The Last President: A Novel of an Alternative America (20 page)

On Thursday, September 30, at a quarter past seven in the morning, limousines began arriving at the North Entrance to the White House to discharge people attending the President’s prayer breakfast. The various senators, representatives, and important lobbyists were shown by the White House staff into the State Dining Room as they arrived.

At seven-thirty, the President, flanked by Ober, Vandermeer, and Gildruss, entered the State Dining Room from the side door leading to the Family Dining Room and took his place at the head of the long table. His chiefs of staff took their seats at the foot, Ober and Gildruss on the left and Vandermeer on the right. Congressman Obediah Porfritt (R-Neb.), seated at the middle of the table, his back to the Healy portrait of a brooding Lincoln, kept his hands folded in his lap and wondered what he was doing there. Not that he was entirely
persona non grata
at the White House, but there were so many
personae
far more
gratissimae
than himself that the list seldom reached down as far as his name.

The President seemed in splendid sorts this morning as he looked out at his assembled guests and nodded somberly. He raised his hands to the level of his chin and clasped them together in a washing gesture to be sure he had everyone’s attention. “Good morning, Senators, Congressman, gentlemen,” he said.

“Good morning, Mr. President,” the table replied in ragged unison.

“As most of you know,” the President said, “I’ve had these prayer breakfasts for members of my Cabinet and members of Congress several times during my years in this office. They have been smaller gatherings, held in the Family Dining Room. I think of them as attempts to commune with our Maker, whatever religion you may happen to be, and, in a very real sense, as opportunities to communicate with each other.

“During my few remaining months in office I’m going to hold these larger gatherings on a regular basis. I think you—especially those of you who have not been to a previous breakfast—will agree that the increased sense of community, of togetherness, and of spiritual values makes the time spent well worthwhile.

“And now let us pray. For that purpose, I have asked the Reverend Dr. Hake Smith to lead us.”

The President nodded, and a tall man with silver hair, whom Porfritt recognized as a popular television evangelist, stood up at the President’s right hand and sunk his chin deeply into the sharp knot of his fifty-dollar Baroness Silva tie. “O Lord!” he cried.

Not seeing the face of the Lord in the polished maple table, he lifted his eyes to the gold chandelier hanging above. “O Lord our Father, hear us poor sinners as we beseech your forgiveness,” he intoned. “Help us to make the right decisions in these troubled times. Guide us through the valley of darkness.…”

While Dr. Smith continued his sonorous instructions to the Lord, Vandermeer left his seat and quietly made his way around the table to the only empty place, a chair between Senator Jensen and Congressman Porfritt. “Where’s Kathy?” he whispered to Jensen. He removed his hornrimmed glasses and squinted at Jensen in great concern. “I thought she was coming with you.”

“I asked her to pick up some papers for me,” Jensen replied in an undertone. “She’ll be here shortly.”

Vandermeer nodded. “You understand,” he said. “I expected to see her come in with you.”

“I know,” Jensen said. “I’m a father myself. She’s a fine little lady, your daughter. If she wants to come to work for me full time when she gets out of school, she has a job. I’ve told her so.”

“I’m very proud of her,” Vandermeer said. “Thank you.” He went back to his seat.

At eight o’clock, just as the scrambled eggs and bacon were being served in the State Dining Room, Kevin Ryan took the subway from the Dirksen Office Building to the Capitol basement. “It’s a bunch of bullshit, Tom,” he told Senator Clay, who was waiting for him in the Senate snack bar.

“You know that,” Clay said, pausing between bites of his sweet roll, “and I know that, but the Great American Public, he don’t know that.”

“You think the Great American Public is waiting to see Arnold and me shake hands and come out fighting, like a pair of plump middleweights? I wonder what put this bug up Artie’s ass?”

“I think he just got trapped by his own rhetoric,” Clay said. “He found himself telling some reporter that the two candidates should heal this country’s ills by appearing together to slap each other on the back and declare that the good of the nation is more important than any campaign.”

“I’ll bet this was the President’s maneuver,” Ryan said, gulping down a cup of black coffee.

“Not this time,” Clay said. “He’s scheduled a big prayer breakfast for this morning. You know he’d never go into competition with himself.”

They went upstairs to the Majority Leader’s office, and Ryan carefully closed the door behind him. “This smells wrong,” he insisted. “Up till now Artie’s theme has been that I’m a crypto-Communist, a child molester, and have secret plans to fluoridate the country’s water supply. Suddenly he wants to shake hands with me.”

