Tales of Natural and Unnatural Catastrophes (28 page)

Buck woke up in cheerful mood. Sometimes his dreams of Communists were negative, the Commies were sour-faced, strong, resisted like a stone wall, and America lost. Buck always awakened in a foul mood from these “losing” dreams.

As soon as Buck pressed a bell twice—a signal for coffee—things began to happen. Three phone calls awaited him: the first two were good-luck messages from a couple of Republican senators in regard to tomorrow’s inquiry; the third was from an aide who said a choir intended to serenade, so could Buck have ready a few nice words for them? He offered the words: “Gosh, I’m really surprised and honored to have a whole choir on my doorstep on Sunday afternoon. Thank—”

“What choir?” Buck interrupted. “From a church, y’mean?”

“From the church where you and Mrs. Jones went today,” said the aide, whose name Buck had forgotten, though he knew the voice. “We can’t turn it off now. It’ll last nine minutes about, and they’ll come and leave by bus. . . . Oh, in about half an hour.”

The President reluctantly got dressed in business suit, white shirt and a tie. Wouldn’t do to be in slacks and sweater and shirt with open collar on this Sunday, when he was supposed to be working hard, mustering facts for tomorrow. It had taken the Attorney General (no pal of Buck’s) three weeks to select a panel of twelve men for tomorrow’s hearing. Buck had managed to get three replaced, but more he couldn’t do, and the questions were going to be tough. Buck intended to stonewall it, with the aid of his three-by-five-inch cards, which held damn-all as to info and facts. “Don’t forget, Buck, Phippy’s prepared to take the guff and the rap if it comes to that, so don’t
you
worry,” one of his aides had said. That was true. Phippy had said to John Sprague, in Buck’s presence, that he’d take the rap, because Phippy knew well that what they were doing was illegal. Well, Buck thought, not quite illegal, he shouldn’t start thinking in those terms. But what they were doing was against declared policy of the land now, that those particular two countries weren’t to get
any
armaments from the USA, because it was in the interests of world peace and the price of oil that their silly conflict stop as soon as possible.

“. . .
a present help
. . .” wafted through the closed windows of the President’s bedroom, where he had just finished dressing. The choir had already arrived.

A servant knocked, and announced that the President was expected now on the front steps.

“
Be strong, and ye shall inherit the
. . .”

Dusk had fallen. At least fifty children ranging from ten to fifteen years of age had aligned themselves below the bottom step of the White House in three rows. They were singing a hymn without a musical instrument to accompany them, but with the guidance of a singing master who had his back turned to the President.

“Good! And just say, ‘That’s not my
style—
not my name—not my style—not my
name.
. . .’” This was Millie, standing and singing about three steps up from the choir and on the left from the President’s view. She was singing, badly, her anti-drugs song “Not Me!” which truly clashed with the hymn.

“Millie?—
Millie!
” cried Buck, descending. Millie evidently thought she was beholding a bunch of drug addicts or converts from drugs.

“You can all make it! You’re
lovely
! You—”

Buck caught her hard by the arm. But he smiled. “Millie?—Hi, folks!” He whispered in her ear, “Millie, it’s a
church
choir. This isn’t—” He had to stop, because he couldn’t come out with “a drug addict rally” when God knew what kind of mikes might be picking all this up. “Be
stro-ong
. . . .” Buck sang, joining in the second chorus.

The youthful group lifted its arms, grinning, after the final note, and at once Buck Jones responded gracefully:

“Thank you, one and all. Gosh, I’m really surprised and honored to have a choir on my own doorstep on Sunday afternoon!”

“Yee-aye!” the kids roared back, laughing, and clapping in appreciation, though many wore gloves, as the air was nippy.

Then the President escorted Millie up the steps toward the White House door, and was joined by two gorillas who appeared from behind pillars. Still holding Millie’s right arm rigid under his, he said through his grin, “Smile. Raise your left arm to the kids!”

