The Road to Omaha: A Novel

  “Any other objections, Counselor?” asked Redwing.

  “Something terrible is going to happen,” squeaked Sam in a strained, piping voice. “It always does when he thinks things through!”

  The Rockwell jet soared over the Appalachian mountains preparing for its descent into the Fort Benning area, specifically a private airfield twelve miles north of the army base. The single passenger on board was the Hawk, once again dressed in his nondescript gray suit, wearing his steel-rimmed glasses, and with his gray, bristled brush-cut hair covered by his dull red wig now trimmed to perfection by Erin Lafferty. The former general had been on the telephone in Swampscott from roughly four o’clock in the morning until five-thirty making his arrangements. The first call he placed was to Heseltine Brokemichael, who was only ecstatic in any attempt whatsoever to “screw the bejesus” out of his loathsome cousin, Ethelred. Seventeen calls later, all placed and received on the beach house lines, paved the way for a certain magazine writer whose current research involved post-Soviet breakup military adjustment to be admitted onto the base. At 0800 Brigadier General Ethelred Brokemichael, whose cover was Base Public Relations, had been alerted by Pentagon Public Relations to expect this very influential journalist and to act as his escort throughout the army complex. For Brokey the Deuce it was a relatively routine assignment that made good use of his minor theatrical talents, which, naturally, he did not consider minor at all. At ten hundred hours, Ethelred Brokemichael hung up his office phone, having instructed his WAC aide to show in the writer. The brigadier was fully prepared to repeat a PR performance he had done so successfully for a number of years.

  What he was not prepared for was the sight of the large, somewhat stooped, bespectacled, red-haired elderly man, who walked shyly through his office door, profusely thanking the female sergeant who held it open for him. There was something vaguely familiar about the man, an aura, perhaps, that belied the image of solicitous courtesy; there was even an abstract sound of distant thunder—heard only by Brokey the Deuce, but it was distinctly there. What was it about this oddball character who might have walked right out of the movie Great Expectations, a large, awkward, downtrodden accounts clerk trying to assuage the old lady … or was he mixing the role up with that tall fellow on stage in Nicholas Nickleby?

  “It’s very kind of you to spare your valuable time for my modest research, General,” said the journalist in a quiet if somewhat hoarse voice.

  “It’s, my job,” said Brokemichael, flashing a sudden grin he felt would do justice to Kirk Douglas. “We are the armed servants of the people and want them to fully understand our contributions to the defense of our country and the peace of the world.… Please, sit down.”

  “That’s a wonderful and moving statement.” The redheaded writer sat down in front of the desk, pulled out a notepad and a ballpoint pen and proceeded to scribble a few words. “Do you mind if I quote you? I’ll ascribe it to an ‘authoritative source’ if you prefer.”

  “Certainly not—I mean, you may certainly ascribe it to me.” This was the very influential journalist who had Pentagon PR running around in circles to accommodate him. Why? This aging, gravel-voiced oddball was a certified civilian in awe of a uniform. The morning would be a snap. “We in the army don’t hide behind secondary, unnamed sources, Mr.… Mr.—”

  “Harrison, General. Lex Harrison.”

  “Rex Harrison …?”

  “No, Alexander Harrison. My parents nicknamed me ‘Lex’ many years ago, and my by-lines have always been under that name.”

  “Oh, yes, of course—it’s just kind of a jolt, if you know what I mean … I mean, Rex Harrison.”

  “Yes, Mr. Harrison used to get quite a kick out of the similarity. He once asked me if we could change places—he’d write an article and I’d go on for him as Henry Higgins. An untimely death; he was a lovely man.”

  “You knew Rex Harrison?”

  “Through mutual friends—”

  “Mutual friends?”

  “New York and L.A. are actually small towns if you’re a writer or an actor … but my publishers aren’t interested in me and my Polo Lounge drinking companions, General.”

  “Polo Lounge …?”

