On Deception Watch

by David H Spielberg

  “At 5:30, Colonel Anderson, along with Metro Police Chief Chris Bennett will brief the press on the status of the investigation into who was behind the attempt on the president’s life.

  “General Slaider emphasized that the president was very much alive and in control, but that due to the continuing lawlessness and arson in Washington and uncertainty as to the full extent of the conspiracy, the president will remain under deep military security.

  “The president was making contingency preparations for the relocation of senior administration officials and certain cabinet secretariats to his secure location at the underground White House. This is the executive command center designed for the protection of the top level of government in the event of nuclear attack. The general emphasized that while no nuclear attack had occurred or was anticipated, the location provided the greatest security to the president and other critical government officials and possessed very sophisticated communication equipment.

  “General Slaider also said that the president has asked the secretary of the treasury to reassign the agents released from duty for his protection to the protection of key members of Congress. He asked that this protection begin immediately and that it continue until he declares the state of emergency to be over.

  “Meanwhile, the looting and arson, which began in Washington midmorning today, continue to spread to other cities as thousands of demonstrators, angered by the nighttime stabbing deaths of student demonstration leaders in Washington and by the attempted assassination of the president, vented their rage and their frustration.

  “Further reports from Washington indicate that as the regular army units are becoming mobilized large numbers of foreign nationals, largely people with Middle East ties, are being detained for interrogation under the provisions of the emergency order invoked by the president. Civil rights groups are already leading demonstrations and seeking injunctions against what they claim is just a more elaborate form of political profiling aimed at stifling freedom of speech.

  “High-government sources speculate that the simultaneous disappearances of Professor Arthur Cranshaw and Samuel Berman, key executives of the now-famous company, AJC Fusion, coupled with the detention of Middle Eastern nationals. implies a possible Middle East connection with today’s early morning events. No group, however, has as yet come forward to claim responsibility for the attack on the president.

  “We switch live now to Chris Martinez in New York . . . ”

  Marshall turned the radio off. He didn’t want to hear about New York. He would have to wait for the telescreen reports tonight to see what was happening in Washington. He closed the doors of his car, started the air conditioner. He called Sylvia again on his cell phone. Again and got no answer. He hung up when her answering machine responded. He tried Dick Scully at the Courier office. This time he got through.

  “I’m in New YorkI don’t knowI felt that that’s where my next story is coming from, okay? Look, are you happy to hear from me or what?okay, okayactually, I’m trying to find Sylvia, but I’m not having any luck at the moment. She’s not at her apartment. I don’t know where she is but I’m going to try to find out. What’s happening in DC? God, what a mess. Do you think they’ll actually put Washington under martial law? Even in the sixties, with the inner cities going up in flames, we didn’t have martial lawdoes anyone even know what that means? I mean how it works—you know—what you can do and what you can’t do?I can’t believe that Congress would go along with thathow bad is it, really?well, be careful going home, Dick. Stay off the streets. That stuff’s for the younger guys, like meI know, I know. Excuse me, Grandpaokay, I’ll call you at home tonight. Goodbye.”

  It was now 2:30. In spite of the thick air and the heat, he decided to walk—to walk over the bridge into Manhattan. From the pier, he took the quarter-mile walk to the entrance of the pedestrian walkway. Slowly, because of the oppressive heat, he climbed the stairs to the promenade.

  Despite the heat, despite the stifling mugginess that left clothes clinging and sticky, Marshall felt a sense of exhilaration from his rising vantage point on the promenade, high over the East River. The dramatic panorama, the huge expanse of the bridge structuregeometrical with its radiating cables—was a powerful testimony of man’s drive almost one hundred and fifty years ago to push beyond the technical limits of its time. The two massive granite towers on either end of the bridge, unexpected huge stone monoliths instead of the modern steel structures, sounded a contradictory note of antiquity—yet strangely in harmony with Marshall’s present state of confusion.

  Why was he in New York? He was really looking for Sylvia—because he wanted to be with her, to share his fears with her, to let her see, to let her know how he cared. This he needed to do even as he resisted the realization of his need. So, aimlessly he began to walk the great bridge to Manhattan, hoping to use up time until it made sense to try Sylvia’s number once again.

  Off to the right, a new eruption of dark smoke billowed into the breathless sky.

  58

  Jeremy was taking a big step with this job. It was bigger than anything he had ever done before and he had needed help, something he had never needed in the past. Because of this he had been especially cautious. Once more he reviewed his plan, checked his progress so far, and reconsidered new fallback positions. He thought and thought until he surprised himself by realizing that he had never considered whether this was a good thing to be doing.

  It was not a question he ever asked himself before. A job was a job. But this, this was very big. It had taken him two months to make the preparations for this day. He didn’t like using other people—getting help. But it was an element of risk that Jeremy decided he had no choice but to accept. He couldn’t do it all alone. Yes, this was a very big job, all together. But was it a good thing to be doing?

