Chapter 66

Chapter 66—Allison explains 

about the recordings

12:30 p.m., Friday, December 30

Allison reluctantly confessed: “Apparently someone got hold of my summaries. … After every meeting I recorded a summary on a thumb drive. It looks like they used my recorded notes for the third meeting—the one Jerry missed.”
 “What a bunch of jackasses. Reminds me of the gang that couldn’t shoot straight …”
Allison interrupted Bob’s diatribe, before she totally lost her temper. “Shall I go on?” she asked rhetorically. “Anyway, I thought Jerry’s suggestion was a stretch, But it got me thinking. He suggested that there was a powerful undercurrent in this country, and that it might end up in a shortened term for the current President, and that I needed a game plan should that occur.”
“Fat damn chance of an impeachment. Look what fools I made of them when they tried to screw me over. Won’t happen. Especially with our guys in the Senate—the ones that are still there. Won’t happen.”
Allison paused, and then said “he wasn’t talking about impeachment.”
There was dead silence in the car for an uncomfortable length of time. “Al, exactly what the hell are you suggesting?”
“What Jerry was alluding to was what he considers to be a very real possibility—that the radical right, the fringe, might try to pull something off.”
“Are you talking about an assassination of the President of the United States? That’s serious business—too damn serious. … And someone recorded these meetings?” Bob said, sounding very agitated.
“Appears to be so,” Allison answered, “but we do not know for sure exactly who it was, or what their intentions were. But it does appear … actually, it’s virtually certain, someone has tapes. And, as I said, James is confident that it is Mossad.”
“Do you know for certain that there are tapes?” Bob asked.
“We received a phone call, actually James received a phone call, from a reporter we had never heard of, and he read segments of what he said was a transcription of some private conversations. Then this reporter dropped off a transcript in James’ mailbox. James and I read it, and it appears to be very accurate.”
“Was James a party at those meetings?” Bob asked.
“Yes, he was one of four, plus myself.
“What did you discuss at those meetings?”
“At first, it was all speculative—such as what sort of things we could do to improve our chances with Congress. Then it quickly turned to where Jerry suspected it would go—what might we expect to happen should the President die, or be killed? How should we react to it? How can we position ourselves to be ready to step in, after all there is a VP.”
“Oh my God,” Bob said, “God help us if that old lying bastard ever becomes President. If anyone ever earned an early demise, he would get my vote. This new guy is a panty waist, but he’s not as stupid as his VP.”
Bob paused a moment, and then continued, “Well, what did you come up with? How did you determine you should posture yourself in that event?”
“That’s when it started to get a little troublesome. Vice President Roberts is an old man—some think he is getting senile. Jerry thought that we should strike a deal with him. In the event of an assassination, Roberts would nominate me for VP. We would meet immediately after the event, and he would choose me. That would help provide stability. And it would be quite logical, my having served with you in the White House. I should have no problem with confirmation. Roberts could finish out the term, and he would be too old to run in the next general.”
“Yeah, that way he could get his picture on a postage stamp,” Bob quipped. “That ought to make him happy.” Bob thought for a moment. … “Well, those tapes are a problem all right. But they demonstrate bad judgment, not a crime. … At least not yet. Hell, the President has contingency plans to bomb every city in the world—but that does not mean anything. Just that he is being prudent. There’s nothing wrong for the VP to have a contingency plan in the event that he should suddenly become President.”
“Unfortunately, it didn’t stop there,” Allison said.
“What does that mean?”
“At the second meeting, Jerry made a comment that got us all thinking. He said something like this: Look, we could spend a long time getting ready for something that might or might not happen. And if it does happen, who knows the when or the how? And if it doesn’t, we would have wasted a lot of time and resources. Too bad we could not nail it down, so that we could work our way up to it in an orderly fashion.”
Allison stopped talking for a moment. She wanted Bob to have a chance to digest what she had just laid out for him. For a few moment—that seemed like an eternity—both were silent.
She then continued, “We all just stared at each other for a minute. Then Jerry suggested that if we infiltrated the radical right, and found out just what they were planning, it would help us plan.”
Bob, who was growing more angry by the second, interrupted: “Jerry has always been full of it. What the hell was he thinking? You can’t infiltrate those buffoons. Nobody on our side is that stupid, or that ugly. Besides, if an assassination were to happen, it would not be organized. Two skinheads would get to talking about it. Then they would get drunk—or high on something. That would lead to bragging, and then they would try to pull it off. If they’re any good, or lucky—and if they have half a brain between them—they might actually be successful.
“But that, my dear Allison, is a whole bunch of ‘ifs.’ The only person who could do any contingency planning is the guy who is actually plotting the assassination.”
“And that’s what we concluded,” Allison said.
“That’s what you concluded? Exactly what does that mean?”
“That’s what meetings three and four were about: possible facilitation.”
“Facilitation? Facilitation of exactly what?” Bob asked.
“We discussed, hypothetically, the pros and cons of facilitating the event, just in case the right never could successfully pull it off. We thought it would be good to set up a time frame. We could not control when the earliest possibility might be; so we thought it wise to start gearing up immediately. Initially our guess was that it could not happen before the middle of his fourth year. But Reginald changed our thinking. He said the sooner the better. He was talking weeks.
“The plan was to make it look that the assassination was the work of the other guys. You know how that works—our guy gets killed by the other side, so our guys get the sympathy vote.”
“I cannot believe it. You were plotting the assassination of a sitting President.” Bob glared over his glasses at a nervous Allison as he slowly mouthed these words.
