The Fourth K

CHAPTER 1

OLIVER OLIPHANT WAS one hundred years old and his mind was as clear as a bell. Unfortunately for him.

It was a mind so clear, yet so subtle, that while breaking a great many moral laws, it had washed his conscience clean. A mind so cunning that Oliver Oliphant had never fallen into the almost inevitable traps of everyday life: he had never married, never run for political office and never had a friend he trusted absolutely.

On a huge heavily guarded secluded estate only ten miles from the White House, Oliver Oliphant, the richest man in America and possibly the most powerful private citizen, awaited the arrival of his godson, the Attorney General of the United States, Christian Klee.

Oliphant's charm equaled his brilliance; his power rested on both. Even at the advanced age of one hundred his advice was still sought by great men who relied on his analytic powers to such an extent that he had been nicknamed the "Oracle."

As adviser to presidents the Oracle had predicted economic crises, Wall Street crashes, the fall of the dollar, the flight of foreign capital, the fantasies of oil prices. He had predicted the political moves of the Soviet Union, the unexpected embraces of rivals in the Democratic and Republican parties. But above all he had amassed ten billion dollars. It was natural that advice from such a rich man be valued, even when wrong.

But the Oracle was nearly always right.

Now on this Good Friday, the Oracle was worried about one thing: the birthday party to celebrate his one hundred years on this earth. A party to be held on Easter Sunday in the Rose Garden of the White House, the host none other than the President of the United States, Francis Xavier Kennedy.

It was a permissible vanity for the Oracle to take great pleasure in this spectacular affair. The world would again remember him for one brief moment. It would be, he thought sadly, his last appearance on stage.

In Rome, on Good Friday, seven terrorists made their final preparations to assassinate the Pope of the Roman Catholic Church. This band of four men and three women believed they were liberators of mankind. They called themselves the Christs of Violence.

The leader of this particular band was an Italian youth well seasoned in the technique of terrorism. For this particular operation he had assumed the code name Romeo; it pleased his youthful sense of irony, and its sentimentality sweetened his intellectual love of mankind.

On the late afternoon of Good Friday, Romeo rested in a safe house provided by the International One Hundred.

Lying on rumpled bed sheets stained with cigarette ash and days of night sweat, he read a paperback edition of The Brothers Karamazov. His leg muscles cramped with tension, perhaps fear, it didn't matter. It would pass as it always did. But this mission was so different, so complex, involved so much danger to the body and the spirit. On this mission he would be truly a Christ of Violence, that name so Jesuitical it always moved him to laughter.

Romeo had been born Armando Giangi, to rich high society parents, who subjected him to a languid, luxurious, religious upbringing, a combination that so offended his ascetic nature that at the age of sixteen he renounced worldly goods and the Catholic Church. So now, at twenty-three, what greater rebellion could there be for him than the killing of the Pope? And yet there was still, for Romeo, a superstitious dread. As a child he had received holy confirmation from a red-hatted cardinal. Romeo remembered always that ominous red hat painted in the very color of the fires of hell.

So confirmed by God in every ritual, Romeo prepared himself to commit a crime so terrible that hundreds of millions would curse his name, for his true name would become known. He would be captured. That was part of the plan. But in time he, Romeo, would be acclaimed as a hero who helped change the existing cruel social order. What was infamous in one century would be seen as saintly in the next. And vice versa, he thought with a smile. The very first Pope to take the name of Innocent, centuries ago, had issued a papal bull authorizing torture, and had been hailed for propagating the true faith and rescuing heretic souls.

It also appealed to Romeo's youthful sense of irony that the Church would canonize the Pope he was planning to kill. He would create a new saint. And how he hated them, all these popes. This Pope Innocent IV, Pope Pius, Pop edict, oh they sanctified too much, these amassers of wealth, these suppressors of the true faith of human freedom, these pompous wizards who smothered the wretched of the earth with their magic of ignorance, their hot insults to credulity.

He, Romeo, one of the First Hundred of the Christs, of Violence, would help erase that crude magic. Vulgarly called terrorists, the First Hundred were spread over Japan, Germany, Italy, Spain and even the tulipy Dutch. It was worth noting that there were none of the First Hundred in

America. That democracy, that birthplace of freedom, had only intellectual revolutionaries who fainted at the sight of blood. Who exploded their bombs in empty buildings after warning people to leave; who thought public fornication on the steps of houses of state an act of idealistic rebellion. How contemptible they were. It was not surprising that America had never given one man to the Revolutionary Hundred.

Romeo put a halt to his daydreaming. What the hell, he didn't know if there were a hundred. There might be fifty or sixty, it was just a symbolic number. But such symbols rallied the masses and seduced the media. The only fact he really knew was that he, Romeo, was one of the

First Hundred, and so was his friend and fellow conspirator Yabril.

One of the many churches of Rome chimed its bells. It was nearly six in the evening of this Good Friday. In another hour Yabril would arrive to review all the mechanics of the complicated operation. The killing of the Pope would be the opening move of a brilliantly conceived chess game, a series of daring acts that delighted Romeo's romantic soul.

Yabril was the only man who had ever awed Romeo, physically and mentally.

Yabril knew the treacheries of governments, the hypocrisies of legal authority, the dangerous optimism of idealists, the surprising lapses in loyalty of even the most dedicated terrorists. But most of all Yabril was a genius of revolutionary warfare. He was contemptuous of the small mercies and infantile pity that affect most men. Yabril had but one aim, to free the future.

And Yabril was more merciless than Romeo could ever be. Romeo had murdered innocent people, betrayed his parents and his friends, assassinated a judge who had once protected him. Romeo understood that political killing might be a kind of insanity-he was willing to pay that price. But when Yabril said to him, "If you cannot throw a bomb into a kindergarten, then you are not a true revolutionary," Romeo told him, "That I could never do."

But he could kill a Pope.

Yet in the last dark Roman nights, horrible little monsters, only the fetuses of dreams, covered Romeo's body with sweat distilled from ice.

Romeo sighed, rolled off his filthy bed to shower and shave before Yabril arrived. He knew that Yabril would judge his cleanliness a good sign, that morale was high for the coming mission. Yabril, like many sensualists, believed in a certain amount of spit and polish. Romeo, a true ascetic, could live in shit.

On the Roman streets, on his walk to visit Romeo, Yabril took the usual precautions. But in fact everything really depended on internal security, the loyalty of the fighting cadres, the integrity of the First Hundred. But not they, not even Romeo, knew the full extent of the mission.

Yabril was an Arab who easily passed for a Sicilian, as indeed many Arabs could. He had the thin dark face, but the lower part, the chin and jaw, was surprisingly heavier, coarser, as if it had an extra layer of bone. In his leisure time he grew a silky fur of a beard to hide the coarseness. But when he was part of an operation, he shaved himself clean.

As the Angel of Death he showed his true face to the enemy. Yabril's eyes were a pale tan, his hair had only isolated strands of gray, and the heaviness of the Jaw was repeated in the thickness of his chest and shoulders. His legs were long for the shortness of his body and masked the physical power he could generate. But nothing could hide the alert intelligence of his eyes.

Yabril detested the whole idea of the First Hundred. He thought it a fashionable public relations gimmick, despised its formal renunciation of the material world. These university-trained revolutionaries like Romeo were too romantic in their idealism, too contemptuous of compromise. Yabril understood that a little corruption in the rising bread of revolution was necessary.

Yabril had long ago given up all moral vanity. He had the clear conscience of those who believe and know that they are devoted with all their souls to the betterment of mankind. And he never reproached himself for his acts of self-interest. There had been his personal contracts with oil sheiks to kill political rivals. Odd jobs of murder for those new African heads of state, who, educated at Oxford, had learned to delegate. Then the random acts of terror for sundry respectable political chiefs-all those men in the world who control everything except the power of life and death.

These acts were never known to the First Hundred, and certainly never confided to Romeo. Yabril received funds from the Dutch, English and American oil companies, money from Russian and Japanese intelligence, and even, long ago in his career, payment from the American CIA for a very special secret execution. But all that was in the early days.

Now he lived well, he was not ascetic-after all, he had been poor, though not born so. He was fond of good wine and gourmet food, preferred luxury hotels, enjoyed gambling, and often succumbed to the ecstasy of union with a woman's flesh. Always paying for that ecstasy with money, gifts and his personal charm. He had a dread of romantic love.

Despite these "revolutionary weaknesses," Yabril was famous in his circles for the power of his will. He had absolutely no fear of death, which was not so extraordinary, but more uniquely he had no fear of pain. And it was perhaps because of this that he could be so ruthless.

Yabril had proved himself over the years. He was totally unbreakable under any kind of physical or psychological persuasion. He had survived imprisonment in Greece, France, Russia and two months of interrogation by Israeli security, whose expertness inspired his admiration. He had defeated them, perhaps because his body had the trick of losing feeling under duress. At last everyone understood. Yabril was granite under pain.

When he was the captor, he often charmed his victims. That he recognized a certain insanity in himself was part of his charm and part of the fear he inspired. Or perhaps it was the lack of malice in his cruelties. Yet all in all he savored life, he was a lighthearted terrorist. Even now he thoroughly enjoyed the fragrant streets of Rome and the twilight of Good Friday filled with the chimes of countless holy bells, though he was preparing the most dangerous operation of his life.

Everything was in place. Romeo's cadre was in place. Yabril's own group would arrive in Rome the next day. The two cadres would be in separate safe houses, their only link the two leaders. Yabril knew that this was a great moment. This coming Easter Sunday and the days after would be a brilliant creation.

He, Yabril, would direct nations down roads they abhorred treading. He would throw off all his shadowy masters, they would be his pawns, and he would sacrifice them all, even poor Romeo. Only death or failure of nerve could defeat his plans. Or, to be truthful, one of a hundred possible errors in timing. But the operation was so complicated, so ingenious, it gave him pleasure. Yabril stopped in the street to enjoy the beauty of the cathedral spires, the happy faces of the citizens of Rome, his melodramatic speculation about the future.

But like all men who think they can change the course of history by their own will, their own intelligence, their own strength, Yabril did not give due weight to the accidents and coincidences of history, nor to the possibility that there could be men more terrible than himself. Men bred within the strict structure of society, wearing the mask of benign lawgivers, could be far more ruthless and cruel.

Watching the devout and joyful pilgrims in the streets of Rome, believers in an omnipotent God, he was filled with a sense of his own invincibility. Proudly he would go beyond their God's forgiveness, for at the uttermost reaches of evil, good must necessarily begin.

Yabril was now in one of the poorer districts of Rome, where people could more easily be intimidated and bribed. He came to Romeo's safe house as darkness fell. The ancient four-story apartment building had a large courtyard half encircled by a stone wall; all the apartments were controlled by the underground revolutionary movement. Yabril was admitted by one of the three females in Romeo's cadre. She was a thin woman in jeans and a blue denim shirt that was unbuttoned almost down to her waist. She wore no bra, there was no roundness of breasts visible. She had been on one of Yabril's operations before. He did not like her, but he admired her ferocity. They had quarreled once, and she had not backed down.

The woman's name was Annee. She wore her jet-black hair in a Prince Valiant cut that did not flatter her strong blunt face, but drew notice to her blazing eyes that measured everyone, even Romeo and Yabril, with a sort of fury. She had not yet been fully briefed on the mission, but the appearance of Yabril told her it was of the utmost importance. She smiled briefly, without speaking, then closed the door after Yabril stepped inside.

Yabril noted with disgust how filthy the interior of the house had become.

There were dirty dishes and glasses and remnants of food scattered in the living room, the floor littered with newspapers. Romeo's cadre was composed of four men and three women, all Italian. The women refused to clean up; it was contrary to their revolutionary belief to do domestic chores on an operation unless the men did their share. The men, all university students, still young, had the same belief in the rights of women, but they were the conditioned darlings of Italian mothers, and also knew that a backup cadre would clean the house of all incriminating marks after they left. The unspoken compromise was that the squalor would be ignored. A compromise that irritated only Yabril.

He said to Annee, "What pigs you are."

Annee measured him with a cool contempt. "I'm not a housekeeper," she said.

And Yabril recognized her quality immediately. She was not afraid of him or any man or woman. She was a true believer. She was quite willing to bum at the stake.

Romeo came racing down the stairs from the apartment above-so handsome, so vital that Annee lowered her eyesand embraced Yabril with real affection, then led him out into the courtyard, where they sat on a small stone bench. The night air was filled with the scent of spring flowers, and there was a faint hum, the sound of countless thousands of pilgrims shouting and talking in the streets of Lenten Rome. Above it all, the ascending and descending tolls of hundreds of church bells acclaimed the approaching Easter Sunday.

Romeo lit a cigarette and said, "Our time has finally come, Yabril. No matter what happens, our names will be known forever."

Yabril laughed at the stilted romanticism, felt a little contempt for this desire for personal glory. "Infamous," he said. "We compete with a long history of terror." Yabril was thinking of their embrace. An embrace of professional love on his part, but shot through with remembered terror as if they were parricides standing over a father they had murdered together.

There were dim electric lights along the courtyard walls, but their faces were in darkness. Romeo said, "They will know everything in time. But will they give us credit for our motives? Or will they paint us as lunatics?

What the hell, the poets of the future will understand us." Yabril said, "We can't worry about that now." It embarrassed him when Romeo became theatrical; it made him question the man's efficiency though it had been proved many times. Romeo, despite delicate good looks and fuzziness of concept, was a truly dangerous man. But there was a fundamental difference between them: Romeo was too fearless, Yabril perhaps too cunning.

Just a year before, they had walked the streets of Beirut together. In their path was a brown paper sack, seemingly empty, greased with the food it had contained. Yabril walked around it. Romeo kicked and sailed the sack into the gutter.

Different instincts. Yabril believed that everything on this earth was dangerous. Romeo had a certain innocent trust.

There were other differences. Yabril was ugly with his small marbled tan eyes, Romeo was almost beautiful. Yabril was proud of his ugliness, Romeo was ashamed of his beauty. Yabril had always understood that when an innocent man commits absolutely to political revolution, it must lead to murder. Romeo had come to that belief late, and reluctantly. His conversion had been an intellectual one.

Romeo had won sexual victories with the accident of physical beauty, and his family money had protected him from economic humiliations. Romeo was intelligent enough to know that his good fortune was not morally correct, and so the very goodness of his life disgusted him. He drowned himself in literature and his studies, which confirmed his belief. It was inevitable that he would be convinced by his radical professors that he should help make the world a better place.

He did not want to be like his father, an Italian who spent more time in barbershops than courtesans at their hairdresser's. He did not want to spend his life in the pursuit of beautiful women. Above all, he would never spend money reeking with the sweat of the poor. The poor must be made free and happy, and then he too could taste happiness. And so he reached out, for a second Communion, to the books of Karl Marx.

Yabril's conversion was more visceral. As a child in Palestine he had lived in a Garden of Eden. He had been a happy boy, extremely intelligent, devotedly obedient to his parents-especially to his father, who spent an hour each day reading to him from the Koran.

