The Icarus Agenda
Page 58
That most loathsome of enemies had not been found in Fairfax; it was presumed that Yosef’s unit would find him and kill him at his house in the western mountains. Yet there was nothing, nothing! The five of them from Command One had waited in their adjoining hotel rooms—waiting, waiting for the telephone to ring and hear the words spoken: Operation Azra is now complete. The hated pig is dead!… Nothing. And most strange of all, there were no screaming headlines in the newspapers, no shocked, anguished men or women on television revealing yet another triumph for the holy cause. What had happened?
Ahbyahd had gone over every step of the mission and could fault none. Every conceivable problem but one had been anticipated and solutions found in advance, either through the byways of official corruption in Washington or with sophisticated technology and bribed or blackmailed telephone technicians in Virginia and Colorado. The one unforeseen and unforeseeable problem was a suddenly suspicious aide to the despicable politician who quite simply had to be killed quickly. Ahbyahd had sent the one “priest” of their small brigade who had not been in Oman to Kendrick’s office late Wednesday afternoon before the attack on Fairfax. The purpose was merely to crosscheck the latest intelligence that confirmed the American congressman’s presence in the capital. The “priest’s” cover was immaculate; his papers—religious and official—were in order and he brought with him “greetings” from numerous “old friends,” each of them a living person from Kendrick’s past.
The “priest” had been caught reading a secretary’s desk calendar while waiting for the aide to come out into the deserted office. The aide had promptly gone back inside; the “priest” had quietly opened the door and heard the young man on the telephone asking for Congressional Security. He had to die. Quickly, efficiently, taken under a gun to the bowels of the massive Capitol and dispatched swiftly. Yet even that death had not been made public.
What had happened? What was happening? The martyrs of the holy mission would not, could not, return to the Baaka Valley without the trophy of vengeance they so desperately sought and so richly deserved. It was unthinkable! If there was no rendezvous in Cortez, blood would flow over blood at a place called Mesa Verde. The terrorist put the key in his pocket, threw the blank card and the envelope on the terminal floor, and started toward Gate 12.
“Sweetie!” shouted Ardis Vanvlanderen, walking into the living room from the office she had built for herself out of a guest room in San Diego’s Westlake Hotel.
“What is it, babe?” asked her husband, sitting in a velour armchair in front of a television set.
“Your problems are over. Those zillions of millions are safe for the next five years! Keep building your missiles and super-duper sonics until the cows shit uranium.… I mean it, lover, your worries are over!”
“I know that, babe,” said Andrew Vanvlanderen without moving, his eyes fixed on the screen. “I’ll see it and hear it anytime now.”
“What are you talking about?” She stopped and stood motionless, staring down at her husband.
“They’ve got to release it soon. They can’t keep it quiet much longer.… Jesus, it’s been damn near twenty-four hours!”
“I have no idea what that muddled mind of yours is conjuring, but I can tell you that Emmanuel Weingrass is on his way out. There was a certain doctor for hire. He’s been injected—”
“He’s out now. So’s Kendrick.”
“What?”
“I couldn’t wait for you, lover—none of us could. There were better ways, more logical ways—expected ways.”
“What the hell have you done?”
“Given an aggrieved people the opportunity to avenge themselves on someone who screwed them to hell and back. I found the survivors. I knew where to look.”
“Andy-boy,” said Ardis, sitting down across from her husband, her large green eyes fixed on his distracted face. “I repeat,” she added quietly, “what have you done?”
“Removed an obstacle that would have weakened the military strength of this country to an unacceptable degree—turning the most powerful giant of the free world into a pitiful dwarf. And doing so cost me personally in the neighborhood of eight hundred million dollars—and cost our group billions.”
“Oh, my God.… You couldn’t wait—you couldn’t wait. You reached the Arabs!”
“Mr. President, I need these few days,” pleaded Mitchell Payton, sitting forward on a straight-backed chair in the upstairs living quarters of the White House. It was one-fifty-five in the morning. Langford Jennings sat in the corner of the couch dressed in pajamas and a bathrobe, his legs crossed, a slipper dangling from one foot, his steady questioning gaze never leaving the CIA director’s face. “I realize that by coming directly to you I’ve broken several hundred valid restrictions, but I’m as alarmed as I’ve ever been in my professional life. Years ago a young man said to his commander in chief that there was a cancer growing on the presidency. This is a far older man saying essentially the same thing, except that in this case any knowledge of the disease—if it exists, as I believe it does—has been kept from you.”
“You’re here, Dr. Payton,” said Jennings, his resonant voice flat, the fear unmistakable. “Yes, Dr. Payton—I’ve had to learn a few things quickly—because Sam Winters made it clear to me that if you said you were alarmed, most other men would be in shock. From what you’ve told me I understand what he means. I’m in shock.”
