Laila sat up, leaning against the backrest of the bed, smoking intently.
“Michael, you wouldn’t believe me if I told you some of the things this man has predicted for me.”
“Like a secret rendezvous in Quebec?”
She ignored him.
“I went to him this morning. At the end, just before I left, he tensed up as though something terrible was happening. He said, `There is someone very close to you. A man. A young blond man.’ He said in Arabic, `He’s a messawarati.” Michael, do you know what a messawarati is?”
Michael rolled his head on his pillow. “A lecherous infidel?”
“Please, darling. Be serious. A photographer: How could he possibly have known that, Michael? He said, `He’s in very great danger here. Very soon.
Tomorrow. He must leave New York before tomorrow.”’
Laila clasped his hand, awed by the chance she was taking. “Michael, please. Go to Quebec tomorrow.”
Michael rose up again on one elbow, looking at her sorrowful face, at the two tears glistening on her cheekbones. What ridiculous, superstitious creatures women can be, he thought.
Tenderly, he kissed away each teardrop. “You’re sweet, my darling,” he said, “to think of me like that.” Then he laughed softly. “But realty I haven’t got room in my life for the prophecies of old Arab fortunetellers.”
Laila rolled over on top of him, her back and shoulders raised so that the long swirls of her hair hung down around his face, enclosing it in an auburn canopy. I tried, she thought, gazing solemnly at her lover, God knows I tried.
“Too bad, Michael,” she whispered. “Oh, too bad!”
* * *
In Washington, the President was trembling. Qaddafi’s reference to Samson’s destruction of the Temple had shaken him as nothing had since he’d watched the Libyan’s fireball exploding on the Pentagon’s screens at midnight.
“Jack,” he ordered, his words coming in a hoarse whisper. “Tell the Doomsday to arrange for some communications problems over the next few minutes. I want some time to think about this.”
When the squawk box fell silent the Chief Executive studied the faces around the table. They too were aghast. It was as if the full measure of the drama they faced had only just become apparent in the obduracy and fanaticism of the man in Libya.
“Gentleman,” the President asked, “what do you think?”
At the end of the table, Admiral Fuller seemed to pull his head down into his shirt collar like a wizened old sea turtle withdrawing into his shell.
“Sir, I think he’s only going to leave us one option-military action.”
“I don’t agree.” The Secretary of State, had intervened almost before the Admiral had finished. “There is another option, and I think we should make a decision to act on it very quickly. Instead of going on trying to reason with a very unreasonable man, we must use the precious time we have left to force some kind of an accommodation out of the Israelis that will satisfy him and save New York.”
“That, at least, has the advantage of being an initiative that requires very little time,” Bennington noted sarcastically. “Only the thirty seconds it’s going to take Begin to say no. The Agency has been pointing out for the last five years that those damn settlements were a menace to peace and were going to land us in serious trouble one day. Unfortunately, no other agency in the government wanted to do anything about them.”
For just a second, listening to his advisers, the President yearned to unleash a primal scream. Was there no crisis so terrible it couldn’t shake the agencies of the U.S. government out of their stereotyped pattern of response: the Pentagon urging us to blow the bastard to bits; State recommending we back down; the CIA trying to cover its ass the way it has been ever since Iran?
“Jack?” he said wearily to his National Security Assistant.
“I come back to what I said half an hour ago, Mr. President. The essence of this crisis is time. If we can get the Israelis to come up with some kind of concession, then maybe we can use it to get Qaddafi to lift his threat.
Or at least extend his deadline so we’ll have a better chance of finding this damn thing in New York before our time runs out.”
The President’s eyes passed over Delbert Crandell. He had no desire to read the intimation of a prophecy fulfilled that he knew he’d find on the Energy Secretary’s face. “What do you people read into this?” he asked the psychiatrists.
