by James Philip
Dempsey was the man who had quashed the ‘Bellingham’ situation and developed the plan now being enacted in his home state and in neighbouring Oregon, to ‘regain the ground stolen by the scum of the earth on behalf of the decent people of those states’. Basically, Dempsey had begun to wage a low level counter-insurgency against the criminals and crazies, religious nuts and miscellaneous survivalists and backwoodsmen who had seized control of large forested and mountainous areas of all three West Coast states since the October War. Significantly, the example of the ruthless suppression of the Bellingham enclave had already brought dozens of previously defiant towns and locales back under the writ of the state authorities with barely a bullet fired in anger.
It was Dempsey who had set up and run Camp Benedict Arnold through which every suspected rebel prisoner captured in the District of Columbia during and in the weeks since the Battle of Washington had passed. There had been a rising groundswell of protest from among the liberal intelligentsia and religious groups about the brutality of the methods he had employed at Camp Benedict Arnold, where his people had isolated as many as seventy surviving members of the leadership cadre of what many of the rebels called the ‘Southern Resistance’.
J. Edgar Hoover and the Federal Bureau of Investigation had cavilled over this label; Hoover was still convinced the rebellion had been a communist-inspired – so-called Red Dawn - plot and to be fair the FBI had actually turned up a lot of hard evidence of the involvement of red-sympathisers, sometimes in collaboration with organised crime, racist and other extreme fringe political groupings running amok elsewhere in the Union at the height of the rebellion in Washington DC.
After the shock of the Battle of Washington and the ‘treatment’ the Vice-President had handed out to the FBI – for its failure to see the coup d’état coming – the veteran Director of the Bureau had been on his best behaviour lately. However, everybody in the room knew that sooner rather than later the old monster would return to type; how many Leopards have ever changed their spots?
Fulbright cleared his throat.
“The burden of today’s conference is to do with domestic security,” he prefaced. “The safety of the homeland. Not really my domain. The Vice-President asked me to be present because many of the decisions we make at home will have profound implications for our ongoing policy abroad in the wider World. I should also say that I am fully apprised of, and completely at one with the President’s redrawn foreign policy priorities.”
He paused to let his audience digest this.
“At my recommendation the President has authorized the reduction of our forces in South East Asia to a ‘trip wire’ presence. We will hope to deter North Vietnamese aggression against its southern neighbour with the threat of air power based in Japan and on the Marianas. In the event this policy fails we will not, repeat not deploy further boots on the ground in that country. The troops earmarked to support the Saigon government will be immediately available for deployment in North America. Moreover, forces currently deployed in Alaska, Iceland, and on border patrol duties in California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas will be released from those duties. I have also recommended to the President that it is imperative that we offer out British allies whatever Naval, Air, Land and Intelligence support in the Mediterranean that is practical to the limit of our current resources. I confirm that beyond this ‘limited’ commitment to our British allies, the Administration has adopted a strategy of military disengagement and non-involvement elsewhere in the World outside the Americas. At this time the United States is not in a position to act as the ‘policeman of the World’. We will support the British in the Mediterranean and we will continue to treat the whole of the America’s as our legitimate sphere of influence. Any material extension of our support for the British, or any perception that we are prepared to send GIs to foreign places to fight somebody else’s wars in untenable at this time. The American people simply would not tolerate it and the Administration believes its altered foreign policy objectives reflect this. That is not to say that diplomatically the US will bury its head in the sand. We retain great influence in the World and the State Department will continue to maximise that influence where possible in support of our widespread commercial, industrial and mineral interests in Africa, Asia and elsewhere. I am also aware that a number of major American companies are looking to win re-construction contracts and salvage rights in Western Europe. The State Department takes the view that our strategic undertakings to the British, albeit falling short of former NATO ‘absolute’ security guarantees will, in the mid to ling-term obviate any obstacles to our big corporations getting heavily involved in the first tranche of salvage operations and in receiving preferential treatment under the proposed ‘lend lease’ and funding arrangements under discussion between our Treasury Department and the British Chancellor of the Exchequer.” He glanced around. “Are there any questions, gentlemen?”
