repairing the house. Manny's pace was slower and he sat down a great deal, but his illness had no effect on his ever-present irascibility. It was a constant; the only time he lowered his voice even a decibel was when he spoke with Khalehla—his 'lovely new daughter, worth much more than the bum who was always hanging around'.
On the fifteenth day Mitchell Payton, working with a young computer genius he had borrowed from Frank Swann at State, broke the codes of Grinell's ledger, the bible according to the inner government. Working through the night with Gerald Bryce at the keyboard, the two men compiled a report for the President, Langford Jennings, who told them exactly how many printouts were to be made. One additional report rolled out of the word processor before the disk was destroyed, but MJ was not aware of it.
One by one the big cars arrived at night, not at a darkened estate on Chesapeake Bay but instead at the south portico of the White House. The passengers were escorted by marine guards to the Oval Office of the President of the United States. Langford Jennings sat behind his desk, his feet on a favourite ottoman to the left of his chair, acknowledging with a nod everyone who came—all but one. Vice President Orson Bollinger was simply stared at, no greeting extended, only contempt. The chairs were arranged in a semicircle in front of the desk and the awesome man behind it. Included in the entourage, each carrying a single manila envelope, were the majority and minority leaders of both Houses of Congress, the Acting Secretary of State and the Secretary of Defense, the directors of the Central Intelligence and the National Security agencies, the members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Attorney General, and Mitchell Jarvis Payton, Special Projects, CIA. All sat down and waited in silence. The waiting was not long.
'We're in a pile of deep shit,' said the President of the United States. 'How it happened I'll be damned if I know, but I'd better get some answers tonight or I'll see a number of people in this town spending twenty years on a rock pile. Do I make myself clear?'
There was a scattered nodding of heads but more than a few objected, angry faces and voices resenting the President's implications.
'Hold on!' continued Jennings, quieting the dissenters. 'I want the ground rules thoroughly understood. Each of you has received and presumably read the report prepared by Mr. Payton. You've all brought it with you and again presumably, as ordered, none of you has made copies. Are these statements accurate?… Please answer individually, starting on my left with the Attorney General.'
Each of the assembled group repeated the action and the words of the nation's chief law enforcement officer. Each held up the manila envelope and said, 'No copies, Mr. President.'
'Good.' Jennings removed his feet from the ottoman and leaned forward, his forearms on the desk. 'The envelopes are numbered, gentlemen, and limited to the number of people in this room. Furthermore, they will remain in this room when you leave. Again, understood?' The nods and the mutterings were affirmative. 'Good… I don't have to tell you that the information contained in these pages is as devastating as it is incredible. A network of thieves and killers and human garbage who hired killers and paid for the services of terrorists. Wholesale slaughter in Fairfax, in Colorado—and, oh my God—in Cyprus, where a man worth any five of you bastards was blown up with his whole delegation… It's a litany of horrors; of boardrooms across the country in constant collusion, of setting prices for outrageous margins of profit, buying influence in all sectors of the government, turning the nation's defence industry into a grab bag of riches. It's also a litany of deceptions, of illegal transactions with arms merchants all over the world, lying to armaments control committees, buying licences for export, re-routing shipments where they're disallowed. Christ, it's a fucking mess!… And there's not one of you here that isn't touched by it. Now, did I hear a few objections?'
'Mr. President—’
'Mr. President—'
'I've spent thirty years in the Corps and no one has ever dared—'
‘I dare!' roared Jennings. 'And who the hell are you to tell me I can't? Anyone else?'
'Yes, Mr. President,' replied the Secretary of Defense. 'To indulge in your language, I don't know what the fuck you're specifically alluding to and I object to your innuendos.'
'Specifics? Innuendos? Screw you, Mac, read the figures! Three million dollars for a tank that's estimated to cost roughly one million five to produce? Thirty million for a fighter aircraft that's been so overloaded with Pentagon goodies it can't perform, then goes back to the drawing board and another ten million per machine? Forget the toilet seats and the
