The Icarus Agenda

Chapter 47

Emmanuel Weingrass confounded the medical specialists, especially those at the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta. Not that he was recovering, for he was not, and there was no change in the terminal status of the virus infection. However, he appeared not to be getting much worse; his rate of decline was far slower than had been anticipated. The doctors would not by any means pronounce the disease arrested; they were simply confused. As the pathologist in Denver phrased it, 'Let's say on a scale of one to minus ten—minus ten being check-out time—the old guy's hovering around minus six and won't move down.'

'But the virus is still there,' said Kendrick as he and Khalehla walked with the doctor in the grounds of the Colorado house out of Manny's earshot.

'It's rampant. It's just not incapacitating him to the degree that it should.'

'It's probably the cigarettes he cons and all the whisky he steals,' stated Rashad.

'He doesn't,' said the pathologist, surprised and even more bewildered.

Evan and Khalehla nodded their heads in resigned confirmation. 'He's a bellicose survivor,' explained Kendrick, 'with more wisdom and larceny in his head than anyone I've ever met. Also, since the prognosis was severe in terms of time, we haven't exactly kept our eyes wide open every minute we've been with him.'

'Please understand, Congressman, I don't want to give you any false hope. He's a terribly ill eighty-six-year-old man—’

'Eighty-six?' exclaimed Evan.

'Didn't you know?'

'No. He said he was eighty-one!'

'I'm sure he believes it, or at least has convinced himself.

He's the sort who when they turn sixty, the next birthday's fifty-five. Nothing wrong with that at all, by the way, but we wanted a complete medical history, so we went back to his days in New York City. Did you know he had three wives by the time he was thirty-two?'

'I'm sure they're still looking for him.'

'Oh, no, they've all passed away. Atlanta wanted their histories, too—possible latent sexually related complications, that sort of thing.'

'Did they check Los Angeles, Paris, Rome, Tel Aviv, Riyadh, and all of the Emirates?' asked Khalehla drily.

'Remarkable,' said the pathologist softly, but with emphasis, a medical mind apparently pondering, perhaps envying. 'Well, I should be leaving, I'm due back in Denver by noon. And Congressman, thank you for the private jet. It saved me a great deal of time.'

'I couldn't do anything less, Doctor. I appreciate everything you're doing, everything you've done.'

The pathologist paused, looking at Evan. 'I just said “Congressman”, Mr. Kendrick. Perhaps I should say “Mr. Vice President”, as I and, indeed most of the country, believe you should be. In truth, if you're not in the running, I don't intend to vote, and I can tell you I speak for the majority of my friends and associates.'

'That's not a viable position, Doctor. Besides, the issue hasn't been resolved… Come on, I'll walk you to the car. Khalehla, check on our sybaritic adolescent and make sure he's not taking a bath in Scotch, will you?'

'If he is, do you think I'm going to walk in there?… Sure, I will.' Rashad shook hands with the pathologist from Denver. 'Thank you for everything,' she said.

‘I’ll know you mean it if you persuade this young man he really must be our next Vice President.'

'I repeat,' said Kendrick, leading the physician across the lawn to the circular drive. 'That issue is far from resolved, Doctor.'

* * *

'The issue should be resolved!' shouted Emmanuel Weingrass from his reclining chair on the enclosed porch, the congressman and Khalehla sitting in their accustomed positions on the couch so that the old architect could glower at them. 'What do you think? It's all finished? So Bollinger and his fascist thieves are out and there's no one to take their places? You're that stupid?'

'Cut it out, Manny,' said Evan. 'There are too many areas where Langford Jennings and I differ for a President to be comfortable with someone like me who might possibly succeed him—and the thought of that scares the hell out of me.'

'Lang knows all that!' cried Weingrass.

'Lang?'

The architect shrugged. 'Well, you'll learn soon enough—’

'Learn what soon enough?'

'Jennings kind of invited himself out to lunch here a few weeks ago, when you and my lovely daughter were winding things up in Washington… So what could I do? Tell the President of the United States he couldn't nosh a little?'

'Oh, shit!' said Kendrick.

'Hold it, darling,' interrupted Khalehla. 'I'm fascinated, really fascinated.'

'Go on, Manny!' yelled Evan.

'Well, we discussed many things—he's not an intellectual, I grant you, but he's smart and he understands the larger picture, that's what he's good at, you know.'

'I don't know, and how dare you intercede for me?'

