“Samuel Winters is not necessarily a friend,” countered Dennison. “He’s withheld a number of policy endorsements we could have used with Congress.”
“Then he didn’t agree with us. Does that make him an enemy? Hell, if it does, you’d better send half the marine guards up to our family quarters. Come on, Herb, Sam Winters has been an adviser to presidents of both parties for as long as I can remember. Only a damn fool wouldn’t accept calls from him.”
“He should have been routed through me.”
“You see, Evan?” said the President, his head askew, grinning mischievously. “I can play in the sandbox but I can’t choose my friends.”
“That’s hardly what I—”
“It certainly is what you meant, Herb, and that’s okay with me. You get things done around here—which you constantly remind me of, and that’s okay, too.”
“What did Mr. Winters—Professor Winters—suggest?” asked Dennison, the academic title spoken sarcastically.
“Well, he’s a ‘professor,’ Herb, but he’s not your average run-of-the-mill teacher, is he? I mean, if he wanted to, I suppose he could buy a couple of pretty decent universities. Certainly the one I got out of could be his for a check he wouldn’t miss.”
“What was his idea?” pressed the chief of staff anxiously.
“That I award my friend, Evan, here, the Medal of Freedom.” The President turned to Kendrick. “That’s the civilian equivalent of the Congressional Medal of Honor, Evan.”
“I know that, sir. I don’t deserve it, nor do I want it.”
“Well, Sam made a couple of things clear to me and I think he’s right. To begin with, you do deserve it, and whether you want it or not, I’d look like a chintzy bastard not awarding it to you. And that, fellas, I will not accept. Is that clear, Herb?”
“Yes, Mr. President,” said Dennison, his voice choked. “However, you should know that although Representative Kendrick is standing unopposed for reelection to guarantee you a congressional seat, he intends to resign his office in the near future. There’s no point, since he has his own objections, to focus more attention on him.”
“The point, Herb, is that I won’t be a chintzy bastard. Anyway, he looks like he could be my younger brother—we could get mileage out of that. Sam Winters brought it to my attention. The image of a go-getting American family, he called it. Not bad, wouldn’t you say?”
“It’s not necessary, Mr. President,” rejoined Dennison, now frustrated, his hoarse voice conveying the fact that he could not push much further. “The Congressman’s fears are valid. He thinks there could be reprisals against friends of his in the Arab world.”
The President leaned back in his chair, his eyes fixed blankly on his chief of staff. “That doesn’t wash with me. This is a dangerous world, and we’ll only make it more dangerous by knuckling under to such speculative crap. But in that vein I’ll explain to the country—from a position of strength, not fear—that I won’t permit full disclosure of the Oman operation for reasons of counterterrorist strategy. You were right about that part, Herb. Actually, Sam Winters said it to me first. Also, I will not look like a chintzy bastard. It simply isn’t me. Understood, Herb?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Evan,” said Jennings, his infectious grin again creasing his face. “You’re my kind of man. What you did was terrific—what I read about it—and this President won’t stint! By the way, Sam Winters mentioned that I should say we worked together. What the hell, my people worked with you, and that’s the gospel truth.”
“Mr. President—”
“Schedule it, Herb. I looked at my calendar, if that doesn’t offend you. Next Tuesday, ten o’clock in the morning. That way we’ll hit all the networks’ nightly news, and Tuesday’s a heavy night.”
“But Mr. President—” began a flustered Dennison.
“Also, Herb, I want the Marine Band. In the Blue Room. I’ll be damned if I’ll be a chintzy bastard! It’s not me!”
A furious Herbert Dennison walked back to his office with Kendrick in tow for the purpose of carrying out the presidential order: Shake out the specifics for the award ceremony in the Blue Room on the following Tuesday. With the Marine Band. So intense was the chief of staff’s anger that his large, firm jaw was locked in silence.
“I’m really on your case, aren’t I, Herbie?” said Evan, noting the bull-like quality of Dennison’s stride.
