Must speak with Herb Junior about his grades, stealing, etc.
—JOURNAL, OCT. 16, 1992
I slept on the couch in my office the night of the President’s historic address. I was awoken shortly before six by a banging sensation on my forehead. It was Firecracker. He was in his pajamas and was carrying about four pounds of comic books. He got in under the blanket and handed me the comic books. Thus I began one of the most decisive days in American history by reading aloud from Newbold the Wonder Slug and Titanium Kid.
The spectacle of a U.S. Naval Task Force steaming at full speed toward Bermuda had certainly caught the world’s attention. The morning papers were full of reaction to the President’s speech. I winced at the Post headline, AMERICA GOES TO WAR. I hadn’t recalled anything in the President’s speech about war. Though he had made it clear he was no longer in a mood to be trifled with, the true mission of Extreme Displeasure remained a secret. The purpose of the speech was to persuade M-and-M that if this nonsense continued he might end up on the business end of the battleship New Jersey’s sixteen-inch guns.
The Soviet Ambassador, Vassily Kritkin, relatively new to Washington, arrived at nine. He was a stout fellow with watery eyes and strong cologne. He suffered from some skin condition and was constantly scratching. (I had advised him on some ointments.)
He had come to warn the President that the Soviet Union would be “forced to respond” in the event of a U.S. attack on Bermuda. The President nodded and steered the conversation toward the Ambassador’s eczema or whatever it was, which seemed to throw the Ambassador off guard. The interview concluded with the President giving him a good whack on the back and admonishing him, “Don’t be a stranger.” I saw to it that he left with several boxes of White House matches. Those always sent the Ambassador off with a smile.
Shortly after ten I received a call from the Uniformed Secret Service division saying I was needed “urgently” in room 103 of the Executive Office Building. There had been “an incident.”
When I arrived I found two officers restraining Charlie and attempting to soothe him. He had each of them by their ties and was saying belligerent things to them. One of the White House medical staff had a blood-pressure sleeve around Charlie’s arm. Charlie had a wild look in his eyes. His hair was mussed and he was breathing heavily.
Another officer told me that he thought Robin Peterson would be “all right” but that he had been taken to George Washington University Hospital just “to have some X-rays taken.”
He said they had been called by Peterson’s secretary, who told them “Mr. Manganelli is in with Mr. Peterson and there are strange banging sounds going on.”
I was not able to get much from Charlie—he was in quite a state. But clearly the problem was the speech. I’d asked Peterson to rework Charlie’s draft. He’d done a perfectly workmanlike job, and had added the line “We must never shrink from force, just as we must never force others to shrink from us,” with its Kennedyesque echoes. Charlie, however, took strong exception to it. Writers are a sensitive lot—too sensitive, in my opinion.
After bundling Charlie off to Bethesda, I called Dr. Saladino at George Washington. There was no serious damage to Peterson, nothing broken, just a swollen lower lip and a bruise below the left eye. I told him of the need for discretion, and he assured me the matter would remain “private.” Very agreeable man.
At one o’clock Clanahan called me. “More good news,” he said. “Cain is making a speech this afternoon on TV.” Cain was our private code word for Dan Tucker.
I really did not feel like being the one to tell the President this. We argued for five minutes about whose job it was. It was a truly inverse Washington phenomenon: two top-level government officers, each trying to convince the other one that he was closer to the President. Of course, I was closer; it was just not a distinction I felt at the moment like enjoying. In the end we tossed a coin. I did the tossing and it came out heads. Clanahan had said tails. He didn’t believe me. So we set up a conference call with Marshall Brement, a mutual and trusted friend and Assistant Secretary of State for Political Affairs. Without telling Marshall what was at stake, we had him toss. I lost.
“More good news,” I said, walking into the Oval Office, trying to sound as perky as popcorn. The President did not take the news well.
Feeley spent an hour on the phone trying to convince the U.S. networks not to carry the speech live. Hah!
Even now, years later, I sometimes dream about that speech. Joan tells me she knows I’ve been having the dream when I begin hurling pillows at the dresser.
I watched Dan’s speech with the President and Feeley in the Oval. It was just the three of us. He didn’t want anyone else.
I don’t know what made Dan tick, but his clock was not working properly. I don’t know if he ever would have made good his promise to immolate himself in public the moment the first U.S. landing craft or paratrooper hit Bermudian soil. The point was that M-and-M might not have given him the option of changing his mind. The President convened another session of the EST.
