by Steve Lewis
‘We have proven that we have the courage to seek peace. Perhaps our enemies have forgotten that we also have the fortitude to wage war.
‘Tonight we mourn Earle Jackson; tomorrow we will avenge him.
‘As Psalm 144 says: “Blessed be to the Lord my rock, who trains my hands for war, my fingers for battle.”
‘Thank you. Good night. And God bless America.’
‘I dislike that woman, she is spoiling for a fight.’ The priest pressed mute on the remote as the coverage returned to another studio panel parsing every word of the speech.
Harry sat back in his lounge chair and brushed some crumbs from his borrowed rugby top.
‘That makes two of us,’ he said. ‘That wasn’t a speech aimed at a lone gunman or a group of terrorists. Asta is preparing her nation for war, which must mean the Yanks suspect the assassination is state-sponsored.’
‘It’s more than that, Harry.’ The old priest’s face tightened into a grimace as he turned to the younger man. ‘I met her, maybe thirty years ago, at a conference at the Graduate Theological Union at the University of California in Berkeley.’
Dunkley was genuinely surprised. ‘I can’t imagine the Tea Lady in Chief on a hippy campus in San Francisco.’
‘It was a gathering that brought together every Christian group from the most liberal to the most conservative,’ the priest said. ‘Mikaela and her ilk were there because it’s the kind of dialogue her type joins with the sole intention of destroying it. When I met her she was an advocate of Dominion Theology: she believed that Christians should govern America. She is a dedicated theocrat and deadly dangerous.’
Dunkley shifted in his seat to get a better view of the priest.
‘Father, without meaning to be impolite, all religions are dangerous in my view and responsible for most of the trouble and all of the wars in the world.’
‘Really?’ The priest raised a bushy eyebrow. ‘Were you paying attention in the twentieth century, Harry? History’s greatest criminals were Hitler, Mao and Stalin. Pol Pot could not match them for corpses, but did for evil. All erased religion and replaced it with the worship of a proselytising, messianic state. Bad men don’t need God to justify mass murder.’
Dunkley felt a long forgotten surge of competitive energy as he warmed to a debate he’d been having since he was sixteen.
‘And how many deaths over millennia have there been because zealots decided to force their imagined gods on others? Your church was as brutal as any, not to mention the contemptible army of kiddie fiddler priests you seem to have spawned. How can you live with that?’
The priest lowered his eyes and Dunkley felt a stab of guilt, remembering the kindness the man had showed him.
‘It’s a very fair question and I have no pat answer,’ the old man said. ‘The church is a human institution and like all our endeavours it is flawed. At times I have despaired of it and its leadership. At times I think our slow death in the West is punishment for our many sins. Yes, the church has done great evil but it has also done great good. And my faith is a different thing. It tells me to hope, even when all seems lost.’
‘Father, you are clearly a good man. Don’t you ever wonder? Don’t you ever doubt?’
The priest looked around the room at the photos of the fathers now passed to dust.
‘Of course I doubt. As Bertrand Russell said, the whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves and wiser people so full of doubt. But as I approach death, every day I ask myself just one question: could I have lived a better life?’
The priest shifted his gaze back to his companion, his almond eyes blazing with intelligence.
‘And my answer to that is yes, of course. But with or without God, in or out of my frail and broken church, I will go to my grave knowing that I mostly did my best and tried to live a life for others. A life where hope always triumphed over despair.’
His voice softened.
‘And you, Harry Dunkley? If you do not drink your life away you have many years left. How do you intend to spend them?’
Harry slumped in his chair and stared up at the ceiling, the colour of a day-old newspaper, the paint beginning to crack.
‘I have no god to fall back on. So I have no idea what God’s will is. I only have me and just lately I’m a bit pissed off that I’ve been letting myself down. I don’t have your luxury of a divinely ordained path.’
