“For a man who’s never met him you know him pretty well, don’t you.”
“I was supposed to nail him. I never did.”
Satterthwaite licked his upper lip, like a cat washing itself. He pushed his glasses higher on his nose and watched without expression as Lime lit a cigarette. “Do you think you’ll get him this time?”
“I don’t know. Everybody’s looking for him.”
“You’ve alerted the other agencies? Other countries?”
“Yes. He’s probably still in this country — at least we have reason to believe he was here until late last night.”
“Here in Washington, you mean?”
“He left a calling card.”
“That agent of yours who was killed.”
“Yes, that one.”
“What makes you say that’s his calling card?”
“He seems to have been one of the people who stirred up the rebellion in Ceylon a few years ago. The government cracked down on that one hard — infiltrated the rebels and singled out the leaders and had them killed.
“The Ceylonese insurgents had to take strong measures to protect themselves. According to NSA it was Sturka who took out the government infiltrators — butchered them dramatically, left them to be found in public buildings with their tongues and hearts ripped out. It was a warning — see what happens to informers who infiltrate us.”
“Now I see what you mean by calling card.” Satterthwaite shook his head. “My God these people are of another species.” He removed his glasses and wiped them clean and held them up to the light at arm’s length, squinting at them. His eyes, Lime saw with surprise, were quite small and set too close together. The glasses had left red dents alongside the bridge of his nose.
Satterthwaite gave the glasses a pained look and put them back on, hooking them over one ear at a time. It was the first time Lime had had personal contact with him, and one of the few times he had seen the man at all; Satterthwaite was not a frequent appearance-maker on television or in any public places. He was the President’s chief advisor and he cast a long shadow but he was one of those invisible figures usually described by the press as “a high White House source.”
“Well.” Satterthwaite was reflective. “Shall we just stand here in outraged dignity? It’s a furious mess, isn’t it. The world’s most powerful system, and they can get us over a barrel so easily. Small groups can tyrannize simply by finding a pressure point. These terrorists use any weapon they can lay their hands on; they recruit any fool who’s willing to sacrifice himself in the name of some vague negative cause, and they know we’re handicapped because we can only fire the second shot.”
“That deters most of the professionals,” Lime said. “The professional doesn’t mean to get caught. Terrorism’s usually an amateur occupation — they rarely get away free in the end, they tend to end up martyrs, and it’s the amateurs who go for that. They don’t care about the second shot — they don’t care if the second shot blows them in two.”
“And here you’ve got the worst of both, haven’t you. A group of sacrificial amateurs commanded and operated by a professional who’s pulling the strings. To tell you the truth,” Satterthwaite said, “I think we’ve got our ass in a crack.”
When Satterthwaite talked he had the disconcerting habit of fixing his stare against the knot of Lime’s necktie; but now the enlarged eyes lifted, the abrasive voice hardened, the jaw crept forward. “Lime, you’re a professional.”
Lime wanted no part of what he saw coming. “I’m pretty low on the totem pole.”
“It’s hardly a time for blind obeisance to seniority and the chain of command, is it? We need a professional hunter — a man we can rely on to get the job done while the politicians keep hands off.”
“The job of nailing Sturka.”
“Yes. I’ll be frank: we’d decided to throw a net, bring in everybody who’s got a file folder, but something happened and we had to ditch that scheme. This is confidential, you understand — it doesn’t leave this room.”
“All right.”
“Everybody wants this thing wrapped up and sealed. Fast, and no loopholes. Get Sturka, and if there’s anyone behind him find out who or what it is.”
“Suppose it turns out to be a foreign government?”
“It won’t. I can’t buy that.”
Lime didn’t buy it either, but anything was possible. “Let me ask you something. Are you suggesting we make Sturka a calling card?”
Satterthwaite shook his head. “That would be playing their game. I don’t want him butchered. We’ve got to get the case packaged airtight and nail the son of a bitch and pin him up against it by the numbers. Arrest, trial, conviction, execution. It’s time to quit letting these radical prigs hector us — it’s time for us to start hectoring them for a change. But we can’t do it their way — we can’t ignore our own rules. They attacked the Establishment and it’s the Establishment that must bring them down, by Establishment rules.”
“It sounds all right,” Lime said. “But you still want someone bigger than me.”
“I like the way you size up.”
Lime dragged on his cigarette and jetted smoke. “I’ve retired. I push papers around, that’s all. A few more years and I go out to pasture.”
Satterthwaite’s smiling headshake was dubious. “Don’t you see? All the people higher up than you are political appointees. Hacks.”
“It’s an FBI case, really. Why not let them run it?”
“Because FBI smacks of police state in too many minds.”
“Nuts. They’re the ones who’re equipped for it.”
Satterthwaite rose from behind the desk. He really was short — not more than five feet five in his shoes. He said, “We’d better get along to the proceedings. Thank you for indulging my ignorance.”
They threaded the busy subterranean corridor and arrived at the press conference somewhat ahead of the President. At least it looked like a press conference: photographers prowled the room restlessly, reporters were collaring people and the TV crews had taken over with their logistical preponderance of equipment and manpower. The lights were hot and painful. Technicians were making loud demands for microphone voice levels. A cameraman yelled, “Get your damn feet off that cable,” and lashed the heavy cable like a bullwhip. Somebody was being the President’s stand-in at the podium behind the Great Seal and the TV people were setting up their camera angles on him.
One of the monitor screens was alight with a fill-in network broadcast. There was no sound but Lime didn’t need commentary to follow the pictorial coverage. A forecaster’s lighted pointer traced a schematic drawing of the Capitol’s interior structure, singling out points where damage had been sustained by the substructures under the House and Senate chambers and the brick supporting arches of the building. Now the screen cut to an exterior long shot of the Capitol — the police had set up portable floodlights to illuminate the scene; officials and men in uniform were milling around and a reporter was facing the camera, talking. The scene shifted again, hand-held cameras following people through the shattered building. Smoke still hung in the colonnaded halls. People were sifting and winnowing through the rubble and dust. By now it was assumed all the bodies, living and dead, had been found and exhumed from the piles of wreckage; they were searching now for pieces of the bombs.
A knot of journalists buttonholed Lime. “You’re the one who nailed them, aren’t you?” “Can you tell us what happened down there, Mr. Lime?” “Can you tell us anything about the bombers you arrested?”
“I’m sorry, no comment at this time.”
Across the room Perry Hearn had answered a ringing telephone; now he put it down and spoke, demanding attention; he made arm signals and everyone sought seats in the miniature amphitheater.