Line of Succession

by Brian Garfield

  “I think I see what you’re driving at.”

  “I’ve got to be blunt,” Ethridge said. “There’s a chance Cliff Fairlie won’t be recovered alive—we have to face that. If I’m to take office as President my first act has to be to nominate someone to fill the vacancy in the Vice-Presidency.”

  “And you’re asking my advice?”

  “No. I’m asking you to be my Vice-President if Cliff doesn’t come back.”

  A beat of silence: Bee’s big lumberjack face dipping toward the brandy in thought. “It’s mighty flattering, Dex.”

  “Frankly, I might have preferred Sam March but he’s gone. But the important thing is you were Cliff’s first choice. I feel obliged to honor his wishes—after all he’s the one who was elected President.”

  “You are being blunt.” The famous Bee grin.

  “Next to March you’d be my own choice. That’s the truth.”

  Bee lifted his head to sip from the globe. “Sam March was pretty good company to be in. I’m not offended.”

  “You and I might make a good team, don’t you think?”

  Bee uncrossed his legs and recrossed them in the other direction. “I guess you want my decision pretty fast.”

  “I’m afraid so.”

  The big Californian lifted to his feet. “Let me sleep on it.”

  “I’ll call your office tomorrow.”

  “Fine.”

  They moved toward the door. Bee said, “It seems damned callous, doesn’t it.”

  “It does. Like picking the pockets of a man who isn’t quite dead yet.”

  “Sometimes I hate politics,” Bee said. He gave Ethridge his quick firm handshake and went.

  It was well past midnight. The headache was beginning to throb again. Ethridge thought of calling the doctor but decided to get a night’s rest and see if the headache disappeared.

  Feeling strangely guilty, thinking of the big desk in the White House, he went up to bed.

  TUESDAY,

  JANUARY 11

  11:35 A.M. Greenwich Mean Time The signal came on a faint pulse on the five hundred-kilocycle marine band. At Land’s End the W/T operator logged it in, time-of-origin 1135 hours. It was in Morse, an awkward fist on the key. Written out it was brief: Fairlie will broadcast this frequency 1200 GMT keep channel open.

  The W/T station got right through on the land line to Commander-in-Chief Portsmouth.

  There was no time to think about the possibility of a hoax. C-in-C sent immediate orders to all stations. By 11:48 every official wireless set on the coasts of England and France was ready to receive.

  At 11:50 a crackle of introductory static and then a voice transmission:

  “This is Clifford Fairlie speaking. In … ten minutes … I will speak … on this … band.”

  C-in-C Portsmouth had reached the Admiralty by telephone at 11:49. Word sped to 10 Downing Street.

  Two lines to Washington were opened: the Prime Minister’s hot line to President Brewster and a satellite-relayed broadcast circuit to convey the promised broadcast live.

  At 11:55 another voice transmission on 500 KG: “This is Clifford Fairlie speaking. In … five minutes … I will speak … on this … band.”

  To a few monitors with good ears it was apparent the second broadcast was the same voice recording as the first with the exception of the phrases “ten minutes” and “five minutes.”

  The PM heard it, live, by telephone from Admiralty; the PM remarked the curious hesitations between words. It sounded like Fairlie’s voice.… The PM inquired of the First Lord of the Admiralty: “We are taping this of course?”

  “Naturally.”

  “Very good, then.…”

  “Whitehall is alerted?”

  “Yes of course.”

  The PM went to the hot line telephone. “Mr. President?”

  “Right here.” The twanging Oregon drawl.

  “We shall pipe this straight through to you.”

  “Let’s hear what it has to say then.”

  8:50 A.M. EST The National Security Agency had monster banks of computers designed to analyze ciphers and codes and electronic transmissions. The Fairlie tape had been punched into the IBM consoles and then had been put in again, this time as sound recordings on ultra-high-speed half-inch tapes designed to disclose every nuance of volume and frequency. NSA’s electronic detection devices were the ultimate in Sherlockian analysis: an inaudible sound, an imperceptible fraction of time sufficed for clues.

