“Don’t say that! Nobody can do that!”
“You can, General. I need final confirmation, just a few loose ends to clear up.”
“For what? Why?”
“Because the Wopotamis may still legally own all the land and air rights in and around Omaha, Nebraska.”
“You’re crazy, Mac! That’s the Strategic Air Command!”
“Only a couple of missing items, buried fragments, and the facts are there.… I’ll meet you in the cellars, at the vault to the archives, General Brokemichael.… Or should I call you co-chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, along with me, Heseltine? If I’m right, and I know damn well I am, we’ve got the White House-Pentagon axis in such a bind, their collective tails won’t be able to evacuate until we tell ’em to.”
Silence. Then:
“I’ll let you in, Mac, but then I fade until you tell me I’ve got my uniform back.”
“Fair enough. Incidentally, I’m packing everything I’ve got here and taking it back to my place in Arlington. That poor son of a bitch who died up in this rat’s nest and wasn’t found until the perfume drifted down didn’t die in vain!”
The two generals stalked through the metal shelves of the musty sealed archives, the dull, webbed lights so dim they relied on their flashlights. In the seventh aisle, MacKenzie Hawkins stopped, his beam on an ancient volume whose leather binding was cracked. “I think this is it, Heseltine.”
“Good, and you can’t take it out of here!”
“I understand that, General, so I’ll merely take a few photographs and return it.” Hawkins removed a tiny spy camera with 110 film from his gray suit.
“How many rolls have you got?” asked former General Heseltine Brokemichael as MacKenzie carried the huge book to a steel table at the end of the aisle.
“Eight,” replied Hawkins, opening the yellow-paged volume to the pages he needed.
“I have a couple of others, if you need them,” said Heseltine. “Not that I’m so all fired-up by what you think you may have found, but if there’s any way to get back at Ethelred, I’ll take it!”
“I thought you two had made up,” broke in MacKenzie, while turning pages and snapping pictures.
“Never!”
“It wasn’t Ethelred’s fault, it was that rotten lawyer in the Inspector General’s office, a half-assed kid from Harvard named Devereaux, Sam Devereaux. He made the mistake, not Brokey the Deuce. Two Brokemichaels; he got ’em mixed up, that’s all.”
“Horseshit! Brokey-Two put the finger on me!”
“I think you’re wrong, but that’s not what I’m here for and neither are you.… Brokey, I need the volume next to or near this one. It should say CXII on the binding. Get it for me, will you?” As the head of Indian Affairs walked back into the metal stacks, the Hawk took a single-edged razor out of his pocket and sliced out fifteen successive pages of the archival ledger. Without folding the precious papers, he slipped them under his suit coat.
“I can’t find it,” said Brokemichael.
“Never mind, I’ve got what I need.”
“What now, Mac?”
“A long time, Heseltine, maybe a long, long time, perhaps a year or so, but I’ve got to make it right—so right there’s no holes, no holes at all.”
“In what?”
“In a suit I’m going to file against the government of the United States,” replied Hawkins, pulling a mutilated cigar out of his pocket and lighting it with a World War II Zippo. “You wait, Brokey-One, and you watch.”
“Good God, for what?… Don’t smoke! You’re not supposed to smoke in here!”
“Oh, Brokey, you and your cousin, Ethelred, always went too much by the book, and when the book didn’t match the action, you looked for more books. It’s not in the books, Heseltine, not the ones you can read. It’s in your stomach, in your gut. Some things are right and some things are wrong, it’s as simple as that. The gut tells you.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“Your gut tells you to look for books you’re not supposed to read. In places where they keep secrets, like right in here.”
“Mac, you’re not making sense!”
“Give me a year, maybe two, Brokey, and then you’ll understand. I’ve got to do it right. Real right.” General MacKenzie Hawkins strode out between the metal racks of the archives to the exit. “Goddamn,” he said to himself. “Now I really go to work. Get ready for me, you magnificent Wopotamis. I’m yours!”
Twenty-one months passed, and nobody was ready for Thunder Head, chief of the Wopotamis.
