Not Fade Away
or, Quality Woodwork
An American Myth
a novel by William Keisling
yardbird books
Copyright © 1999-2010 by William Keisling
All rights reserved.
ISBN 978-1-882611-22-5
A portion of this book first appeared in
The North American Review as
"A Fire in the Box that Could Truly Light the World."
Thanks, Robley Wilson, Jr.
Thanks to Lynn Hamrick for help with cover and design.
Apologies to Henri.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Keisling, William.
Not fade away, or, Quality Woodwork :
an American myth
/ William Keisling.
p. cm.
ISBN 1-882611-12-8 (hc : alk. paper)
ISBN 1-882611-13-6 (pbk. : alk. paper)
I. Title
PS3561.E37575N68 1997
813'.54--dc21 97-21541
CIP
About the adverbs in this book:
In keeping with the current popular distaste for adverbs, the writer resolved to pull most if not all of them from his book. The job nearly complete, he lost his footing and spilled the whole bag of unwanted adverbs pallmall into the story. Realizing the job now was hopeless, he shoveled more in for good measure.
-- The Author
For a Rocker
Larry Holley remembers Buddy coming to him for a loan to buy a Strat based on Buddy's belief that he would soon be another Elvis Presley and would, therefore, need the best of equipment....
Holly's original Stratocaster, the one purchased by Larry Holley in Lubbock and used on most of Holly’s recordings and tours, has never been accounted for.
-- Guitar Player, June 1982
Overture:
A Window on All Time
The seed of our destruction will blossom in the desert,
the alexin of our cure grows by a mountain rock,
and our lives are haunted by a Georgia slattern,
because a London cutpurse went unhung.
Each moment is the fruit of forty thousand years.
The minute-winning days, like flies, buzz home to death,
and every minute is a window on all time.
-- Thomas Wolfe
ROLL OVER, Schoolmaster Dickens, and tell Bill Shakespeare the news. Tell him about your American cousins in the days they walked the tallest and the boldest. Tell him about The Bomb and The Pill, the microchip and the gigabyte; mass production, test-tube babies and future shock; the lift-off from the sandy beaches of Kitty Hawk to the set-down on the desolate prairie of the Sea of Tranquillity. Poke him in the ribs with one of those double-edged razors you confiscated from King Richard III. Tell him how the day which shall live in infamy in the winter of our discontent was made glorious summer by Big Boy and Fat Man over Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Tell him it was the best of spacetime, it was the absolute worst of spacetime, it was nanoseconds of utmost confidence, it was microseconds of deepest most doubt. Dreams were just around the corner, but destruction was just around the corner too. In short, it was a period very much like today, except the sensation of speed was still seductively attractive. Cars, spaceships and computers had yet to become too fast. Change had yet to come so fast that things got disorienting. Future shock had yet to be discovered.
A bald-headed old man, who later would leave office issuing vague warnings about bureaucrats hidden away in the woodwork, governed from the White House in Washington; a bald-headed old man, who would later pound tables with his shoe at the United Nations, governed from the Kremlin in Moscow. In both countries it was clear to the managers of the state supplies of guns and butter that things would stay the same forever.
The year was 1959. The day, February 3. The moment was this:
Washington. Impeccable February weather. In the cloistered backyard of the White House, out on the putting green, eyeing a lengthy shot across the frosty clipped grass, stood the 34th president of the United States, Dwight David Eisenhower. He was measuring off the distance by holding his iron up into the quiet morning.
How should we describe this man to the ages? As he silently trods up to his dimpled ball, digs in his cleated golf shoes, and takes his stand with his favorite putting iron, how can we hint at the impact he had on his century? Do the deeds of a boy foretell the deeds of the man? If so, consider the story of him as a boy, growing up in Abilene, Kansas, smaller than the other boys but good with his fists. They say once a bigger boy was teasing him when he turned around and let the bully have a quick right cross, followed by a left, taking him by surprise, leaving him sprawled in the dust. He stood with fists bared and teeth snarled, unafraid, beckoning to the bully boy, "Come on." The bully boy got up and ran.
Half a world away, half a lifetime away, what were the thoughts of that first German soldier staring out of his bunker onto the misty beaches of Normandy? He saw boats. Thousands and thousands of boats coming in with the changing tide, sailing out of the mist. The bully boys in Berlin were about to get a little present from the two-fisted boy from Abilene.
Once the plague that blighted our house was burned to ashes and its dust carried by the wind to the four corners of the globe, our heads were showered with victorious tickertape, our battled armaments were set aside as stern warnings to the future, our dreadful councils of war gave way to the friendly meetings of families around tv sets to watch Uncle Miltie, Ed Sullivan and a young man named Elvis, and the rumble of our tanks faded to the thunder of our shake, our rattle and our roll. We were left to shake it just a little in the middle of the night. Fair-faced peace had smoothed Ike's wrinkled brow, and now -- instead of riding off to the front in an armored personnel carrier wrapped in his trademark Eisenhower jacket -- he takes his stand with a putting iron on the frosty green behind the White House ensconced in his favorite woolly sweater.
There were others not content to so peacefully pass the time, others determined to play the villain, ones who hated the idle pleasures of those sleepy days. Plots they laid, to steal the secrets of the atom, causing others, by dangerous innuendo and libel, to launch a red scare, until both friend and foe had combined to threaten the peace. Few were more aware of the dangers and intrigues of the time than was Ike. He was fond of cryptically telling visitors at the White House that only Americans could hurt America.
