‘He’s an original, Mr. President,’ offered Khalehla.
‘They broke the mould…’ Jennings’s voice trailed off as his expression became serious. He looked at Rashad. ‘Your Uncle Mitch sends you his love.’
‘Oh?’
‘Payton left an hour ago. I’m sorry to say he had to get back to Washington, but I spoke with him yesterday and he insisted on flying out to see me before I met with Congressman Kendrick.’
‘Why?’ asked Evan, disturbed.
‘He finally told me the whole story of Inver Brass. Well, not everything, of course, because we don’t know everything. With Winters and Varak gone we’ll probably never learn who broke open the Oman file, but it doesn’t matter now. The holy Inver Brass is finished.’
‘He hadn’t told you before?’ Kendrick was astonished, yet he remembered Ahmat saying that he was not sure Jennings knew everything Payton had told him.
‘He was honest about it while offering his resignation, which I promptly rejected… He said that if I knew the entire story I might have squashed the bid being made in your name for you to be my running mate. I don’t know, I might have, I certainly would have been furious. But that’s irrelevant now. I’ve learned what I wanted to learn and you’re not only out of the starting gate, you’ve got a national mandate, Congressman.’
‘Mr. President,’ protested Evan. ‘It’s an artificial—’
‘What the hell did Sam Winters think he was doing?’ interrupted Jennings, firmly cutting off Kendrick. ‘I don’t give a damn how pristine their motives were, he forgot a lesson of history that he above all men should have remembered. Whenever a select group of benevolent elitists consider themselves above the will of the people and proceed to manipulate that will in the dark, without accountability, they’ve set in motion a hell of a dangerous machine. Because all it takes is one or two of those superior beings with very different ideas to persuade the others or replace the others or survive the others, and a republic is down the drain. Sam Winters’ high-sounding Inver Brass was no better than Bollinger’s tribe of boardroom thugs. Both wanted things done only one way. Their way.’
Evan shot forward. ‘It’s precisely for those reasons—’
The doorbell of the Presidential Suite rang, four short rings lasting no more than half a second each. Jennings held up his hand and looked at Khalehla. ‘You’d appreciate this, Miss Rashad. What you just heard is a code.’
‘A what?
‘Well, it’s not terribly sophisticated, but it works. It tells me who’s at the door, and the “who” in this case is one of the more valuable aides in the White House… Come in!’
The door opened and Gerald Bryce walked inside, closing it firmly behind him. ‘I’m sorry to intrude, Mr. President, but I’ve just got word from Beijing and I knew you’d want to know.’
‘It can wait, Gerry. Let me introduce you—’
‘Joe…?’ The name slipped out of Kendrick’s mouth as the memory of a military jet to Sardinia and a handsome young specialist from the State Department came into focus.
‘Hello, Congressman,’ said Bryce, walking to the couch and shaking hands with Evan while nodding to Khalehla. ‘Miss Rashad.’
That’s right,’ interjected Jennings. ‘Gerry told me he briefed you on the plane when you flew to Oman… I won’t blow his horn in front of him, but Mitch Payton stole him from Frank Swann at the State Department and I stole him from Mitch. He’s positively terrifying when it comes to computer communications and how to keep them secret. Now, if someone will restrain the secretaries, he may have a future.’
‘You’re embarrassingly kind, sir,’ said Bryce, the efficient professional. ‘But as to Beijing, Mr. President, their answer is affirmative. Shall I reconfirm your offer?’
‘That’s another code,’ explained Jennings, grinning. ‘I said I’d jawbone our leading bankers on the QT not to get too greedy in Hong Kong and make it rough for the Chinese banks when the ninety-eight transition occurs. Of course, in return for—’
‘Mr. President,’ interrupted Bryce with all due courtesy but not without a tone of caution.
‘Oh, sorry, Gerry. I know it’s top secret and eyes-only and all that other stuff, but I hope that pretty soon nothing will be withheld from the Congressman.’
‘Speaking of which, sir,’ continued the White House communications expert, glancing at Kendrick and briefly smiling, ‘in the absence of your political staff here in Los Angeles, I’ve approved Vice President Bollinger’s statement of withdrawal tonight. It’s in line with your thinking.’
‘You mean he’s going to shoot himself on television?’
‘Not quite, Mr. President. He does say, however, that he intends to devote his life to improving the lot of the world’s hungry.’
