Winter Warning

by Jerome Charyn

  “That’s enough,” Olinov said, slapping at the shaved skulls of his men. “Sasha, let them have their toys.”

  And Isaac marched out of the room with his detail, their Ray-Bans all awry.

  He was overwhelmed by the wanton crush of people in a lobby crammed with spectators and members of the White House press corps, and stragglers who’d wandered in from the street—it seemed as if the whole damn capital knew of POTUS’s impulsive peregrination across Lafayette Park. Isaac was no less a recluse than the Hermit of Haifa. Washingtonians seldom had a chance to catch him in the flesh. He must have looked a bit ragged and drawn in his suit and tie from the clothing barrels of Orchard Street. He wouldn’t change his habits, no matter what his advisors said. He would have felt ridiculous in an Armani label.

  Isaac was trapped in a swirl of bodies, and his detail couldn’t help him now. He had to bob and weave with the prevailing rhythm, or he would have been swept back toward the elevator bank. Hands gripped at him like the colossal talons of that mythical bird under Olinov’s robe; his face was scratched; he was beginning to suffocate amid that furnace of human flesh. It was Matt Malloy who had the presence of mind to reach for his holster and shoot into the ceiling with his .357 Magnum. His superiors would crucify him for firing his hand cannon in a crowded hotel. But that explosion—like the crack of a whip in an echo chamber—smashed the relentless rhythm of the mob. Isaac lurched forward and tumbled out of the hotel. There was an aura of irreality about the episode. Isaac, Manhattan born, could have been a minor character in Augie March.

  “Sir, are you hurt?” asked Matt Malloy, with anguish in his eyes.

  “Matt, I’m fine. I had the time of my life.”

  But his team wouldn’t let him recross Lafayette Park on foot. Matt hunched over and kept nibbling instructions into his ear until Dragon arrived, Isaac’s bulletproof Lincoln deluxe. And now he’d have to ride two blocks in his chariot, with a Lincoln behind him and a Lincoln in front.

  Back to the asylum, he muttered, as he stepped into the chariot.

  3

  Colonel Stefan Oliver, code name Rio, was in the rec room at Quantico, immersed in a monumental ping-pong match with the base champion, a sergeant from the Philippines, when he heard a crackle in his earpiece and instantly halted the match. He had to wear a button mike whether he was wielding a ping-pong paddle or sitting on the crapper. The duty officer at the White House was communicating with him on one of the Secret Service’s encrypted channels. “Tango One to Rio, clear the decks. The Citizen is riding high.”

  “Roger that, Tango One, but what the hell is going on?”

  “You have to arrange a lift package in about twenty minutes.”

  “That’s absurd,” said the commander of the most elite unit in the helicopter corps. “I’m wearing silkies, and I’m playing the match of my life. I can’t put together a lift package in twenty minutes.”

  “Sure you can, Rio. You’re the president’s fucking pilot. Now clear the decks. The Big Guy is at your facility, sir.”

  He had to banish the Filipino sergeant and every other player from the rec room—clear the decks. Then he heard that unmistakable clatter of the presidential detail. Son of a bitch. POTUS had come to Quantico.

  Sidel walked into the rec room in a blue sweatshirt and silkies—the Marines’ traditional nylon running shorts. He had to borrow a paddle.

  “Hit with me, Stef. I always think better when I hear the sound of the ball. That’s why I came to fetch you. I couldn’t wait.”

  He knew firsthand of the president’s fabled softness for ping-pong. Sidel had the Seabees and the gardeners at Camp David rip up the miniature golf course that earlier gardeners and engineers had cut out of the forest exclusively for President Eisenhower—it was modeled after the grounds at Burning Tree, the capital’s premier private golf club. Every president after Ike had used it as a putting green. But Sidel couldn’t bear the sight of that golf course outside his picture window at Aspen Lodge—it offended his proletarian pride. And he had Ike’s little green turned into a bumpy playground with marble-topped ping-pong tables that summoned up his childhood in Manhattan, when every park had its own ping-pong tournament, summer and winter. Isaac hadn’t counted on the perpetual wind off Catoctin Mountain that sent the ball sailing after every shot.

