Line of Succession (24 page)

Kaiser rang off. “Why Fairlie?”

Lime glanced at him.

“I mean, I know he was handy and all. But the son of a bitch is a flaming liberal. You'd think they'd pick on somebody pure American. Somebody they really hate.”

“They never do. The best scapegoat's the innocent one.”

“Why?”

“I don't know. The Aztecs used to choose virgins for their human sacrifices.”

“Sometimes you don't make a hundred per cent sense, you know that?”

“It's all right,” Lime said. “Distribution limited on a need-to-know basis.”

“What?
”

“Nothing.”

“You need a checkup, I swear to God.”

Lime closed his eyes and nodded agreement. When he opened them they were aimed at the clock and as if by extrasensory signal Satterthwaite appeared.

Satterthwaite whirled into the room, topcoat flying, more cluttered and disordered than ever; stopped, swept the room with his magnified myopic stare, spoke while shouldering out of his coat: “Anybody got anything important to tell me? If it's not vital save it for later. Anybody?”

No response: like a classroom full of children too shy to volunteer the spelling of a test word. Satterthwaite scrutinized them all, very fast, stance shifting as he went from face to face. When he got to Lime he flung out his arm, leveled his index finger, overturned his hand and beckoned imperiously. “Let's go.”

Without waiting acknowledgment Satterthwaite wheeled. Lime got to his feet, pushing the chair back with his knees, feeling curious eyes on him. Kaiser muttered, “Watch out for the son of a bitch's teeth.”

Lime found Satterthwaite in the corridor unlocking one of the No Admittance offices. They passed inside. It was a small private conference room, windowless and bare, air fluttering from ventilator ducts. Heavy wooden armchairs for eight, a walnut conference table, a stenographer's desk in the corner. Lime closed the door behind him and located an ashtray and headed for it.

Satterthwaite said, “I understand you have a theory.” Icily polite.

“Well theories are a dime a dozen, aren't they.”

“Tell me about it.”

“I didn't think we had time to waste trotting out every wild speculation that comes along.”

“David when I ask you to give me details I think we can assume we're not wasting anyone's time.”

Lime scowled furiously at him. “By what curious process did you arrive at the conclusion I had anything useful to contribute?”

“It's not a conclusion, it's a surmise, and it's not mine. It's Ackert's. He saw you staring at the map as if you'd discovered a message in secret ink. Come on David, I haven't time to drag it out of you word by word.”

“If I had anything hard do you think I'd keep it to myself? What do you think I am?”

“I'm sure you don't really want an answer to that question. It's throwing raw meat on the floor.”

“Look, I admit I had an idea. I played around with it but it shot itself full of holes. It turned out to have far too many ifs in it. It's not a theory any more, it's a pipe dream—acting on it would distract us from what we ought to be doing. We need more to go on.”

Satterthwaite tucked his chin in toward his Adam's apple, showing his displeasure and his determination to carry on. “I think I know the direction your theory's taken. Are you afraid to risk getting thrown into the arena personally? David, we're talking about one of the most despicable crimes of the century. They've taken an innocent hostage—a man who's vitally important to the whole world. It's the kind of buck you just can't pass.”

Lime grunted.

“David, we're talking about needs. Realities.”

Lime looked down at his shoes as if he were at a high window looking down through smoke at a fireman's rescue net. “I guess we are,” he said. “I do tend to hate an amateur who tries to tell a professional how to do his job.”

“Get off it. Do you think I'm a patronage hack? I'm a dollar-a-year man, David, I'm not in this for glory. I do my job better than anyone else who's available.”

“Modesty,” Lime breathed, “is an overrated virtue.”

Satterthwaite gave him a cold look. “You were born with an innate grasp of the subtleties of the hunt which most men will never learn from years of training. When it comes to operating in the western Mediterranean you're the only expert alive Worthy of the name.” And now Satterthwaite sank the knife, twisting it: “And when it comes to the Western Desert who else can you possibly pass the buck to, David?”

“I haven't been out there since Ben Bella.”

“But I've hit it, haven't I.”

“So?”

