The Mordida Man

4

According to Paul Grimes, there were several reasons why Bristol “Bingo” McKay had not gone to Disneyland with the others, the foremost being that he had always considered the place to be just a trifle dumb. Besides, he had already visited it once before, under protest, nearly fifteen years before. But the real reason he had not gone this time was simply because once you passed through its gates there was no liquor to be had, and the terrible prospect of again encountering Mickey Mouse cold sober was something that Bingo McKay would gladly perjure himself to avoid.

So he had lied his way out of it and filled the early afternoon with twenty-six long-distance telephone calls, three drinks, a light lunch, and five laps around the Marriott Hotel pool. At 4 P.M., which was 7 P.M. on the east coast, he had made his regular five-minute call to his kid brother in Washington. Bingo McKay’s kid brother was President of the United States.

As always, they talked politics, domestic politics primarily, which was Bingo McKay’s special preserve; and, as always, the President listened carefully to his brother’s trenchant, totally unvarnished report, whose more troublesome blips would be reflected in the national polls ten days later.

But by then the President, with his brother’s canny guidance, would have worked the legerdemain necessary to correct whatever political imbalances might exist. It was one of the reasons why Jerome McKay, at thirty-nine was often called the most totally political animal to occupy the White House since Franklin Delano Roosevelt, whom the President, try as he might, couldn’t quite remember.

Now barely nine months in office, the new McKay administration had failed utterly to work any of the economic miracles it more or less had promised. Inflation was nudging an estimated 19 percent; the monthly balance of payments deficit was steady at around $2.6 billion; unemployment had shot up to almost 10 percent; the Gross National Product growth rate had somehow got stuck at just about zero, and gasoline, although rationed, cost $2.26 per gallon on the east coast and $2.31 in the west. The average wait at a filling station had been timed by NBC News at twenty-seven minutes and twenty-eight seconds, although an hour was not in the least uncommon.

All this was particularly embarrassing for the McKay administration, because it had run on oil — or rather against it. The McKay brothers’ strategy had been really quite simple — criminally so, many said later. Jerome McKay had ignored Iris political opponents and had run instead against OPEC and the giant oil companies — and the Russians.

The future President had an uncommon grasp of the oil and natural gas industry because Bingo McKay had steered him into the business at twenty-two, turning him into a multimillionaire by the time he was twenty-eight. At thirty, Jerome McKay had been elected to the U.S. House of Representatives from Oklahoma’s Fifth Congressional District, serving with some distinction, or at least with considerable national attention, for two terms until he relinquished his seat to run successfully for Governor of his native state.

Bingo McKay was fifty-one when he had lugged the huge map of the United States into his kid brother’s office in the Governor’s mansion on Northeast 23rd Street in Oklahoma City and propped it up on an easel. “What the hell’s that for?” the Governor, then only thirty-seven, had asked.

“Basic political geography, lesson number one. How’d you like to be elected President?”

“Very much.”

“Lemme tell you how we’re gonna do it.”

They did it by paying extremely close attention to elementary politics and by running single-mindedly against OPEC and what Jerome McKay branded the oilogopoly — and the Russians. McKay vigorously damned the oil companies’ greed and avarice with unassailable facts and figures, thus confirming the darkest suspicions of 69.2 percent of the American voting public, who had long been hankering for just such a readily identifiable scapegoat.

McKay offered apparently practical, eminently sensible solutions and presented himself as an expert on the oil business, which he certainly was, and also as a repentant sinner who had made his fortune by following the same villainous practices he now condemned. His campaign autobiography, which he wrote himself in three weeks, was called Plunder! and it stayed on the New York Times best-seller list for thirty-seven weeks and then did even better in paperback.

The McKay brothers’ strategy was both excellent theater and sound politics. Jerome McKay whipped his rivals in nearly a third of the primaries, secured his party’s nomination on the fourteenth ballot at three o’clock in the morning, and went on to win the national election with 48.3 percent of the popular vote and an electoral vote margin of two. A little less than a year later he found himself caught up in a delicate, even desperate, gamble for oil.

