by Ian Slater
The congressman was surprised. La Roche was smarter than that; he’d banked from New York to Shanghai. He should have known that on some things, even congressmen can’t be bought. “I don’t want money,” he told La Roche.
“Course you fucking do. Ten grand? Twenty? You’re already a whore. All we’re talking now is price. I’ve bought your way to Capitol Hill and you know it.”
“I like to think that some people voted for me,” said the congressmen evenly.
“Think what you fucking like — but I bought the commercial that bought you the vote. Mr. Fucking Nice and Clean-Robert Redford from the Sunbelt. Don’t give me a dance.” La Roche walked back to the desk and slid the envelope closer to the congressman. “Go on, have a look.” La Roche spun the envelope opener, which, in the fluorescent light, threw a series of long white slashes on the high ceiling. “I know your boy’s in Korea,” he said. “American Division. Near Racin. Port for Pyongyang — or it was until our bombers pounded the shit out of it.” The congressman tried to hide his surprise at the extent of La Roche’s knowledge about his son.
La Roche shrugged nonchalantly, sat down, and swung his high-backed leather chair around toward the harbor, watching a fog bank that was moving inshore. “You shouldn’t feel out of it,” he told the congressman. “You’re not the only—” He almost said “gofer” but used “connection” instead.
“Then why don’t you have your other connection fix the transfer?” asked the congressman, looking down at the unopened envelope.
La Roche was watching the fog starting to roll as the warm land eddies rose from beneath the cooler air of the sea. La Roche spoke without turning back to face the congressman. “He’s in Japan at the moment. I can hardly fax him, can I? Besides, he’s busy over there. If we don’t watch it, we’re going to lose our supply of China crude.”
The congressman lifted the envelope. It was heavy. As he began opening it, he had to admit to himself that La Roche certainly was well informed. The fact that the United States, because the fighting in the Mideast had effectively dried up Arab shipments of oil, depended for up to 30 percent of its oil supply on China crude, was a little-known and carefully unpublicized statistic in the United States.
La Roche turned away from the window and stood behind the congressman, looking down at the contents of the envelope. “I like the redhead,” Jay said. “How old’s he? Sixteen — seventeen? Hard to tell with you on top of him. His face is in the shadow, but that’s you, all right, isn’t it?”
The congressman’s head didn’t move. “Where did you get these?”
“I got them. That’s the point, isn’t it? Now get the transfer.”
“Ah—” The congressman couldn’t go on, his voice cutting out.
“You need a drink,” said La Roche, moving over to the mahogany wall, pressing the panel that opened with a quiet whir, revealing a bar twinkling in its opulence. “Jack Daniels — crushed ice. Right?”
The congressman didn’t answer.
La Roche returned and held out the drink. The congressman hesitated, but then his body slumped and he seemed to shrivel. As he took the drink, he could hear the quiet tinkle of the ice collapsing, the smell of La Roche’s minty breath overpowering. “I suppose you have copies?”
“No,” said La Roche, “not of that lot. But I’ve better photos of you than that.”
The congressman didn’t want to look at the photos anymore, but he was shocked doubly by the fact that they were Polaroids, that someone must have used a flash. But how—
“You were so pissed,” said La Roche, anticipating him in a matter-of-fact tone, “you probably thought the bright light was a fucking sunrise.”
The congressman felt something on his shoulder. La Roche’s hand.
“Relax,” intoned La Roche, sipping a crème de menthe. “You’re all right. Should be a bit more careful, though. Use someplace you know — somewhere you’ve checked out. I always do.” La Roche’s other hand was on the congressman’s shoulder, massaging his neck.
“Christ!” said the congressman, slumping forward now, his head buried in his hands.
La Roche kept up the steady massage. “It’s a bastard, isn’t it? Still — we have to keep it in the family. Right? I mean— for the family’s sake.” Outside, the fog had become a gossamer of gold swallowing the carriers.
