The Generals of October

by John T. Cullen

  No sign of Shoob.

  David sat in the car, parked at the south-bound curb on 34th Street, with the window half rolled down. He listened to soft radio music. He finished a sandwich and a carton of milk and wished he had coffee. Atop several buildings in the island of grass and trees were small domes, housing telescopes. The empty vice presidential mansion loomed darkly.

  Massive tree crowns all around floated silently, and David wished he had not agreed to meet the old NCO here at this hour. In the darkness, fog rolled like a wall across the road, under the trees, up the lawns at Observatory Circle. It thickened as it went, and cars crawled past blinded by their own headlights. David found himself being studied for a minute by a prowling police car. Of all the dumb places to arrange a secret meeting! he thought. Where was Shoob?

  After a half hour, David was ready to drive home. Thinking better of it, he got out of the car to stretch his legs. Traffic had died down, with only an occasional car passing. The street glistened wetly in the fog under street lights peering through leaves. David decided to give Shoob one more chance. He’d walk up to the NSSO building, look for him, and then return to his car. If Shoob hadn’t shown up by then, David would drive home. He crossed the street and walked up the central drive. A black car crept out of nowhere and rustled at his side. “How’s it going, Captain?” called a man’s voice. “Got a minute?”

  David stopped, resisting the urge to loosen the holster of his service revolver. He saw two men in suits and raincoats eyeing him. One flashed a badge. “Secret Service. How are you tonight?” The speaker was a young looking man with steel rimmed glasses, prematurely balding, very pleasant. Preppy type. But there was an unmistakeable tension in the air all around.

  “Fine. Looking for someone.” David stepped close and, unbidden, opened his wallet to show his military I.D. card. The Secret Service man nodded, barely glanced at it. “A kind of heavy set Coast Guard NCO,” David said.

  “Well, good luck,” the blond man said languidly. David heard a click as an assault rifle went back on safety inside the car. “Hope he shows up soon. Good luck.”

  “Thanks.” David watched as the long black car rolled away toward Admiral’s House, and fog closed behind it. In five minutes, David reached the center of the circle. He passed around the main Observatory building, and approached the recently-built NSSO building. NSSO had most of its offices in three underground stories. The single story above ground story blended innocuously with its antique surroundings.

  David found the front door locked. A dim bulb gleamed along a deserted corridor inside. “Chief!” David rapped on the door. “Chief!” He walked around the building, pausing under a light globe. “Chief?”

  Nothing.

  He started to return to his car, picking up stride. This place was spooking him, and he’d be glad to be home. Time for a hot bath, a drink, a good night’s sleep. Fog rolled thickly, and a chill moisture beaded on glass surfaces all around. In this pea-soup moisture, sounds carried well--too well; he heard a mix of muffled sounds, some of them nothing more than a volume of air blowing against a wall or swishing through trees. The fog itself seemed to stalk silently all around him, circling him like dim shark shapes.

  He heard a man’s voice--or was it the cough of a starter turning in a car?--and whirled. Was that a bulky form lumbering down the path 100 yards away, or a glimpse of a moving pine bough, or a wall of fog behind another wall of fog?

  “Shoob!” David cried out. “Shoob?” He peered into the mist, which alternately closed and opened, and David squinted desperately, wiping his eyes with his hands, to stare more intently. He drew his gun.

  Wiping water out of his blinking eyes as he took one step closer, then another, he sensed that something was wrong.

  He heard a muffled shout and started jogging. “Shoob!”

  He inserted a clip from his web belt, and unlocked the safety. This sent a metallic clatter echoing through the damp complex, bounding off walls and returning to its source.

  David called out: “Shoob? Are you okay?”

  The fog closed in thickly, swirling.

  There was a dragging sound, like heels in gravel.

  David heard a sound of struggle--

  --a fist whacking flesh--

  --the sound of a door slamming.

  David ran toward the sounds. His path took him around the central garden with its greenhouses, and back onto the main drive that led to where his car was parked.

  David heard a car start up, saw twin red taillights...a van.

  “Hey,” he called out, “wait! Stop!” He wanted to check the inside, prepared to be embarrassed if this were a mistake. Shoob’s paranoia seemed to be rubbing off on him.

