“Speaking of favors, I forgot where I go from here.”
Polaski gave a quizzical look at the figure in the shadows on the Eagle’s deck. “Look at your diagram, numb brain.”
“It got soggy and I can’t read it.”
“Post eight is fifty yards down the bank.”
“Thanks.”
“If you want to know where post nine is it’ll cost you a cup of coffee,” Polaski said, grinning.
“Screw you. I remember that one.”
Later, during the next post change, the agents merely waved as they passed each other, two indistinct forms in the mist.
Ed McGrath could not recall having seen fog this thick. He sniffed the air, trying to identify the strange aroma that hung everywhere, and finally wrote it off as a common oily smell. Somewhere in the mist he heard a dog bark. He paused, cocking one ear. It was not the baying of a hound in chase or the frightened yelps of a mutt, but the sharp yap of a dog alert to an unfamiliar presence. Not too far away, judging by the volume. Seventy-five, maybe a hundred, yards beyond the security perimeter, McGrath estimated.
A potential assassin would have to be sick or brain damaged or both, he thought, to stumble blindly around a strange countryside in weather such as this. Already, McGrath had tripped and fallen down, walked into an unseen tree branch and scratched his cheek, found himself lost three times, and almost got himself shot when he accidentally walked onto a guard post before he could radio his approach.
The barking stopped abruptly, and McGrath figured a cat or some wild animal had set the dog off. He reached a familiar bench beside a fork in a graveled path and made his way toward the riverbank below the yacht. He spoke into his lapel microphone.
“Post eight, coming up on you.”
There was no reply.
McGrath stopped in his tracks. “Brock, this is McGrath, coming up on you.”
Still nothing.
“Brock, do you read me?”
Post number eight was oddly quiet and McGrath began to feel uneasy. Moving very slowly, one step at a time, he cautiously closed on the guard area. He called faintly through the mist, his voice weirdly magnified by the heavy dampness. Silence was his only reply.
“Control, this is Cutty Sark.”
“Go ahead, Cutty Sark,” came back Blackowl’s tired voice.
“We’re missing a man on post eight.”
Blackowl’s tone sharpened considerably. “No sign of him?”
“None.”
“Check the boat,” Blackowl said without hesitation. “I’ll meet you there after I inform headquarters.”
McGrath signed off and hurried along the bank to the dock. “Post six, coming up on you.”
“Aiken, post six. Come ahead.”
McGrath groped his way onto the dock and found agent John Aiken’s hulking figure under a floodlight. “Have you seen Brock?”
“You kidding?” answered Aiken. “I haven’t seen shit since the fog hit.”
McGrath dogtrotted along the dock, repeating the call-warning process. By the time he reached the Eagle, Polaski had come around from the opposite deck to meet him.
“I’m missing Brock,” he said tersely.
Polaski shrugged. “Last I saw of him was about a half-hour ago when we changed posts.”
“Okay, stand here by the dockside. I’m going to take a look below decks. And keep an eye peeled for Blackowl. He’s on his way down from Control.”
When Blackowl lurched out into the damp morning, the fog was thinning and he could see the faint glimmer of stars through the fading overcast above. He steered his way from post to post, breaking into a run along the pathway to the pier as the visibility improved. Fear smoldered in his stomach, a dread that something was terribly wrong. Agents did not desert their posts without warning, without reason.
When at last he leaped aboard the yacht, the fog had disappeared as if by magic. The ruby lights of the radio antenna across the river sparkled in the newly cleared air. He brushed by Polaski and found McGrath sitting alone in the deckhouse, staring trancelike into nothingness.
Blackowl froze.
McGrath’s face was as pale as a white plaster death mask. He stared with such horror in his eyes that Blackowl immediately feared the worst.
“The President?” he demanded.
McGrath looked at him dully, his mouth moving but no words coming out.
“For Christ’s sake, is the President safe?”
“Gone,” McGrath finally muttered.
“What are you talking about?”
“The President, the Vice President, the crew, everybody, they’re all gone.”
“You’re talking crazy!” Blackowl snapped.
“True… it’s true,” McGrath said lifelessly. “See for yourself.”
Blackowl tore down the steps of the nearest companionway and ran to the President’s stateroom. He threw open the door without knocking. It was deserted. The bed was still neatly made and there were no clothes in the closet, no toilet articles in the bathroom. His heart felt as if it were being squeezed between two blocks of ice.
As though in a nightmare, he rushed from stateroom to stateroom. Everywhere it was the same; even the crew’s quarters lay in undisturbed emptiness.
The horror was real.
Everyone on the yacht had vanished as though they had never been born.
Part II
The Eagle
13
July 29,1989
Washington, D.C.
Unlike actors in motion pictures, who take forever to wake up and answer a ringing telephone in bed, Ben Greenwald, Director of the Secret Service, came instantly alert and snatched the receiver before the second ring.
“Greenwald.”
“Greetings,” said the familiar voice of Oscar Lucas. “Sorry to wake you, but I knew you were anxious to hear the score of the soccer game.”
