by Buck Sanders
“Well, he’s not working for our side,” said Winship.
Continuing, Llewellyn gestured dramatically, as though reconstructing the bomb’s activation in abstract terms, “Thermite and phosphorous, timed by six variable fuses, all controlled electronically right down to the split second.”
“Have you found the electronic receiver?” asked Slayton.
“No, it was destroyed in the blast,” said Llewellyn, “but we did find a small radio transceiver behind the building, hidden under some brush. Its only apparent function was to send a signal to the explosive from an undesignated location.”
“And if it’s inactive now,” said Winship, “there’s no telling who pressed the button.”
Slayton detected a mild concussion or shock wave floating through the Memorial floor. It felt like the prelude to an earthquake. Winship lifted one leg and said, raising his voice, “What was that?” A second ripple passed through the stone floor, followed by a stronger impact that swayed the building.
“An underground explosion?” pondered Dr. Llewellyn.
Outside, Wilma was knocked clear off her feet by the first temblor. As she regained balance, other people were either yelling incoherently or lying injured on the pavement. Lt. Clarke had been hit in the face with a television cameraman’s boom microphone, and was cursing obscenely.
One woman screamed, “The Washington Monument!”
Across the Reflecting Pool, directly behind the Lincoln Memorial and running some distance to the 16th Street parking lot, people were dropping to the ground, getting up, falling over again, as three earthquakelike tremors rippled beneath them. The Monument was pitched to and fro—the explosion momentarily raised its foundation a couple of inches. Tourists standing in line to enter the Monument were showered by large chunks of dislodged stone. The obelisk did not appear damaged enough to topple, but it seesawed precariously, crumbling near its mid-section. Yet after the violence subsided, it remained upright, resembling a pillar of swiss cheese.
Pedestrians not hit by the hail of rock fled the area. Television cameras, hitherto focused on the comparatively mild defilement of Lincoln’s memorial, pivoted a hundred and eighty degrees to record the devastation across the pool.
Winship regained his composure and began screaming orders to the men in lab coats. Llewellyn knelt down to the floor, placing his ear to its surface.
“Incredible pyrotechnics,” he said.
Winship grabbed him. “Get your men to assist the wounded!”
The doctor obliged; a dozen men jumped into their vans and sped away. A squeal of ambulance sirens filled the silence after all the rubble had settled.
Slayton commented, “It was timed perfectly, Ham.”
“I think we should try to make sense of that message before any more public structures are blown up.” Winship descended the Memorial stairs. “There’ll be a meeting in my office in thirty minutes. Hopefully you’ll develop some theories by then.”
“Yes, sir.” Slayton could see a long day ahead.
5
Karl Baal applied a generous amount of cleanser to wash the shoe polish from his hair. Eyelashes and the false nose came next. Looking in the mirror, he was reminded of a scene in an Ingmar Bergman film of a woman plucking a nose, eyes, and hair off her head, then dropping them in a glass container. He rinsed the hotel room tub of the dark residue, scrubbed his face one last time, and prepared for bed.
The next day he’d be able to leave Washington for New Orleans. Dropping into slumber, he chuckled at the ghastly deeds of the day. Two senators who thought they could take the money and run had become unwilling martyrs to the cause of international revolution. He wished he could have seen Parfrey’s expression just before the phone bomb shattered that ugly, puffy skull. In time, all the fat cats would die, he thought.
Baal was familiar with the poverty of Third World nations. His early missionary work in Central Africa removed the stench of capitalist West German influences, and though he felt a strong desire to take the vows of priesthood, the sham of organized religion left him disillusioned. Whole cultures were being suppressed by profit-hungry pigs—infant mortality and sterilization were encouraged by the amoral financiers of Western civilization. Those forces must be eliminated, he thought. Skyscrapers, banks, homes, institutions must all be torn down; man must start again from scratch. Baal heard the suffering of maimed, crippled, fear-wrenched people as he slept; in his reverie, they reached out and called on him to defeat the American capitalists who exploited them so shamelessly. They would have their revenge through him.