  Red taillights swam away toward the street. David made one desperate sprint, but he was too late. The van pulled out, turning smoothly, changing gears, and tooled away. Its engine noise grew faint in the mist.

  David ran back to his car, holstering the gun and thinking--should he try to chase them? Would he miss Shoob if Shoob showed up here after all? Or had Shoob been nabbed? Dammit! As he jogged puffing toward his car, he knew the practical answer--he’d never find thevan in this fog. He wouldn’t recognize the van if he saw it.

  He drove to the Vice President’s House, hoping to alert the two Secret Service men, but, bafflingly, the house was dead still and David could not find a soul as he drove crawling around the house.

  What am I doing? He asked himself as he waited in the main drive once more. He turned the engine off and waited, listening to the sound of his heartbeat, the whisper of an occasional car innocently and slowly crawling past on Observatory Circle.

  He called the local police and spoke with a dispatcher, but felt awkward. What could he tell them? To check every van within a five state radius?

  He called Jankowsky at home. “I’m sorry to bother you, Sir, but I think Shoob may have been abducted from under my nose.

  “You think? Did you see it or not?”

  “Not exactly, Sir. It’s very foggy, and he wasn’t where he was supposed to be. I heard noises, and a van drove off.”

  Jankowski processed for a moment. “Go home.”

  “Sir, I have to wait for the police.”

  “Oh shit, you called the police?”

  “Yessir, under the circumstances...” An alarm bell went off. Something wasn’t quite right about this conversation.

  “Okay... okay...I understand. You did the right thing. Just go home, okay? We’ll handle it from here.”

  “We, Sir?”

  “Go home.”

  “Yessir.”

  At that moment, a police car with flashing lights slowed on 34th, started to turn into the driveway, and stopped. The lights stopped flashing. There was a brief pause, the twirling lights went dark, and the police car drove slowly away. Called off? By whom? Why?

  As David drove home through the fog, he called Tory.

  She sounded concerned, thoughtful, cautious. “Everything is so strange these days. Poor Ib--I’m worried. I could call his wife, see if he’s home.”

  “Why don’t you do that and call me back?”

  He felt thrilled to hear her voice. It was chilly and he turned the heater in the car on.

  Minutes later, as he rolled by her house, she called. “David?”

  “Hey, look out the window.” He slowed.

  A figure appeared in a first floor window. A woman. She waved. “Is that you?”

  “Do you always wave at strange cars?”

  “Just certain strange cars.”

  “How’s Ib?”

  “Not home. I didn’t want to scare his wife, Hala, so I said it was something about work that could wait until tomorrow. She didn’t seem worried--said this is his night to meet with his book club; they sometimes meet until ten or eleven.”

  David tooted twice.

  “Want to stop by?”

  “Wish I could. I’ve had a big day, and tomorrow will be more of the same. Tell me again that you’ll have lunch
with me. It’s all I ask.” He glanced back and saw her still leaning out the window before her house receded among the trees.

  “I give you my word, mon capitaine.”

  “Ah oui, cette joie--je suis--how do you say happy in French?”

  “--'Uppee.”

  “Thank you. I am very 'uppee to be your friend, mademoiselle.”

  ALLISON: We recently asked Chairman Mattoon how he feels about the strength of the Ten Amendment Limit.

  MATTOON: I’ve heard all the scare stories, and I’m here to tell you that I am still in control, and that limit of ten amendments is not going away.

  ALLISON: What about the possibility that the delegates might revolt and have a floor decision, which would ignore the Procedures Committee entirely?

  MATTOON: It’s not going to happen. We’re going to get things ironed out in the next few days. As I said, I’m still in control. Then we’ll all go home. Let’s not worry prematurely about problems that may never arise.

  Chapter 11

  Tory felt thrilled about this interesting new man as she sat in the plush chair by the window. Her wall screen flickered with a talking head speaking news softly, but her thoughts were in outer space. David Gordon. She couldn’t help saying his name quietly to herself every few minutes. She was finding it hard to concentrate on the novel she was reading. She hoped she wouldn’t make a fool out of herself at lunch tomorrow--but he seemed such a fun person, so really serious and quiet yet lively and certainly decent. And yet, she already felt the pain beginning, the fear of disappointment, that dark wall she would never be able to get past, had never been able to get through with any of the men who’d taken an interest in her and then--

  Her reverie was interrupted by Maxie, who stormed out of the bedroom dressed to go out. “Tory, ya gotta go with me. I’m not going alone, and I’m not staying here.”

