“I won’t take much of your time. I need to know what you know about Max Masterson. Anything that might weaken his candidacy. And I want to know how you knew that someone took a potshot at him before I was briefed.”
Pryor shifted in his chair, his face showing that he was pondering how much to reveal.
“It is my duty to report to the president anything that could compromise national security. My sources report directly to me. Your sources report directly to you.”
Bland knew that the only way Pryor could know more than the CIA and its web of operatives would be for him to be involved in the conspiracy itself, and he was involved up to his eyeballs. If he reported directly to the president, Blythe’s complicity was confirmed by the feigned surprise the president displayed when Bland disclosed that Max was being targeted by mercenaries, a smoke screen. he was sitting in the same room as the ringleader. he struggled to remain expressionless.
“Bland, you and I go back a long way. You know how the game is played at this level. Anyone that gets in the way of our shared ideals is to be eliminated. That’s what the president wants, and you aren’t going to stand in my way. Don’t you think that if I had any dirt on that young rabble-rouser that it would be splattered all over for the world to see? It’s that damned privacy cloak that his daddy set up. We can’t penetrate it. If we could, we would have planted enough false propaganda to sink him for good.” he sat back and took a long draw on a cigar that smoldered in a crystal ashtray, the only adornment on his massive desk.
Clean desks can say a lot, Bland surmised.
“Mr. Director, I also report to the president, but I take it he has already been briefed on this. I anticipate that he will know of my visit by the time I leave the building.”
“he already does.”
u ChAPTER NINETY-ONE
Bland wasted no time in seeking out the president. If his position as intelligence secretary couldn’t get him into the Oval Office unannounced, then nobody could get there, and if a door opens in Washington, the opportunist takes it. It was of no consideration to him that the final debate was two days away. To continue to exist in this town and to save his own ass, he was going to take the initiative. The limo ride to the White house was brief but gave him enough time to gather his thoughts and make two phone calls from his secure connection. The first was to Luke Postlewaite. The second was directly to Max Masterson.
By the time the limo was two blocks from the White house, Bland had passed security, another perk of his being the symbolic head of the world’s largest intelligence agency. Once inside the building, he was ushered directly into the Oval Office and sat waiting for Blythe to appear.
The president came in red-faced and sweating, his jogging suit sticking to the lumps of adipose tissue it concealed. “Bland, this better be good. You forced me to pull out of an important meeting. Don’t you know that I am preparing for a debate?” Blythe was acutely aware that his intelligence secretary was not buying any of his window dressing, but he was equally unconcerned that his activities would become public.
Bland had no intention of engaging in social niceties. he would speak his mind for once, and get out, “Mr. President, I resign.”
“What the hell are you talking about, resign? You resign when I tell you to resign. I own you!” his face took on a deeper shade of red.
Bland calmly pulled an envelope from his suit pocket and slid it across the Kennedy desk.
“In my resignation letter, you will find my reasons. You and Adam Pryor have been implicated in a long-standing conspiracy to commit treason against the United States of America, and I have disseminated a full report, together with a recording of Pryor’s admission, that I obtained an hour ago during a visit to his office. But you already knew of my visit when you walked into this room, didn’t you, Mr. President?”
“Do you actually believe that the American public will believe you over me? You dirty . . .” Blythe slumped in his chair and pressed a concealed button. he was used to the immediate response of the Secret Service and was rewarded with the appearance of two black-suited men who stood silently on either side of Bland’s chair.
Bland was not easily intimidated. “I have also gathered convincing evidence that you authorized an attempt on your opponent’s life on the eve of the election. As I speak, this information is being broadcast on all major networks.”
Blythe growled in a tone reserved for professional wrestlers. “Before I order my men to take you away, I have a question. What do you expect me to do with this information?”
AT RISK OF WINNING
Bland paused, knowing that the words he spoke would be the last the president of the United States would hear from his mouth.
“If I were you, I’d be looking for a new job.”
“Bland, surely my own intelligence guy would know that I have nothing to do with Mr. Masterson’s recent string of mishaps. I am the most monitored man in history. If I allowed it to happen, every word I speak in the White house would be recorded.”
Bland watched the sweat form on Blythe’s forehead and imagined that he was interrupting another basement fencing match. The First Lady hadn’t been seen in public with her husband for a year, but she had his sympathy.
The president went on. “I said no to that idea. Didn’t think I should share everything with the voters. They might not like the real Warren hudson Blythe as much as the suit they see on TV.” he took a long swallow of imported beer from the can that he had pulled from a minirefrigerator disguised as a wooden file cabinet. he leaned far back in his chair before placing his stocking feet on the smooth walnut surface.
he sighed.
“You have got to understand, my man.” he took a longer drag on the can, draining it, and crumpled it loudly. “I will expect you to report to the American people the truth about me. I am innocent.”
Bland took a moment to absorb all the strangeness, then fired back. “Mr. President. If my job was to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, I would have been gone a long time ago. There isn’t a politician alive who can stand the truth.”
