Permanent Interests (40 page)

Pundits predicted that Jalbert's winning momentum would sweep Congress as well. Yet more Yakov assets, therefore, would fall by the wayside. Without access to power, Yakov's burgeoning illicit business ventures would become 356 JAMES

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targets of law enforcement agencies and criminal competitors. The intelligence he gathered to sell to the SVR and others would dry up overnight. Dennison didn't need to draw pictures for the Russian parvenu. Yakov seized the opportunity to be catspaw for those who would hold onto power at all costs. It was a continuation of a symbiotic relationship. This particular operation simply could not fail. He would see to it personally.

"I hate Greyhound buses. I hope they go bankrupt,"

Colleen spat as she and Innes disembarked from their sixth bus since leaving San Francisco two days earlier. It was late afternoon.

"Once our lives are back to normal, we won't have to travel like Paul Muni fleeing the chain gang," Innes said.

"We stink," Colleen protested. She let her K-Mart travel bag plop onto the concrete pavement. She looked at Innes defiantly and blew a wayward lock from her forehead.

"We'll find a room."

"We're

broke."

"Maybe Wheeler's wired some funds. I'll check."

"He doesn't give a hoot about us."

Losing his patience, Innes put his face inches from hers.

"I've had it with your bellyaching! If you really want to give up, then do it! Go back to D.C. If you make it back there alive and free, do let me know!" He turned on his heel, picked up his duffle and began to walk away.

Thirty seconds later, she was trodding one step behind him to his side. No further verbal exchanges took place.

They took a room at "Madame Toussaint's Pension," just outside the
Vieux Carré
. An abbreviated bed that filled a tiny room in a third-floor walk-up with a communal bath, it PERMANENT INTERESTS

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was nonetheless a welcome perch from days of being on the run. The mellifluous strains of old-time jazz filled the air. Another sign of New Orleans coming back to life.

Showered, Colleen plunked herself on the bed and fell instantly into a deep slumber. The music and the chance to rest put a smile on her face.

"What are you doing?" Innes asked. He shook her.

"Get up. We've got to see Jalbert's people."

"Go to hell," she mumbled and turned the other way, burying her head under the pillow.

Innes grabbed the corners of the sheets and, like a magician doing the old table cloth flick trick, yanked hard.

Colleen went tumbling onto the floor.

She sat upward. Her wet, tousled hair over her face gave her a wild look. She looked up at Innes with rage-filled eyes. In a flash, she was at his throat with both hands, then pummeled him on the chest. "I'm not going, goddamn it! I
hate
this running around!" She screeched like an angry cat.

Innes subdued her and pinned her on the bed. In patient, succinct words, he commanded, "Stop it. Stop it. Get hold of yourself. We're in this together. Soon it will be all over.

All over
. Do you hear me?"

She stopped struggling and turned her head to the side.

She nodded. Then looked directly at Innes. With a breath of resignation, she murmured, "Okay. Let's get going."

Among the many monuments of the American Civilization, the Louisiana Superdome stood out, in its brobdignagian enormity, as one of the most enduring. Eons from now, when America's past would have to be parsed from dust and artifacts, the Superdome would stand, like 358 JAMES

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Egyptian pyramids or Roman coliseums, defiant against time as mute testimony to a great civilization.

"Wow," is all Innes and Colleen could say as they craned their necks to view the 27-story high, eight-acre structure. "It looks like that enormous UFO in
Cocoon
,"

Innes observed.

They approached a guard. "Pass?" he asked.

"We don't have passes. But we need to see the Jalbert campaign people," Innes replied.

"Sorry. No pass, no entry."

Innes thought quickly. He pulled out his wallet and removed his State Department building pass. Colleen produced hers as well. "U.S. Department of State. Here for the convention. We need to obtain Superdome passes.

Who do we contact?"

The guard studied the eagle-emblazoned, security-stripped I.D.'s carefully, but quizzically. He directed them to the security office.

There, they explained their purpose to a very junior, crew-cutted security aide in a stiff blue blazer.

"Assassination plot? Russians? American officials?

Uh, wait here."

