by James Philip
Henry Kissinger had been the least derisory of the President’s inner circle. He had explained that the promotion of good relations with Argentina and other Latin American nations was an Administration foreign policy imperative; given, he apologised, that so many other parts of the globe were wholly or partially shut off to US commercial interests due to Commonwealth ‘protectionist’ policies.
It had made for an uncomfortable last day at Camp David and soured what ought to have been one of those summits, where otherwise good friends agreed to disagree, and parted on relatively sunny terms. Instead, reading the press the next day the British delegation had discovered it was totally to blame for the quote: ‘FAILURE OF THE CAMP DAVID TALKS!’
In any event, nobody was in a particularly accommodating mood that morning on the deck of the USS United States.
“No,” Margaret Thatcher decided, looking the US State Department Head of Protocol in the eye. “We shall be staying at the Presidio for the duration of the United Nations!”
It was at that moment that a shell-shocked Henry Cabot Lodge had made a delayed appearance.
“Henry, old chap,” Tom Harding-Grayson said, a little concerned, “you look like you’ve just seen a ghost. Are you quite well?”
Standing on the promenade deck of the great liner the British party gathered, almost protectively, around the clearly very shaken US Secretary of State.
“Forgive me, I apologise for not being on deck to greet you,” the grand old man of American foreign policy said, still visibly distracted. “I was called to the phone by the President.”
Chapter 31
Tuesday 7th February 1967
North 12th Street, Bismarck, North Dakota
May Ellen Constantis’s second life – everything before she and her daughter, Sally Jane, who was still not yet eighteen, had been thrown into that obscene baby farm at Madison three years ago – had begun the day she met her second husband. Of course, she had not known that he was going to be her second husband at the time. And neither had he; but they had been making up for it ever since.
She laughed and hugged the trim, grey-haired woman in the blue Air Force uniform on the doorstep, and quickly ushered her in from the cold of the late afternoon.
“So, you stayed over at Offutt with Nathan?” She queried rhetorically, leading the older woman into the neat, warm house. Outside, the snow lay a couple of feet thick on the sidewalks, piled up every morning before the local kids walked or jumped on the tired old Yellow School buses for the day’s lessons.
“Yes, I’d meant to stay a little longer but the ‘ops rotation’ schedules got changed and he pulled a couple of missions a week early,” Caroline Constantis-Zabriski explained. “I could have hung around and caught up with a little reading; but I’d only have distracted him.”
Not only did her husband’s job entail flying eighteen to twenty-four hour Looking Glass missions but in between regular spells of R and R, there was a punishing regimen of seemingly endless training and intensive preparation. Nathan’s life had got even busier lately with his promotion to Group Navigation Officer, a thing which gave Caro a warm glow of pride.
Nathan had looked well, content, happy in his duties. Her time at Offutt had been a constant round of introductions, including dining with her husband’s Group Commander and his Texan wife. And several rounds of newly-wed type sex; which she blushed involuntarily just to think about.
“My dear,” she laughed, looking approvingly at her younger friend, “you’re bigger than ever!”
May Ellen patted her belly.
She was about five-and-a-half months pregnant and the last week or so, starting to think – although not yet done anything about it – slowing down a little.
“Like I said in my letters, your favourite nephew didn’t waste any time knocking me up!”
Again, the women laughed.
“Sally Jane had a special study session today, otherwise she would be home by now. Sam promised to swing by the school on his way back.” May Ellen checked the clock on the parlour wall. “That won’t be for another hour. So, there’s plenty of time for us to gossip.”
Caroline’s favourite nephew, her older brother, Seth’s son, Sam, had never been much for school books; he had wanted to be a football quarterback until his knee got crocked when he was fourteen. Apart from making it through ROTC – the Reserve Officer Training Corps – he had flunked college, settled at nothing and then, the October War had come along. Caro was still not entirely sure she knew the whole story about how her nephew had ended up in the US Rangers, operating as a spy behind enemy lines in the Kingdom of the End of Days.
Sam would have talked about it with May Ellen; Caro guessed they had the sort of relationship in which they talked, literally, about everything.
These days, Caro liked to think that she was the best wife she could be for Nathan, notwithstanding she was still damned nearly twice his age; but she knew that May Ellen was the best thing that had ever happened to Sam. Forget the age difference, not so pronounced as the one between her and Nathan, nonetheless, a dozen years was a lot, May Ellen and her nephew just ‘got’ each other.
“We all went up to the State House to have a family lunch with the Senator and Mrs Burdick a couple of weeks back,” May Ellen reported with no little pride. Sam had looked so fine in his new uniform.
Caro’s nephew had been temporarily promoted twice during the wars in the Midwest; and the Army Department had recently confirmed his substantive promotion to major, backdating his seniority and – a real bonanza – his pay checks all the way back to September 1964. May Ellen worked part-time at the local VA office as a case worker; not a well-paying job, so Caro reckoned the unexpected windfall was a godsend, given that the couple were busy sorting away every spare dime and dollar to build up a proper college fund for Sally Jane.
