Red Phoenix

by Larry Bond

  The picture cut back to Connie Marlowe.

  “In other news here on the Hill today, a similar bill moved a step closer to consideration by the full Senate by winning approval from the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Conservatives have threatened a filibuster if the bill reaches the floor. But Senate Majority Leader Dickinson of Arkansas remains confident that he has enough support to invoke cloture, a move that would shut off any prolonged debate and bring the issue to an up-or-down vote within a set time frame.

  The screen split, showing both the CNN anchorman stationed in Atlanta and the reporter in Washington.

  “Connie, doesn’t it take a two-thirds vote of the Senate to end a filibuster? Does the Korea sanctions bill have that much support in the Senate?”

  “You’re right, John. Normally, the majority leader’s confidence would indicate overwhelming support for the bill. But this is a special case. With the election coming up, a lot of challengers have been pummeling Senate incumbents with charges that they never do any work. So even senators who don’t plan to vote for the legislation are eager to avoid a long, wearing filibuster. And right now, it’s just not clear who has the votes to win on this issue in the Senate. I’m Connie Marlowe for CNN Headline News.”

  OCTOBER 6 — THE HOUSE RULES COMMITTEE, WASHINGTON, D.C.

  “Mr. Chairman, this proposed rule is outrageous and you know it!” Henry Fielding, the ranking minority member of the House Rules Committee sounded angry but not surprised. The white-haired representative from Missouri glared out across the handful of congressional staffers rapidly scribbling notes on legal pads.

  The Rules Committee always met in a small, cramped room to hold the number of spectators down to an absolute minimum. In a way that was a true measure of its power. This committee could make or break legislation in a single hour. It set the terms, the rule, under which a given bill would be considered by the full House of Representatives. Legislation that the Speaker liked would get a rule that sharply limited debate and made it impossible to offer so-called killer amendments. Legislation that the Speaker didn’t like wouldn’t ever get a rule, period.

  To make sure of that, the majority party in the House always maintained a two-to-one plus one edge on the Rules Committee — no matter what the real ratio of Democrats to Republicans might be.

  And the Speaker liked the Korea sanctions bill.

  Fielding knew the fix was in, but he had sworn to put up at least a token fight. “Mr. Chairman, the rule you and your friends have concocted would prevent members of the House from offering even the most reasonable amendments to this legislation. That is not the way we should be conducting business on this kind of issue. And there is no conceivable excuse for the absurd time limitations you’ve placed on the debate.”

  The chairman, Representative Kerwin Bouchard of Louisiana, interrupted him. “Mr. Fielding, the issues contained in this bill have been fully considered in committee.” Unconsciously he ran a wizened hand through the remaining strands of his hair. His Southern drawl thickened. “There is no reason for further delay and no necessity for extended debate.”

  Fielding struck back. “With all due respect, Mr. Chairman, that is nonsense. We’re not elected to be rubber stamps for the committees. This is supposed to be a deliberative body, and your rule would prevent a thorough and reasoned consideration of this legislation. The issues in this Korea sanctions bill are too complex and too important to be handled in this callously partisan fashion.”

  The chairman listened with interest. Fielding at his best was very good. And the chairman had no doubt he would hear the same phrases and arguments again on the floor when the full House debated this rule. But his instructions from the Speaker were clear, and he hadn’t gotten this far in the House by crossing the Speaker. He sat back to enjoy the show with complete confidence in the outcome.

  It took nearly an hour of pro forma argument, but in the end the committee approved the rule by a party-line vote of nine to four. No one on the inside was at all surprised.

  OCTOBER 7 — THE WHITE HOUSE, WASHINGTON, D.C.

  Putnam tossed the bulky report back across his desk. “Damn it, Blake. This isn’t what I asked you for.”

  Blake Fowler looked down at the document and then back to the red face of the national security adviser. He sat down in one of Putnam’s chairs without an invitation.

