by John Boyd
“Oh, we’ll succeed, Ben.” The admiral needed no reassurance. “Operation Meat Cleaver is buttressed by John Paul Jones, and you’re in charge of John Paul Jones.”
“I wasn’t aware, sir, that we had an Operation John Paul Jones.”
“JPJ,” the admiral explained as he pulled a sheaf of documents from his desk, “is predicated on a retrograde motion in the female power structure. According to our intelligence, the high-water mark of female aggrandizement occurred on November two.”
He handed the sheaf of papers to Hansen who could tell at a glance that they were a set of orders and twelve copies.
from: Chief of Naval Operations
to: Lieutenant (j.g.) Benjamin F. Hansen, USNR (MA)
subject: Change of Duty
reference: (a) Executive Fiat #47
1. In accordance with the reference (a) which should not be quoted, you are hereby ordered to proceed immediately by first available transportation and report to the Commanding Officer, Anacostia Training Station, Washington, D.C., for further duty, 2. Government and/ or commercial transportation (exclusive of taxicabs) is hereby authorized.
3. A per diem allowance of $3.83 will be allowed while in transit.
Captain Helen B. Annes
By direction
“They came last week,” the admiral said, “but Air Force One is your first available transportation.”
“If I obey these orders, sir, I’m recognizing their authority, which I don’t.”
“With you, Captain, the recognition is merely personal, not official,” Primrose said.
“Now, when you land at Dulles tonight, leave the President. Make no attempt to assist him, but go straight to the call desk. Have the girl at the desk page Miss Dessy Monas. Then wait. You’ll be contacted by an agent whose password will be, ‘As I live and breathe, if it isn’t the Dock Walloper.’ Your countersign will be, ‘By heavens!’
“After your initial meeting, further instructions on Operation JPJ will come from our stateside agent. Now, to the pleasant task.”
He reached into his center drawer. There was no fumbling this time.
“Captain Hansen, my last commendation put you over the top. You were recommended for a spot promotion to Vice Admiral, and the recommendation has been signed by the President. You are now Admiral Benjamin Franklin Hansen, USN.”
He stood up and extended his hand. “Welcome aboard, Walloper.”
“Thank you, Sug. I certainly appreciate this.”
“Very well. Admiral Hansen,” Primrose said, “it’s back to business. We’ll let the President announce your promotion at his last supper. The news will help liven up the meal if we haven’t heard from the Gluckstag. Your new uniform will be ready in the tailor shop at 1600, that is, your junior grade lieutenant’s uniform. For a while you’ll have to be an undercover admiral.”
CHAPTER 19
Announcement of Hansen’s promotion was the only lively feature of the President’s last supper. Acworth Cobb was not even present, having stayed in the quarters of the late Dr. Drexel to keep the caterwauling Dallas Georgias silent. Thule had no word from the Gluckstag, and the silent telephone which the High Command had counted on to reduce Dr. Carey to a nervous wreck had boomeranged against them. President Habersham almost spilled his soup from his spoon because his eyes kept flicking toward the telephone.
After supper, after Hansen had received congratulations from Talliaferro and Cobb who now made an appearance, the President retired to his quarters to write his last will and testament, to be affixed to his memoirs. The men who remained in the wardroom were silent, intent on the hands of the wardroom clock moving toward ten thirty for Hansen and toward midnight for Homo sapiens.
When the hour hand ceased to be a factor in Admiral Hansen’s wait. Admiral Primrose walked over to the conference table, motioned to the orderly, gave him a few brief instructions, and called his staff and the cabinet members to him.
“Gentlemen, it is 2200 and the President leaves in half an hour. Soon we’ll be saying good-bye, forever, to the Walloper, and I’ve been thinking of a few appropriate remarks that he might say to us.
“Walloper, would you consent to tell us, and let us put your words on tape, of your first love in Bangkok?”
As they all leaned forward, Hansen had time to clear his throat of a suspicious lump that kept rising in it, before the enlisted man put a microphone before him.
