By Order of the President

by Kilian, Michael;

There was a war on in Central America. There were some Americans fighting in it.

  “Where’s the colonel with the ‘football’?” Atherton asked. “Who’s in charge at the White House situation room?”

  “That’s not clear either. Larry, it’s going to be a slow go to the airport with this weather. The police aren’t in place. We can’t use a chopper with this visibility.”

  Atherton stood thinking.

  “Larry? Do you want a drink? You look like you need a drink.”

  Atherton was not much for alcohol, except for wine in the course of a meal, but Howard was very much correct.

  “Yes, scotch. And be generous. Get someone in contact with the White House and the Joint Chiefs, if you can. See if you can contact Ambrose. And I’d like to talk to Mrs. Hampton.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Don’t let Mrs. Hildebrand in here. Not until I’m dressed.”

  “Sure, Larry.”

  But when Howard returned with a bathroom glass brim full of Johnnie Walker Black, the vice president was still in his underwear, his eyes fixed on the now illuminated television screen where Tom Brokaw was talking about an unconfirmed Central American terrorist plot to kill the president.

  Atherton took the glass. “What in hell went wrong with the Secret Service?”

  “Beats me. Berger’s the best. When he and the president were hit, the others must have gone bananas. There are a couple dozen people down.”

  On the screen, Brokaw began a recapitulation, starting with a report that Hampton apparently had not been injured. Atherton drank.

  “Here I am in New York,” he said.

  “We’ve got to go, Larry. They’re almost down to minimums, but there’s sufficient visibility for a takeoff. We should be able to have wheels up in an hour. If you get going.”

  “Any word on who did this? This TV talk about Central Americans?”

  “Nothing reliable. Not yet. The colonel with the ‘football’ is still at Gettysburg, incidentally.”

  Atherton drank again. On the screen, they were showing long-shot footage of the president being pushed toward his limousine by Special Agent Berger, whose own body then slipped from view.

  Then came the scene of the crowd being cut down by the Secret Service man’s errant burst of bullets. Atherton looked away, and then drained his glass in a single nauseating, burning, stiffening gulp.

  The news came to Secret Service Director Walter Kreski from all directions all at once. He had been sitting quietly in his office in the imposing building at 18th and G streets, reading through field reports with his mind more on the Mahler on the FM radio than bureaucratic detail. As the books and chess sets indicated, Kreski was a very intellectual cop.

  From habit, he had turned on his two-way radio monitor, following the dull blur of official conversation with that part of his mind not absorbed by his reading and the symphony. When it came alive with shouting voices he snapped around in his leather chair. Before he could quite determine what the sudden urgency was about, one and then the other of his telephones began to ring. Just as he picked up one, his deputy director burst through the door with all the violence of a surprise raid.

  “Walt, we’ve had an action! Up at Gettysburg! The president’s hit!”

  Kreski, a tall man with a graying, reddish-blond beard, rose from his chair so fast it fell over. “Hit? How serious?”

  “I don’t know. Ambrose has him in the car. He’s gone nuts. He’s heading back toward Maryland.”

  Kreski stared at the radio monitor with a stupefaction arising from utter helplessness. Then he bolted toward it, snatching up the microphone.

  “Berger’s dead,” said the deputy. “We’ve got a lot of casualties. A lot of civilians.”

  The director ordered everyone off the air, then asked for the agent nearest the presidential limousine. It was Hammond, one of his best.

  “I’m in … I have to call it pursuit, sir. Mr. Ambrose and the president are proceeding to Camp David. We have two chase cars and a helicopter accompanying.”

  “Are you in contact with the president’s car?”

  “Affirmative. They’re not talking much. Agent Schlessler responded only once.”

  Agent Schlessler. Kreski grimaced.

  “What is the president’s condition?”

  “Apparently good, sir.”

  “Have you talked to him?”

  “Negative. Only to Schlessler.”

  The telephones were clamorous. Kreski’s office was filling up with people. His secretary was at his desk, holding one of the phones.