The technology of the atom left him in a difficult dilemma, one that struck at the heart of a free society. How could an open society protect its secrets while at the same time remain open? In those days the question occupied Ike's mind no end. In his old soldier's days he never had to wrestle with such difficult abstract questions. To be a soldier is merely to destroy -- to govern is to decide. Though he would never admit it to anyone, not even to himself, Eisenhower secretly felt out of his league in the White House, not up to the job of statesman. In four words, he had trouble deciding.
That was why he turned to golf. Whenever the unbearable final hour came when he was forced to make a decision of grave national import, and after he had read the voluminous stacks of persuasive reports prepared by sincere advisors who recommended one course of action, followed by equally voluminous stacks of equally persuasive reports written by equally sincere advisors who recommended the exact opposite course of action, he would take up his putter, slinging it over his shoulder like a Boston minuteman taking up his flintlock. With his little white ball he would trod out to the backyard green. Depending on how well he was putting that day he would make his decision.
He had it nearly worked out to a science. Generally, as a rule, if he had a bad day on the putting green he would be surly and difficult and he was sure to oppose just about whatever came up for his consideration. But on those days when he felt the magic in his hands and could putt well he would go along with just about anything.
It was a strange way to run a modern country, that's true, but it worked for Ike. Times were good, and he couldn't help secretly suspecting that the nation's prosperity had something to do with the brand of golf balls he bought. For this reason he had a deep-seated suspicion of using inferior golf balls, and he made it a point never to accept an inferior ball as a gift, so fearful was he that World War III might break out if he did.
This particular morning finds Eisenhower grappling with another of those thorny national security problems he must address, even as he grapples with his putting iron and addresses the ball. Several hours earlier, in the middle of the night, an aide awoke him with the news that America's latest intercontinental ballistic missile, the Atlas, named after a Greek god who was turned to stone, had again failed its launch test. The missile's engines had mystifiedly shut off seconds before the scheduled blast off. Like its namesake, it sat like a stone statue on its pad. A week before another Atlas hadn't risen more than twenty feet before it'd careened out of control, spinning abandonedly and blowing up in a wild display of pyrotechnics. These "anomalies," as the missile scientists were fond of calling the misfirings, couldn't be explained. Sabotage, the president was told, couldn't be ruled out.
"Something's got to be done!" Ike ranted to his senior advisors not long ago in one particularly stormy Oval Office meeting. Eisenhower had presided over many such discussions, some of which would remain secret to his countrymen for many decades, some of which never would become known.
The A-Bomb drove him crazy. What would happen, he constantly asked his advisers, if the government of the people got nuked? Wasn't this the central question, why he'd been elected president? he'd ask. Like the dot beneath the question mark, all the other crisis flowed to this.
Hadn't America entrusted the old soldier to formulate contingency plans for the worst possible military event? He called his contingencies the Doomsday Plan. He'd commissioned the excavation of vast bomb shelters to house the president, congress and the supreme court. He authorized special units of the military to train for rescue missions and to implement the plan. In the event Washington was nuked commandos would fly to the rubble of the White House and the capitol building, cut through the wreckage and airlift the elected officials to the secluded bomb shelters.
Eisenhower insisted on drills. At a moment's notice, in the middle of dinner or even on the john, his cabinet officers would be whisked away to faraway underground command posts. They'd arrive God-knows-where in the dead of night to find Eisenhower far underground in a lavish command post, at the head of his underground cabinet table, holding a stop watch, complaining about the time it took to airlift the cabinet halfway across the country and drop everyone eight miles down a mine shaft. He'd even signed presidential orders authorizing martial law in the event of Doomsday. The unspoken irony was that after the population had been decimated by nuclear war, the economy destroyed and marshal law declared, there wouldn't be much left of the government for the people, by the people.
These signed orders and the Doomsday plans would remain in a lead-shielded safe for nearly fifty years, ready for implementation, unseen and unknown by the public they were meant to protect. In this way Eisenhower's shadow would be cast over the government long after he was gone.
One particular day Eisenhower's ever-wary mind pondered the possibility that a red had waltzed into NASA and sabotaged the Atlas. How could this possibility be prevented in the future?
"Someone tell me why it is those damn Russians seem to know all our secrets when we know none of theirs?"
"It's difficult to keep secrets in an open society like ours," one of the advisors pointed out. "Joe Stalin never had that problem."
"Well I never heard such tommyrot!"
Eisenhower paced behind his desk, tearing up the wooden floor with his golf cleats. "In the military we'd never'd put up with such sloppy security and intelligence as this. I tell you, mister, heads would roll! If we'd've had such sloppy security and intelligence in the army I tell you we'd've lost the damn war!"
"Yes, Mr President."
Scowling, Eisenhower pulled open the top drawer of his desk, pointing to the newly installed array of buttons that, if pushed, would initiate nuclear war.
"It's an outrage and a national disgrace!" Eisenhower chewed on. "Here we are, with no idea what's going on in the Kremlin, while over here, what's to stop some Russian from leaving a tour of the White House and coming up here and pressing these buttons?"
"A Russian attack Russia?" one of the men laughed.
"Damnit I'm serious mister!" Eisenhower snarled back, leaning far over his desk. "The laxness of security in civilian government never ceases to amaze me. If this was the military do you know what we'd do? We'd have an ultra top-secret security and intelligence detail that would keep tabs on things. Someone to police the police. Everyone would be so afraid for their necks I guarantee you mister no secrets would ever leak out. If this was the military I tell you we'd seal up this government tighter than a drum!"
"But Mr President," Ike heard one of them say, and rather quietly at that, "this is not the military." He saw it'd come from his advisor for civilian affairs, who was a low-keyed, button-down, bow-tie-wearer of a man from back East named Haines. Other presidents had advisors for military affairs, but Ike needed no help finding his way around the Pentagon. Ike kept someone around who could help explain the strange and unfathomable ways of civilians.
