“I’m very aware of that, Mr. President.”
The courteous goodbyes were distant and chilled. Fairlie sat by the telephone and brooded at it. He realized that if he were in Washington today it would be much harder for him not to be swept up in the urgent sense of horror and the unreasoning emotional demand for reactive vengeance.
It had been up to him to support Brewster, but his refusal reversed their positions. Brewster was the Chief Executive and had the right to make final decisions but only for the next sixteen days, after which the decisions would be Fairlie’s, and Brewster had to worry about that now because this decision wasn’t the kind he could present to his successor as a fait accompli. If Brewster arrested thousands of people and Fairlie quickly turned them loose, it could give Brewster and his party a terrible black eye; at the same time it could put a libertarian luster on Fairlie’s administration — perhaps not enough to convince the radicals that Fairlie could be trusted, but certainly enough to persuade them to postpone any full-scale anti-Fairlie warfare for an interim while they sat back and watched to see how Fairlie performed.
These considerations had to be coursing through Howard Brewster’s mind right now in the White House and they were considerations not easy to dismiss. Brewster was almost singularly aware of history and his place in it; given time to reflect — and Fairlie’s brake had surely given him that — Brewster might decide to recant because the alternative was to risk condemnation for one final reckless act.
There was no sure way to predict which way Brewster would go but Fairlie had offered him a way out — and Brewster, the political animal, would avail himself of it if he could.
This was not the time to fly back to Washington. The President’s televised address would take place before Fairlie’s jet could get him farther than the west coast of Ireland. If Brewster ordered the roundup Fairlie would have to return to the States at once. But if Brewster softened his approach there would be no need to break off the planned visits to Rome and Madrid, and the announcement a few hours ago that Perez-Blasco had granted diplomatic recognition to Peking made it all the more important that Fairlie complete his schedule and resolve the question of the Spanish bases. In the meantime, in the next few hours, there was nothing to do but formulate his own statement and wait.
6:35 P.M. EST The chill rain fell in a soup of drizzle and mist. It threw foggy halos around street lamps and the lights of cars that hissed past on the wet paving. Guards stood in yellow police slickers and hoods at the steps of the Executive Office Building.
David Lime crossed to the White House side of the drive and walked along the fence to the gate. At intervals inside the fence he could see the dripping shadows of alerted guards — members of the Executive Protective Service, formerly the White House Police Force, and of the White House Detail of the Secret Service: the first group to protect the building and grounds, the latter to protect the President and other persons.
A knot of troubled people stood in the night rain outside the main gate. Lime threaded his way through them and presented himself to the guards, and was admitted.
He invaded Brewster country by the low side entrance and had only just entered the press lobby, filled with reporters standing tense under the large formal paintings, when Halroyd, the Special Agent in charge of the White House Detail, drew him to the corridor again. “Mr. Satterthwaite said he’d like a word, sir.”
Lime lifted his eyebrows inquiringly and Halroyd took him along toward the basement offices which Satterthwaite and the other Presidential advisors used.
The office was very small and unspeakably cluttered with paperwork. Satterthwaite, resident White House intellectual, had no interest in appearances; the disordered piles on his desk reflected the impatient brain. Of the five or six straight chairs only two were not heaped with papers; Lime chose one, following the command of Satterthwaite’s flapped hand, and sat.
“Thanks very much, Halroyd.” Satterthwaite spoke in his high abrasive voice and the Special Agent withdrew; the door closed out the noises of voices and typewriters and teleprinters. “The President asked if I’d get a firsthand report from you before the broadcast. It was you who ran them down? One hell of an adroit piece of work. The President keeps talking about ‘that genius over in Secret Service who saved our bacon.’”
“If I’d been a genius,” Lime said, “I’d have thought faster and we’d have got the bombs out before they went off.”
“From what I’ve heard, based on the tiny bits of information you had not one man in ten thousand would have guessed there was anything going on at all.”
Lime shrugged. He wasn’t insensitive to the fact that Satterthwaite’s words were at odds with the expression on his face. The face was marked by an indelible arrogance, the hauteur of a brilliant but tactless mind contemptuous of lesser brains. Satterthwaite was a forty-one-year-old mental machine who wore thick glasses that magnified his eyes to a startling size and dressed himself with studied indifference, a challenging lack of grace. The black hair was an untidy tangle of electric curls; the blunt little hands were perpetually in motion. He had the nimble aggressiveness of his diminutive size.
“All right,” Satterthwaite said. “What have you got?”
“Not too much from the bombers yet. We’re working them over.”
“With rubber hoses I trust.”
It seemed rhetorical; Lime didn’t rise to it.
Satterthwaite said, “The NSA files identified the leader for you — the one behind these six. You know who he is. Julius Sturka.”
Lime couldn’t altogether keep the anger out of his face and Satterthwaite jumped at the admission but Lime headed him off: “I never met the man. Fifteen years ago he was working the same part of the world I was, that’s all.”
“He was an officer in the Algerian FLN. You were in Algeria during that nonsense.” Satterthwaite pushed it aside. “This man Sturka — who exactly is he?”
“Armenian, I think — maybe Serbian. We never knew for sure. It’s not his real name.”
“Balkan and obscure. That’s all rather Eric Ambler.”
“I think he fancies himself that way. Soldier of fortune, trying to overturn the world order singlehandedly.”
“But not a young squirt.”
“Not unless he was a babe in arms when he was a light colonel in the FLN. As I say, I’ve never seen him. He’s supposed to be in his late forties roughly. We’ve got one bad snapshot — I don’t know of any other photographs. He’s camera shy. But name a war of liberation in the past ten years and he’s probably figured in it. Not at the top, but not as a menial either.”
“A mercenary?”
“Sometimes. Not usually. It’s possible he was just hired to do this one but we’ve got no evidence to indicate it. More likely it’s his own caper. Sometimes in the past few years he’s worked with a Cuban named Riva, but there’s no sign of Riva in this case. Not yet at least.”
“Does he have much of a following? If he does it’s odd — I’ve never heard of him.”
“He doesn’t work that way. He’ll put together a little cell or two and concentrate on the vitals of the government he’s trying to break. In Algeria I don’t think he had more than twenty soldiers, but they were all crack professionals. Did more damage than some regiments.”