The old man leaned forward, brushed a silvery wisp of hair from his forehead, and extended a bony hand. Winston took it, warmly and carefully, and mumbled, "It's good to see you again, sir."
"I'll just have to take your word for it that you're Mike Winston," Tromanno told him, in a surprisingly strong voice. He peered closely into Winston's eyes. "Everyone changes with age, of course. Even in the eyes. As I recall, you had very daring eyes."
"You once told me I had your eyes, sir," Winston reminded him.
The old man laughed, a deeply booming flood of pleasant music, then cut it off abruptly and placed a hand on his chest. "Every laugh takes another hour off my life, they tell me," he said. "People used to tell me I'd die laughing." He sniffed. "Better than dying crying, I suppose. Well . . . what've you been up to all these years, Michael? I hear you're a nigger tender now."
"That's why I'm here, sir. I need your counsel."
The old man leaned forward in the chair and peered around Winston's figure, his gaze taking in the nurse and
the manservant who had remained nearby. The dog was watching Winston, head cocked to one side, ears standing stiffly.
Tromanno said, "Henry, you and Em go take a coffee break, or a brandy break, or whatever young people break with these days. I'll ring if I want you."
"Should I leave Rhinemaster, sir?" the manservant asked.
"Take the slavering beastie with you," the old man commanded. "He'd as soon eat me as anybody else. I've noticed him giving hungry looks at my legbone here lately."
The manservant laughed, sent the ex-president an affectionate twinkling of eyes and went out with the dog. The nurse paused in the doorway to give Winston a final critical appraisal, then she too vanished.
"They are a couple of your responsibilities," Tromanno told Winston. "Or I suppose you noticed, if you still have good eyes."
Winston said, "Yes sir. I've been noticing many things during the past few months. I'm afraid, sir, that the black volcano is rumbling again."
"That so?" Tromanno eyed his visitor thoughtfully, sank back into the cushions, and drummed his fingers on a bony knee. Presently he asked, "Would you like a smoke, Mike?"
Winston declined.
"I sure as hell would," the old man declared. "But I've had my three for the day. Well so what—it's almost midnight, isn't it?" He opened a pedestal type humidor, selected a cigar, lit it, coughed, glared at it, then quietly said, "It's about time."
"Sir?"
"It's about time for some rumbling. When do you figure the lava will start flowing?"
"I expect it most any time, sir. It may already be flowing."
"I see. Well... good! I hope I live to see it."
"It could get pretty brutal," Winston said soberly.
"More brutal than the seventies? Than the eighties?"
Tromanno puffed furiously at the cigar. "They say two wrongs never make a right. Baloney! I say it always takes the second wrong to restore right. So do you think the second wrong will be wronger than the first one?"
"Perhaps more damaging to the nation as a whole, sir," Winston replied.
"Damn the nation as a whole! The nation as a whole ceased to exist twenty years ago."
"In a sense, sir, I suppose I agree with you."
The old man smoked and coughed some more, then he asked, "Why'd you come up here tonight, Mike?"
"Grabbing at straws, I guess. I've come to a conclusion that a Negro uprising is imminent. I can't get anyone to listen to me. I suppose I—"
"What's happened to you, Michael?"
"Sir?"
"Why aren't you standing up and cheering them on?"
"Well, I . . . we're speaking of carnage, Mr. President. Destruction of an undreamt magnitude . . . civil war, that's what we're contemplating, sir."
"It started more than two hundred years ago."
"Sir?"
"This civil war you speak of. It began in the Eighteenth Century. It has never ceased. It shall never cease. It cannot. It must not. Can you understand that?"
"I'm not sure I do, sir."
"The problems between the governors and the governed are unremitting, especially in a so-called democracy."
"Yes sir, I accept that."
"But listen, Michael. There is no such thing as a pure democracy. We can make grand speeches about freedom and we can sneer at the totalitarians, but it's all one big ball game."
"I'm afraid I don't quite agree, sir."
