Coffee Betrayal (Chapter 33 - 1st draft)

“Alright, Harry,” said Miriam, “What is it?”

Trueblood looked up from his coffee and peered at his wife, unaware that his eyebrows had lifted. It was a reaction less of curiosity at her question than from surprise by her tone. The cheerfulness she served at breakfast was as customary as the accompanying black coffee, scrambled eggs, toast and orange juice.

Miriam's smile was the same as always but her voice came out too soft. It was as if she was confiding something to him in a hotel lounge during happy hour. They were alone in their kitchen, and she'd made no effort to lean toward him as one would do in the hotel-lounge scenario. So...

Trueblood set his cup down as his brow relaxed, and considered her words. Off the top of his head what is it? meant nothing to him. A quick scan of likely contexts found no hits. Her question apparently had come completely out of the blue. He focused closely on her eyes.

“What is what, Miriam?” he asked gently.

“Something's wrong, Harry. It's not like you to keep things from me.”

“Nothing's wrong, Miriam. I'd tell you if there was. You know that.”

“Harry.”

They sat awhile looking earnestly at each other. Trueblood slurped coffee and his wife munched on a piece of buttered toast. Trueblood broke the silence.

“Look, Miriam, where is this coming from? What makes you think something's wrong?”

“Harry, you put creamer in your coffee.”

“Huh? I what?”

“Creamer, Harry. In your coffee. You put creamer in your coffee. You never put anything in your coffee...”

Trueblood stared at his cup as confusion disturbed the natural composure of his face. “What the...” He cut himself off and looked up at Miriam. “I did,” he said, barely audible, shaking his head as if to deny what he was seeing. He added, “I must have been distracted. I don't remember doing it. I don't know why I did it.

“It is odd, I agree, Miriam, but I don't think it means anything.”

She reached across the table and took his hand. Her smile grew wider. “It wouldn't mean anything if I did something like that,” she said. “You know I get distracted easily. But not you, Harry. You're always so focused.”

He rocked back in his chair, breathing deeply and letting it out in a noisy sigh followed by a half-hearted chuckle. “You're right, Mimi. My focus is my strong suit. I guess...well, I have had a lot of things to focus on lately. You know that. Maybe I've gotten a little jammed up. Too much on the plate, huh?”

“Harry, who are you trying to fool? It's me, Miriam, your loving wife. You always have a lot to focus on. It's what you're good at. Something else is bothering you. Don't try to deny it. It worries me that you're keeping it to yourself. I've never known you to keep something serious from me. Ever. And frankly I'm not sure what to think. I'm a little hurt, Harry.”

Descent to the Bunker (Chapt. 32 - 1st draft)

Small pangs of dread began arcing through Geddes's intestines halfway down the seemingly endlessly spiraling concrete stairs. His first thought was that he might be experiencing a wave of vertigo or maybe a flashback from his own experience with Vulcana. He took several deep breaths, but the clammy feeling persisted. Probably the greater sense of depth into the Earth from the stairs. His only other visit to the bunker – that he knew of – had been by elevator with Ruth on her introduction to Camp David after the Inauguration.

Morowitz explained that he'd had the stairs installed because of his claustrophobic fear of elevators.

“I've gotten it under control pretty much,” he told the others in the lodge's tool shed, where the staircase entrance was hidden, “but I don't want to come unglued in a crisis, and heading down there would mean we were in a pretty stressful situation, I figure...and, well, I guess you could call this a fairly stressful situation, too.”

He grinned sheepishly and turned his palms to his guests. “You can take an elevator if you like. There's one in here...that door there, looks like a closet.”

Ruth looked at others, shrugged. “I've never felt all that comfortable in elevators, either. Besides, I can use the exercise.”

And so the procession started, speechless at first, cautiously down the steep, narrow staircase, footwear scuffs on concrete steps. A pervasive alien mustiness pricked the nostrils with growing disfavor. Blue lights, strategically recessed along the descent in the rock-walled silo, glistened off the steel handrail creating an eerie surreality that seemed to mock the intruders with a discomfiting urgency. Morowitz explained that blue light was easier on his eyes at night. “Doesn't affect the pupils like white light does.

“We keep it blue in the bunker, too, but can switch it up gradually to white if we're gonna be down there awhile. Sort of an artificial dawn...heh heh.”

Whether the blue light was what bothered Geddes it was definitely the light that replaced his anxiety with something new and truly frightful. He saw it in the way the light treated Ruth's eyes when he heard the shoe scuffing falter directly behind him. Leaning against the rail, he turned and braced himself in case Ruth had lost her balance. He found that she, too, was leaning and that her grip on the rail was so fierce her arm trembled. He took a step toward her and put his fingertips on her wrist.

