Red Phoenix

CHAPTER 11 Signals

“Crap!” McLaren crumpled the piece of paper and threw it across the room toward a wastebasket. It missed. He shook his head. He must be getting old.

His aide nodded toward the paper. “Bad news, General?”

“Yeah, Doug.” He felt himself wanting to pace and willed himself to keep still. “That goddamned sanctions legislation is still moving through Congress.”

McLaren had been following the Barnes bill in the Pentagon’s daily news summary ever since it had been introduced. He didn’t pretend to understand all the ins and outs of the legislative process, but any good soldier could recognize a steady advance when he saw one.

What the hell was the matter with Congress anyway? Couldn’t they see that there was a big, dangerous world out beyond the bounds of their congressional districts? He didn’t like what was happening in South Korea any more than the next American, but you couldn’t go around threatening to throw away a vital strategic position without having something to replace it. And that was just what Congress was threatening to do.

He’d seen the studies. The sanctions contained in Barnes’s harebrained legislation could wreck the South Korean economy if they went into effect — and economic growth was pretty much the sole underpinning for South Korea’s political stability right now. Without it, there’d be nothing left to hold the country together. What happened next could make the Seoul massacre look like a tea party. Kim Il-Sung would be licking his chops, ready to exploit any weakness across the DMZ.

Didn’t these guys ever look at a map? The Korean peninsula was a dagger pointed right at the heart of Japan. At least that was how the Japanese saw it, and the Japanese were a pragmatic people. Let the Soviets or Chinese get a bigger foothold here and just watch how fast Japan’s industrial giants would start selling even more high technology to them — and any export control treaties be damned. The thought was chilling. Take the enormous Soviet edge in sheer numbers of planes, tanks, guns, ships, and submarines. Mix it with a liberal dose of Japanese-supplied high-tech weaponry and sensors, and what did you have? A goddamned nightmare, that’s what.

McLaren grimaced. There had better be some people left in Washington with some brains and guts.

“General, do you still want those reports on this week’s alert?”

McLaren started. He must be getting feebleminded, standing around worrying about the Washington hive. He had work to do right here. “Hell, yes, Doug. Lay ’em on me.”

He walked back around his desk and sat down to start poring through the tangle of reports that, together, would give him a picture of just what had happened up at the Z the last time he’d called a snap alert. What was it they called them — McLaren Specials? He smiled to himself. He knew his officers hated those alerts, but it was good practice for them. You never knew just what those crazy bastards up in Pyongyang had up their sleeves. You had to be ready for the unexpected when you were stationed in South Korea.

His phone buzzed. It was the Signals Room. “Sir, we’ve got a priority, scrambled call for you. It’s Admiral Simpson.” McLaren’s eyebrows went up. It must be past midnight, Washington time. The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs was working late.

“Put him on.” He heard a series of clicks and then a faint wash of static. “McLaren here.”

“Hello, Jack, how’s tricks?”

“Phil! You old son of a bitch. What’s up?” There was a barely perceptible lag as the microwave signal raced twenty-four thousand miles up to a communications satellite in geosynchronous orbit and then back down to the chairman in Washington.

‘It’s this Barnes sanctions bill. The White House still says it isn’t going anywhere this year, but my gut tells me that it just might. Both the House and Senate are getting a case of the electoral willies, and you know how screwed up things can get when they start looking for a foreign policy ‘accomplishment’ to show the voters.”

“Hell, Phil. When did you get to be such a big political panjandrum?”

Simpson chuckled. “Goes with the turf. I’ve sat in front of so many congressional committees since last year that I’m even starting to talk like one of them.”

“God save us.”

“Yeah. Well, my wife says she likes it. Says it makes me sound more civilized.”

McLaren’s grip on the phone tightened for a moment. His wife, Elly, would probably have agreed with Caroline Simpson.

But she wouldn’t ever have the chance. Not anymore. He cleared his throat. There wasn’t time for sorrow. Not now. “Go on, Phil.”

“Anyway, I need ammo to give the President a reason to kick this Barnes bill in the head while it’s still young. And what I need from you, Jack, is your best analysis of the situation up North. I need your best guess as to what’s going on up there across the wire.”

