Line of Succession (38 page)

“So?”

“We were supposed to identify Mezetti,” Lime said. He struggled to his feet; sitting in the chair was too dangerous. He couldn't afford to fall asleep just yet.

Eighty-seven hours to inauguration. He arched his back, bracing his fists against his kidneys; heard the ligatures crackle. “Have we got that Concorde?”

“It's in Helsinki,” Hill said.

“Good. We'd better get to it.”

“You need sleep. You look like a corpse.”

“I'll sleep on the plane.”

“Where to?”

“Algiers,” Lime said. “That's the place to start.” It was the place he should have started in the first place. Satterthwaite had been right. Sturka was a pro; a pro was somebody who didn't make stupid mistakes. The fingerprint in the garage—you'd have to practice to get that stupid. Except that it wasn't a mistake.

So the red herring had drawn them off all the way to Finland and in the meantime Sturka was down in the Western Desert all the time. Benyoussef was the evidence that supported that. If Sturka was using the members of his old Algerian cell then that was where he had to be.

The old stamping grounds. The place where Sturka had outwitted Lime every time.

MONDAY,

JANUARY 17

3:20
A.M. EST
The preparations had been completed and tonight Riva's part of the plan went operational.

Riva had watched the weather forecasts and timed the action to coincide with the arrival of the low-pressure front over Washington.

The temperature was 34 degrees and that made it a wet snowfall, the flakes congealing in lumps and splashing where they struck. The thick flurries made bad visibility and that was what Riva wanted.

They were working in two cars, Kavanagh and Harrison in a Chevrolet and Riva in the Dodge. They had ten of the molded satchel charges in the Chevrolet. Riva had fitted together a hosepipe bomb and had put it on the seat beside him under a folded newspaper.

The attack on Milton Luke was the key to the rest; it had to work; yet of them all it was by far the most difficult since none of the others would be half so well guarded.

Luke lived in a top-floor apartment in a high-rise on Wisconsin Avenue. It was virtually impossible to penetrate into the apartment itself; Secret Service had people everywhere in the building.

So they'd ruled that out. It was always senseless attacking the enemy at his most strongly guarded points. Luke was the key target but there were satellite targets and the thing to do was to hit some of them first because they would help act as diversions.

So they hit Senator Hollander's house first. The idea was to shake up the old fascist but not hurt him. Riva drove by first. The big Georgian house was set well back from the street; its porch lights flickered through the snowfall and he could make out the heavy outline of the Secret Service van in the driveway. It looked like the same van they used to post at Dexter Ethridge's house before Ethridge died.

He drove straight past at a steady twenty-five and picked up the walkie-talkie when he had gone by. Spoke one word: “Copasetik.”

He drove the Dodge on, heading for Massachusetts Avenue, listening for the walkie-talkie to reply. It would take a few minutes. The Chevrolet would drift past Hollander's house and Kavanagh would toss the satchel into the shadows. They had picked the spot for it earlier. It wouldn't do too much damage—perhaps uproot some shrubs and clang bits and pieces of shrapnel against the house and the Secret Service van—but it would wake everybody up and it would bring a great many cops up this way.

The satchel had a half-hour time fuse and that would give them plenty of leeway.

“Copasetik.”

He glanced at the walkie-talkie on the seat. It resumed its silence. He turned three blocks up the avenue from the massive apartment building that housed a Senator and two Congressmen and the Secretary of the Treasury. Parked and turned the interior dome-light switch to the off position before he opened the car door and stepped out into the falling snow.

It was a corner building and had two entrances, one on either face. There was also a service ramp that gave access to the basement in the rear. All three entrances were guarded: the Executive Protection Service had a man on each door and the two main entrances had armed doormen as well.

Riva went softly into the service drive, a muffled figure moving without sound. He lifted the gun—a .32 caliber revolver with a perforated silencer screwed to the barrel. He cocked the hammer and then held the weapon down at his side where it was covered by the flapping skirt of his coat.