Tamarkin looked at the notes he had hastily jotted down while listening to Qaddafi. He was horrified by how inadequate they appeared, by how little, finally, he had to offer the President. “I think we’re dealing with an omnipotent personality here. One with a slight but by no means disabling streak of paranoia. People like that tend to have trouble handling open-ended situations. Multiple possibilities. The thing is not to give him a fulcrum on which to crystallize his actions. He’s probably counting on you to either capitulate or threaten him with destruction. In other words, to make his decision for him. If, instead, you throw a whole series of specific, peripheral problems at him he might be at a loss.”
“I’m inclined to agree with my young colleague,” Jagerman noted approvingly. “If I may, sir, I would suggest there is little to be gained by pressing him further on the why of his action. He’s quite convinced he’s right, and you’re only going to make him more intractable by arguing the point. I think you should get instead onto the how and try to distract him with a lot of low-level, semi-technical questions about how to implement his plan. You recall my reference to the ‘hamburger or chicken option’?’
The President nodded. Jagerman’s phrase sounded grotesque in the present situation, but it described a technique for handling terrorist-hostage crises that was in every secret-police manual in the world. Jagerman himself had helped formulate it. Distract the terrorists, it maintained, keep them busy dealing with an unending stream of questions and problems not related to the central point at issue. The example invariably given to demonstrate how the principle worked was the recommended response to a terrorist’s request for food: What did he want, hamburger or chicken? The leg or the wing? Rare or well done? Mustard or ketchup? On a bun? Toasted?
How about relish? Sweet or sour? Pickles? Did he take it with onions?
Distracting a terrorist with such an unceasing barrage of questions frequently helped to calm him down, to expose him to reality and, ultimately, to make him more malleable. The Dutchman added a number of refinements to the technique. For example, he always had food sent in on normal china, glasses and silverware. This, he maintained, subtly introduced an element of civility into the police-terrorist relationship.
Furthermore, he had the terrorist, where possible, wash the plates before returning them, to force him to begin responding to authority.
“If you can succeed in getting a variant of that working,” Jagerman counseled, “then you can perhaps suggest he continue with Mr. Eastman while you are talking with the Israelis.”
“We can always try,” the President replied grimly. “Get him back, Jack.”
“Mr. Qaddafi,” he began again, “there are now, as you know, fortyeight Israeli settlements in what you refer to as the occupied territories. Over ten thousand people are settled there. The logistical problems involved in moving them in the very limited time you’ve given us are staggering.”
“Mr. President.” The Libyan’s quiet, courteous tone was unchanged. “Those people set up their settlements in a few hours. You know that. They sneak in under the cover of night, and at dawn they present the world with a fait accompli. If they can go in a few hours, they can leave in twentyfour.”
“But, Mr. Qaddafi,” the President persisted, “now they have their homes, their possessions, their factories, their farms, their schools, their synagogues. You can’t expect them to walk away and leave all that in twentyfour hours.”
“I can and I do. Their property will be guarded. Once the Palestinian Arab nation is established they will be allowed to return a
nd collect what is theirs.”
“How can we be sure that we won’t have chaos and disorder as the Israelis withdraw?”
“The people in their joy at rediscovering their homeland will preserve order.”
“Joyous they may well be, but I’m not sure that’s going to be enough to preserve order, sir. Shouldn’t we ask King Hussein to furnish Jordanian troops?”
“Certainly not. Why should that imperialistic stooge reap the glory of this?”
“How about the PLO?”
“No. They are compromising traitors. We must use the men of the Refusal Front.”
“We will need to work out arrangements very, very carefully. Know what units would be involved. Who their commanders are. Where they will come from. How they would identify themselves. How will we coordinate their movements with the Israelis? All this requires close planning and discussion.”
There was another of Tripoli’s long and unexplained silences before Qaddafi replied “You shall have it.”
“And the bomb in New York? I presume when these arrangements are made you will tell us where it is and radio instructions to your people who are guarding it to deactivate it?”
Again there was a long silence. “The bomb is set to detonate automatically at the expiration of my ultimatum. The only signal its radio is programmed to receive is a negative signal known only to me to deactivate it.”
