I should confess that I am partially responsible for the high cost of airfare for more than just the Gaddafi family. I once worked on behalf of the private jet owners of America. The job was to beat the airlines in a legislative fight over who would pay for the Federal Aviation Administration to modernize the air traffic control system. The private jet owners did not want to pay a user fee to land and take off. The proposed fee was twenty-five dollars. For perspective: a private jet burns twenty-five dollars of fuel in about one nanosecond. The airlines hired the best lobbying and PR firms to demonize the private jet owners. My job? Hit the airlines hard. As hearings on the issue were making their way through the House and Senate, I worked with an investigative reporter for the Associated Press. “What the airline industry wants from Washington it often gets, and no wonder,” read the lede of her piece. “The people who regulate airlines on one day can become company executives the next—and the other way around.” It’s some of my finest early work. Peter Brown thought so, too. In short, we won. And now you, the passenger, pay a bit more so that the wealthy who fly on private planes can avoid a twenty-five-dollar fee.

  I’m sorry.

  At the airstrip, a Gulfstream jet and a smaller charter plane wait on the tarmac. I sprint into the office and hug the pilot. The Doctor poses for a picture with Natasha. Ali snaps a shot of their awkward hug. Their bodies do not really touch. They do not kiss goodbye. Natasha gets on her plane, and the Doctor boards his jet with the Muhammads in tow.

  Ali is the last to board. I watch him climb the airstair. Ten steps to go. Now two. He stops at the cabin door. Looks back at me.

  “Aren’t you riding back with us to New York?”

  “My luggage is back at the hotel,” I say.

  I stare at the horizon until their plane disappears into the blue. I am exhausted. I can barely walk. But Ali and his gun are gone.

  I take a surreal solo ride in the four-car motorcade back down the Strip. I think of the sixty grand in my hotel room safe. How much cash can you legally fly with on a domestic flight? I’m not sure. I text one of my colleagues at BLJ, asking if sixty grand will trip security.

  “Strap that shit to your body,” they reply.

  I ask the driver to let me out on the corner of Flamingo Road and Las Vegas Boulevard. I limp into a massive CVS and purchase a roll of medical tape for four dollars and ten cents. I pay in cash, worried my BLJ Amex will finally scream uncle.

  Up in my room, I secure the sixty grand along my rib cage. It bulges when I button my shirt. Adding a blazer helps. I feel like a drug runner.

  The bill. Oh holy hell, the bill. Down at the front desk, I’m handed a stack of paper as thick as a Russian novel. My credit card is declined. The Doctor might be gone, but I’m still terrified, unsure of what they do to you in Vegas when you can’t pay your seven-figure bill. I spend the next hour pacing around the bar next to the checkout desk while BLJ’s accountant negotiates with Amex to increase my credit limit.

  My card finally runs, and I head for the valet station. I’m almost outside, almost free, when I realize what I’ve forgotten. I turn around and head back to the desk, where I’m greeted by the concierge’s familiar frowning face.

  “Will there be anything more, sir?” he asks.

  “I need a first-class ticket out of here.”

  When I walk into McCarran International, I remember that the three titanium rods in my leg set off metal detectors. How to spin the sixty thousand dollars taped to my body? I walk through the metal detector. The silence from that machine is the most golden sonic event of my life.

  Just before the plane’s doors close, Flavor Flav stumbles into the seat across the aisle from mine, with a giant clock hanging from his neck. He’s very drunk and holding a ring of keys so large he’s forced to put them into the overhead compartment.

  “The Mayweather fight was money!” he screams, as a flight attendant buckles his seat belt. “I’m headed for New York, boiii.”

  Unfortunately, so am I. After three days of babysitting the homicidal son of a homicidal father, I just want to go home. But I can’t. I’m flying a red-eye direct to New York. Muammar Gaddafi is en route to make his first speech to the United Nations General Assembly.

  CHAPTER 4

  No Fingerprints

  In a yellow cab from JFK, I peel the sixty grand from my rib cage. The medical tape leaves raised red lines on my skin. Before I stuff the money into my backpack, I skim a thousand dollars from one of the stacks and tuck it into my wallet. I need to repay the friend who lent me cash for Vegas. Given the circumstances, I feel I’m being more than restrained with BLJ’s stolen money.

