The General's President Read online

  A grouse had clucked at him from the ground a few yards away, not smart enough to fly at his approach. He'd killed it with a throw of his pickaroon, opened and cleaned out its abdominal cavity with a thrust and flick of hard fingers, and eaten it later for supper.

  He'd been ... twenty-three then, had cut and piled 276 sticks of popple pulpwood that day; close to two semi loads. It had been good cutting, with virtually no cull, the timber too dense for much underbrush or many limbs, the trunks slender enough that he could saw and manhandle the hundred-inch-long sticks freely and rapidly, but stout enough that the piles grew quickly into sleighloads waiting for winter's snow.

  He chuckled inwardly. Oldtimers' disease, he told himself The symptom is perfect recall of anything twenty or more years ago. But he'd always had that kind of memory—detailed, visual, ready when wanted. It had been useful; still was.

  And in a year, what would he remember of today? Today would be the day he'd first worn a flakjacket, first met with the leaders of the Joint Senate and House Committee on Taxation. He'd be asking them to draw up a model tax bill—one they'd like to see if they had full authority to start from scratch without pressure from anyone. Because they wouldn't have to push it through Congress, through a snowstorm of lobbyists.

  Make it simple and rational, he'd tell them. And do it inside of six weeks. He wondered what they'd come up with. Or whether they'd tell him to go jump.

  They were about as knowledgeable as you could hope to find, but how creative? How free thinking?

  A gust threw rain against his face, bringing him into the here and now. He laughed silently at himself and began to look about him at the beauty of the moment. Beside him, Lois's cheeks were pink from cold rain.

  He jogged on, giving no thought at all to any hidden gunman.

  ***

  The president finished scanning a report that Milstead had hand-carried in, then took a drink of half warm coffee. "Charles," he said, "this morning one of my keepers told me there'd been an unusual number of threats against the president's life. How many more? Double? Triple?"

  Milstead looked sharply at him. "Who told you that? That sort of thing's supposed to come only from your security chief."

  Haugen's eyes were mild but unyielding. "I'll answer your question after you've answered mine."

  Milstead wasn't easily flustered. "Sorry, Mr. President. There've been roughly four or five times as many—still not an awful lot. Not as many as we might have anticipated; it certainly hasn't become an emergency situation. Most of them are from parlor psychotics who sit and fantasize but never move. But we need to remember that there'll always be that one or two percent, most of them fortunately incompetent."

  Haugen nodded. "Fine. That's about what I'd expect, and about what I was told. I'm not going to tell you which of them told me, because he was answering my direct question. When I ask someone a question, I expect them to answer it. Besides which, I'm even less enthused about betraying a confidence than I am about withholding something from someone I depend on, like you."

  He grinned then, grimness gone. "How does that sit with you, Charles?"

  Milstead had gotten used to his mercurial chief; he smiled back, though not broadly. "If you say so, Mr. President." Then, carefully casual, "President Donnelly didn't want to hear about threats. They upset him."

  "I don't upset easily, Charles, but I don't believe in wallowing in bad news either. So about threats—no point in distracting me with them needlessly. Just tell me what I need to know, and what I ask for."

  The president smiled ruefully as Milstead left. At least there should be a vice president by evening. Both houses of Congress were to vote today, and while there'd been some debate, Cromwell was supposed to be a shoo-in.

  ***

  It was already nearly dark—daylight savings had just given way to standard time—when the small pickup truck drove up the graveled, puddled, woods-lined driveway and stopped in front of the old farmhouse. The headlights switched off. Both cab doors opened, then slammed shut behind a woman and man who hurried around through the rain to take a box each of groceries from the camper shell in back.

  On the porch, the man found the tattered screendoor hooked, and kicked its frame impatiently, then stood muttering until a man came and opened it. They went in. "Sorry, Mark," the man said. "Tris just sort of hooks it automatically."

