16.1

Marlon sat imperiously behind the wheel of his great love – the 66 Thunderbird. He felt invincible – you are the man. He didn’t care what anybody thought, even the President of America. He could pick up the phone and end it all – just like that!

All that talk from the President was just talk. In truth the President wanted the problem to go away just as much as he did. Of course he did. The President did – the committee did – everybody did. Just, none of them had the guts to do it. The best they could do was look to men like him, men of action, men of steel, men capable of making the hard decisions that kept the system functioning.

Marlon – you are the man.

“Put me through to room… 777”.

Marlon waited for the connection.

The more he thought about his meeting with the President the more convinced he was that the President was really on his side. He’d been surprisingly respectful of Marlon, perfectly calm, and hadn’t had the passion of someone who was seriously warning him off. The conversation was limited and carefully controlled. The President had warned him about his “instructions”. But he’d never said – “don’t do it.” In fact, the President had been just the pushover he’d expected – what a pussy – what a weak assed liberal!

No doubt the conversation had been recorded. The President would have recorded it for personal insurance, just in case it all blew up in the future. But it wouldn’t blow up. Singh’s men would clean up the mess before anybody even knew what had happened. The Australian would then become a nobody – just another missing person. And the sadhu plot would have been eliminated forever.

Marlon would see to that.

Yes – it was clearly all up to him.

The President knows. He knows you are a man of the world, a real man, the kind of man he would like to be…

Yes – they were right to put their faith in Marlon – only such a man could deliver the required result.