IV
Harold Tanner, newly appointed Secretary of Defense, was similarly preoccupied in the headquarters building at Langley Air Force Base. He had just come out of one of the strangest and most depressing meetings of his career, and now stood at a window in the spacious, third-floor officers’ lounge.
Against government edict, he was smoking a cigarette indoors. He stood in a habitual attitude of military parade-rest, his feet apart and firmly planted, his hands locked behind his waist, cigarette between his fingers. He surveyed the pedestrians in their glistening plastic raincoats, their umbrellas bobbing along the sidewalks, and watched the metronome beat of windshield wipers in the slowly moving traffic along the main base boulevard.
His crew-cut hair, humorless gray eyes and weathered face, along with the posture of his spare military frame, looked out of place in the tailored gray suit. Though he did not move, there was no mistaking the anger and agitation in him. His rigid stance, the nervous flicking of the cigarette and the scowl on his countenance forewarned anyone who might have contemplated speaking to him.
Tanner had just carried out an order to reassign two highly experienced and successful commanders from the U.S. Air Force Air Combat Command to assignments that were an insult to their skills and abilities. He hadn’t realized what was happening until he met and talked with the two officers. As a former War College professor, he couldn’t fathom the reason for such a move, and as the new kid on the block, he knew he would get the blame for it among the services.
The Vanderbilt administration had jumped into Washington politics with both feet, and the walls inside the Beltway were still reverberating. The deal-making and back-room bargaining had gotten under way with a vengeance that shocked even the jaded insiders of Washington society. Government programs and agendas were changing in ways that seemed mysterious, unconnected and illogical. Agency heads were toppling like dominoes, and bureau reorganizations were becoming commonplace.
People connected with government business, from defense contractors to those in financial institutions, were wondering at the surprising trends in corporate America. In New York City, key industry and financial managers were retiring, and second-string media people were quietly vanishing into other pursuits—even into other countries. Tanner knew that the public wasn’t aware of these behind-the-scenes happenings, but he assumed they had noted the replacement of the odd network newscaster and television news-show host. It was as if Vanderbilt was assembling a team that encompassed far more than just the Oval Office.
And so many deaths! Vanderbilt had attended more state funerals in the first six months of his administration than any previous president. Two of the Joint Chiefs were dead. Admiral Poindexter and General Thompson had died together in a freak automobile accident in February. Patrick Monahan, Under-Secretary of Commerce, was killed by a guerrilla missile that downed his plane during a visit to Nicaragua, in March. Susan Kawalski, U.S. Deputy Attorney-General, had died of a seizure in May, and later that month, Victor Matsu, Deputy Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, died suddenly of a virulent strain of hepatitis.
The new agency chiefs were all Vanderbilt appointees, and while each expressed eloquent grief over the demise of their seconds-in-command, the deaths somehow seemed fortuitous in light of the fact that there had been friction between the new chiefs and their career deputies, and the vacancies created by the deaths could now be filled by more agreeable people.
Almost as remarkable as the chain of deaths, was how little coverage they received. A year or two ago, such a chain of events would have kept the media mill going for weeks. Even designation of the newly promoted replacements had gotten very limited mention.
Tanner sighed, some of the tension leaving his body as resignation set in. He absently put his hand against the moisture-fogged window, feeling the cold seep into his palm. Not for the first time, he wondered where in hell Vanderbilt had come from. In one moment it seemed, he was an obscure and somewhat colloquial senator from New Hampshire, to whom no one had paid much attention. In the next, he was the most powerful public figure in the world.
The Vice President, Joseph Miller, was a former U.S. Advisor to the European Economic Council. Tall and dark, with dispassionate, questioning brown eyes that seldom blinked—eyes that seemed to bore right into your mind—Miller was another enigma. Somehow, in his quiet, dark way, Miller seemed to evoke trust. Tanner could not say why.
Vanderbilt was another matter. Tanner’s little, old-fashioned mother had a term for people like Vanderbilt. He was “vulgar,” she would have said. Vanderbilt had a habitual lewd and arrogant way in which he looked at people. Not when he was in the public eye of course, but in meetings with his staff, and in private, he made no effort to disguise his contempt for others.
Oddly, for someone who was not an old-timer on the Washington scene, Vanderbilt swept aside resistance as no predecessor had ever done before. By that alone, Tanner knew that there was some heavy-duty money behind him. All the media had taken on the Vanderbilt tincture, and Washington and New York society life seemed to take on a vaguely different nuance. It seemed strained.
Tanner observed that Washington had become overt in its corruption. The rhetoric was still the same; the politicians were still “serving” their country, but the “hidden agenda” wasn’t really hidden anymore. It had become the wallpaper of Washington society. The politicians and power brokers didn’t really seem to care whether or not the public knew what they were doing. Most of them flouted their arrogant confidence that there was nothing the public could do about it. Washington had lost even the semblance of being about representative government. It was openly about power. Power and money, other people’s money, the “golden fleece” of legend.
