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Chapter XXIII
Alex had an office in the White House and behind his desk hung a three-foot tall picture of Winston Churchill. The frame was gilded and so thick as to border on gaudy. Me and Winnie, thought Alex, we were cut from the same cloth.
Suddenly he was in with the really big boys, and the stakes - they were astronomical, so high they would cause a veteran gambler to tremble. This game allowed for no errors. The consequences of a bad move made death seem easy by comparison. Before now, he'd been playing only for himself. Not that he ever considered the possibility of failure or defeat. Such horrible words! Before this, if he had missed something, he had only himself and his father's image to deal with. Now, if something went wrong, he'd have unhappy partners in Washington, and a second set of unhappy partners in corporate America and the corporate Middle East - unhappy and very powerful partners.
Blackmail was a funny game - something like holding a scorpion by its stinger." On the one hand, Alex held all the strings and all the power. On the other hand, an unhappy partner, should he ever get loose, could have him killed. Of course he'd taken precautions. “In the event of my death, the following documents will be made public…”
No, he made sure that it was in his new partners' best interests to keep him alive and happy. But his victims had resources and power of their own. And he had to make himself an indispensable asset to these victims before any one of them figured out how to destroy the evidence against them.
This was life, not a chess game. Possibilities were infinite, and he, Alex, had to foresee all of them and plan. Contingencies, parries, thrusts, and counter-thrusts, just as in a fencing match - victory depended on balance and timing. Alex knew that his strength lay in offense. He had to keep the upper hand, and be several moves ahead of everyone else. Always on the offense. Be bold. Hit first. Hit hard. Keep hitting. Never let up.
The California campaign had been a huge success. The energy crisis had yielded over
$8 billion for his corporate clientele, and more importantly, it had left the state near bankruptcy and ripe for political takeover. Plans for a recall election were already underway.
But just when it looked like the Weasel’s problems had been whitewashed clean away, they began surfacing in the newspapers.
ENRON EXECS CHARGED WITH INSIDER TRADING
The once-prized commodities are now classified as ’junk bonds.
BUSH ADMINISTRATION TIED TO ENRON
President Bush fought against placing caps on the price of energy in California.
They were dark days, and Alex was groping for something, anything, to make the scandals go away and to make the president look good. The tabloids were digging up stories about the twins. The newspapers criticized everything – his tax cuts for the rich, his weak environmental policy, and, finally, like a rotting carcass, the Enron scandal stunk up the air around the White House and their friends. Adam Snavely, Weasel, and Allen Smythe-Huntington were safe enough, but some of their friends’ heads were on the chopping block. It seemed that Alex spent most of his days doing damage control. What he needed was a huge diversion. Alex had great friends in the news media who transferred much of the heat from the president to the Clintons, but, face it, they needed new material.
“We’re counting on you, Lidecker. This is where you earn your keep.” John Ambrose had barked a laugh when he said it, as if it were all a joke, but both men knew he had meant it.
The diversion had to be something completely new, completely unexpected and it had to be huge - the greatest piece of showmanship of all time. He’d been meeting with seven close friends from the CIA and FBI. So far, they hadn’t come up with any new scandal items because wiretap laws were too restrictive, so Alex was considering a new angle. Cloak and dagger was fascinating and it had never been exploited before – at least not in the United States.
The Seven Musketeers, they called themselves, and this was their fifth meeting - their fifth attempt to find a suitable diversion article for the news. “This may just do it,” said Ernie Martinez, switching on his recorder. Ernie and Alex’s friendship went way back – through the CIA days with their all-night stake outs, the close calls, and the night-clubbing until both of them were falling asleep in their whiskey.
“They’re planning to hijack planes,” said Ernie. He switched on the recorder. Someone was raving in Saudi, most of it swearing with allusions to dogs and pigs and Americans.
“It’s Al Qaida, of course.” Ernie stopped the tape and stretched. “They don’t have all the details pinned down yet from what I’ve put together, but they’re planning something immense.”
“Ideas, gentlemen. How can we make the most out of this information?” Alex asked.
“Instead of alerting airport security, what if we use undercover FBI – hundreds of them in each of the airports!” Eddie came up with the idea. “We could make it look like a miniature scale war, a real life cops and robbers show. We play up the good versus evil aspect.”
Marty Stillman puffed on his cigarette. “Could work,” he said. “We pick an agent to be the hero and do him up in all the papers. That’d take the heat off of Enron for weeks.”
Scott Holmes, the newest and youngest Musketeer, all but hiccupped with excitement, so anxious was he to fit in. “And we do follow-up stories on the FBI and the CIA. Disaster narrowly averted thanks to shrewd work by our undercover agents. We pick a couple of agents with interesting stories in their lives - a handicapped kid, a battle with cancer - you know what I mean. And we show their families and do clips of their wives and mothers talking passionately about their heroes. Later, any time Enron starts to surface, we do feature articles about out FBI heroes, and relegate Enron to page 25 where hardly anyone sees it.”
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