The President's Plane Is Missing
Page 30
A corporal, Damon thought. One lousy young corporal when he was expecting practically a whole company of leathernecks to be on duty. His heart sank.
“Hi?” said the Marine with cautious friendliness. “What can I do for you?”
Damon suddenly realized he really had nothing to say, no explanation to offer. “I’m Damon of IPS. I . . . we got a tip something was cooking up here. Uh, something to do with President Haines. I came out to check.”
“President Haines?” The corporal laughed. “Hell, buddy, there ain’t nobody here but me and couple of Pfcs.” Damon looked around. A Marine Corps jeep was the only vehicle in sight. “The place seems a bit quiet,” he said lamely. “You been on duty long?”
“Just came on. Sir, this area’s restricted. You got any credentials?”
Damon produced his White House pass. The corporal merely glanced at it with the same enthusiasm he would have displayed if the newspaperman had shown him a membership card in a Chevy Chase garden club.
“Well, you’ll still have to do an about-face,” the Marine advised. “Sorry, mister, but those are my orders.”
“Yeh,” said Damon. “Say, when you came on duty, was there any activity around here? Helicopters, limousines, that kind of stuff?”
“Nope. Quiet as a church graveyard. Sorry, sir, but . . .”
“I know. So long.”
He turned the car around and drove slowly down the road. Jonesy hadn’t lied. Camp David was deserted. Some big exclusive. All that brilliant detective work, figuring out the mileage gimmick. Well, nothing left to do but find a phone and give DeVarian the bad news.
He turned into State Route 77, but stopped and peered back at the gravel road leading to Camp David. Sunlight splashed through the trees, the beams hazy like shafts of light filtered through stained glass. Graveyard-quiet as the Marine said, Gunther Damon mused. A very apt description. Because he now was convinced that Jeremy Haines was dead.
Madigan’s blunt words were a catharsis for what had been the Cabinet’s silence. Minds suddenly were linked to tongues and a torrent of babel filled the room until the Vice President hammered on the table.
“I’d like to poll the members for their sentiments,” he announced.
“You can’t settle a life-or-death matter like this after five minutes of discussion,” Sharkey said furiously. “Let’s talk about it some more, for the love of God.”
“I’m willing to settle for a poll of preliminary sentiment,” Madigan amended in a conciliatory tone. “It would be helpful if I knew where the Cabinet stands at this point.”
“The Cabinet couldn’t possibly know where it stands right now,” the Secretary of State bristled. “You sprang this on us without any warning. I demand that we discuss this further.”
“I’ll let you discuss it further—after each man has his say on how he feels as of now,” the Vice President said. “As for springing this report on you without warning, that’s not my fault. If Haines didn’t see fit to let his own Cabinet in on what amounts to a national crisis, let him accept the responsibility. If he’s alive to accept responsibility, that is. Which I doubt.”
“I’d like to propose a little poll of my own,” Sharkey said. “I suggest that we wait for further developments on the President’s whereabouts before we even move a toenail in the direction the Vice President wants to shove us.”
“And just how long will that be?” Madigan inquired sarcastically. “Another week? A month? Six months? A year? While we’re waiting for Mr. Haines or his corpse to show up, we could be getting the hell bombed out of us. No, sir, Mr. Secretary of State, not while I’m Acting President.” Sharkey’s boiling emotions propelled him out of his seat. “I insist, sir, that you canvass the view of this body on delaying your blind blunderings into World War III until we find out what has happened to the President.”
He sat down. Madigan gave him a jovial pat on the shoulder that conveyed more condescension than agreement. “Okay, Jim. We’ll go ahead and see where all of us stand. Starting with you as the ranking Cabinet member. I take it you want to wait.”
“You’re damned right I do. And so—”
“Your opinion is duly noted, Mr. Secretary. The Secretary of the Treasury?”
Secretary of the Treasury William Lagos, a handsome man of Greek extraction, said quietly, “A vote not to wait is a vote for war. I say wait.”
“The Secretary of Defense?”