"Some day you'll see it. Arlington saw it. To our everlasting damnation."
"I, uh, think I get your drift, sir."
"Drift, hell. Tell me something, Mike. What is the most horrible sort of tyranny? That of a despot? Or that of a democratic majority?"
"I, uh ... That seems to be a paradoxical question, sir."
"Paradoxical hell. It's pure grim reality. When you've got one-man rule, everybody in the state is riding the same boat. The problem of the governed is a common one. Everybody's alike. But there is no more horrible form of despotism than to find yourself a part of a hated minority in a state run by majority rule. Then the despots are on every street corner, in every public place. They are your employers, your neighbors, your policeman, even your doctors and preachers and teachers. Oh, Michael.. . what terrible tyrants we free men are!"
Winston grinned. "This is like old times, sir. When I was a little boy, hiding in the dark in the next room, and listening to the arguments between you and my father."
"Yes and we argued about the same damn things, didn't we? Ah well, your father was a good man, Mike. Misguided here and there, but a good man who eventually saw the truth."
"Yes sir. He died for his convictions, sir."
"That he did. And what are your convictions, Michael?"
"I'm not sure." Winston took time to light a cigarette. He gazed at the old man and softly declared, "But I don't want to see a totally black America, I'm sure of that."
"Neither does anybody else. Not even the Negro, if he's honest with himself. Arlington niggered us, Mike. He niggered the whites and he even niggered the blacks. He got us all shook out and set apart from one another, just like one of those whirling machines they use in the laboratories to separate everything out. They called me a nigger lover, Mike. Hell, I'm not a nigger lover. Never have been. But I'm not a nigger hater, either. I'm an America lover, Mike. You know what a principle is, Mike?"
"I think so, sir."
"So what is the guiding principle of this country today?"
"I, uh, couldn't say, sir."
"That's because there are no guiding principles in this country today. A principle, Mike, is usually something you don't particularly like to do. While ago you said something about paradox. A principle is a paradox. We all want the other man to be principled, but we don't want to be chained by that same method of personal conduct. So a principle is always something for the other man to observe. But you remember this—if you're going through life just being comfortable, just doing the things you like to do, or want to do, then you're unprincipled. And if you're unprincipled, then you have no character. Where is the character of America today, Michael?"
"I don't know, sir."
"Could it be stirring itself, do you think, in the Towns?"
Winston gave the old man a startled look.
"You can't answer the question.-All right, don't answer it. But when you find the answer, just be sure you let yourself know. So, the niggers are coming out. Hip hip hooray. Who do you think their top people are?"
"Williams, for one. Bogan, I believe. Most of the town mayors."
Tromanno nodded thoughtfully and dropped his gaze to the fireplace. "Well, whoever they are, let's hope they're a blending—I mean a well-balanced blending of Eldridge Cleaver, Martin King, and Whitney Young. That'll give them fist, heart, and mind—and they're going to need all of it."
"These people here, sir, in the house. Can you count on their loyalty? To you, I mean?"
"Why not?" Tromanno snorted.
&nbs
p; "I have reason to believe that many of the Toms are figuring prominently in the uprising. They have more freedom of movement, without appearing to be out of place. This would be vital to any intelligence operation. Also I wouldn't be surprised if many of them were trained assassins."
"You said Bogan is in it," Tromanno recalled. "If they have the army, what else do they need?"
"Our armed forces are pared to the bone, sir. Quick-reaction teams and hordes of technicians—that's most of the army. The navy is little more than a convoying force to protect our foodstuffs shipments from the desperate nations. Air Force is mostly mothballed except for a few fighter wings for continental defense. Automated Defense Command is the major fist of the nation; it could have no role in a civil war. No sir, it's going to be an old fashioned method of warfare if any at all. It's going to be a people war and they've got the weapons."
"Where'd they get them?"
"Army has been secretly unwrapping the mothballs and stacking them about the country at deactivated facilities. Rifles, machine guns, heavy weapons, armor, munitions of every size and type."
"By God, it sounds like they mean business this time."
