Don Pendleton - Civil War II

by Don Pendleton

  "I'm not budging," Winston said adamantly. "This is a very serious matter, and—"

  "So is mine, Commissioner. That dinner engagement is at the White House."

  He said it rather proudly, Winston thought. Get off my back, nigger-tender, you're talking to a guy who dines with the President. Yeah, Winston thought, and I'm talking to a guy who undermined me out of that very spot.

  Winston told him, "Great. Take me with you, and we'll discuss the matter with the man."

  "I don't invite people to the White House. You're smart enough to know that, Winston."

  Sure, but not smart enough to look out for a knife from a friend. "I'm smart enough," he said aloud, "to know that there are going to be twenty million howling niggers pouring out of those towns with blood in their eyes. A military coup is underfoot, I know it now and you should have a long time ago. Now you pick up that telephone and clear it with: the man, and then let's go to dinner."

  Fairchild showed him a twisted grin and asked, "Are you feeling all right, Mr. Winston?"

  "No, I'm feeling like hell. But I can stand it if you can. Pick up the phone, Tom."

  The police chief sighed, dropped his eyes to the desk, then raised them slowly to the still figure in the visitor's chair. "I guess I'd better detain you, Commissioner Winston," he said thoughtfully.

  "In a pig's ass," Winston replied calmly.

  Fairchild smiled. "You understand. A security hold, just until we've had time to check out this, uh, threat. You shouldn't be running around making threats like that, Commissioner. It's against the law."

  "Knock it off, Tom. You know exactly why I am here, and that I am not dashing about alarming the populace." Winston stood up. "Now let's end the game. Make the call or I will."

  "In all seriousness," Fairchild said smoothly, "I am placing you in security hold. You're trying to mix yourself into something that is way beyond you, and that's all I'm going to say about it. You'll just have to understand."

  Winston simply could not understand. He let go from the hip, falling over across the desk-top with an arcing hook that removed the set smile from the cop's face. Fairchild toppled over behind the desk, spinning to hands and knees, and Winston was over the desk with both feet before the cop had completely touched down.

  A small nickle-plated revolver clattered to the floor. Winston scooped it up, leaned back against the edge of the desk, and said, "Okay, Tom, come up carefully."

  "You're nuts ... totally insane!" the police chief panted.

  "Not nuts enough to let you lock me up at a time like this. Now you get on that telephone. You set it up for us to talk to the old man. And you set it up clean. Or else I am going to set you down very dirty, and I have never been more serious in my life."

  Fairchild obviously believed him. His eyes receded even farther into the skull and he grunted, "Don't be melodramatic, Mike. You don't think I'd turn a lunatic loose on the old man."

  "And you know I'm no lunatic. Something is happening in blackville, and it could be happening at this very moment, the big happening. You set it up for the White House, Tom. Set it up right now."

  Fairchild glared at him through a half-minute of silence. Then he gave a heavy sigh and rubbed the contusion on his chin. "All right. But you'll have to turn over the gun. You're not going to dinner at the White House with a gun in your hand."

  "Of course not."

  "You're a throwback, Winston."

  "I'm a what?"

  "You were born several hundred years too late. You belong in King Arthur's court."

  "Right now I'll settle for King Arlington's," Winston told him. "The phone, Tom. Pick up the damn phone."

  CHAPTER 9

  Mike Winston was not often awed by the mere presence of another man. Right now he was trying to decide whether the awe was inspired by the man or the office. Perhaps it was a combination of both, he decided. After all, J. Humphrey Arlington had become an American institution, a "servant of the republic" for more than forty years and nearly eight of those years as President. And this was Winston's first intimate contact with the man.

  The old boy was still a handsome and commanding figure, even at this septegenaiian stage of life. The mind seemed as sharp and the eyes as penetrating as any young man Winston knew. Right now the presidential gaze was fastened securely onto one Mike Winston, and the object of that gaze was finding the entire thing entirely uncomfortable. He was even now beginning to wonder what sort of fool it is who demands, at gunpoint, an audience with the President of the United States. It was no coincidence that Arlington had just expressed that same question.

