by James Philip
“You want me to throw the guy out?” The man asked hopefully.
“Mister John works with Mister Francois,” she explained pleasantly, secretly itching to slap the bigoted security man’s face because she understood that nothing short of a slap in the face would actually get his attention, “the President of the San Francisco chapter of the NAACP – that’s the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People – an organisation which the Governor has personally invited to join the California Civil Rights Forum.”
This drew a completely blank look.
“Of which,” she added, sweeping regally out into the first floor corridor and heading towards the central atrium, “I am the Secretary designate!”
“Oh.”
Miranda was striding purposeful towards the stairs leaving the man breathlessly stumbling in her wake.
Dwayne John was a handsome, towering man with the frame and substance of a heavyweight boxer just a month or two out of the gym. He rose ponderously to his feet as he heard Miranda’s feet ringing on the stone flagstones. Like most state capitols California’s was built to outlast the ages, an expression in marble, stone and alabaster every bit as totemic as the castles Medieval kings and queens had planted across Europe and the Holy Land in centuries past.
“I did not expect you to call today, Mister John?” Miranda queried, with a lot less gravitas than she had planned. Dwayne John was a born again Christian and a devout servant of Dr Martin Luther King, to whom Sunday was God’s day.
“I prayed this morning with my brothers and sisters in San Francisco,” the man assured her. “Dr King says a man respects the Sabbath if he does God’s work all day long every day.”
“Yes,” Miranda muttered. “Perhaps, we might go to the refectory. I’m sure you’d like a coffee. Have you eaten this afternoon?”
The big man smiled.
“Coffee would be good,” he confessed.
It helped that they were meeting in public.
When she had represented the Governor’s Office in State Attorney General Stanley Mosk’s high profile exercise to free Dwayne John from unlawful FBI custody – in what now seemed like an age of innocence before the madness of the last week – she had thought that was that. Terry Francois, the dignified and really quite remarkable man who was President of the San Francisco chapter of the NAACP had taken Dwayne under his wing; and Miranda had tacitly assumed that in due course Dwayne would go back to Atlanta and continue his work for Dr King’s organisation.
The new California Civil Rights Forum was apparently the brainchild of Attorney General Mosk and Governor Brown’s chief of staff, both men possibly having had their elbows jogged by Terry Francois. She had only learned on Friday that Dwayne John was to be the NAACP’s Liaison and Communications Officer, and that the Office of the Governor of California had put her name forward as the CCRF’s first Secretary and Public Relations Officer.
“I never got the chance to thank you for all you did for me,” the black man said as he fell into step with his host. “For me and for Darlene both, that is.”
Miranda did not trust herself to look at the man.
“Have you spoken to Darlene yet?”
“No.”
“She’s going to be staying with my Aunt and Uncle for the foreseeable future in San Francisco.”
“I know. I walked by their place a couple of times last week before a cop rousted me,” a resigned guffaw. “He reckoned I was casing the joint!”
Miranda tried not to see the funny side of it.
“Well, you were in a manner of speaking. You were getting together the courage to face Darlene again, I mean?”
The hulking man at her side chuckled with low, rumbling pleasure for a moment. He had been looking curiously at his grandiose surroundings.
“Every time I go into a government building back home there are signs all over the place. NO BLACKS. WHITES ONLY.”
“That’s not the way of things in California,” she retorted, a little offended.
“Ain’t it,” he queried, gently, “isn’t it what’s in a person’s head that matters; not what he writes on the walls?”
Chapter 19
Sunday 15th December 1963
The Pentagon, Virginia
Acting Major General Colin Powell Dempsey, Washington State Emergency Disaster Management and Civil Defense Commissioner, and Commander of the Washington State National Guard did not know why he had been asked to fly east other than that the ‘request’ – the invitation had been couched in the most diplomatic of military language and addressed to his boss, Governor Al Rosellini – for his ‘presence’ originated directly from General Curtis LeMay, the new Chairman Designate of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee.
“General LeMay is briefing the President,” General Harold Keith ‘Johnny’ Johnson, the Acting Chief of Staff of the United States Army explained, shaking the sixty-one year old Hanford born Washingtonian’s hand. “He will join us as soon as possible.” Johnson looked to the other man in the small underground briefing room. “Have you met General Shoup?”
The acrid taint of burning still hung in the atmosphere.
Dempsey looked at the Commandant of the Marine Corps.
“No, sir. I have not had that honour.” He and the Marine saluted, before shaking hands.
For Dempsey, who had retired from the ‘real’ Army several years ago and been a Colonel on the reserve list in command of the de-activated 307th Mobile Cavalry Regiment on the night of the October War, to be in the company of two honest to God American heroes, was actually a little daunting. Fifteen months ago he had been running his family’s lumber business; now he was attending a council of war in the basement of the Pentagon just days after an insurrection which had rocked the country to its foundations.
“LeMay says you lined up most of the scumbags you captured at Bellingham and machine-gunned them, Dempsey?” Shoup inquired brusquely, eyes narrowing a fraction.
“Yes, sir.” Dempsey was not about to start apologising for eradicating vermin.
“What did you learn from the prisoners you took back to Olympia for interrogation?”
