By Order of the President

by Kilian, Michael;

  “Are you sure you’ll be safe?”

  “Perfectly sure. Perfectly safe.”

  He set down his glass and rose. “All right. You know what’s best.”

  “And leave the briefcase.”

  “Leave the briefcase? It has everything!”

  “I know. I’m going to show him everything. But if you’re here he’s just going to keep losing his temper. I want him to calm down and pay attention. He’s a very bright man, Charley. He’ll understand what we have.”

  “What if he tries to destroy it? To get back at us that way? He might just throw it in the fire.”

  “He has a lot of flaws, Charley, but he’s not irresponsible. Inconsiderate, yes. But not irresponsible.”

  “How can you be sure he won’t just call the police and turn me in? Have them pick me up at my hotel?”

  “Because I told him I’d leave him if he did that.”

  “But Maddy …”

  “In its way, Charley, it is about the most honest thing I could say.”

  The cab ride to Arlington took too long, as did the elevator ride to his floor, as most certainly did the wait in his room. Removing the pistol from his belt, he checked the cylinder to see if it was still fully loaded, then clicked it closed, wondering if he still had any need for it, if he shouldn’t just stick it in his bag. He decided to stay with the habit of the last several days. He’d not been ill-served by it, except once.

  Walking about the room, he paused to draw the drapes open, exposing the entire panorama of river and city that included the Victorian building fronts of Georgetown across the river, the elaborate curves of the Watergate complex downstream, and the piercing spire of the Washington Monument rising beyond it. The day was fading, and the twin red lights at the monument’s pinnacle came on and began to blink.

  Dresden stared down into the now dark waters of the wide, flowing river. So many people dead and endangered, so many miles traveled, so much done, and now so much known and provable. Yet it was all in the hands of a woman who was now all that mattered in his life. Just a few short weeks before he’d forgotten she still existed. Now, he had relinquished everything to her, and to a man who hated him with a raging, violent passion.

  It was time for the early-evening television news. He snapped on the set. The story on the air was about a rash of terrorist shootings in Honduras, nothing of moment to his own predicament.

  The telephone on the night table rang. He snatched it up, hesitating before speaking. It was the clerk at the front desk.

  “There’s a party in the lobby to see you, sir.”

  “What name?”

  “Calendiari, sir.”

  “I’ll be right down.”

  He stepped quickly out of the elevator, but there was not a blond head to be seen anywhere, not in the lobby, not at the desk, not in any of the adjacent corridors. There was, however, a tall, bald-headed man in an expensive overcoat, standing by one of the pillars. Dresden approached him slowly, for a fearful moment wondering if Madeleine were still alive.

  “Well, Senator,” he said.

  Calendiari had regained all of his composure. His eyes were very serious, but cleansed of their rage. His voice was very even.

  “Madeleine showed me everything. The videotapes, the voice prints, the audio tape. Everything. It’s very convincing. It’s very disturbing.”

  “That’s what I felt from the beginning.”

  “What’s between us we can deal with later, and we will. Believe me, we will. But this is more important than all of us. In all sincerity, Dresden, I admire you for what you’ve done so far. I want to do everything I can to help.”

  He began pulling on his gloves.

  “Get your bag and check out. We’ve decided that, under the circumstances, it would be much safer all around if you stayed with us.”

  21

  Chief of Staff Ambrose had called an emergency meeting. As those summoned walked down the curving paths of Camp David to Ambrose’s cabin in the surprisingly balmy weather, they assumed the subject would be the bad news David Callister had brought back from New York, but Ambrose deferred discussion of that—for the time being. His agenda was “prioritized,” as he put it, and at the top of the list was national security. More specifically, war. Real war.

  It was the largest single gathering Ambrose had convened since the night of the president’s shooting. C. D. Bragg, Jerry Greene, and Peter Schlessler were there, as always. So were Senator Andrew Rollins and National Security Adviser James Malcom, and Callister, though he enjoyed no official status. General DeVore, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, had pointedly not been invited, and no notice had been sent to Admiral Elmore.

