The Last President: A Novel of an Alternative America

by Michael Kurland

  “And we’ve all made mistakes and gone perhaps too far in pursuit of his goal or that goal or the other goal, but even the mediocre presidents have, on balance, helped this country more than they’ve hurt it. And the great presidents, the few truly great presidents, have brought this country through trying crises and made it richer, stronger, and greater than it was before.”

  “That’s so, sir,” Ober said.

  “You know,” the President told MacGregor, “General Eisenhower once said that he would rather have won the Congressional Medal of Honor than have been President of the United States. Out of respect for that, and out of respect for your fine—your outstanding—career as a soldier.…” He stood up. By reflex the other four men in the room stood with him.

  “Good-bye, General MacGregor,” the President said, extending his hand. “I’m glad we’ve had this little talk.” He shook hands, three quick up-and-down motions, bending from the elbow. “I shall regret losing you, but your wish to retire shall certainly be honored. I’ll make the announcement at my next press conference.”

  “Good-bye, sir,” MacGregor said.

  “I will speak to Congress about awarding you your fifth star upon retirement. You’ll be one of America’s few living five-star generals. Sweeten the pot.”

  “Yes, sir,” MacGregor said. “Thank you, sir.” He saluted and left the room.

  “Son of a bitch!” the President said as the door closed. “I didn’t dare fire him, the son of a bitch is too popular. Think he’ll keep his mouth closed?”

  “It’s a good bet,” Ober said, crossing the room.

  “What’s the game plan?” the President asked. “We’ve had a foul called on us, lost a few yards, but it’s still our ball.”

  Vandermeer dropped into the chair that MacGregor had just vacated. “We run it through the line,” he said. “Right down the middle.”

  The President nodded. “Sounds good,” he said. “Call the play.”

  “We’ll have to hire about a hundred more federal marshals,” Vandermeer said. “Recruit them from police forces, give them six weeks’ quick training, then use them as a strike force. Another few hundred—call them deputy marshals—to start manning the camps until we can bring them up to strength.”

  “How long?” the President asked.

  “Say, two months.”

  “Go with that.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Two months later, at three o’clock on a Thursday morning in New York, an attorney named Tom Varmer staggered out of bed and groggily crossed the room in response to the urgent knocking at his door. “Whazzit?” he called through the door.

  “Police! Open up!”

  “Wha? Sure thing.” What the hell would the police want with him? Maybe they thought one of the antiwar protesters he defended was hiding under his bed. He threw back the two bolts and unlatched the door, pulling it open. “Come on in,” he said. “What’s up?”

  It took a moment for him to focus on the two men outside and realize that, whatever they were, they were not policemen. They were dressed in Marine fatigue uniforms, with odd-looking insignia on the lapels. One of them had a sidearm strapped to his waist, while the other carried a short-barreled carbine. Tom Varmer was quickly waking up.

  “Thomas H. Varmer?” the one with the sidearm demanded.

  “That’s right. Who the hell are you?”

  “We’re federal marshals. We have here a warrant for your arrest and detainment.”

  Varmer shook his head to make sure he was really awake, and this wasn’t just another in the series of bad dreams he’d been having lately. “What kind of warrant?” he said. “What are you guys talking about?”

  “Here,” the talker said, holding a folded document under Varmer’s nose. “Take a look.”

  Varmer unfolded the paper, which proved to be quite long, and turned on his desk lamp to study it. It was a multiple arrest warrant, issued under the Emergency Powers Act, to detain “the below listed individuals.” Varmer’s name was number fourteen out of about two hundred.

  “Okay, Varmer,” the talker said. “Let’s get going. What are you trying to do, memorize it?”

  “I’m not altogether sure this is legal,” Varmer said. “You know I’m a lawyer.”

  “That’s not our affair,” the talker said. The other man just stood there mute, clutching his carbine.

  “I’m going to make one phone call,” Varmer said.

  He reached for the phone, only to have it slapped out of his hand by the talker.

  “None of that!” the talker said.