  The cab dumps me in front of BLJ’s offices on West Fifty-Seventh Street. Upstairs, the office hums with activity, and I remember it is Monday morning. I find Peter Brown seated in his corner office contemplating the view of Columbus Circle. Brown’s desk is tidy, not one silver pen out of place. I take the Libyans’ cash out of the backpack and place it before him. Brown glances down at the pile, then up at my rumpled suit, my wild hair, my bloodshot eyes. Flavor Flav was rather boisterous on the red-eye. I had no choice but to drown him out with vodka sodas.

  “Peter, I don’t know what the hell just went on in Vegas,” I say. “It was just, you know … They didn’t like Cher … They had guns…” I haven’t slept in three days. I’m aware that I’m not making much sense.

  Brown looks annoyed and holds up a finger. “Why would I want to know about any of that?” he asks, sliding the money into a drawer.

  “The whole trip was just so fucked up.”

  “But there were no news articles published about it,” Brown says. “And that was your job.”

  The same cannot be said for Muammar Gaddafi’s arrival in New York. For the New York media, Gaddafi’s coming to town is something akin to both Christmas morning and a blood orgy. The next morning, Tuesday, BLJ’s staff fields hundreds of press requests. The whole world is calling the office. And they have questions, so many questions.

  Gaddafi’s appearance before the UN General Assembly is what, in public relations, we call an inflection point. In Back to the Future Part II, Doc Brown uses a chalkboard to explain how a small event in the past can skew a time line, creating an alternative future. In public relations, we try to create alternative futures for our clients. We do this by capitalizing on an inflection point, a critical moment when the time line can skew toward, we hope, the positive. Gaddafi’s televised speech in front of world leaders has the potential to erase decades of bad press and negative public perception. If you manage the coverage right, you can serve up rehabilitation, goodwill, and a new image, all in a single news cycle. And the public will eat it up with a spoon. If a client is redeemed in the eyes of both Fox News and CNN, it’s as good as washing them in holy water.

  Emerge, my client, reborn and rebranded—until the next scandal.

  Every client, large and small, faces an inflection point. Some you create. Some are created for you. An inflection point usually comes after your client has shit the bed. Personally, I consider every crisis a golden opportunity. If my client lights their house on fire, you can be damn sure I’ll get the press to blame outdated fire codes. I tell clients, “Don’t be a hero. Always work to find a better villain.”

  Inflection points can go sideways, though. In 2000, British Petroleum sought to create an inflection point with a rebranding for the new millennium. The corporation paid PR firm Ogilvy and Mather $200 million to take it “Beyond Petroleum.” The campaign was truly ambitious—and by “ambitious,” I mean a complete departure from the truth. Let’s look at the investments. In 1999, BP invested $45 million to buy Solarex, one of its largest bets on renewable energy. But that same year, it also invested billions of dollars in expanding its drilling both onshore and off. Its new slogan thus highlighted a minuscule portion of its overall energy portfolio while completely ignoring that the majority of the portfolio even existed. The unbridled cynicism it took to conceive this campaign is nearly unmatched in the modern era.

  * * *

  In March 2006, facts got in the way of BP’s rebrand when about 267,000 gallons of its oil spilled into Alaska’s Prudhoe Bay over the course of about five days. It was the largest spill on record on Alaska’s North Slope—to date. In 2007, BP paid a criminal fine of $20 million, and in 2011, a civil penalty of $25 million.

  I just want my life back. Six words I would have advised Tony Hayward never to say.

  On April 20, 2010, an immense offshore rig operated by BP, known as the Deepwater Horizon, failed explosively, killing eleven people and becoming the source of the largest oil spill in U.S. history. Hayward, the CEO of Beyond Petroleum—who, incidentally, grew up in Slough, the town where the original, British version of The Office is set—was chased by a group of reporters in the days following the disaster. In response to a flurry of questions, Hayward reached into his rhetorical toolbox and came out with something truly worthy of the American Office’s “Michael Scott”: “I just want my life back.”

  He resigned shortly thereafter.