  “Maxie...”

  All her protests were in vain. Maxie’s fiancee had been mean to her, and she wanted to go out man-hunting. Not literally man-hunting, Tory knew. Man-haunting, maybe. Going somewhere, getting even, by having men flirt at her. Tory was tired. She worried about Ib, although surely he was at his book club and he’d contact David with his morbid fears and conspiracy papers tomorrow. She wanted to climb into the feathers and fall asleep daydreaming about David Gordon. Maxie, more hyper than usual, begged, pleaded, and cajoled with Tory to accompany her on a wild night out this evening. Tory didn’t drink much--two glasses of wine and she had a headache. She worried that if Maxie went alone, she’d wreck her car driving home drunk, so she agreed to go along.

  As Tory finished dressing and stepped to the curb, Maxie was already in the gray Porsche. Tory walked through the fog and got in. Maxie looked crisp in sweater and denim skirt. The usual blonde whisp floated over her forehead.

  “Why don’t you give Van Meeuwen the shoe?”

  “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  “Okay.” Tory couldn’t stand Van Meeuwen, the proctologist.

  Maxie rummaged in her glove compartment for her keys. Out fell expensive lipstick, perfume, a mechanical pencil, a USO New Testament, cigarettes, surgical gloves, a stethoscope, a field NBC (nuclear, biological, chemical) kit. Even so, Maxie was class, like her blondness, which wasn’t overly gold or loud, but soft and bright as a sunbeam as it whipped energetically around her temples. She had a handsome wide face, with crinkly eyes, a model’s streamlined nose, a few freckles, and a sensuous mouth. Tory had once thought, if someone wanted to have lots of plastic surgery, they’d want everything to end up like what Maxie had naturally. In fact, though her white uniform looked tailor-made, it was bought off the quartermaster shelf; she was just that thin and shapely. She looked ravishing in her Army officer’s nursing whites, and she’d look just as ravishing in her flight suit. Then again she smoked, occasionally drank too much, and regularly received speeding tickets. “That’s our Maxie,” people said.

  Maxie tore down the city streets. Tory closed her eyes. “Gotta give you driving lessons.”

  “It’s been tried.” Maxie laughed and lit an imported oval with gold imprinted paper. Tory rolled her window down. Maxie drove around the Beltway and then westward out of town. Soon they cruised along tree-lined country roads.

  Maxie said, tipping her soda can up to her lips, while keeping her eyes on the road: “I hear you and David Gordon are having lunch tomorrow.”

  “He seems to be a nice guy,” Tory said guardedly. The last man in her post-divorce life had been an Air Force officer transferred to Alaska a year ago. She'd never heard from him again, after a hot and steamy romance of (she’d counted, fool) seventeen days. Tory had forced herself to forget his name, his rank, his serial number, and his state of origin. And yet, because of her secret, she wasn't surprised. She couldn’t really remember at this point what he’d looked like. Didn’t want to.

  “Whoo-hoo!” Maxie whooped, pulling an imaginary train-whistle. Tory was puzzled. Maxie could have had David, at least as a fling, certainly as a friend, and yet she always seemed to fall for guys who hurt her. Paul Van Meeuwen, Maxie’s current squeeze, a handsome doctor in his mid-30’s, performed buttpucker surgeries at Walter Reed, played 18 rounds of golf on Saturday, owned two houses and part of the family tire fortune, sponsored Formula 1 races at Watkins Glen, and loved Maxie--in that order. Tory wasn’t convinced but didn’t want to say so for fear of seeming jealous.

  They drove through a guard gate onto the small Virginia military reservation. The Porsche stopped in a cloud of dust outside the Officers’ Club. Maxie turned her huge keyring and the motor went from hum to silence. Tory had once asked why she had so many keys. They were for half of Washington, Maxie said; and she kept them all with her to remember the people she loved.

