We Are Holding the President Hostage

by Warren Adler

  “You have the means,” the Padre said, darting a glance at Harkins.

  “What he wants to do . . .” Harkins said.

  “Let him speak for himself,” the President said testily.

  The Padre put up one hand like a traffic cop, playing the role of peacemaker. Unreality, the President assured himself, seeing the image of the tea party unreel again in his mind.

  “He is a good talker, this fellow,” the Padre said pleasantly. “We have discussed the situation and made suggestions.”

  “Options,” Harkins corrected.

  “A rose by any other name . . .” the President said, his words drifting off. Probably sold the man a bill of goods that he knows how to handle me, the President thought.

  “I’m an interpreter,” Harkins said, summoning up whatever humility he could muster. Again the President saw the signals pass between them. They are brothers, he decided. This man Harkins was like a pig in dung.

  “May I continue?” the CIA Director asked. There was something touchingly childish in his request. The President looked toward the Padre and turned away quickly, suddenly fearful that he was contracting this strange virus of obedience. Okay, the President told himself. It’s only an option.

  “Ahmed Safari,” Harkins said. “The man who holds his daughter. Although he is a known homosexual, he has a wife and son in Amman. He cares nothing for the wife. An arranged marriage, typical in the Arab world. But he does adore his son. The boy is seventeen and sickly. Rheumatic heart.”

  “I can’t be a party to that,” the President snapped.

  “We have the assets in Jordan. We can have him in custody in hours.”

  The President shook his head. Harkins again looked toward the Padre.

  “Mr. President. It is a viable option,” Harkins said.

  “Not for me.”

  “But it would be deniable,” Harkins pressed.

  “And obvious.” He felt his gut pinch and harden. “Also, this Ahmed will know that we could not harm the boy. You know we can’t be a party to that. It would be too transparent.” He turned toward the Padre. “What is his motive for releasing your daughter and grandson if he knows that this boy will be safe?”

  “It’s only a part of the plan,” Harkins muttered. “We will have to illustrate to him that we mean business.”

  “And how do we do that?” the President asked. He had relaxed, curious to hook in to their logic.

  “You are absolutely right, Mr. President. This is the heart of the matter,” the Padre said.

  “We must establish our credentials,” Harkins said.

  “For what?” the President asked. A moot question. He knew the answer.

  “I told him how the Soviets had handled a similar episode,” Harkins said. When the President did not interrupt, he continued. “A group had picked up four Soviet diplomats in their embassy in Lebanon. They killed one. Then the Soviets retaliated by kidnapping one of the leaders of the group that had perpetrated the kidnapping. No fanfare. Quite simple. They cut his balls off, stuffed them in his mouth, and dispatched him back to his cohorts. The three Soviet hostages were released in the flash of an eyelash.”

  “And you want me to be a party to that kind of tactic?” the President asked.

  “To the concept,” Harkins said.

  “You liked that?” the President asked.

  “It is a question of credibility,” Harkins said, again looking at the Padre.

  “I’m sorry,” the President said. “We’ve spent nearly two and a half centuries establishing other credentials. We don’t castrate, gouge eyes, or crack kneecaps.” He looked pointedly at the Padre.

  “But we haven’t dealt with this kind of warfare before. It’s a new phenomenon requiring a novel way to deal with it. Aside from the moral judgments,” Harkins said, “a threat requires believability. Our antagonists are very good on that score.”

  “On average,” the President muttered. Despite himself, he felt engaged, dangled on the hook of Harkins’ presentation.

  “It is their most effective weapon,” Harkins said.

  The Padre nodded. The President grew thoughtful. He knew that they were waiting for his next question. But he delayed asking it. They were right, of course. America was afflicted with ethical inhibitions, and such moral strictures created by the Ten Commandments and various rules flowing from them. Not that he was a purist, but there were tolerable limits to any violations. Their suggestions were not within such limits.

  “So what are you suggesting?” the President asked. “Cut off the kid’s ear and send it as proof of our resolve?”

  “You might also get an ear in the mail,” Harkins replied.

  “I don’t like that talk,” the Padre said darkly.

  “We need something bigger than that, less likely to stimulate such a reprisal. We need something to make our threat credible. Most of all, we need chips to play with.

  “What we must do,” Harkins said. He looked toward the Padre. “It is the Padre’s suggestion. But the concept is quite logical. We take Safari’s boy. That’s a given. But we also take some blood kin among the other top players. We’ve searched the data banks. We have names, places, possibilities.” Harkins paused. “Even in the States. You would be surprised who is attending our schools. They would be an easy job.”

  “You’re not serious?” the President repeated. He wondered just how credible his own protestations were becoming.

  Harkins was working up a good head of steam, throwing an occasional glance toward the Padre, as if he were performing just for him. In a night of mad planning, the two had devised a wicked brew that flew in the face of every philosophical tenet of the Judeo-Christian ethic.

  “Of course we’re considering only the most impressive options,” Harkins continued. “The computer has spit out its choices. In fact, most of the actual missions have already been worked out in theoretical scenarios.”

