Line of Succession

Monday, January 10

10:15 A.M. Continental European Time The sky was weak lemon in color and Perdido loomed above the hotel, powder snow blowing off its peak in little gusty clouds. Eleven thousand feet of mountain and nothing to do but ski. The lodge was huge with a heavy-handed massiveness that failed to create the kind of rusticity it was evidently intended to provide. The Germans had built it just last year — the Germans, who built everything in Spain. They had hacked a road up the mountain and built Perdido Spa out of Krupp steel and Hilton plastic, and endeavored to give it the quaint appearance of logs. It was an abomination.

Liam McNeely stood outside the lodge on a wooden deck the size of a football field, open to the sky. Ordinarily it would be crowded with little tables occupied by lunching skiers but today there were no tourists. Premier Perez-Blasco had shelled out of the Spanish treasury enough to hire Perdido Spa for the duration of President-elect Fairlie’s skiing visit. The tables had been removed and Fairlie’s Navy helicopter squatted there on its skids, motionless rotor blades drooping.

Fairlie had originally planned to ski here but he had no interest in skiing now — not after the bombing. Yet the Spanish plans were not easily or quickly changeable. Fairlie was waiting here, resting, en route.

Early this morning Torres, the Foreign Minister, had arrived from Madrid in a black Seat limousine. As Fairlie’s aide-de-camp and chief factotum McNeely had met Torres’s party at the car-park steps and ushered them quickly into the banquet room which the hotel had set aside for Fairlie’s meetings.

Torres had with him his interpreter and two underlings and a squat brigand named Dominguez who turned out to be the director of the Guardia Civil. McNeely produced the aides and Meyer Rifkind, who was head of the Secret Service detail assigned to Fairlie, and they had all sat down in a little group near one side of the enormous empty room. Stiff and hesitant, as if they were the only people left from a crowded party that had broken up an hour ago.

But Torres was congenial and they had ironed out the schedule for Fairlie’s visit to Madrid. Dominguez had done most of the groundwork; it remained mainly to coordinate Secret Service operations into the Spanish security arrangements.

These visits always required intricate and voluminous preparation. The precise time of arrival, the precise spot where the helicopter would land and be met by Perez-Blasco and the civil guardsmen, the motorcade route from helicopter to palace. Dominguez went over the maps for more than an hour with Meyer Rifkind. Here — a stubby finger jabbed the map — Perez-Blasco and Fairlie would make an “unscheduled” stop to pop out of the limousine and shake hands with members of the crowd. Guardianos were clearing the block in advance, screening every storefront and window and rooftop, posting themselves to enfilade the area.

Here, television cameras would be posted along the boulevard to cover the motorcade. There would be good camera shots of Fairlie and Perez-Blasco when they made a “spontaneous” stop to accept roasted chestnuts from a street vendor.

It was all contrivance, the game of personal diplomacy.

A Guardiano would drive the limousine and a United States Secret Service agent would sit beside him on the front seat. Two more, similarly paired, on the limousine’s jump seats facing the dignitaries. Guardianos in their taut uniforms and hard tricorner hats would ride the running boards. Cars ahead and behind would carry security men.

At three-fifteen the motorcade would arrive at El Pardo palace; Fairlie and Perez-Blasco would dismount, the Guardia would form a flying wedge around them, they would enter the palace with Secret Service agents following in a fan.

There would be a midafternoon luncheon. Perez-Blasco and Fairlie would share the dais alone; was that acceptable to McNeely? Perez-Blasco would introduce the honored guest — here, a copy of the brief welcoming speech Perez-Blasco would deliver. Then Fairlie would make a brief address; was it possible for Torres to obtain a copy of that now? Then the dignitaries and reporters would be ushered elsewhere; Fairlie and the Spanish chief executive would retire with their aides for private discussions...

On cue, Clifford Fairlie came down the wide stairs in his lounging jacket, the one with elbow patches, all smiles; shook hands warmly all around, sat down and chatted.

The protocols were observed and finally Torres was leaving. They all emerged from the hotel onto the deck and McNeely smiled vaguely at the chopper pilot when they walked past the helicopter toward the steps. The Secret Service men were scanning the corners, the shadows, the mountainside, even the sky; they were paid to do only one thing and they did it professionally.

Fairlie and Torres and the entourage descended to the pavement. The limousine drew up, Guardianos coming to attention. Later, trying to recall the exact sequence of events, McNeely had a great deal of difficulty sorting out the movements he had seen. The press car drove up behind Torres’s limousine; the aides and guards got inside while Torres and Dominguez said goodbye — this after the usual nonstatements to the press pool: the discussions have been very useful, everything is going smoothly, we look forward to a frank exchange of views in Madrid...

Several hotel employees had come along to the edge of the deck to watch. The chopper pilot and copilot were there, smoking cigarettes, looking at their watches, somewhat bored. Now Torres and his people were inside the stretched-out car. It was a vehicle designed for its times. Two-way radios, bulletproof glass, door locks that could be opened only from the inside. In the era of political kidnappings the technology of security was elaborate. A hard glass screen ascended from the top of the front seat and sealed itself shut with a click against the ceiling; Torres, leaning forward in his rear seat, waved and smiled and spoke through the open door before it chunked shut and the stately car slid quietly away down the mountain road.

The Navy pilots were wandering back to the chopper on the deck when McNeely and Fairlie reached the platform; McNeely later remembered that much. The pool of journalists was dispersing after unsuccessfully trying to pump the President-elect.

Fairlie was heading for the stairs inside the hotel, the Secret Service agents clustering around like sheepdogs. No, McNeely thought, like barnacles. That was going to try Fairlie’s patience: Fairlie liked room, he liked to spread out, he didn’t like people being in his way. He was a man to whom occasions of solitude were important. He’s going to have to learn.

McNeely stood on the deck near the helicopter. What if, he thought, and began to envisage a sniper with a high-powered rifle peering through a telescopic sight from one of the high timber patches... Assassination was always so easy. If a man really intended to murder you there was only one way on earth to stop him: kill him first. And if you didn’t know who he was, didn’t even know of his existence — you had no chances at all.

Morbid thoughts. It was a place that gave rise to them: the mausoleum atmosphere of the huge empty hotel; the yellow-gray sky with sunlight hardly filtering through; the chill dry breeze, the immutable detachment of the mountain.

Later he wondered if he had been experiencing a premonition gone slightly awry: some sort of ESP, prescience, an unusual sensitivity to the portentousness of that day. He was never to give it very much credence; after all there was no sniper.

He turned toward the door, minding the chill, thinking about going into his room for an hour’s work. But solitude was not McNeely’s milieu; he worked best in the midst of noise and confusion. The great empty rooms would depress him and he would only fling himself outdoors again, and so he did not go inside at all.

Instead he engaged the two chopper pilots in small talk. They were Navy officers — easy to converse with; they had been chosen for their mannerliness and appearance as well as their aeronautical skill. McNeely himself had started building model airplanes at the age of nine and the fascination had never left him.

“... forty-five-foot rotor. Horsepower? Close to a thou, she’ll cruise at one-thirty. We’ll make Madrid easy this afternoon, hundred and thirty-five minutes, forty-five minutes’ fuel to spare.”

“Usually they use the Thirteen-Jay for this kind of thing, don’t they?”

“Usually. But that’s a smaller machine, it hasn’t got the ceiling of this bird.” Anderson spoke with proprietary pride.

The chopper was a Bell Iroquois, HU-1J, with VIP accommodations for six passengers in comfort; she had the Navy’s blue paint job and stenciled Sixth Fleet markings. McNeely ignored the nibblings of his conscience while he killed nearly an hour chatting with Anderson and Cord about choppers and missions.

The two pilots were ten-year veterans whose seams and creases were not in their faces but in their worn leather flight jackets. They said “hep” for help and “thank” for think and they talked in a technological jargon that annihilated human communication; they had the kind of minds which McNeely despised in the collective sense — the Silent Sophomority, Muddle Americans — but they were good likable men and McNeely was not a man to let philosophical principle get in the way of human pleasures.

Guilt finally goaded him toward the papers in his room. He left the pilots on the deck drinking coffee out of thermoses.

He made the final cuts and changes in the speech Fairlie would deliver this afternoon and then he showered and changed into a gray Dunhill suit and walked along the mezzanine to Fairlie’s room.

Fairlie was on the phone with Jeanette; he waved McNeely to a chair.

When Fairlie rang off McNeely said, “My God that’s disgusting.”

“What is?”

“All that billing and cooing at your age.”

Fairlie just grinned. He was in the chair beside the phone in a Madras dressing gown; now, when he began to get out of his seat, he seemed to go on rising for an incredible length of time — a tall multijointed man unfolding himself hinge by hinge.

They talked while Fairlie dressed: about Perez-Blasco, about Brewster, about the Capitol bombing, about the U. S. Air Force bases at Torrejon and Saragossa and the Navy base at Rota.

Perez-Blasco was the Messiah, the Judas; the beloved savior of the people, the despot they were learning to despise; the liberal genius, the stupid tyrant; the incorruptible protector, the racketeering gangster; the Goddamned Commie, the Goddamned fascist. He might raise the nation’s standard of living; he might spend everything on palaces and yachts and a numbered Swiss account. “You just don’t know, do you. You just can’t tell. I wish he’d been in office longer.”

“He could say the same about you.”

Fairlie laughed.

McNeely waited for him to knot his tie and then handed him the speech. “Nothing out of the ordinary. One of the standard variations on harmony and friendship.”

“It’ll do.” Fairlie was looking it over carefully, committing blocks of it to memory so he wouldn’t have to speak with downcast eyes glued to the page. He liked to eyeball his audiences. In this case it hardly mattered; the speech was short and it was in English and at least half the people in the room wouldn’t understand one word in ten.

“Sometimes,” McNeely said, “I wonder if we really need these damned bases at all. They’re like sores on the earth, they keep festering.”

“We’re all developing a conscience, aren’t we? This revulsion toward the idea of global power. We’d all like to return to simple times and unload these responsibilities.”

“Maybe they’re responsibilities only because we think they’re responsibilities.”

Fairlie shook his head. “I’ve been tempted that way but it doesn’t hold water. It’s an emotional isolationism — anti-militarism. We like to vilify our own military power but you know it’s created a balance of sorts — not very satisfactory, I guess, but at least it’s given us conditions where we’ve got some chance of success negotiating with the Chinese and the Russians. We’re a stabilizing factor, we make our presence felt and I imagine it eases the crises a lot more often than it aggravates them.”

McNeely replied with enough of a grunt to let Fairlie know he was listening, without interrupting Fairlie’s train of thought.

“It’s not the power that festers, I think. It’s the inconsistency of its use. You can’t be effective in foreign affairs without some philosophical direction — otherwise your actions are unpredictable and the other side is going to miscalculate all the time.”

A knock: it was Rifkind at the door.

“Something wrong, Meyer?”

“A little trouble, sir. It looks like the helicopter broke down.”

McNeely sat up. “What’s wrong with it?”

“Cord explained it to me, sir, but I couldn’t make much sense out of it.”

McNeely poked an arm into his coat and strode out onto the deck. Cord and Anderson were on top of the fuselage poking into the engine. They had grease all over them.

“What’s wrong?” McNeely was sharp; time was getting tight.

“Beats shit out of me,” Anderson mumbled. Then he looked over his shoulder and recognized McNeely. “We started to warm her up, we were going to top up the tanks, and all of a sudden she starts letting go like a banshee. Man what a racket. Didn’t you hear it?”

Fairlie’s room was at the back; McNeely hadn’t heard anything. He said, “What does it look like?”

“I ain’t sure. Oil pressure checks out, but she’s sounding like she got no oil in there. Everything scraping. Like sand in the works, you know?”

“You don’t see anything?”

“No sir.”

“How soon can we get another machine up here?”

The Sixth Fleet was off Barcelona — that was a little more than a hundred miles away. Anderson said, “About an hour, I expect.”

“Get one.”

He went back to the suite and reported to Fairlie. Rifkind trailed along and said, “Of course there’s a possibility of sabotage, but right now we don’t even know what’s wrong with the machine.”

“See what you can find out.”

“Sir.” Rifkind went.

Cord arrived to say they had radioed a request to the Fleet and a replacement chopper was on its way. Fairlie checked the time and said to Rifkind, “You’d better call Madrid.”

“Yes sir. If they chug right along we oughtn’t to be more than a half hour late.”

Rifkind and Cord left; McNeely said, “It’ll be good for a laugh in Madrid. Another case of marvelous American technology.”

“Breakdowns happen. It doesn’t matter.” Fairlie slid the speech into his inside pocket.

The view through the window was spectacular: vast broken planes, an upheaval aglitter with snow, a craggy wilderness; Fairlie, McNeely thought, had a face that matched it.

Fairlie spoke abruptly. “Liam, you remember what Andy Bee said about a President running for a second term?”

“That it ties his hands? Yes, I remember. Why?” Andrew Bee, one-time Senator and now a Congressman from Los Angeles County, had been Fairlie’s strongest opponent in the Republican presidential primaries and had only deferred to Fairlie at the last minute at Denver. A big lumberjack, Andrew Bee; and a thoughtful force in American politics.

Fairlie said, “I’m not going to run for a second term, Liam.”

“What, tired of the job already?”

“Bee was right. It’s got to hamstring a man. You can’t be expected to be both President and politician.”

“The hell. That’s the object of the game.”

“No. I’m going to announce it right up front. I want you to put it in the draft of the Inaugural Address.”

“With all due respect I think you’re nuts. Why commit yourself?”

“It frees my hand.”

“To do what?”

Fairlie smiled a little with that unexpected self-deprecation that sometimes, out of context, warmed his face. As if reminding himself not to equate his person, with the power of the office he was about to assume. “Andy Bee and I had some long talks. The man has some important ideas.”

“I’m sure he does. Next time he runs for President maybe he’ll get a chance to put them into practice.”

“Why wait?”

“To do what?” McNeely asked again.

“Mainly to rip apart the committees.”

“That’s a pipe dream.” McNeely knew all about that, it had been Andrew Bee’s private crusade for years: the unraveling of the archaic committee system in Congress which governed not by majority but by seniority. The satrapies of Congress were tyrannies of old men, most of them rural, many of them corrupt, some of them stupid. No law could pass without the support of these old men, yet nothing in the Constitution required this shackling of Congress; for years the younger members, led by Andrew Bee, had called for reform.

“It’s not a pipe dream, Liam.”

“If you want to get legislation through, you’ve got to have committee support. If you attack the chairmen they’ll eviscerate you.”

“But if I’m not running for reelection what have I got left to lose?”

“All the rest of your programs.”

“Not if I settle this one first,” Fairlie said. “And don’t forget those old boys have to be reelected too. I think they understand the sentiments of the times. Look at the kind of support Andy Bee has with the public. He’s made his stand on the issue for years and the public’s solidly behind him.”

“You’re the one they elected President. Not Andrew Bee.”

Fairlie only smiled; he turned and reached for his coat. “Let’s go outside, I want some air.”

“Don’t you realize how cold it is out there?”

“Oh come on, Liam.”

McNeely went to the phone and summoned assistants to organize Fairlie’s belongings and bring them along to the deck. When he put down the phone Fairlie was almost to the door. McNeely said, “You really want me to put that in the Inaugural Address?”

“Yes.”

“Well what the hell. It won’t do any harm. You can always change your mind later.”

Fairlie laughed and went out. McNeely caught up on the mezzanine and joined the circle of Secret Service men moving along with him.

Cord was canted over the open engine compartment of “the chopper; Anderson, on the deck, was rubbing his hands and exhaling steam. McNeely looked at his watch, buttoned his coat, turned the collar up around his ears. Fairlie was looking up the ski slope, squinting, smiling with visible wistfulness.

McNeely walked over to Anderson. “Find anything yet?”

“I sure can’t figure it. Everything checks out good. But she’s still screechin’ ever time we start her up.”

