The Last President: A Novel of an Alternative America (16 page)

Eleven o’clock the next morning Tank MacGregor, in answer to a presidential summons, appeared at the side gate to the White House and was immediately escorted to the West Wing. The President awaited him in the Oval Office, pacing the floor in front of his desk in short, furious steps. As MacGregor entered, the President retreated behind his desk and sat down, lacing his fingers together and breathing deeply.

MacGregor marched to the Presidents desk, came to a position of attention, saluted, then stood at ease. He wasn’t going to let the President forget for one second who was the career soldier and who was the civilian—no matter what rank his political office gave him. Three rows of ribbons gleamed from the breast of General Tank MacGregor’s dress-green jacket, topped by the ribbon for the Congressional Medal of Honor.

Three presidential advisers sat in leather-backed chairs at—for some reason—the far end of the long office. Sprawled across one chair, his long legs hooked over its low arms, was Uriah Vandermeer. Charles Ober was perched on the edge of another chair, his hands resting on the arms, elbows out, as though waiting for the order to stand. In a third chair, David Steward, the President’s counsel, sat neatly, arms folded, back straight, head erect, staring straight ahead. The three of them were frozen in position, as though afraid to make any motion or sound that might distract the President’s attention from the Army Chief of Staff standing in front of him.

“You sent for me, sir?” MacGregor said, calmly.

“You’re goddamn right I sent for you,” the President exploded. His face twitched as he tried to regain control of himself. His fingers unlaced and he made little chopping motions with his right hand that did not relate in any way to what he was saying. “General MacGregor,” he said, his thin lips freezing in what might have been meant for a smile, “we seem to have been acting at cross purposes for the last few hours, you and I.”

“Yes, sir,” MacGregor said.

“You, ah, realize what I’m talking about then?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Why then, can you explain—is there any possible way in hell—would you please tell me what it is you think you’ve been doing?”

“Yes, sir,” MacGregor said. “At oh-three-thirty hours this morning I sent a general order to every commandant of every Army base in the United States. That’s Eastern Daylight Savings Time, sir, which would have made it, for example, zero-zero-thirty hours local time in California.”

“Get on with it,” the President said.

“Yes, sir. In my order I canceled Operation Garden Plot, and gave specific instructions that no orders emanating from the presidential Office of Emergency Preparedness, or through any other channel outside the normal chain of command, were to be obeyed, and that any such orders were to be immediately forwarded to my office.”

“You did.”

“Yes, sir. I have a copy of the order here, if you’d like to examine—”

”No, thank you, General!” the President said, waving a teletype flimsy in his hand. “I have my own copy, thank you. I’m not totally without resources.” He stared up through his heavy eyebrows at MacGregor. “You didn’t think you could get away with this, did you?”

“That’s a matter of interpretation, sir,” MacGregor said.

Vandermeer sat up. “How’s that?” he said, sounding interested.

“It might seem to some of the interested parties in this, ah, misunderstanding,” MacGregor said steadily, “that it was not the Pentagon that was trying to get away with anything, but the Executive Office of the President.”

“Ah!” Vandermeer said, nodding his head judicially. “Good point.”

“Are you trying to tell me,” the President said, still making unrelated chopping gestures with his hands, “that there are more people involved in this conspiracy than yourself? That I have more disloyal high-ranking officers?”

“No, sir.”

“I will not have this, General MacGregor,” the President said. “I will not tolerate disloyalty in any government official, whether he’s in the Department of Agriculture or the United States Army.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Is that all you’re going to say, ‘No, sir’ and ‘Yes, sir’?”

“Do you want me to comment, sir?”

“You’re goddamn right I want you to comment. I want to know how the hell you found out about Garden Plot, and by what right you canceled a direct presidential order. Don’t just stand there in your goddamn greens with your goddamn Medal of Honor and the goddamn knife-edge crease in your trousers and that goddamn smug, superior look on your face and smirk at me. Tell me what the goddamn hell you thought you were doing. And how many of your fellow goddamn West Point career boobs are in it with you. You know, you’re not the only son of a bitch who was in the service. I was in the Navy during World War Two. On a destroyer escort. Just like that son of a bitch Kennedy, but they made a movie about him. Expendable. I’d say the son of a bitch was expendable.”

