Political heads of state, presidents and kings, even dictators, think they hold the seat of power—that from their lofty heights they control the fortunes of their subjects. But it isn’t true. Yes, they control the police and the armies and whatever other coercive agencies their fertile imaginations can create, but still they and their agencies are not the ultimate source of power. And it’s not from the consent of the governed that they derive their powers, he now understood. That was just another pretty myth. Nor was it from the military-industrial complex, nor from the acquiescence of the legislatures or judges. All these are just shadows of the real source of power.
The real ultimate source of power was a kind of collective id, the source of humanity’s strengthand the seed of its destruction.
Instinctively, communal man understands what it can tolerate in the way of change. And when the urge for change begins to grow, the communal id allows an individual or group or nation to rise to the surface to accomplish that change. And in the accomplishment is the proof of society’s need, ipso facto.
And if the collective id is not ready for that change, again it offers up an individual or group or nation to resist that change and by the successful resistance confirms the untimeliness, ipso facto.
What is, is what must be.
But not knowing “what must be” is the fuel that drives the engine of historythat drives men to pursue their dreams or their obsessions.
Uncertainty—the handmaiden of hopewas the door opener, the universal leveler that makes all things possible—was now clearly on the rise and dangerous beyond measure.
Marshall got to his feet, still only partially dressed, still dazed by the morning news reports. The deaths were shocking, sickening. Not only of Sorensen but of the students, and the disappearance of Cranshaw and Berman, the attempted assassination of the president, and now the growing anarchy in the streets. Marshall’s intellect rebelled at all that had happened so quickly. Can all this really be happening? he wondered.
The broadcast media were speculating wildly. No one appeared to have any reliable information. To the great relief of everyone, the military was quickly bringing order to the chaos in the streets. Firmly, but without violence the army was regaining control of Washington. Slowly they were clearing sections of the city, removing those who resisted to detention centers across the river. Slowly the rule of law was returning. For this the news media gave Colonel Anderson high praise.
Marshall’s thoughts raced to Sylvia. She would be in no imminent danger, he felt. She was only involved in this administratively. But their disaster scenario had come true, not like a thief in the night, unknown and unseen, expected theoretically, only as one expects one’s own death. No, it had come boldly, proclaiming its presence, crushing its victims. The watchers, the people on the edges, like himself, could only gasp and rail at the injustice of it all, as if there were some common court of chancery that should be acting to correct the unfairness, to reestablish the equity of events, to hear the appeal for justice. But there was no court of chancery and there was no one listening.
He reached for the phone to call Sylvia. There was no dial tone.
Looking out his window he saw smoky black columns rising from the northeast and southeast ends of Washington. To him they seemed like the sulfurous emanations of a decaying way of life. New columns would appear as others gradually turned gray, then white, and finally dissipated. He saw no flames, however, from his vantage point, and he guessed that perhaps only tires and debris were being burned. More show than substance, he decided.
Quickly, he finished getting dressed. He would go to New York—to Sylvia. He would call Dick Scully from the airport to let his editor know what he was doing. Dick had plenty of hard news people in Washington. Scully wouldn’t need him to stay.
53
The televised experts continued the debate over who should have protective jurisdiction of the president in the present circumstances. The political pundits analyzed the pluses and minuses of presidential power. The legal experts declaimed on the precedents and consequences of Congressional inaction. Everyone remarked with relief at the sudden and effective actions of the military. Every multimedia news producer was desperate for a half-hour interview with the man of the hour, General Morgan Slaider. Or for fifteen minutes. Even two. Especially before the morning prime time had passed. Cabinet members were everywhere, talking, while saying nothing.
As Marshall turned off his telescreen to leave, the last item he heard was that the airports were closed and that military police were locking up Washington, sealing it off.
He slammed his apartment door shut and raced down the stairs. For the first time he was grateful that he lived outside the loop. They could close off everything inside the loop but it would be impossible to extend the fence, to seal off Washington beyond it.
54
From the New Jersey Turnpike you couldn’t tell what was happening in New York. In fact, you couldn’t tell you were in America, except for the English writing on the signs and buildings. It could be a highway anywhere in Europe. Probably anywhere in the temperate latitudes. The heat, the brown-green grass of summer, the weeds beyond the mowed track, all were anonymous, undistinguished, universal. It could be anywhere.
But it was not anywhere, Marshall thought, as his mind continued to swirl out of control, despite the dulling drive. It was the United States of America. The more perfect union. The land of “We the people . . . ” Only no one really knew who was in charge.
From the time he got in his car at about 8:30 in the morning until his approach to the George Washington Bridge, James had listened to a continuing stream of speculation. No one had the facts. And it was becoming apparent that the people were not happy with the delay in reestablishing the continuity of government.
