HEGEMONY

About the Book

On Election Day when Alexander Fortunatus is elected for second term, there is a disastrous fire in the White House.  A major North Korean spy is captured.  North Korea threatens to use a nuclear weapon. Tommy Kwo, a New York cop, determines that Vice President Ortega is the source of the leak as a result of his involvement with Mary Elizabeth Li who brought Mimaji Jae-hyo, the NK spy into the FSIA (successor to CIA).  An NK plane heading to the US carrying a nuclear missile is blown out of the sky. The President at the UN is shot by an Arab terrorist.  Five small non-nuclear missiles land on American soil.  This results in the nuclear destruction of the government of NK.

Jellinson, an entrepreneur & industrialist and the Presidents enemy, may be behind the terrorist actions. Terrorist bombing of Panama Canal.  Takeover of Panama, whose government was controlled by Jellinson.  A group of corporate giants challenge the Presidents power to control them. They wage economic war against the US. The President is shot a second time at a meeting of the Arab League where he is making a speech.  The US resigns from the UN.  The Jellinson group engages in treaties with nations.  Intelligence determines that China is the key and that Jellinson is a great power in China by virtue of the plants he has developed. The unsuccessful assassins at the Arab League are linked to Jellinson interests in China. Tankerman, an Intelligence man, proposes to sell (false) laser information to Jellinson through the militias.  Mary Elizabeth Li is involved. Terrorist acts lead to martial law throughout the country.

A surveillance tape is played to the military chiefs:

They did not want to believe; they resisted believing, and then when they heard the tape of the CEOs meeting with the President  and they recognized some of the voices  then they realized that they were indeed in a war, a war without boundaries, a war that pitted a class of entrepreneurs against the whole of society, a war not only inside the states, but inside the various companies involved.  And all for what?  Each of the CEOs was extraordinarily rich; each had great power.

What did they want?  Political power?  They had that, indirectly if not overtly, by their ties to the conservative end of the Republican Party, as well as by looser ties to the right wing of the Democratic Party.  The Joint Chiefs could not make sense of what was happening.

Melvin Cordovsky claims to have an invention that will force a missile to return to its source.  A test convinces Ortega. Missiles that are directed at the US are sent back to their source by Cordovskys machine.  The President exposes the whole corporate plot and the part China played. Chinese officers send missiles to the US.  Beijing is bombed.  This ends the Crazy War.  Ortega is elected president.  Fortunatus becomes the First Director of New World Government.

About the Author

Murray Levine has written seven novels, attended NYU, Harvard, and Rutgers. He was a clothing manufacturer, a buyer and management executive in several department stores, an independent retailer, an advertising executive, an English professor, and is now retired to a community in Florida and is president of the homeowners association