Seven Days in May

Tuesday Night

Art Corwin parked in an apartment driveway across from the main gate of Fort Myer. He picked his spot carefully. The car rested on an incline that sloped down to the highway. A good four feet separated it from the automobile in front, so he could swing clear with one turn of his steering wheel. He was facing an intersection on Route 50, so he could either cut across the divided highway and turn left, toward Washington, or turn right into the outbound lane leading to the Virginia countryside.

The rain had stopped and the mist had lifted, though a low overcast still hid the moon. The wet streets and dripping foliage were dark and soggy, but the weather failed to confine Corwin's spirits. He was alert and cheerful. A beer and a corned-beef-on-rye had tasted just right after the long White House meeting. He had a well-tuned, powerful car that could do better than a hundred miles an hour if necessary. And he was working alone again, back to the feeling of his early days in the Secret Service when the only worry was the next move of some small-time counterfeiter, not the hour-by-hour tension of protecting the President of the United States.

Corwin had driven slowly past Quarters Six, on the hill inside the old Army post, soon after seven. Both the official limousine of the chairman and Scott's own big Chrysler stood parked in the driveway. Then Corwin chose this spot, across from the Fort Myer entrance, so he could watch all traffic going in and out of the post. He reparked twice to get just the right line of sight on the gate. Now the street light would illuminate the features of anyone who stopped at the guard hut for the routine nighttime check.

This is a strange business, he thought. Whether Scott had designs on the office of the President he didn't know, but it occurred to him that Christopher Todd's doubts were a poor way to begin a defensive operation. Corwin had taught himself always to assume the worst. Did Scott want the Presidency? Well, didn't almost everybody in this town?

He began to estimate how many men he should add to the White House detail later in the week. One thing he would do if he were running this jerry-built show would be to plant a man in the all-service radio room in the Pentagon. It would be tricky, but ... He wondered if Todd had thought of that. He wondered, in fact, whether Todd's personal reservations about the possibility of a military operation hadn't blinded the Secretary to essential precautions that ought to be taken. Suppose, for instance, Scott moved up the date. What would we do then?

Corwin was deep in the problems of shielding the President when a dark-blue seven-passenger Chrysler slid out of the fort gate into the glare of the street light. The M.P. on duty at the entrance snapped off a salute. At the wheel sat General Scott, apparently in civilian clothes, for he wore no cap. Corwin caught the unmistakable full crop of black hair, sprinkled with white and gray. There was one man beside him-General Billy Riley, the Marine commandant. No other jaw around Washington looked quite like that one.

As the Chrysler wheeled onto Route 50, heading away from Washington, Corwin switched on his parking lights, started his motor and rolled down the hill to the intersection. He let three cars get between him and Scott before he switched on his headlights and pulled out into the traffic. The highway, three lanes wide, rolled out away from the capital. His tires sang on the wet pavement. Corwin liked this. He fixed his eyes on the top of the Chrysler, letting his peripheral vision take care of the normal problems of the evening traffic. He began to hum a song he'd heard at his first Gridiron Club dinner in Washington, a parody to the tune of "Alice Blue Gown":

... I remember the atom blew down

All the foreign relations in town.

Corwin bore down slightly on the accelerator, as the speed limit increased, to keep his distance behind Scott. With plenty of other cars on the road, it was easy. Where was the General heading?

In the jungle of neon lights and access roads at Seven Corners, Corwin saw Scott bear right onto Route 7, the main road to Leesburg. The two cars moved slowly through Falls Church before the traffic began to thin out and speed up. Corwin dropped farther back. He noted that Scott scrupulously observed the speed limit, holding steady at 55.

As they neared Leesburg, the overcast began to break apart. Corwin caught the outline of a cloud and could pick out one star peeping over its rim. The night began to freshen; he rolled down his window to enjoy the country air. At the fork west of Leesburg, Scott bore right on Route 9, heading toward Charles Town. Now, what gives there, General? wondered Corwin. The night races at Shenandoah Downs?

