The empty, hollow phrases that contradicted the terrible knowledge inside him. In less than a month he’d know the wrath of military intransigence. He wouldn’t win that fight. The battle had been decided.
On the courthouse steps he looked for his uniformed escort, for the brown sedan that would take him back to Arlington, to his barracks arrest. It wasn’t in sight; it wasn’t parked where he’d been told it would be.
Instead, a master sergeant, tunic and trousers creased into steel, shoes gleaming, approached Bonner.
«If you’ll follow me, please, Major.»
The automobile at the curb was a tan-metallic limousine, two flags mounted in the front, one on each side of the hood above the wide grille. They rustled hesitantly in the December breeze. Enough to reveal four gold stars on each laterally across a red background.
The sergeant opened the right-rear door for Bonner as newsmen and photographers crowded around him firing questions and snapping pictures. Paul didn’t need to speculate on the identity of the General in the back seat. The reporters had established it in loud, excited voices.
The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the United States.
The General offered no greeting as Bonner entered and sat beside him. He stared straight ahead at the glass partition separating the driver from his Very Important Passengers.
Outside, the sergeant shouldered his way around the vehicle and got behind the wheel. The car drove off; at first slowly, the driver coldly impatient with the crowd, pressing the horn continuously in an effort to clear his path.
«That little scene was ordered, Major. I hope you appreciate it.» The General spoke curtly, without looking at Bonner.
«You sound as though you didn’t approve, sir.»
The senior officer looked abruptly at Bonner, and then, just as rapidly, turned away. He reached over to the left door panel, to the elasticized pocket, and withdrew a manila envelope. «The second order I received was to deliver this to you personally. It is equally distasteful to me.»
He handed the envelope to Bonner, who, bewildered, responded with an inaudible thank-you. The printing on the upper-left-hand corner told him that the contents were from the Department of the Army, not the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He ripped the flap open and extracted a single page. It was a copy of a letter from the White House, addressed to the Secretary of the Army and signed by the President of the United States.
The language was terse, to the point, and left no room for interpretation—other than the degree of anger, perhaps hostility, felt by the author.
The President directed the Secretary of the Army to terminate forthwith all contemplated charges against Major Paul Bonner. Said Major Bonner was to be elevated immediately to the permanent rank of full colonel and entered within the month to the War College for highest-level strategic training. Upon completion of the War College curriculum—an estimated six months—Colonel Bonner was to be assigned as a liaison officer to the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Paul Bonner put the letter carefully back into the envelope and sat silently beside the General. He closed his eyes and thought about the irony of it all.
But he’d been right all along. That was the important thing.
It was back to work.
What did the beavers know?
Yet he was strangely troubled; he wasn’t sure why. Perhaps it was the escalation in rank. Not one jump, but two. It was disconcertingly parallel to a promise made on an icy Connecticut slope, words that ended with ripped flesh and finally death.
But he wouldn’t dwell on it. He was a professional.
It was a time for professionals.
Ian Hamilton patted the wet fur of his Chesapeake retriever. The large dog kept running ahead on the snow-covered path to pick up a stray branch or a loose rock, bringing it back to its master for approval.
It was a particularly gratifying Sunday morning, thought Hamilton. Ten days ago he wasn’t sure he’d be taking any more Sunday walks; at least not on the shores of Lake Michigan.
All that was changed now. The fear was gone, and his normal sense of elation, the quiet elation that came with great accomplishment, returned. And the irony of it! The one man he had feared, the only one who had the real capacity to destroy them, had removed himself from the chessboard.
Or had been removed.
Either way, it proved that the course of action he’d insisted upon was the correct action. Aaron Green had nearly fallen apart; Armbruster spoke in panic of early retirement; Cooper—poor, beleaguered, unimaginative Cooper—had run to the Vermont hills, his uniform stained with the sweat of hysteria.
But he, Ian Hamilton, who could trace his family back to the origins of the infant colossus, whose forebears were the lairds of Cambusquith, he’d held firm.
Practically speaking—pragmatically speaking—he’d felt secure. Far more so than the others. For he knew all they had to do was wait until Andrew Trevayne’s «abridged» version was released from the Potomac Towers. Once that happened, who would make, could make, the decision to allow him to submit the report in its original form? The rope would be on fire at both ends; Trevayne trapped by his own compromise, and the government’s need for equilibrium.
William Hill as much as admitted it.
Big Billy. Hamilton wondered if Hill would ever realize how great a part—unknowingly, of course—he’d played in the development of Genessee Industries. He’d no doubt take his own life if he did. But it was true; Ambassador William Hill had been largely responsible. For over the Washington years Hamilton had watched Big Billy closely. They both were «friends to,» advisers to presidents; Hill much older, of course. He’d seen Big Billy’s words stricken from the record more than once. He’d sympathized as Hill’s advice to Eisenhower over the U-2 crisis in Paris had gone unheeded—the summit meeting aborted; he’d felt for the old man when McNamara persuaded Kennedy that Hill’s judgment on Berlin was in error—the Wall was the result; he’d winced openly when those maniacs at the Pentagon convinced a perplexed, malleable Nixon that the «incursion» into Cambodia was necessary—over the loud, intensely felt objections of William Hill.
Kent State, Jackson. An all but destroyed Joint Chiefs of Staff.
And Ian Hamilton realized that he’d been observing a man whose shoes he might jump into; a version of himself in a few years to come.
Unacceptable.
The alternative was the power and influence of Genessee Industries.
He’d concentrated on that. For everyone’s good.
The Chesapeake retriever was now trying to separate a twig from a fallen limb. The twig held firm; Hamilton bent down and twisted it off.
It took considerable strength, he considered, but he wasn’t even breathing hard.
Big Billy.
Big Billy had flown out to Chicago—an emissary from the President of the United States. They’d met in private in a suite at the Palmer House.
There were areas of mutual concern to be discussed. Mutual concern. The President wanted to see him, meet with him in Washington.
Accommodation would be reached.
The Chesapeake retriever had found another stick. But this one was different from the others; there were several sharp points where the bark had been stripped from the white wood. The dog whimpered, and Ian Hamilton could see that there was blood trickling down from the mouth over the wet fur.
Sam Vicarson sat on top of the packed, sealed carton and looked around at the empty room. Empty except for the couch which had been there when the subcommittee had taken over the office. The movers were about finished.