Tobin lowered his head and his voice accompanied the movement. “I’d like to abstain for the time being.” Geiger and Sharkey stared at him in near shock.
“All right, Mike, we’ll get back to you later,” Madigan said. “The Attorney General?”
Howard Kelly looked imploringly at Sharkey. “I’m stunned by this report. And there’s no telling when we’ll learn the truth about the President. I’ve got to go along with the Acting President.”
Madigan was keeping score on a scratch pad. Sharkey noticed with distaste that the pad bore the presidential seal. “The Postmaster General?” Madigan inquired.
This was Carl Herron, the first career postal official in history to be promoted to Cabinet rank. He had one thing in common with James Sharkey. He worshiped Jeremy Haines. “Wait,” he said and Madigan frowned. The Secretary of State could not resist a kind of grim inner chuckle. He had the distinct notion that the Vice President, in addition to keeping score, was figuring out which Cabinet members should be asked to resign.
“The Secretary of Interior?”
The normally florid face of Wilford Binks, a man of irrepressible humor and good nature, was pallid. “I don’t want war, but the Vice President has made some telling arguments. I don’t see any other course.”
“The Secretary of Agriculture?”
“Well,” said the lanky, dour-featured Theodore Larson, “I’d like to ask first if there’s anything new on the President?”
“Not a word,” Madigan said.
Larson’s long face seemed to stretch further, a flesh-covered rubber band. “Then I’ve got to go along with Kelly and Binks. To wait might be suicide.”
“Thank you, Ted. The Secretary of Commerce?”
Edward Silverman, a mild-mannered Jewish industrialist who, like Herron, had been one of Haines’s few nonpolitical appointments, bit off the end of a cigar and lit it before answering. “Frankly,” he said, “I think this whole discussion is asinine. But you asked for my opinion, Mr. Vice President, and I’ll give it to you. If President Haines didn’t want us to see that Report for the time being, he must have had a damned good reason. And if he wasn’t ready to start a war despite what it said, I’m not either.” Madigan’s ball-point scribbled angrily on the pad. “The Secretary of Health, Education, Welfare?”
Donald Nickels, an affable former congressman, coughed as the smoke from Silverman’s cigar wafted its pungent odor into his nostrils. “If we don’t wait, it’ll be suicide.”
“The Secretary of Housing and Urban Development?” Barney Littell looked first at Sharkey and then at Madigan, trying to dredge from their expressions some encouragement for what he was about to decide. His own kewpie face wrinkled into a reflection of tortured inner conflict, but he finally blurted, “Wait.”
“The Secretary of Labor?”
Nelson Gilbert smiled slightly at the anxious look on Sharkey’s face. “If I didn’t trust Jeremy Haines’s judgment, which I do, I’d trust that of our Secretary of State. Wait.”
Scratch-scratch went Madigan’s pen.
“The Secretary of Transportation?”
Harvey Brubaker’s face was sober, but it was the phony solemnity of a man grieving at a funeral for someone he actually disliked. “I trust in the judgment, patriotism and wisdom of the Acting President of the United States,” he orated. Sharkey winced.
Madigan examined his note pad. “There are six votes to wait and five to support me. I, of course, uh, would have to side with myself. That makes it six to six, gentlemen. Mike, you seem to have the deciding voice.”
“Dammit, Mike,” Sharkey exploded. “You saw that report before anyone else. You know the President didn’t regard it as justification for a preventive war. What the hell are you stalling for?”
“Because,” Tobin said simply, “I haven’t been able to sleep very well since I read it.”
“Wait or don’t wait, Mr. Secretary?” Madigan persisted. “I can’t give you an answer now,” Tobin muttered. “Suppose,” Sharkey suggested, “we take a brief recess. Some minds might change.”
“Some minds might change if you hold your own caucus outside this room,” the Vice President snarled. “If you’re going to try to sway Tobin’s vote, I want equal time, Sharkey.”
“I’m not going to talk to the Secretary of Defense,” Sharkey said. “General Geiger, I’d like to have a word with you outside and in private, if you please.”
