There was some murmuring and a raised voice or two, and Carl tried to remember to breathe. George spoke up. ‘That’s a slight possibility, I’ll grant you that. But look at ‘em. Haven’t all of you — every one of us — known that we never knew the real story of what happened back in 1962? That General Curtis was just too brave and too perfect? That JFK was too easy a villain?’
A few voices spoke up and then the managing editor, the oldest man in the room, raised a hand. ‘I knew Kennedy, you know.’
The room fell silent as the managing editor began to speak. ‘I knew Jack when he was a congressman, and then a senator. He wasn’t perfect. None of us are. He had an eye for pretty girls and he also knew how to work the press. But he was a damn good man. He might have screwed up in the Pacific with his PT boat, but he got his boys out. And he was hurt at the Bay of Pigs, everyone knew that, but he learned from his mistakes. He had great plans for this country, for its people. I knew Jack, and the stories of him that came out after the war, that he was overwhelmed, that he was cowardly, and that the last anyone saw of him, he was weeping in the Oval Office, too frightened to leave on an escape helicopter ... that wasn’t the Jack I knew.’
He pointed to the source documents still in the executive editor’s hands. ‘That’s the Jack I knew. The man in those memorandums, the man who had to deal not only with Russian missiles in Cuba, but a crazed general who wanted war. And the man who stuck it out in the White House, to the end, trying to reach an armistice. That’s the Jack I knew.’
The managing editor turned away, as if ashamed of the tears that were now streaming down his face. ‘You want to know what I think? I think I’ve been waiting for this day for ten years now. We have a responsibility to print the news. That’s what we’re here for.’
More voices, and someone said, ‘Look, we’ve got to wait on this. We can’t rush this into press,’ and another voice, ‘Paul’s right, we need additional confirmation.’
George said, ‘The hell we do! Look, either we go with this in the next edition, or it’ll never run. You know that. People will start talking and whispering and spreading rumors of what we’ve got here, and by the end of the day, Army Intelligence will have these papers and most of us will be in a detention camp. You know that. We can’t wait.’
The executive editor was now looking directly at him. ‘Carl, this is your story. What do you say?’
He looked around at the editors and George and all those faces, all now looking at him for advice, looking at him for counsel. A high school graduate from a little port town who didn’t do much except wear the Army green for a few years, and who eventually learned how to write for a newspaper. Now all of these eyes were staring at him, waiting for him to say something, anything, about this story. A story that was going to change the world.
He cleared his throat. ‘I’ve been at the Globe nearly four years. I’ve always wondered what kind of newspaper we would be, and what kind of nation we could have, if it weren’t for the censorship.’
Another moment of silence, and then the executive editor slowly nodded, got up from his chair, and handed the papers back to him. ‘We haven’t been a real newspaper for a decade, Carl. I guess it’s time we learn what it’s like again.’ He turned to the other editors and smiled wearily. ‘Anyone pack an extra toothbrush today? I have a feeling there’s a good chance we might not be at the newspaper tomorrow.’
The managing editor wiped his face with a handkerchief. ‘Remember what Ben Franklin said. If we are to hang, it’s best we all hang together.’
Carl thought the laughter was forced and not so hearty, but it was good enough. The executive editor looked to George and said, ‘We still have a problem. Major Devane.’
George had a satisfied look on his face. ‘Don’t worry about Major Devane. I’ll take care of it.’
The executive editor nodded and said to the room, ‘Gentlemen, let’s leave Carl and George to their work.’
~ * ~
About a half hour before deadline, after a long hour of edits and rewrites and retyping, the story was done. Carl’s head was throbbing with a headache, his back ached, and his fingers were cramped, but it was done. He wasn’t sure how, or where, he would sleep tonight but at least the damn story was finished.
Jim, he thought. I kept my promise to you and PS 19 and the others. Let’s see if that was good enough.
George called to the newsroom and a copy boy came over, and he handed the story to him in a plain brown envelope. ‘Send this to Phil in typesetting. Tell him it’s from me and it’s “eyes only.” He’ll know what that’ll mean.’ Then he made a phone call to the print shop. ‘Mark? George over in the newsroom. You remember I told you a while ago I might need some help? Yeah, yeah, I still owe you fifty bucks from last week’s game. You’ll get it soon enough, maybe from my estate. Look, I need your help, in about fifteen minutes. All right? Great.’
George hung up the phone, reached into a filing cabinet, and pulled out a small flask. He poured them each a drink. ‘No tea this time,’ he said, grinning, ‘just real sippin’ whiskey.’
Carl took a tiny mouthful, to be polite, and said, ‘You were in on this right from the beginning, right?’
George’s eyes narrowed a bit as he took a drink from the small glass. ‘I’m not sure I’m following you, Carl.’
‘Right from the beginning,’ Carl said. ‘I was assigned to the Merl Sawson murder story. And you sent me to the British consulate, to meet up with the British reporter, Sandy Price. And this morning, when you saw what I was writing, it was like ... it was like you expected that I would come up with something. There was something going on with the Merl Sawson case and you thought I’d get to the bottom of it.’
