Tracie inched forward and then stopped in her tracks, halted by the sound of voices floating through the open door. The people inside the room were speaking quietly, but after a few seconds she recognized J. Robert Humphries’s voice. She had never met him in person, but had seen him on television and heard him speak on the radio many times.
It was definitely the missing man.
He was here.
And he was alive.
Tracie knew she should retreat immediately and get to a phone. Call Director Stallings and alert him to the secretary’s location. Keep the school building under surveillance and wait for the cavalry to arrive.
But there was one problem with that plan. Whoever was holding Humphries was getting ready to move him.
Right now.
His captors—as near as Tracie could tell, there were two men inside the room with Humphries—were talking about taking him on a long ride to his new home, and warning him that his fate would be dire if he attempted to escape.
She had to risk a look inside. She eased her head around the doorjamb and was surprised to see that the classroom had been partially renovated. The corner opposite the door where she was standing had been constructed to look like the interior of a house. Like a bedroom.
A pair of floor lamps mounted on spindly aluminum stands provided lighting. A chair had been placed at an angle facing the door, positioned roughly equidistant from the two faux walls. It was obvious Humphries’s kidnappers had planned to provide proof-of-life photos to the authorities and had wanted it to appear that the secretary of state was being held inside a private home. All of the classroom’s windows had been sealed with plywood, ensuring none of the light would escape the building and alert any passersby—not that there were likely to be any—to the possibility that the supposedly abandoned building was inhabited.
As Tracie watched, two men worked on removing four sets of handcuffs, their backs to her. A set of cuffs bound each of their prisoner’s hands to the arms of the heavy wooden chair, and another two secured his ankles to the chair legs. The chair itself didn’t appear to have been bolted to the floor, but she supposed that step hadn’t been necessary. With the door padlocked from the outside and Humphries shackled to the chair, what difference would it make? It wasn’t like he could go anywhere.
Humphries looked pale and exhausted, and a bloody bandage covered most of his right hand. Otherwise he appeared uninjured. His captors opened the cuffs and one by one the steel bracelets dropped to the floor.
When the last handcuff had been unlocked, the men helped Humphries to his feet, standing on either side of him and bracing his elbows in their hands. He rose and then his knees buckled. He would have fallen to the floor if not for the support of his captors.
“Easy,” one of them said. “We will take this nice and slow, but remember the consequences of doing anything to draw attention to yourself once we leave this building.”
“I remember,” Humphries said tiredly. “May I just stand here for a moment to get my legs under me?”
The man on the left glanced at his watch and said, “Fine. But just for a moment.”
“Thank you,” Humphries said, swaying on his feet like a delicate tree in a strong wind. “I don’t suppose you’ll tell me where it is you’re planning on taking me.” His face looked even whiter than it had when Tracie first peered into the room and she hoped the older man wasn’t on the verge of suffering a heart attack.
The kidnapper on the right hadn’t said a word. The one on the left seemed to be in charge. He paused for a moment, considering the question, and then surprised her, and probably Humphries, when he shrugged and said, “I don’t suppose telling you could do any harm.”
He seemed to straighten proudly and then said, “From here, we will walk you to a waiting car, where you will be driven to a secret location not far from Ocean City, Maryland. You will be loaded onto a waiting helicopter, where you will fly low-level to a private landing strip in the North Carolina countryside. There you will be transferred to a private Learjet leased by an American businessman sympathetic to our interests. The Lear will depart immediately for my country, where your sole purpose in life from the moment of your arrival will be to convince your meddling president to keep his nose out of our affairs.”
“And what country would that be?”
“Iraq.”
A second’s silence stretched into two, and then five, as the U.S. secretary of state absorbed the man’s words. His confusion was obvious. “Iraq? But…we’ve supported you monetarily and strategically in your war against Iran. Why . . . why would you . . .?” His voice trailed off.
The man chopped at the air with his hand, as if swatting away a pesky mosquito. “You are allies of convenience for us, no more and no less. We have nothing in common with your decadent country, and to a man we long for the day when you are ground into dust under our heels. As our influence in the world rises, so will yours fall. And as far as the conflict with our much bigger neighbor to the northeast is concerned, the war with Iran will be over soon. We already have our sights set on a much bigger prize.”
A little of the color seemed to be returning to Humphries’s face, and it looked to Tracie as though he had regained a little of his footing. For his part, the kidnapper seemed to be enjoying himself. He made no move to hurry Humphries out of the room. Humphries asked the logical next question: “What prize is that?”
“We have already begun moving troops—including thousands of our elite Republican Guard soldiers—toward our common border with Saudi Arabia. Soon, we will annex the country, by force if necessary, and absorb it into Iraq. By doing so, we will gain control of one of the most strategically important regions in the world.”
Humphries shook his head. “But that’s madness! You can’t hope to succeed. You will find yourselves at war with the United States within hours of attempting it.”
The man smiled. Tracie knew it without even being able to see his face. She could hear the amusement in his voice when he spoke. “But it is already succeeding,” he said. “We have been moving forces quietly for some time. Has anyone attempted to stop us? No. Has anyone even noticed? No.”
