Executive Treason (24 page)

The White House

“Bernsie, I want you back.” Bernie Bernstein glanced around the Oval Office, noting how Lamden and his wife had redecorated the room. It was warmer than Taylor’s days, full of flowers and grandchildren’s pictures. He wasn’t surprised to see more photographs of democrats and JFK’s famed desk, the one that John-John and Caroline played under.

“Mr. President, I’m flattered, but it’s not going to look good. You can’t dump Lamden’s key staff so quickly.”

“Jesus H. Christ, Bernsie.” Morgan Taylor leaned across the desk he inherited and rubbed his hands together. “If I cared about what looks good, I wouldn’t be inviting a tired, overweight, contrarian asshole like you back into public life. But the fact of the matter is that I plainly don’t care. I need you here.”

“What about Gilmore? He’s pretty damned knowledgeable.”

“He’s not you. And that’s his admission. He’s willing to step aside. Besides, he likes the consultant money.”

Bernstein laughed. “I don’t know, maybe that’s the job I want.”

“Look, the chief of staff is either going to be my wife or you. Honestly, I think I argue less with you.”

Bernstein laughed. Morgan Taylor had a wonderful relationship with his wife. “Come on,” he said. “The real reason is I don’t complain when you swear and smoke.”

Bernie “Bernsie” Bernstein had been President Morgan Taylor’s sounding board for the previous four years. He sided with the president only half the time, but he always helped Taylor reach the right political, moral, and diplomatic decisions. He left the White House when Henry Lamden took office. Unlike some of the Cabinet members who stayed on, there was no place for Bernstein, so he accepted a longstanding offer to teach law part-time at BU.

“What about my commitments, Mr. President?”

“I already called your dean. You’re excused.”

“You did what?” Bernstein said, only partially surprised.

“Halfond was okay with the arrangements,” the president said.

“What arrangements? Nobody told me.”

“I said that you’d be available to lecture once in a while to students here. We’d set up a special governmental studies program. He was quite impressed and saw the promotional possibilities in it.”

“He said yes before you asked me?”

Taylor turned serious. “Bernsie, I really need you with me. I don’t know how long it’ll be. Maybe for the long haul.”

That answered Bernstein’s immediate question. “Doesn’t look good?”

“Don’t know for sure. Based on what the doctors tell me, coming back to work full time may be out of the question.”

“A few things for you then, if you don’t mind.”

“Shoot.”

“You have to come clean on everything you know about this Meyerson investigation.”

“Agreed.”

“We work out a plan to patch up your differences with Congress. They’re on the other side of the aisle.”

This request was harder. “I’m asking you to come back as chief of staff, not White House magician,” Taylor responded.

“You agree to try.”

“I’ll try.”

“And finally, you promise, you absolutely promise, that you’ll listen to me.”

Taylor laughed. “Listen to you? Are you fucking kidding?” Taylor finally sat down at the famous presidential desk. He pushed back into the leather seat, realizing it wasn’t the right fit, but he could live with it. “No way!”

Bernsie smiled. He was feeling happy to be back in the thick of it. Things were just the way he liked them. “Mr. President, I’ll take the job.”

With that business behind them, Morgan Taylor moved onto his next meeting. He invited in the intelligence czar. Jack Evans was only half surprised to see Bernsie Bernstein.

“Bernsie,” he said in greeting.

“Mr. Director,” the newly reinstated chief of staff replied. “Like old times.”

“Only worse.” He had a folder with him that he put on the president’s desk. The comment wasn’t a joke.

Taylor opened the folder, but did not look at it.

“I’ll save you the heavy reading, Mr. President. Let me fill you in about D’Angelo’s meeting with Ira Wurlin, number-two in the Mossad under Jacob Schecter. They had a face-to-face talk about the Meyerson allegations and our own issues with their spy apparatus operating here.”

The president looked at Bernsie, who took a seat.

“Starting with a general fact…the Israelis have their spies in the United States, just as we have ours in their country. We try to protect against their infiltration. They do the same. We succeed more often than not. They find some of ours. Usually, no one gets hurt.”

“To the point, Jack. What about Meyerson?” the president asked.

“They’re knee-deep in a lot of agencies. But not here. At least not with her. Meyerson is not theirs.”