“Perhaps it’s occurred to him that you’re going to win,” Clay said. “Perhaps he wants an ambassadorship in your administration. In about ten minutes we’ll know.”

There was a knock on the door and Ryan opened it. A young girl with long blonde hair stood outside. “Hi,” she said. “I’m Kathy Vandermeer, Senator Jensen’s assistant.”

“We’ve met,” Ryan said, smiling. “Once, briefly, at Senator Jensen’s house.”

“I wasn’t sure you’d remember,” Kathy said. She turned to Senator Clay. “Senator Jensen asked me to pick up his workup on S-47. Mrs. Modell says you borrowed it to have a copy made.”

“That’s right,” Clay said. “Lets see, it should be here somewhere—”

”No hurry,” Kathy said.

At twenty past eight, a white, unmarked panel truck pulled to the curb on Delaware Avenue, a block away from the Capitol. Calvin Middler slid from the passenger’s seat and into the back of the truck. “You sure you’re over that mark?” he asked, licking his lips nervously.

“Sure,” Zonya told him. “Right where we’re supposed to be.”

“Right,” Middler said. He stared out of the truck’s back window. There before him was the Senate wing of the Capitol and, looming over it, the great Capitol dome. No question, he was going to make a name for himself today.

At twenty-five past eight, the White House stewards began clearing away the remains of the scrambled eggs. Vandermeer rose and walked stiffly down the table to the empty seat his daughter should have been sitting in. “Kathy hasn’t arrived?”

Senator Jensen looked at his watch. “I don’t understand it,” he said. “She just had to stop at my office to pick up a document. Of course, she may have had to go over to the Senate Chamber to get it; that might have delayed her a bit. Still—”

”The Senate Chamber?” Vandermeer clutched the side of Jensen’s chair and his face went white.

“Yes. Is something wrong?”

“No, no. I’m just—it must be—indigestion. Something I just ate. If you’ll excuse me—”

”Do you need help?” Jensen asked.

“No. I’ll be all right. I’d just better go and take something.” Vandermeer, looking dazed, walked out into the hall. Once the door was closed behind him he dashed down a flight of stairs and entered the Map Room, where he dropped into a chair and picked up an extension phone. “This is Vandermeer,” he said. “Get me the sergeant-at-arms’s office at the Senate. Quick!” He took his watch off and stared at the face. It was now twenty-seven minutes past eight.

At twenty-nine past eight Ryan sighed. “Might as well get it over with,” he said. “Just think, twenty television cameras on the floor of the Senate just to catch my expression when I shake hands with Artie Arnold.”

“They’re ready to record your inane remarks, too,” Clay said. “And for God’s sake, don’t say anything intelligent. You want the Vice-President of the United States to look bad?”

“You shouldn’t make fun of poor Mr. Arnold,” Kathy Vandermeer said. “He’s really a nice old man.”

Clay laughed. “Don’t ever tell him that,” he said. “It would hurt him worse than losing this election. He thinks he’s hot stuff with the ladies. Calling him a nice old man would be more unkind than all the nasty things we’ve been saying about him.”

A Senate page caught sight of them as they left Clay’s office. “Oh, Miss Vandermeer,” he said, running over to the group. “Would you please go over to the Sergeant-at-Arms’ office? Your father is on the phone.”

At exactly eight-thirty, Calvin Middler pulled the arming pin from the bulbous gold nose of the ATX-3 antitank rocket and took one last squint through the sighting reticle. This is it, baby,” he said. “We’re in the history books!” And he kicked open the rear doors to the panel truck and squeezed the trigger.

For a second nothing happened. Then the rocket rose slowly into the air, the brilliant white flame of its exhaust searing the inside of the truck for a long moment as it pulled away from its launcher. Calvin felt the blast scorching his exposed hands and face, and he saw a universe of pure white that instantly etched through to a red afterimage and faded to black as his retinas burned out.

“Zonya!” he screamed. “Zonya, get us out of here. I can’t see! I can’t—”

”Calvin!” Zonya yelled from the front seat. “You’re on fire!” Grabbing an army blanket from behind the seat, she scrambled over the transmission hump to wrap it around him.

