A Time for War

by Michael Savage

  “You mean, when I mattered.”

  Hawke laughed. “Your modesty is unexpected.”

  There was a false, frustrating informality to the greeting. Part of that was the awkwardness of any first meeting; part was the fact that this was bound to be adversarial. Jack had expected that. But it made Jack wonder if anything about the man was real, honest, off-the-shelf. Jack had always been able to put his TV guests at ease with a few jokes and his naturally easygoing style. But then, most of them were tense about going on TV and wanted to be relaxed. Hawke was guarded but he did not seem tense. And he had the home court advantage.

  “What would you like to eat, drink?” Hawke asked.

  “Nothing, thanks.”

  “Just the facts, ma’am,” Hawke laughed.

  “I am a reporter.”

  “So I was just reading,” he held up the e-reader and wigwagged it. “Your articles on the Hand of Allah. Fascinating.”

  Jack thanked him. Hawke said that if his guest didn’t mind he’d like to go to the dining room. Jack agreed and followed him down a different set of stairs from the one he’d come up.

  The dining room was gently air-conditioned.

  “We don’t get much of a breeze this side of the island, and that sun cooks the roof for the entire day,” Hawke said, waving a hand at the ceiling. It was covered with a Renaissance-style mural of great inventors and their creations, in the guise of saints. “What do you think of my faux Italian masterwork? It was painted by the gentleman who was arrested five years ago for creating fake Michelangelos.”

  Nothing real, honest, off-the-shelf ... Jack thought. “Did you commission this before or after?”

  “After,” Hawke admitted. “I paid for his defense team. Talent like this should not be doing chalk drawings on a prison wall. He got six years, served three. This took him two years. I didn’t bother him the way Pope Julius kept after Michelangelo. Art can’t be bullied.”

  Ironically, it was probably not much smaller than the Sistine Chapel ceiling.

  They sat at a corner of the Louis XVI dining room table.

  “This is not a re-creation,” Hawke tapped it as he sat in one of the matching, cushioned chairs. “It was made for Versailles but never delivered. Marie Antoinette felt it wouldn’t be large enough for the room she had in mind.” He pointed to a painting behind him. “That is she, in hunting attire. It’s by her portraitist, Joseph Krantzinger. She didn’t like the background, insisted he do the whole thing over.”

  “Royalty,” Jack said as he sat. “What can you do with someone who has so much power?”

  Hawke smiled as water was poured by a young male steward. “Behead them, of course. But you never know what will take their place. Was Napoleon any better?”

  “No,” Jack agreed.

  “Was Lenin an improvement over Czar Nicholas II? Did Cuba fare any better under Fidel Castro than it did under Batista?”

  “Those are either-or situations,” Jack said. “Not everything is so black or white.”

  Hawke took a long drink of water as he sat back in his white chair. He didn’t answer.

  He didn’t have to.

  The industrialist smiled. There was something unhealthy in his expression. Not just in the flesh but in the poison that lay beneath it. Like a snake trying to hypnotize prey.

  “Do you own one of these?” Hawke asked, holding up the e-reader.

  “I just got a tablet a few weeks ago,” Jack said. “I’m not an early adaptor.”

  Hawke continued to smile. He spoke one word, quietly. “Pierre.”

  A young man trotted silently up the staircase. Jack just now noticed a small bulge in the frame of Hawke’s glasses, just over each ear. An embedded Bluetooth, he surmised. Pierre was carrying a plastic cylinder, which he handed to Hawke. The way the young man bowed to make sure his boss didn’t have to reach far for it or even look over reminded Jack of a bas relief he had seen of a quaestor presenting Tiberius Caesar with a writing tablet. Pierre removed the e-reader and remained by Hawke’s elbow.

  The cylinder was actually a flexible display nearly two feet across. Hawke spread it on the desk with both hands. The display remained flat.

  “Our latest commercial application of proprietary military technology,” Hawke smiled. “The tablet you purchased is already obsolete. This device utilizes our own patented semiconducting material with eight times the current modulation rate of existing organic thin film transistors.” He smiled triumphantly. “Instead of employing electronics based on conventional solid chips in archaic plastic containers, we’ve created a display driver just twenty microns thick and integrated it into the pane itself. Only dedicated Hawke electronics function on board the Hi-Lite.”

  “You mean I had myself wired up for nothing?”

  Hawke laughed, but not at the easy victory. It was an expression of joy. The man seemed prouder showing off that little screen than he did his jet and yacht.

  His legacy is more important than what it has bought him, Jack thought.

  Hawke gestured toward Jack. Pierre brought him the display screen, laid it out before him, tapped an icon on the plastic sheet, then left.

  “You will recognize this, I think,” Hawke said.

