by James Bruno
“Excuse me. I’m not feeling…well.” Ferret mopped his brow again with his hanky and stormed out. Outside, he leaned against the stucco wall of the club house and cried.
“Ambassador Goldman would like to see you,” Brenda Hitz informed Ferret as he dragged himself into the office forty-five minutes late. He made no acknowledgement as he lumbered past her toward his office cubicle.
“Uh, as in now. He needs to see you urgently…”
Ferret gently shut the door behind him, still paying no mind to the boss’s secretary. Hitz looked down at her folded hands and shook her head in incomprehension.
Ferret sat himself down behind his desk and proceeded to stare into space.
The phone rang. And rang again. And continued to ring. Ferret sat still, and gazed onto some distant, unattainable horizon that only he could see.
The door opened. “Uh, good morning, Win,” Goldman said softly. He eased his back against the wall and folded his arms across his chest. He studied Ferret for a moment. “Weather’s getting better by the day. Don’t you think?”
Ferret stared at the floor, his face devoid of emotion.
“Now’s the time to begin making vacation plans. You and your family make any plans yet, Win?”
Ferret shook his head ever so slowly.
“Well, I know you will,” Goldman added dismissively. “In the meantime, the work continues to pile up. Got another load coming in next Friday. Short notice, but there’s urgency attached to it. White House wants this batch processed quickly…”
Ferret finally made eye contact.
“A dozen Serbs. They’re arriving at some isolated Air Force base out in the back of beyond in North Dakota, or some such place. The White House is taking greater care that the program not get leaked or otherwise exposed. Call JCS to coordinate travel. Plan on spending a week-to-ten days…”
Goldman’s voice faded out of Ferret’s mind. He focused intently on the ambassador’s face. He despised the man. He despised all of the so-called policy-makers who made him commit evil things for their own puffed-up egos. He — all of CHASM’s actors — had become the evil. He knew now the task that lay before him: to eradicate it and to set himself free.
“Good evenin’, Mr. Ferret,” Gerrie, the receptionist, bade a totally unresponsive Ferret as he strode past her on his way out of the office at 5:30 sharp.
Ferret eased himself into the family van in the Department’s parking garage – this time devoid of the enthusiasm he’d had as he launched himself for the Yale Club. He switched on the radio to WTOP, the all-news station. He listened as one correspondent after another reported on some crisis or political event and then signed off in their each unique manner. “And that’s it from Win Ferret in Tel Aviv,” he muttered to himself. As he wended his way through crowded District streets during a gray drizzle, he kept signing off. The methodical flip-flop of the windshield wipers provided metronome-like timing. Flip. “This is Win Ferret reporting from Baghdad.” Flop. “And so it goes. Win Ferret (dramatic pause)…from Moscow.”
Just under a half-hour later, he pulled into Montgomery Mall, a mile outside the Beltway, minutes from home. A grossly fat mother and her brood of four hyperactive children blocked the main entrance to Sears as she sought vainly to negotiate an overloaded cart of purchases toward the parking area while simultaneously trying to keep her kids under control.
Ferret tried to maneuver around her. A chubby son was yowling that he wanted mommy to buy him a toy. A three-year old dropped her near-liquid ice cream cone on Ferret’s left shoe. “Justin! Justin! Get out of the man’s way! Justin!!” the mother screeched in a porcine voice.
A flash bulb burst in Ferret’s head. It was the same sudden white light he had been experiencing at increasingly frequent intervals. Perspiration beaded on his forehead. A primal force within seized him. His face contorted. Wolf-like, he glared at the boy. Ready to pounce.
Mommy, ever alert to strangers as potential threats to her offspring, immediately caught the wild expression on Ferret’s face. With a broad sweep of a flabby arm, she herded kids, merchandise and her own corpulent frame out the door.
