Wag the Dog Read online

  85 In 1969 according to the wonderfully precise statistics released by the American mission in Saigon, 19,534 Viet Cong organizers, propagandists, tax collectors, and the like were listed as having been neutralized—6,187 of them killed.” (Vietnam: A History) Karnow was at first very skeptical of these numbers and “the claim, advanced by William Colby . . . that the program . . . eliminated 60,000 authentic Viet Cong agents.” After the war, however, Viet Cong and NVA sources confirmed to Karnow that Phoenix had hurt them very severely.

  Obviously, they won anyway. But they did so with North Vietnamese forces, mostly regulars, and without the local guerrilla forces.

  Chapter

  THIRTY-THREE

  WWII-2-V, BEAGLE WROTE it down. He could read it, but to anyone else it looked like scribble-II-√. That was not a marquee title—it was a working title, a project name. Other titles starting running through his head:

  Morning in America

  American Century

  American Storm

  Pax Americana

  Hope of the World

  American Hero

  The Reincarnation of John Wayne

  The 7 Incarnations of John Wayne

  He wrote them down under scribble-II-√, but even as he did so, he realized that he wouldn’t find a final title until he actually picked who we were going to have a war with.

  Where? What war?

  There was no shortage of wars around the world. They were going on all over the place all the time. Should he tap into something ongoing? Or start his own. He knew there was a list somewhere. He swung over to the workstation in the corner. It was an alternate way to tap into the Fujitsu and easier for print-based information. He typed in “War, Current.” An alphabetical list began to scroll up the screen.

  Afghanistan Resistance War

  Angola Guerrilla—Civil War

  Bangladesh Guerrilla War

  Bolivian Drug War

  Burma—Guerrilla War

  Central America

  War in Chad

  Conflict in Chile

  Colombia—Guerrilla War

  East Timor Resistance War

  Ecuador

  El Salvador Civil War

  Ethiopia-Eritrea War

  Guatemala, Guerrilla War in

  Holy War—Jihad

  India-Pakistan War

  India: Sikh-Hindu War

  Iran-Iraq War

  Kampuchea—Vietnam’s War Against Guerrillas

  Kurdish War of Independence

  Lebanon

  Liberia—Civil War

  Morocco-Polisario War

  Mozambique Guerrilla War

  Nicaragua-Contra War

  Northern Ireland Terrorist War

  Peru’s “Shining Path”

  Philippines “Communist War”

  Sudan—Civil War

  Sri Lanka—Civil War

  Togo

  Zulu-ANC War86

  He hadn’t stopped the videos. When he looked up, by fate or coincidence, there, obviously misfiled, was Rommel. America’s favorite Nazi. Why did we like him so? Desert warfare? It was hot, but hot and dry is OK. It’s the wet with the hot that makes for sex and disease. Tanks? Machines do the killing and the goal is to kill machines.

  It was time to check with that parallel universe: reality. Reality said yes. The desert was the best place for armored warfare, and it was the one place where air power was really decisive. The documentary series The World at War had been very clear about that.

  That was it then. WWII-2-V would be a desert war—hot and dry, air power and tanks.

  We use surgical or strategic violence only because we are forced to by the enemy.

  Killing is justified so long as one does not take pleasure in it and it is done in a clean manner—preferably from antiseptic distance . . .

  Oh! He had it! What a thought! What an image. He started pushing buttons on the console—he was sure of the title—Bombardier. It’s 1943. Pat O’Brien is trying to show why Americans should bomb people from way high up. As opposed to dive bombing. To prove his thesis he stages a demonstration and literally drops a bomb into a barrel from twenty thousand feet. Later one of the bombardier candidates at bombardier school is freezing up over the target. “When I look at the target, I see people. Women and children. Those letters . . .” They’re from his mom. “She says I’m making myself into a murderer.” But the chaplain (not Pat O’Brien—he’s the head bombardier this time) explains: “The enemy’s targets are everywhere. But yours are clear and confined. Not women and children. . . . That’s why the American bombardiers are trained to hit the target.” The boy believes. His conscience is clear. He can go on to drop bombs. Which he does. In the climactic scene they fly over a Jap munitions factory.

  CREWMAN: Put one in the smokestack.

  BOMBARDIER: Which one?

  CREWMAN: The center one.

