‘I’m sure.’
‘Well, let me tell you, Sergeant,’ he said, his voice growling around his cigar. ‘I know for a fact what happened that day. It was a foul-up, another in a series of foul-ups. There were helicopters at Andrews Air Force Base whose sole job was to get Kennedy and his family out of DC. First, JFK dithered too much and didn’t allow the request to go out until nearly the last minute. Story I heard is that he was having a nervous breakdown, weeping in the Oval Office. Then there were communications problems between the White House Signal Office and Andrews Air Base—someone didn’t have the right authentication code. That ate up a lot of minutes. And when the helicopters finally got into the air, they were halfway there when the first warhead struck. We had minute-by-minute communications logs, and we know for a fact that JFK was in the White House, waiting to be airlifted out, when the city was hit.’
A defiant puff on the cigar, and the general continued, walking down the path. ‘I know it’s a nice fairy story that some people like to tell, that the wounded young President still lives, waiting to come out of hiding at the last moment to save his country. But that’s all it is. Fairy tales, and we don’t have time for them. All right, here we are.’
The path had emerged into a large clearing, where a bam had been transformed into an aircraft hangar. Near the hangar was a concrete landing pad, and a dark green Huey helicopter stood in the center. When the general was spotted by the crew they clambered aboard, and the engine started with a slow whine, as the blades began to turn.
‘Just a brief ride, and then we’ll have you on your way to Boston,’ General Curtis said, raising his voice and tossing aside his cigar.
Carl followed him into the cabin of the helicopter, wincing at the pain in his legs. A crewman settled him and the general into their seats. They put on a pair of earphones and a mike system, and did a quick comm check with the general as the helicopter lifted off and banked to the right. Carl settled back into his seat, folded his arms, and knew with a cold sense of dread that if the general suddenly decided that this sergeant wasn’t trustworthy, it wouldn’t take much to toss him of the helicopter at five thousand feet or so.
Considering what the general had done ten years ago, Carl was sure he could do it without a moment’s hesitation.
~ * ~
Less than a half hour later, the general’s voice, crackly through the static, came over the headsets. ‘Take a look out me side, will you, Sergeant?’
Carl leaned and looked out the Plexiglas, down at the landscape moving beneath them. There were small towns and roads and trees and grasslands, and off by the horizon, a larger city.
‘That’s Frederick, Maryland,’ the general said.
Carl nodded, knowing with a heavy sensation in his feet and hands and chest what was coming next. Below them the landscape started to change, started to become wilder, with rawer homes and buildings. Cars were lined up on the high-ways and sunlight glinted from some of the windshields, but none of the cars were moving. None had moved, in the past ran years. Then there was the distant sight of a city, and even from miles away, Carl could see the burnt rubble and empty windows of the buildings.
‘Rockville,’ the general said. ‘Nobody’s sure when we’ll start rebuilding there. Same old story. Too many demands, too little money and too few people.’
The engine noise of the helicopter grew louder, and Carl noticed that they were gaining altitude. The remains of the cities and towns became clearer. Trees and brush were growing among the ruined buildings, and there were still rows of dead trees, their leaves and small branches burnt away. Then there were fields of gray and black rubble, hard to make out anything in detail, and then, incredibly, a lake. They were flying over a lake, the shores of which were fused gray earth.
’Lake DC,’ the general said, sighing. ‘Once the warhead struck, the whole landscape and geography of this place changed. What’s below us is one of the three craters in this zone, and this one’s been filled by the Potomac River.’
The helicopter circled and Carl looked down, nauseated but unable to look away from the gray soil and water of the dead lake, or the rubble, the endless fields of rubble. Even this high up, he could smell the deadness of this place, this center of what was once called the American Century. Once Carl had stood proudly here, at the inauguration of a president who had promised great things, great crusades. Now, in his second visit to this city, all that was left was rubble. He knew why flights over these bombed-out areas were forbidden; one could be driven to madness thinking of what had happened here, ten years ago. Carl looked over at the general again, and thought: madness.
‘Think of everything that used to be down there. Sergeant,’ General Curtis said, his voice sounding strong in the earphones. ‘Jefferson walked to his inauguration down there. Lincoln saved the Union. Roosevelt fought the Nazis and the Japs. Eisenhower served his two terms down there with honor. Think of the Capitol, the Lincoln Memorial, the White House, the Jefferson Memorial, the Smithsonian, all of the memories, all of our history, everything that was dear to this country. Gone.’
Carl was startled when the general leaned over and grabbed his arm. ‘Except for those two documents, Sergeant Landry. That’s the soul of our nation, a way of finally binding our wounds. Get them for us, Sergeant. Give us back our history.’
Carl said nothing, looking down at the miles of devastation below him, and eventually the general let go of his arm and the helicopter turned north and flew back to Pennsylvania.
And again, he thought: madness.