The nation of sheep that provided the fleece might occasionally object to being sheared, and the unstated Washington objective was to apply just the right balance of threat and propaganda to keep them producing and in check. To create enough doubt and confusion to prevent open rebellion. People-handling. Manipulating the masses. It took a special talent, and Washington was a magnet for such talent. Tanner knew that it had always been that way to some degree, but suddenly it was obvious to all but the utterly blind, and supported by a ubiquitous media. All the carnivores were stepping out of the tall grass, licking their lips and openly observing the dozing flock.
Tanner took a last drag from the cigarette and smiled grimly at the metaphor. It was a literal fact. He had been in and out of Washington for years, and knew a lot of people, but lately, new faces were everywhere. Foreign faces with attitude. Disdainful Arabs. Contemptuous Orientals. Haughty Europeans. Multinational faces. Cold-eyed faces that appeared in hallways and lobby corners, often in earnest conversation with nervous-looking congresspeople and agency heads. Cloistered meetings for unknown purposes were becoming daily occurrences.
The federal workers who ran the day-to-day business of the government didn’t know a great deal of course, and neither, it seemed, did some of the newly appointed cabinet officials, including himself. The individual agencies were comprised of people who for the most part were innocent cogs in a machine. They weren’t privy to the inner workings and high-level meetings.
They probably wondered at all the new changes, but there was nothing anyone could put a finger on. In their world, things went on pretty much as before, but for senior- and mid-level managers in the executive branch, politics had become brutal. It was obvious that people who couldn’t adapt to whatever the hell was going on, were being coerced to resign. People who had made even minor political mistakes, such as publicly espousing a point of view that was antipathetic to the regime, were being encouraged to quietly retire. If you were part of the secret circle, it seemed, or possessed some sort of necessary knowledge, you were judged useful. If someone had some misinformed idea of what was important, he or she was not useful, and when no longer useful, one way or another, that person went away.
The few of his peers that Tanner had enjoyed anything resembling an intimate conversation with appeared to be as ignorant as he was about the nature of the secret substratum. By its very nature the exclusionary climate bred suspicion, and he wondered if those peers were actually ignorant, or if they just viewed him as one who was not yet an initiate to the circle. Some of them seemed reluctant to talk, not merely ignorant.
It was almost as if the briefings and unstructured meetings with the president and department heads had been scripted, glossy charades—superfluous get-acquainted meetings with an undercurrent of knowledge that not everyone was privy to—a “sizing-up” of human resources. Tanner knew that somewhere, somebody big was pulling the strings.
Unlike Patterson, Tanner thought he knew why he had been appointed. Of those with the knowledge to run the Defense Department, he was the most agreeable. Vanderbilt had made it plain that he didn’t want a figurehead in charge of Defense. Neither did he want a headstrong type with rigid ideas. He wanted someone who knew the department inside out. Someone who knew the key people and, as Vanderbilt had put it, “knew where the bones were buried.” Above all, Vanderbilt wanted someone malleable; someone who could be molded into an extension of his own will.
Tanner thought back to a time just six weeks after his appointment, when he had sat with Vanderbilt and Miller, going over the classified personnel files of the various base and unit commanders in all the services, and of those members of congress who were connected in any way with military operations and procurements. On the surface, it seemed natural enough that a new president would want to know all about his key people, but it had seemed to Tanner at the time that Vanderbilt’s questions had an odd slant. Tanner was only now beginning to realize that, in the power shuffle that was taking place, it appeared that the ones being taken out of key commands were those who were the most dedicated and loyal. Commanders with exemplary war records. Older veterans with a lifetime of military honor ingrained in their makeup.
Realization suddenly dawned, and Tanner’s eyes went wide. The entire top of the military command structure was being systematically replaced. Tanner had identified many of those people, thinking that the most diligent commanders would be the ones Vanderbilt would turn to in a crisis. Instead, they were the ones being removed and, if some of the prior appointments were any indication, they were being replaced by incompetent upstarts who had little, if any, military accolades, and the ethics of ferrets.
Tanner was too weak to challenge the President, and realized now that Vanderbilt had counted on that. The knowledge made him angry, angry with himself, and with those who recognized his weakness and used it for their own ends. Like Patterson, he had enjoyed the first flush of pride in his appointment, and had looked forward to earning the respect of his agency—to accomplishing great things and leaving his mark. Instead, he was to be Vanderbilt’s hatchet man and errand boy. He knew now that he would be despised in the memory of the armed services.
The thought rekindled his anger. Silently fuming, he ground out his cigarette on the polished tile floor and walked away, paying no attention to the glaring looks of two Air Force Officers seated at a nearby table. He was ready to take the head off the first person to offer a petty criticism.