We were ready to move out just before noon when Jim Jackson called again. “I was right, it's Deep Greeners,” he said. “They've taken over the capitol building and most of the downtown. Nobody's done any shooting, so far. I've got one of the handbills they're passing round, and it's what you'd expect: demanding an end to all industry, especially the NIPs, condemning logging and farming as ‘rape.’ They even say we should burn down all our towns and cities and make everyone live like they do, in huts and holes in the hills.”
“Who's leading them?” I asked.
“Your governor, Bowen,” Jim said.
“What? Bowen's there?”
“Standing tall and strong on the capitol steps, in the midst of a speech that's gone on for two hours already and gives no sign of stoppin',” Jim replied. “When I left, he was sayin' that oxygen is a precious resource, and no one who didn't worship Mother Gaia should be allowed any.”
“What action have you taken?” I asked, knowing that as a General Staff officer, Jim would have done more than collect information for someone else to act on.
“The local militia is mobilized, and we're quietly evacuating the citizens from downtown,” Jim answered. “We'll put the area around the capitol under siege as soon as that's done. I'd like to avoid any shooting if we can.”
“We're thinking the same way,” I said. “I'll be there with a company of Battle Squaddies by this evening. Out here.”
We rolled in around eight that night. The militia had sealed off downtown Montpelier, with the Deep Greeners inside. They weren't allowing any food in, but hadn't turned off the water or gas yet. We weren't quite ready for a confrontation, nor did the Deep Greeners seem to want one. They thought that if they ran up the Deep Green flag, Vermont would rally to them. It didn't.
We could just wait them out. But I saw this as an opportunity to demonstrate the Confederation would not tolerate putsches. Every state, and the Confederation as a whole, now allowed initiatives and referenda. If Deep Greeners wanted to change our course, they could put their ideas on the ballot and let people vote. Unlike the late United States, we had a legitimate government.
Our Battle Squadron company had brought along a gadget I thought might force the issue. It was a sonic weapon, developed by the French decades ago, that caused people to lose control of their muscle functions–including their sphincter. Basically, they flopped around like fish and shat their pants. What could be more appropriate than making Deep Greeners soil themselves? We also grabbed some local fire engine pumpers to use as water cannon; overnight, our troops welded shields on them to protect the operators from rifle fire.
We attacked at first light on April 2nd. The sonic weapon was on a LAV. It led our column right up to the capitol, followed by three fire engines and infantry with gas grenades. The Deep Greeners, with Bowen, now in the pink of health, out in front, met us on the lawn of the capitol building. They were carrying weapons, but they didn't point them. Evidently, they hoped we would massacre them in front of the television news crews, creating martyrs for their cause.
Instead, we turned on the sound weapon. The effect was immediate. The Deep Green crowd hit the deck, involuntarily, as they lost all muscle control. We didn't even need the fire hoses or the gas.
As soon as we turned the sonics off, our infantry moved in and started handcuffing the Deep Green warriors and tossing them in wagons. I directed the media reps to come in close, real close. They quickly got a strong dose of eau de excrement. Holding their noses, the TV and radio announcers reported the smell-o-rama, which sent their audiences into howls of laughter. That took care of the PR danger of them being portrayed as martyrs. No one becomes a hero by crapping his drawers.
So ended the Deep Green putsch. By noon on the 2nd, downtown Montpelier was returning to normal, and the governor of Vermont met with the legislature to determine the fate of the putschists. It was quickly decided that since they were unsatisfied with life in Vermont, they ought to go somewhere else.
Cascadia had a strong Deep Green party, and the government there had been following events in Vermont with interest. They volunteered to take the expellees, and on the morning of April third we dumped them on two Air Nippon Airbus 600s and sent them on their way to Seattle. To help Cascadia appreciate what it was getting, we did not give them an opportunity to change their pants.
That was not quite the end of the matter. On the evening of the 2nd, I had received a telegram from Bill Kraft, commanding “Return Bowen to Maine immediately.” So I tossed our good governor in the back of my LAV, to find in Augusta on the 3rd a welcoming committee of Kraft, the leaders of the legislature, and the town jailer, who was there to escort the Hon. Mr. Bowen to the slammer.