  “You son of a bitch!” Varmer swung his fist wildly toward the man’s face.

  The other marshal took one step and brought the butt of his carbine down smartly across the back of Varmer’s head. Varmer crumpled to the floor, a red haze in front of his eyes. An incredibly brilliant pain cascaded from the back of his head to the front. He lay where he had fallen, trying to allow this throbbing pain to become a part of his reality. Nothing like this had ever happened to him before.

  One of them kicked him sharply in the ribs. “Get up,” the talker said, “you ain’t out. Grab your bathrobe and come along. We got a lot more stops to make tonight.”

  It was two o clock in the morning in Chicago when a squad of marshals quickly broke into a Hanscomb Street building and herded twenty-one blacks into a waiting bus. Their action warrants had specified merely “the occupants of 347 Hanscomb Street,” and so everyone in residence at the time of the raid was arrested—men, women, and children. Tom Varmer would have been glad to offer his opinion that this was an illegal proceeding, based on a fraudulent warrant. But he wasn’t asked.

  It was four-thirty in the morning, Pacific States Time, when the first buses arrived at the gates of John Muir Camp and began offloading groups of frightened prisoners. The guards, deputy marshals in the President’s new expanded corps, herded the prisoners through the gate to a large compound in front of the rows of detention barracks. There the prisoners were left to examine their surroundings and one another in the early-morning chill.

  Few of the prisoners were dressed for the occasion. Most of them were in pajamas, bathrobes, or nightgowns. Some wore only their underwear, and one man had nothing but a blanket clutched around his portly body. They looked scared, or numb, or tired, or angry. One man began screaming about his rights and tried to run back out through the gate, but two of the guards clubbed him to the ground. After that there was little commotion.

  By five-thirty, there were at least eight hundred people grouped together in the compound. A small, neat man in civilian clothes climbed onto a wooden platform to the left of the gate and picked up a microphone. “Good morning,” he said cheerfully, his words reverberating off the barracks across the compound.

  A muttering rose from the crowd in front of him, which he ignored. The powerful public address system easily carried over the noise. “My name is Davies,” he said, “and I am executive officer of Internal Confinement Camp Number Five, the John Muir Camp. You are all my guests, and I would like to define the terms of our relationship for you right now.

  “You have been arrested, from points all over northern California, and are being held here by authority of Presidential Order Fourteen, under the Emergency Powers Act of 1941.

  “Lists of your names will be made public as soon as they can be drawn up, so there can be no question of ‘secret confinement’ or any other police state procedures. Forms will be distributed for you to fill out, and we will attempt to notify two persons of your choosing about your confinement. I assure you, despite what you may think, there is nothing arbitrary or illegal about this procedure.

  “Special magistrates are now being appointed so that each of you can have his or her day in court. Unfortunately, I can’t say how long it will take to process all of you through the courts, but it will be as speedy as possible, of that I can assure you.

  “There is no bail procedure set up, so each of you will have to bear with us—and remain
with us—until your hearing. We’ll try to make it as pleasant as possible for you all. We realize that, as of yet, you are guilty of no crime and are merely being held in protective custody. After you are assigned to a barracks, you’ll be on your own. Those of you who wish to work can go to the mess hall or the laundry or volunteer for camp assignments.

  “How well we get along is entirely up to you. Anyone attempting to escape from this camp will be shot. That is all.”

  THREE THOUSAND MILES AWAY

  AND TWO WEEKS LATER

  The helicopter circled the camp twice before sitting down on a patch of dirt by the main gate. St. Yves hopped off first, his Bolex slung over his shoulder like an assault rifle, and Kit clambered down behind him. They hurried through the downdraft of the rotor blades to the small welcoming committee of camp officers who were clumped together on the far side of the field, trying to look informal. This was, after all, an informal visit.

  “St. Yves,” St. Yves said, indicating himself. “Young,” he added, pointing to Kit.

