The Fourth K (45 page)

Klee did not need to ask why the Italian security chief had not sent this information through regular channels to Washington. He knew Sebbediccio did not want his close surveillance of Annee made part of an official record in the United States; he did not trust the Freedom of Information Act in America. Also, he wanted Christian Klee in his personal debt.

In Sherhaben, Sultan Maurobi received Christian Klee with the utmost friendliness, as if there had never been the crisis of a few months before. The Sultan was affable but appeared on guard and a little puzzled. “I hope you bring me good news,” he said to Klee. “After all the regrettable unpleasantness, I am very anxious to repair relations with the United States and, of course, your President Kennedy. In fact, I hope your visit is in regard to this matter.”

Klee smiled. “I came for that very purpose,” he said. “You are in a position, I think, to do us a service that might heal the breach.”

“Ah, I am very happy to hear that,” the Sultan said. “You know, of course, that I was not privy to Yabril’s intentions. I had no foreknowledge of what Yabril would do to the President’s daughter. Of course, I have expressed this officially, but would you tell the President personally that I have grieved over this for the past months. I was powerless to avert the tragedy.”

Klee believed him, that the murder had not been in the original plans. And he thought how all-powerful men like Sultan Maurobi and Francis Kennedy were helpless in the face of uncontrollable events, the will of other men.

But now he said to the Sultan, “Your giving up Yabril has reassured the President on that point.” This they both knew was mere politeness. Klee paused for a moment and then went on. “But I’m here to ask you to do me a personal service. You know I am responsible for the safety of my President. I have information that there is a plot to assassinate him. That terrorists have already infiltrated into the United States. But it would be helpful if I could get information as to their plans and to their identity and location. I thought that with your contacts you might have heard something through your intelligence agencies. That you might give me some scraps of information. Let me emphasize that it will only be between the two of us. You and I. There will be no official connection.”

The Sultan seemed astonished. His intelligent face screwed up into an expression of amused disbelief. “How can you think such a thing?” he asked. “After all your destruction, after all our tragedies, would I get involved in such dangerous activities? I am the ruler of a small rich country
that is powerless to remain independent without the friendship of great powers. I can do nothing for you or against you.”

Klee nodded his head in agreement. “Of course that is true. But Bert Audick came to visit you and I know that had to do with the oil industry. But let me tell you that Mr. Audick is in very serious trouble in the United States. He would be a very bad ally for you to have in the coming years.”

“And you would be a very good ally?” the Sultan asked, smiling.

“Yes,” Klee said. “I am the ally that could save you. If you cooperate with me now.”

“Explain,” the Sultan said. He was obviously angered by the implied threat.

Klee spoke very carefully. “Bert Audick is under indictment for conspiracy against the United States government because his mercenaries or those of his company fired on our planes bombing your city of Dak. And there are other charges. His oil empire could be destroyed under certain of our laws. He is not a strong ally at this moment.”

The Sultan said slyly, “Indicted but not convicted. I understand that will be more difficult.”

“That is true,” Klee said. “But in a few months Francis Kennedy will be reelected. His popularity will bring in a Congress that will ratify his programs. He will be the most powerful President in the history of the United States. Then Audick is doomed, I can assure you. And the power structure of which he is a part will be destroyed.”

“I still fail to see how I can help you,” the Sultan said. And then more imperiously, “Or how you can help me. I understand you are in a delicate position yourself in your own country.”

“That may or may not be true,” Klee said. “As for my position, which is delicate, as you say, that will be resolved when Kennedy is reelected. I am his closest friend and closest adviser and Kennedy is noted for his loyalty. As to how we can help each other, let me be direct without intending any disrespect. May I do so?”

The Sultan seemed to be impressed and even amused by this courtesy. “By all means,” he said.

Klee said, “First, and most important, here is how I can help you. I can be your ally. I have the ear of the President of the United States and I have his trust. We live in difficult times.”

The Sultan interrupted smilingly, “I have always lived in difficult times.”

“And so you can appreciate what I am saying better than most,” Klee retorted sharply.