Not that it was likely May Ellen’s daughter would elect to leave Bismarck any time soon, or perhaps, ever. After what the kid had been through even the thought of being separated from her mother, who had shared every minute of her nightmare, and the protection of Sam, their surviving knight in shining armour was probably still too…terrifying.
Caro and May Ellen corresponded regularly, now and then about business – including the various dates being mooted for the first sitting of the Minneapolis War Crimes Tribunal – but mainly about family, personal stuff.
Both women agreed that Minneapolis, which had survived the obliteration of its eastern twin, St Paul and of all the mostly intact cities of the Midwest, closer than any other to the nexus of evil that was the Kingdom of the End of Days was, like Nuremburg in 1945, the only place which had a right to try and to dispose of the cases against the several hundred members of Edwin Mertz’s dark cult who had thus far, fallen into Union hands. Caro had promised to be with May Ellen, and if she chose to testify, Sally Jane every single minute they were in Minneapolis. Initially, the Administration had hoped to commence the WCT Proceedings later that year; now a date in early 1968 was much more likely.
“I’ve been warned that I may need to start setting up my department of the Judge Advocate’s Division in Minneapolis perhaps as soon as April,” she told her friend.
“You’ll be a lot closer to Nathan,” May Ellen sang happily.
Caro grimaced, deliberately somewhat theatrically.
“What?”
“You’ve probably read about the allegations about the CIA and the Administration in DC?” She prompted.
“Most people in North Dakota think everybody in the government is crooked all the time,” May Ellen retorted, as if to say: “What’s new?”
“Well. At the moment I am working a day or two a week as a consultant for the Office of the Director of Central Intelligence, and my name is still on the President’s ‘call at any time’ list, acting in the capacity of a special advisor.”
Caro bit her tongue; knowing she had very nearly strayed into confidential areas.
“Honestly and truly, if any of the things The
Washington Post published are even half-true, I can’t go on working for the CIA or the White House.”
“Oh.” The two women had wandered into the kitchen at the back of the house and now, carried coffee cups back into the parlour. “Where does that leave you, Caro?”
“Well, as a result of the war last year I was recalled to the active list; so, officially, I’m still an Air Force Colonel on detachment to the Office of Personnel Management at the White House, pending posting to the Judge Advocate’s Department in Minneapolis. So, I’ll be okay,” she smiled wanly.
May Ellen and Sally Jane had met Senator Quentin Northrup Burdick when he and his wife had visited them at Grand Forks, shortly after their escape from the then Kingdom of Wisconsin. It was the Senator and his wife, Jocelyn, who had offered mother and daughter sanctuary under their own roof, and subsequently got May Ellen the job – clerking at first but ‘clerking’ had soon turned into case work and visiting families, which May Ellen enjoyed – at the VA office on East Capital Avenue.
In the beginning Sally Jane had tagged along some days. Lately, her daughter had started to make new friends. As was to be expected, for May Ellen – for them both - some days would be better than others. May Ellen was under no illusion she or her daughter would ever really ‘get over’ what they had been through at the hands of the Kingdom of the End of Days. It did not help to know that they had been among the luckiest of the lucky ones; survivors of the ‘genocide of the peoples of the Midwest’.
At first the house on North 12th Street had seemed too big for them, three bedrooms and a family-sized parlour and kitchen – old-style but with an east-facing window which meant it was always sunny, apart from three seasons of the year because they were in North Dakota, after all – and a basement originally still full of somebody else’s stuff but it had been home. It had been theirs, and behind its doors they did not have to pretend to be okay for other people all the time.
And then Sam Constantis had got back, still beaten up but in one piece from the war, and everything had turned out all right in the end!
The front door opened and a moment later, Caro felt her feet lifting off the floor as she was enveloped in her favourite nephew’s hearty embrace.
“Don’t forget me!” May Ellen chided her husband.
He put Caro down and rather more carefully, hugged his pregnant wife, with the couple exchanging wet kisses.
Sally Jane was not, understandably, a very tactile young woman. She allowed her mother to peck her cheek, and stuck out her hand to greet the eminent lady who had befriended them, in what now seemed like another age, back at Grand Forks Air Force Base.
Caro had been working for the President, and soon afterwards, got to be famous; not a thing that appealed to the slim, shy, old before her time teenager.
“Hi, Aunt Caro,” she murmured, instantly glancing to her feet.
“You look more like your mother every time I see you, my dear.”
“Inheritance, what can you do?” The girl said, quirking an ironic smile. She turned thoughtful: “All the stuff in the papers, is it true?”
Caroline pursed her lips.
“I don’t know, but,” she shrugged, “But I wouldn’t put any of it past some of the people around the President.”
Chapter 32
Thursday 9th February 1967
Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, Bethesda, Maryland
It transpired that it had taken the White House the best part of twenty-four hours to track down, or rather to catch up with, Caroline Constantis-Zabriski; with a harassed Air Force Captain arriving at the house on North 12th Street as she was helping her hosts clear away the dinner things. So, instead of enjoying a coffee and if her nephew had anything to do with it a couple of fingers of Kentucky Bourbon, she had found herself in the back of an Air Force Lincoln driving fast to the recently opened Municipal Airport just south of the city.