“I’m grateful for an old acquaintance’s intercession. I knew he’d remember me; I wasn’t sure he’d take me seriously.”
“He took you seriously.… You’re sure you’ve told me everything? The whole rotten mess?”
“Everything I know, sir, everything we’ve pieced together, admitting, of course, that I have no ‘smoking gun.’ ”
“That’s not the most favorite phrase around these premises.”
“In all candor, Mr. President, if I thought those words had any application whatsoever to these premises, I wouldn’t be here.”
“I appreciate your honesty.” Jennings lowered his head and blinked, then raised it, frowning, and spoke pensively. “You’re right, there’s no application, but why are you so sure? My opponents ascribe all manner of deceits to me. Aren’t you infected? Because looking at you and knowing what I know about you, I can’t imagine that you’re an ardent supporter of mine.”
“I don’t have to agree with everything a man believes to think decently of him.”
“Which means I’m okay but you wouldn’t vote for me, right?”
“Again, may I speak in candor, sir? The secret ballot is sacred, after all.”
“In all candor, sir,” said the President, a slow smile creasing his lips.
“No, I wouldn’t vote for you,” answered Payton, returning the smile.
“IQ problems?”
“Good God, no! History shows us that an overly involved mind in the Oval Office can be consumed by an infinity of details. Above a certain level, an immensity of intellect is irrelevant and frequently dangerous. A man whose head is bursting with facts and opposing facts, theories and countertheories, has a tendency to endlessly debate with himself beyond the point where decisions are demanded.… No, sir, I have no problem with your IQ, which is far more than sufficient unto the day.”
“Is it my philosophy, then?”
“Candor?”
“Candor. You see, I have to know right now whether I’m going to vote for you, and it hasn’t a damn thing to do with quid pro quo.”
“I think I understand that,” said Payton, nodding. “All right, I suppose your rhetoric does bother me at times. It strikes me that you reduce some very complicated issues to … to—”
“Simplistics?” offered Jennings quietly.
“Today’s world is as complicated and tumultuous as the act of Creation itself, however it came about,” replied Payton. “Wrong moves by only a few and we’re back where we started, a lifeless ball of fire racing through the galaxy. There are no easy answers any longer, Mr. President.… You
asked for candor.”
“I sure as hell got it.” Jennings laughed softly as he uncrossed his legs and sat forward, his elbows on his knees. “But let me tell you something, Doctor. You try expounding on those complicated, tumultuous problems during an election campaign, you’ll never be in a position to look for the complex solutions. You end up bellyaching from the bleachers, but you’re not part of the team—you’re not even in the game.”
“I’d like to believe otherwise, sir.”
“So would I but I can’t. I’ve seen too many brilliant, erudite men go down because they described the world as they knew it to be to electorates who didn’t want to hear it.”
“I would suggest they were the wrong men, Mr. President. Erudition and political appeal aren’t mutually exclusive. Someday a new breed of politician will face a different electorate, one that will accept the realities, those harsh descriptions you mentioned.”
“Bravo,” said Jennings quietly as he leaned back on the couch. “You’ve just described the reason for my being who I am—why I do what I do, what I’ve done.… All governing, Dr. Payton, since the first tribal councils worked out languages over fires in their caves has been a process of transition—even the Marxists agree with that. There’s no Utopia; in the back of his mind Thomas More knew that, because nothing is as it was—last week, last year, last century. It’s why he used the word ‘Utopia’—a place that doesn’t exist.… I’m right for my time, my moment in the change of things, and I hope to Christ it’s the change you envision. If I’m the bridge that brings us out alive to that crossing, I’ll go to my grave a damned happy man and my critics can go to hell.”
Silence.
The once and former Professor Mitchell Jarvis Payton observed the most powerful man in the world, his eyes betraying mild astonishment. “That’s an extremely scholarly statement,” he said.
“Don’t let the word get out, my mandate would disappear and I need those critics.… Forget it. You pass, MJ, I’m voting for you.”
“MJ?”
“I told you, I had to do some fast gathering and faster reading.”
“Why do I ‘pass,’ Mr. President? It’s a personal as well as a professional question, if I may ask it.”
“Because you didn’t flinch.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“You haven’t been talking to Lang Jennings, a farmer from Iowa whose family made a few bucks because his daddy happened to buy forty-eight thousand acres in the mountains that developers sold their souls for. You’ve been talking to the head honcho of the Western world, the man who could take this planet right back to that ball of fire. If I were you, I’d be frightened confronting that fellow. Frightened and cautious.”
“I’m trying not to be both, and I didn’t even know about the forty-eight thousand acres.”
“You think a relatively poor man could ever be president?”
“Probably not.”
