“All right.”
Then it was time to dress and pick up Marty from the school. They drove together through the drizzle.
That evening, after Marty had gone to bed and while they sat together on the couch in the living room reading, legs entangled, the phone rang. Arthur answered.
“I have a call for Arthur Gordon from President Crockerman.”
Arthur recognized the voice. It was Nancy Congdon, the White House secretary.
“Speaking.”
“Hold on, please.”
A few seconds later, Crockerman came on the line.
“Arthur, I need to speak with you or Feinman, or with Senator Gilmonn…I assume you’re in touch with him, or with the Puzzle Palace?”
“I’m sorry, Mr. President…I haven’t spoken with the senator or the NSA. Harry Feinman is very ill now. He’s dying.”
“That’s what I was told.” The President said nothing for a long moment. “I’m under siege here, Arthur. They still can’t get a vote through in the House, but they’re maybe two votes down…I’m not sure I know everybody who’s laying siege, but I thought you might be able to speak to them. You don’t need to admit complicity…or whatever you would call it.”
“I may not be the right man, Mr. President,” Arthur said.
“In the past few hours, I have been denied access to the war room. I’ve fired Otto Lehrman but that hasn’t stopped a thing. Jesus, they’ve actually threatened to withdraw the troops around the White House! All they’ve done is clearly illegal, but these people…They can afford to wait me out. Something’s going on. And I need to know what it is, for Christ’s sake. I’m the President of the United States, Arthur!”
“I don’t know anything about this, Mr. President.”
“Right. Hold to the party line. For whatever it’s worth, I’m not a stubborn idiot. I’ve spent the last few weeks agonizing over this. I’ve spoken with Party Secretary Nalivkin. Do you know what they’re doing? They’re negotiating with the bogey in Mongolia. He says the world is on the brink of a socialist millennium. That’s what the spacecraft in Mongolia is telling him! Arthur, give it to me straight…Is there anybody I can talk to who can put me back in the chain of command? I am not an unreasonable man. I can be reasoned with. God knows I’ve been thinking this all over. I’m willing to rethink my position. Have you heard about Reverend Ormandy?”
“No, sir.”
“He’s dead, for Christ’s sake! They shot him. Somebody shot him.”
Arthur, face pale, said nothing.
“If they aren’t talking to you, then who would they be talking to?”
“Have you called McClennan, or Rotterjack?” Arthur asked. Both of them had sworn allegiance to Crockerman even after their resignations.
“Yes. I can’t get through to them. I think they’ve been arrested or kidnapped. Is this a revolution, a mutiny, Arthur?”
“I don’t know, sir. I honestly don’t know.”
Crockerman muttered something Arthur didn’t hear clearly and hung up.
47
Reuben Bordes met the Money Man near the Greyhound bus terminal on Twelfth Street. The white-haired, paunchy stranger wore a dark blue wool suit, pin-striped golden silk shirt, and alligator-skin shoes. He seemed perfectly happy to pass Reuben a plump gray vinyl zippered bag filled with hundred- and thousand-dollar bills. Reuben shook his hand firmly, smiled, and they parted without a word said between them. Reuben stuck the envelope into the pocket of his olive-green army coat and hailed a cab.
Instructions given, he sat back in the seat, happier than he had ever been in his life. With this money, he could be traveling in style now: taxicabs, airplanes, fine hotels wherever he went. But more than likely the money would be spent on other things. Still, the thought…
There was an extensive shopping list in his head. His first stop would be the Government Printing Office Data Center. There he would purchase four sets of data disks containing the entire public-domain nonfiction records of the Library of Congress. Each set, on five hundred disks, occupied the space of a good-sized filing cabinet, and he did not know why four copies were necessary, but he would pay for them all in cash with about half of the money in the envelope.
He stood in line at the service counter of the Data Center for ten minutes, and then stepped up to the clerk, a young, balding man with a full red beard and a sharply appraising stare.
“Can I help you?” the clerk asked.
“I’d like four sets of number 15-692-421-3-A-G.”
The clerk wrote the number down and consulted a terminal. “That’s nonfiction, complete, L.C.,” he said. “Including all reference guides and indices?”
Reuben nodded.
The clerk’s stare became more intense. “That’s fifteen thousand dollars a set,” he said.
Reuben calmly unfolded a roll of money and counted out sixty thousand-dollar bills.
The clerk examined the bills carefully, rubbing them, holding them up close. “I’ll have to call my supervisor,” he said.
“Fine,” Reuben said.
A half hour later, all the formalities cleared away, Reuben wrote down where he wanted the sets sent — a mailing address in West Virginia.
“What will you do with them all?” the clerk asked as he handed Reuben the receipt.
“Read them,” Reuben said. “Four times.” He regretted that flippancy as he walked south on Seventh Street toward the National Archives, but only for a moment. Instructions were pouring in rapidly, and he had little time to think for himself.
January 5
Lieutenant Colonel Rogers came out of a sound sleep at four a.m., just minutes before his wristwatch alarm was set to go off. He deactivated the alarm and switched on the small lamp at the head of his narrow bunk. For a luxurious minute, he lay still in the bunk, listening. All was quiet. All calm. It was Sunday; most of the Forge of Godders had moved to Furnace Creek the night before for a huge rally planned this morning by the Reverend Edwina Ashberry.
He dressed quickly, putting on climbing boots and pulling two hundred-foot lengths of nylon rope from a knapsack in the trailer’s corner. Rope in hand, he looked down, brows knitted, at the small desk and telephone. Then he dropped the ropes on the bunk and sat in the chair to write a letter to his wife and son, in case he did not make it back. That took five minutes. He was still ahead of schedule, so he spent five more minutes carefully shaving, making sure every long bristle on his neck was scraped off: military clean. He brushed his teeth and combed his hair meticulously, glancing at the letter. Unhappy with the wording, he quickly recopied the message onto a fresh piece of paper, signed it, folded it into an envelope, and posted the envelope on his message board with address and instructions.
At four-thirty he descended the trailer steps and stood in the bitterly cold desert darkness, a steady wind dragging at his coat and pants legs. At the east end of the camp was Senator Julio Gilmonn’s car, in a fenced-off square reserved for the munitions locker. Gilmonn himself stood with two aides, a handsome, stern-looking middle-aged black woman and a young white male, bulky and clean-cut, near the inner gate leading to the rock.
“Good morning,” Rogers said as he approached. Gilmonn extinguished a cigarette after taking one last frowning, concentrated drag and shook Rogers’s hand.
“There are still a few Forgers out there,” the senator said, pointing to the outer-perimeter fence. “Have you made any plans for clearing them?”
Rogers nodded. “In fifteen minutes we’ll set off a siren and announce an emergency situation. Nothing specific. Then we’ll evacuate the camp through the corridor. If the Forgers haven’t cleared out by then…” He shrugged. “The hell with them.”