by James Philip
“I’ll take his legs, Dwight,” the older man suggested.
Together the two men carried and dragged the corpse back to the Jeep, which Michael Cheney had stolen from a National Guard depot in Fort Worth around the time of the Dealey Plaza fiasco. There was a half-full jerry can of petrol in the rack at the back of the vehicle and Christie emptied the contents over the body and the seats.
Christie dabbed a rag in the gasoline, lit it with a match and lobbed it into the Jeep.
There was a soft ‘woof’ and the flames erupted.
The two men did not stay to watch the fires consume the body of the young religious zealot. They briskly walked away up wind; each man silently reflecting on the hopelessness of their cause.
Chapter 62
Monday 3rd February 1964
Navy Department Building, Camden, New Jersey
For the second time in less than two months Lieutenant-Commander Walter Brenckmann junior found himself marching into the presence of the Chief of Naval Operations, the professional head of the United States Navy.
Back in the first week in December the holder of that exalted post had been Admiral George Whelan Anderson, the stern New York born man under whose watch America had fought and won a thermonuclear war; a war in part sparked by the ‘Beale Incident’. Admiral Anderson had survived that disaster but been a broken man by the time of his resignation in the wake of the bizarrely aggressive conduct of several senior officers of the USS Enterprise Battle Group against the Royal Navy, and the scandal of the sinking of the USS Scorpion. The true facts of this ‘scandal’ were as yet unknown to the American public but if and when those facts ever became generally know, Admiral Anderson’s reputation and that of CINCLANT – the Commander-in-Chief of the US Atlantic Fleet – would be comprehensively trashed.
Walter’s interview with Admiral Anderson had been wholly concerned with the apparent compromising of the chain of command of SUBRON15’s – Submarine Squadron 15 – Polaris missile boats. This had come to light when Commander Troy Simms of the USS Sam Houston (SSBN-609) had opened his ‘deterrent patrol’ orders and discovered to his astonishment that he was required to sail to a position off the eastern coast of Australia so as, in the event of war, to be within the missile ‘throw range’ of over ninety percent of the population of that continent. When, shortly after the Sam Houston had returned to the base of SUBRON15 at Alameda in San Francisco Bay – the cover story was she had touched bottom and needed to be dry-docked – the Squadron’s commander Admiral Jackson Braithwaite and his wife were murdered in a brutal shooting, the alarm bells had rung all the way to the Pentagon and back. Rear Admiral Bernard Clarey, in command of all US submarines in the Pacific – COMSUBPAC – had promptly flown back to California and a huge investigation had been launched into the affair in the days before the Battle of Washington. Ordered to report to the Navy Department in Washington DC Walter Brenckmann had found himself in the eye of the storm; and before he was handed on to the Navy’s gimlet-eyed inquisitors Admiral Anderson had summoned Walter to a private, sternly informal debriefing session.
Anderson had made a deep impression on the young officer. Walter had known the older man by reputation – the whole Navy knew he was among, if not the most distinguished officer of his generation – but until that day he had never encountered him in person. Anderson’s consideration for Walter’s understandable anxiety, his gravitas and paternal manner had quickly put the younger man at his ease. Walter had walked out of the interview convinced that – contrary to his suspicion that his own career was irrevocably tainted, by association, with the security breach he had reported to Admiral Clarey, effectively breaking the news to the rest of the US Navy – the buck actually stopped at the desk of the Chief of Naval Operations; and that if anybody wanted to scapegoat any of his officers it would have to be over Admiral Anderson’s dead body. Admiral Anderson had retired at the end of December and Walter hated the gathering chorus of sniping behind the great man’s back. After a life of service to the flag Anderson deserved better than for his reputation to be slowly shredded by a thousand little cuts by men mostly unfit to stand in the great man’s shadow.
