Line of Succession

by Brian Garfield

  The Chevrolet was just disappearing around the corner with a wail of tires and the agents stopped shooting. Riva got to his feet and when the nearest agent swung to glare at him Riva said, “Jesus Christ Almighty. What in hell was that all about?”

  4:20 A.M. EST Satterthwaite scraped a hand down across his chin. The stubble stung his palm.

  Bleary faces along the length of the big table in The Salt Mine. Voices barking into telephones. Satterthwaite had FBI Director Clyde Shankland on the line. “It looks like a maximum effort they’re putting up. First Hollander’s lawn, then five Goddamned bombs in that one building, then a sniper shooting at Luke’s windows. God knows where else they’ll hit. Look, I want every man you’ve got. We’ve got to provide immediate protection for every VIP in Washington.”

  Kaiser was tugging at his sleeve. Kaiser had a telephone cupped in his hand. “It’s for you. The President.”

  Satterthwaite said to Shankland, “Get on it, Clyde,” and slammed down the phone and grabbed the other one from Kaiser. “Yes, Mr. President.”

  4:23 A.M. EST The city was amok with crying sirens. Riva circled the block and got back into his car and reached for the walkie-talkie. “Copasetik?”

  “Copasetik.”

  “They’re on their toes. Let’s do the alternate.”

  “Copasetik.”

  The central area was getting too hot; they would skip the other targets and head for the outskirts.

  The Secret Service men had questioned him for several minutes but Riva’s identification was in order and his story was plausible and they had bigger things to worry about than him.

  He put the car in gear and headed up toward Senator Forrester’s house.

  4:28 A.M. EST Special Agent Pickett slid into the front seat of the limousine to use the radio. His hand brushed the manila folder on the seat and when he pushed it aside the ID sheet came ajar and he was looking straight into the face of the man they had questioned less than ten minutes ago.

  He picked up the ID sheet and stared at the photo and blurted into the microphone.

  “This is Pickett. I’ve just seen your man Riva.”

  4:31 A.M. EST DeFord and B. L. Hoyt marched into the war room and Hoyt said to Satterthwaite, “Listen, they may be pulling something in that apartment house. Those rifle shots could have been a diversion to distract our people’s attention while someone slipped into the building. We’d better get Milton Luke out of there.”

  “And put him where?”

  “The White House. It’s the best guarded place we’ve got.”

  DeFord said, “I’ll arrange for a heavy escort. We’ll want motorcycles and squadrols.” He reached for a phone.

  4:33 A.M. EST The two FBI agents reached Arizona Terrace and parked at the curb.

  “That’s the Senator’s house.”

  “All right. No point waking him up. Look, I’ll post myself in that open garage across the street. You stick here in the car. Anybody shows up, we’ll have them crossfired.”

  “Okay.”

  4:37 A.M. EST Riva parked at the mouth of Arizona Terrace and within moments the Chevrolet drew up alongside. Kavanagh at the wheel.

  “Everything okay?”

  “So far,” Riva said.

  “You want to do this hit and run?”

  “He’s got that plate-glass picture window in front. Just throw it in through the window.”

  “I don’t know. It’s a cul-de-sac, this street.”

  “I’ll sweep it first,” Riva said. “Give me two minutes.” He pulled out into the street and headed up the hill in low.

  Forrester’s house was at the bottleneck of the street just before it widened into a circular turnaround. Riva drove slowly into the turnaround. Was that a shadow in the parked car? He looked again. Nothing.

  Getting nervous. He chastised himself. It would take them a lot longer than this to get men out this far. Forrester was only a junior senator from an unimportant state.

  He cruised around the loop and headed out again. Glanced into the shadows of an open garage; nothing there. The snowfall had let up, the flakes were drifting down singly. He drove back over the crest and down to the mouth of the drive.

  “All clear.”

  4:41 A.M. EST The FBI agent spoke low into the microphone of his car radio. “Somebody’s just cased Forrester’s house. You better get another car or two up here.”

