The Last President: A Novel of an Alternative America

by Michael Kurland

O. There’s another one final. They’re posting it now. That check mark. That’s one of ours.

  P. Keegle. He’s been one of ours for twenty-five years. They keep voting him back in. He’s senile, you know. Used to be just a drunk, but now he’s senile, too.

  V. There’s Korr. He’s final now.

  P. We’ve got him, don’t we? I mean, we’ve really got him.

  V. Damn right. And a few others. Chaymber. Senator Chaymber.

  P. That pervert. That filthy pervert.

  V. Yes, sir. But now he’s our pervert, (unintelligible) and expense. Still have to handle him with kid gloves. But he’s bought and paid for.

  O. It was that speech. That son of a bitch Ryan.

  P. A good speaker. Very effective. Knows how to do it. Like me. A natural speaker. I want you to get him.

  V. We almost had him, you know. Photographs. Our operative called and told him about the pictures. Made them sound bad—you know.

  P. And?

  V. And he told him to go to hell.

  P. Gutsy. We’ve got to nail him.

  V. We’ll work on it.

  P. Have to do something now. Get the people’s minds off the election. Something strong, statesmanlike.

  O. And we’ve got to get this Coles thing cleared up. Coles and the Washington Post.

  V. I’ve talked to the judge. Judge Peadman.

  P. There’s a slot open on the Supreme Court. I’ve got to nominate someone.

  O. Peadman’s mediocre. I got a report on him.

  V. We promised him the seat.

  P. Let’s see how this trial comes out. If he nails Cole.

  O. Right. After all, the mediocre deserve to be represented too.

  V. That’s good.

  P. Right. That’s the ticket. And what about some real upheavals in the country. Bombings or riots?

  V. Bombings and riots.

  P. Right.

  O. Race riots. Call out the National Guard. Show how the country needs you.

  V. Need to give them something to riot about. I’ll work on it.

  P. Let Artie handle them. Do something presidential. We’re probably going to have to run him in ’76.

  V. I don’t know, sir. Arnold makes a good Vice-President.

  P. Unless we can find some loophole in the Twenty-Second Amendment, he’s it. Don’t worry, we’ll pull his strings.

  V. We have to make him look presidential if we’re going to get him elected.

  P. Got to stop making those speeches. Damn shame. He sure gives good speeches. What was that? “The lambent Lucinas of libertine liberalism?” He certainly said that with feeling. I doubt if he understood one word. The man has the brain of a pigeon. His wife dresses him in the morning.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  It was the third Thursday in February and TEPACS met. The card players gathered around Aaron Adams’ table were, as they had become more and more of late, a glum and self-centered group. They spoke seldom, tersely, and only of poker. All of the group were there except Ian Faulkes, who was on a story in the Midwest. It was the first meeting in two months that had the rest of them assembled.

  Colonel Baker, the last to arrive, mixed his drink and settled into his chair. They cut for deal. Grier Laporte won the cut and the game began.

  “Well!” Obie Porfritt said from across the room where he was watching television and awaiting his turn at the table. “Our Father who art in the White House has added Moscow to the European itinerary for his April trip. I wonder what he’s up to.”

  “God knows,” Adams said.

  “International peace and good will,” Laporte said.

  “Can you open, Aaron?” Masters said.

  “What? No, no.”

  “You sound a bit bitter,” Colonel Baker said to Obie Porfritt. “After all, the gentleman is from your own party.”

  “I am not the one who has forgotten it,” Porfritt said. “Just between you and me and the mike in Aaron’s potted palm over there, there are several of my colleagues who do not feel indebted to the incumbent President for their recent reelection.”

  “How’s that?” Colonel Baker asked.

  “I have heard allegations,” Porfritt said, “from gentlemen who would just as soon not be quoted, that the Republican campaign funds were not distributed with anything approaching an even hand.”

  “I’m not overly surprised,” Sanderman Jones said dryly.

  “Those on the President’s Boy Scout list received an abundance of largesse, these allegations say. While those on Our Leader’s shit list received no help. Those toward the top of the shit list, as a matter of fact, noticed a tendency for their opponents to come up with an unusual supply of ready cash. And such is life in Washington in this, the Year of the Rat.”

  “How did your campaign go, Obie?” Adams asked.

