The Last President: A Novel of an Alternative America

by Michael Kurland

  “And now let us pray. For that purpose, I have asked the Reverend Dr. Hake Smith to lead us.”

  The President nodded, and a tall man with silver hair, whom Porfritt recognized as a popular television evangelist, stood up at the President’s right hand and sunk his chin deeply into the sharp knot of his fifty-dollar Baroness Silva tie. “O Lord!” he cried.

  Not seeing the face of the Lord in the polished maple table, he lifted his eyes to the gold chandelier hanging above. “O Lord our Father, hear us poor sinners as we beseech your forgiveness,” he intoned. “Help us to make the right decisions in these troubled times. Guide us through the valley of darkness.…”

  While Dr. Smith continued his sonorous instructions to the Lord, Vandermeer left his seat and quietly made his way around the table to the only empty place, a chair between Senator Jensen and Congressman Porfritt. “Where’s Kathy?” he whispered to Jensen. He removed his hornrimmed glasses and squinted at Jensen in great concern. “I thought she was coming with you.”

  “I asked her to pick up some papers for me,” Jensen replied in an undertone. “She’ll be here shortly.”

  Vandermeer nodded. “You understand,” he said. “I expected to see her come in with you.”

  “I know,” Jensen said. “I’m a father myself. She’s a fine little lady, your daughter. If she wants to come to work for me full time when she gets out of school, she has a job. I’ve told her so.”

  “I’m very proud of her,” Vandermeer said. “Thank you.” He went back to his seat.

  At eight o’clock, just as the scrambled eggs and bacon were being served in the State Dining Room, Kevin Ryan took the subway from the Dirksen Office Building to the Capitol basement. “It’s a bunch of bullshit, Tom,” he told Senator Clay, who was waiting for him in the Senate snack bar.

  “You know that,” Clay said, pausing between bites of his sweet roll, “and I know that, but the Great American Public, he don’t know that.”

  “You think the Great American Public is waiting to see Arnold and me shake hands and come out fighting, like a pair of plump middleweights? I wonder what put this bug up Artie’s ass?”

  “I think he just got trapped by his own rhetoric,” Clay said. “He found himself telling some reporter that the two candidates should heal this country’s ills by appearing together to slap each other on the back and declare that the good of the nation is more important than any campaign.”

  “I’ll bet this was the President’s maneuver,” Ryan said, gulping down a cup of black coffee.

  “Not this time,” Clay said. “He’s scheduled a big prayer breakfast for this morning. You know he’d never go into competition with himself.”

  They went upstairs to the Majority Leader’s office, and Ryan carefully closed the door behind him. “This smells wrong,” he insisted. “Up till now Artie’s theme has been that I’m a crypto-Communist, a child molester, and have secret plans to fluoridate the country’s water supply. Suddenly he wants to shake hands with me.”

  “Perhaps it’s occurred to him that you’re going to win,” Clay said. “Perhaps he wants an ambassadorship in your administration. In about ten minutes we’ll know.”

  There was a knock on the door and Ryan opened it. A young girl with long blonde hair stood outside. “Hi,” she said. “I’m Kathy Vandermeer, Senator Jensen’s assistant.”

  “We’ve met,” Ryan said, smiling. “Once, briefly, at Senator Jensen’s house.”

  “I wasn’t sure you’d remember,” Kathy said. She turned to Senator Clay. “Senator Jensen asked me to pick up his workup on S-47. Mrs. Modell says you borrowed it to have a copy made.”

  “That’s right,” Clay said. “Lets see, it should be here somewhere—”

  ”No hurry,” Kathy said.

  At twenty past eight, a white, unmarked panel truck pulled to the curb on Delaware Avenue, a block away from the Capitol. Calvin Middler slid from the passenger’s seat and into the back of the truck. “You sure you’re over that mark?” he asked, licking his lips nervously.

  “Sure,” Zonya told him. “Right where we’re supposed to be.”

  “Right,” Middler said. He stared out of the truck’s back window. There before him was the Senate wing of the Capitol and, looming over it, the great Capitol dome. No question, he was going to make a name for himself today.

