I was going to tell him I didn’t know, but he wasn’t listening. When in doubt, follow orders. I got Olsen to take up a good vantage point, and sidled in through the crowd to stand at Arbuthnot’s left shoulder. A flare went up from the Control Tower, planes stopped taking off, the ones in the air were waved into landings and the pilots climbed out to stand at ease near their planes. A band marched out from a hanger, and took up a position right behind us.
In the silence, I could hear a familiar drone from the west, over the ocean. The silence held, the anticipation was unbearable, but I was raised in a hard school. Soon, a huge silvery Zeppelin came into view, headed right for us. I wanted to run or hide or shoot, but managed to control everything but the shiver in my right knee. Then it circled around to face into the sea breeze and we could see the discreet Green Tree insignia on its nose. Say, what? They had done a very good job on the paint, you could barely make out where the red Rising Suns had been, and then only by the slight texture differences under the silver coat, when the sun hit it just right. If you didn’t know that it had to have been an Imperial Navy Zeppelin, you would never have looked for it
It pressed itself closer to the ground with its elevators, and dropped the mooring ropes. Crowds of ground crew ran out to grab onto the monkey-fist knots on the ends, and the zepp shut its engines down to dead slow. The ground crew snubbed the lines to heavy trucks conveniently parked nearby, and I began to realize that this was a well-planned endeavor.
That was proven, once the airship was tied down, and the engines shut off. An obviously newly painted dump truck drove out; they had welded a metal stairway to the bed. It took some jockeying and some hauling on the tie-down ropes, but they got the stairs to the door of the zepp’s gondola. The band fired up some song I never heard before, the dignitaries stepped forward, and the Zeppelin officers came down the stairs to be welcomed. I thought that was it, until four crewmen carried a man in a wheelchair down the steps and presented him to the welcoming committee. A slender woman in a perfect suit accompanied the man in the wheelchair.
“Well, I will be dipped in shit!” I exclaimed, a little louder than I should have.
Arbuthnot nudged me with an elbow, whispered, “You might want to work on your historical statements a little more, Miles. But I agree with your sentiments. Quite the coup, don’t you think?”
“But, I just heard him on Radio Home. Last night. I thought he was in Dalny!”
“They have radios on Zeppelins, you know.”
“Fuck me dry. You guys are fucking something else. I am impressed.”
>>>>>>>>>
I was even more impressed a half hour later, when Franklin spoke before the cameras and microphones. “My fellow North Americans, my fellow citizens of Pacifica. This is a momentous, an historical day. This marks the beginning of the legitimization of a free nation, and the beginning of the end of the dictatorial regime that has oppressed all our lands for so long. This is not the end of that regime, there will be much travail and hard work before our goals are reached, but this is the beginning of the end of that foul perversion of all we hold sacred. I urge all Americans, north and south, ex-Canadian and ex-USA citizens to join us in this struggle, we will fight them in the air, one the sea, and on the land, we will fight them with bullets, we will fight them with words, we will fight them with our lives, our fortunes, and with our sacred honor, and we shall prevail.” I noticed a stout man in a dark suit and bowler hat behind him, beaming with every word. He looked familiar, perhaps he was English, but that was as good as I could do. Write it down.
A certain amount of back-slapping and hail-fellow-well-met-ing was next, then, just as I was getting bored, a Zeppelin officer came and led me and Olsen to a private room behind the assembly hall. All this was obviously improvised, only the visible walls had been painted, the back room was bare plaster, with a raw redwood bar across on wall. Franklin was the center of attention. He greeted me fondly, took my hand in both of his, and said, “This is the man I owe it all to. Milo rescued me from narrow straits up in New Westminster, and arranged my transfer to Dalny Free Port. Miles, how are you?”
“I’m a little on the mind-boggled side. Amazed to see you here, for one thing. And Lucy, of course.”
He lowered his voice, said, “I have a personal message from Barbara. She is on a ship, about half way back to Dalny. She sent a radiogram to Lucy. I suppose she has no one else to talk to at this point. She wishes you well, and is sorry for all the miscommunication and chaos, she hopes you can forgive her. She pleads the stress of war. She is doing well.”