The President paused and looked up at MacGregor expectantly. MacGregor had no idea how to respond to the outburst, which had been mumbled in a low, almost expressionless monotone.

Charles Ober spoke up from his seat at the far end of the Oval Office. “Let me ask you a few specific questions, if I may, General MacGregor,” he said. “Make sure we’re all talking about the same thing.”

The President glanced back and forth between Ober and MacGregor as though weighing the two of them on some mental balance beam, and then nodded. “Yes,” he said, “good.”

MacGregor turned a quarter turn, so he could face Ober without turning his back on the President. “Go ahead,” he said.

“Please sit down, General,” Ober said.

MacGregor folded himself into a green-leather chair by the side of the President’s massive desk. “Right,” he said. “What are your questions?”

The President leaned forward across the desk, his head shaking slightly from side to side. “I could fire you,” he said. “You know I could fire you. For insubordination. I could probably have you court-martialed, when it comes to that.” He looked up. “Isn’t that right, David, couldn’t I have him court-martialed?”

“Yes, sir, Mr. President,” the President’s counsel said quietly from his chair. “You could certainly do that, sir.”

“So don’t you think that I’m without authority in this matter,” the President said. “I am the Commander-in-Chief.”

“A couple of questions, General MacGregor,” Ober said. “I don’t want you to in any way think of this as an inquisitorial proceeding. You can understand that the President feels that you have exceeded your authority and abused his trust in you. But you’re not a schoolchild and we’re not here to reprimand you. I’m sure you had a good reason or thought you had a good reason, for your actions. We’d like to know what that reason was. As you see, there’s no stenographer present and no recording equipment being used. This is a private discussion, and will go no further.”

“I understand that,” MacGregor said. For all their outward calm, Ober’s tapping foot and Vandermeer’s eyes, darting from speaker to speaker behind his glasses, betrayed their inner turmoil. The President and his men were more nervous and upset about this confrontation than he was. They have entered unknown territory, he thought. There is unfamiliar handwriting on the wall and they want me to interpret it MENE, MENE, TEKEL, UPHARSIN. They are weighed in the balance and found wanting. He thought he knew what the problem was: They didn’t know whether they were facing a private action by a stubborn Chief of Staff or a full-fledged revolt of the generals. They had attempted to use the military for what was essentially a civilian action by circumventing the chain of command, and the attempt had blown up in their faces.

Now they couldn’t afford to get tough with him—give him a direct order to commence Garden Plot, or just fire him outright—until they had probed the extent of the damage. And he was just the man to keep them guessing. It would certainly cost him his job, but he had been reconciled to that since he sent last night’s order. He didn’t think they’d dare try to pull his stars and, what the hell, he was ready to retire anyway, and spend the rest of his life stomping around the country as Tank MacGregor the legend. Spend his time speaking before any group that would listen. Reminding them that in order to stay free—and keep this great country free—they’d better keep one eye on the military and both eyes on the politicians.

“Our first question is, how did you find out that Garden Plot had been activated?” Ober asked.

You’re kidding! MacGregor thought. Aloud he said, “I received five separate messages.”

“Five?” Vandermeer sat forward. “Five?”

“Yes, sir. I think you’ll find it a common feeling among career officers that, ah, that the General Staff should have a good idea of everything that’s going on in the Army.”

“The second question,” Vandermeer said, taking over the questioning, “is on what basis did you decide to countermand Garden Plot?”

“It was my decision,” MacGregor said firmly. “Whatever advice I received from others, I made the decision and I alone am responsible for its consequences.” That should keep them guessing.

Vandermeer looked at Ober and shook his head slightly. Then he turned back to MacGregor. “Yes,” he said, “but why? You must have had powerful reasons, strong enough to override, ah, personal considerations.”

MacGregor smiled. “What you mean is, I knew I was laying my job on the line, so why did I do it? Is that right?”

