Klinger’s Neanderthal face brightened a bit. He appreciated the importance of what Salsbury had said. “Even if they used pentothal or hypnotic regression-he still couldn’t remember?”
“Sodium pentothal is much overrated as a truth serum,” Salsbury said. “As for the other. . – Well, they could put him in a trance and regress him to the time of the murder. But he would only draw a blank. Once he has been told to erase the event from his mind, it is beyond his recall just as surely as obsolete data is beyond the recall of a computer that has had its memory banks wiped clean.”
Having finished his second brandy, Klinger returned to the bar cart. This time he filled a twelve-ounce tumbler with ice and Seven-Up.
Salsbury thought, He’s right about that: any man who doesn’t keep a clear head here, tonight, is plainly suicidal.
To Dawson, Klinger said, “Once we’ve got these twelve ‘robots’ what do we do with them?”
Because he had spent the last three months thinking about that while he and Saisbury worked out the details of their approach to the general, Dawson had a quick answer. “We can do anything we want with them. Anything at all. But as a first step-I thought we might use them to introduce the drug into the water supplies of every major city in Kuwait. Then we could saturate that country with a multimedia subliminal campaign specially structured for the Arab psyche, and within a month we could quietly seize control without anyone, even the government of Kuwait, knowing what we’ve done.”
“Take over an entire country as a first step?” Klinger asked incredulously.
Preaching again, striding back and forth between Salsbury and the general, gesturing expansively, Dawson said, “The population of Kuwait is less than eight hundred thousand. The greatest part of that is concentrated in a few urban areas, chiefly in Hawaii and the capital city. Furthermore, all of the members of the government and virtually all of the wealthy reside in those metropolitan centers. The handful of super-rich families who own desert enclaves get their water by truck from the cities. In short, we could take control of everyone of influence within the country-giving us a behind-the-scenes managerial dictatorship over the Kuwait oil reserves, which compose twenty percent of the entire world supply. That done, Kuwait would become our base of operations, from which we could subvert Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Yemen, and every other oil-exporting nation in the Mid-East.”
“We could smash the OPEC cartel,” Klinger said thoughtfully.
“Or strengthen it,” Dawson said. “Or alternately weaken and strengthen it in order to cause major fluctuations in the value of oil stocks. Indeed, we could affect the entire stock market. And because we’d know about each fluctuation well in advance, we could take rare advantage of it. Within a year of assuming control of a half-dozen Mid-Eastern countries, we should be able to siphon one and a half billion dollars into the corporation in Liechtenstein. Thereafter, it will be a matter of no more than five or six years until everything, quite literally everything, is ours.”
“It sounds-crazy, mad,” Klinger said.
Dawson frowned. “Mad?”
“Incredible, unbelievable, impossible,” the general said, clarifying his first statement when he saw that it disturbed Dawson.
“There was a time when heavier-than-air flight seemed impossible,” Salsbury said. “The nuclear bomb seemed incredible to many people even after it was dropped on Japan. And in 1961, when Kennedy launched the Apollo Space Program, very few Americans believed that a man would ever walk on the moon.”
They stared at one another.
The silence in the room was so perfect that each tiny wave breaking against the boat dock, although it was little more than a gentle ripple and was muffled by the window, sounded like an ocean surf. At least it did to Salsbury; it reverberated within his nearly fevered mind.
Finally Dawson said, “Ernst? Will you help us get those magnetic tapes?”
Klinger looked at Dawson for a long moment, then at Salsbury. A shudder either of fear or pleasure; Ogden could not be certain which-passed through him. He said, “I’ll help.”
Ogden sighed.
“Champagne?” Dawson asked. “It’s a bit crude after brandy. But I believe that we should raise a toast to one another and to the project.”