  “You think you detect sour grapes?” Porfritt said. “No, not so. My campaign went, as my campaign always goes, with my own hard-raised funds. I don’t ask anything from the National Committee, and they don’t send me anything.”

  “Nothing?”

  “Well, they did ask if I’d like the Vice-President to come down to Ogallala to talk. Seeing as how he’d be passing by that way anyhow.”

  “And?”

  “And I told them that Artie Arnold and his ‘blustering bards of Bowdlerized balderdash’ was much too deep for my innocent farmers, and he’d best go on by. And so he did, at forty thousand feet.”

  “You didn’t want Arnold to appear with you?” Jones asked. “Wouldn’t he have at least drawn a crowd?”

  “I don’t need a crowd. Those people know me. They would have been coming to see him. And his set speech on law and order, crime in the streets, race problems, drugs, and immorality isn’t what Nebraska farmers need to hear. One of them was bound to ask him what he thought about parity, and then we’d watch the stupid expression cross his face while he tried to figure out what it was and whether he was for it or agin it.”

  With this Obie Porfritt returned his attention to the national news, and the poker game continued. After a while Porfritt turned off the television and came over to the table to kibitz.

  Admiral Bunt, after folding a seven-card-stud hand with a snort of disgust on the third card, looked over to Porfritt and shook his head. “You’ve got it easy,” he said, “over there on the Hill. If you had to deal with the executive branch from the inside, like I do, your bitching would be raised to a new level. Things have changed in the hallowed halls of the Pentagon since the last election. There’s no describing it.”

  “Yes, there is,” Colonel Baker said, “FUBAR: Fucked Up Beyond All Recognition. It’s taken over from FUBB: Fucked Up Beyond Belief.”

  “That’s what I’ve always admired about you military people,” Sanderman Jones said, raising his eyes from his cards, “your natural poetry.”

  “Are we going to play cards,” George Masters demanded, “or are we going to talk?”

  “Let’s talk,” Adams said. “I could use a short break.” He got up and stretched. Masters stared at him as though he’d just lost his mind.

  “What’s with this FUBAR business?” Porfritt asked. “What sort of interaction are we getting between the Executive and the military?”

  “Remember that the Executive is the Commander-in-Chief of the military,” Admiral Bunt said. “Well, our President is taking command.”

  “Those who do what the President wants get promoted and get the good slots,” Colonel Baker said. “Those who don’t see the light get some interesting duty assignments. And the Army has some pretty awful places to send you if you don’t play the game.”

  “It’s not just the Army,” Masters said.

  “Yes, George?” Adams prompted.

  Masters shook his head. “Never mind. I didn’t say anything.”

  “Look,” Adams said. “This is ridiculous. Here we are, a bunch of old friends, and George is afraid to open his mouth.”

  “Not exactly afraid,” Masters said.

 
; “Okay, I’ll grant you. Fear is not the word. But there’s something wrong when old friends won’t talk to each other. Look—let’s broaden the TEPACS Constitution”—he pointed with his thumb to the document hanging on the wall—“and include an oath of—what?—fealty?—silence? Maybe brotherhood.”

  Grier Laporte nodded. “Right,” he said. “An oath of inviolable confidentiality between the group. Nobody talks to anybody outside the group about what we say here. Code word Top Secret TEPACS. Goes no further.”

  Sanderman Jones stood up and sauntered over to the bar. “Like a bunch of twelve-year-olds,” he said. “Shall we prick our thumbs and sign it in blood?”

  “Whatever form of oath you feel is most binding, Sandy,” Adams said. “Blood it is, if you want blood.”

  “You’re serious,” Jones said as though it were an accusation. “You really are serious.”

  “Nevermore, as a famous blackbird is supposed to have said.”

  “Why?”

  “How’s life in the State Department, Sandy? How are things going in State Department Intelligence? I haven’t heard you talking about such things recently.”

  “Come on, Aaron,” Jones protested. “You know my work is classified.”

  “And you know that there isn’t a man in this room who isn’t cleared for Top Secret. And you know that for the past five years we’ve been doing our private bitching over the card table. There’s this thing we political science types call an acquaintanceship network that spreads classified information outside the need-to-know boundaries. It’s an ancient, respectable, and useful way of communicating as long as it’s used carefully. And when it stops being used—when, to put it bluntly, good friends stop talking to one another about anything except trivialities—this is a very bad sign. And, except for Obie, who’s outside of the bureaucratic rat race, we’re not talking about anything except trivialities.”

