The Generals of October

by John T. Cullen

  “Did Ib ever mention a file he found? Something to do with national security?”

  “What kind of file?”

  “I can’t go into detail.” He felt somewhat foolish. If she didn’t know, he couldn’t tell her. What if she knew, and wasn’t talking? If so, why?

  “This country is falling apart,” Tabitha said ironically. “The Constitution is being trashed by morons who think they are great intellects, my career is washed up, and you can’t tell me about some piece of paranoia of Ib Shoob’s.”

  David asked, “Do you think Ib’s disappearance has anything to do with CON2?”

  Tabitha glowered at him some more. Then she rose and said: “I have nothing more to tell you. If I hear from Ib, I’ll tell him to call you. I’d appreciate that you never come here again. Jet, call me anytime, long as it has nothing to do with this. Tell Ib to give me a call when he gets back. I’ll ring you next time I’m in town. Let’s have coffee.”

  On the way back through the gorgeous countryside, Jet said: “That wasn’t Tabitha. I mean, it was her, but I’ve never seen her like this. She was like a total stranger. I don’t think she’ll ever call me.”

  David called Colonel Jankowsky to report on his afternoon. Jankowsky said: “Nothing more, David. We’re having a hell of a time with General Montclair’s headquarters, trying to extricate the medical file on the suicide in Texas, as well as their MP file on him, just to close our own paperwork.” He added: “You’d almost think they’re running their own army over there.” As if realizing he had breached etiquette by being critical of a general officer, he changed tone again. “By the way, Colonel Bellamy called.--Rick Bellamy, the Provost Marshal for the military people at the hotel? He wants you to call him. Says it’s important.”

  David immediately called, but Bellamy’s com button was only taking messages, so he left a message. “Sir, it’s David Gordon. Got your message. Let’s touch base in the morning, or call me this evening if you wish.”

  David took Tory to a small restaurant that evening. There was something sweet and smooth and agreeable about being with her. As they sat under the yellow light of a booth in a family restaurant, he knew she might be feeling something for him too. But she was very cool, and didn’t show it. They sat in a cozy corner and ordered matching baskets of chicken stix and fries, and milk shakes. In the middle of dinner, on impulse, he raised a chicken stick toward her mouth. She looked up, crinkled a smile at him, and accepted it in her mouth with a wink of indulgence. “That’s wonderful,” she said with a luxuriant, sensual groan. She raised a chicken stick to his mouth, and he imitated her.

  “David, I’m feeling this overwhelming urge to take you home with me.”

  “Oh no.”

  “I’m not joking. David--”

  “Yes?”

  “It’s just--I’m not ready for anything, you know, complicated.”

  “I’m not either.” He wasn’t. Yet, he heard a distant chord from his heart strings.

  “You make me feel rather odd inside,” she said holding his hand.

  “Like how?”

  “I’m not telling.” For a moment, with her lush, pensive lips, she evoked stored secrets and heartbreaks.

  Chapter 16

  In the morning, David met Colonel Bellamy by the Reflecting Pool. Bellamy had commed and requested the meeting and the place.

  This was the Mall, the heart of Washington, under the magnificent plan laid out by Pierre L’Enfant and fulfilled by the African-American architect Benjamin Bannecker. The area was laid out like a cross. At the south end was the tallest structure (by law) in the city, the 555-foot needle of Washington’s Monument, looking off to the Potomac. From the monument to the center of the cross, where David sat, was the long, narrow Reflecting Pool. To the east, across a meander in the Potomac, was the rounded roof of the Jefferson Memorial. To the west, across some park land and the ubiquitous monuments, sprawled the White House. The north leg of the cross was the Mall. Along its sides were various cultural institutions, including the Smithsonian and the Hartshorn. At the far end of the Mall was the Capitol, housing Congress. Just behind the Capitol to the left was the Library of Congress. To the right was the Supreme Court.

  Bellamy approached, a robust figure in a long Army raincoat despite the sunny weather. People milled here and there, some hurrying from one building to another, as if there were no CON2 stirring up chaos, as if everything were normal. David looked past Bellamy to see if there was a tail. At that, he shook his head and wondered if the conspiracy atmosphere in the capital, tinged with Autumn sadness, were getting to him. Free of the oppressive hotel, Bellamy seemed a big man with a hard smile. And a rough handshake. “David, walk with me. Don’t look behind, because we have to assume we’re being followed.”