Today Walter was reporting to Admiral David Lamar McDonald, the fifty-seven year old Georgian former naval aviator who had succeeded Anderson as Chief of Naval Operations. McDonald was a more outgoing, approachable figure than Anderson. He had commanded the USS Coral Sea (CV-43) – then one of the biggest carriers in the Fleet - in the mid-1950s and been C-in-C US Sixth Fleet in the Mediterranean. McDonald had been a natural shoe-in as CNO and only politics had delayed his assumption of the role at an earlier date. Unlike Anderson, everybody knew that McDonald enjoyed good professional and personal relations with both Secretary of Defense McNamara and with McNamara’s ‘military assistant’, three-star General William Childs Westmoreland.
“Stand easy, Commander,” McDonald ordered. Since the men were ‘inside’ and therefore ‘below decks’ they did not exchange salutes but Walter Brenckmann had snapped to attention. The older man stuck out his hand; his grip was dry and hard, mirroring the inner steel of the man who had been the US Navy’s youngest four-star admiral at the time of his selection for the post he now held. “Take a seat.”
Walter sat stiffly in the hard chair placed directly in front of the CNO’s desk while the man in whose purview his career rested resettled behind his gleaming, uncluttered desk.
“You’ve had a Hell of a ride these last few weeks, Commander,” the older man observed ruefully, understanding the thoughts and worries which must even now be rushing through the young submariner’s mind. “Well, we all have, I suppose. Things should settle down a little in the coming weeks and months. Unless something else goes wrong, that is.”
Walter found himself reflecting back the Chief of Naval Operation’s grin, relaxing a fraction. He said nothing.
“The investigation of the chain of command issues brought to the attention of the Chiefs of Staff by Admiral Braithwaite, Commander Simms and yourself have hit a brick wall,” McDonald confided matter-of-factly with the mildly irritated sangfroid of a combat veteran who knows that in war things sometimes go wrong and that there is absolutely nothing you, or anybody else can do about it. “The section of the Pentagon where the joint inter-service, FBI and Secret Service investigative task force was based was over-run during the ‘rebellion’ and the critical primary command files and logs that were the subject of the investigation were all destroyed. Sadly, few senior members of the task force survived the fighting at the Pentagon. New investigations were instituted almost immediately after the rebellion was contained but,” the Chief of Naval Operations pursed his lips for a moment and shrugged, “little progress has been made other than to establish, circumstantially at least, that many of the men under suspicion either died in the rebellion or have disappeared.”
Walter kept his mouth firmly shut.
McDonald had a slim Manila file on his blotter which he opened. He paused briefly to reacquaint himself with the summary sheet.
“I have here letter of thanks and commendation signed by the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, Mr Rowley the Head of the Secret Service, and,” he hesitated, “and Mr Hoover, the Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation in connection with your contribution to the successful interrogation and debriefing of Mrs Edna Maria Zabriski. Your conduct in this matter reflects great credit on you personally and upon the US Navy. These letters will be attached to your Service Jacket.”
“Thank you, sir. I was only doing my duty.” Walter took a breath. “Nobody gave me any indication what was likely to happen to Mrs Zabriski, sir?”
“The Department of Justice’s shrinks don’t think she is fit to stand trial for her crimes,” McDonald reported. “Deputy US Attorney General Katzenbach authorized me to inform you that Mrs Zabriski will be detained at a secure mental hospital in lower New York State until further notice.”
Walter’s father had already told him that the British authorities h
ad washed their hands of the whole thing. Prime Minister Heath had been assassinated on American soil; therefore the British had no jurisdiction and that was an end of the matter.
“Thank you, sir.”
McDonald closed the Manila file.
“You were listed for the next nuclear boat command course at Groton,” he went on. “That course has been scratched. Candidates like you are needed to support the re-mobilization program green-lighted by the President. Your name will be at the head of the list for the 1965 command course.” The Chief of Naval Operations viewed the younger man thoughtfully, pausing to assess the impact this news had had on him. “In the meantime I intend to ensure that you are gainfully employed by the Service.”
Walter sat up even straighter in his chair.