“You’re on my case and my name isn’t Herbie.”
“Oh, I don’t know. You looked like a Herbie back there. The man cut you down, didn’t he?”
“There are times when the President is inclined to listen to the wrong people.”
Kendrick looked over at the chief of staff as they marched down the wide hallway. Dennison ignored the tentative greetings of numerous White House personnel heading in the opposite direction, several of whom stared wide-eyed at Evan, obviously recognizing him. “I don’t get it,” said Kendrick. “Our mutual dislike aside, what’s your problem? I’m the one being stuck where I don’t want to be, not you. Why are you howling?”
“Because you talk too goddamned much. I watched you on the Foxley show and that little display in your office the next morning. You’re counterproductive.”
“You like that word, don’t you?”
“I’ve got a lot of others I can use.”
“I’m sure you do. Then again I may have a surprise for you.”
“Another one? What the hell is it?”
“Wait till we get to your office.”
Dennison ordered his secretary to hold all calls except those on Priority Red. She nodded her head rapidly in obedient acknowledgment, but in a cowed voice explained. “You have more than a dozen messages now, sir. Nearly every one is an urgent callback.”
“Are they Priority Red?” The woman shook her head. “What did I just tell you?” With these courteous words the chief of staff propelled the Congressman into his office and slammed the door shut. “Now, what’s this surprise of yours?”
“You know, Herbie, I really must give you some advice,” replied Evan, walking casually over to the window where he had stood previously; he turned and looked at Dennison. “You can be rude to the help as much as you like or as long as they’ll take it, but don’t you ever again put your hand on a member of the House of Representatives and shove him into your office as if you were about to administer a strap.”
“I didn’t shove you!”
“I interpreted it that way and that’s all that matters. You have a heavy hand, Herbie. I’m sure my distinguished colleague from Kansas felt the same way when he decked you on your ass.”
Unexpectedly, Herbert Dennison paused, then laughed softly. The prolonged deep chuckle was reflective, neither angry nor antagonistic, more the sound of relief than anything else. He loosened his tie and casually sat down in a leather armchair in front of his desk. “Christ, I wish I were ten or twelve years younger, Kendrick, and I’d whip your tail—I could have done it even at that age. At sixty-three, however, you learn that caution is the better part of valor, or whatever it is. I don’t care to be decked again; it’s a little harder to get up these days.”
“Then don’t ask for it, don’t provoke it. You’re a very provocative man.”
“Sit down, Congressman—in my chair, at my desk. Go on, go ahead.” Evan did so. “How does it feel? You get a tingling in your spine, a rush of blood to your head?”
“Neither. It’s a place to, work.”
“Yeah, well, I guess we’re different. You see, down the hall is the most powerful man on earth, and he relies on me, and to tell you the truth, I’m no genius, either. I just keep the booby hatch running. I oil the machinery so the wheels turn, and the oil I use has a lot of acidity in it, just like me. But it’s the only lubricant I’ve got and it works.”
“I suppose there’s a point to this,” said Kendrick.
“I suppose there is and I don’t think you’ll be offended. Since I’ve been here—since we’ve been her
e—everybody bows like gooks in front of me, saying all kinds of flattering things with big smiles … only with eyes that tell me they’d rather put a bullet in my head. I’ve been through it before; it doesn’t bother me. But here you show up and you tell me to go fuck off. Now, that’s really refreshing. I can deal with that. I mean I like your not liking me and my not liking you—does that make sense?”
“In a perverse sort of way, I suppose. But then you’re a perverse man.”
“Why? Because I’d rather talk straight than in circles? Pointless lip service and ass-kissing drivel only waste time. If I could get rid of both, we’d all accomplish ten times what we do now.”
“Did you ever let anyone know that?”
“I’ve tried, Congressman, so help me God, I’ve tried. And you know something? Nobody believes me.”
“Would you if you were they?”