Tailing became harder work now. There were few cars on the road and Corwin found it difficult to keep more than one automobile between himself and the big Chrysler. With the valleys, hills and turns, he had to stay fairly close. Once or twice he turned out his lights completely, rushed forward at 70, then switched on the headlights again. If Scott was monitoring his rear-view mirror-which he doubted-he would think another car had come onto the road behind him. They began to climb toward the Blue Ridge, the eastern rim of the Shenandoa Valley. The pursuit became a trial on the roller-coaster dips and twists of the road. Once Corwin turned off onto a gravel road, then made a hurried grinding U-turn to get back onto Route 9. Scott's car was disappearing, its taillights winking as he braked around a curve. Luckily, Corwin was able to get behind a second car that had come along. He looked at his watch: 9:15. The two generals had been on the road for an hour and twenty minutes.

West of Hillsboro, where the road crossed the Blue Ridge before dropping into the valley, the left turn indicator of Scott's car blinked on. Corwin slowed to a crawl. Scott turned left. Corwin followed him onto a black macadam road that ran straight south along the spine of the ridge. He could see Scott's taillights bobbing up and down about half a mile up the road.

So that's it, he thought. Because of his White House job, Corwin knew something about this road that few other Americans did. Virginia 120 appeared to be nothing more than a somewhat better-than-average Blue Ridge byway, but it ran past Mount Thunder, where an underground installation provided one of the several bases from which the President could run the nation in the event of a nuclear attack on Washington. Corwin had come this way at least a dozen times before and knew the road. It was just as well, for some of the rises were so abrupt that it would otherwise be difficult to follow at night. Great trees stood along either side of the paved strip, held back behind the old stone fences.

Once Corwin's headlights picked up two glowing dots beside the road as a rabbit scuttled away to safety behind the rocks.

Assuming that Scott was headed for the Mount Thunder station, a few miles farther on, Corwin turned off his headlights again. God, it's dark, he thought. This is getting a little sticky.

Suddenly he saw Scott's brake lights flash ahead. Corwin stopped. Scott turned sharply and slowly to the left and vanished in the trees. Corwin, using his parking lights, drove on at little more than a walking pace until he reached a point about a hundred yards short of where Scott had turned. He found a wide spot on the shoulder and turned his car completely around, parking on the shoulder with his sedan facing back toward the highway. He tried a start. The ground was too muddy; the wheels spun a bit. He inched the car forward until he found firmer footing in a patch of gravel. Satisfied, he turned off the engine, emptied his right pants pocket of loose change, and put his leather key case, with the ignition key outside, into the empty pocket. You never know, he thought, when you might have to leave in a hurry. He dropped the handful of coins into the glove compartment, pulled out his little flashlight and felt in his coat pocket for notebook and pencil.

Corwin walked along the paved road to the place where Scott had left it. A narrow, unpaved drive cut east, down the side of the ridge, through a thick mixed stand of tulip trees, pine and sumac. On a little marker beside the fence corner Corwin, using his flashlight, could make out the word "Garlock."

More of the same, he thought. This little road must lead down to General Garlock's house.

Brigadier General Matthew H. Garlock was the Mount Thunder station commander. Corwin had met him several times. If there's a conference, he thought, I better get down there.

The gravel road dropped steeply down the slope in a series of turns. Corwin walked along its side on a pad of pine needles, stumbling occasionally on a rock thrown out from the roadbed. He knew the overcast had dispersed overhead, but the woods here were so thick that no light at all penetrated. The heavy moisture from the day's rain and mist clung to trees and ground, wetting his face whenever he brushed a branch but muffling his footsteps. In about a quarter of a mile the road took a final turn and came out into a clearing.