  Two others, a woman and man, were sitting at the large kitchen table, beers open in front of them. The woman got up and helped stow the groceries; the man watched. When everything was put away, Mark opened the refrigerator again and took out two bottles of beer, uncapping them with an opener mounted on the counter. He handed one to the woman he'd arrived with. They too sat down then, Mark's face surly.

  "Tris," he said, "don't hook the fucking screendoor, okay? It doesn't do any good anyway; hell, even the cats go in and out through the rips. And I don't like to come home from work and find myself locked out of my own house."

  "Sorry," she said.

  He turned to the third man. "So what'd you hear from Mr. Mystery?"

  The man smirked his customary smirk. "No sweat. The deal is wrapped. He's got it guaranteed; it's just not delivered. It's coming from someone big, not some two-bit speculator."

  "And we can definitely haul it in the pickup?"

  "No problem. It ain't Fat Man, you know. It'll be in, like a big suitcase, and the bomb itself only weighs forty kilos. A pickup like ours could haul a dozen of them."

  Again Mark scowled. Ours. The asshole. Yours was the word; the pickup was his, Mark's, just like the house. Just like the groceries and beer. He considered for a moment saying something about it, but didn't, because Rafe was the man with the contact. You had to be willing to put up with certain things for a contact like that. And he had a source for gas, too, all they needed.

  "Rafe," said Mark's girl, "how dangerous is it, hauling it around like that?"

  "It's not dangerous. Just don't sit on it very long." He laughed. "You'd really have hot pants if you sat on it too long. We get it, load it in the Cessna, and Phil and Tris fly down to Calvert Cliffs and drop it down a stack."

  Phil looked alarmed at that. "You mean I've got to drop it down a stack?! Shit, man, the odds of..."

  Rafe laughed. "It's a figure of speech. Don't be so literal. You don't have to drop it down a fucking stack, for chrissake. Like I said before: All we want to do is hit the building if we can—the roof. Those places are really built heavy; lots and lots of thick concrete. But if we hit the building, we've maybe got a chance to blow the piles. What a bang that'd make! Make old Chernobyl look like nothing, and wipe out all those millionaire summer homes along the bay."

  His tone turned patient. "We know you're not flying a B1 bomber with a computerized bombsight. You yell when you've lined it up, Tris releases the latch that lets the bomb slide out, and you fly the hell out of there while it floats down under the parachute. Shouldn't be any more trouble than when you practiced dropping the dummies on that sandspit. And if you miss, you miss; our part of the bargain's been fulfilled. It's twenty kilotons, you know? So if it doesn't blow the piles, it'll still blow the place to hell, and scare shit out of the whole country, especially the atomic energy pushers and the government."

  He laughed. "And the goddamn dictator of the United States. If the wind's right... It's only fifty miles from Washington, and maybe he sleeps with his window open." He laughed again, perhaps at the idea that a window would make any difference.

  Mark had registered the pronouns Rafe used: it was we hit, and we'll wreck the place; but you have to, and if you miss. Nor had he missed the comments on Mary's having hot pants. Bastard.

  "How long before we can actually pick up the stuff?" Tris asked.

  "He said three weeks at the most. Maybe no more than a week."

  Mark scowled. "And he's just giving this to us? It costs nothing?"

  Rafe smirked, but his eyes were hard. Mark always backed down before those eyes; he'd seen eyes like those when he'
d been in San Quentin, and nowhere else. "That's not quite right, Marky baby," Rafe answered. "It only costs us nothing. Somebody paid through the nose for it. His contact has the stuff, and contracted with him to get it delivered on the plant. Bet your ass he's getting paid for arranging it with us; probably a lot. And as the delivery people, we get the bomb for nothing, and get to blow up a nuclear power plant."

  Mark subsided. But he couldn't help wondering where the stuff was coming from. From the commies maybe; Rafe could be KGB. Or maybe from the Arabs. They wouldn't like nuclear power; it was competition; and they loved to stick it to the United States, too. Well, whoever. Once they'd turned the stuff over, whoever it was could go to hell. The main thing was to stop nuclear power in America.