The family lived in a large villa with many servants, on extensive grounds that were magically green in that desert land. But one day, when Yabril was five years old, he was cast out of this paradise. His beloved parents vanished, the villa and gardens dissolved into a cloud of purple smoke. And suddenly he was living in a small dirty village at the bottom of a mountain, an orphan living on the charity of kin. His only treasure was his father's Koran printed on vellum, with illuminated figures of gold and calligraphy of a rich blue. And he always remembered his father's reading it aloud, exactly from the text, according to Muslim custom. Those orders of God given to the Prophet Mohammed, words that could never be discussed or argued. As a grown man, Yabril had remarked to a Jewish friend, "The Koran is not a Torah," and they had both laughed.

The truth of exile from the Garden of Eden had been revealed to him almost at once, but he did not fully understand it until a few years later. His father had been a secret supporter of Palestine liberation from the state of Israel, a leader of the underground. His father had been betrayed, gunned down in a police raid, and his mother had committed suicide when the villa and grounds were blown up by the Israelis.

It was most natural for Yabril to become a terrorist. His kin and his teachers in the local school taught him to hate all Jews but did not fully succeed. He did hate his God for banishing him from his childhood paradise.

When he was eighteen he sold his father's Koran for an enormous sum of money and enrolled at the university in Beirut. There he spent most of his fortune on women, and finally, after two years, became a member of the Palestinian underground. And over the years he became a deadly weapon in that cause.

But his people's freedom was not his final aim. In some way his work was a search for inner peace.

Now together in the courtyard of the safe house, Romeo and Yabril took a little over two hours to go over every detail of their mission. Romeo smoked cigarettes constantly. He was nervous about one thing. "Are you sure they will give me up?" he asked.

Yabril said softly, "How can they not with the hostage I will be holding?

Believe me, you will be safer in their hands than I will be in Sherhaben. They gave each other a final embrace in the darkness. After Easter Sunday they would never see each other again.

On this same Good Friday, President Francis Xavier Kennedy met with his senior staff of top advisers and his Vice President to give them news that he knew would make them unhappy.

He met with them in the Yellow Oval Room of the White House, his favorite room, larger and more comfortable than the more famous Oval Office. The Yellow Room was more a living room, and they could be comfortable while being served an English tea.

They were all waiting for him and they rose when his Secret Service bodyguards ushered him into the room. Kennedy motioned his staff to sit down while telling the bodyguards to wait outside the room. Two things irritated him about this little scene. The first was that according to protocol he had to personally order the Secret Service men out of the room, and the second was that the Vice President had to stand out of respect for the presidency. What annoyed him about this was that the Vice President was a woman, and political courtesy overruled social courtesy. This was compounded by the fact that Vice President Helen Du Pray was ten years older than he, was still quite a beautiful woman, and had extraordinary political and social intelligence. Which was, of course, why he had picked her as his running mate despite the opposition of the heavyweights in the Democratic party.

"Damn it, Helen," Francis Kennedy said. "Stop standing up when I come into a room. Now I'll have to pour tea for everybody to show my humility."

"I wanted to express my gratitude," Helen Du Pray said. "I figured you summoned the Vice President to your staff meeting because somebody has to do the dishes." They both laughed. The staff did not.

Romeo smoked a final cigarette in the darkness of the courtyard. Beyond the stone walls he could see the domes of the great churches of Rome. Then he went inside. It was time to brief his cadre.

The woman Annee served as the cadre's armorer and she unlocked a huge trunk to distribute the weapons and ammunition, One of the men spread on the living-room floor a dirty bed sheet, on which Annee put gun oil and rags. They would clean and oil their weapons as they listened to the briefing. For hours they listened and asked questions, and rehearsed their movements. Annee handed out the operational clothing and they made jokes about that. Finally they all sat down together to a meal that Romeo and the men had prepared. They toasted the success of their mission with new spring wine, and then some of them played cards for an hour before retiring to their rooms. There was no need for a guard, they had locked themselves in securely, and they had their weapons beside their beds.

Still, they all had trouble failing asleep.

It was after midnight when Annee knocked on Romeo's door. Romeo was reading. He let her in and she quickly threw his copy of The Brothers Karamazov on the floor. She said almost contemptuously, "You're reading that shit again?" Romeo shrugged and smiled and said, "He amuses me, his characters strike me as Italians trying hard to be serious."

They undressed quickly and lay down on the soiled sheets, both on their backs. Their bodies were tense not with the excitement of sex but with a mysterious terror. Romeo stared straight up at the ceiling and the woman

Annee closed her eyes. She was on his left and used her right hand to slowly and gently masturbate him. Their shoulders barely touched, the rest of their bodies was apart. When she felt Romeo become erect, she continued the strokes with her right hand and at the same time masturbated herself with her left hand. It was a continuous slow rhythm during which Romeo once reached out tentatively to touch her small breast, but she made a grimace like a child, her eyes tightly shut. Now her pulling became tighter and stronger, the stroking frantic and unrhythmical, and Romeo came to orgasm.

As the semen flowed over Annee’s hand she too came to orgasm, her eyes flew open and her slight body seemed to hurl itself into the air, lifting and turning to Romeo as if to kiss him, but she ducked her head and buried her face in his chest for a moment until her body shuddered to a stop. Then very matter-of-factly she sat up and wiped her hand on the soiled sheet of the bed. She then took Romeo's cigarettes and lighter from the marble night table and started to smoke.

Romeo went into the bathroom and wet a towel. He came back and washed her hands and then wiped himself. Then he gave her the towel and she rubbed it between her legs.

They had done this on another mission, and Romeo understood that this was the only kind of affection she could permit. She was so fierce in her independence, for whatever reason, that she could not bear that a man she did not love should penetrate her. And as for fellatio and cunnilingus, which he had suggested, they were also another form of surrender. What she had done was the only way she could satisfy her need without betraying her ideals of independence.

Romeo watched her face. It was not so stem now, the eyes not so fierce.

She was so young, he thought, how did she become so deadly in so short a time? "Do you want to sleep with me tonight, just for company?" he said.

Annee stubbed out the cigarette. "Oh no," she said. "Why would I want to do that? We've both got what we needed." She started to dress.

Romeo said jokingly, "At least you could say something tender before you leave."

She stood in the doorway briefly and then turned. For a moment he thought she would return to the bed. She was smiling, and for the first time he saw her as a young girl he could love. But then she seemed to stand on tiptoe and said, "Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou, Romeo?" She thumbed her nose at him and disappeared.

At Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah, two students, David Jatney and Cryder Cole, prepared their kits for the traditional once-a-term assassination hunt. This game had again come back into favor with the election of Francis Xavier Kennedy to the presidency of the United States.

By the rules of the game a student team had twenty-four hours to commit the assassination-that is, fire their toy pistols at a cardboard effigy of the President of the United States from no more than five paces away.

To prevent this, there was a law-and-order fraternity defense team of more than a hundred students. The "money prize bet" was used to pay for the victory banquet at the conclusion of the hunt.

The college faculty and administration, influenced by the Mormon Church, disapproved of these games, but they had become popular on" campuses all over the United States-an example of the vexing excesses of a free society.

Poor taste, an appetite for the gross in life, was part of the very high spirits of the young. And such a game was an outlet for the resentment of authority, a form of protest by those who had not yet achieved anything against those who had already become successful. It was a symbolic protest, and certainly preferable to political demonstrations, random violence and sit-ins. The hunting game was a safety valve for rioting hormones.

The two hunters David Jatney and Cryder Cole strolled the campus arm in arm. Jatney was the planner and Cole the actor, so it was Cole who did the talking and Jatney nodded as they made their way toward the fraternity brothers guarding the effigy of the President. The cardboard figure of Francis Kennedy was a recognizable likeness but was extravagantly colored to show him wearing a blue suit, a green tie, red socks and no shoes. Where the shoes should have been was the Roman numeral IV.

The law– and-order gang threatened Jatney and Cole with their toy pistols and the two hunters veered off. Cole shouted a cheerful insult, but Jatney was grim-faced. He took his mission very seriously. Jatney was reviewing his master plan and already feeling a savage satisfaction over its certain success. This walk in view of the enemy was to establish that they were wearing ski gear, to establish a visual identity and so prepare for a later surprise. Also to plant the idea that they were leaving the campus for the weekend.

Part of the hunting game required that the itinerary of the presidential effigy be published. The effigy would be at the victory banquet that was scheduled for that evening before midnight. Jatney and Cole planned to make their strike before the midnight deadline.

Everything worked out as planned. Jatney and Cole reunited at 6:oo P.m. in the designated restaurant. The proprietor had no knowledge of their plans. They were just two young students who had been working for him for the past two weeks. They were very good waiters, especially Cole, and the proprietor was delighted with them.

At nine that evening when the law-and-order guards, a hundred strong, entered with their presidential effigy, guards were posted at all the entries to the restaurant. The effigy was placed in the center of the circle of tables. The proprietor was rubbing his hands at this influx of business, and it was only when he went into the kitchen and saw his two young waiters hiding their toy pistols in the soup tureens that he caught on. "Oh, for Christ's sake," he said. "That means you two guys are quitting tonight." Cole grinned at him, but David Jatney gave him a menacing scowl as they marched into the dining room, soup tureens lifted high to shield their faces.

The guards were already drinking victory toasts when Jatney and Cole placed the tureens on the center table, whipped off the covers and took out the toy pistols. They held their weapons against the garishly colored effigy and fired the little pops of the mechanism. Cole fired one shot and burst out laughing. Jatney fired three shots very deliberately, then threw his pistol on the floor. He did not move, he did not smile until the guards mobbed him with congratulatory curses and all of them sat down to dinner. Jatney gave the effigy a kick so that it slid down to the floor where it could not be seen.

This had been one of the more simple hunts. In other colleges across the country the game was more serious. Elaborate security structures were set up, effigies squirted synthetic blood.

In Washington, D.C., the Attorney General of the United States, Christian

Klee, had his own file on all these playful assassins. And it was the photographs and memos on Jatney and Cole that caught his interest. He made a note to assign a case team to the lives of David Jatney and Cryder Cole.

On the Friday before Easter, two serious-minded young men drove from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to New York, and deposited a small suitcase in a baggage locker of the Port Authority Building. They picked their way fastidiously through the cluster of drunken homeless bums, the sharp-eyed pimps, the whores who thronged the halls of the building. The two were prodigies, at age twenty assistant professors of physics and members of an advanced program at the university. The suitcase held a tiny atom bomb they had constructed using stolen lab materials and the necessary plutonium. It had taken them two years to steal these materials from their programs, bit by bit, falsifying their reports and experiments so that the theft would not be noticed.

Adam Gresse and Henry Tibbot had been classified as geniuses since they were twelve. Their parents had brought them up to be aware of their responsibilities to humankind. They had no vices except knowledge. Their particular brilliance made them disdain those appetites that were lice on the hide of humanity, such as alcohol, gambling, women, gluttony and drugs.

What they succumbed to was the powerful drug of clear thinking. They had a social conscience and saw the evil in the world. They knew that the making of atomic weapons was wrong, that the fate of humanity hung in the balance, and they decided to do what they could to avert an infernal disaster. So after a year of boyish talk they decided to scare the government. They would show how easy it was for a crazed individual to inflict grave punishment on mankind.

They built the tiny atom bomb, only half a kiloton in power, so that they could plant it and then warn the authorities of its existence. They thought of themselves and their contemplated deed as unique, as godlike.

They did not know that this precise situation had been predicted by the psychological reports of a prestigious think tank funded by the government as one of the possible hazards of the atomic age of mankind.

While they were still in New York, Adam Gresse and Henry Tibbot mailed their warning letter to The New York Times explaining their motives and asking that the letter be published before being sent to the authorities.

The composing of the letter had been a long process, not only because it had to be worded precisely to show no malicious intent but because they used scissored printed words and letters lifted out of old newspapers that they pasted onto blank sheets of paper.

The bomb would not go off till the following Thursday. By that time the letter would be in the hands of the authorities and the bomb surely found. It would he a warning to the rulers of the world.

And in Rome on that Good Friday, Theresa Catherine Kennedy, daughter of the President of the United States, prepared to end her self-imposed

European exile and return to live with her father in the White House.

Her Secret Service security detail had already made all the travel arrangements. Obeying her instructions, they had booked passage on the Easter Sunday flight from Rome to New York.

Theresa Kennedy was twenty-three years old and had been studying philosophy in Europe, first at the Sorbonne in Paris and then at the university in Rome, where she had just ended a serious affair with a radical Italian student, to their mutual relief

She loved her father but hated his being President because she was too loyal to publicly voice her own differing views. She had been a believer in socialism; now she was an advocate of the brotherhood of man, the sisterhood of women. She was a feminist in the American style; economic independence was the foundation of freedom, and so she had no guilt about the trust funds that guaranteed her freedom.

With a curious yet very human morality she had rejected the idea of any privilege and rarely visited her father in the White House. And perhaps she unconsciously blamed her father for her mother's death because he had struggled for political power while his wife was dying. Later she had wanted to lose herself in Europe, but by law she had to be protected by the Secret Service as a member of the immediate presidential family. She had tried to sign off on that security protection, but her father had begged her not to Francis Kennedy told her he could not bear it if something were to happen to her.

A detail of twenty men spread over three shifts a day, guarded Theresa

Kennedy. When she went to a restaurant, if she went to a movie with her boyfriend, they were there. They rented apartments in the same building, used a command van in the street. She was never alone. And she had to give her schedule to the chief of the security detail every single day.

Her guards were two-headed monsters: half servant, half master. With advanced electronic equipment they could hear the lovemaking when she brought a male friend back to her apartment. And they were frightening-they moved like wolves, gliding silently, their heads tilted alertly as if to catch a scent on the wind, but actually they were straining to listen to their earplug radios.

Theresa had refused a "net security," that is, security of the closest kind. She drove her own car, refused to let the security team take an adjoining apartment, refused to walk with guards alongside her. She had insisted that the security be a "perimeter security," that they erect a wall around her as if she were a large garden. In this way she could lead a personal life. This arrangement led to some embarrassing moments. One day she went shopping and needed change for a telephone call. She thought she had seen one of her security detail pretending to shop nearby. She had gone up to the man and said, "Could you give me a quarter?" He had looked at her with shocked bewilderment, and she realized that she had made a mistake, that he was not her security guard. She had burst out laughing and apologized. The man was amused and delighted as he gave her the quarter. "Anything for a Kennedy," he said jokingly.

Like so many of the young, Theresa Kennedy believed, on no particular evidence, that people were "good," as she believed herself to be good.

She marched for freedom, spoke out for the right and against the wrong.

She tried to never commit petty mean acts in everyday life. As a child she gave the contents of her piggy bank to the American Indians.

In her position as daughter of the President of the United States it was awkward for her when she spoke out for pro-choice abortion activists, and lent her name to radical and left-wing organizations. She endured the abuse of the media and the insults of political opponents.

Innocently, she was scrupulously fair in her love affairs; she believed in absolute frankness, she abhorred deceit.

In her years abroad there were incidents from which she should have learned some valuable lessons. In Paris a group of tramps living under one of the bridges tried to rape her when she roamed the city in search of local color. In Rome two beggars tried to snatch her purse as she was giving them money, and in both cases she had been rescued by her vigilant Secret Service detail. But this made no impression on her general faith that man was good. Every human being had the immortal seed of goodness in his soul, no one was beyond redemption. As a feminist she had, of course, learned of the tyranny of men over women, but did not really comprehend the brutal force men used when dealing with their own world. She had no sense of how one human being could betray another human being in the most false and cruel ways.