  Tory got out and zipped up her jacket. Her breath steamed as she stared at a dilapidated building. “Yu-uk. Want to leave?”

  “It’ll be an adventure!” Maxie protested. Tory went along, though she’d always hated these places. They stopped at the ladies’ room to touch up their makeup. Then they walked through the swinging doors into that redly glowing, music-pulsating world of clinking glasses and laughing voices. They found a table. A waiter took their orders--Campari and soda for Tory, martini with a twist, up, for Maxie. Tory leaned forward under the waiter’s tray. “You change that to white wine, you hear?”

  “You’re right,” Maxie said. Tory thought Maxie seemed a little off tonight.

  “Hello,” said several men all at once, holding drinks and looking charming.

  “Are you one guy with five heads?” Maxie said.

  The men separated and babbled: “I’m Bill. I’m Bob. I’m drunk. Ha ha ha. No really, we saw you here and. Two beautiful women. Bookends, a dark sultry one and a light happy one. The blonde, now you must be a nurse.”

  “That’s a rodge,” Maxie said.

  “And you,” Jeff said, kneeling by Tory so his head was level with hers. “You are a chopper pilot. You have that glint in your eye.”

  “I’ve got the glint,” Tory said, “but not the chopper. To chop onions, maybe.”

  Jeff had hair on nine of his fingers. Tory exchanged glances with Maxie. “This is an infantry post,” Jeff said. “Ahah! You run a tight ship in the AG’s office.” He snapped his finger. “No, you are the AG.” AG was the Adjutant General, responsible for personnel and administrative matters. She leaned forward and patted the hand with the missing ring. “I’m a truck driver.”

  Jeff grinned coldly. “A truck driver.”

  “Honest. Big rig.” She extended her arms out as far as she could. “Big, big truck. Full of frozen chickens.”

  “That’s right,” Maxie said. “And we have to hurry up and drink, or the chickens will thaw. Then we’ll have to drive extra fast to make it to California before they spoil.”

  “But you’re a nurse,” reminded Bill or John or Bob or Stu.

  “That’s why I have to ride along, to take care of all those chickens.”

  “Civilians,
” said one of them with a wave-off as they left for easier game.

  “Thank you,” Tory said.

  The men drifted off and had a fist fight and the MP’s came. At peace for a while, Maxie and Tory chatted. Then a young blond guy who’d been hanging back shyly came over and offered to buy Maxie a drink, roses, anything. Maxie laughed at the inventiveness and bantered with him a while. Tory’s mind drifted to other things. One Campari, and it went to her head a little. Now what about Ib and his strange file? His strange behavior in general. Men and their strange--

  “Tory!” Maxie shouted, shoving her, and Tory realized she was leaning tiredly in her seat. “Hey, come on!” Maxie said. Jeff and Bob and whoever were back. Two cold beers slid across the table in a wake of suds and shaved ice. “Lady,” Jeff said, “you have some serious laughing to do.”

  Tory laughed. “Probably another true statement.”

  A Major Krest or Krist, biggest guy of the lot, who spoke with a beer in his fist and a pointing finger big as a salami, shouted hoarsely: “I don’t know about you guys but I’m going overseas to police dick heads, pardon my French fries--a single man, unlike some of you gentlemen--” Everything Major Kryst said came out in a hoarse blare.

  “--Everyone here is single--” interjected someone.

  “--And I,” continued Major Krust or Krost, “for one, would like to spend my last evening in the civilized world, if you can call this armpit of Gehenna such, with two of the most beautiful women I have ever seen. Gentlemen, I give you”--he pointed finger and beer bottle at Maxie--”the golden glow of sunshine peering through mother’s grape bower on the morning of perfect civilization. Am I right, gentlemen?”

  They all clapped.

  Major Krast continued: “Gentlemen, I give you for your astonishment and breathless introspection”--pointing at Tory, who found herself genuinely gasping at the flattery--”this violet-eyed Mona Lisa whose memory shall haunt me across the wine-dark sea, this siren whose song draws bolder sailors, soldiers, and merchant marines than I onto the pounding shoals of divorce, dementia, and other self destruction. Am I once again right, Gentlemen?”