"Yes sir, I'm afraid so."
"Don't be afraid, Michael. Hell might descend, yes—but could it be much worse than purgatory? Something good, something vital, will come out of this, Mike. You wait and see."
"You, uh, struck a chord there, sir. I've been giving some thought to national vitality myself."
The old man coughed and said, "It's about time someone did. This nation has lost its soul, my boy. It has lost its very soul."
"Yes sir, I agree with that completely. About the Toms, sir. Are you safe here?"
Tromanno laughed quietly. "Yes, I'm as safe as I've ever been. As for Henry and Em, they're like family. Fella I had here a year or so ago, though . . . now he was a hardcase. Temporary help. Used to stand out behind the kitchen and throw the butcher knife into a board, hour after hour. Saw him split a two-by-eight once from a distance of over twenty feet. Had a photo of the Governor, the Governor of Colorado, in his room. Or so Henry told me. Knew the Governor's habits like they came out of the same womb. Went back to town on a weekend off, about a year ago, and never came back. They said he'd died." The old man chuckled. "I don't think he died. I'll bet he's gardening or chauffeuring for the Governor right now. I've been wondering, just wondering, all this time. I'm glad you visited me, Michael. But I don't think I can hold my head up another five minutes. Gravity gets heavier on the old frame every day."
"Well . . . I've enjoyed the visit, sir. And the conversation, as ever, has been entirely stimulating."
"All conversation does is rustle the leaves in the trees, Michael," the ex-president wheezed. "A leaf, you know, falls to the ground and rots or gets burnt. So do a lot of thoughts, produced by stimulating conversation. See to your leaves, Mike. Go on. Go see to your leaves."
CHAPTER 5
The scene at Oakland's Warhole was one of bustling but orderly activity. Ten giant troop copters stood in receiving formation across the artificial turf, great rotary wings whispering softly in a slow idle. Abraham Lincoln Williams sat at the center of the old press box, now a loadmaster's tower, his face close to the glass window in stiff inspection of the activities down on the field. The spectator areas of the massive stadium were filled to capacity with dark young men in U.S. Army combat garb, from which seemingly endless queues extended from all sides to the field.
General Jackson Bogan paced back and forth across the booth behind Williams, speaking occasionally into a hand mike as necessary to give directions to platoon leaders as they moved their troops along the embarkation lines and toward the aircraft.
Suddenly an amplified voice drifted across the stadium, breaking the muted sounds from below. "Aircraft approaching from two o'clock."
Bogan snatched up another headset and spoke briefly into it. He listened for a moment, then instructed, "Let him land if that is his intention. But if he comes within a thousand yards of our traffic pattern and appears to be passing on, then help him land."
The General tossed the headset away and told Abe Williams, "Hover car. Might just be lovers on a moonlight ride." He ran a finger nervously along the base of his nose, then barked into the command net, "Dog Company, take up that slack, move along to Station 10."
"Nuts," he said, glancing at his civilian chief. "Moving this number of troops in such a limited area and keeping this schedule is an exercise I don't care to repeat."
Abe Williams seemed not to have heard. He was gazing into the sky toward San Francisco. "That hover car is coming in," he decided. "And I'll bet I know who's in it. Look at that. He's seen our big birds, and still he comes down. What's the latest from Ritter on that Washington hit?"
"Generally satisfactory," he reported, rather disinterestedly. His main concern was obviously with the operations below. "They lost Winston, though. Just flat lost him. In church, of all places. But Ritter believes Winston is neutralized."
"Well I'll bet we're going to find out right quick," Williams declared unemotionally.
"The hovercar wouldn't be one of Ritter's? Don't his people know the recognition signals?"
"No," Williams sighed. "No, I think this must be Mr. Guts himself."
Bogan stared down upon the little hovercar, just beginning to settle onto the turf between two overshadowing copters. "Mr. who?" he muttered.
"Mike Winston. Well that nervy ... Look at that. That's him, all right. Can you beat that nervy ... ? Give me that headset, Jack—quick!"
