Black Tide

by Brendan DuBois

  I dialed the long-distance number and it was answered on the first ring. "Briggs Associates."

  Answered on the first ring. Not bad. Maybe there was hope for American business yet. I cleared my throat. "Public relations, please. "

  "One moment." I was put on hold, and instead of the mind numbing monotony of hold music, I was given an audio feed of CNN Headline News. Nice touch.

  A click, and then a woman's voice, "Public affairs, Mr. Rossum's office."

  "Is Mr. Rossum in, please?" "

  Hold on." As I listened to a CNN report on fighting in South Africa, I rehearsed the patter I was going to try. For the first time this day, I would identify myself as Lewis Cole, writer for Shoreline magazine out of Boston, Massachusetts, who was looking to schedule an interview with Cameron Briggs.

  Another click, and a man's voice.

  "This is Gus Rossum."

  I opened my mouth to say something and then I stopped. And I hung up on him.

  A few hours after that I walked out of my house and locked the door. I then got into my Range Rover and drove up the trail to the Lafayette House parking lot. I had changed from my shorts and T-shirt of earlier that day and was wearing my working clothes, which included a navy-blue blazer and necktie. My reporter's notebook was on the passenger's side of the Rover. I was prepping myself for a little work. My headache was gone.

  As I drove north on Atlantic Avenue, heading for Wallis, I thought of Mr. Gus Rossum of the public relations department of Briggs Associates, and decided he was probably used to getting ,hung up on all the time. Probably number-two item in his job description. But unlike a lot of other callers he probably received, I had no malice in disconnecting my call to him. It wasn't personal. It was strictly business. In those few seconds of waiting for him come to the phone, I had decided that a truly Gold Star day could not depend on dancing the formal game of schedules, questions and return phone calls that PR people are so adept at performing.

  So this evening, I was going to pass up that game and try another. Traffic was steady but not too heavy, and it only took a few more minutes than usual to pass over into Wallis, and there it was. The number 4 in brass on the brick wall, and I was doing quite nicely, thank you, for the wrought-iron gate was open. I turned left and went up the crushed-stone driveway. Little lamps set into the side of the driveway lit my way up to the house. There was a light gray Audi parked there, the same one I had seen the other day. The house and its two large wings were as big as I remembered them, and lights were on behind every floor-to-ceiling window.

  I went up the brick steps to the wide front door as if I belonged there, carrying the reporter's notebook in my hand. Before I rang the bell I pulled my press identification card out of my wallet and slipped it into my shirt pocket. The bell made no sound that I could hear from outside, but the door opened up in less than a minute and a man answered, wearing lime-green shorts and a white hip-length polo shirt. He carried a golf club in his hands.

  "Yes?" he asked, and from his tone and manner and from what Paula Quinn had told me, I knew I was standing before Cameron Briggs.

  My Gold Star day wasn't over yet.

  Chapter Eighteen

  In working where I did, in the unofficial Marginal Issues Section of our little group, our workday was sometimes interrupted by the occasional visitor. It always followed the same pattern. We were told by E-mail or memo from our section leader, George Walker that a visitor would be by during a certain time. Our desks would have to be cleared of anything that could not be allowed to be seen by the uncleared or the uninitiated, which meant --- at least for our section --- that our desktops for the most part would be thoroughly empty.

  Then the visitor would come by, herded by some higher ups. They'd go into George Walker's office --- the only one with a door --- and engage in about ten minutes of idle chitchat before coming out for the tour of our work area. That usually took about another ten minutes, since our section was so small. However, I recall once when a retired senator who was serving on some intelligence board, and who had a propensity for liquid lunches, stopped at our information center and railed on for long minutes about our subscribing to the Tass news service, back when there was a Soviet Union to be scared of. The ex-senator slurred a lot of his words, but basically, his point was that we shouldn't allow such Communist propaganda into the Pentagon.

