The Washington Decree

by Jussi Adler-Olsen

  Then she heard the sound of sirens in the distance. So the chase was on. The police, the National Guard, the military, or agents from the FBI or FEMA—it didn’t matter. Right now they were all her enemies.

  “What’ll you do if we’re stopped, and I begin to scream?”

  “You won’t.”

  “Don’t bet on it.”

  “It’s hard to scream with your throat slit, wouldn’t you say?” He tossed his cigarette on the floor.

  “Why are you bringing me with you, anyway?”

  He gave a big smile for the first time. “There’s a reward for turning you in, and it’s big. I don’t know whether it’s dead or alive, but it makes no difference to me.”

  She looked up at the hole in the roof again. In theory she could get her elbows up over the edge of the opening if she just jumped a foot and a half. She tensed her thigh muscles. If he pulled a knife, she’d give it a try.

  “Okay, I promise to keep quiet if you tell me where we’re going,” she said, as calmly as she could. “I’ll know when we get there, so why not tell me now?”

  He shot a wad of snot across the steel floor. “Washington, okay? Now, no more questions.” Washington! Then there was still hope. “Okay . . .” she said, looking at his muddy boots, thinking they’d stand out in squeaky-clean DC. “So what’s happening in Washington?”

  “What was it I just told you?”

  “Okay, I’ll keep quiet.”

  * * *

  —

  The sun rose at exactly six o’clock, and the sound of police sirens blended with the noise of other vehicle motors. Several times it sounded like they were passing cars that were stopped. She could hear shouts and commands from outside, and the milk truck slowed down. After making a couple of quick turns the sounds disappeared again. They drove a few minutes more before the driver aired out his brakes a couple of times and came to a halt.

  “What the hell’s he doing?” The militiaman who called himself Benson assumed a squatting position, ready to jump up.

  “Maybe we’ve come to a roadblock,” she whispered. “Keep quiet.”

  They sat still for a moment until the driver’s head popped into view in the hatch opening.

  “I have to close this,” he said. “There’s a long line of cars ahead of us, so there must be a roadblock. I’m not going to let them see a dairy truck with New York plates and its hatch open.”

  The militiaman took out his gun and stood up. “You’re not closing it, got it?” Doggie looked up at the driver.

  “We’ve been lucky so far,” he said. “There haven’t been very many soldiers and cops, but it’s not going to stay that way.”

  “What’s going on?” she asked.

  The driver looked up as a car drove by. Then he said, “One of the pirate radio stations was saying that all military and police units have been called to Washington. The British prime minister is paying a visit to the president in a couple of hours, and they’re not taking any chances. But we’re approaching a roadblock now, so we have to close the hatch again.”

  He took hold of the hatch lid and tipped it a little.

  “Hey, are you deaf, or what?” Benson had his little automatic pointed at him. “I make that call, and it’s all over for your family. You follow me?”

  The driver froze, the stainless steel reflecting the sun’s rays up on his face, or else they’d stopped on a hilltop.

  He looked like he was preparing his words to sound as convincing as possible. “I promise to open it again,” he said. “I promise.”

  “Fuck you, you sad-ass, black ghoul!”

  The dark face above them seemed to change character. It was as though a cloud had blocked the sun, removing all the face’s worry lines, as though all his anguished doubts had left him. “So you’re saying you haven’t called anyone about my family yet?”

  “No, but I will if you keep this up. Get back in the cab and keep driving.” The muzzle of Benson’s gun was now touching the driver’s forehead.

  “Okay, okay. If that’s how it’s gotta be, then that’s how it’s gotta be,” he said, retreating from the opening.

  If he doesn’t shut the hatch again, we’re caught within a quarter of an hour, Doggie thought in the millisecond before a black arm appeared and there was the infernal noise of three shots fired in rapid succession that made the entire container vibrate. She didn’t see Benson go down, just felt the warm blood spray her face. Then the hatch was banged shut.

  So the driver had had another weapon and decided to take the consequences. But now his family was safe.

  They were approaching a roadblock, and there she sat, with a perforated body next to her. And the darkness was blacker than ever.

  CHAPTER 35

  Wesley was in a very desperate situation. Insanity ruled no matter where he looked, and there was absolutely no one who could deny being deeply affected by it. Old friends had become bitter enemies, and former enemies had unexpectedly begun agreeing on everything. All kinds of militias had come together as one, and in the meantime people dared not speak their minds in that fortress of freedom, the Lily-White House.

  One began hearing rumors of desertion in the military and plans of a countercoup. Officers had already been executed, but many had also escaped. The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Powers, had already had to explain himself many times in the Crisis Room and assure the National Security Council of his loyalty.

  No, there was no longer anything that was sacred. Not the laws of the land, universal codes of ethics and morals, nor the Ten Commandments. All norms and customs were there to be ignored or desecrated, and Wesley planned to put a stop to it.

  Lance Burton had become his one remaining ally in the White House since Donald Beglaubter had been murdered and Doggie had disappeared. But Lance was getting on in years, and it was getting easier and easier to see the toll his job was taking on him. He’d worked at least sixteen hours a day the previous week, and even this Sunday they’d been ordered to work from early morning. Lance had complained about a slight pain in his chest, but there he sat in his office as always, trying to stay on top of the most urgent matters as well as attempting to keep a lid on all the secrets in his closetful of electronics.