‘If I find that mother stealing a chocolate bar, he’s in Leavenworth for the rest of his life.’
‘Beijing, sir. Shall I reconfirm?’
‘You certainly may, and add my gratitude, the thieves.’ Bryce nodded to Kendrick and Khalehla and left, again closing the door firmly behind him. ‘Where were we?’
‘Inver Brass,’ replied Evan. ‘They created me and artificially put me before the public as someone I’m not. Under those conditions my nomination could hardly be called the will of the people. It’s a charade.’
‘You’re a charade?’ asked Jennings.
‘You know what I’m talking about. I neither sought it nor wanted it. As you put it so well, I was manipulated into the race and shoved down everyone’s throat. I didn’t win it or earn it in the political process.’
Langford Jennings studied Kendrick; the silence was both pensive and electric. ‘You’re wrong, Evan,’ said the President finally. ‘You did win it and you did earn it. I’m not talking about Oman and Bahrain, or even the still-under-wraps South Yemen—those events are simply acts of personal courage and sacrifice that have been used to initially call attention to you. It’s no different from a man having been a war hero or an astronaut, and a perfectly legitimate handle to propel you into the limelight. I object to the way it was done as much as you do because it was done secretly, by men who broke laws and unconsciously wasted lives and hid behind a curtain of influence. But that wasn’t you, they weren’t you… You earned it in this town because you said things that had to be said and the country heard you. Nobody mocked up those television tapes and nobody put the words in your mouth. And what you did behind the scenes in those closed intelligence hearings had the Beltway choked with traffic jams. You asked questions for which there were no legitimate answers, and a hell of a lot of entrenched bureaucrats used to having their own way still don’t know what hit them, except that they’d better get their acts together. Lastly, and this is from me, Lang Jennings of Idaho. You saved the nation from my most zealous contributors, and I do mean zealous, like in zealots. They would have taken us down a road I don’t even want to think about.’
‘You would have found them yourself. Some time, somewhere, one of them would have pushed you too far and you would have pushed back and found them all. I saw a man try to lean on you in the Oval Office, and he knew when a tree was about to fall on him.’
‘Oh, Herb Dennison and that Medal of Freedom.’ The President’s world-famous grin momentarily came back to him as he laughed. ‘Herb was tough but harmless and did a lot of things I don’t like doing myself. He’s gone now; the Oval Office did it for him. He got a call from one of those old firms on Wall Street, the kind where everyone’s a member of some exclusive club no one can get into and you and I wouldn’t want to, so he’s heading back to the money boys. Herb finally got the colonel’s rank he always wanted.’
‘I beg your pardon?’ said Kendrick.
‘Nothing, forget it. National security, state secret, and all that other stuff.’
‘Then let me make clear what we both know, Mr. President. I’m not qualified.’
‘Qualified? Who in heaven or hell is qualified for my job? No one, that’s who!’
‘I’m not talking about your job—’
‘You could be,’ interrupted Jennings.
‘Then I’m light years away from being ready for that. I never could be.’
‘You are already.’
‘What?’
‘Listen to me, Evan. I don’t fool myself. I’m well aware that I have neither the imagination nor the intellectual capacities of a Jefferson, either of the Adams, a Madison, a Lincoln, a Wilson, a Hoover—yes, I said Hoover, that brilliant, much maligned man—or an F.D.R., a Truman, a Nixon—yes, Nixon, whose flaw was in his character, not in his geopolitical overview—or a Kennedy, or even the brilliant Carter, who had too many brain cells for his own good politically. But we’ve come into a different age now. Drop Aquarius and insert Telerius… that’s the full-grown age of television; instant, immediate communication. What I have is the trust of the people because they see and hear the man. I saw a nation wallowing in self-pity and defeat and I got angry. Churchill once said that democracy may have a lot of flaws but it was the best system man ever devised. I believe that, and I believe all those bromides about America being the greatest, the strongest, the most benevolent country on the face of the earth. Call me Mr. Simplistic, but I do believe. That’s what the people see and hear and we’re not so bad off for it… We all recognize reflections of ourselves in others, and I’ve watched you, listened to you, read everything there is to say about you, and talked at length with my friend, Emmanuel Weingrass. In my very sceptical judgment, this is the job you must take—almost whether you want it or not.’