“Sounds like gasoline trouble. Did you check the fuel pump?”

“First thing.” Anderson made a gesture of baffled disgust with his hands. “Anyhow they’re flying a mechanic up passenger on the bird they sending in to replace this one. He’ll figure it out.”

McNeely nodded. A helicopter was not such a fragile mechanism as it appeared. True, it lacked the dubious visible stability of wings and for that reason a great many people distrusted it but the truth was a helicopter had a better glide chance than a jet plane: if a jet engine quit in midair the plane would hit the ground like a bomb; if a helicopter lost its engine in midair the rotors would freewheel and you could let yourself down dead-stick, and a chopper in distress required very little flat surface area to land on. McNeely respected the fluttery machines.

He patted the metal skin of the big chopper and turned away. Anderson was striding around the far corner of the hotel, possibly headed for one of the rear workshops to hunt up additional tools.

When the pilot went out of sight, McNeely drifted over to Fair-lie’s little circle, his mind going back to Fairlie’s quietly explosive statement about not running for reelection. It was the kind of statement which, if made in heat, meant nothing; but made in deliberate calm, on the basis of obvious lengthy consideration, it meant everything. McNeely stood with the statement undigested, like a lump in his chest that wouldn’t go up and wouldn’t go down. Politics at the very top was the most fascinating game in the world and McNeely, a championship player, selfishly wanted it to go on: but Fairlie was dead right and intellectually McNeely could only accept that it was time to quit playing games.

A stray cool vesper brought the distant flut-flut-flut to his ears and he turned, searching the sky. Presently it appeared between the mountains, a dragonfly of a helicopter with its skinny tail in the air: a Bell Sioux 13R, the DC-3 of helicopters, the military workhorse since Korea.

McNeely hurried back to Cord, the copilot on the engine housing.

“Did you guys call for a Thirteen?” McNeely shouted to make himself heard.

Cord looked up. His head swiveled, he focused on the incoming chopper, he shook his head and cupped his hands around his mouth to shout down. “We only got two big ones aboard. Maybe the other one was out airborne someplace.”

It could cause a problem. The Sioux was a reliable machine but it carried only three passengers. Two passengers if you insisted on having two pilots.

He threaded the cluster of Secret Service men and buttonholed Rifkind and moved him over next to Fairlie. “That’s a three-passenger chopper,” McNeely said.

The Navy helicopter descended slowly, expertly in the thin high-altitude air; it settled on its skids at the far end of the deck beyond the grounded Huey.

The group walked forward; Fairlie was saying, “It’s all right, what the devil, I’ll go along with Meyer and Liam. The rest of you can go down to Madrid by car.”

Rifkind said, “No sir. You need more coverage than just me.”

“Now come on, Meyer, there’ll be an army of Spanish police to mother-hen me the minute we land.”

“I’m sorry sir. You need at least two of us with you at all times. Preferably four.”

“You’re giving me orders, Meyer?”

“No sir. I’ve got my own orders, that’s all.”

They stopped just outside the circle of the slow circling rotors. The pilot was coming out to meet them, stooping low under the blades, a Negro lieutenant in Navy fatigues. He was fifteen pounds overweight, had a neat trimmed black-on-black moustache and slightly bulbous cheeks the roundness of which was accentuated by the wad of gum he was chewing. He emerged, stood up and rendered a crisp salute. “Mr. President-elect.”

Cord had come over from the crippled chopper. “Where’s the mechanic, Lieutenant?”

“Be along on the second machine,” the black lieutenant said. He removed his fatigue cap to reveal a completely bald head; wiped his pate with his sleeve and replaced the cap.

McNeely turned. “What second machine?” He had the lieutenant’s face on a bias toward the light and saw the ridge of a dark scar that ran along the jawline.

The lieutenant was chewing with the open-mouthed insouciance of the chronic gum addict. “Fleet didn’t have a Huey to send, sir, so they ordered two Thirteens out. The other one will be along in a few minutes — they had to wait for the mechanic to get his gear. Captain said you’d probably want a second machine for the gentlemen from Secret Service.”

Fairlie was nodding, reaching for his briefcase which was in one of the aides’ hands. “That’s fine then. Meyer, pick yourself a side-man and the three of us will ride this one. Liam, you come along in the second helicopter with two more of the boys. That soothe your feathers, Meyer?”

McNeely was swiveling on his heels. “Where’s Anderson?”

Cord said, “He went to find a socket-wrench set.”

“He’s got a hell of a sense of timing.”

Fairlie was moving toward the idling chopper. “Never mind, I’ll ride with the lieutenant here.”

“But Anderson knows the route — he knows the landing spot, the timing...”

“Is he the only pilot alive? Good Lord, Liam, give the information to the lieutenant here and let’s take off — we’re more than half an hour late as it is.”

Rifkind had turned toward the black lieutenant. “I’ll have to look at some ID.”

“Sure.” The lieutenant took out his documentation and Rifkind flipped through it and handed it back. Rifkind was a man who stuck to the letter.

Cord had his two ratings over at the new chopper filling its fuel tanks from a gasoline cart. The lieutenant went over to the Huey with Cord and for a minute the two Navy officers stood plotting course on Cord’s charts, after which the black lieutenant folded them and carried them forward, nodding briskly to Rifkind, popping a new stick of gum into his mouth.

They climbed aboard, Fairlie and Rifkind and Rifkind’s number two, and the black lieutenant who strapped in and talked into a microphone and acknowledged responses from his earlappy headset. The ratings topped up and withdrew the gasoline hose and capped the tank, and Fair lie leaned forward to wave at McNeely.

McNeely gave him thumbs-up and the chopper lifted off a few feet, swung back and forth with a pendulant uncertainty, got its bite in the air and soared away. McNeely stood in the whipping down-draft and watched its graceful tilt and sway toward the mountain pass.

The chopper dwindled with distance. Haze absorbed it over the mountains.

Cord stood beside him, a scowl deepening, and with a sudden growl Cord turned and yelled at the ratings who were trundling the gasoline cart away across the ramp. “Hey. Go on back there and find out what the hell’s holding up Lieutenant Anderson.”

There was a brief discussion among the five remaining Secret Service agents as to which two would ride with McNeely. The reporters had already begun to scatter toward the parking lot and their hired cars.

Within a few minutes McNeely heard another helicopter and turned to watch it emerge from the haze, pushing between the peaks.

Cord was at McNeely’s shoulder. “That’s funny. I thought he said they couldn’t get the other Huey.”

And one of the ratings was running full tilt up the deck stairs, shouting. McNeely couldn’t make out the words. The rating ran halfway forward across the deck and stopped, red-faced and out of breath, and made himself heard:

“...tenant Anderson back there — I think he’s dead, sir!”

Certainty hit McNeely an abrupt physical blow. The Secret Service agents were running but McNeely grabbed Cord by the arm. “Never mind him. Get on your Goddamned radio and let me talk to Fleet. Now!”

1:43 P.M. Continental European Time Fairlie had experienced it before but the sensation was always disturbing: the bubble canopy extended down to the level of your feet and it was as if there were nothing under you but air.

The chugging racket of the engine made conversation difficult; none of them spoke very much. The black lieutenant had a sure hand on the controls, one gloved fist on the cyclic stick and the other on a smaller lever at the left, both feet gently heel-and-toeing the pedals. The air was pungent with oil smoke and the spearmint aura of chewing gum.

He watched the jagged upheaval of the Pyrenees slide by beneath. Pamplona off somewhere to starboard — he thought of the running of the bulls; he had been there for it once, the Fiesta de San Fermin, summer of ’64. His first and last bullfights: he had found he disliked them intensely. It wasn’t the blood that angered him, it was the predestined formality of the slaughter. Spanish bullfighting and Spanish-style dancing had that in common: they had dehumanized these activities, shaped them into rote mannerisms — the bullfight and the flamenco dance had not changed in hundreds of years, they were static rituals, there wasn’t a scintilla of creativity in them anymore. That worried him because it implied a key to the Spanish character which he did not comprehend. He was not altogether confident of his ability to persuade Perez-Blasco of anything at all, but he hoped the man was not a bullfight aficionado or a flamenco buff. Impossible to understand a nation of people who were satisfied with art forms that had ceased developing at the time of Velazquez and El Greco.

The helicopter swayed in gentle ballet through the valleys and passes of the mountains. A strange free feeling of dreamlike three-dimensional movement: he wondered if hallucinatory drugs had anything on this. He was a little frightened by the visual precariousness and that added something keen to his pleasure; he caught Rifkind’s puzzled glance and realized he was grinning like a schoolboy.

A change in the engine’s note; a tilt in the seat under him. He reached for a grip. The black lieutenant’s expletive was loud and angry: “Oh Jesus.”

Rifkind, straining forward, put his preternaturally white face over the lieutenant’s shoulder. “What — what?”

“Not two in a row,” the lieutenant growled.

“What is it?”

“Man we got trouble.”

Fairlie’s grip tightened on the handhold.

“Losing fuel... She ain’t pumping right.” The lieutenant’s gloved hands were all over the controls, his head shifting as his eyes whipped from point to point. “Man, I think we blew a hole in the gas line someplace.”

Immediate childish anger exploded in Fairlie: what the devil was wrong with Navy’s maintenance?

The black lieutenant was growling urgently into his radio microphone. Rifkind’s eyes had gone round, the second agent was kneading his knuckles, Fairlie’s fingers started to ache from squeezing the steel. The lieutenant flung the microphone down and jabbed at controls; the helicopter was changing its drumbeat, lurching a little now, and the lieutenant was talking to himself: “Oh man, oh man.”

Rifkind let out an odd little sound — a cry, choked off; the lieutenant shot him a look. “Everybody take it easy now. Oh man, oh man. Listen, we ain’t in no real danger, just take it easy. I got to find a place to set her down. Look for somewhere flat. Mr. President-elect, I do apologize sir, I do apologize.”

“Just ease us down,” Fairlie heard himself say in a voice filled with perjured calm.

Rifkind’s eyes came around, grateful; Rifkind even essayed a smile. Fairlie found himself gripping Rifkind’s shoulder in a gesture of reassurance.

Rifkind’s number two was pointing past the lieutenant’s shoulder. “That looks pretty flat.”

The lieutenant glanced that way. “I don’t know. You can’t tell about those snowdrifts — sometimes nothing under them but air... Wait now, look over there — that look like houses to you?”

Coils of thin mist hung in the passes; it was hard to make out detail; Rifkind said in a high-pitched tone, “It looks like a farm doesn’t it?”

“Farm with a nice flat yard,” the lieutenant said. “Aeah, we can make that easy.” He sat back visibly relieved. The jaws resumed their rumination on the chewing gum. “All right, now you gentlemen snug up your seat belts real tight if you don’t mind and sit back tight against your seats, hear? We’ll set down like a fly on a soap bubble, I give you my promise. Everybody just take it easy...” The lieutenant kept talking like a wrangler soothing an alarmed horse: after a while the words became repetitive and lost meaning but Fairlie found the steady sound of the lieutenant’s voice had a good hypnotic effect and he thought, he’s a good man.

It came up toward them slowly, three or four scrubby little buildings in a flat white groin of the mountains. The helicopter’s engine was sputtering noisily now but the black lieutenant did not act worried. The hands were steady on the controls; Fairlie felt the seat tip under him as the lieutenant put the chopper into a nose-high attitude and the descent slowed until Fairlie had no sensation of movement.

The farm had a look of disuse and long abandonment: paneless windows gaped, there were no livestock, the buildings looked ready to collapse. But as they closed slowly Fairlie began to see he had been mistaken. Smoke curled vaguely from the house chimney and the yard between house and barn had been chewed up by vehicles and foot tracks. Twin ribbons of tire tracks followed a thin corkscrew road away into the canyons below.

The lieutenant set the chopper down so gently Fairlie hardly felt the bump.

He heard a gusty exhalation and realized it had been Rifkind. Rifkind’s number two was scanning the buildings and he had a gun in his fist and Fairlie said mildly, “Put that thing down out of sight, please.”

The lieutenant was talking into his microphone, reading coordinates off his chart into the radio: “Fox zero-niner, about the middle of the northwest quadrant. It’s a little old farm, you can see the buildings from quite a ways up, you ought to find us easy. Repeat, coordinates Fox zero-niner, center of northwest quadrant. Over...”

Rifkind was scraping a palm down across his face and the number two was baleful: “They should’ve come out to have a look at us by now.”

“Well maybe they think we’re revenooers.” The black lieutenant had an engaging grin.

“That’s not all joke,” Rifkind muttered. “Basque country — they do a lot of smuggling up here. Back and forth over the French frontier. These hills are full of Basque nationalists who fought Franco in the thirties and never got over it.”

The rotors finally were coming to rest — whup-whup-whup. The lieutenant said, “Most likely nobody’s home. But I’ll have a look. Everybody sit tight.”

The lieutenant pushed his door open and stepped down. Rifkind and his number two were watching the farmhouse with taut squints and Fairlie leaned forward for a better view.

The lieutenant was standing on the snow beside the open door. He had stripped his gloves off and was sizing up the farmhouse, in no hurry to move in; he used his hands to light a cigarette and then he turned a slow full circle to scrutinize the yard. Fairlie could not follow his glance beyond the periphery to the left; the helicopter was blind to the rear.

The lieutenant completed his turn. Then coolly as if there were nothing remarkable about it he snapped his cigarette into Meyer Rifkind’s face.

Fairlie had no time to absorb it. Men appeared from the blind rear of the chopper — the door was opening on the right side, the lieutenant was jabbing the bunched rigid fingers of his hand into Rifkind’s diaphragm; Rifkind folded up in his seat and sucked for breath, clawing for his service revolver; the abruptness of it electrified the skin of Fairlie’s spine, he began to twist in his seat, and someone to his right fired a shot.

The number two’s head snapped to one side: magically as if by stop-motion photography a dark disk appeared above his eyebrow, rimmed at the bottom by droplets of crimson froth. The lieutenant was hauling Rifkind out of the helicopter. A hand reached in past the number two, toward Fairlie; he saw it in the corner of his vision. There was another gunshot — Rifkind’s hand went out to break the fall but by the time his body had fallen that far it was dead and the arm was crushed underneath.

Fairlie had just a glimpse of the gas pistol before he passed out.

10:20 A.M. EST Bill Satterthwaite carried in his pocket the genuine symbol of status in Washington: a radio-activated beeper which uttered sounds when the White House wanted him.

It was mostly a source of sophisticated amusement. Washington hostesses joked about it (“My dear, when Bill’s beeper goes off in the middle of my hors d’oeuvres I never know whether to continue the dinner or rush everyone into the basement in case it’s World War Three”). The thing angered his wife, fascinated his sons, baffled the diplomats who came from countries where nothing ever required unseemly hurry.

Satterthwaite was one of the handful who hadn’t been searched on entering the courtroom and that was a symbol too.

The courtroom was jammed. Reporters and sketch artists filled the seats. Satterthwaite sat near the side of the room, polishing his glasses, prepared to be bored.

This was only the arraignment. The Federal Grand Jury had taken a week to word its indictments because no one could afford loopholes.

It was the Government’s serve. At precisely ten o’clock the District Judge had entered the courtroom and the defendants had refused to rise. Judge Irwin’s lips had compressed; he had adjusted his robes and delivered an address from the bench on the subject of contempt of court, at the end of which he cautioned the defendants that if they attempted to disrupt the proceedings he would order them bound and gagged.

No one took it for overreaction. The trial of the Washington Seven gave every indication of turning into a spectacle. Philip Harding and his clients knew they had no hope of avoiding conviction; the only hope was to overturn it on appeal. If the court could be baited into losing its temper it might lay the basis for future appeals or the declaration of a mistrial. And since the defendants sought the overthrow of the system which the court represented they had no reason to obey its rules of decorum and etiquette; they meant to defy and provoke at every opportunity.