  4:42 A.M. EST Harrison put the satchel charge in his lap while the car climbed the hill. He set the timer for two minutes.

  Kavanagh drove past the parked Plymouth and pulled in across the front of the Senator’s driveway. “Go.”

  Harrison shoved the door open and stepped out. Started to walk up the driveway toward the front of the house.

  “Hold it right there. FBI.”

  Harrison turned slowly on his heels, twisting his head to look over his shoulder.

  The FBI man stood beside the Plymouth, aiming the pistol casually at the middle of Harrison’s coat and making it clear he felt it was an easy shot.

  The timing device was ticking. Harrison dropped the bomb and dived for cover but the FBI man switched his headlights on and caught Harrison blindingly in the beams.

  Kavanagh was coming out of the Chevrolet with his gun but there was a wink of orange flame arid a roar from the dark open garage across the street and Kavanagh pitched onto his face.

  Harrison got up to run—he couldn’t stay there, the bomb had thirty seconds at most.…

  He felt the bullets thud into him but before he went under he heard the earsplitting thunder of the satchel bomb. Something whacked agony against the back of his neck.

  4:43 A.M. EST The shots alerted Riva and he reached for the walkie-talkie. “Copasetik?”

  When they didn’t answer right away he switched on his lights and drove for the mouth of the street.

  A pair of cars came swerving into it. Saw him approaching and slewed across the pavement to block his exit. Riva turned the wheel and floored the pedal, ramming the Dodge up onto the sidewalk, heading for the open boulevard beyond them. But he had their headlights straight in his eyes and it was hard to see.

  He heard the bomb go off. Something starred the windshield in front of his face. His wheels banged up across the concrete and the car was slithering on wet snow, the rear wheels shrieking. He spun the wheel to go with the skid and crashed into one of the cars.

  He dived across the seat and got out the far door, rolling, bringing the silencer-pistol up. But his eyes were still blinded from the headlights and he couldn’t find a target and then three or four of them were shooting him from behind the lights.

  5:10 A.M. EST Four Secret Service cars formed a convoy escort around the limousine and there were pairs of motorcycles fore and aft. Speaker of the House Milton Luke and his wife were surrounded by a flying wedge of security agents from the door of their apartment to the elevator, down to the ground floor, across the lobby, through the doors and across the sidewalk to the waiting limousine. The Lukes settled in the back seat looking aged and half asleep and showing the signs of having dressed hurriedly. Men were emerging from the building with the Lukes’ two overnight bags; more clothing would follow later.

  The sirens climbed to a shriek and the limousine pulled out into Wisconsin Avenue.

  The burst of engine power sent a hot stream of waste gases through the limousine’s exhaust pipes and the heat ignited the detonator of the hosepipe bomb. When it exploded it ruptured the gasoline tank and the fuel exploded.

  The rear section of the limousine was blown to fragments and the passengers with it. The noise was audible thirty blocks away.

  8:40 A.M. EST In the clamor of the war room Satterthwaite couldn’t hear the President’s voice. He went out and across into the private conference room and picked up the phone. “Yes Mr. President.”

  The President’s voice was thin against the sound of trucks and helicopters and sirens that penetrated the frosty window. The Army was grinding its way through Washington.
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  “Bill, I want you to get over here as soon as you can.”

  “Of course sir.”

  “We’ve got a problem here by the name of Wendy Hollander.”

  “I wish that were the only problem we had.”

  “No you don’t,” the President said, and rage trembled in his voice. “I’d settle for every other problem we’ve got in preference to Wendy Hollander.”

  “I don’t follow that, sir.”

  “You think about it and you will. Listen, he’s over here camping in the Lincoln Sitting Room. I want you to try and get him off my back for a few hours until I’ve had time to get my head in working order.”

  “How am I supposed to do that?”

  “Hell, I don’t care. Put him in command of a battalion of shock troops, he ought to love that.”

