Grinding his molars, the President said, “Our lease on that land—which did not even exist before we dredged it up—expires fifty years from now.”
“Not the way Commander M’duku sees it.”
“I don’t care if he sees purple hippos. I’ve bent over backwards for this clown, and every time I’ve had something unpleasant shoved up my ass. Now you tell him I’m in a nasty mood, Marvin, in a neo-colonial kind of mood, and that you don’t know what the hell I’m capable of when I’m like this, but if he’s smart he will cessate fucking with me.”
He certainly was exercised. The veins on his neck were bulging above the top of his bulletproof Kevlar undershirt. We now wore this most everywhere, even to small receptions.
The President concluded that conversation by telling Marvin his “visa” was good for twenty-four hours. In his book Marvin claims this put “intolerable” pressure on the negotiations, precipitating subsequent developments.
They spoke five times the next day. Each time the President’s blood pressure shot up and he would mutter the word “honey” with a sort of “Rosebud” inflection that frankly worried me.
The last call to Chicago came shortly after seven p.m. Central time.
“Five hundred million,” said Marvin. “He’ll do it for five hundred million. And we can still claim we screwed him down from four bil.”
If M-and-M had been more “romantic”—to borrow Clay Clanahan’s phrase—in his dealings with Thomas Tucker, the President might have agreed to the settlement. But this was not seduction, it was what law-enforcement people call “penetration.”
“Get on the plane, Marvin,” sighed the President.
Three hours later we were flying home on Air Force One. The President was holding a drink and staring out the window. “I should have made him Secretary of State,” he mused, watching the strobe light on the end of the starboard wing. “He shows a remarkable talent for lobbying on behalf of countries that don’t like us very much.”
Somewhere over eastern Virginia he was handed a message saying that our naval air station on Bermuda was again under attack.
31
DESPERATE MOLAR
New and unpleasant ingredient has been added to this already unsavory stew.
—JOURNAL, OCT. 15, 1992
“You know that scene in The Longest Day,” said the President, “where the two Germans in the bunker look out and see the whole horizon covered with ships? I want it like that.”
Admiral Boyd, sullen from four years of defense-budget cutting, replied, “I don’t know if we have enough Navy left to cover the horizon.”
“Then use tankers or whatever and paint them gray. I want him to look out his window in the morning and shit in his pants.”
The Admiral pointed out that in order to be visible from M’duku’s bedroom window, the Task Force would have to situate itself on top of a coral reef.
“Then put them so he can see them from his dining-room window.”
Surveillance photographs were consulted, revealing that his dining-room windows looked out on his garden. The President declared that he wanted the garden defoliated.
We were in the Situation Room. It was past four in the morning and I was very tired, but there was a lot to do. Feeley had taken on martial airs—from having spent so much time with admirals and Marine generals—and had taken to walking around with his telescoping display-chart pointer in the manner of an English colonel. He kept repeating the phrase “Americans love a crisis.” It was a sort of mantra he had devised for the occasion.
Throughout the night there had been discussion of sending in an “extraction team” from Fort Bragg to rescue Marvin and the hapless Cromattie and Baum. But there was no consensus on the point. M-and-M was disputing our charge that he was holding them hostage, saying that since it was impossible to get through to the airfield—which his troops were besieging—they would remain his “honored guests” at People’s House for the duration of the “unpleasantries.” Every so often the former Cedric Pudlington in Makopo M’duku bubbled to the surface.
The phones, of course, were down—cut by “elite Imperial American commandos,” as BUPI claimed—so there was no communicating with Marvin, but Clanahan’s “assets” were reporting that People’s House resembled a fortress more than a governor’s residence.
It was uncertain whether a rescue raid would aggravate or alleviate the situation.
There were some who wanted to leave Marvin where he was. General Gilhooley kept saying, “Well, if he’s their guest …” Feeley began laughing. When the President asked him what was so funny, Feeley said it was the thought of Marvin having his toenails pulled out one by one. Everyone in the room denies having laughed at this, but the truth of the matter is that only Lleland did not. But then he never laughed.
It was then the President decided to approve the extraction mission, code-named Desperate Molar. It is possible that Feeley’s joke was inadvertently responsible for that approval. I think that, despite everything, the President was disturbed by the thought of Marvin’s toenails being pulled out.
Emissaries from Secretary of State Holt continued to arrive. The Secretary had determined that the Middle East might survive another week or so without his constant attention and had deigned to give the impending war in the North Atlantic some of his time. He, of course, was opposed to doing anything about it. “There are no instant solutions,” he told the President. For a moment I thought there might be a scene, but then the President said in a quiet voice, “Thank you, Darius,” and resumed questioning the Admiral about how many Rangers could be parachuted into the town of Hamilton.
Toward five a.m. all the elements of the “land-sea interface”—as the Admiral referred to it—were finalized. Boyd told the President the operation would involve over 30,000 men. “About all we have left,” he mumbled.
“Thank you, Admiral,” said the President. “I’ll try to return them to you in good condition.”
The Pentagon had code-named the operation Certain Fury, but the President preferred Extreme Displeasure—he thought it more understated, yet just as emphatic. He had also dropped his insistence on defoliating M’duku’s garden. “I don’t want to appear vindictive,” he said. “You have to think about history.”
