“Sir, one of my Element members stumbled across the Jesus Factor. The real one this time.”
“How do you know?”
Bill stepped onto the shakiest limb of his professional career. “The Jesus Factor says that on certain days you can’t have a nuclear war.”
“Close enough.” The President sat silent for a second then erupted. “Ah for the love of Mike, I told you to drop it.”
“Mr. President, we were following the UFO angle and it cross-connected to the suitcase nukes.”
“What? Little green men with nuclear suitcases? Are you trying to give me a brain aneurism?”
When Bill finished filling him in, the President had calmed down.
“So we are contained?”
“Yes, sir. The man already works in our nuclear program and has been sworn again to secrecy on this one subject and will be here in two hours.”
“Good,” the President mumbled with his head down.
Bill bent down trying to reconnect to Mitchell’s eyes. “Mr. President, you aren’t going to have him shot are you?”
That made him smile. “Ah hell Bill, lets just make him our guest here at the White House until we figure out what to do about this.”
“That would be ‘White’ house arrest.”
“Call it what you like, but this is the most dangerous idea on the Earth. I can’t risk having someone out there with the power to destroy the world.”
“Whoa, now I’m lost, sir.”
“Shit; I’ve said too much.”
“What about me?”
“What about you?”
“Sir, I know what he knows. Am I also invited to stay indefinitely?”
The President got up and walked to the window. He clasped his hands behind his back. It made Bill think that if a photographer were there at that moment he would have snapped the defining picture of the Mitchell administration. It was like the famous moment of Kennedy during the Cuban missile crisis, snapped as he pondered at the same window.
The President came around to the front of the desk and sat in the chair alongside Bill’s.
“You know what the difference between you and me is?”
“You’ll be buried in a Presidential library and I’ll be in Woodlawn in the Bronx?”
“Odd thought, but I was going more for, ‘Not much,’ as a way of stressing what we have in common. We have been through a few close calls together. Me almost getting impeached, the rocket aimed at the nuke plant. Hell, I met your mom and dad.”
“I still want to apologize for the whole family album thing.”
“Sweet people. Bill, I know I can trust you. But I have to impress upon you how dangerous this is without actually telling you. So please just take my word for it. You don’t want to know what Jesus Factor is… ever!”
“Yes, Mr. President, but…”
“But? No one says, ‘but,’ to the Commander-in-Chief, Bill.”
“Sir, if we stumbled on to it, the bad guys may already know it or possibly stumbled onto it themselves. We should let Professor Li continue his work; see where he goes. Maybe by doing that we’ll discover how to keep it undiscovered.”
Bill was back in the State Department teleconference room with Joey Palumbo by his side. On the monitor in front of them, with the digital read-out “Paris” below it, was Yardley Haines seated next to a very much alive Peter Remo.
“I was talking to the D.J.; he was using those new Planotech Mark 7 power amps and he had them latched up in parallel and…”
“Peter, what happened?”
“Anyway, when I go back to the bar I can’t find my seat ‘cause I left my jacket on the back.”
“With your wallet in the pocket?”
“Yeah. Anyway I freak and start searching all around the club. A guy says he saw someone grab my jacket and head up the stairs. When I get to the top… it was horrible… the cops were there and the guy’s head was crushed right into the cobblestones. Then I hear the cop say my name. I turn and realize he’s reading my driver’s license. For some reason, I didn’t speak up. I just wedged through the crowd and went back to the boarding house.”
Bill looked to Joey with a nod that said,
“Did you know the guy who took your coat, Peter?” Joey asked.
“No, Joe. I mean, I wouldn’t know, because he looked like a pizza when I saw him. Do you know who he was?”
“He was a grifter named Henri Brochard.”
“Nope, never heard of him.”
“Peter, why didn’t you reach out to your family or someone to tell them you were alive?” Hiccock said.
“Billy, when you didn’t know what Jesus…”
“Hold it! Pete, don’t say it, just move on…”
“Right… Anyway you freaked me out, Billy Kid, so I wanted to disappear. France was a good place to do it. Bonnie had a place outside Paris, so I headed there.”
“Wait, Bonnie from Ocean Parkway?”
“Yeah, she’s singing here in France and doing well.”
“But we have you living in a boarding house.”
“Yeah. Bonnie’s living with a guy and they didn’t have room. But she had a friend who ran a boarding house.”
“He must have been thrilled when Peter Robot showed up,” Joey said under his breath gaining a glare from Hiccock.
“Anyway, Bill, the instant I realized they thought the guy in the street was me, I knew I was safe.”
“Pete, by order of the Secretary of State, Mr. Haines there will escort you back to the United States and through customs — no questions asked. I want you to come directly to my office. In fact,” he turned to Joey with a snide look, “Joey here will meet you at Dulles and personally escort you to the White House.”
“Pete, what got you so spooked buddy?” Joey asked.
“I called Kasiko in Queens when I left you. His housekeeper said he died in a car accident.”
“Where? We’ll check it.”
“In New York. But don’t bother, Joe. Kasiko didn’t drive.”
Joey looked at Bill.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
You wouldn’t know it from all the hype, but one of the worst beaches in the world is in the South of France. There, you can literally see the rich and famous from all over Europe and their beautiful, topless women, lying upon and walking over… rocks. Cannes has been the playground for the idle rich and the
“This is so much better than burkas and long black clothes,” Ross said looking out from the Croisette onto the array of topless women, some of whom were applying suntan lotion in a way that would temporarily revert any man to the age of 14.
