Sex and the High Command (26 page)

“Captain Hansen and I will depart from the bunker at ten thirty tonight, which should put us in the landing pattern at Dulles shortly after midnight. But don’t officially transmit Captain Hansen’s orders. Your signature would constitute
de facto
recognition of her government.”

Major Eagleson entered and saluted General Talliaferro. “Major Eagleson reporting, sir.”

“Major Eagleson, do you have any mental reservations about flying the President back to Dulles tonight, in Air Force One?”

“None at all, sir.”

“You realize. Major, there’s been some friction between President Habersham and Dr. Carey, and that you have been taking orders from Dr. Carey. Do you find any conflict of interests there?”

“Conflict of their interests, sir. Not mine.”

“What are your interests, Major?”

“To obey orders to the best of my ability, never to tell a lie, and to do at least one good deed each day.”

“That will be all, Major. Now, salute me, do four about faces, and return to your quarters.”

Major Eagleson saluted, spun around twice, and departed with a brisk, military stride.

Talliaferro said, “He’s the only living automatic pilot in the Air Force—hers or ours.”

“He’ll do. General,” the President said, “but figure his flight plan to enter the pattern ten minutes after midnight. If the bluff hasn’t worked by then, it will be up to Hansen.

“Incidentally, you may as well go ahead with the captain. Mr. Pickens can witness, and while Captain Hansen’s getting briefed, I’ll get packed. By the way, if the
Gluckstag
does not arrive, what is D-Day for Operation Meat Cleaver?”

“March fifteen.”

“Make that April fifteen. Admiral. The bayous are often flooded in March.”

It was Hansen’s first visit to the admiral’s quarters in the ice bunker and it was pleasantly nostalgic to enter and see Defense sprawled on the settee as of yore. The only basic change from the admiral’s old office was that the map on the wall behind his desk was now a map of the United States instead of the world.

One glance at the map told Hansen he was looking at the plan for Operation Meat Cleaver. A large blunt arrow stabbed inward from the shoreline north of Boston, and a longer arrow swept inward and arced eastward from New Orleans. Primrose’s grand design was laid bare by the map—a feint from Plymouth Rock while the major prong stabbed into the soft underbelly of Southern womanhood. However, the grand design was slightly confusing to Hansen. Both the feint and the main attack were being kicked off from seacoasts: Primrose was mounting an amphibious assault with airplanes… unless he was bent on securing his lines of retreat. In that event, Hansen could envision plans beyond plans if Meat Cleaver failed. Operation Pin Prick, perhaps, staged from the Dry Tortugas with rowboats.

Otherwise, not even the quotations had changed much, Hansen realized, when Defense spoke up. “Some are born to greatness, some acquire greatness, but, Ben, you’re the first man I ever met who was shafted by it.”

“We’re going to miss this man, Ogie. Ah, here we are!”

Primrose found the file he was seeking, and Hansen spoke to reassure them. “Don’t despair about the bluff, gentlemen. They’re still jamming our radar.”

“Oh, we’ll succeed, Ben.” The admiral needed no reassurance. “Operation Meat Cleaver is buttressed by John Paul Jones, and you’re in charge of John Paul Jones.”

“I wasn’t aware, sir, that we had an Operation John Paul Jones.”

“JPJ,” the admiral explained as he pulled a sheaf of documents from his desk, “is predicated on a retrograde motion in the female power structure. According to our intelligence, the high-water mark of female aggrandizement occurred on November two.”

He handed the sheaf of papers to Hansen who could tell at a glance that they were a set of orders and twelve copies.

from:	Chief of Naval Operations
to:	Lieutenant (j.g.) Benjamin F. Hansen, USNR (MA)
subject:	Change of Duty
reference:	(a) Executive Fiat #47

1. In accordance with the reference (a) which should not be quoted, you are hereby ordered to proceed immediately by first available transportation and report to the Commanding Officer, Anacostia Training Station, Washington, D.C., for further duty, 2. Government and/ or commercial transportation (exclusive of taxicabs) is hereby authorized.

3. A per diem allowance of $3.83 will be allowed while in transit.

Captain Helen B. Annes
By direction

“They came last week,” the admiral said, “but Air Force One is your first available transportation.”