'Because I'm your father, you ungrateful idiot. The only father you've ever known! Without me you'd still be hustling a few buildings with the Saudis and wondering if you could cover your costs. Don't talk about my daring—you were lucky I dared—talk about your obligations to others… All right, all right, we couldn't have done what we did without your balls, without your strength, but I was there, so listen to me.'

In exasperation, Kendrick closed his eyes and leaned back on the couch. Suddenly, Khalehla realized that Weingrass was unobtrusively signalling to her, his lips in exaggerated movement; the silent words were easily read. It's an act. I know what I'm doing. She could only respond by looking at the old man, bewildered. 'Okay, Manny,' said Evan, opening his eyes and staring at the ceiling. 'You can cut it out. I'm listening.'

'That's better.' Weingrass winked at the agent from Cairo and continued. 'You can walk away and nobody's got the right to say or think a bad word because you're owed, and you don't owe anybody anything. But I know you, my friend, and the man I know has a streak of outrage in him that he keeps running away from yet never can because it's part of him. In short words, you don't happen to like rotten people—present older company excepted—and it's a good thing for this meshugah world that guys like you are around; there are too many of the other type… Still I see a problem, and to put it in an eggshell, it's that not too many of your kind can do a hell of a lot because no one listens to them. Why should anyone? Who are they? Troublemakers? Whistle-blowers? Insignificant agitators?… They're easily disposed of, anyway. Jobs are lost, promotions withheld, and if they're really serious they wind up in the courts where their whole lives are soiled—dirt dug up on them that's got nothing to do with what they're there for by expensive lawyers who've got more tricks than Houdini—and if all they end up with is a dole card and usually no wife and kids, maybe it could be worse. Maybe they could be found under a truck or down on the tracks of a subway at an inappropriate time… Now you, on the other hand, everybody listens to you—look at the polls; you're the top cardinal of the country, granting the fact that Langford Jennings is Pope—and there's not a shyster in or out of sight who'd take you on in the courts, much less the Congress. As I see it, you've got the chance to speak from the top for a hell of a lot of people down below who can't get a hearing. Lang will bring you in on everything—'

'Lang, again,' muttered Kendrick, interrupting.

'Not my doing!' exclaimed Weingrass, palms outstretched. 'I started right off the right way with a “Mr. President”, ask the nurses who all had to go to the bathroom the minute he came inside—he's some mensch, I tell you. Anyway, after a drink, which he himself got for me from the bar when the girls were out, he said I was refreshing and why didn't I call him Lang and forget the formal stuff.’

'Manny,' broke in Khalehla, 'why did the President say you were “refreshing”?'

'Well, in small talk I mentioned that the new building they're putting up on some avenue or other—it was in the New York Times—wasn't so hotsy-totsy, and he shouldn't have congratulated that asshole architect on television. The goddamned renderings looked like neoclassic-art deco, and believe me, the combination doesn't work. Also, what the hell did he, a President, know about square foot construction costs that were estimated at about one-third of what they're going to be. Lang's looking into it.'

'Oh, shit,' repeated Evan, defeat in his voice.

'Back to the point I'm trying to make,' said Weingrass, his face suddenly very serious as he stared at Kendrick while pausing for several long intakes of breath. 'Maybe you've done enough, maybe you should walk away and live happily ever after with my Arab daughter here making lots more money. The respect of the country, even much of the world, is already yours. But maybe also you've got to think. You can do what not too many others can do. Rather than going after the rotten people, by which time there's so much corruption and loss of life, maybe you can stop them before they play dirty—at least some of them, perhaps more than some—from the top of the mountain. All I ask is that you listen to Jennings. Listen to what he has to say to you.'

Their eyes locked, father and son acknowledged each other on the deepest level of their relationship. ‘I’ll call him and ask him for a meeting, all right?'

'That's not necessary,' replied Manny. 'It's all set up.'

'What?'

'He'll be in Los Angeles tomorrow at the Century Plaza for a dinner raising scholarship funds in honour of his late Secretary of State. He's cleared some time before then and expects you at the hotel at seven o'clock. You, too, my dear; he insists.'

The two Secret Service men in the hallway outside the Presidential Suite acknowledged the congressman by sight. They nodded at him and Khalehla as the man on the right turned and rang the bell. Moments later Langford Jennings opened the door, his face pale and haggard with dark circles of exhaustion below his eyes. He made a brief attempt at his famous grin but could not sustain it. Instead, he smiled gently, extending his hand.

