So on this Sunday evening in December, all over America people collected themselves and took stock. Churches were opened so that those so inclined could pray and hear words of comfort. Parents told their children where they were and what they had been doing when they heard that John F. Kennedy had been assassinated. Switchboards jammed as millions decided to call home and touch base with their roots. In airports, shopping malls, and bars from coast to coast, as they gathered around television sets strangers spoke to each other.
There were incidents, of course. In Dallas a man in a bar cheered when an announcer said the President’s life was in grave danger; he was severely beaten and, had he not been rescued by hastily summoned police, would probably have been beaten to death. An Iranian with a long-expired student visa lost his front teeth at a shopping mall in suburban Chicago after he loudly announced that George Bush deserved to die. In San Francisco a waiter dumped a tray of food in the lap of a self-styled animal rights activist who expressed a similar opinion. The activist repeated her remark to the manager who had rushed to apologize, and he summarily ejected her and apologized to his other patrons, who applauded loudly.
At nine-thirty that evening one of the network correspondents informed the White House press secretary’s office that his network had a story that the dead pilot of the President’s helicopter had mentioned explosions—“like missiles”—in his last transmission to Dulles Approach. The network was going with the story on the hour. Did the White House wish to comment.
Yes, it did. The press secretary said he would hold a news conference at ten-fifteen, and he asked the network to hold the story until after the conference. After a hurried consultation with New York, the correspondent agreed.
At ten twenty-two that night the White House press secretary appeared at the rostrum in the basement press room and squinted as his eyes adjusted to the glare of the floodlights. He held a paper in front of him and read from it. At his side were the directors of the Secret Service and the FBI.
“The Vice-President of the United States has authorized me to announce that the helicopter accident this afternoon which claimed the lives of five people was an assassination attempt. We assume—”
He got no further. People who knew better shouted questions at the top of their lungs.
The press secretary waited for the uproar to die. He swabbed his forehead with a handkerchief and continued to stare at the paper in his hand. Finally he resumed:
“We assume that the assassination attempt was directed at the President of the United States, although we have no direct evidence to support or refute that assumption. Apparently a party or parties unknown fired at least two heat-seeking missiles at the helicopter carrying the President, at least two of which appear to have inflicted major damage on the craft, rendering it unairworthy. The pilot immediately lost control. The crash occurred shortly thereafter. If you have questions, the directors of the Secret Service and the FBI are here to help me answer them.”
“How do you know about the missiles?”
“The shrapnel from the warheads punctured the fuselage in many places,” the director of the Secret Service said.
“Do you have any suspects?”
“Not yet.”
“Do you have any clues?”
“None that we’re going to discuss in public.”
“Are arrests imminent?”
“No.”
“Is it true that the pilot of the helicopter told Dulles Approach about explosions, like missiles, in one of his last transmissions?” This was from the network correspondent who had agreed to hold this story.
“Yes, that is true.”
“Why wasn’t this announced earlier?”
The press secretary was tired and had had a hell of a bad evening. He had little patience with questions like that. “We had to check it out. There are a couple of thousand rumors out there, including one that the pilot was drunk. We will release information when we have verified it and believe it is true. Not before.”
“Was the pilot drunk?”
“Not to my knowledge. There will be autopsies on all the victims, of course.”
Across the nation the mood of those still watching television, and they were many, turned gloomy. An assassin. A killer. Not an ordinary killer, but one who had directly attacked the United States of America.
All four of the networks seized the assassin angle with both hands. Film clips were aired of the Kennedy assassination. Pictures of Lincoln, Garfield, and McKinley were shown. Profiles of past presidential assassins and would-be killers were hastily assembled and aired. One network sent a crew to the New York residence of Jacqueline Onassis, Kennedy’s widow, and camped outside with the camera running. The lady didn’t come out.
At the Post Ott Mergenthaler stopped by Yocke’s desk. The television in the corner was showing footage of Jack Ruby shooting Lee Harvey Oswald. “Wanta go get a sandwich?”
“Okay. I can take a break.”
They walked to the elevator and took it down to the cafeteria. Normally at this time of night it was closed, but not this night.
“What do you think?” Yocke asked. “A nut like Oswald?”
“Not very likely. Crackpots don’t shoot missiles.”
“Remember a few weeks ago when they extradited Chano Aldana? That ‘communiqué’ from the Extraditables in Colombia? ‘We will bring the American government to its knees.’ ”
“I remember. If this is their work, they’ve made a good start.”
“So what do you think?”
“I think nobody in Colombia has factored Quivering Dan Quayle into their calculations.”
“As I recall, you called Quayle Bush’s biggest mistake.”
“That’s just one of the nicer things I’ve said about him. I also said he was impeachment insurance for Bush.”
They went through the serving line, helping themselves to cold sandwiches and hot coffee. When they were seated, Mergenthaler continued, “Quayle’s a genuine nice guy, never been accused of being a deep thinker, no ideological cross to bear although he can mouth the conservative line and appears at times to believe some of it. He’s just the kind of guy you’d like to include in a foursome on Sunday morning. Pleasant, affable, likes the kind of jokes dentists tell and can probably tell a few himself. Never worried about money a day in his life. If you hit your last ball into the creek, he’ll toss you one with a grin and refuse to take a dollar for it.”
