“There will be no politics tonight,” Mrs. Oxley said, smiling. “Well, perhaps a little. There’s always politics in the air.”
The reception, a gauntlet to run to before the dinner, launched Weisman into a short but intense political scene. He knew that the guests here would be the elite, the powerful, and the influential, all of them given the privilege of thirty minutes of face time in a room with Weisman. He was quickly and politely surrounded by four senators, six representatives, and a lobbyist. Secretary of State Bloom remained out of the scrub, waiting, a champagne flute in his right hand, until Weisman came to him. Rachel nodded to Weisman, and he walked over to Bloom.
She took that moment to scan the room for Sean. She had not seen his name on the guest list, though that might have been an error. She had decided that he certainly would be at the reception.
Marilyn Hotchkiss, Deputy Secretary of State, was drawn as if by gravity to Rachel, who braced for the quick, complex conversation that would now begin. Neither woman was to say anything significant. But Weisman had instructed Rachel never to miss an opportunity to state his main point: Jerusalem could never become a city divided between Israel and the Palestinians. There was also another matter, but that would come up only when Weisman and Oxley had their most private talks.
While Rachel talked to Marilyn Hotchkiss, she could not keep her mind from drifting to thoughts of Sean, who, she now realized, was not present. She chose not to inquire about him. Certainly their past relationship showed up at least in intelligence files. But, she assumed, those were not the kind of files that either Bloom or Hotchkiss would read.
Looking through the briefing books for this trip, she had found that official State Department biographies of Bloom and Hotchkiss showed that they were married and had grown children. She asked the Mossad’s chief American case officer for the latest dossier on Falcone.
She started to skim through the basic biographical details, which she well knew, and she was unexpectedly glad to see he was still unmarried. Her skimming stopped when she saw the description of Falcone’s years as a prisoner of the Vietcong. She lingered over inspirational leader of other prisoners and beaten and placed in solitary confinement and subject refused early release. The Mossad document, written originally when Falcone was a senator, had been updated. But the basic assessment about his attitude toward Israel had not changed: While generally pro-Israel, subject cannot be counted on as an unqualified friend.…
*
THE Air Force Strolling Strings, in formal uniforms, had been playing in the background. In her reverie, she had hardly noticed the music until the ensemble switched from Vivaldi’s Four Seasons to a medley of songs by George Gershwin, Weisman’s favorite American composer. That was the signal for the President and First Lady to lead Weisman and Rachel out of the reception and into the State Dining Room. The Marine Band—“The President’s Own”—sounded four ruffles and flourishes when the President appeared, with Rachel on his arm, followed by Weisman and the First Lady. Then, paced by “Hail to the Chief,” he led the way into a room radiant with light and splendor.
“Finally,” the President whispered to Rachel. “We can forget our troubles. I promise you a peaceful, lovely night.”
21
ONE HUNDRED and twenty guests were seated at dozens of round tables covered in golden linens. Gold-rimmed plates gleamed and goblets sparkled. Arrangements of lilies at each table paid homage to a flower beloved in Israel and mentioned in both the Old and New Testaments. Waiters glided about, pouring California wines. Under one of the golden chandeliers was a table at which Philip Dake was seated.
Dake was flanked by Secretary of Defense Kane and a young woman who was a rapidly rising NBC correspondent. Others at his table included General Gabriel Wilkinson, a movie director escorting an actress, each a recent Oscar winner; a member of the Israeli Knesset wearing a blue-and-white yarmulke; and Dake’s old friend, the conductor of the National Symphony.
The President had decided to give Dake unusual access for his book on the Oxley administration, and the word had gone out. Dake’s invitation to the Weisman state dinner was a result, as was the selection of Kane and Wilkinson as Dake’s tablemates.
Oxley had sat for several lengthy interviews and he had ordered his staff and cabinet members to cooperate with Dake, over the objections of Ray Quinlan. It was a simple matter of Oxley’s trusting Dake and Quinlan’s distrusting all journalists. Quinlan, like many politicians and operatives, had been stung by Dake.
