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.
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—”