The rocket ascended slowly and deliberately, disappearing from sight over the roof of the Senate wing of the Capitol. Then, with a crumping sound that seemed to be wrenched from the bowels of the earth, the roof and top floors of the Senate wing disappeared in a ball of smoke and flame. Debris exploded outward through the upper-floor windows, parts of the marble façade were thrust out with such force that they landed half a mile away. Several of the outer columns collapsed as the explosion reached them. Sections of the Capitol dome were lofted high into the air. Then the remaining mass of the Capitol dome collapsed, and jagged sections of the facing sloughed off onto the lawn.

Calvin Middler’s face was black, mottled with angry red patches. Zonya sobbed and beat at what was left of his hair with the blanket, but Calvin just stared sightlessly out the open back door of the truck and muttered, “That son of a bitch! That dirty son of a bitch,” over and over like an obscene mantra.

“We’ve got to get out of here,” Zonya screamed at him. “Do you understand? We’ve got to get away from here! I’ve never seen anything like this. Christ, Calvin, what have we done?”

“I can’t see,” Calvin said. “I can’t see. That son of a bitch! He knew. He must have.”

Across the street from them a fire hydrant suddenly burst, sending a torrent of water in an arcing path in front of the truck.

“I’ve got to get us out of here,” Zonya said. “Wrap the blanket around you and hold on to something. I’ll get the doors.”

“I can’t,” Calvin said plaintively, holding his hands up before his sightless eyes. “There’s no feeling in my fingers.”

“Oh, my God!” Zonya said, putting her fist in her mouth to choke back a scream. Calvin’s hands were burned black, and large blisters were forming under the scabs. The tips of his fingers were gone.

George Warren appeared at the back door of the truck. There was a revolver in his white-gloved hand. “You two did very well,” he said.

Calvin Middler turned his head from side to side like a bird. “George?” he said. “You fucking son of a bitch, is it you?”

“Can you get us out of here?” Zonya demanded. She held up her own hands, which were blistering from wrapping the blanket around Middler. “I don’t think I can drive.”

“Very brave,” Warren said. He lifted the gun.

“It
is
you, you son of a bitch!” Calvin cried. Warren shot him through the chest. Zonya turned and dived for the driver’s seat. Warren aimed carefully. His bullet caught her in the back of the head and came out the left eye.

Warren gingerly tossed the gun into the truck. “’Bye now,” he said.

PRESIDENT CANCELS ELECTION

VOWS THAT “TERROR WILL NEVER

RULE THIS COUNTRY”

Special to The New York Times

WASHINGTON, Oct. 4—In a televised press conference today the President announced that he has sent to Congress an executive order announcing the suspension of the upcoming presidential elections and asking for a vote of confidence from both houses for this action.

“Both political parties must have time to bind their wounds and bury their dead,” the President said, referring to the atomic missile that was fired on the Senate last Thursday, claiming the lives of Vice-President Arthur Arnold and Senator Kevin Ryan, the presidential nominees of the two major parties.

“New nominating conventions must be held and new candidates picked. But before this happens, the reign of terror must be ended. Terror will never rule this country,” the President vowed.

Among victims positively identified, in addition to Senator Ryan and Vice-President Arnold, is Katherine Vandermeer, 21-year-old daughter of the President’s domestic policy chief, who was working as a public-relations aide to Senator Jensen. The death toll now stands at 213.

ATOMIC MISSILE VERIFIED

The Pentagon, Oct. 4 (UPI)

The Army verified today that the weapon found in the back of the truck manned by two young terrorists was an experimental model ATX-3 rocket launcher, which fires a tactical rocket with a nuclear warhead.

“These weapons are in limited production for testing purposes,” an Army spokesman said. “They are a battlefield weapon, with a range of about one thousand yards, designed to allow one infantry man to have enough firepower to neutralize a company of tanks.”

He said that, to the best of the Army’s knowledge, all of these weapons are accounted for, and there are none missing.

Dressed in the faded black corduroys and sweat shirt that were his evening jogging costume, Aaron Adams loped around the corner and proceeded at a steady, rhythmic pace down the tree-lined Chevy Chase street. He was well into the second mile of his three-mile ritual and was pleased to note that he wasn’t even slightly out of breath. The street was empty and quiet, and fairly dark except for the occasional streetlight and the sporadic spill of brightness from a picture window in one of the big houses.

