Line of Succession (28 page)

They hadn't left things to chance at any other step and there was no reason to assume the abandonment of Lopez's boat had been an accident. If the engine had frozen up it was probably because the kidnappers had poked a hole through the rusty oil pipe to make it look like an accidental failure.

They might have left one inadvertent clue: the fingerprint on the light switch in the Palamos garage—if in fact the print belonged to one of the kidnappers and not the owner of the garage or one of its customers.

It was the fingerprint that gave him the impression the kidnappers were amateurs led by a professional. A professional developed habit patterns, he never left fingerprints on anything and never had to think about it. By reflex he always went back and wiped things off.

The light switch was the last thing they had touched on their way out and someone had forgotten to wipe it.

If the print turned out to be Fairlie's then Lime would believe it had been left on purpose to attest to the fact that Fairlie was alive. But he doubted it was Fairlie's fingerprint; they wouldn't have allowed Fairlie near a light switch. If the print belonged to any of the kidnappers then it hadn't been left there deliberately; leaving misleading clues was part of the game but giving away the identity of your own man was not.

Barcelona in winter was a distressing gray city of industrial blight and waterfront rot.

The Spaniards had provided an office in an overflow annex a block from the government admin building; it was a quarter of bleak narrow streets—cobblestones and soot-black walls. From the aircraft carrier a whaleboat had brought ashore a Navy UHF scrambler transceiver; it had been manhandled into the office.

The crew had arrived ahead of him and the office crawled with personnel but what took Lime by surprise was the presence of William T. Satterthwaite—rumpled, tired, his curly black hair awry.

There was a small private room set aside for Lime's use but Lime took a quick look at it and declined. “Have you got a car outside?”

“Yes. Why?” Satterthwaite pushed his glasses up.

“Let's sit in the car and talk.”

In the car Satterthwaite said, “Do you honestly think they'd have the nerve to bug that office?”

“It's what I'd do. You don't want foreigners running king-size security operations on your turf without finding out what they're up to.”

Satterthwaite was capable of dismissing the problem instantly: “All right. What about this coffin they carried Fairlie in? Do you think he's dead?”

“I doubt it. You don't kill your ace in the hole until you have to—or until you've run out of a use for it. There's a better question than that, though—how do we know it was Fairlie? It may have been a hundred fifty pounds of bricks.”

“You mean you're not buying the Lopez boat thing at all?”

“Suppose they had accomplices who took Lopez's boat to make it look as if they took Fairlie that way?” Lime hunted around the dashboard for the ashtray. “The only thing definite is they've given us two pieces we were meant to see.”

“The Arab costumes and the boat headed north. One suggesting North Africa and the other suggesting western Europe. Do you think they could both be phonies? Maybe they're going for the Balkans?”

“It's all guesswork right now. We're chasing our tails.”

“Don't get so damned defeatist, David. There are hundreds of thousands of people working on this. Someone's bound to come up with something.”

“Why? We're not dealing with wild-eyed freaks.”

Satterthwaite's eyes burned behind the high magnification of the lenses. “Who
are
we dealing with?”

“A pro and a cell of well-trained amateurs. Not a government job, not a people's liberation-movement thing. We won't find an organization working the caper, although we may find one paying the bills.”

“Why not?”

“Because you haven't told me anything to the contrary.”

“I don't follow that.”

Lime tapped ash, missed the ashtray, brushed ashes off his trouser leg. “If any establishment was behind it your hundreds of thousands of agents would have had a hint by now. It's not the kind of operation a power bloc would try. The only political effect it can have is to solidify the existing powers. The Communists will help
us,
they won't help the kidnappers; they'd expect reciprocal treatment if somebody snatched one of theirs, they can't afford to open this kind of can of beans. It would start a free-for-all of assassinations and abductions. You can't conduct international relations on that level and everybody since Clausewitz has known that—look what happened after Saravejo.”