Corwin stopped, caught for a moment by the beauty below him. Set back into the side of the mountain stood a low, rambling log house. Beyond the house the ridge fell away to a far valley. Hundreds of scattered lights shone up through the night haze that drifted across the lowlands. The sky was clear now, the stars crowding one another across the wide arc of the night, brighter by far than they ever seemed in the city. The moon, pale and hesitant, hung in the east like a lantern in a watchtower. That biggest cluster of lights in the valley, Corwin decided, must be Middleburg: the smaller one, to the right, would be Upperville. In the distance, dim in the haze, lay the glow of Warrenton.

Nice duty for General Garlock, he thought, living up here where he can look down on the Virginia horse country.

Corwin inspected the house. To the right, in the kitchen, he could see a woman bending over the sink. The middle of the house, apparently several rooms wide, was dark, but on the left, in a big room with a fireplace, Corwin could see Scott and Riley sitting on a settee, facing him. When Scott flourished a cigar, a third man got out of a chair to light it for him, and Corwin saw that he was Garlock.

The Secret Service agent walked, crouching low, across the lawn, and lowered himself over the edge of a terrace-right into a rosebush. He cursed silently as he sucked the scratches left on the back of his hand by the thorns. Then he circled to his right, in the shadow of the darkened central rooms, tiptoed carefully across the gravel driveway, and took up a position below the lighted windows. He could hear plainly , and he knew the three voices, but he was so low that all he could see was the heavy wooden beam in the center of the room's ceiling. He dropped to one knee and used the other to support his notebook. It was awkward to hold both notebook and flashlight in one hand while he took notes with the other, but it seemed the only way. Scott was speaking.

"... Appreciate your letting us come out at night, General. It's about the only time all week that I'll be free, and I wanted to firm up the details. And after our troubles with the last one, I want to check things myself."

"That's perfectly all right, sir." Garlock was being properly respectful, although he sounded puzzled. "We're open for business twenty-four hours a day up here. Will there be anything special for this alert?" "Well, the President is coming up to take a look this time," Scott said. "So we decided it might be a good idea to lay on some extra troops."

"Oh." Garlock was surprised. "We've never done that before."

Riley chimed in. "Well, you know, we thought we might put on a little something extra for him. He wasn't very happy about the last All Red."

"And a little extra security, too, with the President here," Scott said. "Accommodations for about two hundred men would do it. You wouldn't have to worry about feeding them. They'll carry full field rations for a couple of days as part of the maneuver. After all, they'll be under full security and won't know where they're headed when they start out."

"Oh, messing the men would be no problem," Garlock said. "We've got plenty of food. But I don't know about the bunks. We're in pretty close quarters down there, General."

"Why can't some of them bivouac aboveground?" asked Riley. "Most of them would be up there anyway, on a perimeter, in case of the real thing."

"Well," said Garlock, "if they're coming in early, I'm afraid it might break security on the alert. A lot of people drive along that ridge road and some of them are service people who keep their eyes open."

"Well, how about lower down on the hill, behind some of those old buildings?" suggested Riley.

"That might do it," Garlock agreed. "By the way, when does the President arrive?"

"About noon Saturday," Scott said. "Of course, the five chiefs will be here by 11:15. If you're worried about any loose ends concerning the President, I can help you wrap them up then. There'll be time."

"The extra security guard is the only problem," said the local commander. "I hadn't realized you planned anything like that. We have almost a hundred men on permanent security detail here, you know."

Corwin thought Garlock sounded a bit miffed, as though the visiting generals were implying some laxity on his part. Scott apparently had the same reaction.

"Don't take this as any criticism of your command, General," Scott said. "It's just that we've got to learn to move security forces around this country much faster than we have. The last alert showed that clearly."

"If that's what the President wants," said Garlock, "well, of course, I have no objection."

There was silence for a moment and Corwin could imagine Scott's gaze following the smoke from his cigar. When Scott spoke, his voice dropped a tone.

