The Icarus Agenda: A Novel

  On the eighth day the ground swell came out of Chicago and rolled through the Middle West. It started with four independent newspapers within a sixty-mile radius editorially proposing the candidacy of Congressman Evan Kendrick for the vice presidential nomination. Within seventy-two hours three more were added, in addition to six television stations owned by five of the papers. Proposals became endorsements and the voices of the journalistic turtles were heard in the land. From New York to Los Angeles, Bismarck to Houston, Boston to Miami, the brotherhood of media giants began studying the concept, and the editors of Time and Newsweek called emergency meetings. Kendrick was moved to an isolated wing of the base hospital and his name removed from the roster of patients. In Washington, Annie Mulcahy O’Reilly and the staff informed hundreds of callers that the representative from Colorado was out of the country and not available for comment.

  On the eleventh day the Congressman and his lady returned to Mesa Verde, where to their astonishment they found Emmanuel Weingrass, a small cylinder of oxygen strapped to his side in case of a respiratory emergency, overseeing an army of carpenters repairing the house. Manny’s pace was slower and he sat down a great deal, but his illness had no effect on his ever present irascibility. It was a constant; the only time he lowered his voice even a decibel was when he spoke with Khalehla—his “lovely new daughter, worth much more than the bum who is always hanging around.”

  On the fifteenth day Mitchell Payton, working with a young computer genius he had borrowed from Frank Swann at State, broke the codes of Grinell’s ledger, the bible according to the inner government. Working through the night with Gerald Bryce at the keyboard, the two men compiled a report for President Langford Jennings, who told them exactly how many printouts were to be made. One additional report rolled out of the word processor before the disk was destroyed, but MJ was not aware of it.

  One by one the limousines arrived at night, not at a darkened estate on Chesapeake Bay but instead at the south portico of the White House. The passengers were escorted by marine guards to the Oval Office of the President of the United States. Langford Jennings sat behind his desk, his feet on a favorite ottoman to the left of his chair, acknowledging with a nod everyone who came—all but one. Vice President Orson Bollinger was simply stared at, no greeting extended, only contempt. The chairs were arranged in a semicircle in front of the desk and the awesome man behind it. Included in the entourage, each carrying a single manila envelope, were the majority and minority leaders of both houses of Congress, the Acting Secretary of State and the Secretary of Defense, the directors of the Central Intelligence and the National Security agencies, the members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Attorney General and Mitchell Jarvis Payton, Special Projects, CIA. All sat down and waited in silence. The waiting was not long.

  “We’re in a pile of deep shit,” said the President of the United States. “How it happened I’ll be damned if I know, but I’d better get some answers tonight or I’ll see a number of people in this town spending twenty years on a rock pile. Do I make myself clear?”

  There was a scattered nodding of heads, but more than a few objected, angry faces and voices resenting the President’s implications.

  “Hold on!” continued Jennings, quieting the dissenters. “I want the ground rules thoroughly understood. Each of you has received and presumably read the report prepared by Mr. Payton. You’ve all brought it with you and again presumably, as ordered, none of you has made copies. Are these statements accurate?… Please answer individually, starting on my left with the Attorney General.”

  Each of the assembled group repeated the action and the words of the nation’s chief law enforcement officer. Each held up the manila envelope and said, “No copies, Mr. President.”

  “Good.” Jennings removed his feet from the ottoman and leaned forward, his forearms on the desk. “The envelopes are numbered, gentlemen, and limited to the number of people in this room. Furthermore, they will remain in this room when you leave. Again, understood?” The nods and the mutterings were affirmative. “Good.… I don’t have to tell you that the information contained in these pages is as devastating as it is incredible. A network of thieves and killers and human garbage who hired killers and paid for the services of terrorists. Wholesale slaughter in Fairfax, in Colorado—and, oh my God—on Cyprus, where a man worth any five of you bastards was blown up with his whole delegation.… It’s a litany of horrors; of boardrooms across the country in constant collusion, of setting prices for outrageous margins of profit, buying influence in all sectors of the government, turning the nation’s defense industry into a grab bag of riches. It’s also a litany of deceptions, of illegal transactions with arms merchants all over the world, lying to armaments control committees, buying licenses for export, rerouting shipments where they’re disallowed. Christ, it’s a fucking mess!… And there’s not one of you here that isn’t touched by it. Now, did I hear a few objections?”