It had started with a whisper in the delegates’ lounge at the United Nations. Then a hint was dropped into the ear of the American Ambassador in Rome. There was nothing firm, of course, said the hinter, but it was just possible that the Libyan Arab Republic, a country rich in both oil and truculence, just might (might now, you must remember) be willing to increase its production of oil and earmark it for the United States — a firm guarantee, of course — in exchange for the right to purchase some of the latest in American technological gadgetry, including just a few items that might be described as extremely sophisticated weaponry.

Jerome McKay decided to nibble at the tempting bait and sent some murmurings and whisperings of his own to Tripoli by way of Lagos, Nigeria. The American signal in due course reached the ears of the leader of the new military regime in Libya, Colonel Youssef Mourabet, a jumped-up Army major who had come to power after the unexpected death six months before from a heart attack of the still young, often choleric Colonel Muammar Qaddafi. The heart attack, it was rumored widely, had been brought on by a fit of apoplectic rage.

So an unofficial twelve-man delegation headed by Libya’s new Minister of Defense, Major Ali Arifi, had been dispatched to the United States on an informal exploratory window-shopping expedition. And since it was all totally and determinedly unofficial, the President had slipped his brother in as tour guide, thus separating the administration nicely from any official recognition of the junket, but pleasing the Libyans enormously because Bingo McKay, although burdened with no government post, was usually regarded to be either the third or fourth most powerful man in Washington. Many even said second.

The junket had gone nowhere near Washington, of course. Instead, it had started in Houston, where the much maligned oil companies, anxious now to scramble back into the administration’s grace and favor, had laid on a lavish reception. After Texas, it was straight out to Southern California for a demonstration of the new F-18a fighter, which the Libyans were known to covet, even lust after, feeling that the new plane would give far more pause to their increasingly jingoistic Egyptian neighbor than did their current fleet of aging Soviet MiG 25s.

The fighter demonstrations were scheduled for the next day at Vandenberg Air Force Base, and after that there was to be a quick side trip up to Northern California, to San Jose — or Silicon Gulch — where the latest in electronic wizardry would be wheeled out for inspection — and possible barter.

But first there had to be the de rigueur visit to Disneyland, which Bingo McKay had lied his way out of and turned over to his twenty-eight-year-old assistant, Dr. Eleanor Rhodes, whom he had hired fresh out of Johns Hopkins with the promise that “I can’t guarantee you anything except money and the fact that you’re gonna be close to the nut-cuttin’, if that’s the kinda stuff you’re interested in.”

Since her doctoral dissertation had been entitled “Parameters of Deception in the Second Nixon Administration,” it was, indeed, the kind of stuff Eleanor Rhodes was interested in; and her quick mind and remarkable memory had for five years now helped Bingo nearly double his own political acumen, which was immense.

Then, too, he was probably half in love with her, but he had never done anything about it because (1) she was too young and (2) she couldn’t remember World War II and (3) he suspected that she was one of the President’s occasional bed partners, which was something Bingo had decided to keep his mouth shut about unless the Guteater brought it up. The Guteater was Dominique McKay, the President’s one-quarter Choctaw wife.

It was shortly after 5 P.M. (on the day that the man called Felix fell almost a mile into the sea) when the ten-car Libyan caravan, sprinkled with eighteen Wackenhut security men, returned to the Marriott from Disneyland. Members of the delegation immediately retired to their rooms to rest until dinner at eight, when their hosts would be executives of the McDonnell Douglas and Northrop corporations, joint developers of the new F-18a.

At 6 P.M. the call came from Tripoli. The call was from Libya’s new ruler, Colonel Youssef Mourabet. It was taken by his Minister of Defense, Major Ali Arifi. They spoke for nineteen minutes in Maghribi, a Bedouin dialect.