The president closed the folder without reading a word. “You’re certain?”

“Let’s just say I believe what Wurlin has reported to D’Angelo. I’d prefer to look Jacob in the eyes, but that’s not going to happen. I believe it was your man Roarke who thought it in the first place.”

“Yes, it was. It didn’t earn him any new fans with the FBI, though.” President Taylor stood up, circled his desk, and sat on the edge. Evans stood over him a few feet away.

“So we make a definitive joint statement. We put this to rest,” Taylor said.

“Begging your pardon, Mr. President, the story has taken on a life of its own. It’s going to be hard to mitigate it,” Bernsie said.

“Tell you what, Bernsie: You find a way. Say it often enough and loud enough and make it stick.” The president now stood and raised his voice. “A young woman was set up to embarrass this administration. It may have contributed to Henry Lamden’s heart attack. And I’m not about to be dragged down by it. End of story.”

“There’s more, Mr. President,” Jack Evans said. “Wurlin gave us something; call it a tip. Political good will to help balance the ledger.”

“Oh?” Bernsie said, already feeling right at home back in the Oval Office.

“He gave D’Angelo a name he thought we’d be interested in and a story to go with it.”

“Will I know the name?” Taylor asked.

“No, but you’re going to be very interested in the story.”

Chicago, Illinois

Luis Gonzales wasn’t his favorite identity. He missed Miami and the life he lived as Ibrahim Haddad. The weather in Florida was more to his liking. It reminded him of the Mediterranean of his youth. And though he was a faithful Muslim, if only behind closed doors, he yearned for the ease at which women in Miami Beach were attracted to money…and the men who had it.

In addition to being rich, Haddad was also mysterious enough to make him desirable to some women. When finished, he rewarded his companions for their service. Diamonds. A necklace, earrings, a pin. They would all get something—except a second visit. This is the way it had been for decades. In Chicago, his guards did his bidding. They found women in their mid-30s, brunette, hair trimmed at the neckline, no taller than five-five or five-six. They always had the same look. Nobody with dyed hair. That would be obvious to him, and there would be consequences for making that mistake. They bought the jewelry, they took the women home after, and they made it abundantly clear that no one should ever return.

Haddad used women and dismissed them. In Miami, his urges were met more frequently. It was definitely more difficult in Chicago. This was true partly because of the different nightlife, and partly because Gonzales wasn’t as visible as Haddad.

Tonight his needs were being met again, fast and emotionless in a hotel suite. Throughout the lovemaking, or more aptly, fucking, Gonzales insisted on keeping the radio on to a talk show. His consort tried to get him to tune to something more appropriate. But like everything else in his life, he controlled this moment, too. He never drifted too far, and when he did, it was to only one memory that he never shared with anybody.

Lebanon, Kansas
the same time

“Thomas Jefferson, people. These are Thomas Jefferson’s words, not mine. Thomas Jefferson, one of the founding fathers. Write it down. E-mail it to your friends. It’ll be online at www.StrongNationRadio.com. But its real power comes in the telling,” Elliott Strong emphasized. “And I quote, ‘Experience hath shown, that even under the best forms [of government] those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny.’”

The talk show host cleared his throat for effect, and continued with a greater sense of urgency.

“‘Perverted it into tyranny,’ ladies and gentlemen. ‘Tyranny.’”

Strong brought his voice down at the end of the quote, but he wasn’t finished. ‘Unless the mass retains sufficient control over those entrusted with the powers of their government, these will be perverted to their own oppression.’” He paused to let it sink in. “Thomas Jefferson. Makes me think he’d calling in if he could.”

The number of Strong’s listeners had spiked over the past week. Ninety-five new stations signed onto his daytime lineup, 107 to his overnight show. Strong spoke to the nation, and like Father Coughlin so many years before him, Elliott Strong was now speaking for the nation.

“Tyranny, ladies and gentlemen. Tyranny of those entrusted with the awesome powers of their government. Our government. You’re finally getting it, aren’t you? We’re in the middle of ‘Spygate’ and the big cover-up. We’re governed by an unelected government. And now Taylor sits like the king atop a Capitol Hill of lies. He does not represent our interests. He does not represent the people of the United States. And we cannot let him determine our future. It is time to raise your voice louder. It is time to end the perversion. It is time to end the tyranny. It is time to end the oppression. It is time to change the Constitution. And it is time to recall the president!”