  As Jeremy entered his car again, he stopped worrying about questions for which he had neither an answer nor a way of even analyzing the problem. He swung onto the Jersey Turnpike.

  He reached into the glove compartment and pulled out a transmitter he had placed there before leaving the house. He put the box on the seat next to him. Reaching behind it, he unhooked the antenna and turned it into the raised position. He extended the antenna telescope-fashion. The box would transmit a three-digit signal for a distance of approximately one mile—more than enough range.

  He was approaching the first tower. The Linden power station was in view with its massive steel towers carrying cables over the New Jersey Turnpike to secondary distribution points. He never really noticed the cables before this job. They were just there. But now they were objects of study, elements in a pattern, and focal points for Jeremy’s busy mind. They were overhead, and in a flash they were behind himtwo-tenths, three-tenths, a half-milebefore he pushed the automatic sequencing switch that transmitted the three-digit message.

  Simultaneously, Jeremy heard the thud like a distant crack of thunder. It was not the sharp, high pitched sound of a close lightning strike. It was the muffled thud of distant mortar or artillery fire. But only one round. At least that was how it felt to Jeremy. He knew for sure what it was, though. It was twenty pounds of plastic high explosive artfully placed to destroy just enough of the tower legs to let the remaining unsupported weight of the tower and tension of the cables do the rest of the job. And it did.

  In his rearview mirror, Jeremy watched as the tower fell like a child playing at a slow-motion death scene. The cables fell along with the tower, dropping like the ropes of a tent being struck, the weekend over and everyone heading home.

  Jeremy proceeded to the George Washington Bridge, headed north on I-95 to 287 by Rye, then over the Tappan Zee bridge to the Garden State Parkway, then south to I-80 and west to Chicago. There were twenty-two such towers, feeding high-tension power lines over major roads on this route. Jeremy had arranged to have charges placed on each of these towers. There were three men he could trust to keep their mouths shut and who, for
money, would do anything, no questions asked. There had been no security on the towers. Why should there be?

  The men had worked methodically. Over a period of about a week the charges had been placed in broad daylight using electric company look-alike maintenance trucks. The men were easily able to drive their trucks to the base of selected towers, place their explosives and igniting mechanisms, and be gone without drawing any attention.

  Tower by tower Jeremy made his way along the interstate. He figured two-and-a-half hours for the route. And his path would jog often enough that if the police detected the geographic pattern of his advance he would be in a new direction before they could organize themselves in an attempt to trap him. He estimated that the people at the Times would be calling the police about Ibrahim’s message and the Arab connection no sooner than twenty minutes into his route as news of the tower explosions became known.

  As a kind of finale to this event, five days earlier, Jeremy himself had placed an explosive package on one of the principal cables leading to the telephone switching center in lower New York, just north of China town, between the Brooklyn Bridge and the Williamsburg Bridge. It would explode at 4:00 p.m. He would be on his way to Chicago by then.

  Again Jeremy was pleased with his performance. After the third explosion, Jeremy began listening to the radio news stations. Bulletins started airing and the story began to grow.

  It amazed Jeremy how very little, really, the things one person did touched other people’s lives. He watched the other cars, the drivers and other occupants—all little worlds of their own. He wondered if they ever thought of themselves, in a larger view of their existence, as merely a small actor on a very much bigger stage. Or did they forget the outside world as they rode along in their car? Did they, looking at him as they passed one another on the road, realize how little of him they truly saw or knew? In his profession, he counted heavily on people looking but not seeing—of their natural desire to surround their personal space with a protective shell of isolation.

  Jeremy wondered what mysteries each car he looked at held—what he might find if he were able to stop each car and examine each life of the people inside. But he could not do that to them any more than they could do it to him. And so he rode on with his human cargo in the trunk and his radio transmitter and his mission of destruction. Like a berserk Johnny Appleseed, Jeremy was casting not seeds but chaos and destruction in the wake of his passing.

  By three o’clock the radio was announcing the mobilization of state police and Army reservists to guard key power and telecommunications locations. Civil defense forces were placed on alert. News media were speculating that this was a diversion preparatory to a surprise Chinese attack on the United States. No one could explain why the Chinese should want to attack the United States. All bridges and tunnels across the Hudson River had been placed under military jurisdiction.

  By four-thirty it was apparent to everyone that the power disruption was extensive. Large areas of the northeast corridor power grid were shut down either by the demolition of the towers or by necessity to prevent overloading the remaining lines and risking their self-destruction. It was apparent to all that this destruction would not, could not be repaired overnight. Careful power-grid restructuring would have to be devised, temporary towers would have to be erected, temporary cabling arrangements made. Security would have to be reassessed and improved. The perpetrator or perpetrators would have to be found and brought to justice. And someone would have to pay for this—monetarily and politically. But that would be then and this was now.

  Jeremy went over his plans and his actions step by step, again and again, looking for a flaw, for a careless mistake. He reevaluated every assumption that his plans were based on. As he drew on his cigarette, he felt confident. He was satisfied that chance error had been reduced to an acceptable level.