“Something like that,” Vandermeer said.

“I am the President,” the President said.

“We did not anticipate an action like this on your part,” Vandermeer said. “Or, quite frankly, that it would be so effective. As far as we can tell, not one of our designated units has moved against its targets.”

“I’ll tell you why I did it,” MacGregor said. “Operation Garden Plot, carried out at this time in this way, would have politicized the Army. Using the military against a defined group of civilians—American citizens—who were not at the time actively engaged in rioting or guerrilla warfare, whatever their intentions might be for the future, would be bringing the Army into activities that every commander since George Washington has done his best to keep it out of.

“It’s an unacceptable precedent to use the Army against American civilians, either to round them up for arrest or to guard them in concentration camps.”

“Internment camps,” Ober corrected.

“Whatever. It’s not my job to comment on police policies within the United States, whatever I may think of them. But it is my job, as I see it, to prevent the use of the military for such functions.”

“Even to the point of disobeying your Commander-in-Chief?” Ober asked.

“Yes, sir. That precedent was established at Nuremberg in 1946.”

“Well,” Vandermeer said. “You’ve clearly given the matter a lot of thought.”

“That’s right,” MacGregor said.

Vandermeer stood up and stretched, then shook his head as though clearing it. “Here are the options as I see them, sir,” he said to the President. “We could fire General MacGregor here for disobeying a presidential order.”

“I could court-martial him,” the President said. He turned to stare at MacGregor. “I could court-martial you.”

“That’s certainly an option,” Vandermeer said.

“What else?” Ober asked Vandermeer. “What other options?” There was a slight artificial quality to the question, and MacGregor realized that he was seeing how the President’s top two advisers manipulated the President.

“We could ask General MacGregor under what conditions he’ll permit his Commander-in-Chief to continue carrying out his function as Chief Executive Officer of this country.”

Nicely loaded, MacGregor thought, admiringly.

Ober nodded. “Compromise is the art of good government,” he said. “Of course he will have to resign.”

MacGregor was not used to being discussed in the third person and he found it disconcerting. “I’m prepared to resign,” he said. “Are you prepared to give me your assurance that the Army will be kept out of the concentration-camp business?”

“Internment camps,” Ober said.

“You will resign for reasons of health?” Vandermeer asked.

“I’ll retire,” MacGregor said. “I’ve been in the Army long enough.”

“I think we should accept that, sir,” Vandermeer told the President.

The President leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes. When he opened them again his whole face had changed; the nervous tic gone, the anger lines disappeared. His lips creased into a genuine smile and his eyes lit up as though he were seeing MacGregor for the first time. “We made a mistake in judgment,” he told MacGregor. “You won’t hold that against us, will you?”

“No, sir,” MacGregor said.

“You know,” the President said, his voice firm and clear with no trace of the petulant anger in it, “all the men who have sat behind this desk have had great plans. There’s not one of them—I’m sure of it—who didn’t have a vision of what this country could become under his leadership.

“And we’ve all made mistakes and gone perhaps too far in pursuit of his goal or that goal or the other goal, but even the mediocre presidents have, on balance, helped this country more than they’ve hurt it. And the great presidents, the few truly great presidents, have brought this country through trying crises and made it richer, stronger, and greater than it was before.”

“That’s so, sir,” Ober said.

“You know,” the President told MacGregor, “General Eisenhower once said that he would rather have won the Congressional Medal of Honor than have been President of the United States. Out of respect for that, and out of respect for your fine—your outstanding—career as a soldier.…” He stood up. By reflex the other four men in the room stood with him.

“Good-bye, General MacGregor,” the President said, extending his hand. “I’m glad we’ve had this little talk.” He shook hands, three quick up-and-down motions, bending from the elbow. “I shall regret losing you, but your wish to retire shall certainly be honored. I’ll make the announcement at my next press conference.”

“Good-bye, sir,” MacGregor said.

“I will speak to Congress about awarding you your fifth star upon retirement. You’ll be one of America’s few living five-star generals. Sweeten the pot.”