by Alan Hruska
“By radio,” Norris says. “On the ship. If we get there. And if he’ll take the call.”
“By the way,” Alec asks with sudden awareness. “You two know each other?”
Harvey smiles from the jump seat. “I’ve done a few things for Lee. Nothing, however, near the scale of commandeering the Sixth Fleet.”
Lou DiBrazzi is awakened by one of the two island men he’s traveling with. With their straggly hair and beards, they both look like they were brought up in caves. For DiBrazzi, it’s like waking into a nightmare rather than coming out of one. The older of the two, Arturo, the henchman who jostled him out of sleep, says, “It’s a long flight, Lou.”
“Getting longer,” says Di Brazzi sardonically.
“Franco and I thought we’d break it up. The traveling time. Have a little fun.” He nods in the direction of the body bags, in which the young women, silent for some time, are presumably sleeping.
The plane is the smaller of Sal Angiapello’s two jets, but still has four seats and an area of several feet behind where the body bags lie quietly. DiBrazzi says, “Fun? What do you mean, fun?”
“Take them out of the bags, you know.” Arturo shrugs.
“No,” DiBrazzi says, and shuts his eyes again.
“No, you don’t know, or no, you don’t want it to happen?”
Eyes open at this, DiBrazzi glares at him.
“Shit, Lou, what’s the big deal? The younger one, we haven’t even taken her clothes off yet. We could watch her squirm. It’d be fun.”
“I said no, dammit!” DiBrazzi sits up in his single seat and gives the bearded man a threatening look across the aisle.
“You think Don Salvatore will mind?” Arturo persists. “He won’t care. He’s gonna put them in trade anyhow. We won’t leave any marks. We’ll just let them out of the bags, make them crawl around for a while, do things.”
DiBrazzi snaps off his seat belt and stands over both of them. “I’m gonna say this once. These women are mine to be trained. On orders from Don Salvatore. You do anything to them I haven’t directed, you’ll be dead when you step off this plane.”
Alec stands outside a hangar at Naval Air Station PAX River. Viewed from the helicopter, the peninsula on which the station is built laps into the Chesapeake Bay like a giant tongue dotted with lights. Now Alec sees the flat surface of the runway and the peninsula beyond as a cruel joke of frustrated opportunity.
They had landed more than an hour ago and been given a tiny room—more like a compartment jerry-rigged on an inside wall of the hangar. Its furnishings consist of three steel chairs and a steel desk with a phone on it. Norris has tried to reach Len Garment twice. Each time Garment’s secretary has said, “I’m sorry, he’s still in with the president.”
When Norris relayed this, Alec said, “Then they must be talking about something else. This is not that complicated.”
“Redirecting a mission of the Sixth Fleet?” Norris said with a grim laugh. “A bit more complicated than you might think.”
Alec’s mind is filled with images he cannot erase. He knows Sal Angiapello transacts a business in flesh. And it’s not difficult to imagine how Sal’s human commodities must be broken to allow that business to flourish. Every minute in which Sarah and Jesse are in bondage to this man is torture to Alec. There are Navy jets lined up all over this tarmac. If he could get one off the ground, he’d already be on his way to the Ionian Sea.
So what may well have been the finest hours of Alec’s legal career have turned themselves into the worst hours of his life. And the sickening images are warping his judgment. Lee Norris has enjoyed one of the most distinguished careers in American history. He’s now putting it on the line. For me, Alec thinks, and those I love, whom he doesn’t even know. I can at least keep my head clear and lend some assistance.
Lack of sleep had caught up with him in the helicopter, and it’s now adding to his malaise. He rubs his face and goes back to the room inside the hangar, where Harvey and Lee are tilted back in chairs with their eyes half closed.
“No word yet, I assume,” Alec says.
“Can’t be much longer,” Norris says.
Alec stretches out on the industrial-grade carpet and is asleep in five minutes. Five minutes later the phone rings.
Norris snatches it. “Len?” Then listens for thirty seconds before saying, “Can you hold for a moment?” He turns to Alec. “Regrets, but the answer is no.”