  In 2012, the State of Alaska would collect another $225 million from BP as a result of the Prudhoe Bay spill. That same year, BP would plead guilty to fourteen criminal counts related to the Deepwater Horizon disaster and pay fines of over $4.5 billion. Adding in the cost of subsequent private claims, and Deepwater Horizon will eventually cost BP more than $65 billion. For BP, there is no moving “Beyond Petroleum.”

  Now our job is to make sure Gaddafi’s inflection point doesn’t attain a similar terminal velocity. Gaddafi wants his UN speech to skew his time line. He has spent decades as a global pariah, scarlet-lettered by President Ronald Reagan as the “Mad Dog of the Middle East.” But in 2006, the United States restored full diplomatic ties with Libya. Then–Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice even visited the country. Gaddafi sees his UN General Assembly speech as an opportunity for rapprochement with the West. He’s been offered a seat at the table. He wants to be welcomed with open arms as both a leader and a revolutionary.

  Gaddafi’s been in town less than twenty-four hours, and he’s already gotten more ink than Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. And not the ink we want. The release of the mastermind behind the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, has angered world leaders. And the protesters currently on the streets of New York. New Jersey lost thirty-eight New Jerseyans in the attack. Media-savvy rabbi Shmuley Boteach has plans to mobilize the Jewish community to demonstrate outside the UN building.

  And then there’s the tent: BLJ has an entire team devoted to cleaning up the tent debacle.

  For weeks, Gaddafi’s aides have been trying to find a place to pitch the Brother Leader’s massive Bedouin tent. The tent is a dick-waving flag that Gaddafi plants while on diplomatic missions. Call it a dictator’s quirk—like the Revolutionary Nuns, his cadre of four hundred beautiful female bodyguards trained in martial arts. Gaddafi requested that he be able to erect the tent in the middle of Central Park. Hard “no” from New York City. Then Englewood, New Jersey, turned him down. When luxury hotels slammed their doors in his face, the Libyans got desperate. ABC News reported that Gaddafi aides had posed as members of the Netherlands’ UN delegation to try to rent a town house. “I’m not a linguist, but it became pretty clear I wasn’t dealing with the Dutch,” the rental broker told ABC.

  To the delight of the tabloids, the Bedouin tent has finally found a home on Donald Trump’s estate in Bedford, forty miles north of New York City. This morning, an ABC News helicopter flew over the property, photographing the tent compound: satellite dishes, ornate rugs, and wall hangings decorated with tiny camels. New York Democratic representative John Hall told the press, “This sponsor of terror is not welcome here,” and asked Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to do “everything in your power” to send Gaddafi packing. Quite an arrival in the very city where Pan Am Flight 103 was scheduled to land. Two hundred seventy dead. And this dictator can’t understand why they won’t let him pitch a tent in Central Park?

  More bad news breaks while I’m in the office. Trump’s people speak to the press, denying that Donald Trump knew Gaddafi was renting his estate. Peter Brown gets Trump on the line minutes after the quote goes live. I linger outside the door of Peter’s office, listening in.

  “Goddamn it,” Brown nearly yells. “You knew exactly who the fuck you were renting it to.” It’s the loudest I’ve ever heard him raise his voice.

  After a long day drinking from a fire hose of media requests, BLJ’s staff head to a dive bar for a much-needed happy hour. We slide into a long booth, eyeing the bottles of amber booze behind the bar. Everyone orders a double.

  “It’s been one thing and then the next,” one of BLJ’s vice presidents laments. “First Gaddafi’s limo wasn’t RPG-proof. As if anyone has a fucking rocket launcher in Manhattan. Then we had to bring a goat to the Bedouin tent. In case they want to, you know, slaughter it. Our interns are feeding the goat.”

  “Do we even pay them?”

  “Our accountant is flipping her shit,” another staffer adds, holding a cocktail glass against his forehead like an ice pack. “The Libyan delegations have rented floors of suites at the Plaza. They’re flying the Libyan flag on Fifth Avenue. Right next to the Israeli flag.”

  “Just be thankful Page Six hasn’t discovered that little detail,” I say.

  “Yet.”

  “I just feel so bad for that poor goat,” the VP says.

  “Another round in the goat’s honor?” I suggest.

  “You know what’s sad,” the VP says, looking down into the ice melting at the bottom of her glass. “After all this, Gaddafi is sleeping alone at the Libyan Mission. In a tiny room. On a cot.”