He saw that her eyes were glazed in the way he'd learned to view with alarm. He saw them from an angle in which the light, refracting oddly within the unfocused lenses, magnified them to create the illusion of shimmering discs, electric versions of the empty ovals Orphan Annie and her dog Sandy presented as eyes in the comics.

Bad Landing at Camp David (Chapt. 31 - 1st draft)

Marine One wobbled down through the thickening afternoon clouds and broke clear less than a thousand feet above Catoctin Mountain Park. The heavy copter skimmed over bristling forested terrain, slowing when the distinct contours of Camp David appeared. It eased into a hover before descending onto the concrete helipad where it made contact with an unpleasant thump.

“Don't tell me Maj. Erskine disrespects you, too?” Ruth said as the rotors wound down.

The president's sheepish grin and wagging head was answer enough, but he added, “I don't think so, Ruth, but I really don't know. Coincidentally they transferred the major awhile back, right about the time the paper started giving away those little magnifying glasses so people could see me in the cartoons. I think they use cadets to fly me now.”

Moments after the engines went silent the forward compartment door snapped open and a stocky young man in a shiny olive drab flight suit stepped into the passenger compartment. Without speaking he gave an impatient flap of his hand beckoning them to disembark. Ordinarily the other passengers would defer to the president to go first, but Morowitz nodded to Ruth, sitting nearest the door, to precede him.

She stood, turned and found herself staring into the young Marine's plump face. His jaw was moving slowly, rhythmically as if he were chewing gum, an act of insolence that by its mere suggestion sprayed a quart of psychic fuel onto her rage, ignited moments earlier by the clumsy landing. His facial muscles, working the gum, assumed the contours of a smirk that further aggravated the disrespect he conveyed. Ruth scanned the nonchalantly pulsing face until she came to a pair of cobalt eyes that peered through her without a glimmer of recognition she was there.

“Bring the pilot out here,” she snapped, glaring at the unseeing eyes. It wasn't until the Marine showed no reaction that Ruth noticed the twin white strings forking from a pocket in his jumpsuit and ending in each ear. The slap came without warning and with such fury it rocked the Marine on his heels and flung one of his earbuds with its tether onto his shoulder where it dangled, emitting the predictable cadence of a defiantly chattering hip hop cricket. Ruth reached up and jerked the other bud from its fleshy nest.

She said in a tight, hard voice, staring first at the nametag sewn into his flight suit then back into his now wide, startled eyes, “Henderson, huh? Well, Capt. Henderson, if you haven't heard the old infantry expression 'don't step on your dick', it's too late now. You've just jumped up and down on yours. Do you have any idea who your passenger is?”

“Whah, yes ah do, Miz Pres...”

“I'm not the president, you goddamned fool! The president is standing behind me...

“Ah'm aware...”

“If you were aware, Henderson, what were you doing chewing gum and listening to that shit you call music? Is this the kind of discipline they're teaching now in the Marine Corps?”

“No, my-em, ah shore do...”

“It's way beyond too late if you were thinking of apologizing, captain. You might as well kiss your career goodbye. If I had my way you'd be cooling your ass in the brig until I came up with a way to boot it out of the Corps for good.

“Speaking of asses, tell that incompetent pilot to get his out here right now!”

“Uh...yes'm...uh.” He lurched backward, bumping past the bulkhead, and stumbled toward the pilot's cabin. Ruth cursed when she saw him close the cabin door behind him. A heavy hand on her shoulder kept her from following him into the forward compartment.

When the buck stops

I saw surprise distort Albert's face when he appeared in the doorway that separated his office from what he called “the big office”. He was holding the morning mail pouch, which he ordinarily carries to my working office across the oval room where I sit now.

“Good morning Albert,” I said. My voice came out unusually light, almost cheerful. I found myself giving him the smile I usually save for the public.

“Good morning, ma'am,” he said, after quickly composing himself. He added, “You're here early.”

I held the smile and nodded. “I am. This is an important day and I just felt like getting a head start.”

“Yes, ma'am, I left a note on your...other desk that the ambassador has taken ill and won't be in this morning as scheduled.”

“Oh? Well, that's just as well. Gives me more time to prepare.” He set the mail pouch on the corner of the Truman Desk, bowed slightly and hesitated. I knew he was concerned about my haggard appearance, but I had no desire to tell him what was wrong and he knew better than to ask. “Thanks, Albert,” I said, and he bowed again and returned to his office.

