The Last President: A Novel of an Alternative America (21 page)

“What kind of highly visible acts?” Porfritt asked.

“There’s one great obvious problem with that,” Jones said. “If we have TV coverage there and it looks like we’re losing instead of winning, that’s likely to encourage the opposition. But it might be worth the risk. For one thing, the cameras will be on our side of the lines.”

“Why isn’t Ian Faulkes here?” Masters asked. “He could help plan this media thing if we do it.”

“I didn’t ask him because he’s British,” Aaron said. “I thought we should have an all-American coup. But I suppose we could clue him in enough so that he could have cameras at the right places at the right time. I’ll sound him out.”

“Say,” Jones said. “Has anyone kept up with the count on those internal confinement camps of the President’s? How many are there now, and what’s the population?”

“I believe there are somewhere around eight of them now,” Masters said. “With about twenty-five hundred inmates per camp.”

“That’s incredible!” Obie Porfritt said. “Are you sure? Twenty thousand people?”

“It is incredible,” Masters said. “I have a notion that the American people—that great silent majority—would be very upset if they realized the extent of this thing. But its been kept very low profile. Burying twenty thousand people in a country this size is easy, if you’re the government. The public does not know.”

“I didn’t know,” Obie said. “A few camps, I thought. A few hundred dissenters. Even that disturbed me, but that I could live with. I had no idea—”

”What’s the point, Sandy?” Aaron asked.

“There’s one of our ‘highly visible acts’,” Jones explained. “Like Lincoln freeing the slaves. As soon as we have anything like a toehold, we announce the immediate closing of all the IC camps and the release of the prisoners. And we announce the total number of camps and their population—with lists, if possible.”

“Good!” Aaron said. “Very good.”

“How long, do you estimate, before D-Day?” Baker asked.

“Soon,” Aaron said. “So we’ll all have to get on the stick, there’s a lot to do. I don’t think I have to tell everyone here to keep their mouths shut, do I?”

“We need an operational code word,” Sanderman Jones said. “A nice, innocuous, operational code word.”

Everyone in the room turned to look at Aaron Adams.

“Jubilee,” Aaron said. He looked at each of them in turn—thin, elegant Sanderman Jones; tall, plump Grier Laporte; Colonel Baker, who took things too seriously; Obediah Porfritt, who wasn’t sure; Rear Admiral David Bunt, who would do what he had to do; George Masters, the consummate professional—and he wondered which of them would come through and which of them would fail. And he wondered what they would think of him six months from now—if any of them were still alive.

“Jubilee,” Obie Porfritt said. “Let’s drink to that. Might not get another chance.” And he bustled around handing out glasses and opening a bottle of champagne that had been sitting in Aaron’s refrigerator since New Year’s Eve.

When Obie had finished pouring, Aaron raised his glass to the group. “Gentlemen,” he said, “bring the Jubilee.”

They drank.

Marine Corps Educational Center

Quantico, Virginia

to: All Officers and Enlisted Personnel

subject: Post Lecture

On Saturday, 6 November, 1976, at 1330 hours, General of the Army Hiram MacGregor will deliver the Post Lecture at the O’Bannon Theater.

Lieutenant General Moor is pleased to welcome General MacGregor to Quantico, and wishes all off-duty officers to attend the lecture. Enlisted personnel are encouraged to attend.

General MacGregor’s topic will be “The Chain of Command.”

T. R. Roseau, Colonel, USMC

OIC training and plans

The lecture attracted a standing-room-only crowd, which the commanding officer, Lieutenant General Clement C, Moor, assured Tank was unique in the history of the post lecture series. “You’re still a hero, Tank. Maybe even, by now, a legend.”

The lecture had been followed by the usual VIP show: a tour of the base, a cocktail reception at the Officers’ Club, and a formal dress dinner for the senior officers and their wives at Quarters Number One, the residence of the base commander, General Moor.

Now, as the last guest left, Generals MacGregor and Moor settled down in the living room to talk over old times. They spoke of Uijonbu and Yudam-ni, of Humhung and Yongdok, and they toasted fallen comrades, MacGregor with his bourbon over ice, and General Moor with a tall glass of ginger ale. “You’re not drinking,” MacGregor said, gesturing with his glass. “I mean, you know, drinking.”

“I was drinking,” Moor told him. “Believe it, I was drinking. Then one morning I woke up in a strange bed, staring at a white ceiling, with no feeling from my shoulders down. And a man with a white smock and a stethoscope came in and told me what my gut looked like from the inside, and gave me a choice.” Moor lifted his glass, and grinned. “I chose ginger ale.”

“A good choice,” MacGregor said.

“My wife and kids think so,” Moor said. “And I’m of more use to the Corps as a teetotaler than as a dead drunk—with the emphasis on ‘dead’.”

MacGregor looked at the stocky, broad-shouldered Marine sitting opposite him and weighed the words he had come to say, and wondered how best to say them, and his glass felt heavy in his hands. “I’m glad you’re alive, Clem,” he said. “I’d rather have a Marine next to me in a fight than anyone else. And I’d rather it be you than any other Marine.”