"What's that you say Haines? For godsakes man speak up!" Why was it these Ivy League guys never learned to speak up? Ike perpetually wondered.
Haines cleared his throat. He sat stiffly in his wing chair. Swallowing hard, his bow tie bobbed.
"You say you'd seal up our government tighter than a drum," Haines meekly proffered, "when I'm sure you realize that's precisely what Stalin achieved in Moscow. Is that the type of government we want?"
"What are you driving at, Haines?"
"Do we really want all these top-secret operatives hiding in the woodwork with no one to keep an eye on them, Mr President?"
Eisenhower glared at Haines. The pip-squeak had a point.
"Are you saying a top-secret security and intelligence detail would be a bad idea for the country?" he asked. "And does that mean you'll take responsibility if the Russians walk off with the store?"
Haines melted under Eisenhower's unyielding gaze. He shrank in his seat, sweating visibly.
"Well?"
"The decision ultimately is yours, Mr President."
"Isn't that just how it is around here!" Eisenhower exploded.
He'd resumed his pacing, grinding the floorboards to sawdust with his cleats.
"Why do I keep you advisors in your monkey suits around if you keep throwing these decisions back at me? You might as well be court jesters!"
Since moving into the White House he'd found this was by far the toughest part of the job. It really wasn't just cliché: it was lonely at the top. Often he amused himself by thinking that, of all the millions of people who wanted to be president, there probably wasn't a sane soul in the whole damn country who wanted to make the tough decisions that came with the job.
The presidential advisors watched the old soldier anguish over the problem in front of the bay windows overlooking the putting green out back.
"So what are we to do with this security problem?" Eisenhower finally piped. "A decision has to be reached. If I was a Roman general and if this was ancient Rome do you know what we'd do? I'd have one of you jokers go out and sacrifice a goat so we could look at the entrails. But this is not Rome, this is twentieth century America. I suppose that means we'll just have to tackle this the usual way."
The usual way was for each advisor to write out his opinion on paper. The advice of experts in the field was also sought. Later, as he read through the thick stacks of position papers, Eisenhower saw that each contradicted the last. One well-informed expert stated that a top-secret security and intelligence team would definitely be a good idea for the country, another well-informed expert stated that a top-secret security and intelligence team would definitely be a bad idea for the country. This position paper here said the president would be ill-advised to do it, that position paper there said the president would be ill-advised not to do it. Eisenhower was at last filled with such a great sense of indecision that he felt like strangling every one of the well-informed experts with his bare hands. He had come no closer to making a decision. So he made no decision at all.
That was where the matter stood when he was awoken from an uneasy sleep by the telephone call from an aide early in the morning of February 3, 1959. Another test firing of an Atlas missile had failed, he was told over the phone. The turkey sat sputtering motionless on the pad, then it had blown up, and sabotage couldn't be ruled out.
Ike slammed down the phone. He lay in bed staring up at the darkened ceiling. In the early morning darkness he could hear Mamie's even breathing. He knew he could always roll over and go back to sleep but he couldn't bring himself to do it. That was the problem with these ultra top-secret national security problems. If you ignored them no one out in the street would be any wiser, at least for a while, but it would still rob you of sleep. You would know.
Cursing, he got out of bed.
"What is it this time, dear?" Mamie asked sleepily.
"It's those damn chowderhead advisors of mine and the tommyrot I get for advice around here. It always comes down to me."
"Well calm down or you'll take another coronary."
"Maybe then my troubles will be over."
Already he'd gotten out of his pajamas and was stepping into his pants. He slipped on his golf shoes and went out.
The sun, big and red, just cracked the horizon as he walked onto the frosted putting green, trailing a train of footsteps in the frost. Pulling on his golfing glove, he looked up at the sunrise. What's that old salt's saying? he thought. "Red sky at night, sailor's delight; red sky at morning, sailors take warning." Hmph! If I was a stupid grog-drinking swabbie maybe it would have some pertinence.
His putting iron on his shoulder, like a rifle, and the little white ball clutched firmly in hand, like a grenade, he circled the fringe on the perimeter of the green, eyeing his objective: the little hole near the center of the green with the flag sticking out of it.
"All right," he soliloquized softly, reconnoitering the hole. "This is how it'll be. If I sink this putt, there'll be a new top-secret security and intelligence detail in America. If I miss, to hell with it."
With that, he unceremoniously dropped the ball over his shoulder then turned to regard his lie. He saw he held an unfortunate field position. The ball had landed squarely in a hole the squirrels had dug while looking for winter food.
Those damn squirrels! Throughout his administration he'd complained unendingly to his aides about the squirrels. He'd gone so far as to order his Secret Service agents to chase after them with butterfly nets, trap them and have them shipped off in exile to the woods of Virginia. By appeasing Eisenhower in this matter of the squirrels his aides thought they were merely giving in to a slightly eccentric foible of a great man. It's well known that men of greatness most always suffer a foible or two, so his staff thought little of it, even though those big Secret Service agents did look ridiculous chasing squirrels around the White House grounds with butterfly nets. They had no way of knowing that the future of the free world hung in balance on the lip of the cup at the center of Ike's putting green, and that the squirrels, by digging up the smooth manicured surface of the green, posed unsettling problems for humanity.
