Ian Slater: Warshot

Somewhat dreamy-eyed, but effusive nevertheless from what he called a “hand and nose job”—the nose referring to the snort of cocaine that now had him in its high — La Roche and his entourage were met at Anchorage airport by two well-dressed men who asked if they could speak to Mr. La Roche alone. He refused, saying grandly that anything they had to say to him they could say to his friends.

“Fine,” said one of them, the other quickly slipping on the handcuffs while the first arrested Jason La Roche for treason, specifically for “knowingly trading with the enemy of the United States in a time of war.”

There was near pandemonium as La Roche began screaming at the FBI men and telling his lawyers to pull their finger out and get “fucking moving.”

“Why — Why — you haven’t even read him his rights,” one of the lawyers whined.

“And I don’t have to,” reported the FBI agent. “Emergency Powers Act. You’re out of luck, mister.”

By this time, the FBI having alerted Anchorage airport earlier, several security officers were quickly on hand to help them board Jay La Roche on the next Alaska Airlines flight from Anchorage to Seattle, where he would be arraigned before a grand jury.

In Brooklyn, police were called to a domestic dispute, a man suspected of beating his wife. The couple’s two kids were being looked after by the neighbor who’d phoned. They got the woman out, but the man wouldn’t budge, and his wife, a Mrs. Lenore Ferrago, said that something had snapped in her husband since the war.

“Is there a gun in the house?” the SWAT team captain asked.

“Yes. An old pistol.” But she said she didn’t think he’d use it.

When they went through the door, they saw him at the fridge, the door open, and told him to put his hands up and not to move. He banged the door shut, turned toward them and shoved his hand inside his jacket. They felled him with two shots. There was no gun on him.

“It’s like he wanted to go,” said one of the cops. “Why?”

The SWAT captain shrugged. “Who knows? War’s over — you think everything’s gonna quiet down, and then all of a sudden, boom!”

In a ceremony set for March 30, Alexsandra Malof was to be presented with the Medal of Freedom. General Douglas Freeman, not for the first time in his career, was “recalled to Washington for consultation.” It was rumored that he would lose his command. Before he left Khabarovsk, he instructed Colonel Norton, on his behalf and in the interests of the long-standing friendship between the United States of American and her allies on Taiwan, to invite Admiral Kuang to have lunch with the general in Tokyo, where the general would break his journey en route to Washington.

While this meeting was taking place in Tokyo, in Khabarovsk a naked man with a small, red flag trailing from his rectum streaked through Freeman’s HQ.

Ten minutes later it was rumored that Aussie Lewis was taking bets — two to one on — that despite his wired-up broken jaw, Robert Brentwood would be eating solid food within six weeks. The bet was taken by Choir Williams and Salvini, but there was a great argument over what exactly constituted “solid.”

Later that afternoon, in Khabarovsk, along the bank of the Amur, two children watched a soldier who, without any formal introduction whatsoever, walked up to one of the members of the Polar Bear Club and said, “Olga?”

The big woman turned. “Da?”

“Name’s Lewis. Aussie Lewis. Pleased to meet ya, Oh. You like green horses?”