25

"YOU'RE NOT SERIOUS?" the President asked. Had he actually asked the question or was it some repetitive tape gone awry, zipping away in his mind? He sat in the dining room, beside him the ever-present Vinnie, whose sour odor seemed to have become a staple of the air they shared. He had slept beside the man in the same bed. There was something obscene in the memory.

Strangely, he had actually slumbered. His mind had clamped shut, as if he had slipped into a deep black pit of emptiness, rising without an iota of residual dream memory.

His first thought had been of Amy, whose missing presence set off the alarms of thirty years' awakenings. He couldn't bound out of bed, of course. Vinnie was attached, and they had taken the precaution, sometime after he had dozed off, of taping his ankles to a leg of the bed.

"My wife?" the President had asked.

"The other room."

"I must see her."

The man shrugged and followed him into the dressing room. She was still sleeping. He had leaned close to her cheek, moved a wisp of errant hair, and kissed her on the forehead. The young man, who had risen from a chair when they came into the room, looked haggard from his night of surveillance.

"She's sleeping like a baby," he said with a cocky smile.

The President did not answer. He returned to the bedroom and started to undress.

"I'm not going to stink all day, pal," he said. "Bad enough I've got to carry you along."

His captors' communication system revolved around the big man with the heavy face, who seemed always lurking behind them. They had these mysterious little eye and body signals between them. The big man disappeared and came back with consent, and the two men stayed by as he was untied. They also followed him into the bathroom.

"I'm going to try and ignore you guys," he said. He began to shave. The blade glided over his face. Then he remembered what he had thought earlier about the plastic sacks holding the liquid explosive. A razor's slash, quick, sharp, direct. Would it empty the liquid, seep away the danger? He tried to dismiss the thought, couldn't, then he replaced the blade and palmed the one he had just used.

To deflect their attention, he held up the razor. "Old faithful. Real gold." As they looked he put the palmed blade in the pocket of his robe. Never know, he told himself. Then he patted his face with after-shave and pinched his cheeks. Old habits never die, he thought. "I know it looks kind of silly."

Neither man responded while the President kept up his bouncy monologue. "Sorry fellas," he said sitting on the toilet. "You remind me of my mama standing over me a hundred years ago, urging me on to duty. Making birdies, she called it. Funny, haven't thought about this since the kids were being housebroken. Might have been how old—two, three?"

He looked at the men. "You have mamas, guys?" He shook his head. "Doubt it. God, you both are ugly. No self-respecting woman would have spawned either of you."

He put up his palms. "Sorry. I don't mean to be so outspoken, but hell, it throws you off your feed to have to take a crap with two guys observing the process." He stood up. "Want to inspect the results?"

They were impassive. He flushed the toilet and jumped into the shower, sticking his head out as he regulated the taps.

"Come on in and play. Wouldn't drop the soap in front of you guys." He felt giddy as he moved into the stream, turning the knobs to make the water as hot as he could stand it, then reversing the process. Must clear out the cobwebs, he thought, raise the adrenaline.

He came out of the shower and toweled himself off. The two men leaned against the wall and watched him. They followed him back into the bedroom, where he dressed. With more sleight of hand, he transferred the blade from his robe to a pocket of his slacks. Then he put on a sport shirt and a cardigan with a Camp David logo stitched over the breast.

"I'm at home, after all. Why not be casual?" he said, really to himself.

Aside from the observing men, the situation struck him as routine. After he had dressed, they reattached him to the cord. Even that act felt expected. He tried to find some reference to a similar situation, one that might act as an anchor of logic. It came to him suddenly. He was Alice and he had walked through the looking glass.

"So let's get on to the tea party," he said, striding across the bedroom threshold, traversing the west sitting room with its doorway piled high with couches, like some decorator's nightmare. "And there's the mad hatter," he muttered. "And the March hare." A strange sight.

They were sitting calmly across the table from each other, the Padre, still in his waiter's uniform, his bow tie removed, and Harkins, who looked up from his keyboard and offered a thin, hesitant smile. The President was instantly on his guard.

Despite the obvious fact that both men seemed to have been up all night, they looked strangely alert. On the table stood a pot of coffee and rolls and butter.

The Padre, as if he were the host, pointed to the President's accustomed chair. The President smirked, sat down, putting a strain on the cord that attached him to Vinnie, who quickly sat down beside him. He poured himself some coffee, but had no appetite for anything more.