  “You asked for the Working Group’s recommendations to the President. And that” — he pointed to the paper — ”is what you’ve got sitting on your desk.” The report was nearly two weeks overdue, but even that had required a minor miracle and countless hours of overtime.

  The actual writing involved in the analysis of the Barnes Korean sanctions bill hadn’t taken more than a couple of days of hard, steady work. But getting the precise wording approved by five cabinet departments and intelligence agencies had been nightmarishly complex. Each wanted to leave its stamp on the report, so each made its own set of editorial changes. Changes that required approval by all the rest, and that often prompted a whole new series of rewrites. Blake had circulated so many different drafts that he now knew every classified-documents courier on the interagency — White House run.

  The minor miracle had come in salvaging anything that was clearly written. The members of the Interagency Working Group were solid professionals, but they weren’t writers, and they’d all learned to use bureaucratese. In bureaucratese, people weren’t affected, “population subgroups were impacted.” The risks of full-scale warfare weren’t increased, “the probability of significant geopolitical and military interaction” underwent an “upward modification.” Blake had dug in his heels to fight off meaningless gibberish like that wherever he could, and he’d won more fights than he’d lost.

  But he knew that none of that mattered to Putnam. Putnam was upset because the State Department had refused to sign off on the report. State’s representative, Tolliver, hadn’t bothered to attend more than one out of every two or three Working Group meetings, and he’d been a pain in the ass every time anyway.

  After a while it had become clear that the secretary of state, a former congressman, was more interested in domestic political polls showing rising public support for some action against South Korea than he was in the foreign policy implications of the legislation. And he wouldn’t approve a document that recommended strong administration opposition and a presidential veto if the Barnes bill got that far.

  Blake had tried everything he could think of to get the State Department on board — short of soft-soaping the Working Group’s recommendations. He’d even made several attempts to get in to see the secretary personally, without result. The man’s flunkies had used every excuse in the book. The secretary was always away on “national business,” or had an “urgent policy board meeting,” and once they’d even tried the old standby that he was “receiving an important foreign delegation.” Blake hadn’t even been able to secure an appointment with the assistant secretary for East Asian and Pacific Affairs.

  The message was clear. The State Department, or at least its political leadership, wasn’t interested in getting into a shitting match with the Congress over South Korea. He’d been given a reason for that over a hasty lunch in the White House commissary with a friend from the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency.

  “Look, Blake,” “Tubby” Barlow had said, “there’s no way you’re gonna get the boys at Foggy Bottom to risk pissing off the Speaker and the majority leader right now. They’re within inches of a new missile agreement with the Soviets. And they aren’t taking any chances that some irate congressman might blow the thing because his favorite bill got dumped on by the administration.” The way the upper echelons of the State Department saw it, South Korea just wasn’t in the same league with a possible superpower arms control treaty.

  And so the Working Group had decided to go ahead without State’s sanction for their final product. It was either that or come up with nothing at all. From the way Putnam was carrying on, it was clear that
he might have preferred that.

  “Goddamn it. This thing is practically useless to me the way it is.” One of Putnam’s reddish-gray curls had broken lose from its hair-sprayed moorings and was flopping around over an eyebrow. The national security adviser impatiently brushed it back into place.

  Blake shook his head. “I don’t see how you can say that. Okay, State doesn’t agree with our recommendations. BFD. Five other agencies do. That’s about as solid a bloc as you’re ever going to find in any administration.”

  Putnam glowered at him. “That’s not going to cut it with the media, Dr. Fowler. You and I both know that somebody at State will leak the secretary’s displeasure with this report to the Post or the Times and then the shit’s really going to hit the fan. The President doesn’t like to see headlines that say things like ‘Top-Level Rifts Mar Administration Policy.’ ”

  Blake had to admit that Putnam had a point. But it was moot.

