The Icarus Agenda

Their eyes locked, father and son acknowledged each other on the deepest level of their relationship. ‘I’ll call him and ask him for a meeting, all right?'

'That's not necessary,' replied Manny. 'It's all set up.'

'What?'

'He'll be in Los Angeles tomorrow at the Century Plaza for a dinner raising scholarship funds in honour of his late Secretary of State. He's cleared some time before then and expects you at the hotel at seven o'clock. You, too, my dear; he insists.'

The two Secret Service men in the hallway outside the Presidential Suite acknowledged the congressman by sight. They nodded at him and Khalehla as the man on the right turned and rang the bell. Moments later Langford Jennings opened the door, his face pale and haggard with dark circles of exhaustion below his eyes. He made a brief attempt at his famous grin but could not sustain it. Instead, he smiled gently, extending his hand.

'Hello, Miss Rashad. It's a pleasure and a privilege to meet you. Please, come in.'

'Thank you, Mr. President.'

'Evan, it's good to see you again.'

'It's good to see you, sir,' said Kendrick, thinking as he walked inside that Jennings looked older than he had ever seen him.

'Please sit down.' The President preceded his guests into the living room of the suite, towards two opposing couches, a large round glass coffee table linking them. 'Please,' he repeated, gesturing at the couch on the right as he headed for the one on the left. 'I like to look at attractive people,' he added as they all sat down. 'I suppose my detractors would say it's another sign of my superficiality, but Harry Truman once said, “I'd rather look at a horse's head than his ass,” so I rest my case… Forgive the language, young lady.'

'I didn't hear anything to forgive, sir.'

'How's Manny?'

'He's not going to win, but he's putting up a fight,' answered Evan. 'I understand you visited him several weeks ago.'

'Was that wicked of me?'

'Not at all, but it was a little wicked of him not to tell me.'

'That was my idea. I wanted to give us both time to think, and in my case I had to learn more about you than what was written in several hundred pages of government jargon. So I went to the one source that made sense to me. I asked him to be quiet until the other day. I apologize.'

'No need to, sir.'

'Weingrass is a brave man. He knows he's dying—his diagnosis is wrong but he knows he's dying—and he pretends to treat his impending death like a statistic on a construction proposal. I don't expect to see eighty-one, but if I do, I hope I have his courage.'

'Eighty-six,' said Kendrick flatly. 'I thought he was eighty-one, too, but we found out yesterday he's eighty-six.' Langford Jennings looked hard at Evan, then, as if the congressman had just told an extraordinarily amusing joke, he leaned back on the couch, his neck arched, and laughed quietly but wholeheartedly. 'Why is that so funny?' asked Kendrick. 'I've known him for twenty years and he never told the truth about his age, even on passports.'

'It dovetails with something he said to me,' explained the President, speaking through his soft, subsiding laughter. 'I won't bore you with the details, but he pointed out something to me—and he was damned right—so I offered him an appointment. He said to me, “Sorry, Lang, I can't accept. I couldn't burden you with my graft.”'

'He's an original, Mr. President,' offered Khalehla.

'They broke the mould…' Jennings's voice trailed off as his expression became serious. He looked at Rashad. 'Your Uncle Mitch sends you his love.'

'Oh?'

'Payton left an hour ago. I'm sorry to say he had to get back to Washington, but I spoke with him yesterday and he insisted on flying out to see me before I met with Congressman Kendrick.'

'Why?' asked Evan, disturbed.

'He finally told me the whole story of Inver Brass. Well, not everything, of course, because we don't know everything. With Winters and Varak gone we'll probably never learn who broke open the Oman file, but it doesn't matter now. The holy Inver Brass is finished.'

'He hadn't told you before?’ Kendrick was astonished, yet he remembered Ahmat saying that he was not sure Jennings knew everything Payton had told him.

'He was honest about it while offering his resignation, which I promptly rejected… He said that if I knew the entire story I might have squashed the bid being made in your name for you to be my running mate. I don't know, I might have, I certainly would have been furious. But that's irrelevant now. I've learned what I wanted to learn and you're not only out of the starting gate, you've got a national mandate, Congressman.'

'Mr. President,' protested Evan. 'It's an artificial—’

'What the hell did Sam Winters think he was doing?' interrupted Jennings, firmly cutting off Kendrick. 'I don't give a damn how pristine their motives were, he forgot a lesson of history that he above all men should have remembered. Whenever a select group of benevolent elitists consider themselves above the will of the people and proceed to manipulate that will in the dark, without accountability, they've set in motion a hell of a dangerous machine. Because all it takes is one or two of those superior beings with very different ideas to persuade the others or replace the others or survive the others, and a republic is down the drain. Sam Winters' high-sounding Inver Brass was no better than Bollinger's tribe of boardroom thugs. Both wanted things done only one way. Their way.'

Evan shot forward. 'It's precisely for those reasons—’

The doorbell of the Presidential Suite rang, four short rings lasting no more than half a second each. Jennings held up his hand and looked at Khalehla. 'You'd appreciate this, Miss Rashad. What you just heard is a code.'

'A what?

'Well, it's not terribly sophisticated, but it works. It tells me who's at the door, and the “who” in this case is one of the more valuable aides in the White House… Come in!'

The door opened and Gerald Bryce walked inside, closing it firmly behind him. 'I'm sorry to intrude, Mr. President, but I've just got word from Beijing and I knew you'd want to know.'

'It can wait, Gerry. Let me introduce you—’

'Joe…?' The name slipped out of Kendrick's mouth as the memory of a military jet to Sardinia and a handsome young specialist from the State Department came into focus.

'Hello, Congressman,' said Bryce, walking to the couch and shaking hands with Evan while nodding to Khalehla. 'Miss Rashad.'

That's right,' interjected Jennings. 'Gerry told me he briefed you on the plane when you flew to Oman… I won't blow his horn in front of him, but Mitch Payton stole him from Frank Swann at the State Department and I stole him from Mitch. He's positively terrifying when it comes to computer communications and how to keep them secret. Now, if someone will restrain the secretaries, he may have a future.'

'You're embarrassingly kind, sir,' said Bryce, the efficient professional. 'But as to Beijing, Mr. President, their answer is affirmative. Shall I reconfirm your offer?'

'That's another code,' explained Jennings, grinning. 'I said I'd jawbone our leading bankers on the QT not to get too greedy in Hong Kong and make it rough for the Chinese banks when the ninety-eight transition occurs. Of course, in return for—’

'Mr. President,' interrupted Bryce with all due courtesy but not without a tone of caution.

'Oh, sorry, Gerry. I know it's top secret and eyes-only and all that other stuff, but I hope that pretty soon nothing will be withheld from the Congressman.'