“I’m not busting you,” Malone replied. “Just giving you a chance to get on the plus side for the next time we take you in.”
He took out the photos of Yolande Belindez and Torres and placed them before the pickpovket. As he did, Angelo’s attention was totally concentrated on the young man’s face. For a fleeting instant he saw there what he was looking for, the sudden apprehensive flicker of recognition.
“Know these guys?” Malone asked.
The pickpocket paused. “No. I no know. Never seen.” Before he knew what had happened, Angelo had slipped the young man’s right forearm between his own arms, grasped his fingertips and was slowly, steadily pushing them backward.
“My friend here asked you a question.”
Sweat broke out on the pickpocket’s forehead. Again his head swiveled wildlv from one detective to the other. “Hey, man, I no see. No see.”
Angelo squeezed harder. The pickpocket squealed in pain.
“You ever tried boosting somebody’s wallet with your hand in a cast? You don’t talk to my friend there, I’ll snap these tendons like crackers.”
“Hey,” the pickpocket screamed in pain. “I talk. I talk.” Angelo eased the pressure. “They new in town. I only seen them once. Maybe twice.”
“Where they live?”
“Hicks Street. Over by the Expressway. I no know house. Only one time I see, I swear.”
Angelo released his fingers. “Grncias, amigo,” he said, opening the door to let the dip out. “Appreciate your help.”
* * *
Henri Bertrand loathed reading the transcripts of wiretaps. The director of French intelligence had no scruples about their morality. It was rather that he inevitably found the exercise depressing. Nothing, he had discovered long ago, revealed quite as completely the emptiness, the banality, the squalor of most lives as did that harvest of the electronic scanning of an unguarded soul.
When he had started to comb his way through the transcripts of PaulHenri de Serre’s conversations, it was with the expectation that he would find in them the imprint of an exalted spirit, of-a man with the love of beauty needed to assemble the collection of ancient objects Bertrand had admired in his apartment.
He had found instead a petty, scheming bureaucrat; a dull, banal man with no trace of the weaknesses someone might exploit to get his cooperation. He had no mistresses; or, if he did, he didn’t talk to them. Indeed, the man’s rigorous marital fidelity, Bertrand had thought with a chuckle, might be seen as the only aberration in his character.
The interminable transcript through which he was laboring dated to November a year ago. It was with the administrative director of the Fusion Research Center at Fontenay-aux-Roses, and, Bertrand noted with relief, it was finally concluding with a personal exchange. He skimmed it rapidly.
ADMINISTRATOR: By the way, cher ami, we’re go ing to have a Nobel here.
DE SERAE: Don’t be fatuous, Jean. The Swedes will never give a Nobel to anyone even remotely con nected with our program.
ADMINISTRATOR: Well, you’re wrong. Do you re member Alain Prevost?
DE SERRE: That rather ploddy type who worked on the submarine reac tor at Pierrelatte years ago?
ADMINISTRATOR: That’s he. In strictest confi dence, he and his people at the laser-beam complex have just made the fusion breakthrough we’ve all been hoping for.
DE SERRE: They blew up the bubble?
ADMINISTRATOR: Shattered it. Prevost has been invited to the P-lysee at four next Tuesday to tell Giscard and a select Cabinet what it all means.
DE SBRRE: My God! Perhaps you’re right. Give Prevost my congratulations. Although I never would have dreamed he had the intel lectual resources for such a thing. Au revoir.
Alain Prevost. Bertrand took a slow, meditative drag on his Gatiloise, trying to remember where it was he had heard that name before. Then he had it: the murder in the Bois de Boulogne.
* * *
A strange voice filtered into the National Security Council conference room over the same white plastic squawk box through which Harold Agnew had revealed barely eighteen hours before the existence of Qaddafi’s hydrogen bomb. It belonged to an Air Force brigadier general sitting at the communications console of the Doomsday 747, thirtyfive thousand feet above the Mediterranean.
