Stanley Johnson - Kompromat

Craig waved across the table to the white-haired gentleman with the black-and-red striped tie who sat exactly opposite him. ‘Welcome aboard, Elmore.’

Craig led the round of applause. ‘And let me tell you the good news, from Elmore’s point of view at least. As vice-president, he’s the person I can’t fire!’

He paused. Ron Craig had learned early in life that if you wanted to grab your audience’s attention, you had to let the tension build. The deliberate pause, mid-sentence or even mid-word, was a basic rhetorical device. Craig knew that from his school days. A guy called Cicero wrote scads about it, he remembered. Not that he had spent too much time on Cicero. He preferred to be out there earning money.

‘There’s one other person I’m not going to fire, I can tell you. That’s my daughter.’ Craig leaned forward to talk into the speaker-phone in front of him.

‘Are you there, honey? Say hi to Rosie, guys.’

‘Hi Rosie!’

‘Say it louder, so she can hear you. Rosie’s in Florida. Couldn’t make it today.’

‘Hi, Rosie!’ they shouted again.

‘Are you there, Rosie?’ Craig repeated.

Rosie’s voice came through clear, bright and bubbly, like the cherry-blossoms in the Mall.

‘I’ve just appointed you my “Special Adviser”, honey. Say “hello” to the guys.’

‘Hello, guys. Great to meet you. Just want to say how proud I am to be part of the team.’

The meeting ran on for an hour. Barring last minute upsets (and they couldn’t imagine what those might be), Ronald Craig would be elected as the presidential candidate at the Republican National Convention to be held in Cleveland, Ohio, that coming July. So now was a time to look ahead, to the election campaign itself and even beyond.

Legally, of course, President Brandon Matlock would discharge the duties of his great office right up to the moment, on Friday, January 20th, 2017, when his successor would be officially inaugurated as the 45th President of the United States. But in practice, as everyone in Washington knew, as soon as the result of the November election was known, power and influence would begin to ooze away from the president in the direction of the president-elect, whoever he or she might be. That was just the way things were.

As the meeting broke up, Craig beckoned to his acting national security adviser:

‘Can you stay behind for a moment, General?’

As the room emptied, the two men huddled in a corner. They spoke for twenty minutes. Craig did most of the talking. Ian Wright, a four-star general, did most of the nodding.

But at one point, the general intervened. ‘What about the Logan Act, sir? The one which makes it a crime for an unauthorized person to negotiate with a foreign power?’

Craig looked puzzled. ‘Isn’t the Logan Act over 200 years old? And surely no one’s ever been prosecuted.’

‘Just thought I’d raise the issue.’

‘Well, thank you, General. My view is don’t bother about the Logan Act. Just go right ahead. Every transition team that I’m aware of makes contact with foreign governments. Let’s just anticipate the reality.’

General Ian Wright still felt uneasy. He sensed he was being pushed further than he wanted to go. On the other hand he liked the idea of occupying that corner office on the first floor of the White House, diagonally opposite the Oval Office itself, with a discreet bronze plaque reading: ‘Gen. Ian Wright, National Security Adviser’.

What the hell! The General made up his mind. As Harry S. Truman put it, ‘If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen.’

‘I’ll have a word with Ambassador Reznikov,’ Wright said.

‘Get him to sign up to my four-point plan. At least get him to check it out with Moscow. That way we can hit the ground running. We might have a deal.’

A deal! That was the magic word. Could the whole of life be boiled down to simple deal-making? Ron Craig obviously thought it could.

‘I’ll give it a go, sir,’ General Wright said. ‘Count on me.’

Ronald Craig gave the general a friendly punch in the chest,

‘That’s the spirit,’ he said. ‘Get up and go. That’s what we need. That’s what this country needs. Get to work, General. There’s a lot hanging on this.’

Rosie Craig didn’t accompany Edward Barnard to the Florida Everglades National Park after all. They had just finished breakfast on the veranda, looking out at the Atlantic, when the ‘Craig for President’ Campaign HQ sent a text message: ‘Your father’s about to appear on CBS’.

So they poured themselves another cup of coffee, turned on the television and settled down to watch. Sure enough Ronald Craig soon appeared.

‘Looks fresh as a daisy, doesn’t he?’ Rosie commented. She admired her father’s stamina. He must have been up most of the night, and they’d already had the team meeting that morning. But it wasn’t just Craig’s stamina she admired. Her father’s ability to surprise, to shake things up, to think the unthinkable, intrigued and fascinated her. But she wasn’t starry-eyed. She was ready to take him to task when she felt she had to. And, to be fair, he was usually ready to listen – to her, at least.

Ron Craig seldom missed a trick. CBS had given him a platform, and by God he was going to use it! After a few minutes’ warm-up, he upped the volume to rant about the media. That was his special bugbear, now as always.

Looking straight at the camera, he stormed, ‘The dishonest media: they are part of the corrupt system. Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson, and Abraham Lincoln and many of our greatest presidents fought with the media and called them out on their lies. When the media lies to people, I will never, ever let them get away with it.’

Seconds later, Rosie’s phone rang.

‘Did you watch CBS, Rosie?’ Ronald Craig asked. ‘Did you hear what I said about the media, the lying bastards?’

Rosie held the phone away from her ear, until her father’s excitement had subsided.

‘You were great, Dad. Just great.’

Craig came to the point.

‘I’ve just had a message from Mickey Selkirk. He’s invited you to visit him on his ranch in Australia. He’s there at the moment. I want you to go. As you know, Selkirk owns newspapers and TV stations all over the world, scores of them in America by the way. He may say he doesn’t interfere with editorial policy. Bullshit! He’s interfering by not interfering. Go and see him. Up close and personal. Bring him round to our point of view. This is a golden opportunity.’

‘You think he’s ready?’

‘He’s gagging for it. Why else is he inviting you at this point? Mickey’s like me. He’s a deal-maker. Now is the best moment. He may never get a better offer. I’m still a dark horse, as far as the election this November is concerned. Caroline Mann is still way ahead in the polls.’

‘So you think he’s ready to come off the fence and support us? What do we have to offer?’

Craig ran through a list of the key points. Then he asked, ‘Is Ed Barnard still there?’

‘Yes, he is. I was about to take him to the Everglades. He wants to see the alligators.’

‘Give the Everglades a miss. Take Ed to Australia with you. If Ed wants to see alligators, he can meet Mickey Selkirk. He’s the biggest alligator of them all.’

Since returning from Russia, Jack Varese’s affair with Rosie Craig, which had begun in Russia’s Far East, had blossomed. Varese had a penthouse apartment at the corner of East 70th Street and Fifth Avenue. As it happened, Rosie Craig’s own apartment was only a block away but, while Varese was in town, she didn’t spend much time there. She spent most of the time in bed with Jack.