  FIFTEEN

  "Thank you, gentlemen. That will be all." The president got up, and the others followed suit: Greg Lambert and the Secretaries of the Treasury, Commerce, and Labor. Commerce and Labor rose tiredly; this man in the White House was damned difficult.

  By contrast, Lambert, the White House Assistant for Policy Development, was cheerful. Though under Haugen he was only an advisor, editor, and source of information, he enjoyed watching the president's mind at work, charging ahead, questioning and absorbing data on the run, seeming rarely to doubt his own judgment.

  And Lambert found a certain perverse pleasure in the president's independent toughness. Sandforth and Komisky—Commerce and Labor—had requested this meeting to make one last try at changing the old man's mind. Because once tonight's speech was made, he and they were committed. He'd listened patiently at first to the same arguments in new clothes. Then his jaw had begun to clench, to jut. Still, he'd heard them out; they'd have to give him that.

  To Haugen, cabinet secretaries were not makers of government policy. They were administrators of major executive departments. Because they were knowledgeable, their input was to be sought and listened to, but he felt no need to be guided by them or swayed by them. He could get input from any number of experts—had and would—and made his own decisions.

  They filed from the room, the president last. General Hammaker was waiting for him outside the door. While Lambert and the secretaries went down the hall to the elevator, Haugen stopped.

  "What have you got Ernie?"

  "The Soviets have reached Teheran from the east. They rolled into the city and basically leveled the government district."

  "And the Ayatollah?"

  "He got out, apparently yesterday, and surfaced in Islamabad an hour ago."

  "Good."

  "He made a speech there, in Arabic. I left a videotape of it with Martinelli; it has an English translation. It'll probably be all over the world on the evening news. He really laid it on the Kremlin; called for an Islamic jihad against the Great Russian Satan."

  Haugen, tired, grunted, and started for his office with Hammaker beside him. A Farsi-speaking Persian, Haugen mused, addressing in Arabic an audience whose native tongue was Urdu. Arabic was, in its way, as big an international language as English, but the nations who shared it as their first or second language managed to fight each other as much as any other group of countries in the world. So much for the concept that having a single planetary language would engender world peace.

  "D'you think anything will come of it?" he asked. "Jalal's speech, that is?"

  "Not any declarations of war, that's for sure. There'll probably be some verbal artillery aimed at the Soviets. Chances are some KGB and GRU people will get picked up and disappear, and it's barely possible we might run into a little more friendliness. It might even reduce the terrorism frequency a bit, or redirect it at the Soviets, especially in their Moslem regions. Time will tell.

  "This is probably the biggest PR goof the Kremlin ever made; worse than Hungary." Hammaker fell silent then, caught again in the question of why the Soviets would do something so stupid. But then, why did nations, rulers, people in general, do some of the stupid things they did?

  They arrived outside Martinelli's office. "I'll look at the tape now," Haugen told him. "It'll give me a change of pace before I put together this evening's speech. And thanks."

  Hammaker saluted and left. As he headed for his office, he thought about what the president had just said. Change of pace before he put together this evening's speech! Judas Priest! The old sonofabitch certainly didn't require a lot of lead time.

  ***

  Jumper Cromwell had been sworn in as vice president, and introduced to his new office and secretary down the hall from the president's; and his new office and secretary in the old Executive Office Building; and his new office and secretary in the Capitol Building just off the Senate floor; and his whole damn suite of vice-presidential offices and staff in the Dirksen Office Building.

  He wasn't going to get involved in any of it, more than he absolutely had to. Which was very damned little. Haugen agreed, he was the president's backup and unofficial national security advisor, and that was it. He'd had to leave active military service, and of course his chairmanship, before swearing in—a constitutional requirement. But he'd arranged for a small office in the Pentagon, and to stay on all the routing lists he'd been on before. To keep up with things.

  The phone buzzed on his Pentagon desk. He reached; tapped keys. "Cromwell," he said.

  "General, this is Major Chilberg. It's about our project. I have something to give you."