  “I never knew,” the President said. Self-righteousness was turning to self-delusion. Of course he knew they played these games.

  “Verisimilitude,” Harkins said, pressing on. Nothing was going to stop him now. “How many times have you said in your public statements that we would go after these bastards if you could make a clean surgical strike against those responsible? Problem—it’s never clean. Remember Libya. In an odd way we lost more than we gave. With due respect, Mr. President, we rattle our swords and do little that is truly effective. They bash our people and we tweak their noses. They just don’t believe we will act with the same degree of ruthlessness. Well, here is the perfect ploy. Do unto them as they do unto us. Only more so.”

  “I wish you could give me guarantees that it could work,” the President said.

  “I’m sorry, Mr. President, I can’t.”

  “He is a good talker,” the President said, looking at the Padre, who nodded.

  “It is the only way to get Ahmed to release the woman and the boy,” Harkins said. “He will be pressed to do so by those who support groups like his, people whose children we will have as hostage. We need just enough to make the point. A favorite Saudi prince at Berkeley. The daughter of the President of Syria attending school in New England. The grandson of Khomeini, who teaches in Teheran. The teenage son of Colonel Qaddafi himself, who can be snatched in Tripoli by our people. We have watched him for months. A mere five.”

  “You really think you can pull this off?” the President asked.

  Harkins nodded. “Except in the States. The CIA has no mandate for that.”

  “You’re joking. I must have missed something in this scenario. Why suddenly the attention to the legal scruples?”

  “There is no need for us to violate domestic American laws.”

  “How decent of you,” the President said. Harkins’ use of the collective pronoun “us” struck him as ironic.

  “The Padre’s organization will do the work in the States,” Harkins said.

  The President felt himself holding down an inner panic. “Are you se
rious?” he asked.

  “We can’t be responsible for what the Mafia does, Mr. President.” Harkins shot the Padre a quick glance.

  “Got all the answers,” the President said.

  “Some,” Harkins said. He smiled.

  The President tried to summon up an attitude of great indignation. It was difficult and it frightened him.

  “Are you asking me to condone the use of kidnapping as a national policy? In effect to practically sanction the perpetration of a capital crime by the number one outlaw group in this country? The idea of hostage-taking is repugnant in itself. It is bad enough to be victimized by it. But to authorize it.” He shook his head. “Dammit. It’s a heinous crime.”

  “Yes it is, Mr. President,” Harkins said, perhaps too swiftly, as if he had been waiting in ambush for the idea to reappear. “It is on a par with murder.” He coughed into his hand. “We all know that war is state-authorized murder. In effect, what is happening out there can be characterized as a brutal no-holds-barred war. In that case kidnapping is a legitimate weapon.”

  “These are innocent people,” the President protested.

  “Yes they are,” Harkins retorted.

  The President twisted in his chair. It went against all moral justification. He looked at the Padre. The man stood up suddenly and came closer. An arm’s length away, the President thought as his hand reached casually into his pocket. He fingered the blade that lay there. One slash. He wondered what the others would do once the Padre was “disarmed.”

  Yet he resisted taking any action. He slipped his hand out of his pocket. He fleetingly wondered whether such inaction constituted approval of Harkins’ plan. It was a question he did not choose to answer.

  Looking up, he saw the Padre’s calm, serene face. There was not the slightest hint of hesitation. They simply occupied different moral space. And yet he allowed his mind to drift along an untrod path. Each step forward was painful. Ahead was blackness, deeper than mere darkness. And yet he could not deny, independent of his predicament, that the idea had some force to it. Vengeance, after all, had a compelling magnetism of its own.

  “And if I don’t agree?” the President asked.

  “It is do-able, Mr. President,” Harkins said. “I’m not saying that it will be perfectly executed. These things never are. But it will send the message once and for all.”

  Harkins had, of course, evaded the President’s question. Had it already been answered by the Padre? Did he really have a choice? Absolutely not, he assured himself. To live or to die. Those were apparently his only alternatives.

  But wouldn’t his consent legitimize the idea? And yet did he dare admit to himself that such a tactic had a grotesque attraction?

  Of course it was possible they just might achieve their goal without bloodshed. Presidents have taken chances in the past, lost lives, blundered. The world would know he was making such decisions under duress. And if it achieved its purpose? He counted his political capital. To collect, he’d have to be alive. That, of course, was the most seductive persuader of all.

  “And after these people are collected. What then?”

  “Someone will have to respond at their end,” Harkins said.

  “But how will they know we really mean business?” the President asked. “There is no way that I would order the killing of innocent people in cold blood.”

  There, he thought, he had found a moral imperative, a bit of indignant flotsam to hold on to against the rushing river of action.

  “But there could be bloodshed, Mr. President,” Harkins said coolly. “You can’t have any illusions about that.”

  He had gone under for a moment, then surfaced.

  “I said I can’t justify killing in cold blood.”

  “Of course not,” Harkins said, shooting a disturbing glance at the Padre, who shook his head in affirmation.

  The President tapped the table. “I don’t like it,” he said. Like Harkins’ pose of reluctance to act without orders, it was a voice for posterity’s evidence. On balance, in theory, even transcending the magnetic seductiveness of it, he did like the idea intellectually. It had verisimilitude.