The Government’s every ball had to clear the net and land inside the service court. There was not much doubt there would be basis for sufficient appeals to carry the case to the Supreme Court, but the Attorney General had to make certain the Supreme Court had no grounds to reverse the convictions.

The reading of the indictments was a rote formality; Ackert’s presence was an indication of the President’s personal involvement in the case, as was Satterthwaite’s. Brewster had said, “Just show yourself. Let the reporters see you.”

In the seats around him Satterthwaite counted four Senators and six Representatives — members of both parties, well-known figures. Congressman Molnar from California, who stood about four goose-steps to the right of Hitler; Congressman Jethro, the black socialist from Harlem; Senator Alan Forrester from Arizona, who stood plumb in the political center. The President’s intent was to demonstrate the solidarity of the Government and it was interesting that the angriest of these spectators was the Leftist Jethro because in his estimation the bombers had set back his cause by ten years.

To Satterthwaite causes and ideologies were tiresome things. He saw history in terms of the theory of random games. The course of events was determined not by mass movements or ecopolitical struggles but by royal whims and feminine intrigues and the accidents of personalities and coincidences. Those in power had the responsibility for judging odds, estimating resources, placing the right bets on the right numbers; the long-term goal was to win more than you lost and the method was to study each turn of the wheel as an individual case. “Long-term policy” was a meaningless phrase because you could never predict when you might encounter an opponent’s surprise gambit, a new Hitler, a new Gandhi. You did your best with what chips you had.

The Attorney General’s voice droned on, the monotone of a man reading aloud from documents designed more to be printed than spoken. The defendants were skirting the boundaries of contempt: yawning, playing ticktacktoe, scratching themselves, laughing intermittently. Robert Walberg was flipping a coin continuously in an obvious effort to make a point about the trial and Establishment justice. Philip Harding with his thumbs hooked in the armholes of his vest grinned obscenely at Ackert throughout the reading of the indictments.

Ackert reached his summation and paused for breath and that was when Satterthwaite’s electronic device began beeping.

The thing always alarmed him; this time it gave him a grateful sense of reprieve as well. He climbed across six knees and walked quickly up the aisle.

A guard held the door for him and Satterthwaite stopped to ask the location of the nearest telephone.

“Court clerk’s office, sir.”

He followed the direction of the pointing finger and entered an office occupied by several women behind desks. Satterthwaite spoke a few words; one of the women turned a telephone toward him.

The President’s secretary was unusually crisp; she sounded distressed. “The President wants you immediately — we’ve sent a car for you.”

So it was more than a trivial flap. He strode toward the street.

The EPS squadrol was just drawing in at the curb, the seven lights on its rooftop flashing red and amber. The driver had the back door open for Satterthwaite when he reached the foot of the steps, and as soon as he was inside the siren climbed painfully against his eardrums. The cruiser surged along the boulevards, slowing for the red lights, dodging lanes, and he felt the speed against his kidneys.

In the outer office the President’s secretary told him, “They’re in the Lincoln Sitting Room,” and he went there, striding along on his short legs with a growing sense of urgency.

The President was on his feet pacing; he acknowledged Satterthwaite with a palm-out gesture that stopped Satterthwaite just inside the door. Satterthwaite quickly catalogued the half dozen men in the room: B. L. Hoyt, Director of the Secret Service; Treasury Secretary Chaney; the directors of the FBI and the, Central Intelligence Agency and the National Security Agency; and Secretary of State John Urquhart.

The President came forward speaking over his shoulder with his favorite executive mannerism, the disguised order in the form of a question: “Now shouldn’t you boys get moving?” He came right by Satterthwaite and touched his elbow as he passed through the doorway; he took B. L. Hoyt in tow and the three of them tramped across the carpet. The President’s cigar left a wake of ash and smoke through which the Secret Service agents traveled efficiently; one of them held the door and the three men passed into the President’s office.

Brewster walked around behind the Lincoln desk and sat, a bit vague against the light that spilled in through the three windows behind him. Satterthwaite, making his guess from the selection of men who had been in conference with the President, said flatly, “Something’s happened to Cliff Fairlie.”

The President’s twang was emotional and pained. “He’s been kidnapped.”

B. L. Hoyt had his finger on the large globe behind the flagstaff. “In the Pyrenees.”

“For Christ’s sake,” Satterthwaite breathed. There followed the President’s hard grunt. Satterthwaite’s consciousness receded defensively: he could absorb only fragments of the President’s story: “...on the way to Madrid to nail down the bases with Perez-Blasco... was McNeely who tumbled to it first... phony Navy helicopter... pilot’s dead... a mountain called Perdido about seventy-five miles west of Andorra.”

The President tapped his palm against the desk top gently and his ring clacked against the wood. Satterthwaite came to. “He was taken alive?”

“Apparently.” That was B. L. Hoyt, very dry. “At least we have no evidence to the contrary.”

“Do we know why?”

Howard Brewster said, “We don’t know who and we don’t know why.” He removed the cigar from his mouth. He had nearly bitten it in two. “Goddamn it.”

Satterthwaite had a little trouble with his knees; he found his way to a chair. “Sweet Jesus.”

“We got word about two hours ago. I’ve put the machinery in motion, we’re using every plane and helicopter and pair of eyes we’ve got in the Med. Madrid’s cooperating, naturally.”

Satterthwaite plucked the handkerchief from his pocket, took off his glasses and wiped them. “I’m sorry, Mr. President. I feel stunned — it takes getting used to.”

The President said, “I know,” and spoke into a telephone: “Have you got McNeely yet?... Buzz me the minute he’s on.” He dropped the receiver on its cradle. “McNeely’s all right. The minute he discovered what was going on he sealed off the exit road up there and restricted the telephone switchboard to official calls — he’s got the reporters bottled up in there, he’s giving it out that Fairlie’s got a head cold, some temporary indisposition.” Brewster smiled briefly. “McNeely’s a country slicker just like me.” He tapped the ash off the end of his cigar. “We want to keep it in the family for a few hours. Maybe we can get Fairlie back before it gets out.”

“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.

The vehicle’s gears gnashed. It lurched forward; he had a feeling it was going up a hill, rounding a sharp curve. Perhaps he was in the trunk of a car — but no; he was stretched out full length on his back and he knew of no car with a trunk that large. The floor of a station wagon perhaps? A truck?

He was contained within a very constricted space: something the size and proportion of his own body. He could define its limits with his elbows, his forehead, his toes. All of it was heavily padded with a soft cloth-covered substance. A padded cell, he thought, I always knew it would come to this. He was not ready to laugh but the thought eased his panic.

They had padded the enclosure to keep him from banging on it with his elbows and feet. They had removed every possibility of his making his presence known to anyone. Professionally done, he thought.

Now he asked a silent question and realized it was the question people were supposed to ask when they regained consciousness:

Where am I?

And what time was it? What day?

Questions to which there were no answers.

It was a land vehicle. Not a plane, not a boat; the motion was that of something on wheels, moving on bad roads, not at a very great rate of speed.

How long had he been moving? There was no way to know what country he was in — what continent.

The thought of time — the indefinite bubble of time in which he lay — made him sharply aware of hunger and thirst.

They would be looking for him. The whole world would be looking. He approached the thought with a certain detachment.

The blackness was absolute. He was totally enclosed. It made him acutely afraid: the lack of light suggested lack of air; the size of the enclosure was claustrophobic; how soon would he exhaust the oxygen? He breathed cautiously but the air did not seem preternaturally stale; there was only the faint stink of exhaust fumes.

Gently. Exhaust fumes: they weren’t being generated inside his padded enclosure. They came in the air, from outside. There was an air vent somewhere.

The floor lurched over a bad bump, a chuckhole. Then there was the sensation of rumbling unevenness: a flat tire? But it kept moving, it didn’t slow down. He was puzzled until the answer struck him: cobblestones.

He lay motionless, feeling cramped, his muscles knotting painfully even though he was stretched out full length. It was a physical manifestation of fear and he fought it by relaxing himself a muscle at a time.

The motion stopped.

His body tensed again, panic renewed: the vehicle had stopped, it was a new terror to reckon with.

His prison swayed under him and he thought it must be the weight of someone climbing into the vehicle. Then he felt himself in motion. Scraping, banging; he was rolled from side to side, there was one particularly sharp blow, and he felt the case around him sway unevenly.

They were carrying him somewhere. Clumsily, banging into things. He felt it when they set him down.

A squeak, and a quiet rhythmic scraping. For a moment he had a horrid gothic illusion of rats gnawing at his enclosure. Incredible what the mind could conjure in total darkness.

There was light. A thin ribbon at first, a crack that opened under the edge of the top of his enclosure. It was very faint but it made him blink. By its shadows he could see that the enclosure around him was lined with something glossy and quilted.

A coffin. They had him in a coffin.

The squeaking and scraping: they were unscrewing the lid.

Something out of a bad horror movie, he thought; it was unthinkable and it was silly. Laughter and fright chased each other through his veins. He felt the rapid heavy thudding of his pulsebeat.

Three of them lifted the lid away. He could make out their silhouettes, that was all; the light blinded him. He tried to sit up. A voice, curiously strained and muffled, spoke calmly: “Take it easy Fairlie.”

Two of them lifted him to a sitting position. He went dizzy, felt his eyes roll up; he had to knot his stomach muscles and fight for consciousness. The same voice spoke again, but not to him: “Take the gag out, give him something to drink.” Then it came closer: “Fairlie can you hear me? Nod your head.”

He lifted his head and let it drop. The effort seemed to cost too much.

“All right, listen to me now. Where we are you could yell your head off and nobody but us would hear you. But I don’t want any yelling. Understand? You don’t speak unless you’re spoken to. Otherwise we have to hurt you.”

He squinted, trying to see. Shapes swam in the light, slowly becoming distinct, taking on form and color. A garage, he saw it was. Big enough for three or four cars. There were two: a small European coupe and a black hearse.

A hearse.

It was an old hearse, perhaps a Citroen; the tires looked bad. That was what they had transported him in. Steam rose from the hoods of both cars.

He saw the black lieutenant, in chauffeur’s uniform now. Still chewing gum.

There were four others, he saw. All of them in Arab robes, their faces hidden behind Bedouin headgear, the wraparounds up to their noses. One of them came forward and began to peel the surgical tape from Fairlie’s face. It stung like razor cuts as it ripped away.

The hands were small and deft: a woman, he saw, and it surprised him.

She did not speak. The black lieutenant brought a tin cup of water. “Small sips, man. Swallow easy.” And tipped the cup to Fairlie’s lips.

He sucked greedily. The water had a brassy taste, or perhaps that was only the fear on his tongue.

The other spoke, the one who had spoken the first time. A disguised voice, he could hear that immediately, but something Slavic about it. “Free his feet and sit him over here.” He was beyond the light and Fairlie couldn’t see him clearly.

The woman undid the wire around his ankles. “His hands too?”

“Not for the moment.”

The woman and the black lieutenant lifted him to his feet. He was standing in the open coffin on the floor of the garage. They held him, each by one elbow. The blood rushed from his head and he almost passed out again; he fought it because it seemed essential to fight something.

It was as if his feet had gone to sleep. He had no muscular control of his ankles. The woman said, “Step over. Careful.” She affected a Germanic sort of accent but it didn’t sound real. Nonetheless, he thought, it served to disguise her real voice well enough. He could see nothing of her but her hands and eyes and cheekbones. She was perhaps eight inches shorter than Fairlie.

They walked him across the room slowly. He felt like a loosely strung puppet. His feet flapped uncontrollably at every step.

There was a workbench against the rear wall. Tools and scrap had been swept to the side. Packing crates were drawn up in the guise of chairs and the Slavic one said, “Sit.”

His elbows were free but his hands were wired together; he sat forward with his elbows on the bench and his hands in front of his face, peering past his knuckles. It was very important to know where he was — vitally important, though he didn’t think why. He tried to make out the license plates of the two cars but they had been smeared deliberately with mud.

The Slav said, “You can speak, can’t you?”

He didn’t know; he hadn’t tried. He opened his mouth and uttered an unrecognizable croak.

“Come on now, you haven’t been gagged that long.”

“How long?” It came out better but it was still as if his tongue were shot full of novocaine.

“A few hours, that’s all. It’s only about sunset.”

The same day, then. Monday, January the tenth.

A rusty work lamp on the workbench, the kind with a hook, and a cage over the bulb. The Slav picked it up, switched it on. “Abdul.”

The black lieutenant: “Yeah?”

“Lights out.”

Abdul, which clearly was not his name, went to a wall switch. The ceiling lights went out; only the work lamp in the Slav’s fist burned. The Slav trained it on Fairlie.

“Do you know your name?”

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

“What’s your name?”

“What is this?”

“What is your name please.”

The light blinded him to the rest of the room. He closed his eyes, twisted his head, squinted into the dark corners.

“Name.”

“Clifford Fairlie.”

“Very good. You may call me Sélim.”

Sélim and Abdul, then. It was very unconvincing; perhaps it was intended to be.

“Abdul. The recorder.”

Footsteps on concrete. After a moment Sélim the Slav spoke at him again from the darkness. “Fairlie talk to me.”

“What about?”

“You must have questions.”

Names, Fairlie thought. Sélim and Abdul. They withheld their real names, they disguised their voices, they hid their faces from him. Conclusion: it was important he not discover who they were. Suddenly he felt a clawing surge of hope. They would not have gone to these lengths if they meant to kill him.

But he knew Abdul’s black face.

But half a dozen people back at Perdido knew it too. They wouldn’t kill Fairlie for that.

Uncertain all the same, he felt very cold.

Sélim said, “Perhaps you’d like to know what this is all about.”

“I assume I’ve been kidnapped.”

“Very good.”

“For what purpose?”

“What purpose would you think?”

“I suppose I’m being held for ransom, is that it?”

“In a way.”

“In what way?”

“I’m sure you recognize the facts of life, Fairlie. Political kidnapping is a highly effective weapon in the wars of liberation that are being waged against the forces of the imperialist regimes.”

“I doubt it. This won’t win your cause many friends.” Fairlie rubbed his mouth against the back of his hand. “May I have something to eat?”

“Certainly. Lady.”

Fairlie heard the girl moving around in the dimness.

“Are we still in Spain?”

“Does it matter?”

“I suppose it doesn’t.”

Abdul the black lieutenant inserted himself briefly between Fairlie and the light. He placed an object on the workbench at Sélim’s hand. It was a small tape recorder.

Sélim did not touch it. Fairlie looked at the tape spools. They were not turning; the machine was not switched on.

Sélim said, “You were saying.”

“What is it you want of me?”

“Only a little painless cooperation. It won’t cost you anything.”

“Speaking in whose terms?”

“Don’t be alarmed. What do you think we want of you?”

The girl — she was a girl or a young woman by her hands and eyes — brought him food on a scrap of cloth. A small crusty loaf split into a sandwich, chunks of cold boiled ham.

Sélim reached for Fairlie’s hands. Fairlie drew back sharply; the Slav only clucked in his throat, reached out again and began to untwist the wires around Fairlie’s wrists.

When his hands were free Fairlie rubbed his welted wrists vigorously. “Is this all of you? This little band?”

“We’re everywhere, Fairlie. The united peoples of the world.”

“I suppose to you self-styled revolutionaries your cause makes good sense. To me it’s gibberish. But I’m sure you didn’t drag me here just to engage in silly dialectics.”

“Perhaps that’s exactly what we have done.”

“Nonsense.”

“You refuse to listen to us unless we force you to.”

“I listen to everyone. It doesn’t oblige me to agree with everything I hear.”

The bread and ham had no flavor; he ate mechanically.

Sélim said, “How long do you suppose we’ve been sitting here talking?”

“Why?”

“Humor me. Answer the question.”

“Five minutes I suppose. Ten minutes. I don’t know.”

