Trigger Point

by Matthew Glass

  Who was going to stop it? Bob Livingstone hadn’t been able to. Doug Havering, acting secretary of state while the president sought another nominee, toed the White House line. Inside the White House, as far as she knew, no one was in opposition to the president’s thinking. Certainly not Gary Rose, and she doubted anyone else was. They were all egging each other on in there, she knew. They had to be.

  She spent a lot of time thinking about her position. Every spare minute, it seemed, when Ella and Ben weren’t grabbing her attention. Late at night, she talked to Dave. There was nothing much he could say apart from the obvious. He listened over long glasses of wine and helped her say it for herself.

  She would probably have to resign. She wasn’t sure about the timing. Resigning in the middle of a crisis never looked good. But what did it matter? It would be the end of her public career. She wouldn’t come back from that.

  But how could she continue to serve when she felt the president was so wrong? He had cocooned himself away from anything that challenged his thinking, and there was no one who had both the will and the opportunity to put that right.

  For three days, she mulled things over. By the 28th, she had made up her mind. Only the question of the timing remained.

  That morning, in the frigid air before dawn, she boarded a plane. She was going to Bob Livingstone’s funeral as well.

  49

  IT WAS A raw, unyielding day. Snow lay on the ground. The air was a cold, bone-chilling mist. Rows of headstones ran down a slope under the silhouettes of leafless trees.

  The chapel was crowded. A marquee had been set up in front of it to take the overflow. Family, friends, former associates from Bob’s days as a lawyer, senatorial colleagues and State Department officials had come to pay their last respects. The marquee was underheated in the freezing air and people shivered. The president gave a eulogy in the chapel. So did Alvin Burr, Bob Livingstone’s closest friend in the Senate. Bob’s eldest, Robert junior, had spoken first. He was Robert junior no longer, he said. He wished he still was.

  Then they all came out into the mist and walked over the snowy ground, through the headstones, to the open mouth of the waiting grave.

  The president and first lady stood alongside Alicia Livingstone and her three sons. Bob’s casket rested on the ground as the last words were said. Tom Knowles’ Secret Service detail tried to look inconspicuous. Two stood immediately behind the president, others in the crowd, others off amongst the headstones, constantly scanning the cemetery.

  Marion Ellman gazed at Bob’s casket. Slowly it was lowered.

  She glanced at the president. He stood with hands clasped, a grim frown on his face.

  Alicia and the three boys stepped forward and each dropped a lily into the grave. The gentle tap of each one as it hit the top of the coffin was audible in the stillness.

  Alicia stood over the casket for a last moment, then turned away.

  The president took her arm, and said something, and Alicia nodded, wiping with a tissue at her tears. The first lady said something to her as well while the president spoke with each of the sons, solemnly shaking their hands in turn.

  Others waited to say a word to the widow. For a couple of minutes the president shook hands with the mourners nearby. As Marion waited her turn to speak with Alicia, she saw Knowles turn. His security detail closed up around him and the first lady. The crowd made way as they began to move off.

  Marion watched him for a moment. Suddenly she stepped out of the crowd and called out.

  The sound of her own voice startled her. In the frigid air, it sounded too loud.

  The president looked around. Everyone was watching. He smiled when he saw who it was. His security detail didn’t. Two of them were coming towards her.

  He told them who she was. The two men backed away, still eyeing her suspiciously.

  Marion went closer. ‘Sir, I need to speak with you.’

  ‘Now?’

  Marion nodded.

  ‘Go ahead.’

  ‘It’s sensitive, sir.’

  The president glanced around. ‘Let’s go over there.’

  They headed out into the snow amongst the gravestones. Marion was conscious of the crowd of mourners still watching them.

  Knowles stopped. He looked at her expectantly.

  Now that she was at the point, she hesitated. She hadn’t even imagined doing this. It hadn’t been rehearsed, not even in her head. She was shaking.