My heart went out to the man. Here he was doing everything in his power to keep the North Atlantic from becoming a war zone, and now his baby brother was threatening to douse himself with gasoline and light a match to himself.
The President apologized to the EST members for the “awkwardness” of the situation. I thought I caught a faint trace of a smirk on Lleland’s face. Admiral Boyd and Gilhooley seemed to have a hard time looking the President in the eye. I think they pitied the man too.
The situation did not require much discussion. Admiral Boyd was directed to assemble another extraction team and to coordinate with Clanahan. The operation was code-named Urgent Laundry, and was to be given priority over Desperate Molar—a fact which obviously grated on Marvin, to judge from his book.
M-and-M’s forces, emboldened by Dan’s promise of self-immolation, pressed the attack on the base throughout the day. The President was kept in direct contact with the Pentagon. The fighting was fiercest at the main gate and along Kindley Field Road. Gilhooley wanted to “blow” the causeway, cutting off the base from the western end of the island, but the President refused, saying he did not want to escalate the conflict. This was admirable restraint, I thought. Gilhooley did not see it that way.
“Then can we at least give them a dose of 322?”
But the President did not want to use GB-322 again. His appetite for chemicals had been ruined; besides, there was the other danger. “General,” he said, “if they so much as get a whiff of that stuff, you know what they might do to Mr. Edelstein?”
From his silence it was clear General Gilhooley was indifferent to the fate of Marvin’s toes.
“We just need to hold twelve hours longer, Gilhooley.”
“Sir, we may not have twelve hours.”
“Have you tried the hoses?”
Gilhooley sighed. “The water pistols. Yes, Mr. President. We have. And those people appear to be enjoying themselves.”
“Good, good,” said the President. “I’m glad there’s something redeeming about all this.”
All day the giant C-7A Universe cargo jets roared in and out of the base continuously on their secret missions, setting the stage for Operation Extreme Displeasure. I’m told by those who were there that it was a sight to rival the Berlin airlift.
Toward seven p.m., with the fleet only five hours from rendezvous point Sierra off St. George’s, the fence along runway ten was breached. This was the scene of the heroic repulse by Master Sergeant Stephen Wagner.
Wagner directed his men to charge the attackers with the fire-fighting trucks. Outnumbered nearly ten to one, he and his unit foamed the invaders to a standstill until reinforcements arrived to complete the repulse with rubber bullets and tear gas.
One of the President’s happiest duties as commander-in-chief was pinning on Wagner’s Bronze Star with V device in the Rose Garden.
In the midst of all this my wife, Joan, called. “Herb,” she said, “I’m worried about Herb, Junior.”
“Joan,” I said, “this is not a good time.”
“He bought a crossbow at Sears.”
“Joan, where did he get the money to buy a crossbow at Sears from?”
“That’s just it. I think he’s stealing from my purse.”
“Joan, you’re going to have to cope with this. I can’t—”
“You remember what he did with that slingshot.”
“All right, tell him to put it away. I’ll speak with him when I get home.”
“When will that be? You haven’t been home—”
“Goodbye, Joan.”
Shortly after midnight we boarded the motorcade for the Pentagon. The President wanted what he called a “no-frills” motorcade, so we went in just ten vehicles, not counting motorcycles. We reached the Pentagon seven minutes later, and a few minutes after that we were ushered into the National Military Command Center. It sometimes goes by the name “the War Room.”
“Welcome to Ground Zero,” said a general to me with a Disneyland smile. I suppose it was just his way of trying to make me comfortable, but I found it unsettling.
Behind a glass plate there were men working at computer terminals. In the center of them stood a gray metal box latched shut with seven padlocks, each one a different color. I didn’t even ask what was in it, but I had a pretty good idea. I noticed that each time the door to the NMCC opened, a sign lit up saying: THIS ROOM NOT SUITABLE FOR SENSITIVE CONVERSATION.
If truth be told, the place gave me the heebie-jeebies. I said to myself, Steady now, Wadlough, your country needs a cool head, but that only made me more nervous. I was beginning to think I might not be cut out for government service.
After a half-hour the motorcade was sent back to the White House with an advanceman sitting in the President’s car. Soviet intelligence monitors motorcade movements, and we did not want them to know we were staying at the Pentagon until Operations Desperate Molar and Urgent Laundry were complete.
At exactly 0207 hours Eastern Standard Time the President gave the go-ahead order. I felt a little chill as he said to Admiral Boyd, “Let’s do it.”
