“Okay, first we’ll discuss things, then we’ll write. I suppose you know you’re navigating along the very edge of the cliff right now, don’t you, Wesley?”
“I am?”
“Well, Jansen and Sunderland do need you. No one writes better than you do. What flows from your pen is sheer brilliance—but be careful. You are under surveillance.”
“Yes, and you as well. We all are—don’t forget it.”
Burton sat down and folded his well-worn hands. Hands that had stretched towards heaven in prayers that his father come home safely from Vietnam. Hands that had picked fruit throughout the Midwest to earn enough to feed his small brothers and sisters and tormented mother. Hands that had shook the hand of everyone Wesley admired. “You believe you know something, don’t you, Wesley? Something about who rides the high horse and who slogs along behind, in the mud.”
“I just know that everything you’re saying now is being recorded, and that Sunderland hears all that his people choose to discuss.”
“I see! So that’s what you think you know? Okay, then . . .”
Burton cupped his hands in front of his mouth like a funnel. “Is it really true, what Wesley’s saying, Mr. Vice President?” he yelled into thin air. Then he shook his head. “You’re so young, kid,” he said, poking around in a stack of papers. He pulled forth a light-blue, lined sheet of paper with writing on it and thrust it towards Wesley.
It wasn’t hard to recognize Donald Beglaubter’s block-letter handwriting. A hand just as childlike and clumsy as its executor had been mature and gifted.
The paper contained a list of names, more or less in order of rank. All were members of the government or important public officials, and next to each name stood a list of occurrences—not all of which Wesley was familiar with—but each one an instance that gave the same unpleasant feeling.
It read:
PERSON:
EVENT:
President Bruce Jansen:
Murder of wives Caroll Jansen and Mimi Todd Jansen
Secretary of Defense Wayne Henderson:
Forced to execute fellow soldier during interrogation in Vietnam
Vice President Michael K. Lerner:
???
Chief of Staff/Vice President T. Sunderland:
Lost a platoon of which he was captain in ambush in Grenada
Attorney General Stephen Lovell:
*Mother and daughter raped and seriously injured in attack
Secretary of State Mark Wise:
Daughter-in-law hospitalized in psychiatric ward after witnessing a murder
Chief Supreme Court Justice T. Manning:
*Assassinated
Secretary of Interior Betty Tucker:
Sister murdered
Secretary of Homeland Security Billy Johnson:
Son killed with knife in robbery
Secretary of Agriculture Rod Norton:
Father killed in hunting accident
Secretary of Commerce Jay W. Barket:
*Son’s best friend killed in shooting incident
Secretary of Education Lena Cole:
Neighbor killed during break-in
Secretary of Transportation Joseph Barrett:
Best friend killed during military exercise
Acting Chief of Staff Lance Burton:
Sister-in-law paralyzed after shooting attack
Secretary of Labor Alison Ramsey:
???
Acting Chief of Communications D. Beglaubter:
*Nephew in same class as child killed in shooting incident
Press Secretary Wesley Barefoot:
House Majority Whip Peter Halliwell:
Son killed by gunshot
Senate President Pro Tem Hammond Woodrow:
Involved in accidental shooting as boy
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Omar Powers:
Wounded in action; attacked and wounded by Vietnam veteran in Biloxi
Burton’s voice brought Wesley’s thoughts back into the room. “What do you make of it, Wesley?”
“Wow . . . I don’t know what to think. Do you know when Donald wrote it?”
“He gave it to me a day before he was assassinated.”
“Why?”
“I’d made a similar list, too. We were going to compare notes.” He opened a drawer and laid a sheet of paper next to Donald’s. They were surprisingly similar in content.
“The entire Cabinet, and ourselves as well. Jesus!” Wesley almost couldn’t believe it. “You have a sister-in-law who was paralyzed after being shot?”
He nodded. “Yes, my youngest brother’s wife.”
“I don’t get it. Most of the persons in charge of running this country have been involved in some kind of terrible episode involving firearms. It’s simply unbelievable.”
“Yes, but scarcely a coincidence.”
“Scarcely a coincidence?” Wesley shook his head. He didn’t know what it was—coincidence or not. “There’s a star next to some of them. What does that mean?”
“That the incident occurred after Jansen became president.”
“Oh, right. Of course.” He nodded. “What significance does one find here?”
“Whatever significance you like.”
Wesley skimmed the list one more time. He, too, had lists in his drawer containing the dates of violent episodes during the past three weeks. Laying all three lists side by side left one with more than mere misgivings—it was enough to make you sick. He wondered for a moment if he shouldn’t destroy his own list. On the other hand, could one be certain there was some conscious agenda behind all these dark deeds? Could a person be so cynical as to orchestrate misfortunes such as these, or was there some other cause?
He looked at Burton. “Isn’t it possible to imagine that, statistically, practically all families in this country have had experiences like this?”