“Yes, sir.” The chairman of the Joint Chiefs rose and walked out of the room, followed by the diminutive Secretary of State. Madigan stared after them, worrying whether the pair could be plotting against him and what form their strategy would take. He decided quickly to concentrate on the wavering, shaken Tobin.
“Now, Mike, I understand how . . .”
In the corridor outside the Cabinet Room, Sharkey and Geiger conversed in low tones.
“This is it,” the Secretary said. “Tobin could go either way. And that sonofabitch Madigan is crazy enough to pull the trigger five minutes after the Cabinet meeting breaks up.”
“Even if the Secretary of Defense votes to wait?”
“I’m afraid so. Fred Madigan is using that NSC report as a symbol of his resentment against the President. Consciously or subconsciously, he’s jumped on it as a means of proving he’s as strong and capable of difficult decisions as Haines. Good God, I didn’t dream he could get the support within the Cabinet he did.”
“I’m not really surprised,” Geiger said thoughtfully. “The whole country’s on the verge of panic. I can see it in the Pentagon every day. Mass jitters. The natural impulse to throw a blind punch and then rationalize that it’s pure self-defense.”
“You go back in. I’ve got some thinking to do. Madigan’s probably pushed Tobin over the brink by now.”
Geiger returned to the Cabinet Room and resumed his seat at the opposite end of the table from the Vice President who, as expected, was engaged in vigorous conversation with the Secretary of Defense. Behind them, a sardonic smile on his swarthy face, was Nelson Gilbert. The rest of the Cabinet had broken up into small groups, the members talking quietly but gesturing vigorously.
Peace or war, Geiger thought, being decided by this handful of well-meaning, frightened men. Or perhaps by one of them, the Acting President, with his hatred of Jeremy Haines poisoning his reason and common sense. Madigan was sitting down now, and Geiger tried to judge from his expression whether he had succeeded with Tobin. The general would not be surprised if he had. There would be no incongruity in the Defense Secretary’s deciding for a preventive war that his own military chieftains opposed. The fact that Tobin was a civilian made no difference. Sometimes soldiers, knowing war, dreaded it more than those viewing it with only abstract experience. And Tobin’s very job made him vulnerable. Next to the presidency itself, it was the most man-killing post in government—a daily exposure to fear of what a potential enemy can do and the facts to support that fear. One of the greatest Americans and the nation’s first Secretary of Defense, James Forrestal, had cracked under the strain of the cold war, a victim of suicide. No, Geiger decided sadly, Michael Tobin was ready to be pushed and probably already had been pushed. Where was the Secretary of State?
The Vice President called the meeting back to order, commenting, “I see we have to wait for Mr. Sharkey again.”
The Secretary of State re-entered the room even as Madigan spoke. Sharkey took his seat next to the Vice President and caught Geiger’s eye, shaking his head almost imperceptibly.
“I thank the Secretary of State for suggesting the recess,” Madigan said smugly. “His apparent decision not to discuss things with the Secretary of Defense was indicative of confidence that Mike Tobin could make up his own mind. Your confidence, Mr. Sharkey, was justified. The Secretary of Defense has, indeed, made up his own mind. He does not believe we should wait for a President who, God rest his soul, may never appear.”
“Is that right, Mike?” Sharkey asked.
“I hope I’m doing the right thing,” Tobin muttered.
“I hope we all are,” Interior Secretary Binks added.
“Mr. Vice President,” Sharkey said, “I implore you, sir, to consult with key members of Congress before making a final decision.”
“I’ll consider your suggestion,” Madigan said.
“Consider it?” the Secretary of State demanded. “It’s incumbent upon you to talk to them. They can’t be left in the dark on a matter so important.”
“The President left me in the dark,” Madigan said craftily, “along with the majority of the Cabinet. Besides, congressmen are known to be poor secret-keepers. One of them could very well blab this to the press, and if that happens we might as well head for the bomb shelters. The surprise element would be destroyed. By the way, when you all leave, say nothing to the newspapermen, except that this was a routine meeting.”