  “It’s the FBI director, Mr. Kreski.”

  He told Hammond to stand by. His deputy had turned on the television set.

  “Walt, what have you got?” said the FBI man, Steven Copley, an old friend.

  “President’s hit. I guess it’s minor. Bushy Ambrose is taking him to Camp David. I have many dead. I lost Berger.”

  “Any ID on the assailant?”

  “Not yet. Male Hispanic.”

  “Right. I think we have a conspiracy, Walt. We took in two male Hispanics in New York a few minutes ago. I was just going to call you. They were in a building overlooking the vice president’s motorcade route. They had Mauser automatic rifles.”

  “What kind of Hispanics?”

  “Honduran. Illegals.”

  “Bloody damn.”

  “It gets worse, Walt. There’s a bombing in Chicago, and National Park Service police report another at the OAS building. Did you hear it?”

  “Negative. Ambrose is calling in military,” Kreski said, listening to Dan Rather on the television.

  “I don’t blame him.”

  “I’m not sure he knows what he’s doing.”

  “It’s a mess, Walt. You want some help up at Gettysburg?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’ll send an evidence team up by chopper. Walt?”

  “Yes?”

  “We just picked up three more Hispanics in Chicago. I’ll get right back to you.”

  “Okay.”

  Kreski set down the phone, ignoring the other one and its shrill ringing. On the television screen, Bonnie Greer was dying, arms flung upward, body arched back.

  “Bloody damn,” he said.

  “It was Special Agent Schultz who did that,” Kreski’s deputy said. “They have him in custody. He tried to shoot himself.”

  Kreski’s secretary was holding the other phone.

  “It’s your wife, director.”

  “Tell her I’ll call her later. Tell her I don’t know any more than what’s on television.”

  He looked to the screen. CBS’s Bill Plante was doing a standup in front of the White House. Kreski studied the faces of his subordinates as they followed the television coverage. It was disquieting. There was something ghoulish and eager about their expressions. His deputy was profoundly serious, but rapt.

  Kreski gripped the man’s shoulder. “Get back to Hammond on the two-way. I want a minute-by-minute report.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  There were sirens outside the window on Pennsylvania Avenue. Why in hell were there so many sirens?

  “The secretary of defense has put the military on Def Con Two,” someone said.

  Defense Condition Two. It meant scrambled B-52 bombers and open doors on Minuteman silos. Soldiers all over the globe would be issued live ammunition. There would be hard staring at the horizon. If the soldiers were nervous enough, some more people could be killed.

  A red-haired girl from Kreski’s press office came in. She glanced at the director, gave a quick, nervous smile, and then stared at the TV screen where an armed guard was pushing Bill Plante to the side.

  “What the hell is that about?” Kreski asked.

  “Not our guys,” said someone. “He’s one of the White House marines.”

  “The press have been ordered off the White House grounds and into the EOB,” someone else said.

  “Who the hell ordered that?” Kreski demanded.


  The man shrugged.

  Kreski looked at his secretary, who had been with him for eleven years. “Get me the White House. Whoever’s in charge.”

  “Hammond says Ambrose has ordered the Special Function Force up to Camp David,” said Kreski’s deputy. “The man’s lost his mind.”

  “I’d be a little panicky myself in his situation,” Kreski said.

  “He used to be a combat commander in Vietnam.”

  “He’s behaving like one.”

  Kreski’s secretary stuck her head back in the door. “They’ve closed the White House switchboard.”

  Kreski swore, to himself. “I’m going over there,” he said.

  “I’ll call you a car.”

  “It’s two blocks. I’ll run.”

  It was raining again, hard enough to soak his head and shoulders by the time he reached 17th Street. Without slowing his stride, he crossed through the traffic, splashing into a deep puddle on the opposite side, startling pedestrians at the curb. There was a long official car pulling into the White House North Gate, two military jeeps behind it. The concrete barricades that had been emplaced after the terrorist bombings in the Reagan administration required a ninety degree turn executed from a complete stop.