  ‘Cold, huh?’ said the president, noticing her trembling. ‘Hell of a day. My God, one hell of a day.’

  ‘There’s something I have to tell you.’

  ‘About Bob. He was a good guy, wasn’t he?’

  Marion nodded. Bob Livingstone had told her that you couldn’t just tell Tom Knowles anything. But Bob was dead.

  She drew a deep breath. It came out freezing in front of her.

  ‘Mr President, what you’re doing is wrong. Your approach, your strategy. They’re wrong.’

  Knowles looked at her in bemusement. ‘What I’m doing about what?’

  ‘About what’s happening. About China.’

  ‘You think so, do you?’

  ‘Mr President, maybe it’s not my place but someone has to tell you. You’re taking us into confrontation with that country and it is not a confrontation either side is going to win. Not us, not them. You’ve misjudged them. You’re giving them no option but to come back at us every time you say something. You’re escalating this and you’re leading us and them into a trap and if you keep going pretty soon there’s going to be no way out.’

  The president stared at her.

  ‘You can ask for my resignation. I don’t care. I’m going to resign anyway.’

  ‘Whoa! Hold up. Let’s not make any hasty decision.’

  ‘It’s not a hasty decision. Someone has to tell you, sir. Someone has to make you listen.’

  ‘And you think resigning’s going to do that?’

  ‘No, resigning’s going to stop me having to act in a way that I think is the exact opposite of this country’s best interests. Resigning is going to allow me to speak publicly. We’re in a lose-lose situation. We have to get out of it.’

  The president folded his arms. ‘What would you do if you were me?’

  ‘We need to be actively seeking collaboration. We need a different approach. We could have done that over South Africa but we didn’t.’

  ‘So could they.’

  ‘True. I’m not saying they’re better. They’re as bad as us, sir.’

  ‘As bad as us?’

  ‘This isn’t a temporary, tactical situation we’re in. Things have changed in our world, Mr President. We’re going to keep beating each other up unless we change as well.’

  ‘Do you think that’s what they think?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Bob said you’d had a conversation with the Chinese ambassador.’

  ‘That’s true. I sent you my report. My impression is that Zhang’s under pressure.’

  ‘What kind of pressure?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘You’re not afraid to admit when you don’t know, are you?’

  ‘Do you prefer people who are?’

  The president smiled for a second. ‘No. I don’t.’

  ‘Sir, there’s someone I think you should meet. His name’s Joel Ehrenreich. He’s just written a book that is one of the best analyses of US–China relations that I’ve read in the last several years.’

  The president frowned. ‘Not sure I recognize the name.’

  ‘He’s at Yale.’

  The president looked at Ellman thoughtfully. ‘Marion, no one’s telling me I’m wrong.’

  ‘I am.’

  ‘But no one else is.’

  ‘And that’s your problem, sir. That, in a nutshell, is your problem.’

  Knowles looked away over the headstones. ‘Why haven’t I heard any of this from you before?’

  ‘Ask Gary Rose. It’s not for want of tryin
g.’

  Knowles was silent.

  ‘Mr President, you should meet Joel Ehrenreich. You should listen to what he has to say. Now. Today. Before you do anything else.’

  The president glanced at his security detail. They were watching him. He looked back at Ellman. ‘Marion, I don’t think this is the time to be talking to academics. You can send me the book.’

  ‘No, sir. Normally I’d agree with you. But there are times when someone who’s outside the fray – someone whose perspective isn’t over the course of a year or an election cycle but takes a generational view of things – sometimes there are times when that’s a good perspective.’

  The president gazed at Ellman. ‘Send me the book,’ he said, and turned and walked away.

  ‘Mr President!’

  He stopped and looked back at her.

  Marion Ellman had nothing to lose. The timing, she realized, had decided itself.

  She came closer to him. ‘You asked me what I would do. I haven’t been involved in your discussions. But if I had to guess, I’d guess you’ve spent an awful lot of time talking about what we want the Chinese to do.’