The stress I've been feeling the previous couple of weeks has been unprecedented, ever since the second call came in. This call had no video, but I dreaded it as I had dreaded nothing else. The call came after breakfast as I walked from our living quarters down to the West Wing. I recognized the unique ring tone that had heralded the first call, the trumpet flourishes that introduce Hail to the Chief.

The first call had come on Inauguration Day as my husband and I were getting ready for bed. There was a short video and the text message: “Congratulations! We'll be in touch.”

Bill was in the bathroom. The video ended before he came out. I didn't tell him, partly because I didn't wish to spoil the moment and also because I was unable to save the images. There was no evidence of what I had just seen.

The video was old. Its colors were faded and marked by scratches and the other signs of deterioration incurred by film over time. What the video depicted was a familiar scene, one I had seen many times over the years, filmed by a man named Abraham Zapruder. The only difference was this film had been shot from a higher elevation and at a considerable distance from where Zapruder was standing. This was looking down from what we know as The Grassy Knoll.

I decided not to tell anyone about the call, sensing intuitively it was not a prank, that the video was real and represented a conspiracy so enduring and complex I knew I couldn't trust anybody with what I'd seen. I served the next two years with a darkness on my heart. I avoided the Oval Office except when absolutely necessary, feeling its mockery of the neutered office it represented. Finally two years later came the moment of truth.

In an Oval Office ceremony later today I am to sign the most controversial piece of legislation of my presidency thus far. It's the health care reform bill we should have gotten in 2010. It passed Congress by the slimmest of margins. It could not withstand a veto. The second phone call informed me a veto was expected. My constituents will disown me if I do so. I would sooner die.

Nov. 22, 1963

 

Executive Pink (exerpt)

The Sting

Guests are filling the place up now. It’s funny the attraction Hollywood has for people - even the real people that Hollywood people pretend to be. A dozen Medal of Honor winners would hardly draw the likes of both House Speaker Edith Glick and House Majority Leader Gus Rosenow and Sen. Jay C. Tillers and Edna Usher and the Vice President and Sen. Bart Gladstone and…Bart Bullshit is here? Why that sure as hell is him, and that’s Crowell Kenyon pushing him in a wheelchair. Well, shit, will wonders never cease. But of course. The old lecher wouldn’t miss a chance to try and pinch Lorelei Walquer, death bed or no. I suppose I gotta give the fat prick some credit for gumption.

My kids’d be here, too, under normal circumstances. As it is, they don’t even know Lorelei Walquer is in town. The President’s nanny is tending them and has instructions to keep them away from the West Wing, no matter what.

So which TV crew is Lorelei’s? There is quite a pile of them gathering in front of the colonnade, but I should be able to recognize one or two of our villains if they look anything at all like the photos I studied. Trouble is, all the men are wearing hats, or caps or bandannas - not because it’s sunny, which it has become, which is why I’m wearing my faded black Leon Russell cap (visor forward), but because it’s fashionable. I am not being condescendingly judgmental of them. Simply stating a fact. I assume they’re the same bunch that routinely attends White House press events and their heads are covered, always, as they are now whatever the weather, outdoors or in.

My watch says three o’clock. This is it. Any minute now. My god, here comes the President. Adele is with her. I should be with her, too. They came out of the Colonnade Door precisely seven steps from where the dais and bank of microphones are set up. [sustained applause] And there’s a group right behind them. I see Lorelei. [applause continues] She’s wearing white pants. God, I love white pants on women. Don’t know why. Just do. Her blouse is black. Great combination. Hair is kind of piled in back. Parted a little left of center over her forehead. Devastating. Thank god she’s wearing shades. I’ve been worried about the danger of looking in her eyes. Now I won’t have…

Jayzuz, something’s wrong! Roger Ashmore is supposed to be with the decoy van, but he’s up there with Lorelei. He looks funny. I’m, what, ten feet from the dais and it looks like…oh, shit. Ashmore’s wearing the girdle! Something is wrong. WARREN! GODDAMMIT, WARREN, WHAT’S HAPPENING?”

People all over the garden are yelling FREEZE! and DON’T MOVE! Where the hell are Warren and Rose? This is totally out of control.

“OOOF! Get off me, god damn you!”

“It’s all right, sir, it’s Special Agent McClean. Just stay down..”

“What the hell’s happening, Orlo? Where’s Bob…where’s your boss?”

