The Fourth K (35 page)

Kennedy was very grave. In the most crucial moment of his life, there was no time for anything but the most straightforward dialogue. Officially he was no longer President of the United States. But he spoke as if he still had full authority as chief of state.

“I come to you tonight without rancor,” he said. “This great tragedy, this great blow to our nation must unite us. You must now know that I took the right course. This is the latest blow in the terrorist Yabril’s plan, the one he thinks
will make the United States of America sink to its knees, capitulate to his demands. We must now come to the conclusion that there is a far-reaching conspiracy against the United States. We are compelled now to gather our strength and act together. Surely now we must be in agreement.

“I therefore ask you to nullify your impeachment of me. But let me be honest, if you do not, I must still try to save this country. I will reject your act of impeachment, declare it unlawful and declare martial law to prevent any further damaging acts of terror. Let me inform you that this Congress, this glorious body that has protected the freedom of America throughout its lifetime, is now protected by six divisions of the Secret Service and an Army Special Forces regiment. When this crisis is over, you may again vote to impeach me, but not until then. This is the greatest danger that this country has ever faced, I cannot let it go unchallenged. I beg of you, do not let our great country be divided because of political differences. Do not let our country descend into civil war deliberately provoked by our enemies. Let us unite against them. Nullify your vote of impeachment.”

There rose a great murmur in the hall. The Congress realized that what Kennedy had told them was not only that they were safe, but that they were also at his mercy.

Senator Lambertino was the first to speak after Kennedy. He proposed that the vote be nullified and that both houses of Congress give their full support to the President of the United States, Francis Xavier Kennedy.

Congressman Jintz rose to second the motion. He declared that events had proven Kennedy to be in the right, that it had been an honest disagreement. He affirmed that the President and the Congress would go forward hand in hand to preserve America against its enemies. He gave his word on that.

The vote was taken. The previous vote to impeach the President was nullified.

Unanimously.

Christian Klee marveled at Francis Kennedy’s brilliant performance. There was no questioning his sincerity. But for the first time in all these years, Christian had caught Kennedy in an outright and conscious lie. He had told the Congress of the United States that Yabril was implicated in the atom bomb explosion. And Christian Klee knew that there was no such evidence. And Kennedy knew it was not true.

So he had been right, Christian Klee thought, he had divined what Francis had wanted him to do.

President Francis Kennedy, secure in power and office, his enemies defeated, contemplated his destiny. There was a final step to be taken, the final decision to be made. He had lost his wife and child, his personal life had lost all meaning. What he did have was a life entwined with the people of America. How far did he want to go with that commitment?

He announced that he would run for reelection in November, and organized his campaign. Christian Klee was ordered to put legal pressure on all the big businesses, especially the media companies, to keep them from interfering with the election process. Vice President Helen Du Pray was mobilizing the women of America. Arthur Wix, who was a power in Eastern liberal circles, and Eugene Dazzy, who monitored the enlightened business leaders of the country, mobilized money. But Francis Kennedy knew that in the last analysis all this was peripheral. Everything would rest
on himself, on how far the people of America would be willing to go with him personally.

There was one crucial point: this time the people must elect a Congress solidly behind the President of the United States. What he wanted was a Congress that would do exactly what he wanted them to do.

So now Francis Kennedy had to perceive the innermost feelings of America. It was a nation in shock.

At Oddblood Gray’s suggestion, they traveled to New York together. They walked down Fifth Avenue to lead a memorial parade to the great crater made by the atom bomb explosion. They did this to show the nation that there was no longer any danger of radiation, that there was no danger of another hidden bomb. Kennedy performed his part of the memorial ceremony for the dead and the dedication of the land to build a park for all the people to remember. Part of his speech was devoted to the dangers of unrestricted freedom for the individual in this dangerous technocratic age. And his belief that individual freedom must be subordinated to further the social contract, that the individual must give up something to improve the life of the social mass. He said this in passing, but it was much noted by the media.

Oddblood Gray was overcome by a sense of repulsive irony when he heard the deafening cheers of the crowd. Could such a terrible act of destruction be so lucky for one man?

In the smaller cities and rural areas, after the shock and horror had worn off, there was a grim satisfaction. New York had gotten what it deserved. It was too bad that the bomb had not been bigger and blown up the whole city with its hedonistic rich, its conniving Semites, criminal blacks. There was, after all, a just God in heaven. He had picked the right place for this great punishment. But through the country
there was also fear—that their fate, their lives, their very world and their posterity were in hostage to fellowmen who were aberrant. All this Kennedy sensed.

Every Friday night Francis Kennedy made a TV report to the people. These were really thinly disguised campaign speeches, but now he had no trouble getting airtime.

He used certain catchphrases and little speeches that went straight to the heart.

“We will declare war on the everyday tragedies of human existence,” he said. “Not on other nations.”

He repeated the famous question used in his first campaign: “How is it that following the end of every great war, when trillions of dollars have been spent and thrown away on death, there is prosperity in the world? What if those trillions had been spent for the betterment of mankind?”

He joked that for the cost of one nuclear submarine the government could finance a thousand homes for the poor. For the cost of a fleet of Stealth bombers it could finance a million homes. “We’ll just make believe they got lost on maneuvers,” he said. “Hell, it’s happened before, and with valuable lives lost besides. We’ll just make believe it happened.” And when critics pointed out that the defense of the United States would suffer, he said that statistical reports from the Defense Department were classified and that nobody would know about the decrease in defense spending.

