Line of Succession
- Автор: Гарфилд Брайан
- Год: 1972
- Язык: английский
- Год: Delacorte Press
- ISBN: 978-0440048473
- Жанр: Политические детективы
Электронная книга - «Line of Succession». Краткое содержание книги:
It all happened so fast: the terrorist bombings of Congress which killed nearly a hundred senators and congressmen; the incredible kidnapping of the President-Elect, Clifford Fairlie.
Tough, veteran agent David Lime was summoned to track down the kidnappers, who threatened to kill Fairlie if the captured terrorists were not set free. And behind the scenes, ruthless men battled for the glory of the highest office in the land.
The rescue efforts swung into high gear. It became a vast, global manhunt. The entire world watched in frozen horror.
But only two men had the power to shape the end of this chilling, savage drama — agent Lime and the terrorist leader for whom hate had become a holy mission.
You had to fight all that. You were the oppressed black colony. You learned the frustrating impotence of nonviolent resistance, sit-ins, demonstrations: self-defeating Custerism — bourgeois games encouraged by the Establishment, kids playing at revolution. Deliberately putting yourself in jail was immature and counterproductive. It did not help end the white-skin privilege of capitalism.
The Third World struggled against imperialism and the time to smash racist tyranny was now, while the momentum was there. Put the pigs up against the wall, increase the cost of empire, open new fronts behind enemy lines to smash the state, goad the pigs into reprisals which would awaken the masses to the fat fascism of the demagogues. People had minds like concrete — mixed, framed and set — and if you meant them to listen you had to blow things up.
The phone.
Sturka picked up. “Yes?”
Alvin fixed his insomniac eyes on Sturka hunching forward. “Where are you, a phone booth? Give me the number.” Sturka scribbled on the flyleaf of the Gideon Bible and ripped it out. “I’ll go to a phone and call you back.”
Sturka cradled the telephone and reached for his jacket. “Everyone stay inside.” He opened the door and went. It was probably Raoul Riva.
Peggy was lighting a cigarette from the burning stub of the old one; she stood just inside the bathroom door, stood there for a stretching interval and finally crossed to the front window. Parted the drapes and looked out. “I don’t know.”
Alvin said, “What?”
Peggy sat down on the floor and tipped her head back against the sill. “It was an uncool getaway.”
Cesar rolled his head around. “So?”
“They got six of our people. We’d have to be stupid if we thought they’d all keep quiet. I bet they’ve given us away by now.”
Cesar said again, “So?”
“So why are we sitting here? Waiting for the pigs to rip us off?”
“Gentle down.” Cesar lay back. “Ain’t nothing to fret about.”
Peggy gave a sour bark of laughter.
Mario said, “Hey,” whipping toward the radio.
The announcer: “... arrested less than an hour ago by police who had been staked out to watch the Harlem tenement. Identified as Darleen Warner, the woman is alleged by the FBI to be a member of the conspiracy to bomb the Capitol. This arrest brings to seven the number of bomb-plot conspirators apprehended so far...”
“Oh that’s sensational.” Peggy closed her eyes.
“Get off it,” Cesar said. “You want to push that stuff out.”
Alvin gave them both bleak stares. He didn’t want a push-out session, he was too tired. They had spent days in self-criticism sessions, Sturka and Cesar leading the harsh group therapy inducing them to exorcise their bourgeois conventionalisms and their individualized fears. They had lived taut, studied intensely, learned to accept discipline; now Peggy was backsliding and it was a bad time for it.
Shut up, he thought.
Perhaps the edge of the thought struck them all because Peggy closed her mouth to a pout and did not speak. The radio droned faintly and trucks went snarling by, Mario brooded over the Times, Peggy chain-smoked, Cesar dozed.
Sturka returned so silently it chilled Alvin. He was inside closing the door before Alvin knew he was there.
“We’ll go out tonight. It’s arranged.” Sturka went around the room passing out documents.
Alvin had a look. Forged seaman’s papers, a Venezuelan passport, entry visas for Spain and France and three North African countries. So that was why Sturka had needed the photos.
Sturka hitched up his trousers with the flats of his wrists. “We’ll board ship tonight at Port Elizabeth — four of us, not Mario. She’s a tramp under Anguillan registry. Going to Lisbon.” His eyes, hard and colorless as glass, shifted toward Mario. “You’ll fly over — book a flight to Marseille on the eighth. We talked about it before. We’re still agreed?”
“Well I’m scared shitless, if you want to know the truth.”
“I don’t think they’ve made you, that’s the point. We’ve got to know.”
“But if we’re wrong they’ll grab me at the airport. They’ll throw away the fucking key.”
“We all admit it’s a risk, Mario.”
“Well I guess we’ve got to try it,” Mario muttered. All through the development of the plan Mario was the one who had stayed in the shadows of the group and maintained his contacts with the pig world. Mezetti Industries thought he was engaged in market research among people his own age. It was something Mario had proposed to his father; his father had put the company’s facilities at his disposal. Every week or so Mario went home, showed his face for a few days, kept his psychological alibi polished. Now it was necessary to make sure he was still free to move about. The group needed a member who could show himself openly.
Sturka was still talking to Mario: “We’ll have to get you to a bank today.”
“How much you need?”
“A very great deal of money.”
“What, just to get the four of you on a tramp freighter? You figure to buy the fucking boat?”
“That’s not what the money’s needed for.” Sturka smiled his chilly anger: Mario’s resistance was undisciplined.
Sturka folded his arms across his chest and his rough pitted face became sleepy as it did when he had Cesar lecture them on doctrine. “Our people are in jail. They’ll be arraigned Monday morning. The politicians will bellow about law and order, there will be waves of horrified indignation across the country. If they don’t find enough evidence to execute our people they’ll manufacture it, but they can’t afford not to execute our people. A few of the underground newspapers will try to make heroic martyrs of them, but there’s a very long list of martyrs who’ve been destroyed by the capitalist Establishment — martyrdom means nothing any more.”
Alvin listened intently because Sturka was not given to philosophical ramblings. Sturka was getting to a point.
“And perhaps we need reminding that this operation wasn’t conceived to give them martyrs.” Sturka’s eyes went from face to face and Alvin was chilled. “We had a purpose. I hope we remember what it was.”
It was a mannerism: a cue, and Mario Mezetti obeyed it. “To show the world how much you can do even if you’re only a small group, if you’re dedicated to retaliation against the fascist pigs.”
Sturka said, “We didn’t finish, did we. The purpose wasn’t merely to sabotage the Capitol, the purpose was to get away with it. To show the people we could get away with it.”
“Didn’t work,” Cesar said. His voice was hard, high-pitched, nasal. He was digging around his mouth with a toothpick. “And the reason it didn’t work was because—”
“The people are sitting.” It was as if Sturka hadn’t heard Cesar. “They’re waiting, they haven’t begun to move. They need a sign. Encouragement. The revolutionaries in this country are waiting for us to prove the time is right for revolution.”
Peggy blew smoke from her nostrils. “I thought we proved that by smashing the Capitol.”
“We would have. If our people had got away.” Sturka moved his hand in an arc. “They’re watching. If they see the bandwagon isn’t moving anywhere they won’t want to jump on it. You see?” Sturka’s idiomatics were odd; he had spent a great deal of time among Americans, but most of it overseas.