The General's President (20 page)

He looked up at Kreiner. "Interesting. You know what this looks like to me?"

Kreiner nodded. "Most people like Haugen, and most of them are hopeful or not hopeful according to whether they like him or not."

"And," Grosberg added, "it's a little like Franklin Roosevelt said in 1932 or three: 'All we have to fear is fear itself.' That's not true of course, but with hope, the country's got a chance. Otherwise..." He made a thumbs down sign across the table, then held up the Xeroxed sheet. "I'll get copies made of this. Most of my people will see it today anyway, but I'll give them copies, just to make a point."

"Yeah," said Kreiner. "Maybe it'll cool things for a while."

***

Raphael Dietrich came abruptly awake in the dark room and spotted the vague grayness of the door opening.

"Rafe!" It was a whisper.

"Come in and shut the door," he murmured.

Mary Vizzini stepped in and pulled the door closed behind her. He could hear the bolt click shut, saw her dim form cross the bedroom toward him. "Mark called, collect," she murmured. "From Dover." She lifted the quilt and crawled under it. "He won't be back till two or three o'clock—maybe even till tomorrow afternoon. The computer there was really fucked up and he's still working on it. Making overtime."

"Good." He pulled her to him and bit her ear. His hands found only a long shirt covering her, and stroked the curve of her back.

"Rafe?"

"Yeah?"

"How long is it going to be before your contact gets the hot stuff?"

"Baby, the only hot stuff I'm interested in now is you."

"Um... But Rafe, it's really on my mind. Getting the stuff."

"Hell, baby! I told you guys at supper yesterday: I don't know.
He
doesn't know. All he knows is that his source has put it off for now. Without telling him why." Rafe's hand caressed the back of her legs. "He says not to worry; he'll get it. That kind of thing is tricky, for chrissake."

"I was thinking," she said. "Maybe we could blow it off in D.C. Take out the White House."

The thought alarmed him. "No way, baby. For two reasons. First we don't want the army running the country. Plus our source is giving this to us for one reason: to blow a nuke plant. He don't want the army running the country either, and I don't want the goddamn mafia or something looking for me for crossing him up."

"And you really don't have any idea who the source is?"

"My contact does. But me? I don't give a shit. Why should I?"

"I'll bet it's an Arab."

He chuckled, his hand beneath her shirttail now. "You'd like to be in bed with an Arab I'll bet," he said. "A rich one."

"Uh-uh. Not an Arab, rich or otherwise. I like being in bed with you."

"How about Mark?"

"Mark's okay. Is it a Russian?"

"It's an American. With a big dick."

She giggled, then sobered. "Rafe?"

"Yeah?" His fingers fumbled with shirt buttons.

"When you leave here, can I go with you? I like you a lot better than Mark."

"Don't tell him that, for chrissake! It could screw the whole project."

"I wouldn't tell him. I'm not that dumb." She paused and, half sitting up, shrugged out of the shirt. "I don't suppose your contact would tell you anyway."

"He told me, all right. We've done stuff before, different times; he knows me. We got stoned together and he told me."

"Is it really an American?"

"Yeah. Unless he was shitting me, it's really an American. But I don't know if his dick is big or not. He's too old for it to make any difference anyway."

She giggled. "Old? I'll bet it's the president then."

He almost laughed out loud. "Then you'd lose your bet. Now cut the goddamn questions. I've had enough of them."

"Just one more, Rafe. You didn't answer me. When you leave here, can I go with you?"

"If you promise to quit the goddamn questions, yeah. You can go with me."

EIGHTEEN

This time the president was at breakfast when the phone interrupted. If the operator passed it through this early, it was probably important. Haugen picked it up.

"This is the president."

"Mr. President, this is General Hammaker."

"I'm eating breakfast with my wife, Ernie. What have you got for me?"

"The Soviet army in the Teheran district is moving again. Apparently an entire army group—three armies. They're headed south. It could be they simply want to take and secure the towns of Qom and Hamadan. But on the other hand, it's possible they plan to head west from there, through the Zagros Gate and down into Iraq."

