The two generals stalked through the metal shelves of the musty sealed archives, the dull, webbed lights so dim they relied on their flashlights. In the seventh aisle, MacKenzie Hawkins stopped, his beam on an ancient volume whose leather binding was cracked. «I think this is it, Heseltine.»
«Good, and you can’t take it out of here!»
«I understand that, General, so I’ll merely take a few photographs and return it.» Hawkins removed a tiny spy camera with 110 film from his gray suit.
«How many rolls have you got?» asked former General Heseltine Brokemichael as MacKenzie carried the huge book to a steel table at the end of the aisle.
«Eight,» replied Hawkins, opening the yellow-paged volume to the pages he needed.
«I have a couple of others, if you need them,» said Heseltine. «Not that I’m so all fired-up by what you think you may have found, but if there’s any way to get back at Ethelred, I’ll take it!»
«I thought you two had made up,» broke in MacKenzie, while turning pages and snapping pictures.
«Never!»
«It wasn’t Ethelred’s fault, it was that rotten lawyer in the Inspector General’s office, a half-assed kid from Harvard named Devereaux, Sam Devereaux. He made the mistake, not Brokey the Deuce. Two Brokemichaels; he got ’em mixed up, that’s all.»
«Horseshit! Brokey-Two put the finger on me!»
«I think you’re wrong, but that’s not what I’m here for and neither are you… Brokey, I need the volume next to or near this one. It should say CXII on the binding. Get it for me, will you?» As the head of Indian Affairs walked back into the metal stacks, the Hawk took a single-edged razor out of his pocket and sliced out fifteen successive pages of the archival ledger. Without folding the precious papers, he slipped them under his suit coat.
«I can’t find it,» said Brokemichael.
«Never mind, I’ve got what I need.»
«What now, Mac?»
«A long time, Heseltine, maybe a long, long time, perhaps a year or so, but I’ve got to make it right—so right there’s no holes, no holes at all.»
«In what?»
«In a suit I’m going to file against the government of the United States,» replied Hawkins, pulling a mutilated cigar out of his pocket and lighting it with a World War II Zippo. «You wait, Brokey-One, and you watch.»
«Good God, for what?… Don’t smoke! You’re not supposed to smoke in here!»
«Oh, Brokey, you and your cousin, Ethelred, always went too much by the book, and when the book didn’t match the action, you looked for more books. It’s not in the books, Heseltine, not the ones you can read. It’s in your stomach, in your gut. Some things are right and some things are wrong, it’s as simple as that. The gut tells you.»
«What the hell are you talking about?»
«Your gut tells you to look for books you’re not supposed to read. In places where they keep secrets, like right in here.»
«Mac, you’re not making sense!»
«Give me a year, maybe two, Brokey, and then you’ll understand. I’ve got to do it right. Real right.» General MacKenzie Hawkins strode out between the metal racks of the archives to the exit. «Goddamn,» he said to himself. «Now I really go to work. Get ready for me, you magnificent Wopotamis. I’m yours!»
Twenty-one months passed, and nobody was ready for Thunder Head, chief of the Wopotamis.
2
The President of the United States, his jaw firm, his angry eyes steady and penetrating, accelerated his pace along the steel-gray corridor in the underground complex of the White House. In seconds, he had outdistanced his entourage, his tall, lean frame angled forward as if bucking a torrential wind, an impatient figure wanting only to reach the storm-tossed battlements and survey the bloody costs of war so as to devise a strategy and repel the invading hordes assaulting his realm. He was John of Arc, his racing mind building a counterattack at Orleans, a Harry Five who knew the decisive Agincourt was in the immediate picture.
At the moment, however, his immediate objective was the anxiety-prone Situation Room, buried in the lowest levels of the White House. He reached a door, yanked it open, and strode inside as his subordinates, now trotting and breathless, followed in unison.
«All right, fellas!» he roared. «Let’s skull!»
A brief silence ensued, broken by the tremulous, high-pitched voice of a female aide. «I don’t think in here, Mr. President.»
«What? Why?»
«This is the men’s room, sir.»
«Oh?… What are you doing here?»
«Following you, sir.»
«Golly gee. Wrong turn. Sorry about that. Let’s go. Out!»
The large round table in the Situation Room glistened under the wash of the indirect lighting, reflecting the shadows of the bodies seated around it. These blocks of shadow on the polished wood, like the bodies themselves, remained immobile as the stunned faces attached to those bodies stared in astonishment at the gaunt, bespectacled man who stood behind the President in front of a portable blackboard, on which he had drawn numerous diagrams in four different colors of chalk. The visual aids were somewhat less than effective as two of the crisis management team were colorblind. The bewildered expression on the youthful Vice-President’s face was nothing new and therefore dismissible, but the growing agitation on the part of the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff was not so easily dismissed.
«Goddamn it, Washbum, I don’t—»
«That’s Washburn, General.»
«That’s nice. I don’t follow the legal line.»
«It’s the orange one, sir.»
«Which one is that?»
«I just explained, the orange chalk.»
«Point it out.»
Heads turned; the President spoke. «Gee whiz, Zack, can’t you tell?»
«It’s dark in here, Mr. President.»
«Not that dark, Zack. I can see it clearly.»
«Well, I’ve got a minor visual problem,» said the general, abruptly lowering his voice, «… distinguishing certain colors.»
«What, Zack?»
«I heard him,» exclaimed the towheaded Vice-President, seated next to the J.C. chairman. «He’s colorblind.»
«Golly, Zack, but you’re a soldier!»
«Came on late, Mr. President.»
«It came on early with me,» continued the excitable heir to the Oval Office. «Actually, it’s what kept me out of the real army. I would have given anything to correct the problem!»
«Close it up, gumball,» said the swarthy-skinned director of the Central Intelligence Agency, his voice low but his half-lidded, dark eyes ominous. «The friggin’ campaign’s over.»
«Now, really, Vincent, there’s no cause for that language,» intruded the President. «There’s a lady present.»
«That judgment’s up for grabs, Prez. The lady in question is not unfamiliar with the lingua franca, as it were.» The DCI smiled grimly at the glaring female aide and returned to the man named Washburn at the portable blackboard. «You, our legal expert here, what kind of … creek are we up?»
«That’s better, Vinnie,» added the President. «I appreciate it.»
«You’re welcome… Go on, Mr. Lawyer. What kind of deep ca-ca are we really into?»