  The State Department wasn’t going to reverse course and approve the report. And the South Korean situation was too critical for the White House to simply sit idly by as the Barnes legislation moved through Congress. Jesus, he hoped there were at least a few red faces over in Legislative Affairs. They’d been telling anyone who would listen that the Barnes bill was just a typical piece of election-year foofaraw. Something introduced to soothe angry voters and then slated for quiet extinction after the ballots were cast. Well, every passing day put that prediction more and more in the column headed by the Chicago Tribune’s 1948 election day headline, “Dewey Wins!”

  Blake looked back across the desk at Putnam. “So you’re not going to present our recommendations to the President?”

  “I didn’t say that.” Putnam reached over and tore off a piece of tape. “The President’s asked for a briefing on this Korea thing something in the next few days. My calendar’s pretty full, but I’m going to try to squeeze it in somewhere — after I’ve had time to go through this stuff in a little more detail.” Putnam started rolling the piece of tape in between two fingers, wadding it up into a tiny, sticky ball.

  Blake wanted to ask why Putnam didn’t just ask him to deliver the briefing. But he already knew the answer. Putnam didn’t know much more about Asian and Pacific affairs than the average daily newspaper reader did, but he did understand the mechanics of power. And in Washington, D.C., access is power.

  Putnam guarded the right to personally brief the President with jealous vigor. In nineteen months on the job, he’d never yet allowed a member of his staff to lead the President through the tangle of position papers, charts, maps, and satellite photos that made up a typical NSC presentation. His rules were clear and absolutely inflexible. The staff experts prepared the briefing and he delivered it. If Putnam still felt uncomfortable with the material, he’d bring a staffer along. But always with the understanding that they would respond only to direct questions from the President or from Putnam himself.

  Blake thought it was a shitty way to conduct business. But he understood Putnam’s intentions. It made the red-haired bastard look very much like the all-knowing whiz kid he claimed to be — at least to the President. And that was what mattered.

  He looked up as Putnam flicked the little ball of tape off into his wastebasket.

  “In any event, Blake, I’ve got a few edits to make in your report.” Putnam smiled. “You’ve done a pretty good job in putting this thing together, I guess. But it needs a little work to make it more readable. Can’t risk putting the Boss to sleep during the presentation, now can we?”

  Oh, crap. Putnam’s idea of clear prose made federal bureaucratese look like something written by Ernest Hemingway. The man never saw a short, simple, clear word that he didn’t think could be replaced by an impossibly long, convoluted clause.

  Blake knew there wasn’t much point in worrying about it. He and Putnam had tangled over the written word nearly as often as they’d clashed over policy. Beside, Putnam probably wouldn’t let him see the hash he’d made of the Working Group’s paper until just before they briefed the President.

  He was almost right.

  OCTOBER 9 — THE HOUSE FLOOR, WASHINGTON, D.C.

  Jeremy Mitchell watched the flickering totals on the vote board with one eye and kept the other on his boss, Ben Barnes, working his colleagues down on the floor in front of the Speaker’s chair. He smiled as the totals changed once again, reflecting another congressman who’d buckled to persuasion from Barnes or pressure from the Speaker.

  Getting the Speaker on board had been the best thing he’d ever done. The man was an oily little snake-charming s.o.b., but he knew the rules and procedures of the House backward and forward. And he’d bend any of them to get his way. Mitchell looked up at section of the vote board that showed the time remaining. It read “0:00.” Just as it had for the last twenty minutes or so. He smiled again. Votes in the House of Representatives were usually supposed to last fifteen minutes or less. If a congressman hadn’t made it to the floor by then or hadn’t made up his mind, that was just too bad. In practice, though, the Speaker controlled time in the House, and fifteen minutes was whatever he said it was — no matter what the clocks might say.

  The sharp crash of the chairman’s gavel brought his eyes back to the floor. The vote was over. The congressman acting as chairman of the Committee of the Whole took a small piece of paper from one of the clerks. “On this vote, the ayes were two thirty-eight. The nays, one eighty-one. The bill is passed.”

  Mitchell headed for the door grinning from ear to ear. They’d done it! And now it was up to the Senate. The majority leader’s chief aide had already assured him they’d bring the Korea sanctions bill up as soon as it passed the House. Jeremy Mitchell could smell victory. Victory for the bill and victory for Ben Barnes when he ran for the Senate two years down the road.