“I’m not permitted to say, sir. But you know he’s supposed to be with the President. I’m assigned to you right now, but if it looks like the President needs help I’ll be following my secondary assignment, sir, and I’ll have to go to her.”

“Well you damned well better, Orlo. Protecting the President is your primary assignment. Always has been, always will be.”

“Strategically, yes, you are correct, sir. But this is a tactical assignment, and until I learn differently I’m afraid you’re stuck with me.”

“Not going to argue with you, Orlo. You have the gun. Just don’t freak when you hear me talking to myself. I’m wired. Transmitting to a tape recorder in my office. Historical record, you see.”

“I see, sir. You go right ahead, sir. I won’t pay it no mind.”

“OK.” Ashmore’s face has gone almost as white as Lorelei’s pants. A couple of men wearing reversed baseball caps are moving from the press area toward the dais. They’re reaching into their vests. Guns? No doubt. Orlo McClean is raising his pistol toward the two men. He’s holding it with both hands. I think he’s going to shoot.

“Wait, Orlo! Follow the script!”

“Can’t do that, man. Looks like the script’s been tossed out. [UNGH] Orlo’s just collapsed in front of me. Someone’s grabbing my shoulder from behind. “What…”

Executive Pink (excerpt)

Spirit of Security

The usual rooftop gunners are at the stations they man twenty-four hours a day every day, but today there seems to be more of them. Maybe they’re just more exposed than usual. Can’t imagine why, unless it’s so they can get a better look at Lorelei Walquer. I can dig it, although I should hope they have a better reason, a security reason. I hope they’re taking this job as seriously as Special Agents Orlo McClean and Hector Cyre. Assigned specifically to guard the President’s body, they are standing next to the Oval Office, in front of the colonnade where the ceremony will take place, practicing their surveillance swivels.

Of the two, McClean is the runaway smoothest. He may be the smoothest who ever lived. By contrast Cyre seems like a mechanical doll: left, 180 degrees right, then quarter back, center, quarter left, left, 180 degrees right, 180 degrees left, then quarter back, center and so forth. His moves aren’t grotesquely jerky, but there’s a certain sameness about them. The timing didn’t vary. Anyone keying in on him could figure out the pattern in no time, then do whatever they don’t want him to see when he’s at the back of his arc, like the Stalag 17 boys playing mouse to the Nazis’ searchlight cats.

McClean is an artist, an actor. His baggy suit, sunglasses and earplug give him away as an agent, but his head swivels are much craftier than Cyre’s. McClean uses a syncopation - a little quicker here, an elongated pause there - and other movements, such as rubbing his fingers under his chin, to distract from the positioning of his head. And he looks like he’s really looking at things, that things have gotten his attention. There’s brow movement as if he’s squinting to get a better focus. He’s so convincing in appearing to be actually looking at something that if you’re watching him and if it’s not you he seems to be looking at you’re inclined to take a look yourself and try to find out what it is he may be seeing.

Only if you watch him awhile does it become obvious there can’t be that many different things of interest to a Secret Service agent that don't require more action than hard looks. There’d be running, leaping, tackling or even gunfire, surely. And if you’re watching Cyre, too, you’d know that if he saw something really suspicious he’d become less mechanical, more reactive or, one would hope, more improvisational. Their lips would be moving as they murmured into their little throat-worm microphones.

Executive Pink (excerpt)

It's a Plan

I liked the sound of the word abduction a lot better than the word assassination. I still do, even knowing it’s only a subtle difference, that the gunfire that can break out in a kidnapping attempt is just as deadly as a shot aimed carefully at a presidential cranium. Maybe it’s the softer consonants. I think it’s something more, though. There seems to be something more civilized, more liberal, socially considerate about the terror of seizing a living body and holding it prisoner until terms are met than the terror of deliberately murdering someone. While assassination may be more sophisticated, there’s an element of ignobility about it that’s missing from abduction.

As a reward for his opting for life over death the kidnapper assumes a greater risk of himself being caught and perhaps killed. Akin maybe to the Lakota brave counting coups with his lance, touching the enemy to let him know he could have killed him. I’m not sure what the tactical point of this might have been, unless it was to win a psychological advantage. Abducting a modern U.S. president has got to be rapturously ballsy if not a plain stupid thing to do. “Four months yesterday, sir,” Ashmore said. He looked to be in his late twenties and spoke in the flat, rapid, memorized manner universal among rookie cops and soldiers addressing superiors or civilians. “You sleeping with her?” “Sir?” “Are you having sexual congress with Miss Walquer, Agent Ashmore?”

“Sir, with all due respect…”