~ * ~
TWENTY-FIVE
Carl stood in front of his apartment building and let his luggage fall on the sidewalk. He listened to the evening traffic race by, ignoring the people around him heading home or over to Newbury Street for a night of shopping and dining. He looked at the brick building, his head still aching from all that had happened that day. It was late evening and just a few hours ago, he had been flying over the rubble that used to be this nation’s capital. Then, after a ride north on an Air Force jet to Logan and a hired car waiting for him outside the terminal, he was back home, exhausted and terrified of what lay ahead.
Six days. In six days Jim Rowley and PS 19 and all the other free communities in this country, they were coming out from the tunnels and basements and refuges, coming out to demand their rights. At the same time—if not earlier—troops would be in place to either arrest them or gun them down. And then after the election, there would be the formal announcement of the anschluss. He could imagine the speech Rockefeller would make. A closer alliance. A return to a special relationship. Nothing to worry about, more food and assistance and maybe a representative from Her Majesty’s government sharing the Oval Office.
Six days.
He had less than a week to find Merl Sawson’s hidden documents, documents that were going to have an impact on the election, documents that could decide whether or not Jim Rowley and his comrades were going to live or were going to end up in decon camps.
Could he do it?
He had to. There were no other options.
He picked up his bags and went inside.
~ * ~
His apartment was musty with stale odors, and he opened the windows overlooking Comm Avenue and the park. The traffic noises sounded good after the silent streets of Manhattan. He went into the bedroom, unpacked his bags, and saw that the Air Force crew at General Curtis’s retirement home had been neat and efficient. All of his clothes had been washed and pressed. Even his pistol had been cleaned, though the clip was empty and there was no ammunition. Very thoughtful, indeed.
A pile of mail had been waiting on the floor near the door, and he spent a few dull moments sorting through it. A Newsweek, with a cover photograph of Nelson Rockefeller, grinning and waving at a campaign event. A Boston Edison bill and a mailing from the American Cancer Society. ‘Fall Appeal,’ it said on the outside of the envelope in bright red letters. He put it aside with the electric bill, to pay later. Another envelop
e, inviting him to join the Veterans of Atomic Wars. He tossed that one in the trash.
An advertising flyer decorated with drawings of a crystal ball, stars and planets, and with a local phone number and address, caught his eye:
Madame Bolivar
Readings and Predictions
You Can Contact a Lost Relative in the Other World!
Thousands Have Done So. Why Not You?
One of the few growth industries in this country after the war. Mediums and spiritualists, for the millions of guilty survivors out there. He threw that away as well.
The last envelope was a thin one from Searchers, Inc. He knew the drill, knew what a thin envelope meant. He opened it up and saw the invoice, as well as the familiar form letter with the familiar words: ‘Sorry to inform you that no progress has been made in locating YOUR SISTER, SARAH LANDRY...’
He almost tossed that away as well, but instead went to the refrigerator and took out two bottles of Guinness—gifts from Sandy from their dinner—and then sprawled out on the couch. He didn’t feel like watching television or going out for a newspaper, so he sat there, drinking. After a half hour or so, he got a couple more beers, and soon he was lying on his couch, staring up at the cracked plaster ceiling. Maybe he should go into the bedroom. Maybe. Did serious drunks ever make it to the bedroom? They ended up on the floor or on couches or in easy chairs. If he could make it to the bedroom, then he really wasn’t a drunk.
He got up, staggered some. His head felt heavy on his shoulders and his legs didn’t quite go where he wanted, but in a minute he had collapsed on the bed. He was still dressed, he still had his shoes on, but by God, he had made it to bed. He isn’t a real drunk, after all.
~ * ~
Sometime in the middle of the night he woke up, terribly thirsty. He went to the bathroom, and then to the kitchen to get a glass of water. He drank two glasses and then stopped, feeling nauseated. He put the empty glass into the sink and sniffed the air again. The apartment still smelled odd and then he realized why. Tobacco. Someone had been smoking in his apartment while he was away. He shivered and went out into the living room, and then to his office.
He switched on a light and looked around. Sure enough. Just as before, before he had left on his trip to Manhattan, he could tell that visitors had been in here. Books had been taken out and rearranged in the bookshelves, and he could see that some papers had been moved around. He sat down at his desk and turned on a table lamp. His head still hurt. What does it mean, he thought. Sloppy spies, coming in and looking at whatever they could get their hands on. Amateurs? Or so slickly professional that they didn’t care if he knew that they had been here.
He checked the time. It was two A.M. on Wednesday. He now had five days left. He yawned, knowing that later today he’d do some things and on Thursday, back at the Globe, he’d get down to serious work. Merl Sawson. If the general had been telling the truth—and that was a mighty big if—then the police and the probable Army searches of Merl’s apartment had turned up nothing.
So. Where would an old vet like Merl hide something of importance? And how would he find them? And what the hell was in those papers anyway?