  At twenty-five past eight, the White House stewards began clearing away the remains of the scrambled eggs. Vandermeer rose and walked stiffly down the table to the empty seat his daughter should have been sitting in. “Kathy hasn’t arrived?”

  Senator Jensen looked at his watch. “I don’t understand it,” he said. “She just had to stop at my office to pick up a document. Of course, she may have had to go over to the Senate Chamber to get it; that might have delayed her a bit. Still—”

  ”The Senate Chamber?” Vandermeer clutched the side of Jensen’s chair and his face went white.

  “Yes. Is something wrong?”

  “No, no. I’m just—it must be—indigestion. Something I just ate. If you’ll excuse me—”

  ”Do you need help?” Jensen asked.

  “No. I’ll be all right. I’d just better go and take something.” Vandermeer, looking dazed, walked out into the hall. Once the door was closed behind him he dashed down a flight of stairs and entered the Map Room, where he dropped into a chair and picked up an extension phone. “This is Vandermeer,” he said. “Get me the sergeant-at-arms’s office at the Senate. Quick!” He took his watch off and stared at the face. It was now twenty-seven minutes past eight.

  At twenty-nine past eight Ryan sighed. “Might as well get it over with,” he said. “Just think, twenty television cameras on the floor of the Senate just to catch my expression when I shake hands with Artie Arnold.”

  “They’re ready to record your inane remarks, too,” Clay said. “And for God’s sake, don’t say anything intelligent. You want the Vice-President of the United States to look bad?”

  “You shouldn’t make fun of poor Mr. Arnold,” Kathy Vandermeer said. “He’s really a nice old man.”

  Clay laughed. “Don’t ever tell him that,” he said. “It would hurt him worse than losing this election. He thinks he’s hot stuff with the ladies. Calling him a nice old man would be more unkind than all the nasty things we’ve been saying about him.”

  A Senate page caught sight of them as they left Clay’s office. “Oh, Miss Vandermeer,” he said, running over to the group. “Would you please go over to the Sergeant-at-Arms’ office? Your father is on the phone.”

  At exactly eight-thirty, Calvin Middler pulled the arming pin from the bulbous gold nose of the ATX-3 antitank rocket and took one last squint through the sighting reticle. This is it, baby,” he said. “We’re in the history books!” And he kicked open the rear doors to the panel truck and squeezed the trigger.

  For a second nothing happened. Then the rocket rose slowly into the air, the brilliant white flame of its exhaust searing the inside of the truck for a long moment as it pulled away from its launcher. Calvin felt the blast scorching his exposed hands and face, and he saw a universe of pure white that instantly etched through to a red afterimage and faded to black as his retinas burned out.

  “Zonya!” he screamed. “Zonya, get us out of here. I can’t see! I can’t—”

  ”Calvin!” Zonya yelled from the front seat. “You’re on fire!” Grabbing an army blanket from behind the seat, she scrambled over the transmission hump to wrap it around him.

  The rocket ascended slowly and deliberately, disappearing from sight over the roof of the Senate wing of the Capitol. Then, with a crumping sound that seemed to be wrenched from the bowels of the earth, the roof and top floors of the Senate wing disappeared in a ball of smoke and flame. Debris exploded outward through the upper-floor windows, parts of the marble façade were thrust out with such force that they landed half a mile away. Several of the outer columns collapsed as the explosion reached them. Sections of the Capitol dome were lofted high in
to the air. Then the remaining mass of the Capitol dome collapsed, and jagged sections of the facing sloughed off onto the lawn.

  Calvin Middler’s face was black, mottled with angry red patches. Zonya sobbed and beat at what was left of his hair with the blanket, but Calvin just stared sightlessly out the open back door of the truck and muttered, “That son of a bitch! That dirty son of a bitch,” over and over like an obscene mantra.

  “We’ve got to get out of here,” Zonya screamed at him. “Do you understand? We’ve got to get away from here! I’ve never seen anything like this. Christ, Calvin, what have we done?”

  “I can’t see,” Calvin said. “I can’t see. That son of a bitch! He knew. He must have.”