The Admiral had offered the President CVM, or Continuous Visual Monitoring of the operations. Small TV cameras with infrared capability embedded in the headgear of selected commandos could instantly relay the picture up onto the six screens in the NMCC. The President had declined, however; “This isn’t the Superbowl,” he’d said. He did agree, however, to CAM, Continuous Audio Monitoring. Through headphones we would be able to hear the sounds of Desperate Molar and Urgent Laundry.
The President was too nervous to listen to his brother’s rescue mission, so we both would be tuned in to Desperate Molar.
It started with a whop-whop-whop noise, followed by a zzzzzzt as the Alpha Group commandos rappelled out of the helicopters to the sound of heavy breathing. Then there was some thumping, followed by a most awful gurgling noise, which I took to be some wretch having his source of oxygen curtailed. I winced.
Steady, Wadlough, I said to myself.
More thumping followed. Then there was a series of noises that sounded like someone with a lisp trying to say “Stop.” A military aide explained that those were silenced machine-pistol shots. Each thupp was followed by an “Unh!” or, in some cases, an “Ah!”
There were quite a few more thupp noises. Then some muffled explosions followed by coughing. Then a voice.
“Who are you?”
I have never been so pleased to hear Marvin’s voice.
“Come on!”
“Wait a minute—”
“Hurry! Hurry! Keep down!”
“I can’t leave like this.”
Then there were loud explosions. An alarm. Barking. A siren.
“I’m in the middle of nego—”
That was the last we heard of Marvin. There was an abrupt “Unnnh!” followed by the sound of something being dragged. I deduced that something was Marvin. The major leading the operation had apparently elected not to stand about and discuss it with him.
Thereafter the soundtrack was chaos. Shooting and shouting and barking and screaming and a series of “Move it, move it!” After the most excruciating length of time the whop-whop-whop returned. Distant at first, it grew louder until it overwhelmed the explosions and shouting.
“His legs!” I heard through the whopping. Then, “Go! Go! Go!” as the helicopter blades grew louder, almost deafening.
Suddenly there were two shots, close together. A groan. Someone shouted, “Major!”
There was a crunch that jolted me. The sound of breath going out. The whop-whop of the helicopters faded and soon there were only voices, a distant barking, and the croaking of tree frogs.
“Sir? Mr. Wadlough? Mr. Wadlough.”
I opened my eyes. A colonel had his hand on my shoulder. He gently lifted the phones off my head.
“They’re safe,” he said. “They’re on their way back to the carrier.”
I looked over at the President. He had never before sent men to their death, nor had I ever seen him weep before.
I whispered at one of the generals to find out if the President’s brother was safe yet.
He shook his head and asked me if I cared to listen in. I wasn’t especially anxious to, but if something went wrong, I felt it would be better if the President heard it from me.
The First Brother was in another house, the former Cabinet building on Front Street. It was even more heavily guarded than People’s House. Of the two missions, it was the dicier.
I put on the earphones and right away heard a lot of thupping. Doors were being kicked in to the accompaniment of shouting. They hadn’t found him yet.
Wincing at every “Unh!” that indicated a deceasing BUPI guard, I listened as the Alpha Group team swarmed through the rooms. It was almost as harrowing as being there. Little droplets of perspiration beaded over my upper lip.
Presently I heard what sounded like several zippers being rapidly fastened at the same time, followed by a spate of “ooh”s and clumping sounds. Then two loud phoomps—concussion grenades, so the General said—went off.
Burst of thupp noises.
“We’re American! It’s all right!”
I could not make out the next words, but they sounded like chanting of a religious sort. Then I realized: it was Dan. He was safe!
“Put that down, Mr. Tucker!”
“Oh light, oh truth, oh, Baba.…”
Baba?
“Don’t do that, Mr. Tucker!”
“Baba—AHHHHH!!” There was a whoomp. The sounds of scuffling. A great phooshing; then nothing but heavy breathing and running footsteps. Two minutes later the audio was drowned out by helicopter blades.
The General explained that the Alpha Group team had anticipated that Dan might try to set fire to himself on the spot, so they had equipped themselves with fire-extinguishers. I was able to inform the President that his brother was singed but safe. As we left the War Room, I made a note to ask the Attorney General to look into this Bhagwan fellow. I have always been a stout upholder of freedom of religion, but I take a dim view of pukka sahibs of any stripe whose followers go about setting themselves on fire.