Line of Succession

by Brian Garfield

  It was a puzzle and it nudged various suspicions in the back of Lime’s mind. But if it was a red herring it could operate either of two ways and there wasn’t time to analyze it to death. Mezetti was a warm body, Lime had a rope on him, and he intended to keep hold of its end until he saw where it was going to drag him.

  So Lime in the Cortina awaited the emergence of a Mario Mezetti he had never laid eyes on. He had a collection of photographs and the information that Mario had been reported this morning wearing a belted brown leather coat, brown slacks and suede desert boots. He’d be difficult to miss; at any rate a gray Rolls with his luggage aboard awaited him in front of the bank and Lime’s men had all the exits covered.

  Lime had taken charge last night but had left the routine surveillance to his armies. If Mezetti saw him too often he would begin to recognize Lime’s face. It was always better to let the minions handle shadow jobs with frequent changes of relays—always fresh faces.

  Mezetti’s Cessna Citation had a cruising speed of four hundred mph and a range of twelve hundred miles. Lime had inscribed a circle of that radius on a map and arranged for close-interval air cover within it. Sixth Fleet had jets airborne waiting to shadow the Citation and Lime had organized a second-string team of commandeered civilian planes because the Navy Phantoms, easily recognizable, would have to keep their distance and tail mainly by radar to avoid alerting Mezetti. If Mezetti decided to fly at treetop altitudes where ground contours would absorb his radar image, he would lose Navy Air; it was better to keep visual contact. The CIA had set up a complex of ground spotter stations and Lime had a dozen planes ready to pick up the baton depending which direction Mezetti flew—Spanish jets now orbiting Malága and Seville and Cape St. Vincent, a Moroccan oil-company plane over Cape Negro, Portuguese civil-air over Lisbon and Madeira, a pair of seaplanes at Majorca and Mers-el-Kebir.

  At ten forty-three the young man for whom the police and security forces of fourteen nations had been searching emerged from the main entrance of the bank carrying a heavy suitcase and entered the rear passenger compartment of the big elderly Rolls.

  Lime stirred the Cortina’s transmission and squirted the little car into the northbound street ahead of the Rolls. Another car would be closing in behind it. Lime drove unhurriedly past the old Moorish castle and out past the open crossgates which were closed across the highway whenever an airplane was making use of the GibAir runway. Lime turned into the car park by the terminal, glancing in the rearview mirror and seeing the Rolls draw up at the passenger door.

  Lime went through private doors, had a brief conference with Chad Hill in the airport manager’s office, passed the customs line without a check and had ensconced himself beside the Navy pilot in the Lear jet before Mario Mezetti came along the runway in a courtesy car and was decanted beside the Citation, which stood warming up about fifty yards down-runway from the Lear.

  When Lime’s plane swung around into position to make its takeoff run Lime twisted his head and through the plexiglass saw the Citation begin to roll.

  Lime was off the ground, pressed back into his seat by the G-force of takeoff, three minutes ahead of the Citation. The Navy pilot put the Lear out over the Straits and orbited off Tangier until the Citation climbed steeply into sight and banked around toward the northeast.

  “That’s enough of a lead,” Lime said. “Let’s go.”

  The Navy pilot pulled the Lear around and held a position directly behind, and slightly below, the Citation. It was the Citation’s blind spot: Mezetti’s pilot would not be able to see the Lear in his rearview mirror unless he made a sudden turn or backflip.

  The Citation steadied on a course east by northeast. It didn’t climb above three thousand feet. Lime, a few miles behind and five hundred feet lower, studied the millionth-scale map on his lap and reached for the copilot’s headset. “Is this thing locked in?”

  “Clear channel,” the pilot said, and reached for a dial.

  Lime settled the earphones over his head. “Is there a send button?”

  “No. It’s an open two-way. You just talk and listen.”

  That simplified things, eliminated the need for an “over” at the end of each transmission. Lime spoke into the mike that hovered before his mouth:

  “Hill, this is Lime.”

  “Hill right here.” The voice was metallic but clear in the headset.