“No, it isn’t.”
“But if these aren’t coincidences, then this is really terrible. The president has used the criterion that almost all the members of his staff have some violent, negative episode in their past involving firearms.”
“Aside from those who have worked for him for many years, yes, that could be the case.”
“What about the incidents that have occurred since Jansen took office? There was a shooting at a school, for example. Can anyone in his right mind suggest that these weren’t coincidences, either?”
“I don’t know. I’m not suggesting anything.”
Wesley suddenly froze and looked around like he’d forgotten where he was. God, what had he gotten himself involved in? Here he was, verbalizing the worst accusations imaginable for the surveillance mikes. “Dammit, Lance,” he whispered, “you should have stopped me. This room’s bugged!”
Lance Burton showed his ivory teeth. “Come here,” he said, pulling him into a side chamber that had once functioned mostly as an archive for legal circulars. “Here it is. Anything else you want to know?” He pointed at a stack of black metal boxes.
“I don’t get it.”
Burton smiled again. “Everything that is said and video-monitored in this
place is recorded on these hard disks. Then the information is beamed over to the Department of Homeland Security to be analyzed.”
“My God, this makes Nixon’s eavesdropping look like amateur night—which it was, kind of.” Wesley tried to fathom the ramifications, but it wasn’t easy. “Is it you who’s in charge of this? I thought it was Sunderland’s idea.”
“He would have preferred it like that, but I beat him to the punch. Sometimes you’ve got to be ahead of the game if you want to maintain control and an overall perspective—as you well know.”
“But hell, Lance, do you have the vice president bugged as well? I can’t imagine him putting up with that.”
“So far, the president’s, the vice president’s, and my office are not under audio surveillance. That was the deal.”
“So far? But they wear badges just like the rest of us, don’t they?”
“The president’s, Sunderland’s, mine, and Ben Kane and his people’s are merely badges—no microphones.”
Wesley raised his eyebrows. “Thanks for the show of confidence!”
Burton looked him in the eye. “This is for real, Wesley. Not one word of this is to get out. You have to promise me that.”
Wesley didn’t know how he should answer. There were a few too many unknown factors involved here. Lance Burton was capable of seeming ingenuous, but big, brown eyes weren’t always to be trusted. To get as far in life as Lance had, one had to cut some corners. But, by and large, he trusted his chief of staff. Burton was a good man, and Wesley was willing to promise him to keep quiet, unless conditions in the future spoke against it. So he nodded. “I promise, Lance. Naturally,” he said.
“Good. Then put this on.”
He handed Wesley a badge identical to the one he’d been issued.
“Here, wear this one instead. It’s just like mine: no mike or perimeter alarm.”
It wasn’t until then that Wesley noticed his old badge had disappeared. He patted his pockets and looked around on the floor.
“No, you didn’t lose it in here. It’s lying in the crack between the cushions in Thomas Sunderland’s sofa. I knocked it off your jacket at an opportune moment during our meeting before.”
Suddenly, Wesley remembered when it had happened. “So that’s why you reached out after me. It wasn’t only so I’d keep my mouth shut.”
“No, not only. We just have to hope the janitorial crew or Sunderland don’t find the badge too soon.”
“What is it you’re trying to achieve?”
“I need proof.” He pointed at Donald’s paper.
“Then maybe you’d better start listening in on the president.”
“Yes, I know, which brings us to the next point. I’ve ordered the glazier to replace the Oval Office’s armored glass windows facing the lawn, but some of the glass panes have bigger ears than others, if you know what I mean.”
This sent an icy shudder down Wesley Barefoot’s spine. Was this really possible? Could a window pane actually be a bugging device?
“Why are you telling me this, Lance?”
“There’s a greater chance that one of us gets out of this unscathed than if I go it alone. That, plus the fact that I trust you, Wesley.”
“Will the surveillance done on Jansen and Sunderland be sent to Billy Johnson?”
“No, not at the moment—just all the other tapes.”
This wasn’t pleasant to contemplate. “You mean, all the bugging of our badges and telephones and all the videos are automatically sent to Homeland Security?”
Burton nodded. “Yes.”
Wesley bit his lower lip.
Then Burton pointed at the two black boxes at the bottom of the stack. “Let’s concentrate on what’s in these two. The top one is connected to the surveillance camera in Sunderland’s office—without sound, unfortunately—but the bottom one compensates for that, because it’s the one that does the video and sound surveillance on your office, Wesley, and also picks up the signal in your badge. Do you see what I’m saying?”
“So you can spy on the vice president through a combination of the video camera and my badge?” This was getting to be too much. “Is there video surveillance in the Oval Office, too?”