"The wonders of the computer age," the President said.

"Greatest invention since the wheel," Harkins said.

"Or curse," the President mumbled. They were bantering with clichés. He watched as Harkins turned toward the Padre, signaling. So he had picked up the eye and body signals.

"There is a certain logic to what he has in mind," Harkins began. The President clasped his arms across his chest. It was, he knew, an uncharacteristic gesture on his part, a kind of protective act. Here it comes, he thought, wondering just how much caution and subtlety Harkins would be able to muster.

"He insists he understands these people, the hostage-takers," Harkins continued, nodding his head toward the Padre, who blinked his eyes in mysterious acknowledgment. "Kind of a new way of looking at the eye-for-an-eye concept. Like two eyes for one."

"I like the way you put things, Jack," the President said, sipping his coffee.

"It's important to place all this in the proper context," Harkins said.

"Of course," the President replied, looking toward the Padre, who returned his gaze impassively.

"It boils down to the following," Harkins said cautiously, again looking toward the Padre. His delivery had the appearance of a well-rehearsed script. Harkins pointed to the monitor.

"In our data banks we have the names of most of the big players in the Middle East terrorist game and some of the little ones. The financiers, the bosses and underbosses, some legal heads of state, the rest hustlers, renegades, opportunists, many hiding under arguably legitimate causes."

Again he looked toward the Padre. "Like what you call consigliatoros and capos and button men." He was being transparently patronizing. The Padre showed no reaction.

"So chicanery is universal. How profound," the President said, noting that his mocking tone was ignored. He had the impression that Harkins was making this presentation merely as a courtesy.

The President looked at the Padre and addressed him. "Okay, you've got his motor running. You want your daughter and your grandson. Just lay it out. Tell me how you think you can do it. I said I'd go along if I thought it would work. I don't want a catalog of the bad guys. I've been through it all before ad nauseam." He felt his anger rise. The Padre listened, unruffled and thoughtful.

"You have the means," the Padre said, darting a glance at Harkins.

"What he wants to do..." Harkins said.

"Let him speak for himself," the President said testily.

The Padre put up one hand like a traffic cop, playing the role of peacemaker. Unreality, the President assured himself, seeing the image of the tea party unreel again in his mind.

"He is a good talker, this fellow," the Padre said pleasantly. "We have discussed the situation and made suggestions."

"Options," Harkins corrected.

"A rose by any other name..." the President said, his words drifting off. Probably sold the man a bill of goods that he knows how to handle me, the President thought.

"I'm an interpreter," Harkins said, summoning up whatever humility he could muster. Again the President saw the signals pass between them. They are brothers, he decided. This man Harkins was like a pig in dung.

"May I continue?" the CIA Director asked. There was something touchingly childish in his request. The President looked toward the Padre and turned away quickly, suddenly fearful that he was contracting this strange virus of obedience. Okay, the President told himself. It's only an option.

"Ahmed Safari," Harkins said. "The man who holds his daughter. Although he is a known homosexual, he has a wife and son in Amman. He cares nothing for the wife. An arranged marriage, typical in the Arab world. But he does adore his son. The boy is seventeen and sickly. Rheumatic heart."

"I can't be a party to that," the President snapped.

"We have the assets in Jordan. We can have him in custody in hours."

The President shook his head. Harkins again looked toward the Padre.

"Mr. President. It is a viable option," Harkins said.

"Not for me."

"But it would be deniable," Harkins pressed.

"And obvious." He felt his gut pinch and harden. "Also, this Ahmed will know that we could not harm the boy. You know we can't be a party to that. It would be too transparent." He turned toward the Padre. "What is his motive for releasing your daughter and grandson if he knows that this boy will be safe?"

"It's only a part of the plan," Harkins muttered. "We will have to illustrate to him that we mean business."

"And how do we do that?" the President asked. He had relaxed, curious to hook in to their logic.

"You are absolutely right, Mr. President. This is the heart of the matter," the Padre said.

"We must establish our credentials," Harkins said.

"For what?" the President asked. A moot question. He knew the answer.

"I told him how the Soviets had handled a similar episode," Harkins said. When the President did not interrupt, he continued. "A group had picked up four Soviet diplomats in their embassy in Lebanon. They killed one. Then the Soviets retaliated by kidnapping one of the leaders of the group that had perpetrated the kidnapping. No fanfare. Quite simple. They cut his balls off, stuffed them in his mouth, and dispatched him back to his cohorts. The three Soviet hostages were released in the flash of an eyelash."