“With Janis.” Not a question.
“Yes. Of course. Perhaps it is all for the best.”
“I won’t argue. I have… Never mind the personal stuff. What can I do for the cause?”
“You can take this.” He handed me an envelope, with a few sheets of paper inside, from the heft. “This will explain the background. A press release, of a sort. We want you to write this up, and to hold this in reserve until you get the word.”
“From Arbuthnot.”
“Or from myself or Lucy. Things are going to move very fast, and you are in a position to expedite matters. Are you ready to make history?”
“It seems to be all I do, recently. So far, so good.”
“That’s the spirit. I must leave you, we have a full day planned, but you do take good care of yourself, and remain poised for rapid action. Understand?”
“Not at all, but I will do as you say.”
“Excellent. Now if your man will snap a few photographs of the two of us, that will suffice.” He paused, and beckoned to that Limey in the bowler. “Get a few shots of Winston too. You will understand after you read my letter. Winston, Miles, Miles, Winston.” Snap. Shake hands again, Snap. And gone.
>>>>>>>>>
Arbuthnot found us a faster, more comfortable ride and a chauffeur, we were back at the shop a little after noon. We handed the film over to Billy Chung, I typed out a fast report, sent a copy up to CKYZ Radio over the teletype that had magically appeared while I was gone. That caught me up to the present, I had a shrewd idea that the future was contained in that innocent white envelope. I slit the flap and pulled out four sheets of paper. The top sheet had a picture of a flag I had never seen before. It consisted of eight gold stars, forming the Big Dipper and Polaris, on a dark blue field. Even I knew that the Big Dipper was a constellation in Ursa Major which symbolized a bear, an animal indigenous to the polar regions and especially Alaska. The caption on the picture mentioned that the Brown Bear was the world’s most widely spread species of ursine, and could be found all over northern Europe, Asia, and North America, as far south as Mexico. Playing with symbolism, are we?
So, Pacifica had a flag, did it? There was a smaller picture at the bottom of a dark blue rondel with a circle of eight gold stars on it. Okay, goodbye ugly blue lines, hello Polaris. Good enough symbol.
The next sheet was a biography of the jovial Mister Winston. Actually, Winston S. Churchill, author, adventurer, and politician in Her Majesty’s Government. I knew he looked familiar. I had read a couple of his books, but I did not suppose we were forming a literary circle. He had quite a resume.
Before the Endless War, he served as President of the Board of Trade, Home Secretary, and First Lord of the Admiralty as part of Asquith's Liberal government. During the war, he continued as First Lord of the Admiralty until the disastrous Gallipoli Campaign caused his departure from government. He seemed to have a weakness for grandiose schemes, but had also been largely responsible for the invention of the Armored Tank. The name “tank” had been a cover story, they were supposed to be mobile water tanks, and the name stuck. And what the First Lord of the Admiralty was doing playing cavalry games was never made clear.
He briefly resumed active army service on the Western Front as commander of the 6th Battalion of the Royal Scots Fusiliers, then went back to government under Lloyd George as Minister of Munitions, Secretary of State for War, Secretary of State
for Air, then Secretary of State for the Colonies. After two years, out of Parliament, he served as Chancellor of the Exchequer in Baldwin's Conservative government of 1924–1929. He had fled King Edward, going first to Canada, then across the Pacific to Hong Kong, and then evacuated to Australia before the Japanese took that over. And now he was back?
A busy little beaver, wasn’t he? Turn the page.
Oh. With bells and stars and underlining, in italics. A proclamation of the establishment of the State of Pacifica, with its provisional capitol in Bellingham, formerly of the State of Washington, US fucking A. Fucking A well told.
The next and last page was almost an anticlimax. Provisional President, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Provisional Vice President, Winston S. Churchill. Constitutional Congress scheduled for June 15, 1931. Not quite a month away, in an undisclosed location.
Clipped to that page, a note; “Please do not publish until permission given, James B. Arbuthnot. “Hilda? Look at this, please?”