CHAPTER THIRTY
Though the afternoon was overcast above Tallinn, it could not dampen the corporal’s spirits. For him it was a day of singular victory. Were Malle any older, it could have been embarrassing. Normally it wouldn’t do — a man courting a woman ten years his senior — but she kept her figure well. It was the first thing he’d noticed on the day he’d knocked on the door of her apartment in the Mustamäe complex. He had commented on her beauty often, especially after she undid the tight bun and let her hair cascade down. And the more he told her how beautiful she was, the more he convinced himself that having sex with her was a completely natural outcome of their first “meeting,” as he called it— rather than rape. In his eyes she had confirmed as much herself, asking him after they’d made love the day before to go with her today for a walk in Kadriorg Park, explaining that with the MPO’s Captain Malkov continuing to arbitrarily take hostages from the street until he rooted out the munitions saboteurs in Tallinn, she was terrified to go out alone.
“I would be honored,” he had told her, the very idea of his comrades seeing him with a vivacious woman on his arm pleasing him immensely. Indeed, he regarded his being posted to Estonia as the best thing that had happened to him since he’d been conscripted, his liaison with Malle confirming his belief not only that things work out for the best in the long run but that at heart women craved a palochku— “bit of stick”—even though they would never admit it. And what if anyone in his MPO company saw him and blabbed about it to his wife, Raza, back home? Then, he determined, he would merely tell Raza that Malle had been another suspected Estonian saboteur he had been ordered to — well, that would be a bit thin, he thought, but it was highly unlikely someone would mention it in their letters. Besides, the company censor would be quick to black out anything that might cause consternation on the home front.
They were strolling beneath the copse of linden trees, the pigeons walking about more skittishly than usual — pigeons were fresh meat in a time of severe rationing. “You are very quiet today,” he said to her, smiling.
“Yes.”
“You look sad. I thought you would be pleased to be out in the park again, yes?”
Two MPO guardsmen passed by, one of them giving him a knowing leer. “Well—?” the corporal pressed. “Why are you sad?”
“Because,” she began, looking pensively ahead at the denuded chestnut trees etched black on the gray sky, “of the war.” She fell silent.
“Don’t be so glum,” he said, slipping his arm about her. He was surprised she didn’t resist — most women did, in public at least. It made him even surer of himself. “Sometimes the war brings good things,” he said. “I like you and you like me. Not at first, but you see, strange things happen in the war. Things we have no control over, yes?”
“Yes,” she agreed, slowing down by the rest rooms, the grass about them knee-deep in fallen leaves that were spilling out onto the cement pathway.
“Wait here for a moment,” she said. “I have to go to the rest room.”
Waiting for her, the corporal pulled his gloves on more tightly, something he always affected when he felt in a particularly good mood. Problem was, if Malkov ever found his damn saboteurs, the corporal knew he’d be moving out, probably reassigned, God help him, to guard duty around the mines in east Estonia. The backside of the Baltic. He hoped Malkov would never find the saboteurs, but anyway, he would turn the boy in then. Did Malle really think he hadn’t figured out the boy was tucked away in the crawl space? He could smell him. The kid was probably masturbating every time they did it.
The corporal’s attention was on a motorcade; the big boy, Admiral Brodsky,
was down from Leningrad, and word had it that he wasn’t happy with Malkov’s failure to root out whoever had been sabotaging the munitions that had gone to the Yumashev and God knew where else. The MPO had already taken over six hundred hostages, with no results. It was said Brodsky was also under pressure from the STAVKA to settle the problem, and quickly — an artillery battery in Germany had come across several duds in what was supposed to be high-explosive 120-millimeters. It was all going to mean more hostages, most likely. Pray, thought the corporal, that the saboteurs, whoever they were, would hold out and give him more time with Malle. But he doubted they would. Some teenagers, like Malle’s grandson, had been shot in the last few days.
Suddenly it occurred to him Malle had been gone a long time, though Heaven knew women always took an age in the — maybe there was a rear door? He started toward the washroom.
“What’s wrong?” It was Malle, coming out, her hair no longer in a bun but about her shoulders, her coat over one arm. Her hair shocked him — she only did that when they were about to make love. It was as if she were undressing in public. She took his right arm with her left and pulled him close to her.