  “I thought it was just me being paranoid,” David said.

  “Far as anyone knows, we’re here to rehash the Mary Corcoran thing,” Bellamy said. He looked at the sky. “Hell of a town. Have you and your boss realized you’re never going to get any information out of those people in the Top Five in the hotel?”

  “Corcoran’s a dead issue unless the Pentagon wants to stir it up again. The suspect killed himself.”

  Bellamy uttered a short, harsh laugh. “Am I surprised? Sure, call me nuts, like Shoob. But I sit there every day and watch those skinheads going up and down in the elevator carrying boxes of ammo. Even a fool would wonder what is going on.”

  “General Montclair is taking no chances.”

  “That’s apparent.”

  “I hear some delegates want to propose more amendments.”

  “Yes, CON2 is about to fall apart. Almost like Murphy’s Law, isn’t it? Plan for the worst. By now, most people with any sense are scared to death and wish they’d never been lulled into voting for it. Beyond that, sure, I lie awake nights worrying. Sometimes, I wake up at three or four in a cold sweat, afraid the loonies’ll hit the hotel with one of those fertilizer bombs they like because they’re so full of crap. I wake up strangling a yell because I think we’re going up and it’s my last two seconds on earth.”

  “I don’t envy you being billeted in the hotel, Sir.”

  “I have a question, David, and I need you to check it out for me. I know you don’t work for me, and I don’t want to cross your chain of command, but--”

  “Sure, I’ll do whatever I can for you. But why me?”

  “Because I have nobody else I can go to. I don’t know whom to trust among the senior people. Even from the simple standpoint of not looking like a fool. You’re young, you’re eager, you can’t possibly be in cahoots with anyone, and besides, if you can’t keep a secret, I’ll deny we ever had this conversation.”

  “I can keep a secret.”

  “Very well, then. I’ve been mightily pissed off, in my own quiet way, about these skinheads crawling all over the place, raping the rest of the army. They hardly even salute officers except their own. It’s scary, David. It's like Special Forces gone mad. Only they’re not part of any bona fide special ops I know of. I’ve checked.”

  “You’re talking about those commandos with no hair and wild eyes.”

  “Yes. Nominally, they’re part of Montclair’s headquarters. There must be a couple of thousand. They keep coming and going, day and night, lugging ammo boxes, machine guns. The bottom floor of the parking garage is end to end with LXs and deuce-and-a-halfs.” LXs were lightly armored infantry vehicles, shaped like a steel cigar tube on ten big wheels, each carrying a dozen soldiers. Deuce-and-a-halfs were the venerable two-and-a-half-ton trucks used for generations by all U.S. services. Bellamy continued: “Normally, soldiers report to a new command from all over the world, men and women, except in combat arms, from every possible unit. These are all men, all white, and most came here under orders from the same duty station in Texas where our friend was killed.”

  David felt a rip of fear across his gut. “I had wondered if our nasty private was murdered rather than a suicide.”

  “He didn�
�t hang himself. David, do me a favor. Do me, do us all, a favor--see what you can dig up on a unit called the 3045th Military Intelligence Detachment (Reserve). Go back as far as you can. The skinheads all seem to belong to that unit.”

  “How did you find that out?”

  “Never mind. The clerk who stumbled on it would be dead if anyone knew. The problem is, I can’t do the research because they’re watching me over there. I know that sounds paranoid--”

  “I have a question for you, Colonel Bellamy. Do you know anything about a super computer called CloudMaster?”

  Bellamy shrugged. “Not much. Big Navy weather modeling jobbie. The U.S. plans to market them around the world. There’s one in the hotel, another in the White House.”

  “That’s odd, Sir. There’s at least one other one in town requisitioned by the Army to support CON2. What I’d like to know is why they need all that computing power. You can tally a thousand votes with a pocket calculator.”