“Eagle One to Eagle Base,” he said. “Secure communications circuit to Fox Base is now operational.” “Fox Base” was the code designation for Tripoli.
“All contacts verified and functioning. Fox Base advises Fox One will be on line in sixty seconds.”
The mutter of conversation in the room stopped at the words “Fox One.” For a moment, there was no noise except for the whir of the ventilation equipment and the occasional scraping of a chair. Each of the men and women present reacted in his or her own way to the fact that in a few seconds they would be listening to the voice of the man threatening six million of their countrymen.
A cackle of static broke from the squawk box, and suddenly Qaddafi’s voice filled the conference room. Since he was speaking over a secure, scrambled line, his voice had a peculiar resonance as though it was percolating slowly upward through a vat of water or had been taken from the sound track of a late-night movie about an extraterrestial invasion of planet Earth.
“This is Muammar al-Qaddafi, Secretary General of the Libyan People’s Congress,” the voice said in Arabic.
Jack Eastman leaned forward as soon as the translators had finished. “Mr.
Qaddafi, this is Jack Eastman, the President’s National Security Assistant.
I wish first to give you the personal assurances of the President of the United States that the communications channel over which we are speaking is a secure voice channel audible only to the people around you and the people here with me in the White House. For the purposes of our conversation I have with me Mr. E. R. Sheehan of the Department of State, who will translate our remarks into Arabic for you, and yours into English for us.”
Eastman gestured with his head to the translator.
“Your arrangements are satisfactory,” Qaddafi replied when he had finished.
“I am now ready to address the President.”
“Thank you, sir,” Eastman answered politely. “The President has asked me to tell you first that he takes the contents of your letter with the utmost seriousness. He is conferring now with our senior people to discuss how we can best take action on your proposals, and has asked me to serve as his personal liaison with you as we try to reach together some resolution of the issues you have raised. There are a number of points in your letter on which we would like to ask you for clarification. Have you considered what interim security arrangements are to be made on the West Bank as the Israelis withdraw?”
The three psychiatrists exchanged satisfied smiles. Eastman was slipping brilliantly into his role of negotiator, ending with a question that would force Qaddafi to go on talking and at the same time lead him to believe he was going to get what he wanted.
There was a long silence before Qaddafi came back on the line. Even in Arabic, everyone in the room could detect the change in his tone.
“Mr. Eastman. The only person in your country to whom I am prepared to speak is the President.”
The men at the table waited for Qaddafi to continue, but only the faint drone of the sound amplifier emerged from the squawk box.
“Stall,” Tamarkin said to Eastman. “Tell him you’ve summoned the President.
He’s on the way. Tell him anything you want, just as long as you keep him talking.”
Eastman had resumed speaking for only a few seconds when Qaddafi’s voice came back on the line. This time the Libyan spoke directly in English.
“Mr. Eastman, I am not going to tumble into your traps as easily as that.
If what I have to discuss with the President is not important enough for him to receive my communication himself, I have nothing further to say to you. Do not contact me again if the President is not prepared to talk personally with
me.”
Again the drone of the amplifier came over the open line. “Mr. Qaddafi?”
Eastman said.
“Eagle One to Eagle Base.” It was the Air Force Brigadier in the Doomsday jet. “Fox Base has cut the circuit.”
* * *
Angelo Rocchia and Jack Rand cruised slowly southeast down Hicks Street, the street indicated by the pickpocket Angelo had grilled a few minutes earlier. The street, it seemed to the Denver-based agent, was almost as miserable, as depressing as the one they had driven through earlier on their way to the docks: the same obscene graffiti on the walls, the same shattered windows, padlocked doors, the same cannibalized hulks of the cars abandoned by the curb. 1n a third-floor window just above their car, Rand spotted an old derelict, a woman, peering down at them. Yellow-gray hair was strewn around her head in a disordered jumble. One hand clutched a faded housecoat around her shoulders, the other the neck of a pint of Four Roses. Pasted to the window, just beneath her gaunt face, was a string of paper cut-out dolls. Rand shuddered. There was more despair, more hopelessness writ upon that face than the young agent was prepared to handle. He turned to Angelo beside him.
