Line of Succession

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.