Lime snubbed the butt out in the ashtray and pushed it shut. “Look, what's their motive? You've heard the ransom demands. All they seem to want is the seven bombers. It's the Marighella technique—nothing unusual about it. They arrest yours, you kidnap theirs and make a swap.”

“Then we all know who's running this show, don't we,” Satterthwaite said. His eyes rested complacently against Lime.

“Probably,” Lime replied, quite evenly. “But we've had the search out for Sturka and his people for more than a week. He may have gone to ground—this may be an entirely different bunch.”

“You're grabbing at straws,” Satterthwaite growled; he leaned even farther forward and his voice was an angry hiss: “Why in the hell do you think we had to force you onto this job?”

“Because you assumed I knew it was Sturka.”

“And Sturka is your boy, David. You nknow him better than anybody else—you've proved you know the way he thinks. You've covered the same ground he's covered.”

“I've never laid eyes on the man.”

“But you
know
him.”

“Maybe it is Sturka's caper. But I'm not putting all my eggs in that basket. Logic points to Sturka but logic is a test of consistency, not truth. If it's not Sturka, and I try to play as if it is, then we'll end up farther behind than we started. I've got to work with facts, don't you see that?”

“Assume it's Sturka, David. What then?”

Lime shook his head. “We've made too many wrong assumptions already. Give me a fact and then I'll go to work.” He found another cigarette in the crumpled pack. “Now you didn't fly over here just to tell me I thought it was Sturka. You knew that already. Or are you just shuttling back and forth across the Atlantic to keep tabs on me?”

“Don't be an idiot.”

“I just wanted it cleared up. That being the case I assume you've got orders for me—something you couldn't even trust to a scrambler.”

“All right. Knowing that much let's see if you can guess what they are.”

“Well you want him back before Inauguration Day, for openers.”

“Yes, but you knew that. It gives you a little over six days.”

“It's not likely.”

“Make it likely.”

“Don't be an ass.”

“I know. All right. Suppose I tell you I've brought an A-team from Langley with me.”

“Then I'd say you're a damn fool. I suppose you've got them running around loose in the Spanish countryside sighting in their scopes on sheep and peasants.”

“Hardly. They're aboard the
Essex.
When you need them you ask Sixth Fleet for the Early Birds and they'll be at your disposal by helicopter.”

Too little sleep, too many cigarettes; he had a headache, his mouth tasted brassy. It was absurd to think about it. Langley was CIA's sprawling Virginia headquarters, a place which was top secret—
Time
said so. “An A-team from Langley” was a euphemism for a killer squad.

“These are the best professionals in the Agency. Twenty-eight men. Three helicopters.”

“And carrying as many guns as a heavy cruiser I'm sure.”

“It's a direct Presidential order, David.”

“Face up on the table, will you? It was your crackbrained notion, you took it to Brewster and he okayed it.”

“Not really. I only provided the methodology.”

“It guarantees you won't get Fairlie back alive.”

“On the contrary. You don't use them until you've got Fairlie out. Fairlie and the kidnappers.
Then
you use them.”

Lime understood it up to a point; it was all based on a flimsy assumption regarding the kidnappers' whereabouts. The premise behind Satterthwaite's idea was that the kidnappers were holed up on territory belonging to a regime that wouldn't assist in capturing them and wouldn't agree to extraditing them to the United States even if it did capture them. So you had to go in, get them, take them out, and leave no clues behind to indicate you had ever been there. It was very Wild Bill Donovan in concept and Lime found it tiresome.

“David, if we put them on trial we have to admit how and where we took them. It could be embarrassing.”

“Embarrassing. For Christ's sake.” Lime shook his head. “At any rate you're still jumping to that conclusion.”

“And you're wasting time in Spain when you should be down there.”

“Not yet. I still want a fact. Suppose they're halfway to Albania?”

“You're dragging your heels. Everything points to it—you know that.”