“You want Sturka for this one too, don't you. Why? Intuition?”

“I just don't believe in coincidences,” Lime said. “Two well-organized capers, both on this scale, both with the same target.… But there are no facts. It was just an idea. You can't put it in the bank.”

Satterthwaite jabbed his finger toward the chair. “Come back here and sit down. Are you ready to start working?”

“It's not my department.”

“Whose job do you want? Hoyt's? He's due for the chop anyway.”

“You can't fire civil servants.”

“You can find shelves to put them on where they can't do any damage. Ackert's job? Would you settle for that? Name your price.”

“There's no price for a fool's errand.” He hadn't stirred toward the chair. A cigarette hung from the corner of his mouth, the smoke stinging his right eye.

“Come on, let's finish thrashing this out. You know I've got you over a barrel.”

“I've got no facts to go on. Can't you understand that?
No facts!
” He took a step forward, filled with anger. “I've got no price—I'm not auditioning for your approval or anybody else's. I'm not lacking in conscience—if I knew I was better equipped to handle the field assignment than anybody else I'd take the job, you wouldn't need to degrade us both with stupid bribe offers.”

Satterthwaite pushed his glasses up against his eyebrows. “You're not a superman, David, you're only the best chance we have among a variety of poor chances. You spent ten years of your life in that part of the world. You grew up in NSA before it rigidified into the kind of bureaucracy that became capable of fucking up the
Pueblo
affair—in your day imagination still counted for something. Do you think I don't know your secrets? I've sized you up, I know your talents, your choice of friends and entertainments, your record, how much you drink and when. You were the man who opened the channel between Ben Bella and De Gaulle. Christ if they'd only had the sense to send you into Indochina.”

Lime shook his head. “It's no good, you know that.” It wasn't altogether that he didn't want a crack at it. He had wanted this boredom; now he was eager to get away from it;
the old warhorse,
he thought, but he turned back before reaching the point of commitment. “Look, things have changed, it's a different world from the one I operated in. The quality of your mind doesn't count—only the quality of your marksmanship. I'm a lousy shot.”

“That's a crock of shit and you know it.”

“No. Nothing's decided by brains any more—in spite of that think tank of yours across the hall. There's no room left for chess players, you know that—it's all decided by assassination and counterassassination.”

“All right. Assassinate them. But find them first. Find Fairlie and bust him out.”

Lime laughed off key. “Use the local boys over there. Spanish cops, Bedouins, desert rats—hell it's their territory.”

“I think it's important to have an American in charge.”

“It's not Barbary pirates you know—these aren't gunboat days.”

“Look, it's an American they've kidnapped and I suspect the kidnappers themselves are Americans. How would it look if a Spanish cop got too close to them and then bungled things? Do you have any idea what that would do to relations between Washington and Madrid? A little stupidity like that could slide Perez-Blasco right into Moscow's camp. At least if an American runs the show it's our success or our failure. If it's a success I think we'll climb quite a few notches in international esteem and we could use that right now, God knows.”

“And if it's failure?”

“We've had them before, haven't we.” Satterthwaite sounded abysmal. “It wouldn't be anything new. Don't you see that's why I don't want the CIA clumping about in their jackboots? They're such clumsy idiots—they're all hated over there, they'd never get the cooperation you'll get.”

Satterthwaite stood up. He was too short to be imposing but he tried.

Lime shook his head—a gentle stubborn negative.

Satterthwaite said, “I don't give a shit what your motives are but you're dead wrong. You're the best we've got—for this particular job. I recognize what you're really afraid of is the responsibility—suppose you take the job and you fail, and they kill Fairlie. You don't want that on your conscience, do you. But how do you think
I'll
feel? What about all the rest of us? Do you think you'll be the only one who'll have to cover himself in sackcloth and ashes?”

Lime's silence was a continuing refusal.

But then Satterthwaite punctured him. “If we lose Fairlie because you refused to try—you'll be far more to blame.”

There was a mad satanic beauty to it. Satterthwaite had been baiting the trap all along and had let Lime watch him do it.

“If you do the job,” the little man breathed, “at least you won't have lost Fairlie for want of trying.”