  “Mr. President—”

  “Mr. President—”

  “I’ve spent thirty years in the Corps and no one has ever dared—”

  “I dare!” roared Jennings. “And who the hell are you to tell me I can’t? Anyone else?”

  “Yes, Mr. President,” replied the Secretary of Defense. “To indulge in your language, I don’t know what the fuck you’re specifically alluding to and I object to your innuendos.”

  “Specifics? Innuendos? Screw you, Mac, read the figures! Three million dollars for a tank that’s estimated to cost roughly one million five to produce? Thirty million for fighter aircraft that’s been so overloaded with Pentagon goodies it can’t perform, then goes back to the drawing board and another ten million per machine? Forget the toilet seats and the goddamned wrenches, you’ve got much bigger problems.”

  “They’re all minor expenditures compared to the totality, Mr. President.”

  “As a friend of mine said on television, tell that to the poor son of a bitch who has to balance a checkbook. Maybe you’re in the wrong job, Mr. Secretary. We keep telling the country that the Soviet economy is in shambles, its technology light-years behind ours, and yet every year when you produce a budget, you tell us we’re up shit’s creek because Russia’s outperforming us economically and technologically. There’s a slight contradiction there, wouldn’t you say?”

  “You don’t understand the complexities—”

  “I don’t have to. I understand the contradictions.… And what about you, you four glorious stalwarts from the House and Senate—members of my party and the loyal opposition? You never smelled anything?”

  “You’re an extremely popular President,” said the leader of the opposition. “It’s politically difficult to oppose your positions.”

  “Even when the fish is rotten?”

  “Even when the fish is rotten, sir.”

  “Then you should get out, too.… And our astute military elite, our Olympian Joint Chiefs of Staff. Who’s watching the goddamned store, or are you so rarefied you forgot the address of the Pentagon? Colonels, generals, admirals, marching in lock-step out of Arlington into the ranks of defense contractors and selling the taxpayers down the drain.”

  “I object!” shouted the chairman of the JCS, spitting through his capped teeth. “It’s not our job, Mr. President, to keep tabs on every officer’s employment in the private sector.”

  “Perhaps not, but your approval of recommendations makes damned sure who gets the rank that makes it possible.… And how about the country’s superspies, the CIA and the NSA? Mr. Payton here excluded—and if any of you try to railroad him to Siberia, you’ll answer to me for the next five years—where the hell were you? Arms sent all over the Mediterranean and the Persian Gulf—to ports the Congress and I said were off limits! You couldn’t trace the traffic? Who the hell was on the switch?”

  “In a number of cases, Mr. President,” said the director of the Central Intelligence Agency, “when we had reason to question certain activities, we assumed they were being carried out wi
th your authority, for they reflected your policy positions. Where the laws were involved we believed you were being advised by the Attorney General, as is the accepted procedure.”

  “So you shut your eyes and said ‘Let Joe Blow handle the pot of hot potatoes.’ Very commendable for saving your ass, but why didn’t you check with me?”

  “Speaking for the NSA,” broke in the director of the National Security Agency, “we spoke several times with both your chief of staff and your National Security adviser about several unorthodox developments that came across our desks. Your NSC adviser insisted that he knew nothing about what he termed ‘vicious rumors,’ and Mr. Dennison claimed they were—and I quote him accurately, Mr. President—‘a bunch of shit spread by ultraliberal wimps taking cheap shots at you.’ Those were his words, sir.”