The airstrip was obscured on three sides by a dense subtropical forest. From three thousand feet, Baal could perceive in the distance the blue-green Gulf of Mexico. Below him, laced between sugar cane fields and thick foliage, was an endless stretch of bayou swamp. The Cessna 150 bobbed nervously in its final approach, tossed around mercilessly by a strong south wind, settling evenly as it slowed down near the end of the runway.
Santino Donati swatted a mosquito on his neck, while two more nibbled hungrily on an exposed left arm. Sweat beaded on the sun-tanned bald spot topping his pudgy head, and the forty-five minute wait in scorching heat reduced his shirt to moist rags.
“There’s that German bastard,” he mumbled to himself, “late as usual.”
The gaunt assassin exited the plane and walked up to the little man with beady eyes.
“Mr. Donati,” he said, “you are perspiring.”
“Mr. Baal,” replied Donati, “you are late.”
They started walking. Near the shade of trees, two hundred yards ahead, a driver waited to take them into the forest. Baal moved at a fast clip, giving his companion’s stubby legs quite a workout.
“There was a delay in New Orleans,” said Baal.
“So much said.” It was Donati’s favorite expression.
“Are the winters here always this warm?”
“Well, technically, it’s pretty much spring in these parts toward the start of April. But yes, the weather is a tad on the hot side.”
Baal glanced back at the man. “For a fellow who talks an awful lot,” he muttered, “you don’t say much.”
Fuck you, too, thought Donati. These elitist urban guerrillas and terrorists were snappy, wise-ass dudes with gold chains and beads around their necks, toting ridiculous ideologies along with grenades and .38s. Donati had acquired a taste for revolution in the city environment of downtown Detroit, a hell-hole far worse than any this namby-pamby kraut slush-brain had ever seen.
Donati viewed most modern terrorists with disdain. They were media superstars. The power of television occasionally gave them a real command of the world which normally would have cast them aside; violence was glorified to extremes, perpetuated by the nightly six and eleven o’clock news reports. However unkind the media were to these spoiled-brat killers, no one could deny the publicity and word-of-mouth generated for terrorist activities via the air waves. It brought an instant notoriety, an illusion of power which was as false to revolution as their slogans. Terrorists of this sort had no answers, just anarchy.
But who was Donati to pass judgment? A petty hood from the barrel’s bottom who kissed ass to reach the top, his only ambition in life was to follow someone else’s footsteps. All revolutionaries need flunkies to shine the shoes, serve the booze, and keep watch over rabble rousers. Donati even managed to get the bosses a few women to screw around with, or beat up, depending on their pleasure. There wasn’t a thing he couldn’t arrange to make his employers happy at home. He’d never see battle again—too many of his had been lost to punks who were faster, rougher, or smarter. Having no particular vocation allowed him to become skilled at many: loading weapons, ordering supplies, assigning guard duty, supervising combat maneuvers. You name it, he did it. All except actual on-the-scene warfare.
“We postponed today’s tactical seminar until you arrived,” he said to Baal. “I can have someone move your gear into your quarters and—”
Baal interrupt
ed, “I’ll take care of that myself. Have the security guards meet me at six-thirty in my room.”
This one was playing tough, Donati thought, but the Commander said he was the best man to handle defense at the terrorist camp. “Whatever you say, sir.”
“Has there been any alteration of the plan to assassinate the President?”
“Not that I know of, sir,” Donati replied.
The jeep ride was two-and-a-half hazardous swamp miles, a train filled with deep potholes and mud. Upon his arrival at the camp, Baal dined with the Commander in celebration of the success in Washington. Donati watched them both wear out the night, guzzling whisky and telling tall tales of mercenary action in Pakistan and western China. When they both passed out from exhaustion and liquor, the roly-poly aide-de-camp cleared the empty bottles and offered thanks to God that he had joined an operation that, for all its drawbacks in personnel, proposed a terrorist strategy that had every chance for overwhelming victory.