“No, not there.” Lance Burton stood up to his full height and opened the cover of a large metal case that hung on the wall above the hard-disk boxes. He threw a couple of switches and activated a monitor that gave an extremely sharp black-and-white picture of what was happening in the vice president’s office. “This button here switches between the different cameras,” he said, changing from Sunderland’s office to Wesley’s, to the Roosevelt Room, to down along the hallway. Then he changed back to the meeting that was still going on in Sunderland’s office.
Wesley looked at the monitor. The most important politicians in the land were taking a coffee break. If one didn’t know better, one might think it was a local Rotary Club meeting: a chat about the world situation over a cup of coffee, and then over to a friendly game of poker. And maybe, in essence, that’s all it was.
“Listen . . . !” said Burton, sticking a wire into the box that tapped the sound from Wesley’s badge. Apart from a faint buzz and a slightly metallic sound, the signal came through loud and clear, sending another shiver down Wesley’s spine. Here sat the president of the United States’ chief of staff and press secretary, eavesdropping illegally on the president, the vice president, and the secretaries of Homeland Security and Defense, as they discussed a colossal national crisis. It was the kind of act that gave a long, long prison sentence—if you were lucky. People had been known to simply disappear for less.
He attempted to catch Lance Burton’s eye. “Do you think this is ever going to work, Lance? Isn’t it much too risky? How can you be positively sure we’re not being watched and listened to, even as we speak?” He stared at the closed door into the communications room, expecting Ben Kane’s bloodhounds to break it down any second.
Burton shrugged his shoulders. If he’d calculated that risk, he apparently wasn’t going to let it bother him. Instead, once more he said, “Listen.”
They were stirring their cups of coffee at the moment, sitting across from one another with straight backs and measured movements. No one cleared his throat; nobody spoke evasively or hesitantly. They looked directly at one another as they agreed on how to further tighten the iron grip on their country. How to cripple the outside world’s influence on the course of events in the United States and close down foreign satellite transmissions, and how a series of viruses would be released on the Internet to do the job. And how all domestic telecommunication would be curbed and controlled. They did so with the taste of fresh-roasted coffee in their mouths and the feel of fine leather upholstery at their backs. The Department of Homeland Security had already drawn up a timetable, and the Defense Department had taken the appropriate military measures. From what Wesley and Lance could understand, it would all be put into effect in a matter of days. They observed how Thomas Sunderland poured himself a glass of cognac and asked for rapid implementation. They saw how intensely President Jansen was listening to everything and how his face gradually relaxed.
He appeared to be satisfied. This was all about control.
A series of dismal, disquieting thoughts jarred through Wesley’s head. It was like hearing a death sentence being pronounced.
“What do we do?” he said, so quietly that it was surprising that Lance Burton heard him.
“Well, Wesley . . . That is what we’re going to discuss.”
CHAPTER 26
Doggie tried to call T. Perkins’s cell phone as she and Ollie drove through the downtrodden neighborhoods of New Jersey. It was Saturday, about three thirty in the afternoon, and she was getting desperate. What was T up to, since he was so hard to get hold of?
Ollie Boyce Henson was sitting next to her, rocking from side to side, his eyes glued on the
female scenery as though these were the first proper ladies he had seen in ages. As though DC had been totally devoid of them.
When they reached the Bronx, she asked him to drop her off a couple of hundred yards from Rosalie’s street, convinced that the less he knew about where she was going, the better for both of them. She gave him the $2,500 and asked that he and his car wreck move on.
He raised a fist in acknowledgment and solidarity, the wide grin a clear sign of how pleased he was with the whole deal—as well he should be. For $2,500, he could get whatever he wanted. A few joints from his cousin, a pair of luminous Jordan basketball shoes, and for sure a couple of full-chested, willing honeys who would far surpass those he’d just been drooling over in Jersey. Yes, it was a happy man who boosted the volume on his stereo, floored the gas pedal, and disappeared up the street.
She stood for a moment, feeling a rare pang of envy, thinking that if she had it all to do over again, she’d try to live as simply as Ollie Boyce Henson.
* * *
—
Doggie thought she knew what to expect, but the grimness and poverty that greeted her on Rosalie Lee’s street was appalling, even though she’d seen worse conditions where she came from, like filthy trailer parks with filthy kids and corrugated-tin, plastic-sheeted shanty towns that signaled failed lives and impending doom. Still, this type of depressing, graveyard-gray, crumbling, big-city grandeur was more overwhelmingly tangible. It was only a hundred yards from the street corner to Rosalie’s doorway, but her anxiety grew every step of the way. Not for fear of being mugged or being paralyzed by despair, but for the unfamiliarity that oozed out of every crack in this concrete quagmire.
She was met by hostile stares as she went. The locals couldn’t care less about her gaudy clothes and whether she was a wanted criminal or a TV star, but they did care that she was white and obviously unashamed of the fact. They were ready for anything, checking out her vigilant eyes and trying to suss out what she was doing there.
The Washington Decree Page 33