Millie did. But once inside the White House, she turned to Buck and said, “You don’t love me!” in a whiny, tear-laden voice.

“Oh, my God!” said Buck, smiting his forehead. They were now in the round lobby whose acoustics were superb, but Buck knew that the staff and the gorillas had already heard just about everything by now. And so had he from
them,
if he thought about it. Even without his hearing aid turned up to full reception, Buck had picked up remarks like, “Goddam place is falling apart, I swear,” in a whisper. Or “It’s a sinking ship and the effing rats’re leaving.” A few people had recently resigned, true.

“Tomorrow’s going to be one tough day,” the President was saying a few minutes later to Richard Coombes in the privacy of the living-room again. Millie had gone to her own bedroom. “Best if Millie’s not here. What about arranging for her to visit that drug rehabilitation center outside of Houston. What’s its name?”

“The New Start Ranch,” Coombes said. “But we used a rehabilitation center the last time, sir. Lots of other possibilities like—Ah, there’s a gardening show opening in Atlanta tomorrow. Winter greenhouses. The flowers’ll look good on TV and Atlanta’ll be pleased if we tell them Mrs. Jones is coming.”

Buck smiled. “What would I do without you, Dick? Try it.—Bet she’ll go. If you have trouble, let me know. Tell her tomorrow’s for the birds—closed session inquiries, I’m out for lunch, and plooped by five in the afternoon.” Still, Buck managed a laugh at this awful prospect.

“That’s just what I wanted to go over again with you, sir. The picture is this.—Yes, let’s both sit down. This whole thing is so enormous, this arms sale—”

“The
media’s
blowing it up!”

“I meant—it’s widespread and involves a lot of people, sir. So many, that I think it’s safe to say a couple of these air carriers, never mind how many or even when, got hijacked, captured by fundamentalist nuts. I don’t mean it’s true, sir, but we’ll say it. Arms and money’re missing. Maybe some of these air shipments had been destined for Israel, so what, perfectly legal. If this has been going on five or six years, we—”

“Ten months.”

“That’s what
you
say, sir, and what you believe
and
what you’ve been told.”

“In other words, I’m right,” said Buck with his most convincing look as he gazed at Dick Coombes.

“Yes, sir. You stick to that, that’s fine. My point is about
reality.
Because those guys tomorrow are going to confront
you
with a couple of billion dollars’ worth of stuff, not just millions, and a long period of time, and names galore, from Israel to Turkey to—”

“
Turkey?
”

“Well, never mind Turkey, he’s just a guy
from
Turkey. Back to the point. This has been going on a long time by land, sea and air. The money—what there is left of it—has been going to fight Communism in Central America, true. You didn’t know about that till a few days ago, that’s what you’re going to say tomorrow, because your staff—the ones connected with this—were going to save it as a
surprise
for you on your birthday next month, in March.”

“As I recall—recall,” said the President thoughtfully, “the freedom fighters in Central America claim to’ve received just about twenty thousand bucks—in all.”

“First, they’re lying, as usual. Second, their own leaders have pocketed God knows how much. We mustn’t try to pin ’em down, sir.”

“Oh, no,” the President agreed.

“Back to tomorrow. You’re bitterly sorry about the seventeen American hostages who were beheaded on television ten days ago. I
would
mention that, seriously, sir.”

“Oh, yes,” said Buck solemnly.

“I’ll make a note to make a three-by-five card about that beheading. But our selling to both sides—which you have known a
little
about—was meant to make friends of
both
countries, you see. No use making a friend of one country and an enemy of the other, is there?”

“Agreed, Dick. And what the hell, look at the profit! It’s led to more fighting, true, but that means more
arms
sales, doesn’t it? What I can’t understand is why some of these people’re so hopping
mad
!”

“Because arms sales are forbidden without knowledge of Congress, sir.”

“Congress be damned! I had enough of them when I ordered the mining of—What harbor was that?”