"Actually, this is being done independently of the President," he said. "As you know, he was pretty unhappy with our performance last time, and we want to show him-"

Corwin had stood up to rest his cramped knee and in doing so had brushed against a euonymus bush. A branch, pushed back by his shoulder, was released when he moved again and swung against the side of the house with a wet slap. In the kitchen, a dog growled. The woman said, "Want to go out, Lady?"

Corwin jumped across the gravel driveway and ran up the sloping yard. He threw himself flat on the lawn and squirmed around to peer at the house under a large boxwood which flanked the roses lining the terrace. The kitchen door banged and a shiny black Labrador hustled along the drive to sniff at the shrubbery where Corwin had been.

"Let's go out," said Garlock, opening a door from the room where the three officers had been talking. "We'll have some fun if it's another one of those deer."

Corwin saw him reach up on the mantel for a long flashlight. He crawled across the yard, reaching the edge of the woods just as Garlock, followed by Scott and Riley, came out of the house. Garlock swept the light around in a narrow circle, beginning at the barn and continuing along the terrace where Corwin had been only a moment before. Corwin, now flattening his broad-shouldered frame behind a log, could feel the wet moss soaking his shirt.

The three men walked along the driveway as Garlock probed the yard with his flashlight. The dog sniffed along Corwin's trail up to the terrace, but apparently lost the scent on the flagstones, for he began to run back and forth, barking unhappily.

"A deer's a beautiful sight," Garlock said, "when you catch him in the light. Those eyes look like two hot coals."

He turned back to the house, but Riley took the flashlight from him, and with Scott moved up toward the woods. Garlock stayed near the house, and the dog stayed with him. Riley and Scott were about twenty yards from Corwin when he heard Riley say:

"It might have been an animal, Jim, but I had a funny feeling coming out here tonight."

"I don't think you need to worry," said Scott. "I stood a pretty good watch on that rear-view mirror. I don't think anyone was following us."

Scott and Riley gave up the hunt a few seconds later and rejoined Garlock at the house. They went back to the living room, and the woman in the kitchen called Lady back in. Not until the kitchen door banged shut did Corwin move. When he did, he felt as if he were rolling in an old sleeping bag that had been left out in a downpour. Hardly a patch of clothing was dry. Regaining the gravel road, he broke into a run, and by the time he reached his car he was puffing hard.

My God, he thought, I must be mud and slop all over from shoes to collar. Mr. President, if you think I'm not going to put in for out-of-town per diem for this joyride, plus ten cents a mile for the car, plus a good dry-cleaning bill, you're crazy.

Then Corwin remembered that it would be the Secret Service, not the President, to whom the expense account would have to go. Working for the government, he thought, you can't win.

Corwin drove back about half a mile along the macadam road until he came to a slight bend. He parked a few yards beyond it, calculating that from here he could see Scott's headlights when he came out of Garlock's road. It seemed unlikely that Scott would turn south, for that was the long way around for the return trip to Washington. Garlock might take them that way to Mount Thunder, of course, but Corwin decided that from his position he could go either way without being spotted. He wished he had a cigarette now. He had quit smoking five years ago, but now could recall exactly how good that first big drag on a cigarette used to taste when he came off a long stakeout on some counterfeiting gang.

He didn't have long to wait. Lights swept out from Garlock's road, hesitated, and then came north toward him. He gunned his car over a small hill in the dark. Then he switched his lights on and sped for Route 9, turned toward Washington and drove-too fast- down the winding road which fell off the Blue Ridge. At the bottom, Corwin swung into a dirt road, turned his car around and waited again in the dark. A few minutes later the big Chrysler rolled past, Riley in the front seat with Scott. Corwin picked up the shadow, but much farther back this time.

The ride home seemed to go more quickly. The night was clear now, as the last black cloud moved away to the east. The road had dried and a breeze had come up. The taillights of Scott's car had assumed an identity of their own for Corwin, and he kept his eyes on them.

