By Order of the President

by Kilian, Michael;

  “Are you the only checkpoint?”

  “Oh no, sir. They’ve got a perimeter intersecting the road about halfway up. There’s another position at the guardhouse and a lot of heavy weapons stuff up at the compound gate. I wouldn’t mess with them, sir. They’re kinda overweaponed.”

  Kreski sat staring at the forested mountainside beyond the reach of the headlights. All was blackness.

  “Do you have communications with them?” Kreski said finally.

  The agent nodded and pointed to a man with a handheld radio.

  Kreski took a deep breath. “All right. Inform them of who we are and that we’re coming up, to meet with the presidential party as per instructions. Get those sawhorses out of the way.” He gently put the gear-shift lever into the drive position.

  “Instructions?” said Copley, when Hammond had moved away.

  “I’m sure it’s covered somewhere in the procedure book.” Kreski picked up the microphone of his car radio, waiting. When the barricades were pulled back he still hesitated. He didn’t need to be doing this. He had a wife and a daughter in college. He was going to retire in a few months. He’d already been offered a good job with one of the biggest security firms in the country and two banks had asked if he would serve on their boards of directors. “All right. All units. Proceed.”

  On orders, they took the climbing road as fast as possible, the sirens screaming, the whirling Mars lights and side-mounted searchlights flashing wildly as they bounced and roared along the twisting course. The soldiers at the first line did nothing. Though holding weapons at the ready, they stepped aside in time for Kreski’s motorcade to sweep by without much slowing. At the next position, the guardhouse that normally would have been manned by Kreski’s people, the troops were unyielding, remaining positioned across the roadway with weapons leveled. At Kreski’s orders, the cars ground and slid to a halt, two almost colliding. Kreski turned off the engine as an officer came toward them. He was a first lieutenant, exceedingly young, and wore the special pale green medal that Hampton had had created for those who had served in Central America.

  “Are you Kreski? Sir?” he asked, in a gruff manner that suggested he would just as soon kill them both. Kreski nodded. “And you’re Copley? Sir?”

  “Director Copley,” Copley said. “The Federal Bureau of Investigation.”

  “Yes, sir. May I see some identification?”

  Both handed over their IDs, Copley with much irritation. The lieutenant examined them on both sides, and ran his thumb along the edge of the lamination.

  “We’re finished for the night at Gettysburg,” Kreski said. “I’m required to report to the president’s staff.”

  “Me too,” said Copley, joining in the lie.

  “I don’t know anything about that, sir,” said the officer, finally returning the identification cards. “My orders are to allow you to proceed to the compound gate. On foot. Someone will meet you there.”

  “Both of us?” Copley asked.

  “Yes. Sir.”

  As they trudged up the grade, their shoes scuffing slightly on the blacktop, the wind came at them fiercely from spaces between the trees, stinging their flesh. Copley pulled on gloves.

  “I begin to wonder why I was so anxious to come up here,” he said.

  “I’m wondering why we don’t have an escort.”

  “Well, I’m not going to go running off into the bushes, Walter. I wouldn’t be surprised if they had claymore mines set up.”

  “I suspect they do.”

  “Maybe they’re hoping we’ll trip one.”

  “You were reminding me this is the United States of America.”

  Another officer at the gate brought them inside, with some reluctance. Kreski felt akin to a prisoner of war being led through his own surrendered fortifications. He had been to Camp David hundreds of times in his career, the last hundred times as the man in charge. The security of this place had been among his most important responsibilities, and now he was being treated as a threat to it.

  They were taken up a short, paved walk to the cabin nearest the gate and ushered inside. It was empty. There was no heat, not even a fire. Left alone, they seated themselves but did not speak. In a very short time, they were joined by two men they knew only slightly—Peter Schlessler, Hampton’s driver, and C. D. Bragg, who was on the White House payroll as a presidential assistant but who served Hampton almost entirely as a political adviser. In a field noted for conviviality, Bragg was a cold, serious practitioner of his profession, a scientist among glad-handers and consensus-makers, a specialist who excelled at assessing the weaknesses of others.