  They had only spoken together once since they’d sworn to each other that, when the time came, at least one of them would step forward and tell about their surveillance of Jansen and Sunderland’s offices. But when was that? Wesley certainly didn’t know. Their pact was making him uneasy.

  Tomorrow—Monday—when the glazier was finished with the windows, they could begin bugging the Oval Office. Then, Burton had said, they could see what came out of it. The possibilities weren’t pleasant to think about.

  * * *

  —

  He was sitting with his head buried in his notes for the positive speech of the day when his secretary came in. Her eyes looked swollen, which wasn’t normal for a woman whose basic training in life had consisted mainly of looking fabulous, regardless of the circumstances. Her mother ran the information department of Beauty Parlor, a weekly magazine with beauty tips for every kind of woman imaginable, yet here she stood, a living betrayal of all she’d been taught.

  “What’s going on, Eleanor?” he asked.

  She said nothing; she simply couldn’t get the words out.

  “Just sit down, okay?” He pointed to his easy chair, but she remained standing.

  “Take your time, Eleanor. Just let it come.” He tried to find something in his desk drawer to console her with—a clean handkerchief, a Kleenex—but found nothing.

  “I’m okay,” she said and dried her eyes. This clearly was not the case, but it was the right signal to send.

  “Come on, just say it, Eleanor. I’m sure it’s something we can fix.”

  Sometimes the wrong comment at the right time can give results. The result in
this case was a torrent of tears that at best would massacre her mascara, at worst was the beginning of a nervous breakdown that would leave him with an even more impossible workload. He stood up and held her, coaxing her to verbalize her problem.

  He looked into her troubled eyes. “We all have our problems these days, Eleanor,” he said. “What’s yours?”

  She gave him a look that would get the immediate attention of any man. “We were woken up this morning by some men knocking on our door. They accused my husband of aiding families of interned politicians, and then they took him with them. He didn’t even have time to put his coat on. . . .” She started to sob, and he could barely hear what she said. “Right in front of our children,” she added. Then she pressed her lips together, got herself under control, and gave vent to her anger. “What that man really needs is to get laid!”

  “I’m sorry, Eleanor. Who? Your husband?”

  “Oh, come on, Wesley.” Her eyes were full of scorn. “Some of the girls have been trying to figure out how they can get next to Jansen. The only thing he needs is to have his brains fucked out. Thoroughly! Clear all that creepy stuff out of his mind. He’s suffering from some kind of mental block. At least that’s the conclusion most of us have reached, me included.”

  Wesley looked at his otherwise chaste secretary and shook his head. Yes, she must be close to a breakdown, but who could blame her? “Okay, Eleanor. If only it were that simple.” He turned away from her. “Where is your husband now? Do you know?”

  He could hear she was struggling to hold back the tears again. “He’s up on Nebraska Avenue.”

  “Homeland Security?”

  “Yes.”

  He looked at his watch. It was five minutes to eleven. “I’ll see what I can do,” he said. “There’s a meeting in the Oval Office in twenty minutes. Secretary Johnson from Homeland Security will be there.”

  * * *

  —

  They were sitting with cups of steaming coffee, but no one touched them. There were only two hours until Terry Watts, the British prime minister, was due to land on the White House lawn, and Secretary Billy Johnson from Homeland Security, Secretary of Defense Wayne Henderson, and Secretary of State Mark Wise all were worried that security was not optimal.

  “There are a hell of a lot of things that can go wrong,” said Johnson. “We’re not sure what the White-Headed Eagles and the other militia groups are up to. We just know there has been a great increase in their activity the last twenty hours. At least ten of their leaders have been observed away from their normal preserves, and one of Moonie Quale’s sergeant at arms was pinned down yesterday, twelve miles outside of Washington.”

  “And then we got him to talk?” Sunderland broke in. He seemed more concerned than usual.

  “No, unfortunately. Some shots were exchanged, and he managed to blow his brains out.”

  “Shit,” said Sunderland and sank back in his seat.

  “Yes, but we know from different sources that something’s brewing,” Johnson continued, “something that we suspect is going to happen today. My people are insisting that we close the bridges over the river and shut down all traffic from 12th to 18th Streets to the west, and from Independence Avenue to K Street, south to north. They say it’s the only way we can guarantee full control of the situation. We can start implementing it now.”

  “Hear, hear,” said the secretary of defense.

  “But how do we know Terry Watts will believe our illusion of everything being normal? If the PM sees the Ellipse completely empty of people when his helicopter lands, won’t he sense something’s wrong?” asked the secretary of state.

  “We can station military personnel in civilian clothes throughout the area,” Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Omar Powers contributed. “We have at least two thousand men we can have in position within the hour. That’s time enough.”

