McAlister stopped the tape recorder.
The President said, “Jesus H. Christ! Did you get the names of those twelve agents in Moscow?”
“Yes.”
“The Russians will have to be told about them. Can a Dragonfly be — disarmed?”
“Yes,” McAlister said. “If the Russian surgeons know what to look for.”
“We can show them.” He shook his head. “Rice is so damned naïve.”
“And he must be echoing his mentor — A.W. West.”
“How could a man like West, a man who has amassed a billion-dollar fortune, be so simple-minded as to think that private citizens can overthrow foreign governments with impunity? How can he believe that he has any moral right to start a war just because he, personally, thinks it's necessary?”
“Lyndon Johnson greatly increased our involvement in Vietnam largely because he, personally, thought it was necessary. Nixon did the same thing in Cambodia, though on a smaller scale.”
“At least they were Presidents, elected officials!”
McAlister shrugged.
“How can West be so naïve as to think that he has all the answers to the problems of the world?” The President's face was no longer bloodless; it was mottled by rage.
McAlister had worked it out in his mind, all of it, over and over again and he was tired of the subject. He just wanted to go somewhere and lie down and sleep for sixteen hours. From the moment he had entered the Oval Office, however, he had been carefully leading the President in one direction, toward one particular decision; and now that they were halfway to that decision, McAlister couldn't allow his weariness to distract him. “We allowed ITT and a couple of private companies to get away with overthrowing, or helping to overthrow, the Chilean government a few years back. That was a dangerous precedent.”
“But didn't they learn anything from that fiasco? Look what happened to Chile after the coup d'état The military dictatorship was inefficient, inept, incompetent! Chile's inflation rate the first year after the coup was seven hundred percent! Because they interfered with the free market, unemployment eventually rose to fifty percent. There were riots in the streets!”
“I know all of that,” McAlister said. “And I'm sure that Rice and West know it too. But these people are what David Canning likes to call 'masturbating adolescents.' They live partly in a fantasy world. To them, there are never any crossroads in life, just forks in the road, never more than two choices, never more than two ways to see a thing: yes or no, good or bad, stop or go, buy or sell, do or don't, us or them.”
Frowning, the President said, “A lot of very nice people look at life that way.”
“Of course,” McAlister said. “But the difference between the nice people and the men like West and Rice is that the nice people, the decent people, aren't consumed by a lust for power.”
“Masturbating adolescents.”
“That's how Canning sees them. But that doesn't mean that they're harmless. Far from it. You read in the newspapers about wholesome teenage boys who murder their parents in the dead of night. A fool can be amusing — and be a killer at the same time.” He ran the tape ahead for a few seconds, stopped it, checked the numbers in the counter, and punched the Start button:
mcalister: Unless I'm mistaken, the Russian and Chinese operations are only two parts of a three-part plan.
rice: That's correct.
mcalister: The third part is for The Committee to take control of the U.S. government.
rice: That's right. That's the core of it.
mcalister: How would you accomplish that?
rice: Assassinate the President, Vice-President and the Speaker of the House, all within an hour of each other.
mcalister: But how would that give you control of the government?
rice: The President pro tem of the Senate is next in the line of succession. He would move straight into the White House.
mcalister: Let me be sure I understand you. You're saying that the President pro tem of the Senate is a Committeeman?
rice: Yes:
mcalister: That would be Senator Konlick of New York?
rice: Yes. Raymond W. Konlick. (Excited background conversation)
mcalister: But isn't it going to be rather obvious— everyone above Konlick getting killed, and him moving smoothly into power? rice: An attempt will be made on his life too. He'll be wounded. Shot in the shoulder or arm. But the assassination will fail, and he'll take on the duties of the Presidency.
mcalister: When is this to happen?
rice: Between two and four days after we trigger Dragonfly in Peking.
McAlister stopped the tape recorder again.
Unable to speak, the President got up and went to the Georgian window behind his desk. He stared out at Pennsylvania Avenue for a long moment. Then he suddenly jerked involuntarily, as if he had realized what a good target he was making of himself, and he came back to his desk. He sat down, looked at the tape recorder, looked at McAlister. “With what Rice has told you, will you have any real trouble getting hard evidence against A.W. West?”
“If you appointed me special prosecutor and gave me a topnotch team of young lawyers and investigators, no one could stop the truth from coming out. We know where to look now. We could nail West and every other man, big and small, who Rice knows is connected with The Committee.”
The President sighed and slumped down in his chair. “This country is just beginning to calm down after a decade and a half of turmoil… And now we're about to hit it with more sensational news stories, investigations, trials. The rest of my first term's going to be totally wasted. I'll have to spend most of my time defending your investigations against charges of political harassment. I'll be on network television every other week trying to reassure the public. Left-wing extremists are going to get very moralistic and start bombing buildings and killing people in protest of the cruelty of capitalism. And you can be damned sure there won't be a second term for me. Bearers of bad tidings aren't rewarded.”
Letting a moment pass in silence, McAlister then said, “And when the dust finally settles, the problem will still be unsolved.”
The President looked at him quizzically. “Explain that.”
This was the penultimate moment, the point toward which McAlister had been heading ever since he entered the Oval Office. “Well, sir, Rice won't know everyone behind The Committee movement.”
“West will know.”
“Perhaps. But we'd never get away with using the drug on him that we used on Rice. There will be some men who have extremely tenuous connections with The Committee, men who have protected themselves so damned well that we'll never nail them and might not even suspect them. Once the furor has passed, they'll quietly set about rebuilding The Committee — and this time they'll be much more careful about it.”
Sighing resignedly, the President nodded: Yes, you're right, that's the way it will be.
McAlister leaned forward in his chair. “There have always been madmen like these, I suppose. But our modern technology has given them the means to destroy more things and more people more rapidly than ever before in history. West can wage bacteriological warfare against a foreign power. And once that's known, the SLA will get in the act to wage a little of it here at home. The knowledge is available; they just have to think about using it. When the West case is in all the papers, they'll think about growing some germs.” He paused for effect. Then: “But there's a way to deal with these kind of people.”