Liberty's Last Stand (62 page)

“Maybe the ayatollahs will put him to work in a bomb factory,” I suggested.

“I don't think he's going to get rich making speeches,” the major declared.

“Probably not,” I agreed and finished the coffee.

THIRTY-THREE

J
R Hays' convoy arrived at the Bank of Manhattan. He walked across the plaza, accompanied by his five fake FBI agents and two officers armed with M4 carbines. He pushed on the revolving door.

To the vast relief of JR Hays, the door wasn't locked. In seconds they were inside and crossing the lobby, which actually had a good crowd of civilians lined up facing only three tellers. JR strode over to the receptionist and announced he was here to see the president of the bank.

“Mr. Gottlieb?”

“If you please.”

“I don't know if he is available just now. I'll check.”

She made a call and read his rank and name tag into the telephone. With the instrument in her hand, she asked, “May I tell him what this matter is about?”

“Government business,” JR said curtly and directed his gaze around, as if he were a bit peeved to be kept waiting. The two soldiers in combat gear, Colonel Adam Holt and Lieutenant Colonel Charley Grayson, adjusted their helmets and fingered their carbines, which looked black and ominous and very out of place in this marble temple to capitalism. People eyed the soldiers, who didn't seem at all self-conscious.

“If you will follow me, gentlemen. . . .” The receptionist opened a short door and admitted them behind the counter, then led the way to a bank of elevators. They were lifted up, up, up.

The president's office was in the executive suite. They were shown to a conference room, one with a long, polished mahogany desk and portraits on the walls of past bankers who had presumably gone on to an honorable retirement and whatever was awaiting them after that.

JR and his men cooled their heels for four minutes by JR's watch when the door opened and a man in his fifties bustled in. He was wearing a rumpled shirt and slacks and carrying his shoes in his hand.

He proved he was a top-notch executive by going straight for JR, whose silver stars gleamed on each shoulder. “I apologize, General,” he said, “but since the power has been off I have been sleeping at the office.”

JR looked the president up and down and gave a quick, tight smile. He stuck out his hand. “Lieutenant General Been, sir.”

“I'm Abraham Gottlieb.”

JR introduced the two soldiers in combat gear and the FBI agents, who whipped out their credentials.

“The army and the FBI,” Gottlieb said, merely glancing at the credentials. The agents put them away and JR tried not to relax. None of the photos on the credentials matched the faces of the people holding them. That was one of the little hurdles he had to clear, and he was over.

“Let's sit down,” JR said to Gottlieb. He reached into his tunic and pulled out two letters and handed them to the banker. One was a letter on White House stationery to Lieutenant General Robert Been, United States Army, ordering him to proceed with whatever troops he thought appropriate to the Bank of Manhattan and transport the gold in the bank's vault to the New York Federal Reserve Bank for safekeeping. The other letter was on Treasury Department stationery and was addressed to Mr. Gottlieb. The secretary of the Treasury regretted the necessity of moving the bank's gold, but threats from mobs and various unnamed rebel forces required that the gold in bank vaults in New York be moved to one central location where it could be guarded by the army.

Gottlieb seemed to shrink. He wiped his forehead and read both letters again while the lieutenant general reached into his tunic and brought out another sheet of paper. “Your copy of the president's letter, sir. I need to keep the original. If you don't mind.”

The banker surrendered the document without a murmur. “I never thought it would come to this,” he said, and swabbed his brow again. “I'll have to verify these letters of course, and if they are genuine, you may have the gold. Unfortunately most of our staff aren't in the bank today, although the vault is open so our customers can withdraw gold.”

“Just how do you propose to verify these letters?” JR snapped.

“Well. . .” Gottlieb tried to compose himself. “The telephone system, internet, and telex are down, so I suppose I'll have to send a bank officer to the New York Fed to see the chairman there. He should have received similar documents.”

This was the make or break moment. JR looked at the banker, overweight, with fleshy features, measuring him. “Mr. Gottlieb, as you know, the president has declared martial law. The army is running America now, subject to the president's orders. As far as you are concerned,
I am the army. I own New York and everyone in it
.”

“Yes, sir, but we have our procedures, which the SEC and banking authorities require us to—”

“
Mr
. Gottlieb, my troops are now surrounding the Fed—your messenger would not get through. You have just read the president's and secretary of the Treasury's orders, and I am obeying them. If I run into any difficulties, these agents of the FBI are authorized to arrest you and your staff.” JR simply stared at the banker, daring him to open his mouth. As briefed, the senior woman removed a set of handcuffs from her purse, and Gottlieb's eyes went to them. Obviously he knew that people on Barry Soetoro's shit list were being hustled off to concentration camps.