For a moment, looking around and seeing he was completely and utterly alone, Eisenhower considered kicking the ball from the squirrel hole. He was often quarrelous when it came to golf. On the eighteenth hole of the Augusta National Golf Course in Georgia a tree stuck out into the fairway on the left and the president never failed to cap off a good game by hooking his ball into it. His blood boiling, he one day stormed into the clubhouse and asked the directors to chop down "that damn tree," but was politely rebuffed. They'd nervously reminded the enraged president and liberator of Europe that golf, like life, was a game where one must hit the ball where it lay. In his heart Eisenhower knew they were right. Now he checked his impulse to kick the ball from the squirrel hole. Not only would it be unsporting, he knew in his heart of hearts it would be an unmanly, cowardly thing to do. He was forced to remind himself that a man of true greatness does not bemoan a difficult situation -- he turns the difficult situation to his advantage. Wasn't that what Julius Caesar was renowned for on the battlefield? The sudden, unexpected action that took his adversaries by surprise and turned the tables to his favor? Wasn't that precisely what Meade had done by securing Little Round Top in the Battle Of Gettysburg, thereby gaining the benefit of the high ground and in so doing turning the tide in the war between the states?
Bringing his eye down close to the golf ball, he surveyed the squirrel hole. It looked like a miniature shell crater. He told himself this wasn't such a bad field position after all. Hadn't Grant had it worse in Vicksburg? Was he less of a man than that swaggering old drunkard of a West Point washout, less of a field commander, less of a president? Hmph! That was sure saying it. Tommyrot!
Straightening himself, digging his cleats into the frozen ground, he gently brought the flat face of the putter against the dimpled ball. He'd have to remember to keep his elbow in. That was the secret. That, and the fingers. At times like this Ike wondered what kind of president Arnold Palmer would make. A real straight shooter, that young fellow. A great putter like Arnold Palmer would do the world a world of good.
Holding his breath, intrepidly bringing back the putter, he fired away. The instant he hit the ball he knew he'd missed. It glanced off the lip of the squirrel hole and took off at a good clip wide of the pin. In a way, he was relieved. No shadowy security and intelligence team, Haines would be glad to hear. Then, as the ball was about to roll past the hole, one of those cursed lean and hungry squirrels darted from the hedges and tackled the ball, mistaking it for something to eat. With a loud clatter the squirrel rolled over the ball, deflecting its course. Eisenhower waved his club, the squirrel ran off posthaste, but it was too late. Ever so slowly the ball crept toward the flag, at last hanging on the very precipice of the hole. Eisenhower held his breath as the ball rattled over the brink into the cup.
It was the legendary luck of Eisenhower. He stood there for the better part of a minute, unmoving. Then he looked up at the boiling gray February sky, looked up into those morning clouds as if he'd just been witness to a pronouncement from heaven.
A little shook up, Eisenhower went into the Oval Office and picked up the phone. He would often make his own phone calls. It was a habit left over from his army days. It would take people by surprise to answer the phone and find Ike on the other end. Often they couldn't bring themselves to believe it was him, that it must be a practical jokester.
"Haines?" he now said gruffly into the phone. "This is Eisenhower. What do you mean, 'Knock it off?' Of course it's me. Who the hell else would I be? Now listen. I've made up my mind about that security and intelligence detail. Get in here so we can get the ball rolling."
It was the better part of an hour and a half before Haines came briskly into the Oval Office. He had an early morning, just-shaved-and-showered look to him. His usual bow tie and tweed jacket. A manila folder under his arm. Eisenhower stared vacantly out the bay windows, his golfing glove in hand. Haines saw the presidential putting iron leaning against the great wooden desk.
"I must say Mr President I don't envy you for having to arrive at such a difficult decision," Haines said. "I don't think I'd have the wherewithal to reason out the proper response in this case. If it was me I'm afraid I'd've resorted to the entrails of that goat you were joking about."
He smiled, intending to inject humor, but Eisenhower gave him a strange glare.
"Hmph," the president grunted, moving from the windows.
"I suppose reason always prevails in the end, sir."
"I certainly hope so."
Eisenhower went despondently to his desk.
"Another Atlas blew up on the pad last night," he told Haines. "I was forced to-- come to terms with the problem. I wonder if the boys in the newsroom got wind of the missile failure yet." He switched on the radio. It began to whine as it warmed up. The whining grew louder as Ike fussed with the tuning knob. That rock 'n' roll music he disliked so much poured into the stately room, breaking the early morning stillness.
"...Well that'll be the day..."
He turned the knob, heard static, then the same tune.
"...That'll be the day.. ay.. ay that I die..."
This time he jetted the little red needle all the way to the far end of the dial. Again he came up with the same tune.
"...That'll be the day..."
"Can't they play anything besides this tommyrot? Let me hear the news."
He dialed another station and at last got a reprieve from the music. A somber-voiced newsman intoned, "...been confirmed that the three of them and their pilot were killed in the early hours this morning when their plane crashed in a cornfield just outside of Clear Lake, Iowa...."
Again the president jetted the dial, this time landing on a call-in show. They heard the voice of a teenaged girl, crying.
"I can't believe he's dead," the girl sobbed sorrowfully over the radio. "Only yesterday he was so alive and then this! How could it have happened? Buddy, you'll not fade away! We'll remember you always, till the end of time."
Ike listened to her bitter lament. It was the unmistakable sound of mourning, a sound America would know only too well in the decades ahead. How could they have known it was a hint of things to come? America was about to go on a long and heartstopping roller coaster ride. Hadn't that tearful teenaged goodbye signaled the start of it? The end of an age of innocence. They'd awoken on the day the music died, the cold February morning when the world had heard the sound of America crying.
The president looked befuddled.
Haines said, "I don't think you'll hear any news of your missile today, sir. This Buddy Holly boy was killed last night. I dropped my daughter at school this morning and the way she carried on you'd have thought there'd been a death in the family. All the kids stood out in front of the high school crying in each other's arms. I never saw anything like it."