“And what if your Kennedy does not achieve his aims?” the Sultan said. “Accidents befall, heaven is not always kind.”

Christian Klee was cold now as he answered, “What you are saying is, what if the plot to kill Kennedy succeeds? I am here to tell you that it will not. I don’t care how clever and daring the assassins may be. And if they try and fail and there is any trace to you, then you will be destroyed. But it doesn’t have to come to that. I’m a reasonable man and I understand your position. What I propose is an exchange of information between you and myself on a personal basis. I don’t know what Audick proposed to you, but I’m a better bet. If Audick and his crowd wins, you still win. He doesn’t know about us. If Kennedy wins, you have me as your ally. I’m your insurance.”

The Sultan nodded and then led him to a sumptuous banquet. During the meal the sultan asked Klee innumerable
questions about Kennedy. Then finally, almost hesitantly, he asked about Yabril.

Klee looked him directly in the eye. “There is no way that Yabril can escape his fate. If his fellow terrorists think they can get him released by holding even the most important of hostages, tell them to forget about it. Kennedy will never let him go.”

The Sultan sighed. “Your Kennedy has changed,” he said. “He sounds like a man going berserk.” Klee didn’t answer. The Sultan went on very slowly. “I think you have convinced me,” he said. “I think you and I should become allies.”

When Christian Klee returned to the United States, the first person he went to see was the Oracle. The old man received him in his bedroom suite, sitting in his motorized wheelchair, an English tea spread on the table in front of him, a comfortable armchair waiting for Christian opposite.

The Oracle greeted him with a slight wave to indicate that he should sit down. Christian served him tea and a tiny bit of cake and a small finger sandwich, then served himself. The Oracle took a sip of tea and crumbled the bit of cake in his mouth. They sat there for a long moment.

Then the Oracle tried to smile, a slight movement of the lips, the skin so dead it barely moved. “You’ve got yourself into a fine mess for your fucking friend Kennedy,” he said.

The vulgarism, spoken as if from the mouth of an innocent child, made Christian smile. Again he wondered, was it a mark of senility, a decaying of the brain, that the Oracle who had never used profanity was now using it so freely? He waited until he had eaten one of the sandwiches and gulped down some hot tea, then he answered, “Which fix?” he said. “I’m in a lot of them.”

“I’m talking about that atom bomb thing,” the Oracle
said. “The rest of the shit doesn’t matter. But they are accusing you of being responsible for the murder of thousands of citizens of this country. They’ve got the goods on you, it seems, but I refuse to believe you to be so stupid. Inhuman, yes—after all, you’re in politics. Did you really do it?” The old man was not judgmental, just curious.

Who else in the world was there to tell? Who else in the world would understand? “What I’m astonished about,” Klee said, “is how quickly they got on to me.”

“The human mind
leaps
to an understanding of evil,” the Oracle said. “You are surprised because there is a certain innocence in the doer of an evil deed. He thinks the deed so terrible that it is inconceivable to another human being. But that is the first thing they jump at. Evil is no mystery at all, love is the mystery.” He paused for a moment, started to speak again and then relaxed back in his chair, his eyes half closed, dozing.

“You have to understand,” Christian said, “that letting something happen is so much easier than actually doing something. There was the crisis, Francis Kennedy was going to be impeached by the Congress. And I thought just for a second, if only the atom bomb exploded it would turn things around. It was in that moment that I told Peter Cloot not to interrogate Gresse and Tibbot. I had the time to do it. The whole thing flashed by in that one second and it was done.”

The Oracle said, “Give me some more hot tea and another piece of cake.” He put the cake in his mouth, tiny crumbs appearing on his scarlike lips. “Yes or no: Did you interrogate Gresse and Tibbot before the bomb exploded? You got the information out of them and then didn’t act on it?”

Christian sighed. “They were only kids. I squeezed them dry in five minutes. That’s why I couldn’t have Cloot at the
interrogation. But I didn’t want the bomb to explode. It just went so quick.”

