Line of Succession (12 page)

“Your chances of being arrested on the crowded streets are too negligible to worry about. You'll blend. But in the bank you'll have to give them a plausible reason for borrowing against the securities.”

“Sure. Peggy and I are getting married, we want to buy a yacht for our honeymoon.”

“No. That's frivolous.”

Mario scowled; Sturka touched his arm with a fingertip. “It's a real estate deal. Very big. Be sly with the banker, take him into your confidence. You need the cash for an under-the-table bribe to persuade the land conglomerate to accept your bid. It's a short-term project and you'll be repaying the loan within three months.”

Alvin stared at Sturka. The man had a command of the most unlikely things.

Mario nodded. “That'll work.”

Cesar said mildly, “We'll have to clean
her
up.”

“Jesus,” Peggy muttered.

Sturka's finger stabbed toward her. “Your father is a college professor—you know how to comport yourself.”

“My father's a phony liberal drunk. A fucking hypocrite.”

“You're Mario's secretary. A very wealthy man's secretary—you'll behave as you would in polite society.”

“Pig society.”

“Peggy.” Sturka's voice was very quiet, very mild, but it shut her up. “While Mario is in the barbershop you'll buy a demure dress and have your hair done.”

When she made no rebuttal Sturka went back to Mario. “Impress on the banker that this is confidential. No one is to know about it, it might cause your deal to go sour.”

“Sure. So no stocks change hands, no sale has to be registered with the SEC or the Exchange.”

“And your family doesn't learn about it.”

“Yeah.”

Sturka went to Peggy. “When you've finished in the city take the Path Tube to Newark and go by taxi to the Washington Hotel. Time it to arrive between six-thirty and seven. Wait at the front entrance.”

“Inside or outside?”

“Outside, we'll be watching. If I'm satisfied you haven't been followed we'll pick you up.”

“What if we can't make contact there?”

“Use the usual method of leaving a message for me and we'll arrange something.” Sturka employed a telephone answering service in the name of Charles Wernick; when you left a message for him you reversed the digits of the number: if you were calling from telephone 691-6243 you left word to call 342-6196.

Alvin yawned. Cesar said, “Wake up, okay?”

“I've been two days without sleep.”

“You'll have a week to sleep on the boat.” Cesar took the pillbox from his pocket. “Take one of these.”

“Uppers?”

“Bennies. Just take one.”

“I guess not.” Alvin had come down off heroin in the Army and hadn't touched any kind of drugs since, medicinal or otherwise; he was terrified of them, he didn't want to get back into the spiral.

Sturka was shepherding Mario and Peggy to the door. Alvin heard the car doors, heard the car start up and drive out of the motel.

Cesar was dragging out items from the theatrical makeup kit they had bought in New York a week ago. They made one another up: styrofoam pads inside the cheeks to change the shape of cheek and jaw; skullcaps and hairpieces to change hairlines; dye to hue eyebrows and hair.

A set of cheekpads and a cropped gray smudge of a moustache and a salt-and-pepper gray hairpiece in tight kink-curls added twenty years to Alvin. Cesar said, “Remember walk a little stooped over.”

A skullcap receded Cesar's hairline and an application of makeup and eyeglasses changed him from swarthy brigand to middle-aged businessman. Sturka became an ascetic type in a wavy brown wig and neatly trimmed goatee.

“Let's go then.”

Outside the air was heavy with a stink of heavy morning traffic grinding up Route 22 toward Newark Airport and the city. The parking court of the motel was busy with slamming car doors, people hustling luggage into car trunks, kids hollering, salesmen driving out into the heavy traffic. The sky was a murky brown—what passed for a clear day in the smog of northeast New Jersey.

WEDNESDAY,

JANUARY 5

2:15
P.M. EST
Lime left Satterthwaite's White House office in a dour mood and ambushed a taxi. “Police headquarters.”

Lunch in the office of the President's sardonic chief security advisor had been dreary with takeout food and Satterthwaite's sonorous essay on political needs and realities. Lime spent the ride leaning his head far back against the cushion, eyes closed, unlit cigarette askew in his lips, thinking drowsy erotic thoughts about Bev Reuland.

