The Road to Omaha: A Novel

by Robert Ludlum

  “Can’t you be my secretary?”

  “And take that job from our dear, dedicated anti-Commie mother, Tyrania? Surely you jest.”

  “The Tyrant’s your mother …?”

  “Careful, Warren. Subagaloo, remember?”

  “Oh, Christ, Arnold. I’m sorry, truly sorry—a great woman, awe-inspiring.”

  “To the business at hand, Mr. Secretary,” said the stenographer, sitting down, the notebook and the gathered pages securely held, her posture once again rigid. “I have maximum clearance, as you know, so how can I help?”

  “Well, maximum clearance isn’t exactly the issue—”

  “I see,” broke in Regina Trueheart. “Body bags with air holes, corpses that weren’t dead—”

  “I tell you, the entire honor guard almost had mass cardiac arrest! Two are in the base hospital, three have demanded immediate discharges on psychiatric grounds, and four went AWOL by racing through the gates screaming their heads off about soldiers rising from the dead to curse the officers they never fragged.… Oh, my God, if this ever gets out—oh, Jesus!”

  “I know, Mr. Secretary.” Security Stenographer First Class Trueheart stood up. “Embarrassment, sir, we’ve all been there.… All right, Warren, we’re in this together. What do we start shredding?”

  “Shredding?” Pease’s left eye was now streaking back and forth with the speed of a laser.

  “I understand,” said Regina, who promptly, without the slightest hint of sensuality, pulled her dress up to her waist. “Documents to be removed, of course. As you can see, I’m fully prepared to carry out the mission.”

  “Huh?” His left eye fixed, the Secretary of State was astonished at what he saw. Sewn into Ms. Trueheart’s panty hose, from knees to thigh, were light brown nylon pockets. “How … how incredible,” mumbled Pease.

  “Naturally, we must remove all metal clips, and should we need more space, my brassiere has a zippered lining, and the back of my slip has an attached overlay of sheer silk that can accommodate the wider documents.”

  “You don’t understand,” said the Secretary, his chin impacting on the edge of the desk as the stenographer released her dress to its normal position. “Ouch!”

  “Keep your mind on business, Warren. Now, what don’t I understand? The Trueheart girls are prepared for all emergencies.”

  “Nothing was written down!” explained the panicked head of State.

  “I see.… Unlogged, max-class, unsanctioned communications, is that it?”

  “What? Were you with the CIA …?”

  “No, that’s my older sister, Clytemnestra. She’s a very quiet girl.… So our problem goes back to leaks in the unsanctioned infrastructure; the unlogged word of mouth made a devious detour into forbidden ears.”

  “It must have, but it couldn’t! No one who knew could possibly have benefited from betraying the secret of our flying those lunatics up to Boston.”

  “Without specific facts, Mr. Secretary—which, of course, could be revealed by Pentothal but never, never in a confrontation with any subhuman congressional committee—please give me an abstract of the operation. Can you do that, Warren?… If it would help you, I’ll show you my pockets again.”

  “It wouldn’t hurt.” She did so, and Pease’s left eye came slowly to a riveting stop. “Well, you see,” he began, spittles of saliva emerging from his lips. “Certain unpatriotic slimes, led by a maniac, want to cripple our first line of defense, namely our contractors and then a section of our air force that has international watchdog responsibilities.”

  “How, sweetie?” Trueheart shifted her weight from one leg to the other, then back again.

  “Auugh.”

  “What, Warren? I asked how.”

  “Oh, yes, of course.… Well, they claim that the land on which is located a huge and very vital air force base may just possibly belong to a group of people—savages, actually—because of some stupid treaty made over a hundred years ago, which never happened, of course! It’s all insane!”

  “I’m sure it is, but is it true, Mr. Secretary?” Once more Regina’s bared legs required a succession of shifting balances, five to be exact.

  “Oh, boy …!”

  “Sit down! Is it true?”

