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THIRTY-FIVE

"Thanks, Jeanne, I'll take it." The phone had interrupted the president in the midst of his morning routine; he touched the flashing key. "What can I do for you this morning, Steve?"

"May I speak with you for a few minutes, Arne? Personally? It's something that's been weighing on my mind since your speech the night before last."

"Sure. Come on down."

"Thank you. I'll be there in two minutes."

The screen went dark. From the third floor to the Oval Office in the Executive Wing, two minutes would be good time even for Flynn's long legs, Arne Haugen told himself. He got up to check the hot water supply in the coffee station, then made himself a cup of coffee. He'd just sat down again when Flynn arrived.

"Have a chair," Haugen said. "Tell me what's on your mind."

Flynn sat. "It's what you said about suicide."

"Oh?"

"This argument may not mean much to someone who's not a committed Christian, but I know you're a man who respects others, respects their beliefs. And I need to tell you mine about this—mine and just about every other devout Catholic.

"You see—There's a law above the law of man; Natural Law, the Law of God. Life is something given to us by God to care for, to live and to cherish. And suicide is murder, Arne, self-murder, a mortal sin. It's not that God or the Church would prolong suffering, but life is sacred, and shouldn't be deliberately destroyed. Even by one's self."

The priest looked painfully earnest. "Suicide is not a private act, you see, even when done in private. It's a form of violence against family, neighbor, and society."

Arne Haugen ignored the brief impulse to mention the crusades and inquisitions. Those had been long ago, in more barbaric times, and no doubt the Church had long regretted the bloodshed and anguish it had caused. Instead he nodded. "But Steve, I didn't recommend suicide," he pointed out reasonably. "I tried to discourage it. My purpose was and is to reestablish principles of personal liberty and responsibility."

"I know. And I appreciate that. But ... law has an influence on morals. And so do the words of someone as widely respected and admired as yourself. So people are likely to commit self-murder who otherwise would not have. You see."

The priest stopped, but the president kept quiet, sensing more to come.

"But what concerns me most deeply," Flynn went on, "is that self-murder is not only a mortal sin, one that damns the suicide's soul. Self-murder also ends the murderer's life, so that he or she cannot confess the sin and ask for absolution!"

Jesus, Haugen thought, believing that, no wonder he looks so troubled. "I see your point," he said, "and I make you a promise. I'm supposed to talk to the press briefly at noon, and I'll tell 'em what you've told me. As the Catholic point of view. As something they should know about. It'll be on the Networks.

"How's that?"

For a few seconds the Jesuit mistrusted his voice. Then he said, "Mr. President, as Professor Rabinowich would have said, you are a mensch."

Haugen grinned. "A mensch? I hope that's good."

Flynn smiled back. "It is, Arne, it is."

***

Arne and Lois Haugen were enjoying a nightcap when the first automatic rifle fire erupted, three separate bursts, near enough to hear clearly inside the thick-walled White House with its tempered-glass windows and heavy drapes closed against winter. From Lafayette Park again, the president told himself.

Things were quiet then, and he didn't take the trouble to call the marine command room on the top floor. If there was anything he needed to know, they'd call him.

The next shooting was nearer, seemingly on the north lawn not far outside their window, and he heard glass breaking. The firing repeated in fast, vicious bursts as he waved Lois to the Center Hall, then crouching, moved quickly to his bedside table, took his .357 magnum from its drawer, and followed her out, both wearing light robes. Two Secret Service men were there, pistols in their hands, one listening on a hand radio. There was more gunfire, then quiet. The four of them stood in the hall, three with guns in hand. After a minute, the agent with the radio looked at the president.

"Some armed men got inside the grounds somehow, sir. The marines don't know if they..."

He was interrupted by more gunfire, overlapping bursts, muffled in the interior hall. The four of them looked at each other in the following silence.

"They didn't know if they'd gotten..."

This time the gunburst that cut him off sounded closer, perhaps on the south lawn. Haugen grinned.

"They didn't know if they'd gotten them all," he said, finishing for the agent. "Maybe they have now."

He'd barely gotten it out when the alarm began—not the great blaring nuclear attack alarm, but a constant high-pitched howl. The president scowling, the first couple went quickly to the emergency elevator, and with the bodyguards rode it down to the deep, heavily-reinforced shelter, where Flynn soon appeared, along with the staff members on duty at that hour. The president was glowering now—a rare occurrence. He had the distinct notion that the danger had been over before the alarm went off.