“Yeah, but mining a harbor’s an act of war, sir, same as war, and in the Constitution only Congress can declare war.”

Buck Jones shook his head, bored. “Too complicated for me. Congress has too many people in it. They just sit there—while American hostages are taken and their heads cut off one week and their brains blown out the week before that, and Congress doesn’t do a thing. We—I—
my
folks here in the White House at least tried.”

“But that’s what you can’t say tomorrow, sir. The arms sales weren’t anything to
do
with hostages, because you’d pledged to stonewall it there. ‘No knuckling down to terrorists,’ you said,
we
said.”

The President nodded, letting it sink in.

Buck and Millie watched a film before bedtime, a tale of American derring-do in the Old West, with a hero who was his own man and took orders from no one. Millie sipped a rum and cola. Buck, in a good mood after the film, was afraid to mention the Atlanta trip to Millie, lest she blow up and say she wasn’t going. She did not like these little official junkets where she had to cut a ribbon, make a brief speech, smile at journalists and photographers. She preferred to be at home, supervising the polishing of her silverware collection (tea sets, sugar bowls, gifts from heads of state), and checking that the housemaids had done their waxing of the furniture, and conferring with her secretary Ethel on the maintenance and improvement of the public image of herself and Buck.

Still Buck had a hard time falling asleep, unusual for him. He was trying not to think about tomorrow—things always came out fine for him, always had, hadn’t they?—but he couldn’t get his mind away from the hearing, which was to begin at 10 a.m. He conjured up the nervous but optimistic face of Fulton J. Phipps, good old Phippy ever eager to serve, to help. Phippy would be ready with the answers tomorrow, in case the President faltered. No one had said that he was going to be questioned alone in a closed room. No, he’d have his loyal friends around him.

At last Buck slept. But when he was awakened by a buzzing beside his table lamp, it seemed to Buck that he had just dropped off. He picked up the house telephone.

“This is Dick Coombes, sir. Fulton Phipps’s wife just telephoned me and—she’s in a state. Phippy’s dead, sir.”

“
What?—
What d’y’ mean dead?”

“Overdose, sir. According to his wife. She noticed—Well, she’s so shook up, she hasn’t phoned a doctor yet or a hospital, just me, because she knows I can reach you any time and. . . .”

Buck saw on his luminous dial clock that it was twenty past 5.
Suicide.
That didn’t play. Buck’s brain began to work intuitively, the way it worked best. “Listen—” he cut through Dick’s stammerings. “Phippy’s got a swimming pool, hasn’t he?” Phippy had a fine property in Fairfax just outside Washington, DC. Buck had been there a few times. “You get that arranged so Phippy drowned himself accidentally. Got that, Dick?”

“But—It’s February, sir, and nobody’s swimming.”

“
Do
it! We can’t have a suicide in this scenario!” Buck shouted, as if he were the hero of the film he’d seen a few hours ago. He hung up.

“Darling—”

Buck’s loud voice had awakened Millie, despite her sleeping pill. Buck was putting on his dressing gown. “Trouble at the ranch. Got things to do. Go back to sleep, Millie.”

“. . . time is it?”

Buck didn’t bother answering. He was thinking.
Coffee, barrels of it,
he remembered as a line from a good film he had seen, when things had suddenly swung into action in a US army camp because of an enemy attack. Real American efficiency, tough fighting by tough marines had carried the day. That was the way it would be now.

With his first cup of coffee in the living-room where the fire still glowed, Buck was on the telephone with his Secretary of State John B. Sprague. “Sorry to wake you at this hour, John, but something’s happened.”

“Not another kidnapping—”

“Worse. Phippy’s killed himself. . . . Yes, I just heard from Dick Coombes, who heard it from Phippy’s wife. Now look—we can’t
have
this. It may be that we have to postpone the hearing this morning, for some reason, because I sure as hell am not going to face ’em without Phippy. You get me?”