  “The Supreme Court is thinking about it. The Chief Justice is keeping the Court arguments quiet for another five days, on national security grounds, until the slimes show up for oral interrogation the day before. We’ve got four days to find the bastards and send them to their happy hunting grounds, which has nothing to do with national security grounds. Goddamn savages!”

  Regina Trueheart instantly released her dress. “That will be enough of that!”

  “Ouch!… What?”

  “We Trueheart girls do not countenance obscene language, Mr. Secretary. It simply reveals a lack of acceptable vocabulary and is offensive in the extreme to church-going people.”

  “Aw, come on, Vergyna—”

  “Regina!”

  “I’m on your side … but don’t you see, sometimes a little profanity says it. When you’re stressed, it just comes out.”

  “You sound like that horrible French writer, Anouilh, who would excuse everything.”

  “Annie who?”

  “Never mind.… Was this secure circle of knowledgeable people restricted to only a few of our highest government officials and even fewer outside civilians?”

  “The fewest of each!”

  “And these all too alive and kicking body bags, were they covertly recruited to carry out their mission—which they obviously failed to do?”

  “So covert they didn’t even understand it! But then, they didn’t have to—they’re maniacs.”

  “Stay here, Warren,” said Trueheart, placing the shorthand pad on the desk and straightening her dress. “I’ll be right back.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “To speak to your secretary, my mother. I’ll be right back, and don’t you dare get on the telephone!”

  “Of course not, Pockets … I mean—”

  “Oh, shut up! You appointees are very, very strange.” With these words the security pool stenographer walked out into the outer office and closed the door.

  Warren Pease, Secretary of State and owner of a fishing yacht he longed dearly to berth at an acceptable club, was torn between slashing his wrists and calling his former brokerage firm and offering all manner of government insider information so as to reclaim his former partnership. Good Lord, why had he ever succumbed to his old roomie, the President’s call to join the administration? Socially, of course, there were advantages, but there were disadvantages, too. One had to be polite to so many people one simply could not abide, and those dreadful dinner parties where he not only had to sit next to but have his picture taken with Negroes. Oh, no, it wasn’t all peaches and cream! The sacrifices one had to make would test the patience of a saint … and now this! Body bags with living maniacs, and his own crowd wanting his scalp! How grotesque life had become! Of course, he had no razor blade and he dared not use the telephone, so he simply had to wait, perspiring profusely. In agonizing minutes, the wait was over. However, instead of Regina Trueheart, her mother, Tyrania, marched into the office, closing the door firmly behind her.

  The matriarch of the Trueheart clan was the stuff of which legends are born. A striking woman with sharp Teutonic features and blazing light-blue eyes, she was just over six feet in height, with an imposing body that stood tall and challenging, belying her fifty-eight years. As her mother before her, who had arrived with the legions of female government secretaries and clerks during World War II, Tyrania was a veteran of the Washington bureaucracy, with awesome knowledge of its byways and back alleys, its follies and flagrant abuses. Again, like her mother, she had brought up her own daughters to serve the byzantine infrastructures of the government’s myriad bureaus, departments, and agencies. Tyrania believed it was the destiny of the family’s women to guide the leaders and would-be leaders through Washington’s minefields
so they could exercise what generally feeble abilities they possessed. In her heart, the Trueheart maximum leader understood that it was women such as herself and her daughters who really ran the nation’s government. Men truly were the weaker sex, so vulnerable to temptation and tomfoolery. This judgment no doubt accounted for the fact that no male child had been born into the family for three generations. It simply was not acceptable.

  Tyrania studied the obviously distraught Secretary of State, in her long, silent gaze a mixture of pity and resignation. “My daughter has relayed everything you told her, as well as describing your apparently overstimulated libido,” she said firmly but quietly, as if admonishing a small, confused boy in the principal’s office.

  “I’m sorry, Mrs. Trueheart! Honestly. It’s been just a terrible day, and I didn’t mean to do anything wrong.”

  “It’s all right, Warren, don’t cry. I’m here to help you, not to make you feel naughty.”

  “Thank you, Mrs. Trueheart!”

  “But for me to help you, I must first ask you a very important question. Will you answer me honestly, Warren?”