  "There seemed to be no other way, sir," Winston explained. "I simply felt that this intelligence should be placed at your disposal at the earliest possible moment."

  The fierce old eyes probed the depths of his brandy snifter, then he swirled the liquid in a gentle motion and commented, "So you think the Negruhs are planning an uprising."

  He looked back into the presidential gaze and replied, "Yes, Mr. President, that is precisely what I think."

  "And you say this in your official capacity aa National Commissioner of Urban Affairs?"

  Winston's eyes flickered. What was the old Hon getting to? "Yes, sir, I do."

  "You realize, then, that you are expressing an official view of the United States Government?"

  "I am expressing a subordinate view to my Chief Executive," he replied curtly. "I would be remiss not to do so, sir."

  "Have you ever considered expressing such views through the regular chain of command?"

  The interview was taking on a dreamlike quality for Winston. Or nightmarish. He explained, "I felt this situation lay beyond official courtesies and protocol, sir. My bureau chief is—at the moment . . . personally indisposed."

  "Your bureau chief, sir, is drunk," the President said quietly.

  Winston blinked. What the hell was going on? Surely, for God's sake, the President couldn't be with the blacks. The idea was almost laughable. He said, "I neglected to tell you, sir. The incident that turned me onto this investigation was . . . well, I'm certain that I saw General Bogan this morning, in company with Abraham Lincoln Williams. He was in civilian clothes. I came across them in the Oakland Town Hall, and you'd have thought I was the truant officer and they were a couple of kids cutting classes. I—"

  "General Bogan has a right to a personal life. Has he not?"

  "It's totally out of character, sir. The town niggers supposedly hate the government niggers as much as they hate whitey. I just can't see the two of them—"

  "It has been common knowledge for some time, both in the Pentagon and at the White House, that Jackson Bogan is interested in a rapprochement with his less favored brothers. Is there something immoral in that, Commissioner?"

  The old bastard. Why was he doing this? He knew

  better. Winston told the President of the United States, "Talking to you, sir, is as frustrating as talking to Tom Fairchild and Charlie Waring. No, sir, doubly as frustrating. I feel ashamed, sir, deeply ashamed."

  Winston was halfway out of Ms chair when the President cackled and said, "Sit down, Commissioner. You've not been dismissed, nor will you be on such a note as that."

  "My apologies, sir," Winston muttered. "You have no idea how difficult it is to command any attention in this city. Paul Revere would have never made it in the twentieth century."

  The President smiled. "We have our Paul Reveres, Commissioner." He turned to Fairchild. "Well, Tom?"

  Fairchild smiled and spread his hands. "I thanked Mike for his alert assistance, sir. I gave him every assurance that the matter would be dealt with." He smiled. "That's when he pulled the gun on me. I thought it best to let you be the judge of the ... uh ... urgency of his intelligence."

  The President chuckled. "I suppose I would feel the same way, with a gun at my head. I understand, Tom, that it was your own gun he pulled on you."

  Fairchild flushed. "I didn't expect a Washington bureaucrat to come on like a television melo
drama, Mr. President."

  The President was still chuckling when he turned back to the urban commissioner. "Don't you like your job, Mr. Winston?" he asked. "I mean, aren't you satisfied with it, ministering to the needs of the black community? Do you find yourself continually pulled back into the intrigue of police work?"

  Winston was getting a deeper taste of rage. President or no, he'd had a cup full. "What sort of game are you two playing with me?" he asked quietly. His hands were beginning to shake. He clamped them firmly onto his knees and leaned forward tensely in his chair. "Who the hell do you think you're talking to?"

  "Here here, sir!" the President cried, in a tone used to scold undisciplined children.

  Winston ignored the call to order. "I came here to present facts—facts, not vague ideas—which appear highly

  critical to the national security. I believe I made an impressive case. And your only reaction is to try to make me feel like an idiot. I am not an idiot, Mr. President."

  The old boy had come to a boil, and the eyes were blazing with outrage. "If the President says you're an idiot, sir, then you are an idiot," he intoned haughtily. "And believe me, sir, you are an idiot!"

