This was, unaccountably, her husband’s favorite — Texans, of course, are supposed to demonstrate the cattleman’s traditional devotion to beef, harboring at all times the cowboy’s general derision of the efforts of sheep farmers.
But Arnold loved butterflied leg of lamb and, much to Tony Tilton’s good fortune, liked it especially on Sunday nights, when he gleefully opened a couple of bottles of outstanding château-bottled Bordeaux, as carefully recommended by his Chief Adviser, the former Secretary of State Harcourt Travis, now lecturing modern political history, somewhat loftily, to students at Harvard University.
Admiral Morgan introduced his wife to the star witness for the prosecution, and poured her a glass of cold white Burgundy.
“Arnold’s been telling me, Tony, how you got away from the volcano,” she said. “That must have been very scary…I think I would probably have fainted with terror.”
“Kathy, when you’re as scared as I was, it’s amazing what you can do,” replied her guest. “The morning was very quiet. No wind, just a few people camping around the lake, not more than a half dozen tents. Nearly everyone was asleep. There was a mist across the water, a high mist, not just a sea-fret. You could see neither upwards nor across the lake. It was one of those soft, silent times you can get out in the wilderness in the early morning. So quiet, you found yourself talking softly, even my buddy Don, and he’s trained to lambaste the world with his opinions.”
Arnold Morgan chortled and took another sip of Dewars. “Keep going, Tony,” he said. “I’m enjoying this.”
“Anyway, I heard this sudden wind. Not quite a howl, you know, nothing theatrical. But a real creepy wailing sound, more like that rise in sound you get in an old house when there’s a storm outside.
“It was about as weird as a sound can be…wh-o-o-o-o-sh! On a dead-still morning. And it was not a sound that was static where we were, it was passing us by, as if heading into the mountain. I found myself looking upwards towards the peak, and then there was this deep thumping sound from way up there, like an underground explosion…Moments later I heard the goddamned noise again.”
“How long, Tony?”
“Not as long as a minute. But close. And I heard it sweep past. Same sound. In a split second, I was looking up over the lake, but there was nothing, not even a movement in the mist. But the sound was identical. And ten seconds later there was another explosion from Mount St. Helens. This one was a much more open sound, a real crash…you know…KERRRR-BAM! Like you’d imagine a bomb, although I’ve never heard one.”
“And then?”
“I started up the wagon and we took off. That’s when we heard the third explosion. That one was real loud, and suddenly there was fire and ash raining into the forest around us. Trees were on fire and God knows what. We just kept going, driving faster than I’ve ever driven in my life.
“The fourth explosion was bigger than all the other three put together — we didn’t see it, but the road shook. And then it began to get dark…tons and tons of ash and debris flung into the atmosphere, I suppose. Kind of blotted out the sun. If I hadn’t seen that sucker blow all those years ago, I guess I’d still have been standing gawping at Mount St. Helens when the lava started down the mountain. It just swallows everything.”
“Including the half-gallon of Dewars, according to your man McKeag,” chuckled Arnold.
“Yeah. Just imagine…one small section of volcanic rock, amber in color, in the middle of all that gray…Dewar’s Rock. Now that’s a landmark.”
“According to Don McKeag’s program, you might be running for state governor in a couple of years,” said Arnold. “Could be your first major act on environmental issues…renaming the rock at the foot of Mount St. Helens.”
One by one, they filed into the private conference room of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs. There was Adm. George Morris and Lt. Comdr. Jimmy Ramshawe. Adm. Alan Dickson; Rear Adm. Freddie Curran; Admiral Morgan; and Tony Tilton. Gen. Scannell had invited the Air Force Chief, Gen. Cale Carter, plus Maj. Gen. Bart Boyce, NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander, and Gen. Stanford Hudson (Readiness Command, U.S. Army).
No politicians were present. But as military brainpower goes, this was a solid roomful, deep in the most secretive inner sanctum of Pentagon planning, directly above the office of President McBride’s dovish Secretary of State for Defense, Milt Schlemmer, formerly of the International Atomic Energy Agency and the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. The man’s name alone brought Arnold Morgan out in hives.
There were only two men from outside the U.S. Military’s High Command — an Air Force colonel from U.S. Aerospace Command HQ, who waited in the reception area with Tony Tilton. Positioned outside the office were two Marine Corps guards, with four others on extra duty in Corridor Seven, which leads directly to E-Ring, the great circular outer thruway of the Pentagon.
The ten men sat at the large conference table, and General Scannell called the meeting to order by informing everyone this was a gathering of the most highly classified nature, and that no one — repeat, no one — was to be informed that it had even been convened.
For reasons that would become obvious, he declared that Admiral Morgan would chair the meeting, and he cited Arnold’s long and detailed involvement in the subject. He also explained that Adm. George Morris had been “on the case” for several months, and that Lt. Comdr. Jimmy Ramshawe, the Fort Meade Director’s assistant, had “essentially made the running throughout the unofficial investigation.”
General Scannell had issued only the most cursory briefing by coded E-mail to the senior officers around the table. But each man sufficiently understood the grave suspicion that now surrounded the eruption of Mount St. Helens, and each man had been furnished with a copy of the letter from Hamas, demanding the United States’ formal evacuation from the Middle East.
“Each of you understands,” said General Scannell, “the distinct likelihood that the crater, high on Mount St. Helens, was hit by four oncoming cruise missiles on the morning of August 9. Only one man was near enough to bear any kind of witness to this event, at least only one man who survived. And he is with us this morning — Mr. Tony Tilton, the President of the Seattle National Bank.
“Now, because I would like to fly him home as soon as possible, I am inviting him to speak to us and explain exactly what he witnessed in the foothills of Mount St. Helens on that morning. Mr. Tilton has already debriefed Admiral Morgan, so I invite Arnold to steer our visitor through his account of the incident.”
Admiral Morgan introduced Tony formally to the group, and then invited him to recount, in precise detail, everything he had told him on the previous evening. And he did so with a lawyer’s clarity. At the conclusion of his story, Admiral Morgan asked if anyone would like to ask Mr. Tilton any further questions, but there were none. The bank chief and the former National Security Adviser had, between them, delivered a detailed, virtuosic performance.
They formally thanked Tilton for coming, and then Admiral Morgan stood up and escorted him from the room. Two young Naval officers were waiting to walk him out to the helicopter pad for the five-minute journey to Andrews, and the flight back to Puget Sound.
Back on the second floor of the Pentagon, the group was listening to the summing up of the Air Force psychiatrist who had been examining the long letter from Hamas. His conclusions were very clear…“While the demands of the letter are plainly outrageous, I detect no sign of hysteria or dementia of any kind. This letter was not written by a disturbed person. It was written by an educated man, whose natural language was most certainly English.