  From the pained look on his escorts' faces, I didn't envy them their job that day, or any other day, for that matter. On one particular visit, the gentleman coming by was a new Assistant SecDef for some office or whose main talent was being from the home state of the current President and a hefty campaign contributor. He had also been a big executive in one of those food conglomerates.

  On most days, we called these visits sheep shows when George wasn't around, but on this day, cattle show seemed more appropriate. The man was large and bulky, with a bright red face and a grin that seemed stitched in with wires. George did his best, which wasn't much. I caught the eye of Cissy Manning, and she winked in my direction while going past the information center. My next-door neighbor, Carl Socha, had disappeared, though on some occasions he'd stay and on rarer occasions he'd actually Play the Game and be fawning and friendly and the best DoD black budget employee ever.

  One day at lunch in the center courtyard of the five-sided palace --- known affectionately as Ground Zero --- I'd asked him why, and in a quite reasonable and serious tone, he'd said, "Lewis, I'm very good at what I do, but I'm also working against three hundred years of history in this country and about fifty years of history in this building, when my father and my uncles were only good in this department for being mess stewards or working in construction battalions. I'm doing everything I can to clamber up that hill, and if it means kissing butt on occasion, so be it. One of those nitwits we meet might one day get kicked upstairs to become SecDef and he might need a bright guy for his staff, and in the fine tradition of affirmative action programs everywhere, he just might pick me, and I might be in a position to help my brethren. So that's why I do what I do."

  I'd said that was a hell of an idea, and asked him to pass the ketchup. Then on this occasion George Walker brought the new Assistant SecDef around to the different cubicles. He hemmed and hawed a bit when he came to mine, mainly because I was sitting in my chair, feet up on my desk, trying my damnedest to do the previous Sunday's New York Times crossword puzzle.

  "Um," George said, not even daring to cross over the threshold into my office space, as if he was afraid I was going to contaminate him with some Bohemian virus. "This is, um, Lewis Cole. One of the more unique members of our section."

  I nodded and went back to the crossword puzzle. I don't do the puzzle to impress anyone --- in fact, I do it in pencil, and I've never succeeded in even getting close to finishing one off. I do the Sunday puzzle for two reasons, though: to stretch my mind and to bring myself back to earth anytime I feel like I'm getting too cocky for my own good.

  The new guy, with his escorts and hangers-on grouped around him, poked his head in and said, "How's it going, young man?"

  I was stuck on a five-letter word for a mountain range in North Africa, and I looked up and gave him my best government employee smile and said, "Not bad, but I sure could use a Coke and an order of large fries."

  Well. Some faces dropped and others turned red, but the new guy gave a satisfied nod and went on with the tour, as though nothing had happened, and I wrote in the word ''Atlas.'' About five minutes later Trent Baker came by and said in his patrician New York voice, "I'm sure that you're quite aware that Mr. Walker is upset with you."

  "Quite," I said, trying to remember the name of the French premier during the Vichy regime. Trent smiled and walked away, looking like he moonlighted as a model for GQ. Coming from one of the richest families on Long Island, he had decided to dedicate his work to his nation instead of the family business. A rare bird. I don't know if he realized that his sense of devotion and loyalty to his country were now considered an anachroni
sm by Those in the Know. Then I shrugged and wrote in "Laval."

  About ten minutes later George Walker called me into his office and shut the door and said, "Cole, you're one of our best, which is why I'm directed to give you wide latitude, but why do you insist on making my job difficult? Why do you insult the visitors who come here and make the whole section look bad?"

  At the time George Walker was going bald toward the front of his head, and when he was upset, the whole front dome of his skull glowed a dull red, like a heated doorknob.

  I shrugged. "I don't know, George. I guess I have an attitude problem toward rich yahoos who come in here because they're connected. They make a mess of things for a year or so before getting bored and moving on, leaving the rest of us here to clean up after them."

  George shook his head. "That's not an attitude that's going to get you anywhere, Cole. Not at all."

  I winked at him, which I think disturbed him almost as much as my Coke and fries crack. "George, let's take a page from our work and look what's before us. You and I and everybody else here didn't quite fit in, and we've been classified as oddballs. That's why we're here, in the Marginal Issues Section."

