said, “and we want to do as much as possible to protect your company. You and your company are very valuable to our nation’s energy future. You heard our conversation in the Oval Office?”
“Yes,” Kingman said, taking a sip of coffee. “Zakharov is in the United States? That’s very worrisome. How could Chamberlain and your Homeland Security people miss that guy?”
“Apparently he had an airtight alias, developed many years ago—completely legitimate. Basically he used his money and connections in the Russian government—and his position in TransGlobal Energy, I’m afraid—to get passports and visas into Mexico. He got himself a legitimate business, got his American visas and entry documents. Then he turned himself into a sleeper agent, going about his normal activities right under our noses, just waiting to activate himself.”
“My lack of faith in this country’s immigration system has been fully justified.”
“You remember this guy?”
“Of course,” Kingman said casually. “Think of Joseph Stalin on a good day. The guy’s a heartless, ruthless psychopathic killer. I cannot overemphasize the incredible danger we’re in to have him loose in America, especially if he has valid identification and financial resources. And I remember Pavel Khalimov too, his ‘enforcer’ in the KirovPyerviy oil company—he’s even worse. At least Zakharov would consider your value to himself and his schemes first before putting a bullet in your head: Khalimov wouldn’t waste the brainpower.”
“Why didn’t you have Zakharov eliminated yourself, Harold?” the President asked. He knew that Harold Chester Kingman certainly chose murder as one of his tools for corporate success—and he also knew that he was probably the only man in the world that Kingman would allow to ask him such a question.
“He got away and disappeared before I could tag him—to South America, it now appears,” Kingman replied. “I should have searched for him harder, but he had tons of money from his Russian oil company and he paid better than I did in Brazil.”
“What’s Zakharov after, Harold?”
“Me,” Kingman replied matter-of-factly. He lit up a cigar without asking the President’s permission—payback for him asking such uncomfortable questions. “He’s a twisted egomaniacal son of a bitch, Sam. He’s engineered dozens of killings and attacks against TransGlobal facilities all over the world for months, and now he’s after me here in the U.S. Only a wacko could ever believe he’d get away with it. If he can’t get me, he’s content to kill thousands of innocent persons.”
“What’s his next likely target?”
“Since he was based in the Bay area and returned there, I’d say he’s lining up something out there,” Kingman said. “Our corporate headquarters is in San Francisco, but it’s a relatively useless target—we’ve dispersed corporate functions out to dozens of different and more secure locations long ago. An attack there would be mostly symbolic —and Zakharov doesn’t really do ‘symbolic’ stuff. He likes to go for the jugular. He’s already gotten TransGlobal’s number-one petroleum and natural gas facility in the U.S. at Kingman City, Texas. Our number-two facility is in Atlantic City, New Jersey, but our number three is in Long Beach, California, and our number-four is in Richmond, California. My best guess: Richmond. He’ll kill several birds with one stone there: disrupt our Bay area oil terminal, along with five other companies’ facilities; take a swipe at my corporate headquarters; and attack right in my hometown.”
“We’ll deploy investigators and protective forces to all of your facilities in the U.S. and as many overseas as they’ll allow, Harold,” the President said, “but we’ll concentrate on Richmond. If he’s there, we’ll get him.”
“Thanks, Sam. I appreciate that.”
“You and TransGlobal are important to America, Harold—it’s in the government’s best interest to protect you the best we can.”
Kingman nodded, letting the obvious buttering-up routine slide off his back unnoticed. “So, how’s Chamberlain working out for you?” he asked after a few more puffs.
“He’s a great asset to me, Harold.”
“He seems to have matured a bit working for you in the White House, Sam,” Kingman observed. “When he worked for me he was an insufferable scheming weasel who liked to prove to everyone how important he was, although he was competent enough. You mentioned to me several months ago about that task force you were going to place him in charge of—I take it it’s not working out?”
“It was a great concept, but Robert seems to have picked some…unusual characters to be part of it,” the President responded. “I left it up to him, thinking he had thought about it extensively and picked the absolute cream of the special-operations crop to spearhead it, but it turns out he just picked a bunch of untested paper shufflers and lab-bound mavericks that couldn’t work well together.”
“Chamberlain can be an egotistic putz sometimes,” Kingman said, “but I always found him to be a pretty good judge of character—picking the wrong guys for the job doesn’t sound like him. Maybe he just got sloppy when he went into government service. I imagine being in Washington and having to deal with the brainless bureaucrats around here will do that to a man.” The President closed his eyes and chuckled, letting that comment slide off his back. “That’s why I stay away from this place as much as possible.”
“A couple of the task force members broke ranks and went down to Brazil to track down that environmentalist group, GAMMA,” the President went on, ignoring Kingman’s remarks, “and they stumbled across Zakharov and Khalimov. Got themselves shot up pretty good.”
“But they did track down this GAMMA and caught up with Zakharov? Sounds like they might have something on the ball after all.”
“Half the Cabinet wants their heads on a platter.”
“As I said, Sam, my complete and utter lack of faith in most of the government and its leadership has been more than justified lately,” Kingman said, filling the air over his head with pungent smoke. “Myself, I’d put my money on those guys that went down to Brazil, and fire everyone else.” The President nodded but said nothing, prompting Kingman to move on so he could get the hell out of there. “Anyway, Sam, I wanted to talk to you about this energy summit that’s coming up in Washington. You know I’m a big supporter of your alternative energy proposals, especially your nuclear power initiatives, which you’re putting before Congress this fall, but I’m not so sure that it’ll be safe enough here in Washington for this confab.”
“It’ll be secure, Harold, I guarantee it,” the President said. “It’s important this be held in Washington—I want this to be a U.S. government–sponsored initiative, not a corporate one or something sponsored by another country or OPEC.”
“So why do I need to be involved?”
“There’s no more powerful alliance we can think of than TransGlobal Energy and the U.S. government,” the President said. “I want to show the world we two are standing together: the world’s most powerful nation and the world’s most powerful energy company, working together to give our nation and the world the energy it needs. You are TransGlobal Energy, Harold. You have to be there.”
“I don’t go for these political dog-and-pony shows, Sam.”
“The world needs to know who the players are, Harold. If you just send some junior vice president of corporate communications or something, they’ll lose interest.”
“What about the environmental and antimultinational corporate lobbies? Aren’t you afraid of pissing them off? They represent a pretty substantial bloc of voters.”
“Yes they do, which makes it even more imperative that we stand together on this,” the President emphasized. “The American people react emotionally to the environment and to abuses of big corporations—but what they want are cheap and plentiful gasoline, heating oil, and electricity. We’ll convince them that with our domestic energy initiative we’ll give them what they need and be conscious of the other stuff too. We’ll talk about preserving and safeguarding the environment, but what we’ll do is start building nuclear power plants and natural gas-fired power plants and storage terminals again.”
“You’re the talker here, Sam—you always have been. Let me be the doer.”
“Do this summit for me, Harold, and you’ll have your pick of the best contracts before they go out for bid,” the President said. “I can also get you a heads-up on any congressional or regulatory agency probes coming out of the chutes.”
“I’ve already got all the spies I need on Capitol Hill, Sam.”
“Harold, do this for me, please,” the President said. “You and me together on stage—it’ll confuse the hell out of all your detractors. They’ll think you’re going to run for public office.”
“Hell, Sam, I’d shoot myself in the head first, and they know it,” Kingman said. He took another deep drag on