This early-evening quiet was not normal for the bureaucrats of official Washington, but it had grown common in the past few months. People stayed home more now, minded their own business. You didn’t want to go to a party and say the wrong things to the wrong man after one too many drinks. Far better not to go.

As Aaron approached the next corner he saw a car with its hood up and a man in sports clothes fiddling with the engine. “Need a hand?” he called, jogging closer.

The man looked up from his fiddling. “Good evening, Aaron,” he said, wiping his hands on a piece of paper toweling draped over the fender.

Aaron stopped, and for a second he felt a touch of fear. Thru he recognized the speaker. “Tank!” he said. “Tank MacGregor.” He smiled. “A better evening than I’d thought.”

MacGregor slammed down the hood of his car. “I hope you don’t mind my interrupting your evening run,” he said. “I’d like to talk with you. Get into the car.”

As they drove off down the street, Aaron leaned back and examined the general’s profile. “You have the makings of a born conspirator,” he said. “I hope it’s nothing trivial.”

“I don’t want to seem melodramatic,” MacGregor said. “I wanted to make sure that we were neither observed nor overheard.”

“The car…?” Aaron said.

“I had a couple of techs from Fort Meade come out and check it for bugs this afternoon,” MacGregor said.

Aaron pursed his lips. “I see,” he said. “What are we going to talk about?”

General MacGregor stared through the windshield and concentrated on his driving for a few minutes. Aaron waited silently for him to speak. “The President of the United States,” he said finally, “has no intention of leaving office and holding a general election anytime in the near future. In order to preserve constitutional democracy, or whatever shreds of it we can salvage, he must be removed.”

Aaron was silent for some immeasurable length of time. “Removed,” he said. His voice sounded weak, and he coughed and repeated, “Removed.”

“Yes.”

“Well,” Aaron said. “I’m certainly glad it was nothing trivial. Can you prove your, ah, contention?”

“Yes. Certainly to your satisfaction.”

“What do you intend to do about it?”

MacGregor pulled the car over to the side of the road and stopped, keeping the motor running. “I’m not in a position to do too much about it,” he said, turning and staring intently at Aaron. “I will, of course, give you whatever help I can.”

“I see,” Aaron said quietly. “I’m the expert at running coups, so it’s on my head.”

MacGregor seemed to shrink a little in his seat, and there was a strange, almost frightened expression on his face. “Aaron,” he said, “I can’t run a coup myself. Don’t you see what it would mean if I succeeded? Our country would never survive the precedent. The next time a MacArthur disagreed with a Truman, would he let himself be fired—or would he ride down Pennsylvania Avenue on his white horse and pound on the gates of the White House to let him in?”

Aaron nodded. “I see what you mean,” he said. “I hadn’t thought it out.”

“Besides,” MacGregor said, “I’m no good at intrigue.”

“About your theory that the President doesn’t intend to leave office,” Aaron said. “I know that he’s stalling, but that’s not the same as saying he’s usurped the office.”

“I’m afraid that, for a change, I have some information that you lack,” General MacGregor said, shifting back into gear and moving the car slowly down the almost empty road.

“Yes?”

“That ATX-3 missile that blew out the North Wing of the Capitol and precipitated this constitutional crisis—do you know where it came from?”

“I know what the Bowker committee came up with,” Aaron said.

“Forget about the so-called heist of the missile by the People’s Revolutionary Brigade. It’s a cover story. The truth is much more complex. Let me trace it out for you,” MacGregor said. “A colonel name of Diton was in charge of the Special Weapons Depot at Fort Dix. The man is a rabid anti-Communist, and he was suckered with a plan to save—I think it was Argentina—from the Red Rabble. He released two ATX-3s to his buddy General Netherby of the White Sands Proving Ground for ‘training and practice,’ of course removing the atomic warheads and returning them to storage. Except that it was two dummies that were returned to storage. General Netherby made out the paperwork stating that the two missiles—fitted with dummy warheads—were test-fired. Then he took them off base in his camper.

“The missiles and their atomic warheads were reunited in New Jersey, and then turned over to a Carlos Muentis of New York and Buenos Aires. At this point a lot of money changed hands, proving that it can be profitable to be patriotic. Señor Muentis, however, did not ship the weapons south. Instead he almost immediately handed them over to one Edward St. Yves of the Executive Office of the President.”

“Then the Oakland Army Terminal—”

”I don’t know what they got at the Oakland Army Terminal, but it wasn’t the ATX-3.”

