It made a kind of sense; that was why it got right to the nerve ends. But once you began that kind of crackdown it would lead inevitably to a full-scale conflict—a kill-or-be-killed war between the Establishment and the radicals. Militants at both extremes wanted just that. The fragile center held them at arm’s length—and at sword’s point.
One man had been kidnapped: and it could ignite the world.
His head throbbed, the pain fluctuating from moment to moment, stabbing behind his right eye. It didn’t worry him but it was an annoyance. The painkillers Dick Kermode had prescribed were brain-dullers as well and Ethridge hadn’t used them. He had already undergone endless examinations in Kermode’s office and at Walter Reed—an agonizing spinal fluid tap for fluid analysis, skull X rays, electroencephalograms; penetrating eye examinations; tests of plantar responses and flexion, half a dozen others he could hardly remember. All negative. He’d known they wouldn’t find anything wrong. It was tension: what could you expect? Everybody had some reaction to pressure. People got ulcers, heart trouble, asthma, even gout; with Ethridge it was sinus headaches.
He glanced at the green glow of the bedside alarm. Nearly five o’clock.
Crossing the carpet in his bare feet toward the bathroom door he felt disoriented, light-headed; he braced his hand against the door and stood still to gather strength. Perhaps he had got up too quickly, the blood rushing from his head.
He glanced back toward the beds. A faint street-lamp illumination filtered in through the lace curtains and fell across the twin beds; Judith remained sound asleep.
He stepped into the bathroom and pushed the door shut before he reached for the light switch; he didn’t want the light to wake her. His hand fumbled for the switch but suddenly there was no feeling in his fingers.
He tried the left hand. The light clicked on.
It was too bright against his eyes. He stood before the sink sweating lightly, staring down at his right hand. He tried to flex the fingers; his hand responded sluggishly, as if at a great distance.
He took it badly. His hair rose, he dragged his uneasy left hand down across his face and began to shake.
When he looked into the mirror his face was drawn with pain—unnaturally decayed, ravaged by a surreal gray putrefaction.
An abrupt red explosion: the blinding stab of pain in his head.
The mild eyes mirrored panic before they rolled up into the sockets.
Faintly he heard the thrashing clatter his limbs made as he fell across the bathtub.
10:30 A.M. Continental European Time David Lime sat behind the wheel of a blue Cortina watching the face of the bank across the street, waiting for Mario Mezetti to appear.
Shadowing him seemed the best option. Today was the fourteenth of January and Fairlie was due to be inaugurated on the twentieth; there were six days, less whatever time it took to transport Fairlie to Washington from wherever he might be found: latitude enough to spend a few hours tailing Mezetti—or even as much as a day or two. If it failed at the end of that time Lime would reconsider.
Leaving Mezetti to his own devices had already produced an impressive amount of raw information. Mezetti had booked a room at the Queen’s Hotel on Grand Parade but he evidently intended to check out today because he hadn’t renewed the booking and he had arranged with Mezetti Industries for a plane and pilot to take him to Cairo today. Surveillance teams had been alerted in Cairo and all intermediate stops where the plane might set down to refuel; and Lime had a Lear jet with British civilian markings on tap at Gibraltar to shadow Mezetti directly in the air in case Mezetti failed to keep to his flight plan.
In the meantime Mezetti had been making telephone calls every two hours at even-numbered hours. Because the calls were international—Gibraltar to Spain—it was easy enough to ascertain the number of the telephone receiving his calls; the phone was in Almería. Every call since eight o’clock the previous evening had been monitored by British and American agents but the eavesdropping hadn’t contributed much because Mezetti’s telephone calls were never answered. Mezetti would let it ring four times and hang up.
A continuation signal, Lime guessed. Someone within earshot of the recipient telephone was supposed to be listening at even-numbered hours. If the phone did not ring it would indicate Mezetti had been detained. But Lime had ordered a stakeout on the house in Almería. It had gone into effect before ten o’clock last night; since then Mezetti had made seven calls to that number but no one was there. Guardianos had combed the house and found it vacant. Neighboring houses had been evacuated, their residents taken into custody, but it didn’t look as if any of the arrested people had any connection with the kidnapping. The line had been traced from the receiving phone to Almería Central in order to find out if the kidnappers had a tap on it but none had been discovered. Even the long-distance telephone operators were being interrogated.
It was a puzzle and it nudged various suspicions in the back of Lime’s mind. But if it was a red herring it could operate either of two ways and there wasn’t time to analyze it to death. Mezetti was a warm body, Lime had a rope on him, and he intended to keep hold of its end until he saw where it was going to drag him.
So Lime in the Cortina awaited the emergence of a Mario Mezetti he had never laid eyes on. He had a collection of photographs and the information that Mario had been reported this morning wearing a belted brown leather coat, brown slacks and suede desert boots. He’d be difficult to miss; at any rate a gray Rolls with his luggage aboard awaited him in front of the bank and Lime’s men had all the exits covered.
Lime had taken charge last night but had left the routine surveillance to his armies. If Mezetti saw him too often he would begin to recognize Lime’s face. It was always better to let the minions handle shadow jobs with frequent changes of relays—always fresh faces.
Mezetti’s Cessna Citation had a cruising speed of four hundred mph and a range of twelve hundred miles. Lime had inscribed a circle of that radius on a map and arranged for close-interval air cover within it. Sixth Fleet had jets airborne waiting to shadow the Citation and Lime had organized a second-string team of commandeered civilian planes because the Navy Phantoms, easily recognizable, would have to keep their distance and tail mainly by radar to avoid alerting Mezetti. If Mezetti decided to fly at treetop altitudes where ground contours would absorb his radar image, he would lose Navy Air; it was better to keep visual contact. The CIA had set up a complex of ground spotter stations and Lime had a dozen planes ready to pick up the baton depending which direction Mezetti flew—Spanish jets now orbiting Malága and Seville and Cape St. Vincent, a Moroccan oil-company plane over Cape Negro, Portuguese civil-air over Lisbon and Madeira, a pair of seaplanes at Majorca and Mers-el-Kebir.
At ten forty-three the young man for whom the police and security forces of fourteen nations had been searching emerged from the main entrance of the bank carrying a heavy suitcase and entered the rear passenger compartment of the big elderly Rolls.
Lime stirred the Cortina’s transmission and squirted the little car into the northbound street ahead of the Rolls. Another car would be closing in behind it. Lime drove unhurriedly past the old Moorish castle and out past the open crossgates which were closed across the highway whenever an airplane was making use of the GibAir runway. Lime turned into the car park by the terminal, glancing in the rearview mirror and seeing the Rolls draw up at the passenger door.