55
The politicians were drifting aimlessly, anxiously seeking the scent of the trail of events, the pundits at their heels with their own assessments. The news professionals were everywhere, quoting everyone. Administration officials, quoting the vice president, praised the efficiency of the military in protecting the president and assured the country that the Federal Bureau of Investigation was hot on the trail of the perpetrators. No new deaths or attacks had been reported.
The vice president appealed to the patriotic spirit of the remaining crowds of demonstrators who had broken through police lines, appealing to them to cooperate fully with the military police and to leave the city quickly and peacefully when they received their exit passes. He appealed to the arsonists to stop setting fires. He understood their frustration and anger, but the fires were not the kind of support President Drummond needed, he insisted.
The city of Washington, DC was shrouded in a gray smoky gloom.
Telescreen clips of the key moments were shown over and over again. Over and over the message was emphasized that the president was not dead, that he was in a secure location, in control. There had been no word of the extent of the president’s wounds, no interviews with surgeons, no reassuring shots of the president waving to America from a hospital bed. So no one believed what they were hearing on the radio or seeing on the telescreen. The internet was wild with speculations. The blogosphere was, as might be expected, over-the-top with accusations. In the midst of an irrational series of events the news people, the professionals, struggled to find rational explanationsand found none.
56
Marshall had driven the tedious route from Washington to New York and back many times. He always remarked to himself how entering the New Jersey Turnpike invariably seemed to imply he had made a major step forward in completing his trip and yet how mile after identical mile later he still seemed no closer to his destination. It was an impossible stretch of straight road that normally left him numb by the end of it.
This time it was different.
From the moment he entered his car he lost all awareness of his driving or of the miles or of the familiar, depressing landmarks. There was no opportunity for
tedium, though Marshall might have preferred the comforting balm of monotony to the distracting mental anguish he struggled to subdue.
He felt better having reached the Jersey Turnpike. He had been apprehensive about the Delaware Memorial Bridge. It was a choke point that he was afraid might have been closed. He could understand the Army sealing off Washington. With the killings and the attempted assassination of the president and five hundred thousand angry demonstrators slowly turning destructive, anarchy had been threatening. No government could allow that to continue. He thought Slaider had done a good job of reassuring the people and taking decisive action. In fact, Slaider’s words seemed to be the only ones in Washington that were substantive and supported by evidence and accomplishment. This was not lost on the people.
Just over the bridge, on the Jersey side, he stopped at a service plaza and called AJC Fusion. No one answered. That made sense, he thought. With Cranshaw and Berman hopefully in hiding probably everyone had been sent home. He tried Sylvia’s apartment and there too the phone rang uselessly. He decided he would try her apartment again from the Vince Lombardi Plaza just outside of New York City. He’d get some gas and a sandwich there. If she still was not there he would call the FBI. Surely they would have her under protective surveillance by now because of her association with Cranshaw and Berman. In fact, he thought, he too was probably under surveillance because of his articles about AJC Fusion. Could he be a target of the energy conspiracy? What possible threat could he or Sylvia be? Or was this to be like the bloody purges of ancient and even more recent periods when entire populations were put to the sword as a warning to rebels and free thinkers?
The radio was a comforting presence for Marshall. Thank god for the news media, he thought. Thank god that America had preserved a free press. Obnoxious, insensitive, biased—all that, yes, but free. Not fair. No, he never accused the media of being fair. He knew it was all a business just like any other, that the media reflected the prejudice of the owners. Fair, no. But free, yes. Free to probe and pick the sores, free to come at you again and again from every point of the compass, free to persist because if one reporter falls away or if almost all fall away, there may still be that one reporter left who believes there is a story there behind all the stonewalling and smoke screens and he or she will be there watching and waiting when you think they have all gone and you can never be completely rid of them when the scent is on you.
All during the ride to New York, the radio journalists were sniffing and sniffing, looking for the trail. Why couldn’t the reporters talk to the president’s physicians at Fort Belvoir? What was his detailed medical condition?
Why was there no medical press conference? Who was in charge of the president’s medical care? Who was running the country? Who was responsible for the Washington killings of the student activists, and who was responsible for shooting the president?
Marshall looked at his watch. It was 11:30 a.m. Maybe five hours since the president had been shot. Not so long, really, when you think about it. After all, it is a rather confusion-causing event, to have your president shot. Five hours is not so long, considering. But still, you would think that we would want to get some facts out fast to keep other countries from miscalculating presumed opportunities. But then, they probably could not react any faster than we can.
And yet, that scent was there. And it was emanating from the fog of obfuscation. Washington journalists inevitably become experts at reading the distinctive shape and texture and smell of fog. And this one, though fresh from the sky, was beginning to take on an odor uniquely its own.
