While he was staging the normal-seeming vacation of the President at the Maine compound, he had tasked his assistant, Richard Dellinger, to go back through his collected, classified memos to remove any record of his appearing to be too pro-Iraq, a difficult task, given the fact that he had been one of the foremost proponents of Baghdad. But Millikan knew his Orwell.
In the face of the fact that Saddam had invaded Kuwait, that the administration had already cut both openand back-channel communications with the PLO, that he had already lost whatever leverage he had on the Hill, it was apparent that he had to do something to maintain his high ground. Gnawing at the back of his mind was the knowledge that Hennessey had a dossier on him a foot thick, that Hennessey could nail him anytime he wanted by throwing him to the wolves of the Democratically-controlled congressional committees, that he could spread rumors that would make him out to be the long-sought Big Mole in the national-security network, that Hennessey had, as the result of his shocking, unprecedented, and possibly illegal lateral jump to the FBI, become the heir of all the secret photos that J. Edgar Hoover had assembled on the Harvard boys and all the Oxford types. He had to find some way to short-circuit Hennessey, get back on top of the curve on Iraq, convince the President that he was really serving well. He needed a hook.
As he gazed over the top of his workstation out the window at the White House, it suddenly struck him what his salvation would be. How he could simultaneously outflank Hennessey, impress the President, and grab the next-best issue of the war—the public fear of the Iraqis’ poison gas and bacteriological-warfare capabilities, soon to be widely publicized by the scare-mongering press.
It was at moments like this that Millikan always felt a certain sense of satisfaction and renewed self-esteem. He drafted a National Security Council Decision Directive setting up an interagency task force to include Hennessey from the FBI, Spector and Vandeventer from the Agency, some of the folks from the chemicals branch at NSA and the Pentagon, and some of the germ people from the NSF. They would start work immediately, in Kennebunkport. He typed it up for that morning’s meeting. He knew that it would be approved without question. If American boys were going to die, the administration had better look as if it at least knew there was a danger. If they died, Millikan looked good, because he’d been on top of it from the beginning. If they didn’t die, Millikan looked good, because his task force could claim the credit.
Chapter Twenty-Five
“We have a report of a bloody horse on the south Boundary Avenue extension,” said the dispatcher’s voice. Clyde was slumbering so deeply that, when he woke up, he was not sure whether he had heard it correctly. Surely she had said “runaway” and not “bloody.”
He had stayed up late listening to the dumbfounding news of the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait on his transistor radio, which was still squawking away on the dashboard. The news reports, his own dreams, and the words of the dispatcher must have got all mixed up in his sleepy head.
“It’s in the vicinity of the vet lab,” she continued. “Sounds like it might be another case of you-know-what. All units respond.”
“All units?” Clyde said aloud, staring at the ceiling of his unit. He was only talking to himself. At the moment “all units” amounted to three Forks County sheriff’s deputies.
When Tab Templeton had materialized before the gates of Nishnabotna Meat like a biblical apparition, liquored up and swinging an ax handle, a single deputy—Clyde—had been dispatched to deal with the problem. If Charles Manson, Abu Nidal, and a pack of rabid wolves had been sighted on Lincoln Way, the Forks County sheriff might have found the situation sufficiently grave to merit the dispatch of two deputies. And now they were sending three after a horse.
Deputy Hal Karst came on the radio, not bothering to disguise the fact that he’d been laughing. “We gonna just grab that horse by the reins, or actually rassle it to the ground?”
No answer. The dispatcher was flummoxed.
Hal Karst continued. He was in his late forties, the oldest deputy on the force, and he didn’t care what the dispatcher or Mullowney or anyone else thought of him. “You want us to rassle it, Clyde can take point, and me and Jim’ll help. But if you just want us to grab the reins, I can handle that all by my lonesome, and Clyde and Jim can go back to sleep.” Hal was an old farm boy and still kept horses of his own.
“Hal, go after the horse,” the dispatcher said, sounding more than a bit frosted. “Clyde and Jim, you are to throw a dragnet over the area.”
Clyde jackknifed to a sitting position and hollered, “A dragnet?” He snatched the microphone with one hand, killing the little transistor radio with the other. “Did you say dragnet, Theresa?” He did a poor job of concealing the grin in his voice. He had never heard this word actually used in an official context. Then he got himself under control and didn’t say anything more. They were recording his transmissions, and if he got overly lippy, they could play it on the radio and TV and make him look like a bad deputy.