The obstacle to his immediate goal now removed, Ferret briefly closed his eyes, took a deep breath, then entered the department store. He knew exactly where he wanted to go. First, the lawn care section. Without hesitation, he pulled out a two-and-one-half gallon gas can. He next made a bee-line toward the home repair department. He was faced with a plethora of choices. So many kinds of hammers. He pursed his lips, studying the array of hardware carefully. He picked out a carpenter’s ballpeen hammer. He test-swung it into his left hand. Too light. Ferret scrutinized a mallet. Hmmm. No. Too soft and broad. His eyes rested on a line-up of seven mini-maul sledges, ranging from two pounds to ten pounds. Heavier than that, they turned into regular sledge hammers. He rubbed his chin and pulled out the five-pounder. A bit too hefty, he thought as he assessed its weight, shifting it in his right hand. Ah, but the three-pounder was perfect. He would take it. He paid with his Sears card.
At the Texaco station just off Democracy Boulevard, Ferret filled the van’s tank as well as the gas can.
“Win Ferret here. Signing off!” A self-contented grin sprouted across his face.
As he did every day after returning from work, Ferret pulled the van up the steep driveway to his split-level — cozily concealed on a tree-enshrouded ridge. It was the serenity and relative seclusion of this house nestled in the bucolic suburban neighborhood of Carderock Springs that had caught his fancy five years previous when he and Lynette were house-hunting.
Cloris Ferret stood on the front steps. She merely watched as she wiped her hands on her apron. Ferret waved. She responded with a slight smile.
In the garage, Ferret quickly got out of the vehicle and opened the back. He checked the gas can to make sure it was sealed tight, then carefully stowed it under a blanket the family used for picnics. His eyes darted around the garage until they fell on the next item he had in mind, a long-handled shovel. This he placed neatly in the rear of the van, off to a side. Finally, he took the boys’ camping tarp, unfolded it and spread it on the floor, covering all the other items.
The Golden Retriever, Leo, galloped in and jumped up to Ferret.
“Nice boy. Good doggie, Leo,” Ferret said, petting the animal to calm it down. He looked around again till he caught sight of a kid’s jump rope. He took it off the wall, tested its strength, then tied a large knot in the middle and set it on the floor near the door to the kitchen.
Ferret slipped the mini-sledge in his brief case and snapped it shut. He checked himself in the van’s outside rear-view mirror. He combed his hair, took a deep breath, shut his eyes, counted silently to ten. Assured that he looked no different from any other day of having just returned from the office, Ferret, checking once more that he had arranged everything as he had planned, entered gingerly into the kitchen.
Lynette was wrestling with the Cuisinart. Chopped carrots were spewn all over the counter.
Ferret kissed his wife on the cheek. “Hiya sweetie.”
She closed her eyes and smiled. “Hi honey. This darn machine confounds me. Can you figure out what I’m doing wrong? You’re late. Held up in traffic?”
Ferret placed the lid on the Cuisinart and turned it sharply until it snapped. “That’s the trick. Strength and force. Works every time. Yup. Ran into a traffic jam on River Road. Car broke down. Right in the middle of the lane.”
Cloris appeared.
“Hello mother.”
“Win.”
They did not kiss.
“How was work?”
“Same old, same old.”
“Brandon and Win, Jr. each has a soccer match tomorrow evening…”
He cut her short. “Yes, mother. We’ll see.”
“They’re your sons, Win. It’s important.”
“We’ll see!” he shot back.
Lynette placed herself between mother and son. “Of course, we will,” she said ch
eerily. “Let’s all sit down and eat. It’s Mexican night. C’mon everybody! Boys! Get down here. Dinner’s on.”
Three bumptious boys flew, slid and tumbled to the dinner table from upstairs.
“I’m starvin’,” declared Win, Jr., the fourteen-year old, in his still-changing voice.
“I could eat a house!” added Jeremy, the kindergartner.
“It’s horse, dumbass. You can’t eat a house. Geez, how stupid can yah get?” corrected the all-knowing Brandon, a week shy of his eleventh birthday.
“Hush,” rejoined Lynette sharply. “Who wants to say grace?”