  Ames was the NSA official assigned to the Fairlie tapes and Lime had worked with him many times before. He had been Lime’s supervisor during the years of foreign fieldwork.

  “Voiceprints are all positive,” Ames said. “We’ve matched it against his recorded speeches. It’s not a phony—it’s Fairlie’s voice.”

  Satterthwaite was scowling through thick lenses at the turning tape reels. “Edited.”

  “Edited like mad,” Lime muttered.

  The place always put Lime in mind of space-flight mission control: the electronic consoles ran on relentlessly along great curved walls.

  Lime held a computer print-out. It diagrammed the splices, showing where Fairlie’s words had been cut and pasted together:

  This is Clifford Fairlie speaking.

  I’ve been kidnapped.

  I’m being held for ransom

  in a place I can’t identify by a group of people who have not shown their faces to me or otherwise identified themselves.

  They have not harmed me physically.

  The

  ransom demands

  seem reasonable. I

  think Washington will agree to these demands.

  I understand how

  you

  may

  suppose

  I’ve been

  brainwashed

  but

  I’m reasonably tough

  and

  I rarely send my brain out to be laundered.

  They have not harmed me.

  I speak my own words, free of restraint.

  I cannot be bought.

  A man in my position hasn’t the luxury of being able to afford being bought.

  I

  speak

  only on my own terms.

  The point is I have a position in the world—alive or dead I still represent that position. The man in that position can’t put his voice to

  words

  that

  aren’t true.

  The

  revolutionaries

  have a cause that makes good sense

  to

  them.

  They

  agree to turn me loose

  in exchange for the seven bombers we’ve got on trial.

  My freedom in exchange for the

  bombers’.

  They are to be released and given safe asylum.

  Instructions will follow.

  This is Clifford Fairlie.

  Satterthwaite said, “Is this a professional editing job?”

  Lime shook his head and Ames said, “A talented amateur, but not a pro. It sounds almost natural but I’d say they probably made their tapes by switching back and forth from one small portable stereo deck to another. There’s a lot of background tape noise—the kind of thing you get from too much overdubbing. They had to do several tracks to wipe out the clicking sounds between splices—it shows up. At any rate it wasn’t done in a well-equipped sound studio.”

  Satterthwaite had the expression of a man who has just tasted something foul. “He knew he was recording it. At least some of it. I mean, you don’t say ‘This is Clifford Fairlie speaking’ unless somebody’s holding a microphone in front of your nose. You’d think he’d have had more sense.”

  “With a gun pointed at his head?” Lime stuck a cigarette in his mouth, snicked his lighter open and flipped its wheel. It erupted into a bonfire.

  The computer typing-recorders were spilling paper tapes on the floor; they writhed in Medusan agony. Satterthwait
e said, “It’s a nice propaganda coup for them.”

  They were killing time, really. Radio triangulation had narrowed the point of origin of the Fairlie broadcast to a Mediterranean coastal area north of Barcelona and international forces were combing it. There wasn’t much left but to wait for whatever turned up.

  3:15 P.M. Continental European Time The boat smelled strongly of fish. In the confinement of the inboard cabin Fairlie watched the impassive face of Abdul, felt the restraining wire around his wrists and ankles, let himself move slackly with the roll and pitch of the vessel. Somewhere in the Med, he supposed. He had a dull headache, the hangover from the drugs they had administered last night.

  “You want to talk, Abdul?”

  “No.”

  “Too bad. I might talk some sense into you.”

  “Man, just don’t tell me we’ll never get away with it.”

  “Maybe you will. But you won’t be able to live with it.”

  Pained disgust. “Come on, man.”

  “You know what they’ll do to you when they catch you.”

  “They won’t catch us. They’re too stupid. Now you rest your mouth awhile.”

  He lay back. It was a narrow bunk; the wooden side jabbed his elbow and there wasn’t room to shift over. He lifted his elbow over it and let it stick out.