“Go on,” Moor said, grinning broadly. “At my age!”

“There are fights, and there are fights,” MacGregor said. “I’ve got a good ten years on you, Clem, and the kind of fights a man my age gets into aren’t won with your fists.”

General Moor leaned forward in his chair. “Speaking of fights,” he said, “that was an important bit of business you did, Tank, in keeping the Army out of the prison-camp business.”

“You heard about that?”

“It was the worst-kept secret since ‘He is risen’,” Moor said. “I don’t know what you told our C-in-C, but you must have made it strong. We were trying to figure out how to keep the Corps’s skirts clean if he asked us, but he never did. We did get involved in that riot.”

“What riot?”

“Down in Florida, in one of those camps. The prisoners—or internees, or whatever we’re supposed to call them—went on a hunger strike that turned into a riot. I understand the guards threw the food at them, or something. Anyhow, they trashed their barracks and grabbed a few guards as hostages. The warden, or whatever he calls himself, called in the Marines. One company was dispatched. By the time they got there there were cameramen all over the place. Almost had to trample them down to get to the riot. And they weren’t from any of the networks, either; they were government. The whole thing was hushed up, and the pictures were never used, as far as I know.”

General Moor lit a new cigarette from the stub of his last one, and smiled at MacGregor’s disapproving expression. “I couldn’t give up everything, Tank,” he said. “Now, do you want to tell me what you’re here for, or do we have to stall around some more until you’re good and ready?”

“What do you mean?” MacGregor asked.

“When Jerry Rosen called up and suggested that you come give our post lecture this month, I was delighted. But I got the feeling that it was your idea. Which is fine. But if you’d wanted to come visit, you would have just come visit. You wanted to be invited. Which means you have some reason for wanting to be here without seeming to want to be here. If you follow that.”

“I follow, Clem. I hope I’m not that transparent to the rest of the world.”

“Tell me what you want to when you want to,” Moor said. “You can trust me.”

“I believe you,” MacGregor said. “Give me one of your cigarettes, Clem. I’m trying to stop smoking, but it can wait.” He took the cigarette and lit it and took one deep drag from it. “I hear you’re going back on the
Guam
, Clem; is that right?”

“Right. Next week. We’re going on a training cruise.”

“Before you go I’d like you to take a run up to Washington,” MacGregor said. “Meet a friend of mine. His name is Adams, Professor Aaron B. Adams. He lives in Chevy Chase. Give him a call.”

“I will, Tank. What sort of thing is he interested in?”

“I think you’d better let him ask the questions,” Tank said. “Now, if you don’t mind, I’d better get to bed.” MacGregor got up and left the room. General Moor heard his steps going up the stairs toward the guest room.

Moor lit a new cigarette and stared into the smoke for some time before turning the lights off and heading up the stairs himself.

Brigadier General Landau, Commandant of the Eighty-Second Airborne Division, leaned back in his swivel chair and laced his fingers behind his head. “Just what do you mean, Captain?” he demanded. “Can you be more precise?”

“No, sir,” Captain Willits said. “I mean, it’s hard, sir.” He shifted uneasily from foot to foot. “Maybe I shouldn’t have come, sir, only I felt it was my duty.”

“No, no; you did right, Captain. Sit down and try to give me something more specific. When you say Colonel Green is talking treason, what, precisely, do you mean?”

“Well, he’s sort of sounding out the officers under him in the regiment, sir. Very subtly, sir. Determining their loyalty to the President, sir. Like what we think of the IC camps, and whether we think he had a right to suspend the elections.”

“Have you mentioned your suspicions to anyone else?”

“No, sir. I thought I should come directly to you.”

“Very good. I need honest, reliable officers like you, uh, Willits, to keep tabs on what’s going on in my command. You just keep your eye on your CO, and make up a weekly report for me on what he says. If it begins to sound like he, uh, has anything in mind, notify me right away.”

“Yes, sir!”

“It’s our job, Willits, to keep the Army out of politics. The President is our commanding officer, and we must obey his commands, whatever we think of them.”

“Yes, sir.”

The room, buried deep in the bowels of CIA’s Langley, Virginia, headquarters, was furnished like a model living room out of
Architectural Digest
. From the Remington reproduction on the far wall, balanced by an antique bric-a-brac cabinet opposite a French-tile-framed fireplace, the room smelled of conservative good taste. Closed curtains at one end of the room, with just a hint of light glowing through, suggested the obligatory picture window. Pleasant, innocuous classical music drowned out the ever-present hum of the air conditioning. It was designed to make you quickly forget that you were two stories underground, surrounded by rooms full of computers, code machines, analysts, area experts, photo interpreters, psychological warfare experts, interrogation experts, armed guards, and locked doors.

The man in the impeccable gray suit sat on one corner of the sectional tan couch, his yellow pad across his knees. “You realize,” he told Aaron Adams, “that you’re not here and we aren’t having this conversation.”

“Who was logged in?” Adams asked, amused.