“Let me talk to him.”
Norris hands Alec the phone.
“Len, this is Alec.”
“Alec,” Garment says. “I’m so sorry. Believe me, I tried. Bill Rogers called while I was in with the president, and he tried. As I just told Lee, the president wants to leave this with the Italian authorities. Rogers will try that, although we both told the president the situation is diplomatically tricky. That island is literally a sovereign state. If anyone has a right to go in there, it’s us, not Italy, since Angiapello has kidnapped American citizens.”
Nixon’s decision is a death knell, and Alec tries to hold his rage. “I’d like you to tell him something else,” Alec says. “You remember his Supreme Court argument in our Telemarch case?”
“Of course. I wrote it for him.”
“Well, he probably never knew my name, but tell him—or get word to him somehow—that I’m the guy he had that conversation with after the argument on the courthouse steps.”
“He’ll know what that means?”
“I think so.” Alec reconsiders. “Well, I hope so.”
“Okay. It’s probably going to have to be a note, at this stage.”
“As long as you can get it to him right now,” Alec says.
“Yeah, I can do that. Let me get off.” And Garment hangs up.
Alec finds both men waiting for an explanation. He says, “It’s a stupid story, but who the hell knows.” He fills a cup from the NAS-issued jug of coffee left for them in this room. “When Nixon lost in California, he came to New York as a partner in Len Garment’s firm. My firm had just gotten the Supreme Court to take on what turned out to be a landmark right-of-privacy case. Garment had won the case at trial and in the New York appellate courts, but he thought an argument in the Supreme Court would be a good showcase for Nixon. It wasn’t. And I think that stunned our present leader. After the argument, the place was a madhouse of reporters wanting quotes. Nixon was obviously pissed off and wasn’t handling it well. Somehow, on the steps, the press mob separated Nixon from his group, but pushed him up against me, and I ushered him downstairs. I said, ‘I work for the man you just argued against, but I respect what you did. That court does not agree with your position—it’s not fashionable or popular right now—but you stood up to them as bravely as any lawyer could.’
“He said to me—and you’ve got to realize, we had a gang of reporters screaming behind us—we were like this little island of calm—he said, ‘How old are you?’ Which kind of surprised me. But I said, ‘Twenty-eight.’ And he said, ‘Well, you’re a whippersnapper, but I appreciate what you’ve said.’ And then he turned back to the hungry horde and dealt with them pretty calmly.”
“Whippersnapper?” Harvey says.
“Yeah, that’s the way he talks.”
“And you think remembering that will now turn him around?”
“Don’t know, Harvey. But it may put a face on the victim. One of them, anyway. The guy whose life he’s turning to shit.”
They drink coffee for another half hour. Alec finally says, to break the silence, “There’s this so-called leader in Washington—a man of limited stability and dubious character—who may or may not deign to glance at a note. Or change his mind, even if he does. Or do anything whatever to save two young women from a miserable death. And we have no choice but to sit here and wait for this son of a bitch to react.” Lee Norris looks down, and Harvey Grand shuts his eyes. There’s nothing they can say to improve the situation.
In another ten minutes, the phone rings again. Norris says t
o Alec, “You take it.”
Alec picks up. “Len?”
Garment says, “I don’t know what worked, Alec, or whether he even saw the note. But you have your destroyer.”
They bump down on the carrier soon after dawn, slammed back and forth, as they were warned, by the clutch of the cable. The miracle is that a swaying plane can touch down at all on a moving flight deck in the middle of the sea. Alec got a little sleep on the flight to give him the energy to climb out of the plane on his own. Harvey pops out and onto the deck, as if warming up for an Olympic triathlon. A large man, not young, he still moves like an athlete. Norris needs two midshipmen to hoist him down. Alec asks one of them, “Pilot said we were over Malta. Where is it?”
“Turn around,” says the young man.
And there’s the island, a purple hilly haze, already in the distance, off the stern of the ship.