  Presidential press secretary Weigle had yet to be allowed an appearance at the compound. He was performing too important a role for Ambrose down at the White House, making a nuisance of himself with the vice president’s people and confusing the press.

  “Has everyone read the latest report out of Tegucigalpa?” Ambrose asked, as Schlessler poured coffee. All nodded except Rollins, who had arrived late, and Callister, who disdainfully yawned. Ambrose shoved Rollins a copy of the report, but ignored Callister.

  “The situation there is getting out of hand,” Ambrose continued. “As out of hand as it has been up here. Everything depends on our maintaining control over operations in Central America. I mean absolute control and I mean all operations. It’s getting away from us and I want absolute control restored.”

  “The chain of command starts here,” said Moran, the defense secretary.

  “I know that,” Ambrose said. “A presidential order to the National Military Command Center and the tanks roll across the Rio Coco. You don’t have to familiarize me with standard operating procedures. What I’m interested in is nonregulation procedure. How do you control that? How would I start a war down there without presidential orders?”

  “You couldn’t,” a general from the Joint Chiefs said. “Whatever you did you’d have to go through the defense secretary, the war room, the chairman of the JCS, me, CIC Southern Command, and the field commander, not to speak of the navy secretary and CIC Atlantic Command, Military Airlift Command, and anybody else involved in purple operations in the region.”

  “You’re still talking orthodoxy,” Ambrose said. “I’m not talking about ordering anyone into combat. I’m talking about spontaneous combustion. What set of circumstances could one create in which a war could begin all on its own?”

  “An incident,” said C. D. Bragg.

  “The battleship Maine’s already been sunk,” Rollins said.

  “You could provoke the other side,” Bragg said. “An assassination attempt on Ortega. A major bombing in Managua or San Salvador. A naval incident that would draw them into an attack on our shipping.”

  “The Congress and the public wouldn’t stand for it,” Ambrose said.

  “We may have gotten rid of the No-More-Vietnams syndrome,” Senator Rollins said, folding the Tegucigalpa report and putting it in his pocket, “but not the No-More-Gulfs-of-Tonkin syndrome.”

  “And our response would have to go back up the chain of command,” said the general.

  “So there isn’t any way then,” said Ambrose.

  Everyone nodded agreement, except Malcom, who cleared his throat. A former Green Beret major and Rhodes scholar, the national security adviser was a taciturn, thoughtful man whose comments were so infrequent and circumspect that everyone always listened when he spoke.

  “There is a way,” he said. “World War I began not because anyone deliberately sought to start it but because the mobilization of troops by the major powers in response to perceived threat was so massive that a clash all along both fronts was inevitable. If you were to put the American military on a very high level of alert and then create an incident, there likely would not be time to involve the full chain of command in initiating a substantial response.”

  “All right,” said Ambrose. “What are the options for putting the ar
med forces on a high state of alert?”

  “I can with a simple order,” the general said. “As we did after Gettysburg. The president can order any kind of alert condition he wishes.”

  “Right,” said Ambrose. “So that option is absolutely under our control. What else?”

  “The JCS chairman can order full-scale alerts,” the general said.

  “He’s playing it perfectly straight,” Ambrose said. “He wouldn’t start anything without good, substantial reason.”

  “A false intelligence report,” C. D. Bragg said.

  “No one is playing it straighter than Admiral Elmore,” Ambrose said. “No false NIE is going to get by him.”

  “What about the National Security Agency?”

  “What about Wimex?” the general asked. “If you could access Wimex, you could call an alert. It’s not hard to access Wimex.”

  “What the hell’s Wimex?” Greene said.