“A house name,” the man said. “Usually used for Eastern European contacts. That’s why you’re down here in the debriefing area. Also because, by the nature of the process, you’re automatically escorted in and out without anyone else seeing you or knowing you’re here.”

The man facing Adams was Robert Sims, a CIA career professional who occupied a position in the hierarchy that in private industry would have been called middle management, or in regular government service, entrenched bureaucracy. He was one of the men who had been on the outside feeding information in, and was now on the inside shuffling papers to see that the information was somehow utilized. An earnest, self-important man who had years ago forgotten how to smile, he nonetheless did his work well, and honestly felt that what he did was worth doing.

Sims was a member of the Policy Coordinating Committee, which took the directives handed down by the Director and his top aides and turned them into working orders that could be implemented by the various semiautonomous directorates of the Agency. In practical terms the committee acted as a buffer between the political demands instigated at the top and the pragmatic operations conducted by those who did the work.

“All right, Bob,” Adams said. “Let it be that I’m not here.” He dropped into an armchair opposite the couch and pulled his pipe from a side pocket of his tweed jacket. “What aren’t we talking about while I’m not here?”

“You’re laughing,” Sims said. “I’m trying to save your hide, and you’re laughing.”

“I wasn’t aware that my hide required saving, Bob.”

“Come off it, Aaron. I’ve know you for twenty-odd years. Let’s not play games about this.”

“No game, Bob,” Adams said. “Don’t try to lead me on, because I won’t be led. If you know something, spit it out. If you’re on a fishing expedition, at least dangle some bait in front of me. Don’t just tell me ‘all is discovered,’ and expect me to drop my pants.” Adams tamped a plug of tobacco into his pipe.

“I really am trying to help you,” Sims said. “The Company can’t do anything, you understand. Not with people handpicked by the President in the fourteen top slots. You’ve no idea how much time is wasted in keeping their hands out of the works.”

“I know the system,” Adams said, slightly impatiently.

“The recording devices for this room are turned off, Aaron,” Sims said. “We know you’re planning a coup.”

“What—”

”We got onto it through one of those chains of circumstances that nobody can control, so don’t waste time denying it—or looking for the traitor in your organization. One of your people deposited a large sum of money in a Swiss bank, and we found out and wondered why. So we started watching him. He led us, in a tortuous route, to you.”

Aaron nodded. “No point denying it if you’re convinced,” he said.

“The word is ‘Jubilee,’ Aaron,” Sims said. “Like with cherries.”

Aaron lit his pipe with the Zippo lighter he’d been carrying since the Battle of the Bulge. His hands were steady. “What do you intend to do with this theory of yours?”

“We intend to do our best to see that it doesn’t get out,” Sims said. “Not that we’re going to aid you in any way, you understand.”

“I understand.”

“But we want to know the time and date of execution.”

Aaron smiled. “I wasn’t intending to be executed,” he said.

“Everything we’ve got about Jubilee is in a protected file,” Sims said. “If you guys blow it, the file gets shredded and dumped.”

“You’re not helping or hindering, you’re just ignoring it and covering your ass. Is that it?”

Sims leaned forward. “Several of our mutual friends in this organization are very interested in your, ah, project and its outcome. But they won’t take a chance on being seen with you. I’m instructed to inform you that, after this meet, you’re to avoid coming to this building or contacting any CIA personnel in any way. If any Company people are in this with you—and I’m not asking—they are to withdraw. Now.”

“So that’s it,” Adams said.

“On the other hand,” Sims said, “we can’t neglect our obligation to the government—to this country, if you like.”

“Very patriotic,” Adams said dryly.

“That’s why we’re asking you to give us the date and time of your operation.”

“As you should very well know,” Adams said, “I’ve no idea of the date and time of my operation. There are a thousand things that could delay it—or advance it. When the stars are in their right conjunction and the entrail readings are favorable, then we march on Rome. But not before.”

“I understand,” Sims said. “That’s why we’re giving you a special phone number to call in when you know.”

“And a reason,” Adams said. “You still haven’t given me a reason. Just for old times’ sake isn’t good enough.”

“There are certain foreign governments that are sensitive to the internal, ah, politics of the United States government. They must be warned, or in some cases reassured, that this is purely an internal matter which doesn’t concern them.”

“That has occurred to me,” Adams admitted. “Are you saying that the Company will undertake to perform that function?”

“It’s our job,” Sims said. “That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you.”

“You realize that if we blow it, it’s bound to come out that someone in the Company knew something about it. One of those foreign governments is bound to mention it to someone.”

“It seems probable. Do your best not to blow it.”

Adams puffed on his pipe and watched the little clouds of gray smoke get sucked up by the air conditioning. “What’s the number?” he asked.

“Here,” Sims said, handing him a piece of paper. “Memorize it and burn it in this ashtray. Your code word is Kingfisher. Say it, followed by a date and time. Try to give us at least five hours’ warning. Cancel code will be just ‘Kingfisher Off,’ I guess.”

“Kingfisher?”

“Taken from a random list,” Sims said.

“Sure.” Adams lit a match to the phone number. “Be talking to you.”