“I imagine it’s long enough for you to have cleared your voice. It sounds natural enough to me.” Sélim reached for the tape recorder, pushed it forward into the light. He did not switch it on yet. “Now we have a simple request. I have a short speech written out. You ought to find that familiar — you people always read speeches written for you by someone else, don’t you.”

Fairlie refused to be drawn; fear chugged in his stomach and he was not prepared to debate questions of that nature.

“We’d like you to deliver this little speech for us in your own voice. Into the tape recorder.”

Fairlie only continued to eat.

Sélim was very patient, very mild. “You see we believe the greatest difficulty faced by the peoples of the world is that those in power simply do not listen — or at best, listen only to what they want to hear.”

“You’ve got a captive audience,” Fairlie said. “If it pleases you to bombard me with mindless invective I can’t stop you. But I can’t see how you expect it to do you any good.”

“On the contrary. We expect you to help us re-educate the world.”

“Thank you but I rarely send my brain out to be laundered.”

“An admirable sense of humor. You’re a brave man.”

Sélim reached inside his robes, drew out a folded paper, pushed it into the light. Fairlie picked it up. It had been typewritten, single spaced.

“You’ll read it exactly as written, with no editorial revisions and no imaginative asides.”

Fairlie read it. His mouth pinched into tight compression; he breathed deep through his nose. “I see.”

“Yes, quite.”

“And after I’ve obeyed your instructions?”

“We don’t intend to kill you.”

“Is that a fact.”

“Fairlie you’re no use to us dead. I realize I can’t prove this to you. It’s true, however.”

“You don’t honestly think Washington will agree to these demands?”

“Why not? It’s a very cheap price to pay for your safe return.” Sélim leaned forward. “Put yourself in Brewster’s position. You’d do it. So will he. Come now, Fairlie, you’re wasting our time. You can readily understand that right now for us time is blood.”

Fairlie glanced at the last line of the typewritten speech. “‘Instructions will follow.’ What instructions? You can’t bring this off, you know that.”

“We’ve brought it off up to now, haven’t we Fairlie.” The voice was filled with quiet arrogance.

Fairlie tried to see him past the upheld hand lamp. Sélim’s head, wrapped in linen, was only a vague suggestion. Fairlie’s hand reached the table, gripped its edge; he put his fingertips on the document and pushed it away.

“You’re refusing.”

“Suppose I do?”

“Then we’ll break one of your fingers and ask you again.”

“I can’t be brainwashed.”

“Can’t you? Suppose I leave it to your imagination. You have to decide what your own life is worth to you — I can’t tell you that. How much pain can you bear?”

Fairlie lowered his face into his hands to shut out the blinding hard light.

He heard Sélim’s quiet talk. “We’re individually important to no one, not even ourselves. You on the other hand are important to a great many people. You have obligations to them as well as to yourself.” Sélim’s voice had dropped almost out of hearing.

Fairlie sat cramped and motionless facing the decision that would have to last his lifetime. Sophomoric questions of physical courage were beside the point; what mattered was position. If you stood for anything at all you must be seen to stand for it. You could not allow yourself to mouth words that mocked your beliefs. Not even when no one who heard you would believe for a moment that you had made the statement of your own free will.

He pulled the typewritten statement into the light and squinted against the glare. “‘They are to be released and given safe asylum.’ Asylum where? No country in the world will touch them.”

“Let that be our problem. Haven’t you enough of your own?”

Sélim dipped the light a little, out of his eyes. Fairlie shook his head. “‘Fascist pigs,’ ‘white liberal swine,’ ‘racist imperialists.’ Cheap propaganda slogans that don’t mean a thing. This document would have to be deciphered like a broadside from Peking.”

“I haven’t asked you to interpret for us. Just read it.”

Fairlie looked into the shadows beside the light. “The point is I have a position in the world, you see — alive or dead I still represent that position. The man in that position can’t put his voice to words like these.”

“Even if they’re true?”

“They aren’t true.”

“Then you refuse.”

He would have preferred to be able to meet Sélim’s eyes but the light made it impossible.

“Given time we can force you to do it.”

“Possibly. I think I’m reasonably tough.”

“There are drugs.”

“I doubt my voice would sound natural.”

Sélim sat silent for a brooding interval. Fairlie felt cold, dismal. Possibly this refusal would cost him his life; he was not capable of facing that with equanimity.

Very soft: “What do you want, Fairlie?”

“What do I want?”

“Let’s hear your side — perhaps we can strike a bargain. What is your price?”

“I cannot be bought, you know that. A man in my position hasn’t the luxury of being able to afford being bought.”

“I applaud your courage. But there must be some basis for discussion.”

“Of course there is.” He felt irresponsibly lightheaded. “Agree to turn me loose.”

“And if I do?” Sélim shifted the light; it stabbed directly into his eyes. “You know what we want, isn’t that right?”

“I’ve read your ransom demands.”

“And?”

“I understand how from your point of view they may seem reasonable. They don’t to me.”

“Why not?”

“My freedom in exchange for the seven bombers we’ve got on trial? You don’t really—”

“Now that’s much better,” Sélim murmured.

“What?” A sudden suspicion: he reached up, twisted the lamp in Sélim’s hand.

Light fell across the tape recorder. But the spools were still motionless.

Sélim pulled the lamp out of his grip. “I’ll switch it on when you’re ready.”

“I’ll speak into that thing only on my terms.”

“And what are your terms, Fairlie?”

“I speak my own words, free of restraint.”

“We can hardly allow that.”

“You’re free to splice the tape. But I’ll say no more than that I’ve been kidnapped and am alive and in good health. That should be evidence enough to serve your tactical purposes. It’s all I’ll give you.”

“Of course you’d give us that much — it would suit your own purpose. You want them to know you’re still alive. They’ll search more strenuously, knowing you’re alive.”

“It’s all I’ll give you. Take it or leave it.”

Sélim abruptly set the work lamp down on the bench. Fairlie reached out and turned it away so that it shone against the wall. Sélim did not stop him; the others, who probably had not heard most of the talk, watched from the dim corners like ghosts.

Sélim switched on the tape recorder, unreeled its microphone and spoke into it: “Uno, dos, tres, cuatro...” He rewound the spools and switched it to playback and the machine said obediently, “Uno, dos, tres, cuatro.”

Sélim rewound the few inches of tape so that the next recording would erase his test words. He pushed the microphone toward Fairlie. “Very well. We’ll try it your way. Whenever you’re ready.”

Fairlie took the mike out of his hand, held it beneath his mouth. He nodded; Sélim’s long-fingered hand pressed the start-record buttons.

“This is Clifford Fairlie speaking. I have been kidnapped, I’m being held in a place I can’t identify by a group of people who have not shown their faces to me or otherwise identified themselves except by obvious pseudonyms. They have not harmed me physically and I believe they do not intend to kill me.”

He lowered the microphone. “That’s all.”

“Say you expect to be released if your government agrees to our ransom demands.”

He shook his head, standing mute; finally Sélim grunted and switched the recorder off. “Abdul.”

The lights came on inside the garage; Sélim switched off the work lamp. “Abdul, tie him.”

He watched, bleak, while Abdul came forward with wire and secured his hands. “The feet too?”

“Not yet.” Sélim stood up, reached for the work lamp. He removed something from its cage — a disk, trailing fine wires. The wires ran down the lamp cord into the jumble around the socket. Sélim picked up the packing crate on which he had been sitting. Underneath it was a tape recorder identical to the one on the workbench. Sélim lifted it to the bench. “I think we have enough.” He began to rewind the spools; he said conversationally to Fairlie, “A good editing job requires two tape decks, you know.”

It was no good screaming oaths. Fairlie closed his eyes. He had allowed them to draw his words; they had duped him so easily. Everything he’d said in the past half hour was on that tape.

“You’ve been most cooperative,” Sélim said. “We appreciate that. We really do.” He placed the two machines side by side on the bench. “Ahmed, time for you to get to work.”

One of the others came forward from the corner — stocky, this one, with dark brown hands. Possibly this one was a real Arab. Sélim relinquished the bench to him and Ahmed placed a set of earphones over his head and began to plug in wires that connected the two recorders together. His hands moved with professional adeptness.

Abdul removed a wad of chewing gum from his mouth and pressed it to the underside of the workbench; he turned and gripped Fairlie’s arm. “Come on, Mr. President-elect. Time to get back in your box.”

Sélim and Abdul walked him to the coffin. It was a simple box on the outside, its luxury limited to the quilted satin interior. The six handles were made of wood. A small hole had been bored through near the bottom at the head end, Fairlie saw; source of the fresh air for the occupant.

Sélim said, “Get in please. We’re going to drug you. It’s not toxic, it’s an anesthetic which reduces respiration by a marked degree. You will be alive, but comatose. For a few hours, no more. During that time you’ll give every appearance of being dead. Your skin will be very pale, your breathing will be too shallow for detection. But you’ll be quite all right afterward, it wears off almost immediately. Lady?”

They pushed him down on his back; he did not struggle, there was no point to it with his hands wired. The woman approached with a syringe. Held it up, squeezed a droplet from the needle’s tip. At least she appeared to know the drill — she wasn’t a fool who’d kill him with an injected air bubble. Fairlie kept his eyes open, watched bitterly as the needle sank into the vein of his inner elbow.

Abdul loomed above the coffin and looked down at him and Abdul’s jaws worked; Fairlie could smell the chewing gum. It, or the drug, made him vaguely nauseous. He heard Sélim talking to someone: “This Ortiz had better be what you make him.”

“No sweat. You go looking to buy yourself an official, you’ll find him sitting right on the counter.”

Fairlie’s head began to swirl. The sucking and clicking of Abdul’s chewing gum became a very loud sound in the garage.

Sélim: “I have a meet in — twenty minutes.”

Ahmed: “In Palamos?”

“Mm.”

“Plenty of time then.”

Fairlie’s eyes slid shut.

“Kill the lights while I open the door.”

Darkness. Fairlie fought. Very distantly he heard the scrape and thunder of the garage door: he tried to focus on it but he was falling in vertigo, a spiral without bearings. Slipping under, he was thinking toward the last that he was a fool and that was a shame because the world did not need a fool for a leader just now.

9:40 P.M. EST The headache was a sharp burning blade against Dexter Ethridge’s right eye. He tried to ignore it. President Brewster was saying, “It’d be a bad mistake to let this distract us completely from the Spanish thing. Nobody seems to realize how important those bases are.”

“Well we’re not going to be able to hang onto them forever,” Ethridge said.

“You can’t always think in terms of forever, Dex. First you’ve got to think of right now. Today, tomorrow, the next twelve months.”

Ethridge recognized the philosophy: it was Bill Satterthwaite’s and over the past few years more and more it had come to color the President’s acts.

The President said, “Right now — and right now is the point — the Reds have got us outshipped and outgunned and altogether militarily outclassed in the Mediterranean. The only thing we’ve got to balance it is the Spanish bases.”

“It’s not as if we’re on the brink of war though.” Ethridge half-closed his right eyelid, trying to drive the pain away.

“Dex. We have been on the brink of war continuously since Nineteen and Forty-seven.” The President was very tired; his voice had the quality of a rusty hinge in motion but Ethridge found it pleasantly abrasive, like a rough towel after a hot bath.

They sat in private conference in the Lincoln Sitting Room; they had been there more than two hours, uninterrupted except for a staff aide’s intrusion with an item of news from Justice: an anonymous caller had warned Los Angeles police there was a plastic bomb concealed in the Federal Court Building, had said there would be an epidemic of bombs across the country if the Washington Seven were not released; the threat sounded as if it represented the voice of a vast nationwide conspiracy. But it turned out there was no bomb in the Federal Court Building; at any rate the Government had begun massive surveillance of known radicals a week ago and there was no sign of organized terrorist momentum. In fact the tragedy at the Capitol seemed to have brought quite a few hot-bloods to their senses; even the underground press was calling for a halt to violence.

Yet for nearly a half hour the President had digressed from the subject at hand — Fairlie’s abduction — to talk a hard line, angry with the “sellouts who grovel at the feet of these radical punks.” Ethridge had listened with dubious interest. When Brewster was warmed up his rhetoric improved but his marksmanship became erratic. Tonight the President was in an execrable temper. The air was poisoned by his cigar smoke.

The President had battled his demons with fervid passion: “We should have stomped the bastards right off. Back in the Sixties. But we’re supposed to be tolerant and liberal. So we let them walk on us.”

Brewster had been talking to his knees. He did not lift his head; he didn’t stir, but his eyes shifted quickly toward Ethridge as if to pin him. “Their Goddamned dogmatic righteousness. It makes a man sick, Dex. They talk about ‘liberate,’ they mean blow somebody up. They talk about participatory democracy, they mean turning everything over to five delinquents with a can of gasoline. They’ve made us accept their dirty minds and their dirty language — when was the last time you were shocked when you heard the words ‘fascist pigs’? They’ve radicalized all of us and it’s time to stop it.”

Ethridge’s headache was a maddening distraction. He found it hard to summon the alertness Brewster’s talk seemed to require. Brewster had harped on the subject of the radicals until a few minutes ago when he had shifted abruptly to the Spanish bases. It bothered Ethridge because he knew the President was not given to idle ramblings. There was a reason for Brewster’s display of anger — it was a preamble to something specific and Ethridge kept trying to predict the President’s next moves but the headache intervened and finally he said, “Do you think someone could get me a couple of aspirins?”

Brewster’s head moved quickly; dark hair fell over his eye. “Don’t you feel well?”

“Sinus headache, that’s all.”

“I’ll ring for the doctor.”

“No.”

“Dex, you were bombed, you got hit on the head, now you’ve got a headache. I want you looked at.”

“Really it’s not necessary. I’ve had sinus trouble all my life — I get a headache every now and then. It always passes.” Ethridge raised one hand a few inches to acknowledge the President’s concern. “It’s nothing, I promise you. The doctors gave me every test known to medical science. I’m quite all right. I only need a couple of aspirins.”

The President reached for his chairside telephone. Ethridge heard him mutter into it; he caught the word “aspirin” and sat back in relief.

He didn’t want another battery of them poking at him, rousting him from one diagnostic machine to another, subjecting him to an infernal variety of pains and peeping eyes and the prisonlike boredom of enforced isolation. There was nothing wrong with him; it was the weather, his perennial sinus. Earlier he had been troubled by lethargy, the great amounts of sleep he had seemed to require after the bomb explosions; he had awakened the morning after the blast with a splitting headache and a curious weakness in his right arm and leg. He had informed the doctors of these symptoms — he wasn’t a prideful fool. There had been some somber talk about the possibility of a stroke or perhaps a “metabolic cerebral lesion.” More skull X rays, another electroencephalogram. Dick Kermode, his doctor, had come into the hospital room beaming on the third morning: Hell there’s nothing wrong with you. A man gets hit on the head, he’s got a right to a little headache. No lesions, no sign of a stroke. Headache gone today? Fine, then we’ll turn you loose — we’ve exhausted all the tests, they’re all negative. But if you have any trouble check back with me immediately, will you? Try a little Privine for that sinus.

Howard Brewster cradled the telephone. “Promise me something, Dex. You’ll call your doctor first thing in the morning and tell him about this headache.”

“It’s not worth—”

“Promise me this little thing, all right?”

He inclined his head. “Very well, then.”

“You’re important, Dex. We don’t want any trouble with your health. If we don’t get Cliff Fairlie back by Inauguration Day you’re going to have to be healthy enough to step into these shoes.”

“We’ll have him back by then, Mr. President. I’m absolutely convinced of that.”

“We’ve got to assume the worst,” Brewster said around his cigar. “That’s why you’re here now. We haven’t got a whole lot of time — you’ve got to be briefed on all the things I briefed Cliff on. My predecessor took six weeks showing me the ropes — I took just about that long with Cliff. Now you and I have got just nine days. You’ll have to visit with Defense and State, you’ll have to spend some time with my Cabinet people and the Security Council, but mainly there’s only one boy who can guide you through this here wilderness and that’s me. You’re going to have to spend so much time at my right hand for the next nine days you’ll get to hate the sight of me, if you don’t already.”