“Nobody mentioned ‘Red Dawn’ or any of that baloney, sir,” the junior man replied respectfully. “The people at Bellingham weren’t political or religious they were just the scum of the earth.”
Johnny Johnson sighed.
The three officers were standing next to a situation table showing the current ‘state of play’ in the District of Columbia and the surrounding designated ‘Military District’. Areas of the capital city were still marked as ‘no go zones’ where the military was permitted to ‘fire at will’, many roads were still shut because of the activity of lone snipers or the suspected existence of improvised explosive devices or undetonated munitions, or booby traps. Less than two-thirds of the District of Columbia and approximately half-the surrounding ‘Military Zone’ were directly under the control of the Military Governor.
It was estimated that as many as a thousand suspected ‘insurgents’ were still at loose within the ‘Zone’.
Dempsey studied the table sidelong for a moment.
“The people in Bellingham were at war with several of the groups holed up in the foothills of the Cascades. Some of those groups appear to have stolen military vehicles from National Guard depots, or maybe from across the Canadian border. My information is that the Canadian authorities have big troubles with ‘hold out’ and ‘survivalist’ groups who tend to hideaway in the backwoods and mountains unless they need supplies. My assumption is that the groups holed up in the foothills of the Cascades east and north east of Seattle probably raid across the border into Canada most of the time. The pickings around Seattle and south most of the way to the Oregon state line won’t be good and these guys tend to avoid large military garrisons; which means they stay well away from Hanford.”
Colin Dempsey tried and failed to keep the exasperation out of his voice. The giant Hanford nuclear facility had a permanent post-war ga
rrison of equivalent to three to four battalions of mechanized infantry supported by two companies of Air Mobile cavalry with about thirty helicopters, Hueys mostly. If a small part of that force had been made available to him he could have snuffed out the obscenity of the Bellingham ‘occupation’ months ago.
The Acting Chief of Staff of the US Army grunted noncommittally as if he was reading his subordinate’s mind.
“I think things will be different in the weeks and months to come, General Dempsey,” he murmured thoughtfully. “Today we asked you to join us in our discussion as to how best to ‘wrap up’ out current local difficulties in the DC area. However, it is much on our minds how we should proceed to resolve the ongoing ‘issues’ elsewhere in the Union.”
Dempsey met the level gaze of the fifty-one year old North Dakotan. Johnson had been with the 57th Infantry at Fort McKinley in the Philippines in 1941, falling into the hands of the Japanese after the fall of Bataan in April 1942. He had survived the infamous ‘Bataan Death March’ and over two years bestial imprisonment at Camp O’Connell and at Bilibid Prison, survived the sinking of the Oryoku Maru by American aircraft in December 1944 while being transferred out of the Philippines and another nine months of inhuman captivity in the Japanese home islands before being liberated on 7th September 1945. As if the accolade ‘hero of the Bataan death March’ was not enough, Johnson had commanded the 3rd Battalion of the 8th Cavalry in the Defense of the perimeter at Pusan in Korea five years later.
At the time of the October War Johnson had been Chief of Staff of NATO’s Central Army Group in Germany. But for an unresolved mechanical problem with one engine of the C-130 Hercules aircraft detailed to fly him back to his headquarters at Mannheim-Seckenheim following an emergency conference in Northern Italy, his aircraft would have landed at about the same moment Mannheim was bracketed by a salvo of three one megaton warheads.
The best generals were lucky generals.
“The FBI thinks the rebellion was whipped up by communists, deserters and the Mormons,” Johnson observed laconically.
General Shoup guffawed contemptuously.
“A proportion of the rebels we captured claim some kind of quasi-religious motivations,” he conceded. “Most of the bastards talk about having lost ‘people in the war’. There seem to be a smattering of recently discharged military people but most of those guys were probably malcontents during their military service. The worrying aspect of this is that we don’t seem to be capturing any of the organisers, the main movers in this thing. Prisoners talk about their ‘officers’ and ‘leaders’ and ‘preachers’ but we don’t actually have any of these people in our hands.”
“At Bellingham,” Colin Dempsey put in, “and one or two places we had to clear first to move our armour up the road from Seattle, the men running the show tried to hide in the ranks. That’s probably happened here, only on a much bigger scale, sir.”
“That’s what we figured,” Shoup grunted.
“I had to authorized exceptional measures to identify the leaders,” Dempsey went on. “We have to accept that we are at war with these people.”
Shoup sucked his teeth.
“Now that the present emergency is over the President has mandated that the constitutional rights of suspected rebels and prisoners in our hands be respected,” he declared disgustedly.
“With respect, sirs,” Dempsey observed, “the emergency is not over. I understood we had snipers on rooftops, rioting and looting in certain parts of DC and large areas of the city were effectively lawless no go zones?”
The Acting Chief of Staff of the US Army put a stop to the discussion.
“The President has spoken on this matter.”
Dempsey, the oldest man in the room – separated by a matter months from the Commandant of the Marine Corps but by over nine years from the US Army Chief of Staff – very nearly deferred to the two, vastly more senior officers.