Bill and I adjourned for dinner at Mel's. When we'd ordered our codfish cakes and boiled potatoes, which was all the menu offered in those hard days, I gave the Herr Oberst my best hurt puppy look and said, “Old friend, you set me up, or at least I think you did.”
“I did not set you up,” Kraft replied, somewhat on the defensive. “If I'd told you what I knew, you would have acted just as you did anyway.”
“What did you know?” I inquired.
“I knew Bowen's sickness was an act,” he replied. “At first it was real. He was overwhelmed by the responsibility of being a wartime governor. Like most politicians in the old United States, he'd spent a lifetime learning how to avoid decisions. When he had to make some, he came unglued.”
“But that passed. By the time of the governors' meeting in New York, he was over it. I was getting reliable reports that when he thought he was alone, he was quite spry. Once I figured out he was acting, the question was why? If he just wanted to be governor of Maine and serve his people, he had no need to pretend he was sick. So who or what was he serving instead?”
“I got a break, thanks to one of the oldest engines of human history, female jealousy. Bowen's wife had noticed that one of his nurses, a certain Miss Levine, spent increasing amounts of time with him. He brightened notably when she entered the room, and was sufficiently indiscreet to ask for her if she wasn't there. At the same time, he grew colder toward everyone else, including his wife.”
“Naturally, Mrs. Bowen thought they were having an affair. Afraid of causing a scandal, she approached me quietly for advice. I suspected something more was going on. So I arranged for Miss Levine to get a telegram calling her home to attend a sick momma. Along the way, her journey was unexpectedly interrupted when the train made a water-stop. She was escorted to a waiting automobile, and thence to a small fishing shack on the coast. Interrogation techniques soon proved they have not lost their efficacy.”
“It seemed Miss Levine was a devoted Deep Greener. She did appeal to Bowen's amorous propensities, but those just opened the door. Bowen had absorbed a great deal of cultural Marxism under the old regime, and his breakdown came in part because he found himself heading a government that rejected everything it stood for. She worked her feminine wiles to convince him he could become a hero by embracing Deep Green and leading it to power. That restored his health, and also gave him reason to keep his cure secret until he could find a way to act.”
“Did you know Bowen was involved with the Deep Greeners in Vermont?” I asked.
“Yes,” Kraft replied. “Miss Levine had established that connection for him. Threatened with the gallows, she agreed to become a double agent. She convinced Bowen he had to communicate with the Vermonters in writing. I got copies of all the letters.”
“Why didn't you tell me all this?” I asked.
“I was afraid you would counterattack too soon. It's a bad American habit. We needed to let our enemy commit himself irrevocably before we acted.”
“And what will happen to Bowen now?”
“He will be tried for treason, convicted, and hanged by the neck until dead,” Kraft replied.
The wheels of justice ground coarse but swiftly in the Northern Confederation. Bowen went on trial before a jury of his peers on April 7. The weasel fir
st reverted to his helpless invalid act, then suddenly recovered his health to offer a stirring defense of cultural Marxism. The jury literally laughed in his face. The prosecutor gave the court Bowen's treacherous letters to the Vermont Deep Greeners, and on April 10, it took the jurors less than fifteen minutes in deliberation to find him guilty.
Bowen's lawyer—we had not yet recodified the laws and eliminated lawyers—knew his client was as guilty as Judas, and hadn't spent much effort suggesting otherwise. Instead, he focused his efforts on avoiding the death penalty. He presented the court with a stack of glowing character references. The prosecutor pointed out they were all written by former politicians or lobbyists whose palms Bowen had greased under the old American regime.