The cop saw him approaching. Straightened up and stepped out under the light with his hand on his gun. “Hi there.” Friendly but cautious.

“Hi,” Riva said and shot twice.

The shots made little puffs of sound and the cop sagged back against the brick wall and slid down to the pavement. He left a glossy smear on the wall.

Riva dragged the cop into the shadows and put the cop's cap on his own head. From a distance it would do. He took up a post by the door with the cop's key ring in his pocket.

Americans had such childish ideas about security.

A car turned in at the far end of the service drive. It flicked its lights. Riva lifted his left hand high over his head. The Chevrolet backed out of the driveway onto the street, pulled forward along the curb, backed into the driveway and came all the way to the service ramp in reverse.

The lights went out and the car doors opened.

“Everything okay?”

“Everything's fine.”

It might have been one cop talking to another—his relief.

Riva used the cop's key to open the service door. “Easy now.”

“Sure—sure.” Kavanagh and Harrison went inside lugging the five satchel charges.

Riva checked the door to make sure it could be opened from inside without a key. All they had to do was push the crossbar down. He tossed the key ring on top of the dead cop and walked up the service drive past the Chevrolet. Its engine was pinging with the sound of cooling contraction. He wiped a droplet of snow off his nose and walked unhurriedly out to the street, around the corner, across the street and down the block to the Dodge.

He sat in the car for thirty-five minutes—the length of time they had judged it would take. There was no reason to expect any trouble. There were no hallway guards in the apartment house and the various dignitaries didn't have sentries posted at their doors. Americans couldn't stand living that way. So all you had to do was get into the building; from there on you would be undisturbed.

The bombs probably wouldn't waste them all. Senator Grant's bedrooom was in an outside corner of the building on the top floor and the nearest hallway was one room removed from the bed. The bomb would make a shambles of Grant's kitchen and it would make him good and angry. That was just as good. With any luck the Treasury Secretary would get buried under a good deal of heavy debris. The satchel charges in the trash chutes next to the bedrooms of Congressmen Wood and Jethro would almost certainly kill both Representatives and their wives. As for columnist J. R. Ilfeld he would lose the priceless art works in his sybaritic parlor and that would serve to inflame his rage beyond reason.

Riva heard the distant cry of sirens. The bomb on Hollander's lawn, he thought. Before the night was over they'd be running in panic-stricken circles—chasing their tails. A pack of prize fools, the American security forces.

“Copasetik.”

He turned the key and waited with the engine idling until the Chevrolet drove past; he switched on the lights and pulled out to follow at a leisurely distance, heading for Wisconsin Avenue.

4:05
A.M. EST
They had floodlights all over Senator Hollander's lawn and the bomb squad was examining the pieces of shrapnel they had found imbedded in the siding.

“A hell of a lot of force in that thing,” the sergeant said. “Christ look at that tree it knocked down.” It had been a giant of an old maple.

Senator Hollander and Mrs. Hollander were stomping around the snowy lawn in slippers and robes, bellowing at everybody in sight. Lieutenant Ainsworth spoke into the radio: “It looks like a professionally made bomb. You'd better try and get in touch with Mr. Satterthwaite.”

4:08
A.M. EST
Riva drove slowly along Wisconsin Avenue and parked a block short of Milton Luke's apartment building. The snow was still fluttering down in heavy wet streamers. It was beginning to accumulate on the sidewalks and lawns; the temperature had probably dropped a degree or two.

A garage would have made it easier but there wasn't any. It had been the last apartment building raised in Washington before the zoning laws forbade throwing up high-rises without built-in garages. So everybody had to scramble for parking spaces in the street—everybody except the VIPs. The limousine assigned to Speaker Luke, now President-designate Luke, had its own cordoned-off parking space immediately in front of the building. The chauffeur was a Secret Service agent and was always with the car. Two more Secret Service men were on the apartment house door. There were dozens of them inside the building, in the corridors, at the other entrances. You couldn't get at Luke inside; you had to do it out here.

Riva lifted the walkie-talkie. “All set?”

“Copasetik.”