He and Lois sat up for a few minutes, then went to bed in their shelter quarters. Not long after they got to sleep, the all clear sounded. They could have stayed where they were, but the president got up so Lois did too, and they went back to their apartment. The ice had mostly melted in their drinks there. They finished them dilute, then went to bed.

His eyes were closed when he heard a distant explosion. To hell with it, he thought, and a minute or two later was asleep.

***

In the morning, as soon as he'd wakened, he called the marine command post. "They were ninjas, sir," the captain told him. "Apparently eight of them, wearing black. Japanese; real ninjas." He sounded impressed. "They seem to have jumped from a plane at high elevation and body planed in before pulling their chutes. We found their equipment. Some of them landed outside the fence, but three came down inside."

The captain still sounded wound up, Haugen thought.

"The first one we saw," the marine went on, "was in Lafayette Park. He carried ten kilos of air-miscible high explosive in a flat backpack. When we discovered that, that's when the alarm was sounded. We didn't know if there were any other human bombs or not. If one of them somehow got inside the White House, or even to the north portico...

"One of them came down way over near the Lincoln Memorial, and he carried HE too. Apparently he was disoriented and didn't know where he was; anyway he blew himself up by the reflecting pool.

"It was so dark last night, we'd have had a hard time finding them if it hadn't been for our night visors. They were using the trees for cover, sneaking along—eight of them, including the one that blew himself up."

The president wasn't sure how long the captain would have talked if he hadn't interrupted. "You people handled things very professionally, captain," he said. "I'm very proud of you all. Tell your men for me at muster."

Then he hung up, chuckling. It had been a long time since he'd been as excited as the captain seemed to have been. And excited was a great condition, when you handled it well.

***

Unless he had an NSC meeting in the morning, Jumper Cromwell usually read the news as soon as he'd finished the daily intelligence and situation summaries. The Joint Staff had people who looked through some twenty newspapers each night and morning, clipping news articles, editorials, and columns, pasting them on large sheets and photocopying them for senior officers.

Today the news ran heavily to the night's attack on the White House. There were pictures of the dead assassins, masked in black, and a couple with masks removed. Cromwell grunted. The frigging newspapers seemed thrilled to be writing about actual ninjas. The marines who'd shot their asses off got almost no space, at least in the clipping sheets.

The editorial pages still were fixated on the president though, and on his speech of two nights before. As Cromwell read, his usually mild temper heated. When he finished, he reached for his phone, drew back, then with a move of abrupt decision dialed the White House. It wasn't a confidential matter, so he went through the White House exchange, the operator there putting him through immediately to the president's secretary.

"Just a moment please, general," Martinelli said. He waited. Seconds later, the president's face popped onto his phone screen.

"Good morning, Jumper. What can I do for you today?"

"Have you seen the papers this morning, sir?"

"The usual: read a summary that included some Xeroxed excerpts. Two of em: yesterday's and today's."

The usual. It seemed to Cromwell that the president would have read more than that, with so much attention being given to his speech.

As if he'd heard the general's unspoken thought, or read his expression, the president went on, "I'm not as interested in what the editorial writers think as I am in the reaction over on Capitol Hill. Most of Congress is lawyers, you know. What in particular bothered you in the papers this morning?"

The general suddenly realized that Haugen was grinning! It occurred to him that perhaps the people who put the summaries together might be shielding the president from the worst shots.

"How does this sound?" Cromwell said, and began to read. " 'It is abundantly clear that the president has no intention of returning the government to normal constitutional processes. President Donnelly, apparently under extreme pressure from the Pentagon, turned the government over to a man he'd never heard of—General Cromwell's president who, under the ill-advised Emergency Powers Act, has made himself the dictator of America. This would have been bad enough if he'd been content to preside over the normal, proper organs of government.

" 'But Dictator Haugen is trying to redesign government according to his own strange notions, and has overturned some of the most basic precepts of American democracy.

" 'No reasonable person can claim that the emergency still exists. The only significant violence today grows out of public outrage at his presidency. It is time for Congress to impeach, to throw out, this amateur president with his perverted and un-American ideas, before he does more damage.' "

Cromwell shifted his gaze to Arne Haugen's image on the screen. Haugen was looking calmly back at him. "Mr. President," said Cromwell, "I'd say it's time to exercise the sedition act."

"Against Mr. Sanders?" Haugen asked.

It was Sanders' column, though Cromwell hadn't said so. "You'd already read it then," he said.

"Yep. They included it in full, in the summary. Said it was pretty representative of what they called "the more irate" segment. But it's not actually seditious; he doesn't advocate revolt or disorder.