“St. Yves?”

“That’s right.”

“You’re sure?”

“Yes.”

Aaron shifted in his seat and stared out at Burning Tree Golf Course as they drove slowly by. “I’ve got an in—you know—to the White House. I have a dossier on this administration that you wouldn’t believe. Murder, rape, arson, forgery; you name it, they’ve done it or condoned it. But this—”

”I know.”

“I guess I didn’t want to believe it. Hell, I didn’t even want to think it.”

“I know.”

“You’re right, of course. The man must be removed.”

“Not assassinated,” MacGregor said quickly.

“No, not assassinated. Removed from office and brought to trial. All this must come out. What happened over the last four years, or however long it turns out to have been happening, must be analyzed and understood so that it can never happen again.”

“Unfortunately, there’s nothing that can never happen again,” MacGregor said dryly. “After every war the generals and politicians get together and analyze it and write books about it so it can never happen again. But it hardly matters what they conclude. It’ll still happen again. It always does, bigger and better.”

“Don’t give me that existential crap, Tank,” Aaron said. “The human race does improve, slowly and painfully. And governments and political systems do work better now than they did in the past. We’ve gotten two hundred years out of this one already; maybe with a retread we can go another couple of hundred.”

“We won’t go another year if that man isn’t stopped. You’d better go to it,” MacGregor said. “Bring the Jubilee.”

“I may need you,” Aaron said.

“Name it,” MacGregor said.

“I’ll have to think about it,” Aaron told him. “I’ll be in touch.”

Uriah Vandermeer sat behind his desk, his feet planted squarely on the floor, his fingers laced together over the glass desktop. There was a pensive, somewhat distant expression on his face. He was staring at—or possibly through—the John Pelow oil portrait of his daughter Kathy on the wall to his right. Pelow had captured the youthful coltish look, perhaps in the flow of the long blonde hair, or the hands frozen in mid-gesture. Underneath, for Pelow was a master, the quick intelligence shone through, and something of the curiosity, the innocence, of the child-woman: the child she had been, and the woman she now would never become.

“You blame me,” Vandermeer said. “I know you do.”

Did the girl in the portrait shake her head slightly—or was it merely a trick of the light? Pelow was good with light.

Vandermeer took off his glasses and rested his head on his arms. “It seemed like—” he paused and thought, then peered back up at the picture. “You get carried along by events. One thing leads to another and you never stop to reexamine your basic premises. Things polarize. Good is what you do for the President. Bad is what’s done by those against you and the President. Can you understand that?”

Kathy stared silently down at him.

“I should have done it long ago,” he said. “I will try. You’ll see. I didn’t permit myself to think about what was happening. That man led me, step by step, inch by inch, and I— What’s that?” He cocked his head and listened closely, for a minute, to the picture.

“I don’t know how yet, but I will,” he told it. “Trust me.”

There was a polite knock on the door, and Vandermeer turned away from the portrait as Mrs. Fleischer, his private secretary, entered the room.

Aaron Adams leaned back in the leather armchair and looked slowly around his study, surveying his six companions. Each of them had been quietly and separately approached, and each had agreed, with differing degrees of fervor, that Something Must Be Done. But now, together, they were slowly pulling themselves toward the only conclusion, forcing themselves to face what it was that had to be done, and what their parts in the doing would have to be. Adams had shepherded them along through the discussion, explaining carefully what the options were and keeping the discussion headed in some loose way from the premise to the inevitable conclusion.

And now it was done. The words were said, the thought was spoken, and the vast chasm was suddenly open before them.

“Here we are then, gentlemen,” Adams said. “We are now, each of us, guilty of conspiracy to commit treason. Within the next two months we’ll have succeeded in unseating the President of the United States and forcing a new election, or we’ll all be in prison or dead. I think we can pull this off, but it is, at best, a long shot. If any of you have not faced the possibility of your death in the past, you will have the chance to do so now.”

“Hell, Aaron,” Grier Laporte said, stirring the ice in his bourbon around with his finger, “you can get killed crossing the street. You can go to prison for a lot less than that. Especially these days.”

Adams smiled grimly. “I just wanted to make sure that none of you could say he wasn’t warned.”

“Don’t play with words,” Admiral Bunt said. “We’ve got to get that crazy son of a bitch before he turns this nation into a dictatorship.”

“Something I don’t understand, Aaron,” Grier Laporte said.