For several seconds no man stirred.
“Excuse me, sir,” Colin Dempsey growled. His recent experiences dealing with senior officers had deadened his instinctive deference to rank. Notwithstanding that he held the officers in the room in high respect; he was less impressed with the standard of the political direction under which they had been operating in his time in Washington DC. From what he had seen the Administration badly needed to get a grip, and Congressmen and Senators alike were behaving like there had never been a Cuban Missiles War and as if the bloody battles in the streets of the capital city had been some kind of minor local difficulty hardly worthy of their consideration.
Nor did he like the conditionality of the ‘guarantees’ the Administration had given to the British; they sounded like accidents waiting to happen and seemed to ignore vital long-term US strategic interests. Like for example, the safeguarding of Arabian oil supplies; the ongoing communist insurgencies in half-a-dozen sub-Saharan countries – among them Namibia, Mozambique, Somalia, the former Belgian Congo – and in North Africa. The Secretary of State had not even mentioned Korea, which troubled him more than somewhat.
As for the comments about gain access for American corporations to win ‘salvage contracts’ in the war damaged lands; did he honestly believe that the British were going to allow ‘foreigners’ on their, or any of the destroyed lands of their former allies, on what Wall Street was already touting as ‘treasure hunts’. He viewed Fulbright’s assertions about re-construction contracts and woolly asides about ‘lend lease’ type deals to facilitate the same as unadulterated wishful thinking that bordered on being pure hogwash. Basically, the sort of thing a career politician who had never held down a proper job in his entire life said because basically, he did not know any better. If the US Treasury actually had serious money to spare after it had reversed the ‘peace dividend’ cuts, it ought to be spent in America!
“Carry on General Dempsey,” Fulbright invited, perhaps sensing that he had over-tested the old soldier’s credulity.
The Washingtonian determined to restrict his ‘questions’ to those pertinent to his own profession.
“The last time I was called back to do my yearly thirty days ‘reserve time’ I was sent over to Bremerton to moderate a war game based on the premise that the Soviets, or their regional surrogates, were threatening the Saudi Arabian oilfields and the British refineries on Abadan Island.”
The Secretary of State nodded, reminded of the conversations he had recently had with the US Ambassador in Riyadh – who had been, he judged, somewhat complacent – and the exchange of telegrams he had subsequently had with Thomas Barger, the Chief Executive Officer of the Arabian American Oil Company (Aramco), who had been anything but sanguine about what he described as ‘America’s hugely weakened post-war and post Battle of Washington’ position in the region. At his request Barger had flown back to New York where the two men had spent an evening discussing the oilman’s concerns. Basically, the Saudi Arabians – their economic development already severely curtailed by the post-war fall in the price of oil and the
massive global reduction in demand for that oil – had been badly shaken by what had happened in Washington in December. Those events had suddenly brought into brutally sharp focus the absence of American GIs, aircraft and warships in the Middle East. Who was to keep the peace between the Shah to the Kingdom’s north across the waters of the Persian Gulf, and between Egypt, awash with modern Soviet weapons fired up with Islamic fervour, Egypt’s some time ally Syria and the well-armed, pugnacious loose cannon of the young Israeli State? What was America’s policy? Did America have a policy and after the insurrection at the heart of her government and what weight should the Kingdom place on its word?
These were all very good and very pressing questions!
Nevertheless, the Administration had decided to draw in its horns. There were British forces in the Middle East, albeit not strong forces, they ought to be sufficient to hold the line, or at least provide a ‘trip wire’. All the belligerents knew the British had nuclear weapons and a sizable navy.
As for Dempsey’s elliptical question about what would happen if ‘the Soviets’ invaded Iran and or Iraq; well, that was so fanciful as to be ridiculous. There was no ‘Soviet threat’, and any attempt to conflate the chaos and terroristic confusion in Turkey and elsewhere in Asia Minor with a credible ‘threat’ to the oilfields of the region was laughable.
