The General's President (15 page)

FOURTEEN

The president had drawn the heavy drapes back, and the dawnlight was stormy gray through curtains. Separating them, he peered out across sodden lawn. A blustery wind swirled the first falling leaves, and flung irregular flurries of raindrops sharply against the window. "Don't let me talk you into anything, Babe," he said.

"No, it's a good idea," she answered. "I like this weather too, and I haven't had much exercise since we left home." She pulled running pants onto legs that were longer than her husband's. She was tall, and still fine looking. "I'm going to take it easy though."

He shrugged into his warmup jacket, then sat down and put on jogging shoes. "Me too. But I really need it; all I've done lately is move papers. I'm going to start either jogging or swimming every day." Another spatter of rain rattled against glass, and Haugen grinned as he got up. "You don't suppose our guardians will try to protect us from the rain, do you?"

She laughed at an image: two Secret Service men jogging beside them, umbrellas bobbing up and down as they ran. "They take their work so seriously! All of them do. We shouldn't laugh, even privately between us."

Moments later, four sober-faced Secret Service agents met them in the Stair Hall. Warned, they'd donned raincoats. No umbrellas were evident, but two of them held each a short jacket. The president hadn't seen one before, but he realized what they had to be: flakjackets.

"We're supposed to wear those to jog in the yard?" Haugen asked.

"Yes sir, Mr. President. Actually, Mr. Ashley would prefer that you stay indoors except when necessary."

The president's expression became curious. "Is this standard, or what? What's the story?"

"Well, sir, there've been threatening letters. Quite a few; more than usual. And while most of that sort of thing is just some nut blowing off steam with his pen, you can figure there'll be those few who'll try to follow through. And the FBI's reported more than the usual number of threats, too."

The president nodded, thoughtful now. It made sense that this would happen with a president who'd entered office as he had, and with dictatorial powers, at that. Pulling off his warmup jacket, he put out his right arm and Wayne helped him into the flakjacket. It was moderately heavy, but not unreasonably so, considering its function. Haugen looked at his wife. She was doing the same. "Are you sure you still want to come along?" he asked. "You could be sitting in front of a log fire in the library, working on your book."

She shook her head. "I have lots of time for that." She touched his arm, smiling. "Whither thou goest..."

Protected now against worse than chill, they went out a south, ground-floor door and began to jog easily on the close-trimmed grass, the rain cold on their faces. It brought a scene back to the president's mind, of walking through autumn forest, a four-foot long, one-man crosscut saw over a shoulder, axe and pickaroon gripped in his other hand, handmade birch felling wedges tightening a hip pocket. The rain and the air had felt much like today's, but then he'd worn a lined denim barn jacket—of cotton, not some military high-tech material—and physically he'd felt
strong
, beyond challenge. And the smells had been different—wet balsam fir, balm of Gilead olive-barked and pungent, the thick layer of sodden leaves underfoot.

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?"