MAMista. Len Deighton

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СКАЧАТЬ He controlled the planes of the Presidential Flight. When an extra seat on Air Force One was needed, the general knew how to fix it for the ones he favoured.

      Curl said, ‘Halfway through.’ The document he referred to was a 100-page report on a new military transport plane demonstrated the previous week. They both knew that ‘halfway through’ meant Curl had not even glanced at it.

      ‘I just came from the chief,’ said the general. He said it casually, but minutes with the President were added up proudly, like high school credits. He tapped the Air Force promotion lists to show what the President had signed.

      ‘Is he alone?’

      ‘Waiting for the eleven o’clock TV news.’

      Curl looked again at his watch. It was 10.58 pm. He was already turning away as he said, ‘Thank you, General. Can I tell you how much we all enjoyed Monday?’

      All enjoyed Monday was a far cry from how impressed we all were on Monday. But the general smiled. He liked John Curl. He was not one of those peaceniks who were yelling for more, and still more, military cutbacks every time they saw a newspaper picture of happy smiling Russians.

      Right now the Air Force needed every sympathetic voice it could get here in the White House. The poll-watchers were shouting for mega-dollars to be switched to education and fighting crime and drugs. They were saying that it was the only way to avoid the President getting severely clobbered when the mid-term elections came. ‘It was a pleasure, John,’ he called after him. ‘The Air Force is hosting one hundred and fifty Senators and guests for the same demonstration on the twenty-first. If you want tickets for anyone …’

      ‘Great. I’ll be in touch,’ said Curl, turning to wave. Then he smoothed his wrinkled sleeve. The silk-mixture suit, custom-made shirt and manicured hands were part of Curl’s public image. Even when this handsome man was summoned from bed to an emergency conference in the Crisis Management Center he cut the same dashing and impeccable figure.

      Curl had already forgotten the general. His mind was on the newscast that the chief was waiting for. The news he was bringing might be made public and that would change the whole picture. Curl worried that he might need more figures, dates and projections but it was too late now.

      Curl stopped and took a silk handkerchief from his top pocket. He carefully wiped his brow. More than once he’d heard the President refer slightingly to aides who arrived ‘hot and sweaty’. Curl nodded to the elderly warrant officer outside the sitting-room door. On the floor at his side rested a metal case. (When the staff photographers were around he kept it on his knees.) It held sealed packets signed by the Joint Chiefs. These were the codes that could order a nuclear strike. And the Doomsday Books that, in comic-strip style, illustrated projections in megadeaths for each of the target towns. The Russians, drowning in a sea of economic disaster, were clutching at the straws of capitalist revival. The East European satellite nations were offering their desolate industrial landscapes to any bidder. But anyone with access to the intelligence pouring in to Room 208, from the Gulf, as well as from Africa and the Far East, knew that America’s enemies had not gone out of business. So ‘the bagman’ followed the President everywhere he went.

      Curl knocked at the door softly but waited only a moment before entering. His chief was sitting in his favoured wing armchair, reading from a fat tome and sipping at his favourite evening drink: cognac and ginger.

      Curl stood there a moment reflecting upon the baffling way in which this room seemed to change when the President was in it. It was bigger, lighter and more imposing when the chief was here. He’d stood here alone sometimes and marvelled at the difference.

      The President made a movement of his hand to acknowledge Curl’s presence. The public saw only the President a make-up team and TV producer created for public display. They would have been shocked to see this wizened little man in his spotted bow tie, baggy slacks, hand-knitted sweater and red velvet slippers. This was the way the President liked to dress when the White House staff photographers were not around, but it was verboten at all other times. The bow tie was ‘arty’, the slippers ‘faggy’, the sweater ‘too homespun’ and US Presidents didn’t drink fancy foreign booze. Most important, US Presidents looked young and fit. They didn’t wear granny glasses and sit hunched over books: they rode and roped and piloted their own choppers. It wasn’t always easy to reconcile this carefully conjured outdoor figure with the emphasis the Administration was now putting upon formal education and the need for scientists and scholars, but votes must always come first.

      The President had aged greatly in two years of office, aged by a decade. He continued to read and didn’t look up as Curl entered. ‘Fix yourself a drink, John. The news is coming now.’

      Curl didn’t fix himself a drink. He wasn’t fond of alcohol and liked to present a picture of abstemiousness when with the President. Curl stood behind the President looking at the TV but also noticing the small bald patch on the crown of the chief’s head. Curl envied him that: his own baldness was reaching up from his temples to a little promontory of hair that would soon become an island and disappear altogether. From the front the President showed no hair loss at all.

      Still thinking about this, Curl seated himself demurely on the sofa with his leather case beside him. He arranged a handful of small pink prompt cards in sequence, shuffling them like a professional gambler with a deck of marked cards. Upon each one a topic of discussion was typed in large orator type. ‘Spanish Guiana – guerrilla contact’ read the topmost card. Curl kept them in his hand, holding them out of sight like a conjuror.

      The Pizza Hut ad ended. The President closed his book. This newscaster was a man they both knew, a man to whom they both owed a favour or two. The first item was edited coverage of the protest march in Los Angeles. The subsequent demonstration had continued through the early evening. The tone of the commentary was glum: ‘An LAPD spokesman estimated close on one hundred thousand angry demonstrators packed into MacArthur Park today … Young and old, men and women: protesting the announced cutbacks in the aerospace industry that could make a quarter of a million workers jobless by Christmas.’

      There were hand-held TV camera shots of angry demonstrators shouting and struggling with the police at several places on the route. Their big banners were easy to read, and easy to chant: ‘Save your sorrow: Your turn tomorrow’; ‘Cut-backs today will kill L.A.’ One home-made sign, scrawled on a sheet of brown cardboard, said, ‘Where is Joe Stalin now that we need him?’

      The time difference between Washington and the West Coast did not prevent the news from airing a few vox-pop interviews with demonstrators as the speeches ended and the people began to disperse. Articulate union leaders, and cautious middle management, agreed that America should not dismantle its defences just because the USSR was adopting a less belligerent posture.

      The following news item was about the US Coast Guard’s latest haul of drugs. ‘Five million dollars street value,’ said the commentary. The President pushed the button on his control. The picture went dark. ‘I wish these half-witted TV people would stop glamorizing that poison: “Five million dollars street value.” Holy cow! It’s like a recruiting campaign for pushers.’

      Curl stood up and fidgeted with his file cards.

      ‘MacArthur Park,’ said the President. ‘They would choose skid row! As if the demonstrations aren’t losing me enough votes, I have to have cameras panning across derelict houses and drunken bums.’

      Curl said, ‘No real violence, Mr President. We have to be pleased the demonstrators were so disciplined and well-behaved.’

      The two men sat looking at the blank screen for a moment. They both knew that this was СКАЧАТЬ