In a book about lobbyists, Peddlers of Power, Dake had dredged up an incident from Quinlan’s early days on Capitol Hill. Quinlan was on the staff of a senator who was censured for his flagrant trading of votes for campaign contributions. Quinlan had no connection with the senator’s malfeasance, and in fact resigned just before the censure vote. Dake had barely mentioned Quinlan, but that mention called Quinlan “a young man who thought he was a staffer when he actually was a gofer.”
Dake had been developing an anecdote for the book about Oxley’s DEFCON change at the time of the Elkton attack. When he asked Wilkinson about it, Wilkinson gave Dake enough information to convince him that he could perhaps broaden it into something about Oxley and relationship with the Pentagon. He needed all the Oxley anecdotes he could get. The book was not going well.
He nodded to Anna Dabrowski, at a nearby table, looking gorgeous in a canary-yellow gown. Seated next to her was a Marine light colonel in dress blues, looking happy to be with a beautiful woman. If she’s here, that probably means Falcone isn’t. I wonder why.
“Where’s Falcone?” Dake asked Wilkinson.
“Can’t say,” Wilkinson replied.
“Can’t or won’t?”
“Can’t.”
“Secret trip?”
“Yeah. To keep the bad guys from knowing where he is.”
“Anything to do with Iran and the Elkton?”
“You know that one, Phil. There’s no Iranian involvement.”
From Wilkinson’s inflections, Dake got the signal that the JCS chairman was giving him the official line but was not comfortable with it. Dake filed it away in his infallible memory.
*
JUST around the time the White House waiters were removing the soup dishes, Falcone’s plane was landing at Andrews. Glancing out the window before touchdown, he saw the crescent moon against the dark sky. For a moment he dozed off and saw the crescent in the flag that flew over Pakistan, over Turkey, Algeria … the crescent that flew over so many places.…
He was still sleepy when he walked down the exit stairway to the tarmac. After a farewell to the plane’s crew and routine greetings from the duty officer who met the aircraft, Falcone headed for the SUV that would take him … where?
Weary and muddled by jet lag, he hesitated. He could rush to his apartment, jump into a tuxedo, and make the last of the state dinner. And for what? Not for any official business, but truthfully only to see Rachel Yeager.
He had thought of her many times—sudden, unsummoned thoughts of their short time together long ago. He had vaguely kept aware of her, under various names in various CIA analyses of Mossad activities. The latest mention of her was in the National Security Council’s recent report on Prime Minister Avi Weisman’s selection of her as ambassador to the United Nations. He had been tempted to get word to her that he would like to meet her again. But the Middle East was complicated enough without injecting a high-level romantic liaison into the mix.
It was Israel’s fate always to be under attack by her enemies. And he knew it once had been Rachel’s job to eliminate some of those enemies wherever they could be found. That meant everywhere, every day. There was no room for love in her world. Now, if he could trust the intel profiles, she was no longer a Killer Angel. But her life was still dedicated to Israel. Her job had changed from eliminating enemies to managing enemy states.
He knew that in the meetings beginning tomorrow he would inevitably see her in their official roles. Well, we could at least hav
e lunch, maybe at Positano’s, where we …
“Excuse me, sir. Do you go home or to your office?”
Falcone looked blankly at the security man.
“Oh? Sorry. Jet lag. Home. Yes, definitely. Home.”
22
AS FALCONE was heading toward his apartment, the Regal was nearing the mouth of the Savannah River under that same dark sky pierced by a crescent moon. A small boat, the Betty B. with PILOT emblazoned on its hull and cabin roof, pulled alongside. The boat came abreast of a brightly lighted compartment that opened on the port side of the Regal’s lowest deck. When boat and ship were on parallel course, the pilot lithely leaped across four feet of water, shook hands with a crewman, and strode to the first of the stairways that would take him up to the bridge.
The Betty B. sharply turned away and sped back down the river to the small bay where it had met the Regal. The boat headed south and skirted the coastline of Tybee Island, past the flashing black-and-white lighthouse, and tied up at the Betty B. wharf. Over the centuries, the island had become a delta peninsula attached to the mainland by marshes. But people still called it an island. Not much changed around Savannah.