  The memory of last night was kaleidoscopic in his head. For an indeterminate time he had been asleep—unconscious, drugged into coma. He had come out of it slowly as if drunk. Aware at one point that he was still in the closed coffin and that it was moving with the quiet heave of a boat on open water. He wasn’t sure of his recollection of sequences for it seemed they had removed the coffin from the boat: he had been awake when they had unscrewed the lid and it had been on dry land, but with the smell of the sea. Dark—a cloudy night, the cold wind whipping mist across the sands. Dead seaweed tangled around his feet. Someone talking—Sélim?—about driving the boat high up on the shoals so it wouldn’t wash out on the tide. A quick movement, shadows rushing through the darkness; a grunt, the thump of a body falling onto the hard-packed sand. Sélim: “Abdul. Stick your knife in him. Hard.” The black face motionless, hardly visible in the poor light. The jaws no longer chewing gum. “Go on, Abdul. It’s discipline.” Abdul moving slowly, disappearing. The distinct scraping-sliding thrust of knife into flesh and bone.

  “Lady—now you.”

  “No—I.…”

  “Do it.” Very soft.

  Remembering it now Fairlie thought he understood it: Sélim had faced reluctance among his troops and had achieved the solidarity he needed by committing the others to participation in his atrocity. Fairlie knew his Mao: cruelty was an instrument of policy.

  It was dismal knowledge, it removed the last doubt of their inhumanity. They would kill him whenever it suited them. In that moment, or in this one, he gave up hope.

  They had taken him up the dunes: Sélim the Slav, Abdul the black lieutenant, Lady and the one whose name he had not heard. He did not know whom they had murdered on the beach, or why.

  He remembered now there had been a truck waiting, a small rusty van driven by Ahmed, the one who spoke English with a Spanish accent. In the van they had covered him with a blanket and injected a drug and he had gone out again.

  He was not certain but he seemed to remember that they had been at sea, then on land, then at sea again, and perhaps yet again on land.

  Now on the cabin bunk he felt the rise of a moderate sea beneath his spine and watched Abdul’s unreadable features and wondered where God was.

  10:10 A.M. EST In a Boston hotel room with snowflakes drifting against the panes three men worked at revolution. Kavanagh and the Harrison youth molded their ten satchel charges while Raoul Riva worked over a map of Washington with a felt-tip pen and a District of Columbia federal directory.

  The Establishment had been stung twice; it was alerted and that was supposed to make it difficult to move freely. But the Americans were suicidally and hysterically incompetent: they had no long-range plans for countering insurgency, they had a genius for preparing to meet the last attack rather than the next one.

  Their Capitol had been bombed. Now it was surrounded by armed guards while workmen ripped out its damaged insides and prepared to rebuild. Federal buildings everywhere had been reinforced by sentries and checkpoints. The temporary House and Senate chambers that had been set up in the Cannon and Rayburn buildings were protected by platoons of soldiers. The Government in its stupidity had cordoned off federal office buildings in every major city and thrown guards around everything from post offices to city halls.

  And in the meantime every Congressman and Senator went home each night to a serene unguarded house or apartment.

  They were so stupid it was hardly worth picking a fight with them. Riva turned a directory page and ran his finger down the center column until he found the home address of Senator Wendell Hollander.

  10:45 A.M. EST Satterthwaite’s war room had been set up in the NSC boardroom because communications were already laid into the building. The long table was a tangle of teletapes and phones and transceivers. A situation map covered one wall. Information was being fed into the pool of typists one floor below, where it was collated on update sheets and sent in to the analysis table in the war room. Senior executives of all the government security agencies sifted the data sheets, seeking not only information but inspiration.

  They sat, winnowed, talked, in some cases complained. Satterthwaite had insisted on this bulky arrangement; he wanted instant liaison with all agencies and had insisted they assign men whose rank empowered them to make instant decisions and commit their agencies without needing to waste time in consultations outside this room.