"Who is this Buddy Holly character?"
"One of those rock 'n' rollers, sir. Second only to Elvis, from what I understand."
"I thought that Presley kid was in the army, like all young men should be. Why isn't this Buddy Holly in the army?"
"He's dead now sir."
"I guess it all works out the same in the end then, doesn't it?"
"It really was very tragic, sir. On the way in I heard one of the radio announcers say he was only twenty-one."
A look of stern disapproval swept Ike's face. When he flashed that grin of his he could make flowers grow but when, as now, he wanted he could flash a stare so cold that it froze water. He switched off the radio.
"I don't believe it! A matter of supreme national importance like the misfiring of this missile and all we can get on the radio is news of the death of some boy who won't be remembered two weeks from now! I tell you, this country is in a dangerously fickle and frivolous mood these days, Haines."
"Yes, Mr President."
"Well let's get down to brass tacks then, shall we? About this security detail."
He withdrew a notepad from his desk drawer and stood over it, writing briskly. Tearing the sheet from the pad, he slid it across the desk.
Haines read, in bold, soldier's handwriting:
"This order empowers a special, secret unit of the US Army to investigate the integrity of the security apparatus of the government of the United States, particularly, but not limited to, its nuclear defense forces. If security procedures, after thorough investigation, are proved to be inadequate, the president should be notified."
"There," Eisenhower said, "that should keep them honest. I feel better already. Maybe now I'll get some shut-eye around here."
Haines studied the order.
"Why give this assignment to the army, sir?"
"Because I trust the army, that's why."
Eisenhower took in Haines' face.
"What else is troubling you mister? Spit it out."
"Don't you think, Mr President, that the objectives as they're spelled out here are a little-- broad?"
It was in fact the kind of order for which Eisenhower was famous. A framework of broad objectives, with few details sketched in, leaving quite a bit to the discretion of whoever was to receive it.
"Write an order so an idiot can follow it and I guarantee you an idiot will follow it," the president scoffed. "Men win battles, Mr Haines, not orders. When it comes right down to it, the instructions I gave the men for the D-Day invasion were little more than, 'Cross the channel, take the beach and move inland.' For that I landed here on Pennsylvania Avenue and I'm not about to tinker with success. This matter is closed."
Eisenhower glumly examined his face in the big oval mirror by the fireplace.
"Fretting over this has given me wrinkles," he said. "This one right here, I think," -- he pointed high on his bald brow -- "can be directly attributed to this decision."
"I only hope somewhere down the road we won't need policemen to police the police who are policing the police, Mr President. Then you'll be in for a few more wrinkles. Like the Romans used to say, Who shall guard the guardians themselves?"
"I share the same concern, Haines. That's why the selection of the right man for this job is vitally important."
Haines opened his manila folder.
"I brought along a list of candidates...."
"That won't be necessary, Haines." Eisenhower came away from the mirror. "I was thinking about this all morning, while I was waiting for you to roll out of bed and get in here."
He saw Haines blush.
"This job is particularly sensitive," the president went on. "It's conceivable that whoever takes this assignment may one day find a hole in our defense system. He could find his finger on that damned nuclear button over there." He nodded at his desk.
"We obviously need a man we can trust."
"I'm afraid trust won't be enough for this job, Haines. I want the man who takes this assignment to have a tremendous amount to lose if ever he finds himself with the doomsday button in front of him. A man with so much to lose that he'd never think of pressing it. A wealthy man, someone who'd want to keep this world together if only for his own greedy self-interest."
"Where will you find such a man in the army?"
Eisenhower gazed off. In his mind's eye he visualized the Pentagon, like the Greek god Zeus might look out from Olympus and visualize the world of mortals in a pool of wine. Not since Grant had there been an American president so thoroughly familiar with the dark ranks of the Department of Defense. It was no small feat. The Pentagon, big, mysterious and impenetrable, was a heavy unseen ballast beneath the surface, a ballast upon which sailed the more visible ship of state.
"Natlong," Eisenhower said suddenly, snapping his fingers. "George A. Natlong. He's a colonel. Perfect for the job. Specializes in atomic secrecy. Worked at Alamogordo. Had a hand in the Rosenberg thing. Married into the Duke fortune."
"The Dukes?" Haines asked. "Not the floor wax Dukes? The ones who own Delaware?"
Eisenhower nodded.
"His father-in-law is Henry Duke. The old man must be worth a half a billion, at least."
"Isn't Henry Duke the eccentric who turned his family estate into the furniture museum?"
"That's the one." Ike brought his forefinger up to his brow, tapped his fingertip against it. "Nevertheless, he's the most harmless old codger you'd ever want to meet. Old Henry invites people to dinner according to the flowers that happen to be blooming in his garden. Every spring when the crocuses come up Mamie and I always get an invite to dinner. You've never seen a bivouac like his. Winterford, he calls it. Rooms and rooms of antique furniture, from every era of American history. He disassembles old houses and ships them to his mansion, where he reassembles them down in his basement, lock, stock and barrel. His daughter married this Natlong. The smartest move of his career. He stands to inherit a mint so it's a safe bet he'll want the world to stick around so he can collect. If one day you'll own the world I'm betting you won't want to see it destroyed. What do you think of my reasoning, Haines?"
Haines nodded his approval.
"Sounds perfect for the job."
Eisenhower said dourly, "His father-in-law's been after me to promote him so now I can kill two birds with one stone. If Natlong accepts this assignment see that he's promoted to brigadier general."
"Yes, Mr President. Will that be all?"
Eisenhower looked at the order in Haines's hands.