Jim Rowley thought the papers could help prevent the crackdown on the free communities by influencing the election.
General Curtis said they were the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence.
And Caz Cynewski, the old CIA employee, said they wert the key, the key to He Lives.
JFK, still alive?
Jesus. Carl was under no illusions. Whatever those papers were, the general and his comrades needed them for their own plans, their own futures. And if Carl did them the favor of locating them, he would probably be graciously thanked and then be sent to the outskirts of San Diego, to decontaminate topsoil or some damn thing.
Never to come back to Boston, never to work again at the Globe, never to see or hear anything more about Sandy.
Damn that woman.
He looked at his book manuscript. What was it that she had said, before the truck blew up back in New Jersey? Something about writing another chapter, about what they had seen and about the lies of the generals. He ran his fingers across his manuscript. That was an idea, especially if he only focused on one particular lie, and one particular general. Something the general had said about a visit to Vietnam had brought back an old memory. He knew he should get some sleep but he had this nervous energy, wanting to put words down on paper before he forgot them or before something else came along.
Near the typewriter was a shortwave radio, smaller than the one out in the living room. Now it was a little past three o’clock on Wednesday morning. He switched on the receiver, let it warm up for a few minutes, and then scanned the dial, searching for a frequency that he knew by heart. There was a burst of static, and then a man’s voice, with a Massachusetts Havard accent, that faded in and out.
‘…my fellow citizens, the time is upon us in November to make a decision ...’ the voice said, and Carl felt the hair on the back of his arms rise.
‘…whether to return to the promise of my administration, tragically shortened in its lifetime ...’ More static and pops and crackles. He held his breath and gingerly moved the frequency dial, and the familiar voice, the one he heard back in 1961 on that cold day at the Capitol, went on.
‘... or we go forward into the darkness, unnoted and unwanted by the world, our bright promise dimmed forever ...’
More static. He moved the dial around for a few more minutes, and there was nothing but static and the whines and hisses of radio jamming. He reached over to switch off the radio and then stopped. No, he decided. Leave it on. As he had said to Sandy, days before in the ruins of the Hyannisport compound, being in a minority meant being uncrowded, and he liked that.
Then he rolled a sheet of blank paper into the typewriter and began to write.
~ * ~
It was later on Wednesday morning, the day overcast and threatening rain. He was a couple of blocks away from his apartment building, holding a cup of coffee, woozy from not enough sleep, knowing there was a lot to do today. He stood at a pay phone near a used bookstore, dialed the Park Plaza, and asked for Sandy’s room.
‘I’m sorry, sir,’ the operator said. ‘Miss Price has checked out.’
Damn, he thought. ‘Did she leave any forwarding address or telephone number?’
‘No, sir.’
‘Anything at all?’
‘No, I’m afraid not.’
He hung up the phone and sipped at the coffee. He guessed he could have made the call from his apartment, but he had wanted to get out and he didn’t want to use the phone back home. He had been visited twice by unseen strangers, and who knew what kind of listening devices they had left behind. He had no idea who they worked for: the English. French, German, Japanese, Nelson Rockefeller, General Curtis, or even George McGovern. They might be in his apartment right now, maybe looking to see what he had been writing so early in the morning.
Carl patted the inside of his coat pocket, where the freshly typed pages were folded in an envelope. Sorry, spooks. The evidence ain’t there.
It’s here.
~ * ~
He went back to his apartment building and got the Coronet started after a few grinding tries, then he drove over to State Street, where he lucked out finding a parking space. The clouds that had been threatening earlier in the morning had opened up, and he knew that without a hat or an umbrella he would look like a drowned dog in a few moments.
So what? he thought. I’ve got things to do and not much time to do them in.
At number 10 State Street, he came to a familiar building, one he had visited less than two weeks ago, and that had eventually propelled him into some very strange places indeed. The British consulate still looked clean and immaculate in its four-story brick splendor, and he went through the black wrought-iron gate and up the flagstone path.
The main door was open and he went into the tiny lobby area, where a young man sat
behind a glass window, reading a copy of The Economist. There was a speaker grill in the center of the glass and he suddenly remembered, with a wry smile, the pawnshop in Manhattan, run by that strange couple. Jesus, he thought, what were their names?
‘Yes?’ said the attendant, his tone cultured and showing maybe a hint of irritation at being interrupted. He was wearing a white dress shirt and what looked like an old school tie. ‘May I help you?’
‘I’d like to see Douglas Harris, please. The press attaché.’
The man smiled as he looked through a ledger. ‘I’m afraid that’s impossible without an appointment.’
Carl reached into his wallet, pulled out a business card, and slid it through a thin opening at the bottom of the glass carrier. ‘I’m Carl Landry, of the Boston Globe. I really need to talk to Mr. Harris.’
Resurrection Day Page 43