And he was promised a place at the very top.
“That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard!” General Bradley Scott of the Pentagon, chief adviser on inter national military affairs for the President, laughed out loud.
Hamilton Winship popped two Alka-Seltzer tablets in his water glass. The fizz promised to remedy a twisted, bothered stomach. “Please, General,” he said in Ben Slay-ton’s defense, “hear my man out.”
Scott let out a noxious belch and harrumphed loudly to exhibit his displeasure. This long-haired Treasury agent was calling him a liar, and Brad Scott didn’t take shit from anybody.
Slayton glanced at Winship, his eyes begging for moral support. Luckily, Mr. Richards, adviser and representative to the head of the Secret Service, spoke up before Slayton lost all credibility.
“I think it’s fair to assume,” Richards began, “that the message left etched in the base of Lincoln’s statue has nothing to do with Santa Claus, as the honorable General Scott has suggested, nor does it relate to some ironic twist of turning the antislavery Lincoln black as the proverbial ace of spades.
“The mechanism used in the Washington Monument assault was timed to go off thirty-five minutes after the relatively harmless explosion at the Lincoln Memorial. Both devices were manufactured and designed by people who knew what they were doing. Perhaps they invented them—Winship’s men have yet to find out why the soot won’t wash off the Memorial statues.” This elicited mild guffaws from the six gentlemen seated in Winship’s office. Richards paced the room, continuing:
“If these explosives are as innovative as everyone suspects, I fail to see why we should ignore Mr. Slayton’s theory.”
Rising from his chair, Scott thumped his fist on the mahogany table, startling his colleagues next to him. “There is no proof that his theory is correct!”
Winship consumed the antacid brew. “But it’s worth pursuing,” he said, feeling better already. “After all, we’re dealing with a most insidious and clever subversive group. They will not come forward and claim responsibility for the blast, which makes them an unknown entity. We have no clues to their identity or base of operation. The media is demanding an explanation of some sort, and if I don’t tell them something by noon, the rash of speculation will make us a laughingstock on Capitol Hill.”
It was Slayton’s turn. At the room’s center he wrote on a portable blackboard:
S NTA AS B G DE
“This message on the statue,” he said, is more than a warning. It’s a clue.” Underneath, he chalked in:
SANTAYANAS BRIGADE
Again, General Scott couldn’t resist asserting, “It only proves that Mr. Slayton knows how to play fill-in-the blanks.”
Before Slayton had a chance to pummel Scott with indelicate expletives, Winship grabbed the spotlight. “Gentlemen, let’s remain cool and open-minded. Ben’s interpretation is the only solid possibility offered thus far. Let him speak.”
Slayton resumed, “Philosopher Carlos Santayana wrote, Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.’ That, combined with an understanding of the history behind President Lincoln’s assassination, would suggest conspiracy of some sort. The United States of eighteen-sixty was not all that hospitable to Lincoln, and much has been published on the theory that he was the victim of a plot by officials inside the White House. Looking closely at the country today, there is social upheaval, a polarization of voters versus big government, and very little is being done to remedy the nation’s ills.”
Senatorial adviser Roderick Kennedy spoke up, leaning away from the table on a swivel chair. “This Administration is making great strides in curing the problems you’re speaking of.”
“We must assume these terrorists cannot be interested in changing the system. Terrorist doctrine in general calls for all-out revolution without partial solutions or constructive change.”
“And The Brigade?” Winship said.
“When I served in Vietnam there were rumors that a company of disenchanted Green Berets had taken matters in their own hands, touring the mountain areas and murdering North and South Vietnamese troops. They were called The Brigade.”
“Army intelligence uncovered no such commando outfit,” claimed General Scott. “Special Forces investigated those reports, and it was a hoax.”
