Covert Warriors pa-7

by W. E. B Griffin

  “I was on the island as a journalist,” Roscoe replied. “A neutral, non-combatant observer.”

  But Danton thought, Shit, I don’t believe that.

  I was rooting for the good guys.

  And I took the Uzi that Castillo said I might need.

  “If that was the case,” Delchamps said, “we’d have to kill you. You know too much.”

  There he goes with that “we’d have to kill you” bullshit again.

  The trouble with that being I’m not sure it’s bullshit.

  I do know too much.

  “And if we killed you, then you wouldn’t get the million,” Yung said.

  “What fucking million?”

  “I could set up a trust fund for your kids, I suppose,” Yung said thoughtfully.

  “What fucking million?” Roscoe demanded as he rummaged through his tie rack.

  “Shooters,” Delchamps said, “roughly defined as everybody who went to the island, get a million. Plus, of course, everybody who went into the Congo. Charley, Sweaty, and Dmitri opted out.”

  My God, they’re serious! I’m being offered a million dollars!

  How much would that be when the IRS was through with me?

  Why am I asking?

  Pure and noble journalist that I am, I’m of course going to have to refuse it.

  What is this “pure and noble journalist” bullshit?

  What’s the difference between me taking free meals and booze from any lobbyist with a credit card and taking a million from the Merry Outlaws?

  I write what I want, period.

  And I was on that island, and I could have been killed.

  Roscoe had a sudden, very clear flashback to what had happened several years before at the National Press Club.

  Somebody had jumped on Frank Cesno, then high up in CNN’s Washington Bureau-and a hell of a journalist-about the recent tendency of TV journalists to paint themselves as absolutely neutral when covering a war.

  “Otherwise, both sides would think of us as spies, not journalists,” Cesno had announced, more than a little piously.

  Whereupon he had been shot out of the saddle by Admiral Stans-field Turner, who had been director of the CIA under Jimmy Carter.

  “Frank,” the admiral had said, “what do you think the Russians or the North Koreans-or anybody-think when they look at someone like you? Noble member of the Fourth Estate or spy?”

  “David,” Roscoe J. Danton inquired, “how much of a bite would the IRS take from that million?”

  THREE

  Auditorium Three CIA Headquarters McLean, Virginia 1100 12 April 2007

  Auditorium Three, unofficially known as the Director’s Auditorium, was a multipurpose room which could be used as a small theater capable of hosting forty people in theater-style seating and another eight in more elegant seats in the front row, each provided with a small table and a telephone. It could also be used as a dining room capable of feeding as many as sixty people, with five tables, each seating a dozen guests.

  It was secure, which caused it also to be known as the Director’s Bubble, which meant that great effort was expended just about daily to ensure that nothing said or seen in the room could possibly be heard or seen anywhere else.

  That sort of security wasn’t a consideration today, where what was to be said by President Joshua Ezekiel Clendennen would be heard and viewed in real time all over the world.

  There was security, of course. Not only was this the headquarters of the CIA, but the President of the United States was going to be there. As were the Vice President, the secretary of State, and other very senior officials.

  There are so many Secret Service guys in here, Roscoe J. Danton thought as he entered Auditorium Three, that they’re falling all over each other.

  They’re competing for space with the State Department security guys-and gals-protecting Natalie Cohen, the Army security guys protecting Naylor, and the CIA’s own security guys keeping an eye on both Frank Lammelle and the store in general.

  Edgar Delchamps and Two-Gun Yung had dropped off Danton at the main entrance, saying they’d wait for him in the parking garage, which caused Danton to again recall the allegation-which he believed-that Delchamps had taken out a CIA traitor in the parking garage by inserting an ice pick into his auditory canal, thereby saving the Agency from the embarrassment that trying the sonofabitch would have caused.

  Some of the White House Press Corps filled most of the seats in the auditorium. There were far more members of that elite body than there were seats for them here today.