However, in the forty-eight hours he had been in the nation’s half-wrecked, still smouldering battlefield capital he had seen and heard things that made his flesh creep. The Navy had damned nearly lost control of its Polaris boats! The Navy had lost control of elements of the Atlantic Fleet for Chrissake! The idiots had sunk one of their own nuclear hunter killers! And as for the fucking Air Force trying to start a war in the Mediterranean! The fact that there had been an attempted coup d’état – fortunately not very well executed, that was the only reason they were actually having this ‘conference’ rather than any exceptional feat of arms by the great American military – and nobody had seen it coming was as criminal as it was incredible!
“What exactly did the President say, sirs?” The grey-haired veteran of the Battle of the Bulge, and latterly the ruthless suppressor of anarchy in his home state asked. “Other, that is, than order us to featherbed traitors and criminals?”
At the height of the fighting the President had given Curtis LeMay a free hand to crush the insurgency. LeMay had called in air strikes, formed ad hoc task forces of Marines, Mechanized Cavalry, National Guardsmen, cops and anybody loyal to the President who could hold a gun, swiftly expanded the defensive perimeter out from around the White House, secured Capitol Hill and launched a series of savage counter-attacks which had relieved the siege of the Pentagon and a broken the back of the insurgency in significantly less than thirty-six hours.
Dempsey suspected that after the first few hours the rebels, drunk with success – and intoxicated in the normal way - had become hopelessly over-extended, lost what little central co-ordination they might have had at the outset, and that thereafter the coup was doomed as soon as somebody like Curtis LeMay belatedly got a grip. Either Shoup or Johnson, had they been at the White House, or in communication with the President at the critical moment would probably have done just as good a job. Disciplined troops confronted with a rabble, no matter how well-armed, led or motivated, had only to stabilise their position and await the appropriate opportunity to move forward in force to defeat their enemy. David Shoup had waded ashore on a beach heaped with dead Marines; Johnson’s tanks had held the perimeter at Pusan when the whole Red Chinese Army was trying to break in. Neither man needed an interloper like Dempsey to tell them their business but he strongly suspected they badly wanted him to say what they, as men close to the heart of power could not.
When neither man answered Dempsey’s question, he was happy to outline the way he saw the lay of the land.
“It is the President’s job to have a care for the constitutional rights of all Americans,” he observed grimly. “Notwithstanding, it is my understanding that a state of martial law presently pertains in the District of Columbia and its environs out to a distance of some twenty-five miles. The President has delegated his powers as commander-in-chief within that zone to the Military Governor of the same.” He nodded towards the Commandant of the Marine Corps. “With respect, sir,” he sighed, “you wouldn’t have invited me to attend this place at this hour unless you hadn’t already intended to use your discretionary powers as the Military Governor of the District of Columbia to the full extent.”
Colin Dempsey straightened, not an entirely pain free exercise as his old wounds had been set off by sitting twelve hours in a bucket seat in a C-130 Hercules transport flying East from California.
“What are your orders, sir?”
Chapter 20
Monday 16th December 1963
California Institute for Men, Chino, San Bernardino, California
Having been refused permission to speak to Sam Brenckmann at Van Nuys Police Station, when Sabrina Henschal had returned the next morning with the meanest lawyer she could find – her old friend Vincent Meredith was by far and away the meanest attorney she could afford but he was nowhere near as mean as she would ideally have liked – the LAPD had ‘lost’ both Sam and his ‘accomplice’, Doug Weston in ‘the system’. This in itself was not entirely implausible; the whole ‘system’ had pretty much broken down and the National Guard was still running parts of the ‘show
’.
It was a little bit like the Keystone Cops meets Mickey Mouse except not in any way funny because the LAPD was running rings around the California National Guard and the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office had adopted a Greta Garbo ‘I want to be alone’ attitude to the whole thing!
Unfortunately, screeching this in Captain Reggie O’Connell’s face did not materially help Sabrina Henschal’s or Sam Brenckmann’s cause because despite Vincent Meredith’s presence two large LAPD detectives grabbed Sabrina by the arms, carried her outside and deposited her on the pavement.
‘Which part of please leave the talking to me did you not hear, Sabrina?’ the man had inquired, grabbing her before she could run back into Van Nuys Police Station and get herself arrested for a breach of the peace.
‘I can’t believe I once had sex with you!’
The man had viewed her with rueful fondness. Sabrina was one of those women who instantly attracted or repelled men. She was also one of those women who could be very hard work; albeit worth it but Vincent Meredith had no intention of attempting to renew their long dead ‘thing’.
‘It was fun while it lasted,’ he observed dryly.
The trip to Van Nuys had been last Friday and since then Vincent had gone about his business unencumbered by Sabrina and actually located Sam Brenckmann. He had been surprised how hard it had been and how many people he had had to talk to; LA justice was broken, basically.
Moreover, from what he had seen and heard nobody at City Hall was bothered one way or the other which was just wrong.
What made it worse was that once the initial panicky paralysis which had followed the news of the attempted coup in Washington DC had peaked, and begun to wane, the California State National Guard had meekly rowed in behind the existing police regime – like a herd of particularly dumb sheep - and effectively, got into bed with the cops.