At the little crossroads in Dranesville, Scott bore off to the left. This will be harder, Corwin thought, he's taking the back road to Chain Bridge. That means he isn't going back to Fort Myer. And he isn't driving Riley home to the Marine Barracks in Southeast Washington, either. He must be heading for some place in Northwest Washington or Maryland.

The road dodged and bent through the trees. Corwin had to stop several times to avoid getting too close to Scott.

Not until the General crossed the Potomac on Chain Bridge did Corwin feel easier. Tailing in city traffic was a cinch; he dropped back four or five cars. Scott drove across to Massachusetts Avenue and turned toward the heart of the city. Corwin followed him through two traffic circles before the chairman turned off into a side street that led to the rear of a huge new apartment building. When Scott drove into the back parking lot, Corwin parked on the street nearby.

He saw Scott and Riley walk past a lighted sign ("The Dobney: Tenant Parking Only") and into the underground garage. From his angle, he could see only their legs and feet as they crossed the room and turned into a side corridor. He waited until they had time to get into an elevator, then followed them. The hallway dead-ended at the freight elevator.

Well now, he thought, that's a strange way for the chairman of the Joint Chiefs to go calling.

Corwin went back to his car, drove into the back lot and parked about a dozen places away from Scott's automobile. On a hunch, he fished into his glove compartment and got out the pocket-sized Congressional Directory he always carried. He looked up Prentice, Frederick, Senator from California. Sure enough. Residence: The Dobney.

A few minutes later a yellow taxicab drove up and parked. Corwin recognized it as belonging to the fleet which had the concession at Dulles International Airport. He also recognized the passenger who got out. He was tall, angular, and walked with a slight forward hunch of his shoulders. He wore a blue lightweight suit with a high sheen-the kind Corwin called an "electric suit."

Well, I've done my homework pretty well, he thought. After his talk with the President that morning, Corwin had done two things before picking up Scott. He had arranged to get Casey's service record, and he had studied the picture of every man mentioned by President Lyman. He hadn't had to hunt for a likeness of the man who had just got out of the cab, because he had obtained a photograph of him at Lyman's request a week ago. He was sure he was right; the man now walking toward the back entrance of the Dobney was the television commentator, Harold MacPherson.

Corwin got out of his car and strolled toward the garage. He saw MacPherson turn left and go down the hallway toward the freight elevator.

It was more than an hour later-almost 1 a.m.- when Scott and Riley, this time accompanied by MacPherson, reappeared at the garage entrance. The three shook hands and parted, MacPherson going back to the taxi.

Corwin decided to fudge a bit on the President's orders and follow the cab. The quarry was newer-and thus vastly more interesting. Frankly, Corwin thought, I've had about enough of Gentleman Jim for one night.

The new venture, however, proved fruitless. The taxi drove out to Dulles International, as Corwin had suspected it would. He followed MacPherson into the lobby, after brushing the worst of the mud from his shirt and pants, and watched the commentator check in at Eastern Airlines, buy a magazine and stroll down a ramp. Corwin watched him climb onto Flight 348, a night coach to New York.

The Secret Service agent went to a phone booth and called Esther Townsend at the White House. It was 1:55 a.m.

"This is Art," he said. "I've got a report. It's pretty interesting."

"Can it wait until morning?" asked Esther sleepily.

"Early morning, honey," he said, "but awful early."

"How about seven o'clock, upstairs?"

"That's okay. I'll be there."

"I think that's better," Esther explained. "He didn't get to bed until an hour ago and this may be the last night in some time when he'll get a decent rest."

"I'm afraid that goes for all three of us, honey," Corwin said. "I'll be at home."

Flight 348 was lifting off the runway when Corwin drove past the last hangar. God, I'm tired, he thought. And scummy. I smell like a muskrat.

He tramped hard on the accelerator. He began to hum wearily:

... I remember the atom blew down

All the foreign relations in town.