“What’s that?”

“Why us? I mean: why TEPACS? How does it happen that the group of people you play poker with are the ones you choose to form a cabal?”

“Not the whole group, Grier. Just you six. Principally because of what we sociopolitical scientists call your acquaintanceship network. Each of you is in a position, because of your current job or the professional friendships you’ve built up over the years, to fill one of the slots I need filled.”

“Don’t waste time on the lecture, Aaron,” Colonel Baker said. “You’re conducting this orchestra. Just lay it out for us.”

“Now, I think we should discuss this fully,” Obie Porfritt said. “And I still maintain that, if the President announces a date on which the election will be held, we should abandon the scheme.”

“Until we see how he weasels out of it? Come on,” Sanderman Jones said, “you know that the longer this cabal is in existence without having a coup, the greater the risk of it blowing up in our faces. If we’re going to do this at all, we follow through.”

“A couple of things,” George Masters said.

“What?”

“We’re not going to assassinate the son of a bitch.”

“That’s understood. We have to bring him to account, to put him and his people on trial.”

“Right. And if we succeed, we hold elections as soon as possible after.”

“Of course.”

“If we’re going to do this,” Admiral Bunt said, “let’s get with it. What’s the plan, Aaron? I assume you have a plan.”

“I have a few notions,” Adams admitted. “But before I go into my ideas, I’d like a little input from you people. Just how do we overthrow the government?”

“Well, to start with, of course,” Sanderman Jones said from his corner, “we don’t actually overthrow the government. We merely displace the Chief Executive and immediately proclaim loudly that we have restored the government to the people. As, indeed, we shall have. Then we hold an election as soon as possible.”

“What do you mean, ‘displace the Chief Executive’?” Grier Laporte asked. “Just march into the White House and kick him out? That can’t be all it takes.”

“Well,” Adams said, “in a sense we do just kick him out. We impeach him in the House, if possible, at the same time as we arrest him. This makes us quasi-legal. Then we put him on trial in the Senate right after the election.”

“We’d need to establish military control of the District,” Colonel Baker said. “The Eighty-Second Airborne is the obvious unit for that.”

“Too obvious, I’m afraid,” Aaron said. “If I were the President—certainly if I were
this
President—I’d make sure the command of the Eighty-Second was in safe hands. As the major ready unit in the Washington area, its too tempting a target. But I don’t know the commander, and haven’t made any attempt to sound him out.”

“We don’t need the whole division, you know,” Baker said. “Just a couple of regiments, and a way to immobilize the rest. The regimental commanders aren’t picked for their political purity, that’s too far down the totem pole.”

“A good point, Francis. We have to determine what the minimum number of troops we need to control the area is.”

“To do that,” Jones pointed out, “we have to determine first what the area we need to control is. Can we get away with just grabbing the White House, or do we need to hold a perimeter including say, the Capitol and the Pentagon?”

“My feeling is that we don’t have to physically take much beyond the White House itself,” Aaron said. “And effectively neutralize a few other key areas, like the Pentagon, for some limited time.”

“There’s another consideration,” Admiral Bunt said. “The United States is the linchpin of free world defense. We don’t want our adversaries to get the wrong idea of what our internal situation is while this is going on. The men with the go codes will still have their hands on the buttons.”

“There’s another side to that, David,” Sanderman Jones said. “We can’t take any chances that the President, in his last seconds, will start a global war.”

“He wouldn’t—” Laporte said, looking startled. “I mean, not even—”

”We can’t take the chance,” Jones insisted. “It has to be covered.”

“I see what you mean about acquaintanceship nets, Aaron,” Bunt said. “I think I know the man who knows the man to take care of that. And I think he’ll go along.”

“That puts us halfway there,” Aaron said.

“Media!” Laporte said suddenly.

“Excuse me?”

“Media. That’s the way. Immediate live television coverage of the whole thing.”

“What good will that do?” Masters demanded.

Laporte bit off the tip of a cigar and spat it into the ashtray, and then busied himself puffing it to life before he answered. “As I see it,” he said, “the problem is credibility. Right? I mean, if we’re going to do this thing, then we have to make people believe as quickly as possible that it’s done. That it’s over. That we’ve won. And we do a couple of highly visible acts that will get the people behind us. Then no military unit, no matter how loyal they are to the President, will try to move in and re-coup—or countercoup—or whatever.”