Humphries decided to try a different tack. “What does any of this have to do with kidnapping me? All you’ll accomplish with this foolishness is to force a United States response before you’ve even made a move into Saudi Arabia.”
“Not true. In fact, the reality is just the opposite. You see, as far as your government is concerned, you have been taken prisoner by the Soviet Union. That is what we wanted President Reagan to think, and that is what he thinks. Your country’s attention is fixated on an enemy you’ve been fighting for decades in a ‘Cold War’ that cannot be won, and you will soon be fighting the same enemy militarily. At that time we will act and thus position ourselves to become the first great superpower of the twenty-first century and beyond!”
“The Soviet Union? Why would the president think I’ve been taken by the Soviet Union?”
“Because that is what the evidence tells him. Evidence we have manipulated. Meanwhile, we continue to move our plan forward. A plan that has been months, even years, in the making. We have considered everything. For example, this entire setup,” he gestured at the crudely constructed sham bedroom, “was built to hold you for only a few days, while we directed your country’s attention where we wanted it. Then, after convincing your leadership the Russians had committed an act of war that must inevitably require a response, we move to Phase Two.”
“Which involves transporting me to Iraq.”
“Correct. Now that we have waited out the most intense portion of your manhunt, all the while stashing you within a few short miles of the White House, we will transport you to Baghdad. There, you will become our most significant bargaining chip in convincing your country not to interfere in Iraq’s destiny. By that time they will realize we have played them for fools, but will most likely be so busy fighting a nuclear war with the Soviet Union that they will
not be able to concern themselves with what is happening on the sacred ground of our ancestors.”
Humphries looked stunned. The small amount of color that had returned to his face was gone. He said, “Saudi Arabia is not your homeland.”
“It is all our homeland!” the man barked angrily. The terrorist jerked Humphries forward, pulling on his elbow, and the exhausted secretary of state tripped over his own feet and nearly tumbled to the floor.
“Enough talking,” the man said. He took half a step backward, forcing Humphries to move an equal distance toward the door.
Where Tracie was standing, her body mostly shielded by the doorframe.
“We will waste no more time. We must go now,” he said, and turned toward the door, his hand still on Humphries’s arm.
Tracie took a deep breath and then pivoted around the doorframe, raising her Beretta in a two-handed grip, training it dead center on the talkative man holding J. Robert Humphries.
30
Thursday, September 10, 1987
2:35 a.m.
The White House Situation Room
Aaron Stallings stifled a yawn and tried to keep his growing irritation in check. A late-night briefing of the president by his top national security advisers was not unusual and, given the current situation, certainly not unexpected. But Aaron was facing a full schedule starting at daybreak, and the leisurely pace at which some of the participants entered the White House Situation Room annoyed the hell out of him.
The way Ronald Reagan drummed his fingers impatiently on the surface of the long walnut table suggested the president felt the same way.
After what felt like forever, everyone had filed into the briefing area and taken a seat. Glum expressions adorned haggard faces. Mugs of coffee stood in front of each man, with cream and sugar in silver serving dishes placed in the center of the table. Some ignored the coffee, others downed it greedily.
“Everyone’s here, finally?” the president asked his chief of staff pointedly.
“Yes, sir,” a clearly exhausted Chester Moore answered.
“All right, then. You called this meeting so let’s get the show on the road. What do you have for me?”
Moore hesitated, then plunged ahead. “Mr. President, rumblings are beginning to circulate among the press corps concerning Secretary of State Humphries’s absence.”
Reagan shook his head. “Rumblings? What is that supposed to mean?”
“Sir, it means there’s likely been a leak somewhere. In the last few hours I’ve been asked point-blank by more than one journalist about the possibility that Secretary Humphries has been kidnaped.”
“Is that so? And what did you tell them?”
“I’ve stuck to the narrative: that the secretary of state is suffering from a minor illness and will be back to work soon. But the cat is climbing out of the bag, sir, and while no one has yet gone on record to report the kidnapping angle, experience tells me it’s only a matter of time before that happens, and probably not very much of it. Once the first news outlet runs with the story, everyone will follow. In mere hours, certainly less than a day, this thing is going to explode in our faces.”
FBI Director Matt Steinman spoke up. “This sounds like a strategic political discussion to me,” he said, his words dripping with annoyance. “Would you mind telling me why we all have to be here?” Aaron Stallings noted with a touch of amusement that the deference customarily afforded the president was missing from Steinman’s question to Reagan’s chief of staff. Steinman made a vague gesture at the rest of the room, Aaron assumed in an effort to ensure they were on his side. “We have work to do.”
Chet Moore was rail-thin and balding, with gold wire-rimmed glasses and a perpetually rumpled suit that made him look like an overworked accountant during tax season. But Stallings knew the chief of staff’s meek, mild image could not be further from the truth, and the FBI director should have known it as well. Moore had a mind like a steel trap and was as competent at his job as every other man in the room was at theirs, including the president.
Reagan’s chief of staff had been with him since before his days as governor of California, and Aaron knew the rumpled little man had the president’s full faith.