  “Frank and David have just been doing some pretty heavy badmouthing of presidential influence in the Pentagon,” Sanderman Jones said, waving an unlit cigarette in their direction before he stuck it in his mouth.

  “You know, Sandy, Aaron’s right,” Admiral Bunt said. “Frank and I have been making a lot of noise, without saying anything that could really get us in trouble. Staying out of trouble is becoming a way of life at the Pentagon. I’d like to be able to talk to someone, and if I can’t trust you six, who can I trust?”

  “I hope you never need an answer to that question, David,” Adams said.

  “That oath,” Bunt said, “Whatever form you want—I’ll take it.”

  “I don’t think we need an oath,” Adams said. “Let’s just call it Secret TEPACS. Nothing said inside this room is to be repeated outside this room. The only thing you need say is, ‘I agree’.”

  “I agree,” Colonel Baker said.

  “Let’s call it ‘Top Secret TEPACS’,” Admiral Bunt said. “Just to follow the form. Do it right.”

  “Okay. I agree,” Adams said.

  “I agree,” Bunt echoed.

  Sanderman Jones looked around the room, at the faces of his friends. “I agree, too,” he said. “But only if I hear all the rest of you say it. And you know, come to think of it, the fact that I just felt impelled to say that proves you’re right, Aaron. I had to hear myself say it to believe it.”

  George Masters of the FBI grinned without humor. “If the Old Man were still alive,” he said, “I’d report all this to him and he’d start one of his secret files. Then I’d be the inside man in this clandestine organization and every time we met to play poker I could draw overtime. As it is, I think I can honestly see the use of our being able to talk freely and pool information. Divide and conquer, as the man once said. I agree.”

  Grier Laporte nodded. “Information is my business,” he said. “But I don’t give it out, I just take it. I agree.”

  Representative Obediah Porfritt was silent, a thoughtful look on his face. Slowly the gazes of the six other men in the room fixed on him. “Now look, fellows,” he said. “I think I’m in a different position from the rest of you. I wouldn’t want to agree to this unless I meant it. You can see that. And I’m not sure I should. After all, I have a responsibility to the people of the United States. I’m their elected representative. And if I know anything that affects their interests, it’s my job to act on that knowledge.”

  “You have a responsibility to the people in one section of Nebraska,” Laporte said. “Not that I’m putting that down. It’s important. But it isn’t exactly the whole United States. You’re making a federal case out of this, Obie.”

  Porfritt shook his head. “That’s not how I see it,” he said, speaking slowly and thoughtfully. “As a member of the House of Representatives, I’m not just asked to vote on bills that affect Nebraska. And I’m bound by an oath to the Constitution of the United States. The same oath the President takes.”

  “We won’t ask you to break that oath, Obie,” Adams said. “As a matter of fact, someday we may hold you to it.”

  Porfritt thought about that for a long moment. “Okay,” he said. “I agree.”

  FROM THE PRIVATE JOURNAL OF AARON B. ADAMS

  FRIDAY. TEPACS here last night. Finally got the group talking again. Broke down the wall of conversational reticence by creating our own classification—Top Secret TEPACS, Bunt insists we call it. It has long puzzled me, the importance humans place on symbols. We couldn’t just mutually agree to keep our conversations private—we had to have a name—a symbol—for the process. So TST it is.

  The President—or, more likely, somebody under the President—really knows and understands the principle of divide and conquer. More like divide and control in this case, I suppose. Ober? Vandermeer? Gildruss?

  Am I getting paranoid? We are not yet a police state, but I wonder how far from it we are.

  Two more years. How much more damage can he do? I’ll have to start giving K. specific assignments—which will make it more dangerous for him, but he’s a big boy now. Assemble a dossier of the evils of the Executive. The TEPACS papers.

  And do what with them? Nothing, I hope. But thinking the unthinkable is necessary, if unpopular. I pray it doesn’t lead to doing the impossible.