  “How is the president?” Copley asked.

  Bragg studied him, as though trying to measure the degree of the FBI director’s sincerity. “He’s doing fine.” Bragg turned to Kreski. “What have you learned?”

  “We’ve made multiple arrests,” Copley said. “Nearly all Hispanic. There’s a provable conspiracy, apparently Honduran, with apparently provable links to Nicaragua and Cuba.”

  Copley hadn’t told Kreski that.

  Bragg was still looking at Kreski. “What have you learned at Gettysburg? Were there other gunmen involved? Other snipers?”

  “Probably. We don’t have everything put together yet.”

  “Can you document the connection to Honduran terrorists? Do you have enough to justify a press conference statement? A U.N. resolution condemning the governments of Cuba and Nicaragua for responsibility in this?”

  “Yes,” Copley said.

  “Not yet,” Kreski said.

  “We’re meeting now in the president’s lodge,” Bragg said. “The president has asked Colonel Ambrose to take charge of things for the time being. Colonel Ambrose would like to meet with you at ten A.M. tomorrow.”

  “Here?”

  “At the Rustic Motel in Thurmont. During this emergency, that will be our public contact point. The park here is going to be sealed off. We want to isolate the president as much as possible until the situation is secure.”

  “But the Rustic will be full of press!” Copley said. Kreski wondered if the man was beginning to lose control.

  “We’re having it cleared,” said Bragg, rising. “You’re to bring everything. Autopsy reports. Diagrams. Evidence technician reports. Arrest records. Colonel Ambrose wants to know everything you know.”

  “By ten A.M.?”

  “What about the White House? The vice president? My other responsibilities?” Kreski asked.

  “You’re to carry out your other duties as always,” Bragg said. “To the best of your ability. Our concern here is for the president’s safety and for the most thorough possible investigation of the assassination attempt.”

  “I’m not a homicide investigator,” Kreski said. “That’s Director Copley’s expertise.”

  Bragg continued to ignore Copley, whose exasperation was becoming very obvious. “Colonel Ambrose, and the president, have great confidence in your professionalism.”

  Kreski started to leave.

  “You’re to interrogate every one of your agents who was on duty at Gettysburg and instruct them not to leave the Washington metropolitan area.”

  “I’ll deal with my men.”

  “Just do what you’re goddamn told, director.”

  Bragg and Schlessler waited until the sound of Kreski’s and Copley’s motorcade had disappeared far down the hill, then hurried back to the presidential lodge. A huge fire was blazing on the hearth and the living room was fairly crowded, with people sitting in large, comfortable armchairs and drinking, some in sadness, some to deal with stress, some to calm themselves in the general air of excitement in the room. Schlessler went immediately to attend to those who desired refills. Bragg went to the fireside, where Ambrose sat looking at a yellow legal pad. “They’ll be at Thurmont tomorrow,” Bragg said.

  “Do you think they’ll tell us what they know?”

  “Kreski will.”

  Ambrose nodded. Bragg returned to the seat he�
��d occupied earlier on the couch against the wall. Next to him was Jerry Greene, the president’s advertising expert and media adviser. Next to him was Dr. Jerome Potter, the president’s physician. In chairs nearby were the national security adviser, the secretary of defense, the army chief of staff, Senator Andrew Rollins of Tennessee, Hampton’s principal man in the Congress, and David Callister, the conservative newspaper columnist and television commentator who had written of Hampton as a presidential possibility long before Hampton had given it any truly serious thought. Hampton had returned the favor with a genuine and most useful friendship.

  Ambrose brought all talk to an abrupt halt by standing. He glanced at almost everyone, as a company commander might do, looking for demerits. He waited still longer, until the mood in the room was as somber as it had been when the meeting had begun. Then he held up the legal pad that had made the rounds of the room. “Everyone has read this now?” There were noddings. “There is complete understanding? There is complete agreement?” The noddings increased. Ambrose put the pad carefully into the flames, onto the top of the brightly burning logs. He drank, almost in some ritual toast, then set down his glass on the mantel with great care. His face was very flushed.