“If they unsex me,” he began, “theirs will be a partial victory only. Nothing can ever dispel the spiritual musk of me which lingers over the places where I have loved. One spot, in particular, is old Bangkok—aptly named city.
“It was on a night in the springtime when I first met her, among temples silvered by a rising moon…”
Dallas Georgias, née Houston Drexel, the gelded Mustang from SMU, rode alone and whimpering in the press section of Air Force One while President Habersham and Admiral Hansen rode aft and amidships in the President’s conference room. President Habersham was moody and solicitous of silence, but Admiral Hansen, disguised in his junior grade lieutenant’s uniform, had questions that urgently needed answers. Sug had assumed that Hansen knew why he was being sent back to the States, but the admiral had overestimated the junior admiral’s knowledge.
As a matter, to him, of chilling fact, Hansen had not the slightest idea what Operation John Paul Jones entailed, and the man who rode beside him, the man who was to lay the legal groundwork for Operation Meat Cleaver, was his only remaining source of information. Yet direct questions were out, more than ever now, since he had been promoted to omniscience.
“Sug might have been overly optimistic about JPJ,” he ventured. “Empires don’t fall in a day.”
“Ours did,” the President said, “on November two.”
Looking out at the stars, Hansen was reminded that it was almost Christmas, and the reminder led him to a new angle of inquiry. “Well, Mr. President, I suppose you’ll have to start thinking about a Christmas present for your little lady.”
“I know what she wants,” the President said, “but I don’t know how to wrap them.”
“Perhaps, sir, there might be a reconciliation by Christmas.”
“That would be a logical act,” the President said, “and I’m counting on them not to act logically. If women were Homo sapiens, we could figure on them delaying the execution till after the inauguration…”
“Sir, are you implying that females are not human beings?” Hansen’s astonishment was responsible for the direct question.
Surprisingly, the President chuckled. “I suppose they aren’t gibbons, but they’re certainly not sapient. No male would have left that promise of amnesty as a legal loophole for me to stick my neck in. Of course, it was a woman’s trick, primarily, to drive a wedge between Sug and me. She didn’t know that I was looking for a chance to split with the Primrose hard line and get back on a constitutional course. Constitutional measures form the only approach that can be justified by history. I had to go along with Primrose as a last ditch measure, but my conscience bothered me. I could never see a purely military solution to the problem, but I’m confident of the rightness of my actions now. After they’ve killed me while I’m still in office, then the ladies will be nuked in accord with Section Eight, Article One, of the Constitution.”
Thank heaven for Annapolis and the required course in constitutional law. Now Hansen could follow the President’s legal reasoning. He was returning to create a de facto insurrection which could be put down by force of arms, but that did not explain why Hansen was returning to the country with the President.
Admiral Hansen lapsed into his own silence.
Precisely five minutes after midnight, the President said, “Well, Ben, either the Gluckstag has arrived or it hasn’t. Let’s find out if Primrose’s little bluff worked.”
He leaned over and switched on the intercom to the cockpit. “Colonel Eagleson, please contact Shiloh and ask if the Gluckstag has landed.”
“Yes
, sir.”
He waited for an answer, leaning toward the squawk box, and the answer came quickly. “Shiloh reports negative, sir.”
President Habersham sat back. “Well, Ben, our little bluff didn’t work. No matter, we can still help the cause if I can get myself killed before inauguration and if you can get that Christmas present up to Old Sug.”
Anything he said to Habersham, Hansen realized suddenly, was off the record. If the President wanted to get himself killed, Hansen had enough confidence in Demorest Habersham to know that he was talking to a dead civilian.
“What do you think the boys would like for Christmas, sir?”
“After you’ve sent them those candied pineapple rings, they won’t have time for opening other presents.”
So, he had been sent to get replacements for the inertial navigation devices to activate the Cherokee Cluster!