A burly, unsmiling, authoritative-looking fellow sauntered into the small ante-room. "You folks got something to tell us about a security threat?" His badge said, "Hefflin, James R., Deputy Chief of Security."

In a nearby cubicle, a female worker was laminating building passes. He placed the finished items into a plastic tray.

The pair again recounted the danger to Jalbert.

Hefflin pursed his lips. "Well, that's very interesting.

We'll keep a heightened alert for any threats. We'll especially keep an eye out for Secretary Dennison and PERMANENT INTERESTS

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anyone else from the White House who might try to infiltrate," he humored them.

Innes could see what was happening. "Wait a minute.

You think we're nuts, don't you?"

Hefflin looked down and made a whistling sound as he toyed with a stapler.

"Look, damn it. We're serious here. If you don't warn Jalbert's people…"

Hefflin took his job seriously. "I'll tell you what I'm gonna do. There's some FBI guys here you can talk to.

They listen to everybody."

Innes made a halting gesture with both hands. "No. Not the FBI."

"Why not? Are they in on the 'plot' too?"

"We're not sure where they stand. It's best not to include them right now."

Hefflin lost all patience. He looked at his watch. "Well, folks. I'm a busy man. We got a political convention to take care of. Got over 50,000 people streamin' in from all over the country." He showed them the door. The young aide stood menacingly with his arms folded.

Innes and Colleen got up. "You really don't understand.

You've got to take this thing seriously!" The aide pushed Innes against the shoulder. Innes swiped his hand away.

Amid the scuffling, Colleen snatched two finished press passes from the plastic tray. They were unceremoniously shown out of the complex.

Wentworth, Dimitrov and Laguzza each had little difficulty stealing themselves -- unbeknownst to each other

-- into the Superdome, using subterfuges from their respective past training. The morning after Innes and 360 JAMES

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Colleen were evicted, Wentworth joined the South Carolina delegation, waving a placard that proclaimed, "Jalbert for the Future. Spartanburg, S.C." Dimitrov entered as part of the Buffalo, N.Y. contingent led by councilman Stan Kominsky. Inside, he donned a guard's uniform and strutted about with walkie-talkie on his hip as all the other guards did. Laguzza weaseled passes for himself, Bags and Herman, through the connections of Vincent "The Omelette" Scarfomalo, an old pal of Al's and scion of shady Louisiana business circles. That morning of the first day of the convention, Bob Innes and Colleen McCoy breezed in as members of the press. The New Orleans FBI office was there in force as well, augmented by Dom Berlucci along with Speedy Donner, agent Hanks and others.

Speaker after speaker after speaker pontificated before the masses of party faithful. Senator this and governor that and the reverend so-and-so and a lot of plain nobodies got their fifteen minutes in the sun of national publicity. All endorsed Jalbert as the party's candidate for president. The Son of the Bayou, the Sunbelt Jefferson, the Cajun Kennedy -- Roger Charles Jalbert captured the hearts and imaginations of his entire party. A lone contender for the nomination withdrew in the face of this blockbuster support for the Louisianan. A motion was made to clinch the nomination that very evening.

The usual hyper-hoopla associated with American political party conventions provided the setting. Grown men pranced around the stadium with a huge, inflated crayfish. Balloons in the shape of
fleurs-de-lys
festooned the tiers. Indigenous jazz bands belted out Dixieland tunes.

Bevies of southern beauties, bedecked in skimpy Old Glory outfits, danced. Showfolk from Hollywood hugged and kissed and pronounced the dawn of a grand new era.

Multitudes of grinning middle Americans in funny hats PERMANENT INTERESTS

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pumped and waved placards with the usual variations of their man for President. Single-night romances were being struck. Network "anchorpersons" preened and performed before millions of television viewers who were otherwise uninterested in summer reruns of reruns.

Among the sea of beaming faces, several reflected different emotions, if anyone took the effort to notice.

Wentworth, clean-cut and bearing a large "Jalbert for President" button on his shirt, plodded up and down the stadium levels seeking revenge. His professional soldier's eyes scanned the crowds mechanically. As soon as Yakov and Dimitrov were confirmed in his mental computer, he would strike with deadly force. To avenge Lydia was his only concern in life now.