“That’s an old scenario,” General ‘Johnny’ Johnson observed, clearly keen to quash this nonsense so that the meeting could move on to more important business. “Our best intelligence discounts the intervention of a third party. The British are currently dealing with what appears to be a widespread terroristic insurgency in the Mediterranean. As for ‘the Soviets’, they don’t exist anymore!”
Dempsey frowned.
Presently, he became aware that Curtis LeMay was studying his face, and drew comfort from the knowledge that there was at least one other person in the room who was prepared to think the unthinkable, no matter how unpalatable it might be.
The old soldier sighed.
“Before the rebellion in DC our best intelligence was that there was no warning of what was about to happen, sir,” he said quietly.
Chapter 55
Tuesday 28th January 1964
State Capitol Building, Sacramento
It was a disaster! Worse, it was a disaster that Miranda Sullivan ought to have seen coming for days. It was not as if she had not been warned. Vincent Meredith, Sam Brenckmann and Sabrina Henschal’s dead-eyed private investigator cum attorney had cautioned her, told her in no uncertain terms that the only thing to do was to lie low until the press pack moved onto its next victim. But oh, no, she had known better and been far too mulishly proud to listen and now what ought to have been a quiet, poorly attended press call about the dates and venues for the first formal sessions of the California Civil Rights Forum, had turned into a three-ring circus!
And not just any three-ring circus!
This was bedlam, Barnum and Bailey on Benzedrine!
Nobody wanted to talk about civil rights; all the bastards wanted to talk about was Sam Brenckmann, Johnny Seiffert, the fire at The Troubadour, the corrupt cop Reggie O’Connell and a man called Doug Weston whom she had never met. Moreover, they did not just want to know about the aforementioned; they wanted to know which ones of them she had slept with, taken drugs with, and or committed any federally indictable offences with!
Her parents were going to go ballistic!
The Governor was probably going to sack her!
But, and it was a big proviso, she was not going to cry!
The flash bulbs exploded in her face, the barrage of questions buffeted her remorselessly. She sat very still, her pale white hands clasped on the desk before her, waiting. Waiting patiently, knowing intuitively that if she said a single word in her own defense she would be damned forever and that a dignified – or rather, as dignified as possible – silence was her only hope until the worst of the storm had blown over.
The only thing she had got right was to warn Dwayne John to stay away.
‘This is a briefing from the Governor’s Office,’ she had determined and Dwayne John knew her well enough by now not to argue with her when she had that particular look in her eyes. Like many men built like a man mountain there was a quirk in his soul that instantly recognized and responded to, a strong woman’s resolve. ‘You,’ she had continued, ‘don’t work for the Governor. I do!’
Miranda had leavened the severity of her message by planting a pecking kiss on the big man’s cheek, as often she did these days because it seemed like the most natural thing. The disorientating experience of being drawn back into her old life had simply nudged her closer to Dwayne, and he to her. In fact, she did not know how she would have got through the last few days without ‘the big guy’ beside her, constantly ready to catch her at a moment’s notice if she stumbled.
She blinked serenely into the flashing lights.
Although this press call was without doubt a disaster and would most likely result in her losing her job – which incidentally she liked a lot – in the bigger picture it was as nothing to the prospect of introducing Dwayne to her parents.
Miranda had not told the big guy about that yet.
She sighed long and hard and raised her right hand, open palm to her tormentors. It had been easier breaking Sam Brenckmann out of that nightmare concentration camp in San Bernardino than fighting her way past these jackals on the steps of the Capitol Building. She probably would not have got into the building at all if she had not had a bunch of FBI Special Agents at her shoulder. The trouble was a girl could not always count on Federal law enforcement officers always being there when she needed them because it was not as if she lived in a police state. Not unless you were unfortunate enough to be a person of color in Alabama, or Georgia, or the Carolinas or anywhere else in the old Confederate South where those hideous Jim Crow laws still prevailed.