“What do we do?” Rand asked. “A door-to-door?”
Angelo was silent a moment, thinking. “No,” he answered. “We do that, the word’ll get around the heat’s on the street. They’ll figure we’re from Immigration. Half of these people are illegals. Hit some of these places here, what you have to be concerned about is you don’t get trampled by the mob running out of the front door. We got to figure out something else.”
They passed a tiny grocery store, a hole in the wall with a couple of half-empty crates of wilted vegetables piled against its window. Angelo noted the proprietor’s name painted in white on the door panel.
“I got an idea,” he said, looking for a parking place.
The two picked their way along the rubble-and garbage-littered sidewalk, back to the grocery store.
“Let me do the talking in here,” Angelo warned.
Once again there was the familiar tinkle of a bell over the door. The odor of garlic, of cheap salami and of cold cuts assaulted their nostrils as they stepped inside. It was, Rand observed, a cramped cubbyhole of a place, not even half the size of the Holiday Inn bedrooms he had so often slept in. Cans, bottles of oil, packages of pasta, dried soups, noodles were strewn about in a disordered jumble. In the ancient freezing cabinet, packages of frozen foods, TV dinners, pizzas, some torn open, others filthy from being picked over, were littered about.
The face of a plump elderly woman in black, gray hair gathered in a tight bun at the nape of her neck, rose up above a refrigerating cabinet crammed with milk, butter and an array of frozen junk foods. She eyed warily the two unfamiliar faces intruding into her store.
“Signora Marcello?” Angelo asked, coming down hard with the accent.
The woman grunted.
Angelo moved a step closer to her, consciously stressing the space separating him from Rand. His voice dropped to a husky half-whisper. “I got a problem. I need a little help.” There was no question of telling her he was a cop, he knew that. Older women like her, born in the old country, didn’t talk to cops, period. “Niece of mine, nice Italian girl, got mugged last Sunday coming home from the ten-o’clock Mass over there to Saint Anthony’s on Fourth Avenue.”
He leaned toward the woman, as though he was a priest about to hear her confession. “That’s the fidanzato,” he whispered, jerking a thumb at Rand.
An intimation of dislike crossed her face. “He’s not an Italian, but what are you going to do, kids the way they are these days? Good Catholic boy, though. German.”
He drew back slightly, sensing the bond of understanding that was growing between him and the woman. His heavy head moved back and forth in apparent sadness and disbelief. “Would you believe that people could do a thing like that to a nice girl, one of ours, just received Our Lord, right there almost on the church steps? Beat her up, grab her bag?”
He stepped closer until his face was only inches from Signora Marcello’s, his voice a whisper, each of his words designed to arouse her prejudices. “South Americanos, they were. Spics.” He spat out the last word. “They come from around here.”
Angelo reached into his pocket and drew out the photos of Torres and Yolande Belindez. “Friend of mine, Italian detective downtown, got me these pictures.” Angelo grimaced. “But cops, you know, what could they do?” He tapped the pictures. “Me, I’m the oldest. I’m going to get them. For the honor of the famiglia, capito? You ever seen these two?”
“Ai, ai,” the old woman groaned. “Jesus, Mary, Joseph! Whatsa become this place?” She reached for a pair of broken glasses. “This one I know.” A gnarled finger thumped the picture of the girl with the big tits. “She come in here every day, buy a bottle of milk.”
“You know her name?”
“Sure. Itsa Carmen. Carmen something.”
“You know where she lives?”
“Down the street, next to the bar. Three buildings, all alike. She lives there.”
* * *
The only person in the National Security Council conference room not shocked by Qaddafi’s brutal interruption of his communication with Eastman was the President. He had expected it. Heads of state, no matter how irrationally they may behave, do not respond to the same psychological imperatives as desperate and isolated terrorists.