The Air Force had already called at the hotel she had booked into that afternoon before taking a cab to visit her nephew and his family. Never mind, she sighed, at least they will have folded everything nicely before they repacked my case!
She had pulled rank, insisting on time to say goodbye properly to Sam, May Ellen and Sally Jane. Caro was deeply touched when the girl hugged her.
So, as the car sped away into the night she sat alone in the back seat, quietly moist-eyed, knowing the next time she saw the women and her pesky nephew, might probably be in Minneapolis sometime during the lead up to the convening of the War Crimes Tribunal.
Her journey was going to give her plenty of time to carry on reflecting upon the White House milieu into which she had so suddenly been inducted into a little over a year ago.
What did I know?
What should I have known?
In many ways it was a self-defeating internal debate; she had been one of many outsiders parachuted into the White House machine to help to manage an unprecedented monumental national disaster. Yes, she had asked herself why Richard Nixon or any of the clever men around him had not seen that cataclysm coming but at the time, that had been academic. In all truth, she had been too busy trying to get inside, and stay inside, Edwin Mertz’s twisted psyche to bother with ephemeral side issues; winning the war as fast as possible had been the only mantra and even now, she did not think that could have possibly been done any better or faster.
Even now, although the Commander-in-Chief might be a complete shit surrounded by crooks and charlatans; when he wanted something to happen, it happened!
This she knew for a fact because there was a US Army Bell UH-1 Iroquois helicopter waiting for her at the airport – which presently, was actually just one low building, a couple of hangars and a wide, open snowy field – with its rotors already slowly turning. A gas tanker was being driven away, having just topped off the Huey’s tanks.
‘Where on earth are you taking me?’ She had demanded, working on the well-established principle that in the military if you did not ask, you never got to know anything!
‘Minot AFB, Ma’am,’ she was told with immaculate respect by a man in flight gear who saluted as crisply as any Marine in history.
She threw a sloppy salute, no more than a sad approximation of something she had seen other people do, in return.
Minot was up near the Canadian border, a hundred or so miles north, that was not even in the right direction for DC!
‘Minot?’
‘Yes, Ma’am. The Air Force have a Learjet 23 waiting on the runway to take you directly to Andrews Field. You should be in DC about zero-one-hundred-hours local.’
Perhaps, on another occasion – that is, not in the middle of the night and being the solitary passenger on a bumpy flight half-way across North America when she was already dog-tired – she might have enjoyed the flight, or the experience, leastways. As it was, by the time she fell into the car waiting at the foot of the three or four steps down from the plush cabin, she was seriously testy.
“Oh, God,” she groaned, recognising the handsome man in the seat beside her as she dropped into the waiting limousine.
Even in the middle of the night a matter of days after his brilliant career began to irretrievably crumble to dust around him, Richard McGarrah Helms, presently although possibly not for much longer, the Director of Central Intelligence, was urbane and composed.
“I won’t ask you how your flight was, Caro,” he apologised. “Things have been a little hectic around here,” he went on, “as I am sure you will have heard, even out in the boondocks of the Great Plains.”
Caroline very nearly retorted that she had not got around to seeing the ‘Great Plains’ because they were currently buried underneath several feet of snow; and besides, when she was not being entertained by friends or working, she had been on her back being pleasured by her husband!
Strangely, much to her exasperation that remembrance took the edge off her angst; because she really, really wanted to be unspeakably rude to Helms!
Another time, perhaps�
�
“Is it all true?” She asked. It seemed like the logical question.
“It all depends on how one looks at it,” the man retorted mildly.
“Have you and that snake Angleton been spying on the American people, Richard?”
“Yes, but not just for the Hell of it, Caro.”
The car, a Lincoln, moved forward with purring power.
“And the Warwick Hotel business?”
“That would be a ‘no comment’ one.”
“Claiming the 5th Amendment?”
The man shrugged.
“You really mustn’t believe everything you read in the newspapers, Caro.”
Remembering that it was pointless asking a man like Richard Helms questions when one had no idea what he was actually hiding, Caro changed the subject.
“Why do you need me back in DC, Richard?”
“Billy the Kid has been in town for several days. He killed an agent in Alexandria a few days ago. He abducted, brutalised, raped another of my people before dumping her in woods within site of the Langley complex…”
“He killed her within sight of…”
“No,” the man interrupted her. “He didn’t kill her. He put her through Hell and then he released her. She wandered around, dazed and confused until she almost got knocked down walking along the Georgetown Pike. Nobody knew who she was, she was delirious for a couple of days. We’ve got her in a secure wing at Walter Reed. Physically, apart from a few cuts and bruises, she’s okay…”
“No, she’s not!” Caroline snapped.
Why did so many men have shit for brains?
“You said she’d been abducted and raped?”
“Yes…”
“How would you feel if that had happened to you?”
“Not so good, obviously…”
Sensing that something else was going on, Caro waited to see what Helms was going to offer her. After an uncomfortable silence as the car cruised through virtually empty streets, the Director of Central Intelligence, realised that unless he told her more, the President’s favourite shrink was not going to play ball.