“Hell, a guess is all you’ll be able to get.” McLaren reached across his desk for a pencil. “Don’t you Pentagon boys already get copies of all my intel reports?”

“I want a new assessment drawn up. I know it might not be much different from the last one, but I want something hot off the presses to take in to the President.”

“Okay. You’ve got it. I’ll get my J-2 to send an update over the wire ASAP” McLaren made a note. Colonel Logan, his intelligence officer, was going to be busy today.

“Thanks, Jack. I appreciate it. Look, I’ve gotta run. It’s nearly one in the A.M. back here, and Caroline’s going to have my butt for breakfast if I stay much longer.”

McLaren smiled to himself. He couldn’t imagine anyone, even the admiral’s formidable wife, putting the fear of God into Phil Simpson. He doubted if the thickset little man with the jutting jaw and impish grin had ever truly been afraid of anything or anyone. McLaren and the admiral had been friends since Nam. His battalion had been stationed down near the Mekong Delta, right beside Simpson’s detachment of river gunboats and patrol craft. They’d fought together against the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese regulars, and then they’d moved on to some truly mind-bending carouses in the back-alley bars of both Saigon and Hong Kong. Somewhere along the way they’d formed a friendship that had lasted through years of peacetime, promotions, and duty assignments around the globe. Each man appreciated the other’s guts and willingness to buck the conventional wisdom to get results.

“No problem, Phil. I’ll talk to you later. And that intel report will be sitting on your desk when you get there in the morning.”

There was a pause on the other end of the line, and then Simpson asked cautiously, “Look, are you planning on visiting Washington anytime soon?”

“No, why?” His daughter was supposed to come out to Seoul for Christmas this year. And his son would be at sea over the holidays.

“Well, it’s just that this might be a good time to keep out of the States. If you’re in town, some smart-ass congressional aide would probably call you to testify in some public hearing on the ROK. And Jack, don’t take this wrong, but you come across kinda raw on camera. Know what I mean?”

McLaren laughed, “Yeah, I know what you mean. I flunked Public Diplomacy 101 at the Point years ago, and I haven’t ever bothered to take a refresher course.”

“No kidding. I wouldn’t ever have guessed,” Simpson said dryly. “Later, Jack.”

“Give my best to Caroline.” McLaren hung up and pressed the intercom button. “Doug, get Charlie Logan over here, pronto. I’ve got work for him.”

Logan, his J-2, was a good officer, but he was a little too inclined to slack off if he thought no one was paying attention. McLaren had noticed a tendency to recycle old, approved intelligence reports if the situation hadn’t changed much. Logan’s laziness wouldn’t put his career at risk, but it would probably keep him from getting his star. Well, Charlie wouldn’t have a lot of time to goof off today. If the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs wanted a new North Korea intel assessment by breakfast Washington time, McLaren would make damned sure he got one.

Admiral Philip Simpson nodded to himself. McLaren’s J-2 knew how to write a good report. He’d have Carlson pass it on to the NSC staffer, Fowler, for inclusion into the Interagency Working Group’s final report to the President. The admiral skimmed through the document, looking for anything new that should be highlighted. He found it on page four.

Simpson flipped to the back of the report, looking for the radio intercept transcript.

Simpson marked the section for Captain Carlson’s attention and sat back in his chair. North Korea and the Soviet Union were getting entirely too chummy for his taste. Not that he could do much about it.

His intercom buzzed. “Admiral, your car is here to take you up to the Hill.”

Simpson tossed the report into his out box and stood up, reaching for his briefcase. It was time to go to Capitol Hill and jabber at the Senate Armed Services committee about manpower retention rates. He looked at his calendar. This was his fourth congressional appearance of the week. He often thought it was a goddamned wonder that he ever got any work done.

The CNN reporter, a pretty brunette, stood in the marble-lined corridor outside a hearing room in the Rayburn House Office Building.