  AS MUCH THE PROVINCE OF THE WRITER AS OF THE DIRECTOR, MR. BIRD DECLARED. THE EMPHASIS GIVEN OVER THE PAST THIRTY YEARS TO THE DIRECTOR OF A MOVIE, WHICH HAS RESULTED

  BUST

  BUST

  BUST

  16MPS

  B U L L E T I N

  FIRST LEAD HANOI BOMBING

  WASHINGTON, 23 MARCH AM 3:40 (MPS)-AN UNIDENTIFIED SOURCE HAS STATED THIS MORNING THAT A MASSIVE BOMBING RAID IS EVEN NOW IN PROGRESS OVER THE CITY OF HANOI AND THE PORT CITY OF HAIPHONG IN NORTH VIETNAM. FLIGHTS OF B-52 BOMBERS, APPARENTLY IN VIOLATION OF THE PEACE TREATY SIGNED BETWEEN THE UNITED STATES AND NORTH VIETNAM, ARE SAID TO BE DROPPING TONS OF CONVENTIONAL BOMBS.

  PHONE CALLS IN TO THE CITY OF HANOI HAVE CONFIRMED THAT SOME SORT OF RAID IS IN PROGRESS.

  THE PENTAGON REFUSES TO EITHER CONFIRM OR DENY THE REPORT. THE WHITE HOUSE PRESS OFFICE IS CLOSED.

  (MORE)

  TO THE DIRECTOR OF A MOVIE, WHICH HAS RESULTED

  BUST

  BUST

  SECOND LEAD HANOI BOMBING COMING

  W A I T

  W A I T

  -------------------------------------------------------------

  SECOND LEAD HANOI BOMBING

  WASHINGTON 23 MARCH AM 4:00 (MPS)-WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY ROBERT FULLER APPEARED BRIEFLY TO THE MASS OF REPORTERS WHO WERE GATHERED OUTSIDE THE EAST GATE AWAITING SOME WORD ON THE REPORTED BOMBING OF HANOI AND HANDED OUT A PREPARED STATEMENT. EXACT TEXT FOLLOWS:

  “THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES, ACTING IN HIS CAPACITY AS Commander-in-Chief OF THE ARMED FORCES, HAS ORDERED THE UNITED STATES AIR FORCE TO COMMENCE THE RETALIATORY BOMBING OF THE NORTH VIETNAMESE CITIES OF HANOI AND HAIPHONG. THIS ACTION HAS BEEN TAKEN REGRETFULLY, AND AFTER CAREFUL DELIBERATION, IN RESPONSE TO THE CONTINUOUS AND REPEATED VIOLATIO
NS OF THE PARIS PEACE ACCORDS THAT THE TWO COUNTRIES OF THE UNITED STATES AND NORTH VIETNAM AGREED TO AND SIGNED IN 1973.

  “OTHER COUNTRIES MUST LEARN THAT THE UNITED STATES WILL KEEP ITS COMMITMENTS AND WILL LIVE UP TO ITS WORD.”

  (MORE)

  Major Donaldson, the pilot of the Air Force 707, appeared in the cabin doorway. “Excuse me, gentlemen, but we’ll be landing in about twenty minutes at Travis,” he said. “We’re starting our descent now, so please put your seat belts on.” He gave a brief, habitual salute, then disappeared back into the pilot’s cabin.

  Kit tightened his seat belt and turned to stare out the window. Six miles below, under a layer of scattered cumulus clouds, lay a dry, mountainous countryside that looked like the gateway to hell: very beautiful but bleak, barren, and inhospitable to human beings.

  St. Yves rested his 16-millimeter Bolex on the seat beside him and fastened a seat belt around it before tightening his own. “I’ll have to pick up some more film for this baby,” he said for the fourth or fifth time. His eyes were unnaturally bright.

  “Calm down, Ed,” Vandermeer said.

  “I can’t help it,” St. Yves told him. “It’s confrontation. It always gets to me. Being on the front line of life. Pow!” He smacked his right fist into his left palm.

  Kit, looking around the passenger compartment of the large jet, empty except for himself, Vandermeer, St. Yves, a communications sergeant, and four Secret Service men, felt himself to be now very firmly in the center of power. But as it was a power he could neither wield nor influence, it was like being in the eye of a hurricane. He was safe while he stayed where he was, but motion in any direction could get him picked up and dashed to pieces without warning.

  The plane banked to the left and descended below the cloud cover as they headed in toward Travis Air Force Base across the flat farmland of California’s Central Valley.

  “What’s the word from Berkeley?” Vandermeer suddenly asked the communications sergeant. “Anything happening?”

  “I’ll check, sir.” The communications sergeant turned to his little console and moved his fingers over the keyboard.