Eastman let out a low whistle as the interpreter finished his work. “What a clever bastard! That’s his guarantee we don’t dump the missiles on him at the last moment. We have to keep him alive to save New York.”
“Either that,” Bennington answered, “or it’s a very shrewd …” He pursed his lips, thinking. “He could be lying, you know. And lying about the SCUD missiles too.” He turned abruptly to the President. “Mr. President, it would make all the difference to our planning to know if he’s lying or not.
We have a device here that we’ve developed at the Agency which could be invaluable to us if we can get him to agree to speak to you over a television linkup.”
“What is it, Tap?”
“It’s a machine that employs laser beams to scan the musculature of a man’s eyeballs at ultra-high speeds while he’s talking. It picks up certain characteristic changes in the muscle patterns that occur if a man is lying.”
The President gave Bennington an admiring smile. “You’re right. Let’s try it.”
“Mr. Qaddafi,” he said as he resumed his dialogue, “in the very complex discussions we’re going to have to have here on movements on the West Bank, it would be helpful if we could see as well as hear each other. That way we can work out our arrangements on maps and aerial photographs so that there’s no chance of error. Would you be agreeable to setting up a television link between us? We can fly in immediately the necessary equipment.”
Again there was a long pause from Tripoli. Bennington distractedly twisted a pipe cleaner in the stem of his Dunhill, silently praying that Qaddafi would agree. To his astonishment the Libyan did, with no reluctance at all.
Further, he had his own equipment immediately available in his headquarters.
Poor bastard, Bennington thought, detecting a note of pride in his reply.
Probably so caught up with technology as a plaything that he keeps forgetting how far we’re ahead of him.
While the technician on the Doomsday jet prepared to set up a television link that would relay Tripoli’s signal to the Atlantic COMSAT satellite, then back to the antennas and communication discs in the spaceage garden adjoining the CIA’s headquarters, a pair of Agency scientists wheeled their eye scanner into the National Security Council conference room.
The conferees looked on, fascinated, as they set up this latest gadget in an arsenal of weapons designed by the CIA to break down the most resistant barriers of the human conscience and force men to divulge emotions so hidden they were sometimes unaware they had them. It looked vaguely like a portable X-ray machine. Two small black metal tubes like the eyepieces of a pair of fieldglasses protruded from the top. From these, two beams of light were already dancing over the television screen on which Qaddafi’s face was expected to appear. Highintensity laser beams, they would be trained on his eyeballs and would read for the minicomputer at the heart of the scanner the slightest variations in the size or shape of their surface.
The results would be instantly compared to the control data already stored in the computer bank, and be printed out on the mini-television screen attached to the scanner.
For a few seconds, Tripoli’s television signal expanded and contracted on the screen as haphazardly as a multiplying amoeba caught under a microscope’s glare. Then, suddenly, it coalesced into a sharp image of the Libyan leader. Curiously, the sight was almost reassuring. Qaddafi appeared so boyish, so timidly serious, that it seemed inconceivable that he could carry out his threat. In his simple khaki blouse with no decoration other than his colonel’s epaulets, he looked more like a professor of tactics at the infantry school than a man who would be the avenging sword of God.
Eastman could detect no hint of strain or tension on his face. Indeed, there was only one register of feeling there, the intimation of an ironic smile trying, with minimal success, to intrude on the precise set of his mouth.
The little pinpoints of light from the scanner skated over the screen, then came to rest astride each eyeball like a pair of contact lenses.
“We’re registering,” one of the technicians stated.
This time, you son of a bitch, we’ve got you, Bennington thought, taking as he did a long, satisfied puff of his pipe.
Opposite the President, a red light glowed on the television camera relaying his image back to Tripoli.
“They’re set,” Eastman whispered.
The images of the two leaders were now projected side by side on the screens of the conference-room wall, the President trying, despite the strain, to force some indication of personal warmth onto his face, Qaddafi’s regard as devoid of emotion as a Roman bust.