  The President was showing his strain. After a moment Satterthwaite said, “You intend to keep pouring these troops into the city, sir?”

  “I do.”

  “I don’t think it’s necessary.”

  “Well then you’re wrong,” Brewster snapped.

  “The FBI nailed them all. There aren’t any of them left, we know that.”

  “We’ve been told that. We don’t necessarily know it. And we’ve got to make a show of force.”

  “Yes sir. But we’d better keep a tight lid on them.”

  “Let’s worry more about keeping a tight lid on the crazies, Bill.” And the President hung up.

  The net hadn’t yet been thrown; the roundup was not underway but nothing would stop the pressure for it this time. Milton Luke and Representatives Jethro and Wood and all their wives were dead.

  Satterthwaite listened to the wail of sirens and the clatter of Army trucks moving through the streets and when he moved to the window he saw an armored limousine moving up Pennsylvania Avenue surrounded by jeeps in which soldiers were standing up with rifles and submachine guns leveled at sidewalks and windows; they looked ready to fire at anyone who moved.

  He didn’t know who was inside the limousine; it could have been anyone, those who moved at all moved like colonial administrators traveling through revolution-torn jungle provinces.

  The city was not under siege but it thought it was and perhaps that amounted to the same thing. The Army was reacting with the vexation of a laboratory rat presented with a no-exit maze: all ammunitioned up and no one to shoot.

  Anguish blazed in Satterthwaite’s eyes. He turned away from the window but a new siren went by, perhaps no louder than the others, and he reacted as he would have to a fingernail’s scrape across a blackboard: with an involuntary shudder. He went back into the hallway and entered the war room, found Clyde Shankland and made himself heard over the din:

  “I’ve got to go to the White House. Have you got anything more for me?”

  The FBI Director had a telephone at his ear. “Tell him to wait. Put him on Hold.” He put the receiver down and looked at Satterthwaite. In his left hand Shankland held a pencil upright, bouncing its point on the table as if to drill a hole in the surface. “We’ve traced Raoul Riva back to the Cairo Hotel. Of course he wasn’t using that name. But it was him. He only had two visitors—the same two guys several times during the past few days.”

  “The two that were with him last night?”

  “Yeah. Harrison and the dead guy, Kavanagh.”

  “Well that’s what Harrison said, isn’t it.”

  “I’m not ready to believe the son of a bitch yet.”

  “But everything confirms it. Doesn’t it?” He put it to Shankland as a challenge but Shankland only shrugged. Satterthwaite said angrily, “You’re not listening to the rumors are you? Of all people you ought to know better.”

  “What rumors?”

  “About the enormous conspiracy.”

  Shankland said in his flat prim nasal voice, “Mr. Satterthwaite, we thought we had them all the first time and it turned out we were wrong.”

  “You still think there’s an endless supply of them coming out of the woodwork?”

  “I’ll only repeat what I said to the Security Council an hour ago. Until we’ve got dependable airtight information to confirm what Harrison says, I have to go on record as recommending a full-scale crackdown.”

  That was the way Shankland always talked. He was straight out of the Hoover mold.

  Satterthwaite said, “What else have you got for the President?”

  “Well they still had three bombs left. Unexploded ones, in the back seat of that Chevrolet.”

  “Any idea who they were meant for?”

  “Harrison says it was flexible. They figured to hit whoever was available—they’d figured out ways to hit eight or nine VIPs on the outskirts of Washington.”

  “Harrison,” Satterthwaite said. “Is he going to pull through?”

  “He wouldn’t if I had my preferences.”

  “Goddamn it we need him alive. If he dies we’ll never have any way of proving it ends here.”

  “Who’s going to believe him anyway? If he pulls through alive you’ll just have to hold off a lynch mob on top of everything else. I’d as soon he kicked off right now.”

  “The point is he’s willing to talk.”