  “Oh, yes, yes, I will!”

  “Good.… Now tell me, among the very small circle of civilians—nongovernment people—who are aware of this counterstrike operation, do any of them profit from this conceivably threatened air base?”

  “All of them, for God’s sake!”

  “Then look to one of them, Warren. He’s selling out the others.”

  “What …? Why?”

  “Long-range, I can’t answer you until I have more facts—such as stock options and buy-outs—but short-range the answer is obvious.”

  “It is?”

  “No one in the administration, with the exception of yourself, would enter into such a devious solution that employed incarcerated men, in military prison because of their violence-prone dispositions. The lessons of Watergate and Iran-scam have left their indelible marks, as repulsive and unpatriotic as they may be. Put simply, there were too many indictments.”

  “But why am I the exception?”

  “You’re too new and too inexperienced in this town. You wouldn’t know how to unite the President’s advisers for this sort of clandestine operation. They’d all run to the hills at the suggestion—except, perhaps, the Vice-President, who probably wouldn’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “You think it’s one of the … civilians!”

  “I’m rarely wrong, Warren.… Well, I was once, but that was my husband. After we girls threw him out of the house, he ran down to the Caribbean, and now he charters his run-down sailboat out of the Virgin Islands. A totally despicable human being.”

  “Really? Why is that?”

  “Because he claims to be a completely happy person, which we all know is unacceptable in our complex society.”

  “No kidding …?”

  “Mr. Secretary, may we concentrate on the immediate problem? I strongly suggest that you place the ‘body bags’ in total isolation, squash whatever stories come out of Quantico as the result of drunkenness, and go underground and reach the Zero Zero Zero-dash-Zero Zero Six at Fort Benning.”

  “What the hell is that?”

  “Not what, but who,” replied Tyrania. “They’re called the Suicidal Six—”

  “Like in the Filthy Four?” interrupted Pease, scowling.

  “Light-years beyond. They’re actors.”

  “Actors? What do I want with actors?”

  “These are unique,” said Trueheart, leaning forward and lowering her voice. “They’d kill for good reviews, which none has ever had in abundance.”

  “How did they ever get to Fort Benning?”

  “Nonpayment of rent.”

  “What?”

  “They haven’t worked steadily in years, just went to classes and waited on tables.”

  “I don’t understand a word you’re saying!”

  “It’s really quite simple, Warren. They joined the army together to start a repertory theater and eat on a more regular basis. Naturally, a creative-thinking officer in G-Two saw the possibilities and inaugurated a new program for covert operations.”

  “Because they were actors?”

  “Well, according to the general in charge, they were—are—also in great physical shape. You know, all those Rambo movies where they got extra parts. Actors can be very vain where their appearances are concerned.”

  “Mrs. Trueheart!” exclaimed the Secretary of State. “Will you please tell me where this conversation is leading us?”

  “To a solution, Warren. I will only talk in abstract terms, so there’s complete deniability, but I’m sure that your well-honed and well-brought-up intellect will understand.”

  “Those are the first words that make sense to me.”

  “The Suicidal Six can and will impersonate anybody and anything. They are masters of disguises and dialects, and can penetrate the impossible penetration.”

  “That’s crazy. They’d be penetrating ourselves!”

  “Good point. That gives you an enviable overview.”

  “Wait a minute.” Pease spun around in his swivel chair and stared at the crisscrossed flags of the U.S. and the State Department, in his imagination seeing a portrait of Geronimo dressed in a general’s uniform between them. “That’s it!” he cried. “No indictments, no congressional hearings—it’s perfect!”

  “What is, Warren?”

  “Actors.”

  “Of course.”

  “Actors can be anybody they want to be—convince other people they’re not who they really are, right?”

  “That’s true. It’s what they’re trained to do.”

  “No killers, no indictments, no goddamned hearings on the Hill.”

  “Well, I wouldn’t go that far without buying off a few senators, which our contingency funds allow for—”

  “I can see it now,” interrupted Pease, spinning front, his left eye in place, both eyes wide with excitement. “They arrive at Kennedy Airport—red sashes, maybe beards and homburgs—a delegation.”