“This is Connie Marlowe for CNN Headline News. In a surprise development here today, House Armed Services Committee Chairman Stephen Nicholson announced that his committee would not seek jurisdiction over the South Korea sanctions bill. The move, which caught most Capitol Hill observers off guard, clears the way for the bill to go to the House Rules Committee. From there it would move to the full House of Representatives.

“The bill’s chief sponsor, Congressman Ben Barnes of Michigan, was understandably pleased when I spoke with him earlier.”

The film cut to taped footage of a smiling Ben Barnes in the same corridor.

“Naturally I’m delighted that my distinguished colleague Congressman Nicholson has seen the importance of swift and decisive action by the House in this matter. America’s roads and stores cannot continue to be flooded with shoddy South Korean imports while students are murdered in Seoul’s streets. We must send a clear message to the South Korean government. No more violence. No more repression. No more free ride.”

The picture cut back to Connie Marlowe.

“In other news here on the Hill today, a similar bill moved a step closer to consideration by the full Senate by winning approval from the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Conservatives have threatened a filibuster if the bill reaches the floor. But Senate Majority Leader Dickinson of Arkansas remains confident that he has enough support to invoke cloture, a move that would shut off any prolonged debate and bring the issue to an up-or-down vote within a set time frame.

The screen split, showing both the CNN anchorman stationed in Atlanta and the reporter in Washington.

“Connie, doesn’t it take a two-thirds vote of the Senate to end a filibuster? Does the Korea sanctions bill have that much support in the Senate?”

“You’re right, John. Normally, the majority leader’s confidence would indicate overwhelming support for the bill. But this is a special case. With the election coming up, a lot of challengers have been pummeling Senate incumbents with charges that they never do any work. So even senators who don’t plan to vote for the legislation are eager to avoid a long, wearing filibuster. And right now, it’s just not clear who has the votes to win on this issue in the Senate. I’m Connie Marlowe for CNN Headline News.”

“Mr. Chairman, this proposed rule is outrageous and you know it!” Henry Fielding, the ranking minority member of the House Rules Committee sounded angry but not surprised. The white-haired representative from Missouri glared out across the handful of congressional staffers rapidly scribbling notes on legal pads.

The Rules Committee always met in a small, cramped room to hold the number of spectators down to an absolute minimum. In a way that was a true measure of its power. This committee could make or break legislation in a single hour. It set the terms, the rule, under which a given bill would be considered by the full House of Representatives. Legislation that the Speaker liked would get a rule that sharply limited debate and made it impossible to offer so-called killer amendments. Legislation that the Speaker didn’t like wouldn’t ever get a rule, period.

To make sure of that, the majority party in the House always maintained a two-to-one plus one edge on the Rules Committee — no matter what the real ratio of Democrats to Republicans might be.

And the Speaker liked the Korea sanctions bill.

Fielding knew the fix was in, but he had sworn to put up at least a token fight. “Mr. Chairman, the rule you and your friends have concocted would prevent members of the House from offering even the most reasonable amendments to this legislation. That is not the way we should be conducting business on this kind of issue. And there is no conceivable excuse for the absurd time limitations you’ve placed on the debate.”

The chairman, Representative Kerwin Bouchard of Louisiana, interrupted him. “Mr. Fielding, the issues contained in this bill have been fully considered in committee.” Unconsciously he ran a wizened hand through the remaining strands of his hair. His Southern drawl thickened. “There is no reason for further delay and no necessity for extended debate.”

Fielding struck back. “With all due respect, Mr. Chairman, that is nonsense. We’re not elected to be rubber stamps for the committees. This is supposed to be a deliberative body, and your rule would prevent a thorough and reasoned consideration of this legislation. The issues in this Korea sanctions bill are too complex and too important to be handled in this callously partisan fashion.”

The chairman listened with interest. Fielding at his best was very good. And the chairman had no doubt he would hear the same phrases and arguments again on the floor when the full House debated this rule. But his instructions from the Speaker were clear, and he hadn’t gotten this far in the House by crossing the Speaker. He sat back to enjoy the show with complete confidence in the outcome.

It took nearly an hour of pro forma argument, but in the end the committee approved the rule by a party-line vote of nine to four. No one on the inside was at all surprised.