“You've already got plenty of gumshoes prowling around down there, I'm sure.”

“Damn few of them with your knowledge of the territory. And none of them with your knowledge of Sturka.”

“That's two assumptions—the place and the identity—and I'm not buying either one of them yet.”

“Why?”

“Because of the Arab robes.”

“So it's a bluff,” Satterthwaite said. “You've seen bluffs before.”

“The boat headed north. Is that the same kind of bluff?”

“Obviously a different kind of bluff.”

Filled with simmering anger Lime said, “You've got to understand this. I can't do it by myself. I've got to have a fact, and then I can start taking advantage of their mistakes. I need their help.”

“Fat chance of getting it.”

“I don't know. I only need to help plan their mistakes.”

Satterthwaite was silent for a bit; finally he said, “I'm going to let you alone from here on. But I want it clear that you're under orders to use the A-team if and when you've extracted the kidnappers.”

“It's so fucking cheap.”

“It's politics. You don't ask favors when you don't have to—it only leaves you owing somebody a favor. With that crowd we can't afford to be obliged to them for anything at all.”

“Then use an intermediary. The Russians?”

“It would have to be the Chinese and we don't want to be owing them any favors either.” Satterthwaite sat back, reached for the door handle but didn't open it. “Oh. You asked for Fairlie's blood type—a wise question. Unfortunately it's AB negative. I've left instructions to have a case on the ready helicopter aboard
Essex.
Good enough?”

“For the moment.”

An hour later Satterthwaite was on his way back to Washington and Lime was running a battery shaver over his chin in the rancid loo of the annex building. He wanted a shower and a good meal and twelve hours' sleep; he settled for a quick wash and a desk-corner lunch of bread and cheese and jug sangría from a nearby café.

He locked himself in the tiny office cubicle and stretched out on the floor with his hands interlaced under the back of his head; stared at the ceiling and tried to fit things together in his mind. The way to do this was to let the mind go. His upper thoughts immediately swayed toward Bev Reuland but he made no effort to correct the drift.

Two days ago on his way to Andrews AFB he had made time to see her: called Speaker Luke's office and arranged to meet her in the Rayburn cafeteria. He had stopped at a claustrophobically narrow shop to get a dozen pink roses and had arrived in the cafeteria carrying them. Bev, in a harlequin skiing jacket of some green-and-white synthetic fiber that glistened like plastic, her hair tied in a horsetail with a small ribbon, had watched his approach with suspicion, a shadow crossing her eyes.

“What's this for?”

“A little grace if you please.”

“Those are break-it-to-her-gently roses.” She unwrapped enough of the green-wrapped package to see the buds. “They
are
lovely,” she conceded.

It was the middle of the afternoon and the place was nearly empty; conversations were faint distant mutters across the room. He said, “It's nothing much. I'll be gone a little while.”

No reply. She got up and went to the counter and he watched her go through the railed route to the coffee urn, a stop at the cashier, her high-hipped stride as she returned bearing two cups of coffee. She sat down on the edge of her chair as if she expected at any moment it would explode beneath her. “How long?”

“Open-ended.”

“They've sent you after Fairlie.” A flat statement, but she was very tense with eyes hungry for information.

“I remember Bev Reuland. The girl who only goes with people if they're fun.”

“Oh shut up David, you're not funny.”

Things had changed far more than he had wanted. It had always been no-questions-asked between them. She was a girl with a slow carnal smile and a healthy set of appetites and they liked each other. Now she was a different girl because if something happened to Lime a little piece of Bev would go with him. The cup and saucer rattled in her hand; she put them down. “Well. What are we supposed to say to each other?”

“Nothing. I'll be back—you can think about what you want to say, and tell me then.”

“You weren't going out in the field anymore.”

“I know.”

“I suppose they turned your head. It must be very flattering to be told you're the best they've got—the only one who can do the job.” Her lips quivered before she drew them in between her teeth.