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THIRTY-NINE

Paul Massey sat grimly watching the six o'clock network news on WTFD-TV. The trial of the three mortarmen who'd shelled the White House got the biggest play; it was visual and exciting. But the president's speech, and responses to it, got a lot of attention too.

Massey had spoken little since watching the speech the night before. Rumors had been rampant on Wall Street for days of a major investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission, but he'd felt no concern. There'd been big SEC investigations before, and none had touched Massey. He'd been too well buffered.

But Haugen's speech had frightened him, he who couldn't remember feeling frightened since early childhood.

When the weather forecast began, he clicked the set off and keyed Tallmon's apartment on his intercom. A few seconds later, Tallmon's face appeared on the comm screen.

"Yes Mr. Massey?"

"I want to see you at once. In my office."

"Yes sir. At once sir."

Massey sat and waited, even his face immobile. When Tallmon came in, there was no offer of scotch and seltzer, just the order "sit," and a gesture at a chair facing Massey's. Just "sit"; Tallmon knew then that this would be a very unpleasant meeting. But he'd changed since he'd begun his covert revolt; he could confront Massey's displeasure now, however expressed. He sat.

"Haugen is still alive. The attempts on him were clumsy."

Tallmon didn't tell him that, of the publicized attempts, only the ninja attack and the rocket attacks had been by his contractors. The others—the mortar attempt and the fighter plane attempt—had been independent efforts. He also didn't tell him that only two other contracts were pending.

"Yes sir."

"Explain."

"The explanation seems to be that the White House is exceedingly well protected, sir, particularly electronically. There have been attempts on his life that were cut off before they got far enough to make the papers, and he scarcely leaves the White House."

"I do not employ you to explain failures." The phrasing was acid but the delivery monotone.

"Of course not, sir." Tallmon didn't trouble to remind Massey that an explanation of failures was exactly what he'd demanded.

The eyes that probed Tallmon's bland exterior were no longer rational.

"And the media; you were to direct a media war on the man. Yet the worst that I see in the papers is carping and innuendo, and the television criticism is mostly even weaker. There has been no concerted attack, while the clumsy assassination attempts have actually inspired a degree of sympathy and indignation.

"How do you explain this? Certainly not protection."

"May I speak frankly, sir?"

Massey's response was a long look and a short reply: "Do so."

"You have considerable influence, sir, but only limited power. There is a difference. In a sense, you are like the Pope: Important people listen to you, but they may or may not do what you want. You have no army to coerce them with, and in times like these, they are much less likely to comply."

Massey said nothing, just looked. Tallmon continued. "You inherited machinery of a sort for brokering power, but it wasn't designed for times like these. That was probably your great grandfather's biggest oversight.

"I was able to contract with people whose service is assassination; they are in the business. But the newspapers, the networks... You might influence their boards of directors, their chairmen, to a degree, but they are more interested in selling papers than they are in advancing your grandfather's philosophy and plans—a philosophy and plans they do not even know. And their editors are another step away from you; they don't know you at all. They know only their publishers, and often do not heed them. While their writers do not know the publishers; they know only their editors.

"Even those that you own, like the Bassett Chain, and the Foremost News Network before it lost its license, operate independently to some degree. There are none who undertake to follow your orders as slavishly as I. They have their own points of view, and their own interests to advance."

He shrugged. "When Haugen has made what they considered serious mistakes, they have jumped on him, perhaps more heavily because of your influence. But so far his mistakes have not been serious enough to result in serious difficulty for him."

Tallmon's voice had been quiet from the beginning, and patient. Now it became faintly sympathetic as well. "In a way, sir," he went on, "your true power is like a glacier; your great grandfather designed it that way. He and his associates set certain things in motion, to move ponderously in a certain approximate direction. Piece by piece they undertook to program the entire American nation to move in that direction, and things have moved in that direction. A considerable distance. They planted an orchard of institutions and nurtured their beginning, then allowed them to grow and bear fruit in their own time. They never intended to fight a war for power; cultural evolution was their mode, with themselves as the cultural engineers, so to speak.

"They never devised an effective steering mechanism for their glacier, nor designed any weapons other than financial—no instruments of quick and decisive, far-reaching command. They let it move inexorably on its own, confident that they or their lineage would be in a position to seize the crown when the time came."

Tallmon thought of adding that to seize a crown required a man of action, but he didn't.

"And the people you've engineered into positions of power," he added, "even Coulter, are not your puppets, but only people you influenced, who might be expected to act in appropriate ways."

As he spoke, Tallmon's eyes never left Massey's wooden mask. Surprisingly, Barron Tallmon felt a stirring of something like love, as if for a harsh father come upon hard times in his declining years. "Your great grandfather," he continued, "was a genius, a man of vision and resource. You inherited his wealth and his organization, but you did not inherit..."

Massey interrupted. "How do you know so much about my great grandfather?" The eyes burned cold and bitter.

"I read some things in your personal safe." Tallmon gestured at the concealing picture on the wall. "The book on the Archons, and other things."

"Then you spied on me." Massey's voice was still quiet, still expressionless.

"Yes sir. I used a tiny surveillance device to obtain the combination."

Quietly, Massey's hand had drawn out a desk drawer. Now it brought forth a pistol, with a silencer that made it seem larger than it was. Tallmon watched the muzzle move to point at him. And wasn't afraid. This is what we've been working toward all these years, he thought. He would have to hurry to tell him his act of ultimate treason.

"And I photocopied them," Tallmon added. "And sent the photocopies to General Cromwell. So far, he hasn't even seen fit to do any..."

The crooked finger tightened, firing the pistol, the .32 caliber slug striking Tallmon in the center of the chest. His mouth fell open, not from surprise, for he wasn't surprised, but in death. The bullet had pierced his breastbone and heart, and then the chairback. After a suspended second, what had been Barron Tallmon folded forward and toppled off the chair.

Massey sat expressionless for perhaps half a minute, looking coldly at the body. Then he put the muzzle in his mouth and pulled the trigger again.

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