We Are Holding the President Hostage

by Warren Adler

  Chalmers thought he had detected a slight note of deference.

  18

  NED FOREMAN SAT at the conference table and blew his nose into a Kleenex. A cold in July, he thought with disgust. In fact, everything that was happening was ludicrous. Foreman, the National Security Advisor, had spent the last couple of hours on a mission of reassurance. He had called the foreign ministers of all the NATO allies, of France, of Japan, of India, and, of course, of the Soviet Union.

  To all the message was the same. The machinery of government would operate smoothly in this crisis, as it had in previous circumstances. Not to worry. Some crazies have got the President holed up, but we’ll figure out a way to get the situation resolved.

  “What are their demands?” Dimitri Karkov, the Soviet Foreign Minister, had asked in his remarkably unaccented English. He had seemed genuinely shocked, expressing deep concern. He and the General Secretary liked the President. Endangering the American President was not in their interests.

  “We are not yet certain.”

  “That is very bad,” the Russian said.

  Foreman, although unseen, nodded in agreement. He was tempted to ask what he knew had been asked many times before when American hostages had been taken. Is this a KGB-inspired operation? If not, what is your influence? Do you control these people through surrogates? Surely, if you tried, you could get them out. Always the answer had been the same. Nyet.

  “They are in no way connected to us,” Karkov assured him.

  “We studied that possibility. It was quickly rejected, Minister.”

  It had been a carefully measured response. He wanted the Russian to be certain that the matter had been under deep consideration. Nor had it been rejected out of hand.

  “Of course you realize that we may have to put the armed forces on worldwide alert,” the Foreign Minister said. “But, I assure you, it will be routine.”

  “It could be viewed as a provocation,” Foreman said cautiously.

  “We have studied that possibility.”

  It occurred to Foreman that they were talking in the same language but at cross-purposes. He remembered a line from a movie: “What we have here is a failure of communication.”

  “You think this hostage incident was arranged by our side to provoke yours?”

  “A thought,” the minister responded, “but quickly rejected.”

  Foreman doubted that he spoke the truth. The Soviets were always testing America’s motives. Devious bastards. He would have to arrange another clandestine meeting with Peter Vashevsky to confirm the Russian’s real intentions. Peter Vashevsky was the top KGB operative in the United States, with a direct pipeline to the General Secretary. He and Vashevsky had no communication problem. The Soviets were only comfortable operating on two tracks. One public. One private.

  “I hope your alert doesn’t get our people nervous,” Foreman said.

  “You must assure them. But certain things are necessary.”

  “I understand, Minister.”

  “So who is running your country?” the Russian asked. In his voice Foreman detected an unmistakable note of contempt.

  “At the moment—” Foreman hesitated “—the Secretary of State is nominally in charge.”

  “Nominally?”

  “Actually, he is reporting to the Vice President, who is on his way home from the Far East.”

  Always futile, he thought, to define the intricacies of the democratic process to the Soviets. To begin to define the Twenty-fifth Amendment to him would be unthinkable. Besides, no one was quite certain how it applied in this case. He could sense the wheels going around in the Russian’s mind.

  “Everything is under complete control here,” Foreman added, but thought to himself, bullshit.

  “Do you know anything about these people who have the President?” the Russian said, his voice demanding.

  “We’ll have something soon.”

  “They have a great prize. They could demand the impossible.”

  “We will keep you informed, Minister.”

  His conversation with the Russian reinforced his sense that something was nagging at Karkov, something he could not distinguish through the murk of these swift-moving events.

  The White House staff had set up a crisis center in a conference room on the basement level of the Executive Office Building. The Vice President was theoretically in charge. However, he was so far outside the circle of power that, as the saying goes, he did not even have the keys to the men’s room.

  Until this incident he had been barely tolerated, and the prevailing opinion was that God did not give him his fair share of gray matter. At least he had the good grace to be separated by distance. Once he arrived on the scene, the situation could only go downhill. At the moment any shred of hope was invested in the director of the CIA, Jack Harkins, a smart son of a bitch.

