In universities there are chancellors, principals, masters, wardens, deans, bursars, professors, readers, fellows, and others in a variety of pecking orders. But a college’s head porter is definitely Senior League. As a former NCO in the 16/5th Lancers, Tim had coped with a few squaddies in his time.
When Simon and Jenny came back he nodded benignly and told them: “You’re with Dr. Keen, I believe. Corner of the quadrangle, up the stairs to the top.”
When they reached the cluttered room at the top of the stairs of their tutor in medieval history and introduced themselves, Jenny called him “Professor” and Simon called him “Sir.” Dr. Keen beamed at them over his glasses.
“Now,” he said merrily, “there are two things and only two that I do not allow. One is wasting your time and mine; the other is calling me ‘sir.’ ‘Dr. Keen’ will do nicely. Then we’ll graduate to ‘Maurice.’ By the way, Jenny, I’m not a professor either. Professors have chairs, and as you see I do not; at least not one in good repair.”
He gestured happily at the collection of semi-collapsed upholstery and bade his students be comfortable. Simon sank his frame into a legless Queen Anne chair that left him three inches off the floor, and together they began to consider Jan Hus and the Hussite revolution in medieval Bohemia. Simon grinned. He knew he was going to enjoy Oxford.
It was purely coincidence that Cyrus Miller found himself a fortnight later sitting next to Peter Cobb at a fund-raising dinner in Austin, Texas. He loathed such dinners and normally avoided them; this one was for a local politician, and Miller knew the value of leaving markers around the political world, to be called in later when he needed a favor. He was prepared to ignore the man next to him, who was not in the oil business, until Cobb let slip the name of his corporation and therefore his visceral opposition to the Nantucket Treaty and the man behind it, John Cormack.
“That goddam treaty has got to be stopped,” said Cobb. “Somehow the Senate has got to be persuaded to refuse to ratify it.”
The news of the day had been that the treaty was in the last stages of drafting, would be signed by the respective ambassadors in Washington and Moscow in April, ratified by the Central Committee in Moscow in October after the summer recess, and put before the Senate before year’s end.
“Do you think the Senate will turn it down?” asked Miller carefully. The defense contractor looked gloomily into his fifth glass.
“Nope,” he said. “Fact is, arms cutbacks are always popular among the voters, and despite the odds, Cormack has the charisma and the popularity to push it through by his own personality. I can’t stand the guy, but that’s a fact.”
Miller admired the defeated man’s realism.
“Do you know the terms of the treaty yet?” he asked.
“Enough,” said Cobb. “They’re fixing to slice tens of billions off the defense appropriations. Both sides of the Iron Curtain. There’s talk of forty percent—bilateral, of course.”
“Are there many more who think like you?” asked Miller.
Cobb was too drunk to follow the line of the questioning. “Just about the whole defense industry,” he snarled. “We’re looking at wholesale closings and total personal and corporate losses here.”
“Mmmm. It’s too bad Michael Odell is not our President,” mused Miller. The man from Zodiac, Inc., gave a harsh laugh.
“Oh, what a dream. Yes, he’ll be opposed to cutbacks. But that won’t help us much. He’ll stay Veep and Cormack will stay President.”
r /> “Will he now?” asked Miller quietly.
In the last week of the month, Cobb, Moir, and Salkind met Scanlon and Miller for a private dinner at Miller’s invitation in a suite of cloistered luxury at the Remington Hotel in Houston. Over brandy and coffee Miller guided their thoughts to the notion of John Cormack’s continued occupation of the Oval Office.
“He has to go,” Miller intoned. The others nodded agreement.
“I’ll have no truck with assassination,” said Salkind hurriedly. “In any case, remember Kennedy. The effect of his death was to push through Congress every piece of civil rights legislation he couldn’t get through himself. Totally counterproductive, if that was the point of the hit. And it was Johnson, of all people, who got it all into law.”
“I agree,” said Miller. “That course of action is inconceivable. But there must be a way of forcing his resignation.”
“Name one,” challenged Moir. “How the hell can anyone bring that about? The man’s fireproof. There are no scandals in back of him. The caucus assured themselves of that before they asked him to step in.”
“There must be something,” said Miller. “Some Achilles’ heel. We have the determination; we have the contacts; we have the financing. We need a planner.”
“What about your man, the colonel?” asked Scanlon.
Miller shook his head. “He would still regard any U.S. President as his Commander in Chief. No, another man ... out there somewhere ...”
What he was thinking of, and what he intended to hunt down, was a renegade, subtle, ruthless, intelligent, and loyal only to money.
Chapter 3
March 1991
Thirty miles west of Oklahoma City lies the federal penitentiary called El Reno, more officially known as a “federal corrections institution.” Less formally, it is one of the toughest prisons in America—in criminal slang, a hard pen. At dawn on a chill morning in the middle of March a small door opened in the frame of its forbidding main gate and a man emerged.