The defense then called a variety of clergymen–and, foolishly, some women, including one purporting to be the Episcopal “Bishop” of Maine. Bill Kraft, a traditional Anglican despite his Prussian commission, referred to her as “the Vestal”. They testified that the death penalty was unchristian. The prosecution responded by offering the local Monsignor as a witness. He methodically catalogued passages from the writings or sermons of each defense witness where they had departed widely from Christian doctrine. With a twinkle in his venerable eye, he then recounted how the church itself, in its salad days, had not hesitated to turn the most hardened of sinners over to the secular arm for the ultimate sanction–while praying, most sincerely, for their souls.
Bowen's attorney's final trick was to call Mrs. Bowen to the stand. Perhaps he thought conjugal bonds would inspire her to plead for mercy, and that a faithful wife's tears would sway the court.
But Mrs. Bowen proved to be made of sterner stuff. Her plea to the court, while not what Bowen's lawyer had hoped, was most eloquent.
“Your honor, men of the jury, perhaps you can imagine how hard it is for me to say what I must. Perhaps you can't. Asa was a good husband, and I think I've been a good wife. I loved him, and I think he loved me. I know I love him still.
“That's what makes it so hard. If I were angry with him, or jealous because of his unfaithfulness, it would be easier. But I'm not. I wish with all my heart that he and I could simply walk out of this building together and go home.
“But I know I must honor a higher love, my love of this state of Maine. And I do love her. I love her rocky spray-swept coasts and quiet forests, her old ways and silent people. And I know Maine's women, no less than her men, must do their duty by her.
“My husband betrayed us. There is no other way to put it. He tried to sell us out to people who would have destroyed us. I know what kind of people they were. Asa used to bring them by the house all the time, back when we were still the United States. They were always going on about this cause or that, somebody who was a victim, somebody else who was an oppressor. I'd invite them out to see our garden, a nice garden. But they couldn't see it, or me, or anything. All their brain was taken up by some ideology, so they couldn't see at all. And what they could not see, they would destroy.
“If my Asa had succeeded with these Deep Greeners, this State of Maine my family has loved for more than 200 years would have vanished. It would not have been the same place. I don't know what it would have become, but it would not have been the same. It would not have been Maine.
“I would like to ask mercy for my husband. But I do not have the right to do that. All those generations who went before us, who carved our state from the wilderness with lives of toil and hardship, who gave all they had to make us what we are, forbid me. What Asa did might have reduced all their labor and pain and sacrifice to nothing. No one has a right to do that.
“My husband is guilty of a terrible crime. I thank God he failed in it. But he did it, and he must pay the price. I will miss him, and mourn him the rest of my life. But I cannot ask you to spare him. Do your duty, as I have done mine.”
*
The judge, along with the rest of us in the courtroom, was deeply moved by Mrs. Bowen's speech. His voice rang throughout the chamber as he sentenced the Honorable Asa Bowen, the former governor of the great State of Maine, to hang by the neck until dead on the 15th of April. Those of us who remembered what April 15th had meant in the old U.S.A. found it a most appropriate day for hanging a government official.
The gallows were set up in front of the State House, still a burned-out shell thanks to federal bombing, but a symbol of Maine nonetheless. The whole town turned out for the hanging, and other folks came from all over Maine, despite the difficulties of travel. I was pleased to see that many parents brought their children. They weren't too young to learn that the wages of sin are death, that Maine was recovering its nerve.
Right at noon, just after the factory whistles blew, Bowen stepped out of the horse-drawn paddy wagon, draped in black, that had brought him from the town jail. Before him walked a priest reading Psalms. Bowen kept his dignity, mounted the platform unassisted and stood on the trap. The executioner, in his black mask, hooded Bowen and bound his legs. The noose was slipped over his head and tightened. The priest offered a prayer for Asa's soul; most of us bowed our heads and joined in the Amen. It was the state's duty to execute justice, but God could be merciful. At exactly 12:10, the hangman pulled the lever and Bowen dropped. It was a clean kill.
It was also time for lunch.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Down at Mel's, the talk was about our new governor. The problem was, we didn't have one. We'd never had an election to choose a new lieutenant governor after Governor Adams was assassinated and Bowen moved up. While most matters were handled directly by the people, through referenda, if the war heated up again we'd need someone who could make decisions, fast. The Roman republic had elected dictators in times of crisis. We didn't need to go that far, but we did need a governor, and this time it had to be a good one.