The chief of her security detail, a man too old to guard the more important people in government, was appalled by her innocence and tried to educate her. He told her horror stories about men in general, stories taken from his long experience in the service; he was more frank than he would ordinarily have been, since this job was his last assignment before retiring.

"You're too young to understand this world," he said. "And in your position you have to be very careful. You think because you do good for someone they will do good for you." Just the day before, she had picked up a, male hitchhiker, who assumed that this was a sexual invitation. The security chief had acted immediately; the two security cars forced

Theresa's car to the edge of the road just as the hitchhiker put his hand in Theresa's lap.

"Let me tell you a story," the chief said. "I once worked for the smartest and nicest man in the government service. In clandestine operations. Just once he got outsmarted, caught in a trap, and this bad guy had him at his mercy. Could just blow him away. And this guy was a real bad guy. But for some reason he let my boss off the hook and said, 'Remember, you owe me one.' Well, we spent six months tracking this guy down and we nailed him. And my boss blew him away, never gave him a chance to surrender or turn 'double.' And you know why? He told me himself This bad guy once had the power of God and therefore was too dangerous to be allowed to live. And my boss didn't have a feeling of gratitude, he said the guy's mercy was just a whim and you can't count on whims the next time around." The chief did not tell Theresa his boss had been a man named Christian Klee.

The election of Francis Xavier Kennedy as President was a miracle of American politics. He had been elected on the magic of his name and his extraordinary physical and intellectual gifts, despite the fact that he had served only one term in the Senate before being elected to the presidency.

He was called the "nephew" of John F. Kennedy, the President who had been assassinated in 1963, but was outside the organized Kennedy clan still active in American politics. In reality, he was a cousin, and the only one of the far-flung family who had inherited the charisma of his two famous uncles John and Robert Kennedy.

Francis Kennedy had been a boy genius in the law, a professor at Harvard at the age of twenty-eight. Later he had organized his own law firm, which crusaded for broad liberal reforms in the government and the private business sector. His law firm did not make a great deal of money, which was not important to him, since he had inherited considerable wealth, but it did bring him a great deal of national fame. He crusaded for the rights of minorities and the welfare of the economically disabled, he defended the helpless.

Kennedy had swept the country along with him in his campaign for the presidency. He had proclaimed he would write a new social contract for the American people. What makes a civilization endure? He asked them. It is the contract between the governors and the governed. The government must promise public safety from crime, from economic hardship; it must promise to every citizen the right and the means to pursue the individual dream of enjoying personal happiness in this life. And then, only then, would the governed be obligated to obey the common laws that ensure civilization. And Kennedy proposed that as part of that sacred social contract all major questions in American society be settled by referendums rather than by decisions made by the Congress, by the Supreme Court or by the President.

He promised that he would wipe out crime. He promised that he would wipe out poverty, which was a root of crime and a crime in and of itself. He promised a national health insurance program financed by the state and a Social Security System that would truly enable workingmen to have a comfortable retirement.

To affirm his dedication to these ideals and to remove the armor of his own personal wealth, he proclaimed on television that he would give his personal fortune of forty million dollars to the Treasury of the United States. This was done in a highly public legal ceremony that was shown by every television-station news program in the country. The image of Francis

Kennedy's grand gesture had a huge impact on every voting citizen.

He flew to every major city in the country, and his automobile cavalcade covered the small towns. His wife and daughter by his side, their beauty flanking his, he overwhelmed the public consciousness. His three debates with the Republican presidential incumbent were triumphs. The combination of his wit, his intelligence and his youthful exuberance completely destroyed his opponent. No President had ever entered his first term of office more beloved by the populace.

He had conquered everything except fate. His wife had died of cancer before his inauguration.

Despite his crushing sorrow, Francis Xavier Kennedy managed to enact the first step of the program. During the election process he had made the daring political move of naming his personal staff in advance so that the electorate could approve them. He had named Oddblood Gray, a black activist, as his liaison with Congress on domestic affairs. He had selected a woman to be his running mate and made the political decision that she would also function as a member of his staff. The other nominations were more conventional. And it was this staff that helped push through his first victory, the revision of the Social Security laws so that every workingman could be sure of enough money to live on when he retired. The tax to finance this revision was paid by the profits of the giant corporations of America, and these immediately became his deadly enemies.

But after this initial victory, Kennedy seemed to lose momentum. His bill to give the people a referendum vote on major issues was defeated by Congress, as was his call for a national health insurance plan. And Kennedy himself was losing energy in confronting the stone wall Congress put up before him. Though Kennedy and his White House staff fought with an almost desperate ferocity, more and more of their plans were defeated.

The knowledge that in the last year of his presidency the battle was being lost filled him with a despairing anger. He knew that his cause was just, that he was on the side of what was right, that he held the moral high ground, that his course of action was the most intelligent for the survival of America. But it seemed to him now that intelligence and morality had no weight in the political process.

President Kennedy waited until everyone on his senior staff had been served tea.

"I may not run for a second term," he said evenly. Looking over to the Vice President, he added, "Helen, I want you to prepare to make your run for the presidency."

They were all struck dumb, but Helen Du Pray smiled at him. The fact that this smile was one of her great political weapons was not lost on these men. She said, "Francis, I think a decision not to run requires a full-length review by your staff without my presence. Before I leave, let me say this. At this particular point in time I know how discouraged you are. But I won't be able to do any better, assuming I could be elected. I think you should be more patient. Your second term could be more effective."

President Kennedy said impatiently, "Helen, you know as well as I do that a President of the United States has more clout in his first term than in his second."

"True in most cases," Helen Du Pray said. "But maybe we could get a different House of Representatives for your second term. And let me speak of my own self-interest. As Vice President for only one term I am in a weaker position than if I served for two terms. Also your support would be more valuable as a two-term President and not a President who's been chased out of office by his own Democratic Congress. "

As she picked up her memorandum file and prepared to leave, Francis Kennedy said, "You don't have to leave."

Du Pray gave everybody the same sweet smile. "I'm sure your staff can speak more freely if I'm not present," she said, and she left the Yellow Oval Room.

The four men around Kennedy were silent. They were his closest aides.

Kennedy had appointed them personally and they were responsible solely to him. The President was like a strange kind of Cyclops with one brain and four arms. The senior staff was his four arms. They were also his best friends, and, since the death of his wife, his only personal family.

Du Pray closed the door behind her, and there was a small flurry of movement as the men straightened their folders of memorandum sheets and reached for tea and sandwiches. The President's chief of staff, Eugene Dazzy, said casually, "Helen may be the smartest person in this administration."

Kennedy smiled at Dazzy, who was known to have a weakness for beautiful women, "And what do you think, Euge?" he said. "Do you think I should be more patient and run again?"

Eugene Dazzy had been the head of a huge computer firm ten years before, when Francis Kennedy first entered politics. He had been a cruncher, a man who could eat up rival companies, but he had come from a poor family, and he retained his belief in justice more out of a practical sense than a romantic idealism. He had come to believe that concentrated money held too much power in America and that in the long run this would destroy true democracy. And so when Francis Kennedy entered politics under the banner of a true social democracy, Dazzy organized the financial support that helped Kennedy ascend to the presidency.

He was a large affable man whose great art was the avoidance of making enemies of people whose important wishes and special requests the President denied. Dazzy bowed his balding head over his notes, his tubby upper body straining the back of his well-tailored jacket. He spoke in a casual voice. "Why not run?" he said. "You'll have a nice goof-off job. Congress will tell you what to do and refuse to do what you want done. Everything will stay the same. Except in foreign policy.

There you can have some fun. Maybe even do some good.

"Look at it this way. Our army is fifty percent under quota, we've educated our kids so well they are too smart to be patriotic. We have technology but no one wants to buy our goods. Our balance of payments is hopeless. You can only go up. So go get reelected and relax and have a good time for four years. What the hell, it's not a bad job and you can use the money." Dazzy smiled and waved a hand to show that he was at least half kidding.

The four men of the staff watched Kennedy closely, despite seemingly casual attitudes. None of them felt Dazzy was being disrespectful; the playfulness of his remarks was an attitude that Kennedy had encouraged in the past three years.

Arthur Wix, the national security adviser, a burly man with a big-city face-that is, ethnic, born of a Jewish father and an Italian mother-could be savagely witty, but also a little in awe of the presidential office and Kennedy.

Wix had met Kennedy ten years before, when he had first run for the Senate.

He was an Eastern seaboard liberal, a professor of ethics and political science at Columbia University. He was also a very rich man who had contempt for money. Their relationship had grown into a friendship based on their intellectual gifts. Kennedy thought Arthur Wix the most intelligent man he had ever met. Wix thought Kennedy the most moral man in politics. This was not-could not be-the basis of a warm friendship, but it did form the foundation for a relationship of trust.

As national security adviser, Wix felt that his responsibilities obliged him to be more serious in tone than the others. He spoke in a quiet persuasive voice that still had a New York buzz. "Euge," he said, motioning to Dazzy, "may think he's kidding, but you can make a valuable contribution to our country's foreign policy. We have far more leverage than Europe or Asia believes. I think it's imperative you run for another term. After all, in foreign policy, the President of the United States has the power of a king."

Kennedy turned to the man on his left. Oddblood "Otto" Gray was the youngest man on Kennedy's staff, only ten years out of college. He had come out of the black left-wing movement, via Harvard and a Rhodes Scholarship. A tall, imposing man, he had been a brilliant scholar and a first-rate orator in his college days. Kennedy had spotted under the firebrand a man with a natural courtesy and sense of diplomacy, a man who could persuade without threats. And then in a potentially violent situation in New York, Kennedy had won Gray's admiration and trust.

Kennedy had used his extraordinary legal skills, his intelligence and charm, and his clear lack of racial bias to defuse the situation, thus winning the admiration of both sides.

After that, Oddblood Gray had supported Kennedy in his political career, and urged him to run for the presidency. Kennedy appointed him to his staff as liaison with the Congress, as head man to get the President's bills pushed through. Gray's youthful idealism warred with his instinctive genius for politics. And to some extent, naturally, idealism suffered defeats, because he really knew how government worked, where leverage could be applied, when to use the brute force of patronage, when to skip in place, when to surrender gracefully.

"Otto," Kennedy said. "Give us the word."

"Quit," Gray said. "While you're only just losing." Kennedy smiled and the other men laughed. Gray went on. "You want it straight? I'm with Dazzy.

Congress shits on you, the press kicks your ass. The lobbyists and big business have strangled your programs. And the working class and the intellectuals feel you betrayed them. You're driving this big fucking Cadillac of a country and there ain't even power steering. And you want to give every damn maniac in this country another four years to knock you off, to boot? I say let's all get us the fuck out of here."

Kennedy seemed delighted, the handsome Irish planes of his face breaking into a smile and his satiny blue eyes sparkling. "Very funny," he said.

"But let's get serious." He knew they were trying to goad him into running again by appealing to his pride. None of them wanted to leave this center of power, this Washington, this White House. It was better to be a clawless lion than not to be a lion at all.

"You want me to run again," Kennedy said. "But to do what?"

Otto Gray said, "Damn right I want you to run. I joined this administration because you begged me to help my people. I believed in you and believe in you still. We did help, and we can help more. There's a hell of a lot more to do. The rich get richer, the poor get poorer, and only you can change that. Don't quit that fight now." Kennedy said, "But how the hell can I win? The Congress is virtually controlled by the Socrates Club."

Gray looked at his boss with the kind of passion and forcefulness found only in the young. "We can't think like that. Look what we've won against terrible odds. We can win again. And even if we don't, what could be more important than trying?"

The room was quiet for a moment, as everyone seemed to become aware of the silence of one man, the most powerful influence on Francis Kennedy.

Christian Klee. All eyes focused on him now.

Klee held Kennedy in some sort of reverence, though they were dear friends. This always surprised Kennedy, because Klee valued physical bravery and knew Kennedy had a fear of assassination. It was Christian who had begged Francis to run for the presidency and guaranteed his personal safety if he was appointed Attorney General and head of the FBI and Secret Service. So now he essentially controlled the whole internal security system of the United States, but Kennedy had paid a heavy political price for this. He had traded Congress the appointment of two justices of the Supreme Court and the ambassadorship to Britain.

Now Kennedy stared at Christian Klee, and finally Klee spoke. "You know what worries people most in this country? They don't really give a shit about foreign relations. They don't give a shit about economics. They don't care if the earth dries up into a raisin. They worry in the big and little cities that they can't walk the streets at night without getting mugged. That they can't sleep safely in their beds at night without worrying about burglars and murderers.

"We live in a state of anarchy. The government does not fulfill its part of the social contract to protect each and every individual citizen.

Women go in fear of rape, men go in fear of murder. We are descending into some sort of morass of animal behavior. The rich eat up the people economically and the criminals massacre the poor and middle class. And you, Francis, are the only one who can lead us to the higher ground. I believe that, I believe you can save this country.

That's why I came to work for you. And now you want to desert us." Klee paused. "You have to try again, Francis. Just another four years."

President Kennedy was touched. He could see that these four men still truly believed in him. And in one part of his mind he knew that he had maneuvered them into saying these things, had made them reaffirm their faith in him, had made them equally responsible with him. He smiled at them with genuine delight.

"I'll think it over," he said.

They took this as a dismissal and left, except for Christian Klee.

Christian said casually, "Will Theresa be home for the holidays?"

Kennedy shrugged. "She's in Rome with a new boyfriend. She'll be flying in on Easter Sunday. As usual, she makes a point of ignoring religious holidays."

Christian said, "I'm glad she's getting the hell out. I really can't protect her in Europe. And she thinks she can shoot off her mouth there and it won't be reported here." He paused a moment. "If you do run again, you'll have to keep your daughter out of sight or disown her."

"I can't. If I do run again, I'll need the radical feminist vote."

Christian laughed. "OK," he said. "Now, about the birthday party for the Oracle. He is really looking forward to it."

"Don't worry," Kennedy said. "I'll give him the full treatment. My God, a hundred years old and he still looks forward to his birthday party."

"He was and is a great man," Christian said.

Kennedy gave him a sharp look. "You were always fonder of him than I ever was. He had his faults, he made his mistakes."

"Sure," Christian said. "But I never saw a man control his life better.

He changed my life with his advice, his guidance." Christian paused for a moment. "I'm having dinner with him tonight, so I'll just tell him the party is definitely on."

Kennedy smiled dryly. "You can safely tell him that," he said.

At the end of the day Kennedy signed some papers in the Oval Office, then sat at his desk and gazed out the window. He could see the tops of the gates that surrounded the White House grounds, black iron tipped with white electrified thorns. As always, he felt uneasy about his proximity to the streets and to the public, though he knew that the seeming vulnerability to attack was an illusion. He was extraordinarily well protected. There were seven perimeters guarding the White House. For two miles away every building had a security team on the roofs and in apartments. All the streets leading to the White House had command posts with concealed rapid-fire and heavy weapons. The tourists who came mornings to visit the ground floor of the White House in their many hundreds were heavily infiltrated with Secret Service agents, who circulated constantly and took part in the small talk, their eyes alert.

