The First Horseman
Page 36
‘Thanks.’
‘But the other thing you need to understand is that a declaration of this kind gives the President, and by extension, me, some extraordinary powers.
‘Such as what?’
‘Well, basically, it lets us do pretty much what we want to do. Where matters relative to North Korea are concerned, the Constitution is pretty much suspended. If the need arose – and we’d be the ones to decide that – we could seize property and commodities, send troops abroad, institute martial law. The whole doctrine of habeas corpus goes out the window, which means we can hold anyone we want for as long as we want – without charging them with a crime.’ He paused, and looked around. ‘You like your room?’
‘Yeah,’ Frank said. ‘It’s nice.’
Fitch smiled. ‘Good. I’m glad you like it. But that’s not all. If we have to, we can restrict travel, too, and if necessary, we can impose censorship.’
‘Who’s “we”?’
‘The federal government.’
Frank looked skeptical.
‘I know what you’re thinkin’, but you can look it up. The Constitution provides for national emergencies – and it defers to them. Article Nine, section one. You want me to write that down?’
‘No,’ Frank said. ‘I don’t think that’s gonna be necessary.’
‘The funny thing is, we got half a dozen of them going at any given time. Iran, Iraq, Angola, Libya – you name it, its an emergency. Hell, Roosevelt declared a national emergency that lasted forty-three years – no kiddin’! From ’thirty-three to ’seventy-six. So no one really pays much attention to it unless – like you – some poor sonofabitch gets his tit in a ringer. And then he’s got problems.’ Fitch paused, and sighed. ‘How you feeling?’
‘I’m okay,’ Frank said.
Fitch nodded. ‘Good. Anyway,’ he concluded, ‘it’s the same everywhere. Every country’s got a provison for this kind of thing. In France they call it a “state of siege.” In England –’
‘What’s your point?’
‘Just this: if you try to sell this story, it’s gonna cause you a lot of trouble. No one’s gonna believe it, and even if they do, they aren’t going to publish it. I guarantee it.’
Frank looked at him. ‘Are you, like, an editor at Writer’s Digest, or something? I mean –’
Fitch chuckled. ‘That’s funny,’ he said. And then the smile disappeared. ‘Look, I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking we can’t stop you –’
‘Uh-oh,’ Frank interjected. ‘Is this where you tell me you’re gonna kill me?’
Fitch looked shocked. ‘Of course not! You’re an American citizen.’
‘Then, what?’
‘This is where I tell you that you can’t prove it.’
‘Bullshit,’ Frank said. ‘People got killed. They were killed on the ferry –’
Fitch shook his head. ‘Some nuts tried to hijack the ferry. So what?’
‘I was shot. Solange –’
‘Was in custody when you were shot.’
Frank stared at him.
‘It happens all the time’ Fitch said. ‘You were in Harlem, for chrissake.’ With a smile, he removed a newspaper clipping from his attaché’ case. ‘This is a week old,’ he said, ‘but I thought you’d want to see it . . .’
POST REPORTER, DALY, WOUNDED IN NEW YORK
May 23 (New York) – Washington Post reporter Frank Daly was shot in East Harlem last night, the victim of an apparent robbery.
A national-desk reporter on leave of absence from the Post, Daly is in critical condition at Columbia Presbyterian Hospital. A police departmeun spokesperson said there are no suspects in the robbery.
Frank looked up from the clip. ‘Amazing,’ he said.
Fitch smiled sheepishly. ‘We’re pretty good, when you get down to it.’ Then he got serious again. ‘The problem, Frank – from our point of view – is that North Korea is a psychopathic state. It’s like Hannibal Lecter on bok choy. And it sits there, desperate, with the wind at its back, and nothing to lose. If they should ever decide to take out Japan with anthrax or smallpox, they could do it in a heartbeat – using weather balloons, or just the people they have on the ground in Tokyo. Plus we’ve got a couple of battalions of our own standing in harm’s way, just below the DMZ. So the point is: we don’t want to set them off, understood?’
‘I hear you,’ Frank said.
‘And from your point of view, the situation isn’t much better. You don’t have a sample of the virus, or anything like it. And you don’t have any witnesses, either. So if you start running around, talking about dead Norwegians and the Spanish flu, you won’t get anywhere – unless we decide to put you somewhere. Which, of course, we can do.’
‘There’s Annie,’ Frank said.
‘What about her?’
‘She’s a witness.’
Fitch slapped himself on the side of the head. ‘Oh, that’s right,’ he said. ‘She saw everything, didn’t she? So I guess you could put the story on the Internet, or publish it abroad – and you would have a witness. I hadn’t thought of that! Except . . . oh, now I remember: she signed a Secrecy agreement! So I guess that won’t work.’ He sat down on the side of the bed. ‘Because, I’ll tell you something: you put her in a story, and I know for a fact Neal Gleason will send her away. Through space and time.’