  "That's not its title," he snapped. "We're the Room 112 Subgroup. "

  "George, you're not following procedures. You're letting your emotions cloud your analysis. This is the Marginal Issues Section, and that's who we are and what we do. The only career path for me is your office, and I certainly don't want your job."

  Well, that comment didn't sit well, and George started moving papers left and right on his desk, and he spoke low to me and said, "Cole, I'm doing everything possible to get out of this section, and if you want to stay here, fine. But I'm not."

  I left and looked back through the glass of the door. His head was bowed over his work and the color was quite red. Poor George. He had a plan to move on up, and part of that plan, I later learned, was treatments to restore hair to his bald spot. He had gone through one treatment before he and the rest of the section were killed.

  That memory came back to me as I sat on a stone bench in the rear yard of Cameron Briggs's house and watched him at play on his putting green, knocking little golf balls into a series of holes in a lawn that was so perfect and smooth it made the grass out front look like it belonged to a wild Nebraskan prairie. This was the first time I had ever been up close to a putting green, and was true, the balls did make a little rattling echo each time they went into the hole. As I watched Briggs at work, I was reminded of that Assistant SecDef, for Briggs was a lot like him. Not in physique or dress --- Cameron was about my height (six feet) and ten years older, with short salt-and-pepper hair, but as in better shape than me and had a slim muscularity that spoke of determined hours in a health club. No, it wasn't the shape that reminded me of that ex-hamburger maven turned DoD official. It was the attitude of being above it all so much in terms of class and money that nothing mattered. I guessed it was the self-confidence that came to somebody when they had money, enough money to buy anything: handsome looks, an oceanfront home worth millions of dollars or a fancy job in the Pentagon.

  I got a taste of that self-confidence not more than fifteen minutes ago, when he had answered the door and, after listening my lying spiel, invited me in for a drink and conversation. While making my drink in a room that had a bar that would not look out of place at the Lafayette House, he had said, "You'll note that there's nobody here tonight. Just a week ago I got sick of them just hanging around, and I gave them all --- the cook, gardener and maid --- two weeks off. Gad. Sometimes you just want be alone, away from people, especially people that you support, that just keep on looking for more money."

  By now my jacket was off and I was drinking a weak gin and tonic. I was bowing a bit to the surroundings, for I had decided my usual Molson Golden Ale wouldn't quite fit in with the fine Mr. Cameron Briggs and his summer cottage. My reporter's notebook was in my lap and Briggs kept up a running commentary as he stroked each golf ball into a hole in the putting green.

  "Hmm," he said, his voice firm and low, like that of a former radio announcer. "Shoreline is doing a story about the residents of the seacoast and their reaction to the Petro Star spill. Hmmm."

  The ball popped away from his putter and in a second or two made that satisfying clatter into the hole. He nodded and moved. The putting green was next to a stone patio that butted up against the house, which had high, elegant-looking glass doors leading inside. There were other stone benches and a lot of shrubbery, and more indirect lighting from small lampposts set into the ground. There were no insects buzzing around, no flies, sand fleas or mosquitoes. I guess it is true, the rich are different from you and me, and the reason this night was that they could afford superb insect eradication.

  Briggs popped another ball in. He looked up at me. "Suppose there is no reaction, Mr. Cole? Does that pose a problem for your story?" I sipped at my drink and said, "No, it doesn't pose a problem for the story, but it does pose a question. Why the lack of reaction?"

  "Hmmm," he said, looking down at the ball with a firm look of attention. "That's a fair question, deserving of a fair answer."

  Another ball went down under the rapid fire of Cameron Briggs, and he was finished. He made a grasping motion with the club that suggested some taste of triumph, then sat down across from me on another bench and held his putter with both hands, twirling it back and forth, almost like a baton.