“Begging your pardon, sir,” observed Slayton, “I read the records of those surveillance briefings, dated through nineteen sixty-seven, which confirmed nineteen unauthorized commando raids on villages near the Cambodian border, all of which were reportedly carried out by American Berets without the order of any commanding officer in the field. The tactics were similar in all cases—both militia and civilians massacred.”
Scott squirmed in his seat.
Slayton proceeded. “A single outfit was responsible for the attacks. General, you’re aware that prior to nineteen sixty-seven, Vietnam was an undeclared war. Our boys were there to advise and keep the peace. But apparently some of them felt a need to do more. A Special Forces report dated late nineteen sixty-six mentioned that ten villages, supposedly under Communist control, were targets of illegal raids by an unknown American outfit.”
“Goddammit, man,” Scott said, “anyone could have been wiping out those Viet-Cong. It doesn’t make sense to pin it on a squad of Green Berets which may not have existed.”
“Then you admit to their possible existence?”
“It was a… possibility.”
“Your own computers, General, failed to list twelve names on the MIA bulletins, and they didn’t turn up on Presumed Dead or Reported Dead tallies, either. And twelve Berets sent to mine a lagoon north of the Demilitarized Zone in March of nineteen sixty-six never reported back to their CO. Their bodies were never found, and shortly thereafter Americans were ostensibly seen drilling holes in VC back in the hills.”
Scott’s freckled brow wrinkled in anger. He hated to be out-guessed by anyone, let alone the most unorthodox member of the Treasury task force. Slayton’s reputation for disrespectful conduct was well known in high circles.
“I still don’t believe any of it,” he croaked, “and I refuse to be intimicdated.”
Winship saw the General working his way into a confrontation with Slayton, and interceded. The last thing he needed right now was a fist fight between the two, and Slayton enjoyed goading the man. “Let’s try to settle this without resorting to a duel,” Winship laughed, trying to maintain some humor.
“I think I’ve proved my point,” said Slayton. “Care to add anything, Ham?”
Scott could no longer contain himself. Springing up and down, raving and yelling, he thrust a pointed finger at Slayton. “You can’t be serious! The combined resources of the Army and the Treasury have scoured all the records, and we came up with nothing!”
Slayton couldn’t resist. “That’s because you boys weren’t looking for a disillusioned squad of Army deserters with dreams of glory, who weren’t getting enough bloodshed on the front and decided to mount a campaign of their own.”
“Because I was there. At first the Brigade was a myth, an invention by the warmongers and gorillas who arrived in Nam in sixty-five, when there was no real war and no one to kill. It was a war-hawk fantasy of epic proportions —mass executions, homicidal raids on villages in the northern hills. To imagine they were real, that they might be around now, boggles the mind. We’d be dealing with militant radicals—”
“What sort of radicals?” Kennedy asked.
“Right-wingers,” affirmed Slayton, “completely bananas. If The Brigade slipped into China, as I believe they did, they could be stockpiling weapons and training soldiers for swift terrorist aggression against the United States. The timing between the Lincoln and Washington Memorial explosions demonstrated a love for spectacle. In one week, on April fourteenth, the President has scheduled a televised address to the nation, to spell out the Administration’s stance toward terrorism. More than coincidentally, one week fom now will also mark the anniversary of Lincoln’s death. The main part of the terrorists’ message read ’stop us if you dare.’ I’d venture to say they’re planning to murder the President.”
Winship added his two cents’ worth: “A few headline-hunting senators have de-emphasized the importance of antiterrorist intelligence. On my desk is a stack of memos from them claiming such activity on our part is wasting the taxpayers’ money.
“Slayton’s assignment is of the utmost urgency. In case he is correct, and the message from the terrorists is part of an assassination plot, we must act without consulting the Senate. Slayton leaves today for Chicago, to trace a shipment of arms believed en route to the terrorists. General, I assume that we can examine a few relevant Pentagon files before Slayton leaves this afternoon?”
“I have specific case numbers and names,” interjected Slayton, “so locating the information won’t take long.”
“Some of the information is top secret,” Scott said, lowering his bureaucratic veil.