“Relax and take it easy,” Gwynne ordered. “The world can turn without you for a few hours.” He jabbed a needle into the President’s arm and then held a glass of water for him to wash down a pill.
Dan Fawcett entered the bedroom. “About through, Doc?” he inquired.
Gwynne nodded. “Keep him off his feet. I’ll check back around two o’clock this afternoon.” He smiled warmly, closed his black bag and stepped through the door.
“General Metcalf is waiting,” Fawcett said to the President.
The President pushed a third pillow behind his back and struggled to a sitting position, massaging his temples as the room began to spin.
Metcalf was ushered in, resplendent in a uniform decorated by eight rows of colorful ribbons. There was a briskness about the general that was not present at their last meeting.
The President looked at him, his face pallid, his eyes drooping and watery. He began to hack uncontrollably.
Metcalf came over to the bed. “Is there anything I can get you, sir?” he asked solicitously.
The President shook his head and waved him away. “I’ll survive,” he said at last. “What’s the situation, Clayton?”
The President never called his Joint Chiefs by rank, preferring to lower them a couple of notches down their pedestal by addressing them with their Christian names.
Metcalf shifted in his chair uncomfortably. “The streets are quiet at the moment, but there were one or two isolated incidents of sniping. One soldier was killed and two Marines wounded.”
“Were the guilty parties apprehended?”
“Yes, sir,” Metcalf answered.
“A couple of criminal radicals, no doubt.”
Metcalf stared at his feet. “Not exactly. One was the son of Congressman Jacob Whitman of South Dakota and the other the son of Postmaster General Kenneth Potter. Both were under seventeen years of age.”
The President’s face looked stricken for an instant and then it quickly hardened. “Are your troops deployed at Lisner Auditorium?”
“One company of Marines is stationed on the grounds around the building.”
“Hardly seems enough manpower,” said the President. “The Maryland and Virginia Guard units combined will outnumber them five to one.”
“The Guard will never come within rifle shot of the auditorium,” said Metcalf knowingly. “Our plan is to defuse their effectiveness by stopping them before they arrive in the city.”
“A sound strategy,” the President said, his eyes briefly gleaming.
“I have a special news report,” said Fawcett, who was kneeling in front of the television set. He turned up the volume and stood aside so the picture could be seen from the bed.
Curtis Mayo was standing beside a highway blocked by armed soldiers. In the background a line of tracks stretched across the road, the muzzles of their guns pointing ominously at a convoy of personnel carriers.
“The Virginia National Guard troops that Speaker of the House Alan Moran was relying on to protect a meeting of Congress on the George Washington University campus this morning have been turned back outside the nation’s capital by armored units of the Army special forces. I understand the same situation exists with the Maryland Guard northeast of the city. So far there has been no threat of fighting. Both state Guard units appeared subdued, if not in numbers, by superior equipment. Outside Lisner Auditorium, a company of Marines, under the command of Colonel Ward Clarke, a Vietnam Medal of Honor holder, is turning away members of Congress, refusing them entrance to hold a session. And so once again the President has thwarted House and Senate members while he continues his controversial foreign affairs programs without their approval. This is Curtis Mayo, CNN news, on a highway thirty miles south of Washington.”
“Seen enough?” asked Fawcett, turning off the set.
“Yes, yes,” the President rasped happily. “That ought to keep that egomaniac Moran floundering without a rudder for a while.”
Metcalf rose to his feet. “If you won’t need me any further, Mr. President, I should be getting back to the Pentagon. Conditions are pretty unsettled with our division commanders in Europe. They don’t exactly share your views on pulling back their forces to the States.”
“In the long haul they’ll come to accept the risks of a temporary military imbalance in order to dilute the dreaded specter of nuclear conflict.” The President shook Metcalf’s hand. “Nice piece of work, Clayton. Thank you for keeping Congress paralyzed.”
Metcalf walked along the corridor for fifty feet until it emptied into the vast interior of a barren warehouselike structure.
The stage set that contained an exact replica of the President’s White House bedroom sat in the middle of the Washington Navy Yard’s old brick ordnance building, which had gone virtually unused since World War Two.
Every detail of the deception was carefully planned and executed. A sound technician operated a stereo recorder whose tape played the muted sounds of street traffic at a precise volume. The lighting outside the bedroom windows matched the sky exactly, with an occasional shadowed effect to simulate a passing cloud. The filters over the lamps were set to emit changing yellow-orange rays to duplicate the day’s movement of the sun. Even the plumbing in the adjacent bathroom worked with the familiar sounds of the original, but emptying its contents into a septic tank rather than the Washington city sewer system. The huge concrete floor was heavily populated with Marine guards and Secret Service agents, while overhead, amid great wooden rafters, men stood on catwalks manning the overhead lighting system.
Metcalf stepped across a network of electrical cables and entered a large mobile trailer parked against the far wall. Oates and Brogan were waiting and invited him into a walnut-paneled office.
“Coffee?” Brogan asked, holding up a glass urn.
Metcalf nodded gratefully, reached for a steaming cup and sank into a chair. “My God, for a minute there I could have sworn I was in the White House.”
“Martin’s people did an amazing job,” said Oates. “He flew in a crew from a Hollywood studio and constructed the entire set in nine hours.”
“Did you have a problem moving the President?”
“The easy part,” replied Brogan. “We transferred him in the same moving van as the furniture. Strange as it might sound, the toughest hurdle was the paint.”
“How so?”
“We had to cover the walls with a material that didn’t have the smell of new paint. Fortunately, our chemists at the agency lab came up with a chalky substance they could tint that left no aroma.”
“The news program was an ingenious touch,” commented Metcalf.
“It cost us,” Oates explained. “We had to make a deal with Curtis Mayo to give him the exclusive story in return for his cooperation in broadcasting the phony news report. He also agreed to hold off a network investigation until the situation cools.”
“How long can you continue to deceive the President?”
“For as long as it takes,” answered Brogan.
“For what purpose?”
“To study the President’s brain patterns.”
Metcalf threw Brogan a very dubious look indeed.
“You haven’t convinced me. Stealing back the President’s mind from the Russians who stole it in the first place is stretching my gullibility past the breaking point.”
Brogan and Oates exchanged looks and smiled. “Would you like to see for yourself?” Oates asked.
Metcalf put down the coffee. “I wouldn’t miss it for a fifth star.”
“Through here,” Oates said, opening a door and gesturing for Metcalf to enter.
The entire midsection and one end of the mobile trailer was filled with exotic electronic and computer hardware. The monitoring data center was a generation ahead of Lugovoy’s equipment on board the Bougainville laboratory.