The Icarus Agenda by Robert Ludlum

‘If you think I’m going to endanger national security on network television… well, Congressman, I’m genuinely sorry to say it, but I don’t think you have any right representing the American people.’

‘The whole bunch of them? Never thought I did. I was told this programme was between you and me—that I insulted you on television and that you had the right to reply in the same arena. It’s why I’m here. So reply, Colonel. Don’t keep throwing Pentagonese slogans at me; I have too much respect for our armed services to allow you to get away with that.’

‘If by “slogans” you’re criticizing the selfless leaders of our defence establishment—men of loyalty and honour who above all want to keep our nation strong—then I pity you.’

‘Oh come off it. I haven’t been here that long, but among the few friends I’ve made are some brass over in Arlington who probably wince when you drag out your modus non operandis. What I’m patiently trying to explain to you, Colonel, is that you don’t have a blank cheque any more than

I do or my neighbour down the street does. We live with realities—’

‘Then let me explain the realities!’ broke in Barrish.

‘Let me finish,’ said Evan, now smiling.

‘Gentlemen, gentlemen,’ said the familiar newscaster.

‘I’m not casting any doubts on your commitment, Colonel,’ Kendrick interrupted. ‘You’re doing your job and protecting your turf, I understand that.’ Evan picked up a piece of paper. ‘But when you said in the hearing—I wrote this down—”minor academic fiduciary procedures”, I wondered what you meant. Are you really above accountability? If you believe that, tell it to Joe Smith down the street who’s trying to balance the family budget.’

‘That same Joe Smith will get on his knees to us when it dawns on him that we’re ensuring his survival!’

‘I think I just heard a lot of groans over in Arlington, Colonel. Joe Smith doesn’t have to get on his knees to anyone. Not here.’

‘You’re taking my remarks out of context! You know perfectly well what I meant, Congressman Partridge!’

‘No, Colonel, he’s the other guy. I’m the sub who was sent in at left guard.’

‘Left is certainly right!’

‘That’s an interesting statement. May I quote you?’

‘I know about you,’ said Barrish ominously, threateningly. ‘Don’t talk to me about the guy down the street, pretending you’re like everyone else.’ Barrish paused, then as if he could no longer control himself, shouted, ‘You’re not even married!’

‘That’s the most accurate statement you’ve made here. No, I’m not, but if you’re asking me for a date, I’d better check with my girl.’

No contest. The Pentagon’s big gun backfired, the powder burns all over his face on national television.

‘Who the hell is he?’ asked Mr. Joseph Smith of 70 Cedar Street in Clinton, New Jersey.

‘I don’t know,’ replied Mrs. Smith, in front of the television next to her husband. ‘He’s kind of cute, though, isn’t he?’

‘I don’t know about cute, but he just told off one of those snotty officer types who used to give me a lot of shit in ‘Nam. He’s my buddy.’

‘He’s good,’ said Inver Brass’s Eric Sundstrom, rising and turning off the set in his flat overlooking New York’s Gramercy Park. He drained his glass of Montrachet and looked over at Margaret Lowell and Gideon Logan, both sitting in chairs across the room. ‘He has a quick mind and stays ice cold. I know that cobra Barrish: he likes nothing better than drawing blood in the spotlight. Kendrick buried him with his own bullshit.’

‘Our man’s kind of cute, too,’ added Mrs. Lowell.

‘What?’

‘Well, he’s attractive, Eric. That’s hardly a liability.’

‘He’s funny,’ said Logan. ‘And that’s a decided asset. He has the ability and the presence to shift rapidly from the serious to the amusing and that’s no small talent. He did the same thing during the hearing; it’s not accidental. Kennedy had the same gift; he saw humorous ironies everywhere. The people like that… Still, I think I see a grey cloud in the distance.’

‘What’s that?’ asked Sundstrom.

‘A man with such quick perceptions will not be easy to control.’

‘If he’s the right man,’ said Margaret Lowell, ‘and we have every reason to believe he is, that won’t matter, Gideon.’

‘Suppose he’s not? Suppose there’s something we don’t know? We will have launched him, not the political process.’