Moore slid his glasses down his nose and peered over the top of them at Steinman. “You all have to be here,” he said quietly, like a teacher reprimanding a recalcitrant student, “because this news affects every one of you. You all have to be here, because presumably you’d like to come to agreement on how to get out in front of this bombshell. You all have to be here because once it’s reported that the U.S. secretary of state has been missing for over two days and nothing has been done, that we’ve begun taking delivery of the secretary of state’s body parts and nothing has been done, this administration will appear in the eyes of the world to be nothing more than an impotent joke. You all have to be here—”
“All right, that’s enough,” the president interrupted. “You’ve made your point, Chet, quite effectively. And I have to say I agree with you. The time has come for a response. In fact, that time might well be past, but there’s nothing we can do about that now. All we can do is move forward.”
Moore nodded once and said, “So the question is simple: what will our response to this outrage be? To answer that question, every one of you must be here and must participate.”
Reagan cast a withering glance in Steinman’s direction and only then did Chief of Staff Chester Moore push his glasses back up onto the bridge of his nose and look away from the FBI director.
The room was totally silent.
After a moment, Reagan fixed his gaze on Secretary of Defense Mark Carmichael. Carmichael cleared his throat—Stallings guessed to buy a little time—and then said, “Mr. President, given the Soviet Union’s involvement, my suggestion would be a targeted strike on their interests. We need to get their attention and let them know in no uncertain terms that this barbarism will not stand.”
“Wait a minute,” Reagan said, raising a hand. “Do we now have concrete proof that the Soviets have taken J.R.? Because my understanding is that none of the evidence is conclusive. And in every single conversation I’ve had with Secretary Gorbachev—four in the last two days—he has steadfastly and vehemently denied any knowledge of J.R.’s whereabouts—”
“Well, sir,” Steinman interrupted. Aaron Stallings smiled inside. He had long believed that his FBI counterpart was overmatched in his position, and Steinman was proving it now. It was like watching a slow-motion car accident.
“Yes?” Reagan said, no small amount of irritation in his voice.
Steinman didn’t seem to notice. He continued blithely on. “Mr. President, when you consider the totality of the evidence, from the Makarov recovered inside Secretary Humphries’s home, to the Russian newspapers used to provide proof of life, to the specifics of the demands required to ensure the secretary’s safe return, it seems absurd in the extreme to believe anyone else could be responsible.”
“I’m aware of the evidence, Director Steinman, none of which is new since our last meeting, I might add. But if we’re talking about military strikes, I want to know with certainty that we’re not striking the wrong target and provoking the wrong enemy!” Reagan’s face had begun coloring the moment he started to speak and had turned a dark red by the time he finished his sentence. His eyebrows were knitted together and his face resembled a thundercloud as he stared at Matt Steinman like he might launch a targeted strike on him.
“Mr. President, if I may?” General Jack Matheson was chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and he spoke calmly, steadfastly ignoring the chastened FBI director.
“Please, Jack, go ahead,” Reagan said.
“Thank you, sir. We’ve prepared a list of potential targets for a limited strategic strike that would demonstrate our resolve not to allow the secretary of state’s kidnapping to go unanswered while at the same time minimizing the risk of all-out war with the Soviets. We’ll forward the entire list to you, of course. But all
of us, including Secretary Carmichael, agree that the optimum response would be an F-16 strike on the Soviet destroyer Smetlivy, currently operating in the eastern Mediterranean.”
“Explain to me what you mean when you say ‘minimizing the risk of all-out war.’” For the moment, Reagan seemed to ignore the chairman’s specific suggestion of targets, focusing instead on something else.
“Well, sir, the Soviets understand we cannot allow Secretary Humphries’s kidnapping to go unanswered. They must. This strike would permit us to demonstrate the seriousness with which we’re taking his disappearance, while limiting the Soviets’ loss to a single military asset, which is currently operating in an area without any other significant Soviet presence. Given that they provoked the encounter, it seems unlikely they would respond with a full military assault unless their aim all along has been to provoke war.”
Reagan was silent for a moment as he absorbed the general’s words. Then he murmured, almost as if to himself, “Unless, of course, the Soviets don’t have our secretary of state, and never did.”
Matt Steinman rolled his eyes and for just a moment Aaron thought he was going to interrupt again, but he seemed to decide against it and kept his thoughts to himself.
The president sighed and spoke to General Matheson. “All right, Jack, how would this assault take place?”
31
Thursday, September 10, 1987
2:40 a.m.
Washington, D.C.
Tracie stepped clear of the doorway and said, “Everybody freeze. Stay right where you are.”
She didn’t know if the terrorists were wearing body armor, but Tracie assumed that they were not. As far as the Iraqis knew, their plan was working to perfection, and their involvement in the kidnapping of J. Robert Humphries was taking place completely below the radar of United States officialdom.
Besides, what choice did she have other than to interfere? After coming this far, there was no way she was going to allow the terrorists to waltz out of here and disappear again, whisking the secretary of state off to become a pawn in a high-stakes geopolitical game of chicken.
Tracie Tanner Thrillers Box Set Page 42