  When Roscoe had shown his White House Press Corps credentials to the first of three security points-the “outside” one, near the main entrance-one of Lammelle’s security people had handed him another credential, this one a plastic-sealed card on what Roscoe thought of as a “beaded dog tag chain.” He looked at it. It held his photo and the legend PRESIDENTIAL PRESS CONFERENCE AT CIA HEADQUARTERS 1100 APRIL 12TH 2007.

  “You’re on the reserved-seating list, Mr. Danton,” the man said.

  Roscoe found this interesting, because before he had been so rudely awakened, he had had no intention of coming out here today and hadn’t asked for credentials, let alone a reserved-seat reservation.

  He knew the protocol for events like this, at which there would be far more seats requested by members of the White House Press Corps than were available. The “host”-in this case, Frank Lammelle-and Porky Parker would put their heads together and decide who got in. And who would have to wait outside, fuming.

  Roscoe intuited that he was on the reserved-seating list because of Lammelle, not Porky Parker. While he had no problems with Porky, Porky could be expected to hand out reserved seats to the elite of the White House Press Corps, and Roscoe knew that he wasn’t a member of that elite. Close, but no golden ring.

  And he further intuited that it was due to his new status as a member-however uncomfortable-of the Merry Outlaws. At the beginning, Frank Lammelle had headed the CIA delegation of the alphabet agencies looking for Charley Castillo.

  Lammelle even had an air-powered dart gun-

  Straight out of a superhero comic book.

  Jesus, that would have made a great story if I could have written it!

  — with which he planned to tranquilize Castillo so that he would be amenable to being loaded aboard the Moscow-bound Aeroflot plane.

  After Vic D’Alessandro-surprise, surprise! — had shot Lammelle with Lammelle’s own Super Agent Whiz Bang air gun in Cancun-where his pursuit of Castillo had taken him-Lammelle had awakened in the middle of a desert in Mexico, at a secret airfield the Merry Outlaws had dubbed Drug Cartel International.

  There, when he saw what Castillo’s Merry Outlaws were doing, and compared it to what the President was trying to do to Castillo, Lammelle had changed sides. He hadn’t gone to the Venezuelan island but had made a large, maybe even essential, contribution to the operation.

  If I have a CaseyBerry, Roscoe thought, you can bet your ass Castillo gave Lammelle one. And I can hear Castillo calling Lammelle on it, and asking, “Frank, can you get Roscoe into that press conference?”

  And that would neatly tie in with Delchamps and Yung-having easily slipped through the Watergate’s state-of-the-art, absolutely, positively guaranteed 24/7 security system-appearing in my bedroom this morning.

  Why the hell is it important to Castillo that I hear whatever bullshit our beloved Commander in Chief is going to spew today?

  When Roscoe passed through two more security points and finally got into Auditorium Three, a uniformed CIA security officer took a close look at his new presidential press conference credentials and showed him to a seat where he was buried between fellow members of the White House Press Corps. He had half expected to be seated in one of the VIP seats in front. He saw that Andy McClarren of Wolf News and C. Harry Whelan, Jr., had been so honored.

  Roscoe glanced at the open laptop computer of his seat mate, Pierre Schiff, of L’Humanite, and helpfully suggeste
d that for about ten bucks, Schiff could go to Radio Shack and buy a screen that would keep people from seeing what was on his laptop screen.

  Schiff gave him a smile that would have frozen hot chocolate.

  Roscoe looked around the auditorium and saw mostly what he expected to see:

  There was a narrow stage holding a podium bearing the presidential seal. Against the curtain at the rear of the stage was a sea of American flags, plus the CIA flag, those of the Vice President of the United States, the secretary of State, the director of National Intelligence, the director of the Central Intelligence Agency, and two red flags, one with four silver stars on it and one with three.

  To the left and right of the stage and in the rear of the auditorium, still and video cameramen-plus half a dozen guys, whatever they were called, manipulating microphone booms-were crowded together, preparing to send the images and sounds of the conference around the world.