  The president nodded.

  She pointed at him, right at the chest, like a teacher to a pupil. ‘You need to spend some time thinking about what the Chinese want from us.’

  THERE WAS SILENCE in the car on the ride back to the airport. Sarah gazed out the window. The president pondered the conversation he had just had with the UN ambassador. It had reared up out of nowhere and kicked him in the teeth.

  But he didn’t have time to reflect on it. The ride to Air Force One was a short one. Almost as soon as he had boarded the plane for the flight to Nevada a call came through from General Hale.

  ‘Mr President,’ said the general, ‘we know where they are.’

  50

  THE HELICOPTERS WERE in the air by the time Air Force One touched down in Nevada. At five in the afternoon Pacific Time it would be 4am in Sudan.

  Hale had told the president not to expect to hear anything until around 6pm Pacific at the earliest. The attack team would maintain radio silence until they were off the ground and back out of Sudanese air space.

  The plan was one of three that had been drawn up by Pressler’s team. The president had seen the details days earlier and had approved it subject to key operational conditions being met. It called for a night-time raid by five Chinooks flying out of the US base at Lodwar in Kenya, cutting north across Uganda and into southern Sudan at almost the limit of their range. Each of the Chinooks would carry twenty-four marines and their weaponry, and the group would be under escort of a half dozen Apache attack helicopters.

  By six the president and Sarah had arrived at their ranch north of Elko. Friends were due for dinner at 6.30. Knowles waited in his study, flicking through a bunch of papers that he was supposed to read. He couldn’t concentrate, kept glancing at the phone.

  One of the security guys knocked on his door to tell him his guests had arrived. He didn’t get up right away. Sarah was out there to look after them, he knew. He couldn’t tear himself away from the phone.

  Finally, at around seven, he got up and went out.

  The Maises and the Dickinsons were local Elko couples, good friends going back years. Sarah had already seen to their drinks. Tom poured himself a bourbon. The talk stayed clear of politics. Dick Maise was president of the local country club and was always good for a bunch of stories about the goings-on down there. Ed Dickinson was a more quiet kind of guy, almost morose. His wife Hilary was a hoot.

  At around seven-thirty Tom excused himself. He went back to the study and had the White House operator get Mortlock Hale on the phone.

  ‘There’s no news, sir,’ said the general.

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘It means they’re not out of Sudan.’

  ‘They definitely went in?’

  ‘Yes, sir. They shut down communication at eighteen thirty-two eastern. That would be around four-thirty your time, sir.’

  ‘That’s three hours ago. You told me they’d be out by six.’

  ‘Mr President, I said that would be the earliest possible time. That would be the time if Dewy and Montez were waiting with their bags packed.’

  ‘But they should be out by now, right?’

  ‘They’ll be out, sir.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘When they’re done, Mr President. Sir, I’ll call you as soon as I hear anything. If I may … I’ve been through a number of these scenarios. They’re nerve-wracking at the best of times. Right now, I’ve got five guys here with me and I think we’ve got about two whole fingernails between us. But nine times out of ten, when you think something’s gone wrong, it hasn’t. You’ve got to trust the guys on the ground. These are good guys Pressler sent in. Top notch. They’ll do the job.’

  Knowles didn’t say anything.

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘I heard you, General.’

  ‘Mr President, you’ll hear as soon as we have any information whatsoever.’

  ‘Okay. Thank you.’

  Knowles put down the phone. If Dewy and Montez weren’t waiting with their bags packed, as the general put it, then what kind of battle would the rescue force have to fight to extract them? One of the operational Go conditions for the rescue was that the forces holding the two airmen had to be lightly armed, either LRA or Sudanese army. A lightly armed, poorly trained group of soldiers would disintegrate into a panicked rabble firing wildly at anything that twitched – mostly each other – when a force of Apaches came out of the night sky at them with their guns blazing. Pressler had estimated that the marines who would pour out of the Chinooks that followed would eliminate them as a fighting force almost instantaneously, taking minimum or zero casualties.

