“Kirkuk.”
The four men waited for the President’s reaction. Michael Cagliari, his national security adviser, glanced at the notes he had made and found nothing encouraging. Admiral Terrance Scovill, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, relaxed into the comfort of the couch in the Oval Office and ran possible questions through his head that Zack Pontowski might ask him. Bobby Burke, the director of central intelligence, said nothing. He did not like being the bearer of such ominous news when he had no idea of what was going to happen next. Tom Fraser sat in a chair off to the right and felt a surge of relief. This, he thought, will take Pontowski’s mind off the Middle East and planning for an oil embargo for a long time.
“Are we reading the signals wrong?” Pontowski finally asked.
“There is always that possibility, Mr. President,” the DCI answered. “But it correlates with too many other items coming out of the Kremlin. And we haven’t seen or heard from the general secretary for over three weeks.”
“They haven’t come close to solving their economic problems,” Cagliari added. “There is growing unrest, mostly in the Ukraine, Moldavia, Georgia, and Azerbaijan. Even the Baltic States are joining in. Which, considering the way the Soviet Army has been setting on them since they declared their independence, is an indication of how bad things are.”
“Terry, what do you see?” Pontowski asked.
Admiral Scovill leaned forward. “We are monitoring a great deal of movement on the part of the Soviet Army. But it is all internal and toward the hot spots Mike just mentioned. None of it can be considered threatening to NATO or Western Europe. One other thing, Mr. President, they are being very obvious about it. The Soviets want us to know they are not threatening NATO.”
Pontowski nodded and leaned back in his chair, glad that he had brought the three men over from the previous administration. They were turning out to be his best advisers, despite the serious misgivings Fraser had voiced at first. “So, it looks like Viktor Rokossovsky is about to lose his job as the general secretary of the Communist party.”
“That in itself,” Cagliari said, “isn’t too much to worry about. It’s how they are doing it. We had thought the Soviets had solved the succession-of-power problem and could do it peacefully. This is shaping up like an old-fashioned putsch. They’re going to do this one with tanks and guns.”
“It gets complicated,” Burke said, “because we don’t know whose side the army is on. Right now, we assume the generals are stirring the pot.”
“So what do you recommend we do?” Pontowski asked. He wanted their honest opinions. He would make up his mind later after listening to his secretary of state.
Cagliari spoke first. “Right now, nothing. We must not do a thing the Russians could interpret as a threat or an attempt to mix in their internal affairs. We’ve got to keep things quiet.”
Scovill and Burke agreed with him.
“Okay, gentlemen, that’s it for now.” The four men rose and started to leave. “Tom, hold on for a moment.” Fraser held back until the men had left. “Well, what do you think?”
Fraser hesitated. It wasn’t often that Pontowski asked his advice on foreign affairs. He knew he had to give it his best shot. “I agree with Mike, we’ve got to keep things quiet until die Russians get their problems sorted out.”
“Is that all?”
Fraser shook his head. “The Middle East. I see problems there that could spill over and frighten the Russians. That’s not good when they are having internal problems. They used our response to Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait as an excuse to crack down. I don’t know what they would do if the Middle East became destabilized again.”
“What kind of destabilization would drive them over the edge?”
“I’m really the wrong man to ask that question. Why don’t I call in Cox or that whiz kid Carroll?”
Pontowski smiled. “Tom, I got the impression that you don’t agree with them.”
Fraser was stunned. How had Pontowski cottoned on to that? “Well,” he stammered, “I don’t. I’m for a balance approach in the Mideast and I think Cox and Carroll are too pro-Israeli. We need friends on both sides of that fence. But that isn’t my job so I shut up.”
“What is your job?”
“To keep facts, options, ideas, opinions flowing to you.” He paused and smiled. “And to take care of all the damn paperwork.”
“Keep it up, Tom. Keep it up.”
Fraser knew he was dismissed and beat a hasty retreat to his office. Was the President sending him a message?
“Mr. Fraser,” Melissa called when he passed by her desk. “B. J. Allison called.”
He decided to ignore the message.
9
Discretion is a relative thing, especially in Washington, D.C., where almost everyone practices it to some extent, and the higher the orbit of the power circle a person whirls around on, the more vital it becomes to the survival of the practitioner. Thomas Patrick Fraser instinctively understood this and had become a master at the game. He relied on a pleasant, Irish-bred manner to charm people and a quick intelligence to stay at least two jumps ahead of any potential indiscretion. Normally, it worked well and to his advantage, covering up his sharklike nature.
But when Thomas Fraser lost his temper, his rough South Boston heritage broke through and he was anything but discrete with those who occupied a power circle below his. They received the full blast of his anger. But since Fraser was anything but suicidal, he never let those spinning above him see this side of his personality. And Barbara Jo Allison’s constellation was well above his.
“Really, Tom,” B.J. said, peering at him over her teacup, “I do not believe the President is honoring his commitment to me. After all, I did make substantial funds available to you during the last election.” Her anger at having to summon him a second time when he did not respond to her first call was apparent in the acid tone of her voice.
“B.J., you knew at the time that I had to launder that money and that Pontowski didn’t know a thing about it.”
The petite woman took a sip of the herbal tea she drank before going to bed. “You led me to believe that you would be my friend at court.”
Fraser used the break to drain his coffee cup. The summoning phone call from Allison had wakened him out of a sound sleep at three in the morning and he was still not fully awake. You bitch! he mentally cursed. How do you expect a man to think so early in the morning. “If he ever finds out,” Fraser cautioned, “he’ll appoint a special prosecutor and launch a full-scale investigation. I’ll be the first casualty.”
“And the scandal will rival Watergate.” Allison smiled. “It will be the end of his administration.” She had enough representatives in her pocket to guarantee that the House would at least convene a committee to consider impeachment.
Fraser fought down the urge to argue and tell her that Pontowski was a skilled and ethical politician. “Don’t underestimate him.”
“Come, Tom. We’ve been friends too long to fight over this.” Now she was using her soft southern accent to charm. She was offering him a reprieve — if he chose to take it. She reached out a liver-splotched hand and touched his wrist. “I only want this silly talk about an excess profits tax on oil stopped. And the very idea of national emergency controls over all the oil corporations if there is another Arab oil embargo is too painful to think about. Why, you would think we did not have the best interests of our very own country at heart.”
Fraser knew exactly what B.J. had at heart — profits. Even he would have a hard time unraveling the creative bookkeeping her accountants indulged in, but his personal estimate was that B.J. doubled her profits any time there was a significant upward shift in world oil prices. What he didn’t realize was that she could do even better if she knew a decline in prices was in the making. B.J.'s main problem was public relations. Public scrutiny of her business methods would probably raise such an outcry that the government would be forced by an irate electorate to nationalize the oil industry.