2
The President of the United States, his jaw firm, his angry eyes steady and penetrating, accelerated his pace along the steel-gray corridor in the underground complex of the White House. In seconds, he had outdistanced his entourage, his tall, lean frame angled forward as if bucking a torrential wind, an impatient figure wanting only to reach the storm-tossed battlements and survey the bloody costs of war so as to devise a strategy and repel the invading hordes assaulting his realm. He was John of Arc, his racing mind building a counterattack at Orleans, a Harry Five who knew the decisive Agincourt was in the immediate picture.
At the moment, however, his immediate objective was the anxiety-prone Situation Room, buried in the lowest levels of the White House. He reached a door, yanked it open, and strode inside as his subordinates, now trotting and breathless, followed in unison.
“All right, fellas!” he roared. “Let’s skull!”
A brief silence ensued, broken by the tremulous, high-pitched voice of a female aide. “I don’t think in here, Mr. President.”
“What? Why?”
“This is the men’s room, sir.”
“Oh?… What are you doing here?”
“Following you, sir.”
“Golly gee. Wrong turn. Sorry about that. Let’s go. Out!”
The large round table in the Situation Room glistened under the wash of the indirect lighting, reflecting the shadows of the bodies seated around it. These blocks of shadow on the polished wood, like the bodies themselves, remained immobile as the stunned faces attached to those bodies stared in astonishment at the gaunt, bespectacled man who stood behind the President in front of a portable blackboard, on which he had drawn numerous diagrams in four different colors of chalk. The visual aids were somewhat less than effective as two of the crisis management team were colorblind. The bewildered expression on the youthful Vice-President’s face was nothing new and therefore dismissible, but the growing agitation on the part of the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff was not so easily dismissed.
“Goddamn it, Washbum, I don’t—”
“That’s Washburn, General.”
“That’s nice. I don’t follow the legal line.”
“It’s the orange one, sir.”
“Which one is that?”
“I just explained, the orange chalk.”
“Point it out.”
Heads turned; the President spoke. “Gee whiz, Zack, can’t you tell?”
“It’s dark in here, Mr. President.”
“Not that dark, Zack. I can see it clearly.”
“Well, I’ve got a minor visual problem,” said the general, abruptly lowering his voice, “… distinguishing certain colors.”
“What, Zack?”
“I heard him,” exclaimed the towheaded, Vice-President, seated next to the J.C. chairman. “He’s colorblind.”
“Golly, Zack, but you’re a soldier!”
“Came on late, Mr. President.”
“It came on early with me,” continued the excitable heir to the Oval Office. “Actually, it’s what kept me out of the real army. I would have given anything to correct the problem!”
“Close it up, gumball,” said the swarthy-skinned director of the Central Intelligence Agency, his voice low but his half-lidded, dark eyes ominous. “The friggin’ campaign’s over.”
“Now, really, Vincent, there’s no cause for that language,” intruded the Presid
ent. “There’s a lady present.”
“That judgment’s up for grabs, Prez. The lady in question is not unfamiliar with the lingua franca, as it were.” The DCI smiled grimly at the glaring female aide and returned to the man named Washburn at the portable blackboard. “You, our legal expert here, what kind of … creek are we up?”
“That’s better, Vinnie,” added the President. “I appreciate it.”
“You’re welcome.… Go on, Mr. Lawyer. What kind of deep ca-ca are we really into?”
“Very nice, Vinnie.”
“Please, Big Man, we’re all a little stressed here.” The director leaned forward, his apprehensive eyes on the White House legal aide. “You,” he continued, “put away the chalk and let’s have the news. And do me a favor, don’t spend a week getting there, okay?”
“As you wish, Mr. Mangecavallo,” said the White House attorney, placing the colored chalk on the blackboard ledge. “I was merely trying to diagram the historical precedents relative to the altered laws where the Indian nations were concerned.”
“What nations?” asked the Vice-President, in his voice a trace of arrogance. “They’re tribes, not countries.”
“Go on,” interrupted the director. “He’s not here.”