“Synchronize. Three minutes from … now.”

He was studying the crystal of his watch; now he slipped the hosepipe bomb out from under the newspaper, got most of it inside his coat pocket and the rest up his left sleeve, and stepped out of the car with his left hand in his pocket. The bomb was only an inch and a half in diameter but the charge inside was a German explosive gel that had the destructive equivalent of a six-inch naval shell. One end of the hosepipe was capped with aluminum, the other with a heat-sensitive detonating device, and powerful magnets were fixed to both caps and a ring around the center of the pipe. The magnets would hold the bomb snug against any piece of steel.

The detonator was a tin-copper electrical device that relied on an increase in temperature to affect the expansion differential of the two metals: any temperature above 100 degrees Fahrenheit would cause contact and thereby detonate the bomb.

He walked down the street on the sidewalk opposite the apartment building and glanced casually in its direction. The Secret Service agents were watching him as they would watch any pedestrian abroad at ten past four in the morning.

Ahead of him a car was sliding among the lights of the intersection two blocks distant. Riva timed his turn to coincide with the bleat of the car's horn as it came into the block.

The horn attracted the Secret Service agents' attention. The chauffeur was standing under the awning watching the limousine but his head also turned toward the advancing Chevrolet. Riva stepped off the curb between two parked cars and stood there waiting for the Chevrolet to go past him so he could walk across the street. He made it look as if he were walking toward the building beyond the apartment house.

He heard the pneumatic hiss of the car as it grew closer and he took a step back to avoid the splash of snow. The car went by, doing about twenty-five; the agents' heads swiveled, indicating their steady interest in it. Riva stepped out into the avenue, looked both ways and began to cross. His path was designed to take him past the back of the limousine toward the next building down.

The agents were dividing their attention between Riva and the receding Chevrolet when Harrison in the back seat of the Chevrolet began to shoot. He was shooting at the windows of Milton Luke's apartment. His shots were not expected to do any damage; it was a very high angle. But they accomplished their purpose; the Secret Service agents got behind pillars and cars and began to blaze away at the Chevrolet.

Riva did what anybody would do. You're a pedestrian in the middle of the open and suddenly guns start going off: you dive for cover.

The cover he chose was the shadow of the VIP limousine and as he rolled past its rear bumper his left arm snaked up underneath the rear of the car. It took only a second or two to locate an exhaust pipe. He snapped the magnetized bomb on top of the pipe, immediately beneath the gasoline tank, and kept right on rolling over against the curb. Now he was a few feet behind the limousine, not within reach of it, and the Secret Service agents could see him if they chose to look.

The Chevrolet was just disappearing around the corner with a wail of tires and the agents stopped shooting. Riva got to his feet and when the nearest agent swung to glare at him Riva said, “Jesus Christ Almighty. What in hell was that all about?”

4:20
A.M. EST
Satterthwaite scraped a hand down across his chin. The stubble stung his palm.

Bleary faces along the length of the big table in The Salt Mine. Voices barking into telephones. Satterthwaite had FBI Director Clyde Shankland on the line. “It looks like a maximum effort they're putting up. First Hollander's lawn, then five Goddamned bombs in that one building, then a sniper shooting at Luke's windows. God knows where else they'll hit. Look, I want every man you've got. We've got to provide immediate protection for every VIP in Washington.”

Kaiser was tugging at his sleeve. Kaiser had a telephone cupped in his hand. “It's for you. The President.”

Satterthwaite said to Shankland, “Get on it, Clyde,” and slammed down the phone and grabbed the other one from Kaiser. “Yes, Mr. President.”

4:23
A.M. EST
The city was amok with crying sirens. Riva circled the block and got back into his car and reached for the walkie-talkie. “Copasetik?”

“Copasetik.”

“They're on their toes. Let's do the alternate.”

“Copasetik.”

The central area was getting too hot; they would skip the other targets and head for the outskirts.

The Secret Service men had questioned him for several minutes but Riva's identification was in order and his story was plausible and they had bigger things to worry about than him.