“The Kitty Hawk is being readied for sea at Kobe at this time. Several key members of her operations staff were flown stateside to join the Enterprise Battle Group ahead of its deployment to the Mediterranean. This means that there are active duty seagoing vacancies on the staff of CINCPAC, Vice Admiral Moorer. I’ve spoken to him about your employment between now and next year’s nuclear boat command course. You’ll be going out to Japan to join the Kitty Hawk as her Assistant Anti-Submarine Warfare Officer. At the discretion of the Captain of the Kitty Hawk you will qualify as a watch keeper.”
At this juncture the Chief of Naval Operations smiled wryly.
“So, in a couple of month’s time you’ll get to drive the second biggest carrier on the planet!”
Chapter 63
Tuesday 4th February 1964
Lincoln Farm, North Druid Hills, DeKalb County, Georgia
“They say in ten or fifteen years the city will swallow up these hills,” the gregarious old man who ran a string of horses out of the ramshackle falling down huddle of buildings called Lincoln Farm declared, puffing on his pipe as he led the father and son towards an ‘outhouse’ half overgrown behind the stables. Most of the horses were out in the two big fields close to the dusty track that headed down towards Interstate 85. Out here in the country it was easy to forget that North Druid Hills was less than ten miles from the center of Atlanta.
“That’s the way of things,” Galen Cheney agreed, scowling as the vile stench of the weed in the old man’s pipe wafted in his face.
“Shouldn’t be too many snakes,” their host continued complacently. “Not this time of year. They said you needed to hole up someplace?”
The tall, forbidding man in the dusty jeans beneath his trademark Sedona halted in his tracks. The brim of the hat cast his face in a deep shadow; the sun was high in the sky and the air was warm, humid.
“The boy and me are here to do some hunting, Mister Jackson,” he said slowly, carefully enunciating ever syllable as if he was talking to a man he regarded as a moron.
“Whatever you say, Mister.” Horatio Jackson was in his sixties, his pudgy face bucolic and his sagging frame heavy footed and clumsy as he moved. His eyes were narrow and when he opened his mouth he was gap-toothed. He stank of stale alcohol and bad tobacco and Lincoln Farm spoke to the indolence and laziness of his character. “Just so long as I get my twenty bucks a day I don’t give diddly squat what you people are about.”
“Snakes?” Isaac asked worriedly; he hated snakes.
“You just mind where you put your feet, son,” Jackson guffawed, “and you’ll be fine.”
“You didn’t say there’d be snakes, Pa,” the boy – he was twenty years old but a boy still – whined, darting frightened looks at the ground around him.
“There ain’t no snakes around her, son.”
“Please yourself!” Jackson chortled. “Please yourself.”
The old man would not have been so self-satisfied if he had troubled to note the violence in Galen Cheney’s hard grey-blue eyes.
“They didn’t say what your name is stranger?” Horatio Jackson asked.
Cheney halted and jabbed a finger in his face.
“You don’t need to know my name, friend.”
“Just being civil!”
Galen Cheney halted before the hovel that he was paying good money to rent from the dissolute ‘farmer’. If anything finally brought home to him that the cream of the resistance had been frivolously thrown into the fires of Washington DC in December, it was the manner of men he had thus far encountered in Atlanta. Nobody he had met in Atlanta was fit to pick up the shit of the brave men who had died in Washington. Several times he had been on the verge of profanity; other times he had very nearly reached for his gun. The leeches wanted his money, the glory of his sacrifice and looked at Isaac like he was simple. Which he was not! The boy was one of God’s gifts to him and his wife, dearly departed, may she rest in the peace of God’s grace for eternity. Isaac was different; he had skills that few if any other living man could match; a man once in the cross hairs of his sights at a thousand yards was dead and even while such a man walked on the Earth, he was only a dead man walking. Yet these Southern ‘hicks’ – they all seemed inbred, ugly of face, spirit and voice – treated Isaac as if he was a freak...
Cheney sighed.