  “Gentlemen. This has probably been the worst day of our lives. It could also be the most important day of our lives. Now, I think it would be … I think that, before we retire for the night, I think that we should all go in now and see the president.”

  5

  Dresden awoke restless at the first glimmer of light, a barely perceptible predawn glow faintly outlining the smoothness of Charlene’s bare shoulder and a few corners of furniture. He sat up slowly, quietly, reminding himself that he had had only a few hours sleep, and not caring. His mind was fully active, thoughts racing. Awful, bloody, remembered televised scenes from Gettysburg had chewed at the cozy bliss that had followed his making love to Charlene, but the alcohol had dealt with them. Now they had returned.

  Moving quietly, he slipped from his bed and went into the living room, sitting restlessly on one of the velvet chairs for a moment, then fetching a nearly full gallon jug of wine from behind the mahogany bar. With it in hand, he went out the double doors into the shadows of the garden, and climbed on up the slope to where a crude dirt road had been cut across the face of the ridge, a favorite sitting place of his. Lowering himself gently to the cool earth and dangling his long legs over the edge of the road, he took another sip and put back his head, closing his eyes.

  When he opened them again, it was to an entire world, his world. The broad vista before him encompassed much of the Heather River valley. Directly below him was all of Tiburcio, town, creek, and valley. To the southwest was the draw in the mountains that led, eventually, to Santa Cruz and the sea. No one who had ever sat in this place could possibly wonder why he had stayed here and would never leave.

  The view was as intoxicating as the wine, even in the gloom of dawn, and too distracting. He looked down at his hands.

  Why would they try to keep a dead man alive? They had a vice president, a cabinet—a Congress. Of what use was a dead president? What lunacy was running rampant in the national government? How was one to fathom lunacy, especially with mere logic?

  There had been a forest fire in these mountains ten years before, a wild, mad aberration of nature that had consumed twenty-five thousand acres before it was done. The fire had spared the village of Tiburcio, but only just, leaping the creek a few miles upstream from the town and sweeping up and over the ridge. Dresden had driven into the burning mountains, using a station wagon news unit from Channel Three, bringing with him a photographer and a girl named Tracy Bakersfield, who had then been a freshly hired young videotape editor in the newsroom. Charley had almost gotten them killed, taking them onto a mountaintop clearing ringed by burning trees and failing to heed the hissing sound of a nearby oak wrapped in flame just before its superheated sap ignited and the tree exploded before their eyes, stunning them with its rush of heat. He had taken Tracy’s hand and run. They had reached the station wagon in time, but nearly lost it and their lives backing down from the summit through a narrow defile where the swiftly moving fire had enveloped both sides of the road. Only their reckless speed in reverse—the slightest error in steering could have spun them into the flames—brought them through this gauntlet with no more harm than a few scorched patches on car paint and clothing.

  He had fallen desperately in love with Tracy Bakersfield that night, though ultimately to no avail. After taking her home he had come back to this place in Tiburcio and watched the fire burn on through the night and into the dawning morning. The sun had risen through layers of smoke and haze over a bizarre and barren landscape that might as well have been another planet’s.

  The trees had all grown back now. At the ridgeline opposite, over which the flames had come marching like one of the vast armies of antiquity, the sun would shortly shine on stands of pine and oak and patches of gentle yellow meadow. If he’d keep quiet, if he’d forgotten about the president, he could continue his life as serenely as before. Nothing would disturb this.

  Dresden rose, stretching. He had decided what to do next.