  President Jansen looked at all of them calmly from behind his desk. “A plan like that is out of the question. An hour and a half ago a thirty-man team from the British special forces, SAS, landed down by the National Mall. Billy Johnson’s men from FEMA are to work with them the next fifteen hours, which means that the British will be able to detect and register any of our military in civilian clothes. We can’t do anything that radical without being found out. I agree completely with an enlarged security zone, but otherwise we must stick to normal security procedures for a visit from a head of state.”

  “I’m sorry, Mr. President, but we have to install plainclothes soldiers. Don’t worry, we can do it so the SAS won’t get suspicious.” Billy Johnson shifted his large body in his seat. “You see, during the past couple of days we’ve come to realize that a large portion of the capital that’s keeping the militias going is coming from big business. We’ve succeeded in pinpointing unusually large transactions. The folks in heavy industry—not least the weapons industry—have plenty of cash to throw around, as we well know. Terry Watts’s visit is a unique opportunity for these finance men to see to it that the situation in this country is revealed to the rest of the world, once and for all. I’m not sitting here saying we can expect an armed attack or an assassination attempt; there are so many other possibilities. Flyers or powerful loudspeakers, for example. And even though we have pretty good control of the organized demonstrations, we can’t totally prevent a sudden big disturbance in the crowds over at the Lincoln Memorial or Franklin Square from resulting in the use of tear gas or water cannons. I’m afraid anything’s possible. We cannot guarantee full control unless we close the area off completely and have plenty of personnel in the vicinity.”

  Jansen thought a moment and nodded. It was obvious that the realization that things had to be this way wasn’t sitting well with him. Wesley knew how pragmatic he could be, given the chance.

  “Can we trust your people, Billy?” Jansen asked. “You have a lot of personnel under your command.”

  Which was exactly what Wesley was thinking.

  “There’s been some purging these last few days. Everything’s under control, yes.”

  “And you, Omar? Do you also have control of your troops?”

  “Completely, sir. We’re using only elite units here. All good people, be sure of it.”

  “I don’t want to end up like Anwar Sadat, you understand.”

  “No, of course not.” General Powers raised his arms and spread out his hands, as Wesley had seen so many times before when he spoke to his troops—in Iraq, in Sudan, in Israel. “You can have total confidence in my men and women, Mr. President—which Anwar Sadat unfortunately couldn’t. This here is the United States of America.”

  Wesley glanced over at Lance Burton, who he was sure was having more or less the same thoughts on the matter as he was, as far as Powers’s last declaration was concerned. He sensed approaching catastrophe, which made it quite difficult to deal with the fact that in twenty minutes he’d be standing on the pressroom podium, improvising over the theme of the British prime minister’s state visit, then switch to a totally irrelevant exposé of the unusually large number of gallstone operations there had been around the country over the past few days. That was the day’s good-news story, carefully chosen by Thomas Sunderland, but—incredibly enough—suggested by Wesley himself. So while he was enlightening the population as to how many tons of gallstones had been removed during the past twenty-four hours, Billy Johnson and Omar Powers’s troops would be putting a tight lid on Washington, coming down hard on the slightest signs of irregularity in a scenario that left nothing to chance. That included emptying the metro of all homeless persons and other undesirables, laying an iron ring around all the approach roads, hassling innocent citizens, getting them off the streets, interning them—“disappearing” them. All this, when he could be—should be—standing before the live news cameras, warning people to stay indoors and look out for themselves and their loved ones. That anyone who came anywhere near the Capito
l or the White House couldn’t count on returning home safely. The staging of this glorious state visit was not going to come off without violent repercussions—that’s what he ought to be saying. But he knew he wouldn’t.

  “Fine. That’s fine, Omar,” said the president. “It’s not that I’m worried about standing forth today.” He looked over at Sunderland. “By the way, what is the status of ‘Dot com,’ Thomas? How far are we?”

  Sunderland stole a glance at Wesley. “I’m not sure this is the proper forum, Mr. President. Can we wait with that one?”

  Jansen followed Sunderland’s eyes and fixed his on Wesley. Bruce Jansen seemed composed, practically serene, as though nothing in this world could shake his belief that everything he did was for the common good. “What we’re referring to, Wesley, is that we are now ready to . . .”—he wiggled two fingers of each hand to make quotation marks—“. . . ‘regulate’ the Internet. Naturally, you can’t make this public, but of course you should know about it. I believe Vice President Sunderland agrees with me on this.”

  Wesley could see the disapproval radiating from Thomas Sunderland. Of course Sunderland knew Wesley was a vigorous opponent of closing down the Internet, and that he’d fight it tooth and nail.

  “We can’t. We can’t close down the Internet,” said Wesley. “It will make life hell for hundreds of millions of people. The financial sector will break down completely, and it’s in bad enough shape as it is. In these modern times you simply cannot sabotage the Internet; the consequences would be incalculable. The whole world would turn against us.”

  “Stop, Wesley. We’re not talking about putting satellites out of commission, okay? However, I can see from Sunderland that we better move on to the next item on the agenda.” The president’s expression left no doubt that the subject was closed. “But for your information, we can do this and we will, after Prime Minister Watts’s visit is over. It’s essential, if we’re to maintain control of the situation. It’s merely a question of where we’ll start and how long it will continue.” He caught Sunderland’s eye.