Everybody knew who that was: Bill Kraft. He believed what we believed, he could make decisions and he understood war. But Bill was not about to cooperate.
“Nolo episcopari,” he growled when the speaker of the state legislature asked him if he'd take the job–“I don't want to be a bishop,” the ancient answer a priest is expected to give when he is selected for that honor. The difference was that Bill actually meant it.
I added my voice to the many telling him he had no choice, Maine and the Confederation could not do without him, we could not afford another mistake, and so on. He would have none of it. When he got up from his half-eaten meal and marched out of Mel's, I knew he was serious. I'd never seen Bill leave a table while it still had something edible on it.
At the Speaker's request, I joined him and a few other political movers and shakers at his office after lunch. Sam Gibbons, the speaker, was clearly worried. “I think we all expected Bill Kraft to replace Bowen, as soon as we knew what Bowen had been up to. I know the folks back home in my district want him. Bowen's treason upset them in a serious way. They feel Maine could go the way of the old USA if this sort of thing continues. They know Kraft and what he has done for us, and they trust him. If I have to tell them he won't do it, they'll really start to worry where we're headed. They just won't understand, and frankly, neither do I.”
“Have you ever visited Bill Kraft at home?” I asked.
“Nope,” Sam answered. “Bill doesn't really like politics, or politicians, even ones who agree with him,” Sam explained. “He does like Marines. Have you been there?”
“I have,” I answered. “And I think I understand why Bill is afraid of the governorship. He lives a quiet, ordered life, a retro-life if you will. That's his anchor, and it enables him to think creatively and boldly without becoming unstable. My guess is he fears the celebrity life of a political leader would overturn that. He's probably right. “'Innsbruck, ich muss dich lassen'” is a sad song.”
“I can understand that,” Gibbons said. “We all feel it. I'm a lot happier back on my farm than here in Augusta. But in Bill's case we have to get him by it. No one else can make the people of Maine confident in their leaders right now,
after Bowen. What if we just put his name on the ballot, hold an election and let him win, which he would?”
“I seem to remember another popular military leader named Sherman who faced the same kind of political draft,” I said. “His answer was, ‘If nominated I will not run, and if elected I will not serve.’ I suspect we'd hear something similar from Bill Kraft.”
“Isn't there some way we can order him to do it?” Gibbons asked.
“He only takes orders from the Kaiser,” joked one of the other politicos.
Bingo! As the light went on in my brain housing group, I could feel a big grin spreading over my face. Herr Oberst Kraft had played one on me by letting me go after the Deep Greeners without a full sheet of music. Now, it was payback time.
The others saw my idiot grin. “You got an idea?” Gibbons asked.
“I do,” I replied. “I think I can arrange for Bill to get an order from the Kaiser, or more precisely from the King of Prussia–they're the same person.”
“Who is it?” asked another politico.
“The head of the House of Hohenzollern.”
“I didn't think Germany had a Kaiser any more,” Sam said.
“Technically, it doesn't,” I answered. “But technically, Prussia doesn't exist any more either. I don't doubt Bill's Prussia is real, but its place is in his heart, not on the map. That Prussia has a king, and its king is the head of the House of Hohenzollern. If he orders Bill to accept the governorship of the state of Maine, he'll do it. As a Prussian officer, he'll have to.”
“How do we get to this king?” Sam asked.
“Through his dear friend and cousin—that's how the kings of Europe addressed each other, even when sending a declaration of war—the Tsar of Russia,” I said.
Following our little meeting, I walked a few blocks to the small wooden house that was the Imperial Russian Embassy and the residence of the Russian ambassador, Father Dimitri. In the front room that was his office, the samovar was bubbling beneath the double-headed eagle, and from the kitchen the ambassador brought out blini and a tin of caviar. “Thanks,” I said. “You know all we eat up here any more is fish. You wouldn't have a nice beefsteak back there, would you?”