"I thought Eichmeier's syndicated column was a lower blow than that. According to him, I'm practically guilty of manslaughter because Chief Justice Fechner had his stroke listening to my speech. You knew he died yesterday, I suppose." The president paused. "At least I'll have a chance to appoint his replacement, someone who doesn't seem, hostile to me."

Cromwell nodded. "Did you see the American Daily Flag?" he asked.

"Just the last paragraph or so of an editorial. It ended something like, 'The American People could be forgiven, or even congratulated, if they rose up and threw this tyrant out.' That does come fairly close to sedition, I'll have to admit."

"Are you going to do anything about it?"

"Nope. The media reaction overall was really pretty mild; some of it was actually friendly. And as far as the Flag's concerned, ninety-five percent of the people who read it were already saying that, or worse, or at least thinking it." He paused.

"And consider just how far I went in that speech, Jumper. Now that was extreme!"

Cromwell didn't speak at once, but it was clear from his expression that he was forming a response. Haugen waited.

"Mr. President, you have the basis for a counterattack that has nothing to do with the sedition act or prosecutions of any kind. You have my report on the long-term activities of the Holist Council executive board. And now you have their bible—the Archon book; that damns them with their own words. Why don't you just read parts of those in a fireside address?"

"I probably will, when the time comes. But not now. For one thing, it would be a red herring. Almost none of the editorial writers or columnists or TV news analysts have ever heard of the Archons. Probably none of them have. I'm sure that most of them don't know much about the Holist Council either, and very few of them are connected with it. They're expressing their own views, whether we like them or not.

"I talked to Okada last evening after I got back from Texas, and again this morning. We discussed a statement he'll be giving the media today. In front of the TV cameras. He'll be saying the right things back at them. Like, it would be interesting to know who was willing to spend the kind of money it took to hire, equip, and fly in the ninjas. And to import a nuclear bomb. Okada'll probably sound harder than usual; he was really pissed by Sanders and Eichmeier, too.

"Meanwhile, tomorrow Morrisey and Spencer will start another survey, this one on public response to my legal reform. I'm looking forward to that. It'll be a lot more useful to me than TV or the papers. Or even than the letter tally we'll be getting over the next few days."

Cromwell felt a little better: The president was a remarkably deliberate man, and so far his judgments had been damned good.

The president changed abruptly to a different subject. "D'you know one of the troubles with this job, Jumper?" he asked.

The shift took Cromwell by surprise. "No. What?"

"There's so little direct action. A president hardly has any hands-on involvement; I work through proxies almost entirely. I have to; it's the only practical way. But sometimes I feel like I'm half spectator and half manipulator." He laughed. "And half worrier; it's a job and a half. I'm never out where it's happening; no time for it."

His voice changed, became brisk. "I need to hang up, Jumper. I've got another call flashing."

Haugen disconnected, and touched a key on his security phone. Dirksma's face appeared on the screen. "What have you got, Peter?" the president asked.

"Mister President, we've found a connection between Blackburn in his secret, private practitioner persona, and a financially prominent person. Very prominent. Under the name 'Dr. William Merriman,' Blackburn had done occasional work for Paul W. Massey. We don't have details yet, just the connection. We got onto it from a bug that General Cromwell got installed, illegally I suspect, in Massey's residence. Except for a couple of underworld names that were mentioned, no one here paid much attention to it—not until we learned Blackburn's alias.

"Of course, we couldn't use any evidence acquired this way in a court action, but it's certainly giving us some leads to follow."

"I know about the bug," the president answered. "I approved it under a provision in the Emergency Powers Act. But I agree that we shouldn't use it in court, if it comes to that."

He paused to jot on a note pad. "I'll send you photocopies of a couple of things today: a report Jumper had prepared, and a copy of something sent by the person who installed the bug for Jumper. Neither is clear evidence of criminal activity, but they give perspective to a lot of things. Including the connections you just mentioned."

Haugen stopped. A chainsaw had started just outside. "Peter, I need to see about something. Are we done?"

"I believe so, sir."

"I'll hang up then. Thanks for the information."

The president disconnected and strode out of his office and into the yard, followed by two concerned-looking Secret Service men. Nearby, a man with a hardhat was about to make a notching cut in one of the trees on the White House grounds.

"Hey!" shouted the president, "what're you doing there?"

The man turned, saw who was coming, and cut the ignition on his saw. He wore coveralls with a Parks shoulder patch. Awkward, not sure what to do, he saluted. The president saluted casually back.