  Jack looked down at the surprisingly bright and lifelike image. It was an episode of Truth Tellers from 2010, the one with Dr. Jose Colon of Caltech and press officer Rebecca Walsh of Squarebeam. The audio came from speakers that were hidden in the ceiling and walls around the table. It began at the point when Jack was saying, “... what you were describing sounds a lot like the protection rackets run by the mob.”

  “I don’t need to see or hear it,” Jack said. “I remember what I said.”

  “Do you remember every show you’ve done? Or just that one?”

  “A call from the Vice President of the United States tends to stick in one’s memory,” Jack told him.

  “What did he tell you?”

  “That’s between me and the Vice President.”

  “Do you know the definition of a lonely man, Mr. Hatfield? A man of ideals in a selfish world.”

  Jack shrugged a little. “I’d call him a beacon.”

  “Like a solid old lighthouse or a candle in the window,” Hawke said with a flourish. In the process of saluting them he mocked them.

  “I would say more like a pole star,” Jack said.

  “Of course you would,” Hawke said. “You know, though, that pole stars are true only at the poles. And they change over time.” He leaned forward. “The Vice President told you that you were overstating the danger of Squarebeam technology. He informed you that we were on the verge of making a significant deal with the Chinese government that would provide work for my laboratories in Connecticut, in Florida, and in California. He suggested that the President would like to be able to talk about the thousands of jobs and hundreds of millions of dollars this relationship would bring to America. Does that sum it up?”

  “Except for one thing,” Jack said. “He didn’t answer my question about what kind of technology you were selling to China.”

  “Did you expect him to? What is your security level, Jack?”

  “The word of a journalist is the only security level he needs,” Jack said. “That’s why the public never heard about D-Day before June 6 and Joe Voter did not know about JFK’s back pain or mistresses.”

  “Ideals again,” Hawke said.

  “They always come back, just like spring,” Jack said. “Why do you hate them so much?”

  “Because they lack any connection with reality, any use in an evolving society. They are the ultimate form of narcissism.”

  “Not this?” With a sweep of his hand, Jack moved from the flexible display to the boat. “Everything in your colors, black and white. Everything with your zigzag line cutting through it. Your predatory bird logo on every employee.”

  “You must learn the difference between vanity and uniformity,” Hawke said. “I don�
�t announce to the world, as you do, that my ideals are correct. These trappings—and that’s all they are, accessories to a life—are proof that my judgment is correct. I understand what people need, from ordinary citizens to government leaders.”

  “And when they succumb, you brand them,” Jack said.

  “You’re wrong,” Hawke said. “It’s a partnership.”

  “So your employees keep telling me. Each of them stamped from your mold, articulating your dogma, surrendering self for comfort and access.”

  “You make comfort sound like a dirty word.”

  “Not at all,” Jack said. “I happen to love it myself, though I wouldn’t trade my bike for your tinted-windows limo. I’d miss too much of the world.”

  “You have it before you, right there,” he pointed to the display.

  “Data, not experience.”

  “That depends on the kind of experience one wishes to have,” Hawke said. “Does a woman want the pain of childbirth or the child itself? Does a man want the pain of dentistry or a radiant smile? When you ride your bicycle can you play the piano? Can you paint, read? Drive an SLR McLaren? Everything in life is a tradeoff, Mr. Hatfield.”

  “Not freedom,” Jack replied.

  “Yes freedom,” Hawke said. “You are not free to rape or burn down a house of worship.”

  “That’s where ideals come in,” Jack said. “Without them—a Bill of Rights or a church, for example—nations crumble.”

  “A moral anchor,” Hawke said dismissively. “Something other than an iron will to unify people. To you it’s one or the other.”

  “Isn’t it?” Jack asked. “That’s one reason the Soviet Union didn’t make it. Uganda under Amin. Iraq. Suppression and corruption are no substitute for a code of honor.”

  “You have a high school student’s view of the world,” Hawke said. “Have you actually spent time in Russia, in Chechnya, in the other republics? I have. The Soviet Union failed before it began because the Czar, the leader the masses despised, was executed and thrown down a mineshaft. Civilizations don’t rally around morality; they rally around hate. Did the Confederacy rally around slavery because it was moral? No. They were united in their strong, universal dislike of being ordered to change their way of life, to make the needs of the state subservient to the whims of the nation. Despite being better financed, better armed, and with more men, the North took four bloody years to subjugate the Rebels. When was this country more united than after Pearl Harbor or 9/11? Joseph Conrad argued that what truly changes the world for the better are acts of ‘ferocious imbecility.’ Who can argue that humankind’s response to that has always been shoulder-to-shoulder unification? Look at the Crusades. To this day, many Muslims condemn them. When President George W. Bush dared to say—on September 16, 2001, when our nation was still bleeding—’This crusade, this war on terrorism is going to take a while,’ he was widely criticized for using that word. Yet what made his words necessary? What caused the original Crusades? In the eleventh century, as in 2001, it was an act of vicious aggression by radical Muslims—in that instance, cutting off access to Jerusalem. Hate, Mr. Hatfield. Hate unifies. Hate inspires. Hate of poverty, of degradation, of endless, difficult choices. That, Mr. Hatfield, is a third option.”