  “Talk? He’s willing to boast. He knows he has no chance to squirm out of it; he’s a dead man, he just hasn’t been executed yet. He seems to think the more cooperative he acts the longer we’ll keep him alive, if only to keep pumping him. Or maybe he wants everyone to know how clever they all were. Maybe he’s looking for a place in the history books.”

  “I still want to know what his chances are.”

  “I guess they’ll patch him up. He took a couple of thirty-eights in his guts.”

  On his way out of the room Satterthwaite felt a rising sense of alarm. If the rumors could get into this room they could go anywhere. Hard facts were in short supply, the events were beyond everyday understanding, and nothing terrified men more than ambiguous uncertainties that directly affected their lives.

  The rumors were to the effect that there was a giant international movement bent on toppling the American government. It was based in Cuba or Peking or Moscow; it was the brainchild of an evil genius—Castro, Chou En-lai, Kosygin; it was Communist-inspired or Communist-led or both; it was, in short, the opening skirmish of World War Three.

  “How long’s he intend to keep me waiting like a Goddamn office boy?” Wendell Hollander demanded with biting scorn.

  Satterthwaite’s nostrils flared. “The President’s up to here with troubles, Senator. You can see that.”

  “His troubles,” Hollander snapped, “are gon to last exactly seventy-five hours by my timepiece. My troubles might well last the next four years.” His eyebrows narrowed shrewdly. “If the country lasts that long, that is.” Even when he was using his confidential tone of voice Hollander tended to yell; he was somewhat deaf.

  And if you last that long. Hollander for the past decade or more had had the rheumy appearance of a terminal patient. But like most unhealthy men he took extremely good care of himself; it was not impossible he would live to be ninety and if that was the case he still had thirteen dyspeptic years to go.

  “With all due respect,” Hollander shouted, “I would like to suggest you remind that yellow-bellied coward down the hall that I’m waiting here to see him.” His face bulged thick with blood and anger.

  “Senator, the President will see you as soon as he can.”

  Hollander’s indignation reached its peak. For a moment he stood gathering himself—drawing himself up, pumping air into his caved-in chest. In an effort to be reasonable Satterthwaite said quickly, “These are terrible times for us all.”

  He had never been any good at personal diplomacy; he wished the President had assigned someone else to this chore. But protocol required it be someone at least of Cabinet rank.

  “That son of a bitch,” Hollander growled, and abruptly shot his eyes toward the ceiling corners, darting from one to another. “And I hope he’s listening to me. Y
ou think I don’t know these rooms are bugged?”

  Why he’s senile, Satterthwaite thought in awe. Senile and paranoid and probably the next President of the United States.

  Satterthwaite ran his fingers through his wild thick crop of hair. “Senator, I can’t force the President to see you right this instant. You know that as well as I do. Now if there’s anything you’d like me to do for you.…”

  “There is. You can tell me just what’s being done about this war they’ve started on us. What’s being done, boy? Or is it that all you mangy neurotic intellectuals are still just sitting around arguing the fine points?” Hollander’s moist pale eyes flicked causally across Satterthwaite’s face. The gnarled fingers produced a curved and polished pipe. Packed it with care and lifted it to the wizened mouth. It took Hollander three matches to get the pipe lighted to his satisfaction. He was still on his feet, too agitated to sit. On his head the vanishing gray wisps of hair were carefully combed across the pate; he was as old-fashioned in dress and bearing as a badly tended antique.

  It had been a bad mistake, Brewster sending Satterthwaite on this chore. It couldn’t help but antagonize the old man. Hollander, neither thoughtful nor subtle himself, believed these qualities in others were superficial and untrustworthy. No one thought himself a poor judge of human nature; Hollander, seeing before him an arrogant and myopic little fighter and remembering Satterthwaite from years ago when Satterthwaite hadn’t known better than to offend him unforgivably, could only assume Brewster had flung Satterthwaite in his face as a calculated affront.

  It was something Satterthwaite supposed the President simply hadn’t had time to think of. But he should have thought of it himself and declined to meet Hollander here.