Greenwald tensed. Any Secret Service communication opening with the word “greetings” meant the beginning of an urgent, top-secret report on a critical or grave situation. The sentence that followed was meaningless; a caution in case the telephone line might not be secure — a real possibility, since the Kissinger State Department had allowed the Russians to build their new embassy on a rise overlooking the city, vastly increasing their telephone eavesdropping capacity.
“Okay,” Greenwald said, trying to sound conversational. “Who won?”
“You lost your bet.”
“Bet” was another key word indicating that the next statement was coming in coded double-talk.
“Jasper College, one,” Lucas continued, “Drinkwater Tech, nothing. Three of the Jasper players were sidelined for injuries.”
The dire news exploded in Greenwald’s ears. Jasper College was the code for a presidential abduction. The reference to the sidelined players meant the next three men in succession were taken too. It was a code that in Greenwald’s wildest dreams he never thought he would hear.
“There’s no mistake?” he asked, dreading the answer.
“None,” replied Lucas, his tone like the thin edge of broken glass.
“Who else in the office pool knows the score?”
“Only Blackowl, McGrath and myself.”
“Keep it that way.”
“To be on the safe side,” said Lucas, “I initiated an immediate assessment of the second-string players and future rookies.”
Greenwald instantly picked up on Lucas’s drift. The wives and children of the missing parties were being located and protected, along with the men next in line for the Presidency.
He took a deep breath and quickly arranged his thoughts. Speed was essential. Even now, if the Soviets were behind the President’s kidnapping to gain an edge for a pre-emptive nuclear strike, it was too late. On the other hand, with the top four men in American government effectively removed, it hinted at a plot to overthrow the government.
There was no time left to be shackled by security. “Amen,” said Greenwald, signaling Lucas that he
was dropping the double-talk.
“Understood.”
A sudden terrifying thought swept Greenwald’s mind. “The bag man?” he asked nervously.
“Gone with the rest.”
Oh, dear God, Greenwald agonized to himself silently. Disaster was piling on top of disaster. “Bag man” was the irreverent nickname for the field-grade officer at the President’s side day and night who carried the briefcase containing codes called release messages that could unleash the nation’s 10,000 strategic nuclear warheads on preselected targets inside Soviet Russia. The consequences of the ultrasecret codes falling into alien hands were beyond any conceivable horror.
“Alert the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff,” he ordered. “Then send a detail to pick up the Secretaries of State and Defense, also the National Security Adviser, and rush them to the White House Situation Room.”
“Anyone on the presidential staff?”
“Okay, bring in Dan Fawcett. But for now let’s keep it a closed club. The fewer who know the ‘Man’ is missing until we can sort things out, the better.”
“In that case,” Lucas said, “it might be wise to hold the meeting someplace besides the Situation Room. The press constantly monitor the White House. They’d be on us like locusts if the heads of state suddenly converged there at this time of morning.”
“Sound thinking,” Greenwald replied. He paused a moment, then said, “Make it the Observatory.”
“The Vice President’s residence?”
“Press cars are almost never in evidence there.”
“I’ll have everyone on the premises as soon as possible.”
“Oscar?”
“Yes.”
“Very briefly, what happened?”
There was a slight hesitation and then Lucas said, “They all vanished from the presidential yacht.”
“I see,” said Greenwald heavily, but it was clear he didn’t.
Greenwald wasted no more time on talk. He hung up and hurriedly dressed. On the drive to the Observatory his stomach twisted into knots, a delayed reaction to the catastrophic news. His vision blurred and he fought off an overwhelming urge to vomit.
He drove in a mental haze through the deserted streets of the capital. Except for an occasional delivery truck, traffic was nearly nonexistent and most of the traffic signals were simply blinking on a cautious yellow.
Too late he saw a city streetsweeper make a sudden U-turn from the right-hand gutter. His windshield was abruptly filled with the bulky white-painted vehicle. In the cab the driver jumped sideways at the protesting scream of tires, his eyes wide in the glare of Greenwald’s headlights.
There was a metal-tearing crunch and the splash of flying glass. The hood bent double, flew up, and the steering wheel rammed into Greenwald’s chest, crushing his rib cage.
Greenwald sat pinned to the seat as the water from the mangled radiator hissed and steamed over the car’s engine. His eyes were open as though staring in vague indifference at the abstract cracks on the shattered windshield.
Oscar Lucas stood in front of the corner fireplace in the living room of the Vice President’s mansion and described the presidential kidnapping. Every few seconds he glanced nervously at his watch, wondering what was keeping Greenwald. The five men seated around the room listened to him in undisguised astonishment.
Secretary of Defense Jesse Simmons clamped his teeth on the stem of an unlit meerschaum pipe. He was dressed casually in a summer sportcoat and slacks, as was Dan Fawcett and National Security Adviser Alan Mercier. Army General Clayton Metcalf was in uniform, while Douglas Oates, the Secretary of State, sat fastidiously groomed in a dark suit and necktie.
Lucas came to the end of his briefing and waited for the barrage of questions he was certain would be fired. Instead, there was a prolonged hush. They just sat there, numb and immobile.
Oates was the first to break the stunned silence. “Good Lord!” he gasped. “How could such a thing happen? How could everyone on the yacht simply evaporate into thin air?”
