The Icarus Agenda

'I suppose there's a point to this,' said Kendrick.

'I suppose there is and I don't think you'll be offended. Since I've been here—since we've been here—everybody bows like gooks in front of me, saying all kinds of flattering things with big smiles—only with eyes that tell me they'd rather put a bullet in my head. I've been through it before; it doesn't bother me. But here you show up and you tell me to go fuck off. Now, that's really refreshing. I can deal with that. I mean I like your not liking me and my not liking you—does that make sense?'

'In a perverse sort of way, I suppose. But then you're a perverse man.'

'Why? Because I'd rather talk straight than in circles? Pointless lip service and ass-kissing drivel only waste time. If I could get rid of both, we'd all accomplish ten times what we do now.'

'Did you ever let anyone know that?'

'I've tried, Congressman, so help me God I've tried. And you know something? Nobody believes me.'

'Would you if you were they?'

'Probably not, and maybe if they did the booby hatch would turn into a registered loony bin. Think about it, Kendrick. There's more than one side to my perversity.'

'I'm not qualified to comment on that, but this conversation makes things easier for me.'

'Easier? Oh, that surprise you're going to lay on me?'

'Yes,' agreed Evan. 'You see, up to a point I'll do what you want me to do—for a price. It's my pact with the devil.'

'You flatter me.'

'I don't mean to. I'm not given to ass-kissing drivel, either, because it wastes my time. As I read you, I'm “counterproductive” because I've made some noise about several things I feel pretty strongly about and what you've heard goes against your grain. Am I right, so far?'

'Right on the tiny tin dime, kiddo. You may look different, but to me there's a lot of that stringy, long-haired protest crap in you.'

'And you think that if I'm given any kind of platform there might be more to come, and that really frosts your apricots. Right again?'

'Right in the fly's asshole. I don't want anything or anyone to interrupt his voice, his comments. He's taken us out of the pansy patch; we're riding a strong Chinook wind and it feels good.'

'I won't try to follow that.'

'You probably couldn't—’

'But basically you want two things from me,' continued Evan rapidly. 'The first is for me to say as little as possible and nothing at all that calls into question the wisdom emanating from this booby hatch of yours. Am I close?'

'You couldn't get closer without being arrested.'

'And the second is in what you said before. You want me to fade—and fade fast. How am I doing?'

'You've got the brass ring.'

'All right, I'll do both—up to a point. After this little ceremony next Tuesday, which neither of us wants but we lose to the man, my office will be flooded with demands from the media. Newspapers, radio, television, the weekly magazines—the whole ball of wax. I'm news and they want to sell their merchandise—’

'You're not telling me anything I don't know or don't like,' interrupted Dennison.

'I'll turn everything down,' said Kendrick flatly. 'I won't grant any interviews. I won't speak publicly on any issue, and I'll fade just as fast as I can.'

'I'd kiss you right now except that you mentioned something kind of counterproductive, like “up to a point”. What the hell does that mean?'

'It means that in the House I'll vote to my conscience, and if I'm challenged on the floor I'll give my reasons as dispassionately as I can. But that's in the House; off the Hill I'm not available for comment.'

'We get most of our PR flak off the Hill, not on it,' said the White House chief of staff reflectively. 'The Congressional Record and Cable's C-Span cameras don't put a dent in the Daily News and Dallas. Under the circumstances, thanks to that smooth son of a bitch Sam Winters, your offer is so irresistible I wonder what the price is. You have a price, I assume.'

'I want to know who blew the whistle on me. Who leaked the Oman story so very, very professionally.'

'You think I don't?' erupted Dennison, bouncing forward. 'I'd have the bastards deep-sixed fifty miles off Newport News in torpedo cans!'

'Then help me find out. That's my price, take it or take me replaying the Foxley show all over the country, calling you and your crowd exactly what I honestly think you are. A

bunch of bumbling Neanderthals faced with a complicated world you can't understand.'

'You're the fucking expert?'

'Hell, no. I just know that you're not. I watch and I listen and see you cutting off so many people who could help you because there's a zig or a zag in their stripes that doesn't conform to your preconceived pattern. And I learned something this afternoon; I saw it, heard it. The President of the United States talked to Samuel Winters, a man you disapprove of, but when you explained why you didn't like him, that he withheld endorsements that could help you with Congress, Langford Jennings said something that impressed the hell out of me. He said to you that if this Sam Winters disagreed with some policy or other, it did not make him an enemy.'

'The President frequently doesn't understand who his enemies are. He spots ideological allies quickly and sticks by them—sometimes too long, frankly—but often he's too generous to detect those who would erode what he stands for.'

'That's about the weakest and most presumptuous argument I've ever heard, Herbie. What are you shielding your man from? Diverse opinions?'

'Let's go back to your big surprise, Congressman. I like the topic better.'

'I'm sure you do.'

'What do you know that we don't that can help us find out who leaked the Oman story.'

'Essentially what I learned from Frank Swann. As head of the OHIO-Four-Zero unit, he was the liaison to the secretaries of Defense and State as well as the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, all of whom knew about me. He told me to rule them out as possible leaks, however—'

'Far out,' interrupted Dennison. 'They've got soft-boiled eggs all over their faces. They can't answer the simplest questions, which makes them look like prime idiots. Incidentally, they're not idiots and they've been around long enough to know what maximum-classified is and why it's there. What else?'

'Then apart from you, and frankly I rule you out only because my surfacing is about as “counterproductive” as your fractured grey cells could conjure, that leaves three other people.'

'Who are they?'

'The first is a man named Lester Crawford at the Central Intelligence Agency; the second the station chief in Bahrain, James Grayson. The last is a woman, Adrienne Rashad, who's apparently special property and operates out of Cairo.'

'What about them?'

'According to Swann they're the only ones who knew my identity when I was flown over to Masqat.'

'That's our personnel,' said Dennison pointedly. 'What about your people over there?'

'I can't say it's impossible, but I think it's remote. The few I reached, except for the young sultan, are so removed from any contact with Washington that I'd have to consider them last, if at all. Ahmat, whom I've known for years, certainly wouldn't for a lot of reasons, starting with his throne and, equally important, his ties with this government. Of the four men I spoke to on the telephone, only one responded and he was killed for it—undoubtedly with the consent of the others. They were frightened out of their skins. They didn't want anything to do with me, no acknowledgment of my presence in Oman whatsoever, and that included anyone they knew who did meet me and who might make them suspect. You'd have to have been there to understand. They all live with the terrorist syndrome, with daggers at their throats—and at the throat of every member of their families. There'd been reprisals, a son killed, a daughter raped and disfigured because cousins or uncles called for action against the Palestinians. I don't believe any of those men would have spoken my name to a deaf dog.'