“It doesn’t sound too hopeful,” Satterthwaite said.
“No, I reckon it doesn’t.”
Satterthwaite pulled his head around toward B. L. Hoyt. “On general principle I suppose you’d better intensify the guard on the Vice-President-elect.”
“Already done. We’ve got a crowd around Ethridge a fly couldn’t get through.” Hoyt was a gaunt cadaver with a pulmonary pallor, the shrunken pattern of his skull clearly visible; but his china-blue eyes were bitter-bright.
Satterthwaite waited, attentive. He saw the President’s eyebrows contract. “Bill, suppose they hide Fairlie somewhere. Suppose this thing drags out more than a few hours—suppose it turns into days, weeks.”
“Don’t we have to wait and see what it’s all about, Mr. President?”
“Oh I expect we’ll hear from them. Some sort of ransom demands. We’ll deal with that when we come to it. But in the meantime we’re obliged to hunt for them. Now that puts us in a mess, Bill. We’re just not organized for this kind of operation. The jurisdictions aren’t laid out, there’s no chain of command, no real communications. Technically I suppose it’s Madrid’s ball but we’re not about to let them carry it. State’s in touch with Paris right now and if this lasts more than a few hours I guess we’ll have to bring in some others—the Portuguese, Rome, maybe the North African countries. But in the meantime we’ve got Navy and CIA and NSA and Air Force falling all over each other, reporting each other’s helicopters every ten minutes. All these Goddamn bureaucracies and no coordination at all.”
“Then let’s set up a center. Put somebody in charge.”
“Uh-huh.” The President removed the cigar from his mouth and blew smoke at its ash. “Hoyt here recommended you for that job.”
“Me?” He glanced at Hoyt in surprise.
Hoyt’s thin nostrils dilated. “Technically it’s my bailiwick, protecting Fairlie. But overseas the Secret Service hasn’t got a pot to piss in. We could turn it over to the Navy or one of the intelligence agencies, but it seems to me that would be inviting a lot of interservice bickering we haven’t got time for. Put an admiral in charge and you’d have all the CIA types resenting it. Put the CIA in charge and the Navy would resist taking orders from them. We need somebody who’s neutral—somebody up high enough to command respect.”
The President said, “You’re Cabinet rank, Bill, and you’re neither military nor security-intelligence.”
“But what qualifications have I got?”
“Brains,” the President grunted, and sank the cigar in his mouth.
“It’s not good politics,” Satterthwaite said. “If anything goes wrong we’ll all get roasted because we didn’t have a professional in charge.”
“The secret of administration,” the President said, “is to know how to pick good men. You’ll have your pick of every professional we’ve got.”
Hoyt said, “You’ve already got a base of communications through the Security Council. We’ll arrange to have all reports sent there. It’ll be up to you to coordinate them. You’ll get all the help you need.”
“Don’t argue the point,” the President said, “we haven’t got time.”
“All right, Mr. President.”
“Fine. Now when McNeely calls I want you on the extension. He’s on top of things over there. In the meantime while we’re waiting you can get some of the details from Hoyt.” Brewster ashed his cigar in the glass tray, swiveled his chair to put a shoulder to them, and began to speak into a phone.
Hoyt came around the Presidential flag and took a stance in front of Satterthwaite on the seal of the United States that was woven into the carpet. He talked in a clipped monotone and he was good at it; Satterthwaite quickly began to form a picture of what had happened at Perdido.
It had been carefully timed and organized; they weren’t amateurs. Someone at the hotel had sugared the helicopter’s fuel tanks and poured finely ground glass into the engine lubricants. The same saboteur, it was assumed, had waited his opportunity to get Navy pilot Anderson alone and had killed him.
The sabotage had been committed at the last minute—probably while everyone’s attention was distracted by the departure of the Spanish minister’s car. The timing had been well planned, for it left insufficient time for Fairlie to travel to Madrid by car. So the Fairlie party had summoned a replacement helicopter from Sixth Fleet and the kidnappers had monitored those messages; the kidnappers had appeared ten minutes ahead of the real Sixth Fleet helicopter and in Anderson’s absence the kidnappers’ pilot had been employed. All of it obviously planned to every detail. There was only one clue of any significance. “The phony Navy chopper pilot was black, and he was either native American or a damned good imitation of one.”
“That’s something to start with, at any rate.”
“We’ve already got Sixth Fleet checking. The FBI and the other agencies are running through their R & I files for black helicopter pilots.”
The President was off the phone. “That probably brings you as up to date as any of us. Any ideas?”
“One, for a start. I’ll need the best people I can get.”
“Obviously.”
He turned to Hoyt. “I’ll want your man Lime.”
“I’ll see what I can do.”
“Don’t ask him. Order him.”
Hoyt nodded. “I’d better get on my horse, then. Mr. President?”
Brewster waved him out.
When the door closed behind Hoyt the President said, “His head’s going to roll of course. I guess he knows that.”
“He’s not stupid.” The Secret Service had committed two grave blunders in a space of ten days and the public would demand a villain; Hoyt would be It and Hoyt would have to accept the blame publicly. In this room during the past twenty minutes Hoyt had known all that perfectly well but had shown no sign of it.
The President said, “We’ve got to get Fairlie back. I don’t care how many feathers we have to ruffle on our good neighbors overseas. We’re going to get him back if it takes the Marines.” He was growling around a fresh cigar. “It’s going to start a hell of a whipsaw in this country, Bill.”
“Sir?”
“We’ll be split right down the middle between the flag wavers and the libertarians.”
“I suppose you’re right. But we’ve hardly got time right now for theoretical arguments on the dilemma of protecting officials without limiting public access to them.”
“At any rate we’ve got Fairlie to worry about first. I want you to ride them hard, Bill, make sure every agency in Warshington’s on top of this thing. I want the rivalries dropped, I want absolute cooperation right down——”
The telephone buzzed.
“——the line. Yes Margaret? … Fine. About damn time. Put him on.” The President glanced up at him. “It’s McNeely. Get on that other phone, will you?”
5:10 P.M.Continental European Time Fairlie was in some sort of vehicle. He could feel the crunch and jounce of its movement; there was the slight stench of gasoline exhaust.
He had come awake once before. Inside a room, the light very dim; someone had put a needle in his arm and he had gone out again.
He remembered it now: the helicopter, the shootings, the glimpse of the gas pistol.
His head was sluggish with drug. He blinked; there was no constriction on his eyelids but he could see nothing. A sense of blindness, and panic; he tried to move his hands but they were manacled or tied; tried to sit up and banged his forehead into something sickeningly soft. The world lurched crazily and tipped him half up on one shoulder but his head struck something soft again, and he was rolled onto his back again by a shift in the vehicle’s attitude.
He tried to cry out but it was only a hoarse grunt against the wadding taped into his mouth.
Rising panic: he began to thrash in the darkness but all his limbs were tied and he began to drown, choking on the gag. When he understood that, he stopped straining: he made his muscles limp and focused on getting his breath. The wads in his mouth kept tickling the back of his tongue: he felt nauseous and wanted to cough but it was impossible to draw deep breath for a cough, the wadding strangled him; he had to force himself to breathe with shallow regularity, it was the only way to get air. In the blackness his eyes were wide and round.