  BOMBARDIER: That’s easy.

  Beagle knew he was going to use that. He didn’t know where he was going to find a smokestack in the desert, but he was going to use that scene. Our war was going to be so surgical, we would drop our bombs right down the enemy smokestack. Never touch woman nor child nor noncombatant of any kind.

  It brought him back to the big problem. Who would attack America? Even an American outpost. Didn’t we have Falkland Island-type places? Puerto Rico? The Virgin Islands? Guam? One of the Pacific Islands? It was pitiful. Nobody was going to attack America.

  Maybe that wasn’t necessary. It was going to be a remake of World War II. He knew that. What if—what if, instead of appeasing Hitler, we’d stood up to him early. Hitler invades Poland. Maybe we’ve learned from the Second World War and we do it better this time. We stand up to him when he invades Poland. That was great. Nobody has to attack the United States. We just have to find a Hitler and have him invade Poland.

  Was that doable? Yes. He thought so. There were lots of Hitlers around and lots of Polands.

  Was that enough? Was that it? Yes.

  Beagle rose and stretched. He walked out of the control room, feeling immensely satisfied with himself. Without being conscious of it, he swaggered—it was a walk familiar to anyone who had watched classic Westerns—he swaggered just like big John Wayne.

  Agnes Przyszewski hugged her mom. Even though Agnes had been raised on television, where if someone lost a job or quit their job they always had a new and better job by the time the thirty sitcom minutes were over, it had gradually penetrated that what her mother had done, and was doing, was a remarkable gesture of support. It was bringing mother and daughter closer than they had been for years.

  They picked out clothes together for Kitty’s upcoming interview with Joe Broz. “I’m not going to take the job,” Kitty said, “unless it means I can do something for you.” When Kitty stood in front of the bathroom mirror and started to do her hair, Agnes offered to brush it for her, something she had loved to do as a little girl but hadn’t done since she was seven. It was all Kitty could do not to cry.

  Chaz and Bo were about half a block away. The car they sat in was stolen, as were the plates, acquired separately at long-term parking at LAX. They had decided to take the Przyszewski woman right when she reached her car, where it was parked out on the street. That was the quickest, cleanest way. Once someone is in a car, stopping them can be very complicated, and, once stopped, it can be difficult to get them out.

  They’d done this sort of thing before. But they still talked it through. They would start moving, with Chaz at the wheel, as soon as Kitty opened the front door, cruising toward her. Then Bo, who had a sweet voice and a kind of wimpy look, would say, “Excuse me, miss, can you help me. I think we’re lost.” She’d stop. He’d get out of the car with a map in his hand. By the time she saw the gun, he’d be right up close to her. Chaz, who already had a boner thinking of her, would have the back door flung open. Bo would hustle her in.

  She’d be alive when they were done. There would be no permanent visible damage to her body. But sh
e probably wouldn’t talk to anyone for a long, long time.

  When the commands stopped coming from the control room, Teddy Brody got restless. He really, truly expected Beagle to say something, anything, about his one-page propaganda piece. Actually, he didn’t expect Beagle to say “something, anything,” he expected Beagle to praise him, give him recognition, and give him the opening to say, “Please sir, won’t you read my treatment.”

  Teddy squeezed between a pair of monitors and peered through a gap where one of them was mounted. The control room was empty. Video monitors playing, no one watching. There, in a corner of the console, looking neglected, was a single sheet of paper that might or might not have been his essay on propaganda. His heart sank.

  He decided to enter the control room. He’d never done that, except the first day of his employment when he was taken on a tour of CinéMutt so that he would see how his humble efforts in the back room came to fruition in the director’s room. For that matter, he hadn’t entered any room, uninvited, since he was six. Or was it seven. Or eight. Or five. He’d blocked it out. What was it that he’d blocked out? Something came over him when he put his hand on the knob of the connecting door. A terrible fear that he felt in his bowels. More specific than that, in his sphincter. He knew that what he’d seen was his parents having sex. Not an unusual thing for a child to stumble on. Why so traumatic? What was it about those tears that so troubled him. Tears. There had been tears and rage. He turned the knob. The door swung open on perfect silent hinges. There was no one—no vision—no tyrant—no rage—no tears—waiting for him inside. Just an empty room with a lot of video screens running silent, flickering colors out in the air where they quickly dimmed for failure to find reflective surfaces.