"And you want me to be a party to that kind of tactic?" the President asked.

"To the concept," Harkins said.

"You liked that?" the President asked.

"It is a question of credibility," Harkins said, again looking at the Padre.

"I'm sorry," the President said. "We've spent nearly two and a half centuries establishing other credentials. We don't castrate, gouge eyes, or crack kneecaps." He looked pointedly at the Padre.

"But we haven't dealt with this kind of warfare before. It's a new phenomenon requiring a novel way to deal with it. Aside from the moral judgments," Harkins said, "a threat requires believability. Our antagonists are very good on that score."

"On average," the President muttered. Despite himself, he felt engaged, dangled on the hook of Harkins' presentation.

"It is their most effective weapon," Harkins said.

The Padre nodded. The President grew thoughtful. He knew that they were waiting for his next question. But he delayed asking it. They were right, of course. America was afflicted with ethical inhibitions, and such moral strictures created by the Ten Commandments and various rules flowing from them. Not that he was a purist, but there were tolerable limits to any violations. Their suggestions were not within such limits.

"So what are you suggesting?" the President asked. "Cut off the kid's ear and send it as proof of our resolve?"

"You might also get an ear in the mail," Harkins replied.

"I don't like that talk," the Padre said darkly.

"We need something bigger than that, less likely to stimulate such a reprisal. We need something to make our threat credible. Most of all, we need chips to play with.

"What we must do," Harkins said. He looked toward the Padre. "It is the Padre's suggestion. But the concept is quite logical. We take Safari's boy. That's a given. But we also take some blood kin among the other top players. We've searched the data banks. We have names, places, possibilities." Harkins paused. "Even in the States. You would be surprised who is attending our schools. They would be an easy job."

"You're not serious?" the President repeated. He wondered just how credible his own protestations were becoming.

Harkins was working up a good head of steam, throwing an occasional glance toward the Padre, as if he were performing just for him. In a night of mad planning, the two had devised a wicked brew that flew in the face of every philosophical tenet of the Judeo-Christian ethic.

"Of course we're considering only the most impressive options," Harkins continued. "The computer has spit out its choices. In fact, most of the actual missions have already been worked out in theoretical scenarios."

"I never knew," the President said. Self-righteousness was turning to self-delusion. Of course he knew they played these games.

"Verisimilitude," Harkins said, pressing on. Nothing was going to stop him now. "How many times have you said in your public statements that we would go after these bastards if you could make a clean surgical strike against those responsible? Problem—it's never clean. Remember Libya. In an odd way we lost more than we gave. With due respect, Mr. President, we rattle our swords and do little that is truly effective. They bash our people and we tweak their noses. They just don't believe we will act with the same degree of ruthlessness. Well, here is the perfect ploy. Do unto them as they do unto us. Only more so."

"I wish you could give me guarantees that it could work," the President said.

"I'm sorry, Mr. President, I can't."

"He is a good talker," the President said, looking at the Padre, who nodded.

"It is the only way to get Ahmed to release the woman and the boy," Harkins said. "He will be pressed to do so by those who support groups like his, people whose children we will have as hostage. We need just enough to make the point. A favorite Saudi prince at Berkeley. The daughter of the President of Syria attending school in New England. The grandson of Khomeini, who teaches in Teheran. The teenage son of Colonel Qaddafi himself, who can be snatched in Tripoli by our people. We have watched him for months. A mere five."

"You really think you can pull this off?" the President asked.

Harkins nodded. "Except in the States. The CIA has no mandate for that."

"You're joking. I must have missed something in this scenario. Why suddenly the attention to the legal scruples?"

"There is no need for us to violate domestic American laws."

"How decent of you," the President said. Harkins' use of the collective pronoun "us" struck him as ironic.

"The Padre's organization will do the work in the States," Harkins said.

The President felt himself holding down an inner panic. "Are you serious?" he asked.

"We can't be responsible for what the Mafia does, Mr. President." Harkins shot the Padre a quick glance.

"Got all the answers," the President said.

"Some," Harkins said. He smiled.

The President tried to summon up an attitude of great indignation. It was difficult and it frightened him.