“My God!” he said. “You want to do it here!” He looked about, half-ecstatic, half-inhibited. “Here — in the park?”
“Not in the open, silly,” she said, smiling, and led him up the incline by the pond into the thicket of linden trees. Out of view, she turned to him, looked expectantly in his eyes, pushing her thigh into him.
“My God,” he said, his voice a hoarse whisper in his excitement. “My God, Malle, I love you.”
“I love you,” she said, her expression unchanged, and as they embraced, her coat fell among the dead leaves, the long hat pin piercing his heart, blood spurting over her bodice. Staggering back, wiping the hair from her eyes, she picked up the coat, put it on, and trying not to hurry, walked away-then she was running. She slowed down, breathing quickly, intent on not looking at all conspicuous, unaware that when she had brushed her hair from her face, she had left it smeared with his blood.
* * *
The COMPAC–Commander Pacific — was in his Pentagon office when Congressman Hailey’s call caught up with him. It was on the scrambler, and the congressman was talking about a Wave, a nurse, La Roche, L. — nee Brentwood. Separated.
Given the fact that her younger brother, David Brentwood, was MIA in northern Germany and another brother, Ray, ex-captain of the FFG USS Blaine, was badly burned and undergoing restorative surgery in La Jolla Vets’, would it be possible “for the family’s sake” to have her posted to a noncombat area? To Honolulu, to be specific. On an unrelated matter, the congressman would like to get together sometime with COMPAC to discuss increased naval appropriations from Congress.
‘‘I’m afraid,” the admiral informed the congressman, “I’ll have to forward the request to the chief of naval operations in Washington. Computer here says there was a disciplinary problem.”
“Yeah, I realize that,” replied the congressman. “Little indiscretion off Halifax. But surely she’s paid for that, being posted up there in Siberia. Anyway, we still have the siblings policy, don’t we? One missing or killed, the other is called home?”
“It’s voluntary, Congressman.”
“Hell,” said the congressman, “you don’t think she’d volunteer to get out of the Aleutians?”
“Well, congressman, we need everyone we can muster, and none of Admiral Brentwood’s children have been killed.”
“Jesus!” shot back the congressman. “What d’you want? One kid’s a goddamned monster in La Jolla Vets’ and one kid’s MIA. I’d say that was a fair contribution to the war effort.”
“Very well, Congressman. I’ll put the request through normal channels.”
“Shit — I don’t want you putting through anything. It’ll get lost in a sea of paper. That’s why I’m calling you. When you come up for congressional approval for the post of CNO, I’m not going to be wading through normal channels.”
“I’ll check it out, Congressman.”
“Fine. When can I expect to hear from you?”
“Oh, I’d say a week or two.”
“Jesus, Admiral — I mean today. Tonight.”
“I’ll get back to you, but I can’t promise—”
“Appreciate it,” said the congressman. “You boys are doing one hell of a job.”
“Thank you, sir.”
When he put the phone down, the admiral was shaking his head, passing a slip of paper to his aide. “A Wave — La Roche, L. What some guys’ll do for a bit of poontang. We’re trying to fight a war and he’s trying to get his favorite piece of tail to Honolulu. I thought I’d seen everything. Put it through normal channels. I don’t give a damn if the son of a bitch doesn’t confirm me.”
“Yes, sir,” said his aide, a balding, world-weary officer who’d served two other COMPACs. When his boss left, the aide faxed the request for a transfer to Washington. Strictly speaking, it wasn’t worded as a request, but the aide was long schooled in not saying what he was saying. His boss could afford to take the high road, at least officially, but the aide knew a quick response to the congressman would do COMPAC no harm, and aide to a CNO was one of the most powerful positions in the country. Either way, COMPAC had to deal with it. He was going to get a lot more of this bullshit. If the truth be known, the aide thought, it was probably old Admiral John Brentwood behind the request, using the congressman as a front.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
In the heaving darkness eleven hundred miles northeast of Japan, the rain-lashed flight deck of the U.S. carrier Salt Lake City was a roaring blaze of blue-white light, slivers of red, yellow, and green piercing the frenzied air. The carrier battle group of ten warships centered about Salt Lake City was thirty-six hours, less than halfway from the Aleutians, but its airborne screen and combat air patrols had been up since leaving the Korean waters.