  He was in. And he knew, in his heart, that he was right to enter. He was a good boy. Too good. This was not a world where propriety and politeness, punctilious honesty and genuine respect, were the tools to achieve success—if there ever was such a world. Anywhere. Ever. It was a place where knowledge was power, even stolen knowledge, especially stolen knowledge. Where you told people what they wanted to hear—not the truth—because who wanted truth? That was for private moments with yourself, if you liked mirrors that were mean and ugly. Where a stolen screen credit was better than no credit and the only rule for plagiarism was to be certain that you had better lawyers and trickier accountants than whomever you stole from. Goddammit, it was time for him to grow up or get out. Go—not home, never home—but some halfway house for losers, like a university.

  He walked, silent feet on silent carpet, to the console. He saw his paper there. No grade on it. He’d expected one. Dumb reflex. He saw Beagle’s meager notes—the titles.

  There was a bottle of sparkling wine in the CinéMutt kitchen. Beagle thought he deserved a champagne toast to himself. He called home, to speak to his wife. But she wasn’t in. He went out in the reception area and . . . well, there was a stranger. Kitty was so great. Used to be so great, before she went bonkers. At least he could have celebrated with her and she would have acted happy about it even if he couldn’t tell her what exactly they were drinking to.

  The obvious person to call was David Hartman. After all, David was the one other person in the world who knew.

  Hartman took the call.

  “I am standing here, sparkling wine in hand. And you should be too. Because I have figured it out,” Beagle said.

  On the other end of the line Hartman leaned back and closed his eyes and sighed with relief. That was the hell of the job. Waiting for the damn talent to do whatever it was they did. It always took as long as it took. “I’ll open a bottle over here,” Hartman said, “and I’ll drink to you over the phone.” Beagle waited while Hartman went away. When he came back, they clinked their glasses against their respective telephones. While Hartman looked through his appointment calendar to see who he would have to dump to see Beagle that day, or tomorrow morning at the latest, he remembered that this business about the secretary was bothering him.

  “Line, this Przyszewski woman, your secretary, was she any good?” Hartman had an idea about placing her somewhere safe, where he could keep tabs on her and not have U. Sec. do whatever it did.

  “She was great.”

  “Really?”

  “Kitty, yeah. Until she went nuts.”

  “What happened?”

  “She asked me to give her daughter a part in my next movie. That got my back up, or it would’ve, it usually does, but there aren’t any parts anyway. So I said that and she lost it.”

  “Would you have her back?”

  “Sure. I’d love her back. If she were sane, of course.”

  “Why don’t you do this,” Hartman said. “Call her up. Tell her you called me and I said RepCo would represent her daughter. We’ll give the kid an agent. Kitty’ll be happy, you’ll be happy, and we can all go on about our business.”

  “Done,” Beagle said.

  Then they figured out when they could meet.

  Chaz saw Kitty’s door open. He smiled and put one hand on his crotch. He was thick and pulsing in anticipation. Bo, who noticed the gesture, laughed. Chaz’s game was not strictly what Bo would have done if he were alone, but he got a kick out of the fear and pain parts.

  Kitty came out. Chaz put the car in motion.

  Inside the house, the phone rang. Agnes picked it up.

  “Hi, is Kitty there?”

  “Who’s this?”

  “This is Line.”

  “I don’t think she wants to talk to you”, Agnes said, rude and virtuous, playing it the way she’d seen it done on prime-time soaps.

  “Well, I was hoping I could talk her into coming back to work.”

  “Too bad,” Agnes said. “I don’t think she wants to come back.”

  Outside, as Kitty moved toward her car, Chaz and Bo pulled up to just about where they thought the snatch should take place.

  “Is this Agnes?” Beagle asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Do you know RepCo?”

  Of course she did. She was an L.A. kid. “Of course I do,” Agnes said.

  Bo held his map in front of his face and put on his baffled and helpless expression.

  “Well, I’m good friends with Dave Hartman, head of RepCo, and, um, well I talked to him about you and he said RepCo would be happy to represent you, if you want to give it a try.

  Bo rolled down the window. “Uh, excuse me, miss,” he called out to Kitty. “We sure are lost here.”