  And so Stefan Oliver, the thirty-seven-year-old commander of Squadron One, stood in his silkies at Quantico and slapped at the ball with his president. He wasn’t trying to score points. For whatever reason, the Big Guy had glommed onto his personal pilot, and the Marine generals at Quantico were uncomfortable about this sudden coziness. The colonel was a widower; his wife, Leona, had died of a blood clot that had gone to the brain, and left him with Max, a moody eleven-year-old boy. And since the colonel had complicated hours, with the added complication of a boy who attended a school for the learning disabled near Rock Creek Park, Isaac insisted that father and son sleep at the White House on those days when his pilot was too involved with lugging him around. Stefan Oliver had a bedroom in the “attic,” on the third floor; he and the boy were the White House’s semipermanent guests.

  But Isaac hadn’t come to Quantico before; the visit seemed strange, almost a kind of burlesque. He’d never involved himself in his pilot’s lift packages, and he had his own ping-pong table in the White House attic, where he could have scheduled a match with members of the Secret Service and won in a sneeze. Yet he’d come to the rec room at Quantico, where he could be alone with Stef and risk losing point after point.

  “Kid,” Isaac said, “I’m being set up.”

  “Then shouldn’t we tap Malloy and Bull Latham? I’m an amateur when it comes to intel.”

  “But you have a keener eye than Matt. And the Bull is compromised. He’s loyal to his own career. He’d love to watch me stumble. No, I need your calibrations, Stef. You were at Camp David during the accords.”

  “Yes, sir, but I wasn’t involved with the big show. I didn’t have any presidential lifts. I was a babe in the woods, the youngest pilot on the watch.”

  Isaac studied him for a moment, pursed his lips. “Did you meet the Israeli prime minister?”

  “A couple of times. He liked to ramble, but his security was tight as a rat’s ass. I did carry him once. He wanted to go up on one of our Night Hawks. Shin Bet had a fit. But they couldn’t stop him. He wouldn’t stay aft with all the generals. He sat in the cockpit with me, sailed right through the mist.”

  “And what was your take on him?” Isaac asked. “Was he suicidal, or in complete control?”

  Stefan Oliver stared at his boss. “I’d say he was a prisoner of protocol—a lot like you.”

  Isaac laughed and tossed his paddle into the air. “I knew it! You’re a natural, much more clever than Matt and the Bull. Colonel, let’s get cracking.”

  “I wasn’t told about this lift package. Where to, sir? What’s our destination?”

  “My dacha.”

  Sidel wouldn’t change out of his silkies, and Stefan had to give him fatigues and one of his own flight jackets. He’d consult the weather charts, talk to the tower. If the fog was too thick, they couldn’t approach the mountaintop. They’d have to land at Thurmont, and drive the rest of the way to the presidential retreat. The military team at the White House had choreographed this damn lift, and the colonel had been left to piss in the wind on his own command. He didn’t like it at all. He radioed the duty officer.

  “Tango One, can you hear me, Tango One?”

  “Loud and clear.”

  “Weather uncertain. Will Dragon be at the Thurmont rendezvous?”

  “Dragon on target, Rio. Not a worry in the world. Roger and out.”

  Why had they bothered to include him in this mystery tour? The entire crew had assembled without him. His crew chief and copilot were in place. Stefan scowled, and they busied themselves with the control panels like a couple of innocents, while the president climbed the air stair, and the helicopter with the distinct white top assumed
the designation of Marine One the moment he was aboard. There were two Hawks on this lift package, Marine One and a decoy.

  Stefan had the stick between his legs, but the Hawk seemed to hover on invisible strings. He didn’t like it at all. Still, he couldn’t soliloquize to himself while he was in the air. He cruised toward Maryland and the mountaintop. The weather had begun to break. He could see clear to Gettysburg and some of the battle sites, like little green bumps. He confirmed his coordinates with the tower and radioed the duty officer.

  “Tango One, we’ll survive without Dragon. I’m heading toward Camp David.”

  “Are you sure, Rio? What if the sky falls on your head?”

  “Then you’ll suffer, son. I didn’t authorize this lift. I was never briefed. I’m a ghost rider. Roger and out.”