  The big chair at the center—ordinarily the President’s seat—was Satterthwaite’s now and he was in it when the Presidential summons came. He left the room without excusing himself and strode rapidly on his short legs to the eastern exit from the building.

  The previous night’s feathery snowfall had left a crisp crust. It was a clear cold morning and reporters in topcoats and overshoes were besieging both buildings in the largest concentration Satterthwaite had seen since the night of the presidential election. It took four EPS patrolmen and a Secret Service agent at point to elbow a path through the crush for Satterthwaite’s passage.

  Inside the White House even the press lobby was empty; the White House had been closed to reporters indefinitely. The President’s announcements were delivered to the press by Perry Hearn on the mud of the trampled lawn.

  On his way up to the President’s office he found Halroyd, the Special Agent in charge of the White House Detail; Satterthwaite wheeled off his course to speak to him.

  “Find David Lime, will you? Ask him to report to me in the NSC boardroom. He may still be at NSA—check there first.”

  “Yes sir.”

  Halroyd went, and Satterthwaite was admitted to the presidential presence.

  The President had with him Dexter Ethridge and the press secretary. Hearn was on his way out. He nodded to Satterthwaite, picked up his briefcase and detoured past Satterthwaite toward the door. “They’ll want more, I’m afraid,” he said over his shoulder.

  “It’s all I’m giving them. Make them accept it, Perry—embellish it all you can, try to satisfy them.”

  Hearn had stopped at the door. “I’m afraid they’re not going to be satisfied with anything less than hard news, Mr. President. ‘We’re doing all we can, we expect an early solution’—no matter how you word that it comes out sounding like something they’ve heard too often before.”

  “Damn it, I can’t help it.” The President was flushed; he looked very tired, his eyes were bloodshot.

  Perry Hearn left quietly. Ethridge nodded to Satterthwaite without rising from his seat. Ethridge didn’t look well. Drawn; loose bags under the eyes; the appearance of sickbed slackness. It was hardly surprising. He had been hit hard.

  Satterthwaite was as tired as anyone; too tired for for
malities. He spoke to the President with the acerbic intimacy he ordinarily withheld from public view: “I hope you didn’t drag me over here for a progress report. When we’ve got something I’ll let you know.”

  “Gentle down, Bill.”

  Mild shock in Ethridge’s eyes; Satterthwaite grimaced and nodded to indicate his apology.

  The President said, “I’ve got a policy decision to make.”

  “What to tell the press?”

  “No. Nothing like that.” The President put a cigar in his mouth but did not light it. It made his voice more gutteral. “It’s that damn fool press conference they held last night.”

  “What press conference?”

  “You didn’t hear about it?”

  “I’ve been up to here, Mr. President, you know that.”

  From his chair Dexter Ethridge spoke evenly. “Some congressional leaders held a joint press conference last night.” He sounded very dry, disapproving. “Woody Guest, Fitz Grant, Wendy Hollander, a few others. Both houses and both parties were represented.”

  The President pushed a copy of the New York Times across his desk. “You’d better read it.”

  Satterthwaite had seen a copy of the Times earlier in the day but had not had time to read it. The headline at the top of the front page was probably the largest point type the Times used—FAIRLIE KIDNAPPED. Each of the two words ran the width of the page in high boldface.

  It was near the bottom of the page under a two-column group photo of a dozen well-known faces.

  CONGRESSIONAL LEADERS CALL FOR “GET TOUGH” POLICY—INSIST GOV’T REJECT RANSOM DEMANDS

  The President was talking while Satterthwaite read. “I’ve had calls from every one of them. And the telegrams are a mile high.”

  “How do the telegrams split?”

  “About six to four.”

  “For or against the hard line?”

  “For.” The President spoke the word slowly and let it hang in the air. Finally he added, “The public sentiment seems to be let’s not just sit around and bleed about it.” He removed the cigar; his voice hardened. “I can hear the mob, Bill. They’re gathering out there with picks and torches.”