'Hello, Miss Rashad. It's a pleasure and a privilege to meet you. Please, come in.'

'Thank you, Mr. President.'

'Evan, it's good to see you again.'

'It's good to see you, sir,' said Kendrick, thinking as he walked inside that Jennings looked older than he had ever seen him.

'Please sit down.' The President preceded his guests into the living room of the suite, towards two opposing couches, a large round glass coffee table linking them. 'Please,' he repeated, gesturing at the couch on the right as he headed for the one on the left. 'I like to look at attractive people,' he added as they all sat down. 'I suppose my detractors would say it's another sign of my superficiality, but Harry Truman once said, “I'd rather look at a horse's head than his ass,” so I rest my case… Forgive the language, young lady.'

'I didn't hear anything to forgive, sir.'

'How's Manny?'

'He's not going to win, but he's putting up a fight,' answered Evan. 'I understand you visited him several weeks ago.'

'Was that wicked of me?'

'Not at all, but it was a little wicked of him not to tell me.'

'That was my idea. I wanted to give us both time to think, and in my case I had to learn more about you than what was written in several hundred pages of government jargon. So I went to the one source that made sense to me. I asked him to be quiet until the other day. I apologize.'

'No need to, sir.'

'Weingrass is a brave man. He knows he's dying—his diagnosis is wrong but he knows he's dying—and he pretends to treat his impending death like a statistic on a construction proposal. I don't expect to see eighty-one, but if I do, I hope I have his courage.'

'Eighty-six,' said Kendrick flatly. 'I thought he was eighty-one, too, but we found out yesterday he's eighty-six.' Langford Jennings looked hard at Evan, then, as if the congressman had just told an extraordinarily amusing joke, he leaned back on the couch, his neck arched, and laughed quietly but wholeheartedly. 'Why is that so funny?' asked Kendrick. 'I've known him for twenty years and he never told the truth about his age, even on passports.'

'It dovetails with something he said to me,' explained the President, speaking through his soft, subsiding laughter. 'I won't bore you with the details, but he pointed out something to me—and he was damned right—so I offered him an appointment. He said to me, “Sorry, Lang, I can't accept. I couldn't burden you with my graft.”'

'He's an original, Mr. President,' offered Khalehla.

'They broke the mould…' Jennings's voice trailed off as his expression became serious. He looked at Rashad. 'Your Uncle Mitch sends you his love.'

'Oh?'

'Payton left an hour ago. I'm sorry to say he had to get back to Washington, but I spoke with him yesterday and he insisted on flying out to see me before I met with Congressman Kendrick.'

'Why?' asked Evan, disturbed.

'He finally told me the whole story of Inver Brass. Well, not everything, of course, because we don't know everything. With Winters and Varak gone we'll probably never learn who broke open the Oman file, but it doesn't matter now. The holy Inver Brass is finished.'

'He hadn't told you before?’ Kendrick was astonished, yet he remembered Ahmat saying that he was not sure Jennings knew everything Payton had told him.

'He was honest about it while offering his resignation, which I promptly rejected… He said that if I knew the entire story I might have squashed the bid being made in your name for you to be my running mate. I don't know, I might have, I certainly would have been furious. But that's irrelevant now. I've learned what I wanted to learn and you're not only out of the starting gate, you've got a national mandate, Congressman.'

'Mr. President,' protested Evan. 'It's an artificial—’

'What the hell did Sam Winters think he was doing?' interrupted Jennings, firmly cutting off Kendrick. 'I don't give a damn how pristine their motives were, he forgot a lesson of history that he above all men should have remembered. Whenever a select group of benevolent elitists consider themselves above the will of the people and proceed to manipulate that will in the dark, without accountability, they've set in motion a hell of a dangerous machine. Because all it takes is one or two of those superior beings with very different ideas to persuade the others or replace the others or survive the others, and a republic is down the drain. Sam Winters' high-sounding Inver Brass was no better than Bollinger's tribe of boardroom thugs. Both wanted things done only one way. Their way.'

Evan shot forward. 'It's precisely for those reasons—’

The doorbell of the Presidential Suite rang, four short rings lasting no more than half a second each. Jennings held up his hand and looked at Khalehla. 'You'd appreciate this, Miss Rashad. What you just heard is a code.'

'A what?

'Well, it's not terribly sophisticated, but it works. It tells me who's at the door, and the “who” in this case is one of the more valuable aides in the White House… Come in!'