“Probably never. Power is to the rich, or the damn-near broke who haven’t a thing to lose and a lot of clout and exposure to gain.… Regardless, Dr. Payton, you come here through a back door making an outrageous request, asking me to sanction the covert domestic activities of an agency prohibited by law from operating domestically. Further, and in the process, you want me to permit you to suppress extraordinary information involving a national tragedy, a terrorist massacre meant to kill a man the country owes a great deal to. In essence, you’re asking me to violate any number of rules vital and intrinsic to my oath of office. Am I right so far?”
“I’ve given you my reasons, Mr. President. There’s a web of circumstances that spreads from Oman to California, and it’s so clear that it has to be more than coincidence. These fanatics, these terrorists, kill for one purpose that overrides all other motivations. They want to focus attention on themselves, they demand headlines to the point of suicide. Our only hope of catching them and the people here behind them is to withhold those headlines.… By sowing confusion and frustration someone may make a mistake in the heat of anger, reach someone else they shouldn’t reach, breaking the chain of secrecy, and there has to be a chain, sir. Those killers got in here, which took powerful connections to begin with. They’re moving around from one end of the country to the other with weapons; that’s no simple feat, considering our security procedures.… I have a field agent from Cairo going to San Diego and the best man we have in Beirut heading for the Baaka Valley. They both know what to look for.”
“Jesus!” cried Jennings, leaping up from the couch and pacing, the slipper falling off his foot. “I can’t believe Orson is any part of this! He’s not my favorite bedfellow but he’s not insane—he’s also not suicidal.”
“He may not be a part of it, sir. Power, even a vice president’s power, attracts the would-be powerful—or the would-be more powerful.”
“Goddamn it!” shouted the President, walking over to a Queen Anne desk on which there were scattered papers. “No, wait a minute,” said Jennings, turning. “In your own words you have this web of circumstances that somehow extends from the Oman crisis all the way across the world to San Diego. You say it has to be more than coincidence but that’s all you’ve got. You don’t have that well-advertised smoking gun, just a couple of people who knew each other years ago in the Middle East and one who suddenly shows up where you don’t expect her.”
“The woman in question has a history of borderline financial manipulations for very high stakes. She would hardly be enticed by an obscure political position that’s light-years away from her normal compensation.… Unless there were other considerations.”
“Andy-boy,” said the President, as if to himself. “Gladhander Andy.… I never knew that about Ardis, of course. I thought she was a bank executive or something he met in England. Why would Vanvlanderen want her to work for Orson in the first place?”
“In my judgment, sir, it’s all part of the web, the chain.” Payton stood up. “I need your answer, Mr. President.”
“ ‘Mr. President,’ ” repeated Jennings, shaking his head as if he could not quite accept the title. “I wonder if that word sticks in your throat.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“You know what I mean, Doctor. You arrive here at one o’clock in the morning with this paranoid scenario asking me to commit impeachable offenses. Then when I ask you a few questions you proceed to tell me: A, You wouldn’t vote for me. B, I’m simplistic. C, At best, I’m a predecessor of better men. D, I can’t differentiate between coincidence and valid circumstantial evidence—”
“I never said that, Mr. President.”
“You implied it.”
“You asked for candor, sir. If I thought—”
“Oh, come on, get off it,” said Jennings, turning toward the antique desk with the papers strewn across the top. “Are you aware that there’s not a single person in the entire White House staff of over a thousand who would say those things to me? That doesn’t include my wife and daughter, but then they’re not official staff and they’re both tougher than you are, incidentally.”
“If I offended you, I apologize—”
“Don’t, please. I told you that you passed and I wouldn’t want to rescind the grade. I also wouldn’t permit anyone else but someone like you to ask me to do what you’ve asked me to do. Quite simply, I wouldn’t trust them.… You’ve got a green light, Doctor. Go wherever the hell the train takes you, just keep me informed. I’ll give you a sacrosanct number that only my family has.”
“I need a presidential finding of nondisclosure. I’ve prepared one.”
“To cover your ass?”
“Certainly not, sir. I’ll countersign it, assuming full responsibility for the request.”
“Then why?”
“To protect those below me who are involved but who have no idea why.” Payton reached into his jacket pocket and withdrew a folded page of paper. “This makes it clear that your staff has not been consulted.”
“Thanks a bunch. So we both hang.”
“Any such finding would have to have a time limit.”
“It does, sir. It’s for a period of five days.”
“I’ll sign it,” said Jennings, taking the paper and reaching for another on the Queen Anne desk. “And while I do I want you to read this—actually, you don’t have to. Like most computerized printouts from the press office, it takes too long. It came to me this afternoon.”
“What is it?”
“It’s an analysis of a campaign to push Congressman Evan Kendrick onto the party’s ticket next June.” The President paused. “As the vice presidential candidate,” he added softly.
“May I see that, please?” asked Payton, stepping forward, his hand outstretched.