  Jesus, Cromwell thought, what a tangled web we weave. Or try to unravel. "Good. I'll meet you here in my office. Right away."

  "Yes sir."

  Cromwell tapped another key and returned to the contents of his IN basket. The paper kept flowing, regardless of the real world. The country was still wobbly after taking a standing eight-count; there was war in Iran; and the Readiness Command wasn't ready, although it soon would be again, with the National Guard taking over the entire internal peace-keeping job. Even if the Red Fleet was sailing up the Potomac, paper would flow in the Pentagon. It was part of an insatiable information hunger.

  He scanned another memo, initialed it, and tossed it in his OUT basket. Chilberg was in charge of his unofficial research on the Holist Council; there was no guessing what he'd gotten hold of.

  ***

  The president's communicator buzzed. "Yes Jeanne?"

  "I found Father Flynn. He's here now."

  "Good. Send him in."

  A moment later the priest entered. "Sit down, Steve," said the president. "Coffee?"

  "No thanks."

  "I've been ignoring you. My apologies. I'm still at that stage where I'm running and don't dare slow down. Actually I've gotten on top of things somewhat: I'm through the worst of the briefing phase—the urgent, four-alarm part. I've worked out and issued operating procedures and delegations of authority that save me a fair amount of time and trouble, and I've gotten the feel of the people who work for me. Canned a couple of them, and in general gotten the machinery somewhat tuned up and oiled.

  "I'll tell you what," he added, "Donnelly had some good people with him, especially Milstead and Martinelli. They've gotten to be like my right and left arms."

  Flynn nodded. "For me, being in the White House has been more like a vacation than a job. I'm enjoying more time for study and reading than I've had since seminary." He cocked his head and looked Haugen over. "You've developed little satchels under your eyes, Arne—not enough sleep or too much reading—but other than that you look well."

  Haugen grinned. "I keep making resolutions to sleep more and exercise, but other things keep getting in the way. My health is not top priority; the business of living outranks it."

  The Jesuit's eyebrows raised. "And what is the business of living?"

  Haugen's eyes held energies. Father Flynn marveled that this man could have so much life at his age. As if he wasn't using it up; as if he created it as he went.

  "The business of life? It's whatever you make it," Haugen replied. "Man wasn't born to take care of himself, he was born to do things."

  He chuckled. "My firs
t week here, with everything that was happening, Singleton tells me to come in for a physical. I told him I'd had one in August and I was too damn busy now. When he started to argue, I told him to back off, that I'd call him, he wasn't to call me.

  "A person does need to keep the machinery functional, but there are times when maintenance and repairs have to be postponed, backlogged, to get more important things done when they need to be."

  The priest nodded. "I have no argument with that. But I hope you don't postpone too long. You're remarkably fit and strong for a man your age. Or a man of fifty, as far as that's concerned. Just don't squander yourself."

  The president raised his right hand. "I promise," he said. "Matter of fact, I'm flying John Zale in from Duluth. You've met John; he was my executive secretary there. He's going to be my personal expeditor here. I've worked out his job description with Milstead so they won't step on each other's toes. It'll give me more time and take some pressures off Charles; he's too valuable to use up."

  Haugen's face went serious then. "This is the night I give the speech on the economic measures we talked about, and right now I've got a case of nervous stomach.

  "Will you be watching?"

  "By all means, Mr. President."

  "Good. You know, I've seldom operated rushed like this before. I'll tell you a secret though: It's exciting as hell. Using the term 'hell' figuratively.

  "Meanwhile if there's anything I do that bothers you, that seems unethical or otherwise wrong, I hope you'll let me know. I'm depending on you to."

  The Jesuit's blue-gray eyes were steady on the president. "I will, Mr. President," he said. "I will."

  ***

  The White House broadcast room required little preparation for a telecast; little more than lighting a fire in the fireplace. After a late supper with his wife, the president took the stairs down from the presidential apartment, was made up for the cameras, and went in. At 9 p.m. eastern time, 6 p.m. Pacific, he was on his feet beside the fireplace, and the telecast began.