The door opened and Gerald Bryce walked inside, closing it firmly behind him. 'I'm sorry to intrude, Mr. President, but I've just got word from Beijing and I knew you'd want to know.'

'It can wait, Gerry. Let me introduce you—’

'Joe…?' The name slipped out of Kendrick's mouth as the memory of a military jet to Sardinia and a handsome young specialist from the State Department came into focus.

'Hello, Congressman,' said Bryce, walking to the couch and shaking hands with Evan while nodding to Khalehla. 'Miss Rashad.'

That's right,' interjected Jennings. 'Gerry told me he briefed you on the plane when you flew to Oman… I won't blow his horn in front of him, but Mitch Payton stole him from Frank Swann at the State Department and I stole him from Mitch. He's positively terrifying when it comes to computer communications and how to keep them secret. Now, if someone will restrain the secretaries, he may have a future.'

'You're embarrassingly kind, sir,' said Bryce, the efficient professional. 'But as to Beijing, Mr. President, their answer is affirmative. Shall I reconfirm your offer?'

'That's another code,' explained Jennings, grinning. 'I said I'd jawbone our leading bankers on the QT not to get too greedy in Hong Kong and make it rough for the Chinese banks when the ninety-eight transition occurs. Of course, in return for—’

'Mr. President,' interrupted Bryce with all due courtesy but not without a tone of caution.

'Oh, sorry, Gerry. I know it's top secret and eyes-only and all that other stuff, but I hope that pretty soon nothing will be withheld from the Congressman.'

'Speaking of which, sir,' continued the White House communications expert, glancing at Kendrick and briefly smiling, 'in the absence of your political staff here in Los Angeles, I've approved Vice President Bollinger's statement of withdrawal tonight. It's in line with your thinking.'

'You mean he's going to shoot himself on television?'

'Not quite, Mr. President. He does say, however, that he intends to devote his life to improving the lot of the world's hungry.'

'If I find that mother stealing a chocolate bar, he's in Leavenworth for the rest of his life.'

'Beijing, sir. Shall I reconfirm?'

'You certainly may, and add my gratitude, the thieves.' Bryce nodded to Kendrick and Khalehla and left, again closing the door firmly behind him. 'Where were we?'

'Inver Brass,' replied Evan. 'They created me and artificially put me before the public as someone I'm not. Under those conditions my nomination could hardly be called the will of the people. It's a charade.'

'You're a charade?' asked Jennings.

'You know what I'm talking about. I neither sought it nor wanted it. As you put it so well, I was manipulated into the race and shoved down everyone's throat. I didn't win it or earn it in the political process.'

Langford Jennings studied Kendrick; the silence was both pensive and electric. 'You're wrong, Evan,' said the President finally. 'You did win it and you did earn it. I'm not talking about Oman and Bahrain, or even the still-under-wraps South Yemen—those events are simply acts of personal courage and sacrifice that have been used to initially call attention to you. It's no different from a man having been a war hero or an astronaut, and a perfectly legitimate handle to propel you into the limelight. I object to the way it was done as much as you do because it was done secretly, by men who broke laws and unconsciously wasted lives and hid behind a curtain of influence. But that wasn't you, they weren't you… You earned it in this town because you said things that had to be said and the country heard you. Nobody mocked up those television tapes and nobody put the words in your mouth. And what you did behind the scenes in those closed intelligence hearings had the Beltway choked with traffic jams. You asked questions for which there were no legitimate answers, and a hell of a lot of entrenched bureaucrats used to having their own way still don't know what hit them, except that they'd better get their acts together. Lastly, and this is from me, Lang Jennings of Idaho. You saved the nation from my most zealous contributors, and I do mean zealous, like in zealots. They would have taken us down a road I don't even want to think about.'

'You would have found them yourself. Some time, somewhere, one of them would have pushed you too far and you would have pushed back and found them all. I saw a man try to lean on you in the Oval Office, and he knew when a tree was about to fall on him.'

'Oh, Herb Dennison and that Medal of Freedom.' The President's world-famous grin momentarily came back to him as he laughed. 'Herb was tough but harmless and did a lot of things I don't like doing myself. He's gone now; the Oval Office did it for him. He got a call from one of those old firms on Wall Street, the kind where everyone's a member of some exclusive club no one can get into and you and I wouldn't want to, so he's heading back to the money boys. Herb finally got the colonel's rank he always wanted.'

