This 44-part series began running in WCT Nov. 8. Readers can read all the installments to date at www.windycitymediagroup.com .
From the journal of John 'Jack' Quincy Adams, Chief Secret Service Special Agent in Charge, The White House. Code Name: One.
Part 9. Getting Even With Daddy
Jack Adams, the Secret Service agent charged with assassinating President George W. Bush and being held for psychiatric evaluation, is telling the psychiatrist about the first time Bush talked to him as a person, not an agent. It is late at night in the Oval Office and Trailblazer is explaining that he is going to finish the job his father couldn't finish in Desert Storm.
'My daddy has always thought he was the top banana. Always thought he was better than anybody else. He used to play tennis with me and Jeb in Kennebunkport or Houston and Jeb would always win—he used to be damned good at tennis, before he gained all that weight. Did you know that?'
'No, sir.'
'Oh, yeah. Top notch tennis player. He'd whip our daddy's butt. Most of the time Jeb'd let him win though, 'cause if he didn't there'd be hell to pay afterward. If our daddy lost at tennis he'd get ugly all through dinner. Lecture us on all the things we were doing wrong with our lives. One afternoon my dad and I were playing tennis and I decided not to let him win. I was kind of mean about it, too. I'd let him have the point and it would be point, set, match; then I'd take it back. I played him like that for about forty-five minutes and I could see him boiling mad on the other side of the net. Then I saw he was getting pretty winded and I was afraid the old man might have a heart attack, so I just finished him off. It made him furious.'
'When we were walking off the court to go clean up for dinner, he said to me, 'Pretty good game, son. You're coming along.' That was his way of trying to make me feel like it was no big thing to win a tennis match. But I knew it was eating him up. I said, 'Take no prisoners, that's my motto.' And he says to me, 'That's why you'll never be president.' So I said, 'What do you mean?' And he said, 'And that's another reason.'.'
'What did he mean by that?'
'That's just the point, see. He didn't mean anything. He was just screwing with me. That's how he got where he is. But the thing is, in the end, when it comes right down to it, he didn't have the cajones to finish the job. He went into Iraq to take out Hussein, but he didn't have the nerve to stick it out. He pussied out.'
'I thought the point of Desert Storm was just to get back Kuwait, and once he had accomplished that, he pulled out.'
'Bullsh…. Baloney. He couldn't do it, One. Like tennis. He thinks he should win, but he doesn't have what it takes to win. And you know what it takes to win?'
'What, sir?'
He grabbed his scrotum, like a baseball player, and gave a yank, 'I came here with just one item on my agenda: take out Saddam. Show my daddy what a real president does. Besides, those poor people need a real religion. You can't really have liberty without Christianity. They go together like bacon and ketchup.'
'Did you support the war?' Haber asked.
'I supported eliminating Saddam. I think the way they did it was stupid and heartless.'
'What would you have done?'
'If we can send a fiber optic camera into a person's lungs and land a rocket on Mars, we ought to be able to get an operative into Hussein's palace and slice the fucker's throat, that's what I'm saying.'
'But it's against international law. It's against federal law. Your friend Bill Clinton signed the Executive Order forbidding assassinations.'
'Bullshit. And he's not my friend. Fight fire with fire's what I say. Flying planes into the World Trade Center is against international law. Detonating bombs in the London and Madrid subways is against international law. You fight them the way they fight you. It's a simple matter of survival.'
'So, then, what did this conversation with the president leave you thinking, or feeling?'
'Nothing new, really. Just that he was operating the way a teenager operates. Beat daddy at tennis. Be a big man on campus. Follow the sentimental aphorisms of Christianity rather than its hardcore tenets. Save the pagan babies with one hand, steal their oil with the other and build a McDonalds while you're at it.'
'You got rather cynical in your job, didn't you?'
'I got educated in my job.
'You're a real paradox, Mr. Adams, you know that?'
'Who isn't, Doc? Who isn't'
Follow this 44-part serialized book in Windy City Times for the next several months. See www.WindycityMediaGroup.com for past columns.