‘Son, I like you. But you are chock full of the rote beliefs atheists have about people of faith. To put it in your language you are full of shit. I don’t pray for or expect a roadmap for my life. I have certain gifts and some strong beliefs. My strongest belief is that I have to make the most of those gifts. Harry, God’s will is what you make it.’
The priest put his hand on Dunkley’s arm. His grip was still strong and there was a fierce urgency in the old man’s eyes.
‘What will you make it?’
Dunkley exhaled in a long slow breath before answering.
‘I’ve lost faith in the institutions that run our country and the world. I used to believe that journalism was worthwhile and noble, that sunlight was the best antiseptic, that I was uncovering the truth. But I also learned to my great cost that it was an ego trip. As you say, all humans are flawed. I screwed up my marriage and now my daughter won’t talk to me.’
Gaby, his only child. She was the one person he loved unconditionally, but she had cut him off and how could he blame her? When he was in his prime as a reporter he had all but ignored her and she had not coped well with his public fall from grace. Their last conversation had ended with her stinging retort: ‘You are a pathetic disgrace.’
He’d tried to reach out to her, but in vain. Six months ago, she’d stopped returning his calls.
Of all his mistakes and misdemeanours, losing Gaby hit the hardest. How he wished he could hear the gentle arpeggio of her voice extolling his day’s modest achievements.
He wondered what she was doing now. Did she think of him at all, or was he just refuse locked away in her past?
Dunkley took another gulp of air.
‘I’ve got more flaws than most. I got my best friend murdered, lost my job and nearly killed myself. So what will I make of what’s left of my life? To paraphrase you, Father, that is a fucking good question.’
The priest smiled.
‘Well, I trust you’ll find a fucking good answer, Harry Dunkley. The world needs journalists like you. As Albert Camus said, a free press can be good or bad. But an unfree press is always bad.’
The saints were closing in.
Dunkley sat on a pew in the Villa Maria church, gazing up at a stained-glass window. The sun animated a colourful portrait of John or Joseph or some other Catholic hero. Dunkley knew too little of the Bible to decipher the image.
A marble plaque below the window asked people to pray for the soul of Father Placide Hault, who’d died in 1909 after a life caring for others. There were some good people here, those who laboured in the name of their God, even if he couldn’t begin to understand their faith.
Dunkley had rarely darkened the doors of any chapel but he’d grown to enjoy the contemplative ambience of this space. He breathed in the quiet of the sandstone building, feeling a renewed strength. For the first time in many months he was resolved. He lifted his hands and held them out in front of him. Steady. No trembling. He smiled to himself then took one last long sweep of the church. Built in 1871, it bore the scars of countless repairs. It had been extended, updated, patched and repatched over its 146-year life. But it was still standing.
The saints stared down at him.
He walked out into a glorious Sydney morning, fumbling in his pocket for his cheap phone. He scrolled through some recent numbers, then punched green and waited.
A familiar voice answered with a casual, ‘How are you, mate?’
Dunkley’s response was instant. ‘Martin, I’m in.’
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Washington
Soft light filtered through a pair of curtained windows overlooking Washington’s 14th Street. A full-length mirror reflected a trim waist and strong, straight shoulders. He flexed his biceps, impressed by the firm muscle. His fingers searched his midriff for middle-aged excess, but there was none.
Jack Webster had thirty minutes to prepare for the funeral of President Earle Jackson. The defence chief was in his preferred suite at his favourite DC hotel, the Willard, a short walk to the White House and a fifteen-minute drive to the National Cathedral on Wisconsin Avenue.
Webster was part of the Australian contingent that included the governor-general, Prime Minister Elizabeth Scott, Opposition Leader Catriona Bailey, and a parade of ministerial and vice-regal hangers-on. They had arrived at Dulles International several hours ago on the Boeing 737 that served as Australia’s cut-down version of Air Force One.
He carefully folded his towel and replaced it on the rack. His batman had laid out his uniform, all starch and bearing. A pair of black shoes had been buffed to a high military sheen.