Carl gestured to the framed photo of the young girl on George’s desk. ‘Your niece. She received medical treatment in London. That was a deal, wasn’t it? Your future cooperation with British authorities in exchange for the medical treatment. Am I wrong?’
George put the glass down on the desk. ‘Nope.’
Even as tired as he was, he felt a flash of anger. ‘You might have told me.’
‘Wouldn’t have worked,’ George said, picking up the flask again and then, apparently thinking better of it, putting it back on the desk. ‘When you started here, Carl, I checked out your service record. I had a good idea of what you were capable of. I saw you working here in the newsroom, putting up with a lot of crap, not losing your cool, getting the job done. You’re no quota baby, Carl. You’re a damn fine man and an even better reporter. Well, this was one job I wanted to see get finished. You were my first, last, and only choice to do it.’
Carl stared at the overweight man with the ridiculous retro black-and-white clothing. ‘Who the hell are you working for? British intelligence? The McGovern campaign?’
George sighed, like an old prizefighter trying to gear himself up for one more match. ‘No, to both of those questions. In fact, I don’t much like McGovern. Too soft in the middle, don’t think he could make the tough decisions. No, Carl, you know what I am? I’m a newspaperman, that’s all. just a newspaperman trying to get something back. Trying to loosen things up so we can have real newspapers again, report real news, have real elections, and maybe have a real government to call our own. That’s all. There are other people out there who think the same way. Some are organized, others aren’t. All I know is that I got a couple of phone calls from people I trusted, asking me for help. Some of these people were Americans, some were British. And I provided it.’ He patted a hand on Carl’s notes and the ten-year-old documents. ‘Gladly.’
Carl took another polite sip and then said, ‘You know, here’s the truth for you, George. I hate whiskey. I hate being told what to do. I hate being used for other people’s purposes. And right about now, I think I hate being a newspaperman.’
‘Good for you, it’s a hell of a business,’ George said, finishing off his whiskey. ‘What are you going to do instead, write a book?’
He started gatheri
ng up some of his notes and papers. ‘Truth be told, George, I just finished one, not a few days ago.’ He shook his head. ‘The last chapter might need a bit of a rewrite. I wrote it before this stuff all showed up.’
George stood up, clapped him on the shoulder. ‘Well, before you start rewriting, let’s go to the newsroom. I think you’ll enjoy what’s going to happen next.’
He opened the door to the usual bustle and noise as the deadline for the next day’s newspaper approached. Carl made to go to his own desk but George smiled widely and said, ‘Here, have a seat next to me. A ringside seat, you could call it.’
Carl sat down and looked out at the reporters, seeing with satisfaction the puzzled look from Jeremiah King. He wondered how his guided tour of Manhattan had gone. And then he noted with surprise a furtive wink from Jack Burns, the music critic. What kind of place was this? Secrets within secrets? A newspaper that was doing more than just reporting the news? There was a flash of blue and he looked over to the vending machines and coffeepots, where a group of five or six pressmen in their blue, ink-stained jumpsuits were talking among themselves.
Then, more noise, more disruption. He looked up and Major Devane was striding through the newsroom, his shirtsleeves rolled up, his tie askew, a fist clenched around some yellow copy paper. ‘Dooley!’ he yelled. ‘You stupid clown. How in God’s name . . .’ Then he spotted Carl and said, his lips firm with fury, ‘You! Sergeant Landry, you better hope you got your lead-lined underwear packed, because before this night is out, you’re on your way to Omaha.’
George smiled sweetly up at the major. ‘Something I can help you with?’
‘This!’ Devane snarled, shoving the papers under his nose. ‘Do you realize ... this is outrageous! Slanderous! Not to mention violating at least six sections of the National Security Act, which you and everyone in this newsroom has signed! This cannot and will not go to press!’
George rested his hands behind his head. ‘And what do you plan to do about it?’
‘You ... So that’s why my phones are out!’ Devane looked around the newsroom, his eyes wide. ‘You’ve planned this. All of you! All of you are conspirators! All of you will be facing serious jail time for even attempting to print something like this! And I’m not going to allow this to go to press!’
Devane reached for a phone on the desk and George snapped forward and grabbed his wrist. ‘I don’t think so.’ Devane struggled and said, ‘You fool, that’s assaulting an Army officer,’ and then Carl sat up as the group of pressmen were suddenly at George’s desk. The largest of the group, whose beefy hands were stained with ink, said, ‘Mark said you might need some help, Mr. Dooley.’
George was now grinning widely and let go of Devane’s wrist. ‘That’s right. Take the good major here and take him back to the rear conference room. Be nice and polite but don’t let him leave, don’t let him get near a phone. And don’t worry about anything he says. It’s all been taken care of.’
Devane looked around again. His face was flushed, and Carl knew what he was thinking. Besides everything else, Devane was now seeing his career fade away. ‘You ... you…’
The city editor’s smile was now gone. ‘Would love to chat with you, Major, but you know what? We’ve got a newspaper to put out. A real newspaper, for the first time in ten years. And you know what else? You’re fired. You’re a lousy person and an even lousier editor. Guys, get him out of here.’