  “Welcome to Camp Washington Irving,” a chubby man in the almost-Marine uniform of the Federal Internal Confinement Camp Command said, giving them an offhand salute. Kit studied the uniform with interest; it was the first time he had seen one up close. It had been personally designed by the President, and showed clearly the President’s tendency toward unconscious parody. Maroon piping sewn along every seam of a Marine Corps class A uniform, and maroon detail added to the shoulders, pockets, cuffs, and lapels. Gleaming gold insignia had been designed for the lapels: the executive eagle for the left, and the inch-high letters FICCC in a semicircle for the right. The military insignia of rank was reserved for the shoulders. The service caps were heavy with gold braid and sported a large eagle carrying the letters FICCC. The motto “We Serve” was stitched in gold across the breast pocket. With the addition of a dress sword, Kit decided, the uniform would not have looked out of place as a costume for The Merry Widow.

  “You must be Nickerson, the camp commandant,” St. Yves said, eyeing the highly polished birds on the shoulders of the mans crisply starched uniform.

  “That’s right,” Commandant Nickerson said. “I thought Mr. Vandermeer was coming with you.” He was trying not to sound disappointed, but it was clear that in his eyes a St. Yves and a Young were not a Vandermeer. Kit had a clear image of the hundreds of man-hours the staff of Camp Washington Irving must have put in polishing boots and brass and starching and pressing uniforms preparing for a visit from the second most powerful man in Washington.

  “Mr. Vandermeer is still in the helicopter,” St. Yves said. “He’s having the pilot check him out on the controls. He used to fly one of these during the Korean War, you know.”

  “I didn’t,” Nickerson said. “Do you suppose he’ll be long? I have a schedule—”

  Vandermeer appeared in the doorway of the copter and jumped down with the easy grace of a man who spent an hour in the White House handball court three days a week. The clump of camp officers came to attention as he approached, and Nickerson saluted. “Welcome to Camp Washington Irving, Mr. Vandermeer,” he said, holding the salute for four beats and then bringing it smartly down. “I’m Commandant Nickerson, and this is my aide, Captain Peters. This is the adjutant, Captain Reager.… He continued down the line, introducing all twelve members of the welcoming group.

  Vandermeer shook all the hands. “You know why we’re here,” he said. “We want to see everything. Everything. The President wants a direct report on the status of the internment camps at this point in time.”

  “We understand, sir,” Nickerson said.

  “How’s it going?” Vandermeer asked. “Any complaints? Any problems? It looked pretty good from the air—neatly laid out, peaceful.”

  “No troubles, sir,” Nickerson said, falling into step alongside Vandermeer, who was striding toward the administration building. “No troubles at all. That is, beyond what you’d expect.”

  “Yes, but what do you expect, Commandant? That’s what I’m here to find out. We’re so new at this we don’t really know what to expect.”

  St. Yves raced ahead and got into position to photograph the group entering the building. He crouched by the door, his Bolex whirring, and then leaped between two startled members of the camp staff to get a close-up of Vandermeer’s face as he talked to the commandant. Vandermeer, a camera sophisticate, ignored St. Yves’ antics, but the commandant started and took an involuntary step backward, crashing into an aide and almost knocking him down.

  Kit resisted an impulse to take off his hat and hold it in front of his face like a gangster entering a courtroom. He would just as soon not have had a 16-millimeter record of his visit. With a conscience newly prodded awake by the death of Dianna Holroyd, Kit thought that these internment camps were the most visible, most egregious excess of a power-mad White House. He wanted to quit, but, as Aaron kept pointing out, Kit was his best pipeline to the White House. So he tagged along on trips like this, since St. Yves seemed to like having him along, and reported to Aaron whatever he saw.

  “Some of the prisoners are troublesome,” Nickerson said, “but nothing we can’t handle. Most have settled down pretty quickly to their new status, with the help of the tranquilizers we add to their food. But a few of them insist on being troublesome.”

  “Troublesome?” Vandermeer said. “How troublesome? Trying to escape? Fighting with the guards?”