  He was only half right.

  CHAPTER 12

  Low Profiles

  OCTOBER 11 — INSA-DONG, SEOUL, SOUTH KOREA

  Captain Tony Christopher did not regret coming into Seoul that day. He had planned on a little shopping. But he hadn’t planned on spending almost all of his time in the same store.

  Back at the base that morning there had been the standard warning about “the possibility of civil disturbances.” Fine, he was no fool. But Seoul was huge — more than ten million people lived within its limits. The South Koreans could have a riot at one end of town and still leave enough peaceful city for one Air Force pilot to do some gift-shopping. Anyway, the chance was too good to miss. He only got one day off during the week.

  Besides, the warnings had been for the Myong-dong district, around the Catholic cathedral, where there had been protests all week. That was bad luck, of course, because the best department stores were all clustered in the Myong-dong area. And he was getting tired of the cheap, touristy stuff they tried to push on you in the Itaewon bargain shops, near the main U.S. Army base just south of Seoul.

  Fortunately the squadron’s intelligence officer had put him on to a good thing. He’d suggested taking a look along Insa-Dong, Mary’s Alley. Michaels might not know much about his main job — keeping track of enemy aircraft deployments, tactics, and antiaircraft sites — but he did have a nose for bargains on things like handcrafted fans, fine jewelry, and ceramics. Exactly the kind of stuff most women liked. Exactly the kind of stuff that might help Tony smooth things out with his current girlfriend, Maria.

  She was a real looker, short, but with jet-black hair falling straight down to below her waist. They’d gone out three times, most recently last night. She was fun, with a good sense of humor, and an appreciation of Tony’s flying stories. She also, however, had a tremendous temper — a temper that had been triggered when, lost in thought, Tony had called her Carol.

  So at Michael’s recommendation, Tony had come up on the first train from Kunsan to Seoul and then hopped the Seoul subway to the Chongno 3-ga station near Pagoda Park. That had been the easy part. Since then, he’d spent a long, hot morning browsing his way up
Insa-Dong, combing through the antique shops, art galleries, furniture stores, and jewelry stores that lined the narrow, winding street.

  The trouble was, he doubted that he could tell a piece of good Korean craftsmanship from the worst piece of junk ever made. And even a “bargain” from one of the Insa-Dong shops was going to take a pretty hefty bite out of his paycheck from Uncle Sam.

  Damn. Tony hated dithering around like this. He’d hoped to make a quick sortie into Seoul for Maria’s gift and still have enough time left for a swing through the casino at the Sheraton Walker Hill. He felt lucky and you always had to hit the blackjack tables feeling lucky. But it looked as if he was going to need all that luck just to make the evening train back to Kunsan.

  Tony zipped up his jacket. He wanted to get out of the chill wind for a while, but he knew the minute he stepped into a shop he’d be mobbed by a bunch of Korean salesclerks. They were all so godawful helpful and polite that you almost felt compelled to buy something from them. And Tony knew that was the fastest way to wind up stuck with something you didn’t want, couldn’t afford, and couldn’t get rid of.

  As he stepped off the curb to cross a side street, a sign in a storefront window caught his eye — LEE’S KOREAN-ENGLISH BOOKSTORE. That was the ticket. Just the place for a breather. He wheeled and started for it.

  The bookstore was a godsend all right. It was warm, quiet, and blinds across the store’s two front windows cut out most of the sun’s glare. Tony closed the door firmly behind him, shutting out the roar as a convoy of trucks loaded with riot police rumbled down the street.

  A short, middle-aged Korean standing behind a counter with a cash register smiled and bowed slightly to him. Tony nodded back politely and moved deeper into the shop, glancing idly at the bookracks around him. There weren’t any other customers. And there didn’t seem to be a whole lot of books by American authors either. Most were by people he assumed were modern Korean writers.