Starista, Russia

As he listened to the Internet transmission, Dubroff pondered his immediate problems.

The American Embassy? No, out of the question. Brush an American businessman or a tourist? Leave a note? Absolutely not. He had to be more resourceful, even in today’s Russia.

These were the concerns that kept him awake at night. Who? How? Perhaps he could get word out through a friend. No. Everyone’s dead. Besides, he’d built his career on the foundation of never trusting anyone.

So who and how haunted him. His worry grew with every hour he lay awake.

Chicago, Illinois

Gonzales moved faster to the rhythm of the words on the radio. He thrust harder as the talk show host emphasized more. He felt the pressure inside, and the need to release just as the host finished.

“To recall the president!” was nearly drowned out by his own scream of pure, selfish pleasure.

The White House
Washington, D.C.

“Haddad,” Evans said. “Ibrahim Haddad. Exporter. Lived on Fisher Island, off Miami Beach.” The president picked up the nuance.

“Lived?”

“Lived,” the intelligence chief continued. “Past tense.”

“Lived as in no longer lives?” Bernsie asked.

“Lived as in no longer lives there. He disappeared the night of January nineteenth along with his very seaworthy boat and his staff. The implication is that he died in a boat accident. That’s the connection that I think we’re supposed to make.”

“Before we get to the rest, and I assume there is more…”

“Yes, Mr. President.”

“What is Jacob Schecter’s connection with this Haddad?”

“None. According to the Mossad, Haddad is a businessman with strong ties to the Middle East and bank accounts a mile long. The Israelis started watching him in the mid-seventies, when he was seen with Hafez al-Assad in Syria, and later his sons. He was also photographed in Iraq with Udai Hussein, and later in Libya.”

The president sat straight up. “Ashab al-Kahf” he whispered. “The People of the Cave. It was all Haddad’s operation?”

“There are strong indications,” Evans declared.

“Then why the hell didn’t our good friends in Israel let us know about this clown years ago?” the new chief of staff demanded.

Evans took the question. “Because they only knew where he traveled, not what he may have done. They still don’t. But they read
The New York Times
, too. Someone must have compared the details of what occurred and what they knew. The meetings, the years, the characters matched up. One to one.”

“Weren’t we looking for a man named Abraham last year?”

“Absolutely. Our asset in Libya learned that Fadi Kharrazi had talked of an Abraham, or so we thought. We linked him to Fadi’s plans here, not knowing what they were and who this Abraham was. But it wasn’t Abraham at all. His name was Ibrahim.”

“So Ibrahim Haddad ran the sleeper operation that elected Teddy Lodge.”

“Most likely and conceivably more, Mr. President. The files the Special Forces team brought out of Libya suggested that former Soviet sleepers are quite comfortably embedded in the United States.”

“Run by Haddad?” Bernsie asked.

“Unknown. But likely.”

“But Lodge was a Libyan plant, not a Russian,” Taylor added.

“Yes, from the beginning a Muslim plot, traded from country to country, ultimately designed to end our relationship with Israel. That’s not the case with your average run-of-the mill Cold War Russian sleeper. Lodge and his friend Newman were the only real threats to come out of Libya.” He added a word of caution. “Others may have been co-opted to Haddad’s cause by money, not politics. They’re the ones that don’t show up in Ashab al-Kahf.”

“Back to Haddad,” Taylor said, rising to pour himself a cup of coffee from a porcelain pitcher embossed with the White House seal. “He hightailed it out of Dodge?”

“Yup,” Evans said, in keeping with the question.

“And you don’t think he went down in his ship.”

“Not a chance,” Evans said, pointing to a cup for himself.

Taylor knew he liked it with a touch of cream, just to lighten it up.

The chief of staff rose and threw his hands in the air. “I don’t believe it. You’ve got the fucking French Connection of politics here, and you’re taking a calm coffee break!”

“Oh, quite the opposite, Bernsie. I’m just waking up to the real worry, which we haven’t heard yet. Have we, Jack?” The president turned to his head of National Intelligence.