With that, the session adjourned. I looked at the clock over the door. It read 5:45 a.m. I was filled with a sense of history, but I also had a slight headache.
After a few hours’ sleep on my couch I dragged myself to my desk and spent most of the morning going over Charlie’s draft of the President’s address to the nation that evening. It needed toning down. Charlie had worked himself into a lather. There was one too many quotes from Henry V’s “Once more unto the breach” speech; and anyway the President’s tongue did not curl easily around Shakespeare. I also asked Charlie to beef up the supportive references to Marvin. His first draft had not even mentioned him by name, referring only to “U.S. personnel.”
Charlie did not take well to my speech suggestions. The problem was that I knew more than he did about the TOP SECRET/TYPHOON-classified Extreme Displeasure than he, but was not at liberty to discuss it. After we had barked at each other for fifteen minutes or half an hour, I solved the problem by informing him I was no longer “suggesting” the changes.
He called me a “wimp.”
I was not in the mood to be spoken to this way by a speechwriter. I reminded him of what John Ehrlichman had told one of Nixon’s speechwriters: “You writer types are a dime a dozen.”
“So were Nixon’s speeches,” he snarled. “At least Ehrlichman had balls.”
“Now, Charlie—”
“Go on, give it to Peterson. He’ll give it that nice, simpering touch you like.”
I made a note to look into Charlie’s medication. I didn’t think they were giving him enough of the pills that calmed him down.
At 3:10 p.m. I got a call from Clay Clanahan. “Something’s just come up,” he said. “I don’t want to be the one to tell hi
m.”
I knew it must be bad.
“Guess who’s in Bermuda,” he said.
I hadn’t a clue.
“First Brother.”
I wasn’t sure I wanted to tell the President either. Dan Tucker had arrived on the vexed island—by boat.
Clanahan’s people had him under surveillance. Apparently he had gone straight to the Chancery building on Front Street that was serving as the Political Office of BUPI. Clay didn’t know what he was doing in there, but he had a few ideas.
The President was briefing Speaker of the House Ferraro and the congressional leadership on Extreme Displeasure when I slipped into the Oval to give him the news.
From the look on Ms. Ferraro’s face, the briefing was not going well. I managed to catch the President’s eye and convey to him that I had something important for him.
“Well?” he said after they’d left.
I told him. He walked over to his desk and didn’t say anything for a few moments.
“Remind me, Herb, is he still a Muslim?”
“No, sir. He’s been living in Michigan with the Bhagwan.”
“Oh, yes,” he sighed. “That’s right. He sent me some of their cheese for Christmas. It wasn’t bad, actually. Little lumpy. Card said they make it from beans.”
I felt badly for him.
32
URGENT LAUNDRY
Must speak with Herb Junior about his grades, stealing, etc.
—JOURNAL, OCT. 16, 1992
I slept on the couch in my office the night of the President’s historic address. I was awoken shortly before six by a banging sensation on my forehead. It was Firecracker. He was in his pajamas and was carrying about four pounds of comic books. He got in under the blanket and handed me the comic books. Thus I began one of the most decisive days in American history by reading aloud from Newbold the Wonder Slug and Titanium Kid.
The spectacle of a U.S. Naval Task Force steaming at full speed toward Bermuda had certainly caught the world’s attention. The morning papers were full of reaction to the President’s speech. I winced at the Post headline, AMERICA GOES TO WAR. I hadn’t recalled anything in the President’s speech about war. Though he had made it clear he was no longer in a mood to be trifled with, the true mission of Extreme Displeasure remained a secret. The purpose of the speech was to persuade M-and-M that if this nonsense continued he might end up on the business end of the battleship New Jersey’s sixteen-inch guns.
The Soviet Ambassador, Vassily Kritkin, relatively new to Washington, arrived at nine. He was a stout fellow with watery eyes and strong cologne. He suffered from some skin condition and was constantly scratching. (I had advised him on some ointments.)
He had come to warn the President that the Soviet Union would be “forced to respond” in the event of a U.S. attack on Bermuda. The President nodded and steered the conversation toward the Ambassador’s eczema or whatever it was, which seemed to throw the Ambassador off guard. The interview concluded with the President giving him a good whack on the back and admonishing him, “Don’t be a stranger.” I saw to it that he left with several boxes of White House matches. Those always sent the Ambassador off with a smile.
Shortly after ten I received a call from the Uniformed Secret Service division saying I was needed “urgently” in room 103 of the Executive Office Building. There had been “an incident.”
When I arrived I found two officers restraining Charlie and attempting to soothe him. He had each of them by their ties and was saying belligerent things to them. One of the White House medical staff had a blood-pressure sleeve around Charlie’s arm. Charlie had a wild look in his eyes. His hair was mussed and he was breathing heavily.
Another officer told me that he thought Robin Peterson would be “all right” but that he had been taken to George Washington University Hospital just “to have some X-rays taken.”
He said they had been called by Peterson’s secretary, who told them “Mr. Manganelli is in with Mr. Peterson and there are strange banging sounds going on.”