"I don't have to remind you, Haines, that this assignment should be considered to rank among the highest level of secrets."
"You mean--."
"That's right. This is a Confidential Executive Order. Aside from you and me, the only one who should know of it is the man who takes the job. Natlong must agree to take the assignment before you give him any details, understand? If he turns down our offer, come back here and we'll pick someone else. Is that clear?"
"Yes sir."
Haines started to go, but Eisenhower held up a finger.
"One more thing, Haines. I should write down the number of that damn order. Someone sure as hell better keep track of these things."
From a side drawer in his desk Eisenhower took a plain brown ledger. Opening it, he said, "Never thought I'd end up resorting to this little book as much as I've been." He slid on his reading glasses and, taking up the ledger, he said, "Now let's see. That must make this Confidential Executive Order No. 666."
He scribbled out a brief notation in the ledger but when he looked up he saw Haines staring at the order in his hands, staring with what could only be called dread.
"What's the matter, Haines? For christsakes speak up man!"
"You did say this was Confidential Executive Order No. 666, didn't you, sir?"
"That's right. If I remember, No. 664 authorized the U-2 spy plane flights over Russia. And 665 was that Bay of Pigs business. That makes this 666. What of it?"
Haines cast his troubled gaze about the Oval Office. He found what he was looking for on the bookshelf. It was an old, trenchworn soldier's Bible, the one Ike had carried with him since the old days. Haines went over and tore into it.
"Here it is, sir. Revelations 13. It's a prediction of a beast that will supposedly bring about the end of the world. I'm sure you've heard of it. The beast is known to the ages only by a number."
With unsteady hands, he handed the ragged old Bible to Eisenhower, pointing out a passage. The president brought the book over to the light of the windows.
"'Here is wisdom,'" he read aloud. "'He who has understanding, let him reckon the number of the beast, for it is a number of a man, and its number is six hundred and sixty-six.'"
He closed the book.
"Humph," he grunted. That was all.
Haines distrustfully held Confidential Executive Order No. 666 out in front of himself, holding it at a distance, like it carried plague.
"Maybe we shouldn't go through with this after all sir," Haines said softly, his voice atremble.
Eisenhower looked amazed. He remembered back to the war, to his command in Europe, to one particularly rainy night in Britain when he'd been finishing preparations for the Normandy invasion. Everyone was pushed to the limit. Ike knew if they bungled the invasion the Americans probably would be pulled out to fight in the Pacific, sacrificing Europe to the enemy. It was the darkest moment of his life. Late one night at Allied High Command a British officer approached him with a folded slip of paper. Ike opened it and found the address of a woman in South Dorchester. "What's this?" he'd asked the officer. "You yanks would call her a psychic," the Brit replied with a wink. "She had me give you her address. She believes she can help you. If I were you, general, I wouldn't cross the channel without seeing her first." Feeling somehow embarrassed, Eisenhower slipped the address into his shirt pocket. Several times, when the darkness was all around him and he was filled with doubt, he'd almost resorted to that ride to South Dorchester. When millions of lives and the fate of the world rest on your shoulders there is great temptation to palm off your toughest decisions on someone or something else. Ike found himself avoiding the British officer who'd given him the address. Finally, on the night of the invasion, feeling as alone as any man has ever felt, he went to talk with the troops. They'd seen his unease. "Don't worry, general," one of the men came up and said to him, shaking his hand. "We'll win this for you." That's when he'd first gotten the inkling that it might work. The weather that night had been stormy but the meteorologists, using the latest scientific equipment, predicted it would clear in time for a landing at dawn. Was it go? they wanted to know. Walking alone down by the water, he tore the little piece of paper with the psychic's address into a hundred pieces, casting it to the waves. That was one decision he'd never regretted. Now, years later in the Oval Office, he set his tattered old Bible down on his desk.
"Why, that's just tommyrot," he told Haines, dismissing the Bible with a wave of his hand. "This decision was reached through-- ah, reason." The president self-consciously fiddled with his putting iron.
"Why, Haines," he went on, "you wouldn't want us to return to the days of augurs and soothsayers, when decisions were reached by studying the entrails of slaughtered goats, would you?"
"Of course not Mr President."
"Then get the hell over to the Pentagon with that order."
Haines looked appreciatively at the president. At times like this he was glad such a strong man held the office.
"Forgive me, sir," he said. "I must have panicked."
Eisenhower flashed that winning grin.
"It happens to the best of us, Haines. Happens to the best of us."
And so the job of enforcing Confidential Executive Order No. 666 fell to an obscure army desk jockey named George Armstrong Natlong. He was an ordinary-enough-looking career officer, a little on the short and stocky side, with slicked-back graying hair, a pale face with sunken distrustful eyes set like coals in a snowman above a neatly trimmed gray moustache. He could have been mistaken for any one of a million men in uniform working around the Pentagon. He looked a little like a wrung-out Hemingway. He was one of those men who always tried to carry himself in a way that would suggest he was stronger or bolder than he really was. Few people were impressed, not even children. He was a dying breed, a relic of the past, a dinosaur, a pseudo-macho man at a time when the world no longer had a need or a taste for macho men.