  And there was something Roscoe was surprised to see: A detachment of the 3rd Infantry-“the Old Guard”-drum and bugle corps wearing Revolutionary War uniforms. The detachment was lined up, without much room to spare, to the left of the stage, between the stage and the cameramen.

  Roscoe had just enough time to wonder about them-they had never been involved in a presidential press conference that he could remember-when the lights dimmed twice as a signal that something was about to begin. The lights went up-really up, to provide lighting for the cameras-and a line of people filed onto the stage.

  Vice President Charles W. Montvale came first, followed by Secretary of State Natalie Cohen. Montvale took up a position immediately behind the podium, where he would be on the right of the President when he appeared, and Cohen took up a position to the left of the podium. Next came Truman Ellsworth, the director of National Intelligence, and then A. Franklin Lammelle, the director of the Central Intelligence Agency, and finally Generals Naylor and McNab. They took up positions to the left and right of the podium.

  Presidential press secretary John David “Porky” Parker stepped to the podium and announced, “Ladies and gentlemen, the President of the United States.”

  Everybody stood.

  There came a roll of drums, and the sound of fifes playing “Hail to the Chief.”

  President Clendennen marched purposefully onto the stage. He was a short, pudgy, pale-skinned fifty-two-year-old Alabaman who kept his tiny ears hidden under a full head of silver hair. As he marched past the dignitaries, just how short he was momentarily was made clear; he was shorter than even Natalie Cohen. Then he reached the podium and stepped onto a hidden platform that made him appear taller than everybody.

  “Good morning,” the President said. “Thank you for coming.”

  Danton grunted softly. Good morning, Shorty. Wouldn’t have missed it for the world.

  The President’s voice was deep and resonant.

  I’ll give him that. He sounds like what people want a President to sound like. And when he’s standing on his little stool, he looks presidential.

  “Most of you,” the President began, “thanks to the zealous- perhaps too zealous-reporting of a distinguished journalist writing for one of our more distinguished newspapers, are aware of a tragic incident that took place yesterday in Mexico. Three of our fellow Americans were found shot to death. A fourth American is missing.”

  And who were these people? Did they have names? What were they doing in Mexico?

  “Let me begin by stating that I have no more sacred duty as President and Commander in Chief than the protection of the lives of my fellow citizens, wherever they might be.”

  Aside from not getting impeached, and maybe even getting reelected.

  “And let me confess, as Zeke Clendennen, private citizen, that I am as outraged as anyone in our great nation about what happened outside Acapulco yesterday. I really understand, and sympathize with, those who think-as did one of Andy McClarren’s guests last night on The Straight Scoop-that we should send in the Marines as we did to Veracruz in 1914 and ‘teach them a lesson they won’t soon forget.’”

  Sure you do, Zeke.

  “But I am no longer Zeke Clendennen, private citizen. And as President and Commander in Chief, I have a responsibility to our great nation as a whole.

  “There are parallels-as I’m sure you all know-between what happened yesterday near Acapulco and what happened in Tampico in 1914.”

  Most of the clowns in the White House Press Corps have no idea what happened in Tampico, or, for that matter, where it is.

  “And there are considerable differences.”

  No shit? Give me a for-instance, Zeke.

  “The nine American sailors arrested in Mexico in 1914 were not arrested by a legitimate Mexican government, but by a Mexican dictator, a self-appointed general, Victoriano Huerta. President Woodrow Wilson publicly referred to Huerta as ‘false, sly, full of bravado, seldom sober, always irresponsible, and a scoundrel.’

  “It should go without saying that the United States did not recognize dictator Huerta or his so-called government.”

  Then how come we recognize Hugo Chavez? Isn’t he a dictator who’s false, sly, full of bravado, seldom sober, always irresponsible, and a scoundrel?

  “The exact opposite situation exists in Mexico today. The president of the United Mexican States, my close personal friend, Ramon Martinez. .”

