Mario Puzo - The Fourth K

It was some vague nightmare coming through-the reality did not sink in. The face he had called up on his computer screen these past nine months, the life he had monitored with computer and surveillance teams had suddenly sprung out of that shadowy mythology into the real world.

He saw the face not in the repose of surveillance photos but in the throes of exalted emotion. And he was struck by how the handsome face had become so ugly, as if seen through some distorted glass.

Klee was already moving quickly toward Jatney, still not believing the image, trying to certify his nightmare, when he saw Gray stretch out his hand. And Christian felt a tremendous feeling of relief. The man could not be Jatney, he was just a guy holding his kid and trying to touch a piece of history.

But then he saw the child in his red windbreaker and little woolen hat being hurled through the air. He saw the gun in Jatney's hand. And he saw Gray fall.

Suddenly Christian Klee, in the sheer terror of his crime, ran toward Jatney and took the second bullet in the face. The bullet traveled through his palate, making him choke on the blood, then there was a blinding pain in his left eye. He was still conscious when he fell. He tried to cry out, but his mouth was full of shattered teeth and crumbled flesh. And he felt a great sense of loss and helplessness. In his shattered brain, his last neurons flashed with thoughts of Francis Kennedy, be wanted to warn him of death, to ask his forgiveness. Christian's brain then flicked out, and his head with its empty eye socket came to rest in a light powdery pillow of snow.

In that same moment Francis Kennedy turned full toward David Jatney. He saw Oddblood fall. Then Christian. And in that moment, all his nightmares, all his memories of other deaths, all his terrors of a malign fate crystallized into paralyzed astonishment and resignation. And in that moment he heard a tremendous vibration in the world, felt for a tiny fraction of a second only the explosion of steel in his brain. He fell.

David Jatney could not believe it had all happened. The black man lay where he had fallen. The white man alongside. The President of the United States was crumpling before his eyes, legs bent outward, arms flying up into the air as his knees finally hit the ground. David Jatney kept firing. Hands were tearing at his gun, at his body. He tried to run, and as he turned he saw the multitude rise and swarm like a great wave toward him and countless hands reach out to him. His face covered with blood, he felt his ear being ripped off the side of his head and saw it in one of the hands. Suddenly something happened to his eyes and he could not see. His body was racked with pain for one single moment and then he felt nothing.

The TV cameraman, his all-seeing eye on his shoulder, had recorded everything for the people of the world. When the gun flashed into sight, he had backed away just enough steps so that everyone would be included in the frame. He caught David Jatney raising the gun, he caught Oddblood Gray making his amazing jump in front of the President and go down, and then Klee receiving a bullet in his face and going down. He caught Francis Kennedy making his turn to face the killer and the killer firing, the bullet twisting Kennedy's head as if he were in a hammerlock.

He caught Jatney's look of stem determination as Francis Kennedy fell and the Secret Service men frozen in that terrible moment, all their training for immediate response wiped out in shock. And then he saw Jatney trying to run and being overwhelmed by the multitude. But the cameraman did not get the final shot, which he would regret for the rest of his life. The crowd tearing David Jatney to pieces.

Over the city, washing through the marble buildings and the monuments of power, rose the great wail of millions of worshipers who had lost their dreams.

PRESIDENT HELEN DU PRAY held the Oracle's one-hundredth birthday party in the White House on Palm Sunday, three months after the death of Francis Kennedy.

Dressed to understate her beauty, she stood in the Rose Garden and surveyed her guests. Among them were the former staff members of the Kennedy administration. Eugene Dazzy was chatting with Elizabeth Stone and Sal Troyca.

Eugene Dazzy had already been told his dismissal was to take effect the next month. Helen Du Pray had never really liked the man. And it had nothing to do with the fact that Dazzy had young mistresses and was indeed already being excessively charming to Elizabeth Stone.

President Du Pray had appointed Elizabeth Stone to her staff-, Sal Troyca came with the package. But Elizabeth was exactly what she needed. A woman with extraordinary energy, a brilliant administrator, and a feminist who understood political realities. And Sal Troyca was not so bad; indeed he was a fortifying element with his knowledge of the trickeries of the Congress and his low brand of cunning, which could sometimes be so valuable to more sophisticated intelligences, such as Elizabeth Stone's and indeed, thought Du Pray, her own. '

After Du Pray assumed the presidency she had been briefed by Kennedy's staff and other insiders of the administration. She had studied all the proposed legislation that the new Congress would consider. She had ordered that all the secret memos be assembled for her, all the detailed plans, including the now infamous Alaska work camps.

After a month of study it became horrifyingly clear to her that Francis Kennedy, with the purest of motives, to better the lot of the people of the United States, would have become the first dictator in American history.

From where she stood in the Rose Garden, the trees not yet in full leaf,

President Du Pray could see the faraway Lincoln Memorial and the arching white of the Washington Monument, noble symbols of the city that was the capital of America. Here in the garden were all the representatives of America, at her special invitation. She had made peace with the enemies of the Kennedy administration.

Present were Louis Inch, a man she despised, but whose help she would need. And George Greenwell, Martin Mutford, Bert Audick and Lawrence Salentine. The infamous Socrates Club. She would have to come to terms with all of them, which was why she had invited them to the White House for the Oracle's birthday party. She would at least give them the option of helping build a new America, as Kennedy had not.

But Helen Du Pray knew that America could not be rebuilt without accommodations on all sides. Also, she knew that in a few years there would be a more conservative Congress elected. She could not hope to persuade the nation as Kennedy, with his charisma and personal romantic history, had done.

She saw Dr. Zed Annaccone seated beside the Oracle's wheelchair. The doctor was probably trying to get the old man to donate his brain to science. And Dr. Annaccone was another problem. His PET brain-scan test was already being discussed in various scientific papers. Du Pray had always seen its virtues and its dangers. She felt it was a problem that should be carefully considered over a long period of time. A government with the capacity to find out the infallible truth could be very dangerous. True, such a test would root out crime and political corruption; it could reform the whole legal structure of society. But there were complicated truths, there were status quo truths, and then was it not true that at certain moments in history, truth could bring a halt to certain evolutionary changes? And what about the psyche of a people who knew the various truths about themselves could be exposed?

She glanced at the comer of the Rose Garden where Oddblood Gray and Arthur Wix were sitting in wicker chairs and talking animatedly. Gray was now seeing a psychiatrist every day for depression. The psychiatrist had told Gray that after the events of the past year it was perfectly normal for him to be suffering from depression. So why the hell was he going to a psychiatrist?