“Well, I’m sure you all recall the information our mole at the Supreme Court gave us about an obscure, impoverished Indian tribe petitioning the Court over a supposed treaty with the federal government that was allegedly lost or stolen by federal agents. A treaty that if ever found would restore their rights to certain territories currently housing vital military installations.”
“Oh, yes,” said the President. “We had quite a laugh over that. They even sent an extremely long brief to the Court that nobody wanted to read.”
“Some poor people will do anything but get a job!” joined in the Veep. “That is a laugh.”
“Our lawyer isn’t laughing,” observed the director.
“No, I’m not, sir. Our mole sends word that there’ve been some quiet rumors which may mean absolutely nothing, of course, but apparently five or six justices of the Court were so impressed by the brief that they’ve actually debated its merits in chambers. Several feel that the lost Treaty of 1878, negotiated with the Wopotami tribe and the Forty-ninth Congress, may ultimately be legally binding upon the government of the United States.”
“You gotta be outta your lemon tree!” roared Mangecavallo. “They can’t do that!”
“Totally unacceptable,” snapped the pinstriped, acerbic Secretary of State. “Those judicial fruitcakes will never survive the polls!”
“I don’t think they have to, Warren.” The President shook his head slowly. “But I see what you mean. As the great communicator frequently told me, ‘Those mothers couldn’t get parts as extras in Ben-Hur, not even in the Colosseum scenes.’ ”
“Profound,” said the Vice-President, nodding his head. “That really says it. Who’s Benjamin Hurr?”
“Forget it,” replied the balding, portly Attorney General, still breathing heavily from the swift journey through the underground corridors. “The point is they don’t need outside employment. They’re set for life, and there’s nothing we can do about it!”
“Unless they’re all impeached,” offered the nasal-toned Secretary of State, Warren Pease, his thin-lipped smile devoid of bonhomie.
“Forget that, too,” rebutted the Attorney General. “They’re pristine white and immaculate black, even the skirt. I checked the whole spectrum when those pointy-heads shoved that negative poll tax decision down our throats.”
“That was simply grotesque!” cried the Vice-President, his wide eyes searching for approval. “What’s five hundred dollars for the right to vote?”
“Too true,” agreed the occupant of the Oval Office. “The good people could have written it off on their capital gains. For instance, there was an article by a fine economist, an alumnus of ours, as a matter of fact, in The Bank Street Journal, explaining that by converting one’s assets in subsection C to the line item projected losses in—”
“Prez, please?” interrupted the director of the Central Intelligence Agency gently. “That bum’s doing time, six to ten years for fraud, actually.… A lid, please, Big Man, okay?”
“Certainly, Vincent.… Is he really?”
“Just remember, none of us remember him,” replied the DCI, barely above a whisper. “You forgot his line item procedures when we had him at Treasury? He put half of Defense into Education, but nobody got no schools.”
“It was great PR—”
“Stow it, gumball—”
“ ‘Stow it,’ Vincent? Were you in the navy? ‘Stow it’ is a navy term.”
“Let’s say I’ve been on a lot of small, fast boats, Prez. Caribbean theater of operations, okay?”
“Ships, Vincent. They’re always ‘ships.’ Were you by way of Annapolis?”
“There was a Greek runner from the Aegean who could smell a patrol boat in pitch dark.”
“Ship, Vincent. Ship.… Or maybe not when applied to patrols—”
“Please, Big Man.” Director Mangecavallo stared at the Attorney General. “Maybe you didn’t look good enough into that dirtbag character spectrum of yours, huh? On those judicial fruitcakes, as our high-toned Secretary of State called ’em. Maybe there were omissions, right?”
“I used the entire resources of the Federal Bureau,” replied the obese Attorney General, adjusting his bulk in the inadequate chair while wiping his forehead with a soiled handkerchief. “We couldn’t hang a jaywalking ticket on any of them. They’ve all been in Sunday school since the day they were born.”
“What do those FBI yo-yos know, huh? They cleared me, right? I was the holiest saint in town, right?”