“Hey man. We here.”

He paid the cabbie and got out. Sunny today and not so damned cold. He threw his head back and searched for contrails, reflecting on his fantasies. Bev always managed to prove her point without waving banners: she was thirty-four, divorced, feminine, adminstrative assistant to Speaker of the House Milton Luke. He looked at his watch. Right now she would be dictating replies to Luke's constituents. Dear Mr. Smith, Thank you for your letter of January second. Regarding your request.… Efficient by day; languorous by night; she had compartmentalized herself crisply and Lime envied her.

The reporters knew him now. They laid siege in the corridor; its musty soot seemed to have settled in their clothes. Lime pushed at the air with his palms and when they subsided from baying to muttering he told them, “No comment—and you may quote me,” and went past them through the cop-guarded doorway to the stairs.

Upstairs an FBI man had the interrogation; the subject was Sandra Walberg. The young lawyer from Harding's office sat in a corner, very bored. The kid looked like all Harding's disciples—shaggy, discontented, righteous. Harding had achieved his notoriety by inciting his clients to riot in court.

Lime crossed over and sat at the FBI man's right so that he wouldn't get the glare from the window when he looked at the girl. As he pulled the chair out and sat down the FBI man acknowledged him with a nod; the defense lawyer ignored him; Sandra glanced at him once. She was a small-boned girl with pinched features, full of sullen defiance.

The FBI man was young and vinegary, up to date in his field. His questions were compelling and logical. He spoke in a cautious tone, reserving malevolence. Of course none of it did any good: Sandra wasn't talking. None of them was talking. There had been a few remarks from the prisoners—particularly from Bob Walberg who was more nervous than the others. “A few alterations in the Capitol.” And a grin and a clenched fist raised: “Right on!” But the young lawyer always cut in quickly, shutting them up: “Everything's cool, baby. Keep it.”

Harding's clients were going to be executed and the state could not seriously pretend to offer clemency because Harding had to know such an offer would be in bad faith.

Harding was handling the case in the full knowledge that there was no way on earth for him to avoid losing his clients' lives to the executioner. The only advantage gained by anybody would be gained by Harding himself: by defending the bombers he would cement his position as mouthpiece for the radical left. Afterward he would be able to go to his people and say to them that he—the best of his kind—had tried, and had been beaten by the corrupt and unfeeling system: therefore choose violence, which I have advocated all along, because I have just proved to you that nothing else works. Lime despised the Hardings; they would fight to the very last drop of their followers' blood.

You had to go through this charade. It was all sham and nonsense; everybody, Harding included, knew it. But you brought the prisoners up separately and interrogated them politely all day long, always with a lawyer present, always with reminders that the prisoner didn't have to say a word.

In the evening you returned the prisoners to their solitary cells and the lawyers went home. Then after dinner you rousted the prisoners out again and took them secretly into interrogation cells and you worked them over
sans
lawyers and
sans
recitations of rights. You did this because the case demanded it: until you traced this thing to its roots you had no way of knowing how substantial the overall danger was. You had to find Sturka and you had to find out where Sturka would lead you in turn, and one way to find Sturka perhaps was to pry it out of these prisoners.

The normal pressures had been applied, and had proved minimally effective, so drugs had been introduced. Thus far the results had been poor but tonight might prove more satisfactory. In the meantime the prisoners each morning complained to their lawyers of the nightly roustings and the interrogators replied gravely that the prisoners were either dreaming or lying maliciously, The Establishment could produce a plethora of reliable witnesses to testify that the prisoners had lain undisturbed in their cells all night long; the Establishment could also produce doctors to testify that the prisoners had not been drugged. These radicals, Lime thought, had imagined a fascist police state and had created it.

In court it would be the Justice Department's job to goad the prisoners into confessing their guilt aloud. The issues were inflammatory and volatile and only public confession by the bombers would assuage public unease. Such a confession would be obtained.