Vice Admiral Gerald Starnes meets with them on the flag bridge. He’s a human blade, probably six feet, five inches tall, high narrow forehead, swooping nose, thick straight, grayish hair, and thin lips pressed with the seriousness of the business. “You guys probably need some sleep. You have a choice—I suggest you crash on the destroyer. Sooner you get there, the better. Given the distance to your destination, you should have until midafternoon.”
Norris says, “We’re damn grateful for this, Gerry.”
“Look, I hope it works. Those are savage people. A true fact? With Nam winding down, and even before, I’ve had my eye on that island. It’s one of the area’s major munitions suppliers. I don’t know what’s been protecting them, but I was damn glad to get that order from the White House last night.”
“I think,” Norris says, “we’d just as soon go right to the destroyer.”
“Copter’s the fastest way.”
Norris looks at Alec and Harvey, who both nod.
“Look,” the vice admiral says directly to Alec. “I have a daughter too. I know what you’re going through. But I’m putting you in excellent hands. If anyone can pull this off, it’s Ned Townsend, the commander of that vessel. He’s the most resourceful officer in this fleet.”
After conveying more thanks, the three lawyers are escorted down the staircases to the flight deck. Alec takes with him an impression of the vice admiral’s craggy face, which reads—despite the man’s words—deep pessimism about the outcome of this mission.
THIRTY-SIX
Jesse showers in a stall surfaced in Portuguese tiles, which, under the circumstances, appear incongruously florid. It is not only grime she washes from her body. It’s also the leer of the men who had hauled her upstairs. They had taken her from the plane in that bag and tossed it, with her in it, onto a bed. From inside, she watched it being unzipped, suffered their eyes exploring her body, their filthy laughs, and then heard the door to the room being locked. She waited before peeking out. They were gone. She blinked at the sunlight. She did not expect to emerge from this kidnapping without some violent assault, but those men presumably were under orders, for now, not to touch her. Another bag with Sarah in it was open on the same bed. Apparently drugged again, she was asleep. They had not taken her clothes off. Dispensation for a blood relative? Yet seeing Sarah lying there, a kid in a school uniform, made this episode even more intolerable.
Jesse steps out of the shower, carries a towel with her into the bedroom, glances at the view from the front window. The house is on a knob of a hill that slants down to the water. She sees manicured lawns, palm trees, and a wide beach on a cove partially protected by small jetties that jut into the sea. The bedroom’s one closet racks an array of women’s clothes, none new, but all designer quality and clean. A dresser literally bulges with lingerie. She covers herself quickly with what first comes to hand. A plate of cut fruit sits on a side table with a bottle of water. She devours two slices of pineapple and takes a long drink, too hungry and thirsty to worry about being drugged again. Then she thinks about trying to wake Sarah.
Instead she sits on the small bed in the room, feeling anger overcoming her terror. For the first time in her life, she wishes she had a loaded gun in her hands. Whoever stripped her and put her in that bag, whoever carted her to that plane and this island, deserves to be shot.
Sarah stirs, begins to murmur something, then lets out a cry. Jesse rushes to quiet her. With a hand over Sarah’s mouth, she says, “Easy, easy. We’re alone, we have to talk.” She helps Sarah from the bag, helps her to stand. “There’s food, a shower, we seem to have some time.”
Sarah nods. “Where are we?”
“My guess, Sal’s house, on his island. They dumped us in this room and haven’t been back since. It’s been not quite an hour. Take some food and water. The fruit is actually quite good. We should try to develop some sort of plan.”
“Alec will come for us,” Sarah says.
“That’s the plan?”
“He will. I know him. He’ll come here with men. He’ll come after that bastard, that despicable Angiapello. He’ll probably kill him.”
“Sarah,” Jesse says, “even if he can figure out where we are, and round up a small army, how the hell could he even land on this island without…?” She waves her hands in frustration. “How could he land safely? We have to think what we can do for ourselves.”
The door opens. An older man with an impressively jutting nose and well-cut blue blazer stands in the doorway. “Don Salvatore wishes you downstairs.”