  Foreman studied the faces of the men around the table. At the head of it sat Vic Proctor, the Secretary of State, an old nemesis of the Vice President but too much of a pro to refuse the call to close ranks. Already, in his mind, the conference room had become the bunker.

  Others around the table were Steve Potter, the President’s press secretary, Lou Shore, counsel to the President, and Bob Nickels, the Chief of Staff, the old-boy team, the death-till-us-part triplets he called them, but never to their faces. Also present, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Bill Kendall, who sat quietly in a chair at a far end of the table directing the so-called siege, which was not a siege at all, in fact, was no more than a small cordon of men who had no practical function except to show the world that, somehow, America was still in charge of itself.

  The Secretary of Defense, Harley Fox, was also present, as usual, scaring them to death about the Soviets taking advantage. He had orchestrated a presentation by some general who was sure that his elite military SWAT team could do the job with a fifty-fifty chance of getting the President out unharmed. Good odds, considering, the Secretary of Defense had offered.

  “Considering what?” someone had asked.

  Fox grunted. He hated to have his military options put down. Then someone said, “Suppose it was you, Harley?”

  He seemed to be considering a comeback until someone said, “Anyone can walk through the detectors in the Pentagon carrying the same material.”

  “Then we’ll authorize a body frisk for everyone,” Fox snapped.

  “Body frisk thirty thousand people a day?” Vic Proctor asked.

  By then everyone in the room realized the futility of the discussion and Steve Potter put it in perspective. “Fact is,” the President’s press secretary said, “none of us are really safe. There are holes in the system. That’s a given. Besides, the body frisk is just not American.” Invoking what was or was not American had a soothing effect on the tense gathering.

  A bank of telephones had been swiftly installed. When they spoke on the phones their voices were low, controlled. These were men who under most circumstances knew the value of tone. Outwardly, they were cool, although, Foreman knew, most were genuinely frightened. If the President were blown up, the ball game was over for them as far as government was concerned. Chalmers would bring in his own team.

  A telephone button flashed suddenly. The men looked up from their various conversations. Vic Proctor picked up the instrument.

  “Good. Right now.”

  He nodded and tapped lightly on the table with his free hand. Then he replaced the receiver and looked up.

  “Halloran,” he said. Halloran was the head of the FBI.

  The interrogation of the caterer was taking place a few doors down from the conference room, a makeshift filing office pressed into service for its proximity and lack of windows.

  They did not have to wait long. Halloran arrived. He and his wife had been guests at the state dinner. He was still wearing his tuxedo. The ready-made black tie hung awry on one collar point. Halloran appeared as a big, bluff, red-faced man whose face was the map of the Emerald Isle and
whose speech contained the sounds of Bean Town. He had given the FBI back the glamour that had seeped out of the organization over the last decade. Once a big-city cop, he developed into a hands-on manager who, like Hoover, often led the posse and conducted the big investigations himself. He had done so in this case.

  “I got good news and bad news,” he began. His eyes surveyed the faces around the table. He did not sit down, knowing that he was about to impart something momentous. He waited to create the perfect sense of drama.

  “Mafiosa,” he said, pausing for a long moment. “The man who has the President is Salvatore Padronelli, better known as the Padre, probably the most important don in this country. Second generation. A racket network of powerful proportions. The other three are his top capos, loyal to the death. One of them, the Canary, is a known murderer and hit man. The other, the Prune, has a rap sheet as long as your arm. The young one is Benjy Mustoni, known as the Kid, an ambitious enforcer. This caterer, poor bastard, was, as they say, given a deal he couldn’t refuse.”

  “What the hell do they want?”

  “They want Maria and Joseph Michaels, the Padre’s only daughter and grandson.”

  “Who?” the Secretary of State asked.