“We are not going to be delayed by disloyal people, Mr. Gottlieb,” JR intoned, as if he were talking to a buck private who had his shoes on the wrong feet. He stood, signaling he was through talking. “Now call down to your lobby and tell the head cashier to stop passing out gold. All of it is going to the Fed. When the army has it in our trucks, I'll give you a receipt for every ounce.”

Without waiting for a response from the banker, JR turned to the colonels and said, “Gentlemen, let's get at it.”

He turned back to Gottlieb. “If you wish to put on your shoes, sir, you may come to the vault and help supervise my troops, and ensure the receipt is properly prepared.”

The banker slammed his feet into his shoes.

JR spoke to his FBI agents. “It looks as if your services aren't needed today.”

“We'll stay, just in case,” the senior woman said and slid her handcuffs back into her purse.

JR Hays made sure his missive from Barry Soetoro was safely in his pocket. The letter from the Treasury secretary lay on the polished mahogany where Gottlieb had left it. Maybe, JR thought, he should frame the president's letter and a copy of the one from Treasury. They were great pieces of work, signed by the best forger in the Texas prison system.

He strode out of the conference room, looking every inch a man in complete command, the general from central casting.

When I got back upstairs after brunch, my escort found that the brass had moved from a situation room to an office on the E-Ring. They were huddling behind closed doors. I asked one of the outer-office types if Grafton was in there, and informed he was, headed for the door.

“You can't go in there unless they send for you,” I was told.

I smiled to show I could forgive a social faux pas. “I'm Grafton's official biographer. He wants me there unless Mother Nature shrieks for my attention. It's just one of his peccadilloes.” I opened the door, slipped in and closed the door behind me.

Grafton glanced my way but continued talking. I dropped into an empty chair near the door.

Grafton said, “As I see it, our first priority must be getting people out of Soetoro's concentration camps. Then, in no particular order, we must get electrical power, telephone, and internet service restored nationwide; get police and firefighters back on the streets and highways; and tackle the humanitarian problems this mess has caused. I would bet there are forgotten and abandoned elderly, sick, and addicts tucked away in odd corners dying of malnutrition and dehydration. In other words, we must get the nation moving again.”

“What about the states that declared their independence?” the bluesuiter, Bud Weiss, asked.

“It wasn't just Barry Soetoro who caused this mess,” Grafton replied, “it was a vast overreach by the federal government, by which I mean the executive, judiciary, congress, and bureaucracies.”

“That's not our business.”

“It's our business if we're rebuilding this country. Frankly, gentlemen, if we're going to restore the United States of America, we need a constitutional convention to decide if we really want the federal government to rule America, or if we even want a federal system. I don't know the answer, but I know that without a political settlement to resolve lots of festering issues, this nation will fracture into several nations.”

“You're saying we need a new constitution,” Cart McKiernan murmured with his chin down, looking at Grafton over the top of his glasses.

“The states are going to have to figure that out,” Grafton said with a gesture of irritation. “The military needs to stabilize the country and get it running again so the politicians can ruminate and negotiate without the house burning down around them.”

Grafton stood up and started shaking hands. “Gentlemen, I want to thank you for your time this morning. This is our country. Soetoro won't be here long. The sooner he's gone, the better.”

General Rodriquez said, “Still think we should call the White House and offer to fly him out of the country?”

When I heard that my eyebrows went up toward my hairline.

“Yes,” Jake Grafton said. “Tell him the military won't protect him. In my opinion America will be better off going forward if people don't have his blood on their hands, but—” He raised his hands in a shrug. Then he said his good-byes. I opened the door and followed him out.

Fifteen minutes later, when we were in the Cessna and he was taxiing around the parking lot to find a lane for takeoff, I asked Grafton why he recommended flying Soetoro into exile.

“None of the leaders at Dawson can control our little army, and that's only one of at least eight or ten armed mobs marching on Washington. They'll kill Soetoro if they get their hands on him. If they do, his supporters will try to make him a martyr. A lot of people still think he's the black messiah, beset by evil enemies on all sides.”

“Think he'll go?”

“No, but it's worth a try.”

A minute later we were airborne and climbing over the Potomac for the White House. Maybe it was my imagination, but the crowd outside seemed larger. As we crossed the Mall, we could see people walking toward the mansion, like an incoming tide.

I looked away from the scene below. There was a house fire somewhere up to the northeast, and the plume was rising and drifting on the wind. I wondered if the fire department was on the job. Grafton finally leveled his wings heading west and added power to climb.

The flagship of the Texas Navy, the attack submarine
Texas
, was fifty miles east of Cape May, New Jersey, running at three knots when Loren Snyder poked the telescoping photonics masts—
Texas
had two of them—above the surface. In less than a minute, the video from the mast confirmed what the sonar was telling the crew, that there were no surface ships of any kind within their visible horizon.