  Slowing to a walk at the pedestrian entrance, Kreski continued past the guardhouse window, presuming, as always, he would be recognized and admitted. But there was no welcoming buzz. The iron gate remained locked.

  The white-shirted guard, a burly, dark-haired man with a bushy mustache whom Kreski knew well, shrugged abjectly and gestured to a marine sergeant standing next to him. The White House marines were supposed to be decorations, ceremonial symbols to add a little color to the presidential decor. Now they were running the place.

  The sergeant stepped outside. “Sorry, sir. No access.”

  Kreski pulled out his security badge, feeling as ridiculous as he was angry. “Do you know who I am? What my job is around here?”

  “Yes, sir. You’re Director Kreski. Sorry, sir, no access. Only cabinet officers.”

  “You goddamned idiot! I’m the head of the Secret Service! The president’s been shot!”

  “Orders, sir.”

  “From whom?”

  “My CO, Captain Tomlinson.”

  “Call him.”

  “Sir, I’ve no …”

  “Call him before I have you arrested for obstruction of justice!”

  The young sergeant stepped back into the guardhouse, letting the heavy, bulletproof glass door slide shut behind him, but he picked up the phone.

  A reporter Kreski recognized, a white-haired man with his White House press credentials hanging uselessly from a chain around his neck, was leaning against the wrought-iron fence beneath an umbrella.

  “I left my tape recorder in the press room,” he said. “They won’t let me go back for it.”

  “Go buy another,” Kreski said. He turned away. Folding his arms, he stood staring hard at the front portico of the Executive Mansion.

  It was easily ten minutes before a figure came running down the drive from the West Wing lobby. It was Dick Shawcross, the vice president’s chief of staff.

  “Now you know how it feels,” said the reporter, when Kreski was finally admitted through the gate.

  Kreski paused, then laughed, not a little bitterly.

  “Who declared all this martial law?” he said to Shawcross as they headed up the drive.

  “The president.”

  “In person?”

  “Through Ambrose. Colonel Ambrose.”

  Shawcross had been Vice President Atherton’s roommate at Princeton and, later, his law partner. He had a neat, upper-class smile.

  “The president’s favorite colonel.”

  They hurried down the carpeted stairs to the White House situation room. It was crowded with high-ranking aides and military brass, though only a few cabinet officers were present; Kreski went to the attorney general first.

  “Steve Copley’s arresting Hispanics, Hondurans, it looks like,” Kreski said. “There was a bombing at the OAS Building?”

  The attorney general frowned. “That’s right. A bomb blew up a trash basket. We just had one at the Rayburn Building that took out six cars.”

  “It’s still an active situation then?”

  Attorney General Allen Wilson was a bald-headed man, with close-cropped white hair at the sides, but still quite youngish-looking. He had been a million-dollar-a-year bond lawyer on Wall Street. He looked very vague and uncertain.

  “I don’t know,” he said.

  Treasury Secretary Robert Heinke grasped Kreski’s arm. “What do you have, Walt?”

  “Damned little. Ambrose and the president are heading for Camp David. By car.”

  The secretary nodded, encouraging Kreski to go on. The commerce secretary, an attractive if somewhat plump woman of fifty-one, came up beside him.

  “I have my best man in a car behind them,” Kreski said, after a brief pause. “And everyone else who can get into a car is trying to catch up. But my people don’t seem to be in much demand. I feel like I’ve been put on hold.”

  “That’s how we all feel,” said the attorney general.

  “What’s the point of all this military?” Kreski said.

  “I haven’t the foggiest. I wasn’t consulted. It all came from the president via Ambrose and Jim Malcom.”

  James Creek Malcom, the Colorado mining magnate Hampton had first made ambassador to Canada and then his national security adviser and head of the National Security Council, was not in the room. Kreski could see a navy officer busy on a computer terminal near the end of the conference table. It connected with the computer-teletype terminal of the Moscow “hotline” in the Pentagon war room.