This was no job for an admiral. Any storekeeper, first class, in the male auxiliary naval reserve could requisition inertial navigating devices. Hansen was disgusted. As a thinker. Admiral Primrose had flaws; he approached the simplest problem as if it were a challenge to a computer.
This entire little spat with the women was not a military problem, at all. It was a task for diplomacy. Once he had established contact with the real underground, he was going to show Sug his error. He was going to bring about peace with honor.
He would send Admiral Primrose a Christmas present, all right, but it wasn’t going to be candied pineapple rings. A book would be far more appropriate as a gift for that constant reader. Yes, he would send the Chief of the Combined Chiefs of Staff a leather-bound novel—leather would not mildew in an ice bunker even after a couple of decades. Admiral Primrose was going to receive from Admiral Hansen a deluxe edition of Alice in Wonderland.
CHAPTER 20
After the policewomen had taken the President away in a paddy wagon, Admiral Hansen ran into trouble, himself, in the waiting room. He had asked the girl at the desk to page Miss Dessy Monas, when he turned to find trouble in the form of a very large black policewoman holding a long billy club at both ends and standing spraddle-legged before him. The legs that jutted from beneath the blue serge miniskirt resembled two old-fashioned pot-bellied stoves, the only connotation of warmth anywhere about her.
“Picking up somebody’s baggage, Charlie?”
“No. I’m waiting an answer to a page.”
“You don’t wait here. This is the ladies’ waiting room. You wait over there.”
She swung the billy club in a flipping arc and pointed it toward a door marked men.
“I don’t have to go to the men’s room.”
“Since when you don’t have to go to the men’s room?”
“Officer, I object to being segregated. As a naval officer, I never judged a man by his sex, color, creed, or previous condition of servi…”
“You want to tell it to the judge, Charlie?”
Well, he thought, as he hurried to the men’s room, her people had taken it for three hundred years. He should be able to take it for the next twenty-five or so, unless he decided to curtail his three score and ten by sending the candied pineapple rings to Sug.
Inside, the head was dingy, littered, with a yellow-streaked urinal lining the far wall. Three benches had been moved in from the main waiting room and they were bare except for a naval rating who was snoozing away with his head resting on his sea bag and his hat down over his eyes.
To calm his indignation over the plight of his President, arrested for speeding inside the city limits when his plane touched down at 120 miles an hour, Hansen walked over to read the graffiti above the urinals. As he read, he heard his page squeaked over the squawk boxes, one of which was affixed in the comer of the men’s room. If they piped the announcements into the men’s room, males must not be considered completely subhuman, he thought.
“Amusing, aren’t they?”
He wheeled at the sound of Helga’s voice, and the woman he loved stood before him, a smile of delight on her face, wearing bell-bottomed trousers and a coat of Navy blue.
“As I live and breathe,” she said, “if it isn’t the Dock Walloper!”
“By heavens, Helga!”
“Who did you expect? Senator Dubois?”
“Would I be hugging him like this?”
“Waltz me away from the urinal, Benjy. Its wave length is jamming my perfume.”
He waltzed her away, asking, “Say, what happened between you and Joan Paula?”
“Nothing. We staged a tiff for the Blubber Presiding… JP took over the communications watch at Anacostia. An emergency developed, or she would have come with me. We’ll have to take a taxi back. I was too excited to drive over.”
“My per diem doesn’t permit taxis.”
“I’ll pay the fare.”
“Good. I’m ordered to report to Anacostia.”
“We know. That’s Joan Paula’s command, and she’s one of us.”
“Who’s ‘us’?”
“The Men’s Preservation League. It’s one of those bleeding heart organizations for promoting civil rights,” she said. “But we can gossip in the cab.” She hoisted the sea bag on her shoulder and looked around her. “I must speak to the girls about these men’s rooms.”
He had to let her carry the sea bag, since he was an officer and she was posing as a rating, but she walked easily under her burden. Outside, on the empty platform, she called the cab and held open the door for him. He crawled in, but he thought she was carrying things too far and said so.
