The Washington Decree

by Jussi Adler-Olsen

  * * *

  —

  She sat for a moment with the phone receiver in her hand, trying to remember Wesley’s eyes while they were embracing, but all she could see was the gray concrete of Sussex State Prison, all she could smell was a sterile prison odor, and all she could hear was the metallic clanging of barred doors. The prison’s invisible aura hung over her like a melancholic fog. How was she going to make it go away? How could it, as long as her doubts about her father’s innocence kept gnawing in the back of her mind?

  Their meeting the day before had made a strong impression on Doggie. Earlier, during the trial, he’d just been part of the cast, a small gear in a relentless doomsday machine, merely the final piece of a puzzle. He’d looked small, defenseless—and guilty. In these surroundings she’d been unable to recognize this man who’d been like a god to her, and she’d hated him for it. But yesterday at the prison had been another story. His gaze had been unwavering and sincere, and he’d spoken his mind to her. His warmth and intensity had been there, too. Now her doubts were driving her crazy. It was like a nightmare.

  Today was Tuesday. The following Tuesday her father would be dead.

  She dialed the number to the sheriff’s office in Highland County, and for the first time noticed a slight click on the line. So Wesley had been right. Tapping the phones was now part of everyday life at the White House.

  After a moment a woman’s grumpy voice came on the line and explained to her that Sheriff Perkins wasn’t in his office. Doggie called his cell phone number and heard the faint click again, but otherwise there was silence. “Come on, T . . .” She sighed and finally hung up. “Why in the world haven’t you activated your voice mail, you old fool?” she muttered, then called her mother.

  She had one, specific question. “Mom, I’m calling to ask where you and Dad met each other. I don’t think you ever told me.”

  “Why are you asking me this now, Dorothy?” came the quiet voice.

  “Dad says you met during a political campaign. Is it true? Were you involved in Goldwater’s and Wallace’s campaigns?”

  “No!”

  Doggie shook her head. So it had been a lie, just as she’d feared. She felt her skin getting clammy.

  What was worse now, the pain or the embarrassment?

  “No, I wasn’t directly involved, but your grandfather was . . .” she added, then paused before the crucial words finally came: “. . . and I went along with him.”

  The blood started pumping through Doggie’s veins again. “You’re saying that Grandpa participated in the Goldwater and Wallace election campaigns?” Doggie remembered her mother’s father as mild- mannered, with soft hands and the kindest eyes. A nice person, full of love and warmth—at least where his family was concerned. “Did he really support them? That’s not how I remember him at all.”

  Now there was an edge in the voice on the other end of the line. “Your grandfather was very active, politically. There’s nothing wrong with that, Dorothy.”

  Did her mother really say that? Didn’t she have a picture of President Jansen hanging above her cluttered shelves? Apparently, nothing was as it seemed. “So you met Dad at one of those meetings?”

  “I’ve told you before, haven’t I? Your father followed me around for months, at a distance!” There was a moment of laughter. “Yes, I knew he was interested, but I couldn’t do much about it, could I? I was with someone else at the time, you know.”

  “And this guy was involved in the campaigns, too?”

  “I’ll say he was! He was very active.”

  “So Dad joined the campaigns just to get next to you?”

  More laughter. There was no need for her mother to say more.

  * * *

  —

  A virginal sheet of paper lay before her now, white and frightening. She had to document the facts and possibilities that could help Sheriff Perkins find out the truth—if she could locate the sheriff and he could be bothered to help her, that is.

  Doggie thought it all through. She wrote about the glass of water that had disappeared; the security agent, Wunderlich, who appeared not to exist; and all the inconsistencies surrounding the assassination itself. She had to have it all written down before she spoke to T. Perkins so she’d have a chance of convincing him. Her father was scheduled to die in seven days, and she was the only one pleading his case.

  CHAPTER 16

  One day when he was in late puberty, John Bugatti was taken aside by his father, a rural doctor who’d made it his specialty to examine women’s lower abdominal regions, and asked what he wanted to do with his life. This question contained a veiled threat as well as an implied answer. His father wanted his only son to take over his practice, but John didn’t share his father’s obsession with human physical maladies—especially not women’s. A couple of weeks previously he’d impulsively fondled one of the boys on the football team, and from then on he’d known. If there was one thing he wanted to do with his life, it was get in the pants of as many boys as possible, especially some rock star with long hair and plenty of mascara. So he’d looked at his father that day and made up his mind. He wanted to be a journalist and nothing else. Not surprisingly, his father was shocked. From his conservative point of view, this meant a huge plunge in his son’s local social standing, but upon reflection he realized this disastrous choice could one day make his son editor of the local rag—and that was something else. That meant status.

  John was content with the idea of becoming a freelance writer for Rolling Stone, where he could come in close proximity with all the rock stars he wanted, but here his father put his foot down. If John wanted the family’s moral and financial support, he’d have to pursue a traditional journalistic career.