The General tossed him the radio gear and Williams jerked the transmitter to his hps. "Leave that whitey breathing and handle him gently! Bring him up herel" His eyes were anxiously on the scene below as a voice crackled back through the earphone. "Yes, this is Top Man. Get him up here!"
He returned the headset to Bogan and told him, "You know, you just have to admire that guy. He's like the old British Empire men—crusty and gutsy and absolutely
incorruptible. I wonder how he ever survived the Arlington administration."
"With bruises," the General replied. "Chopper One, you're loaded. Batten down and get ready."
Williams was watching the distant approach. He grinned and said, "Our esteemed commissioner has had a very frustrating day. Just look at him. Tired, middle-aged hero, and nobody knows it yet, not even him."
Bogan grunted and resumed his pacing. Presently Mike Winston appeared at the glass door, dwarfed between two enormous black soldiers. One of die escorts opened the door and called in, "You want him, in there, sir?"
"Yes, leave him," Williams instructed.
"We took a gun off him, sir. Watch him."
The black leader waved the soldiers away and watched Winston walk into the press box. He glanced at Williams and went directly to the window to gaze soberly upon the scene below.
"Nightmare alley," Winston muttered. "First time I'm sorry to be right."
"If you thought this was happening, why'd you come?" Williams asked, a faint smile playing at his lips.
Winston sighed. "I wasn't that sure. I overheard an Air Police signal about troop 'copters over Oakland. I wanted to see for myself."
"Now you see."
"Yeah, now I see. Pretty cute. Wargames cover and all. You feel really ready for this, Abe? You think you can take on the United States of America?"
"What do you think, Commissioner?"
"I think you're out of your mind. I can't let you do it, Abe."
Williams laughed. "And just what do you propose to do about it?"
"I didn't come here to plead with you," Winston said. "Reason, maybe. I doubt that you know what you're walking into. Arlington's been onto you for some time. He has some counter-strategy going."
"Like what?"
Winston shook his head. "I don't know like what. But
he's a crafty old fox. I think he's working something on you, Abe."
"He just thinks so," Bogan declared, joining the conversation. "Okay, Choppe
r One, assume flight station."
"Yes, we know OF White Devil's master plan," Williams told Winston. "He's been setting us up for a total knockover for the past four years. He'd planned to unveil it a week before election day. You tell me why."
Winston rubbed his forehead and continued staring at the activities on the field. "I don't know why, even assuming your information is correct. But let's hold this operation a moment while we discuss it, eh?"
Abe Williams laughed in his face. "Hear that?" He jerked a thumb toward the playing field and the sound of huge rotary blades whipping the air.
Chopper One rose slowly from the deck, heeled over at sharp angle, and side-slipped beyond the enclosing walls and toward San Francisco.
"Too late for reasoning, or for pleading, or for anything, Commissioner. Oh, and it's even too late to be calling you Commissioner. Your commission expired, Winston, three hours ago."
"What?"
"Oh, didn't you hear about that? The President fired you. Publicly."
"Chopper Two, you're loaded," Bogan declared, in the background.
"Fired me on what pretense?"
Williams chuckled. "You're an enemy of the state. Carousing around with town niggers, always making trouble for your country, keeping the niggers stirred up all the time and unwilling to accept their heaven-declared fate."
"Well, it figures," Winston said, sighing.
"He said you were even going to marry one once."
A muscle twitched in Winston's jaw. "Did he actually bring her into it?"
Williams nodded. The smile was gone. "He did. On nationwide television."
"Bastard," Winston muttered.
"Chopper Two, assume flight station."
Williams was watching the white man closely. "It's all over for you, Winston. Those men done you wrong, the same way they done me wrong—and I'd guess for precisely the same reason. They don't care if you're blaok or white. They only know you're weaker than they are, and they're going to do you wrong come hell or fair acres."
"This is all crazy. Arlington is crazy. You are crazy."
Don Pendleton - Civil War II Page 9