshelf by the fireplace, took down my 1985 World Almanac and placed paper markers at the two pages my family was proud of, and handed it to him: ‘Four forty-three, look who signed the Declaration of Independence, toward the bottom of the list, under the S’s.’ The print was quite small, but there after the noble name of Roger Sherman, Connecticut, came that of Jared Starr, Virginia. Major in the Continental Army, served in the final battle of the Revolution at Yorktown, 1781.

  ‘Quite a record. He’ll prove very helpful to us. Didn’t you also say he signed the Constitution?’

  ‘That was his son. Look on page four forty-seven,’ and there, in minute print under the heading Virginia, came two names, the first more distinguished than the second: James Madison, Jr., Simon Starr. I could see that Zack was impressed, but at this point he didn�
��t care to say so: ‘Didn’t you have a rather well-known general in your family, too? Civil War, maybe?’

  ‘General Hugh Starr, always fought close to General Lee. Many battles. Attested to the surrender at Appomattox, then lived to eighty-eight, firing Confederate fusillades all the way.’

  ‘Anyone else we can use to keep you out of prison?’

  ‘Well, my father won the Congressional Medal of Honor at Saipan in 1944.’

  ‘He did? You never told me.’

  ‘Rather simple. Marines formed the two outer flanks, Army the middle. Both generals were named Smith. “Howling Mad” the Marine was in charge, Ralph the Army man led the unlucky Twenty-seventh Division, mostly New York National Guard. Clerks and shopkeepers principally, with my father as a West Point light colonel attached to lend some professionalism.

  ‘Divided commands are hell, as we learned at the Point. This was classic. Two conflicting doctrines. The Marines roared ahead, leaving enemy hedgehogs behind. The Army, properly methodical, cleaned out everything, but to tell the truth, we did lag … Hell of a mess. Finally, “Howling Mad” relieved Ralph of command. Said the Marines would finish the job alone. Unprecedented.

  ‘My father went ape. Later claimed he had not been told of the order to hold fast where he was and let the Marines take over. Led his men on a fantastic surge forward, performed what they called “incredible feats of valor.” Lost his left leg, and earned a place in Army history for getting a court-martial on Saturday and notice of his Congressional Medal of Honor on Monday.’

  Zack reflected on the history of my four military ancestors, and said: ‘You Starrs are patriots, aren’t you? If we play this right, no Senate investigation can touch you.’

  ‘But the culpability?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘It always seemed to me, during the various courts-martial on which I served, that there were two conditions. Legal guilt and moral culpability. They’re not always the same.’