Every inch of the White House that these tourists were permitted to visit behind the ropes was covered by TV monitors and special audio equipment that could pick up secret whispers. Armed guards manned special computer desks that could serve as barricades at every turn in the corridors. And during these visits by the public Kennedy would always be up on the new specially built fourth floor that served as his living quarters. Living quarters guarded by specially reinforced floors, walls and ceilings.

Now in the famous Oval Office, which he rarely used except for signing official documents in special ceremonies, Francis Kennedy relaxed to enjoy one of the few minutes he was completely alone. He took a long thin Cuban cigar from the humidor on his desk, felt the oiliness of the leafy wrapper on his fingers. He cut the end, lit it carefully, took the first rich puff and looked out through the bulletproof windows.

He could see himself as a child walking across the vast green lawn, from the faraway guard post painted white, then running to greet his uncle Jack and uncle Robert. How he had loved them. Uncle Jack so full of charm, so childlike, and yet so powerful, to give hope that a child could wield power over the world. And Uncle Robert, so serious and earnest and yet so gentle and playful. And here Francis Kennedy thought, no, we called him Uncle Bobby, not Robert, or did we sometimes? He could not remember.

But he did remember one day more than forty years ago when he had run to meet both his uncles on that very same lawn and how they had each taken one of his arms and swung him so that his feet never touched the ground as they went toward the White House.

And now he stood in their place. The power that had awed him as a child was now his. It was a pity that memory could evoke so much pain and so much beauty, and so much disappointment. What they had died for he was thinking of giving up.

On this Good Friday Francis Xavier Kennedy did not know that all this would be changed by two insignificant revolutionaries in Rome.

CHAPTER 2

ON EASTER SUNDAY morning, Romeo and his cadre of four men and three women in full operational gear disembarked from their van. In the Roman streets outside St. Peter's Square they mingled with the crowds attired in Easter finery-the women glorious in the pastel colors of spring and operatic in churchgoing hats, the men handsome in silk cream-colored suits with yellow palm crosses stitched into their lapels. The children were even more dazzling: little girls wearing gloves and frilly frocks, the boys in navy blue confirmation suits with red ties on snowy shirts. Scattered throughout were priests smiling benedictions on the faithful.

Romeo was a more sober pilgrim, a serious witness to the Resurrection that this Easter morning celebrated. He was dressed in a dead-black suit, a white shirt heavily starched, and a pure white tie almost invisible against it. His shoes were black but rubber-soled. And now he buttoned the camel-hair coat to conceal the rifle that hung in its special sling. He had practiced with this rifle for the past three months until his accuracy was deadly.

The four men in his cadre were dressed as monks of the Capuchin order, in long flowing robes of dingy brown, girdled by fat cloth belts. Their tonsured heads were covered with skullcaps. Concealed inside the loose robes were grenades and handguns.

The three women-one of them Were-were dressed as nuns in black and white and they too had weapons beneath their loose-fitting clothing. Annee and the other two nuns walked ahead as people made way for them, and Romeo followed easily in their wake. After Romeo came the four monks of the cadre, observing everything, ready to intercede if Romeo was stopped by papal police.

And so Romeo's band made their way to St. Peter's Square, invisible in the huge crowd that was assembling. And finally like dark corks bobbing in an ocean of many colors, Romeo and his cadre came to rest on the far side of the square, their backs protected by marble columns and stone walls. Romeo stood a little apart. He was watching for a signal from the other side of the square, where Yabril and his cadre were busy attaching holy figurines to the walls.

Yabril and his cadre of three men and three women were in casual attire with loose-fitting jackets. The men carried concealed handguns, while the women were working with the religious figurines, small statues of Christ, that were loaded with explosives designed to go off by radio signal. The backs had adhesive glue so strong that they could not be detached from the walls by any of the curious in the crowd. Also, the figurines were beautifully designed and made of expensive-looking terra-cotta painted white and formed around a wired skeleton. They gave the appearance of being part of the Easter decorations and as such were inviolate.

When this operation was completed, Yabril led his cadre through the crowd and out of St. Peter's Square to his own waiting van. He sent one of his men to Romeo to give him the radio signal device for the detonating of the figurines. Then Yabril and his cadre got into their van and started the drive to the Rome airport. Pope Innocent would not appear on the balcony until three hours later. They were on schedule.

In the van, closed off from the Easter world of Rome, Yabril thought about how this whole exercise had begun…

On a mission together a few years before, Romeo had mentioned that the Pope had the heaviest security guard of any ruler in Europe. Yabril had laughed and said, "Who would want to kill a Pope? Like killing a snake that has no poison. A useless old figurehead and with a dozen useless old men ready to replace him. Bridegrooms of Christ, a set of a dozen red-capped dummies. What would change in the world with the death of a Pope? I can see kidnapping him, he's the richest man in the world. But killing him would be like killing a lizard sleeping in the sun."

Romeo had argued his case and intrigued Yabril. The Pope was revered by hundreds of millions of Catholics all over the world. And certainly the

Pope was a symbol of capitalism; the bourgeois Western Christian states propped him up. The Pope was one of the great buttresses of authority in the edifice of that society. And so it followed that if the Pope was assassinated it would be a shocking psychological blow to the enemy world because he was considered the representative of God on earth. The royalty of Russia and France had been murdered because they too thought they had the divine right to rule, and those murders had advanced humanity. God was the fraud of the rich, the swindler of the poor, the Pope an earthly wielder of that evil power. But still it was only half an idea. Yabril expanded the concept. Now the operation had a grandeur that awed Romeo and filled Yabril with self-admiration.

Romeo for all his talk and sacrifices was not what Yabril considered a true revolutionary. Yabril had studied the history of Italian terrorists. They were very good at assassinating heads of state; they had studied at the feet of the Russians, who had finally killed their Czar after many at tempts-indeed the Italians had borrowed from the Russians the name that Yabril detested: the Christs of Violence.

Yabril had met Romeo's parents once. The father, a useless man, a parasite on humanity. Complete with chauffeur, valet and a great big lamblike dog that he used as bait to snare women on the boulevards. But a man with beautiful manners. It was impossible not to like him if you were not his son.

And the mother, another beauty of the capitalistic system, voracious for money and jewels, a devout Catholic. Beautifully dressed, maids in tow, she walked to mass every morning. That penance accomplished, she devoted the rest of her day to pleasure. Like her husband, she was self-indulgent, unfaithful, and devoted to their only son, Romeo.

So now this happy family would finally be punished. The father a Knight of Malta, the mother a daily communicant with Christ, and their son the murderer of the Pope. What a betrayal, Yabril thought. Poor Romeo, you will spend a bad week when I betray you.

Except for the final twist that Yabril had added, Romeo knew the whole plan. "Just like chess," Romeo said. "Check to the king, check to the king, and the checkmate. Beautiful…

Yabril looked at his watch, it would be another fifteen minutes. The van was going at moderate speed along the highway to the airport.

It was time to begin. He collected all the weapons and grenades from his cadre and put them in a suitcase. When the van stopped in front of the airport terminal, Yabril got out first. The van went on to discharge the rest of the cadre at another entrance. Yabril walked through the terminal slowly, carrying the suitcase, his eyes searching for undercover security police. Just short of the checkpoint, he walked into a gift and flower shop. A CLOSED sign in bright red and green letters hung on a peg inside the door. This was a signal that it was safe to enter and also that the shop would be kept clear of customers.

The woman in the shop was a dyed blonde with heavy makeup and quite ordinary looks, but with a warm inviting voice and a lush body shown to advantage in a plain woolen dress belted severely at the waist.

"I'm sorry," she said to Yabril. "But you can see by the sign that we are closed. It is Easter Sunday, after all." But her voice was friendly, not rejecting. She smiled warmly.

Yabril gave her the code sentence, designed merely for recognition.

"Christ is risen but I must still travel on business." She reached out and took the suitcase from his hand.

"Is the plane on time?" Yabril asked.

"Yes," the woman said. "You have an hour. Are there any changes?"

"No," Yabril said. "But remember, everything depends on you." Then he went out. He had never seen the woman before and would never see her again and she knew only3 about this phase of the operation. He checked the schedules on the departure board. Yes, the plane would leave on time.

The woman was one of the few female members of the First Hundred. She had been planted in the shop three years ago as owner, and during that time she had carefully and seductively built up relationships with airline terminal personnel and security guards. Her practice of bypassing the scanners at the checkpoints to deliver parcels to people on planes was cleverly established.

She had done it not too often but just often enough. In the third year she began an affair with one of the armed guards, who could wave her through the unscanned entry. Her lover was on guard duty this day; she had promised him lunch and a siesta in the back room of her shop. And so he had volunteered for the Easter Sunday duty.

The lunch was already laid out on the table in the back room when she emptied the suitcase to pack the weapons in gaily colored Gucci gift boxes.

She put the boxes into mauve paper shopping bags and waited until twenty minutes before departure time. Then, cradling the bag in her arms because it was so heavy and she was afraid the paper might break, she ran awkwardly toward the unscanned entry corridor. Her lover on guard duty waved her through gallantly. She gave him a brilliantly affectionate smile. As she boarded the plane the stewardess recognized her and said with a laugh,

"Again, Livia." The woman walked through the tourist section until she saw

Yabril seated with the three men and three women of his cadre beside him.

One of the women raised her arms to accept the heavy package.

The woman known as Livia dropped the bag into those waiting arms and then turned and ran out of the plane. She went back to the shop and finished preparing lunch in the back room.

The security guard, Faenzi, was one of those magnificent specimens of

Italian manhood who seemed deliberately created to delight womanhood.

That he was handsome was the least of his virtues. More important, he was one of those sweet-tempered men who are totally satisfied with the range of their talents and the scope of their ambition. Faenzi wore his airport uniform as grandly as a Napoleonic field marshal; his mustache was as neat and pretty as the tilted nose of a soubrette. You could see that he believed he had a significant job, an important duty to the state. He viewed passing women fondly and benevolently, because they were under his protection. The woman Livia had spotted him almost immediately on his first day of duty as a security guard in the airport, and marked him as her own. At first he had treated her with an exquisitely filial courtliness, but she had soon put an end to that with a torrent of flirtatious flattery, a few charming gifts that hinted at hidden wealth, and then evening snacks in her boutique at night. Now he loved her or was at least as devoted to her as a dog is to an indulgent master-she was a source of treats.

And Livia enjoyed him. He was a wonderful and cheerful lover without a serious thought in his head. She much preferred him in bed to those gloomy young revolutionaries consumed with guilt, belabored by conscience.

He became her pet and she fondly called him Zonzi. When he entered the shop and locked the door, she went to him with the utmost affection and desire, but she had a bad conscience. Poor Zonzi, the Italian antiterrorist branch would track everything down, and note her disappearance from the scene. Zonzi had undoubtedly boasted of his con quest-after all, she was an older and experienced woman, her honor need not be protected. Their connection would be uncovered. Poor Zonzi, this lunch would be his last hour of happiness.

Quickly and expertly on her part, enthusiastically and joyfully on his, they made love. Livia pondered the irony that here was an act that she thoroughly enjoyed and yet served her purposes as a revolutionary woman.

Zonzi would be punished for his pride and his presumption, his condescending love for an older woman; she would achieve a tactical and strategic victory. And yet poor Zonzi. How beautiful he was naked, the olive skin, the large doglike eyes and jet-black hair, the pretty mustache, the penis and balls firm as bronze. "Ah, Zonzi, Zonzi," she whispered into his thighs, "always remember that I love you."

She fed him a marvelous meal, they drank a superior bottle of wine and then they made love again. Zonzi dressed, kissed her good-bye, and glowed with the belief that he truly deserved such good fortune. After he left she took a long look around the shop. She gathered all her belongings together with some extra clothes and used Yabril's suitcase to carry them. That had been part of the instructions. There should be no trace of Yabril. Her last task was to erase all the obvious fingerprints she might have left in the shop, but that was just a token task. She would probably not get all of them.

Then carrying the suitcase, she went out, locked up the shop, and walked out of the terminal. Outside in the brilliant Easter sunshine, a woman of her own cadre was waiting with a car. She got into it, gave the driver a brief kiss of greeting and said almost regretfully, "Thank God, that's the end of that." The other woman said, "It wasn't so bad. We made money on the shop."

Yabril and his cadre were in the tourist section because Theresa Kennedy, daughter of the President of the United States, was traveling first class with her six-man Secret Service security detail. Yabril did not want the delivery of the gift-wrapped weapons to be seen by them. He also knew that Theresa Kennedy would not get on the plane until just before takeoff, that the security guards would not be on the plane beforehand because they never knew when Theresa Kennedy would change her mind and, Yabril thought, because they had become lazy and careless.

The plane, a jumbo jet, was far from fully occupied. Not many people in Italy choose to travel on Easter Sunday, and Yabril wondered why the President's daughter was doing so. After all, she was a Roman Catholic, though lapsed into the new religion of the liberal left, that most despicable political division. But the sparsity of passengers suited his plans-a hundred hostages, easier to control.

An hour later, with the plane in the air, Yabril slumped down in his seat as the women began tearing the Gucci paper off the packages. The three men of the cadre used their bodies as shields, leaning over the seats and talking to the women. As there were no passengers seated near them, they had a small circle of privacy. The women handed Yabril the grenades wrapped in gift paper and he adorned his body with them quickly. The three men accepted the small handguns and hid them inside their jackets.

Yabril also took a small handgun, and the three women armed themselves.

When all was ready, Yabril intercepted a stewardess going down the aisle.

She saw the grenades and the gun even before Yabril whispered his commands and took her by the hand. The look of amazement, then shock, then fear was familiar to him. He held her clammy hand and smiled. Two of his men positioned themselves to command the tourist section. Yabril still held the stewardess by the hand as they entered first class. The Secret Service bodyguards saw him immediately, took note of the grenades and saw the guns. Yabril smiled at them.

"Remain seated, gentlemen," he said. The President's daughter slowly turned her head and gazed into Yabril's eyes. Her face became taut but not frightened. She is brave, Yabril thought, and handsome. It was really a pity. He waited until the three women of the cadre had taken their positions in the first-class cabin and then had the stewardess open the door leading to the pilots' cockpit. Yabril felt he was entering the brain of a huge whale and making the rest of the body helpless.

When Theresa Kennedy first saw Yabril, her body suddenly shook with the nausea of unconscious recognition. He was the demon she had been warned against. There was a ferocity in his narrow dark face; its brutal, massive lower jaw gave it the quality of a face in a nightmare. The grenades strung over his jacket and in his hand looked like squat green toads. Then she saw the three women dressed in dark trousers and white jackets with the large steel guns in their hands. After that first shock, Theresa Kennedy's second reaction was that of a guilty child. Shit, she had gotten her father into trouble; she would never ever be able to get rid of her Secret Service security detail. She watched Yabril go to the door of the pilots' cabin holding the stewardess by the hand. She turned her head to exchange a look with the chief of her security detail, but he was watching the armed women very intently.

