The Fourth K (26 page)

Kennedy smiled at him. “No, Congress will use that against me.”

Christian was confident now. Still, for a moment, he felt a little sick and bile rose in his mouth. Then it passed and he knew what Kennedy wanted, he knew what he had to do.

Kennedy sipped his coffee; they had finished their meal, but none of them had taken more than a few bites. Kennedy said, “Let’s discuss the real crisis. Am I still going to be President in forty-eight hours?”

Oddblood Gray said, “Rescind the order to bomb Dak, turn over the negotiations to a special team, and no action to remove you will be taken by the Congress.”

“Who gave you that deal?” Kennedy asked.

“Senator Lambertino and Congressman Jintz,” Otto Gray said. “Lambertino is a genuine good guy and Jintz is responsible in a political affair like this. They wouldn’t double-cross us.”

“OK, that’s another option,” Kennedy said. “That and going to the Supreme Court. What else?”

Dazzy said, “Go on TV tomorrow before Congress convenes and appeal to the nation. The people will be for you, and that may give Congress pause.”

“OK,” Kennedy said. “Euge, clear it with the TV people for me to go on over all the networks. Just fifteen minutes is what we need.”

Dazzy said softly, “Francis, it’s an awful big step we’re taking. The President and the Congress in such a direct confrontation and then calling upon the masses to take action. It could get very messy.”

Gray said, “That guy Yabril will string us out for weeks and make this country look like a big lump of shit.”

Christian said, “There’s a rumor that one of the staff in this room or Arthur Wix is going to sign that declaration to remove the President. Whoever it is should speak now.”

Kennedy said impatiently, “That rumor is nonsense. If one of you were going to do that, you would have resigned beforehand. I know all of you too well—none of you would betray me.”

After dinner they went from the Yellow Room to the little movie theater on the other side of the White House. Kennedy had told Dazzy that he wanted all of them to see the TV footage of the murder of his daughter.

In the darkness the nervous voice of Eugene Dazzy said, “The TV coverage starts now.” For a few seconds the movie screen was streaked with black lines that seemed to scramble from top to bottom.

Then the screen lit up with brilliant colors, the TV cameras focusing on the huge aircraft squatting on the desert sand. Next the cameras zoomed to the figure of Yabril presenting Theresa Kennedy in the doorway. Kennedy watched again how his daughter smiled slightly and waved to the camera. It was an odd wave, a wave of reassurance yet of subjugation. Yabril was beside her, then slightly behind her. And then there was the movement of the right arm, the gun not visible, and the flat report of the shot and then the billowing ghostly pink mist and the body of Theresa Kennedy falling. Kennedy heard the wail of the crowd and recognized it as grief and not triumph. Then the figure of Yabril appeared in the doorway. He held his gun aloft, an oily gleaming tube of black metal. He held it as a gladiator holds a sword, but there were no cheers. The film came to an end. Eugene Dazzy had edited it severely.

The lights came on, but Kennedy remained still. He felt
a familiar weakening of his body. He couldn’t move his legs or his torso. But his mind was clear, there was no shock or disorder in his brain. He did not feel the helplessness of tragedy’s victim. He would not have to struggle against fate or God. He only had to struggle against his enemies in this world and he would conquer them.

He would not let mortal man defeat him. When his wife died, he’d had no recourse against the hand of God, the faults of nature. He had bowed his entire being in acceptance. But his daughter’s man-made death, engineered by malice—
that
he could punish, and redress. This time he would not bow his head. Woe to that world, to his enemies, woe to the wicked in this world.

When he was finally able to lift his body from the chair, he smiled reassuringly to the men around him. He had accomplished his purpose. He had made his closest and most powerful friends suffer with him. They would not now so easily oppose the actions he must take.

Kennedy left the room and his staff sat in silence. It almost seemed as if the air of power, burnt with misuse, had spread a sulfurous odor through the room. The terror that had sprung from the desert of Sherhaben had even more frighteningly invaded this room.

What remained unsaid was that now they were perhaps more worried about Francis Kennedy than about Yabril.

Oddblood Gray finally broke the silence. “Do you think the President has gone a little crazy?” he said.

Eugene Dazzy shook his head. “It doesn’t matter. Maybe we’re all a little crazy. We have to support him now. We have to win.”