"What're you doing?" the president repeated, this time with no trace of indignation.

"Mr. President sir, we're supposed to cut all the trees around here."

"How come?"

Another man was hurrying over from a panel truck nearby. "Can I help you, Mr. President?" he asked. He was a tall, powerful man, sure of himself.

"Yes. This gentleman tells me you're planning to cut the trees here. Who told you to do that?"

"Sir, Mr. Cambert, my supervisor. He said the Secret Service ordered it."

"The Secret Service!?" The president's voice had raised half an octave.

"Yes sir. They're afraid somebody might use those trees for sneaking up to shoot you. That's what Mr. Cambert said."

The president assumed a serious expression. "I see. Well, I certainly appreciate their concern, but I don't want these trees cut down." He gestured. "You see those marines? They take good care of me. Were you in the service?"

"Yes sir. Airborne sir, like you. Twenty years ago."

Haugen looked at the sawyer. "How about you?"

The man straightened. "I got out of the navy last year, Mr. President. I was on the missile cruiser Ticonderoga."

Two other men with saws were standing by the truck, waiting to see what would happen.

"Well, you can imagine then," Haugen said, "that those young marines are pretty darned competent. And we know what they did to the ninjas last night. So what I want you to do is go back and tell Mr. Cambert the trees will have to stay; that the president said so. Tell him I'll take care of it with the Secret Service so there's no squawk."

"Yes sir, Mr. President. I'll tell him that. And the boys and me are glad we don't have to cut 'em. We were just saying what a shame it would be."

The president surprised the two by shaking hands with them. Then he watched for a minute as the crew loaded gear into the truck, before grinning at an embarrassed Agent Trabert. "Glad you guys are so interested in my health," he said, and started back for the executive wing.

***

It was felt in Anchorage as a distinct jar at 0632:21 hours, Alaska Time, followed exactly twenty seconds later by another equally strong. At about that time, those who were looking and had a good view westward saw the explosion, a ruddy flash in the wintry predawn somewhere near the horizon, fading to a faint reddish glow that quickly died. Fourteen minutes later the sound of it reached the city, a boom that woke the sleeping.

Mount Spurr had exploded, blowing more than half a cubic mile of rock to powder and sending it miles into the sky. It also converted some 300 million cubic yards of glacier into vapor and water—roughly 100 million tons of water which, mixed with dirt, roared down mountain slopes and ravines, carrying with it thousands of blasted trees. Seconds after the explosion, Chakachamna Lake, large by most standards and thickly iced over, was hit by an avalanche of incandescent gas and dust, moving at several miles per minute, that instantly burned the deep snow away, opening the ice with an immense snarl of steam, and torched the shock-flattened trees that it touched. Minutes later the water arrived, debouching onto and into the lake, preceded by the booming of great boulders swept by it down the ravines.

Dawnlight came soon after, then daylight. Shortly before 11 A.M., Alaska Time, the leading fringe of the ash cloud arrived at Anchorage on a fair west wind. Ash and a midday twilight began to settle on the city. By twenty past eleven the street lights were on. At noon the prohibition against nonemergency traffic went into effect, and snow-plows moved out, their lights flashing blue in the gloom, to begin the job of plowing ash from the streets. By 2:40 in the afternoon, snow began to fall, muddy snow. Ordinarily it wouldn't have been quite sundown yet, at sixty-one degrees north latitude on January 14. On this day, however, it had been dark for nearly three hours.

There had been no warning. The mountain's innards had grumbled recently, but not alarmingly. Seismographs had noted nothing threatening until seconds before the first shock. The few humans in the mountain's vicinity had had no warning at all.

Sixty miles south, Mount Redoubt erupted too, but not explosively. A fissure or fissures opened in one flank. Glacier burst from steam pressure, lava flowed stinking forth, snow melted, and water and boulders scoured its ravines. The event was trivial, compared to the explosion farther north.

***

When the report reached the White House, President Haugen had just begun swimming laps with the first lady and Father Flynn. Milstead hadn't interrupted him for these presumed acts of God. The chief got little enough relaxation; after lunch would do. Thus the president and Flynn learned of the eruptions while eating to the twelve o'clock news.

Acts of God—eruptions, great hurricanes, tidal waves—can be more engrossing than acts of man, and Haugen and Flynn watched intently. By that time it was daylight in Anchorage, and planes had already overflown the devastation, taking such pictures around Mount Spurr as the light there allowed. The more impressive footage was of the Redoubt Volcano. The dust cloud from Mount Spurr was drifting east, not south toward Redoubt, thus a rising sun lit the scene redly through sooty fumes and steam. Lava still ponderously flowed, the snow retreating ahead of it, and debris-filled mud lay in great fans of ruin at the foot of the ravines.

