The Fifth Horseman (40 page)

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 about 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.”

Drained, emotionally, by his effort, the President slumped back in his chair. “How’d we do?” he asked Eastman, tugging at his sweat-dampened shirt collar as the translator started to work.

“Terrific!” his adviser replied. “A-okay.”

A few minutes later, the Libyan’s answering voice poured forth from the squawk box. Its tone seemed slight, almost as though the dictator was subconsciously trying to apologize for intruding on the White House gathering. There was nothing apologetic, however, about the words Qaddafi employed.

“Mr. President, I have not called you to discuss my letter. Its terms are very clear. They require no discussion or amplification on my part-only action on your part. I have no intention of entering into a discussion with you now or in the future.”

Qaddafi paused to allow the State Department expert to interpret his words.

Jagerman and Tamarkin gave each other quick glances of professional concern.

“Mr. President,” the Libyan continued. “The sole reason for my communication is to warn you that we have discovered on our radar screens and radio channels the presence of your Sixth Fleet menacing our shores. I will not be intimidated by your martial posturing, Mr. President. I will not be threatened.”

“That arrogant son of a bitch!” The voice, skirting lotto voce under the interpreter’s words, belonged to Delbert Crandell, the Secretary of Energy.

“He thinks he’s being threatened?”

“Those ships are now twenty kilometers off my coastline. I want them withdrawn immediately to a distance of at least one hundred kilometers from my shores, Mr. President. If they are not, I shall reduce the time in the ultimatum I gave you by five hours, from twenty-one hundred GMT tomorrow to sixteen hundred GMT.”