The Icarus Agenda

A maid preceded Payton through an enormous sitting room overlooking the bay to another stately door. She opened it and the director walked inside the extraordinary library, trying to absorb everything that struck his eyes. The huge console that took up the entire wall on the left with its panoply of television monitors and dials and projection equipment; the lowered silver screen on the right and the burning stove in the near corner; the cathedral windows directly opposite and the large circular table in front of him. Samuel Winters got up from the chair beneath the wall of sophisticated technology and came forward, his hand extended.

'It's been too long, MJ—may I call you that?' said the world renowned historian. 'As I recall, everyone called you MJ.'

'Certainly, Dr Winters.' They shook hands and the septuagenarian scholar waved his arm, encompassing the room.

'I wanted you to see it all. To know that we have our fingers on the pulse of the world—but not for personal gain, you must understand that.'

'I do. Who are the others?'

'Please sit down,' said Winters, gesturing at the chair facing his own, on the opposite side of the circular table. 'Take off your coat, by all means. When one reaches my age all the rooms are much too warm.'

'If you don't mind, I'll keep it on. This will not be a long conference.'

'You're certain of that?'

'Very,' replied Payton, sitting down.

'Well,' said Winters softly but emphatically as he went to his chair, 'it's the unusual intellect that chooses its position without regard to the parameters of discussion. And you do have an intellect, MJ.'

'Thank you for your generous, if somewhat condescending, compliment.'

That's rather hostile, isn't it?'

'No more so than your deciding for the country who should run and be elected to national office.'

'He's the right man at the right time for all the right reasons.'

'I couldn't agree with you more. It's the way you did it. When one lets loose a rogue force to achieve an objective, one can't know the consequences.'

'Others do it. They're doing it now.'

'That doesn't give you the right. Expose them, if you can, and with your resources I'm sure you can, but don't imitate them.'

'That's sophistry! We live in an animal world, a politically oriented world dominated by predators!'

'We don't have to become predators to fight them… Exposure, not imitation.'

'By the time the word gets out, by the time even the few understand what's happened, the brutal herds have stampeded, trampling us. They change the rules, alter the laws. They're untouchable.'

'I respectfully disagree, Dr Winters.'

'Look at the Third Reich!'

'Look what happened to it. Look at Runnymede and the Magna Carta, look at the tyrannies of the French Court of Louis the Sixteenth, look at the brutalities of the Czars—for Christ's sake, look at Philadelphia in 1787! The Constitution, Doctor! The people react goddamned quickly to oppression and malfeasance!'

'Tell that to the citizens of the Soviet Union.'

'Checkmate. But don't try to explain that to the refuseniks and the dissidents who every day make the world more aware of the dark corners of Kremlin policy. They are making a difference, Doctor.'

'Excesses!' cried Winters. 'Everywhere on this poor, doomed planet there is excess. It will blow us apart.'

'Not if reasonable people expose excess and do not join it in hysteria. Your cause may have been right, but in your excess you violated laws—written and unwritten—and caused the deaths of innocent men and women because you considered yourself above the laws of the land. Rather than telling the country what you knew, you decided to manipulate it.'

'That is your determination?'

'It is. Who are the others in this Inver Brass?'

'You know that name?'

'I just said it. Who are they?'

'You'll never learn from me.'

'We'll find them… ultimately. But for my own curiosity, where did this organization start? If you don't care to answer, it doesn't matter.'

'Oh, but I do care to answer,' said the old historian, his thin hands trembling to the point where he gripped them together on the table. 'Decades ago Inver Brass was born in chaos, when the nation was being torn apart, on the edge of self-destruction. It was the height of the great depression; the country had come to a stop and violence' was erupting everywhere. Hungry people care little about empty slogans and emptier promises, and productive people who've lost their pride through no fault of their own are reduced to fury… Inver Brass was formed by a small group of immensely wealthy, influential men who had followed the advice of the likes of the financier Bernard Mannes Baruch and were unscathed by the economic collapse. They were also men of social conscience and put their resources to work in practical ways, stemming riots and violence not only by massive infusions of capital and supplies into inflamed areas, but by silently ushering laws through Congress that helped to bring about measures of relief. It is that tradition that we follow.'

'Is it?' asked Payton quietly, his eyes cold, studying the old man.

'Yes,' answered Winters emphatically.

'Inver Brass… What does it mean?'

'It's the name of a marshy inlet in the Highlands of Scotland that's not on any map. It was coined by the first spokesman, a banker of Scots descent, who understood that the group had to act in secrecy.'

'Therefore without accountability?'

'I repeat. We seek nothing for ourselves!'

'Then why the secrecy?'

'It's necessary, for although our decisions are arrived at dispassionately for the good of the country, they're not always pleasant or in the eyes of many even defensible. Yet they were for the good of the nation.'

'“Even defensible?”' repeated Payton, astonished at what he was hearing.

‘I’ll give you an example. Years ago our immediate predecessors were faced with a government tyrant who had visions of reshaping the laws of the country. A man named John Edgar Hoover, a giant who became obsessed in his old age, who had gone beyond the bounds of rationality, blackmailing presidents and senators—decent men—with his raw files, which were rampant with gossip and innuendo. Inver Brass had him eliminated before he brought the executive and the legislative, in essence the government, to its knees. And then a young writer named Peter Chancellor surfaced and came too close to the truth. It was he and his intolerable manuscript that caused the demise of Inver Brass then—but not its resurrection.'

'Oh, my God!' exclaimed the director of Special Projects softly. 'Good and evil, decided solely by you, sentences pronounced only by you. A legend of arrogance.'

'That's unfair! There was no other solution. You're wrong'.'

'It's the truth.' Payton stood up, pushing the chair behind him. 'I've nothing more to say, Dr Winters. I'll leave now.'

'What are you going to do?'

'What has to be done. I'm filing a report for the President, the Attorney General and the congressional oversight committees. That's the law… You're out of business, Doctor. And don't bother to see me to the door, I'll find my way.'

Payton walked out into the cold grey morning air. He breathed deeply, trying to fill his lungs but unable to do so. There was too much weariness, too much that was sad and offensive—on Christmas Eve. He reached the steps and started down to his car when suddenly, shattering the grounds, was a loud report—a gunshot. Payton's driver lunged out of the car, crouching in the drive, his weapon steadied by both hands.

MJ slowly shook his head and continued towards the back door of the vehicle. He was drained. There were no reservoirs of strength to draw from; his exhaustion was complete. Nor was there now the urgency to fly out to California. Inver Brass was finished, its leader dead by his own hand. Without the stature and authority of Samuel Winters, it was in shambles and the manner of his death would send the message of collapse to those who remained… Evan Kendrick? He had to be told the whole story, all sides of it, and make up his own mind. But it could wait—a day at least. All MJ could think of as the driver opened the door for him was to get home, have several more drinks than were good for him, and sleep.