  Jack saw where this was going and it frightened him. He imagined Hitler and his war against the Jews turned loose in some way he had yet to figure out. But a good journalist never lets opinion or ego get between himself and information. He lets his subject think he is the smarter of the two. That keeps him talking, explaining.

  “At the risk of being sent to detention,” Jack smiled, “how does that have anything to do with why I’m here?”

  “You told an associate that you believed my technology was being used to murder Americans,” Hawke said. “Is that accurate?”

  “I did.”

  “May I have your evidence? If you need to use a computer to open a file or database, the touchpad on the screen before you is linked to my corporate system through the Hawke-B satellite. You can even open any number of ONI files, if you need them—though I would have to give you my password.”

  Jack did not react to Hawke’s latest demonstration of access. He looked down. He typed a few commands into the touchpad. It was impressive. “I don’t need a computer,” he said, “just an answer. And, if necessary, an explanation.” Something else a good journalist did was to never become the interviewee.

  Hawke laughed again, this time with a little less enthusiasm. “I rarely watched your program when you had one, but I see why it was successful. You believe that pushing and bullying is the way to get information.”

  “It saves time.”

  “Is that how you seduce your women as well?”

  Jack was not intimidated. “You wouldn’t believe the lures I throw at women.”

  “Like a fly-fisher?” Hawke smiled.

  “More like that than you would imagine,” Jack said. “Seduction is not my style, Mr. Hawke. Women are pretty smart. Either they click with you or they don’t. You’re pretty smart. Either you answer my questions or you don’t.”

  “If I don’t,” Hawke said, “what then?”

  “The main part of my business here is through.”

  “The main part,” Hawke said.

  “I’m pretty sure that someone with your ‘proprietary technology’ is up to no good,” Jack said. “But I’ll find that out on my own.”

  “Not with the help of Ms. Griffith,” Hawke said confidently. He indicated the flexible display.

  Jack looked down, saw security footage of a woman entering and leaving the Murrieta facility.

  “She learned nothing,” Hawke told him.

  “Sure she did,” Jack said.

  “What was that?”

  This was one question Jack was happy to answer. “That she’s not alone. The two clowns you sent to chase her away? Didn’t turn out too well for them.” Jack had learned that by reading the text message from Doc on Hawke’s flexible display.

  Hawke had survived too many boardroom battles and Congressional committees to be thrown by a sideshow setback. What seemed to wound him—and Jack had followed his eyes carefully as they went from Jack to the flexible display then back—was the realization that his own device had just been used against him.

  “What is your other business with me?” Hawke asked. His voice was unworried but his expression was slightly guarded, his eyes were wary.

  “You’re guilty of something,” Jack said. “You’ve told me that by your lack of curiosity about what I suspect, what I may know. An innocent man would have asked.”

  “You think too highly of yourself,” Hawke said. “You’re a conspiracy theorist, nothing more. You lucked out once, with the Hand of Allah, and you’re desperately trying to do so again. On my back.”

  “Do you have anything else you want to share?” Jack asked.

  “Just this.” The veneer of graciousness vanished, like harsh sunlight breaking through mist. “I flew you down here to sit across the table from the man who called me a Mafioso, a level of attack that even heads of state have never dared.”

  “They’re afraid of you,” Jack said. “I’m not.”

  “They’re wise,” Hawke replied. “You’re not. I wanted to tell you, face-to-face, that the sound of Jack Hatfield’s voice no longer matters. Who has come running to the Hero of Golden Gate? Where are the offers? Where is The New Jack Hatfield Show? You were always a fringe voice but now you are a discredited one as well. A freak who chased down a radical freak, nothing more.”

  Hawke tapped his glasses, paused, smiled.

  “You and Miss Dover Griffith—a man on the way down leading a girl who has lost her way. I’m informed that you sent a bully as your proxy, a rogue coyote. He attacked two security men who were merely escorting the young lady from a dangerous situation. That is your contribution to society. Verbal and physical thuggery. That is your flexible display screen, your contributi
on to the world. Fortunately your wife left you. There is no one to hear you except a poodle, a mercenary, a pizza maker, an aging hippie, and now a frustrated journalist. You come here and piss on my people? You and your circle are pathetic.”

  “Are Americans pathetic, Mr. Hawke? Are the Chinese better than us?”

  “The Chinese again,” Hawke said. “You’re like a journalistic abattoir, you know that? You examine every part of the animal, over and over, to make sure it is used for something. I already told you, my activities are at a level of security—”

  “I didn’t ask about your activities,” Jack interrupted. “I asked about the Chinese.”

  “You’ll have to be more specific,” Hawke said, amused and apparently intrigued. “They are no more monolithic than Americans.”