America was sombre, but Webster felt a small thrill as he began to dress. After all he was in Washington, the epicentre of global power, the New Rome. His spiritual home.
On this blackest of days, Sir Jack had never felt more alive.
He studied himself in his full regalia and his hand rose slowly in salute, his eyes never leaving the mirror. ‘Sir!’ The warrior was ready.
This nation feted men like him, and had made the military chiefs Washington and Eisenhower president. Webster was the empire’s soldier, its loyal subject, ruling one of the outer provinces. Here, he was among people who had real power and knew how to wield it. Ruthlessly.
Today the nation would pray for the soul of a slain president, but in reality Jackson was a flawed martyr who had damaged Brand USA. In this world no one respected the weak, and a vulnerable America was bad for the West.
The death of a president was a tragedy, but it was also an opportunity. A desperately needed chance to hit the reset button. The assassin had done America a favour.
There was a sharp rap on the door. 12.25 precisely.
Webster grabbed one last look in the mirror, stroking his row of medals before opening the door.
‘Sir Jack, would you follow me please?’
‘This is a sad hour in the life of our great nation. Earle Jackson won America’s respect with his leadership, and he won our love with humility and goodness. He belonged to the people, and so to the people he will be returned, forever.’
Washington National Cathedral was overflowing with nearly four thousand mourners, many of them foreign dignitaries who had come to pay their respects to the fifth US president to be assassinated while in office. They listened in silence as a black-clad Mikaela Asta paid respect to her predecessor.
The capital was in the grip of a vicious winter, the plummeting temperatures adding to the bleak mood of a city with too much experience in burying dead leaders.
For a week, the American people had mourned their commander in chief, who had been gunned down at a rally in one of Detroit’s blue-collar enclaves. Despite committing unprecedented resources to the hunt for the killer, the nation’s law enforcement and intelligence agencies had made little headway in solving the case.
In a nation prone to wild rumour, conspiracy theories abounded.
Now the funeral entourage prepared to leave the grand cathedral, a motorcade waiting to carry the presidential casket on a five-mile route that would take an hour to complete. Jackson’s family had requested he be laid to rest at Arlington, the first president since John F Kennedy to be buried at the national military cemetery.
In his seat fifteen rows from the front, Jack Webster dipped his head as the procession slowly followed the casket carried by six soldiers. He had just turned to join the trail of mourners when he felt a firm grip on his forearm. ‘Good of you to come all this way, Jack.’
The man who had been sworn in as vice president was at his side. Morgan McDonald had been his close confidant for more than a decade.
‘Of course I would be here, Morgan,’ Webster said. ‘America might have more powerful allies but it has no better friend than Australia.’
Big Mac dipped his head in acknowledgement. ‘I know. That is why we need to talk.’
Big Mac knew that few of his fellow Americans mourned Jimmy Carter’s one-term presidency, and military hardheads still winced at the thought of America’s humiliation when embassy staff were taken hostage in Tehran.
And he was also well aware that fewer still would recall Carter’s vice president, Walter Mondale. But Mondale was America’s first ‘modern’ vice president and the first to have an office in the West Wing of the White House.
And it was in this office on the building’s western edge that Big Mac was holding court, albeit with an audience of one.
‘These are dark days, my friend, dark days indeed.’ The vice president’s southern drawl slowly caressed each word.
‘Wherever you look around the world the good guys are losing.’ He waved at a massive map he’d just had installed. ‘In Africa, Boko Haram is on the rise, holding Nigeria captive. In the north, the Arab Spring has turned to a bitter winter that will last generations. The Middle East is aflame from end to end. Worst of all, Syria and Iraq are now at the mercy of those infidel butchers from Islamic State.’
It wasn’t the first time Jack Webster had heard this speech, but he said nothing. He agreed with every word, and wanted to gauge Big Mac’s direction and purpose.