“We don’t know,” Lucas answered helplessly. “I haven’t ordered an investigating team to the site yet for obvious security reasons. Ben Greenwald slammed a lid on the affair until you gentlemen could be informed. Outside this room, only three Secret Service personnel, including Greenwald, are privy to the facts.”
“There has to be a logical explanation,” said Mercier. The President’s adviser on national security rose to his feet and paced the room. “Twenty people were not whisked away by supernatural powers or aliens from outer space. If, and I make that a questionable if, the President and the others are indeed missing from the Eagle, it has to be a highly organized conspiracy.”
“I assure you, sir,” said Lucas, staring directly into Mercier’s eyes, “my deputy agent found the boat totally deserted.”
“You say the fog was thick,” Mercier continued.
“That’s how Agent Blackowl described it.”
“Could they have somehow penetrated your security network and driven away?”
Lucas shook his head. “Even if they managed to elude my security detail in the fog, their movement would have been detected by the sensitive alarm systems we installed around the estate.”
“That leaves the river,” observed Jesse Simmons. The Secretary of Defense was a taciturn man, given to telegramlike statements. A leathery tan face was evidence of his weekends as an avid water skier. “Suppose the Eagle was boarded from the water? Suppose they were forcibly removed to another boat?”
Oates gave Simmons a dubious stare. “You make it sound as if Blackbeard the Pirate was responsible.”
“Agents were patrolling the dock and riverbank,” Lucas explained. “No way passengers and crew could be subdued and carried off without a sound.”
“Maybe they were drugged,” suggested Dan Fawcett.
“A possibility,” admitted Lucas.
“Let’s look at this head-on,” said Oates. “Rather than speculate on how the abduction occurred, I think we must concentrate on the reason and the force responsible before we can plan a response.”
“I agree,” said Simmons. He turned to Metcalf. “General, any evidence the Russians are behind this as a time cushion to launch a first strike?”
“If that was the case,” answered Metcalf, “their strategic rocket forces would have taken us out an hour ago.”
“They still might.”
Metcalf gave a slight negative tilt to his head. “Nothing indicates they’re in a state of readiness. Our Kremlin intelligence sources report no signs of increased activity in or around the eighty underground command posts in Moscow, and our satellite surveillance shows no troop buildup along the Eastern bloc border. Also, President Antonov is on a state visit to Paris.”
“So much for World War Three,” said Mercier with a look of relief.
“We’re not out of shallow water yet,” Fawcett said. “The officer carrying the codes designating nuclear strike sites is also gone.”
“Not to worry on that score,” said Metcalf, smiling for the first time. “As soon as Lucas here alerted me to the situation, I ordered the alphabetical code words changed.”
“What’s to stop whoever has them from using the old code words to break the new ones?”
“For what purpose?”
“Blackmail, or maybe an insane attempt to hit the Russians first.”
“Can’t be done,” Metcalf replied simply. “There are too many built-in safeguards. Why hell, even the President couldn’t launch our nuclear arsenal on his own, in a fit of madness. The order to start a war has to be transmitted through Secretary of Defense Simmons and the Joint Chiefs. If any of us knew for certain the order was invalid, we could countermand it.”
“All right,” said Simmons, “we temporarily shelve a Soviet conspiracy or an act of war. What are we left with?”
“Damned little,” grunted Mercier.
Metcalf looked squarely at Oates. “As things stand, Mr. Secretary, you are the constitut
ionally designated successor.”
“He’s right,” said Simmons. “Until the President, Margolin, Larimer and Moran are found alive, you’re the acting President.”
For several seconds there was no sound in the library. Oates’s flamboyant and forceful facial exterior cracked ever so slightly, and he seemed to suddenly age five years. Then, just as suddenly, he regained control and his eyes took on a cold, visceral expression.
“The first thing we must do,” he said in a level tone, “is to act as though nothing has happened.”
Mercier tilted back and gazed unseeing at the high ceiling. “Granted we can’t hold a press conference and announce to the world we’ve misplaced the nation’s four ranking leaders. I don’t care to think about the repercussions when the word leaks out. But we can’t hide the facts from the press for more than a few hours.”
“And we have to consider the likelihood the people responsible for the kidnapping will give us an ultimatum or make a ransom demand through the news media,” Simmons added.
Metcalf looked doubtful. “My guess is that when contact is made it will come without a trumpet blast to Secretary Oates, and any demand will be for something besides money.”
“I can’t fault your thinking, General,” said Oates. “But our top priority is still to conceal the facts and stall for as long as it takes to find the President.”
Mercier had the look of an atheist buttonholed by a Hare Krishna at an airport. “Lincoln said it: ‘You can’t fool all the people all the time.’ It won’t be easy keeping the President and Vice President out of the public eye for more than a day, at most. And you can’t simply erase Larimer and Moran; they’re too highly visible around Washington. Then there is the Eagle’s crew to consider. What do you tell their families?”
“Jack Sutton!” Fawcett blurted as though he was having a revelation.
“Who?” Simmons demanded.
“The actor, the spitting image of the President who plays him in TV commercials and on comedy shows.”
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