He announced that in his second term he would be even tougher on crime. He would again fight to give all Americans the opportunity to buy a new home, cover their health care costs, and make certain they were able to get a higher education. He emphasized that this was not socialism. The costs of these programs would be paid for simply by taking a little bite out of the rich corporations of America. He declared that he did not advocate socialism, that he just wanted to
protect the people of America from the “royal” rich. And he said this over and over again.

For the Congress and members of the Socrates Club, the President of the United States had declared war upon them.

The Socrates Club decided to hold a seminar in California on how to defeat Kennedy in the November election. Lawrence Salentine was very worried. He knew that the Attorney General was preparing serious indictments resulting from the activities of Bert Audick and was mounting investigations of Martin Mutford’s financial dealings. Greenwell was too clean to be in trouble, Salentine didn’t worry about him. But Salentine knew that his own media empire was very vulnerable. They had gotten away with murder for so many years that they had gotten careless. His publishing company, books and magazines were OK. Nobody could harm print media, the Constitutional protection was too strong. Except of course that a prick like Klee might get the postal charges raised.

But Salentine really worried about his TV empire. The airwaves, after all, belonged to the government and were doled out by them. The TV stations were only licensed. And it had always been a source of bewilderment to Salentine that the government allowed private enterprise to make so much money out of these airwaves without levying the proper tax. He shuddered at the thought of a strong federal communication commissioner under Kennedy’s direction. It could mean the end of the TV and cable companies as now constituted.

Louis Inch, ever the patriot, harbored a somewhat disloyal admiration for President Kennedy. Still hailed as the most hated man in New York, he volunteered to restore the bomb-
blighted area in that city. The damaged blocks were to be purified with marble monuments enclosed in a green woodland. He would do it at cost, take no profit and have it up in six months. Thank God the radiation had been minimal.

Everybody knew that Inch got things done much better than any government agency. Of course he knew he would still make a great deal of money through his subsidiary companies in construction, planning commissions and advisory committees. And the publicity would be invaluable.

Inch was one of the richest men in America. His father had been the usual hard-nosed big-city landlord, failing to maintain heat in apartment buildings, skimping on services, forcing out tenants in order to build more expensive apartments. Bribery of building inspectors was a skill Louis Inch learned at his father’s knee. Later, armed with a university degree in business management and law, he bribed city councilmen, borough presidents and their staffs, even mayors.

It was Louis Inch who fought the rent control laws in New York, it was Louis Inch who put together the real estate deals that built skyscrapers alongside Central Park. A park that now had an awning of monstrous steel edifices to house Wall Street brokers, professors at powerhouse universities, famous writers, chic artists, the chefs of expensive restaurants.

Community activists charged that Inch was responsible for the horrible slums on the Upper West Side and in the Bronx, in Harlem and in Coney Island simply by the amount of reasonable housing he had destroyed in his rebuilding of New York. Also that he was blocking the rehabilitation of the Times Square district, while secretly buying up buildings and blocks. To this Inch retorted that these troublemakers were people who, if you had a bagful of shit, would demand half of it.

Another Inch strategy was his support of city laws that required landlords to rent housing space to anyone regardless of race, color or creed. He had given speeches supporting those laws because they helped to drive the small landlord out of the market. A landlord who had only the upstairs and/or the basement of his house to rent had to take in drunks, schizophrenics, drug hustlers, rapists, stickup artists. Eventually these small landlords would become discouraged, sell their houses and move to the suburbs.

But Inch was beyond all that now—he was stepping up in class. Millionaires were a dime a dozen; Louis Inch was one of the hundred or so billionaires in America. He owned bus systems, he owned hotels and he owned an airline. He owned one of the great hotel casinos in Atlantic City and he owned apartment buildings in Santa Monica, California. It was the Santa Monica properties that gave him the most trouble.

Louis Inch had joined the Socrates Club because he believed that its powerful members could help solve his Santa Monica real estate problems. Golf was a perfect sport for hatching conspiracies. There were the jokes, the good exercise and the agreements struck. And what could be more innocent? The most rabid investigator from congressional committees or the hanging judges of the press could not accuse golfers of criminal intent.

The Socrates Club turned out to be better than Inch expected. He became friendly with the hundred or so men who controlled the country’s economic apparatus and political machinery. It was in the Socrates Club that Louis Inch became a member of the Money Guild that could buy the entire congressional delegation of a state in one deal. Of course you couldn’t buy them body and soul—you were not talking abstractions here, like the Devil and God, good and evil, virtue and sin. No, you were talking politics. You were
talking of what was possible. There were times when a congressman had to oppose you to win reelection. It was true that 98 percent of the congressmen were always reelected, but there were always the 2 percent that had to listen to their constituents.

Louis Inch dreamed the impossible dream. No, not to be President of the United States, he knew his landlord imprint could never be erased. His smudging the very face of New York was an architectural murder. There were a million slum dwellers in New York, Chicago and especially Santa Monica who would fill the streets ready to put his head on a pike. No, his dream was to be the first trillionaire in the modern civilized world. A plebeian trillionaire, his fortune won with the callused hands of a workingman.