“I, uh, I don’t know Dad. I wasn’t thinking it was a decision I’d be making. I haven’t given it any thought.”
“You’ve certainly been giving some thought to why I haven’t used it so far.”
“Yes, I have.”
“And why do you think I haven’t?”
“I don’t know, Dad.”
“I got elected as you well know because my predecessor, President Norwalk, was a ruthless politician who would stop at nothing to ensure a Republican succeeded him.”
“I remember it well.”
“He pulled every dirty trick in the book—and some not in it—to get me elected when the Electoral College was tied and the election was thrown into the House of Representatives.”
“It was pretty scary, all right,” Jack remembered.
“I won by one vote in the House.”
“Matt Hawkins of Wyoming.”
“Correct. And I’ve been turning all this over in my mind, Jack, and I don’t think I want to win this election if the only way I can win it is by using dirty tricks.”
They’d both stopped walking and just stood there as the light faded into a chilly dusk. The wind got up.
“Let’s head back, Dad. I’m getting cold.”
“Me, too, son.”
“Well,” Jack said after a minute of silence. “I certainly admire you, Dad. To forfeit the Presidency when it’s yours for the taking—well, that takes a special kind of courage.”
“I’m not saying I’m necessarily doing the right thing,” said St. Clair, “but it’s the right thing for me.”
“Then I fully support you.”
“I’m thinking you might want to have a chat with our friend Agent Rodriguez. Since he’s the only other person who knows about this, I think it might be best for the country to have him reassigned to the Miami field office.”
“He could be chief of your post-Presidential security team.”
“Just my thoughts exactly. That way, he’s down there in Miami with us. You can stay close to him. Explain to him why I’m doing it this way. He’ll want to know. Make sure none of this business gets leaked from our end.”
“Right.”
“Ah, here we are,” said the President as they came up to Aspen Lodge, the outside lights shining on the porch. “I told the cook this morning we’d like a leg of lamb with all the fixin’s—just the way you like it.”
“Nobody cooked leg of lamb like Mom,” said Jack.
“No. You’re right about that.”
They nodded to several of the Marines in the circle in front of the lodge. And climbed the steps to the porch.
“Before we go in for dinner, Dad, I just want to say something.”
“Sure, son.”
“I love you.”
St. Clair bit his lower lip, and in the twilight, Jack thought he saw the trace of a tear well up in his Dad’s eyes.
* * *
CHAPTER 33
Reza Shahzad walked at a leisurely pace around the Audubon Bird Sanctuary just a couple of miles from Senator Dumaine’s home on Mill Hill Island in Loagy Bay south of Wellfleet.
He wasn’t alone as he appreciated the lush grounds and abundant vegetation in the park.
With him was Mahmoud Yazdi, MISIRI’s chief operative posted in America, assigned to monitor Dumaine’s activities.
“I have never been to Cape Cod,” said Shahzad. “Only Boston.”
“It’s very nice out here in the summer.”
“And the winter?”
Mahmoud wrinkled up his rather patrician nose into a self-satisfied smirk.
“As they say in America, ‘Colder than a witch’s titty.’”
“Very amusing, Mahmoud.”
“I didn’t think you would like it, Reza.”
The casual observer would never know these two men were among the most feared terrorists in the world. Feared, even though no one actually knew their names. Only their merciless and relentless acts of war against the West were known.
Reza Shahzad looked like an Olympic ski jumper from Iceland, with his white-blond hair and sparkling smile. Mahmoud Yazdi, with his sandy-colored hair and freckles on his nose, looked like a typical preppy lawyer who might work for a distinguished law firm on Wall Street, strolling here on his day off wearing khaki trousers, a light blue Polo pullover and Bass Weejuns.
“I forgot the name on your new passport already.”
“As long as I’m here, I am Sven Borsk, from Norway,” said Shahzad.
“Very good, Sven. I don’t want to call out to you across a room and yell, ‘Hey, Reza!’”
“Where is the event?” asked Shahzad.
“Just up around the bend.”
They came to a turn in the trail, and up ahead there was a large clearing where an outdoor amphitheater used for summer plays was situated. Already a large crowd had gathered to hear Dumaine speak. Shahzad and Yazdi had come quite a bit earlier to stroll the more deserted grounds closer to Silver Spring Harbor to the south, and now they were coming up at the rear of a crowd that had already settled in.
Dumaine was just mounting the stage.
This was his hometown, so of course the audience exploded the moment he appeared from the wings, jumping to their feet to welcome home their Favorite Son.
“Thank you, thank you, thank you,” Dumaine said by way of opening, hoping to tamp down the crowd’s enthusiasm so he could get on with his speech.
“I’m here today at our very special Audubon Bird Sanctuary because it played such as crucial part in my life as a kid growing up, harvesting oysters with my dad just a few hundred yards from where we’re standing…”
Shahzad’s practiced eye followed every movement of the Secret Service agents as they scanned the crowd for the least suspicious behavior.
“Another reason I chose the Sanctuary for my remarks today has to do with the current Administration’s policy toward our precious environment…”
As Dumaine finished a point, Shahzad and Yazdi were quick to applaud wildly so they would look like any other yuppie supporters of the dashing and charismatic Senator Dumaine.