“Don’t you worry,” she said. “You may be a fourth-class citizen to the government but you’re a collector’s item for the girls.”
“Happy to see me?”
“Ecstatic, you brute. Those V-bombs lack character. They make a terrific first impression, but after six months or so it’s like shaking hands with your brother.”
“Helga. I was appointed Vice Admiral.”
“Good. Joan Paula will be thrilled to know she has an admiral to order around. She’s putting you in charge of seamanship instruction. Women are such dreadful ship handlers. When the President signaled he was landing. Fatso Carey tried to recall the Gluckstag. The ship was late, anyway. The woman skipper—that slob in the White House wouldn’t trust a man with a shipload of girls—got lost because her radar was jammed and she ran aground on Cape Atholl trying to make the turn for home. Joan Paula had to stick around communications because she’s helping direct rescue operations through Thule. Young Lindenberry had to send snow cabs to pick up the girls, or those poor things would be freezing to death. Fatso Carey would like that. That woman’s vicious, Ben.”
“The cruelty isn’t one-sided, Helga. You know, I’m down here to pick up some inertial guidance devices…”
“Oh, no, you aren’t! Joan Paula suspended that operation. You’re all she wanted. She’ll brief you on Operation Tethered Bull and Operation Jelly Roll—but let’s not talk about unpleasant things. Joan Paula’s changing your orders to ‘proceed and report’ so you’ll have two weeks alone with me on Hatteras. It’s quiet down there in winter, and there’ll be no PE’s snooping around. Oh, another bit of pleasant news. Senator Dubois is dead.”
“Postoperative complications, I hope,” Hansen said.
“Oh, no. Carey promised him something for his defection. She sent him an eight-girl relay team from the Rockettes, and he died on the seventh lap. Ben, this is no country for old men.”
“I would never die on any lap,” he said, recalling Helga’s idiosyncrasy.
She squeezed his hand in what developed was a warm misunderstanding. “I’m glad, Ben, because it’s not my nature to be selfish, and I’m going to have to share you with the other girls until the Greenland crop matures.”
There was no further time for sentiment as the taxi came to halt before the sentry gate at Anacostia.
“You report in, Ben. Say hello to Joan Paula, and hurry back. Our car’s parked in the lot, and I’ll be waiting at the gate.”
Military etiquette was still being observed.
He followed the Wave into the administration building and down a long corridor to a door marked officer in charge, training detail. The Wave knocked three times and opened the door to Joan Paula’s “Come in.”
Joan Paula, seated at her desk and bent over a communications log book, did not look up when they entered or when he sang out, “Lieutenant junior grade Hansen reporting, ma’am.”
“At ease. Lieutenant. Carry on. Orderly.”
Coppery highlights burnished her auburn hair. Her white blouse was crisply pressed. On sight, he would have given her a 4.0 for military appearance, and the new half stripe, gleaming on her blue coat sleeve, showed him someone else also appreciated her.
When she heard the orderly close the door, she looked up, smiled, and raised her arm to show him the stripe. “Got the extra one yesterday. Papa. It’s not a bloody war, but it’s a sickly season.”
She arose and extended her hand for a handshake.
“Did you bring me a seal from Greenland?”
“You didn’t requisition one.”
“Same old Papa. Draw up a chair.”
“Is a handshake all I get?”
“That’s all you get at a naval facility,” she said, “because rank must be observed. But I have something else to satisfy the amenities.”
With Hansen efficiency, she slid open the drawer of her desk and drew out two water glasses, a decanter of water, and a fifth of bourbon.
“The hooch is nonreg,” she said, pouring, “but rank has its privileges. I’ve got new orders for you, here.” She pulled a set of papers from the desk, and shoved them toward him. “They’re ‘proceed and report’ so you can take the ten days as my Christmas present. Mother’s carting you off to the Cape over Christmas, so I’m giving you the extra time to recuperate… Skoal!”