The Oracle started to laugh. It was a curious laugh even in so old a man. It was a series of grunted heh, heh, heh’s. “You’ve got it ass backwards,” the Oracle said. “You had already made up your mind that you would let the bomb explode. Before you told Cloot not to interrogate them. It didn’t go by in a second, you planned it all out.”

Christian Klee was a little startled. What the Oracle said was true.

“And all this to save your hero, Francis Kennedy,” the Oracle said. “The man who can do no wrong except when he sets the whole world on fire.” The Oracle had placed a box of thin Havana cigars on the table; Christian took one of them and lit it. “You were lucky,” the Oracle said. “Those people that were killed were mostly worthless. The drunken, the homeless, the criminal. And it’s not so great a crime. Not in the history of our human race.”

“Francis really gave me the go-ahead,” Klee said. And that made the Oracle touch a button on his chair so that the back of it straightened to make his body upright and alert.

“Your saintly President?” the Oracle said. “He is far too much a victim of his own hypocrisy, as all the Kennedys were. He could never be party to such an act.”

“Maybe I’m just trying to make excuses,” Christian said. “It was nothing explicit. But I know Francis so intimately, we’re almost like brothers. I asked him for the order so that the medical interrogation team would be able to do a brain probe. That would have settled the whole atom bomb problem immediately. And Francis refused to sign the authorization. Sure, he gave his grounds, good civil libertarian and humanitarian grounds. That was in his character. But that
was in his character before his daughter was killed. Not in his character afterwards. And this
was
afterwards. Remember, he had already ordered the destruction of Dak by this time. He gave the threat that he would destroy the whole Sultanate of Sherhaben if the hostages were not released. So his character had changed. His new character would have signed the medical interrogation order. And then when he refused to sign, he gave me a look, I can’t describe it, but it was almost as if he were telling me to let it happen.”

The Oracle was fully alive now. He spoke sharply. “All that doesn’t matter. What matters is that you save your ass. If Kennedy doesn’t get reelected, you may spend years in jail. And even if Kennedy gets reelected, there may be some danger.”

“Kennedy will win the election,” Christian said. “And after that, I’ll be OK.” He paused for a moment. “I know him.”

“You know the old Kennedy,” the Oracle said. Then as if he had lost interest he said, “And how about my birthday party? I’m a hundred years old and nobody gives a shit.”

Christian laughed. “I do. Don’t worry. After the election you’ll have a birthday party in the White House Rose Garden. A birthday party for a king.”

The Oracle smiled with pleasure, then said slyly, “And your Francis Kennedy will be the king. You do know, don’t you, that if he is reelected and carries his congressional candidates with him, he will in effect be a dictator?”

“That’s highly unlikely,” Christian Klee said. “There has never been a dictator in this country. We have safeguards—too many safeguards, I think sometimes.”

“Ah,” the Oracle said, “this is a young country yet. We have time. And the Devil takes many seductive forms.”

They were silent for a long time, and then Christian rose
to take his leave. They always touched hands when they parted; the Oracle was too fragile for a real handshake.

“Be careful,” the Oracle said. “When a man rises to absolute power, he usually gets rid of those closest to him, those who know his secrets.”

A Federal judge set Henry Tibbot and Adam Gresse free.

The government did not contest that the arrest had been illegal. The government did not contest that there had been no warrants. Gresse and Tibbot’s defense team had exploited every legal loophole.

The people of America were enraged. They blamed the Kennedy administration, they cursed the judicial system. Mobs gathered in the streets of the great cities calling for the death of Gresse and Tibbot. Vigilante groups formed to carry out the justice of the people.

Gresse and Tibbot fled to a hiding place in South America and disappeared into a sanctuary financed by their wealthy parents.

•  •  •

Two months before the presidential election, polls showed that Francis Kennedy’s margin of victory would not be enough to carry his congressional candidates into office.

There were more problems: a scandal involving Eugene Dazzy’s mistress; the lingering charges that Attorney General Christian Klee had deliberately permitted the explosion of the atom bomb; the scandal of Canoo and Klee using the funds of the office of the military adviser to beef up the Secret Service.