  “No, sir,” Nickerson said. “Not much of that. A couple of men tried to make it over the fence about a week ago, but a guard on the tower spotted them and let go a burst with his gun. Killed one of them outright. The other’s still in the hospital. It was in the report last week. Haven’t had any incidents like that since.”

  St. Yves tucked his camera under his arm and fell into step with the group. “That’s surprising,” he said. “I wouldn’t expect any of the internees to try to escape yet. It’s too soon. They should be exhausting all the legal procedures first. That should keep them busy for another couple of months anyway. Those two must have had a heavy date.”

  Nickerson shrugged. “That’s one of the things they keep bitching about,” he said. “Come this way, let me show you the main mess hall.”

  “What’s one of the things they keep bitching about?”

  “The legal procedures,” Nickerson said. “Or, to be more precise, the fact that there aren’t any legal procedures.”

  “You mean they’re getting tired of waiting for trials and that sort of thing?”

  “The prisoners demand the right to see their lawyers,” Nickerson said. “Also to write letters.”

  “Internees,” St. Yves said. “They’re not prisoners, they’re internees.”

  “Internees,” Nickerson said.

  They entered the mess hall, a 1940s paradigm of institutional efficiency. Camp Washington Irving, as it was now called, had been constructed during World War II but not needed, and had been waiting for use ever since. The mess hall, cleaned to antiseptic purity in anticipation of Vandermeer’s visit, was all chrome and white linoleum and bleached wood. Only the food looked out of place; it wasn’t symmetrical, and it wasn’t neat. It wasn’t, Kit noted as they walked by the steam table, very appetizing either.

  Vandermeer allowed himself to be seated at a table and brought a cup of coffee. Kit, at Nickerson’s insistence, took a tin tray and went through the chow line behind St. Yves, who was helping himself to the watery canned corn and unidentifiable creamed meat with unlikely enthusiasm.

  St. Yves slid onto the bench next to Vandermeer and dropped his tray in front of him. “I want to get a shot of the internees going through this line,” he told Vandermeer. “And some close-ups of them eating. Good, healthy food. Nothing spared to make the lives of these unfortunate men comfortable until they can take their rightful places in society again.”

  “This is one of two mess halls at the camp,” Commandant Nickerson said. “We can chow fifteen hundred prisoners through this hall in an hour.”
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br />   “Internees,” St. Yves said.

  Vandermeer turned to stare at Nickerson. “You must not make the mistake again,” he said. “These men and women are internees. Federal prisoners have certain rights: the right to a speedy trial, the right to be accused of something specific, the right of habeas corpus, the right to see their lawyer. If these men were prisoners, why then we’d be violating their constitutional rights. You see that, don’t you?”

  Nickerson stared at Vandermeer, his eyes wide. He seemed to have lost the power of speech.

  “These people are being interned for the good of the state,” Vandermeer said. “Think of the Japanese during World War Two. No trials, no habeas corpus, no lawyers, no mess, no fuss. We do likewise. But you must learn, Commandant Nickerson, that terminology is very important.”

  St. Yves put down his fork and nodded. “A spade is not always a spade,” he told Nickerson, who was sitting opposite him at the table. “Sometimes it is a shovel. Sometimes it is a digging implement. Do you understand?”

  Nickerson nodded his understanding. Kit, at the far end of the table, wondered just what it was that the commandant understood.

  Captain Reager trotted over to the table. “The, ah, internees are lining up outside for lunch,” he said. “You wanted to get pictures?”

  “Right!” St. Yves said, swinging his Bolex up to his shoulder.

  “You want them all in at once, or just a few at a time?” Reager asked. “I’ll have to call in more guards if you want them all in. Just as a precaution.”

  “A few of them,” St. Yves said. “Thirty or forty—no more. We don’t want the joint to look crowded, do we?”

  “Ah, no,” Reager said. “Right.” He trotted back to the door.

  “We haven’t found the necessity of isolating the internees from the guards,” Nickerson told Vandermeer. “These aren’t really violent people, it seems.”

  “How would you characterize them, Commandant?” Kit asked.