The Last President: A Novel of an Alternative America

by Michael Kurland

  Warren checked his watch as he climbed back into the car. It was eleven twenty in the morning, ten minutes before the rendezvous, and just time to get there. He started the car and drove slowly ahead, looking for a side road on the left. A few hundred yards on, he came to it and turned.

  About a quarter mile in, the road turned to dirt. Well-worn tractor ruts made the going more difficult, pitching the car about like a small boat in a choppy sea. Warren was forced to slow down to a crawl, and shortly he gave up altogether. He slowly maneuvered the car around so that it was facing back out, then he got out and locked it. By the odometer he had less than half a mile to go anyway. He opened the trunk and took out a knapsack, pulling the straps through his aims and adjusting it to ride high on his back. Then he closed the trunk and started off down the road.

  Ten minutes later he came to a clearing where two Army-surplus command tents had been pitched. There were nine or ten people of indeterminate sex, dressed in various versions of woodsman-hippie, gathered in a wide circle in front of the far tent. In the middle of the circle, neatly stacked, were six machine guns and two Army ammo boxes. The boxes were open, and two of the group were kneeling by them and filling clips for the machine guns with the loose bullets. The rest of them were watching intently, while passing two small hash pipes around the circle.

  The circle broke apart as Warren approached, and one of the hash pipes hastily disappeared. The girl holding the other pipe kept it between her lips as she turned toward Warren, jauntily thrusting it out like F.D.R.’s cigarette holder. It was Zonya—the girl in the photograph—but now her hair was long, thin, and brunette.

  Warren spotted Calvin Middler as one of the two men loading clips. Since they were supposed to already know each other, Warren waved casually. “Hi, Middler,” he said.

  Calvin jumped to his feet. “This is the man I been telling you about,” he told the group.

  “I don’t know,” the young man who had hidden the hash pipe said, “He looks pretty straight to me.”

  George Warren slowly and calmly looked the youth over. The others, silent and hostile, waited for him to speak. “I don’t look straight to you, boy,” he said finally, “I look neat. You look sloppy and undisciplined—all of you.” He walked over to Middler and tapped him on the chest with his right forefinger. “You called me here to meet these infants?” he demanded. “In the jungles of Bolivia I worked with starving peasants—illiterate, disease-ridden, filthy, malnourished, hopeless men—and we turned them into an army. But these upper-middle-class infants who think that to be sloppy is to be free, and that smoking dope is an act of rebellion against authority—” Warren turned to the group. “They chewed coca leaves in the jungle. Not to turn themselves on, but to stop them from feeling the hunger pangs and let them keep drilling and working. And we won in Cuba, and we’ll win in South America. But the United States?” He thrust his finger in the face of the youth who had called him straight. “You people call yourselves the People’s Revolutionary Brigade. Why? What people? What revolution? You people are so stupid you don’t even know enough to post perimeter guards. What the fuck do you think you’re doing out here?”

  “Now, calm down, Carlos,” Middler said, raising his arms in the air in a cross between pacification and benediction. “These people are new to all this. But they’ve got guts. You read about that bank robbery in Brooklyn last week?”

  “You mean the one where four masked men with machine guns held up a row of young girl tellers and a sixty-four-year-old bank guard and got away with eight thousand? I read about it.”

  “It was our first operation,” Zonya said.

  “Zonya!” the young man yelped. “Shut up!”

  “What for, Jay-boy?” Zonya asked. “You think he’s a nark?”

  “Look” Warren said. “Whatever your friend Jay thinks, I’m not a nark. What I am is a contact man for goodies: goodies that explode, goodies that shoot, all goodies that bother the capitalist pigs. You want to see?”

  “Sure,” one of the group spoke.

  “I’ll show you what I’ve got. You make good use of them, I get you more. But you people better get more professional if you want to do any good. The FBI and the CIA aren’t staffed with amateurs.” With a shrug of his shoulders, Warren dropped the backpack, catching it with his right hand as it fell. He undid the flaps and distributed the contents in a line on the ground in front of him.

  “These are bombs,” he said. “They’re professionally made, and can be depended on to do what they’re supposed to.”

  “Which is what?” Zonya asked.

  “Blow up things,” Warren said. He picked up one of the objects and held it in the air in front of him. It was the general size and shape of a cigar box with a brown drafting-paper finish. On the side of the box were two small spring clips for wires to be attached. “You pass a six-volt current through these clips, you blow up a car, a room, a locker, a bank, a few people, whatever. You want to use a couple of lantern batteries if you can, be sure you’ve got enough amperage. One six-volt lantern battery will probably do. A transistor radio battery or four flashlight batteries in series probably won’t.

  “A cheap wristwatch makes a good timer.” He pulled one out of his pocket. “You remove the plastic crystal, then pull off the second and minute hands. Drill a hole in the plastic at the center, and one at twelve o’clock. Stick a couple of wires through the holes. You’ve got a twelve-hour timer. Up to twelve hours. Set it for the delay you want. Accurate to within a minute or two. Carry a short-tester with you to test the watch right before you hook it into the circuit. Anybody know any electronics?”

  “I do,” a small young man with a large mustache volunteered.