I was not able to get much from Charlie—he was in quite a state. But clearly the problem was the speech. I’d asked Peterson to rework Charlie’s draft. He’d done a perfectly workmanlike job, and had added the line “We must never shrink from force, just as we must never force others to shrink from us,” with its Kennedyesque echoes. Charlie, however, took strong exception to it. Writers are a sensitive lot—too sensitive, in my opinion.
After bundling Charlie off to Bethesda, I called Dr. Saladino at George Washington. There was no serious damage to Peterson, nothing broken, just a swollen lower lip and a bruise below the left eye. I told him of the need for discretion, and he assured me the matter would remain “private.” Very agreeable man.
At one o’clock Clanahan called me. “More good news,” he said. “Cain is making a speech this afternoon on TV.” Cain was our private code word for Dan Tucker.
I really did not feel like being the one to tell the President this. We argued for five minutes about whose job it was. It was a truly inverse Washington phenomenon: two top-level government officers, each trying to convince the other one that he was closer to the President. Of course, I was closer; it was just not a distinction I felt at the moment like enjoying. In the end we tossed a coin. I did the tossing and it came out heads. Clanahan had said tails. He didn’t believe me. So we set up a conference call with Marshall Brement, a mutual and trusted friend and Assistant Secretary of State for Political Affairs. Without telling Marshall what was at stake, we had him toss. I lost.
“More good news,” I said, walking into the Oval Office, trying to sound as perky as popcorn. The President did not take the news well.
Feeley spent an hour on the phone trying to convince the U.S. networks not to carry the speech live. Hah!
Even now, years later, I sometimes dream about that speech. Joan tells me she knows I’ve been having the dream when I begin hurling pillows at the dresser.
I watched Dan’s speech with the President and Feeley in the Oval. It was just the three of us. He didn’t want anyone else.
I don’t know what made Dan tick, but his clock was not working properly. I don’t know if he ever would have made good his promise to immolate himself in public the moment the first U.S. landing craft or paratrooper hit Bermudian soil. The point was that M-and-M might not have given him the option of changing his mind. The President convened another session of the EST.
My heart went out to the man. Here he was doing everything in his power to keep the North Atlantic from becoming a war zone, and now his baby brother was threatening to douse himself with gasoline and light a match to himself.
The President apologized to the EST members for the “awkwardness” of the situation. I thought I caught a faint trace of a smirk on Lleland’s face. Admiral Boyd and Gilhooley seemed to have a hard time looking the President in the eye. I think they pitied the man too.
The situation did not require much discussion. Admiral Boyd was directed to assemble another extraction team and to coordinate with Clanahan. The operation was code-named Urgent Laundry, and was to be given priority over Desperate Molar—a fact which obviously grated on Marvin, to judge from his book.
M-and-M’s forces, emboldened by Dan’s promise of self-immolation, pressed the attack on the base throughout the day. The President was kept in direct contact with the Pentagon. The fighting was fiercest at the main gate and along Kindley Field Road. Gilhooley wanted to “blow” the causeway, cutting off the base from the western end of the island, but the President refused, saying he did not want to escalate the conflict. This was admirable restraint, I thought. Gilhooley did not see it that way.
“Then can we at least give them a dose of 322?”
But the President did not want to use GB-322 again. His appetite for chemicals had been ruined; besides, there was the other danger. “General,” he said, “if they so much as get a whiff of that stuff, you know what they might do to Mr. Edelstein?”
From his
silence it was clear General Gilhooley was indifferent to the fate of Marvin’s toes.
“We just need to hold twelve hours longer, Gilhooley.”
“Sir, we may not have twelve hours.”
“Have you tried the hoses?”
Gilhooley sighed. “The water pistols. Yes, Mr. President. We have. And those people appear to be enjoying themselves.”
“Good, good,” said the President. “I’m glad there’s something redeeming about all this.”
All day the giant C-7A Universe cargo jets roared in and out of the base continuously on their secret missions, setting the stage for Operation Extreme Displeasure. I’m told by those who were there that it was a sight to rival the Berlin airlift.
Toward seven p.m., with the fleet only five hours from rendezvous point Sierra off St. George’s, the fence along runway ten was breached. This was the scene of the heroic repulse by Master Sergeant Stephen Wagner.
Wagner directed his men to charge the attackers with the fire-fighting trucks. Outnumbered nearly ten to one, he and his unit foamed the invaders to a standstill until reinforcements arrived to complete the repulse with rubber bullets and tear gas.
One of the President’s happiest duties as commander-in-chief was pinning on Wagner’s Bronze Star with V device in the Rose Garden.
In the midst of all this my wife, Joan, called. “Herb,” she said, “I’m worried about Herb, Junior.”
“Joan,” I said, “this is not a good time.”
“He bought a crossbow at Sears.”
“Joan, where did he get the money to buy a crossbow at Sears from?”
“That’s just it. I think he’s stealing from my purse.”
“Joan, you’re going to have to cope with this. I can’t—”
“You remember what he did with that slingshot.”
“All right, tell him to put it away. I’ll speak with him when I get home.”
“When will that be? You haven’t been home—”
The White House Mess Page 22