Craig Reynolds, the port’s chief pilot, had had a long day and was glad his son, Mike, did the leaping now. In about half an hour, after guiding the Regal up the curving Savannah River, Mike would get in his pickup at the cruise dock in Savannah Harbor and drive down U.S. 80 to Tybee and the Betty B. wharf, the office and home of Reynolds & Son, Pilots. By long tradition along the East Coast, piloting was a family business that endured for generations.
*
THE Regal slowly approached the mouth of the river and in a half hour would tie up at Savannah’s cruise-ship dock, next to a long, low building festooned with a string of lighted jack-o’-lanterns and a sign, WELCOME MIDNIGHTERS. From a speaker in every cabin came the cherry voice of the ship’s master of events: “Welcome to beautiful and historic Savannah! Complete with ghosts and goblins! Halloween is still a week away. But here we are, about to enjoy the tricks and treats of the weird but wonderful city made famous by Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. If you enjoyed the movie or the book, imagine how you’ll enjoy the real thing! In exactly half an hour, the buses will be at the dock to whisk you away to a tour of this devilish city and its rollicking nightlife.”
Nearly all the passengers were in their cabins dressing for the tour, which would end with a midnight supper and jazz at a historic mansion dating from the eighteenth century. But Pat and Kathy Flanagan had dressed quickly enough to have time for a photo opportunity before heading for the tour buses.
The Flanagans left their upper-deck cabin and walked to an outside stairway that led up to a gridded metal platform at the starboard door of the bridge. Pat posed Kathy on the platform so that the crescent moon was over her right shoulder. Behind her stretched the dimly lit stern of the Regal, and beyond that the dark sea. “Perfect,” Pat said. “Stay right there—and for God’s sake, smile.”
Pat crouched on the stairway and aimed his smartphone. He pressed the button five times, each press of the button transmitting the image to the name on the top of his speed dial: Kelly, the Flanagans’ niece in Boston. As he pressed the button for what would be the last image, a brilliant light filled the sky and an enormous wall of water began hurtling toward the Regal.
A surge of heat and pressure swept across the ship. In a searing instant, Pat and Kathy were vaporized and their silhouettes were stenciled on the white bridge door. On the port side, Captain Hyldebrand and pilot Mike Reynolds were walking along the deck when suddenly both were gone. They became part of the wall of water, consigned to the sea that they both had served.
The heat and pressure moved on, crushing the Regal and drowning the ship, along with two hundred and thirteen other passengers and crew members. The force rushed on toward Savannah, tearing down the graceful Talmadge Memorial Bridge, which soared one hundred and eighty-five feet above the river. The wave, sinking ships and carrying cars and trucks and silvery pieces of the bridge, swept into the city of Savannah, which instantly vanished into the night as all electricity failed. In the sudden darkness, buildings crumbled and a cross-topped church steeple collapsed as if in a requiem to Savannah.
23
U.S. COAST Guard Lieutenant Samuel Tourtellot, piloting his red-and-white helicopter through sudden turbulence about eighteen miles off Savannah, heard a radio message. All he could make out was huge wave and bright. Then nothing more—no call letters, no carrier signal, not even the click when a radio was switched off. On a pad clipped to his right leg he noted the time: 2113.
An autopilot system had put the helicopter on a search pattern that resembled the course of a lawnmower: up one long side, across a short side, then down a long side. Tourtellot had set the computerized search pattern when he neared the area where a fishing boat had sent out a distress call. The autopilot system allowed him to look down at the sea without keeping an eye on the controls.
Simultaneous with the loss of the radio signal, the automatic pilot system failed. Tourtellot grabbed the controls and tried to radio his home port, the Coast Guard Air Station in Savannah. His radio was dead.
“The goddamn computer is out,” Lieutenant Susan Hancock, the copilot, shouted. The illuminated dials on the dashboard faded to black. The cabin lost all light. They were in darkness flying through darkness.
“We still have power,” Tourtellot said. “But I don’t know what side of the search box we’re on. I don’t know which way we’re heading.”