For many years he faithfully discharged the duties of Confidential Executive Order No. 666. His cold war exploits were many, and of such a thrilling and suspenseful nature that if ever they were to be written down and published in spy novel form they would make the works of messers Le Carré, Ludlum and Fleming seem pale and uninformed by comparison. Of this George Natlong had no doubt, as his only two diversions from his job included reading those mind corrupting books and playing poker every Wednesday night with four other army officers from his class at West Point. They, and everyone at the Pentagon, it seemed, read those debilitating books. On several occasions while they were playing cards and chatting about their latest spy read George Natlong, having had a little too much to drink, would go so far as to boast that the work in which he was currently engaged would make a better plot for a spy novel than the nonsense in whatever book they'd been discussing. The only trouble was, he wasn't at liberty to prove his point by discussing his top-secret work with his friends, let alone to publish his exploits for the masses in spy novel form. His poker friends understood, as they were army generals themselves, and also were restricted from ever mentioning the details of their work. If every once in a blue moon George Natlong, a little tight on bourbon, let down his hair enough to intimate to his closest friends that what he was doing at the Pentagon would make the current James Bond adventure seem like a trip to Disneyland, the others would just leave it at that and not badger him to elaborate. They had no way of guessing what a day in the life of George Natlong must be like.
It was just as well that George Natlong said little of his work, for if ordinary loose lips can sink ships, George Natlong's pale, moustache-shaded lips could surely sink an entire ship of state. He spent his days hidden away in the unseen bowels of the Pentagon, aided by an assistant. He went about finding leaks in the groaning ship of state so that they might be plugged before the ship sank. To see through his eyes would be to see the unprotected belly of the beast.
In 1969 he and his assistant found an open back door at Fort Knox and ended up walking off with a gold ingot. Obeying the decade-old order that had been initialed by Eisenhower, he promptly wrote out a report expressing his amazement at the lax security at the nation's gold depository, and, per instructions, he mailed the report off to President Nixon care of a secret post office box at the White House, enclosing the gold ingot with the report. That should shake them up, he thought as he dropped the heavy package down a Pentagon mail shute. He might as well've mailed that gold brick off to oblivion. To his surprise he never heard anything back from the White House. The following year, late on Christmas Eve, he and his assistant just about waltzed into the treasury and printed a whole sheet of hundred-dollar bills with Santa Claus's picture on the front. "Ho, ho, ho!" he wrote on his report, and he sent it off with the uncut sheet of bogus bills to the same secret post office box. Again, to his surprise, he heard nothing. He might as well have mailed it off to oblivion.
As the years went by he and his assistant uncovered many truly remarkable things. Anyone could walk off with moon rock. Imprinted on the back of the original copy of the US Constitution he found the following message: "For a Goode time, call Betsy Ross." George Washington's wooden teeth can be worn (though somewhat uncomfortably) with Dentu•Grip. And Pat Nixon kept a gun in her underwear drawer.
The American government, it turned out, was little more than a wide-open house. It reminded George Natlong of the olden days in America when folks went around leaving doors unlocked. These being the distrustful, turbulent days of Vietnam, Nixon and the secret bombing war in Cambodia, George Natlong found himself worrying more and more that someday someone might walk off with the store, and he wondered why no one had done it yet. What, after all, was to stop them? George Natlong didn't much understand people, didn't understand what keeps them honest. He saw only the millions of government bureaucrats and supposed it was only the fear of getting caught that kept them from walking off with the nation's most priceless property and its most sensitive secrets. Over time he'd come to see himself and his vigorous enforcement of Confidential Executive Order No. 666 as the only thing that stood in the way of the American equivalent of the sacking of Rome. He could only thank his lucky stars that this most sensitive of jobs had fallen to him. He was the only man in America he could trust to do the job right. No -- that's putting it too mildly: he was the only man in America he could trust.
Of all the national security problems worrying George Natlong none worried him more than the military communications network that tied the president to the nuclear arsenal. George Natlong's worst fear was that some unfriendly agent could break the security codes in the elaborate computerized network and wind up with his hands on the nuclear button. It was an unsettling thought, and George Natlong felt it was his patriotic duty to make sure it couldn't happen.
Early in l962, hoping to find out if just anyone could fire off a salvo of nuclear missiles, he'd hired out a large staff of egghead computer scientists, rented a warehouse in suburban Washington and bought a huge beast of a mainframe computer, identical to the one at the Pentagon. The scientists under his command spent years programming the computer but, in the end, much to George Natlong's relief, they told him it couldn't be done. The security codes protecting the Pentagon's computer were much too tough to crack, the eggheads assured George Natlong. Barring a technological breakthrough it would be impossible. Much relieved, George Natlong put his darkest fears aside and turned his attention to other, more pressing national security problems.
That was where the matter stood until early in 1975, when one morning George Natlong's assistant came to him with a classified memorandum he'd come across in the Office of Technology Assessment.
"I thought you'd better see this, general," his assistant had said. He slid the memo inauspiciously onto George Natlong's desk.
"What's this?"
"Some computer genius working for the government has made what may turn out to be an important discovery. From what I gather, this guy used a computer to design an even better computer. The first computer produced a design for a new machine that's so advanced that -- now get this -- no one can understand it. Not even the guy who invented it."
"So?"
"Don't you see, general? This could be the technological breakthrough we've been worrying about. If the Russians got their hands on this new circuitry they might be able to build a machine that'd make the Pentagon's computers look like an abacus. They might be able to neutralize our defenses."
George Natlong lowered his cigar.
Looking closely at the memorandum, he said, "I see. And this new computer-- where's it being built?"
"That's just it, sir. It isn't being built. This memo says the scientist who made the discovery requested government funding to build a prototype but got turned down. Too experimental. At least, that's what the Office of Technology Assessment says."
"You don't say." George Natlong thoughtfully brought the cigar to his mouth, rolling it around. "Very interesting."
"I thought it might be a good idea if we saw to it that this machine gets built, after all. Find out what its capabilities are. Before the enemy does."
"You think we can get this scientist to work for us?"
His assistant shrugged.
"I don't see why not."