  “Good, come with me.” The two of them crossed the field to where a tall tree, about as thick around as a large man’s circling arms, grew by itself. Warren placed the charge on a low branch next to the trunk and fastened the watch-and-battery timing circuit to the two clips, after checking with his pocket short-tester. Then they came back to the group. “Let’s get back in that gully,” Warren said. “And bring the guns and the other charges.” They all scrambled down the side of a stream bank behind the tents.

  The whole group huddled together, staring out between the two tents at the tree. “I set about a five-minute delay,” Warren said, “the shortest I feel safe with. Any time now.”

  Then it blew. A sharp, clear sound, loud enough to cause brief pain, and followed promptly by the lesser echoes, as the wave reverberated off the snowy hills. The air was suddenly filled with snow and mist. The tree wavered. And then it fell straight down on itself, as though collapsing inward. And then it stopped. And then it slowly, slowly tilted against the sky. The tilting grew faster and the tree fell to earth with a shuddering crash.

  “That’s it,” Warren said, as the group climbed back up the bank and brushed themselves off. There was a hole in one of the tents where a fireplace-sized log had burst through on its way to ground. “It’s not a toy.”

  Zonya hefted one of the cigar boxes with respectful care. “We could sure off a few pigs with one of these,” she said.

  “That’s just what we don’t want to do,” Middler said. “Not now. Not yet.”

  “Why not?” Zonya demanded.

  “Because we’re trying to build public support, not destroy it. We’ve got to use the bombs to destroy the countinghouses and guardhouses of the capitalist system—not to kill people. Not until stage three. And we’re not even in stage two yet.”

  “He’s right,” Warren said. “I’ll leave you with these three explosive devices. If you want more, you’re going to have to show me more. I want the PRB to develop a bomb doctrine—and a command and priority doctrine, for that matter—and I and my people will support you. But you’ve go to be more military. And that includes such mundane details as posting guards on an operation.”

  “Who are your people?” Jay demanded in a voice that fought hard not to sound surly.

  “I am Carlos,” Wa
rren said, “and you are all my people. Wherever I am needed, I will be. Come, walk with me, Middler.” He picked up the empty knapsack and started back the way he had come.

  “I’ll be right back,” Middler called, and ran to catch up with Warren.

  When they were out of earshot of the People’s Revolutionary Brigade, Middler said, “Well, what do you think?”

  “See if you can take over—or at least become group planner.”

  “No sweat,” Middler said. “Zonya’s holding the group together. And we’re, ah, getting very close.”

  “Good luck,” Warren said. “Tell her how smart she is; that’s what she wants to hear.”

  “Did you talk to your boss?”

  “Yes.”

  “And?”

  “He agreed,” Warren said. “As of now, you’re not just an informant, you’re on the payroll.”

  “Of the CIA? I’m a CIA agent?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Do I get to go to the CIA school?”

  “Probably. After this assignment.” There was certainly no reason to tell Midler that he was really working for the SIU.

  “I’d better get back.”

  “Right. I’ll be in touch.”

  Bill Heym got up from his desk in the Washington Post’s newsroom and crossed the bullpen to the glass-enclosed cubicle with National Editor in black on the frosted-glass door. Pushing the door open, he stuck his head in and said, “I’ve got something for you, Gerry.”

  Gerry Poole, the national editor, wadded the yellow paper he was staring at and tossed it in the wastebasket by the door before looking up. “Knock,” he said. “After twelve years you could have at least learned one thing: knock. Please. Supposing I had a young lady in here?”

  “She’d be a reporter,” Heym said, “and you’d be assigning a story.”

  “All the more reason,” Poole said.

  “I’ve got something for you,” Heym repeated. “Something hot.”

  “How hot is hot?”

  “It’s so hot I don’t want to think about it, that’s what.”

  “Spill.”

  “There’s a guy sitting at my desk. It’s his piece. If it’s true, it’s the hottest story of the year, and I hope to hell it’s not true. How do you like that?”

  Poole nodded and took the remaining stack of yellow copy and put it aside. “Bring him in.”

  Heym waved across the large room. “Hey, Coles!” he yelled. The thin man in the tweed jacket rose from the chair by Heym’s desk and came over. Heym ushered him into the office. “This is Gerry Poole, our national editor. I’d like you to start over for him. He’ll want it first hand from you. Gerry, this is Dr. Barry Coles, a professor of economics at Columbia University.”

  Poole got up and shook hands with the intense not-quite-young man who was examining him with lively interest through large hornrimmed glasses. “Coles,” he said. “Barry Coles. I know the name. Wait a second”—he pointed a finger at Coles and shook it—“I know! You did an article for Foreign Affairs. Something about land management in the two halves of Vietnam.”

  “I’m impressed,” Coles said. “That was two years ago.”

  “Yeah. And then you went to work for the White House, and you were one of the ones kicked out after the last election.” Poole tapped the side of his head. “I’ve got that kind of a memory, I can’t help it.”

  “This is something new,” Heym said. He carefully closed the office door and sat Coles down in the chair facing Poole across the desk, then sat himself in a corner. “Okay, Professor,” he said, “the floor is yours.”