Yazdi yelled, “Du-maine, Du-maine, Du-maine!” as the Senator took a breath between sentences. He leaned over to Shahzad. “I wish I could put a knife in the soft spot of his neck and cut off his fucking head.”
Shahzad smiled, nodded and clapped Yazdi on the back.
“Right on, man!” he said in a loud voice.
Shahzad kept his gaze on the Secret Service agents. Their eyes were in constant motion, jumping here, there, up front, to the rear, checking out the sides. To the far left of the stage one agent covered the crowd with a set of high-powered Bushnell Image View Roof Prism Binoculars. This was a special set of binoculars, though: it had a 2.1 MP digital camera attached to it. Occasionally, the agent would stop to take a picture of someone. Shahzad was pleasantly surprised when the agent scanned past them three or four times and never stopped long enough to take their photographs. Obviously, they fit in so well, the agent didn’t think they looked anything out of the ordinary.
“Thank Allah for the American habit of profiling,” laughed Shahzad.
“I know,” said Yazdi in a low voice. “They think we’re going to play tennis after Dumaine’s speech and then drink a Budweiser.”
They shared a chuckle over this. But they were absolutely right.
After the speech, Dumaine was scheduled to return to his large house at Hawk’s Landing perched on a promontory on Mill Hill Island, an island accessible from the mainland by a narrow wooden bridge.
Not wanting to attract the least bit of attention to themselves, Shahzad and Yazdi waited until Dumaine and his security people left, and then as an added precaution, waited until ninety percent of the crowd left before they moseyed back to the rented Ford Taurus in which Yazdi had picked up Shahzad at the airport.
Yazdi drove along the winding Lieutenant Island Road, which slowly took them to the other side of Loagy Bay. They stopped for plates of oyster
s at Harrigan’s Café on State Highway Route 6, a typical New England clam shack. Shahzad only used lemon and horseradish on his oysters, and grimaced when Yazdi smothered his with that awful red “cocktail sauce” offered by the restaurant.
After that, Yazdi drove Shahzad down to the end of the Old Wharf Road where there was a small boat rental shop with a dozen or so little fishing skiffs gently riding the tide at the low dock. Shahzad paid and Yazdi carried a duffle and some fishing gear to the boat.
Yazdi piloted the boat, since he knew where he was going, and soon they were heading around the far end of Mill Hill Island.
They pulled on a couple of rain parkas (blue for Shahzad and black for Yazdi)—as well as two baseball caps (Yankees for Yazdi, Red Sox for Shahzad)—as soon as they were out of sight of the boat landing.
If observed, they would look nothing like the two supporters cheering Dumaine at the Audubon Bird Sanctuary.
Yazdi piloted the small craft to the narrow channel over which the short bridge connected the mainland to Mill Hill Island.
“You see they have guard posts on each side of the bridge?”
“Yes.”
“If you try to go under the bridge in this boat, let’s say, they will call out to you on a bullhorn to back away.”
“Of course.”
“Hawk’s Landing is on the other side of the island.”
Mahmoud turned the small craft around and went around the long way to the far side of the island, the southern end where Hawk’s Landing was located.
“Everything went OK at the airport?” Yazdi asked.
“Yes,” said Shahzad. “We had a delay in New York, but knowing how successful we were by disrupting the America air service since 9/11, I quite enjoyed it.”
Yazdi laughed.
“It is funny to watch them at the security checkpoint, no?”
“Very funny,” said Shahzad.
“They spend tens of millions of dollars trying to prevent something we would never do again anyway. Stupid Americans. They only re-act to events,” said Yazdi.
“If we do not beat them in battle, we will bleed them to death with their own money. All the money they spend—for nothing. Nothing.”
“There,” said Yazdi with a jerk of his chin. “There is Hawk’s Landing.”
Shahzad turned toward Mill Hill Island and saw the Dumaine estate on a bluff, or promontory, overlooking Loagy Bay. From what Shahzad had been able to tell as they circumnavigated the island, Hawk’s Landing was its highest point. He whipped out his pair of Zeiss 20x60mm Image Stabilized binoculars, which cost ten times what the Secret Service binoculars cost, and had a look at the Dumaine home.
This Dumaine chap had come quite a long way from his days growing up the son of a common oysterman. Shahzad knew all this from the extensive dossier the VASAK Unit had compiled on the Senator. He’d come out of Harvard Law School (on a scholarship) and immediately became a rising trial lawyer practicing tort law, filing class-action suits that he won, one after the other, landing himself millions of dollars in fees. It was a short jump from the law to the Senate.
He’d already examined the extensive photo collection assembled by Yazdi, who had brought in another operative from New Jersey who could fly a plane. They’d flown over Mill Hill Island and taken plenty of photos so Shahzad's unit back in Tehran could use them for planning purposes if they ever decided to assault Dumaine at Hawk’s Landing.
The photos revealed not much more than they were able to get from images obtained through Google Maps and satellite images.