  Bellamy frowned. “I kind of wondered, myself; I sorta thought they were keeping track of all the logistics--20,000 troops in the Composite Force, plus whatever Montclair is fielding, not to mention the civilian police services. You’re right. It doesn’t add up.”

  They shook hands and parted company.

  David walked the length of the Mall, around Capitol Hill, and into the Library of Congress. There, in a recently established National Military Archive, he sat in a small, too-cold air conditioned room at a table while a departmental assistant brought him permadisks recorded from old microfiche records. “There you are, Captain,” she said, “unit histories since 1945.” She was a 30ish woman, not bad looking, but stern and as frigid as her domain. David wondered if the air conditioning was designed to prevent people from staying too long, or to keep her from melting. “You can have another stack going further back, once you’re done with those.”

  “Thank you,” David said, slipping a disk into the reader. No head goggles here. The image showed on a flat-screen that hung like a picture on the wall. It was slow, monotonous reading. The only splashes of color were the various unit emblems--shoulder patches, guidons, flags, decorations. He started with the numbers and ran a sort check. Should have known; there was no 3045th. He went to the Regular Army and stepped through the various Military Intelligence agencies and commands. Should have been easy, he thought. The field was narrow enough. The problem was that some units overlapped and others were blanked out for security reasons. Even though the Cold War had been over for decades. Having scanned the active Army, he switched to the Reserves. It got tougher. The MI units sprawled over 48 states. Some outfits overlapped with National Guard units, others with Regular Army units. He traveled up and down alphabetic and numerical listings. Nothing resembling the mythological unit Bellamy had asked him to search for. Could the 3045th be a fraud? It hardly seemed possible. David rose to stretch his legs. He stepped into a lounge for coffee. As he sipped his coffee, he looked through a window that opened on a large bay office. He spotted the librarian’s unsmiling face several dividers away. She was speaking with two military officers. All three were nodding. He didn’t recognize either of the two joes. Could be public relations officers, for all he knew, maybe historians; anything was possible. Then again, could they be following him, checking on what he was doing? Ridiculous. You’d send plainclothes guys to do that, not guys in uniform visible from a mile away, unless--. In today’s Washington, maybe a military uniform was a good disguise. David finished his coffee, crumpled the paper cup, and threw the cup into the empty steel waste basket with a slam. He wasn’t going to start looking over his shoulders every five seconds.

  Returning to the reader in the small office, he went back over the disks he’d looked at. There were Active, Reserve, Active Reserve, Inactive Reserve, Ready Reserve, an endless profusion. As he searched, he discovered more categories. Under Reserve, Temporary Status, Budget Review for 1956, he found the 3045th Military Intelligence Detachment (Reserve) (Military Government). The 3045th was one of several Reserve components, most associated with one or another major American university, whose mission was to train U.S. Army officers to take over governments in conquered countries. The supreme models were, of course, Germany and Japan, defeated in World War II, and governed directly by the Allied military forces for several years. Officers and men of the 3045th had served with distinction during the period 1946--1949 in West Germany. Some of the members had served with OSS during World War II, recruited from Yale, Harvard, and the like. The unit was disbanded in 1957. Some members moved on to MI units in related missions, but access to names and units was classified top secret with Joint Chiefs of Staff-level Need-to-Know.

  Chapter 17

  David had just finished briefing Jankowsky on his meeting with Bellamy, when Tory rang him on the collar com. “David, can you talk?”

  “Something about Ib?” A fist seemed to tighten in his abdomen.

  “Nothing yet.”

  “Where are you? Is everything okay?”

  “I’m at the Atlantic Hotel, David,” she said with a sigh; “my unit is being moved here!”

  David frowned. So the military team using CloudMaster at NSSO was being transferred from the Observatory to the computer center at the Atlantic Hotel & Convention Center. Colonel Bentyne, her commanding officer, was directly under General Montclair’s command.

  “I’ll be coming to this horrible place every day.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that. Look on the bright side, Tory. There is a shuttle to the hotel. You can ride to work with me in the morning and then shuttle on.”

  “That would certainly be a bright spot. I don’t like this at all, David. Jet’s pretty gloomy about it too. There’s fourteen of us, and nobody’s happy about it. Aw hell, it’s the Army. What did I expect?”