  Well, Winston thought, so this is what it's like. This is what it's like for an Abe Williams or a John Harvey, trying to act like a man in the presence of pompous foolishness. His eyes blurred. He wondered if he were going mad. He wanted to get up and hit that old man, knock his goddamn leering old head off. Yes, he must be going mad. His fingers dug into his knees. He took a deep breath, let half of it out, and aaid, "Mr. President, our nation is in peril. You must understand that."

  "This nation is forever in peril!" Arlington thundered. "When the President places his head upon the pillow at the end of day, the nation is in peril. When the President rises from his bed at end of night, the nation is in peril! Your President has lived for half a century with the daily knowledge of his nation in peril. From within and from without. Does an administrative junior stroll into the White House, fresh from a once-in-a-lifetime self-important game of intrigue, and presume to tell his President that the national is in peril? You, sir, are a total idiot!"

  The old man had used a lot of wind for that emotional speech, but Winston was too far gone to tread water now. He dived into the uncertain depths with a flaring, "You, sir, are a pompous ass!"

  Yeah, he'd gone insane. Arlington's face was white death. The lips were moving without sound. Winston had broken through; he had joined that exclusive inner circle of political suicides. But the Presidential gaze was, at least, of a different quality now. He wasn't toying with Winston any longer.

  "I apologize for my outburst, Commissioner," the President said, sucking hard for air.

  "And I for mine, sir," Winston replied.

  Arlington stared with glassy eyes at an unlit cigar. Tom

  Fail-child was trying hard not to smirk and not <|uilr> succeeding. Presently the President sighed and said, "Tom, would you be so kind as to bring some more brandy."

  Winston's was untouched. He waved Fairchild away, fidgeted, and watched his President attempting to pull the mantle of dignity back. The police chief completed his chore and resumed his watch in the chair. The silence ticked on. Presently Arlington sighed heavily and told Winston, "I must apologize to you, sir. I have treated you badly."

  "Thank you," Winston said.

  "And you have treated me badly."

  "Yes sir. And I also apologize."

  "Good. Now we have that rot out of the way. We have made a terrible mistake in this nation, Mr. Winston."

  "Yes sir."

  "Yes. A terrible mistake. We turned the military over to the blacks—lock, stock and artillery. And now we are at their damn mercy, sir. Do you understand that? We are at their mercy."

  "It may not be too late to—"

  "Of course it's not too late! That's the whole idea. It is not too late."

  "I, uh . . . I've lost you, sir."

  "You've never had me, Commissioner." The tired old eyes slid over to inspect Fairchild. "We are going to have to tell him, Tom."

  "I agree, Mr. President."

  "And you understand what this will mean."

  "Yes, sir. I understand."

  Winston did not particularly like the looks exchanged between the two. He watched Arlington, and waited, wondering what sort of game was starting now.

  The President lit his cigar, coughed, then leaned forward in his chair to impale Winston with a faint echo of the earlier hard glare. "You are not in the midst of fools, Commissioner. Did you imagine that you are the only man in government who is aware of the treachery developing in this republic? We have been watching them. We know who they are, and we have suspected for some time what they are up to. I must candidly confess, however, that your intelligence was a bit of a shock. We were not aware of the arms stockpiles. And we were not aware of General Bogan's treachery. Others in the military establishment, yes. We mean to know all of them, and we mean to learn precisely what it is they are planning. And you, Commissioner, must guard your information with your very life. You must keep it to yourself, and you must make no further moves, or you will upset our intelligence effort. Do you understand?"

  "I believe they already know of my suspicions, sir. I had a tail earlier today. I am being watched."

  "All the more reason, then, for you to go about your activities as though you are completely innocent Go back to your job, your job of administering the Negruh's needs. Speak no word to any man regarding this matter. And let your government handle the matter."

  "Forgive me, sir," Winston said hesitantly, "but I feel in my very bones that the situation has gone beyond the help of an intelligence effort. I believe that you should move immediately, forcefully, tonight. Every person known or suspected of treason should be rounded up and locked up. Every police department in the nation should be placed on federal activation, and each of those arms stockpiles should be seized and destroyed. Tonight."