“What’s with the politeness all of a sudden? Are you ill?” She flipped the pages, whistled, “My sweet fucking Jesus. That’s a damn load of crap, isn’t it?”
“My mind is boggled. I feel like the little dog on the railroad tracks.”
“The one that lost his head over a little piece of tail? No shit.” She smiled, but it was not a success.
“So nice to deal with somebody that speaks your language. Who can we tell?”
“Just Frankie and Peaches. And not on the phone, either. This is fucking incandescent. If the IB ever gets the tiniest little inkling of this crap, they will blow all of Washington State off the map.”
I had to agree, but words were not doing it. I just kissed her soundly, and said, “Want to go now?”
“We better. Roosevelt’s arrival is public, they wanted press on that, but this proclamation is a big fucking time bomb.”
>>>>>>>
We got to Crazy House just in time to be roundly ignored, almost trampled by the course of events. Person or persons unknown had tried to assassinate President Hoover. He had been wounded, no notes on his condition, and Charles Curtis, the Vice President, was holding the fort, without actually claiming to be president. We waited in one of the lounges for Peaches to spare us a few minutes, the radio nearest us was tuned to Radio Home, and Henry Mencken was waxing wroth. “Indian Charlie Curtis gives me no hope. He is the Kansas comic character, who is half Indian and half windmill. Charlie ran against Hoover with great energy, and let fly some very embarrassing truths about him. But when the Hoover managers threw Charlie the Vice-Presidency as a solatium, he shut up instantly, and a few days later he was hymning his late bugaboo as the greatest statesman since Pericles. He is seventy-one years old, and has never shown the slightest trace or spark of greatness. We can safely assert that the once great nation is now headless, rudderless, and has a nonentity at the helm.” Made you think that Indian Charlie had managed to piss Henry off somehow. Not an impossible task. If all the people Henry was mad at were laid end to end, he would set out and piss off some more. Some people have a positive talent.
And it was easier to think of what a curmudgeon Mencken was than to try to have a rational response to current events. I counted the days, Clyde Tolson could easily have driven to DC in the time he had, and what he might be doing there was barely worth thinking about. But just on general principles, he was the leading suspect in the shooting of good old Herbert. We were just rising to greet Peaches, but she rushed right past us, and twisted the tuner dial of the radio.
“Listen to this shit!”
Ed Murrow was not sounding so unruffled, saying; “In a startling development, Lieutenant General John Archer Lejeune, superintendent of Virginia Military Institute in Lexington, Virginia, has declared the secession of Virginia from the United States, and the formation of the Second Confederacy. He cited the assassination of President Hoover, and the murders of Director Hoover and Generalissimo Patton as evidence of the dissolution of the United States, and the successful invasions of New England, Wisconsin, and Washington State as proof of the impotence of the Federal government.
“South Carolina, Georgia, and Alabama have followed suit with similar declarations, Mississippi, Tennessee, and Louisiana are expected to make similar declarations within the day, depending on the voting in the state legislatures. Lejeune, a native of Louisiana, was the thirteenth Commandant of the Marine Corps. Lejeune had nearly forty years’ service in the Marine Corps, including commanding the U.S. Army's 2nd Division during the early days of the Endless War. He is the fifth Superintendent of the Virginia Military Institute. Lejeune is often referred to as the Greatest of all Leathernecks and the Marine's Marine. He saw combat duty in both the Spanish-American War and the Endless War. Lejeune is well known as a confidant and stern supporter of the late Generalissimo George Patton, who was a graduate of VMI. Stay tuned for further developments.”
Peaches muted the radio, grated, “How do you like those horse apples? Is that the shit, or fucking what?” She was wearing a nice dark blue dress and low heels, but it was the same old irrepressible Peaches. “Is that the craziest thing you ever heard?”
“Actually, dear heart, we came up here to clue you in on a bigger story. Where’s Frances?”
That snapped her head around. “I… Oh, fuck. You can’t be fucking with me, you wouldn’t dare. She is in her room, I guess. She works nights these days. Right this way.”