Devane started yelling again but the pressmen—a couple of whom got into their task with some enthusiasm—started pulling him down the corridor. Some people in the newsroom stood up to get a better view, and a handful of others started clapping.
‘And another thing,’ George called out, standing up. ‘You couldn’t edit worth shit. I don’t even think you could spell “cat” if I spotted you two of the letters.’
Carl looked on. ‘It’s not going to be that easy. There might be some people here working for him.’
George settled back down in his chair. ‘Tough. The thing is, this place has been stuck in a rut. We’ve just smashed the routine. Without hearing from Devane, the Boston C.O., he’s not going to do anything on his own. He’ll buck it up the ladder and by the time a decision is made, the paper will be on the streets. We’ll send it over the wire. And we’re going to courier it out tonight, to other newspapers, just in case the news wires get cut.’
Carl laughed and George looked at him strangely. ‘What was that about?’
‘Oh, just a historical note, I guess. That just seems appropriate, considering what Paul Revere started from this city, almost two hundred years ago.’
‘Don’t get silly on me, Carl. Besides, I’m allergic to horses.’
He thought about Jim Rowley, about the anschluss, about a lot of things. ‘This story is going to have an impact on the election, you know.’
‘Good.’
Carl said, ‘And another thing, George. There’s going to be a big story coming out of Manhattan in the next day or two.’
George turned to him. ‘Really? What kind of story?’
‘One that will be on the front pages of every newspaper in the country. But the Globe can get to it first.’
He was grinning again. ‘Tell me more, later. Do you want to do it?’
‘No,’ he said. ‘I’ve had my fill of Manhattan. Send somebody else.’
‘Jeremiah King?’
A dead island, he thought. Maybe it was time for someone to visit a living island. ‘No. Send Bobby Munson.’
Then the executive editor came in, holding layout sheets for the next day’s paper. ‘Heard some commotion out there. Everything all set?’
‘Things are just fine,’ George said.
The executive editor put a layout sheet on George’s desk. ‘I was just going over the final layout for tonight. There’s an item I want cut from page two. Put in a house ad or a news brief or something. But I want this goddam item cut out. Care to do the honors?’
George picked up the layout sheet, eyes glistening with emotion, and then he passed it over to Carl. ‘John, I think Carl should take care of this little business.’
Carl looked down at the layout sheet, seeing the locations of the ads and the placement of the page two stories and headlines. And stuck down by the corner, in all its glory, was a small little piece:
To our readers: The stories appearing in today’s Boston Globe have been cleared by the U.S. Army under the provisions of the Martial Law Declaration of 1962 and the National Emergency Declaration of 1963.
He picked up a pencil and with a fury that even surprised him, he drew a large X across the copy with such force that the point of the pencil broke.
~ * ~
EMPIRE: SIX
A MATTER OF EMPIRE: SIX
* * *
And so it began.
Major Kenneth Hunt was in the loud and cramped hull of an RAF C-130 Hercules transport, heading south to their target, heading south for what he knew in his bones was a mission that would eventually lead to the deaths of millions. He found himself thinking of that poor RAF crewman, the one who had so desperately tried to sabotage the mission. He hated himself for thinking so, but he wished the poor bloody bugger had succeeded.
He was forward, near the cockpit, and he glanced back at the helmeted paras, sitting stiffly in the webbed seating, their 7.62 mm SLRs at the ready. Each had a main chute on his back, a smaller, emergency parachute on his chest, and a small pack attached to a leg, which would be released just before landing. The sound of the four engines made normal conversation impossible, and most of the men simply stared straight ahead. In less than an hour his lads would be forming two lines and exiting through the doors on either side of the aircraft, behind the landing gear fairings, jumping into America, ready to kill men who thought they were allies.
He thought about his brother Clive, and the talk they had had, some weeks ago, about empires gone and empires reborn. He was sure Clive would see some sort of black amusement in the fact that the troops of the new
British empire were out to do their dark deeds in America tonight, in transport planes manufactured in these same United States.
Well, in just a few hours it would be over. He checked his watch. Hell, in less than twenty minutes they’d be on final approach to Plattsburgh Air Force Base, and a number of young American Air Force men down there, working or maybe dreaming in their sleep, well, they would be dead very soon. He and the lads were going to do their job, and do it right, for the Queen and the Regiment, and after it was over, maybe it was time to muster out, go overseas. Australia, he thought. When the next nuclear wars started, maybe Australia would make it through. Now, if only he could convince his sister and Clive to join him, that would be wonderful.
But the guilt, he thought. Could you live with it, after what happened?
He closed his eyes, thinking of Rachel, her laugh, her touch. Poor Rachel, dead all these years, probably buried in some mass grave in India. He sighed, felt something begin to ache in his chest. Maybe we wouldn’t get to Australia, he thought. There would no doubt be shooting on the ground when they landed, when the Americans realized what was going on. A little aggressiveness on his part, and he could end it all tonight, on the ground, and be with Rachel again.
Resurrection Day Page 52