  “It’s a watering hole favored by the rich and famous and everyone else in L.A. who wants to be.… Now back to my publishers, they’re interested in the military and how it’s reacting to the economies being imposed. May we start the interview?”

  “Sure, yes … of course. I’ll tell you anything you like, it’s just that I’ve always had a tremendous interest in the theater and movies … and even television.”

  “My writing and performing friends would put television first, General. It’s what they call ‘survival money.’ You can’t make a living on the stage, and films are too few and far between.”

  “Yes, I’ve heard that from—well, never mind—but this is real inside stuff from someone who really knows!”

  “I haven’t betrayed any secrets, take my word for it,” said the journalist. “Even Greg, Mitch, and Michael admit it.”

  “Oh, my God … naturally!” No wonder Pentagon PR considered this old hoarse-voiced reporter very influential. He had obviously been around for years, and hobnobbed with famous people whom the Pentagon were always trying to cultivate for their TV commercials. Christ! Rex Harrison, Greg, Mitch, and Michael—he knew everybody! “I frequently fly to … L.A.… Mr. Harrison. Perhaps we might get together sometime … at the Polo Lounge.”

  “Why not? I’m out there half the time, the other half in New York, but to tell you the truth, the action’s on the Coast. When you’re out there, just go to the Po-Lounge and tell Gus the bartender that you’re looking for me. I always check in with him whether I’m staying at the Beverly Hills or not. That’s how people know I’m in town—like Paul … Newman, that is, and Joanne, and the Pecks, Mitchum, Caine, and even a few newcomers like the Toms—Selleck and Cruise—and Meryl and Bruce—the good people.”

  “The good people …?”

  “Well, you know, the real ones, the guys and girls I get along with—”

  “I’d love to meet them!” interrupted Brokemichael, his eyes two large white saucers with flashing brown cup rings. “I can arrange my schedule any time!”

  “Hey, whoa, General, whoa,” said the old reporter huskily. “These people are pros in the business. They’ve been around the block, and don’t necessarily like side streets to amateurville.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, an interest in the movies or television or whatever isn’t exactly being a member of the fraternity, if you see what I mean. Hell, everybody wants to meet these faces—sometimes they call themselves ‘faces,’ as though it’s an insult to themselves—but underneath they’re real people who know what goes with the territory, but put limits on the land grabs.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “In short words, you’re not a pro, General, you’re a fan—and that they can get on any street corner, more than they can handle. Pros don’t socialize with fans, they tolerate ’em.… May we get back to the interview, please?”

  “Well, yes, of course,” cried the frustrated Brokemichael, “but I think—I know damned well—that you’re underestimating my commitment to the performing arts!”

  “Oh, was your mother an actress in a community theater, or did your father act in a high school play?”

  “Neither one, although my mother always wanted to be an actress but her parents told her it would send her to hell, so she mimicked a lot.… My father was a colonel—goddamn, I’ve outranked that son of a bitch!… But I’ve got the theatrical bloodline from my mother—I really love the theater and good films and TV—especially the old movies. I feel electricity when I watch a show that moves me, really moves me. I cry, I laugh, I’m every one of those characters on the stage or on the screen. It’s my alter life!”

  “I’m afraid that’s a fantasizing amateur’s reaction,” said the gruff-voiced journalist, returning to his
notebook.

  “Oh, you think so?” protested Brokemichael, his own voice strained, cracked with emotion. “Then let me tell you something—can we go off the record, no pen, no notebook—everything confidential?”

  “Why not? I’m only here to get the overall military picture—”

  “Be quiet!” whispered Brokey the Deuce, rising behind his desk, then crouching, slithering toward the door, listening as if playing a role in Bertolt Brecht’s Threepenny Opera. “I command the most elite acting repertory company in the annals of military history! I’ve trained them, guided them, brought them to the zenith of their talents, so that now they’re considered a world-class, antiterrorist unit that succeeds where everyone else fails! I ask you, is that amateurville?”