  “Well,” I say. “Let’s hope the Brother Leader’s speech goes well tomorrow.”

  * * *

  “We are ready to hand out weapons to a million, or two million or three million, and another Vietnam will begin,” Muammar Gaddafi warns the United Nations. He stands on the dais in a flowing brown robe, a massive black brooch in the shape of Africa pinned to his chest. “It doesn’t matter to us. We no longer care about anything.”

  I’m watching Gaddafi’s speech on a flat-screen TV in a suite at the Plaza. The lavish space is crammed with BLJ staff and thirty members of the Libyan delegation. Everyone sips from their own personal bottle of Veuve Clicquot. Libyan children scurry around the Oriental vases and jump up and down upon the velvet sofas. Across the room, the Doctor cheers and chugs from his bottle.

  I flinched earlier, when the Doctor walked into the suite flanked by Ali. The fear I had felt in Vegas bubbled up in my throat. It’s a hot, sick feeling. A feeling not even half a bottle of Veuve can wash away. When I saw him, I darted to the far end of the room, hiding out with the kids, hoping the Doctor wouldn’t catch sight of me.

  When his father promises the gathered world leaders that he’ll put his finger in the eyes of those who doubt that Libya is ruled by anyone other than its people, the Doctor calls for a toast. BLJ’s staff and the Libyans raise their bottles. I clink bottles with a Libyan delegate smoking a cigar as Gaddafi suggests the UN headquarters be relocated to Libya, so he can avoid jet lag. This speech went off the rails when Gaddafi was introduced as “Leader of the Revolution of the Socialist People’s Libyan Arab Jamahiriya, President of the African Union, and King of African Kings.” Scheduled to speak for fifteen minutes, Gaddafi has been rambling for nearly an hour. He demands $7.77 trillion as reparation for colonial crimes in Africa. He rips a page from a copy of the United Nations Charter and tosses it into the air behind him. The viewing party at the Plaza nod and smile idiotically, as if we’re proud parents at a child’s ballet recital.

  When Gaddafi calls for Israel and Palestine to be merged into a joint state called “Isratine,” I can stand it no longer. I sneak out of the suite before the “Brother Leader and Guide of the Revolution” concludes his remarks. Outside, I hit Fifth Avenue, buy a pack of Camels, fire one up, and start walking south without a destination in mind. Four blocks later, my hip catches fire. I hail a cab and tell the driver to take me to Penn Station.

  I board an Amtrak back to DC. I have a fear hangover. Over the next forty-eight hours, my phone explodes with panicked dispatches from the BLJ team in New York. Gaddafi went on Larry King Live. King welcomed him by accidentally calling him “Muhammad Gaddafi.” Though he speaks English, Gaddafi insisted on using an interpreter. When King asked Gaddafi what his first impressions of America were, he replied, “Nothing.” He called the UN Charter worthless. King will later tell interviewer Piers Morgan, “As a dictator, he’s among the worst. As an interview, he is the worst.” Morgan wonders what drugs Gaddafi took before his General Assembly speech.

  We get all the wrong headlines. Gaddafi wanted to march into New York as a triumphant leader, ready to take his place on the world stage. He leaves an international joke. Worse, his carefully constructed image is demystified. For forty years, Gaddafi ruled as a feared dictator who—rumor had it—took pleasure in personally executing whomever he pleased. BLJ tried to keep it that way. But a PR firm can do only so much. What do you do with a client who calls for getting rid of Switzerland? Who doesn’t like Switzerland? I’ve never had a client this uncontrollable, a caricature of a dictator who is so evil it’s almost funny. And I never will again. Unless Kim Jong Un decides to hire me.

  Gaddafi’s inflection point has gone sideways in spectacular fashion. His time line has skewed into the wrong alternative future, maybe forever. I think about the goat wandering around the Bedouin tent. I wonder if it survived. An odd saying, one of Preston’s, comes to mind: “You can’t unfuck a goat.”

  I spend the next few months trying to unfuck this goat.

  * * *

  In April, I get an email from an agent at the counterespionage division at the Department of Justice. They want to go through BLJ’s files to ensure we’re in compliance with the Foreign Agents Registration Act. I know we’re not. Peter Brown has told me not to file FARA forms for the Libyans.