We went up a flight of stairs and she pounded on a door in the back. Some muffled noises, a minute’s wait, and Frankie stuck her head out, saw the three of us. “What? Oh, shit, it must be important. Come on in.”
“Frankie?” I said, in awe, “Are you growing a beard?”
“My face is. It’s my face, and it grows hair. What’s it to you?”
“Nothing. Looks good.” I managed to squeak out.
Hilda had the placation; “Quite becoming. A natural look? Not bad. I’m almost jealous.”
“I know you are fucking with me, but thanks. What’s up? I know you are not here to discuss my grooming.”
I pushed the door closed, and handed Peaches the envelope of doom. “Read this.”
“Holy crap. It never rains but it fucking pours,” She said, and handed the pages to Frankie one by one, as she finished each one.
Silence, followed by more digestive silence. “This is all on the QT, until we get the word from Franklin or Arbuthnot.”
“They fucking played us like fish. A fucking Zeppelin?”
“Yep. Has to be Japanese. They repainted it, but I know it’s not an American one. And some of the crew looked kind of Oriental too, but they hung back out of the spotlight. This has been brewing for a long time, but it’s almost time to move. I guess that Patton’s getting killed has forced the issue, but this is moving faster than I could have imagined.”
Frankie added, “And the fucking Mormons, and the wars in New England, and Wisconsin. You just know the Colombians have to move too, to protect their border from the fucking Mormons, and… I can’t believe I’m saying this, the Confederates?”
“No shit.” My mind was racing in overdrive. “Texas is the big deal here. The Krauts are going to run right down the Mississippi like shit through a tin horn, there is hell to pay.”
“And no pitch hot, as my daddy used to say,” Hilda put in. “How many different ways can one halfway decent country get raped at the same time?”
“Bullshit on this theoretical crap. What are we going to do, right here, right now?” Peaches has a strong grasp on reality as she is writ.
“You copy the gist of these papers, and you lock them up in the safest place you have, and we wait for the word to go public. What else can we do?”
“You’re right, Miles,” Frankie said, “We just do as we are told and hope for the best. We are citizens of Pacifica now, whatever that means, and we better be good ones. This is going to be so fucked up.”
“Yeah.” I answered. “But we are in a good spot here. If the heat focused down in
Bellingham, then maybe we won’t get bombed again. I bet you anything you want, that Hodges or…” I phased out.
“Spit it out.” Peaches ordered.
My mouth caught up to my brain. “We can expect Delany and his micks, and maybe Remus any minute now. Stillwell is probably here now, or very close. The Mormons will have their hands full, they won’t invade, and the Wisconsin war is a thousand miles away, or better. Is there enough Federal strength left in California to fuck with us? Is the US Navy going to dare come out of Pearl Harbor and attack Bellingham? Not very fucking likely. The Colombians have no call up here, no skin in this game. This was all Russia at one time. I think the Spanish gave up at San Francisco. I think we are good. Meanwhile, I’m hungry, is it dinner time yet?”
“Breakfast, you mean,” Frankie joked. “Let’s chow down. Tonight is going to be a screaming bitch in the news business.”
Hilda touched her arm. “When you are right, Frankie, you are right. Let’s get fueled up, and back to the Express. We have some serious writing to do.”
>>>>>>>>
On soft news days, the challenge is what to write. Hard news days, the challenge is what to write first. Split the difference. Left side of the page, Roosevelt arrives in Bellingham. Right side of the page, Hoover shot, Confederacy Declared. Headline, “Chaos Breeds Disunion.”
And keep the radios on, in case something else happens. Writers lead boring lives, except when we don’t.
Never mind the philosophy. Nail it down and send it to the printers, look for more trouble to get into. One thing that was happening was that the component stations of Victory Broadcasting System had no direction, nobody knew what the Investigation Bureau was going to do, and everybody was on their own. Some had regained the silly idea that they had to serve their local communities, and were broadcasting local news. In many cases, the local news was an invasion coming down their throats. Goering had obviously decided to take all of New England, and to go full force on the Mississippi Thrust, spit the States right down the middle. Were the new Confederates giving him the green light?
Brown Bear Blues Page 6