“It’s Daddy’s turn,” Brandon reminded everyone.
All joined hands as Ferret thanked the Lord for “these bountiful gifts” of tacos, burritos, salsa and guacamole dip.
They dug in.
“Pop, you comin’ to the games tomorrow?” Win, Jr. asked.
“We’ll see how things go,” Ferret answered softly.
“If Dad’s feeling well,” Lynette added.
Cloris stared at her son worriedly. Ferret made sure he made no eye contact.
“Gee, we sure hope you can go, Dad,” Win, Jr. implored.
“Well, I thought we’d all take a little trip,” Ferret said. A quizzical look marked each family member’s face.
“A trip, dear?” Lynette asked.
“To North Carolina. Back to the woods where we always go camping,” Ferret continued.
His brood exchanged furtive glances indicating confusion and concern.
“We will return to Tyrrell County — this summer. July perhaps,” Lynette, ever the diplomat as well as the diplomat’s wife, said without missing a beat.
Thereafter there was little in the way of dinner conversation. The main sound was that of Leo slurping down doggy chow from a large plastic bowl.
The usual family routine followed dinner. Ferret watched the news. Lynette went off to play a set of tennis with a girlfriend. Cloris sat on the rear deck reading Updike. The boys went off to play with friends.
By 9:00, all were back in their cozy suburban nest. The boys retired one-by-one. The three adults sat watching a PBS special on the art of ancient Rome. A light snore emitted from Ferret’s mother as she nodded off on the love seat. Lynette, a budding artist herself, was engrossed with the TV program. Leo sat contentedly at Ferret’s feet.
Ferret looked conspicuously at his watch. “It’s getting to be that time. I’ll take Leo to the garage.” He got up from his barcalounger, stretched, then called for Leo to follow him to the garage.
In the garage, the frisky canine jumped playfully around its master. “Come Leo. Here boy. Come on!” Ferret sang out. He grabbed a doggy biscuit from a bag on a shelf with one hand and the kiddie’s jump rope from the floor with the other. The dog stood with his paws up against Ferret’s chest, his tongue hung out one side as he let out muffled “woofs” in anticipation of receiving the treat.
“Atta boy, Leo. Atta boy,” Ferret said reassuringly. He wrapped the rope lightly around the pet’s neck, knot-side down. He held the biscuit up just above Leo’s puffing nose. As the animal strained to reach the trea, Ferret dropped it into his mouth, then, in a flash move, yanked the ends of the rope with all his might and shoved Leo down onto the concrete floor. Ferret placed his 180-pound frame squarely onto Leo’s back, and tightened the rope further.
The dog pulled its head violently from side to side as it struggled to escape the death grip. But it was trapped. Leo’s paws could scratch only the hard surface of the floor. Its larynx broken from the knot, the only sound that emitted from it was a desperate, but subdued, “kaaaaaack.” Its tongue, bloated and black, protruded from its mouth. Blood sprayed from the dog’s snout; most, however, entered its trachea and into its lungs, drowning the animal as it also suffocated.
Ferret, rigid and flushed, straddled the beast, now in its final death throes. Ferret’s twisted face was a picture straight from hell. Eyes wide, nostrils flared, complexion vermilion, hair wild. His breathing was hard, sweat oozed from every pore. A fierce determination had taken possession.
Leo’s body became limp. His reddened eyes bulged, yet were unseeing. As twitches of muscles and limbs faded into the stillness of death, Ferret let up on the rope. He rose and looked down at the slain pet. He again rubbed both temples. A thousand bloodied, chest-thumping barbarians bellowed atavistic victory shouts inside his ragged soul. Emotions out of control. Reason struggled vainly against the hordes that haunted him, who tugged him now firmly into their netherworld of wild freedom.
“The Evil,” he murmured. “It is I. And I am it,” he whispered, nodding in self-confirmation.