  “Why the Def Con Two?” Kreski asked.

  “They told the JCS it was precautionary,” said the attorney general. “If they are Hondurans, then Nicaragua and Cuba may be involved. If they’re involved, then the Soviets are probably involved.”

  L. Merriman Crosby, the secretary of state, an inordinately patrician-looking old gentleman with four decades in Washington, joined them.

  “What do you know, Mr. Kreski?” he said.

  “Mr. Secretary, I came here to find out what was going on.”

  “Well, it’s an awful state of affairs, don’t you know, but we’ve largely learned only what they’re telling us on television. We’ve been sitting in this room with very little to do.”

  “Where’s the secretary of defense?” Kreski said.

  “He’s just left the Pentagon. In a helicopter, don’t you know. We presume he’s coming here. The rest of the cabinet, indeed, all of the president’s closest associates, appear to be en route to Camp David.”

  It had been more than idle rumor that the agreement reached between Hampton and Atherton at the convention had included more than a gift of the vice presidential nomination. Atherton had also been awarded five cabinet posts. Hampton had kept all the others, plus national security adviser. None of his people were present.

  “Walt, are you going up to Camp David?” said the treasury secretary.

  “Not yet. As soon as the weather breaks, I’m going to go to Gettysburg. I’m afraid my agency is responsible for the deaths of at least four people.”

  “More than that, I’m afraid,” said the attorney general. “We’re told six, probably more.”

  “Ghastly,” said Crosby. He glanced at the pointless confusion in the crowded, windowless room, then looked back to Kreski.

  “If you can spare ten minutes, Walter, there’s something we’d appreciate your doing for us,” he said. “It’s rather important. Someone has to go over to the Executive Office Building and say something to the news media.”

  “I’m not the president’s press secretary. I’m the last person who should do that.”

  “The White House spokesman has locked himself in his office,” said the treasury secretary. “I think he’s trying to get through to Ambrose.”

  “I
f one of us in the cabinet goes before them we could give the same unfortunate impression Haig did in 1981—‘I’m in control here, here in the White House.’ There’s already been entirely too much talk of a coup as it is. We need to get a calming message out to the nation. It’s vital.”

  “They trust you, Walt. And you’re nonpolitical.”

  “But I’ve no handle on what’s going on.”

  “Just throw some of the television coverage back at them. Call it ‘tentative field reports.’ Unconfirmed.”

  They all turned to the bank of television monitors against one wall. On one screen, ABC’s Sam Donaldson was standing in front of a belligerent-looking White House military guard at the gates. Donaldson was saying the marines had seized control of the White House.

  “Good God,” Kreski said.

  “We need you, Walter. Now. Please.”

  “I’ve never done this.”

  “They’ll believe you, Walt.”

  “I won’t believe me.”

  There were only two kinds of people in the Congress at that moment, those running pointlessly and madly through the halls as though they could accomplish something toward dealing with the crisis, and those staring at television sets. In an expansive suite in the Russell Senate Office Building, the staff of Senator Maitland “Meathead” Dubarry of Louisiana were captives of the television. In his huge private office, Dubarry had his set on, but paid it little attention. As often happened when floor votes were called, the assassination attempt had caught Dubarry with too many drinks in him.

  His glass was again empty. He waved it at the woman in the office with him, a cotton-candy blond secretary whose principal office skill was fellatio. She took it to a cabinet by the street windows and filled it precisely halfway with vodka—a patriotic American brand distilled in Virginia—and topped it with Tab. The senator had a weight problem that was rapidly becoming a cardiovascular problem.

  As she added ice and stirred, the tall, rumpled, middle-aged man sitting on the edge of Dubarry’s desk cleared his throat noisily. Reuben Jackson was the senator’s administrative assistant, the functioning chief authority in the office, and he did this whenever Dubarry was doing something wrong.

  “There’s probably going to be a leadership meeting before we’re done with this today,” he said. “Maybe you ought to go easy for a while.”