  Kitty looked at her watch. She had a minute to spare to help out a lost stranger and still make the job interview in plenty of time. “What were you looking for?” she asked.

  Let her take one step closer, then Bo would get out of the car, holding a map and a piece of paper. “Let me show you the address,” he said. The map would cover the gun. The trick of it was to get ’em close to the car. They’d see the gun, be shocked, be in the car before they had a chance to scream or run or fight. And it’d be done.

  “Mom, Mom, come quick,” Agnes yelled from the doorway.

  Kitty hesitated.

  “Hurry, Mom, hurry.”

  “Excuse me,” Kitty said to the stranger and, thinking her daughter was in some sort of trouble, by the urgency in her voice, she dashed back to her house, leaving Chaz and Bo behind.

  After Beagle spoke to Kitty, she called Mr. Broz and canceled. If Mr. Broz was disappointed, he concealed it well. She didn’t know, of course, how deeply disappointed Chaz and Bo were. They thought they’d have another shot at her. But after Beagle spoke to Hartman and Hartman called Taylor, they were pulled off the job. Chaz, now that he’d seen her, was downright brokenhearted.

  86 A similar list can be found in John Laffey, The World in Conflict 1991: War Annual 5 (Brassey’s). In the few years since publication of the series began, the number of wars seems to be relatively constant.

  Chapter

  THIRTY-FOUR

  “MY FATHER WAS a sonuvabitch,” I say to Maggie. “What difference doe
s it make?”

  “Just making conversation,” she says.

  “Just making conversation—that’s talking about what’s gonna happen to the Lakers without Magic, without Pat Riley, without Kareem. That’s making conversation. What was your father like? When was the first time you got laid?”

  “You’re angry,” she says. “You’re an angry man underneath that . . . pose you have.”

  “I’m a regular guy, is all,” I say. “There are lots of fathers out there . . . or used to be—steel town, mill town, work hard, drink hard, teach their sons: life’s hard.”

  “Alright, Joe,” she says. “Don’t tell me about your father. What was your mother like?”

  I have my shoes and my shirt off. “I got to change,” I say. “If I’m gonna run before we go to the party.” I walk away from her and upstairs. I get into my room—I still have a separate room where I keep my clothes and actually sleep. I pretend about the sleeping but not about the clothes. It’s one thing for a woman to make room for a man in her bed, another to give up space in her closets. I get into my room, I unbuckle this damn three-hundred-dollar belt—I can’t figure out what makes it worth three hundred dollars, I just can’t, never will—unbutton, unzip, drop my pants. When I turn around, she’s there. She’s looking at me.

  “So many scars,” she says.

  “What do you want from me?”

  “Are you going to run?”

  “I’m gonna run,” I say. I reach into my bureau and grab a pair of running shorts, quick. Why should she watch the hardening of my cock? She already knows how much power she has over me. But she is staring at me. Looking me over. Seeing the arousal. I know she is. “You don’t get out of here,” I say, “I’m gonna . . .” I don’t say Fuck you. I’m going to fuck you. And once it starts, it’ll never stop or it’ll be all over. The microphones are listening.

  “Maybe I’ll run with you,” she says, turns, and walks into her room.

  I get a shirt on, then head out. I have no intention of waiting for her. I just want to get the hell out of there. The investigation is going nowhere. I thought we had something with Kitty Przyszewski, but she slipped away. It’s a stupid case anyway. Who cares what John Lincoln Beagle is up to. It’s just another goddamn movie. His wife and kid hate him. That’s common gossip by now. Husband and wife are each only waiting for a point of advantage to file for divorce. If I blow off this idiocy with Maggie today, and go back to U. Sec., where I belong, by tomorrow I’ll probably be right back on Beagle, but this time for his wife. Or the other way around, on her for him. The line running around town on Jacqueline Conroy is, “The bitch knows the golden rule of Hollywood—always fuck up.” Certainly, every name she is linked to—Patrick Swayze, Kevin Costner, and Madonna87—indicates a strong upwardly mobile orientation. Maggie and I and Mrs. Mulligan, each of us, separately, has heard that John Lincoln had been doing it with his receptionist and that he wanted to do it with her daughter too. The mother was so upset that she quit. But Beagle called and promised her daughter a part in his next picture so she came back.