Without hesitation, Ferret left the dead dog and quietly slipped back into the house. He washed the blood off his hands in the kitchen sink, though spots and smears colored his shirt and trousers. He wasted little time. The barbarian hordes were on a relentless march. They carried him along.
On the kitchen table lay his brief case. He went to it and ever so carefully clicked it open. From the living room he heard Kenneth Clark deliver the concluding commentary on the PBS special on ancient Roman art. The children were sound asleep in their rooms. He reached down and slowly took the small sledge from out of the briefcase. He was a man determined. He knew what he had to do.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
On the surface, Tulliver accepted Haley’s congratulations with gentlemanly grace. Within, however, he loathed the military. He had managed, through his father’s connections, to avoid the draft and, good God, having to serve in Vietnam. It wasn’t on moral grounds that he did so. Oh sure, he participated in a couple of antiwar demonstrations at Princeton — fortunately, not so vigorously as eventually to call the world’s attention to himself for being a draft dodger, as Bill Clinton had done. Everybody protested something back then. It was just that the whole artificial atmosphere of strutting, saluting and sucking up left him cold. For a young man with a mission — to get to the top as fast as he could — wasting two years of his life playing soldier simply wasn’t in the cards. And now, as he reached the next rung on the ladder of success, that of National Security Adviser to the President of the United States, he loathed the military more than ever, especially the U.S. Marines. He thought of them as tin-horned martinets. “Pit bulls with some vague awareness of the existence of a Constitution but otherwise unthinking, unoriginal, uneducated and unwashed,” he was fond of sniggering to likeminded friends in the boardroom or at the country club.
“Semper fi, sir,” Haley said as he shook his boss’s hand with bone-crushing pressure and looked him squarely in the eye. He produced a beribboned box. “Karen always told me that I was entitled to put on a couple of pounds to celebrate each of my promotions. Her chocolate truffles are wicked. Enjoy.” He handed the box to Tulliver with both hands.
“Mrs. Haley deserves a promotion too, Dan. How about if I make her Deputy National Security Adviser? By the time a new Administration rolls into town, they wouldn’t be able to dislodge our fat asses out of the West Wing.”
“That’s one way to hold on to our jobs. I’ll pass it along, but she’s got a bigger job than that already: raising two wild boys and a girl and putting up with one badass Marine.”
The two men shared a hearty laugh. There it was again, Tulliver thought to himself. That hypocrisy that only career men in uniform had. Paid to kill, they extolled family values to the rafters; as if to absolve themselves of the mortal sin of slaughtering or maiming other fathers. In this regard, the extent of Haley’s hypocrisy went much further. He was Mr. Fix-it in an administration where the fix was always in. He got results every time. Tulliver usually didn’t ask how.
“Dan, when I go up, you follow with me. I’ll make sure you get that full bird quickly. Keep getting us results.”
“Do my best,” Haley said with ramrod directness.
True-blue American patriots like Haley made Tulliver queasy. Nonetheless, Haley was effective. He loved nothing better than fighting the bad guys in the tr
ench warfare of policy-making. Since being decorated for his role on General Franks J-5 Planning Staff during the Second Gulf War, he won a fast promotion and an assignment on the White House staff. Tulliver was well aware that his subordinate’s goal was to become a flag officer within five years. This was the carrot he held before the Marine’s face.
“By results, I mean success. This Yugoslavia deal may be long in the tooth, but it has got to hold. With the way things are going in the Middle East and the near fiasco of the Sudan mission, it’s more important than ever that the President’s effectiveness in foreign policy not take any more hits. This morning, when the President fired Fennimore and asked me to take over the NSC, I assured him that I and my team would not let him down.”
Haley nodded without comment.
“I plan to ditch most of Fennimore’s people over the coming weeks. We don’t need goofy academics to get in our way. That’s why I’ll be relying on you more. I won’t be undercut like Fennimore was.”
The last sentence hung in the air like a pregnant rain cloud. And in Washington, the passive voice was used a lot as a means of disguising one’s culpability in a crime or a snafu.