As one of the pancake-rotodomed Hawkeyes, part of the carrier’s early-warning airborne screen, came in to land, three twin-engined “electronic countermeasures” Prowlers were warming up for the waist catapult, their bent “bee stinger” refueling nose rods casting strange shadows on the deck.
“He’s tired,” said the assistant LO, the landing officer in his yellow ID vest waving off a second Hawkeye for another run around, the plane already in its bolter pattern.
“Tired gets you killed,” yelled the LO, hand over his extended throat mike. The Hawkeye was coming in again.
“Looking good for the three-wire,” said the ALO, the plane approaching in low over the fantail.
“Clean trap,” confirmed the ALO, the Hawkeye’s nose dipping, power off, lurching to a stop. Seconds later its three moles, electronic warfare operators, came out. Arms extended, grasping the shoulders of the men in front of them, they were led through the blaze of light like blind men, their eyes not yet readjusted after the hours of near total darkness in the windowless aft of the Hawkeye’s electronic cave. As the seaman led them out of harm’s way across the hose-strewn deck, green-jacketed men checked the arrester cable, a blue jacket driving his yellow “mule” out to push the plane as quickly as possible to the “parking lot.” Another Hawkeye, its rotodome already up, well above the fuselage, turned about at the refueling station, as a “grape” jacket, with ear-muffs, quickly hooked up a wire-wrapped pressure hose, pumping a load of JP-5 fuel into the aircraft. Two men, green shirts, sprinted through the rain to Frank Shirer’s F-14 Tomcat as he and his radar intercept officer stood by, trying not to look upset. The two green jerseys, maintenance men, flicked up an access panel and replaced a black box.
“Try it!” one yelled at the top of his lungs, and the second man watched the cockpit as the Tomcat’s HUD lit up.
“A-OK!” the man screamed back, thumbs up.
“Thanks,” said Shirer, his voice drowned in the fury of a Prowler, a blast sheet up as the plane roared off the waist catapult into the rain-driven night.
On a mission to try to
protect Shemya Island from an ominous buildup of Russian fighters and bombers at Petropavlovsk on the Kamchatka Peninsula, no one admitted to being scared. They were too busy thinking about what they had to do. Next to submarine duty, working a carrier’s flight deck was the most dangerous job in the navy, made especially so this night by the line of squalls sweeping in all the way from the Sea of Japan. Screaming across the carrier’s deck, the wind gusts and shears combined with the back-blasts in a fierce hodgepodge of crosscurrents that could blow a man off the deck like a tumbleweed. The only good thing about this night was that the smell of Avgas wasn’t so astringent, the winds whipping fumes away as soon as they rose.
The first wave of fighters having taken off to go ahead and cover the carrier’s “Wild Weasels,” the advance electronic-jamming Prowlers, it was now Shirer’s turn as leader of the second wave. His cockpit closed, the Tomcat’s two twenty-thousand-pound Pratt and Whitney turbofans in high scream, preflight check completed, Shirer asked his RIO — radar intercept officer — if he was all set.
“Ready to go, Major?”
The Tomcat’s light gray fuselage appeared angular, ungainly, from the carrier’s island, the two intakes cumbersomely boxlike, until the plane turned under the lights, presenting its streamlined profile, the two flyers’ names stenciled alongside the cockpit bright white as Shirer lined her up with the starboard bow catapult track. A yellow jacket, both his flashlights arcing, walked back as the jet fighter inched forward. Two red-jacketed ordnance men appeared in front of the plane and shone their flashlights directly onto the tips of the Tomcat’s Sidewinder missiles. Through his headphone Shirer heard the faint burr, its sound like the rundown battery sound in a car. The heat-seeking missiles were now armed and live. The Tomcat’s nose settled, its chin gently nudging the catapult’s hook as the latter was attached to the nose wheel’s strut. Across, left of him, through the rain- and steam-filled night, Shirer could see his wingman lining up on the port bow catapult.