At that moment one of Yabril's men came into the first-class cabin holding a grenade in his hand. One of the women made another stewardess pick up the intercom. The voice came over the phone. It quavered only slightly. "All passengers, fasten your seat belts. The plane has been commandeered by a revolutionary group. Please remain calm and await further instructions. Do not stand up. Do not touch your hand luggage. Do not leave your seats for any reason. Please remain calm. Remain calm."

In the cockpit the pilot saw the stewardess enter and said to her excitedly, "Hey, the radio just said somebody shot at the Pope." Then he saw Yabril enter behind the stewardess and his mouth opened into a silent "0" of surprise, words frozen there just as in a cartoon, Yabril thought, as he raised his hand that held the grenade. But the pilot had said, "… shot at the Pope." Did that mean Romeo had missed? Had the mission already failed? In any case Yabril had no alternative. He gave his orders to the pilot to change course and head for the Arab state of Sherhaben.

In the sea of humanity in St. Peter's Square, Romeo and his cadre floated to a comer backed by a stone wall, and formed their own island. Annee in her nun's habit stood directly in front of Romeo, gun ready beneath her habit.

She had the responsibility to protect him, give him time for his shot. The other members of the cadre, in their religious disguises, formed a circle, a perimeter to give him space. They had three hours to wait before the Pope appeared.

Romeo leaned back against the stone wall, shuttered his eyes against the Easter-morning sun and quickly his mind ran over the rehearsed moves of the operation. When the Pope appeared, Romeo would tap the shoulder of the man on his left, who would then set off the radio signal device that would detonate the holy figurines on the opposite wall of the square. In that moment of the explosions he would take out his rifle and fire-the timing had to be exact so that his shot would seem to be a reverberation of the other explosions. Then he would drop the rifle, his monks and nuns would form a circle around him and they would flee with the others. The figurines were also smoke bombs, and St. Peter's Square would be enveloped by dense clouds. There would be enormous confusion and there would be panic. With all this he should be able to make his escape.

Those spectators near him in the crowd might be dangerous, for they would be aware of his actions, but the movement of the multitude in flight would soon separate them. Those who were foolhardy enough to persist in pursuing him would be gunned down.

Romeo could feel the cold sweat on his chest. The vast crowd waving flowers aloft became a sea of white and purple, pink and red. He wondered at their joy, their belief in the Resurrection, their ecstasy of hope against death. He wiped his hands against the outside of his coat and felt the weight of his rifle in its sling. He could feel his legs begin to ache and go numb. He sent his mind outside his body to pass the long hours he would have to wait for the Pope to appear on his balcony.

Lost scenes from his childhood formed again. Tutored for confirmation by a romantic priest, he knew that a red-hatted senior cardinal always certified the death of a Pope by tapping him on the forehead with a silver mallet. Was that still really done? It would be a very bloody mallet this time. But how big would such a mallet be? Toy-sized? Heavy and big enough to drive a nail? But of course it would be a precious relic from the Renaissance, encrusted with jewels, a work of art. No matter, there would be very little of the Pope's head left to tap; the rifle under his coat held explosive bullets. And Romeo was sure he would not miss. He believed in his left-handedness, to be mancino was to be successful, in sports, in love and, certainly by every superstition, in murder.

As he waited, Romeo wondered that he had no sense of sacrilege-after all, he had been brought up a strict Catholic in a city whose every street and building reminded one of the beginnings of Christianity. Even now he could see the domed roofs on holy buildings like marble disks against the sky, hear the deep consoling yet intimidating bells of churches. In this great hallowed square he could see the statues of martyrs, smell the very air choked with the countless spring flowers offered by true believers in Christ.

The overpowering fragrance of the multitudinous flowers washed over him and he was reminded of his mother and father and the heavy scents they always wore to mask the odor of their plush and pampered Mediterranean flesh.

And then the vast crowd in their Easter finery began shouting "Papa, Papa, Papa!" Standing in the lemon light of early spring, stone angels above their heads, the people chanted incessantly for the blessing of their Pope. Finally two red-robed cardinals appeared and stretched out their arms in benediction. Then Pope Innocent was on the balcony.

He was a very old man dressed in a chasuble of glittering white; on it was a cross of gold, the woolly pallium, embroidered with crosses. On his head was a white skullcap and on his feet the traditional low, open red shoes, gold crosses embroidered on their fronts. On one of the hands raised to greet the crowd was the pontifical fisherman's ring of Saint Peter.

The multitude sent their flowers up into the sky, the voices roared in ecstasy, the balcony shimmered in the sun as if to fall with the descending flowers.

At that moment Romeo felt the dread these symbols had always inspired in his youth, recalling the red-hatted cardinal of his confirmation, who was pockmarked like the Devil, and then he felt an elation that lifted his whole being into bliss, ultimate joy. Romeo tapped the shoulder of the man on his left to send the radio signal.

The Pope raised his white-sleeved arms to answer the cries of "Papa, Papa!" to bless them all, to praise the Eastertide, the Resurrection of Christ, to salute the stone angels that rode around the walls. Romeo slid his rifle out from beneath his coat; two monks of his cadre in front of him knelt to give him a clear view. Annee placed herself so that he could lay his rifle across her shoulder. The man on his left flashed the radio signal that would set off the mined figurines on the other side of the square.

The explosions rocked the foundations of the square, a cloud of pink floated in the air, the fragrance of the flowers turned rotten with the stench of burnt flesh. And at that moment Romeo, rifle sighted, pulled the trigger. The explosions on the other side of the square changed the welcoming roar of the crowd to what sounded like the shrieking of countless gulls.

On the balcony the body of the Pope seemed to rise up off the ground, the white skullcap flew into the air, swirled in the violent winds of compressed air and then drifted down into the crowd, a bloody rag. A wail of horror, of terror and animal rage, filled the square as the body of the Pope slumped over the balcony rail. His cross of gold dangled free, the pallium drenched red.

Clouds of stone dust rolled over the square. Marble fragments of shattered angels and saints fell. There was a terrible silence, the crowd frozen by the sight of the murdered Pope. They could see his head blown apart. Then the panic began. The people fled from the square, trampling the Swiss

Guards who were trying to seal off the exits. The gaudy Renaissance uniforms were buried by the mass of terror-stricken worshipers.

Romeo let his rifle drop to the ground. Surrounded by his cadre of armed monks and nuns, he let himself be swept out of the square into the streets of Rome. He seemed to have lost his vision and staggered blindly; Annee grasped him by the arm and thrust him into the waiting van. Romeo held his hands over his ears to shut out the screams; he was shaking with shock, and then with a sense of exaltation followed by a sense of wonder, as if the murder had been a dream.

On the jumbo jet scheduled from Rome to New York, Yabril and his cadre were in full control, the first-class section cleared of all passengers except Theresa Kennedy.

Theresa was now more interested than frightened. She was fascinated that the hijackers had so easily cowed her Secret Service detail by simply showing detonation devices all over their bodies, which meant that any bullet fired would send the plane flying into bits through the skies. She noted that the three men and three women were very slender with faces screwed up in the tension shown by great athletes in moments of intense competition. A male hijacker gave one of her Secret Service agents a violent push out of the first-class cabin and kept pushing him down the open aisle of the tourist section. One of the female hijackers kept her distance, her gun at the ready. When a Secret Service agent showed some reluctance to leave Theresa's side, the woman raised her gun and pressed the barrel to his head. And her squinting eyes showed plainly she was about to shoot; her lips were parted slightly to relieve pressure from the clenching of the muscles around her mouth. At that moment Theresa pushed her guard away and put her own body in front of the woman hijacker, who smiled with relief and waved her into the seat.

Theresa watched Yabril supervise the operation. He seemed almost distant, as if he were a director watching his actors perform, not seeming to give orders but providing only hints, suggestions. With a slight reassuring smile he motioned that she should keep to her seat. It was the action of a man looking after someone who had been put in his special care. Then he went into the pilots' cabin. One of the male hijackers guarded the entry into first class from the tourist cabin. Two women hijackers stood back to back in the section with Theresa, guns at the ready. There was a stewardess manning the intercom phone that relayed messages to the passengers under the direction of the male hijacker. They all looked too small to cause such terror.

In the cockpit Yabril gave the pilot permission to radio that his plane had been hijacked and relay the new flight plan to Sherhaben. The American authorities would think their only problem was negotiating the usual Arab terrorist demands. Yabril stayed in the cabin to listen to the radio traffic.

As the plane flew on there was nothing to do but wait. Yabril dreamed of

Palestine, as it had been when he was a child, his home a green oasis in the desert, his father and mother angels of light, the beautiful Koran as it rested on his father's desk always ready to renew faith. And how it had all finished in dead gray rolls of smoke, fire and the brimstone of bombs falling from the air. And the Israelis had come, and it seemed as if his whole childhood was spent in some great prison camp of ramshackle huts, a vast settlement united in only one thing, their hatred of the Jews. Those very same Jews that the Koran praised.

He remembered how even at the university some of the teachers spoke of a botched job as "Arab work." Yabril himself had used the phrase to a gunmaker who had given him defective weapons. Ah, but they would not call this day's business "Arab work."

He had always hated the Jews-no, not the Jews, the Israelis. He remembered when he was a child of four, maybe five, not older, the soldiers of Israel had raided the settlement camp in which he went to school. They had received false information,

"Arab work," that the settlement was hiding terrorists. All the inhabitants had been ordered out of their houses and into the streets, with their hands up. Including the children in the long yellow-painted tin hut that was the school and lay just a little outside the settlement.

Yabril with other small boys and girls his age had clustered together wailing, their little arms and hands high in the air, screaming their surrender, screaming in terror. And Yabril always remembered one of the young Israeli soldiers, the new breed of Jew, blond as a Nazi, looking at the children with a sort of horror, and then the fair skin of that alien Semite's face was streaming with tears. The Israeli lowered his gun and shouted at the children to stop, to put down their hands. They had nothing to fear, he said, little children had nothing to fear. The Israeli soldier spoke almost perfect Arabic, and when the children still stood with their arms held high, the soldier strode among them trying to pull down their arms, weeping all the while. Yabril never forgot the soldier, and resolved, later in life, never to be like him, never to let pity destroy him.

Now, looking below, he could see the deserts of Arabia. Soon the flight would come to an end and he would be in the Sultanate of Sherhaben.

Sherhaben was one of the smallest countries in the world but had such an abundance of oil that its camel-riding Sultan's hundreds of children and grandchildren all drove Mercedeses and were educated at the finest universities abroad. The original Sultan had owned huge industrial companies in Germany and the United States and had died the single most wealthy person in the world. Only one of his grandchildren had survived the murderous intrigues of half brothers and become the present Sultan-Maurobi.

The Sultan Maurobi was a militant and fanatically devout Muslim, and the citizens of Sherhaben, now rich, were equally devout. No woman could go without a veil; no money could be loaned for interest; there was not a drop of liquor in that thirsty desert land except at the foreign embassies.

Long ago Yabril had helped the Sultan establish and consolidate power by assassinating four of the Sultan's more dangerous half brothers. Because of these debts of gratitude, and because of his own hatred of the great powers, the Sultan had agreed to help Yabril in this operation.

The plane carrying Yabril and his hostages landed and rolled slowly toward the small glass-encircled terminal, pale yellow in the desert sun. Beyond the airfield was an endless stretch of sand studded with oil rigs. When the plane came to a stop, Yabril could see that the airfield was surrounded by at least a thousand of Sultan Maurobi's troops.

Now the most intricate and satisfying part of the operation, and the most dangerous, would begin. He would have to be careful until Romeo was finally in place. And he would be gambling on the Sultan's reaction to his secret and final checkmate. No, this was not Arab's work.

Because of the European time difference Francis Kennedy received the first report of the shooting of the Pope at 6:oo A.m. Easter Sunday. It was given to him by Press Secretary Matthew Gladyce, who had the White House watch for the holiday. Eugene Dazzy and Christian Klee had already been informed and were in the White House.

Francis Kennedy came down the stairs from his living quarters and entered the Oval Office to find Dazzy and Christian waiting for him. They both looked grim. Far away on the streets of Washington there were long screams of sirens. Kennedy sat down behind his desk. He looked at Eugene Dazzy, who as chief of staff would do the briefing.

"Francis, the Pope is dead. He was assassinated during the Easter service."

Kennedy was shocked. "Who did it? And why?"

Klee said, "We don't know. There's even worse news."

Kennedy tried to read the faces of the men who stood before him, feeling a deep sense of dread. "What could be worse?"

"The plane Theresa is on has been hijacked and is now on its way to Sherhaben," Klee said.

Francis Kennedy felt a wave of nausea hit him. Then he heard Eugene Dazzy say, "The hijackers have everything under control, there are no incidents on the plane. As soon as it lands we'll negotiate, we'll call in all our favors, it will come out OK. I don't think they even knew Theresa was on the plane."

Christian said, "Arthur Wix and Otto Gray are on their way in. So are

CIA, Defense, and the Vice President. They will all be waiting for you in the Cabinet Room within the half hour."

"OK," Kennedy said. He forced himself to be calm. "Is there any connection?" he said.

He saw that Christian was not surprised but that Dazzy didn't get it.

"Between the Pope and the hijacking," Kennedy said. When neither of them answered, he said, "Wait for me in the Cabinet Room. I want a few moments by myself." They left.

Kennedy himself was almost invulnerable to assassins, but he had always known he could never fully protect his daughter. She was too independent, she would not permit him to restrict her life. And it had not seemed a serious danger. He could not recall that the daughter of the head of a nation had ever been attacked. It was a bad political and public relations move for any terrorist or revolutionary organization.

After her father's inauguration Theresa had gone her own way, lending her name to radical and feminist political groups, while stating her own position in life as distinct from her father's. He had never tried to persuade her to act differently, to present to the public an image false to herself It was enough that he loved her. And when she visited the White

House for a brief stay, they always had a good time together arguing politics, dissecting the uses of power.

The conservative Republican press and the disreputable tabloids had taken their shots, hoping to damage the presidency. Theresa was photographed marching with feminists, demonstrating against nuclear weapons and once even marching for a homeland for Palestinians. Which would now inspire ironic columns in the papers.

Oddly enough, the American public responded to Theresa Kennedy with affection, even when it became known she was living with an Italian radical in Rome. There were pictures of them strolling the ancient streets of stone, kissing and holding hands; pictures of the balcony of the flat they shared. The young Italian lover was handsome; Theresa was pretty in her blondness with her pale milky Irish skin and the Kennedy satiny blue eyes.

And her almost lanky Kennedy frame draped in casual Italian clothes made her so appealing that the caption beneath the photographs was drained of poison.

A news photo of her shielding her young Italian lover from Italian police clubs brought back long-buried feelings in older Americans, memories of that long-ago terrible day in Dallas.

She was a witty heroine. During the campaign she had been cornered by TV reporters and asked, "So you agree with your father politically?" If she answered "yes" she would appear a hypocrite or a child manipulated by a powerhungry father. If she answered "no," the headlines would indicate that she did not support her father in his race for the presidency. But she showed the Kennedy political genius.

"Sure, he's my dad," she said, hugging her father. "And I know he's a good guy. But if he does something I don't like I'll yell at him just as you reporters do." It came off great on the tube. Her father loved her for it.