Far uptown in Manhattan, between Fifth and Madison avenues, in a brownstone town house that rose six storeys high the white-haired Samuel Winters sat opposite his friend, Jacob Mandel. They were in Winters’ large top-floor study. Several exquisite Gobelin tapestries were hung on various wall spaces between the bookshelves, and the furniture was equally breathtaking. Yet the room was comfortable. It was used; it was warm; the masterpieces of the past were there to serve, not merely to be observed. Using the remote control, the aristocratic historian snapped off the television set.

‘Well?’ asked Winters.

‘I want to think for a moment, Samuel.’ Mandel’s eyes strayed around the study. ‘You’ve had all this since you were born,’ said the stockbroker, making a statement. ‘Yet you’ve always worked so hard.’

‘I chose a field where having money made things much easier,’ replied Winters. ‘I’ve occasionally felt rather guilty about that. I could always go where I wanted, gain access to archives others couldn’t, study as long as I wished. Whatever contributions I’ve made have been minor compared with the fun I’ve had. My wife used to say that.’ The historian glanced at the portrait of a lovely, dark-haired woman dressed in the style of the forties; it was hung behind the desk between two huge windows overlooking Seventy-third Street. A man working could turn and gaze at it easily.

‘You miss her, don’t you?’

‘Terribly. I come up and talk with her frequently.’

‘I don’t think I could go on without Hannah, yet oddly enough, considering what she went through in Germany, I pray to God she leaves me first. I believe the death of another loved one would be too great a pain for her to bear alone. Does that sound awful of me?’

‘It sounds remarkably generous—like everything you say and do, old friend. And also because I know so well what you would face by yourself. You’d do it better than I, Jacob.’

‘Nonsense.’

‘It must be your temple—’

‘When were you last in church, Samuel?’

‘Let’s see. My son was married in Paris when I broke my leg and couldn’t attend, and my daughter eloped with that charming helium-head who makes far more money than he deserves writing those films I don’t understand—so it must have been in forty-five when I got back from the war. St John the Divine, of course. She made me go when all I wanted to do was get her undressed.’

‘Oh, you’re outrageous! I don’t believe you for a minute.’

‘You’d be wrong.’

‘He could be dangerous,’ said Mandel, suddenly changing the subject and reverting to Evan Kendrick. Winters understood; his old friend had been talking but he had also been thinking.

‘In what way? Everything we’ve learned about him—and I doubt there’s much more to know—would seem to negate any obsession for power. Without that, where’s the danger?’

‘He’s fiercely independent.’

‘All to the good. He might even make a fine President. No ties to the tub-thumpers, the yea-sayers and the sycophants. We’ve both seen him blow the first category away; the rest are easier.’

‘Then I’m not being clear,’ said Mandel. ‘Because it’s not yet clear to me.’

‘Or I’m being stupid, Jacob. What are you trying to say?’

‘Suppose he found out about us? Suppose he learned he was code name Icarus, the product of Inver Brass?’

‘That’s impossible.’

‘That’s not the question. Leap over the impossibility. Intellectually—and the young man has an intellect—what would be his response? Remember now, he’s fiercely independent.’

Samuel Winters brought his hand to his chin and stared out of the window overlooking the Street. And then his gaze shifted to the portrait of his wife. ‘I see,’ he said, uncertain images coming into focus from his own past. ‘He’d be furious. He’d consider himself part of a larger corruption, irrevocably tied to it because he was manipulated. He’d be in a rage.’

‘And in that rage,’ pressed Mandel, ‘what do you think he would do? Incidentally, exposing us in the long run is irrelevant. It would be like the rumours of the Trilateral Commission promoting Jimmy Carter because Henry Luce put an obscure Governor of Georgia on the cover of Time. There was more truth than not in those rumours but nobody cared… What would Kendrick do?’

Winters looked at his old friend, his eyes widening. ‘My God,’ he said quietly. ‘He’d run in disgust.’

‘Does that sound familiar, Samuel?’

‘It was so many years ago… things were different—’

‘I don’t think they were that different. Far better than now, actually, not different.’