The Krakow Klub (13 page)

Stoellar had studied possible candidates for
the Oval Office of the United States very carefully. He found one
individual who stood out above the rest. This individual was
handsome and charming with a degree from a prestigious Eastern
University
. However, he was not noted for his
superior brainpower. In fact, he had been rather lazy in school and
preferred to pursue his social life rather than get good grades.
Rumor had it that he only passed his exams after exhaustive
individual tutoring by a person, or persons, with inside knowledge
of exam contents.

Also
, he was rather
naïve in many areas, making him easy to control and manipulate. His
mentor soon convinced him that he was a superior human being and
entitled
to great wealth and power. It had
been an easy sell.

Over the next few years, the candidate was
groomed carefully and moved through a succession of elected offices
until he was a nationally known and respected Congressman.

The mentor had flooded the press with glowing
news reports of his leadership skills, selfless dedication to the
nation, honesty, integrity, and so on. He
was
regularly photographed on
the scene of natural disasters, as
well as many large gatherings, including sporting events.

Obviously, every news release was mostly
media hype and only used to enhance his reputation and garner
votes.

He was indeed the perfect presidential
candidate.
He smiled at every camera while showing a
perfect set of white teeth. He said all the right things, kissed
babies, wore custom suits, married the politically correct wife,
charmed the women voters, and made the male voters want to be his
friend.

On the other side of the coin, he loved his
little vices. He liked to flirt with beautiful women, he sometimes
drank a little too
much,
and he had even
sniffed a little cocaine on occasion. Those little peccadilloes,
however,
could be
hidden
from the public by Stoellar’s organization. Their protégé seemed to
be like
Teflon. Nothing bad could stick to
him.

Now, he occupied the White House and was just
beginning his second
four-year
term. The
future was, indeed, bright for the Krakow Klub.

Stoellar was a brilliant man and knew that he
must always have a backup plan in place. He had selected a second
political lackey that should be easy to control to be the vice
president. Neither candidate had any idea that
the
organization controlled the other
. The level of secrecy
within the Krakow Klub would make the CIA and NSA look like open
forums for the dissemination of information.

The plan had worked
perfectly,
and his two candidates were now in place in
the White House. The president had done a reasonably acceptable job
and followed orders to the best of his rather limited abilities.
Unfortunately, on several occasions, the Krakow Klub had had to
clean up a few political messes that he had caused. However, they
considered that a small price to pay for controlling the most
powerful office in the world.

****

Then one momentous day, just as Stoellar sat
down for lunch in his penthouse, Petrovich rushed in and
frantically announced that the president was resigning from
office.

Stoellar was stunned. His face
reddened,
and the veins stood out on his forehead and
neck. He turned on the wide screen television. It was true. The
fool was resigning. How could this be? Stoellar was furious and
smashed his fists on the antique table before him. The man that he
had so carefully trained and so well-rewarded had become a traitor.
He would pay the price. He would pay the ultimate price for his
betrayal. No one had ever survived the wrath of Erik Stoellar. No
one had ever cheated him and lived to tell the tale.

He swore and ranted for several minutes
before he calmed down. This event would be a slight setback but
nothing fatal, except for the president. After all, the vice
president was in
place,
and he would certainly
follow orders. He was now in a cold fury, and for him, that was the
most lethal form of emotion imaginable.

Stoellar calmly picked up the telephone and
told his secretary to get the president on the phone immediately.
Her office
was in a suite located in a nearby
building, but with his direct intercom, his secretary could just as
easily have been right outside his door.

While waiting for his call to the president,
he called the president’s mentor. The mentor was also enraged and
had already begun forming a plan to handle the Judas.

Stoellar listened silently and then agreed
that the plan was acceptable. He had spent untold millions to groom
the ungrateful
wretch,
and he would have
to pay
the price for his treachery. And he
must pay soon. Very soon.

****

The president concluded his brief statement
to the press and left the pressroom. He returned to the Oval Office
and flopped into the chair behind the desk. He was
ashen,
and his hands shook visibly. He pulled open the
drawer that held a silver flask filled with whiskey. Before he
could open it, the phone
rang,
and he snatched
up the receiver. His worst fear
became
reality
. Number One was the caller.

He had expected a furious
rampage,
but that was not the case. The
icy
cold
voice struck fear to the very core of his existence.
Beads of cold sweat appeared on his
forehead,
and he wiped them away with the back of his shaking hand. He felt
like crawling under the desk and hiding. He was like a frightened
child.

He knew that he should have called his mentor
before the press
conference,
but he couldn’t
work up the nerve. Somehow, he had the foolish idea that he could
leave town and disappear before the organization could get to
him.

He tried to apologize and assured his caller
that things were almost in place. “All is not lost.” He stammered
through his excuses while trying frantically to come up with a
realistic reason for his resignation.

Number One continued to speak in that
chilling voice.

“Yes, I know that all is not lost. The
operation will continue, but you have betrayed the organization.
You have betrayed me. I created you. I formed you. I trained you. I
made you what you
are,
and I’m going to take
it all away from you now. You are less than a speck of dust on my
shoe!”

With
that,
he ended the
call,
and the president was left staring at
the receiver.