He took a flashlight out of a rack overhead and aimed it toward a rescue life raft rigged to be dropped into the sea. “There’s a compass in the raft survival kit. We’ll get to the coast on that,” he said. “And then follow the lights to Savannah. Should see them in a minute or so.”
A rescue diver in a wet suit, one of the two crewmen, yelled, “Hey, Lieutenant! Blackout! No light back here. Intercom out.”
“Here, too, Ross,” Tourtellot yelled back. “Not to worry.”
Hancock groped around and found the compass. She held the compass on her lap while Tourtellot shone his flashlight on it and saw which way he had to turn to aim the helicopter toward the coast.
Two minutes later, Hancock said, “There aren’t any lights. Are you sure we’re on the right heading?”
Tourtellot looked at his watch. “By my calculations we’re over the coast.” He peered into the darkness ahead. “Blackout. Some kind of local power outage. I’m heading for Hilton Head.” He turned sharply north.
“Wait! Jesus Christ!” Hancock said. “Look at that!”
Two thousand feet below them was a circle of flame. Tourtellot dropped down, and tried to understand what he was seeing. “Looks like one of those big gas tanks.”
“Sam, the goddamn thing is floating.” By the light of the flames they could see a vast carpet of water. “And Sam, the bridge. That’s where the Talmadge Bridge is supposed to be.”
“I’m heading north until we see light or we run out of gas,” Tourtellot said. “And then we’ll land and find out what the hell is going on.”
Tourtellot did not know how much gas he had because he had no dials. They were not merely dark; they were not working. But it was not long before he saw lights along the coast. He dropped low enough to see the lighted outline of Hilton Head, South Carolina. He recognized the shape of Port Royal Sound, and aimed toward the runway lights of Page Field at Parris Island, the vast flat site of the U.S. Marine Recruit Depot.
Even as he spotted the runways, he saw the lights of two Marine helicopters taking off and heading toward him. Tourtellot could imagine their radio calls to him—and the aggressive reaction that his silence would trigger. As he was further imagining that they would treat him as a hostile aircraft, one helicopter suddenly slanted upward and, flying directly over Tourtellot, shined a powerful light and aimed it at a runway. The second helicopter pulled close alongside. The pilot shone a light on Tourtellot and emphatically pointed down.
Tourtellot just as emphatically nodded and continued toward the runway.
As the helicopter landed, a dozen or so Marines surrounded it and, hunching over, closed in as soon as its blades began to stop. Tourtellot was the first to step out, followed by Hancock and the two members of the crew.
“Hands in the air, chopper boy,” a Marine shouted, aiming an automatic rifle at Tourtellot’s head. He did as he was told. Other Marines stepped forward to seize Hancock and the two crewmen.
A captain carrying a carbine shouted, “What the fuck’s going on?” He squinted at the name on Tourtellot’s helmet and added something that sounded like “Turtle-O.”
“All my lights are out. Radio out. This is an emergency landing,” Tourtellot said.
“This is a fuckin’ unauthorized flight and landing,” the Marine said. He led the four Coast Guards to two Humvees, which took them to a nearby one-story brick building.
The Marine captain ushered Tourtellot into the duty officer’s small office and closed the door. After hearing Tourtellot’s terse report on a blackout and radio failure, the captain put in a call to the Coast Guard Air Station in Savannah over a military communications line. An operator reported, “Unable to make a connection.”
The captain made another call, then led Tourtellot out of the office and to a door labeled PROVOST. At the door stood a Marine sergeant wearing a white belt, a .45 in a white holster, and a red-and-yellow MP armband. He opened the door and closed it behind Tourtellot.
Hancock and the two crewmen were seated in metal chairs along one wall. The captain who had brought them in stood next to the chairs. At a desk sat a Marine major, his bald head gleaming under a flickering fluorescent ceiling fixture. The brass nameplate on the desktop said MAJOR WATTS. He turned to the captain and said, “Take the three other interlopers to the Briefing Room for now.” As the others filed out of the office, Watts turned to Tourtellot.
Blink of an Eye Page 14