“And both the House and the Senate confirmed you with rather decent majorities, Vincent. That says something about our constitutional checks and balances, doesn’t it?”
“More about checks made out to ‘cash’ than balances, Prez, but we’ll let it slide, okay?… Owl Eyes here says that five or six of the big robes may be leaning the wrong way, right?”
“It could simply be minor speculation,” added Washburn. “And completely in camera.”
“So who’s takin’ pictures?”
“You misunderstand, sir. I mean the debates remain secret, not a word of them leaked to the press or the public. The blackout was actually self-imposed on the grounds of national security, in extremis.”
“In who?”
“Good heavens!” cried Washburn. “This wonderful country, the nation we love, could be placed in the most vulnerable military position in our history if five of those damn fools vote their consciences. We could be obliterated!”
“Okay, okay, cool it,” said Mangecavallo, staring at the others around the table, quickly passing by the eyes of the President and his heir apparent. “So we got us some room by this top-secret status. And we also got five or six judicial fruitcakes to work on, right?… So, as the intelligence expert at this table, I say we should make sure two or three of those Zucchinis stay in the vegetable patch, right? And since this sort of thing is in my personal realm of expertise, I’ll go to work, capisce?”
“You’ll have to work quickly, Mr. Director,” said the bespectacled Washburn. “Our mole tells us that the Chief Justice himself told him he was going to lift the debate blackout in forty-eight hours. In his own words, Chief Justice Reebock said, ‘They’re not the only half-assed ball game in town’—that’s a direct quote, Mr. President. I personally do not use such language.”
“Very commendable, Washbloom—”
“That’s Washburn, sir.”
“Him, too. Let’s skull, men—and you, too, Miss … Miss …”
“Trueheart, Mr. President. Teresa Trueheart.”
“What do you do?”
“I’m your Chief of Staff’s personal secretary, sir.”
“And then some,” mumbled the DCI.
“Stow it, Vinnie.”
“My Chief
of Staff …? Gosh ’n’ crackers, where is Arnold? I mean this is a crisis, a real zing doozer!”
“He has his massage every afternoon at this hour, sir,” replied Miss Trueheart brightly.
“Well, I don’t mean to criticize, but—”
“You have every right to criticize, Mr. President,” interrupted the wide-eyed heir apparent.
“On the other hand, Subagaloo’s been under a great deal of stress lately. The press corps call him names and he’s quite sensitive.”
“And there’s nothing that relieves stress more than a massage,” added the Vice-President. “Believe me, I know!”
“So where do we stand, gentlemen? Let’s get a fix on the compass and tighten the halyards.”
“Aye, aye, sir!”
“Mr. Vice-President, give us a break, huh?… The compass we’re locked into, Big Man, should better be fixed on a full moon, ’cause that’s where we’re at—looney-tune time, but nobody’s laughin’.”
“Speaking as your Secretary of Defense, Mr. President,” broke in an extremely short man whose pinched face barely projected above the table and whose eyes glared disapprovingly at the CIA director, “the situation’s utterly preposterous. Those idiots on the Court can’t be allowed to even consider devastating the security of the country over an obscure, long-forgotten, so-called treaty with an Indian tribe nobody’s ever heard of!”
“Oh, I’ve heard of the Wopotamis,” the Vice-President interrupted again. “Of course, American history wasn’t my best subject, but I remember I thought it was a funny name, like the Choppywaws. I thought they were slaughtered or died of starvation or some dumb thing.”
The brief silence was ended with Director Vincent Mangecavallo’s strained whisper as he stared at the young man who was a heartbeat away from being the nation’s Commander in Chief. “You say one more word, butter skull, and you’re gonna be in a cement bathrobe at the bottom of the Potomac, do I make myself clear?”
“Really, Vincent!”
“Listen, Prez, I’m your head honcho for the whole country’s security, right? Well, let me tell you, that kid’s got the loosest mouth in the beltway. I could have him terminated with extreme prejudice for saying and doing what he didn’t even know he said or did. The hit off the record, naturally.”
The Road to Omaha: A Novel Page 2