  “Have you got their course?”

  “Yes sir. I’ve alerted Majorca.”

  “It looks like a change in flight plan.”

  “Yes sir. We’re ready for it.”

  The Citation flew straight and level for fifteen minutes and then the pilot jogged Lime’s knee. “He’s got his wheels down.”

  Lime looked up from the map in time to see the Citation start a slow left turn, the nose going down into an easy glide. The sea was beneath the Lear’s starboard wing, the Spanish coastline immediately below and the foothills rising to his left; the peaks of the Sierras loomed several thousand feet above the airplane, some miles north. It began to appear the Citation was descending straight toward the mountains.

  “Hill, this is Lime.”

  “Yes sir. We’ve still got him on radar—hold it, he just disappeared.”

  “I’ve still got him. He’s put his gear down.”

  The airplane ahead was still turning slowly. Lime nodded to the pilot and the Lear followed in the Cessna’s wake.

  “You want our gear down, Mr. Lime?”

  “No.” There were no commercial airfields in the area toward which the Citation was descending. If Mezetti was about to set down in a pasture it would hardly do to land right behind him. “Keep some altitude,” Lime said. “Swing a little wide—if he lands we want to see the place but we’ll shoot past.”

  “All right sir.”

  Hill on the headset: “Sir, he picked up the consignment as ordered.”

  “Thank you.” Mezetti had telephoned the bank yesterday and requested they have one hundred thousand dollars in cash on hand for him. This was confirmation he had collected it. Clearly then he was doing courier duty and it could be assumed he was now headed for a rendezvous with the others in order to turn over the money.

  It all looked a little too easy; but Lime reminded himself they wouldn’t have been shadowing Mezetti at all if it hadn’t been for the single fortuitous fingerprint on the garage light switch in Palamos.

  The Cessna was quite low along the foothills, banking back and forth, obviously searching for something. Lime said, “Keep going—make it look as if we’re on a regular flight to Majorca. Don’t slow down and don’t circle.”

  Into the microphone he said, “Chad?”

  “Yes sir.”

  “He’s going down in map sector Jay-Niner, the northwest quadrant.”

  “Jay-Niner northwest, yes sir. I’ll alert the nearest ground team.”

  “We’re going by. We’ll want a crisscross.”

  “Yes sir.”

  The Spanish plane from Malága would overfly the sector within four minutes to confirm the Citation had actually landed. Lime, looking back with his cheek to the plexiglass window, had a last glimpse of the little jet descending toward a field encircled by foothills. There were two or three small peasant-farm buildings on the edge of the field and a ribbony road that headed south toward Almería.

  “Swing out over the Med and take us back to Gibraltar.”

  The Lear touched down neatly and braked the length of the runway and made a slow turn at the end of the strip to taxi back to the terminal.

  Chad Hill came loping out to meet him. The young man seemed unable to contain himself. “They’ve got another tape!”

  Lime said, “What tape?”

  “He left one of those tapes on the roof of the hotel. You know, with a transmitter. Like last time.”

  “Fairlie’s voice again?”

  “No sir, it’s in Morse.”

  He was out of cigarettes. “Anybody got a cigarette?” One of the technicians obliged. It was
a Gauloise and when Lime lit up, rancid fumes instantly filled the little room.

  The police station was crowded; the CIA people were working on the apparatus Mezetti had left on the hotel roof. It had a timer set to start the tape playback at eight o’clock tonight.

  It was just short of noon. Lime said, “Put it together and take it back where you found it.”

  Chad Hill’s mouth dropped open.

  Lime said in a mild voice that didn’t betray his exasperation, “If that thing doesn’t broadcast on time they’ll know something went wrong.”

  Chad Hill swallowed visibly. Lime said, “You’ve made copies by now.”

  “Yes sir. Sent it to Washington by scrambler transmission.”

  “Any prints on that equipment?”

  “No.”

  “All right then, take them up on the hotel roof and watch them set it up. When they’re finished, bring them back to this room and post a man on the door. Nobody goes in or out of this room until eight tonight—and no phone calls except to me. Right?”