'I beg your pardon?' said Kendrick.

'Nothing, forget it. National security, state secret, and all that other stuff.'

'Then let me make clear what we both know, Mr. President. I'm not qualified.'

'Qualified? Who in heaven or hell is qualified for my job? No one, that's who!'

'I'm not talking about your job—’

'You could be,' interrupted Jennings.

'Then I'm light years away from being ready for that. I never could be.'

'You are already.'

'What?'

'Listen to me, Evan. I don't fool myself. I'm well aware that I have neither the imagination nor the intellectual capacities of a Jefferson, either of the Adams, a Madison, a Lincoln, a Wilson, a Hoover—yes, I said Hoover, that brilliant, much maligned man—or an F.D.R., a Truman, a Nixon—yes, Nixon, whose flaw was in his character, not in his geopolitical overview—or a Kennedy, or even the brilliant Carter, who had too many brain cells for his own good politically. But we've come into a different age now. Drop Aquarius and insert Telerius… that's the full-grown age of television; instant, immediate communication. What I have is the trust of the people because they see and hear the man. I saw a nation wallowing in self-pity and defeat and I got angry. Churchill once said that democracy may have a lot of flaws but it was the best system man ever devised. I believe that, and I believe all those bromides about America being the greatest, the strongest, the most benevolent country on the face of the earth. Call me Mr. Simplistic, but I do believe. That's what the people see and hear and we're not so bad off for it… We all recognize reflections of ourselves in others, and I've watched you, listened to you, read everything there is to say about you, and talked at length with my friend, Emmanuel Weingrass. In my very sceptical judgment, this is the job you must take—almost whether you want it or not.'

'Mr. President,' broke in Kendrick softly, 'I appreciate everything you've done for the nation, but in all honesty there are differences between us. You've espoused certain policies I can't support.'

'Good Christ, I don't ask you to!… Well, on the surface, I'd appreciate your shutting up until you talked to me about the issues. I trust you, Evan, and I won't keep you out. Convince me. Tell me where I'm wrong—without fear or favour—that's what this goddamned office needs! I can get carried away on some things and know I should be pulled back. Ask my wife. After the last press conference two months ago, I walked into our kitchen upstairs in the White House and expected some kind of congratulations, I guess. Instead I got hit with “Who the hell do you think you are? Louis the Fourteenth with despotic powers? You made as much sense as Bugs Bunny!” And my daughter, who was visiting us, said something about giving me a book on grammar for my birthday… I know my limitations, Evan, but I also know what I can do when I have the best people to advise me. You got rid of the garbage! Now, step in.'

'I repeat—I'm not equipped.'

‘Oh but I think you are; I think you are. It's why the job is yours for the taking. Don't kid yourself, you may have been forced on the ticket, but to deny you would be an affront to millions of voters, the PR people made that clear.'

'PR? Public Relations? Is that what it's all about?'

'Far more than either of us would like, but yes, it's a large part of what everything's about these days. To say otherwise would be to deny reality. Better it's people like you and me than a Genghis Khan or an Adolf Hitler. Beneath our differences, we want to save, not destroy.'

It was Kendrick's turn to study the President of the United States. 'Good Lord, you are a charmer.'

'It's my stock-in-trade, Mr. Vice President,' said Jennings, grinning. 'That and a few honestly held beliefs.'

'I don't know. I just don't know.'

'I do,' interrupted Khalehla, reaching for Evan's hand. 'I think Field Officer Rashad should really resign.'

'Also something else,' said President Langford Jennings, his eyebrows arched. 'You should get married. It would be most unseemly for my running mate to be living in sin. I mean, can you imagine what all those evangelicals who deliver so many votes would do if your current status was revealed? It's simply not part of my image.'

'Mr. President, sir?'

'Yes, Mr. Vice President?'

'Shut up.'

'Gladly, sir. But I should like to add a note of clarification for the record—for God's sake, don't tell my wife I told you. After both our divorces we lived together for twelve years and had two children. We tied the proverbial knot in Mexico three weeks before the convention and predated the marriage. Now that's really a state secret.'

‘I’ll never tell, Mr. President.'

'I know you won't. I trust you and I need you. And our nation will be better off for the both of us—quite conceivably because of you.'

'I doubt that, sir,' said Evan Kendrick.

'I don't… Mr. President.'

The bell of the Presidential Suite rang once again. Four short, sharp half-second bursts.