  “The woman and kid, the hostages who were picked up in Egypt.”

  “You’re joking,” Steve Potter said.

  “Notice my laughter,” the FBI chief said. “Joke’s on me, too. He served me a drink. The Padre himself. I knew he looked familiar, but I couldn’t place him. Dammit. Not in that atmosphere. He’s slippery and efficient as hell, a master motivator. But stand in his way . . .”

  Halloran remained silent for a moment, then continued. “In his group of people, they worship him. It is no accident that he is called the Padre.”

  Halloran shook his head. “He’s sixty-nine years old. I’m sending his file over. Makes good reading. He’s seen it all. Not a scratch on him. Knows his business. Worse, he subscribes to a mythology that makes him truly believe he is a man of honor. Gives him total justification for any act of thievery or brutality. Yet, he’s supposed to live modestly, although he’s richer than Croesus.”

  He looked at Potter. “Now you got something to feed the animals.”

  “Depends on how stupid you want us to look,” the press secretary said gloomily. “Those Arabs who got her and the kid will be laughing for a millennium. The fucking Mafia. Who would believe it?”

  “At least we know they’re not fanatics,” Bob Nickels, the Chief of Staff, said.

  Inexplicably, Foreman noted, the tension seemed to ease. Even in himself. Perhaps it was because the Mafia was perceived to be, under all the hoopla, business people. Lou Shore, presidential counsel, seemed to put it in perspective for all of them.

  “They know the value of a deal,” Shore said. “Also, I doubt if they’re suicidal. That’s the key. We might just have to wait them out.”

  “You been dealing with them, Lou?” Halloran asked with unmistakable sarcasm. He did not wait for an answer. “The world’s best police brains have been trying to break them for years. No way. They know what they want and that old bastard up there will die trying. If necessary, he will blow himself to kingdom come. I shit you not.”

  “That doesn’t mean he would stand in the way of negotiations,” Vic Proctor said.

  “You can call it that if you want to,” Halloran said, meeting Proctor’s gaze. “Just ask the caterer.”

  “Are you saying he won’t negotiate?” Shore asked.

  “All day long. But he won’t settle for anything less than the delivery of his daughter and grandson harm-free.”

  “But we’ve done everything we can,” Foreman interjected. “Jack Harkins will explain that to him.”

  “The Padre doesn’t think so,” Halloran said stubbornly. “That’s the whole point of this exercise.”

  “Got to get him out of the line of fire,” Proctor said wearily.

  The National Security Advisor sensed his meaning. Force the President out of office. Leave the Padre no one to negotiate with. Halloran appeared uncertain as to how to bow out. He seemed disappointed that his advice was not being solicited. But the Secretary of State was lost in his own thoughts.

  “Shall I go out and toss the fish to the seals?” Potter asked.

  The question brought Proctor back to alertness.

  “We’ve got to ask Chalmers,” he said with obvious distaste.

  “In that case . . .” Whatever came next was swallowed, unheard.

  “No way out on that,” Proctor said, looking toward Potter with obvious sympathy.

  “Too juicy an opportunity for him to miss,” Potter sighed.

  “You might want to knock out a statement,” Proctor said.

  “For him?”

  “He’s the man.” Proctor looked about him, searching the faces. “Unless someone’s got a better idea.”

  “We’ve got nearly seven hours before the Vice President touches down. You’d think all you superbrains would find an answer,” Lou Shore interjected, his expression growing more harried by the minute.

  He had less to lose than the others, Foreman thought. The President’s childhood friend, he would be perceived by Chalmers as a fanatic loyalist and marked as one of the first to go.

  “All right,” Proctor said, glaring at Shore. “What’s your pleasure?”

  Shore lowered his eyes and cracked his knuckles. “Try gas or something. Hell, that’s what some of you get paid for.”

  “Whistling Dixie,” Halloran said.

  “You’re the head of the fucking FBI,” Shore said, raising his voice. “What the hell have you got to offer?”