  “You’ll notice,” remarked Jennings coldly, “that neither of those men is in this room. My NSC adviser has retired, and my chief of staff is on leave tending to personal business. In Herb Dennison’s defense, he may have run a tight, pretty autocratic ship, but his navigation wasn’t always accurate.… Now we come to our chief law enforcement officer, the guardian of our nation’s legal system. Considering the laws that were broken, bent and circumvented, I have the idea that you went out to lunch three years ago and never came back. What are you running over at Justice? Bingo games or jai alai? Why are we paying several hundred lawyers over there to look into criminal activities against the government and not one of the goddamned crimes listed in this report was ever uncovered?”

  “They were not in our purview, Mr. President. We’ve concentrated on—”

  “What the hell is a purview? Corporate price-fixing and outrageous overruns aren’t in your purview? Let me tell you something, whack-a-doo, they damn well better be!… To hell with you, let’s turn to my esteemed running mate—the last is by far not the least in terms of vital importance. Our groveling, sniveling tool of very special interests is the big man on the campus! They’re all your boys, Orson! How could you do it?”

  “Mr. President, they’re your men, too! They raised the money for your first campaign. They raised millions more than your opposition, virtually assuring your election. You espoused their causes, supported their cries for the unencumbered expansion of business and industry—”

  “Reasonably unencumbered, yes,” said Jennings, the veins in his forehead pronounced, “but not manipulated. Not corrupted by dealings with arms merchants all over Europe and the Mediterranean, and, goddamn you, not by collusion, extortion and terrorists for hire!”

  “I knew nothing about such things!” screamed Bollinger, leaping to his feet.

  “No, you probably didn’t, Mr. Vice President, because you were an all too easy mark peddling influence for them to risk their losing you through panic. But you sure as hell knew there was a lot more fat in the fire than there was smoke in the kitchen. You just didn’t want to know what was burning and smelling so rotten. Sit down!” Bollinger sat, and Jennings continued. “But get this clear, Orson. You’re not on the ticket and I don’t want you near the convention. You’re out, finished, and if I ever learn that you’re peddling again or sitting on a board other than for charity … well, just don’t.”

  “Mr. President!” said the leather-faced chairman of the Joint Chiefs as he stood up. “In light of your remarks and all too obvious disposition, I tender my resignation, effective immediately!”

  The declaration was followed by half a dozen others, all standing and emphatic. Langford Jennings leaned back in his chair and spoke calmly, his voice chilling. “Oh, no, you’re not getting off that easy, any of you. There’s not going to be a reverse Saturday-night massacre in this administration, no crawling off the ship and into the hills. You’re going to stay right where you are and make damned sure we get back on course.… Understand me clearly, I don’t care what people think of me or you or the house I’m temporarily occupying, but I do care about the country, I care about it deeply. So deeply, in fact, that this preliminary report—preliminary because it isn’t finished by a long shot—is going to remain the sole property of this President under the statutes of executive nondisclosure until I think the time is right to release it … which it will be. To release it now would cripple the strongest presidency this nation has had in forty years and do irreparable damage to the country, but I repeat, it will be released.… Let me explain something to you. When a man, and I trust someday a woman, reaches this office, there’s only one thing left, and that’s his mark on history. Well, I’m taking myself out of that race for immortality within the next five years of my life, because during that time this completed report, with all its horrors, will be made public.… But not until every wrong committed on my watch has been righted, every crime paid for. If that means working night and day, then that’s what you’re all going to do—all but my pandering, sycophantic Vice President, who’s going to fade away and with any luck will have the grace to blow his brains out.… A final word, gentlemen. Should any of you be tempted to jump this rotten ship we’ve all created by omission and commission, please remember that I’m the President of the United States with incredible powers. In the broadest sense they include life and death—that’s merely a statement of fact, but if you care to take it as a threat … well, that’s your privilege. Now, get out of here and start thinking. Payton, you stay.”

  “Yes, Mr. President.”