“Probably not, and maybe if they did the booby hatch would turn into a certifiable looney bin. Think about it, Kendrick. There’s more than one side to my perversity.”
“I’m not qualified to comment on that, but this conversation makes things easier for me.”
“Easier? Oh, that surprise you’re going to lay on me?”
“Yes,” agreed Evan. “You see, up to a point I’ll do what you want me to do—for a price. It’s my pact with the Devil.”
“You flatter me.”
“I don’t mean to. I’m not given to ass-kissing drivel, either, because it wastes my time. As I read you, I’m ‘counterproductive’ because I’ve made some noise about several things I feel pretty strongly about and what you’ve heard goes against your grain. Am I right, so far?”
“Right on the tiny tin dime, kiddo. You may look different, but to me there’s a lot of that stringy, long-haired protest crap in you.”
“And you think that if I’m given any kind of platform there might be more to come, and that really frosts your apricots. Right again?”
“Right in the fly’s asshole. I don’t want anything or anyone to interrupt his voice, his commitments. He’s taken us out of the pansy patch; we’re riding a strong Chinook wind and it feels good.”
“I won’t try to follow that.”
“You probably couldn’t—”
“But basically you want two things from me,” continued Evan rapidly. “The first is for me to say as little as possible and nothing at all that calls into question the wisdom emanating from this booby hatch of yours. Am I close?”
“You couldn’t get closer without being arrested.”
“And the second is in what you said before. You want me to fade—and fade fast. How am I doing?”
“You’ve got the brass ring.”
“All right, I’ll do both—up to a point. After this little ceremony next Tuesday, which neither of us wants but we lose to the man, my office will be flooded with demands from the media. Newspapers, radio, television, the weekly magazines—the whole ball of wax. I’m news and they want to sell their merchandise—”
“You’re not telling me anything I don’t know or don’t like,” interrupted Dennison.
“I’ll turn everything down,” said Kendrick flatly. “I won’t grant any interviews. I won’t speak publicly on any issue, and I’ll fade just as fast as I can.”
“I’d kiss you right now except that you mentioned something kind of counterproductive, like ‘up to a point.’ What the hell does that mean?”
“It means that in the House I’ll vote my conscience, and if I’m challenged on the floor I’ll give my reasons as dispassionately as I can. But that’s in the House; off the Hill I’m not available for comment.”
“We get most of our PR flak off the Hill, not on it,” said the White House chief of staff reflectively. “The Congressional Record and cable’s C-Span cameras don’t put a dent in the Daily News and Dallas. Under the circumstances, thanks to that smooth son of a bitch Sam Winters, your offer is so irresistible I wonder what the price is. You have a price, I assume.”
“I want to know who blew the whistle on me. Who leaked the Oman story so very, very professionally.”
“You think I don’t?” erupted Dennison, bouncing forward. “I’d have the bastards deep-sixed fifty miles off Newport News in torpedo cans!”
“Then help me find out. That’s my price, take it or take me replaying the Foxley show all over the country, calling you and your crowd exactly what I honestly think you are. A bunch of bumbling Neanderthals faced with a complicated world you can’t understand.”
“You’re the fucking expert?”
“Hell, no. I just know that you’re not. I watch and I listen and see you cutting off so many people who could help you because there’s a zig or a zag in their stripes that doesn’t conform to your preconceived pattern. And I learned something this afternoon; I saw it, heard it. The President of the United States talked to Samuel Winters, a man you disapprove of, but when you explained why you didn’t like him, that he withheld endorsements that could help you with Congress, Langford Jennings said something that impressed the hell out of me. He said to you that if this Sam Winters disagreed with some policy or other, it did not make him an enemy.”
“The President frequently doesn’t understand who his enemies are. He spots ideological allies quickly and sticks by them—sometimes too long, frankly—but often he’s too generous to detect those who would erode what he stands for.”
“That’s about the weakest and most presumptuous argument I’ve ever heard, Herbie. What are you shielding your man from? Diverse opinions?”