  Somebody is tightening control, David thought. Somebody is bringing all the toy soldiers together where they can be better watched. “There’s an upbeat soul. Want to meet me for lunch?”

  “Yes.”

  “You sound like you need cheering up. I’ll meet you at the Atlantic and we’ll find a little place.”

  David met Tory in the main lobby of the hotel. She was dressed much as he was--jeans, plaid shirt, sweater, light jacket--because her crew were packing up the office records and supplies. “I’m taking the rest of the day off,” he told her as they walked toward the elevators. “What a magnificent lobby,” David said as his eyes raked across an acre of hillocks, waterfalls, palm trees, and more greenery. Massive marbled columns in soft honey tones swirling among soft cacaos, loomed into the ceiling. In the cavernous lobby, David turned his gaze upward through the hazy emptiness. Way up, shafts of sunshine cut through small high windows and even higher skylights. The shafts leaned through the atmosphere, fading into fragments filled with lazily whirling dust motes like lightning bugs.

  She whispered: “Isn’t it wonderful? I still hate the idea of working here.” She pushed a button. “My car is in the basement garage. I’m done packing my desk, and I don’t need to hang around.” They stepped inside, the door closed, and the elevator descended.

  “Want to spend a few hours with me?” she asked.

  “I can’t think of a better way to pass the afternoon.”

  The door opened upon a dark vista of concrete and weak lights. The place was packed with light armored infantry vehicles painted with blue and yellow camouflage blobs. Fifty caliber machine gun barrels bristled ominously from ball turrets. A squad of commandos looked up in surprise while unloading ammo boxes from a pallet. Their sergeant frowned as he stepped toward the elevator. “What are--?” he started to say but the door closed.

  “Next floor up. Who are they?” Tory asked as the elevator rose.

  “You sorta get used to them, and sorta not,” he said echoing what Bellamy had said. They found her car and drove out of the garage, into a welcome gust of wind and daylight. “What a relief to be out of there,” she said.

  “CON2 will be over in a few months,” he suggeste
d. How long did a bunch of idiots need to completely screw up the Constitution? If the Constitution radically changed, the Supreme Court would be almost meaningless until a new body of interpretive law had been built from the ground up. Even the division of powers into Executive, Legislative, and Judiciary could be up for grabs. Nothing would ever be the same again.

  They passed a cordon of trucks outside, drove past the checkpoints, and into the heart of the city. Despite CON2, the machinery of government was in full motion, and the sidewalks were jammed with pedestrians dressed for office work.

  “There is one place I’d really like to go,” Tory said.

  “You name it.”

  “You can say no.”

  “I won’t.”

  And she explained as they walked slowly along the paths and lawns, her arm slung through his, their bodies close together. Victor Breen had been a hero of the Vietnam War, a Medal of Honor recipient, killed in battle long ago. Tory had an older brother who’d been ten when her grandfather’s coffin came back from Asia. He’d told her in loving detail about the funeral. The Army had buried Victor Breen at Arlington in a light drizzle while a few scattered flowers came into a late bloom along the endless somber green. Tory's brother told of a U.S. flag draping the coffin. Men in uniform with lots of stripes and braids had attended. Soldiers had fired guns. Taps had quavered hauntingly where Tory and David walked today. Tory's brother retold the story about once a year when the family reunited for Christmas at the house in Davenport.

  Today, Tory carried a bouquet of flowers.

  “Nice place for a stroll,” David said, holding her lightly, appreciating the specialness of the place.

  “It’s gorgeous,” she said. She seems to be growing distant, he thought.

  She folded her arms upon herself against the brisk wind, and pressed against him. He liked the feel of her shoulder, then an arm, an elbow, a hand, against his side. They came to the weathered stone. She knelt and laid the flowers lovingly on the grass beside the simple white headstone that read Victor Breen, Col., USA. Moss grew on the stone, filigreed with hairline cracks by many winters and summers. He noticed her eyes brimmed and then tears twirled through the air and spangled the young green grass. Somewhere over a hill covered with brittle orange leaves, at some new gravesite, a volley of shots rang out. Thin, distant strains of Taps floated through the air.