Through the powerful Zeiss binoculars, Shahzad could clearly see three patrol boats (one Massachusetts State Wildlife, one Wellfleet Police and one 25-foot Defender-class Coast Guard harbor boat with a big gun mounted on its bow. No one would be visiting Senator Dumaine unless he’d been issued a personal invitation.
“It’s very frustrating, Mahmoud.”
“What?”
“This whole—thing. This man. This Dumaine.”
“What do you mean?”
“We could have had him so easily if we’d been given the green light earlier.”
“The Supreme Leader does not know about field tactics, or even strategy.”
“I know. I know.”
“But if ever the Supreme Leader decides to eliminate Dumaine, this is not the place for it to happen. I have been following the man for a long time now.”
“I know you have.”
“And this Hawk’s Landing is very secure. The only way would be to go in there at night with a large force.”
“Yes, I agree. We will have to take him on the road. Somewhere he does not have a permanent security apparatus already organized.”
Shahzad turned his gaze away from Hawk’s Landing and smiled at Mahmoud Yazdi.
“Well, I’m happy I got to see the place, but there really is no reason to be here now. Let’s go back to Boston. I want to go to Locke-Ober for the lobster stew before I go back to Tehran.”
“You have to give the Americans credit, Sven,” Yazdi smiled.
“I have never underestimated their ability… to cook lobsters.”
* * *
CHAPTER 34
The election season droned on and on, week after week, the punishing schedules, eighteen-hour days and rigorous travel demands, challenging everybody’s final reserves of energy.
But, finally, it was over, and election night arrived.
The candidates retreated to their native towns, Mowbray to Philadelphia, and St. Clair to Miami Beach.
Gabrielle Mercade stood outside the stately Ritz-Carlton Hotel in downtown Philadelphia, a building even grander with its massive columns than the White House itself. There was a slight drizzle, with some sleet, in the cold November air. Her field producer gave her a cue and she went live.
Back in the NBC studio, Brian Williams spoke up.
“Even though it’s early, we’ve got initial reports from our correspondents in the field: we have Gabrielle Mercade at her post in Philadelphia,” he led in, “as well as Leon Pomfret in South Beach. Gabby, since you got the colder weather, you go first,” the anchor smiled into the camera.
Gabby’s broadcast smile lit up the screen.
“Both Governor Mowbray and Senator Dumaine arrived in Philadelphia on a surging wave of optimism. And though there was some friction during the campaign because Senator Dumaine seemed to be hogging the limelight, we in the press corps never got any indication that there was any serious problem between Mowbray and Dumaine.”
Brian jumped in.
“Let’s bring in Leon Pomfret, in Miami Beach at the Raleigh Hotel. What do you think about that, Leon?”
“Gabby’s absolutely right, Brian. It all looked like good-natured fun, really. You had Dumaine playing the role of the boyishly handsome upstart, and Mowbray looking on like a wise sage as the youngster showed off.”
“You never got any sense that Mowbray felt threatened by the charismatic Dumaine?” said Brian.
“Not at all. The campaign ended on a very strong note,” said Gabby, “with a singular sense of party unity. In short, everybody involved in this campaign dragged themselves, exhausted, into Philadelphia thinking they were the ones to beat.”
Brian Williams looked at some papers in front of him, and referred to a computer screen.
“And the early returns would seem to justify that confidence, Leon,” he said.
Leon nodded, standing under a gently swaying palm tree out by the pool at the Raleigh.
“And those early returns are vindicating a renewed Democratic Party that seems to have struck a chord with the American people,” said Leon.
“There’s no question about that, Leon. Early exit polls suggest, while not a landslide victory for Mowbray and Dumaine, a showing that is leaving many an analyst, including our own Leon Pomfret, a little surprised. Right, Leon?”
Leon snickered and smiled, looking into the camera.
“All right, Brian. It’s my ‘gotcha’ moment! But it’s
true. A lot of political observers, including myself, thought the whole issue of Russia and its former satellite countries selling nuclear supplies to rogue nations would not be an issue that would resonate with the American people. But we were wrong. This is an issue that President St. Clair sought to exploit, but in reverse, trying to paint Dumaine especially as a loose cannon.”
“That’s right, Leon,” said Gabby from Philadelphia. “The voters thought that St. Clair was soft on the issue, while Dumaine was strong.”
“It’s all a lot of rhetoric, either way,” said Leon.
“Well, the people—voters, anyway—love rhetoric,” said Brian. “Maybe most Americans aren’t as cynical as we are.”
“Just vote for me and I’ll make you a pretty speech,” said Gabby.
“Sometimes, that’s all it takes,” said Brian.
“Well, Senator Dumaine certainly won the rhetoric sweepstakes in this election,” said Leon.
“That’s not all he won,” Brian said before changing the subject. “Why did the President’s campaign choose the Raleigh for their election night headquarters? I’ve been there and it’s quite small.”
“I think the President’s son, Jack Houston St. Clair, had something to do with it. Apparently, it’s his favorite hotel on South Beach, and as you know, Jack’s been involved in the campaign quite a bit.”
The Running Mate (A Jack Houston St. Clair Thriller) Page 13