Sharkey looked around the table at his fellow Cabinet members. “Is this all the discussion we’re going to have?” he cried desperately. “Have you searched your souls and your consciences for what you’ve just done?” All his disdain for the Vice President boiled unchecked to the surface, an erupting volcano spewing its emotional lava. “Are you going to let this power-mad little man take the United States into World War III?”
Not a man spoke. Madigan’s face was white with rage but he kept his own voice down, instinctively sensing that to lose his temper might break the fragile strands of Cabinet support.
“Mr. Sharkey, I must remind you that I’m acting on the basis of what the National Security Council, the CIA concurring, has warned will be an inevitable attack by China on the United States. I would be derelict to my oath of office if I did not heed that warning. Your own opposition has solidified my determination to protect my country. For your information, Mr. Secretary, I’ve made my decision. | I’m walking out of this room and I’m going to my office. There’s a little red button on my desk. It’s connected to the war room at the Pentagon. I’m going to push it.”
“Wait a minute,” Tobin said hurriedly. “Don’t rush into , it. You should meet with the Joint Chiefs first. You should—”
“The Joint Chiefs, I gather, would display the same indecisive, mealymouthed, pablum temperament that General Geiger seems to possess. I see no further use in pursuing this discussion, gentlemen. The Cabinet has given me a vote of confidence and—”
“It was a goddamned narrow vote,” Gilbert said hoarsely.
The Vice President ignored him. He stood up. So did Sharkey. The tiny Secretary of State seemed about to restrain Madigan physically. The rest of the Cabinet remained sitting, unable to move, as if the tenseness had sapped the strength in their limbs.
“Get out of my way, Sharkey,” Madigan said coldly.
“Only the President of the United States can do what you are about to do,” the Secretary of State said in a whisper.
“I’m the President of the United States,” said Frederick James Madigan. “Haines is dead.”
“No,” spoke a voice at the other end of the room. “He is not dead.”
Necks swiveled toward the entrance to the Cabinet Room. Nelson Gilbert gasped.
“My God,” said Michael Tobin.
In the open door of the Cabinet Room, his big frame almost filling the aperture, stood Jeremy Haines, thirty-seventh President of the United States.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
The Secretary of State said nothing, but his mouth w
idened into a canyon of a grin.
General Geiger wore the look of a little boy who had just seen the U. S. Cavalry arrive in the last five minutes of a Saturday afternoon TV movie.
The Secretary of Labor merely breathed, “Thank God.”
The Secretary of Transportation uttered a puzzled “I don’t understand.”
The Secretary of Defense shook his head in disbelief, then his face brightened like a patch of earth freed by sunlight from the shadow of a passing cloud.
The Secretary of the Treasury blurted, “Where the hell have you been?”
The Postmaster General resembled a man who had just seen visual proof of the Resurrection.
The long face of the Secretary of Agriculture contracted into a smile, wrinkles of delight appearing on the leathery skin like cracks in shattered safety glass.
The Secretary of Commerce, for the first time in twelve years, said a prayer in flawless Hebrew.
The Secretary of Interior froze into utter speechlessness, his jaw hanging like the unhinged prow of a landing craft.
The Secretary of HEW bore an idiotic expression, walking a facial tightrope between laughter and tears.
The Attorney General closed his eyes and then opened them, as if he expected the President should have disappeared with the blink.
The Secretary of Housing and Urban Development merely stared unbelievingly.
And across the face of Frederick J. Madigan flowed a rapidly shifting montage of shock, bewilderment, disappointment and a strange infinitesimal blending of fear and relief. His mouth opened, closed, then gaped open again to expel with unwilling force the two words that magically seemed to shrink his entire body, disintegrate his belligerence and strip him of his authority.
“Mr. President!” he exclaimed. As Jeremy Haines approached his end of the table, Madigan extended a trembling hand and the gesture was an alchemy of abject surrender and vaporized confidence. Haines grasped it briefly but warmly. “Fred,” he said in a practical, matter-of-fact tone, “I think we’ll need another chair.”