Putnam tossed the bulky report back across his desk. “Damn it, Blake. This isn’t what I asked you for.”

Blake Fowler looked down at the document and then back to the red face of the national security adviser. He sat down in one of Putnam’s chairs without an invitation.

“You asked for the Working Group’s recommendations to the President. And that” — he pointed to the paper — ”is what you’ve got sitting on your desk.” The report was nearly two weeks overdue, but even that had required a minor miracle and countless hours of overtime.

The actual writing involved in the analysis of the Barnes Korean sanctions bill hadn’t taken more than a couple of days of hard, steady work. But getting the precise wording approved by five cabinet departments and intelligence agencies had been nightmarishly complex. Each wanted to leave its stamp on the report, so each made its own set of editorial changes. Changes that required approval by all the rest, and that often prompted a whole new series of rewrites. Blake had circulated so many different drafts that he now knew every classified-documents courier on the interagency — White House run.

The minor miracle had come in salvaging anything that was clearly written. The members of the Interagency Working Group were solid professionals, but they weren’t writers, and they’d all learned to use bureaucratese. In bureaucratese, people weren’t affected, “population subgroups were impacted.” The risks of full-scale warfare weren’t increased, “the probability of significant geopolitical and military interaction” underwent an “upward modification.” Blake had dug in his heels to fight off meaningless gibberish like that wherever he could, and he’d won more fights than he’d lost.

But he knew that none of that mattered to Putnam. Putnam was upset because the State Department had refused to sign off on the report. State’s representative, Tolliver, hadn’t bothered to attend more than one out of every two or three Working Group meetings, and he’d been a pain in the ass every time anyway.

After a while it had become clear that the secretary of state, a former congressman, was more interested in domestic political polls showing rising public support for some action against South Korea than he was in the foreign policy implications of the legislation. And he wouldn’t approve a document that recommended strong administration opposition and a presidential veto if the Barnes bill got that far.

Blake had tried everything he could think of to get the State Department on board — short of soft-soaping the Working Group’s recommendations. He’d even made several attempts to get in to see the secretary personally, without result. The man’s flunkies had used every excuse in the book. The secretary was always away on “national business,” or had an “urgent policy board meeting,” and once they’d even tried the old standby that he was “receiving an important foreign delegation.” Blake hadn’t even been able to secure an appointment with the assistant secretary for East Asian and Pacific Affairs.

The message was clear. The State Department, or at least its political leadership, wasn’t interested in getting into a shitting match with the Congress over South Korea. He’d been given a reason for that over a hasty lunch in the White House commissary with a friend from the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency.

“Look, Blake,” “Tubby” Barlow had said, “there’s no way you’re gonna get the boys at Foggy Bottom to risk pissing off the Speaker and the majority leader right now. They’re within inches of a new missile agreement with the Soviets. And they aren’t taking any chances that some irate congressman might blow the thing because his favorite bill got dumped on by the administration.” The way the upper echelons of the State Department saw it, South Korea just wasn’t in the same league with a possible superpower arms control treaty.

And so the Working Group had decided to go ahead without State’s sanction for their final product. It was either that or come up with nothing at all. From the way Putnam was carrying on, it was clear that he might have preferred that.

“Goddamn it. This thing is practically useless to me the way it is.” One of Putnam’s reddish-gray curls had broken lose from its hair-sprayed moorings and was flopping around over an eyebrow. The national security adviser impatiently brushed it back into place.

Blake shook his head. “I don’t see how you can say that. Okay, State doesn’t agree with our recommendations. BFD. Five other agencies do. That’s about as solid a bloc as you’re ever going to find in any administration.”

Putnam glowered at him. “That’s not going to cut it with the media, Dr. Fowler. You and I both know that somebody at State will leak the secretary’s displeasure with this report to the Post or the Times and then the shit’s really going to hit the fan. The President doesn’t like to see headlines that say things like ‘Top-Level Rifts Mar Administration Policy.’ ”

Blake had to admit that Putnam had a point. But it was moot.