Dr. Zed Annaccone was one of those short thin men with a big chest. He looked extraordinarily alert and what seemed
like superciliousness in his facial expression was actually just the confidence of a man who believed he knew more about the important things on this earth than anyone else. Which was quite true.

Dr. Annaccone was the medical science adviser to the President of the United States. He was also the director of the National Brain Research Institute and the administrative head of the Medical Advisory Board of the Atomic Security Commission. Once at a White House dinner party, Klee had heard him say that the brain was such a sophisticated organ that it could produce whatever chemicals the body needed. And Klee had simply thought, So what?

The doctor, reading his mind, patted him on the shoulder and said, “That fact is more important to civilization than anything you guys can do here in the White House. And all we need is a billion dollars to prove it. What the hell is that, one aircraft carrier?” Then he had smiled at Klee to show that he meant no offense.

And now he was smiling when Klee walked into his office.

“So,” Dr. Annaccone said, “finally even the lawyers come to me. You realize our philosophies are directly opposed?”

Klee knew that Dr. Annaccone was about to make a joke about the legal profession and was slightly irritated. Why did people always make wise-ass remarks about lawyers?

“Truth,” Dr. Annaccone said. “Lawyers always seek to obscure it, we scientists try to reveal it.” He smiled again.

“No, no,” Klee said and smiled to show he had a sense of humor. “I’m here for information. We have a situation that calls for that special PET study under the Atomic Weapons Control Act.”

“You know you have to get the President’s signature on that,” Dr. Annaccone said. “Personally I’d do the procedure
for many other situations, but the civil libertarians would kick my ass.”

“I know,” Christian said. Then he explained the situation of the atom bomb and capture of Gresse and Tibbot. “Nobody thinks there is really a bomb, but if there is, then the time factor is crucially important. And the President refuses to sign the order.”

“Why?” Dr. Annaccone asked.

“Because of the possible brain damage that could occur during the procedure,” Klee said.

This seemed to surprise Annaccone. He thought for a moment. “The possibility of significant brain damage is very small,” he said. “Maybe ten percent. The greater danger is the rare incidence of cardiac arrest and the even rarer side effect of complete and total memory loss. Complete amnesia. But even that shouldn’t dissuade him in this case. I’ve sent the President papers on it, I hope he reads them.”

“He reads everything,” Christian said. “But I’m afraid it won’t change his mind.”

“Too bad we don’t have more time,” Dr. Annaccone said. “We are just completing tests that will result in an infallible lie detector based on computer measurement of the chemical changes in the brain. The new test is much like the PET but without the ten percent damage risk. It will be completely safe. But we can’t use that now; there would be too many elements of doubt until further data are compiled to satisfy the legal requirements.”

Christian felt a tinge of excitement. “A safe, infallible lie detector whose findings would be admitted into court?” he said.

“As to being admitted into a court of law, I don’t know,” Dr. Annaccone said. “Scientifically, when our tests have been thoroughly analyzed and compiled by the computers,
the new brain lie-detector test will be as infallible as DNA and fingerprinting. That’s one thing. But to get it enacted into law is another. The civil liberties groups will fight it to the death. They’re convinced that a man should not be used to testify against himself. And how would people in Congress like the idea that they could be made to take such a test under criminal law?”

Klee said, “I wouldn’t like to take it.”

Annaccone laughed. “Congress would be signing its own political death warrant. And yet where’s the true logic? Our laws were made to prevent confessions obtained by foul means. However, this is science.” He paused for a moment. “How about business leaders or even errant husbands and wives?”

“That’s a little creepy,” Klee admitted.

Dr. Annaccone said, “But what about all those old sayings, like, ‘The truth shall make you free’? Like, ‘Truth is the greatest of virtues.’ Like, ‘Truth is the very essence of life.’ That man’s struggle to discover truth is his greatest ideal?” Dr. Annaccone laughed. “When our tests are verified, I’ll bet my institute budget will get chopped.”

Christian said, “That’s my area of competence. We dress up the law. We specify that your test can be used only in important criminal cases. We restrict its use to the government. Make it like a strictly controlled narcotics substance or arms manufacturing. So if you can get the test proven scientifically, I can get the legislation.” Then he asked, “Exactly how the hell does that work anyway?”