And now she was in mortal danger.

If only she had remained close to him, if only she had been more of a loving daughter and lived with him at the White House, if only she had been less radical, none of this would be happening. And why did she have to have a foreign lover, a student radical who perhaps had given the hijacker crucial information? And then he laughed at himself. He was feeling the exasperation of a parent who wanted his child to be as little trouble as possible. He loved her, and he would save her. At least this was something he could fight against, not like the terrible long and painful death of his wife.

Now Eugene Dazzy appeared and told him it was time. They were waiting for him in the Cabinet Room.

When Kennedy entered, everyone stood up. He quickly motioned for them to be seated, but they surged around him to offer their sympathy. Kennedy made his way to the head of the long oval table and sat in the chair near the fireplace.

Two pure– white-light chandeliers bleached the rich brown of the table, glistened the black of the leather chairs, six to each side of the table, and more chairs along the back of the far wall. And there were other sconces of white light that shone from the walls. Next to the two windows that opened to the Rose Garden were two flags, the striped flag of the United States and the flag of the President, a field of deep blue filled with pale stars.

Kennedy's staff took the seats nearest him, resting their information logs and memorandum sheets on the oval table. Farther down were the Cabinet members and the head of the CIA, and at the other end of the table, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, an Army general in full uniform, a gaudy color cutout in the somberly dressed group. Vice President Du Pray sat at the far side of the table, away from Kennedy, the only woman in the room. She wore a fashionable dark blue suit with a white silk blouse. Her handsome face was stem. The fragrance of the Rose Garden filled the room, seeping through the heavy curtains and drapes that covered glass-paneled doors. Below the drapes the aquamarine rug reflected green light into the room.

It was the CIA chief, Theodore Tappey, who gave the briefing. Tappey, who had once been head of the FBI, was not flamboyant or politically ambitious.

And had never exceeded the CIA charter with risky, illegal or empire-building schemes. He had a great deal of credit with Kennedy's personal staff, especially Christian Klee.

"In the few hours we had, we've come up with some hard information," Tappey said. "The killing of the Pope was carried out by an all-Italian cadre. The hijacking of Theresa's plane was done by a mixed team led by an Arab who goes by the name Yabril. The fact that both incidents happened on the same day and originated in the same city seems to be coincidence. Which, of course, we must always mistrust."

Kennedy said softly, "At this moment the killing of the Pope is not primary. Our main concern is the hijacking. Have they made any demands yet?"

Tappey said quickly and firmly, "No. That's an odd circumstance in itself."

Kennedy said, "Get your contacts on negotiation and report to me personally at every step." He turned to the Secretary of State and asked,

"What countries will help us?"

The Secretary said, "Everyone-the other Arab states are horrified, they despise the idea of your daughter being held hostage. It offends their sense of honor and also they think of their own custom of the blood feud.

They believe they cannot derive any good from this. France has a good relationship with the Sultan, They offered to send in observers for us.

Britain and Israel can't help-they are not trusted. But until the hijackers make their demands we're sort of in limbo."

Kennedy turned to Christian. "Chris, how do you figure it, they're not making demands?"

Christian said, "It may be too early. Or they have another card to play."

The Cabinet Room was eerie in silence; in the blackness of the many high heavy chairs the white sconces of light on the walls turned the skin of the people in the room into a very light gray. Kennedy waited for them to speak, all of them, and he closed down his mind when they spoke of options, the threat of sanctions, the threat of a naval blockade, the freezing of Sherhaben assets in the United States-the expectation that the hijackers would extend the negotiation interminably to milk the TV time and news reports all over the world.

After a time Kennedy turned to Oddblood Gray and said abruptly, "Schedule a meeting with the congressional leaders, the relevant committee chairmen, for me and my staff." Then he turned to Arthur Wix. "Get your national security staff working on plans if this thing turns into something wider." Then Kennedy stood up to leave. He addressed them all.

"Gentlemen," he said, "I must tell you I don't believe in coincidence. I don't believe the Pope of the Roman Catholic Church can be murdered on the same day in the same city that the daughter of the President of the United States is kidnapped."

Adam Gresse and Henry Tibbot had put aside Easter Sunday as a day of work.

Not on their scientific projects but on cleaning up all traces of their crime. In their apartment, they bundled up all their old newspapers from which they had cut letters to compose their message. They vacuumed to remove the tiny fragments of scissored papers. They even got rid of the scissors and glue. They washed down the walls. Then they went to their university workshop to get rid of all the tools and equipment they had used to construct their bomb. It did not occur to them to turn on the television until their task was completed. When they heard the news of the killing of the Pope and the kidnapping of the President's daughter, they looked at each other and smiled. Adam Gresse said, "Henry, I think our time has come."

It was a long Easter Sunday. The White House was filling up with staff personnel of the different action committees set up by the CIA, the Army and the Navy, and the State Department. They all agreed that the most baffling fact was that the terrorists had not yet made their demands for the release of the hostages.

Outside, the streets were congested with traffic. Newspaper and TV reporters were flocking into Washington. Government staff workers had been called to their desks despite its being Easter. And Christian Klee had ordered a thousand extra men from the Secret Service and the FBI to provide additional protection for the White House.

The telephone traffic in the White House increased in volume. There was bedlam, people rushing to and fro from the White House to the Executive Office Building. Eugene Dazzy tried to bring everything under control.

The rest of that Sunday in the White House consisted of Kennedy's receiving reports from the Situation Room, long solemn conferences on what options were open, telephone conversations between heads of foreign countries and the Cabinet members of the United States.

Late Sunday night the President's staff had dinner with him and prepared for the next day. They monitored the TV news reports, which were continuous.

Finally, Kennedy decided to go to bed. He was confident that his staff would keep vigil throughout the night and wake him when necessary. A Secret Service man led the way as Kennedy went up the small stairway that led to the living quarters on the fourth floor of the White House.

Another Secret Service man trailed behind. They both knew that the

President hated to take the elevators in the White House.

The top of the stairs opened into a lounge, which held a communications desk and two more Secret Service men. When he passed through that lounge,

Kennedy was in his own living quarters, with only his personal servants: a maid, a butler and a valet, whose duty it was to keep track of the extensive presidential wardrobe.

What Kennedy did not know was that even these personal servants were members of the Secret Service. Christian Klee had invented this setup.

It was part of his overall plan to keep the President free from all harm, part of the intricate shield Christian had woven around Francis Kennedy.

When Christian had put this wrinkle into the security system he had briefed the special platoon of Secret Service men and women. "You're going to be the best goddamn personal servants in the world, and you can go straight from here and get a job in Buckingham Palace. You already know your first duty is to take any bullets thrown at the President. But it will be as much your duty to make the private life of the President comfortable."

The chief of the special platoon was the manservant on duty this night.

Ostensibly he was a black naval steward named Jefferson with the rank of chief petty officer. Actually he had top rank in the Secret Service and was exceptionally well trained in hand-to-hand combat. He was a natural athlete and had been a college all-American in football. And his IQ was 16o. He also had a sense of humor, which made him take a special delight in becoming the perfect servant.

Now Jefferson helped Kennedy take off his jacket and hung it up carefully.

He handed Kennedy a silk dressing gown, as he had learned that the President did not like to be helped putting it on. When Kennedy went to the small bar in the living room of the suite, Jefferson was there before him, mixing a vodka with tonic and ice. Then Jefferson said, "Mr. President, your bath is drawn."

Kennedy looked at him with a little smile on his face. Jefferson was a little too good to be true. Kennedy said, "Please turn off all the phones.

You can wake me personally if I'm needed."

He soaked in the hot bath for nearly a half hour. The tub's jets pounded his back and thighs and soothed the weariness out of his muscles. The bathwater had a pleasant masculine scent and the ledge around the tub was filled with an assortment of soaps, liniments and magazines. There was even a plastic basket that held a pile of memos.

When Kennedy came out of the bath, he put on a white terry-cloth robe that had a monogram in red, white and blue lettering that said THE BOSS. This was a gift from Jefferson himself, who thought it part of the character he was playing to give such a present. Francis Kennedy rubbed his white, almost hairless body with the robe to get himself dry. He had always been dissatisfied with the paleness of his skin and his lack of body hair.

In the bedroom, Jefferson had pulled the curtains closed and switched on the reading light. He had also turned down the bedcovers. There was a small marble-topped table with specially attached wheels near the bed and a comfortable armchair nearby. The table was covered with a beautifully embroidered pale rose cloth, and on it was a dark blue pitcher containing hot chocolate. Chocolate had already been poured into a cup of lighter cerulean blue. There was an intricately painted dish holding six varieties of biscuits. Comfortingly, there was a pure white crock of pale unsalted butter and four crocks of different colors for different jams: green for apple, blue spotted white for raspberry, yellow for marmalade and red for strawberry.

Kennedy said, "That looks great," and Jefferson left the room. For some reason these little attentions comforted Kennedy more than they should, he felt. He sat in the armchair and drank the chocolate, tried to finish a biscuit and could not. He rolled the table away and got into bed. He tried to read from a pile of memos, but he was too tired. He turned off the light and tried to sleep.

But through the muffling of the drapes he could very faintly hear a little of the immense noise that was building up outside the White House as the media of the whole world assembled to keep a twenty-four-hour-a-day watch. There would be dozens of communications vehicles for the TV cameras and crews. And a marine battalion was being set up as extra security.

Francis Kennedy felt that deep sense of foreboding that had come to him only once before in his life. He let himself think directly about his daughter, Theresa. She was sleeping on that plane, surrounded by murderous men. And it was not bad luck. Fate had given him many omens. His two uncles had been killed when he was a boy.

And then just over three years ago his wife, Catherine, had died of cancer.

The first great defeat in Francis Kennedy's life was Catherine Kennedy's discovery of a lump in her breast six months before her husband won the nomination for President. After the diagnosis of cancer, Kennedy offered to withdraw from the political process, but she forbade him, saying she wanted to live in the White House. She would get well, she said, and her husband never doubted her. At first they worried about her losing her breast and Kennedy consulted cancer experts all over the world about a lumpectomy that could remove only the cancerous growth. One of the greatest cancer specialists in the United States looked at Catherine's medical file and encouraged removal of the breast. He said, and Francis Kennedy forever remembered the words, "It is a very aggressive strain of cancer."

She was on chemotherapy when he won the Democratic nomination for the presidency in July, and her doctors sent her home. She was in remission.

She put on weight, her skeleton hid again behind a wall of flesh.

She rested a great deal, she could not leave the house, but she was always on her feet to greet him when he came home. Theresa went back to school, Kennedy went on the campaign trail. But he arranged his schedule so that he could fly home every few days to be with her. Each time he returned she seemed to be stronger, and those days were sweet, they had never loved each other more. He brought her gifts; she knitted him mufflers and gloves.

One time she gave the day off to the nurses and servants so that she and her husband could be alone in the house, to enjoy the simple supper she had prepared. She was getting well. It was the happiest moment in his life, nothing could be measured against it. Kennedy wept tears of pure joy, relieved of anguish, of dread. The next morning they went for a walk in the green hills around their house, her arm around his waist. She had always been vain about her appearance, anxious about how she fitted into her new dresses, her bathing suits, the extra fold of flesh beneath her chin. But now she tried to put on weight. He felt each bone in her body when they walked with their arms entwined. When they returned he cooked her breakfast and she ate heartily, more than he ever remembered her eating.

Her remission gave Kennedy the energy to rise to the peak of his powers as he continued his campaign for the presidency. He swept everything before him; everything was malleable, to be shaped to his lucky destiny.

His body generated enormous energy, his mind worked with a precision that was extraordinary.

And then on one of his trips home he was plunged into hell. Catherine was ill again, she was not there to greet him. And all his gifts and strength were meaningless.

Catherine had been the perfect wife for him. Not that she had been an extraordinary woman, but she had been one of those women who seem to be almost genetically gifted in the art of love. She had what seemed to be a natural sweetness of disposition that was remarkable. He had never heard her say a mean word about anyone; she forgave other people's faults, never felt herself slighted or done an injury. She never harbored resentments.

She was in all ways pleasing. She had a willowy body and her face had a tranquil beauty that inspired affection in nearly everyone. She had a weakness, of course: she loved beautiful clothes and was a little vain. But she could be teased about that. She was witty without being insulting or mordant and she was never depressed. She was well educated and had made her living as a journalist before she married, and she had other skills. She was a superb amateur pianist; she painted as a hobby.

She had brought up her daughter well and they loved each other; she was understanding of her husband and never jealous of his achievements. She was one of those rare accidents, a contented and happy human being.

The day came when the doctor met Francis Kennedy in the corridor of the hospital and quite brutally and frankly told him that his wife must die.

The doctor explained. There were holes in the bones of Catherine Kennedy's body, her skeleton would collapse. There were tumors in her brain, tiny now but inevitably they would expand. And her blood ruthlessly manufactured poisons to put her to death.

Francis Kennedy could not tell his wife this. He could not tell her because he could not believe it. He mustered all his resources, contacted all his powerful friends, even consulted the Oracle. There was one hope. At medical centers all around the United States there were research programs testing new and dangerous drugs, experimental programs available only to those who had been pronounced doomed. Since these new drugs were dangerously toxic, they were used only on volunteers. And there were so many doomed people that there were a hundred volunteers for each spot in the programs.

So Francis Kennedy committed what he would have ordinarily thought an immoral act. He used all his power to get his wife into these research programs; he pulled every string so that his wife could receive these lethal but possibly life preserving poisons into her body. And he succeeded.

He felt a new confidence. A few of the people had been cured in these research centers. Why not his wife? Why could he not save her? He had triumphed all his life, he would triumph now.

And then began a reign of darkness. At first it was a research program in Houston. He put her in a hospital there, and stayed with her for the treatment that so weakened her that she was helplessly bedridden. She made him leave her there so that he could continue campaigning for the presidency. He flew from Houston to Los Angeles to make his campaign speeches, confident, witty, cheerful. Then late at night he flew to Houston to spend a few hours with his wife. Then he flew to his next campaign stop to play the part of lawgiver.

The treatment in Houston failed. In Boston they cut the tumor from her brain and the operation was a success, though the tumor tested malignant.

Malignant, too, were the new tumors in her lungs. The holes in her bones on

X ray were larger. In another Boston hospital new drugs and protocols worked a miracle. The new tumor in her brain stopped growing, the tumors in her remaining breast shriveled. Every night Francis Kennedy flew from his campaign cities to spend a few hours with her, to read to her, to joke with her. Sometimes Theresa flew from her school in Los Angeles to visit her mother. Father and daughter dined together and then visited the patient in her hospital room to sit in the darkness with her. Theresa told funny stories of her adventures in school; Francis related his adventures on the campaign trail to the presidency. Catherine would laugh.

Of course Kennedy again offered to drop out of the campaign to be with his wife. Of course Theresa wanted to leave school to be with her mother constantly. But Catherine told them she would not, could not, bear their doing so. She might be ill for a long time. They must continue their lives. Only that could give her hope, only that could give her the strength to bear her torture. On this she could not be moved. She threatened to check out of the hospital and return home if they did not continue as if things were normal.