  “I sent everyone a memorandum when the emergency began,” Ambrose said. “Wimex is the computer complex inside Cheyenne Mountain in Colorado. It’s hooked up to our geosynchronous satellites over the Soviet Union. It’s programmed to initiate our immediate response to apparent launches of Soviet ICBMs while the president and the Pentagon war room decide what to do next. Wimex is authorized to scramble tac air and B-l flights, and order alerts up to Def Con Four—all on its own.”

  “In fact, it’s done so several times by accident,” the general said. “In one of those incidents, some fool colonel mistakenly put a war games tape into it.”

  “Def Con Four would not suffice,” C. D. Bragg said. “You’d need a hair-trigger situation. Def Con Two or One.”

  Everyone sat in silence.

  “Anyone holding a ‘Gold Codes’ card could create such a situation,” Malcom said.

  “‘Gold Codes’ card?” said Ambrose. “They’re for use in nuclear war!”

  “The ‘Gold Codes’ card accesses the command center,” the national security adviser said. “Its code numbers authorize the caller to initiate a nuclear strike at his option. But they also authorize the caller simply to order a state of alert. The holder of a ‘Gold Codes’ card could put the nation on Def Con One.”

  “On Def Con One,” the defense secretary said, “you could set off a firecracker on the Coco and all hell would break loose.”

  “All hell could include an accidental nuclear exchange,” the general said.

  “All right,” Ambrose said. “Let’s look at it the other way around. How would someone go about trying to stop such a war? How could someone prevent that kind of alert from being called?”

  “There’s the Watergate precedent,” Rollins said.

  “Watergate?” Ambrose asked. “What the hell does that have to do with anything?”

  “When Nixon began to go funny Jim Schlesinger—remember he was defense secretary then—he and Jerry Ford and the others got together and worked it out with the war room that no White House ‘Gold Codes’ card calls were to be honored without their being consulted.”

  “That was four against one,” Ambrose said, “and you had a president known to be off the deep end. What’s our situation?”

  “The president has a ‘Gold Codes’ card, meaning you in the present setup, Bushy,” the defense secretary said. “I have one. My deputy has one, and he’s completely reliable. With us all the way.”

  “The JCS chairman has one, and he’d use it only in the most extreme circumstance,” the general said. “He would not take part in any effort to prevent another card bearer from carrying out his responsibilities.”

  “And the fifth and last card is held by Vice President Atherton,” Ambrose said. “Three versus one versus one.”

  “But you’d only need minutes,” Malcom said. “The force in Honduras is virtually on lock and load as it is.”

  “And mentally they’ve been on Def Con One since Gettysburg,” the general said.

  Ambrose chewed his lower lip. He looked at each of those present, and then down at the tabletop, drumming his fingers. “All right,” he said. “I want the ‘Gold Codes’ cards changed.”

  “They will be, automatically,” the defense secretary said. “In exactly twelve days.”

  “You’re talking about all five cards,” Ambrose said. “I’m talking about just two, yours and mine—I mean, yours and the president’s. I want those codes changed and I want the new numbers the only ones authorized for war room access.”

  “You can’t do that, Bushy,” Rollins said, leaning back in his chair.

  “We’re in the middle of a national emergency. Why the hell not?”

  “For one thing, it would require an action of the full National Security Council—the president, Atherton, Secretary of State Crosby, and the defense secretary here. I don’t think Atherton and Crosby would be very compliant. You’d also be required to consult Admiral Elmore and the JCS in their advisory capacity. They wouldn’t think it a very hot idea, either.”

  “We could just go ahead and do it.”

  “Bushy,” Rollins said. “The American people know the president’s been shot. They see him as completely isolated up here. They see Atherton in many ways as an acting president, especially since he moved into the White House. If you try to take away any of his powers to act in the president’s absence in a military emergency, there could be hell to pay. You can’t do that unless you’ve got the president back in the Oval Office.”

  “So we sit,” Ambrose said.

  “The timing could be better,” C. D. Bragg said.

  “This has not been a very useful discussion,” said Ambrose.

  “Hypothetical ones seldom are,” the defense secretary said.