At 6:24 P.M., Ali Arifi summoned Eleanor Rhodes to his suite. He spoke for five minutes without stopping or allowing questions. At 6:33 P.M. Eleanor Rhodes was knocking on Bingo McKay’s door.

After Bingo opened the door, he started to say something sardonic about Disneyland, but changed his mind when he saw the grim expression on her face.

“There’s a problem,” she said once the door was closed.

“How bad?”

“Bad enough. They’re going to Vegas tonight — for gambling. You’ll notice I didn’t say they’d like to go. They’re going.”

“Well, maybe I’d better go try and persuade ’em to change their minds.”

She shook her head. “I don’t think I’d try, if I were you.”

“Like that, huh?”

“Like that. They’re leaving at eight.” She headed for the telephone. “We’re invited, but they’re going whether we do or not.” She picked up the phone.

“You calling the Wackenhut folks?”

She shook her head again. “They don’t want them along. I’m calling Milroy in Vegas.” Frank Milroy was the Las Vegas Chief of Police.

“Tell him to make it tight,” McKay said. “Tell him I want three on one at least.”

Eleanor Rhodes nodded and started dialing. By 6:50 P.M., security arrangements had been completed in Las Vegas, the Northrop-McDonnell Douglas dinner had been canceled, and the nineteen Wackenhut security men had been recalled to form an escort for the Libyans from the Marriott Hotel in Anaheim to Los Angeles International Airport, where the delegation would board its especially equipped Boeing 727 for the short flight to Las Vegas. The 727 had been the personal plane of the late Colonel Qaddafi and was manned by a Libyan crew that had been trained by Pan American.

The Libyans were already in their cars when Bingo McKay and Eleanor Rhodes came out of the hotel and climbed into the last limousine in the procession. Five miles from the airport the caravan picked up a four-man motorcycle escort provided by the Los Angeles Police Department, which led it onto the field. The Libyans got out of their cars and hurried up the ramp into the plane. Last to start up the ramp were Bingo McKay and Eleanor Rhodes.

As they entered the plane, they were greeted by a smiling Ali Arifi. “I’m delighted that you both decided to join us.”

“Kind of sudden, wasn’t it, Minister?” McKay said.

Arifi shrugged. “Who can tell when luck will beckon?”

Bingo McKay began to suspect that something was wrong, extremely wrong, twenty minutes after the 727 took off from the Los Angeles airport. But it wasn’t until ten minutes later that he knew positively that their destination that night would not be Las Vegas. For by then the plane was headed due east, and the lights of Las Vegas could be seen glittering five miles below and two miles back.

The Libyans had all gathered in the forward compartment, leaving McKay and Eleanor Rhodes alone in the lounge. McKay nudged Rhodes and made a sharp pointing movement down. She looked through the window and turned to stare at him. There was no need for questions.

“Reckon I better go see what those suckers have got in mind for us,” McKay said as he rose.

She nodded warily. “Yes, maybe you’d better.”

McKay made his way to the forward compartment and tried the door. It was locked. He knocked and it was quickly unlocked and opened by Ali Arifi, still wearing a broad smile.

“Come in, Mr. McKay,” Arifi said. “We were just talking about you.”

McKay went in and heard the door being closed and locked behind him. He didn’t turn around to look because a gun was being poked into his back, just above his belt. But it wasn’t just the gun that kept Bingo McKay from turning. Of equal interest was the tray that had been pulled down from the back of one of the seats.

It was an ordinary tray, the kind on which meals are served during commercial flights. This one was covered with a clean white cloth. On the cloth was an arrangement of surgical instruments. Standing next to the instruments was the delegation’s physician, Dr. Abdulhamid Souri, who held a syringe in one hand. Dr. Souri raised his eyes from the syringe to look at Bingo McKay.

“Well, hell, fellas,” McKay said.

Dr. Souri smiled. “It’s not going to hurt, Mr. McKay,” he said softly. “I promise you that it won’t hurt one bit.”