  A close friend, Zeke, like those guys in Matamoros who grab your arm and ask, “Hey, gringo, you wanna fook my see-ster?”

  “. . is a statesman recognized around the world for his lifelong dedication to the principles of freedom and honesty in government.

  “When this terrible incident of yesterday came to President Martinez’s attention, the first thing he did was send a senior officer from the Mexican foreign ministry to our embassy in Mexico City to inform our ambassador. Then he called his good friend in the White House-he calls me ‘Zeke’-to tell me what had happened, and to apologize to the American people for what had happened. He gave me his word, officially and as a friend, that he and every branch of the government of Mexico will do everything possible not only to apprehend and quickly bring to justice those responsible for the deaths of our fellow citizens, but to locate and safely return the missing officer to his family.”

  Frankly, Zeke, I am not holding my breath. From what I saw in Mexico, every other cop is on the payroll of one of the drug cartels.

  Castillo even bought-from the damn Federales-a Black Hawk the U.S. gave them to help fight the drug cartels. Charley used it to fly us onto the island.

  I wonder what happened to the Black Hawk after we flew it back to the USS Bataan? Charley said that when the Bataan got back to Norfolk, they should say nothing; just unload the helo onto the wharf, then let the Mexican ambassador explain how it got there after the Mexican government had told us it had been totally destroyed fighting the drug cartels.

  I can’t believe Natalie Cohen would go along with that, but I thought it was a great idea.

  “We came very close in 1914 to going to war with Mexico. .”

  Again. I’m sure you will recall, Zeke, that we also had one with them in 1846. You know, like the Marines sing, “From the halls of Montezuma”?

  “. . And we came close, as you all know, to war recently. Our late and beloved President, faced with a very difficult choice, decided it was his duty as Commander in Chief of our nation to launch a preemptive strike on what he believed was a factory in the Congo manufacturing a dangerous substance that could have been used against us.”

  “What he believed was a factory in the Congo manufacturing a dangerous substance that could have been used against us”?

  Where did your late and beloved predecessor get a wild idea like that? Was he supposed to take the word of the guy who runs our biological warfare lab and personally go to the Congo to have a look?

  “Like every other patriotic American, I fully supported-perhaps even cheered-his courageous decision.”

  I seem to recall you saying, in front of
a microphone you thought had been turned off, that it was “idiotic and reckless.”

  “And then, when God in His infinite wisdom took our Commander in Chief from us, and I found myself in that role, I came to understand how difficult the decision he had taken was for him.”

  Where the hell are you going now, Mr. President?

  “The President was a wise and knowledgeable man. More than anyone else, he knew how close his decision would bring us to a nuclear war, and he knew full well that could have meant the end of the world.

  “I came out of my study, my appreciation, of what the President had done with two things: First, an even deeper admiration of his wisdom and character than I had had. And, second, an awareness that I was ill equipped to step into his empty shoes, and that without God’s help, I simply could not do so.”

  Zeke baby, you finally said something I agree with.

  “So I ask you, my fellow Americans, to pray for me. Pray to God to give me the wisdom and the courage that He gave to our late Commander in Chief. Pray to God that when another problem challenges our country, He will give me the strength to not act impulsively but rather with tempered wisdom.”

  I hate to tell you this, Zeke, but getting God to give you tempered wisdom’s going to take a lot of praying.

  “I was informed just before I came up here that there are matters requiring my immediate attention at the White House. So I will not be able to take questions.

  “The Vice President and others here with me today will answer any questions you may have.

  “Thank you. God bless you. God bless the United States of America.”

  The President then stepped from behind the podium and walked quickly to the edge of the stage and down a shallow flight of stairs.

  What the hell? That’s it?

  Before you take off, Zeke, you’re supposed to wait until one of your pals in the press corps, cued by Porky Parker, cuts off the conference by saying, “Thank you, Mr. President.”

  The cameras followed the President and recorded Porky Parker as he fended off the White House Press Corps as they shouted questions and tried to get close to the President.