Ott sipped coffee and munched some on his sandwich.
“Every observer who knows this guy says he grows into his job. People underestimate him—that’s ridiculously easy to do—and he surprises them. He’s got a modest amount of brains but never had to use them before he got into public office. So he learns how to be a congressman, how to be a senator, how to be a vice president. His staff feeds him lines to say and he says them. If Bush dies, Quayle will presumably learn how to be a president. Given enough time, enough good will by all concerned, he can probably learn how to do a mediocre job.”
“He isn’t going to have any time at all,” Yocke said.
“That’s my point. He’s walking straight into a blast furnace. In addition to all the stuff Bush has been juggling, Quayle will have the drug crisis going full blast, hot enough to melt steel. People are going to want this kid who never made a tough decision in his life to do something. And you know what? I’ll bet he will!”
Ott worked on his sandwich some more, then added, “If I was a doper in Colombia, I’d crawl into a hole and pull the hole in after me. The biggest temptation any man in the White House faces is to overreact. You got all those generals who’ll want to go kick ass. If the Extraditables claim Bush as a trophy, the public is going to howl for blood. We may have a real rootin’, tootin’ war on our hands, mister. The hell with the S-and-L crisis, the hell with federal aid to education, the hell with balancing the budget. We’re going to blow the whole wad on a trip to Colombia to burn out that hornet’s nest. You watch. You see if I’m right.”
�
�I don’t think the Colombian dopers are behind this, Ott,” Yocke said. “Oh, I know, Aldana blew a lot of smoke. But that terrorist gig they’ve been running in Colombia won’t work here. Not in America.”
“I wish I had your optimism. If Quayle sends the Army and Air Force to Colombia to kick ass, that won’t work. The people we’re after will run and hide. We’d have to burn the damn place down and sift the ashes to get ’em. No, if the Colombians start murdering judges here and buying everyone who can be bought, America is going to change and change fast. This will cease to be the America you and I grew up in. I’m not sure what it will become. Frankly, I hope to God I never have to find out.”
“Let’s pray that George Bush doesn’t die.”
Ott snorted. “More to the point, we’d better pray that the Colombians don’t claim they shot him down.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
SITTING in his room in the FBI dorm at the Quantico Marine barracks, Harrison Ronald Ford flipped through the Monday morning Post looking for the story about Ike Randolph’s body. Most of the paper was devoted to the assassination attempt. That and a minute-by-minute account of Bush’s life, including interviews with people who knew him when.
At first Ford thought it wasn’t there, but he finally found the story on page B-7, three whole paragraphs: Body of a severely burned unidentified black male shot through the head found Sunday morning by a military policeman on a routine check of the perimeter of Fort McNair. Well, that was better than the anonymous phone call idea, though Ford was sure that someone had told the MP to go look.
He was disappointed. Likely as not Freeman and the boys would never see this little piddley story, considering what great readers they were. The whole damn crowd didn’t invest a dollar a month in reading material. If it wasn’t on the top half of the front page and staring at them through the glass of the newspaper dispenser, they would never see it.
Maybe one or two of the TV stations had picked up the story and run it when they were momentarily out of George Bush footage.
He tossed the paper on the desk.
Nothing was going right. The grand jury appearance had been postponed, Hooper was out chasing assassins all over Maryland and northern Virginia, Freddy was unreachable at the J. Edgar Hoover Building. And he was sitting here stewing. Wondering what was going through Freeman McNally’s agile little mind.
It wouldn’t be anything good, that was certain. When he didn’t show up for work tonight, no doubt someone would check his apartment. At least he had had the good sense to leave the Mustang parked in front of the joint. That simpleton Freddy had wanted to take it back to the FBI lab. Harrison had told Hooper and Freddy in no uncertain terms what he thought of their intellectual ability.
His disappearance would not be something Freeman McNally would ignore. What was it he had said about Fat Tony Anselmo—you can find out anything if you know who to ask and have enough money?
Harrison stared out the window at the manicured lawn and trimmed trees.
The day was dismal. Overcast, threatening to rain.
And he was sitting here in plain view of anybody out there with a set of binoculars. He lowered the window blind and pulled the string to shut the louvers.
Then he threw himself full-length on the bed.
Ten months of this shit and he was still sweating it. Would it ever end?
“Did you watch any TV this morning?” Mergenthaler demanded of Jack Yocke on Monday morning. The older man stood at the opening of the cubicle with a wad of newspapers in his hand. He always read the New York Times, the Chicago Herald Tribune, and the Los Angeles Times every morning when he arrived for work.
“Fifteen minutes or so.”
“Those idiots are canonizing Bush and he hasn’t even had the decency to die. I got NBC’s eulogy with my morning coffee. If he lives we’ll have our very first saint in the White House. The Democrats won’t even bother to have a convention in ’92.”
“Haven’t you heard? The Democrats are talking about running Donald Trump and Leona Helmsley in ’92.”