Perhaps, she would wait a while before she introduced Dwayne to her parents; the poor darlings were still in shock – positively traumatized - about Gregory and Darlene. She had to hand it to her brother. She had always had him down as a loveable, charming klutz but the way he had marched into the lounge of the Sequoyah Golf and Country Club with Darlene in tow and: firstly, announced their impending nuptials; secondly, invited mother and father to the wedding in Sausalito of all places on the second Saturday of March; and thirdly (and this was the really cool thing) demanded not asked for an interest free loan to buy a boat (an old yacht), still had Miranda involuntarily succumbing to periodic mild giggling fits.
That was two days ago, her mother’s sixty-first birthday; a big family affair organized by Aunt Molly and her Uncle Harvey at which an apparently endless stream of local notables and minor celebrities had breezed in and out to pay their respects to the birthday girl.
Superficially, her mother had taken the unexpected development – the news about Gregory and Darlene – quite well in a rictus-smile sort of way. However, as soon as the happy couple left the room she had looked at Uncle Harvey and Aunt Molly as if it was their fault and later interrogated Miranda very much in the manner of an angry police detective interviewing a mob hit man who has just been caught red-handed within minutes of shooting dead his partner.
Thinking about it, it had been the frankest exchange of views Miranda had ever had with her mother, and vice versa. Afterwards, they had both been...a little surprised. Miranda had found herself confessing that yes, I knew about it’ but ‘no, it wasn’t any of your business’. Her mother had accused her of being a ‘selfish girl’ and of ‘not caring about her brother’s future happiness’. Miranda had practically gone toe to toe with her mother and then, as if passing thundercloud had suddenly passed overhead and the sun had come out again, mother and daughter had found themselves looking at each other trying not to laugh out aloud.
Miranda’s father who had hovered uncomfortably in the background while the two women had conducted their shouting match in front of the packed lounge of the
Sequoyah Golf and Country Club, had taken the opportunity of the fleeting break in hostilities to step between mother and daughter.
With an arm around both of the women in his life he looked around the room, a smile playing on his handsome face. Like the old ham actor he was he had defused the unpleasantness in a moment.
‘Margaret,’ he had declared. ‘I’m blowed if I’m going to lend the boy a single cent. WE are going to buy him that bloody boat! At least that way we know the blasted thing won’t sink!’
He had sniffed the air, daring anybody to contradict him.
‘And even if we must go all the way over to Sausalito for the wedding,’ he concluded, ‘we’re paying for that too. And that’s all that I have to say about the matter.’
He had kissed Miranda on the top of her head, his wife on her brow and drawn the two women close.
Everybody in the lounge of the Sequoyah Golf and Country Club had started clapping and cheering...
Nobody in the small room on the ground floor of the California State Capitol Building had paid any attention whatsoever to Miranda’s raised hand.
She picked up one of the mimeographed copies of the list of planned meetings of the CCRF over the next three months and waved this, not really thinking it would make a great deal of difference.
She was right; it did not make any difference.
Collecting Sam Brenckmann from the hospital had been weird.
Dwayne had practically had to carry Sam Brenckmann from the car into Gretsky’s when eventually they had arrived back in Laurel Canyon last Thursday afternoon.
Typically, Sabrina Henschal had looked the big guy up and down like a cat sizing up her next meal. She and Sabrina had never got on, never seen eye to eye about anything really. Miranda had taken Sam away from her before she was ready to let go on him but it was more than that; Miranda did not like Sabrina, or Gretsky’s and the feeling was entirely mutual. She had been surprised – disarmed in fact - by how genuinely friendly and openly grateful Judy Dorfmann had been. It might have been because she was the one bringing the father of her six week old daughter back to her; either that or Sam’s girlfriend was just a really nice person. Judy was plain, very tired and utterly devoted to Sam and they had not let go of each other apart to make a fuss of Tabatha Christa in all the time Miranda and Dwayne had been at Gretsky’s. When she and the big guy had made their excuses and turned to leave Sam had given Miranda a hug – he had felt like a bag of bones – and done likewise with Dwayne. Judy had tried to hug and kiss the big guy, a physical impossibility until he had sheepishly bowed his head.