  It was always a bitch to land on the mountaintop. It didn’t matter how many times he’d been in the captain’s seat. You still had to squint like a hawk to spot the landing zone that had been cut out of the forest and that also served as a skeet range. He worried all the time that some son of a bitch of a sharpshooter would be out on the range popping at clay pigeons like Buffalo Bill while Stef was bringing in a White Top. And sure enough, a sharpshooter was right on the range with headphones and a target gun, as if he was lord and master of these bucolic grounds and there had never been or would never be a metal bird known as Marine One.

  Stefan had to radio the camp commander. “Shoofly, Shoofly, what the fuck is Buffalo Bill doing on my lawn?”

  And the commander shot back at him, “Rio, you have God’s word, the lawn is bare-assed.”

  Stef had to squint again at the skeet range—Buffalo Bill was gone. Neither the copilot nor the chief steward had seen him. And Stef began to doubt his own instincts, that sixth sense he had of the terrain. He allowed his craft to hover a bit as he surveyed the lawn and then landed Marine One on a dime, as he always did. The president didn’t stride into the cockpit to chat with Stef and thank him for the lift, which had become his “protocol” on board Marine One, but climbed down the air stair instead with his military aide and Matt Malloy. There were the usual motorized golf carts that would carry the Secret Service men on board the second White Top to their cabin. But Isaac detested these carts and everything that reminded him of golf and all the aristocrats at Burning Tree. And unless he arrived from Thurmont on board Dragon during a foul-weather lift, he preferred to hike from the landing pad to the presidential digs at Aspen Lodge.

  The Big Guy could relax a bit. He didn’t have to follow the protocol of a full presidential detail, since his dacha on the mountain was a fenced-in fortress. And the airspace above this fortress had been dubbed “the doughnut of death,” considering that no unauthorized craft couldn’t possibly penetrate it.

  Isaac had deposited the colonel’s flight jacket on his seat and wore one of the traditional blue windbreakers that were coveted by all those who visited the mountain.

  So he was almost invisible at his dacha, since everyone—from the Seabees to the carpenters and the kitchen patrol—was decked out in identical windbreakers with the words CAMP DAVID stitched in gold on the back.

  Stef couldn’t accompany POTUS on his little pilgrimage to Aspen Lodge. He had to button up the aircraft, put it to bed. He was tired and also pissed off at the president. He’d always been informed, even when there was a sudden shift in POTUS’s schedule. If something went wrong on this ride, and Marine One had been knocked about in a blizzard, Stef would still bear the blame, even though he hadn’t designed or approved the lift package.

  He rode in a caravan of golf carts across the wooded terrain, past the camp commander’s quarters, past the dispensary, past the nurses’ station, past a row of horseshoe pegs, past the primitive cabins with their green-painted boards and shake roofs, and leapt out at Walnut Lodge, his own digs at Camp David, this hidden resort with roads that were hard to find, where the sun could sink behind Catoctin Mountain and leave a blood-red trace, and where time had a lulling yet ferocious tug that was beyond the clockwork of any president and his keepers. FDR was the first president to visit the mountain and he’d dubbed it Shangri-La, where he could escape the furor of politics in wartime Washington and have his own rustic paradise. His aides had to live without running water and wash themselves in wooden troughs, while Stef had all the perks of a Marriott at Walnut Lodge.

  He couldn’t even settle in. The duty officer at Camp David was on the horn: POTUS wanted to see him at his dacha.

  “How soon?” Stefan asked. “Can I unwind a bit? Have a cup of fruit cocktail out of my fridge?”

  “Colonel, the boss expects you to come riding into Dodge as pronto as you can. If you’re screwing one of the nurses from Chestnut, tell her to diddle herself.” There was a deadness on the line, as the duty officer realized his blunder. Stef was still in mourning. “I didn’t mean to be untactical, sir . . .”

  He put on his own windbreaker and a Baltimore Orioles cap and went out into the winter chill that had settled on the mountain months ago and would last until spring. It could make a man crumple up on a bad day. He had no official status at Shangri-La once the lift package landed. He was one of the president’s invited guests, marking time on the mountain until the president decided to leave and Stef had to prepare another package, like a mummy called back to life. That was the strangeness of the squadron commander’s role once he arrived at Shangri-La.

  He kept seeing other men in windbreakers and Oriole caps, men he had never seen before. They didn’t mask their gaze. They saluted Stef.

  “Evening, Colonel.”