“Let’s go back to your big surprise, Congressman. I like the topic better.”
“I’m sure you do.”
“What do you know that we don’t that can help us find out who leaked the Oman story?”
“Essentially what I learned from Frank Swann. As head of the OHIO-Four-Zero unit, he was the liaison to the secretaries of Defense and State as well as the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, all of whom knew about me. He told me to rule them out as possible leaks, however—”
“Far out,” interrupted Dennison. “They’ve got soft-boiled eggs all over their faces. They can’t answer the simplest questions, which makes them look like prime idiots. Incidentally, they’re not idiots and they’ve been around long enough to know what maximum-classified is and why it’s there. What else?”
“Then outside of you—and frankly I rule you out only because my surfacing is about as ‘counterproductive’ as your fractured gray cells could conjure—that leaves three other people.”
“Who are they?”
“The first is a man named Lester Crawford at the Central Intelligence Agency; the second, the station chief in Bahrain, James Grayson. The last is a woman, Adrienne Rashad, who’s apparently special property and operates out of Cairo.”
“What about them?”
“According to Swann, they’re the only ones who knew my identity when I was flown over to Masqat.”
“That’s our personnel,” said Dennison pointedly. “What about your people over there?”
“I can’t say it’s impossible, but I think it’s remote. The few I reached, except for the young sultan, are so removed from any contact with Washington that I’d have to consider them last, if at all. Ahmat, whom I’ve known for years, certainly wouldn’t for a lot of reasons, starting with his throne and, equally important, his ties with this government. Of the four men I spoke to on the telephone, only one responded and he was killed for it—undoubtedly with the consent of the others. They were frightened out of their skins. They didn’t want anything to do with me, no acknowledgment of my presence in Oman whatsoever, and that included anyone they knew who did meet with me and who might make them suspect. You’d have to have been there to understand. They all live with the terrorist syndrome, with daggers at their throats—and at the throat of every member of their families. There’d been reprisals, a son killed, a daughter raped and disfigured because cousins or uncles called for action against the Palestinians. I don’t believe any of
those men would have spoken my name to a deaf dog.”
“Christ, what kind of a world do those goddamned Arabs live in?”
“One in which the vast majority try to survive and make lives for themselves and their children. And we haven’t helped, you bigoted bastard.”
Dennison cocked his head and frowned. “I may have deserved that shot, Congressman, I’ll have to think about it. Not so long ago it was fashionable not to like Jews, not to trust them, and now that’s changed and the Arabs have taken their place in the scheme of our dislikes. Maybe it’s all bullshit, who knows?… But what I want to know now is who sprung you out of the top-secret woodwork. You figure it’s someone from our ranks.”
“It has to be. Swann was approached—fraudulently approached, as it turns out—by a blond-haired man with a European accent who had in-depth data on me. That information could only have come from government files—my congressional background check probably. He tried to tie me in with the Oman situation, but Swann firmly denied it, saying he had specifically turned me down. However, Frank had the impression that the man wasn’t convinced.”
“We know about the blond spook,” broke in Dennison. “We can’t find him.”
“But he dug and found someone else, someone who confirmed either intentionally or unintentionally what he was tracking down. If we rule you out, and if we also rule out State, Defense and the Joint Chiefs, it has to be Crawford, Grayson or the Rashad woman.”
“Cross out the first two,” said the White House chief of staff. “Early this morning I grilled Crawford right here in this office, and he was ready to challenge me to a game of Saigon roulette for even suggesting the possibility. As far as Grayson is concerned, I reached him in Bahrain five hours ago and he damned near had apoplexy thinking we even considered him the leak. He read the black-operations book to me as if I were the dumbest kid on the block who should be thrown into solitary for calling him on an unsecured line in foreign territory. Like Crawford, Grayson’s an old-line professional. Neither one would risk throwing away his life’s work over you, and neither could be tricked into doing it.”
The Icarus Agenda Page 41