  “A what?”

  “From Sweden! A delegation from the Nobel committee. They’ve studied the military history of the twentieth century and have come over to find General MacKenzie Hawkins to award him the Nobel peace prize for being the greatest soldier of our time!”

  “Perhaps I should call a doctor, Warren.”

  “Not at all, Mrs. Trueheart, you gave it to me! Can’t you understand? This banana’s got an ego bigger than Mount Everest!”

  “Who has?”

  “Thunder Head.”

  “Who?”

  “MacKenzie Hawkins, that’s who! He won the Congressional Medal of Honor—twice.”

  “I think we should say a silent prayer to almighty God for having made him an American and not a Commie—”

  “Bullshit!” exploded the Secretary of State. “He’s the asshole of the millennium. He’ll come running out from wherever he is to get that award.… Then it’s Sweden and points north, way north! A lost plane—Lapland, Siberia, the tundra, who cares?”

  “Despite your inane profanity, Warren, when you say north, it has the ring of brilliant truth, our truth.… What can I do, Mr. Secretary?”

  “To begin with, find out how we reach the officer running these actors, and then have my plane prepared to fly me down to Fort Benning.… Perfect!”

  The two rental cars raced south on Route 93 toward Boston, Paddy Lafferty commandeering the first, his wife, driving the second, approximately a mile behind. Aaron Pinkus sat in front with his chauffeur, while Sam Devereaux, his mother, and Jennifer Redwing were in the rear seat, the Indian attorney between mother and son. The second vehicle carried General MacKenzie Hawkins in the front with Mrs. Lafferty, as Desis One and Two were in the back, playing blackjack with a deck of cards appropriated from the former ski lodge.

  “Now, you hear me good, little girl!” said the plumpish Erin Lafferty of fine Celtic features into the car telephone. “I want the buster boy t
o have a full bowl of oatmeal with real milk—not that watered-down crap Grandpa drinks—and the tiny lass should have two slices of bread soaked in eggs and fried—two eggs, got that?… All right, girl, I’ll get back to you later.”

  “Your children?” asked the Hawk somewhat awkwardly as Mrs. Lafferty replaced the phone.

  “Have you got your brains anywheres near your head, man? Do I look like a woman who’s got wee tots?”

  “I merely overheard your conversation, madam—”

  “That was my youngest, Bridget, who’s lookin’ after my older lad’s—my second oldest lad’s—kids, while them two-toilet suppositories are on a cruise … would you believe, a cruise?”

  “Did your husband object?”

  “How the hell could he? Dennis-boyo is a big accountant with all those letters after his name. He does our taxes.”

  “I see.”

  “May the devil fart perfume, you do! Never have kids who are brainier than you. There’s hell to pay.” The car telephone buzzed and Mrs. Lafferty picked it up. “What is it, Bridgey? You can’t find the refrigerator, girl?… Oh, it’s you, Paddy, darlin’, who I may just push your head into a barrel of used crank case oil.” Erin Lafferty held the phone out for Hawkins. “Paddy says Mr. Pinkus wants to talk to you.”

  “Thank you, madam.… Commander?”

  “No, it’s still Paddy, great General. I’ll put the boss on in a second or two. I just wanted to tell you not to pay no attention to my woman. She’s a good girl, sir, but she’s not been in true combat, if you know what I’m drivin’ at.”

  “I understand, Gunny. But if I were you, I’d make damn sure ‘Buster boy’ gets his oatmeal with real milk and the ‘tiny lass’ has her fried bread with two eggs.”

  “Oh, she’s been on the breakfast bit again, has she? Grandmothers can be the end of the good life, General.… Here’s Mr. Pinkus.”

  “General?”

  “Commander? What’re the map coordinates, sir?”

  “The what?… Oh, where we’re going. Yes, well, I’ve just made arrangements for us all to stay at my brother-in-law’s summer house in Swampscott. It’s on the beach and rather delightful, and as he and Shirley’s sister are in Europe, it’s completely available.”