«Where are you going?»
«To speak to your secretary, my mother. I’ll be right back, and don’t you dare get on the telephone!»
«Of course not, Pockets … I mean—»
«Oh, shut up! You appointees are very, very strange.» With these words the security pool stenographer walked out into the outer office and closed the door.
Warren Pease, Secretary of State and owner of a fishing yacht he longed dearly to berth at an acceptable club, was torn between slashing his wrists and calling his former brokerage firm and offering all manner of government insider information so as to reclaim his former partnership. Good Lord, why had he ever succumbed to his old roomie, the President’s call to join the administration? Socially, of course, there were advantages, but there were disadvantages, too. One had to be polite to so many people one simply could not abide, and those dreadful dinner parties where he not only had to sit next to but have his picture taken with Negroes. Oh, no, it wasn’t all peaches and cream! The sacrifices one had to make would test the patience of a saint … and now this! Body bags with living maniacs, and his own crowd wanting his scalp! How grotesque life had become! Of course, he had no razor blade and he dared not use the telephone, so he simply had to wait, perspiring profusely. In agonizing minutes, the wait was over. However, instead of Regina Trueheart, her mother, Tyrania, marched into the office, closing the door firmly behind her.
The matriarch of the Trueheart clan was the stuff of which legends are born. A striking woman with sharp Teutonic features and blazing light-blue eyes, she was just over six feet in height, with an imposing body that stood tall and challenging, belying her fifty-eight years. As her mother before her, who had arrived with the legions of female government secretaries and clerks during World War II, Tyrania was a veteran of the Washington bureaucracy, with awesome knowledge of its byways and back alleys, its follies and flagrant abuses. Again, like her mother, she had brought up her own daughters to serve the byzantine infrastructures of the government’s myriad bureaus, departments, and agencies. Tyrania believed it was the destiny of the family’s women to guide the leaders and would-be leaders through Washington’s minefields so they could exercise what generally feeble abilities they possessed. In her heart, the Trueheart maximum leader understood that it was women such as herself and her daughters who really ran the nation’s government. Men truly were the weaker sex, so vulnerable to temptation and tomfoolery. This judgment no doubt accounted for the fact that no male child had been born into the family for three generations. It simply was not acceptable.
Tyrania studied the obviously distraught Secretary of State, in her long, silent gaze a mixture of pity and resignation. «My daughter has relayed everything you told her, as well as describing your apparently overstimulated libido,» she said firmly but quietly, as if admonishing a small, confused boy in the principal’s office.
«I’m sorry, Mrs. Trueheart! Honestly. It’s been just a terrible day, and I didn’t mean to do anything wrong.»
«It’s all right, Warren, don’t cry. I’m here to help you, not to make you feel naughty.»
«Thank you, Mrs. Trueheart!»
«But for me to help you, I must first ask you a very important question. Will you answer me honestly, Warren?»
«Oh, yes, yes, I will!»
«Good… Now tell me, among the very small circle of civilians—nongovernment people—who are aware of this counterstrike operation, do any of them profit from this conceivably threatened air base?»
«All of them, for God’s sake!»
«Then look to one of them, Warren. He’s selling out the others.»
«What …? Why?»
«Long-range, I can’t answer you until I have more facts—such as stock options and buy-outs—but short-range the answer is obvious.»
«It is?»
«No one in the administration, with the exception of yourself, would enter into such a devious solution that employed incarcerated men, in military prison because of their violence-prone dispositions. The lessons of Watergate and Iran-scam have left their indelible marks, as repulsive and unpatriotic as they may be. Put simply, there were too many indictments.»
«But why am I the exception?»
«You’re too new and too inexperienced in this town. You wouldn’t know how to unite the President’s advisers for this sort of clandestine operation. They’d all run to the hills at the suggestion—except, perhaps, the Vice-President, who probably wouldn’t know what you’re talking about.»
«You think it’s one of the … civilians!»
«I’m rarely wrong, Warren… Well, I was once, but that was my husband. After we girls threw him out of the house, he ran down to the Caribbean, and now he charters his run-down sailboat out of the Virgin Islands. A totally despicable human being.»
«Really? Why is that?»
«Because he claims to be a completely happy person, which we all know is unacceptable in our complex society.»
«No kidding …?»
«Mr. Secretary, may we concentrate on the immediate problem? I strongly suggest that you place the ‘body bags’ in total isolation, squash whatever stories come out of Quantico as the result of drunkenness, and go underground and reach the Zero Zero Zero-dash-Zero Zero Six at Fort Benning.»
«What the hell is that?»
«Not what, but who,» replied Tyrania. «They’re called the Suicidal Six—»
«Like in the Filthy Four?» interrupted Pease, scowling.
«Light-years beyond. They’re actors.»
«Actors? What do I want with actors?»
«These are unique,» said Trueheart, leaning forward and lowering her voice. «They’d kill for good reviews, which none has ever had in abundance.»
«How did they ever get to Fort Benning?»
«Nonpayment of rent.»
«What?»
«They haven’t worked steadily in years, just went to classes and waited on tables.»
«I don’t understand a word you’re saying!»
«It’s really quite simple, Warren. They joined the army together to start a repertory theater and eat on a more regular basis. Naturally, a creative-thinking officer in G-Two saw the possibilities and inaugurated a new program for covert operations.»
«Because they were actors?»
«Well, according to the general in charge, they were—are—also in great physical shape. You know, all those Rambo movies where they got extra parts. Actors can be very vain where their appearances are concerned.»
«Mrs. Trueheart!» exclaimed the Secretary of State. «Will you please tell me where this conversation is leading us?»
«To a solution, Warren. I will only talk in abstract terms, so there’s complete deniability, but I’m sure that your well-honed and well-brought-up intellect will understand.»
«Those are the first words that make sense to me.»
«The Suicidal Six can and will impersonate anybody and anything. They are masters of disguises and dialects, and can penetrate the impossible penetration.»
«That’s crazy. They’d be penetrating ourselves!»
«Good point. That gives you an enviable overview.»
«Wait a minute.» Pease spun around in his swivel chair and stared at the crisscrossed flags of the U.S. and the State Department, in his imagination seeing a portrait of Geronimo dressed in a general’s uniform between them. «That’s it!» he cried. «No indictments, no congressional hearings—it’s perfect!»