  “Did they get the message, Mitch?” asked Jennings, pouring himself and Payton a drink from a bar recessed in the left wall of the Oval Office.

  “Let’s put it this way,” replied the director of Special Projects. “If I don’t have that whisky in a matter of seconds, I’m going to start shaking again.”

  The President grinned his famous grin as he brought Payton’s drink to him at the window. “Not bad for a guy who’s supposedly got the IQ of a telephone pole, huh?”

  “It was an extraordinary performance, sir.”

  “That’s what this office has been largely reduced to, I’m afraid.”

  “I didn’t mean it that way, Mr. President.”

  “Of course you did and you’re right. It’s why the king, with all his clothes on or naked, needs a strong prime minister who, in turn, creates his own royal family—from both parties, incidentally.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Kendrick. I want him on the ticket.”

  “Then you’ll have to convince him, I’m afraid. According to my niece—I call her my niece but she’s not really—”

  “I know all about it, all about her,” interrupted Jennings. “What does she say?”

  “That Evan’s perfectly aware of what’s happened—what’s happening—but hasn’t made up his mind. His closest friend, Emmanuel Weingrass, is extremely ill and not expected to live.”

  “I’m aware of that, too. You didn’t use his name but it’s in your report, remember?”

  “Oh, sorry. I haven’t had much sleep lately. I forget things.… At any rate, Kendrick insists on going back to Oman, and I can’t dissuade him. He’s obsessed with the arms merchant Abdel Hamendi. He quite rightly believes that Hamendi’s selling at least eighty percent of all the firepower used in the Middle East and Southwest Asia, destroying his beloved Arab countries. In his way, he’s like a modern-day Lawrence, trying to rescue his friends from international contempt and ultimate oblivion.”

  “What exactly does he think he can accomplish?”

  “From what he’s told me, it’s basically a sting operation. I don’t think it’s clear to him yet, but the objective is. That’s to expose Hamendi for what he is, a man who makes millions upon millions by selling death to anyone who’ll buy it.”

  “What makes Evan believe Hamendi gives a damn what his buyers think of him? He’s in the arms business, not evangelism.”

  “He might if more than half the weapons he’s sold do not function, if the explosives don’t explode, and the guns don’t fire.”

  “Good God,” whispered the President, turning slowly
and walking back to his desk. He sat down and placed his glass on the blotter, staring in silence at the far wall. Finally, he turned in his chair and looked up at Payton by the window. “Let him go, Mitch. He’d never forgive either one of us if we stopped him. Give him everything he needs, but make goddamned sure he comes back.… I want him back. The country needs him back.”

  Across the world, pockets of mist drifted in from the Persian Gulf, blanketing Bahrain’s Tujjar Road, causing inverted halos beneath the street-lamps and obscuring the night sky above. It was precisely four-thirty in the morning as a black limousine intruded upon this deserted waterfront section of the sleeping city. It came to a stop in front of the glass doors of the building known as the Sahalhuddin, until sixteen months ago the princely high chambers of the man-monster who called himself the Mahdi. Two robed Arabs emerged from rear doors of the imposing vehicle and walked into the wash of dull neon lights that illuminated the entrance; the limousine quietly drove away. The taller man tapped softly on the glass; inside, the guard at the reception desk glanced at his wristwatch, got out of his chair and walked rapidly to the door. He unlocked it and bowed to the odd-hour visitors.

  “All is prepared, great sirs,” he said, his voice at first barely above a whisper. “The outside guards have been granted early dismissal; the morning shift arrives at six o’clock.”

  “We’ll need less than half that time,” said the younger, shorter visitor, obviously the leader. “Has your well-paid preparedness included an unlocked door upstairs?”

  “Most assuredly, great sir.”

  “And only one elevator is in use?” asked the older, taller Arab.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “We’ll lock it above.” The shorter man started toward the bank of elevators on the right, his companion instantly catching up with him. “If I’m correct,” he continued, speaking loudly, “we walk up the final flight of stairs, is that so?”