  “Now, General, they’re soldiers, trained for that sort of thing—”

  “No, they’re not!” exploded Brokemichael, his whisper growing into a near-hiss. “They’re actors, real professional actors! When they enlisted as a group, I saw the opportunities right away. Who better to infiltrate and pull the plugs behind enemy lines than men trained to impersonate other people? And what better than a unit of actors familiar with one another’s work, a repertory company capable of playing off one another to give the illusion of spontaneity, of naturalism—reality?… clandestine operations, Mr. Harrison. They were born to it and I made it possible!”

  The journalist’s reaction was that of a curmudgeon grudgingly acknowledging a valid point where he had thought none existed. “Well, I’ll be damned …! That’s one hell of a concept, General—I might even go so far as to say it’s brilliant.”

  “Not exactly amateurville, is it? These days everyone wants their services. Even now, at this moment, they’re on assignment for one of the most powerful men in the country.”

  “Oh?” The man called Harrison frowned questioningly, a slight cynical smile shaping his lips. “Then they’re not on the premises, so I can’t meet them … and we are off the record so I can’t write about them?”

  “My God, way off the record, not a word!”

  “Then, frankly, General, speaking as a reporter, I have only one source—you. No editor alive would accept a single source, and my friends in the Polo Lounge would laugh through their oat bran eggs Benedict, saying it would make a hell of a screenplay if it were true—which it would if it was.”

  “It is!”

  “Who says besides you?”

  “Well, I … I can’t!”

  “Too bad. If there was a shred of truth to the concept, you could probably sell an outline for a few hundred thousand. And with what they call a ‘screen treatment’—that’s a half-assed summary like we all used to do in high school book reports—for maybe a half a million. You’d be the toast of Tinseltown.”

  “Oh, my God, it is true! Believe me!”

  “I may believe you, but my confidence wouldn’t be worth a Pellegrino and lime in the Po-Lounge. For this kind of thing to fly, you need credibility.… Now, General, I really think we should return to the interview.”

  “No! I’m too close to my dreams.… Paul and Joanne, Greg and Mitch and Michael—all the good people!”

  “That they are—”

  “You must believe me!”

  “How can I?” growled the old journalist. “I can’t even write down a word—we’re off the record.”

  “Well, try this,” cried Brokey the Deuce, his eyes on fire as the sweat rolled down his face. “Within the next twenty-four hours, my antiterrorist repertory company of actors will capture one of the most dangerous enemies our country has ever known.”

  “That’s a hell of a statement, General. Anything to back it up with that I can document?”

  “Is there anything between off-the-record and on-the-record?”

  “Well, I suppose there’s confidential postoccurrence disclosure—that’s to say nothing may be printed until the event takes place, and even then, only ‘on background.’ ”

  “What’s that?”

  “No specific names are used or revealed as sources.”

  “I’ll take it!”

  “You’ll get it,” muttered the journalist.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Nothing. Go ahead, General.”

  “They’re-in-Boston-Massachusetts,” said Brokemichael quickly in a monotone, his lips barely moving.

  “That’s nice.”

  “Have you been reading the newspapers or watching television?” the general asked, again quickly, secretively.

  “Off and on, you can’t escape either one.”

  “Did you read or hear about the Nobel committee that flew into Boston on the Vice-President’s plane?”

  “Yes, I think I did,” replied the journalist, scowling in thought. “Something about an address at Harvard and announcing some award or other for a general … the Soldier of the Decade, or something like that. I saw it on the television news.”

  “Preet-tee impressive, wouldn’t you say?” said Brokey the Deuce, the question delivered in sing-song.

  “Well, any committee representing the Nobel Foundation wouldn’t be too tacky.”

  “You agree then that they were a distinguished group of scholars and military historians, right?”

  “Certainly. The Nobel boys don’t mess around with bums, they don’t have to. So what’s all this got to do with your … your repertory company of antiterrorists?”

  “It’s them!”

  “What’s them?”