In point of fact Ethridge did not hate the sight of him. He rather liked Howard Brewster. But it had taken years for Ethridge to accrete his impression of the President because the political Brewster was very hard to pin down. Superficially he was the embodiment of American tradition: he had grown up in rural Oregon believing in hard work and patriotism, believing there was opportunity for everyone, believing God loved nothing so much as a good fighter. It was was as if Brewster’s philosophers were Abraham Lincoln and Horatio Alger and Tom Mix. Brewster was an amalgam of liberal traditions and conservative mentality and the values of Main Street. And his weaknesses were typical: the transient piety, the chameleon sincerity, the flexible morality.

In Ethridge’s estimation Howard Brewster was a respectable opposition President: he was not too terrible, considering that nobody could be good enough for the job.

“Long hours, Dex,” the President adjured. “An awful lot to cram into your brain — top-secret stuff, in-progress stuff. That’s why I want you healthy.”

The President leaned forward for emphasis. His hand moved away from his face, carrying the cigar, swathed in smoke. “You can’t afford headaches. You get me?”

Ethridge smiled. “All right, Mr. President.”

A staff aide brought Ethridge’s aspirin and a glass of ice water. Ethridge swallowed the tablets.

“My cigar bother you?”

“Not at all.”

“That the truth or just politeness?”

“I enjoy an occasional cigar myself, you know that.”

“Well, some people get a headache, they get sensitive to things.” The aide withdrew and Brewster laid the cigar in the ashtray by his elbow. “You’re a polite cuss, Dex. I recollect back toward the beginning of the campaign you kept showing up late for appearances and it turned out you kept getting slowed down holding doors open for people. Nobody else got to hold a door when you were around.”

“They cured me of that after a while.”

The President smiled, his eyes closed to slits. But his amusement seemed dispirited. “I wish I knew you better right now.”

“Am I all that mysterious?”

“You’re the Vice-President-elect, Dex. If we don’t get Cliff back alive within nine days you’re the next President of the United States. If I had my druthers I’d like to know you as well as I know m’own sons. It’d make me feel a whole lot easier.”

“You’re afraid of turning it over to me, aren’t you. You don’t know I’ll be able to carry it.”

“Well, I have every confidence in you, Dex.”

“But you’d like reassurance. What do you want me to tell you, Mr. President?”

Brewster made no direct answer. He stood up, moved around the room curiously — as if he were a visitor seeing the room for the first time. Looking at the paintings, the furniture; finally coming back to his chair and standing in front of it, leaning over to pick up his cigar. “Governing the people of this country from the eminence of this White House,” he said slowly, “is kind of like trying to swat a fly with a forty-foot pole. It’s not a question of whether your heart’s in the right place, Dex. I take it for granted your political beliefs aren’t all that different from mine. Some, maybe, but not a whole lot. But you and I served together in that Senate what, twelve years? I never did get to know you very well.”

“I was on the other side of the aisle.”

“There were plenty of Democrats I didn’t know nearly as well as some of the boys over to your side of the aisle.”

“What you’re saying is I’ve never been a member of the club.”

“Not to be indelicate about it, yes. It’s not that you were a maverick or one of those loudmouths nobody could ever talk to. Far from it. But you were an awful quiet Senator, Dex.”

And the presidential eyes swiveled against him like twin gun muzzles. “An awful quiet Senator.”

“Not my style to make much noise, Mr. President.”

“Nine days from now if you step into this house you’ll have to get noisy, Dex. Nobody listens if you don’t make noise.”

“I’ll try to make the right noises then.”

“Think you can?”

“I hope I won’t have to. I hope Cliff Fairlie will be back. But if it comes to that — the answer’s yes. I think I can, Mr. President.”

“Good — good.” Brewster settled into the chair, drawing the cigar to his mouth, crossing his legs. He wore a herringbone Harris tweed sport jacket; his tie was cinched up neatly, his trousers pressed, his shoes shined, but he always gave the impression of a baggy rumpled man.

“I get a feeling I haven’t reassured you much.”

“Dex, a lot of the boys over in my party are pretty worried about you. You’ve been in Washington twenty-four years and nobody’s ever noticed you doing much except pushing legislation that would benefit your Big Three constituents back in Detroit. I’m being blunt now — I guess I have to be. You spent your last eight years in the Senate on the Judiciary and the Finance and the Commerce Committees — domestic seats every one of them. So far as I know you’ve never once stood up on the floor of the Senate to say a word about foreign affairs or defense. Your voting record on foreign affairs is fine, jim-dandy, but the boys on the Hill look to Pennsylvania Avenue for leadership, not voting records.”

“I’m afraid I can’t rewrite my record to suit the circumstances, Mr. President.”

“I’m just warning you what you’re up against. Your forty-foot pole is the Congress of the United States, Dex. If you want to swat your flies you’ve got to learn how to handle that pole.” The cigar moved through a slow arc to the ashtray. “You got a lot of congressional barnacles to deal with. Certified anachronisms, a lot of them. I know Fairlie’s got grandiose plans to ease them out to pasture but it ain’t going to work, it’s been tried before and it never works. You got to learn how to balance that forty-foot pole on one finger, Dex, it’s the only way. You try to hold it up by one end and the thing’ll slip right out of your hands. You’re a Republican, boy, and that’s a Democratic Congress out there.”

Twelve hours earlier the possibility of becoming President of the United States had been vague and distant in Ethridge’s mind. Ever since the election the realization had been there and he couldn’t ignore it altogether but he regarded it much the way he might think about winning a lottery for which he held one ticket. It could happen but you didn’t make plans.

Then Fairlie had been abducted and the Secret Service reinforcements had arrived. For the first time he had realized the significance of his place in the scheme of things. Long odds became short ones. He didn’t dare stop and compute them; it would seem disloyal to Fairlie. But kidnappers often killed. Ethridge might find himself President of the United States for four years.

There had not been time to absorb it fully. The summons to the White House had been peremptory, the President’s greeting filled with aggrieved concern and avuncular sympathy. But then had come the diatribe against radicals, the insistence on the importance of continuing the Spanish negotiations, now the emphasis on Ethridge’s health and the blunt doubts about his fitness.

He turned, a heavy deliberation in the movement, toward Howard Brewster. “Mr. President, when I accepted the nomination at Denver I accepted the responsibility that went with it.”

“You didn’t campaign for that nomination very hard.”

“No. I didn’t. I was a dark horse, admitted.”

“Have you ever campaigned for anything very hard, Dex?”

“I think I have.” He smiled slowly. “Campaigned pretty hard against you, didn’t we.”

Brewster didn’t bat an eye. “That was Fairlie’s campaign.”

“I think I had a hand in it. Am I flattering myself?”

“Not at all. You won him a lot of votes — you probably swung the election. But balancing that forty-foot pole takes a different kind of campaigning.” The President’s cigar had gone out. He found a new one in his pocket. “The hell with it. We’ll have to do the best we can in nine days, that’s all. At least you’ve been a long time on the Hill and you haven’t made too many enemies. FDR came in, he was a state governor, the only people he knew were people who hated him, he didn’t know the first thing about dealing with the club. It worked out — it always does.”

Ethridge had the distinct feeling the President was talking mainly to convince himself — and that he wasn’t succeeding. The pale eyes mirrored that. You’re not FDR, Dex. You’ll never have his drive in a million years.

Well, Ethridge thought, we’ll see about that. And as he reached his decision a surge of exultation lifted him.

The President was on the telephone. “Bill? Update me.” The big face nodding, the eyes brooding into space. He listened for several minutes with an actor’s variety of expressions chasing one another across his face. His replies were mostly monosyllabic; he ended by saying, “Keep me posted,” and rang off.

“Any news?”

“The Spanish police found the helicopter. Abandoned.”

“Where?”

“A farm in the Pyrenees.” Brewster had a deep suntan, the product of lamps, but in this light he looked very old. He had aged a great deal in two or three years. They always did, Ethridge observed, and the thought was tainted by an unwholesome personal regret; Ethridge knew his own vanity.

“They may be able to find some sort of fingerprints,” the President was saying, not with great conviction. “Some sort of clues.”

“There’s no word from Fairlie?”

“No. Nor from the people who took him.”

“It’s an awful thing.”

“It wouldn’t have happened,” Brewster intoned, “if I hadn’t let him talk me out of cracking down on the bastards.”

“I doubt you can say that. A crackdown wouldn’t have netted these — they’re in Europe.”

The pale eyes flickered. “Dex, I want to get tough with these bastards. I need your help.”

“You’re asking me the same thing you asked him a week ago.”

“The situation’s got worse. Out of hand.”

“We don’t even know who these are yet, Mr. President.”

“One of them’s an American. A black. We know that.”

“That hardly justifies a mass lynching.”

“I don’t want a lynching, Dex.”

“A net would only catch thousands of innocent fish.”

“It’ll show them we won’t back down.” A gesture with the hand that ordinarily held the cigar. “That’s important right now — a lot more important than people seem to think.”

Ethridge knew the President wanted a crackdown not for any strategic purpose but to give the appearance that the Administration was doing something firm and functional. Right now the public needed that reassurance. Ethridge conceded the President had a point; but it was an equally valid point that an overt display of official violence could trigger the dissidents into rebellious mob riots which would force Washington into punitive reaction. It could only be military. And once you unleashed your military establishment against segments of your own populace you were admitting the whole democratic structure was a failure. Ethridge was not willing to risk that when, through Fairlie, the country’s chances for reorganization and reform and ultimate stability were better than they had been in decades.

Pain stabbed his eyeball. He squinted. “Mr. President, I’m against taking any wholesale action right now. But I’m going to give this a lot of thought.”

Brewster backed away with grace. “Do that, Dex.” He looked at his watch. “Get a good night’s sleep then; we’ll start the briefings first thing in the morning. I imagine you’ll — are you all right, Dex?”

“Headache, that’s all.” The spasm receded; he stood up to go. A slight weakness in his right leg but when he put his weight on it he had no trouble walking. In the morning he’d call Dick Kermode.

The President walked him to the door. “Mind your health, Dex.” Partly in jest: “You know what happens if you bail out on us. Old Milt Luke’s next in the line of succession.”

It was a curiously bemusing thought. The old House Speaker hadn’t lost any marbles yet but he had reached the age where every point had to be illustrated by a long trudging ramble into reminiscence, an excursion into debilitating recall.

The President said, “I’m serious about that, Dex. Milt Luke’s your backup man until you’re inaugurated. Once you’re sworn in you can nominate your own Vice-President and have him confirmed by Congress — have you picked anyone yet?”

“You’re talking as if you don’t expect we’ll get Fairlie back.”

“I hope we will. But things don’t always come right in the end, Dex. We may not get him back in time, we may not get him back at all. You may have to swear in as President. Pick yourself a Vice-Prez — do it soon.”

Agent Pickett and the protective squad picked him up in the corridor and convoyed him to his car. He had one of the presidential limousines now; he slid down in the seat and rested the back of his head against the cushion, closed his eyes, felt the headache begin to wane.

Sam March, he thought. March would make a good Vice-President. Level-headed, a good Senator, the right kind of Republican...

Good God.

March was dead: killed in the bombing.

Ethridge sat up, winced, looked out the window. So many of them were dead. It was difficult to credit.

Silence inside the moving limousine. Thump of tires, the soft whoosh of the heat blowers. It was a cool steamy night, the windows fogging up, windshield wipers batting softly. The back of the driver’s head was flat and complacent; the Secret Service guards always taciturn, were silent now.

Big black limousine: like a hearse, he thought. How many of them he had followed this week. The endless funerals. He couldn’t get to them all. Most of them had been taken home to their native states but a few — those with war records who had indicated the preference — had been interred at Arlington. He had shuttled to and from them, reminded each time of the first state funeral he had witnessed. Raining, he remembered: hot and wet, and the cortege had marched from the Capitol all the way to Arlington on foot in the drenching rain. The caisson had rolled with stately grandeur and the Mall had been crowded with veterans and the honor guard behind Black Jack Pershing’s casket had included Eisenhower and Hap Arnold and all those others who were dead now.

The overlap of generations was stunning: Ethridge had been a young congressman heading for the Seventies, perhaps the Eighties; Pershing had fought Indians on the frontier...

The limousine drew up. The Secret Service had a van drawn up in the driveway — stakeout headquarters. Ethridge was ushered into his own house, an agent preceding him to check out the shadows. They were very tense now, these Secret Service men. They took their jobs seriously and there had been too many failures.

Judith had gone up to bed, he was told; he looked in surprise at the wall clock in the foyer: it was half past eleven.

A President keeps long hours. He hung his overcoat in the hall closet, put his hat on the shelf. Very weary. The headache had receded but he felt drained; it had been an unbearable week, an unbearable day.

He’s right. Maybe I don’t have the drive. Ambition for the Presidency was a pathological thing and he had never had it, not really.

He went into the study. The house man poured him a cognac according to habit and withdrew quietly from his presence. Ethridge sank into his chair, staring at the telephone by his elbow.

It was like the pre-wedding jitters. You never seriously thought of flight but there were moments of panic. The Presidency — of course he wanted it. Every politician wanted it.

He had to look up the number; he dialed, looked at his watch, made a slight face. At least the headache was gone.

“Congressman Bee’s residence.” It was Shirley Bee, trying to sound starched; he smiled.

“Hi Shirley, it’s Dex Ethridge.”

“Why Senator!” She sounded genuinely pleased.

“How you doing?”

“Why just fine, thank you.” Her Birmingham drawl made it jist fahn, thankye.

“Andy around?”

“Why sure, I’ll get him right away.”

Noblesse oblige. Ethridge sat back, bemused by the petty exercise of power.

“Hello? Senator?”

“Andy. I’m sorry to disturb you this late at night.”

“Not at all. I’m still up. Trying to write a letter to Senator March’s widow — trying to think of the words.”

That was like Bee. To write his own consolation letters. Ethridge felt the incision of guilt: he’d had his administrative aide take care of that.

He started to say That’s strange, I was just thinking about March, but he held his tongue. “Andy, I need to talk with you.”

“Right now?”

“Yes.”

“Not on the phone, I gather.”

“Better not.”

“I’ll be right along then. Save me a brandy.”

Hanging up he saw how easily he was beginning to utilize the prerogatives of power. Until the convention he would have been the one to go to Bee’s house — even though Bee was only a congressman. Bee had done two terms in the Senate himself, had been one of the most popular men ever to sit in that body. Then there had been that automobile accident four years ago just when he was up for re-election. There had been a wave of public sympathy but it hadn’t been enough to overcome two things: Bee’s hospitalization, which made it impossible for him to campaign, and the Brewster landslide which had swept Democrats into power everywhere. Even so, Bee had been nosed out by the slimmest vote margin.

Two years later after trying to work up an interest in private law practice Bee had run for office again. He had jumped into the congressional election in his home district in Los Angeles and had won by a majority that broke every California record. It was assumed Bee would use his House seat merely to keep himself warm — as a jumping-off place for the next senatorial election — but last summer he had chosen to make the big leap instead: he had campaigned for the Presidency.

It was unheard of, reaching for the Presidency from the House of Representatives: particularly when you were a member of the minority party. Ethridge had never been quite certain what Bee expected. Was he just making a trial run, getting the public used to the idea of Andrew Bee as presidential candidate? Would he go for the Senate two years from now and then make a serious bid for the Presidency two years after that? He would still be young enough; he was only forty-seven now.

It had been taken for granted Howard Brewster was unbeatable for re-election. But Bee had campaigned and had received surprising support. He’d won the New Hampshire primary and lost the Florida primary only narrowly to Fitzroy Grant. But then the Fairlie machine had got steam up and Fairlie had walked away with the primaries in Oregon and Texas and even Bee’s home state of California; at the convention Bee had magnanimously thrown his support to Clifford Fairlie. To Ethridge’s knowledge there had been no deals made but two of Fairlie’s Cabinet designees were Bee campaigners.