“It was all hypothetical, at first. Our reasoning was this: If I did not become VP until the middle of the fourth year of the President’s term, I would have too little time to establish my positions, vis-á-vis the current President. And Roberts would need some time to prove just what a fool he is. Later than that, he might somehow get himself nominated and elected. We could not allow that.”
“Let me see if I’ve got this right. You and your buddies were meeting privately, secretly, and the topic of your conversations centered around the assassination of the President. Is that about right?”
“You make it sound so callous. As I said, we feared that it was going to happen whether or not we facilitated it. We calculated that the best thing for the country was simply to use it to our advantage.”
“Callous? Just how delicate would you like it? When you start talking about ‘facilitating’ an assassination, it is anything but hypothetical—and it is never gentile.  That’s called a conspiring to assassinate a President. You and your buddies were hatching a plot. That’s exactly what that was. Get caught and convicted—you hang. Now you’ve got me involved. … Al, I thought you were smarter than this.”
“Are you here to help, or drive in another dagger?”
“Al, I want to help, but you’ve dug a very deep hole.”
“I know it’s bad—that’s why we’re talking. We have to find a solution. That’s what that business with James is all about, something to buy us some time.”
It had been several minutes since Bob had actually looked at Allison.  “How does that work?” he asked. “That business about your affair with James?”
“James thought that if we cooked up this story about an affair, between him and me, it would steal the news cycle, for this weekend at least. We don’t know what this reporter has in mind with the story—if he’s going to run with it, or not. And if so, where? We don’t even know if he is a real reporter. These are all unknowns. Altogether too many unknowns. We needed some time to sort it out, and James thought this bogus affair would provide it.”
“You mean you’re not sleeping with James?”
“Of course not.”
Bob chuckled slightly, and said, “So, you have just confessed to an affair that did not happen? Oh my God, am I hearing what I think I’m hearing?”
“I don’t believe for a second that you are surprised to hear that,” Allison said with a note of sarcasm.
“Actually,” Bob said, turning to look at Allison, “I’m not at all shocked that the two of you hatched this scheme. It sounds a lot like something James would come up with.”
The two of them sat there for a few moments, without either of them speaking a word.  Finally, Bob broke the silence. “If you don’t know who this guy is, or what outlet he represents, what makes you so sure he is a reporter? Maybe this is some sort of blackmail scheme.”
“We considered that. But nothing was ever mentioned about money, quid pro quo, or anything that resembled what one might expect if it were extortion. It had the sense of a story. It just felt typical, like this guy got hold of these transcripts, and wanted to publish them. It had the smell of a Watergate.”
“Watergate?” Bob said. “Hell, this is nothing like Watergate. Watergate was chewing gum compared to what you guys got on your shoes.” He paused a moment, then said, “ Transcripts, you say? Not tapes? Not recordings?” Bob appeared to be deep in thought.
“No recordings, but from what we read it seemed as though it had been transcribed verbatim. They had to have been transcribed from a recording.”
“Then what is this?” Bob asked Allison, removing a small thumb drive from his pocket and holding it up. He did it almost as though he was sticking it in her face.
Allison got a quick glimpse of it, and turned away. “I don’t know, what is it?” she replied.
“It sounds like you dictating something. What’s this all about?”
Allison snatched the stick from his hand, and briefly examined it. She immediately recognized the writing on it as her own.
“How did you get this?” she asked, exhibiting extreme signs of frustration. It appeared as though her husband had her summarizations of the meetings. She could not be sure without putting it in a computer, but it certainly did look like her drive, the one that had, just hours early, been stolen from her by whom she thought to be Mossad agents.
“If that’s what I think it is, then I want to know how you got it,” Allison said, now in full attack mode.
“Well, I’m pretty sure it is what you think it is,” Bob replied. “It’s okay, you can keep it. I just want to know how you could be so careless. The encryption on the original was child’s play. Any fifteen-year-old could have cracked it. What’s that old clich»? Loose lips sink ships.”
“So, did you listen to it?” Allison asked, her voice signaling her anger. She was furious that Bob had the thumb drive, that he made fun of her attempts to secure it, that he had let her go on when he already knew about the plot, and that he was lecturing her about the whole matter.
She was deeply embarrassed that she had allowed this potential disaster to occur. The only bright side, in her mind, was that Bob was now totally engaged. And when Bob accepted a challenge, things happened. And problems, even big ones, always seemed to have a way of going away—when Bob was fully engaged.
Allison thought it best to just sit there until she had calmed down. Bob knew she was angry, and he was willing to back off the sarcasm, and shift into solution mode.
“Okay, let’s see if I’ve got this straight,” Bob said, as he began to summarize the situation. “Stop me if I’m wrong, or if I’m leaving something important out. You and four others began meeting a short time ago discussing a strategy in the event that the President were to leave office before the end of his term.”
Bob paused, to give Allison a chance to add something should she wish to. “That’s where it went, but initially we were discussing election strategies,” she said.
“Whatever,” Bob continued. “Then, Jerry, acting like that damn idiot I’ve always known him to be, suggested that it might be a good idea to become a bit more proactive. In other words, he thought you guys should prepare to take matters into your own hands, should the other idiots, those Nazis in that other party, not be able to pull it off in a timely fashion. Is that about right, so far?”
Bob then stopped to again give Allison a chance to speak. He had not wanted to lose his temper, but he was very furious about this whole incident. Allison did not even acknowledge the pause. She did not acknowledge her husband, or anything he was saying. Had he been wrong, she would have spoken up; but her silence could rightly be interpreted as agreement.
Bob then continued. “Now, it turns out, someone tapped into Bionic Jerry’s cochlear implant.” Bob stopped, he was fuming again. “Why does this remind me of the Four Stooges? Damn it. All those years we worked together. All the tough times we’ve been through, and you pull this ...”
“Shut your damn mouth, you sonofabi**h.”