They clearly could not rely on any of the people in Georgia; the people in Atlanta were no more than the ‘stay at home’ rump of the Georgia militia he had helped to train last year. The resistance had no need for ‘good old boys’ like the deadbeats and losers he and Isaac had been handed around in the last twenty-four hours. Mistakenly, he had believed he would need ‘local knowledge’, and ‘enablers’ but actually all he needed was a street map and a car. He could buy the former and steal the latter at his convenience. As for finding his target the whole city was festooned with hurriedly thrown up billboards proclaiming the forthcoming rally in Bedford-Pine Park; and the civil rights people were already erecting a makeshift stage in one corner conveniently overlooked by the high rise apartment blocks and offices of midtown Atlanta.
“We’ll stay in the house,” Galen Cheney decided. “You can sleep in the outhouse.”
Horatio Jackson’s face creased into what might have been a smile; but then he realized the tall man with the Texas drawl was not joking.
“Now steady on Mister...”
Galen Cheney reached into the folds of his leather jacket.
Isaac chortled nervily as the muzzle of the long-barrel .44 calibre Smith and Wesson Magnum prodded the chest of the old man who had tried to frighten him by talking about snakes.
Chapter 64
Wednesday 5th February 1964
Bedford-Pine Park, Atlanta, Georgia
Dwayne John had imagined that he was coming home when he had boarded the Greyhound bus in San Francisco. Now he knew this was just another one of the things he had been wrong about in the last few years. Or rather, not so much things he had got wrong as things that had not turned out in any way like he had thought they were going to turn out. A man did things for the best of all possible motives and yet fate, somehow, had a contrary knack of tripping one up when you least expected it.
He had been an unlikely Galahad to Darlene Lefebure’s Cinderella – it helped to think of these things in terms of fairy tales, he had discovered – and as God was his witness he had never meant to lay a finger on her right up until he did. Things had got crazy in an infernal rush once they had got to California; too many new things all at once, no time to adjust. Looking back he had no idea how he had avoided ending up locked away for five to twenty-five in San Quentin; he had been doing drugs, getting into fights...
Was that really me?
The night of the October War was the surrealist thing of all.
Miranda.
Darlene finding them together.
Johnny Seiffert waving his Navy Colt, the threats and the abuse as he drove them out into the street half-dressed and as high as kites. He had looked around for Miranda – he had not even known her name at the time – but she had gone and he was left standing on the pavement with his dick swinging in the breeze...
And now he had come home to Georgia, except th
e West Coast was his home now because that was where Miranda was, two-and-a-half thousand long miles away!
He had put a call through to her office in Sacramento yesterday. He could not remember if California was two or three hours behind Atlanta; she had put him right on that, having only just got into work.
That was a bad start; made good immediately.
‘It’s really great to hear your voice,’ she had said and those words, crackling and attenuating past the mush on the long distance line had made him feel like a million dollars. He had talked to her about the plans for the big rally in the middle of Atlanta on Friday. The news about Dr King’s ‘summit’ with the President had been on the wires last night and was all across the TV news channels and the daily papers coast to coast that morning. ‘There may be over a hundred thousand people there on Friday!’
The Atlanta Police Department had pleaded for the rally to be abandoned or delayed. They were afraid there would be a riot, or city-wide disorder but State Governor Vandiver had spoken face to face to Mayor Allen – a man many of those close to Dr King were beginning to suspect was actively searching for ways to befriend the civil rights movement – and by telephone to Dr King himself, promising to do everything in his power to enable the rally to go ahead.
‘The time has come for men of good will to come together,’ he had asserted. ‘The rights enshrined in the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America will be exercised by all Georgians regardless of the color of their skin.’
Dr King was in the process of polishing the speech he had intended to give on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington DC late last summer; that ‘March on Washington’ had been postponed – many around Dr King said ‘banned’ – by a Kennedy Administration afraid of antagonising its ‘Southern friends’ at a time when the country was still reeling from the aftershocks of the October War. Now the gossip was that the ‘March to Philadelphia’ was not just back on the agenda, it was actually going to happen in as little as a month, or maybe, two and there was an expectation that the leader of the movement would make the announcement on Friday.