“Stop laughing! I’m not kidding! I don’t care how maudlin and saccharin those television twits get after he dies, if he dies. But if he doesn’t, we’re going to have to live with a politician the public gets all weepy just thinking about. Saint George. Yuck! Turns my stomach.”
“Oh, I don’t think it’ll be that bad,” Jack Yocke said slowly. “The public’s memory is short. By ’92 the Republicans will be spending millions trying to remind the voters that George almost gave his life for his country.”
“Humph! By God, I hope you’re right. This damn country won’t work if we gotta start being nice to the politicians. And it won’t work if we have only one viable political party.” Mergenthaler stalked away toward his glassed-in office.
All across America this Monday morning the wheels of commerce turned slowly, if at all. Parents let children stay home from school and took a sick day themselves. The televisions stayed on. From coast to coast streets, stores, and factories were nearly deserted as everyone participated in the national drama by watching the talking heads on television.
Normal programming was preempted. Every fact, rumor, and tidbit about the shootdown and the President’s condition was played and replayed, experts discussed the massive manhunt, politicians went from network to network for cameo appearances to assure the viewing audiences that the wheels of government were continuing to turn and to urge the public to remain calm.
Why these officials felt it necessary to urge the public to keep its wits was never explained. The only people who seemed outraged beyond endurance were a few elderly ladies who telephoned their local television stations to voice bitter complaint about the preemption of their favorite soap operas. Even so, there were fewer of these calls than television executives expected.
Amidst the speculation about the identity and motives of the assassins, a new element was slowly introduced. Tentatively, with circumspection at first, Dan Quayle began to get airtime.
He had appeared in the White House press room at seven-thirty a.m., in time to be carried live on all the morning shows, said a few carefully prepared words, then embarked in a heavily guarded motorcade for Bethesda Naval Hospital to see the President’s doctors, since Bush was still comatose.
By midmorning the networks were heavily into Quayle. His wife, his kids, his parents, his school chums and former professors back in Indiana, all were paraded before cameras and all mouthed appropriate words. Those that didn’t, didn’t get on the air.
All the networks approached the subject in basically the same way. The popular perception that Quayle was a lightweight airhead was silently refuted by the carefully chosen words and pictures the network chose to air. Quayle was cast in a presidential light, spoken of with deference. Conspicuously absent this morning were the snide asides and giggles up the sleeves and lighthearted try-to-top-this reporting of his public misstatements and bloopers that had characterized media coverage of Dan Quayle since the day Bush chose him as his vice-presidential candidate.
In the Post newsroom Ott Mergenthaler noticed the collective corporate decision to polish Quayle’s image and began making phone calls, trying to pin down producers and executives on why they made this decision.
Over in the Joint Staff spaces of the Pentagon, Toad Tarkington noticed it too. And when Toad noticed something, he quickly made everyone in earshot aware of it. Today, as usual in his new assignment, his listeners were all senior to him in years, rank, and experience, but that didn’t seem to crimp the Toad-man’s style in any significant way.
“Hoo boy, I’m telling you, they’re grooming Danny the Dweeb for the big one. They ought to turn on the TV in George’s room. If he saw this he’d leap out of bed and jog down to the White House.”
“Mr. Tarkington,” the Air Force colonel said in a tired, resigned voice, “please! Must you?”
“This is all a sick joke, right? Quivering Dan Quayle? The pride of the Indiana National Guard? Somebody ca
ll me when the commercial comes on. I’m gonna go buy some popcorn.”
“Can it, Toad,” Jake Grafton said. “Don’t you have any work to do?”
“Yessir. As you know, I’m preparing a contingency plan to convert all the A-6s to Agent Orange spray aircraft so we can zap the South American cocaine fields. I figure if we mix the stuff with the gas, we can just fly over the fields with the fuel dumps on and—”
“Back to work.”
“Aye aye, sir.”
Judge Snyder was at least seventy, with thin hair and a thick waist and big, hamlike hands. He was tall, about three inches over six feet, but he appeared taller because he moved with that clumsy awkwardness that some big men have. Still, the word that came to most people’s minds after they had met Judge Snyder was “crusty.” Even his wife used that word when describing him to new acquaintances. The young lawyers with fashionably long, styled hair who practiced in front of him would have added another word—“profane”—although no one had ever heard him indulge in salty language in the presence of his wife. Clearly he was not of the generation of the buttoned-down, big-firm Mercedes drivers who constituted the majority of the lawyers who practiced in his courtroom.
When Thanos Liarakos entered the judge’s office at ten o’clock on Monday morning, Snyder had a television going and was reading a newspaper. He held the paper up before him, spread wide, as he leaned back in his heavy swivel chair.
His office was full of books, with briefs and case files stacked everywhere. On the wall behind him was a framed piece of needlework. Inside delicate pink and yellow flower borders were the words SUE THE BASTARDS.
When the door closed Judge Snyder lowered one corner of the paper and frowned at his visitor. “Why aren’t you at home, Liarakos, watching the damned TV with everybody else?”
“Seen enough of it, your honor,” was the reply.
“Me too. Turn that damn thing over there off, will you?”
Liarakos did, then dropped into a chair. He took an envelope from his jacket pocket and extracted the contents, which he handed to the judge.
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