“We need a moment,” Jesse says.
“Oh, yes.” The man smiles. “You think Don Salvatore’s wishes are small things that can be delayed?” He advances into the room.
“We’re coming,” Jesse says.
“Yes. Much better for you. Follow me.”
After some sleep, which wasn’t totally restful, Alec and his compatriots sit around a table with naval officers in what is probably a mess room, but they aren’t eating. Commander Addison (Ned) Townsend chairs the meeting. A former halfback for a Naval Academy team in the days it had national ranking, Townsend had served with distinction in World War ll and now nears retirement. His white hair, though thick, might imply readiness for the golden years. His smooth, sharp features, jutting chin, and manner suggest a man who would always be more at home captaining a destroyer. He says, “Hostages… always a nasty situation. But this one….” He shakes his head like a doctor with a diagnosis he’d rather not give. “There’s no great way to sneak onto this island. A destroyer coming toward them is hardly inconspicuous. We’re looking at a small, mainly flat oval, rocky at the shores, loaded with security cameras scanning the coast, and studded with machine guns. Even if our men could get there underwater, they’d be vulnerable to a barrage of gunfire before they reached the house, or wherever the women are being held. Parachuting men in from the carrier would likely get most of them killed and the women along with them. One approach that might work is destroying one of Angiapello’s warehouses with our guns, and trading the other for the women.”
Norris asks, “Have we gotten Angiapello on the phone yet?”
“No luck,” says Townsend.
A midshipman arrives to serve them all coffee. It gives them a minute more to think. Townsend then continues, “As I said, every option here is risky. What I’d recommend is, we go in blazing. Turn all our guns on everything. Bring planes in from the carrier to bomb and strafe. Throw everyone into confusion, eliminate as many of them as we can. And start invading the island as we shell it. Most likely, Angiapello’s got one place he regards as safe, and he’ll go for it, taking the women with him. He has every incentive to keep them alive. They’re his bargaining chip.”
“And what would you see as the outcome?” Norris asks.
“Angiapello squirreled up. With guns on the women. Surrounded by fifty, sixty of us. Most of his army killed in the battle. His munitions destroyed. At that stage, if we get there, the risk is way down.”
“If we get there,” Harvey says.
“You don’t like it?” Norris says.
“W
hat’s not to like?” Harvey says wryly. “We have no idea where Sarah and Jesse are being held. We start shelling the island, there’s a not-insignificant chance that one of those blasts will find them. Especially if we blow up two warehouses full of munitions. And once our men land and the shooting starts, there’ll be lots of stray bullets to catch anyone. What’s more, your best-case scenario—Sal with a couple of gunmen surrounded by fifty of us—what I see is Sal, with at least ten of his own, armed to the teeth, willing to shoot it out. With the women out in front of them as human shields. Or even, telling you before you start bombing, that he’s tying the women up someplace as a target.”
“As I said—”
“Right, Ned, risky” says Norris.
And everyone looks at Alec. He takes a swig of coffee and says, “I think the chances are better if I go in alone.”
Which stuns them into silence.
Townsend says, “Forgive my saying so, son, but that’s nuts. It achieves nothing but your certain death. They’ll either shoot you on the beach or bring you back to be tortured. These are very primitive people.”
“Maybe,” Alec says. “Eventually. But there are facts you don’t know, Commander. Jesse Madigan is there because of me. My daughter is there because of her inheritance, which I control. Sal’s not likely to kill me until we’ve had a chance to talk. Which is to say, a chance to negotiate.”
Townsend studies him for a moment. “What was your sport?”
“My what?”
“In college, what sport did you play? You look like you might have been an athlete.”
“I was on the track-and-field team.”
“Event?”
“High jump,” Alec says, wondering where this was going.
“I was hoping you’d say the hundred-yard dash. Because when you’re on that beach and feel the gunfire wing by and spit up at you, you’re gonna wanna run as fast as you can back to the boat you came in.”
“I don’t think I’d do that,” Alec says.