"Are you asking me to condone the use of kidnapping as a national policy? In effect to practically sanction the perpetration of a capital crime by the number one outlaw group in this country? The idea of hostage-taking is repugnant in itself. It is bad enough to be victimized by it. But to authorize it." He shook his head. "Dammit. It's a heinous crime."

"Yes it is, Mr. President," Harkins said, perhaps too swiftly, as if he had been waiting in ambush for the idea to reappear. "It is on a par with murder." He coughed into his hand. "We all know that war is state-authorized murder. In effect, what is happening out there can be characterized as a brutal no-holds-barred war. In that case kidnapping is a legitimate weapon."

"These are innocent people," the President protested.

"Yes they are," Harkins retorted.

The President twisted in his chair. It went against all moral justification. He looked at the Padre. The man stood up suddenly and came closer. An arm's length away, the President thought as his hand reached casually into his pocket. He fingered the blade that lay there. One slash. He wondered what the others would do once the Padre was "disarmed."

Yet he resisted taking any action. He slipped his hand out of his pocket. He fleetingly wondered whether such inaction constituted approval of Harkins' plan. It was a question he did not choose to answer.

Looking up, he saw the Padre's calm, serene face. There was not the slightest hint of hesitation. They simply occupied different moral space. And yet he allowed his mind to drift along an untrod path. Each step forward was painful. Ahead was blackness, deeper than mere darkness. And yet he could not deny, independent of his predicament, that the idea had some force to it. Vengeance, after all, had a compelling magnetism of its own.

"And if I don't agree?" the President asked.

"It is do-able, Mr. President," Harkins said. "I'm not saying that it will be perfectly executed. These things never are. But it will send the message once and for all."

Harkins had, of course, evaded the President's question. Had it already been answered by the Padre? Did he really have a choice? Absolutely not, he assured himself. To live or to die. Those were apparently his only alternatives.

But wouldn't his consent legitimize the idea? And yet did he dare admit to himself that such a tactic had a grotesque attraction?

Of course it was possible they just might achieve their goal without bloodshed. Presidents have taken chances in the past, lost lives, blundered. The world would know he was making such decisions under duress. And if it achieved its purpose? He counted his political capital. To collect, he'd have to be alive. That, of course, was the most seductive persuader of all.

"And after these people are collected. What then?"

"Someone will have to respond at their end," Harkins said.

"But how will they know we really mean business?" the President asked. "There is no way that I would order the killing of innocent people in cold blood."

There, he thought, he had found a moral imperative, a bit of indignant flotsam to hold on to against the rushing river of action.

"But there could be bloodshed, Mr. President," Harkins said coolly. "You can't have any illusions about that."

He had gone under for a moment, then surfaced.

"I said I can't justify killing in cold blood."

"Of course not," Harkins said, shooting a disturbing glance at the Padre, who shook his head in affirmation.

The President tapped the table. "I don't like it," he said. Like Harkins' pose of reluctance to act without orders, it was a voice for posterity's evidence. On balance, in theory, even transcending the magnetic seductiveness of it, he did like the idea intellectually. It had verisimilitude.

"It is necessary," the Padre said, as if reading his mind. "Power is nothing without respect."

The Padre watched him rubbing his chin. The President felt the chill of his own nakedness. He both feared and loved the use of power to subvert the conventional means and plunge directly into the enemy's heartland. The old bastard was right, and Harkins was right about the old bastard.

His presence was an excuse for the unconventional treatment of this international illness. Let's go get the sons of bitches. As for consequences, hell, he could always go back to the old hypocrisies. Politics was his business, for crying out loud.

"All right," the President said, his voice low. He was determined not to show them his exhilaration.

"Now, Mr. President?" Harkins asked, his fingers on the computer keyboard.

"Do it then," the President said, his voice affirming his authority.

He was, of course, covering only his end. What the Padre and his cohorts did was none of his business. Render unto Caesar what is Caesar's and to God—he looked at the Padre—what was God's.

They watched as Harkins' fingers darted over the keyboard. His eyes became mesmerized by the screen. After a few minutes Harkins' fingers rested. He looked at the screen again. Hit the keyboard keys, then paused.

"Failsafe confirmations," he whispered. "Trick is to avoid using the phone. This scrambles and only comes out whole through unscrambling." Harkins paused again. Then he tapped out another message. "Turkey in the oven," he said, looking up, offering them all a broad smile.

"What hath God wrought," the President said. Well hidden behind his mask of concern, he smiled. He looked toward the Padre. The Padre's face was grim.