The president of the United States began to
weep and cradled his head in his hands. For the first time since
childhood,
he uttered a sincere prayer
for deliverance
. He was the center of a
crisis, a deadly crisis, and he had no idea how to manage it.

He remembered that day in the Situation Room
when he learned about the man called Tom and his alien connection.
Tom, the old man, had more power than Number
One,
and he wasn’t afraid to use it. Number One had no
idea that he could be nullified, even obliterated in a flash by
that
mysterious half-human, half Mylean.

The president was intelligent enough to
realize how much power that this old man possessed and that he was
not afraid to use it. The Krakow Klub was no match and could
surely
be destroyed if Tom chose
to do so
. All loyalties flew out the
window,
and he had acquiesced to the old man’s demands
without a second thought even though he knew that he was possibly
signing his death warrant.

The whole debacle had begun when that damned
spacecraft
was spotted
near Earth. It hadn’t bothered him at the time as he believed in
live and let live. However, the situation had gotten more and more
complicated and culminated with a meeting in the White House
Situation Room with his staff and that damned Dr. James Slater.

Slater had convinced everyone that
an old man
named Tom had unbelievable powers
and the nerve to use them. Afterward, Slater had placed Tom’s
letter in his
hands,
and that letter would
instantly change his life forever. Now, his faith in the Krakow
Klub was
shattered,
and he knew that they
would never reach their goal.

The new player was Tom, a man who could
destroy everything that Number One had worked so hard to achieve.
It all boiled down to a war between money and advanced technology.
He was wise enough to realize that technology would win. Tom stated
very clearly in his letter to the president that he would not
hesitate to reduce anyone or anything to cinders blowing in the
winds of the galaxy if his demands
were
ignored
. This Tom person wanted his
resignation,
and he would get it.

There was no alternative for the president
after that meeting and after reading the letter. He would resign
and disappear. Dear God, how he feared Erik Stoellar. He had never
met the man until he was introduced shortly after the presidential
election. His handler had invited him to dinner at an exclusive
Washington club. When he arrived, he was ushered into a
private dining room
where his handler, Stoellar, and Ivan
Petrovich were already seated and in deep conversation.

Stoellar raised his head and turned toward
the new president; the look brought sheer terror to him. The eyes
seemed to penetrate his very
soul,
and he knew
that he had just met the embodiment of pure evil. Even worse was
his
companion,
Petrovich. That imposing giant
of a man was probably a perfectly trained killing machine ready to
do Stoellar’s bidding
on
an instant’s
notice.

Now he had
double-crossed
the organization in his moment of
weakness. He was just now realizing what he had done. He was
terrified.

And well he should be.

****

At 2:00 PM, shortly after the president
resigned, the vice president, Henry B. Wilkinson, was sworn in and
took over the reins of power.

The former president left the White House
alone and walked slowly to the South Lawn where Marine One stood
waiting silently. He received the usual salutes and returned them
for the last time as he slowly climbed the
stairs
and turned for a last look. The door
shut,
and the rotors began their powerful spin. He
continued to look down as they lifted off and made their way
directly to Andrews Air Force Base. There, he would board a small
military jet for an unknown destination. He
fervently
prayed that he would be allowed to live out the
rest of his life in total obscurity.

The jet carrying the former president of the
United States along with two Secret Service agents and a crew of
two
was never to be seen or heard from
again.
Its transponder shut down over the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. No
debris
would ever be found
.

The former First Lady would no longer need
that expensive divorce lawyer. But it would take her lawyer a long
time to get her “ex” declared “officially dead.”

****

Immediately after the resignation, Erik
Stoellar made a call from his satellite phone to another satellite
phone
located
somewhere in Russia. The two
parties spoke in Russian briefly and then ended the call.

Stoellar simply stated that the organization
would revert to Plan B and that Option 2 might be required. The
Russian would then pass it on to his contact, who would then inform
his contact. The calls would continue until all members of the
Krakow Klub knew about the change in plans.

After ending the call, he went to the window
and looked out over Central Park using his terrestrial telescope.
He loved the powerful optics that let him spy on those unsuspecting
targets below. In fact,
he liked
to daydream
that the instrument was
actually
a rifle with
a sniper scope and that he could pick off one after another, after
another.

It was an uncomfortably warm
day,
and there were few people out and about. The scene
usually amused him, but today, the brainless activities below
disgusted
him. He went to the bar, poured a
generous glass of his favorite brandy, and returned to his desk. He
sat down, loosened his silk tie, and sipped the brandy slowly. It
was a bit early for him to take a brandy, but it helped him relax
and think. And he needed to think.

This setback was most unfortunate and
costly,
but it would not deter him from his
ultimate goal. He took another sip and quickly determined his
revised plan of action. He would congratulate the new president.
After all, Wilkinson was also obligated to him. There would be no
questions asked. He would just give him the name of the person
he must appoint
as vice president. He wouldn’t
like the
candidate,
but that didn’t matter. He
would do what he was told to do. He lacked the backbone to do
otherwise. He had been selected for his position precisely for that
reason.

Stoellar’s nominee for vice president would
be Carla Montrose. She had the temperament of a spitting cobra and
the venom to back it up. Almost universally hated by her colleagues
in Congress, including many in her
political
party, she could cause a confrontation at the
batting
of
a false eyelash.