“If I obey these orders, sir, I’m recognizing their authority, which I don’t.”

“With you, Captain, the recognition is merely personal, not official,” Primrose said.

“Now, when you land at Dulles tonight, leave the President. Make no attempt to assist him, but go straight to the call desk. Have the girl at the desk page Miss Dessy Monas. Then wait. You’ll be contacted by an agent whose password will be, ‘As I live and breathe, if it isn’t the Dock Walloper.’ Your countersign will be, ‘By heavens!’

“After your initial meeting, further instructions on Operation JPJ will come from our stateside agent. Now, to the pleasant task.”

He reached into his center drawer. There was no fumbling this time.

“Captain Hansen, my last commendation put you over the top. You were recommended for a spot promotion to Vice Admiral, and the recommendation has been signed by the President. You are now Admiral Benjamin Franklin Hansen, USN.”

He stood up and extended his hand. “Welcome aboard, Walloper.”

“Thank you, Sug. I certainly appreciate this.”

“Very well. Admiral Hansen,” Primrose said, “it’s back to business. We’ll let the President announce your promotion at his last supper. The news will help liven up the meal if we haven’t heard from the
Gluckstag
. Your new uniform will be ready in the tailor shop at 1600, that is, your junior grade lieutenant’s uniform. For a while you’ll have to be an undercover admiral.”

Announcement of Hansen’s promotion was the only lively feature of the President’s last supper. Acworth Cobb was not even present, having stayed in the quarters of the late Dr. Drexel to keep the caterwauling Dallas Georgias silent. Thule had no word from the Gluckstag, and the silent telephone which the High Command had counted on to reduce Dr. Carey to a nervous wreck had boomeranged against them. President Habersham almost spilled his soup from his spoon because his eyes kept flicking toward the telephone.

After supper, after Hansen had received congratulations from Talliaferro and Cobb who now made an appearance, the President retired to his quarters to write his last will and testament, to be affixed to his memoirs. The men who remained in the wardroom were silent, intent on the hands of the wardroom clock moving toward ten thirty for Hansen and toward midnight for Homo sapiens.

When the hour hand ceased to be a factor in Admiral Hansen’s wait. Admiral Primrose walked over to the conference table, motioned to the orderly, gave him a few brief instructions, and called his staff and the cabinet members to him.

“Gentlemen, it is 2200 and the President leaves in half an hour. Soon we’ll be saying good-bye, forever, to the Walloper, and I’ve been thinking of a few appropriate remarks that he might say to us.

“Walloper, would you consent to tell us, and let us put your words on tape, of your first love in Bangkok?”

As they all leaned forward, Hansen had time to clear his throat of a suspicious lump that kept rising in it, before the enlisted man put a microphone before him.

“If they unsex me,” he began, “theirs will be a partial victory only. Nothing can ever dispel the spiritual musk of me which lingers over the places where I have loved. One spot, in particular, is old Bangkok—aptly named city.

“It was on a night in the springtime when I first met her, among temples silvered by a rising moon…”

Dallas Georgias, née Houston Drexel, the gelded Mustang from SMU, rode alone and whimpering in the press section of Air Force One while President Habersham and Admiral Hansen rode aft and amidships in the President’s conference room. President Habersham was moody and solicitous of silence, but Admiral Hansen, disguised in his junior grade lieutenant’s uniform, had questions that urgently needed answers. Sug had assumed that Hansen knew why he was being sent back to the States, but the admiral had overestimated the junior admiral’s knowledge.

As a matter, to him, of chilling fact, Hansen had not the slightest idea what Operation John Paul Jones entailed, and the man who rode beside him, the man who was to lay the legal groundwork for Operation Meat Cleaver, was his only remaining source of information. Yet direct questions were out, more than ever now, since he had been promoted to omniscience.

“Sug might have been overly optimistic about JPJ,” he ventured. “Empires don’t fall in a day.”

“Ours did,” the President said, “on November two.”

Looking out at the stars, Hansen was reminded that it was almost Christmas, and the reminder led him to a new angle of inquiry. “Well, Mr. President, I suppose you’ll have to start thinking about a Christmas present for your little lady.”