  Across the street from them a fire hydrant suddenly burst, sending a torrent of water in an arcing path in front of the truck.

  “I’ve got to get us out of here,” Zonya said. “Wrap the blanket around you and hold on to something. I’ll get the doors.”

  “I can’t,” Calvin said plaintively, holding his hands up before his sightless eyes. “There’s no feeling in my fingers.”

  “Oh, my God!” Zonya said, putting her fist in her mouth to choke back a scream. Calvin’s hands were burned black, and large blisters were forming under the scabs. The tips of his fingers were gone.

  George Warren appeared at the back door of the truck. There was a revolver in his white-gloved hand. “You two did very well,” he said.

  Calvin Middler turned his head from side to side like a bird. “George?” he said. “You fucking son of a bitch, is it you?”

  “Can you get us out of here?” Zonya demanded. She held up her own hands, which were blistering from wrapping the blanket around Middler. “I don’t think I can drive.”

  “Very brave,” Warren said. He lifted the gun.

  “It is you, you son of a bitch!” Calvin cried. Warren shot him through the chest. Zonya turned and dived for the driver’s seat. Warren aimed carefully. His bullet caught her in the back of the head and came out the left eye.

  Warren gingerly tossed the gun into the truck. “’Bye now,” he said.

  PRESIDENT CANCELS ELECTION

  VOWS THAT “TERROR WILL NEVER

  RULE THIS COUNTRY”

  Special to The New York Times

  WASHINGTON, Oct. 4—In a televised press conference today the President announced that he has sent to Congress an executive order announcing the suspension of the upcoming presidential elections and asking for a vote of confidence from both houses for this action.

  “Both political parties must have time to bind their wounds and bury their dead,” the President said, referring to the atomic missile that was fired on the Senate last Thursday, claiming the lives of Vice-President Arthur Arnold and Senator Kevin Ryan, the presidential nominees of the two major parties.

  “New nominating conventions must be held and new candidates picked. But before this happens, the reign of terror must be ended. Terror will never rule this country,” the President vowed.

  Among victims positively identified, in addition to Senator Ryan and Vice-President Arnold, is Katherine Vandermeer, 21-year-old daughter of the President’s domestic policy chief, who was working as a public-relations aide to Senator Jensen. The death toll now stands at 213.

  ATOMIC MISSILE VERIFIED

  The Pentagon, Oct. 4 (UPI)

  The Army verified today that the weapon found in the back of the truck manned by two young terrorists was an experimental model ATX-3 rocket launcher, which fires a tactical rocket with a nuclear warhead.

  “These weapons are in limited production for testing purposes,” an Army spokesman said. “They are a battlefield weapon, with a range of about one thousand yards, designed to allow one infantry man to have enough firepower to neutralize a company of tanks.”

  He said that, to the best of the Army’s knowledge, all of these weapons are accounted for, and there are none missing.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  Dressed in the faded black corduroys and sweat shirt that were his evening jogging costume, Aaron Adams loped around the corner and proceeded at a steady, rhythmic pace down the tree-lined Chevy Chase street. He was well into the second mile of his three-mile ritual and was pleased to note that he wasn’t even slightly out of breath. The street was empty and quiet, and fairly dark except for the occasional streetlight and the sporadic spill of brightness from a picture window in one of the big houses.

  This early-evening quiet was not normal for the bureaucrats of official Washington, but it had grown common in the past few months. People stayed home more now, minded their own business. You didn’t want to go to a party and say the wrong things to the wrong man after one too many drinks. Far better not to go.

  As Aaron approached the next corner he saw a car with its hood up and a man in sports clothes fiddling with the engine. “Need a hand?” he called, jogging closer.

  The man looked up from his fiddling. “Good evening, Aaron,” he said, wiping his hands on a piece of paper toweling draped over the fender.

  Aaron stopped, and for a second he felt a touch of fear. Thru he recognized the speaker. “Tank!” he said. “Tank MacGregor.” He smiled. “A better evening than I’d thought.”

  MacGregor slammed down the hood of his car. “I hope you don’t mind my interrupting your evening run,” he said. “I’d like to talk with you. Get into the car.”