The general's assistant was a cocky young army major with dark, handsome features, a rugged, powerful build, and a way about him that said he was accustomed to getting whatever it was he set out to have.
"You know these scientists," he said. "Offer them enough research money and they'll go to work for Himmler." Tapping his fingertip on the memo, he added, "It says here this guy's name's Patterson. Dr L. Patterson. Works not far from here, sir, in Bethesda."
"Well then major," George Natlong said, "tomorrow why don't we pay this Dr Patterson a call?"
They went sub rosa, in civilian clothing, the general and his assistant both wearing gray flannel business suits and shiny black civvy shoes. It was a little after lunch when they arrived at a door marked by a plaque which read, "L. Patterson, PhD." They knocked, heard no noises inside, and no one came to the door.
"Must still be out to lunch."
His assistant tried the knob. The door conveniently swung open. They exchanged glances, smiling knowingly. No one seemed to lock their doors.
It was a computer scientist's office, all right. Books everywhere and, along the far wall, an array of computers, blinking and clicking quietly away. The place was cluttered with transistors, circuit boards and similar electronic gizmos. Along the wall several green chalkboards were filled with the mysterious notations of a mathematician. In front of one of the chalkboards a white lab smock hung over the back of a stool. George Natlong's assistant, resting his hands on the smock, looked mystifiedly at the writing on the chalkboards.
"Might as well be hieroglyphics," he whistled through his teeth. "This guy must be some egghead."
At that moment the door opened. An attractive young woman entered. She came in all loaded down with shoe boxes. At first she didn't see the visitors. Her cheeks aglow from the cold outside, she walked to the workbench by the windows, where she set down the shoe boxes, took off her gloves.
"He may be an egghead but at least he has good taste in secretaries," George Natlong said, breaking the silence.
The young woman spun around, startled.
"Who are you?"
"I'm sorry to have startled you, hun," George Natlong winked at her, his felt hat in his hands. "We've come to see Dr Patterson. The door was open so we figured it would be all right if we waited here."
"Oh," the woman said, not sure of what to say. She looked at the second man.
"While we're waiting for Dr Patterson to get back from lunch do you suppose you could pour us a cup of that java, sweetheart?" George Natlong smiled at her. He held his felt hat out to the chemist's beaker of coffee that rested on a Bunsen burner among the clutter on the workbench.
"Certainly," she smiled back. Then, somewhat indignantly, "Hun."
In a great huff she stormed over to the coffee beaker and poured a tall mug of coffee. She brought it over to George Natlong and thrust it abruptly against his chest, splashing some onto his fingers.
"Here you are, sweetheart."
"Ouch! That's hot!"
She reached for the folded lab smock. Slipping it on, she drew from one of the oversized pockets a pair of round, black-framed eyeglasses. She slid on the glasses, took a look at the visitors.
"I'm Dr Patterson," she said.
The story of Dr Linda Patterson is worth telling. The most important part of the story concerns the one thing she wanted more than anything else, which was to build the world's finest computer.
For years she worked in the same steel and glass office building in suburban Washington DC. It was one of those nondescript modern buildings you see dotting the landscape in Bethesda, a sculptureless pillbox set behind a shapeless stainless steel sculpture, all set against acres and acres of asphalt parking lot, and all of it laid out neat and trim in the center of a whispering pine woods, making the building hard to see from the highway. If you happened to be driving on the freeway perhaps you could see a corner of the building jutting out in the distance through the pines, but that was the kind of thing you saw all the time when driving the beltway in Bethesda, and you wouldn't think twice of it. If you happened to commute often down that six-lane stretch of highway, or if you happened to own a fine home in one of the exclusive communities nearby, you would know something was out there in the pine woods, some kind of modern office building where they did something or another very modern, but that would be all you would know. You would naturally assume it was one of those things the government has going on out there, in the woodwork, one of those secrets you'd never know.
And you'd be right. The building where Linda Patterson worked housed an obscure government agency whose mission was to develop advanced electronic technologies. The thousands of people who worked in the building each wore white laboratory smocks, to keep down the dust, and color-coded photo identification badges, to keep down the possibility of leaking sensitive information to the agents of hostile foreign governments. Those who worked in the building were expected never to speak of their projects with their co-workers. And they were not supposed to associate with their co-workers after hours. These restrictions were fine with Linda Patterson, for she truly wanted to be left alone to build her marvelous machine.
Linda Patterson went to work for the government agency fresh out of school. She graduated at the top of her class from a major East Coast university, at twenty-five the holder of a doctoral degree in advanced electronics engineering. Even before she'd completed her doctorate work the director of the government agency himself paid her a surprise visit, suggesting she come to work for the agency. A mind as promising and as brilliant as hers, he told her, shouldn't be wasted on commercial projects at IBM, but should be put to work for the good of American science.
In those days Linda Patterson was, in a word, naive, believing all she needed to accomplish her dream was gobs of research money with which she could buy gobs of research time. She didn't think twice about the source of the money. Nor, in those days, did she think twice about the consequences of her work. She only cared about chasing her dream. Later, much later, she would look back with shocked amazement at just how naive she'd been. But that, as has already been said, wouldn't be until later, much later.
At the time of her interview with the director of the government agency Linda Patterson matter-of-factly explained that her great desire in life was to build the most powerful computer in the world, a machine which could only be designed with the help of another powerful computer, not to mention much time and money. The work would certainly take years, and might never pay off, but if the government was willing to foot the bill, and if it was willing to put up with many inevitable uncertainties (for scientific research is nothing if it's not in the business of digging through inevitable uncertainties), if the Government of the United States, in short, was willing to put up with her, then Linda Patterson would be willing to put up with the government.