  They couldn’t afford a screw-up. Knowles feared to think what the press would do to him if some kind of helicopter rescue debacle was taking place right now somewhere in Sudan. It would be his second step to Carterdom. He didn’t know what had done Jimmy Carter more damage – the taking of the hostages at the American embassy in Teheran or the failed attempt to rescue them that had ended with stories of US helicopters choked in the desert dust. The first was tragedy, the second farce. Nothing hurts a politician more.

  There was a knock on the door. Sarah looked in.

  ‘We’re waiting to sit down, Tom.’

  He nodded.

  ‘You coming?’

  ‘Sure.’ He got up and forced himself to walk away from the phone.

  They had big juicy steaks and fries and salad. Dick and Hilary and Sarah carried the conversation. He found it a little hard to get involved. He tried. He laughed at the appropriate times. Told a story about some amusing incident that had happened early in their time at the White House when they still didn’t know how the place ran. Then his thoughts drifted away again.

  ‘You’re quiet today, Tom,’ said Hilary.

  Tom looked at her.

  ‘Everything okay?’ She laughed. ‘No national emergencies we should know about?’

  Tom smiled.

  ‘The funeral was somewhat of an ordeal,’ said Sarah.

  Knowles nodded. ‘Yeah. That was a hell of a funeral. And cold, too. Jesus, it was cold out there.’

  ‘That was the secretary of state, right?’ said Dick.

  ‘Were you close to him?’ asked Hilary.

  ‘Well, you know, you work with someone, you spend a couple of years working with someone pretty intensely on some pretty important stuff, and then he’s …’ Tom shrugged, sighing. ‘Then he’s gone.’

  Ed Dickinson nodded knowingly. Ed didn’t say much but always perked up when talk turned to the morbid side of life. ‘It was a sudden death, wasn’t it? See, we’re not accustomed to sudden death any more. What was it? A heart attack?’

  ‘Right in front of Tom,’ said Sarah. ‘Isn’t that right, Tom?’

  ‘That’s right. Right in front of me in the Situation Room.’

  Everyone had stopped eat
ing. They stared at him.

  ‘In the Situation Room?’ said Dick. ‘Hell, that’s dramatic.’

  ‘Was there some kind of emergency going on?’ asked Hilary.

  ‘No. We have all kinds of meetings down there.’ Knowles smiled. ‘Only place you can get any peace and quiet.’

  They laughed.

  ‘Sometimes I go down there just for the hell of it. You know, just to–’

  Knowles stopped. His personal aide had come quietly into the room.

  ‘Mr President,’ he said, ‘there’s a call for you.’

  KNOWLES LISTENED, TRYING to comprehend what he was being told.

  ‘Four of the Apaches got out. Two of the Chinooks. The others were damaged to varying degrees and unable to exit.’

  ‘Any dead?’ he asked.

  ‘We think we lost the pilots in the two Apaches that went down,’ said Hale. His voice was somber. ‘That’s four. There’s another eight dead that we know of, plus a bunch of injured.’

  ‘And everyone else got back into those two Chinooks?’

  ‘No, sir. They’re still on the ground.’

  ‘Wait, you told me we got two Chinooks out. We still have men on the ground?’

  ‘Mr President, we think we’ve got about eighty men on the ground.’

  The number exploded in his head like a gunshot. ‘Eighty men on the ground?’

  There was silence on the line for a moment, then Knowles heard Hale’s voice. ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘We left eighty men behind?’

  ‘Approximately, sir. At this stage it’s an approximate number.’

  The president threw his head back and stared at the ceiling. For a moment he could hardly breathe.

  ‘Mr President?’

  ‘I’m sorry, General. I’m just trying to understand how that can happen. Eighty men? Eighty of our highest trained marines! What are they doing? Are they still fighting?’