Andrew Bee had spent two days stumping for Fairlie for every day he spent at home running for re-election in Congress — a race he had to make as an independent because he’d dropped out of the congressional primary to run for the presidential nomination — but Bee had been re-elected by a powerful plurality over both his party-line opponents and the victory had solidified him with the Republicans as an unbeatable vote-getter.

The fact was that even from his lowly House seat Andrew Bee was an important force in the Republican party and in American politics.

Ethridge went out front to alert the Secret Service men to Bee’s arrival. “I forgot to give him the password but I’d appreciate it if you’d let him in anyway.”

Agent Pickett, always an easy mark for Ethridge’s quiet humor, smiled quickly. “We might strip him down and brainwash him a little but we’ll let him through eventually, sir.”

“Fine — fine.” Ethridge withdrew to his study.

Bee arrived within twenty minutes, a tall burly man with deep-set blue eyes and a California tan and the stage presence of a leading actor. He had a slight limp from the automobile crash four years ago; it had taken some pieces of bone out of his legs. But he moved athletically enough; it hadn’t crippled him. He had once been a logger in northern California and he still had the look of it.

“Very mysterious,” Bee hinted as he accepted a globe of brandy.

Ethridge moved to his seat. “You’ve thought about the implications of Cliff Fairlie’s kidnapping.”

“Which implications did you have in mind?” Bee was being careful; it made Ethridge smile a little and Bee nodded in understanding. “You could be President — that implication.”

“Andy, you had a lot of support at the convention. You might have made a hell of a fight of it.”

“I had to defer to Cliff. His chances were better than mine.”

“It was a big thing to do.”

“Well I didn’t do it expecting gratitude, Senator. Cliff and I were splitting the moderate-liberal support, and if we’d slugged it out to the finish Fitz Grant would likely have won the nomination. I don’t think a conservative Republican could have beaten Brewster.”

“You’re saying you threw your support to Fairlie for the good of the party?”

“I didn’t think of it like that.”

It had been not so much for the good of the party as for the good, in Bee’s estimation, of the country — the belief that Fairlie would make a far better Chief Executive than Brewster.

“You were Cliffs first choice for running mate.”

“I know. But McNeely and the others counseled him against it. I’d have weighted the ticket too far to the left — he’d have lost too much conservative support.”

“So they picked me instead of you. I’m supposed to be the conservative on the ticket.”

“A lot of people made that assumption,” Bee said. “I didn’t. I know your voting record.”

“You and I have always got along pretty well in the Senate. Can we still get along well, Andy?”

“I think I see what you’re driving at.”

“I’ve got to be blunt,” Ethridge said. “There’s a chance Cliff Fairlie won’t be recovered alive — we have to face that. If I’m to take office as President my first act has to be to nominate someone to fill the vacancy in the Vice-Presidency.”

“And you’re asking my advice?”

“No. I’m asking you to be my Vice-President if Cliff doesn’t come back.”

A beat of silence: Bee’s big lumberjack face dipping toward the brandy in thought. “It’s mighty flattering, Dex.”

“Frankly, I might have preferred Sam March but he’s gone. But the important thing is you were Cliff’s first choice. I feel obliged to honor his wishes — after all he’s the one who was elected President.”

“You are being blunt.” The famous Bee grin.

“Next to March you’d be my own choice. That’s the truth.”

Bee lifted his head to sip from the globe. “Sam March was pretty good company to be in. I’m not offended.”

“You and I might make a good team, don’t you think?”

Bee uncrossed his legs and recrossed them in the other direction. “I guess you want my decision pretty fast.”

“I’m afraid so.”

The big Californian lifted to his feet. “Let me sleep on it.”

“I’ll call your office tomorrow.”

“Fine.”

They moved toward the door. Bee said, “It seems damned callous, doesn’t it.”

“It does. Like picking the pockets of a man who isn’t quite dead yet.”

“Sometimes I hate politics,” Bee said. He gave Ethridge his quick firm handshake and went.

It was well past midnight. The headache was beginning to throb again. Ethridge thought of calling the doctor but decided to get a night’s rest and see if the headache disappeared.

Feeling strangely guilty, thinking of the big desk in the White House, he went up to bed.

Tuesday, January 11

11:35 A.M. Greenwich Mean Time The signal came on a faint pulse on the five hundred-kilocycle marine band. At Land’s End the W/T operator logged it in, time-of-origin 1135 hours. It was in Morse, an awkward fist on the key. Written out it was brief: Fairlie will broadcast this frequency 1200 GMT keep channel open.

The W/T station got right through on the land line to Commander-in-Chief Portsmouth.

There was no time to think about the possibility of a hoax. C-in-C sent immediate orders to all stations. By 11:48 every official wireless set on the coasts of England and France was ready to receive.

At 11:50 a crackle of introductory static and then a voice transmission:

“This is Clifford Fairlie speaking. In... ten minutes... I will speak... on this... band.”

C-in-C Portsmouth had reached the Admiralty by telephone at 11:49. Word sped to 10 Downing Street.

Two lines to Washington were opened: the Prime Minister’s hot line to President Brewster and a satellite-relayed broadcast circuit to convey the promised broadcast live.

At 11:55 another voice transmission on 500 KG: “This is Clifford Fairlie speaking. In... five minutes... I will speak... on this... band.”

To a few monitors with good ears it was apparent the second broadcast was the same voice recording as the first with the exception of the phrases “ten minutes” and “five minutes.”

The PM heard it, live, by telephone from Admiralty; the PM remarked the curious hesitations between words. It sounded like Fairlie’s voice... The PM inquired of the First Lord of the Admiralty: “We are taping this of course?”

“Naturally.”

“Very good, then...”

“Whitehall is alerted?”

“Yes of course.”

The PM went to the hot line telephone. “Mr. President?”

“Right here.” The twanging Oregon drawl.

“We shall pipe this straight through to you.”

“Let’s hear what it has to say then.”

8:50 A.M. EST The National Security Agency had monster banks of computers designed to analyze ciphers and codes and electronic transmissions. The Fairlie tape had been punched into the IBM consoles and then had been put in again, this time as sound recordings on ultra-high-speed half-inch tapes designed to disclose every nuance of volume and frequency. NSA’s electronic detection devices were the ultimate in Sherlockian analysis: an inaudible sound, an imperceptible fraction of time sufficed for clues.

Ames was the NSA official assigned to the Fairlie tapes and Lime had worked with him many times before. He had been Lime’s supervisor during the years of foreign fieldwork.

“Voiceprints are all positive,” Ames said. “We’ve matched it against his recorded speeches. It’s not a phony — it’s Fairlie’s voice.”

Satterthwaite was scowling through thick lenses at the turning tape reels. “Edited.”

“Edited like mad,” Lime muttered.

The place always put Lime in mind of space-flight mission control: the electronic consoles ran on relentlessly along great curved walls.

Lime held a computer print-out. It diagrammed the splices, showing where Fairlie’s words had been cut and pasted together:

Satterthwaite said, “Is this a professional editing job?”

Lime shook his head and Ames said, “A talented amateur, but not a pro. It sounds almost natural but I’d say they probably made their tapes by switching back and forth from one small portable stereo deck to another. There’s a lot of background tape noise — the kind of thing you get from too much overdubbing. They had to do several tracks to wipe out the clicking sounds between splices — it shows up. At any rate it wasn’t done in a well-equipped sound studio.”

Satterthwaite had the expression of a man who has just tasted something foul. “He knew he was recording it. At least some of it. I mean, you don’t say ‘This is Clifford Fairlie speaking’ unless somebody’s holding a microphone in front of your nose. You’d think he’d have had more sense.”

“With a gun pointed at his head?” Lime stuck a cigarette in his mouth, snicked his lighter open and flipped its wheel. It erupted into a bonfire.

The computer typing-recorders were spilling paper tapes on the floor; they writhed in Medusan agony. Satterthwaite said, “It’s a nice propaganda coup for them.”

They were killing time, really. Radio triangulation had narrowed the point of origin of the Fairlie broadcast to a Mediterranean coastal area north of Barcelona and international forces were combing it. There wasn’t much left but to wait for whatever turned up.

3:15 P.M. Continental European Time The boat smelled strongly of fish. In the confinement of the inboard cabin Fairlie watched the impassive face of Abdul, felt the restraining wire around his wrists and ankles, let himself move slackly with the roll and pitch of the vessel. Somewhere in the Med, he supposed. He had a dull headache, the hangover from the drugs they had administered last night.

“You want to talk, Abdul?”

“No.”

“Too bad. I might talk some sense into you.”

“Man, just don’t tell me we’ll never get away with it.”

“Maybe you will. But you won’t be able to live with it.”

Pained disgust. “Come on, man.”

“You know what they’ll do to you when they catch you.”

“They won’t catch us. They’re too stupid. Now you rest your mouth awhile.”

He lay back. It was a narrow bunk; the wooden side jabbed his elbow and there wasn’t room to shift over. He lifted his elbow over it and let it stick out.

The memory of last night was kaleidoscopic in his head. For an indeterminate time he had been asleep — unconscious, drugged into coma. He had come out of it slowly as if drunk. Aware at one point that he was still in the closed coffin and that it was moving with the quiet heave of a boat on open water. He wasn’t sure of his recollection of sequences for it seemed they had removed the coffin from the boat: he had been awake when they had unscrewed the lid and it had been on dry land, but with the smell of the sea. Dark — a cloudy night, the cold wind whipping mist across the sands. Dead seaweed tangled around his feet. Someone talking — Sélim? — about driving the boat high up on the shoals so it wouldn’t wash out on the tide. A quick movement, shadows rushing through the darkness; a grunt, the thump of a body falling onto the hard-packed sand. Sélim: “Abdul. Stick your knife in him. Hard.” The black face motionless, hardly visible in the poor light. The jaws no longer chewing gum. “Go on, Abdul. It’s discipline.” Abdul moving slowly, disappearing. The distinct scraping-sliding thrust of knife into flesh and bone.

“Lady — now you.”

“No — I...”

“Do it.” Very soft.

Remembering it now Fairlie thought he understood it: Sélim had faced reluctance among his troops and had achieved the solidarity he needed by committing the others to participation in his atrocity. Fairlie knew his Mao: cruelty was an instrument of policy.

It was dismal knowledge, it removed the last doubt of their inhumanity. They would kill him whenever it suited them. In that moment, or in this one, he gave up hope.

They had taken him up the dunes: Sélim the Slav, Abdul the black lieutenant, Lady and the one whose name he had not heard. He did not know whom they had murdered on the beach, or why.

He remembered now there had been a truck waiting, a small rusty van driven by Ahmed, the one who spoke English with a Spanish accent. In the van they had covered him with a blanket and injected a drug and he had gone out again.

He was not certain but he seemed to remember that they had been at sea, then on land, then at sea again, and perhaps yet again on land.

Now on the cabin bunk he felt the rise of a moderate sea beneath his spine and watched Abdul’s unreadable features and wondered where God was.

10:10 A.M. EST In a Boston hotel room with snowflakes drifting against the panes three men worked at revolution. Kavanagh and the Harrison youth molded their ten satchel charges while Raoul Riva worked over a map of Washington with a felt-tip pen and a District of Columbia federal directory.

The Establishment had been stung twice; it was alerted and that was supposed to make it difficult to move freely. But the Americans were suicidally and hysterically incompetent: they had no long-range plans for countering insurgency, they had a genius for preparing to meet the last attack rather than the next one.

Their Capitol had been bombed. Now it was surrounded by armed guards while workmen ripped out its damaged insides and prepared to rebuild. Federal buildings everywhere had been reinforced by sentries and checkpoints. The temporary House and Senate chambers that had been set up in the Cannon and Rayburn buildings were protected by platoons of soldiers. The Government in its stupidity had cordoned off federal office buildings in every major city and thrown guards around everything from post offices to city halls.

And in the meantime every Congressman and Senator went home each night to a serene unguarded house or apartment.

They were so stupid it was hardly worth picking a fight with them. Riva turned a directory page and ran his finger down the center column until he found the home address of Senator Wendell Hollander.

10:45 A.M. EST Satterthwaite’s war room had been set up in the NSC boardroom because communications were already laid into the building. The long table was a tangle of teletapes and phones and transceivers. A situation map covered one wall. Information was being fed into the pool of typists one floor below, where it was collated on update sheets and sent in to the analysis table in the war room. Senior executives of all the government security agencies sifted the data sheets, seeking not only information but inspiration.

They sat, winnowed, talked, in some cases complained. Satterthwaite had insisted on this bulky arrangement; he wanted instant liaison with all agencies and had insisted they assign men whose rank empowered them to make instant decisions and commit their agencies without needing to waste time in consultations outside this room.

The big chair at the center — ordinarily the President’s seat — was Satterthwaite’s now and he was in it when the Presidential summons came. He left the room without excusing himself and strode rapidly on his short legs to the eastern exit from the building.

The previous night’s feathery snowfall had left a crisp crust. It was a clear cold morning and reporters in topcoats and overshoes were besieging both buildings in the largest concentration Satterthwaite had seen since the night of the presidential election. It took four EPS patrolmen and a Secret Service agent at point to elbow a path through the crush for Satterthwaite’s passage.

Inside the White House even the press lobby was empty; the White House had been closed to reporters indefinitely. The President’s announcements were delivered to the press by Perry Hearn on the mud of the trampled lawn.

On his way up to the President’s office he found Halroyd, the Special Agent in charge of the White House Detail; Satterthwaite wheeled off his course to speak to him.

“Find David Lime, will you? Ask him to report to me in the NSC boardroom. He may still be at NSA — check there first.”

“Yes sir.”

Halroyd went, and Satterthwaite was admitted to the presidential presence.

The President had with him Dexter Ethridge and the press secretary. Hearn was on his way out. He nodded to Satterthwaite, picked up his briefcase and detoured past Satterthwaite toward the door. “They’ll want more, I’m afraid,” he said over his shoulder.

“It’s all I’m giving them. Make them accept it, Perry — embellish it all you can, try to satisfy them.”

Hearn had stopped at the door. “I’m afraid they’re not going to be satisfied with anything less than hard news, Mr. President. ‘We’re doing all we can, we expect an early solution’ — no matter how you word that it comes out sounding like something they’ve heard too often before.”

“Damn it, I can’t help it.” The President was flushed; he looked very tired, his eyes were bloodshot.

Perry Hearn left quietly. Ethridge nodded to Satterthwaite without rising from his seat. Ethridge didn’t look well. Drawn; loose bags under the eyes; the appearance of sickbed slackness. It was hardly surprising. He had been hit hard.

Satterthwaite was as tired as anyone; too tired for formalities. He spoke to the President with the acerbic intimacy he ordinarily withheld from public view: “I hope you didn’t drag me over here for a progress report. When we’ve got something I’ll let you know.”

“Gentle down, Bill.”

Mild shock in Ethridge’s eyes; Satterthwaite grimaced and nodded to indicate his apology.

The President said, “I’ve got a policy decision to make.”

“What to tell the press?”

“No. Nothing like that.” The President put a cigar in his mouth but did not light it. It made his voice more gutteral. “It’s that damn fool press conference they held last night.”

“What press conference?”

“You didn’t hear about it?”

“I’ve been up to here, Mr. President, you know that.”

From his chair Dexter Ethridge spoke evenly. “Some congressional leaders held a joint press conference last night.” He sounded very dry, disapproving. “Woody Guest, Fitz Grant, Wendy Hollander, a few others. Both houses and both parties were represented.”

The President pushed a copy of the New York Times across his desk. “You’d better read it.”

Satterthwaite had seen a copy of the Times earlier in the day but had not had time to read it. The headline at the top of the front page was probably the largest point type the Times used — FAIRLIE KIDNAPPED. Each of the two words ran the width of the page in high boldface.