  Some of those at the table began to stir, as though assuming the meeting was over. An arch clearing of the throat kept them in their chairs. Ambrose looked over at Callister.

  “I forgot,” Ambrose said. “We have this other problem, thanks to Mr. Callister here. What do we do? Those people who broke into his house have to be neutralized. Fast.”

  “Do you want to call in the FBI?” Rollins asked.

  “We’ve got to notify them, at least. Callister, have one of your staff in New York do that. Just inform the field office up there that that couple forced their way into your house at gunpoint and asked questions about the president. Volunteer nothing beyond that, and don’t bring the police into it.”

  “Your advice is sound,” Callister said.

  “It’s not advice,” Ambrose said. “Those are orders.”

  “If you want to neutralize those two,” Bragg said. “You can’t leave it at that.”

  “We can deal with them with the military,” the defense secretary said. “We have a whole office full of Defense Intelligence Agency people at the Pentagon who were frozen out of the Gettysburg investigation by Kreski and Copley. They’ll jump at something to do.”

  “I want that couple iced, before they stir up trouble for us.” Ambrose turned to Bragg. “C. D., you and Schlessler serve as liaison on this. I want frequent reports.”

  People started to rise, but Ambrose’s raised hand stayed them.

  “One more thing,” he said. “Christmas. I’m sorry, but it’s no can do. I’ll permit family visits at the Rustic Motel in Thurmont on the afternoon of Christmas Day, one P.M. to five P.M. Nothing more. We simply can’t risk it.” He moved his gaze to Callister. “As for you, sir. You don’t leave Camp David. Not until this is over. Not until I give you permission. Am I making myself clear?”

  “As usual, you are making yourself insufferable.”

  “Just don’t get out of line, Callister. At this point you’re making yourself very expendable.”

  The vice president readily agreed to meet with them, not at the White House, but at his official residence on Observatory Hill, and at night. George Calendiari drove them, with Maddy riding in the front seat beside him. It was a protocol, a matter of appearances. It was the unspoken sense of all three of them that her real place was in the back w
ith Dresden. On the drive from McLean, she kept turning to talk to him, and on one dark stretch of Canal Road on the Maryland side of the Potomac, reached back and squeezed his hand.

  This was the culmination of all their efforts, all they had endured, all they had set out to do. The two of them could do no more. The responsibility would now pass into the hands of people awesomely more powerful than themselves, the questions of resolution, justice, and ultimate restitution of authority to be taken up by the gigantic, inexorable workings of the government itself. This night would mean their freedom. They must conclude matters with George. They had not decided how they would go about this, but it was a necessity. When they left the Vice President’s House it would be to begin their new lives.

  Turning off Massachusetts Avenue, they were stopped at the entrance gate by a large number of security men, some in civilian clothes, others in police and military uniforms. But after a courteous examination of Calendiari’s Senate ID and a quick look inside the BMW, they were waved on. A curving ascent of the long drive took them to the top of the hill, where they were greeted by yet more security personnel and guided politely to the entrance of the old Victorian mansion, where a butler opened the door for them. Their coats were taken, and they were conducted into a large, comfortable parlor with a cheery fire burning despite the outside warmth.

  “George, Mrs. Calendiari,” said the vice president, rising. Dresden was struck by how aged the man now looked. “You must be Charles Dresden.”

  “Yes, sir,” said Charley, stepping forward and shaking Atherton’s extended hand. There was a great deal of seriousness in the vice president’s voice, and sadness. His eyes seemed somewhat vacant and staring.

  He introduced the others in the room—his secretary, Mrs. Hildebrand; Chief of Staff Richard Shawcross; Secretary of State Merriman Crosby; Press Secretary Neil Howard; and Steven Copley, director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

  “I’d offer you some refreshment,” Atherton said, “But I think that, under the circumstance, it would be best if we got on with this as soon as possible. Our videotape equipment is in my study on the second floor. If you’ll come this way, please.”