He had been keeping the four men abreast of the developing crisis in secret briefings, but now that the awful moment of decision was at hand he wanted them associated with it.
One by one, the President had called on each of the men in the room to voice his opinion. At the far end of the table, the Secretary of State was summing up in his characteristically succinct manner what was their virtually unanimous recommendation.
“We cannot, Mr. President, allow six million Americans to die because another nation, however friendly, refuses to modify the consequences of a policy we have always opposed. Land the Marines and the Rapid Deployment Force. Associate the Soviets with our action to fix the Israelis in place. Inform Qaddafl of what we are doing and let him follow the action through his embassy in Damascus. That will save New York, and when we’ve defused that threat, then we can deal with him.”
There was an undertone of coughs and of throats being cleared, a kind of chorus of approval at the Secretary’s words. The President thanked him formally. Then he let his eyes sweep the faces around the table, studying each grim mien he saw there. “Harold,” he said to his Science Adviser, “I think you’re the one person we haven’t heard from.”
Harold Brown’s elbows were resting on the table, his shoulders drooping as though he was crushed by the implications of what he was about to say. He was a nuclear physicist, one of that high priesthood that had nurtured and furthered for mankind the scourge and the blessing of the shattered atom.
With growing alarm he had watched as the civilized world had drifted, indolent and uncaring, to this inevitable end when a zealot with a bomb could impose his will by the threat of violence so terrible it brooked no opposition.
“Mr. President.” He took a deep breath as he began. “The last crisis I lived through in this room was the Iranian crisis, and the events of those days are still painfully embedded in my mind. This country needed friends badly in those days, Mr. President, and may I remind you we had only one, Israel. When the chips were down, it was they alone who were ready to stand with us. The Saudis and the Egyptians, perhaps, in their way. But, above all, it was the Israelis who answered the call.
“Our supposed allies the Germans, the French, when we needed them, when we asked them to stand up and be counted, they turned their backs. They were so concerned about their oil, they were prepared to see this nation humiliated and humbled, our diplomats executed, provided we did nothing to disturb the tranquil pattern of their existence. Those are moments I cannot forget, Mr. President. Are we now to turn our arms on the one people who stood by us when we needed them? At the behest of a dictator who loathes us, our nation and everything we stand for?”
“I share the feelings of everyone about those settlements, about the Israelis’ intransigence on so many points. But what is at issue here transcends those settlements, Mr. President. There are moral issues that are beyond debate and discussion, and this is one of them. There is a point beyond which a nation, like a man, cannot go and still maintain its dignity and self-respect. I say we are at that point.”
Silence, a silence of pain and anguish, stilled the room when Brown had finished. The President rose. He looked at the clock on the wall opposite.
“Thank you, gentlemen,” he said. “I should like to meditate in the Rose Garden for a moment on what you have said.”
Al Feldman caught up with Angelo a few feet from the exit of the command post. He threw his arms around the detective and tugged him to the guards’ quarters in which he had laughed at the fake Civil Defense poster.
“Angelo,” he murmured, sitting him down in the midst of a row of green metal lockers, their inside doors covered with Playboy centerfolds, “you were right. Those guys did lie to you. They had to.” Patiently, the Chief explained the details of Qaddafi’s threat. “Dewing didn’t mean to blow up at you like that, but you got to understand the strain we’re all living under.”
Angelo looked into his boss’s frightened eyes. “I’m sorry, Chief. It wasn’t him. It’s my fault. Some other things have been working on me the past couple of days.”
“Where were you running off to?”
“The Kennedy Center. See the kid.”
The Chief pulled a Camel from his battered pack, lit it and exhaled his first drag with a sympathetic sigh. Angelo’s attachment to his mongoloid daughter was well known in the Division. “And get her out of here?”
“Yeah.”
Feldman rose and placed a trembling hand on his detective’s shoulder. He squeezed it tightly. “Okay, Angelo. Go get her. Anybody earned a ticket up to Connecticut, it’s you. Just keep your mouth shut, okay? I’m going back in there and sell them on your idea, because I think you’re right.”
The two men walked to the exit side by side. Angelo reached for Feldman’s hand. “Thanks, Chief,” he said. Then he turned right, past the guards, toward the stairs and safety.
The men around Dewing’s table were still debating Angelo’s idea when Feldman slipped back into the room. He made a discreet gesture toward Bannion to indicate that the situation was contained, then eased back into his place. He was still attempting to pick up the threads of the argument when a.plainclothesman entered the room and placed a slip of paper in front of him.
“Jesus Christ!” he roared as he read it. “Rocchia was rightl”
He jumped from his chair and almost ran to the map of the city.
“One of our vice cops just interrogated a teenage wbore who works out of a brownstone right here.” The startled men around him watched as he hammered the map. “At 27 West Eighth. She identified one of these three Arabs, the one they call Kamal, as one of her clients last night.”
“Is she sure?” Bannion asked. “Those girls see a lot of traffic down there.”
“Absolutely. Apparently he’s a sadistic bastard, and he banged the life out of her while he was doing it.” Feldman’s gaze went back to the map. “That’s almost at Fifth. Right in the corner of the area Rocchia gave us.”
His words had a galvanic effect on the men in the room. Hudson felt like standing up and cheering. Bannion had the smile on his face of an Irish racetrack tout who has just had a hundred-to-one shot come in.
“Chief,” Dewing asked, “how long would it take us to search out that area your man gave us?”
Feldman scrutinized the map. “We better push the search area east to Broadway to be sure.” He paused, making his calculations. “Twelve hours.
Give me twelve hours and we’ll find the goddamn thing, I promise you.”
But on this Tuesday, December 15, there were not twelve hours left. There were only two. For five agonizing moments, the men in the National Security Council conference room had sat in silence waiting for their leader’s return. Only Jack Eastman had gone upstairs with him. He too, however, had left him at the Oval Office door. He had stood there watching as, all alone, the President had paced the driveway beyond, hands in his pockets, his head sunk almost into his chest, meditating, praying, doing whatever it was that great leaders must do in the unbearable loneliness of the exercise of power. He had not uttered a word to Eastman when he came back in.
Now he stood at the head of the table, his fists still thrust deep into his pockets, calm yet clearly resolute, trying to find just the words he wanted.
“Gentlemen,” he said finally, his voice barely a whisper, “I have reached a decision. It is certainly the worst any man who has held my office has ever had to make, but I am deeply, unshakably convinced that it is the one I must make. I am for better or worse the President of two hundred and thirty million Americans, and however deeply concerned I am about the fate of New York City and all of its people, my responsibility is to all of this country and all of its people. We are confronted with what is, finally, an act of war against this nation. If we cower before that threat, if we bow to blackmail and agree to blackmail in turn one of this country’s surest allies, we will abandon our birthright and condemn ourselves sooner or later to destruction as surely as the sun will set this night.”