Haugen recalled being shown pictures of the Zagros Mountains, big, barren-looking,
rugged
. "The Zagros Gate. Is that the pass through the mountains?"

"Yes sir."

A move west toward Iraq was at odds with the Joint Staff's evaluation of the situation and the available intelligence on Soviet thinking. The Soviet army that had come down through the northern Zagros had just that week finally arrived at Teheran, days after the city had been taken by the Soviet army from Afghanistan. They'd had a long tough trip of it, and both the CIA and the Joint Staff deemed it highly unlikely that they'd get themselves involved with more of the Zagros very soon. Especially now that winter was settling in at higher elevations and much of the Iranian army had returned from Iraq.

That had been the expert evaluation, and it made sense. "Any reason to think they
might
move west?"

"Nothing compelling, sir. But there's the size of the force they're moving with; they shouldn't need a force anywhere near that large to take and hold Qom and Hamadan. And they're moving more troops into Iran from both the northwest and the northeast."

"What does the CIA think the Soviets are up to? Geopolitically that is. Or the Pentagon?"

"If they have an opinion, sir, they haven't expressed it. But offhand—The oil from the gulf's been cut off for more than a year now, and a lot of countries are suffering for it. Worse than we are. It's conceivable that the Soviets want to set up as the big oil broker of the world—rebuild the pipelines and refineries and docking facilities there. But that's a long, hard, hostile way from Russia for a project like that, and the Sov economy's in real trouble. It's questionable whether they have the resources to pull it off with."

Haugen examined the oil broker idea and smiled inwardly; if that was true, it was going to be a big disappointment to them. "Um-m. Okay Ernie, thanks. Let me know if anything further develops." He paused. "But Ernie, not at breakfast or supper unless it's urgent. And important doesn't necessarily equate with urgent; this could have waited a half-hour. Okay?"

"Yes sir. I'll keep that in mind, Mr. President. And I'll keep you informed."

"Thanks, Ernie." Haugen broke the connection, then resumed the call for Lois. "And I've got a premonition," he finished. "For what it's worth. The Soviets
are
going to move down into Iraq."

***

A phone call from Cromwell had driven the new Soviet move to the back of the president's mind. The general wanted to bring someone over. To give another briefing, this one on an NSA project. Haugen had told him okay, come on over. Cromwell said it would be forty or fifty minutes; he had to fly the guy in from Fort Meade.

The president finished scanning another report, initialed it, then another, and six more, putting them in his OUT basket. He looked at his watch; forty-five minutes had passed. Getting up, he walked to the big window and parted the curtains. The day was cloudy. Breezes vagrant and unruly chased occasional leaves; the last to fall. The grounds staff had harvested the main crop. In Duluth the earth would be snow-covered by now.

The National Security Agency.
The name itself had a certain built-in camouflage, Haugen thought. A lot of people thought it meant the National Security Council, the NSC, the group everyone knew about that set defense policy. He'd thought so himself till he'd been briefed, early on.

The NSC consisted of himself, the Secretaries of State and Defense, and Cromwell in his unwanted role as vice president. There was also a slot on the NSC for a national security advisor, but Haugen hadn't appointed one, felt no need for one.

But the National Security Agency, the NSA, presumably was functioning with the same people as before. After having been briefed on it, his first week in office, the president had assumed he knew what he needed to about the NSA: It was the most secret of secret agencies, non-political, totally technical, in charge of cryptography, of intelligence gathering by satellites, and the safeguarding of armed forces communication. And like several other agencies, it monitored foreign communications for intelligence purposes. Now Cromwell, on a security line from his Pentagon office, had told him there was more, had admitted it was something he hadn't wanted to talk about until the president had gotten well grooved in on the job.

Haugen's gaze out the window had gone unfocused, opaqued by thought. Flynn, he decided, shouldn't attend this one. He'd had Stephen sit in with him on quite a few meetings and interviews, which had made some people nervous, even though the priest sat quietly out of the way. Or was it
because
he sat quietly out of the way? Haugen mused. Or did they think of the priest as a shaman of some sort, sorting out their inner thoughts, their motives? It wasn't that he was a Jesuit—a lot of people had a weird idea of Jesuits—because almost none of them knew the order Flynn belonged to.