“Wait a decent interval,” he ordered, “then tell the Doomsday I’m on the line ready to talk to him.” He glanced along the table to the three psychiatrists. “Gentlemen, while we’re waiting I want you to give me the best advice you can on how to deal with this man. Dr. Jagerman?”
Jagerman sighed, regretting again the web of circumstances that had brought him into this room. “First of all, Mr. President, you must neither threaten him nor give in. But plant in his mind the idea that what he wants is not totally impossible.”
“Even though it in fact is?”
“Ja, ja.” The Dutchman underlined his words with two abrupt inclinations of his head. “We must deceive him into thinking that he can succeed.” Jagerman caressed the skin of his mole with his fingertips, almost as if he were touching a talisman. “Try to avoid direct confrontation, because that will only reinforce his negative attitudes. From his first few words, he seems quite composed and in command of his emotions. Contrary to what you might think, that’s good. It’s weak, insecure people who frighten easily that are dangerous. They’re apt to lash out at you at the slightest provocation.”
There was a slight pause while the psychiatrist marshaled the last of his thoughts. “Tactically, sir, I would try to persuade him to accept the dialogue with Mr. Eastman. Tell him that that way you yourself will be free to concentrate all your time and energy on resolving the problems he has raised in his letter. It’s really very, very important that we lure him into that ongoing dialogue.”
The President folded his hands on the desk, composing his thoughts, preparing himself for the ordeal ahead. He took a breath that swelled the frame of his thoracic cage until his blue shirt went taut, then let it out in one long, weary burst. “All right, Jack,” he said. “I’m ready.”
As the President leaned to the white squawk box, a flush of pink seeped above the ridge line of his collar like water spreading over a blotter. It was a manifestation of his hidden anger; his anger at the humiliation he felt having to act out this comedy; his anger as the proud leader of the most powerful nation on earth at being forced to humble himself before a man who would kill, six million of his fellows.
“Colonel Qaddafi,” he began as soon as the Libyan leader was back on the line, “this is the President of the United States. The message which you addressed to my government yesterday has been the object of a close and detailed study by my principal advisers and myself. We are still in the midst of that process. However, you must have no doubt, sir, that both I and my government condemn the action you have taken. No matter how strongly you feel abo
ut the issues that divide us in the Middle East or the injustices that have been inflicted on the Arab people of Palestine, your attempt to resolve the problem by threatening the lives of six million innocent Americans in New York City is a totally irresponsible and deplora-ble action.”
The President’s blunt words sent concern sluicing over the faces of the psychiatrists. Tamarkin grabbed a silk foulard from the breast pocket of his jacket and dabbed at the sweat glistening on his temples. Jagerman sat stiffly upright, his head cocked slightly backward as though he was already waiting to hear the distant rumble of the Apocalypse. The Chief Executive ignored them. He jabbed his finger at the State Department’s Arabist.
“Translate that. And don’t you damn well modify my tone by so much as one iota.”
The President leaned forward as the translator’s last phrase ended, determined to resume speaking before Qaddafi could break in with a reply.
“You are a soldier, Mr. Qaddafi, and as a soldier you know that I have, at my fingertips, the power to destroy, instantly, every living creature in your nation. I want you to understand that I shall not hesitate to use that power, whatever the consequences may be, if you force me to do so.”
Eastman smiled in silent approval. He hasn’t listened to a damned thing the psychiatrists had to say, he thought.
“Most men in my position, sir, would have used that power to destroy you the minute they read your letter. I did not because it is my ardent desire to find a peaceful solution to this problem. To find it together with you and your help. As you are perhaps aware, I have never, during my Presidential campaign and since my inauguration, ceased to proclaim my conviction that there can be no durable resolution to the problem of the Middle East which does not take into account the legitimate aspirations of the Palestinian people. But you must not forget, sir, that the attainment of the objectives you set forth in your letter does not depend on my government alone. That is why I would like to suggest to you that my close counselor, Mr. Eastman, remain in permanent contact with you as a link between us while I negotiate with Jerusalem.”
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