  It still unnerved Stef. They were his duplicates or triplicates, who rode the wind, like he did. He could have had a dozen twins out there—two dozen. Dammit, he knew his own Marines, and he was familiar enough with the Secret Service. These weren’t Park Rangers, who had clearance at this site, who gardened a lot and often provided mounts for the president’s guests.

  He stopped one of these strangers. “Who are you, son?”

  “Chief Petty Officer Tatum. I’m with the Seabees, sir. I belong to Captain Cotter’s detail.”

  Tatum’s tags were in order, and he knew the abracadabra that the Secret Service had arranged with Naval Intel to spirit out any rogues on the mountain: Blood on the Moon.

  So Stef passed the swimming pool that President Nixon had the Seabees build for him near the patio of Aspen Lodge; Nixon had kept the pool heated summer and winter during his stay at the dacha—it was called Dickie’s Birdbath, since crows seemed to populate the pool more than presidents, riding over the surface with their raucous chatter. Isaac also kept the pool heated, and might go for a midnight dip when there wasn’t too much blood on the moon. POTUS was a mystery unto himself, a ping-pong playing police chief who had become president by mere chance because the president-elect, J. Michael Storm, had to resign. Still, it was Isaac who had gathered in the votes, who had campaigned with a Glock in his pants, while J. Michael hid out at the Waldorf. But Isaac was beginning to suck up more and more of Nixon’s habitat. He’d become as reclusive as Nixon after Watergate. Isaac wasn’t plagued by any scandal. But he withdrew into the mountain mist, and allowed Ramona Dazzle to run the palace.

  Aspen Lodge was barely visible in the steam clouds that rose above the water, even with the spotlights that surrounded the president’s cabin. The colonel had to climb the patio steps through a shroud of wintry air—it was like holding a moist web in his hands. POTUS was on the patio with his chef, Charles, a huge black man with scars on his face as vivid as tattoos. Charles was a Seabee assigned to Aspen Lodge, and had also been with the Seabees in Nam. He’d had a concession booth at the Polo Grounds when he was still a boy. Isaac loved to talk with his Seabee chef about the late New York Giants. POTUS was still grieving Willie Mays, who was plucked from the Polo Grounds and sentenced to San Francisco. But Charles had another tale to tell.

  “Look, Mr. President. I was there. I saw Willie walk down the steps of St. Nicholas Terrace and slide into
the Polo Grounds on his own two feet. I watched him play stickball with kids in the Valley. He took to Harlem, and Harlem took to him, but you won’t catch Willie walking on St. Nicholas Terrace—gone is gone.”

  Charles marched back inside the cabin, and Isaac was left in that wintry web, as the colonel climbed onto the patio.

  “You know, kid, I can always see the deer at first light—from this porch. They come to the salt lick. The Seabees replenish that lick whenever I come to the mountain. Those whitetails were all bled out by local hunters, but I suspended the hunting season on this mountain, put a moratorium on whitetails. That’s the last bit of power Ramona’s left me.”

  “You could always fire her,” the colonel said.

  Isaac smiled in that curl of steam clouds. “And risk a coup? The military’s on her side.”

  “I doubt that, sir.”

  “I didn’t mean to dis you, Stef. But I had to get out of the Hotel”—that was the Secret Service’s code name for the White House. “And I didn’t want Ramona here. So I improvised and covered my tracks. She won’t find this little maneuver in the logbooks.”

  Stef had to grin at Sidel’s childlike perversity. “You can’t keep her off the mountain, sir. A lift package is always countersigned. She’ll see the signatures.”

  “But I’ve locked down all the other Night Hawks. And she can’t get through the gates. I’m still commander-in-chief. I need twenty-four hours, Stef.”

  “Then it really is Blood on the Moon,” Stef muttered.

  “What’s that?” Isaac asked with the same childlike perversity.

  “It’s kind of the code name to identify unauthorized personnel.”

  “And I’m the last to hear about it?”

  The president seemed in real pain, and Stef was puzzled. POTUS was wild-eyed and wooly on his mountain. “I didn’t want you to bring Max,” Isaac said. “That’s why I excluded you from the package.”

  Stef usually brought his son along on the lift, and the boy would go back to the District on Dragon if Stef had to linger. Max had a live-in nurse who stayed with him when the colonel disappeared on long lifts. Half the time they all lived in the White House attic and had breakfast with the Big Guy.