  Illogic was taking hold now. Shore, striking out blindly, had begun to reflect everyone’s frustration. And panic. Halloran flushed red. He shifted his weight from foot to foot.

  “You people haven’t been listening,” he muttered. All eyes in the room had once again turned to him. “There are no alternatives,” he said, lowering his voice. “Bottom line. Get the woman and the boy out. End of story.”

  The room filled with silence.

  “Problem is . . .” Foreman said. The elusive notion hiding in his mind suddenly burst into his consciousness along with the words of the Russian: They have a great prize. They could demand the impossible. “They will up the ante,” Foreman finished.

  “In the end, we’ll have to meet whatever they ask,” Halloran said.

  “And if not?” Foreman asked. Awful scenarios were dancing in his head. One in particular. It was definitely the wrong time to put it into words.

  “Then you’ve got, among others, one very dead president up there,” Halloran said solemnly.

  19

  EVERY MAN WAS GIVEN a moment, Jack Harkins believed. It could only be defined as a lightning bolt. If the tip of the bolt reached out and touched you, then you were obliged to slip through the seam of the flash into the void of destiny. Jack Harkins was certain that such a moment had arrived.

  As he walked up the winding stairway of the White House to the central hall, he felt the adrenaline of anticipation. All the vectors of his life were converging, the Phi Beta Kappa key, the four athletic letters, the six-year doctorate in political science, his slog through the maze of government service. If this new phase was life-threatening, so be it. It added all the more excitement to the joy and pleasure of it.

  Harkins walked through a gauntlet of armed men. Another line ranged itself across the upstairs width of the central hall. The men wore helmets and battle gear, an incongruous form of dress in the elegant hallway. Between this line and the closed door of the west sitting room was a kind of no-man’s-land.

  Moments before, the CIA Director had been in the basement command post at the Executive Office Building, where the Secretary of State had briefed him on the situation. The man had been apologetic, weary, but not vague by choice. It was, Harkins thought, an astonishing can of worms.

  “You realize the risk you are taking,” the Secretary of State said gloomil
y.

  “I think you might be exaggerating. They need contact with the outside. That’s essential to them.”

  Without hesitating, Harkins walked through the line of men, across the no-man’s-land to the closed west-sitting-room entrance. He looked back at the faces of the tense men across the hall, smiled, then rapped on the door. He waited, rapped again.

  He heard movement within. The door slid open slowly. Just a sliver at first. He saw an eye staring at him. The door opened farther. He sensed the tension rise behind him, imagined movement, the leveling of guns. The door opened farther. Hands came out and scooped him in. He felt himself embraced by the arms of a big man. Another moved furniture into place behind the closed door.

  Locked in position, he waited until the job was completed. Then the man who had moved the furniture, an older man, turned directly toward him. A calm face, he thought, stubbled, with alert eyes, which studied him. He knew at once it was the Padre referred to in his briefing.

  “If you’ll follow me, Mr. Harkins,” the man said. He waited while the bigger man, behind him, frisked him thoroughly.

  “Don’t be silly,” he said.

  There was no response. He followed the older man into the dining room. The setting was serene, peculiar. The President sat at one end of the table, Mrs. Bernard at the other. They looked at him with expressions that might have been characterized as wry amusement.

  Two men sat at either side of the table. It took him a few seconds more to see the attachments of cord. Beyond that, there was little sign of disarray. What was most bizarre were the waiters’ uniforms the men wore. They somehow clashed with the stark seriousness of the situation.

  The man he had followed went toward the wall with the sideboard, pulled another chair forward, and waved for him to sit down. He did so. The chandelier above them glistened, its reflection scattered into thousands of sparkles on the crystal, plates, and silver. The situation did not even strike him as threatening to the President.

  “Sorry about this, Jack. It’s definitely not my idea,” the President said.

  “Nor mine,” the First Lady said.