The State Department wasn’t going to reverse course and approve the report. And the South Korean situation was too critical for the White House to simply sit idly by as the Barnes legislation moved through Congress. Jesus, he hoped there were at least a few red faces over in Legislative Affairs. They’d been telling anyone who would listen that the Barnes bill was just a typical piece of election-year foofaraw. Something introduced to soothe angry voters and then slated for quiet extinction after the ballots were cast. Well, every passing day put that prediction more and more in the column headed by the Chicago Tribune’s 1948 election day headline, “Dewey Wins!”

Blake looked back across the desk at Putnam. “So you’re not going to present our recommendations to the President?”

“I didn’t say that.” Putnam reached over and tore off a piece of tape. “The President’s asked for a briefing on this Korea thing something in the next few days. My calendar’s pretty full, but I’m going to try to squeeze it in somewhere — after I’ve had time to go through this stuff in a little more detail.” Putnam started rolling the piece of tape in between two fingers, wadding it up into a tiny, sticky ball.

Blake wanted to ask why Putnam didn’t just ask him to deliver the briefing. But he already knew the answer. Putnam didn’t know much more about Asian and Pacific affairs than the average daily newspaper reader did, but he did understand the mechanics of power. And in Washington, D.C., access is power.

Putnam guarded the right to personally brief the President with jealous vigor. In nineteen months on the job, he’d never yet allowed a member of his staff to lead the President through the tangle of position papers, charts, maps, and satellite photos that made up a typical NSC presentation. His rules were clear and absolutely inflexible. The staff experts prepared the briefing and he delivered it. If Putnam still felt uncomfortable with the material, he’d bring a staffer along. But always with the understanding that they would respond only to direct questions from the President or from Putnam himself.

Blake thought it was a shitty way to conduct business. But he understood Putnam’s intentions. It made the red-haired bastard look very much like the all-knowing whiz kid he claimed to be — at least to the President. And that was what mattered.

He looked up as Putnam flicked the little ball of tape off into his wastebasket.

“In any event, Blake, I’ve got a few edits to make in your report.” Putnam smiled. “You’ve done a pretty good job in putting this thing together, I guess. But it needs a little work to make it more readable. Can’t risk putting the Boss to sleep during the presentation, now can we?”

Oh, crap. Putnam’s idea of clear prose made federal bureaucratese look like something written by Ernest Hemingway. The man never saw a short, simple, clear word that he didn’t think could be replaced by an impossibly long, convoluted clause.

Blake knew there wasn’t much point in worrying about it. He and Putnam had tangled over the written word nearly as often as they’d clashed over policy. Beside, Putnam probably wouldn’t let him see the hash he’d made of the Working Group’s paper until just before they briefed the President.

He was almost right.

Jeremy Mitchell watched the flickering totals on the vote board with one eye and kept the other on his boss, Ben Barnes, working his colleagues down on the floor in front of the Speaker’s chair. He smiled as the totals changed once again, reflecting another congressman who’d buckled to persuasion from Barnes or pressure from the Speaker.

Getting the Speaker on board had been the best thing he’d ever done. The man was an oily little snake-charming s.o.b., but he knew the rules and procedures of the House backward and forward. And he’d bend any of them to get his way. Mitchell looked up at section of the vote board that showed the time remaining. It read “0:00.” Just as it had for the last twenty minutes or so. He smiled again. Votes in the House of Representatives were usually supposed to last fifteen minutes or less. If a congressman hadn’t made it to the floor by then or hadn’t made up his mind, that was just too bad. In practice, though, the Speaker controlled time in the House, and fifteen minutes was whatever he said it was — no matter what the clocks might say.

The sharp crash of the chairman’s gavel brought his eyes back to the floor. The vote was over. The congressman acting as chairman of the Committee of the Whole took a small piece of paper from one of the clerks. “On this vote, the ayes were two thirty-eight. The nays, one eighty-one. The bill is passed.”

Mitchell headed for the door grinning from ear to ear. They’d done it! And now it was up to the Senate. The majority leader’s chief aide had already assured him they’d bring the Korea sanctions bill up as soon as it passed the House. Jeremy Mitchell could smell victory. Victory for the bill and victory for Ben Barnes when he ran for the Senate two years down the road.

He was only half right.