Blythe smiled and wiped his forehead. “Then we have an understanding, Mr. Bland?”
“No, you misunderstood,” he said, weighing his words. he fought the urge to speak the thoughts that were screaming inside of his mind, begging to get out. If he said those words, he wouldn’t be counting the days to retirement. he would be counting the seconds.
“If there is one thing that I have learned in my thirty-seven years in the espionage business, it’s the basic fact that the truth doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter whether you plotted with terrorists to kill off your strongest political opponent. You wanted it to happen. It doesn’t matter whether, years from now, you are vindicated, and the bastards who took you down are all dead along with you. It only matters what the people are thinking at the moment. You’re going to go down because the people believe you were involved, and all of them are pointing at you.”
Bland turned to leave and was startled to see two Secret Service agents standing at arm’s length and aligned with each of his shoulders. They were poised to immobilize him and restrain any movement he foolishly chose to make. These were his employees at the moment, but they answered to the man popping a beer behind his desk. he quietly left the room with his escorts at each arm.
With his intelligence secretary secured away from the world for the time being, Blythe ordered the door to the Oval Office closed. Using the voice-activated intercom, he notified his secretary that he was not to be disturbed, leaving his cabinet members waiting in the conference room.
u ChAPTER NINETY-TWO
Our intelligence secretary has betrayed the American people and has brought my administration into disrepute,” said President Blythe in a hastily assembled press conference. he addressed the world from the Oval Office and spoke in measured tones, his heavily made up face and hair resembling a caricature of his previously manicured features. Years of prescription drug abuse and a
lcohol had bloated him, and he no longer carried the swagger of a confident young politician. he was succumbing to years of stress and physical abuse, and no amount of makeup could restore the past.
“he has been taken into custody and charged with treason, the highest crime an American can commit against his country,” he continued. “My message will be short, as you know that in two days, I will be debating Masterson and Conroy in North Carolina. After that, I will be spending the final time before the election attending to the business of running this great country, as I intend to spend the next four years of my presidency.”
The camera and lights were turned off. “Are we through?”asked Blythe.
“Yes, Mr. President,” replied the cameraman.
“Good, now get the hell out of my office,” Blythe bellowed.
The assembled crew scrambled to comply with the demands of the most powerful person in the country and were gone in minutes.
u ChAPTER NINETY-ThREE
There was no valid reason for the president of the United States to enter into the most contentious debate of his career unprepared, but Blythe’s rapid decline was of his own creation. Inside the isolation of the White house, the only witnesses to the deterioration of his mind were the very same people who were there to promote his image. By design, Party Chairman Portman and Vice President Case spent no time in the presence of the president to witness it, but Presidential Advisor Ted Schoolcraft and Chief of Staff Walsh occupied the outer offices of the White house. They saw it manifested in the ever-growing wall he was building around himself.
The president of the United States, the most public high official in the political world, was under a self-imposed siege. Aside from brief public appearances to make recorded stump speeches before audiences handpicked by his campaign staff, Blythe was isolated from America.
As they sat in the White house conference room awaiting the 10:30 a.m. meeting that would never happen, Schoolcraft and Walsh assessed the situation.
“I’m getting that mushroom feeling again,” offered Schoolcraft, a personal joke that the two had shared since their first days of service to Blythe in the early days of his Senate race twelve years before.
“Keeping you in the dark and feeding you shit again? Yeah, me, too,” replied Walsh. “he’s lost it. I don’t just mean the presidency. I mean, he’s getting as cuckoo as he’s ever been, and if it doesn’t come out in that debate, I’ll personally get him an Academy Award. Better yet, a Pulitzer.” They chuckled quietly, but there was no humor, just a shared nervousness.
“I can’t get him to focus on this debate, he cancels a good portion of his campaign appearances, and all the press seems to be interested in is who Masterson will pick as his running mate. he needs to be out there pressing the flesh and looking presidential.” Shaking his head, he lowered his voice to a whisper. “he has this idea that an Independent can’t get elected. The polls say otherwise.”
Schoolcraft cradled his coffee and clutched a meticulously organized notebook. he could have reduced all of the paper to his electronic iPad, and he had, but he chose to have something more substantial to occupy his hands when he was dealing with Blythe. The president was mistrustful of electronic information and had demonstrated a fondness for throwing iPads against the wall to see if they would break. “Whether he pulls this out of his ass and wins a second term or not, I’m leaving this nutcase and going into the private sector right after the election. You should, too. Maybe we can both get a lobbying job and make some real money for once,” he whispered.
After a half hour of waiting, Blythe had not emerged, and they returned to their offices in the east wing. Another day wasted, and no time left to prepare for the inevitable.
u ChAPTER NINETY-FOUR
had his handlers known that he was abusing drugs and alcohol to mask his depression and paranoia, Blythe would have been micromanaged. But he carried his own pill container, which he used to supplement the medication presented to him as prescribed. Only his personal physician knew the full extent of the problem, but Dr. Oxley was almost as isolated from the president as the rest. A personal checkup was obligatory to convince the public that he was in good health, but two checkups per year were all that he allowed, and the details of his condition were barred from public scrutiny by the same laws that protected everyone else. Secretly, the president was getting stoned, and since his showdown with his intelligence secretary, his need to douse his anxiety had grown to new proportions.