  “I’ve been doing research in the State Department files,” Coles said.

  “I thought you went back to Columbia,” said Poole.

  “I did. But it was between semesters and I was at loose ends. Then Dr. Greener of the Institute for an Informed America offered me a six-month grant, and I accepted.”

  “What was the subject of the grant?”

  “The Economic Influence of American Policy Intent and Reality in South Vietnam, nineteen-sixty to nineteen-seventy. I was to work with the actual documents. My clearance was still good for that.”

  “Isn’t the IIA a little right-wing for you, Dr. Coles?”

  “The paper is for general release, under the imprint of the IIA, and they’ll print what I give them,” Coles said. “There were no prior restrictions on the, ah, slant of my findings. I made that perfectly clear, and Dr. Greener had no quibble.”

  “Fine,” Poole said. “So, what happened?”

  “So—this is one of the files.” Coles opened his worn leather briefcase and extracted a thick manila folder. “In here is a Xerox of the Washington-Saigon State Department cable traffic for the month of November 1963. You’d better read it yourself. The effect is cumulative.”

  Poole took the folder and started rapidly reading through the Xeroxed flimsies. When he neared the middle, he slowed. A couple of the sheets he read through twice. He didn’t say anything until he finished the entire folder. Then he closed it and put it down on his desk. “Son of a bitch!” he said.

  “What do you think, Gerry?” Bill Heym asked.

  “There’s not much question. None of the cables comes right out and says it, but if you put a couple of them together—well, there’s not much question. We’ll have to see the originals, of course.”

  “There’s no way I can take them out of the building,” Coles said. “The Xeroxes are the best I can do.”

  Gerry Poole leaned back in his chair and laced his hands under his chin. “Now look, Dr. Coles,” he said. “You come in here and hand us what purports to be a cable file that proves—that strongly suggests—that John Kennedy ordered the assassination of President Diem. Now my personal inclination would be to burn the file and forget that I ever saw it; but I can’t do that. First of all, I’m a newspaperman, and this is what my friend Mr. Heym here would call a hot story. And second of all, you’d only take it somewhere else. But it has to be authenticated. Neither this paper nor any other reputable news medium will touch this story until it’s been authenticated to hell and back.”

  “We can do some work on the Xeroxes,” Heym suggested. “We could have Dr. What’s-his-name—White—go over them.”

  “We’d need some others for comparison,” Poole said.

  “I can get you more,” Coles told him.

  “That’s no good. We need an independent source,” Poole said. “Can you get someone else in with you?”

  “Probably,” Coles said. “I’ve never tried, but probably.”

  “Okay. You figure a way to take Gerry in with you—as your assistant or something, and let him make some Xeroxes. Then we’ll have Dr. White, our document man, see if he can authenticate them.”

  Barry Coles stood up. “It’s a hell of a thing,” he said. “I don’t know whether I hope he can or I hope he can’t.”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Dianna Holroyd, the executive secretary of SIU, was a tall, vital woman who ran room sixteen with calm efficiency. She looked barely forty, but her personnel file said fifty on her next birthday.

  Kit Young was at her desk going over the CIA inventory file—the list of CIA material on loan to SIU—when she suggested that they have a drink together after work, “if you’re not afraid to be seen with an older woman.” She arched her eyebrows suggestively as she said it.

  “Delighted,” Kit said. Rumor had it that Miss Holroyd liked younger men, but in any event, there was no better possible source of information about the inner world of SIU than its executive secretary.

  “I’ll drive,” she said, meeting him in the west entrance lobby. “It relaxes me. I’ll drop you at your car later.”

  And it did seem to relax her. The tense lines in her face eased as she pulled on her cotton-and-leather driving gloves and steered her big XK-150 coupe out of the underground garage. Once on the street, she swung west onto Pennsylvania Avenue and guided the heavy open car through the tight traffic with experience
d skill and evident delight. She concentrated on driving the ancient Jaguar with an intensity that precluded conversation.

  Turning onto the Whitehurst Freeway, she crossed the Francis Scott Key Bridge and headed north on the George Washington Memorial Parkway. It seemed quite a way to go for a drink, but Kit asked no questions.

  She drove for about twenty minutes, and then took an exit and a twisting side road that ended on a cliff overlooking the Potomac. “There,” she said, turning the engine off. It was her first word since starting the car.

  “You drive well,” Kit said.

  She looked at him. “Just that?” she asked. “It’s usually ‘You drive well for a woman’.”

  “You drive well for a woman,” Kit amended. “Or for a man, or for a trained seal.”

  She smiled. “There’s a leather case behind your seat,” she said. “Can you reach it?”

  “Sure,” Kit said. He reached behind and pulled the case out.

  “That drink I promised you is in it,” she said, opening it carefully to reveal three bottles, four glasses, and a plastic ice bucket. “Scotch or vodka?”

  “Scotch,” Kit said.

  “Over? Water? I’m sorry, no soda in the case.”

  “Over is fine.”

  Dianna maneuvered ice into two glasses and jiggered scotch into one and vodka into the other. Then she closed the case and put it by her side. “Mud,” she said, passing Kit his glass and raising hers.