Neatly cornered. Lime's eyes drilled hatred into him.

Satterthwaite crossed half the distance between them and frowned a little behind his glasses; he lifted one hand in a vague gesture of truce. “Don't hate me too hard.”

“Why shouldn't I?”

“Because I wouldn't want you messing this up just to spite me.”

Lime saw how it could be. The little man was right again. A fiend—but you had to stand in awe of him.

“Now you'll go to Barcelona,” Satterthwaite said, a down-to-business voice. “You're leaving Andrews Air Force Base at half past five—I've laid on a C-one-forty-one.” A flap of wrist, glance at watch. “A little over four hours to pack your things and say your goodbyes. You'd better move along.”

Lime, hooded, watched him in silence.

Satterthwaite said, “I won't give it to the press yet. You'll want a free hand. What do you need?”

A long ragged breath; the final surrender. “Give me Chad Hill from my office—he's green but he does what he's told.”

“Done. What else?”

A shake of the head. “Carte blanche.”

“That goes without saying.”

Lime walked forward to pass him but Satterthwaite stopped him. “Your theory.”

“I told you—it was too full of ifs.”

“But I was right about it.”

“I told you you were.”

“Then my judgment's not that terrible after all. Is it.”

Lime didn't answer the thin smile in kind.

Satterthwaite eeled past him through the door and Lime emerged, looked back into the room curiously—a crucible, but it looked ordinary enough. The door swung shut. No Admittance.

Satterthwaite was walking toward the war room. When he reached it he stopped. Over his shoulder: “Good hunting—I suppose I should say something like that.” The grim little smile was glued on. “Get the son of a bitch out alive, David.”

Having given himself the curtain line Satterthwaite disappeared into the war room.

Despising the man for his cheap theatricality Lime stood a moment burning his stare into the closed door before he shambled away, head bowed to light a cigarette.

WEDNESDAY,

JANUARY 12

10:40
P.M.
Continental European Time
Mario had grown up inculcated with a hatred of stinkpot powerboats. He had learned summer seamanship aboard the Mezetti ketch, a two-masted sixty-four-footer with the grace of a racing regatta champion. He knew nothing about engines—those were Alvin's job—but he had the wheel and the responsibility of navigation by binnacle and charts. The boat was American built, a thirty-nine-foot Matthews powered by a single big diesel. She was probably at least twenty-five years old although the diesel was newer, a French engine. A stubby wooden craft with belowdecks cabins both fore and aft and only a tiny fishing deck between the rear-cabin ladder and the transom, she had been built with customary Matthews shipyard economy and there was not quite enough headroom for a six-foot man in the wheelhouse. Mario was stocky enough to have no trouble but both Alvin and Sturka had to stoop when they came inside.

There was no chart table as such; the paper image of the western Mediterranean was spread across the wooden dash to one side of the binnacle where Mario could read it while standing with one hand on a wheel spoke. He was using compass and chart to dead-reckon from lighthouse to lighthouse. The sea had lifted, an hour before sunset, to a nine-foot chop and had not become any calmer in the hours since; the chunky round-bottomed hull made heavy going of it and Mario had to tack at five-minute intervals against a sea that was running quarter to his course—Southwest by Cabo de Gata, then west around the headlands toward Almería. The weather was running in from the Straits, slanting against the shore. A rough night for seafaring—there were very few boats out, the only lamps were buoys.

It was Cesar who had proved the worst sailor and Mario felt remotely vindicated by that: he knew they all held him in contempt but Cesar was the most arrogant of any and it was satisfying to see him green with
mal de mer.
The malaise had infected Peggy to a lesser extent; she and Cesar were glued to their bunks in the after cabin. Alvin and Sturka were forward, below with Clifford Fairlie, probably trying to indoctrinate him by the dialectic exchange. A stupid pursuit—you couldn't change their minds once they'd gone over the hill. Mario had learned that at home. Mezetti Industries destroyed the environment from day to day with the willful malice of a Genghis Khan and you pointed this out to your father and he came back with engineers' lies contrived to prove it was all Communist propaganda.