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.
“Sure. Peggy and I are getting married, we want to buy a yacht for our honeymoon.”
“No. That’s frivolous.”
Mario scowled; Sturka touched his arm with a fingertip. “It’s a real estate deal. Very big. Be sly with the banker, take him into your confidence. You need the cash for an under-the-table bribe to persuade the land conglomerate to accept your bid. It’s a short-term project and you’ll be repaying the loan within three months.”
Alvin stared at Sturka. The man had a command of the most unlikely things.
Mario nodded. “That’ll work.”
Cesar said mildly, “We’ll have to clean her up.”
“Jesus,” Peggy muttered.
Sturka’s finger stabbed toward her. “Your father is a college professor — you know how to comport yourself.”
“My father’s a phony liberal drunk. A fucking hypocrite.”
“You’re Mario’s secretary. A very wealthy man’s secretary — you’ll behave as you would in polite society.”
“Pig society.”
“Peggy.” Sturka’s voice was very quiet, very mild, but it shut her up. “While Mario is in the barbershop you’ll buy a demure dress and have your hair done.”
When she made no rebuttal Sturka went back to Mario. “Impress on the banker that this is confidential. No one is to know about it, it might cause your deal to go sour.”
“Sure. So no stocks change hands, no sale has to be registered with the SEC or the Exchange.”
“And your family doesn’t learn about it.”
“Yeah.”
Sturka went to Peggy. “When you’ve finished in the city take the Path Tube to Newark and go by taxi to the Washington Hotel. Time it to arrive between six-thirty and seven. Wait at the front entrance.”
“Inside or outside?”
“Outside, we’ll be watching. If I’m satisfied you haven’t been followed we’ll pick you up.”
“What if we can’t make contact there?”
“Use the usual method of leaving a message for me and we’ll arrange something.” Sturka employed a telephone answering service in the name of Charles Wernick; when you left a message for him you reversed the digits of the number: if you were calling from telephone 691-6243 you left word to call 342-6196.
Alvin yawned. Cesar said, “Wake up, okay?”
“I’ve been two days without sleep.”
“You’ll have a week to sleep on the boat.” Cesar took the pillbox from his pocket. “Take one of these.”
“Uppers?”
“Bennies. Just take one.”
“I guess not.” Alvin had come down off heroin in the Army and hadn’t touched any kind of drugs since, medicinal or otherwise; he was terrified of them, he didn’t want to get back into the spiral.
Sturka was shepherding Mario and Peggy to the door. Alvin heard the car doors, heard the car start up and drive out of the motel.
Cesar was dragging out items from the theatrical makeup kit they had bought in New York a week ago. They made one another up: styrofoam pads inside the cheeks to change the shape of cheek and jaw; skullcaps and hairpieces to change hairlines; dye to hue eyebrows and hair.
A set of cheekpads and a cropped gray smudge of a moustache and a salt-and-pepper gray hairpiece in tight kink-curls added twenty years to Alvin. Cesar said, “Remember walk a little stooped over.”
A skullcap receded Cesar’s hairline and an application of makeup and eyeglasses changed him from swarthy brigand to middle-aged businessman. Sturka became an ascetic type in a wavy brown wig and neatly trimmed goatee.
“Let’s go then.”
Outside the air was heavy with a stink of heavy morning traffic grinding up Route 22 toward Newark Airport and the city. The parking court of the motel was busy with slamming car doors, people hustling luggage into car trunks, kids hollering, salesmen driving out into the heavy traffic. The sky was a murky brown — what passed for a clear day in the smog of northeast New Jersey.
Wednesday,
January 5
2:15 P.M. EST Lime left Satterthwaite’s White House office in a dour mood and ambushed a taxi. “Police headquarters.”
Lunch in the office of the President’s sardonic chief security advisor had been dreary with takeout food and Satterthwaite’s sonorous essay on political needs and realities. Lime spent the ride leaning his head far back against the cushion, eyes closed, unlit cigarette askew in his lips, thinking drowsy erotic thoughts about Bev Reuland.
“Hey man. We here.”
He paid the cabbie and got out. Sunny today and not so damned cold. He threw his head back and searched for contrails, reflecting on his fantasies. Bev always managed to prove her point without waving banners: she was thirty-four, divorced, feminine, adminstrative assistant to Speaker of the House Milton Luke. He looked at his watch. Right now she would be dictating replies to Luke’s constituents. Dear Mr. Smith, Thank you for your letter of January second. Regarding your request... Efficient by day; languorous by night; she had compartmentalized herself crisply and Lime envied her.
The reporters knew him now. They laid siege in the corridor; its musty soot seemed to have settled in their clothes. Lime pushed at the air with his palms and when they subsided from baying to muttering he told them, “No comment — and you may quote me,” and went past them through the cop-guarded doorway to the stairs.
Upstairs an FBI man had the interrogation; the subject was Sandra Walberg. The young lawyer from Harding’s office sat in a corner, very bored. The kid looked like all Harding’s disciples — shaggy, discontented, righteous. Harding had achieved his notoriety by inciting his clients to riot in court.
Lime crossed over and sat at the FBI man’s right so that he wouldn’t get the glare from the window when he looked at the girl. As he pulled the chair out and sat down the FBI man acknowledged him with a nod; the defense lawyer ignored him; Sandra glanced at him once. She was a small-boned girl with pinched features, full of sullen defiance.
The FBI man was young and vinegary, up to date in his field. His questions were compelling and logical. He spoke in a cautious tone, reserving malevolence. Of course none of it did any good: Sandra wasn’t talking. None of them was talking. There had been a few remarks from the prisoners — particularly from Bob Walberg who was more nervous than the others. “A few alterations in the Capitol.” And a grin and a clenched fist raised: “Right on!” But the young lawyer always cut in quickly, shutting them up: “Everything’s cool, baby. Keep it.”
Harding’s clients were going to be executed and the state could not seriously pretend to offer clemency because Harding had to know such an offer would be in bad faith.
Harding was handling the case in the full knowledge that there was no way on earth for him to avoid losing his clients’ lives to the executioner. The only advantage gained by anybody would be gained by Harding himself: by defending the bombers he would cement his position as mouthpiece for the radical left. Afterward he would be able to go to his people and say to them that he — the best of his kind — had tried, and had been beaten by the corrupt and unfeeling system: therefore choose violence, which I have advocated all along, because I have just proved to you that nothing else works. Lime despised the Hardings; they would fight to the very last drop of their followers’ blood.
You had to go through this charade. It was all sham and nonsense; everybody, Harding included, knew it. But you brought the prisoners up separately and interrogated them politely all day long, always with a lawyer present, always with reminders that the prisoner didn’t have to say a word.
In the evening you returned the prisoners to their solitary cells and the lawyers went home. Then after dinner you rousted the prisoners out again and took them secretly into interrogation cells and you worked them over sans lawyers and sans recitations of rights. You did this because the case demanded it: until you traced this thing to its roots you had no way of knowing how substantial the overall danger was. You had to find Sturka and you had to find out where Sturka would lead you in turn, and one way to find Sturka perhaps was to pry it out of these prisoners.