  Tracy Bakersfield was now teaching a television course at Santa Linda State and living in Villa Beach over on the ocean. Dresden still saw her occasionally, though she was married. The gentleman had changed her name to Tracy Kluggerman. She remained a genius at videotape editing. She was the finest editor of tape or film Charley had ever encountered in all his career. That she had become nothing more than a teacher at a second-echelon state university was not illogical. She was very happy and living where she wished, just as he was content and fulfilled living in Tiburcio. California was like that.

  He would seek her out, as soon as possible. But first he would need an assassination tape of his own.

  Still puzzling over his unanswered questions, he started down the slope toward his darkened house.

  Vice President Atherton had put on one of his darkest suits, one usually worn at foreign funerals. To preclude too great an aspect of mourning, he had added the touch of a light blue shirt and crimson silk tie. These were television clothes. He would likely spend a sizable part of this long day on television.

  Two extra Secret Service cars had been added to his motorcade and a new route to the White House was being taken. Normally, the Secret Service rarely varied from three routes—as Atherton knew them: the ten-minute, fifteen-minute, and twenty-minute routes. It was nearly impossible to get directly downtown from Observatory Hill any other way. But this morning they were taking a circuitous one that had already consumed fifteen minutes, driving north up Rock Creek Parkway and then doubling back south again all the way to the Potomac River.

  He was briefly enticed by the notion of a catnap, but thought better of it. A Ronald Reagan might have been able to get away with sleeping through a crisis, but not a young vice president. And certainly not this crisis. He had another compelling reason for wakefulness. Laurence Atherton now believed in the possibility of himself being assassinated even more than the Secret Service did.

  Atherton had slept badly and little the previous night. The National Security Council meeting he had called had been delayed for more than an hour for lack of sufficient principals, and he’d finally been compelled to proceed with the emergency conference without the absentees. Lacking the secretary of defense and the national security adviser, the meeting was without much purpose. Merriman Crosby, the secretary of state, reported that the governments of Nicaragua and El Salvador had vehemently denied any complicity in the shootings and had charged the United States with rigging the assassination attempt to discredit their revolution. The chairman of the Joint Chiefs said that military activity had virtually ceased in the combat sectors of Guatemala, Honduras, and Costa Rica. He reported that the National Security Agency, which operated a super-secret global electronic eavesdropping network chiefly for the military, had picked up increased communications traffic between Moscow and Havana, as
well as between Washington embassies and a great many home foreign ministries. It otherwise had found little out of the ordinary.

  Old Admiral Elmore, the director of Central Intelligence, had attended the meeting in a rare appearance. For most NSC sessions, he customarily sent a deputy. A grim, cold-faced professional appointed by President Hampton’s predecessor, the retired flag officer and former National Security Agency chief had been steadfastly neutral in the rivalry between Hampton and Atherton forces in the White House. He had remained silent for most of the meeting and expressionless throughout all of it. In response to a question at the beginning, he had said none of the nation’s intelligence agencies had received any indication that an internationally organized assassination plot had been in progress. At the conclusion of the session, he informed them that all intelligence assets in Central America had been ordered to determine the extent of any foreign involvement in the plot, if any, though none now could be proved beyond the arrests of Honduran nationals by the FBI. There were times when Atherton wondered which government the old admiral was working for. Probably his own.

  The motorcade swept around a curve and along a stone embankment bordering the Potomac, its waters now glittering in the early morning sunshine. The cars in the opposite lanes had been slowed to a standstill by the heavy traffic, and each motorist’s eyes seemed to meet Atherton’s as they went past. The vice president eased back against the seat and out of their sight. There was a late edition of the Washington Post on the seat beside him, but he ignored it. The paper would be full of important information, but not that which he needed most to know. What was going on up at Camp David? What madness had enveloped the most powerful office in the free world?

  After the National Security Council meeting Atherton had joined with Shawcross, Howard, Secretary of State Crosby, and the attorney general, his closest allies in the cabinet, for a private conference of their own. Not daring to use the vice presidential mansion, knowing the extent of listening devices throughout the government buildings of Washington, he chose instead a back private dining room of his club, which he had seldom visited since becoming vice president.