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“I wouldn’t dream of it, Mr. Silver,” said Paul Devereaux.
Each man had retained the habit of using the formal “Mr.” address toward the other, almost unheard of in modern Washington. Neither had any talent for bonhomie, so why pretend?
“Would you please get your”—to any other subordinate Jonathan Silver would said “sad ass,” but he changed it to—“presence up to the White House at six this evening? I speak on behalf of you know who.”
“My pleasure, Mr. Silver,” said the Cobra. And hung up. It would not be a pleasure. He knew that. But he also supposed it had always been inevitable.
CHAPTER 16
JONATHAN SILVER HAD THE REPUTATION OF POSSESSING the most abrasive temper in the West Wing. He made it plain as Paul Devereaux entered his office that he did not intend to restrain it.
He held a copy of the Los Angeles Times and waved it in the face of the older man.
“Are you responsible for this?”
Devereaux examined the broadsheet with the detachment of an entomologist surveying a mildly interesting larva. The front page was largely occupied by a picture and the banner headline “Hell on Rodeo.” The photo was of a restaurant that had been reduced to carnage by streams of bullets from two machine pistols.
Among the seven dead, said the text, were four now identified as major underworld figures, one passerby who had been leaving as the gunmen entered and two waiters.
“Personally, no,” said Devereaux.
“Well, there are a lot of people in this town who think otherwise.”
“Your point, Mr. Silver?”
“My point, Mr. Devereaux, is that your goddamn Project Cobra seems to have achieved a form of underworld civil war that is turning this country into the kind of charnel house that we have seen in northern Mexico for the past decade. And it has got to stop.”
“May we cut to the chase?”
“Please do.”
“Almost two years ago, our mutual commander in chief asked me, quite specifically, whether it would be possible to destroy the cocaine industry and trade, both of which were clearly out of control and had become a nationwide scourge. I replied, after intensive study, that it would be possible if certain conditions were fulfilled and at certain cost—hopefully short-term.”
“But you never mentioned the streets of three hundred cities running with blood. You asked for two billion dollars and you got that.”
“Which was the financial cost only.”
“You never mentioned the civil-outrage cost.”
“Because you never asked. Look, this country spends fourteen billion dollars a year via a dozen official agencies and gets nowhere. Why? Because the cocaine industry in the U.S. alone, never mind Europe, is worth four times that. Did you really think the creators of cocaine would switch to jelly beans if we asked them? Did you really think the American gangs, among the most vicious in the world, would move into candy bars without a fight?”
“That is no reason for our country being turned into a war zone.”
“Yes, it is. Ninety percent of those dying are psychos to the point of being almost clinically insane. The few tragic casualties caught in the cross fire are less than the traffic dead during the Fourth of July weekend.”
“But look what the hell you’ve done. We always kept our psychos and sickos down in the sewers, down in the gutters. You have put them on Main Street. That is where John Q. Citizen lives, and John has a vote. This is an election year. In eight months the man down this hall is going to ask the people to trust him with their country for another four years. And I do not intend, Mr. Goddamn Devereaux, that they will refuse him that request because they dare not leave their homes.”
As usual, his voice had risen to a shout. Beyond the door, more-junior ears strained to hear. Inside the room, only one of the two men retained an icy and contemptuous calm.
“They won’t,” he said. “We are within one month of witnessing the virtual self-destruction of American gangland, or, at any rate, its shattering for a generation. When that becomes clear, I believe the people will recognize what a burden has been lifted from them.”
Paul Devereaux was not a politician. Jonathan Silver was. He knew that, in politics, what is real is not important. The important is what appears to be real to the gullible. And what appears to be real is purveyed by the media and purchased by the gullible. He shook his head and jabbed at the front page.
“This cannot go on. No matter what may be the eventual benefits. This has to stop, no matter what the price.”
He took a single sheet of paper that had been facedown on his desk and thrust it at the retired spy.
“Do you know what this is?”