  Jeremy listened to the speculation on the radio as he headed west, to the frantic efforts to contain the damage, and to the clamor for a clear declaration of who was in charge of the nation. By evening he would be in Cleveland. In the evening, after dark, the looting would begin in New York City. That part did not need to be orchestrated. Jeremy knew that it would happen all by itself. And it would make what was happening in Washington look like child’s play.

  Washington was first and then New York. It must look as if the contagion was spreading—that the conspiracy of violence was solidly national in scope.

  Jeremy was a professional, not a zealot. His task now was to complete his contract and retire from the arena safely and inconspicuously. He had just one more task to perform. The exit.

  59

  Frank Morrison approached the vice president’s office with no reference frames, no guideposts, no up, no down. He had no preparation for the emotional impact of Emerson’s wounding and no basis for judging the likely outcome. He discovered within himself a need to fight, to resist consciously a relentless urge to simply stand and scream. By will and instinct and a refusal to diminish himself in his own estimation he kept control—kept moving forward somehow.

  Emerson Drummond was not just his boss. Drummond was a treasure for the nation that he had been entrusted to protect administratively and politically. And in Washington, that is the same as saying he was Drummond’s elite bodyguard, willing to throw himself in the path of the politician’s bullet or journalist’s sword.

  But his reason for existence had disappeared. No, not disappeared. That was not true. Emerson Drummond had not disappeared, he reminded himself. The president was there, at the hardened White House. Within hours by air, he could be with the president. He could assume that President Drummond was no longer at Fort Belvoir but rather deep inside the secret site labeled Site R in internal memos. Sixty-one thousand square feet reserved for the top levels of government and the judiciary. Another site labeled only Site C would provide for the joint housing of the Congress, in one chamber. The top Pentagon officials would relocate to yet a third site, eighty-one thousand square feet, likewise located deep within a protective mountain and deep underground within the mountain.

  The government’s first order of business is always to protect the American people, unlessunless anyone was actually really in danger. Then the first order of business of government was to protect itself.

  Morrison understood all this and accepted it. The military precautions had all been handled very smoothly by General Slaider and his people. The protocols were in place and there for a reason. No one knew the extent of this expanding threat. It was clear that the Secret Service was simply over its head with this and the military needed to step in. Everyone understood this.

  The news from New York about the bombings of the power system was very alarming and certainly seemed to justify the continued exceptional security precautions for the president. But it just wasn’t Emerson’s style to go so completely and personally out of touch. Why was everything coming through General Slaider? Had Emerson actually been killed? Was Slaider trying to prevent a panic, a breakdown in command at a crucial time in the country’s hour of need?

  That didn’t make sense. For god’s sake this is America, he thought. We have an order of succession that can click in like a well-oiled switch. American government was an uninterruptible power supply. This wasn’t some goddam banana republic where the death of a dictator sets off a power struggle for control, he argued with himself. So what the hell was Emerson doing?

  Emerson was no fool. He would have good reasons for what he was doing, for how he wanted things. Perhaps he knew something we didn’t, he thought. Could Emerson be aware of some danger to him from within that only the relocation plan could protect him from? This was not theoretical speculation. After all, the man had been shot. We all saw that. This was obviously not a single madman. The power infrastructure bombings have shown us this. The fusion issue was endangering very big interests. Everyone knew this. Had Emerson underestimated their reach? The Arab connection with the events in New York had not been entirely unexpected. Could t
hat lone phone call be trusted? There are always crank organizations taking responsibility for things they had no connection to at all. And if true, how high could their money reach? Perhaps Emerson was being sensible, after all.

  But why had the meeting been canceled to discuss the speaker’s mission to the president? Latimer has been holed up all day in his office. The news conference this morning was a disaster. Morrison assumed Latimer was currently working with his communications people to produce more convincing public statements. He understood Latimer’s reluctance to start using the president’s staff. That would send the wrong signal to the nation. Paul was doing the best he could under very sensitive circumstances. But why was the crisis cabinet meeting canceled? The alpha team was to reconvene two hours after the morning meeting and the meeting was canceled. Why? All Paul had told him throughout the day was to stay available and make sure that every member of the cabinet was available.

  To the outside, Frank Morrison knew that the government appeared to be in total disarray. But Washington responds to action, any action. The United States government is an amazingly adaptive system. One we could all take pride in, he thought. And now Latimer seemed ready to do something.

  Morrison knocked on the door to the vice president’s office and entered.

  Paul Latimer had changed. Morrison saw it instantly as he entered the office. He could not put his finger on the change. But it was there. He suddenly seemed less anonymous.

  “Sit down, Frank,” Latimer said without raising his eyes from his desk. He was signing documents. When he was through, he lifted his head and looked at Morrison intently. Neither man said a word to each other. The vice president pressed a button on his telephone console and almost instantly the side door to the office opened and a Secret Service agent that Frank knew only slightly entered.

  Latimer handed him the documents. “You know where to take these?”