  “That Nobel committee! They’re my men, my actors!”

  “General, on this point I’ll stay strictly off the record, but have you been dabbling in the sauce this morning?… Hey, look, I’m no young goober with newsprint stars in my eyes—like my friends at the Po-Lounge, I’ve been around the block, too, sometimes with a fifth in my pocket—”

  “I’m telling you the truth!” Brokemichael fulminated, his harsh sotto voce so intense the veins in his throat turned purple. “And I never have a drop of alcohol before the Officers’ Club opens at noon. That ‘Nobel committee’ is actually my clandestine unit, my actors!”

  “Perhaps we should reschedule this interview—”

  “I’ll prove it to you!” The leader of Suicidal Six raced to a file cabinet, slapped open a drawer, and yanked out a number of manila folders. He ran back to his desk and threw them indiscriminately across the top, opening several and scattering dozens of photographs helter-skelter. “There they are! We keep records of their various disguises so as not to duplicate them on succeeding operations in case of past photo surveillance.… Here, here! These are the last pictures—the hair, a few short beards, the glasses, and even the eyebrows. These are the men you saw on television in the press conference at Logan Airport in Boston! Look, look!”

  “I’ll be damned,” said the journalist, now standing and studying the eight-by-ten glossy photographs. “I believe you’re right.”

  “I am right! These are the Suicidal Six, my creation!”

  “But why are they in Boston?”

  “It’s top secret, max-classified to the zenith.”

  “Well, General, I hate to tell you, but all you’ve shown me is disconnected visual possibilities. They’re meaningless without an explanation. Remember, we’re on ‘postoccurrence disclosure,’ so it’s okay, you can tell me.”

  “My name won’t be mentioned—except perhaps to your ‘Po-Lounge’ friends, who I’d kill to meet?”

  “My word as a journalist,” agreed the man who called himself Harrison.

  “Well, that general you mentioned—that disgraced former general—is a traitor to our country. I won’t go into all the details, but if he carries out his plan, this nation stands to lose its first- and second-strike capabilities.”

  “He’s that—Soldier of the whatever?” interrupted Harrison.

  “ ‘Soldier of the Century,’ but it’s all a hoax, a scam to pull him in and take him! And my men, my actors are doing that right now!”

  “I’m genuinely sorry to hear that, Gen
eral, genuinely sorry.”

  “Why? He’s demented.”

  “He’s what?”

  “He’s a screwball, a mental case—”

  “Then why is he so goddamned important?”

  “Because he and a criminal lawyer from Harvard, accent on criminal—who I know something about—have worked up some big fraud case against our perfect government that could cost us—especially the Pentagon—more millions than we could con from Congress in a hundred years!”

  “What case?”

  “I don’t have the particulars, only the essence, and let me tell you, it’s a Rocky Horror Picture Show—did you ever see that movie?”

  “Sorry,” growled the journalist, his blatant hostility apparent, but apparently not to Brokey the Deuce. “Who is this general?” asked the man called Harrison, choking out the question.

  “A crazy son of a bitch named Hawkins, a real troublemaker, always has been.”

  “I remember that name. Didn’t he win the Congressional twice?”

  “He’s also a maniac. Eighty percent of the Congressional get it after they’re dead. How come he wasn’t killed—maybe there’s a story there?”

  “Auuaagh!” coughed the journalist, the fire now in his eyes. “How come Air Force Two carried these imposters to Boston?” he asked, resuming a semblance of control.

  “Window dressing for the press conference. You can’t ignore that aircraft.”

  “You can’t rent it from a Hertz counter, either. That plane’s an untouchable.”

  “Not for some people—”

  “Oh, yes, you mentioned a big shot … ‘one of the most powerful men in the country,’ I think you said.”

  “Very high rank, damn near the highest. Max-classified.”

  “Now that sort of confidential information would really impress my friends in Hollywood. They’d probably fly you out to the Coast for a couple of conferences—all very hush-hush, of course.”