  He said, "My answer, I guess, is that I didn't speak quite clearly. It wasn't a lack of reaction, but a lack of the expected reaction. I'm sure you came here looking for the standard comment to plug into your standard story, about the standard outrage and how upset we all are about this tragic environmental disaster on these pristine shores. Bah. I may sound cold and heartless. I really don't care about that. The oil on those shores is the price we have to pay."

  Briggs held the golf club still and moved forward, leaning into the club and almost using it as something to prop him up. “We live in an advanced, technological and extremely complex society, Mr. Cole, and if there's more than a few thousand people out there who realize how complex it really is, I'd be surprised. You know, I made some very bitter enemies out there, back in the Eighties, when the Cold War seemed to be getting warmer. Some collection of do-gooders came by, wanting to get my name on a resolution for a nuclear freeze or some numb-nut petition, and I told them it was a waste of time. I told them that there would never be a nuclear war. Never. They couldn't believe me when I d that, and they demanded proof. Do you know what my answer was?"

  I looked into my drink for a moment. "Nuclear war would never come because it would unnecessarily deplete the customer base?"

  He smiled at that one. "No, though that's amusing. No, I said there would never be a nuclear war because it wouldn't make sense. It was too expensive, too bulky and too blunt an instrument. I told them that if and when a war came, it would be simple and direct. In fact, I told them I could shatter this country in a week and all it would take would be less than ten million dollars and a hundred or so well-trained men. You know how I would do that, Mr. Cole?"

  I decided he was looking for a more serious answer than my previous one, and I said, "Vulnerabilities. Choke points. Utility switching yards. Computer rooms. Some refineries, maybe a bridge or two."

  Briggs nodded vigorously as I responded. "Exactly. My God, people don't realize how easy it would be." He swiveled and made a gesture to the north. "Up about an hour or so from here electrical substation in a remote part of the New Hampshire woodlands. At a party last summer, a Public Service of New Hampshire exec told me all it would take would be one man with a high-powered rifle and in twenty minutes this entire state would be in a blackout. That's just one man with a rifle. One man with an explosive charge in a computer room in New York City could take out the air traffic control system for the whole Northeast. Hell, you read about it all the time, Mr. Cole, how a computer chip burns out somewhere and the entire long-distance network for AT&T collapses. It wouldn
't take much."

  I doodled something in my notebook. "So do you have your hundred-man army ready, Mr. Briggs?"

  He smiled again. "Hardly. But that's the point I make. More than 99 percent of the human populace stumble through their lives, not knowing --- and probably not caring --- about the elaborate juggling act that takes place every day to keep them alive. The gasoline trucks that slide into the neighborhood service station. The tractor-trailers that roll in and out of giant food stores. The pharmaceutical companies that make the necessary drugs and treatments. Such a juggling act the world has never known before, and it wouldn't take much to bring it all to a screeching halt. Can you imagine New York City if all the grocery trucks were to stop going in for a week? A month? Those fools told me that they prayed for no nuclear war, and I told them they should pray for no national truckers' strike. And while you're imagine no trucks moving across this country, imagine the impact of a national computer programmers' union, and what would happen if they sat home and didn't go to work."

  Briggs got up and motioned to me to follow him, and since I was working, I did. We walked across the patio and through tall double glass doors and into the kitchen area, where I deposited my now empty glass. The kitchen had two enormous gas-fired stoves, side by side, and there was a walk-in cooler and freezer against a wall. Pots and pans of every possible size and shape hung from wooden beams overhead. If there is such a thing as kitchen envy, maybe I was feeling it about that moment.

  From the kitchen we passed a formal dining room --- tall chairs grouped around a polished table that looked like it would cover a bowling alley --- and through other rooms that I soon gave up trying to give names to. There were paintings on the walls --- some nineteenth-century and some modern art --- along with a collection of statuary and several wood-and-glass display cases with cut crystal and china. Somehow we ended up in the white tiled front hall, and I followed Briggs as he pranced up a curving staircase, his leg muscles quite defined as he took the stairs two steps at a time. Through it all, he carried his golf club, and I was beginning to wonder if he slept with it.