  Thus followed several boring years of studying and working for local and regional newspapers until he landed a job in New York and finally reached the top as NBC’s Washington correspondent. By then the scene had changed, the rock stars and their makeup had faded, and John’s career was leading him in new directions. Now he was interviewing one intriguing, handsome man after another. No, he had no regrets as to his choice of employment. It had turned out to be the perfect blend of business and pleasure.

  Thus was his life’s motif until he met “Uncle Danny,” as friends called his lover. Danny was completely different from the New York queers he used to throw himself at in the sauna clubs, and he was different from the more stable—yet just as noncommittal—safe-sex relationships that ensued. Danny was fantastic and beautiful and just as sincerely interested in life’s deeper meaning as John was disinterested. And it was Danny’s influence, along with the inevitable process of maturity, that slowly shaped him into the person—and especially the journalist—he’d now become: dedicated to his profession’s principles of free expression and pursuit of the truth. If he hadn’t met Danny, John Bugatti would scarcely have been bothered by the media censorship and other calamities unleashed by President Jansen’s state of emergency. But Danny had made him see things in a new light—and he was angry. He was angry about Homeland Security’s directives that dictated the behavior of what was left of the news media, angry about the daily closing down of newspapers and TV and radio stations, and particularly angry about his inability to do anything about it.

  Conditions had become ugly and unbearable. It was the rule of the ironclad fist; Stalin couldn’t have done better. Anyone who still dared speak out critically could be sure of being monitored by forces capable of silencing him. So people kept their mouths shut, and the very few TV stations that the government still allowed on the air were forced to attend daily self-censorship meetings in the name of self-preservation. And each day Bugatti got more and more pissed off.

  * * *

  —

  That morning he’d checked out the mood of the nation over a cup of steaming coffee in the Cosi café at Washington DC’s Metro Center, a place where everybody came a
nd everyone knew one another. Even the Capitol Hill messenger boys were there, with plenty of time on their hands since their employers in Congress had been protectively interned as a security precaution resulting from the recent militia disturbances. It was here that John received his tips in the days before Jansen’s regime came to power, subtle comments from the guy sitting next to him that were clarified and elaborated upon by the guy sitting behind him. Knowledge that others wanted him to have, that he could subsequently do with as he wished. But those days were over. Now everyone stared into their coffee cups and tried to keep the conversation going without saying too much. People nowadays were equally afraid of what they knew and what they didn’t know. Among many other things, no one even mentioned Tom Jumper’s spectacular escape from the police the day before. The tempo out on the streets had slowed down, too; people no longer hurried determinedly from place to place. There were fewer trucks and less traffic; only the police and the military were busier than ever, to everyone’s dismay—even John’s. For him, the attraction of a man in uniform was long gone.

  The mood up in NBC4’s editorial offices on Nebraska Avenue was funereal, the same routine, day after day. John began each morning by looking through his day’s assignments. That morning he really hoped his eyes were deceiving him. If he—the station’s premier Washington expert—was expected to spend several hours interviewing women, they’d damn well better be the wives of important politicians, not the intended flock of innocuous, discarded, middle-aged bags who ran the catering at the 7th Street Convention Center. What the hell did he or his viewers care, even though the point of his assignment was to show a workplace going to pieces as a result of the current chaos? He crossed it off his list. “One less waste of energy,” he mumbled, then raised his head to see his boss’s pale face hovering above him. Once she’d been a delectable goddess on the New York media scene. But now, like most top reporters, she’d been restationed in Washington, had developed dark circles under her eyes, no longer cared how she dressed, and had the charisma of an empty mayonnaise jar.

  “We’ve all got a meeting with Hopkins,” she said, attempting a smile. This didn’t sound good. Like the rest of NBC’s journalistic and editorial elite, he turned up at the editor in chief’s office fearing the worst. The legendary Alastair Hopkins was at his desk, gazing distractedly out his tinted panorama window, tight-lipped. He was obviously affected by something he’d just been told by the two black-clad men standing on either side of him.

  As always, Hopkins got straight to the point. “From now on, all your interviews will be recorded. There will be no more direct transmissions. I’ve been informed that, in accordance with Executive Order 10995, all our work must be approved by these two gentlemen”—there was a trace of irony in this last word—“before we broadcast anything.” He raised his hand in an attempt to maintain order, but the assembled journalists hadn’t gotten this far in their profession by keeping quiet. In the ensuing vocal mayhem, the two security agents instinctively edged away from the windows, some of which could be opened. They were outnumbered, and it was a hell of a fall to the pavement if these reporters got seriously aggressive.

  Hopkins stood up. “Jesus Fucking Christ, people, take it easy! Do you want to get us closed down already? Don’t you get it? If you don’t do as you’re told, you’ll be out of a job in ten minutes—so just relax!”

  By the time Bugatti slipped out of the meeting, the atmosphere had become positively odious.