It was near the bottom of the page under a two-column group photo of a dozen well-known faces.

The President was talking while Satterthwaite read. “I’ve had calls from every one of them. And the telegrams are a mile high.”

“How do the telegrams split?”

“About six to four.”

“For or against the hard line?”

“For.” The President spoke the word slowly and let it hang in the air. Finally he added, “The public sentiment seems to be let’s not just sit around and bleed about it.” He removed the cigar; his voice hardened. “I can hear the mob, Bill. They’re gathering out there with picks and torches.”

Satterthwaite, grunting to indicate he had heard, turned the page.

Dexter Ethridge said, “We decided this morning, Mr. President. We’ve already made the decision.”

“I know that Dex. But we didn’t make it public.”

“You’re saying we can still change our minds.”

“We didn’t anticipate the reaction would come down this hard on one side, did we?”

“Mr. President,” Ethridge said. The tone made Satterthwaite look up at him. Ethridge stirred slowly in his chair. A deep breath, a reluctant voice: “You’ve never been the kind of man who makes his decisions on the basis of who talked to him last. You’ve never needed public consensus to confirm your judgment. I find it hard to believe you’re going to let the unreasoning panic of a mob affect your—”

“The country could split apart on this issue.” The President was harsh. “I’m not playing politics for God’s sake. I’m trying to hold this country together!”

Ethridge was sitting up straight. It was the first time Satterthwaite could recall seeing him this angry. “You won’t hold it together by giving in to the yahoos.”

The President waved his cigar toward the newspaper in Satterthwaite’s hands. “Some of those men are prominent public servants, Dex. Maybe some of them are yahoos too but you can’t always judge a case by its advocate.”

Satterthwaite set the newspaper aside. “I think the President’s point is well taken. This morning we all listened to Fairlie’s voice. We reacted straight out of our guts — we’re civilized people, someone in our family is in trouble, we instantly concluded the ransom demands weren’t impossible to meet so we decided to agree to the exchange. The paramount consideration was Fairlie’s safety — we hadn’t had time to study the ramifications.”

Ethridge was watching him narrowly. The muscles and nerves twitched in his face.

President Brewster said, “If we give in it’ll give every two-bit terrorist gang in the world a green light to try this kind of thing again and again. Turning these seven killers loose, sending them into asylum — assuming there’s a country somewhere with the guts to grant them asylum — that would be kind of like telling every guerrilla in the world he’s free to go ahead and blow up people and buildings with impunity.”

Ethridge’s skin was the hue of veal, he had unhealthy blisters under his eyes. He spread his hands in appeal: “Mr. President, I can only stick to what I said this morning. The kidnappers are offering an exchange and we all agreed that Cliff Fairlie’s life is worth a great deal more than the lives of those seven ciphers. I don’t see how that’s changed.”

Satterthwaite turned, catching the President’s eye; he said to Ethridge, “If that were the real quid pro quo you’d get no argument. But it’s not a choice between Fairlie’s life and the lives of seven ciphers. It’s whether we can afford to give carte blanche to the extremists.”

Ethridge sat stubbornly upright, his silence disagreeing. He squeezed his eyes with thumb and forefinger and when he opened them it seemed to take him a long time to bring them into focus. “I think we have to face the fact that whatever we do isn’t going to please everybody. We can’t avoid a split. The theoretical arguments pretty well cancel each other out — look, I can give you a strong case against taking a tough stand. You can’t simply refuse to turn the seven bombers loose, you’ll have to follow up with a police operation against all the radical cells. You’ll end up with a permanently enlarged security operation, and that means permanent curtailment of citizens’ rights. It’s the only way you’ll keep the lid on, and it seems to me that’s exactly what the militants want of us — a tough repression that will feed their anti-Establishment arguments.”

Satterthwaite said, “You’re maintaining we’ve already lost.”

“We’ve lost this round. We have to accept that.”

“I don’t,” the President snapped. “I don’t at all.” He pawed around the surface of his desk, his eyes not following his hand; he was watching Ethridge. His hand closed around the lighter; the wheel snicked and the President lit his cigar. “Dex, are you going to make a public fight of this? A public break with me?”

Ethridge didn’t answer directly. “Mr. President, the most important thing — more important than this entire tragedy — is to establish a long-term system of policies that will rebuild the self-confidence and security of the people. If the society hasn’t got enormous discontents to fuel the militant extremists, then the whole terrorist movement will wither away for lack of nourishment. Now it seems to me—”

“Long-term policies,” Satterthwaite cut in, “are a luxury we haven’t got time to debate right now.”

“May I finish, please?”

“I’m sorry. Go ahead.”

“I don’t mean this as personal offense but I believe Cliff Fairlie is more likely to establish the kind of secure self-confident society we need than anybody else in government. His ideas are the first reform proposals I’ve ever seen that give us a real chance to build a more responsible and more responsive government in this country. And if we manage to recover Fairlie the wave of public sympathy will be so overpowering there’s a good chance he’ll be able to get congressional backing for a great many reform programs that could never be passed under any other circumstances.”

Satterthwaite was rocked; he tried not to show it. The frail Vice-President-elect, with his sick eyes and his tall quixotic gauntness, was putting out a display of shrewd subtlety totally unexpected. Ethridge was crediting Fairlie with far more magic than Fairlie actually possessed; reforms had been proposed before, Satterthwaite saw nothing particularly new in any of Fairlie’s, but there was one place where Ethridge had an undeniably powerful point: Fairlie, if recovered intact, would generate exactly the kind of public outpouring Ethridge foresaw. On the crest of that wave, with any political ability at all Fairlie indeed would be able to push all sorts of unheard-of reforms through Congress before the legislators regained their composure.

Satterthwaite’s eyes went past Ethridge, past the hanging flag to President Brewster; and he saw in the President’s lined face a surprise similar to his own — the awareness of the explosive significance of what Ethridge had just said.

12:25 P.M. EST In the war room Lime’s patience was shredding. He had arrived almost an hour ago with his lunch in a paper bag stained dark around the bottom by coffee that had escaped from the lidded takeout cup. The cheap food rumbled uneasily in his stomach.

He had pulled out an empty chair beside NSA’s Fred Kaiser, who was big and grizzled, a not unfriendly bear of a man; Lime knew him, not well. Kaiser was keeping two phones busy, sitting with a receiver propped between shoulder and one ear, a finger stuck in the other.

Lime offhandedly sifted through typewritten reports, seeking slivers and scraps, finding nothing worthwhile. The long table was littered with growing piles of dog-eared papers — reports from the typists downstairs, from the National Military Command Center in the Pentagon, from stacks of Secret Service and NSA files that had been brought out needing the dust blown off their covers. Down at the end a woman with blue hair was typing up slotted index cards and inserting them in their proper alphabetical places in a Wheeldex. The carriage of a teleprinter jerked back and forth, paper popped up through the glass slot and a uniformed major general ripped it off and stood reading it while the machine clicked beside him.

The room was filled and busy. Mainly they were making lists and then evaluating them. There were lists of known radical activists and then there were other lists behind those: the lists of people who weren’t quite on the lists. Suspected but not known. Computer banks plugged into the teleprinters were analyzing histories — modus operandi, locale, the flimsy facts about the black American chopper pilot and the tire tracks two vehicles had left in the snow of the abandoned farm in the Pyrenees where the helicopter had been found.

Over at the side of the room B. L. Hoyt had earphones strapped over his head and was listening — probably to a copy of the Fairlie tape — imbecilically calm with his chilled blue eyes raised toward the ceiling. The end of the tape whipped through the heads and spun around the takeup reel, flapping; Hoyt did not stir.

Fred Kaiser slammed down the phone and barked at Lime, “Jesus H. Christ.”

“Mm?”

“Nothing. Just rising to remark on the calamity.”

“Mm.” Lime’s cigarette lay smoking at the rim of the table, growing a long ash, threatening to leave a burn on the wood. He rescued it, dragged off the stub and crushed it in the ashtray.

“My wife thinks she’s a psychiatrist,” Kaiser said.

“Does she.”

“I went home for breakfast, right? She spends half an hour analyzing the bastards. All I want’s a quart of coffee and baconeggs, I get headshrinker guesses on why they snatched Fairlie.”

“And why did they?” Lime pushed a typewritten sheet aside and overturned the next one.

“I didn’t listen too much. She had it all doped out, their parents rejected them or something. It’s all shit, you know. I can tell you what motivated them. Somebody put them up to it. Somebody recruited them, somebody trained them, somebody programmed them. Somebody took a bunch of damn fools and wound them up like walking toys and pointed them at Cliff Fairlie. Just like somebody pointed those seven assholes at the Capitol with fused bombs in their cases. Now we ought to find out who and why. You ask me we’d do worse than poke around Peking and Moscow.”

“I don’t know.” Lime wasn’t a subscriber to the conspiracy theory of history.

“Come off it. There used to be a day when we responded to this kind of crap with the Marines. This country used to be willing to go anyplace in the world with any cannon they needed to get back any lousy citizen of ours, let alone a President.”

“Where would you send the Marines, Fred? Who would you shoot?” Lime kept most of the sarcasm out of his voice.

“Aagh.” A phone rang: Kaiser turned with military abruptness, picked up the phone and talked and listened. Lime went back to his papers. Kaiser was a political infant but it didn’t annoy him; people like Kaiser inhabited a masculine technical sphere, they didn’t have to understand reality — only facts.

Kaiser rang off. “Why Fairlie?”

Lime glanced at him.

“I mean, I know he was handy and all. But the son of a bitch is a flaming liberal. You’d think they’d pick on somebody pure American. Somebody they really hate.”

“They never do. The best scapegoat’s the innocent one.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know. The Aztecs used to choose virgins for their human sacrifices.”

“Sometimes you don’t make a hundred per cent sense, you know that?”

“It’s all right,” Lime said. “Distribution limited on a need-to-know basis.”

“What?”

“Nothing.”

“You need a checkup, I swear to God.”

Lime closed his eyes and nodded agreement. When he opened them they were aimed at the clock and as if by extrasensory signal Satterthwaite appeared.

Satterthwaite whirled into the room, topcoat flying, more cluttered and disordered than ever; stopped, swept the room with his magnified myopic stare, spoke while shouldering out of his coat: “Anybody got anything important to tell me? If it’s not vital save it for later. Anybody?”

No response: like a classroom full of children too shy to volunteer the spelling of a test word. Satterthwaite scrutinized them all, very fast, stance shifting as he went from face to face. When he got to Lime he flung out his arm, leveled his index finger, overturned his hand and beckoned imperiously. “Let’s go.”

Without waiting acknowledgment Satterthwaite wheeled. Lime got to his feet, pushing the chair back with his knees, feeling curious eyes on him. Kaiser muttered, “Watch out for the son of a bitch’s teeth.”

Lime found Satterthwaite in the corridor unlocking one of the No Admittance offices. They passed inside. It was a small private conference room, windowless and bare, air fluttering from ventilator ducts. Heavy wooden armchairs for eight, a walnut conference table, a stenographer’s desk in the corner. Lime closed the door behind him and located an ashtray and headed for it.

Satterthwaite said, “I understand you have a theory.” Icily polite.

“Well theories are a dime a dozen, aren’t they.”

“Tell me about it.”

“I didn’t think we had time to waste trotting out every wild speculation that comes along.”

“David when I ask you to give me details I think we can assume we’re not wasting anyone’s time.”

Lime scowled furiously at him. “By what curious process did you arrive at the conclusion I had anything useful to contribute?”

“It’s not a conclusion, it’s a surmise, and it’s not mine. It’s Ackert’s. He saw you staring at the map as if you’d discovered a message in secret ink. Come on David, I haven’t time to drag it out of you word by word.”

“If I had anything hard do you think I’d keep it to myself? What do you think I am?”

“I’m sure you don’t really want an answer to that question. It’s throwing raw meat on the floor.”

“Look, I admit I had an idea. I played around with it but it shot itself full of holes. It turned out to have far too many ifs in it. It’s not a theory any more, it’s a pipe dream — acting on it would distract us from what we ought to be doing. We need more to go on.”

Satterthwaite tucked his chin in toward his Adam’s apple, showing his displeasure and his determination to carry on. “I think I know the direction your theory’s taken. Are you afraid to risk getting thrown into the arena personally? David, we’re talking about one of the most despicable crimes of the century. They’ve taken an innocent hostage — a man who’s vitally important to the whole world. It’s the kind of buck you just can’t pass.”

Lime grunted.

“David, we’re talking about needs. Realities.”

Lime looked down at his shoes as if he were at a high window looking down through smoke at a fireman’s rescue net. “I guess we are,” he said. “I do tend to hate an amateur who tries to tell a professional how to do his job.”

“Get off it. Do you think I’m a patronage hack? I’m a dollar-a-year man, David, I’m not in this for glory. I do my job better than anyone else who’s available.”

“Modesty,” Lime breathed, “is an overrated virtue.”

Satterthwaite gave him a cold look. “You were born with an innate grasp of the subtleties of the hunt which most men will never learn from years of training. When it comes to operating in the western Mediterranean you’re the only expert alive Worthy of the name.” And now Satterthwaite sank the knife, twisting it: “And when it comes to the Western Desert who else can you possibly pass the buck to, David?”

“I haven’t been out there since Ben Bella.”

“But I’ve hit it, haven’t I.”

“So?”

“You want Sturka for this one too, don’t you. Why? Intuition?”

“I just don’t believe in coincidences,” Lime said. “Two well-organized capers, both on this scale, both with the same target... But there are no facts. It was just an idea. You can’t put it in the bank.”

Satterthwaite jabbed his finger toward the chair. “Come back here and sit down. Are you ready to start working?”

“It’s not my department.”

“Whose job do you want? Hoyt’s? He’s due for the chop anyway.”

“You can’t fire civil servants.”

“You can find shelves to put them on where they can’t do any damage. Ackert’s job? Would you settle for that? Name your price.”

“There’s no price for a fool’s errand.” He hadn’t stirred toward the chair. A cigarette hung from the corner of his mouth, the smoke stinging his right eye.

“Come on, let’s finish thrashing this out. You know I’ve got you over a barrel.”

“I’ve got no facts to go on. Can’t you understand that? No facts!” He took a step forward, filled with anger. “I’ve got no price — I’m not auditioning for your approval or anybody else’s. I’m not lacking in conscience — if I knew I was better equipped to handle the field assignment than anybody else I’d take the job, you wouldn’t need to degrade us both with stupid bribe offers.”

Satterthwaite pushed his glasses up against his eyebrows. “You’re not a superman, David, you’re only the best chance we have among a variety of poor chances. You spent ten years of your life in that part of the world. You grew up in NSA before it rigidified into the kind of bureaucracy that became capable of fucking up the Pueblo affair — in your day imagination still counted for something. Do you think I don’t know your secrets? I’ve sized you up, I know your talents, your choice of friends and entertainments, your record, how much you drink and when. You were the man who opened the channel between Ben Bella and De Gaulle. Christ if they’d only had the sense to send you into Indochina.”

Lime shook his head. “It’s no good, you know that.” It wasn’t altogether that he didn’t want a crack at it. He had wanted this boredom; now he was eager to get away from it; the old warhorse, he thought, but he turned back before reaching the point of commitment. “Look, things have changed, it’s a different world from the one I operated in. The quality of your mind doesn’t count — only the quality of your marksmanship. I’m a lousy shot.”

“That’s a crock of shit and you know it.”

“No. Nothing’s decided by brains any more — in spite of that think tank of yours across the hall. There’s no room left for chess players, you know that — it’s all decided by assassination and counterassassination.”

“All right. Assassinate them. But find them first. Find Fairlie and bust him out.”

Lime laughed off key. “Use the local boys over there. Spanish cops, Bedouins, desert rats — hell it’s their territory.”

“I think it’s important to have an American in charge.”

“It’s not Barbary pirates you know — these aren’t gunboat days.”