It wasn't Lime's department to obtain it and he was thankful for that, but he recognized the Government's needs and knew that somehow the Government would find a lever to use against one or another of the prisoners.

He listened for ten minutes to the FBI agent's questions. Sandra Walberg said very little and none of it was in direct response to the questions. The kid lawyer in the corner yawned without bothering to cover his lips. Lime exchanged jaded glances with the FBI man and twisted past the table and went out.

In the lobby of the Executive Office Building he found his boss DeFord and Attorney General Ackert talking to reporters. Ackert was talking without saying much, with a politician's practice. He did it very well; his delivery was as impersonal as a print-out from a computer and he sounded like a cop testifying in court. It made him appear professional and competent; in fact he was both those things, but the act he was putting on at the moment was a conscious and deliberate role, therefore false. DeFord on the other hand was a fool but in public he had a way of giving the impression of informed crispness: he cloaked his incompetence in a fabric of secretiveness:
I know the answers of course but security prevents me from divulging them at this time.
He didn't exactly say it in so many words.

There was more questioning and Attorney General Ackert was saying tonelessly, “Naturally. They've been informed, in the presence of their attorneys, that they have every right to remain silent, that anything they say can and will be used against them, and that they have the right to counsel at all times during questioning.”

Lime and DeFord broke away from the journalists and walked toward DeFord's sanctum.

DeFord, twisting the doorknob, said, “I'd like to see them hang that lawyer while they're at it.”

They went inside and the woman at the desk gave them her equitably chilly smile. Lime followed on into DeFord's office.

DeFord sat down and tugged at the slack in his amply fleshed throat. “I, ah, had a telephone call from a gentleman named Walberg a few hours ago. The twins' father. He's just flown into Washington. I gather he's tried to see his children and nobody wants to talk to him.”

Lime nodded. “He can't comprehend that his children could possibly have had anything to do with it. There must be some mistake—a misunderstanding or a frame-up. Or maybe under the influence of bad companions. But it can't be
their
fault.”

“You already talked to him, then.”

“No.”

“Eh. Well. I'm sure that's the way I'd feel if I were in his place.”

“I'm sure it is.” Lime was thinking of Sandra Walberg. A determined up-yours resenter, that girl; how anyone could go on believing in her innocence——

“David, I'm sorry but I told the man you'd explain things to him.”

“You did.”

“He's, eh, waiting down in your office. I thought I ought to tell you.…” DeFord trailed off, turning an apologetic hand over, palm up.

“You damn fool.” Lime's anger intensified the meaning of the drab words.

He walked out of the office and instead of slamming the door he pulled it shut with a quiet reproachful click.

Walberg had the lugubrious face of a professional mourner. His cheeks and hands were covered with freckles; his thin ginger hair was carefully combed across the baldness of his scalp. He appeared more doleful than indignant. Soft as a Number One pencil, Lime thought.

“Mr. Lime, I'm Chaim Walberg, I'm the fa——”

“I know who you are, Mr. Walberg.”

“It's kind of you to see me.”

“It wasn't my choice.” Lime went around his desk, spun the chair, sat. “Specifically what do you want to ask me to do?”

Walberg inhaled deeply. If he'd had a hat he'd have been rotating it in his hands. “They won't let me see my children.”

“I'm afraid they're the Government's children right now, Mr. Walberg. It's a security matter.”

“Yes yes, I understand that. They don't want people leaking messages to or from the prisoners. They told me that. As if they think I'm in league with anarchists and assassins. In the name of God, Mr. Lime—I swear.…”

Walberg stopped to compose himself. Now he summoned dignity. “There has been an error, Mr. Lime. My children are not——”

“Mr. Walberg, I haven't the time to be your wailing wall.”

It stung Walberg. “I was told you are a cold man but people think you a fair one. Evidently that was not correct.”

Lime shook his head. “I'm only a faceless assistant to an assistant, Mr. Walberg. They shunted you onto me to get you out of their hair. There's nothing I can do for you. My job consists mainly of making out reports on the reports other people have made out. I'm not a cop, I'm not a prosecutor, I'm not a judge.”