It was midafternoon in D.C. when James Gupta at the NSA called the president. The seismograms associated with the eruptions, he said, were peculiar in several respects, and taken together left no doubt in his mind that this quake and eruption were triggered by scalar resonance.

"What's the certainty level?" Haugen asked.

"The probability is well above the ninety-nine percent level—better than 0.999."

"Hm-m." The president frowned. "Why Mount Spurr?"

"I have no substantial idea, sir."

"How about an insubstantial idea?"

"It could have been a demonstration—the Soviets reminding us of what they can do. In a location that did no severe damage to populations or property."

"To what purpose?"

"It could be to worry us, in advance of some Soviet move in Europe or Asia. To make us hesitant, more reluctant to mount a countermove."

The president's look was thoughtful, perhaps tinged with skepticism. "If you say the quake and eruption were created by scalar resonance, I'll accept that. But we already knew what they have the power to do, and they know what we can do if we choose to."

"True."

Briefly Haugen said nothing. "Well, I won't rack my brain over it. At least not until we have more data." He paused. "And just to be sure, check on our own resonance transmitters; I need to be damn certain we didn't do it. Check that right away and get back to me on it."

Gupta's answer was delayed slightly. Obviously the order bothered him. "Yes sir," he said.

"How long will it take you? I presume you know exactly who you need to check with at each location."

"Yes sir, I do. I should have the information to you within the hour."

"Good. They'll probably think you're crazy for asking. Tell them the president wants to be absolutely sure before he takes certain steps."

Gupta nodded very soberly, wondering what those "certain steps" might be. When they'd disconnected, the president buzzed Cromwell, just down the hall.

"Jumper," Haugen said, "I need to talk with Colonel Schubert again. Tomorrow morning. Any problem with that?"

"I'll have to check, but I doubt it very much."

"Fine. Let me know."

It was hard for Arne Haugen to put his attention back on the proposed tax reform package the Joint Committee on Taxation had sent him. But he persisted until it had his complete attention. It was detailed and well written, with glossary and appendix. The discussion seemed very thorough and the proposal very rational. Why, he asked himself, didn't earlier committees come up with one like this? The reason, when he thought about it, seemed obvious: The difficulty of getting it through a Congress beset by a hundred special interest groups, or a thousand, almost all of them persuasive and some of them convincing, arguing or wheedling for modifications and compromises. And all wielding influence in the form of political support, and frequently potential campaign contributions.

His phone buzzed again. "What is it, Jeanne?"

"Your daughter's on line one, sir."

The president felt a pang of guilt as his finger moved to the flashing key; he hadn't called Liisa since—since the Christmas that hardly was. Her face appeared on the screen, a face more resembling his own than Lois's—good but not pretty.

"Hi, sweetheart. How's it going in far away Grand Forks?"

"It's cold here, daddy. Six below at noon."

"How's Ed doing? And the kids?"

"Ed's fine. He's still acting department chairman; Professor Becker's not recovering as quickly as expected. I just wanted to let you know that Joyce is expecting. I'm going to be a grandmother."

She didn't sound very enthusiastic. "Huh! That's interesting. Any more talk about a wedding?"

"Nothing definite. Well, in a way. They've definitely decided to, but they haven't set a date. Not even a month." She paused. "Joey only makes a dollar an hour. He does pick and shovel work for the P.W.A."

"What does Ed think of all this?"

"About Joyce's pregnancy? He doesn't know yet. Joyce just found out for sure this morning, though she's suspected for the last couple of days. Joey's supposed to have been taking that new oral male contraceptive that the FDA approved last year. Either it didn't work, or Joey forgot."

Probably the latter, Haugen thought. Ed considered Joey Lund a world class bumbler. Likeable but a klutz. The president grinned at his daughter, strangely lightened by her report, as if it somehow lent perspective to things. "Life gets complicated around here, too, honey. Have you told your mother yet?"

His security phone began to buzz, and a code number had formed on its screen.

"No. I thought I'd call her next," Liisa said.

"Good idea. Liisa, the National Security Agency is trying to get me on my security phone. I need to hang up. Thanks for the news, and for thinking of me."

"You're welcome, daddy. 'Bye."

"Goodbye, honey."

He disconnected and reached for the security phone. Life does get complicated all right, he mused.

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