  * * *

  —

  He got hold of Wesley Barefoot as the latter was eating lunch. He heard a couple of faint clicks on the line, but by now he’d grown accustomed to eavesdropping being the order of the day. One just had to be careful about what one said.

  Bugatti cleared his throat. “What the hell’s happening over there at the White House, Wesley? I hear a couple of the leaders of the militia coalition have been caught in Ohio, and people are saying they’ve been killed. Is there anything to the story and, if so, who’d they catch? Who do I talk to? How am I supposed to do my job?” He waited a moment; Barefoot was apparently thinking. Then he continued. “Listen: You’re the White House press secretary and you clam up just like all the others, but it can’t go on like this, Wesley. If you want to help yourself and Jansen and that administration you stand for, then you know that we . . . I mean, the whole country needs an interview with the president so we can find out how long these measures are going to remain in effect. Won’t you see to it that I get some time with him, preferably within the next hour or two, if possible? Something’s just happened at our office that I’d like—no, that I need—the president to comment on. Do you understand, Wesley? Can you do it?”

  Wesley’s voice sounded very tired on the other end of the line. Surely he knew all about the intensification of press censorship. “No can do, John,” he said. Simple as that. “I’m sorry. Of course you can speak with one of my colleagues. I’ll see what I can do. Can you call back in an hour?”

  * * *

  —

  An hour and ten minutes later, Bugatti was standing before the control post, four hundred yards in front of the White House. No one got by it without written permission or one of the chips that all White House employees were ordered to have pinned to their chest. The atmosphere bordered on chaos, helped along by a dancing forest of protest signs and raging demonstrators, among which were a sprinkling of well-known actors, authors, and other personalities.

  A few months ago this would have looked like a scene out of a science fiction movie. How could it be? American democracy had an ingenious system of checks and balances, specifically to make sure something like this never happened. It was supposed to be foolproof. The attack on the attorney general and the assassination of the chief justice of the Supreme Court had derailed the entire system, and the American way of life appeared to be hurtling towards doomsday. At first it was believed that the White-Headed Eagles were behind the attacks, and all prominent politicians and officials were ordered out of harm’s way. But when Moonie Quale denied his militia’s involvement, and moments later a bomb threat was phoned in to Congress, the authorities began expanding their investigation, digging deeper. Loose rumors about a conspiracy against the president gained credence, and suddenly many of these same distinguished politicians’ and officials’ homes were being turned inside out without search warrants. Within a matter of days several members of Congress had been placed under house arrest, accused of having participated in the alleged plans to depose the president and his administration. Everyone thought this wave of paranoia would quickly blow over, but the investigation dragged on, and the politicians remained in detention. This in turn caused a furious reaction from the politicians’ constituencies as well as all other political bodies in the country, but nothing helped. The assassinations and bomb threats were facts, the conspiracy rumors were growing, and this was all used to justify the president’s next radical move, namely the temporary suspension of Congress. Thus Jansen’s authority was absolute. FEMA gave the police and FBI the word, and within hours the streets were filled with uniforms. The procedure followed to the letter a series of presidential decrees that FEMA had worked up years ago but that no one had ever believed would be put into practice on such a scale. While the consequences of Jansen’s state of emergency could not yet be compared with the totalitarian regimes of a Pinochet or a Pol Pot, the similarities were growing. Many democratically elected officials feared for their safety and, according to John Bugatti’s sources, several had already left the country. When the Democratic national headquarters was bombed and several congressmen and other public servants were murdered, all members of Congress were detained for their own safety.

  Most of John’s colleagues lost their jobs during the course of the next few days. First the Department of Homeland Security closed down Fox TV, then ABC and CBS. Several national daily newspapers were cut down to a few pages, and one saw well-reputed reporters standing on street corners
with their laptops under their arms. They had nowhere to go, they were angry, and many were afraid. What was a person to do in a situation like this? It had happened plenty of times around the world in recent history, but no one seemed ready for it this time, not in the United States. America was so used to practicing free speech that it had become a lifestyle, and now suddenly people were mute. But John also knew plenty of journalists who were presently much more concerned about how they were going to pay off their expensive homes than defending the right to free expression.

  John’s situation was different. NBC was allowed to stay on the air, and its programming was arranged and approved, thanks to the efforts of Alastair Hopkins. But that still left two questions: Whether there was anything important left to report about under these conditions, and what John should do about it?

  John was also fearless. He wasn’t long for this world, anyway. If it hadn’t been for Danny, he’d have succumbed to AIDS long ago. The treatment helped, but the weariness and the feeling of impotence was working its way deeper and deeper into his body. The lethargy still came and went, but when it came, it was more debilitating than ever. Yes, his condition was irritating and slowly robbing him of his good looks, but he was afraid of nothing, and he now planned to put this to use.

  The mob of demonstrators just behind him was forcing its way forward, towards the barrier. Their curses were loud and their sweat was strong. These angry citizens were going to get as close as possible and make themselves heard, no matter what.