‘Europe is a run by a pack of limp-wristed bureaucrats as a travesty of a state that provides false unity. In the north the Russian bear is waking; it smells our weakness and is testing its strength.’
Big Mac looked from the map to his friend.
‘And in your own neck of the woods, Jack, we have an emerging problem. Maybe the biggest problem of all. An emboldened and aggressive China. A country determined to dominate the world.’
Webster leaned forward in his seat.
‘Unfortunately, my friend, and I say this with great respect, our problem got a whole lot worse when the US cut and ran from the Taiwan Strait. That rolled forward China’s plans for regional expansion by a generation. We needed that time to prepare.’
Big Mac breathed out theatrically and nodded his agreement.
‘Yes, Earle Jackson was a disaster as president. He should be buried in an unmarked pauper’s grave to be pissed on for eternity by rodents. Not at Arlington. But don’t misread the American people. We can criticise our own; others are not afforded that right. The people are angry that someone killed Jackson before they got the chance to do it at the ballot box. They are hurting and hunger for revenge. So, turns out, the best thing Earle ever did for America was die. We salute him for that. This is a crisis we must not waste.’
‘What do you mean, Mr Vice President?’
McDonald lifted his vast bulk from behind his desk and turned to look out the window.
‘It’s time to reboot America. Time for us to shout to the world that we are still the only superpower on Earth. The murder of our president gives us a window of opportunity. We have reason to believe that the attack on our leader was not the act of a lone madman but part of a co-ordinated assault by a nation. We will take our time, but when we act it will be with a sledgehammer, it will come without warning and the world will shudder.’
There was a long pause. Big Mac kept gazing out the window, his hands clasped behind his back.
‘Jack, this will be high risk. We will need our friends to be unwavering in their support.’
‘You know you have it. We’ve been unwavering since you came to our aid in World War II. Australia does not forget its friends.’
‘We need more than words, Jack, we need deeds. Concrete, unmistakeable signs that you are on our side in this scrap.’
‘What do you want?’
‘I understand you’re in the market for submarines.’
‘Yes, twelve
of them. The biggest defence buy in our history.’
Big Mac turned to Webster and smiled, revealing a gold tooth that made him look for all the world like the planet’s shonkiest used car salesman.
‘Well, I know a man who might just be selling some.’
Elizabeth Scott was surprised to find that she and the governor-general were being put up in two of the four adjoining townhouses in Blair House on Pennsylvania Avenue, three hundred metres from the White House front gate. With Washington groaning under the weight of world leaders, Scott had thought she would be well down the list of dignitaries vying for a spot at the president’s official guest house.
Yet the American embassy had issued the invitation when the Australian travelling party was announced and when Scott arrived there was a card waiting on the bureau in the entry hall. Inside was a handwritten note below the presidential seal.
‘Elizabeth, I am sorry we are meeting under such sad circumstances,’ it began, in beautifully fluent, copybook cursive script. ‘But I hope that it will be the beginning of an enduring friendship. The alliance between our nations is one of the few rocks in an uncertain world. In such times friends have to stay close. God bless, Mikaela Asta.’
She had read the note yesterday morning, but it seemed days ago. It was nearly midnight and jet-lag was taking its toll after a day of solemn ritual and a host of meetings with world leaders. There was one last crucial engagement before Scott could crawl into bed.
At least she wouldn’t have to go far. Blair House’s remaining two townhouses had been awarded to the Japanese prime minister and emperor, an arrangement not lost on other visiting dignitaries and Washington elites.
‘They are ready for us, Ma’am.’ The bass voice of Jack Webster was accompanied by a sharp rap on the door.
Scott felt uneasy. Meetings between heads of government were usually secretive affairs, but few were actually held in secret. They took months to plan, were telegraphed in the press and attended by foreign affairs officials from both sides. Great care was taken that exact notes were kept, and agreed statements were issued at their conclusion.