Dragonfly

rice: That's right. That's the core of it.

mcalister: How would you accomplish that?

rice: Assassinate the President, Vice-President and the Speaker of the House, all within an hour of each other.

mcalister: But how would that give you control of the government?

rice: The President pro tem of the Senate is next in the line of succession. He would move straight into the White House.

mcalister: Let me be sure I understand you. You're saying that the President pro tem of the Senate is a Committeeman?

rice: Yes:

mcalister: That would be Senator Konlick of New York?

rice: Yes. Raymond W. Konlick. (Excited background conversation)

mcalister: But isn't it going to be rather obvious— everyone above Konlick getting killed, and him moving smoothly into power? rice: An attempt will be made on his life too. He'll be wounded. Shot in the shoulder or arm. But the assassination will fail, and he'll take on the duties of the Presidency.

mcalister: When is this to happen?

rice: Between two and four days after we trigger Dragonfly in Peking.

McAlister stopped the tape recorder again.

Unable to speak, the President got up and went to the Georgian window behind his desk. He stared out at Pennsylvania Avenue for a long moment. Then he suddenly jerked involuntarily, as if he had realized what a good target he was making of himself, and he came back to his desk. He sat down, looked at the tape recorder, looked at McAlister. “With what Rice has told you, will you have any real trouble getting hard evidence against A.W. West?”

“If you appointed me special prosecutor and gave me a topnotch team of young lawyers and investigators, no one could stop the truth from coming out. We know where to look now. We could nail West and every other man, big and small, who Rice knows is connected with The Committee.”

The President sighed and slumped down in his chair. “This country is just beginning to calm down after a decade and a half of turmoil… And now we're about to hit it with more sensational news stories, investigations, trials. The rest of my first term's going to be totally wasted. I'll have to spend most of my time defending your investigations against charges of political harassment. I'll be on network television every other week trying to reassure the public. Left-wing extremists are going to get very moralistic and start bombing buildings and killing people in protest of the cruelty of capitalism. And you can be damned sure there won't be a second term for me. Bearers of bad tidings aren't rewarded.”

Letting a moment pass in silence, McAlister then said, “And when the dust finally settles, the problem will still be unsolved.”

The President looked at him quizzically. “Explain that.”

This was the penultimate moment, the point toward which McAlister had been heading ever since he entered the Oval Office. “Well, sir, Rice won't know everyone behind The Committee movement.”

“West will know.”

“Perhaps. But we'd never get away with using the drug on him that we used on Rice. There will be some men who have extremely tenuous connections with The Committee, men who have protected themselves so damned well that we'll never nail them and might not even suspect them. Once the furor has passed, they'll quietly set about rebuilding The Committee — and this time they'll be much more careful about it.”

Sighing resignedly, the President nodded: Yes, you're right, that's the way it will be.

McAlister leaned forward in his chair. “There have always been madmen like these, I suppose. But our modern technology has given them the means to destroy more things and more people more rapidly than ever before in history. West can wage bacteriological warfare against a foreign power. And once that's known, the SLA will get in the act to wage a little of it here at home. The knowledge is available; they just have to think about using it. When the West case is in all the papers, they'll think about growing some germs.” He paused for effect. Then: “But there's a way to deal with these kind of people.”

“I'd like to hear about it,” the President said.

“There's a way we can defuse The Committee and yet avoid all of the investigations, trials, and public agony. There's a way we can keep the lid on the assassinations and all the rest of it — and still punish the guilty.”

The chief executive's eyes narrowed. “What you're going to suggest is… unorthodox, isn't it?”

“Yes, sir.”

The President looked at the tape recorder for several minutes. He said nothing; he did not move. Then: “Maybe I'm ready for the unorthodox. Let's hear it.”

“I want to play some more of the tape first,” McAlister said. “I want you to be even readier than you are now.” He switched on the machine:

mcalister: Then Chai Po-han is Dragonfly?

rice: Yes.

mcalister: If he was back in China way last March, why haven't you triggered him by now?

rice: In order to cover his absence from his room that night in Washington, we made it look like he'd been out carousing. We put him back to bed, soaked him in cheap whiskey, and put a pair of — a pair of lacy women's — panties in his hands…

mcalister: Oh, for God's sake!

rice: Because his roommate, Chou P'eng-fei, was more lightly sedated than Chai, we knew he would wake up first in the morning, smell the whiskey, see the lace panties. We didn't foresee, couldn't foresee, how these crazy damned Chinks would react. When they got back to China, Chai was sent straight to a farm commune instead of to Peking. He was punished for what they call “counterrevolutionary” behavior.

mcalister: The People's Republic is an extraordinarily puritanical society.

rice: It's crazy.

mcalister: Most developing countries are puritanical. We were like that for a couple of hundred years, although not quite so fiercely as China today.

rice: We wouldn't send an American boy to a slave-labor camp just because he got drunk and took up with a hooker. It's crazy, I tell you.

mcalister: They didn't see it as just “taking up with a hooker.” To them it was a political statement.

rice: Craziness. Crazy Chinks.

mcalister: Chai wasn't an American. Didn't you see, didn't you even suspect, that American standards might not apply? Christ, you fouled up the project at the very beginning! You screwed up on such a simple bit of business — yet you think you know how to run the world!

rice: It was an oversight. Anybody could have made the same mistake.

mcalister: You're dangerous as hell, but you're a real buffoon.

rice: (Silence)

mcalister: Chai is still on this commune?

rice: No. He was released. He arrived in Peking at five o'clock this morning, our time.

mcalister: When will he be triggered?

rice: As soon as possible, within the next twelve hours.

mcalister: Who is the trigger man in Peking?

rice: General Lin Shen-yang.

mcalister: What? General Lin?

(A flurry of indistinct conversation)

mcalister: Is General Lin a part of The Committee?

rice: No.

mcalister: Does he know he's the trigger?

rice: No.

mcalister: He's been used, just like Chai?

rice: That's right.