“The new PET?” Dr. Annaccone said. “It’s very simple. Physically not invasive. No surgeon with a blade in his hand. No obvious scars. Just a small injection of a chemical substance into the brain through the blood vessels. Chemical self-sabotage with psychopharmaceuticals.”

“It’s voodoo to me,” Christian said. “You should be in jail with those two physics guys.”

Dr. Annaccone laughed. “No connection,” he said. “Those guys work to blow up the world. I work to get at the inner truths—how man really thinks, what he really feels.”

But even Dr. Annaccone knew that a brain lie-detector test meant legal trouble. “This will be perhaps the most important discovery in the medical history of our time,” Dr. Annaccone said. “Imagine if we could read the brain. All you lawyers would be out of a job.”

Christian said, “Do you think it’s possible to figure out how the brain works, really?”

Dr. Annaccone shrugged. “No,” he said. “If the brain were that simple, we would be too simple to figure it out.” He gave Christian another grin. “Catch-22. Our brain will never catch up with the brain. Because of that, no matter what happens, mankind can never be more than a higher form of animal.” He seemed overjoyed by this fact.

He became abstracted for a moment. “You know there’s a ‘ghost in the machine,’ Koestler’s phrase. Man has two brains really, the primitive brain and the overlying civilized brain. Have you noticed there is a certain unexplainable malice in human beings. A useless malice?”

Christian said, “Call the President about the PET. Try to persuade him.”

Dr. Annaccone said, “I will. He is really being too chicken. The procedure won’t damage those kids a bit.”

The rumor that one of the White House personal staff would sign the petition to remove Kennedy from the presidency had set off warning signals in Christian Klee’s head.

Eugene Dazzy was at his desk surrounded by three secretaries taking notes for actions to be taken by his own personal
staff. He wore his Walkman over his ears but the sound was turned off. And his usual good-humored face was grim. He looked up at his uninvited visitor and said, “Chris, this is the worst possible time for you to come snooping around.”

Christian said, “Eugene, don’t bullshit me. How come nobody’s curious about who the rumored traitor on the staff is. That means everybody knows, except me. And I’m the guy who should know.”

Dazzy dismissed his secretaries. They were alone in the office. Dazzy smiled at Christian. “It never occurred to me you didn’t know. You keep track of everything with your FBI and Secret Service, your stealth intelligence and listening devices. Those thousands of agents the Congress doesn’t know you have on the payroll. How come you’re so ignorant?”

Christian said coldly, “I know you’re fucking some dancer twice a week in one of those apartments that belong to Jeralyn’s restaurant.”

Dazzy sighed. “That’s it. This lobbyist who loans me the apartment came to see me. He asked me to sign the removal-of-the-President document. He wasn’t crude about it, there were no direct threats, but the implication was clear. Sign it or my little sins would be all over the papers and television.” Dazzy laughed. “I couldn’t believe it. How could they be so dumb?”

Christian said, “So what answer did you give?”

Dazzy smiled. “I crossed his name off my ‘friends’ list. I barred his access. And I told him I would give my old buddy Christian Klee his name as a potential threat to the security of the President. Then I told Francis. He told me to forget the whole thing.”

Christian said, “Who sent the guy?”

Dazzy said, “The only guy who would dare is a member
of the Socrates Club. And that would be our old friend Martin ‘Take It Private’ Mutford.”

Christian said, “He’s smarter than that.”

“Sure, he is,” Dazzy said grimly. “Everybody is smarter than that until they get desperate. When the VP refused to sign the impeachment memorandum, they became desperate. Besides, you never know when somebody will cave in.”

Christian still didn’t like it. “But they know you. They know that under all that flab you’re a tough guy. I’ve seen you in action. You ran one of the biggest companies in the United States, you cut IBM a new asshole just five years ago. How could they think you’d cave in?”

Dazzy shrugged. “Everybody always thinks he’s tougher than anybody else.” He paused. “You think so yourself, though you don’t advertise it. I do. So does Wix and so does Gray. Francis doesn’t think it. He just can be. And we have to be careful for Francis. We have to be careful he doesn’t get too tough.”