Vengeance, not political idealism, drove the Malandrino contingent as well. Feeling powerless in the face of Yakov's challenges, Big Al, acting on a tip that Yakov had gone to the Crescent City, ordered Ricky and his two best men down to search out and kill the two Russians. Ricky surveyed the throngs of conventioneers with binoculars from an upper deck while Bags and Herman weighed into the crowds.

Innes and Colleen likewise mingled and searched, but were at a loss as to what to do should they encounter a familiar enemy face or spot something fishy, except simply to rouse security personnel.

The FBI guys walked, watched and listened, occasionally talking into their sleeves; and "interfaced"

with their Secret Service counterparts.

Yakov was beside himself with gleeful anticipation.

From his forty-first floor suite overlooking the Superdome, 362 JAMES

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he awaited the signal from Dimitrov. At the moment when Jalbert appeared and took the podium, Dimitrov would say through his walkie-talkie,
Ty nuzhen Rodiny'
-- "The Motherland needs you." He, in turn, would wait ten minutes for Dimitrov to depart and get well clear of the complex before signaling an
Afghantsi
helicopter crew to lift off in a rented Bell waiting in a field on the other side of Lake Pontchartrain. Three Afghan war veterans, one pilot, one armed with an AK-47 and a third munitions specialist, would fly fifteen minutes toward the city center. Flying low and fast, they would follow the flat surface of the lake until they reached the West End, avoiding the nearby Coast Guard Station. Then the chopper would cut east, traverse City Park and make a mad dash for the Superdome. The pilot would hover over the stadium center only long enough for the munitions man to eject the fuel-air burst device, then head out at top speed for the Delta where a fast cigarette boat awaited them to take them to a ship that would deliver them to Cuba. What they didn't know was that, in reality, there was no cigarette boat, nor an escape ship. Yakov would dial a number on his cell phone that would trigger a small explosive incendiary device which would blow the helicopter and its crew to smoky smithereens. Yakov didn't like too many living accomplices. Fewer mouths to reveal the truth. Something he picked up from Comrade Stalin.

The fuel-air bomb, used so effectively against Afghan villagers as well as
mujahidin
, would send a fine mist of high-octane gasoline into the air of the stadium, then ignite.

The resultant explosion would be utterly devastating to any living thing within a kilometer radius. The instant fire would devour the oxygen as well as incinerate everything in its domain. A mushroom cloud would rise, the impact of which would disintegrate most structures.

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Yakov couldn't wait to see the effect such a device would have in an enclosed area like the Superdome. The power would reverberate, thus intensifying the devastation.

The thought of killing 50,000 people gave Yakov a sense of supreme power, certainly. But the big prize was not only elimination of the major threat to his accumulating wealth and influence, Roger Jalbert, but also several generations of future leaders in his vein.

Yakov rubbed his hands and smirked. Immediately after the explosion, Dennison and Selmur would engage the President in calming the nation and appearing as a strong leader. They had already scripted a scenario. Selmur would call in the media. Dennison would arrive at the White House. They would trot out Corgan before the TV

cameras and stick under his nose an eloquent speech which would include a sensitive condolence to the Jalbert family as well as those of the other victims. Bernie Scher would be appointed to a special task force to seek out the terrorists responsible for the crime; a bunch of muslim fanatics would be arrested. With the help of some expertly-planted, manufactured evidence and the vengeful mood of the nation, the White House would push for a swift trial, followed by even swifter executions.

Popular Kansas governor -- and probable vice presidential nominee -- Helen Termont stood before the convention. She signaled the ebullient crowd to quiet down. After a few minutes, the raucousness abated, allowing Termont to give the nominating speech.

"The new American Renaissance needs an architect.

We stand ready to build according to that architect's plans.

Fellow Americans, I give you the next President of the United States -- Roger Charles Jalbert!!"

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The convention went wild. "Jalbert for President!

When do we want him? Now!" chanted thousands of people in unison.

Jalbert took in the glory. His boyish smile enchanted.