“Look, it’s an American they’ve kidnapped and I suspect the kidnappers themselves are Americans. How would it look if a Spanish cop got too close to them and then bungled things? Do you have any idea what that would do to relations between Washington and Madrid? A little stupidity like that could slide Perez-Blasco right into Moscow’s camp. At least if an American runs the show it’s our success or our failure. If it’s a success I think we’ll climb quite a few notches in international esteem and we could use that right now, God knows.”

“And if it’s failure?”

“We’ve had them before, haven’t we.” Satterthwaite sounded abysmal. “It wouldn’t be anything new. Don’t you see that’s why I don’t want the CIA clumping about in their jackboots? They’re such clumsy idiots — they’re all hated over there, they’d never get the cooperation you’ll get.”

Satterthwaite stood up. He was too short to be imposing but he tried.

Lime shook his head — a gentle stubborn negative.

Satterthwaite said, “I don’t give a shit what your motives are but you’re dead wrong. You’re the best we’ve got — for this particular job. I recognize what you’re really afraid of is the responsibility — suppose you take the job and you fail, and they kill Fairlie. You don’t want that on your conscience, do you. But how do you think I’ll feel? What about all the rest of us? Do you think you’ll be the only one who’ll have to cover himself in sackcloth and ashes?”

Lime’s silence was a continuing refusal.

But then Satterthwaite punctured him. “If we lose Fairlie because you refused to try — you’ll be far more to blame.”

There was a mad satanic beauty to it. Satterthwaite had been baiting the trap all along and had let Lime watch him do it.

“If you do the job,” the little man breathed, “at least you won’t have lost Fairlie for want of trying.”

Neatly cornered. Lime’s eyes drilled hatred into him.

Satterthwaite crossed half the distance between them and frowned a little behind his glasses; he lifted one hand in a vague gesture of truce. “Don’t hate me too hard.”

“Why shouldn’t I?”

“Because I wouldn’t want you messing this up just to spite me.”

Lime saw how it could be. The little man was right again. A fiend — but you had to stand in awe of him.

“Now you’ll go to Barcelona,” Satterthwaite said, a down-to-business voice. “You’re leaving Andrews Air Force Base at half past five — I’ve laid on a C-one-forty-one.” A flap of wrist, glance at watch. “A little over four hours to pack your things and say your goodbyes. You’d better move along.”

Lime, hooded, watched him in silence.

Satterthwaite said, “I won’t give it to the press yet. You’ll want a free hand. What do you need?”

A long ragged breath; the final surrender. “Give me Chad Hill from my office — he’s green but he does what he’s told.”

“Done. What else?”

A shake of the head. “Carte blanche.”

“That goes without saying.”

Lime walked forward to pass him but Satterthwaite stopped him. “Your theory.”

“I told you — it was too full of ifs.”

“But I was right about it.”

“I told you you were.”

“Then my judgment’s not that terrible after all. Is it.”

Lime didn’t answer the thin smile in kind.

Satterthwaite eeled past him through the door and Lime emerged, looked back into the room curiously — a crucible, but it looked ordinary enough. The door swung shut. No Admittance.

Satterthwaite was walking toward the war room. When he reached it he stopped. Over his shoulder: “Good hunting — I suppose I should say something like that.” The grim little smile was glued on. “Get the son of a bitch out alive, David.”

Having given himself the curtain line Satterthwaite disappeared into the war room.

Despising the man for his cheap theatricality Lime stood a moment burning his stare into the closed door before he shambled away, head bowed to light a cigarette.

Wednesday, January 12

10:40 P.M. Continental European Time Mario had grown up inculcated with a hatred of stinkpot powerboats. He had learned summer seamanship aboard the Mezetti ketch, a two-masted sixty-four-footer with the grace of a racing regatta champion. He knew nothing about engines — those were Alvin’s job — but he had the wheel and the responsibility of navigation by binnacle and charts. The boat was American built, a thirty-nine-foot Matthews powered by a single big diesel. She was probably at least twenty-five years old although the diesel was newer, a French engine. A stubby wooden craft with belowdecks cabins both fore and aft and only a tiny fishing deck between the rear-cabin ladder and the transom, she had been built with customary Matthews shipyard economy and there was not quite enough headroom for a six-foot man in the wheelhouse. Mario was stocky enough to have no trouble but both Alvin and Sturka had to stoop when they came inside.

There was no chart table as such; the paper image of the western Mediterranean was spread across the wooden dash to one side of the binnacle where Mario could read it while standing with one hand on a wheel spoke. He was using compass and chart to dead-reckon from lighthouse to lighthouse. The sea had lifted, an hour before sunset, to a nine-foot chop and had not become any calmer in the hours since; the chunky round-bottomed hull made heavy going of it and Mario had to tack at five-minute intervals against a sea that was running quarter to his course — Southwest by Cabo de Gata, then west around the headlands toward Almería. The weather was running in from the Straits, slanting against the shore. A rough night for seafaring — there were very few boats out, the only lamps were buoys.

It was Cesar who had proved the worst sailor and Mario felt remotely vindicated by that: he knew they all held him in contempt but Cesar was the most arrogant of any and it was satisfying to see him green with mal de mer. The malaise had infected Peggy to a lesser extent; she and Cesar were glued to their bunks in the after cabin. Alvin and Sturka were forward, below with Clifford Fairlie, probably trying to indoctrinate him by the dialectic exchange. A stupid pursuit — you couldn’t change their minds once they’d gone over the hill. Mario had learned that at home. Mezetti Industries destroyed the environment from day to day with the willful malice of a Genghis Khan and you pointed this out to your father and he came back with engineers’ lies contrived to prove it was all Communist propaganda.

Mario knew the others held him in low esteem because he wasn’t terribly smart and his Maoism was more doctrinaire than practical. None of them really liked him, Sturka especially, but it didn’t matter. Mario was useful; it was important to be useful. Not just the money he could provide but other things as well — like the seamanship they demanded of him now. An ignorant sailor would have swamped the boat in cross-seas a dozen times by now, or run aground on coastal shoals.

The thing that mattered was the liberation of the human race and if you contributed anything at all, regardless how small, your existence was justified. One tiny chink in the endless battering that would destroy the walls of Amerika. One effort to fuck the robber barons whose institutional violence perpetuated the power of the few.

He saw a distant beacon off the starboard bow and he timed the intervals between its flashes. “Right on,” he said aloud, pleased with his navigation. He judged the sea and found it safe to drop the retaining loop over the wheelspoke; with the rudder locked he put on his Halloween mask, went down the five-step ladder to the door of the forward cabin and banged with his knuckles.

Sturka pulled the narrow door open, stooping with his thin face close against the ceiling deck. The light was poor, a single low-watt bulb somewhere behind Sturka.

Mario said, “Almería.”

Sturka checked the time. “We’re behind.”

“In this weather you don’t keep tight schedules.”

“We wanted to make Málaga before dawn.”

“You’ll never make that. It’s a hundred miles.”

Sturka registered no emotion. “Well stop wasting time. Take us in.”

Behind Sturka he had a glimpse of Alvin — the neo-Alvin, fuzz-wigged, belly and cheeks rounded by stuffing, makeup that made him non-Alvin, jaws riding up and down with the chewing gum he had never used before. Fairlie wasn’t supposed to be able to identify any of them. Sturka said it was security — suppose Fairlie got loose? — but it was possible Sturka actually meant to turn him loose and Mario hated the thought.

Sturka was shrouded in a burnous, his face almost invisible; Fairlie behind him sat pale on the pitching bunk gripping its edge. He looked scared and that gave Mario a savage joy.

Hot behind the silly mask Mario went up to the wheelhouse and stripped it off; unlocked the wheel and turned a few points to port. The slight correction increased the roll underfoot and he gripped the red rich walnut spokes of the three-foot wheel.

The red buoy passed astarboard and Sturka came up into the wheelhouse stripping off his Arab headgear and robe; in Levi’s and T-shirt Sturka sat down in the canvas chair abaft the locker trunk. “Recite for me Mario.”

He was obedient. “Sure. I bury the raft, and walk in, and call the Mezetti office in Gibraltar and tell them to send a car to Almería for me. I take the recorder and the radio into Gibraltar with me. Tomorrow I spend the day making sure things are set up — the Citation and the pilot, refueling stops at Tunis and Bengasi. Friday morning I set up the radio and the recorder with the timer. Then I go over to—”

“What time do you set it for?”

“Eight o’clock Friday night. Right?”

“Go on.”

“Friday morning I set the timer and then I go to the bank. I cash the cashier’s checks.”

“How much do you cash?”

“A hundred thousand dollars.” He had been watching the sea — the lights of Almería moving up ahead, the headland sliding up to port. Now he slid a glance at Sturka. “What do we need that much for?”

“Grease.”

“What?”

“To persuade some people to keep quiet about us.”

“Who?”

“Some people in Lyon and Hamburg. And where we’re going, in Lahti.” Sturka pronounced it with the hard gutteral Finnish “h.”

Mario indicated his understanding. The Cessna Citation was a seven-place executive jet with a range of twelve hundred miles; they would have to set down twice for refueling and someone had to provide the landing areas and the fuel at Lyon and Hamburg.

The harbor lights moved off the starboard quarter and Mario kept them there, aiming for the dark beach west of Almería. Depth markings on the chart showed it to be an easy beach; the surf would not be strenuous behind the headland and he would be able to drive the raft right up on the sand. He would have to walk a couple of miles but that didn’t bother him.

“Continue your recitation.”

“We take off at eleven Friday morning. When we’re in the air and out of the traffic pattern I switch the radio off the way Alvin told me and I put my gun on the pilot. I tell him to land at the place you’ve picked here.” He gestured through the salt-crusted windows; the field was fourteen miles inland from Almería, a pocket in the foothills. “If the pilot gives me trouble I shoot him in the leg and tell him to land us fast so we can give him medical attention before he bleeds to death. If he still tries to turn around and get back to Gibraltar or land in Almería I shoot him in the other leg. Then I tell him I’ll kill him and take my chances landing it myself.”

“Do you think you can?”

“If I have to, I guess. Alvin’s coached me a lot.”

After the landing they would kill the pilot and bury him. Get everyone aboard and head out into the Med, flying up the channel between Ibiza and Majorca; across the coastline east of Marseille and hedgehopping to avoid the coastal radars. But that leg and the rest would be Alvin’s responsibility; all Mario had to do was get the plane from Gibraltar to Almería.

He kept the throttle up, triangulating with his eyes to judge the shore; he would see the combers in time and he had to keep the screw turning in the strong following sea. “I can do it. Don’t worry about me.”

“I’m not,” Sturka said. “But you have the telephone number in Almería. Did you forget that?”

“No. I phone you every two hours. I let it ring exactly four times and hang up.” Sturka would be within earshot of that telephone and would be waiting for its ring at even-numbered hours. If it did not ring he would have to assume Mario had been discovered. There was no reason to suspect they would discover him. As far as Mezetti Industries was concerned Mario was traveling on the continent on company business. While the rest of them — Sturka, Alvin, Peggy, Cesar — had journeyed clandestinely to Lisbon aboard a tramp freighter Mario had spent four days at home in New York and then had flown quite openly to Marseille aboard a scheduled Air France flight out of Kennedy Airport. It had been a test and Mario had been willing to undergo it: his passport had not been questioned at the airport, no one had detained him, and therefore he was not a suspect.

It had been a necessary risk because Mario was the one who had to continue operating in the open and they had to be sure the pigs weren’t onto him. Maybe he wasn’t bright but he understood these things and realized why he had to take the chance. He was glad he had taken it; it had made him more sure of himself, and it had succeeded, and it was necessary to the cause that it succeed.

He began to see the dim phosphor crests of breaking whitecaps on the sea ahead. A mile, perhaps; then it would be time to throttle down. “I don’t like putting all that money in greedy hands. We ought to find a better use for it.”

“It will further the cause — what more do you need?”

“Why not treat them the same as we treated the greedy pig with the helicopter?” The helicopter hadn’t cost them anything.

“Because they’re people we may need again.” Sturka got to his feet, swayed with the lurch and lunge of the deck, bowed his head under the low overhead decking and moved forward to stand just off Mario’s shoulder, watching Mario con the boat into the surf. The boat was crashing hard on the crests; there was still a half mile but the bottom was a shallow shelf that beat up the waves. Everything shuddered, Mario heard brightwork rattling. His plimsolled feet were sure on the deck planks.

He spun the wheel a half turn to starboard but it was a fraction late and a crest broached the windward scuppers; foam rolled across the deck and sprayed him when it caromed through the overhead hatchway. “You sure you can get across there in this?”

“We’ll make it,” Sturka said.

“I’d better not go in any farther. You want to drop the anchor?”

Sturka went up through the door forward. Spray hosed into the cockpit and wind slammed the door shut. Mario watched him move catfooted to the anchor windlass. He waited until Sturka had a good grip on the railing and then he watched for a wide trough. When the boat pitched into one he spun her fast, rudder hard over, wanting to bring her into the wind before the next crest hit; but she was a little slow and the crest caught her awkwardly and rolled her hard over. There was a great deal of rolling foam and he peered through it anxiously. The lather cascaded away and Sturka was still there, rooted, drenched but relaxed. Mario held the bow straight into the wind and throttled back only a little, needing steerageway; Sturka was pitching the anchor over, letting the chain run through the ratchet.

A big one lifted her ten or twelve feet and she slid down the backside of it nose first. The bow dug into the following comber and Sturka again was buried in black marbled water but when the bow wallowed out of it he was still there with water rolling off him like oil. The chain slacked a little at trough-bottom and Sturka set the ratchet and began to make his way aft, hand over hand along the railing. Mario idled the screw down and waited with his hand on the throttle to see if the anchor had taken hold. The chain drew up taut and he had a feeling, nothing more than an intuitive sensation, of a brief distant scraping before the arrowpoint of the anchor took a grip and the boat hung, cork-bobbing like a buoy, from its straining chain, stern toward shore.

Sturka swung himself into the wheelhouse acrobatically, his clothes pasted to his bony skin. Alvin was coming up from the forward cabin and Mario gave him the wheel and followed Sturka aft to inflate the rubber raft.

He slid the folded raft out from under Peggy’s bunk. Peggy gave him a bloodshot look and rolled over; Mario said, “Won’t be long now,” in an effort to be encouraging but she only grunted. Cesar on the opposite bunk was in bleary agony and the cabin reeked of vomit; Mario was glad to hurry topside, dragging the raft, Sturka pushing it up from below. Sturka came out into the little fishing deck to help him hold the raft down while they inflated it from its canister of compressed air. It was tricky work with the deck pitching eight feet in the air and slamming down; he was soaked through within seconds.

Sturka put his mouth close to Mario’s ear to make himself heard over the roar of the sea. “If they catch you.”

“They’re not going to.”

“If they do.”

“I don’t say a word.”

“They’ll pry you apart in time. You’ll have to talk — everyone does.”

“I hold out.” Shouted gasps in the roiling night. “As long as I can. Then I give them the thing we made up.”

“Recite.”

“Now? Here?”

“Recite Mario.”

“You’re in Tangier waiting for me to pick you up in the plane.”

“Go on.” Sturka’s voice very thin against the roar.

“Jesus. I promise you I haven’t forgotten anything.”

After a moment Sturka pulled the raft toward the stern rail by its gunwale rope. “All right Mario.”

They got it overboard and Sturka held it against the transom while Mario climbed over the rail and braced himself in the raft. The bottom was already awash; he would be in water up to his navel in instants but the raft would hold. The oars were plastic, bolted into their locks; he fixed his grip on them and shouted and Sturka cast him off. He pulled hard; the boat loomed momentarily and then a wave took him; for a bit he was under water with the taste of salt. When it cascaded off him the boat had disappeared and he was alone in the raft — lost, for a bit, until the next breaker picked him up and he had time for a quick glance over his left shoulder to locate the lights of Almería. They gave him bearings and he began to row toward the black silent beach.