Chapter 36

Don’t panic whatever you do.  Keep focused in the campaign.  Nothing has been said yet.  There is time to turn this thing around.  One strike will do it.

The President was kidding himself and he knew it.  Alone on a rainy weekend in the family quarters at the White House, he was panicking.  He angrily tossed the initial drafts of various campaign speeches aside; his campaign had lost some steam with the stalled economy.  Pollsters were telling him that rising energy prices, led by gasoline at the pump, were taking a bite out of the voting public’s pocketbook and he was being blamed for it, as if he were responsible.  While he was struggling with terrorism, his likely opponent, awaiting only formal nomination at the upcoming convention, was making hay on the campaign trail.

The terrorist strike on Russian oil facilities was a disaster in waiting if the electorate even had half a clue of its implications.   Rising energy costs along with his cozy relationship with the Saudis had also been called to account.  Why hadn’t the Front been decimated earlier?  For that matter, where was Bin Laden? Where was his erstwhile energy policy?  What policy?  It was mere political fiction.  All the American public knew was that the price of nearly everything tied to petroleum was rising because his policies were ineffective.

That linkage would eat me up if the American public only knew.  If they knew that the director was out there jacking the oil markets at their expense, I’m good as dead politically, guilty by association.  The director has leverage on me because he knows I have been completely co-opted regarding the crude oil market manipulation.  I can’t raise a finger publicly as to what is going on because he could run to the press.  If he as much as opens his mouth, I am finished in the election.  I had better kill him, and soon.

 The deal by itself was questionable, but those kinds of transactions occur every day.  Corporate CEOs get bailed out all the time.  It was no different for me.

The director had told him not to do it at the time, sharing his own bitter experiences.  Nonetheless, the banker had no political sense.  His own father had botched American attempts to put him in the Lebanese presidency.  What could the director teach him, the future master politician?

If I don’t take care of business here, crude oil prices could go to the moon.  It is now in the 40s, but what would keep it from 100 dollars per barrel if these strikes just keep coming?  And it’s because of my situation that the thing was kicked off in the first place.  Its timing, with the election coming up, was perfect.

The frustrated man in the White House had overlooked the indiscretions the director committed along the way, including the laundering hinted at by the CIA’s efforts.  Nothing could ever definitively be proven.

Mere indiscretions if he personally was not threatened.  Besides, he had hoped the Israelis would have taken care of business by now.  They even had screwed up Zurich.

In the past, during times like this the President had dug down deeply within himself, summoned all his resources, and had prevailed.  Now, that lousy Lebanese had made his move and scored, capturing the first piece.  The taste was bitter to the President, so confidently ensconced in his prerogatives and power and perks.  So willing to sacrifice others for his causes and presently so exposed himself.

Freeman said consider a deal with the director.  Freeman doesn’t grasp the essential equation of a deal. I know what the director wants, a very bitter step on my part, and even then I am not totally safe.  I still would have to forever trust this little wretch of a man who so desperately wants his freedom.  I will give him his freedom all right, the freedom of the grave!

The President, lost in his rage, mounting with every thought, snapped the red ink pen-so useful in jotting notes in the speech drafts-into pieces, leaving a red trail of ink on his hands.  Grateful that no one was around, he slowly wiped away the stain with his handkerchief.

The President steeled himself and relaxed.  The unmanned combat aerial vehicles were now poised off the coast of Lebanon.  If the Front or the director so much as made one misstep, he would feed their remains to the scavengers in the Bekaa Valley.  He had the mightiest military in the world in his corner, he had the Israelis, the intelligence resources of the government and the American people if he could summon the right rhetoric.  And he had Roger Freeman, the manipulator and designer of perceptions and polling numbers.  He had it all.

And what does the director have?  The President began to snicker in the family quarters.

For some odd reason, the last thought  reminded him of Stalin’s famous saying:  How many divisions does the Pope have?  However, the thought didn’t have a salutary effect on the most powerful man in the world.  After all, a Polish pope, along with one of the President’s famous predecessors, had sunk Stalin’s Soviet Union.  And where was Stalin now?  The hateful, vile tyrant was rotting in his dank tomb.

Don’t panic.  Don’t panic.


Back | Top