As Marshall pulled into Vince Lombardi Plaza, Dan Philips of CBS News was announcing the mysterious disappearance of the speaker of the house. Attempts by the media to interview one of the people in the line of succession to the presidency had vanished. In addition, as there had been no parade of high-ranking government officials to Fort Belvoir, Philips and his colleagues were all but calling the government liars and that any fool could see that the president was not at Fort Belvoir. Relentlessly Philips asked, “Where is he and what is his condition?” Everyone they asked either did not know or repeated the essence of the vice president’s statements during his morning press conference. The bullshit divining rods were twitching.
57
Sylvia still was not at her apartment or was not answering her phone. Under the circumstances, that might be her strategy—to let no one know where she was, Marshall reasoned. He would go to her apartment. She would let him in when she heard his voice . . . if she were there.
She wasn’t there.
He called the FBI and they told him nothing. He tried to call Dick Scully at the Courier office, but all he could get was a busy signal. He drove to the foot of the Brooklyn Bridge and parked. Across the East River was the Manhattan skyline. It’s the water, Marshall thought. It’s the water that makes it so impressivethe way it frames the buildings on the bottom and the sky frames it above and it’s all buildings in between. The same skyline in, say, Philadelphia, would not have the same power. It’s the framing, he was sure of it.
Marshall got out of the car and walked to the edge of the dock. The air was still and stifling. The slight case of hay fever he had was making his sinuses pound and he was unable to get a full, deep breath.
You watch and listen and read the news everyday and stay close to every breaking development. It all seems so important at the time. Then you go on a vacation for two or three weeks and there are no papers and no telescreen and the breaking developments continue, but you don’t know about them. And it doesn’t matter. The world goes on without your awareness. What’s the sound of one hand clapping or a tree falling in a deserted forest—or a crisis you didn’t hear about?
A president is shot. It’s not the first time. It’s probably not going to be the last. And all the worrying and fuss about it is of no use or purpose and is a stupid waste of energy. And if I waste energy or don’t waste energy, he thought, so what?
But I’m no fatalist, he argued with himself. All the infinite destinies of the earth, of humanity, of James Marshall are not the same. Some are better than others. Some are better than others for James Marshall. What it all comes down to, the bottom line, James, old boy, is that you are the bottom line. You accept what your principles and values and self-image allow you to accept and you resist what they force you to resist. And you don’t know where those critical balance points are until you bang into one. Can events be both important and unimportant at the same time?
Was the black plague important and unimportant? I guess it was, he thought. To those who died it was important, but the reality is, even with a third of the population of Europe wiped out in six years’ time, life went on such as it was. And if it didn’t go on, then we wouldn’t be worrying about it now anyway, would we?
Who gives any thought to the black death now? And the people of the time undoubtedly thought it was the most important thing happening to mankind ever. And maybe it was. But to some Hindu guru contemplating his navel in a cave in India, untouched by the disease, the black plague meant nothing. Or to some self-sufficient, isolated hamlet population who did not even know there was a plague, the plague meant nothing. But to those in its grip it was the most horrific catastrophe that ever struck mankind. And now, of course, it means nothing, nothing at all. History is just our verification that a world before our immediate experience really existed. Nothing more. The turns and twists are just the sound and fury of the tale told by an idiot, signifying nothing in the end since we never know whether this turn or that twist not taken would have been better. There is no way to tell.
Would a nuclear war end up the same ambiguous way? Would the death of a president or the squelching of an idea for unlimited power to serve mankind end with the same ambiguous results? Is anything ever absolutely and exquisitely important? Is anything worth risking your life for, either physically or through dedication of precious time? Is nihilism at the bottom of it all, politically and socially, the way a kind
of quantum chaos seems to be at the bottom of physical reality?
Thinking. Too much thinking.
Marshall turned and walked slowly back to his car. The interior had become broiling hot. He rebuked himself for not having left the windows open—for compulsively closing the windows and locking the doors. Now it was like an oven in the car. He reached across the hot and radiating seat to open the passenger door. With both doors open, the car cooled enough in a few moments for him to venture sitting inside. He slid in and turned on the car auxiliary power in one movement. As he adjusted himself behind the steering wheel, he turned on the radio for the latest news. It was two o’clock.
“ . . . released by General Morgan Slaider affirms the jurisdiction of the military in providing protection to the president during this emergency. In the press release, the president praised the work of the Secret Service agents and their courage and offered condolences to the family of Agent Chadwick who died from wounds he sustained in his effort to protect the president. The president also praised the military for the efficient manner in which they assumed responsibility for his security when it became apparent that the Secret Service was overwhelmed under the circumstances.
“After reading the presidential press release, General Slaider provided a brief schedule of events for the press. Dr. Raymond Lewis, Chief Medical Officer at Fort Belvoir, will hold a conference this afternoon at 4:30 p.m. to describe the president’s condition and entertain questions.
On Deception Watch Page 21