“Mr. Qaddafi,” the President said, resuming the dialogue, “I think we will both find this visual link we’ve established very helpful in dealing with the difficult problems we face. When we were speaking a few moments ago, I believe you had just told me that the bomb in New York is controlled by an automatic timing device which only you can alter by a radio signal from Tripoli. Is that correct?”
Every face in the room was turned to the image of Qaddafi on the screen, the two bright lights of the scanner riveted to his eyeballs. Before he replied to the President, his right hand reached up to the pocket of his battle blouse. He unbuttoned it with almost tantalizing slowness. Then he drew a pair of dark sunglasses from its folds and, while the audience in the White House looked on in dismay, placed them defiantly over his eyes.
“Son of a bitch!” gasped one of the CIA technicians.
The smile that had been struggling for ascendancy on the Libyan’s face burst forth. “Yes, Mr. President,” he answered, “you are correct.”
* * *
Compared to the National Security Council conference room the underground command post from which Muammar al-Qaddafi was addressing the President was almost spartan in its simplicity. Not much larger than a pair of double bedrooms, it was divided in half by a chest-high cement partition topped by a thick panel of glass. Qaddafi sat in one half at a simple wooden desk on which was trained the television camera transmitting his image to Washington. Just off camera was a twenty-eightyear-old Libyan graduate student from the University of Texas who was serving as his interpreter in much the same way as the State Department Arabists were serving the President.
In the second room, five men sat at a gray metallic desk. There were no maps on the wall, no blinking telephones at their elbows, no piles of secret cables offering advice stacked before them. There wasn’t even a rug on the floor. They included Qaddafi’s Prime Minister Salam Jalloud; his chief of intelligence; Vladimir Illitch Sanchez “Carlos,” the elegant Venezuelan te
rrorist; and a short man with thick eyeglasses and long, unkempt blond hair. He was a German, born in a little village in the Bavarian foothills, who had found his true vocation at West Berlin’s Free University in the early sixties as a professional student radical. Among his several degrees was a doctorate in psychology, and it was that which accounted for his presence in the Villa Pietri. In return for $50,000 in a Swiss bank, he had agreed to become Qaddafi’s psychiatric adviser. The fact that Qaddafi was even speaking to the President went against his primary recommendation. It was he who had persuaded the Libyan to reject the charge’s first initiative. Qaddafi’s reluctance to agree and his instant and irrational rage at sighting the Sixth Fleet on his radar had confirmed the German’s conviction that as his Washington counterparts had suspected, Qaddafi really did want to talk to the President.
“My time. Mr. President,” Qaddafi was saying, “is as valuable as yours. I have no intention whatsoever of becoming involved in a long and revealing dialogue with your adviser Eastman while leaving you free to concentrate your energies on other things.”
“But,” the President protested, “I’ve got to talk with Mr. Begin about your note.”
The German smiled. That was exactly the reply he had told Qaddafi the American would make.
The Libyan stared at the television camera from behind his dark glasses. A faint smile twisted away at one side of his mouth. “Surely, Mr. President,”
he said, his voice suddenly chill, “you don’t mean to tell me that fifteen hours have gone by since my explosion and you have not yet started discussing the implementation of my demands with the Israelis?”
The image of the President was being screened on an ordinary commercial television set, a twenty-four-inch Philips color receiver. The Americans were delivering a tight closeup of his head and shoulders. That was the shot the psychiatrists had recommended. A close visual contact with a figure of authority often aided a terrorist negotiation.
It aided, in any case, the task of the two young men manipulating the machine which fixed a pair of light beams to the eyes of the President on the screen before them. Manufactured by the Standarten Optika of Stuttgart, the machine had come to Carlos’s attention when the West German police had used it to interrogate the suspected killers of German financier Dietrich Vallmar. With the German psychiatrist’s help, he had brought it to Tripoli.
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