  “Yes sir.”

  “You understand this, do you?”

  “Yes sir. It’ll give us a jump on the rest of the spooks—no leaks. I understand.”

  “Good.” Obviously Chad thought the measure was extreme but he knew how to follow orders and that was why Lime had picked him. “When you’re done here find me—I’ll have more chores for you.”

  “Yes sir.” Chad swung away.

  Lime reread the transcription in his fist. The Morse decode was brief:

  ATTENTION WORLD X FAIRLIE IS ALIVE X

  FLY WASHINGTON SEVEN TO GENEVA BEFORE

  MIDNIGHT 17 JANUARY X MOVEMENT MUST BE

  PUBLIC WITH RADIO & LIVE TV COVERAGE X

  AWAIT FURTHER INSTRUCTIONS GENEVA X

  At twelve-fifty there was a flash from Chad Hill: “He’s taking off again.”

  “You sure Mezetti’s still in the plane?”

  “Yes sir. They’ve had field glasses on him for half an hour.”

  “What’s he been doing?”

  “Nothing. Poking around the place as if he lost something. Hooker says he looks confused and kind of pissed off—as if he expected somebody to meet him there and they didn’t show up.”

  “Did he spend any time inside the farm buildings?”

  “Long enough to poke around. He came right out again.”

  “What about the suitcase?”

  “He never took it off the plane.”

  “All right. Track the plane and send Hooker down to look through those buildings.”

  “He’s already down there sir. That’s where he’s calling from. I’ve got him on the other phone—you want me to ask him anything?”

  “Well I assume he found nothing?” Lime was a little wry.

  “That’s right sir. No sign anyone’s been there in weeks. Except Mezetti of course.”

  “How about the basement?”

  “No sir. He looked.”

  “All right. Call me back.”

  He hung up and lit another cigarette and tried to get his brain in working order. Somewhere in all this there ought to be a pattern but it wasn’t emerging. Perhaps he was missing it: he was running on his batteries, he’d had less than four hours’ sleep last night and it hadn’t been enough to make up for the previous two days without.

  The phone rang. Chad Hill again. “For Christ’s sake. He’s coming back to Gibraltar. The pilot just radioed for landing instructions.”

  “All right. Put an eight-man tail on Mezetti. As soon as he’s separated from the pilot bring the pilot in.”

  “Yes sir.”

  Lime cradled it but within seconds it rang again. “Sir, it’s Mr. Satterthwaite on the scrambler. You want to come over here?”

  Satterthwaite’s high-pitched voice was shrill with unreasoning anger: he was getting rattled, things were piling up against him. “What have you got out there, David? And don’t tell me you’ve drawn a blank.”

  “We’re moving. Not far and not fast, but we’re moving. You saw the message we’re supposed to get tonight?”

  “A lot of good that is,” Satterthwaite said. “Listen, they’ve taken Dexter Ethridge to Walter Reed in an ambulance.”

  It made Lime sit bolt upright. “Bad?”

  “Nobody knows yet. He seems to be out cold.”

  “You mean somebody tried to assassinate him?”

  “No. Nothing like that. Natural causes, whatever it is—he was home in bed, or in the bathroom. Listen, you know what happens if Ethridge packs up. We’ve got to have Fairlie back by the twentieth.”

  “Well you’ve still got a line of succession.”

  “Milt Luke?” Satterthwaite snorted. “Get him back, David.”

  As usual Satterthwaite was trying to sound like Walter Pidgeon in Command Decision and as usual his voice was wrong for it. Lime ignored the heroics. “What’s the decision on the exchange?”

  “We’re divided. It’s still, ah, hotly contested, as it were.”

  “It’s up to the President, though. Isn’t it.”

  “We live in a democracy,” Satterthwaite said, quite dry. “It’s up to the people.”

  “Sure it is.”

  “David whether you like it or not it’s a political decision. The consequences could be catastrophic if we do the wrong thing.”

  “I’ve got a piece of news for you. The consequences will probably be catastrophic whatever you do. You’d better shit or get off the pot.”