Speak of the devil. Annie was admitted about thirty seconds after Fitch left. And she was angry.
‘I’ve been waiting for days out there,’ she complained, ‘and this general comes in –’
‘He’s not a general. He’s a colonel.’
‘I don’t think he’s even a colonel. When I met him, he was a CIA agent.’
‘I know. He was on the plane from Hammerfest.’
She kissed him softly on the lips and sat down at his side.
That evening, a telephone was installed in the room, and Annie brought him a newspaper from the gift shop.
JAILED CULTISTS IN EXTRADITION FIGHT
June 7 (Havana) – Two weeks after arriving in Cuba, eight Amencan cultists are fighting extradition on kidnapping and murder charges stemming from the bizarre hijacking of the Staten Island ferry last month.
In an interview with Agence France Press, a spokesperson for the jailed Temple of Light members, Belinda Barron, said she and her group fled to Cuba to escape ‘religious persecution.’
‘What happened aboard the ferry,’ Barron told reporters, ‘was the fault of the police and the FBI. They overreacted. What we were doing was ‘guerrilla theater,’ pure and simple. It was a nonviolent demonstration against water pollution – and the cops turned it into a bloodbath . . .’
In the weeks that followed, Frank spent hours each morning in therapy for what the doctors said was a bruised spine. The rest of the time he spent reading the newspapers, looking for traces of the story.
US, NORTH KOREA SIGN WEAPONS PACT
Inspections Tied to Food Aid
July 2 (Pyongyang) – After more than a month of meetings with North Korean leaders, United Nations officials announced today that an agreement has been reached, tying humanitarian aid to weapons’ inspections in this impoverished country.
George Karalekis, American head of the first U.N. inspection team to arrive in the North Korean capital, said that his unit would begin immediately to look for biological weapons labs in the Diamond Mountains.
‘We’ve had some unconfirmed reports that the North Koreans may be looking at these kinds of weapons,’ Karalekis told reporters. ‘Naturally, it’s something we’re concerned about . . .’
A second story came out the day Frank went home. It was on page three of the Times, under a photograph of the young woman who’d driven the U-Haul off the ferry:
THREE CULTISTS, PRIVATE EYE
CHARGED IN COUPLE’S DEATHS
July 20 (Albany) – Three Cultists and a Poughkeepsie-based private investigator listened impassively this afternoon as prosecutors told a gruesome tale of murder and mutilation.
An emotional Susannah Demjanuk, 23, told the court that she and the others were ‘acting on orders’ when they dismembered Rhinebeck residents Harold and Martha Bergman earlier this year.
‘Luc told us what to do,’ Demjanuk testified, ‘and we did it.’ Asked to identify ‘Luc,’ she pointed tearfully to Temple of Light guru Luc Solange and said, ‘That’s him at the defendant’s table. The one with the neck brace and body cast.’
The defendants’ attorneys dismissed Demjanuk’s testimony as ‘the ravings of a mentally unstable woman who has no right to throw the first stone.’
The reference was apparently to Demjanuk’s recent plea in the microwave murder of Georgetown University student Benjamin Stern, 28. A critic of the Temple, Stern wrote about the organization in a self-published newsletter, Armageddon Watch. He disappeared in April.
In her testimony this afternoon, Demjanuk told the court that the Bergmans were taken from their home in Rhinebeck, N.Y., and killed in the back of a U-Haul van. At the time of their deaths, the couple was seeking a court order for the disinterment of their son, Leonard, who drowned at sea while a member of the Temple of Light.
In addition to Solange, the accused include Martin Kramer, 44, of Poughkeepsie; Thomas Reckmeyer, 26; and Vaughn Abelard, 25. A fourth cultist indicted in the case, Étienne ‘the Frenchman’ Moussin, 29, is believed to be in Cuba. All except Kramer are from the Lake Placid area.
There were no other stories that month, unless you counted the one in the Post:
DALY, ADAIR SET TO WED
By then he’d already written two hundred pages of the book.
‘What’s it about?’ Annie asked over his shoulder as he typed.
‘I told you,’ he said, looking up at her. ‘It’s a novel. A thriller.’
‘But what’s it about?’
‘Well,’ he said, ‘it’s about . . . this journalist . . .’ He paused for a moment to type a few words, then turned back to her. ‘This ruthlessly handsome journalist . . .’
‘Yeah?’ She looked skeptical.
‘And a girl.’
‘And what’s she like?’
‘She’s tall.’
‘Just “tall”?!’
‘No. She’s also . . . brilliant . . . and ravishing. Very ravishing.’
‘And what happens?’
‘Well,’ he said, ‘there’s this icebreaker.’
She gave him a suspicious look. ‘Yeah?’
‘And she’s on it, because – well, because she’s a scientist. And he’s stuck in this cheap hotel, somewhere in Russia . . .’
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Copyright © John Case, 1998
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First published in the United Kingdom in 1998 by Century
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