  Arlington sighed, stared at Winston for a moment, then turned to his chief cop. "Tom?"

  Fairchild shook his head. "No, Mr. President. It's the wrong approach. Our intelligence indicates no need whatever for panic at this stage. And we could lose the heart of the entire thing if we move too hastily. Another ten days, I feel, and we'll be ready to move. But certainly no sooner."

  The President nodded and said, "My feelings exactly. Thank you, Tom. Goodnight, Mr. Winston. Thank you for coming."

  Winston's head was spuming. Only vaguely was he aware that he was leaving the President's study. He was moving woodenly at Fairchild's side, through the doorway

  and along the wide corridor, down the steps into the waiting automobile.

  Fairchild started the engine, moved the car gently along the sweeping drive, through the gate and onto the avenue. Then he pulled to the curb, produced a set of plastic handcuffs and the nickle-plated revolver.

  "You're under arrest, of course," he said quietly.

  Winston did not immediately comprehend. His thoughts were tumbling, a sense of frustration and urgency plucking at the taut fibres of his nervous system. Fairchild snapped one end of the cuffs onto Winston's left wrist, closed the other end around a clip on the dashboard, then moved the car back into the thin traffic of early-evening Washington. It was just beginning to get dark in the nation's capital. Winston stared at the handcuffs, at the little gun resting between Fairchild's legs, at the cold face of his captor.

  Then the taste of rage came sweet to his tongue. So that's where Charlie first got fucked! By that old man back there, that pompous and empty-headed ass who sold the nation on a sleight-of-hand apartheid plan called AMS

  The curtain rang full open in Winston's mind, and he saw it all then, the entire conspiracy of two decades, a white conspiracy, an entire nation bent to the will of one pompous and probably demented leader.

  He reached across with his right hand, snared the steerling wheel, and lunged across it. His left foot found Fairchild's right, on the accelerator
, and he stomped with everything he had. The cop was fighting him for the wheel, scrabbling desperately to disentangle his foot.

  "You crazy bastard!" Fairchild screamed. Then the brick wall loomed up over the scrunching hood of the car and Winston felt the piercing bite of the plastic cuffs as he became a dislocated flying object.

  I did itl he exulted, in that smashing amount of impact.

  Not until some time later, however, was he to be entirely sure of just what it was he had done.

  He had, in effect, become an integral part of the Omega Project.

  BOOK II - GATEWAY TO TOMORROW

  CHAPTER 1

  Fairchild was unconscious, a white welt traversing his forehead and a bit of blood on one cheek, but he was breathing. Winston fumbled through his pockets, found the key to the handcuffs, and freed himself. He glared at the little revolver through a moment of indecision, then pocketed the weapon. Fairchild was beginning to stir. Winston backed out of the wrecked vehicle on all fours. Several other cars had halted and a crowd of curious pedestrians was forming.

  "A man in there is hurt," Winston advised nobody in particular. Then he slipped through the crowd and walked rapidly down the avenue, turning off onto the first side street he came to.

  There was an ache in his ankle and his head was beginning to spin. He saw a familiarly-shaped building, one of those modernistic atrocities they were calling religious architecture in the nineties, and the neat plaque set into the side with the two words almost apologetically whispering: AMERICAN CHURCH.

  He merged in with the twenty or so people moving up the stone steps, fingering his AMS card and wondering whether he could risk using it. If there was a Zot-spot out on him . . . no, surely not so quickly.

  Winston hadn't been inside a church for a long time, and ] he felt vaguely uncomfortable at the prospect. But he was not seeking an enlightenment of soul—merely a place to wait and rest and bring his whirling mind together.

  The plastic box at the head of the stairs featured three j slots. One was inscribed CHRISTIAN TRADITIONAL, another NON-CHRISTIAN, and the third NEW AGE. A small line of people waited to use the latter two. Christian Traditional was not making it too well and most of the cards feeding into that slot, Winston noted, belonged to the very aged.