He removed the single paper clip from the document and handed three loose sheets of gray paper to the President of the United States, who cut his thumb on their edges.
Everyone agreed that paper could be very sharp. The President asked for water for the cut. The Secretary of Defense filled one glass half full. He passed it up the table.
"Thank you," said the President, knocking the glass into the lap of the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, whose turn it was to sit next to the President, but who complained that somehow the Secretary of the Army always missed his turn.
The Secretary of Defense poured another glass and hand-delivered it up to the head of the table where the President put his bleeding thumb into the glass.
"Be careful, sir," said the Secretary of State. "That document is water soluble also."
"What?" said the President, taking his thumb out of the glass and holding the papers in both hands. The right thumb went through the document like a spoon through fresh, warm oatmeal. The pages suddenly had a long thumb hole in them. "Oh," said the President of the United States.
"No matter," said the Secretary of State. "I remember what it said. Verbatim."
The Sunflower Team had been annihilated, said the Secretary of State. This team had been the counterforce to the Russian Treska which had operated so successfully in Eastern Europe. Sunflower had been destroyed when it was de-weaponed. The weapons had been taken away for fear of another international incident. Now the Treska was loose, blooded, and there was nothing apparently to stop them.
"Perhaps a stern note to the Kremlin?" suggested the Secretary of Defense.
The Secretary of State shook his head. "They have their problems too. They cannot stop. We have created a vacuum they are being sucked into. They cannot not proceed. They have their hawks too. After almost thirty years of cat and mouse, they suddenly had the mouse in their mouths and they swallowed. What do we threaten them with in this note to the Kremlin? 'Be careful or you will be even more successful next time?' "
The Director of the Central Intelligence Agency explained how the Sunflower worked and that it took a man an exceptional man at least five years of training to achieve the level of competence needed for that sort of clandestine killing. What was needed now to stop the Treska was another equally good small unit. Or a nuclear war.
"Or time," said the Secretary of State. "They will kill and kill until even the American public wakes up."
"And then?" asked the President. "Then we pray that there is something left to fight them with," said the Secretary of State.
"America is not dead yet," said the president, and his voice was somehow calmer and his eyes just slightly clearer when he said this. In some manner, a decision had quietly been made, and he turned the agenda to another subject.
He canceled a meeting with a Congressional delegation that afternoon and went to his bedroom, a surprising move for a very fit President. He shut the large door behind him and personally drew the drapes. In a bureau drawer was a red telephone. He waited until 4:15 p.m. exactly, then picked up the receiver.
"I want to talk to you," he said.
"I've been expecting this phone call," came a lemony Voice.
"When can you get to the White House?"
"Three hours."
"Then you're not in Washington?"
"No."
"Where are you?"
"You don't need to know."
"But you do exist, don't you? Your people can perform certain extraordinary things, can't they?"
"Yes."
"I never thought I would have to use you. I had hoped I wouldn't."
"So had we," came the voice.
The President put the red phone back in the bureau drawer. His predecessor had told him about the phone one teary day the week before he resigned. It had been in this very room. The former President had been drinking heavily. His left leg rested on a hassock to ease the pain of his phlebitis. He sat on a white doughnut pillow.
"They'll kill me," said the former President. "They'll kill me and no one will care. They'd celebrate in the streets if I were dead. Do you know that? These people would kill me and everyone else would celebrate."
"That's not so, sir. There are many people who still love you," said the then Vice President.
"Name fifty-one percent," said the former President and blew his nose wetly into a tissue.
"Ever the politician, sir."
"And what do I get for it? If John Kennedy did what I did, they'd think it was a little boy's game and some sort of joke. If Lyndon Johnson did it, no one would find out. If Eisenhower did it…"
"Ike wouldn't do it," interrupted the vice president.
"But if he did."
"He wouldn't''
"He wouldn't have had the brains to do it. Everything was handed to that man on a platter. World War II, everything. I had to fight for what I got. No one ever loved me for myself. Not even the wife. Not really."
"Sir, you called me for something?"
"In that bureau drawer is a red telephone. It will be yours when I am no longer President." The thought overwhelmed him and he sobbed.
"Sir."
"Just a minute," he said, regaining his composure. "All right. When that day happens, you will have that phone. Don't use it. They're bastards and disloyal and never think of anyone but themselves."
"Who, sir?"
"They're murderers. They get away with murder. They go around our country murdering civilians and you're going to be responsible for them when you're President. How do you like them apples?" The President served up a delicious grin amidst his banquet of tears.
"Who are they?"
As the former President explained it, John Kennedy-who never got blamed for anything-was really the one who had started it. Code name: CURE. "Basically, they were a vicious, disloyal pack of killers who couldn't be counted on in a crunch. When things were going well, they were your babies. But when the going got tough, so did they. They got going."
"You still haven't explained, sir. I will need an explanation."
The President explained. CURE had been organized because the government had come to fear that the Constitution could not survive the spread of crime. The government needed an extra boost in that department. But the extra boost itself was a violation of the Constitution. So without getting caught or blamed, with nary a peep from the newspapers or from anyone else, that good old liberal John F. Kennedy had plucked a CIA man out of duty and set him up with a secret budget. It was a vast secret budget. It had a network throughout the country, and no one except the head of it-a New Englander who looked down on people from California because they weren't born rich-knew about it. It had an enforcement arm too-a homicidal maniac psychopath, and his teacher, who was a foreigner, and who wasn't white.
"Sir, I don't understand how no one would have heard of it by this time," the then Vice President said doubtfully.
"If only three know of it and only two understand it and if you can kill anyone you feel like, as free as the breeze without anyone complaining, you can get away with anything. But if you are the President of the United States and a Republican and come from California and if your wife wears a plain old Republican cloth coat, then you can't even get away with trying to save the presidency and the country…"
"Sir. In my administration, I won't tolerate this organization."
"Then pick up the phone and say to them, you're disbanded. Go ahead… say that. Johnson told me about them and told me any time I wanted to get rid of them, all I had to do was say they should disband."
"And did you?"
"Yesterday."
"And what happened?"
"They said it was up to you because I was resigning this week."