Maybe they simply felt ill at ease that a president, a non-Catholic president at that, chose to have a priest close at hand, Haugen thought. Today, parts of intellectual society had become so utterly secular that the very existence of religion seemed to make them uncomfortable. Apparently it wasn't churches that troubled them—churches were organizations, something they could understand—but
religion
for chrissake!

Not that he himself was religious, even privately. Haugen hadn't felt any urge in that direction as far back as he could remember, which was as far back as had any meaning to the subject. But he did have a notion, however nonrational and ill-defined, that Flynn was a valuable adjunct conscience. That just the priest's being there had an effect, without anything being said between them. And Haugen was not a man to argue with impulses that felt right to him. He'd gotten rich off impulses like that.

Still, Flynn's presence at this NSA briefing didn't quite seem appropriate. Partly because when he'd asked Cromwell if Campbell, the Secretary of Defense, would be sitting in, Cromwell had said no, and asked him not to mention it to Campbell or anyone else. As if something about it was too secret for even the Secretary of Defense to know about.

Yet the NSA was
under
Campbell, and supposedly reported to him. Weird!

His intercom buzzed, and he went to it. "Yes Jeanne?"

"General Cromwell is here, Mr. President, with another gentleman."

"Send 'em in."

The man who entered with Cromwell appeared to be Hindu—tallish, slim, still young. "Mr. President," Cromwell said, "this is Dr. Mahendra J. Gupta of NSA."

They shook hands—Gupta's, fine-boned, engulfed in the beefy Haugen fist that seemed altogether too large for a man his height. The Hindu grinned nonetheless, seeming entirely at ease, and when he spoke, there was no trace of accent. "You might prefer to call me James, Mr. President," he said. "Or Jim. Mahendra's a little awkward if you're not used to it."

The president's brows arched. "All right. Jim it is. American born and named?"

"Southern California."

"Well, I guess that qualifies. Sit." Haugen gestured. They took seats, each visitor setting a briefcase by his feet. "What's this about?"

"Probably the most confidential piece of business in the government," Cromwell said. Then he pointed at his briefcase. "What I've got in there is a sort of ECM. To scramble certain electronics, in case someone's managed to bug the place."

Haugen fixed him with his eyes. "D'you think they have?"

"No sir. I doubt hell out of it. I just don't want to take chances on this."

"Hmh! In that case—" Haugen went to his office door, opened it and looked out. "Jeanne," he told her quietly, "no interruptions please." Then he closed the door and locked it.

"All right," he said when he was seated again. "Let's have it. What is it that's so confidential that apparently even the Secretary of Defense can't know about it?"

Cromwell looked at Gupta. "You might as well do the talking, Jim," he said.

"Right." The black eyes found Haugen's. "It's about little green men, Mr. President." Cromwell winced. "Not literally," Gupta continued, "but we do have compelling, if circumstantial evidence of extraterrestrial visitations."

"Visitations? That's plural. When?"

"On a number of occasions, especially during the decades of the fifties and sixties and into the early seventies."

"Circumstantial? Then what's so confidential about it? Probably half the people in the United States believe in flying saucers."

"There are some puzzling aspects to the observations, sir. That's part of it. But mainly it's the work that's resulted that's gotten the heavy security lock."

"What work?"

"Research and development."

Haugen gazed without speaking, eyes intent.

"Let me start from the beginning," Gupta said. "The Soviets have similar evidence for ETs, but tending to be more xenophobic than we are, it worried them a lot more. The subject came up at a summit conference back in the seventies, and it was decided that the two governments should collaborate in the development of high-tech weaponry. The United States' role in this is under the aegis of the NSA. Perhaps not the logical place for it, except for the secrecy aspect, but that helps in the cover. Currently I'm in charge of our work on the project."

"Interesting," Haugen said. "How old are you?"

The grin flashed again. "Thirty-four, Mr. President. They decided, on the basis of my doctoral dissertation, that I was coming so close to confidential work from outside the security wall that they'd better get me inside, so they hired me. Since then I seem to have risen through the system."