  As they drove off down the street, Aaron leaned back and examined the general’s profile. “You have the makings of a born conspirator,” he said. “I hope it’s nothing trivial.”

  “I don’t want to seem melodramatic,” MacGregor said. “I wanted to make sure that we were neither observed nor overheard.”

  “The car…?” Aaron said.

  “I had a couple of techs from Fort Meade come out and check it for bugs this afternoon,” MacGregor said.

  Aaron pursed his lips. “I see,” he said. “What are we going to talk about?”

  General MacGregor stared through the windshield and concentrated on his driving for a few minutes. Aaron waited silently for him to speak. “The President of the United States,” he said finally, “has no intention of leaving office and holding a general election anytime in the near future. In order to preserve constitutional democracy, or whatever shreds of it we can salvage, he must be removed.”

  Aaron was silent for some immeasurable length of time. “Removed,” he said. His voice sounded weak, and he coughed and repeated, “Removed.”

  “Yes.”

  “Well,” Aaron said. “I’m certainly glad it was nothing trivial. Can you prove your, ah, contention?”

  “Yes. Certainly to your satisfaction.”

  “What do you intend to do about it?”

  MacGregor pulled the car over to the side of the road and stopped, keeping the motor running. “I’m not in a position to do too much about it,” he said, turning and staring intently at Aaron. “I will, of course, give you whatever help I can.”

  “I see,” Aaron said quietly. “I’m the expert at running coups, so it’s on my head.”

  MacGregor seemed to shrink a little in his seat, and there was a strange, almost frightened expression on his face. “Aaron,” he said, “I can’t run a coup myself. Don’t you see what it would mean if I succeeded? Our country would never survive the precedent. The next time a MacArthur disagreed with a Truman, would he let himself be fired—or would he ride down Pennsylvania Avenue on his white horse and pound on the gates of the White House to let him in?”

  Aaron nodded. “I see what you mean,” he said. “I hadn’t thought it out.”

  “Besides,” MacGregor said, “I’m no good at intrigue.”

  “About your theory that the President doesn’t intend to leave office,” Aaron said. “I know that he’s stalling, but that’s not the same as saying he’s usurped the office.”

  “I’m afraid that, for a change, I have some information that you lack,” General MacGregor said, shifting back into gear and moving the c
ar slowly down the almost empty road.

  “Yes?”

  “That ATX-3 missile that blew out the North Wing of the Capitol and precipitated this constitutional crisis—do you know where it came from?”

  “I know what the Bowker committee came up with,” Aaron said.

  “Forget about the so-called heist of the missile by the People’s Revolutionary Brigade. It’s a cover story. The truth is much more complex. Let me trace it out for you,” MacGregor said. “A colonel name of Diton was in charge of the Special Weapons Depot at Fort Dix. The man is a rabid anti-Communist, and he was suckered with a plan to save—I think it was Argentina—from the Red Rabble. He released two ATX-3s to his buddy General Netherby of the White Sands Proving Ground for ‘training and practice,’ of course removing the atomic warheads and returning them to storage. Except that it was two dummies that were returned to storage. General Netherby made out the paperwork stating that the two missiles—fitted with dummy warheads—were test-fired. Then he took them off base in his camper.

  “The missiles and their atomic warheads were reunited in New Jersey, and then turned over to a Carlos Muentis of New York and Buenos Aires. At this point a lot of money changed hands, proving that it can be profitable to be patriotic. Señor Muentis, however, did not ship the weapons south. Instead he almost immediately handed them over to one Edward St. Yves of the Executive Office of the President.”

  “Then the Oakland Army Terminal—”

  ”I don’t know what they got at the Oakland Army Terminal, but it wasn’t the ATX-3.”

  “St. Yves?”

  “That’s right.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Yes.”

  Aaron shifted in his seat and stared out at Burning Tree Golf Course as they drove slowly by. “I’ve got an in—you know—to the White House. I have a dossier on this administration that you wouldn’t believe. Murder, rape, arson, forgery; you name it, they’ve done it or condoned it. But this—”