Blythe’s campaign abandoned any hope of disgracing Max and Scarlett. As the two remaining candidates receiving more than twenty percent of the primary vote, they would be at the podium with the incumbent, and the focus of the press was on the final three. Max was far ahead of Scarlett in the polls, but she hung on doggedly, continuing to make stump speeches throughout the country. She had succeeded in eliminating her party from the campaign from the start, and for the first time in her life, she assumed the role of Independent.
For a traditional politician, going bare without the resources of the political machine was scary at best. At its worst, it was uncomfortably lonely. Just the same, Scarlett needed to remain viable as a candidate. Excerpts of her speeches were continuously broadcast to provide contrast to the highly polished rhetoric that was put out by Blythe’s reelection staff. In the last days of the election, her talking points had been repeated so often that one speech was basically the same as the one before it, and she had nothing more to contribute to convince the undecided to give her their vote.
Max made no effort to match or contrast either campaign’s message. his campaign was so unorthodox that there was no way to accurately predict the effect his message would have on the voters. he had made no speeches and had managed to shift attention to his campaign while obscuring his opponents in too many of their own words. There were only Max’s sound bites, accompanied by the intense attention given to Max himself, and a new disdain by the public for the usual process of electing the next president. It was a battle of the new challengers against the old. For the first time in modern history, an incumbent party was being challenged by two Independents, and the incumbent was stumbling badly.
“I need my notes. Where are my notes? Where are the questions? how the hell am I going to know the answers if I don’t know the questions?” Blythe sat in a barber chair, dressed in the same sweatshirt and sweatpants that he had worn for two days. he’d showered, but the old sweaty clothes were not replaced with clean ones, and his body odor was offensive to everyone in the room. he was vibrating with agitation.
AT RISK OF WINNING
“Mr. President, stop fidgeting. You stink like a dumpster, and I’m supposed to make you look and smell like a president. Go change your clothes.” Yawanna hawley was the makeup artist for the White house, and she had been there for three presidents before Blythe. her official job description was “image consultant,” a title bestowed upon her by hillary Clinton, and the title stuck. She didn’t have a political bone in her body and had no fear of being fired for her insolence. Greater men than Blythe had confided in her over the years, and she provided her own unadulterated version of public opinion. his predecessors had valued her opinion, but this one didn’t have a clue. Clucking with disapproval, she rattled on. “The Bushes had good hair, but don’t get me started about Romney. And I can’t wait to get my hands on Scarlett Conroy’s hair. I can always tell how well a politician will do by their hair, you know?”
he ignored her, but changed into the standard dark-blue suit and white shirt upon which the image of the president is built. When he had changed, he settled back into the chair and resumed barking orders. “Someone bring me an ice water,” he bellowed.
Two aides scrambled to comply, while Walsh and Schoolcraft continued to brief him on answers to possible questions. They had the mutual angst that they were bailing out a sinking ship with a thimble, and they dreaded the inevitable shredding of the Blythe administration during the debate. They had no major accomplishments to tout and wer
e only able to weakly defend a presidency that was mired in a malaise of endless wars and economic stagnation. There had been no promises kept, and Blythe’s belligerent approach to international issues had created many more enemies than he had brought into his camp.
While the president popped two small pills from his pocket, Yawanna went to work on his face. She carefully blended the red of his rosacea with the sparse natural flesh-tones of the rest of his face, all the while fighting the feeling that she was dressing a corpse. he had spent the morning drinking the rest of the scotch that he could find, and he radiated the heat and sweat that his body produced to expel the toxins.
Schoolcraft was the more optimistic of his handlers and spent the downtime reading questions and attempting to elicit a response. “Maybe it was wise to keep him bottled up and out of the public eye. he won’t stand up to Masterson and Conroy head to head, and it’s too late to do anything about it. Those political ads are at least two years old, and he’s sliding down a slippery slope to disaster,” he confided to Walsh. he stared at the raving madman and thought, “No amount of makeup will take away Blythe’s glazed eyes and wobbly mannerisms.” he pulled Walsh into an adjoining room, and once they were outside of earshot, Walsh blurted what they were both thinking. “I didn’t have the guts to confront him, to just walk in and shake him out of this. he should have been in rehab a year ago. But how would that have played with the press?”
he moved farther from the door, suddenly fearful of being overheard, then continued sharing his thoughts. “I can see it now. huffington would be sitting outside of the gates of the funny farm, and the press would be saying, ‘It’s the fourteenth day of the president’s rehabilitation, and the course of therapy is progressing nicely, while Vice President Case has assumed his role as world leader during this emergency.’”
At Risk of Winning (The Max Masterson Series Book 1) Page 25