  “Funny—Dexter Ethridge said the same thing. In somewhat more genteel language of course.”

  “Which makes Ethridge a little brighter than the rest of you,” Lime said. He glanced across the communications room. A dozen men were busy at phones and teleprinters; a few of them wore headsets. Chad Hill was handing a telephone receiver back to the man seated at the table beside him. Hill started to gesture in Lime’s direction—something had developed that required Lime’s attention. Lime waved an acknowledgment and said to the scrambler, “Look, we’re glued onto Mezetti. Right now he’s leading us in circles but I think he’s going to take us to them if we give him a little time. I can’t have——”

  “How much time?”

  “I’m not an oracle. Ask Mezetti.”

  “That’s what you ought to be doing, David.”

  “Are you ordering me to pick him up?”

  Static on the line while Satterthwaite paused to consider it. Lime was dropping the ball in his lap. “David, when I talked you into this it was with the understanding that the best way to get a job done is to pick the best people and give them their heads. I’m not going to start telling you how to do your job—if I were capable of that I’d be doing the job instead of you.”

  “All right. But Mezetti may lead us right into the hive, and it could happen any time. I need to know how much latitude I’ve got if I have to start talking deals with them.”

  “You’re asking blood from a stone.”

  “Damn it I have to know if you’re going to agree to the exchange. Any negotiator has to know his bargaining points. You’re tying my hands.”

  “What do you want me to tell you? The decision hasn’t been made yet. The instant it’s made I’ll let you know.”

  It was all he was going to get. He stopped pressing it. “All right. Look, something’s come up. I’ll get back to you.”

  “Do it soon.”

  “Aeah. See you.”

  He broke the connection and crossed the room and Chad Hill bundled him outside. In the Government House corridor Chad said, “He’s changed course on us.”

  “He’s not landing in Gib?”

  “The plane turned north.”

  Lime felt relieved and showed it with a tight smile. “Now we’re getting somewhere. Who’s on him?”

  “Two planes at the moment. Another one coming across from Lisbon to pick him up farther north.”

  “All right then. Just let’s don’t lose the son of a bitch.”

  The worst part was doing nothi
ng, knowing things were happening out there but sitting still waiting for news. Lime sent a man out to buy him half a dozen packs of American cigarettes and if possible a large order of coffee. He retreated to his monk’s cell and tried to put his head together.

  His sense of time had been blurred: fatigue gave him a sunless sense of unreality, everything took place at a distance as if seen through a camera. He had to rest. Once again he stretched out on the floor and closed his eyes.

  He pictured Bev but the image drifted and he was thinking of Julius Sturka, the vague face in the grainy photograph.

  He didn’t want it to turn out to be Sturka. He’d tried to get Sturka before and he’d failed. Failed in 1961 and failed again in the past fortnight.

  In the old days he had wasted a lot of time learning nonfacts about Sturka—the sort of rumors that were always available to fill the holes between facts. Maybe it was true he was a Yugoslav who had watched the fascisti torture his parents to death in Trieste, or a Ukrainian Jew who had fought Nazis at Sevastopol, but Lime long ago had begun to distrust all the simplistic Freudian guesses about Sturka. There wasn’t any doubt Sturka had a romanticized picture of himself but it wasn’t the messianic sort that had characterized Ché Guevara. The nearest Lime could come to a definition was to think of Sturka as a sort of ideological mercenary. He couldn’t fathom what motivated Sturka but it seemed clear enough that Sturka was preoccupied more with means than with ends. He had an unrealistic view of political strategy but his tactics were impeccable. He was a methodologist, not a philosopher. At least from a distance he resembled the master criminal who was more concerned with the mechanical complexity of his crime than with its reward. Sometimes it tempted Lime to think of him as an adolescent prankster doing something outrageous just to prove he could get away with it on a dare. Sturka had the traits of a game player, he took delight in moves and countermoves. At what he did, he was superb; he was a professional.

  A professional. Lime understood that; it was the highest accolade in his lexicon.