  “It is necessary,” the Padre said, as if reading his mind. “Power is nothing without respect.”

  The Padre watched him rubbing his chin. The President felt the chill of his own nakedness. He both feared and loved the use of power to subvert the conventional means and plunge directly into the enemy’s heartland. The old bastard was right, and Harkins was right about the old bastard.

  His presence was an excuse for the unconventional treatment of this international illness. Let’s go get the sons of bitches. As for consequences, hell, he could always go back to the old hypocrisies. Politics was his business, for crying out loud.

  “All right,” the President said, his voice low. He was determined not to show them his exhilaration.

  “Now, Mr. President?” Harkins asked, his fingers on the computer keyboard.

  “Do it then,” the President said, his voice affirming his authority.

  He was, of course, covering only his end. What the Padre and his cohorts did was none of his business. Render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God—he looked at the Padre—what was God’s.

  They watched as Harkins’ fingers darted over the keyboard. His eyes became mesmerized by the screen. After a few minutes Harkins’ fingers rested. He looked at the screen again. Hit the keyboard keys, then paused.

  “Failsafe confirmations,” he whispered. “Trick is to avoid using the phone. This scrambles and only comes out whole through unscrambling.” Harkins paused again. Then he tapped out another message. “Turkey in the oven,” he said, looking up, offering them all a broad smile.

  “What hath God wrought,” the President said. Well hidden behind his mask of concern, he smiled. He looked toward the Padre. The Padre’s face was grim.

  26

  THIS SUMMIT WAS BEING HELD in an underground bunker. Ahmed enjoyed the irony. He also took pleasure in sitting at a round table as an equal. In this game personal symbols were important. Dress, facial hair, hat, sidearms, and, above all, the illusion of noncontrivance. Arafat was a master at it. His barber must be a genius to keep that seven-day growth immaculately authentic.

  He had dressed for the occasion. Tailored khakis, a powder-blue beret and matching silk cravat, a pair of wrap-around sun goggles, a Smith & Wesson 9-mm automatic pistol tucked into a spring shoulder holster, and a waist belt with pockets for four eight-shot magazines. He had trimmed his bushy mustache and cut off its side droops.

  There were eight of them around the table. Number twos mostly. It would be unseemly for the number ones to appear, responding to this summons by an upstart. At one time or another he had worked for all of them.

  His contacts were with those on the third and fourth levels, buying his expertise in managing these enterprises. Most of them, over the years, had become nameless, then faceless, finally merely ciphers. Also, he claimed ideological neutrality, a strong asset, considering the competing religious and national animosities. He was a professional among fanatics.

  “I am a gun,” he would tell them. “A gun has no ideology, only accuracy.”

  Iranians, Syrians, Libyans, Palestinians of three factions, and Shiites were represented, whoever had organizational strength, finances, the big boys in this business. Remarkably, it had taken less than twelve hours to get them all together.

  Of course they were uneasy, not knowing what to expect. Only yesterday he had been characterized as a blunderer, a misguided missile, although his boldness had given him a kind of cachet. Boldness was currency in this business.

  He had taken the woman and her child as an after-thought, a booby prize. As it turned out it was the hottest ticket in the hostage game. His once-faltering status had skyrocketed overnight.

  There had been the usual preliminaries and rituals of Arab politeness, an exchange of pleasantries that transcended the fierce and often bloody competition. But the rule, as he w
ell knew, was to bring the rhetoric but leave the weapons at the door.

  It took some time for the politeness to run its course. The fundamental question before the group was how best to use this sudden windfall of power. For Ahmed the question was how to use his prizes for his own purposes.

  Ahmed’s objective was to get them to coalesce, behind him, to follow his lead. Quite simply, and they all knew it, he had the President of the United States by the balls.

  “What are you suggesting then?” the Libyan asked. It seemed to Ahmed a consensus-type question.

  “We’ve got to demand more than we have been asking,” Ahmed said.

  “But they haven’t caved in to our original demand to release our brothers,” the Libyan said. He was a middle-aged man with a head of tight gray curls, thick moist lips, and hooded brown eyes. In this group he had spread Qaddafi’s money around in great buttery gobs, which, he felt, gave him the right to wear the mantle of spokesman.

  “That’s the point. We have to make the kind of demand that will force them all to take notice.”

  “So then,” the Libyan said. He did not look at the others for approval. “I agree that we might ask for something larger. But the ultimate humiliation for the U.S. would be to get them to negotiate with us. That would be a victory in itself.”

  “A victory, yes. But not a route.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  Ahmed had their attention. He must be cautious, he told himself.

  “Up to now we have been delivering gnat bites to the rump of the horse. Annoying, yes. But nothing has occurred to bring our cause one step closer to fruition.” He was deliberately vague here, since they all harbored variations of the cause.

  “What we need to do now is to deliver a hammer blow, to get the horse to go berserk, to scare the shit out of the whole world. Only then will they realize that we mean business.” He felt a sudden surge of the old fanaticism.