“I know what she wants,” the President said, “but I don’t know how to wrap them.”

“Perhaps, sir, there might be a reconciliation by Christmas.”

“That would be a logical act,” the President said, “and I’m counting on them not to act logically. If women were Homo sapiens, we could figure on them delaying the execution till after the inauguration…”

“Sir, are you implying that females are not human beings?” Hansen’s astonishment was responsible for the direct question.

Surprisingly, the President chuckled. “I suppose they aren’t gibbons, but they’re certainly not sapient. No male would have left that promise of amnesty as a legal loophole for me to stick my neck in. Of course, it was a woman’s trick, primarily, to drive a wedge between Sug and me. She didn’t know that I was looking for a chance to split with the Primrose hard line and get back on a constitutional course. Constitutional measures form the only approach that can be justified by history. I had to go along with Primrose as a last ditch measure, but my conscience bothered me. I could never see a purely military solution to the problem, but I’m confident of the rightness of my actions now. After they’ve killed me while I’m still in office, then the ladies will be nuked in accord with Section Eight, Article One, of the Constitution.”

Thank heaven for Annapolis and the required course in constitutional law. Now Hansen could follow the President’s legal reasoning. He was returning to create a
de facto
insurrection which could be put down by force of arms, but that did not explain why Hansen was returning to the country with the President.

Admiral Hansen lapsed into his own silence.

Precisely five minutes after midnight, the President said, “Well, Ben, either the
Gluckstag
has arrived or it hasn’t. Let’s find out if Primrose’s little bluff worked.”

He leaned over and switched on the intercom to the cockpit. “Colonel Eagleson, please contact Shiloh and ask if the
Gluckstag
has landed.”

“Yes, sir.”

He waited for an answer, leaning toward the squawk box, and the answer came quickly. “Shiloh reports negative, sir.”

President Habersham sat back. “Well, Ben, our little bluff didn’t work. No matter, we can still help the cause if I can get myself killed before inauguration and if you can get that Christmas present up to Old Sug.”

Anything he said to Habersham, Hansen realized suddenly, was off the record. If the President wanted to get himself killed, Hansen had enough confidence in Demorest Habersham to know that he was talking to a dead civilian.

“What do you think the boys would like for Christmas, sir?”

“After you’ve sent them those candied pineapple rings, they won’t have time for opening other presents.”

So, he had been sent to get replacements for the inertial navigation devices to activate the Cherokee Cluster!

This was no job for an admiral. Any storekeeper, first class, in the male auxiliary naval reserve could requisition inertial navigating devices. Hansen was disgusted. As a thinker. Admiral Primrose had flaws; he approached the simplest problem as if it were a challenge to a computer.

This entire little spat with the women was not a military problem, at all. It was a task for diplomacy. Once he had established contact with the real underground, he was going to show Sug his error. He was going to bring about peace with honor.

He would send Admiral Primrose a Christmas present, all right, but it wasn’t going to be candied pineapple rings. A book would be far more appropriate as a gift for that constant reader. Yes, he would send the Chief of the Combined Chiefs of Staff a leather-bound novel—leather would not mildew in an ice bunker even after a couple of decades. Admiral Primrose was going to receive from Admiral Hansen a deluxe edition of
Alice in Wonderland
.

After the policewomen had taken the President away in a paddy wagon, Admiral Hansen ran into trouble, himself, in the waiting room. He had asked the girl at the desk to page Miss Dessy Monas, when he turned to find trouble in the form of a very large black policewoman holding a long billy club at both ends and standing spraddle-legged before him. The legs that jutted from beneath the blue serge miniskirt resembled two old-fashioned pot-bellied stoves, the only connotation of warmth anywhere about her.

“Picking up somebody’s baggage, Charlie?”

“No. I’m waiting an answer to a page.”

“You don’t wait here. This is the ladies’ waiting room. You wait over there.”

She swung the billy club in a flipping arc and pointed it toward a door marked men.

“I don’t have to go to the men’s room.”

“Since when you don’t have to go to the men’s room?”

“Officer, I object to being segregated. As a naval officer, I never judged a man by his sex, color, creed, or previous condition of servi…”