Francis, on the long trips through the night to her bedside, could only marvel at her tenacity. Catherine, her body filled with chemical poison fighting the poisons of her own body, clung fiercely to her belief that she would be well and that the two people she loved most in the world would not be dragged down with her.

Finally the nightmare seemed to end. Again she was in remission. Francis could take her home. They had been all over the United States; she had been in seven different hospitals with their protocols of experimental treatments, and the great flood of chemicals seemed to have worked, and Francis felt an exultation that he had succeeded once again. He took his wife home to Los Angeles, and then one night he, Catherine and Theresa went out to dinner before he resumed the campaign trail. It was a lovely summer night, the balmy California air caressing them. There was one strange moment. A waiter had spilled just a tiny drop of sauce from a dish on the sleeve of Catherine's new dress. She burst into tears, and when the waiter left she asked weeping, "Why did he have to do that to me?" This was so uncharacteristic of her-in former times she would have laughed such an incident away-that Francis Kennedy felt a strange foreboding. She had gone through the torture of all those operations, the removal of her breast, the excision from her brain, the pain of those growing tumors, and had never wept or complained. And now obviously this stain on her sleeve seemed to sink into her heart. She was inconsolable.

The next day Kennedy had to fly to New York to campaign. In the morning Catherine made him his breakfast. She was radiant, and her beauty seemed greater than ever. All the newspapers had polls that showed Kennedy was in the lead, that he would win the presidency.

Catherine read them aloud. "Oh, Francis," she said, "we'll live in the White House and I'll have my own staff. And Theresa can bring her friends to stay for weekends and vacations. Think how happy we'll be. And I won't get sick again. I promise. You'll do great things, Francis, I know you will." She put her arms around him and wept with happiness and love. "I'll help," Catherine said. "We'll walk through all those lovely rooms together and I'll help you make your plans. You'll be the greatest President. I'm going to be all fight, darling, and I'll have so much to do. We'll be so happy. We'll be so good. We're so lucky. Aren't we lucky?"

She died in autumn, October light became her shroud. Francis Kennedy stood among fading green hills and wept. Silver trees veiled the horizon, and in dumb agony he closed his eyes with his own hands to shut out the world.

And in that moment without light, he felt the core of his mind break.

And some priceless cell of energy fled. It was the first time in his life that his extraordinary intelligence was worth nothing. His wealth meant nothing. His political power, his position in the world meant nothing.

He could not save his wife from death. And therefore it all became nothing.

He took his hands away from his eyes and with a supreme effort of will fought against the nothingness. He reassembled what was left of his world, summoned power to fight against grief. There was less than a month to go before the election and he made the final effort.

He entered the White House without his wife, with only his daughter, Theresa. Theresa, who had tried to be happy but who had wept all that first night because her mother could not be with them.

And now, three years after his wife's death, Francis Kennedy, President of the United States, one of the most powerful men on earth, was alone in his bed, fearful for his daughter's life, and unable to command sleep.

Sleep forbidden, he tried to stave off the terror that kept him from sleep.

He told himself the hijackers would not dare harm Theresa, that his daughter would come safely home. In this he was not powerless-he did not have to rely on the weak, fallible gods of medicine, he did not have to fight invincible cancerous cells. No. He could save his daughter's life. He could bend the power of his country, spend its authority. It all rested in his hands and thank God he had no political scruples. His daughter was the only thing he had left on this earth that he really loved. He would save her.

But then anxiety, a wave of such fear it seemed to stop his heart, made him put on the light above his head. He rose and sat in the armchair. He pulled the marble table close and sipped the residue of cold chocolate from his cup.

He believed that the plane had been hijacked because his daughter was on it. The hijacking was possible because of the vulnerability of established authority to a few determined, ruthless and possibly high-minded terrorists. And it had been inspired by the fact that he, Francis Kennedy, President of the United States, was the prominent symbol of that established authority. So by his desire to be President of the United States, he, Francis Kennedy, was responsible for placing his daughter in danger.

Again he heard the doctor's words: "It is an extremely aggressive strain of cancer," but now he understood their full implication. Everything was more dangerous than it appeared. This was a night when he must plan, to defend; he had the power to turn fate aside. Sleep would never come to the chambers of his brain so sown with mines.

What had been his wish? To arrive at a successful destiny of the Kennedy name? But he had been only a cousin. He remembered his great-uncle Joseph Kennedy, legendary womanizer, one who amassed gold, a mind so sharp for the instant but so blind to the future. He remembered Old Joe fondly, though he would have been Francis Kennedy's opposite politically if he were alive today. Old Joe had given Francis gold pieces for his early birthdays and set up a trust fund for him. What a selfish life the man had led, screwing Hollywood stars, lifting his sons high. Never mind that he had been a political dinosaur. And what a tragic end. A lucky life until the last chapter: the murder of his two sons, so young, so highly placed. The old man defeated, a final stroke exploding his brain.

Making your son President-could a father have greater joy? And had the old kingmaker sacrificed his sons for nothing? Had the gods punished him not so much for his pride but for his pleasure? Or was it all accident?

His sons Jack and Robert, so rich, so handsome, so gifted, killed by those powerless nobodies who wrote themselves into history with the murder of their betters. No, there could be no purpose, it was all accident. So many little things could turn fate aside, tiny precautions reverse the course of tragedy.

And yet– and yet there was the odd feeling of doom. Why the linking of the Pope's killer and the kidnapping of the President's daughter? Why the delay before stating their demands? What other strings in the labyrinth were there to be played out? And all this from a man he had never heard of, a mysterious Arab named Yabril, and an Italian youth named, in scornful irony, Romeo.

In the darkness he was terrified at how it all might end.

He felt the familiar always-suppressed rage, the dread. He remembered the agonizing day when he had heard the first whisper that his uncle Jack was dead, and his mother's long terrible scream.

Then, mercifully, the chambers of his brain unlocked, his memories fled.

He fell asleep in his armchair.

CHAPTER 3

THE MEMBER of the President's staff with the most influence on Kennedy was the Attorney General. Christian Klee had been born into a wealthy family stretching back into the first days of the republic. His trust funds were now worth over a hundred million dollars, thanks to the guidance and advice of his godfather, the Oracle, Oliver Oliphant. He had never wanted for anything, and there had come a time when he wanted nothing. He had too much intelligence, too much energy to become another of the idle rich who invest in movies, chase women, abuse drugs and booze or descend into a religious viciousness. Two men, the Oracle and Francis Xavier Kennedy, led him finally into politics.

Christian first met Kennedy at Harvard, not as fellow undergraduates but as teacher and student. Kennedy had been the youngest professor to teach law at Harvard. In his twenties, he had been a prodigy. Christian still remembered that opening lecture. Kennedy had begun with the words: "Everybody knows or has heard of the majesty of the law. It is the power of the state to control the existing political organization that permits civilization to exist. That is true. Without the rule of law, we are all lost. But remember this, the law is also full of shit."

Then he had smiled at his student audience. "I can get around any law you may write. The law can be twisted out of shape to serve a wicked civilization. The rich can escape the law and sometimes even the poor get lucky. Some lawyers treat the law the way pimps treat their women. Judges sell the law, courts betray it. All true. But remember this, we have nothing better that works. There is no other way we can make a social contract with our fellow human beings."

When Christian Klee graduated from Harvard Law School he had not the faintest idea of what to do with his life. Nothing interested him. He was worth millions, but he had no interest in money, nor did he have a real interest in the law. He had the usual romanticism of a young man.

Women liked him. He had a smudged handsomeness that is, classic features just slightly askew. A Dr. Jekyll beginning to turn into Mr. Hyde, but you would notice that only when he was angry. He had the exquisite courtesy attained by the patrician rich in their early schooling. Despite all this he commanded an instinctual respect from other men, because of his extraordinary gifts. He was the iron fist in Kennedy's velvet glove, but had the intelligence and courtesy to keep it hidden from public view.

He liked women, had brief affairs but could not summon up that feeling of true belief in love that leads to a passionate attachment. He was desperately looking for something to commit his life to. He was interested in the arts, but had no creative drive, no talent for painting, music, writing. He was paralyzed by his security in society. He was not so much unhappy as bewildered. He had, of course, tried drugs for a brief period; they were, after all, as integral a part of American culture as they had once been of the Chinese empire. And for the first time he discovered a startling thing about himself. He could not bear the loss of control that drugs caused. He did not mind being unhappy as long as he had control of his mind and body. Loss of that control was the ultimate in despair. And the drugs did not even make him feel the ecstasy that other people felt. So at the age of twenty-two with everything in the world at his feet, he could not feel that anything was worth doing. He did not even feel what many young men felt, a desire to improve the world he lived in.

He consulted his godfather, the Oracle, then a "young" man of seventy-five, who still had an inordinate appetite for life, who kept three mistresses busy, who had a finger in every business pie and who conferred with the President of the United States at least once a week. The Oracle had the secret of life.

The Oracle said, "Pick out the most useless thing for you to do and do it for the next few years. Something that you would never consider doing, that you have no desire to do. But something that will improve you at least physically and mentally. Learn a part of the world that you think you will never make part of your life. Don't squander your time. Learn. That's how

I got into politics originally. And this would surprise my friends, I really had no interest in money. Do something you hate. In three or four years more things will be possible and what is possible becomes more attractive."

The next day Christian applied for an appointment to West Point and spent the next four years becoming an officer in the United States Army. The

Oracle was astounded, then delighted. "The very thing," he said. "You will never be a soldier. And you will develop a taste for denial."

Christian, after four years at West Point, remained another four years in the Army training in special assault brigades and becoming proficient in armed and unarmed combat. The feeling that his body could perform any task he demanded of it gave him a sense of immortality.

At the age of thirty he resigned his commission and took a post in the operations division of the CIA. He became an officer in clandestine operations and spent the next four years in the European theater. From there he went to the Middle East for six years and rose high in the operational division of the Agency until a bomb took off his foot. This was another challenge. He learned to use and manage a prosthetic device, an artificial foot, so that he did not even limp. But that ended his career in the field and he returned home to enter a prestigious law firm.

Then for the first time he fell in love, and married a girl he thought was the answer to all his youthful dreams. She was intelligent, she was witty, she was very good-looking and very passionate. For the next five years he was happy in marriage, happy as the father of two young children, and found satisfaction in the political maze through which the Oracle was guiding him. He was, finally, he thought, a man who had found his place in life. Then misfortune. His wife fell in love with another man and sued for divorce.

Christian was dumbstruck, then furious. He was happy; how could his wife not be? And what had changed her? He had been loving and attentive to her every wish. Of course he had been busy in his work, to build a career.

But he was rich and she lacked for nothing. In his rage he was determined to resist her every demand, to fight for custody of the children, deny her the house she wanted so badly, restrict all monetary rewards that come to a divorced woman. Above all, he was astounded that she planned to live in their house with her new husband.

True, it was a palatial mansion, but what about the sacred memories of the life they had shared in that house? And he had been a faithful husband.

He had gone again to the Oracle and poured out his grief and pain. To his surprise the Oracle was completely unsympathetic. "You were faithful, so that makes you think your wife should be faithful? How does that follow, if you no longer interest her? Of course it is more natural for a male to be unfaithful. Infidelity is the precaution of a prudent man who knows that his wife can unilaterally deprive him of his house and children without a moral cause. You accepted that deal when you married; now you must abide by it." Then the Oracle had laughed in his face. "Your wife was quite right to leave you," he said. "She saw through you, though I must say you gave quite a performance. She knew you were never truly happy. But believe me, it's the best thing. You are now a man ready to assume his real station in life. You've got everything out of the way-a wife and children would only be a hindrance. You are essentially a man who has to live alone to do great things. I know because I was that way.

Wives can be dangerous to men with real ambition, children are the very breeding grounds of tragedy. Use your common sense, use your training as a lawyer. Give her everything she wants, it will make only a small dent in your fortune. Your children are very young, they will forget you.

Think of it this way. Now you are free. Your life will be directed by yourself."

And so it had been.

So late on Easter Sunday night Attorney General Christian Klee left the

White House to visit Oliver Oliphant, to ask his advice and also to inform him that his one-hundredth birthday party had been postponed by President Kennedy.

The Oracle lived on a fenced estate that was expensively guarded; its security system had bagged five enterprising burglars in the last year. His large staff of servants, well paid and well pensioned, included a barber, a valet, a cook and maids, for there were still many important men who came to the Oracle for advice and sometimes had to be fed elaborate dinners or provided with lodging.

Christian looked forward to his visit with the Oracle. He enjoyed the old man's company, the stories he told of terrible wars on the battlefields of money, the strategies of men dealing with fathers, mothers, wives and lovers. He talked of how to defend against the government, its strength so prodigious, its justice so blind, its laws so treacherous, its free elections so corrupting. Not that the Oracle was a professional cynic, he was merely clear-sighted. And he insisted that one could lead a happy successful life while observing the ethical values on which true civilization endures. The Oracle could be dazzling.

The Oracle received Christian in his second-story suite of rooms, which consisted of a narrow bedroom, an enormous bathroom tiled blue that held a Jacuzzi and a shower with a marble bench and handholds sculpted into its walls. There was also a den with an impressive fireplace, a library and a cozy sitting room with a brightly colored sofa and armchairs.

The Oracle was in the sitting room resting in a specially built motorized wheelchair. Beside him was a table, and facing him were an armchair and a table set for an English tea.

Christian took his place in the armchair opposite the Oracle and helped himself to tea and one of the little sandwiches. As always, Christian was delighted by the appearance of the Oracle, the intensity of the man's gaze so remarkable in one who had lived for a hundred years. And it seemed logical to Christian that the Oracle had evolved from a homely sixty-five-year-old to a striking ancientness.

The skin was shell like, as was his bald pate, which showed liver spots dark as nicotine. Leopard-skin hands protruded from his exquisitely cut suit-extreme age had not vanquished his sartorial vanity. The neck, encircled loosely by a silk tie, was scaly and ridged; the back broad, curved like glass. The front of the body fell away to a tiny chest; you could encircle his waist with your fingers, and his legs were hardly more than two strands in a spider's web. But the facial features were not yet ravaged by approaching death.

Christian poured the Oracle his cup, and for the first few minutes they smiled at each other, drinking tea.

The Oracle spoke first. "You've come to cancel my birthday party, I assume. I've been watching the TV with my secretaries. I told them the party would be postponed." His voice had the low growl of a worm larynx.

"Yes," Christian said. "But only for a month. Think you can hold out that lone." He was smiling.

"I sure do," the Oracle said. "That shit is on every TV station. Take my advice, my boy, buy stock in the TV companies. They will make a fortune out of this tragedy and all the forthcoming tragedies. They are the crocodiles of our society." He paused for a moment and said more softly,

"How is your beloved President taking all this?"

"I admire that man more than ever," Christian said. "I have never seen someone in his position more composed over a dreadful tragedy. He is much stronger now than after his wife died."

The Oracle said dryly, "When the worst that can happen to you actually happens, and you bear it, then you are the strongest of men in the world. Which, actually, may not be a very good thing."

He paused for a moment to sip his tea, his colorless lips closed into a pale white line like a scratch on the seamed nicotine-spotted skin of his face. Then he said, "If you feel it's not breaking your oath of office or your loyalty to the President, why don't you tell me what action is being taken."

