‘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 motivation. 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, contact someone else they shouldn’t contact, 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 favourite 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. ‘Glad-handed 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 offences. 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 candour, sir. If I thought—’
‘Oh, come on, get off it,’ said Jennings, turning towards 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. I also wouldn’t permit anyone 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 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.’
‘No, Mr. President. Only myself. Nondisclosure is built into the statutes of the 1947 Act of Congress institutionalizing the CIA. It permits extraordinary action on the part of the Agency in times of national crisis.’
‘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 on to 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.
‘I thought you might want to,’ said Jennings, handing the elongated page to the director of Special Projects. ‘I wondered if you’d take it as seriously as Sam Winters took you.’
‘I do, sir,’ answered Payton, now rapidly, carefully scanning the eye-irritating computer print.
‘If there’s any substance to that paranoia of yours, you may find a basis there,’ said the President, watching his unexpected visitor closely. ‘My press people say it could fly… fly fast and high. As of next week, seven respectable newspapers in the Midwest will do more than raise Kendrick’s name, they’ll damn near editorially endorse him. Three of those papers own radio and television stations in concentrated areas north and south, and, speaking of coincidences, audio and visual tapes of the congressman’s television appearances were supplied to all of them.’
‘By whom? I can’t find it here.’
‘You won’t. There’s only a half-assed ad hoc committee in Denver no one’s ever heard of and they don’t know anything. Everything’s fed to Chicago.’
‘It’s incredible!’
‘Not really,’ disagreed Jennings. ‘The congressman could prove to be an attractive candidate. There’s a quiet electricity about him. He projects confidence and strength. He could catch on—fast and high, as my people say. Orson Bollinger’s crowd, which I suppose is my crowd, could be having a collective case of the trots.’
‘That’s not the incredibility I’m talking about, Mr. President. When I’m presented with such an obvious connection, even I have to back off. It’s too simple, too obvious. I can’t believe Bollinger’s crowd could be that stupid. It’s too incriminating, entirely too dangerous.’
‘You’re losing me, Doctor. I thought you’d say something like “Aha, my dear Watson, here’s the proof!” But you’re not, are you?’
‘No, sir.’
‘If I’m going to sign this goddamned impeachable piece of paper, I think I’m entitled to know why.’
‘Because it really is too obvious. Bollinger’s people learn that Evan Kendrick is about to be launched in a nationwide campaign to replace their vice president so they hire Palestinian terrorists to kill him? Only a maniac could invent that scenario. One flaw among a hundred-odd arrangements, one killer taken alive—which we have— and they could be traced… will be traced, if you’ll sign that paper.’
‘Who will you find then? What will you find?’
‘I don’t know, sir. We may have to start with that committee in Denver. For months Kendrick has been manoeuvred into a political limelight he never sought—has run from, actually. Now, on the eve of the real push there’s the obscenity of Fairfax and the aborted assault on Mesa Verde, aborted by an old man who apparently doesn’t let his age interfere with his actions. He killed three terrorists.’
‘I want to meet him, by the way,’ interrupted Jennings.
‘I’ll arrange it, but you may regret it.’
‘What’s your point?’
‘There are two factions, two camps, and neither is unsophisticated. Yet on the surface, one may have committed an extraordinary blunder which doesn’t make sense.’
‘You’re losing me again—’
‘I’m lost myself, Mr. President… Will you sign that paper? Will you give me five days?’
‘I will, Dr Payton, but why do I have the feeling that I’m about to face a guillotine?’
‘Wrong projection, sir. The public would never allow your head to be chopped off.’
‘The public can be terribly wrong,’ said the President of the United States bending over the Queen Anne desk and signing the document. ‘That’s also part of history, Professor.’
The streetlamps along Chicago’s Lake Shore Drive flickered in the falling snow creating tiny bursts of light on the ceiling of the room at the Drake Hotel. It was shortly past two in the morning and the muscular blond man was asleep in the bed, his breathing deep and steady, as if his self-control never left him. Suddenly his breathing stopped as the sharp, harsh bell of the telephone erupted. He bolted up to a sitting position, swinging his legs out from under the loose covers to the floor, and yanked the phone out of its cradle. ‘Yes?’ said Milos Varak, no sleep in his voice.