Christian knew that this was what the old man lived for. To be inside the skin of power. "Francis is very concerned that the hijackers have not yet made any demands. It's been ten hours," Christian said. "He thinks that's sinister."

"So it is," the Oracle said.

They were both silent for a long time. The Oracle's eyes had lost their vibrancy, and seemed extinguished by the pouches of dying skin beneath them.

Christian said, "I'm really worried about Francis. He can't take much more.

If something happens to her…"

The Oracle said, "There will be a very dangerous confrontation. You know, I remember Francis Kennedy as a little boy. Even then I was struck by how he dominated his cousins. He was a natural hero, even as a young boy. He defended the smaller ones, he made peace. And sometimes he did more damage than any of the bullies would have done. Black eyes darkened in the name of virtue."

The Oracle paused and Christian poured him some hot tea though the cup was still more than half full. He knew the old man could not taste anything unless it was very hot or very cold.

Christian said, "Whatever the President tells me to do, I'll do it."

The Oracle's eyes were suddenly very bright and visible. He said musingly,

"You've become a very dangerous man in these past years, Christian. But not terribly original. All through history there have been men, some considered 'great,' who have had to choose between God and country. And some very religious men have chosen country over God, believing they would go to everlasting hell, thinking it noble. But, Christian', we have come to a time when we must decide whether to give our lives to our country or to help mankind continue to exist. We live in a nuclear age. That is the new and interesting question, a question never before posed to individual men. Think in those terms. If you side with your President, do you endanger mankind? It's not so simple as rejecting God."

"It doesn't matter," Christian said. "I know Francis is better than

Congress, the Socrates Club and the terrorists."

The Oracle said, "I've always wondered about your overwhelming loyalty to Francis Kennedy. There are some vulgar gossips who say it's a very faggy business. On your part. Not his. Which is odd, since you have women and he does not, not since the death of his wife three years ago. But why do the people around Kennedy hold him in such veneration, when he's recognized as a political dunderhead? All those reformist and regulatory laws he tried to shove down that dinosaur Congress's throat. I thought that you were smarter than that, but I presume you were overruled. Still, your inordinate affection for Kennedy is a mystery to me."

"He's the man I always wished I could be," Christian said. "It's as simple as that."

"Then you and I would not have been such longtime friends," the Oracle said. "I never cared for Francis Kennedy."

"He's just better than anybody else," Christian said. "I've known him for over twenty years, and he's the only politician who has been honest with the public, he doesn't lie to them."

The Oracle said dryly, "The man you described could never be elected

President of the United States." He seemed to puff out his insect body, his shiny-skinned hands tapped the controls of his wheelchair. The Oracle leaned back. Above the dark suit, the ivory shirt and simple blue streak of his tie, the glazed face looked like a piece of mahogany. He said, "His charm escapes me, but we never got on. Now I must warn you. Every man in his lifetime makes many mistakes. That is human, and unavoidable. The trick is never to make the mistake that destroys you. Beware of your friend Kennedy, who is so virtuous, remember that evil can spring from the desire to do good. Be careful."

"Character doesn't change," Christian said confidently.

The Oracle fluttered his arms like bird wings. "Yes, it does," he said.

"Pain changes character. Sorrow changes character. Love and money, certainly. And time erodes character. Let me tell you a little story. When I was a man of fifty, I had a mistress thirty years younger than myself.

She had a brother who was ten years older than she, about thirty. I was her mentor, as I was with all my young women. I had their interests at heart.

Her brother was a Wall Street hotshot and a careless man, which later got him into big trouble. Now, I was never jealous-she went out with young men.

But on her twenty-first birthday, her brother gave a party and as a joke hired a male stripper to perform before her and her friends. It was all above board, they made no secret of it. But I was always conscious of my homeliness, my lack of physical appeal to women. And so I was affronted, and that was unworthy of me. We all remained friends and she went on to marriage and a career. I went on to younger mistresses. Ten years later her brother gets into financial trouble, as many of those Wall Street types do.

Inside tips, finagling with money entrusted to him. Very serious trouble that landed him a couple of years in prison and of course the end of his career.

"By this time I was sixty years old, still friends with both of them.

They never asked for my help, they really didn't know the extent of what

I could do. I could have saved him but I never lifted a finger. I let him go down the drain. And ten years later it came to me that I didn't help him because of that foolish little trick of his, letting his sister see the body of a man so much younger than myself. And it wasn't sexual jealousy, it was the affront to my power, or the power I thought I had.

I've thought of that often. It is one of the few things in my life that shame me. I would never have been guilty of such an act at thirty or at seventy. Why at sixty? Character does change. That is man's triumph and his tragedy."

Christian switched to the brandy that the Oracle had provided. It was delicious and very expensive. The Oracle always served the very best.

Christian enjoyed it, though he would never buy it; born rich, he never felt he deserved to treat himself so well. He said, "I've known you all my life, over forty-five years, and you haven't changed. You are going to be a hundred next week. And you're still the great man I always thought you were."

The Oracle shook his head. "You know me only in my old age, from sixty to a hundred. That means nothing. The venom is gone then and the strength to enforce it. It's no trick to be virtuous in old age, as that humbug Tolstoy knew." He paused and sighed. "Now, how about this great birthday party of mine? Your friend Kennedy never really liked me and I know you pushed the idea of the White House Rose Garden and a big media event. Is he using this crisis situation to get out of it?"

Christian said, "No, no, he values your life's work, he wants to do it. Oliver, you were and are a great man. Just hang on. Hell, what's a few months after a hundred years?" He paused. "But if you prefer, since you don't like Francis, we can forget about his big plans for your birthday party, mass coverage by the media, your name and picture in all the papers and on TV. I can always throw you a little private party right away and get the whole thing over with." He smiled at the Oracle to show that he was joking. Sometimes the old man took him too literally.

"Thank you, but no," the Oracle said. "I want to have something to live for. Namely, a birthday party given by the President of the United States.

But let me tell you, your Kennedy is shrewd. He knows my name still means something. The publicity will enhance his image. Your Francis Xavier Kennedy is as crafty as was his uncle Jack. Now, Bobby would have shown me the back of his hand."

Christian said, "None of your contemporaries are left, but your prot6g6s are some of the great men and women in the country, and they look forward to doing you this honor. Including the President. He doesn't forget that you helped him on his way. He's even inviting your buddies in the Socrates Club and he hates them. It will be your best birthday party."

"And my last," the Oracle said. "I'm hanging on by my fucking fingernails."

Christian laughed. The Oracle had never used bad language until he was ninety, so now he used it as innocently as a child.

"That's settled," the Oracle said. "Now let me tell you something about great men, Kennedy and myself included. They finally consume themselves and the people around them. Not that I concede your Kennedy is a great man. So he's become President of the United States. But that is an illusionist's trick. Do you know, by the way, that in show business the magician is considered to be completely without artistic talent?" Here the Oracle cocked his head; he astonishingly resembled an owl.

"I will concede that Kennedy is not your typical politician," the Oracle said. "He is an idealist, he is far more intelligent and he has morals, though I wonder whether sexual rigidity is healthy. But all these virtues are a handicap to political greatness. A man without a vice? A sailing ship without a sail!"

Christian asked, "You disapprove of his actions. What course would you take?"

"That is not relevant," the Oracle said. "His whole three years, he's got his dick half in, half out, and that's always trouble." Now the Oracle's eyes became cloudy. "I hope it doesn't interfere with my birthday party too long. What a life I had, eh? Who had a better life than I? Poor at birth, so that I could appreciate the wealth I earned later. A homely man who learned to captivate and enjoy beautiful women. A good brain, a learned compassion so much better than the genetic kind. Enormous energy, enough to power me past old age. A good constitution, I've never been really sick in my life. A great life, and long! And that's the trouble, maybe a little too long. I can't bear to look at myself in the mirror now, but as I said, I was never handsome." He paused for a time and then said abruptly to Christian, "Leave government service. Dissociate yourself from everything that is happening now."

"I can't do that," Christian said. "It's too late." He studied the old man's freckled head and marveled at the brain that was still so alive.

Christian stared into those aged eyes shrouded like a never-ending misty sea. Would he ever be so old, with his body shriveling like some dead insect?

And the Oracle watching him thought, How transparent they all are, as guileless as little children. It was obvious to the Oracle that his advice had been given too late, that Christian would commit a treachery to himself.

Christian finished his brandy and rose to leave. He tucked the blankets around the old man and rang for the nurses to come into the room. Then lie whispered into the glazed skin of the Oracle's ear. "Tell me the truth about Helen Du Pray, she was one of your prot6g6es before she got married. I know you arranged for her first entry into politics. Did you ever screw her, or were you too old?"

The Oracle shook his head. "I was never too old until after ninety. And let me tell you that when your cock leaves you, that is real loneliness.

But to answer your question. She didn't fancy me, I was no beauty. I must say I was disappointed, she was very beautiful and very intelligent, my favorite combination. I could never love intelligent homely women-they were too much like myself. I could love beautiful dumb women, but when they were intelligent, then I was in heaven. Helen Du Pray-ah, I knew she would go far, she was very strong, a strong will. Yes I tried but never succeeded, a rare failure I must say. But we always remained good friends. That was a talent she had, to refuse a man sexually and yet be an intimate friend. Very rare. That was when I knew she was a seriously ambitious woman."

Christian touched his hand, it felt like a scar. "I'll phone or drop in to see you every day," he said. "I'll keep you up to date."

The Oracle was very busy after Christian left. He had to pass on the information Klee had given him to the Socrates Club, whose members were important figures in the structure of America. He did not consider this a betrayal of Christian, whom he dearly loved. Love was always secondary.

He had to take action, his country was sailing in dangerous waters. It was his duty to help guide it to safety. And what else could a man his age do to make life worth living? And to tell the truth he had always despised the Kennedy legend. Here was a chance to destroy it forever.

Finally the Oracle let the nurse fuss over him and prepare his bed. He remembered Helen Du Pray with affection, and now without disappointment.

She had been very young, in her early twenties, her beauty enhanced by a tremendous vitality. He had often lectured her on power, its acquisition and uses, and, more important, on abstaining from its use. And she had listened with the patience that is necessary to acquire power.

He told her that one of the great mysteries of mankind was how people acted against their own self-interest. Points of pride ruined their lives. Envy and self-delusion took them down paths that led to nothingness. Why was it so important for people to maintain a self-image? There were those who would never truckle, never flatter, never lie, never back down, never betray or never deceive. There were those who lived in envy and jealousy of the happier fate of others.

It had all been a special sort of pleading and she had seen through it. She rejected him and went on, without his help, to achieve her own dream of power.

One of the problems of having a mind as clear as a bell when you are a hundred years old is that you can see the hatching of unconscious villainy in yourself, and ferret it out in past history. He had been mortified when Helen Du Pray had refused to make love with him. He knew she had other lovers, she was not prissy. But at seventy he, amazingly, had still been vain.

He had gone to the rejuvenation center in Switzerland, submitted to surgical erasing of wrinkles, the sanding of his skin, the injection of animal fetus pulp into his own veins. But nothing could be done for the shrinking of his skeleton, the freezing of his joints, the very turning of his blood into water.

Though it no longer did him any good, the Oracle believed he understood men and women in love. Even when he was past his sixtieth year young mistresses adored him, The whole secret was never to impose any rules on their behavior, never to be jealous, never to hurt their feelings. They took young men as their true loves and treated the Oracle with careless cruelty. It didn't matter. He showered them with expensive gifts, paintings, jewelry in the best of taste. He let them call on his power to get unearned favors from society and the use of his money in generous but not lavish amounts. He was a prudent man and would always have three or four mistresses at one time. For they had their own lives to lead.

They would fall in love and neglect him, they would take trips, they would be working hard at their careers. He could not make too many demands on their time. But when he needed female company (not only for sex but for the sweet music of their voices, the innocent deviousness of their wiles), one of the four would be available. And of course to be seen at important functions in his company gave them entree into circles it would be more difficult for them to penetrate on their own. Social cachet was one of his assets.

He made no secrets, they all knew about one another. He believed that in their hearts women disliked monogamous men.

How cruel that he remembered bad things he had done more often than the good. His money had built medical centers, churches, rest homes for the elderly; he had done go MARIO PUZO many good things. But his memories of himself were not good. Fortunately he thought about love often. In an interesting and peculiar way, it had been the most commercial thing in his life. And he had owned Wall Street firms, banks, airlines.

Anointed with the power of money, he had been invited to share in world-shaking events, been adviser to the powerful. He had helped shape the very world people lived in. A fascinating, important, valuable life.

And yet the managing of his countless mistresses was far more vivid in his hundred year-old brain. Ah, those intelligent headstrong beauties, how delightful they had been, and how they had vindicated his judgment, most of them. Now they were judges, heads of magazines, powers in Wall Street, TV news queens. How cunning they had been in their love affairs with him and how he had outwitted them. But without cheating them of their due.

He had no guilt, only regrets. If one of them had truly loved him, he would have raised her to the skies. But then his mind reminded him that he had not deserved to be so loved. They had recognized his love, it was a hollow drum that made his body thump.

It was at the age of eighty that his skeleton began to contract inside its envelope of flesh. Physical desire receded and a vast ocean of youthful and lost images drowned his brain. And it was at this time he found it necessary to employ young women to lie innocently in his bed just so that he could look at them. Oh, that perversity so scorned in literature, so mocked by the young who must grow old. And yet what peace it gave his crumbling body to see the beauty he could no longer devour.

How pure it was. The rolling mound of breast, satiny white skin crowned with its tiny red rose. The mysterious thighs, their rounded flesh giving off a golden glow, the surprising triangle of hair-a choice of colors-and then on the other side the heartbreak of buttocks divided into two exquisite haunches. So much beauty, to his bodily senses dead and lost, but sparking the flickering billions of cells in his brain. And their faces, the mysterious shells of ears spiraling into some inner sea, the hollowed eyes with their banked fires of blue and gray and brown and green looking out from their private eternal cells, the planes of their faces descending into unshielded lips, so open to pleasure and to wounds. He would look upon them before he went to sleep. He would reach out and touch the warm flesh; the satin of thigh and buttocks, touch the burning lips, and oh so rarely smooth the crinkled pubic hair to feel the throbbing pulse beneath. There was so much comfort there that he would fall asleep and the pulse would soften the terror of his dreams. In his dreams he hated the very young and would devour them. He dreamed of the bodies of young men piled high in trenches, sailors by the thousands floating fathoms deep beneath the sea, vast skies clouded by the space-suited bodies of celestial explorers spinning endlessly into the black holes of the universe.

Awake he dreamed. But awake he recognized his dreams as a form of senile madness, his disgust of his own body. He hated his skin, which gleamed like scar tissue, the brown spots on his hands and bald pate, those deadly freckles of death, his failing sight, the feebleness of his limbs, the spinning heart, the evilness tumoring his brain clear as a bell.

Oh, what a pity that fairy godmothers came to the cradle of newborn infants to bestow their three magical wishes! Those infants had no need; old men like himself should receive such gifts. Especially those with minds as clear as a bell.