The Eleventh Commandment (1998) (48 page)

Connor hesitated by the door.

‘Nothing to report, sir. I was just about to run an eye over the west stand.’

‘Fine. Report in if you see anything suspicious.’

‘Will do,’ said Arnie, and clipped the receiver back onto his belt.

Connor quietly stepped out onto the covered walkway, closed the door behind him and placed the empty Coke can on the step.

He checked his watch, then walked quickly down the covered walkway, unlocked the door and turned off the lights. The concourse was swarming with fans heading for their seats. When he reached the lift shaft, he checked his watch again. Fifty-four seconds. On the final run it would have to take less than thirty-five. He pressed the button. Forty-seven seconds later the service elevator reappeared. Obviously no one on the second or fifth levels had been calling for it. He placed the tray inside and pressed the button once again. It immediately began its slow journey down to the basement.

No one gave Connor, dressed in a long white catering coat and a Redskins cap, a second glance as he strolled casually past the concession stand towards the door marked ‘Private’. He slipped inside and locked the door behind him. In the darkness he walked noiselessly back along the narrow walkway until he was a few yards from the entrance to the JumboTron. He stood looking down at the vast steel girder that held the massive screen in place.

Connor gripped the handrail for a moment, then fell to his knees. He leaned forward, grabbed the girder with both hands, and eased himself off the walkway. He stared fixedly at the screen which, according to the architects’ plans, was forty-two feet in front of him. It looked more like a mile.

He could see a small handle, but he still had no idea if the emergency trapdoor that had been clearly marked on the engineer’s plans really existed. He began to crawl slowly along the girder, inch by inch, never once looking down at the 170-foot drop below him. It felt like two miles.

When he finally reached the end of the girder, he dropped his legs over the sides and gripped tightly, as if he was on horseback. The screen switched from a replay of a touchdown in the Skins’ previous game to an advertisement for Modell’s sporting goods store. Connor took a deep breath, gripped the handle, and pulled. The trapdoor slid back, revealing the promised twenty-two-and-a-half-inch-square hole. Connor slowly hauled himself inside and slid the door back in place.

Pressed in on all sides by steel, he began to wish that he had added a thick pair of gloves to his clothing. It was like being inside a refrigerator. Nevertheless, as each minute passed he became more confident that should it prove necessary to fall back on his contingency plan, no one would ever discover where he was hiding.

He lay suspended inside the hollow steel girder 170 feet above the ground for over an hour and a half, barely able to turn his wrist to check the time. But then, in Vietnam he’d once spent ten days’ solitary confinement standing upright in a bamboo cage with water up to his chin.

Something he suspected Arnie had never experienced.

Z
ERIMSKI SHOOK HANDS WARMLY
with everyone he was introduced to, and even laughed at John Kent Cooke’s jokes. He remembered the names of all the guests, and answered every question that was put to him with a smile. ‘What the Americans call a charm offensive,’ Titov had told him: it would only add to the horror of what he had planned for them that evening.

He could already hear the guests telling the press, ‘He couldn’t have been more relaxed and at ease, especially with the President, whom he kept referring to as “my dear and close friend Tom”.’ Lawrence, the guests would recall, did not show quite the same degree of warmth, and was slightly frosty towards his Russian visitor.

After the introductions had been completed, John Kent Cooke banged on a table with a spoon. ‘I’m sorry to interrupt such a pleasant occasion,’ he began, ‘but time is marching on, and this is probably going to be the only opportunity I have in my life to brief two Presidents at once.’ A little laughter broke out. ‘So here goes.’ He put on a pair of glasses and began reading from a sheet of paper handed to him by his public affairs assistant.

‘At eleven twenty I will accompany both Presidents to the south entrance of the stadium, and at eleven thirty-six I will lead them out onto the field.’ He looked up. ‘I have arranged for the welcome to be deafening,’ he said with a smile. Rita laughed just a little too loudly.

‘When we reach the centre of the field, I will introduce the Presidents to the two team captains, and they in turn will introduce them to their co-captains and the coaches. Then the Presidents will be introduced to the match officials.

‘At eleven forty, everyone will turn and face the west stand, where the Redskins band will play the Russian national anthem, followed after a short pause by “The Star-Spangled Banner”.

‘At precisely eleven forty-eight our honoured guest President Zerimski will flip a silver dollar. I shall then accompany both gentlemen off the field and bring them back here, where I hope everyone will enjoy watching the Redskins defeat the Packers.’

Both Presidents laughed.

Cooke looked up at his guests, smiling with relief that the first part of his ordeal was over, and asked, Any questions?’

‘Yes, John, I have a question,’ said Zerimski. ‘You didn’t explain why I have to flip the coin.’

‘So that the captain who correctly guesses whether it’s heads or tails can choose which team kicks off

What an amusing idea,’ said Zerimski.

As the minutes slipped by, Connor checked his watch more and more frequently. He didn’t want to be inside the JumboTron for any longer than necessary, but he needed time to familiarise himself with a rifle he hadn’t used for some years.

He checked his watch again.
Eleven ten.
He’d wait for another seven minutes. However impatient you become, never go early - it only adds to the risk.

Eleven twelve.
He thought about Chris Jackson, and the sacrifice he had made just to give him this one chance.

Eleven fourteen.
He thought about Joan, and the cruel and unnecessary death Gutenburg had ordered for no reason other than that she had been his secretary.

Eleven fifteen.
He thought about Maggie and Tara. If he managed to pull this off, it might just give them a chance to live in peace. Either way, he doubted if he would ever see them again.

Eleven seventeen.
Connor slid open the trapdoor and eased himself slowly out of the confined space. He gathered his strength for a moment before swinging his legs over the girder and gripping it firmly with his thighs. Again, he didn’t look down as he began the slow forty-two-foot crawl back to the walkway.

Once he had reached the safety of the ledge, he pulled himself up onto the walkway. He held onto the rail for a few moments, steadied himself, and began a short series of stretching exercises.

Eleven twenty-seven.
He breathed deeply as he went over his plan for the final time, then walked quickly towards the JumboTron, pausing only to pick up the empty Coke can he had left on the step.

He banged loudly on the door. Without waiting for a response, he opened it, marched in and shouted above the noise of the ventilation unit, ‘It’s only me.’

Arnie peered down from the ledge above, his right hand moving towards the trigger of his Armalite. ‘Beat it!’ he said. ‘I told you not to come back till the Presidents were off the field. You’re lucky I didn’t put a bullet through you.’

‘Sorry,’ said Connor. ‘It’s just that I noticed how hot it gets in here, so I brought you another Coke.’

He passed the empty can up, and Arnie bent down to take it with his free hand. As his fingers touched the rim of the can, Connor let go of it, grabbed him by the wrist and, with all the strength he could muster, pulled him down from the ledge.

Arnie let out a terrible scream as he came crashing over, landing head first on the galvanised walkway, his rifle skidding away across it.

Connor swung round and leapt on his adversary before he had a chance to get up. As Arnie raised his head, Connor landed a straight left to the chin that stunned him for a moment, then grabbed for the pair of handcuffs hanging from his belt. He only just caught sight of the knee flying towards his crotch, but deftly moved to his left and managed to avoid its full impact. As Arnie tried to rise to his feet, Connor landed another punch, this time full on his nose. Connor heard the break, and as blood began to flow down his face, Arnie’s legs buckled and he sank to the ground. Connor sprang on him again, and as Arnie tried to get up he delivered a blow to his right shoulder that caused him to go into spasms. This time when he collapsed onto the walkway he finally lay still.

Connor tore off his long white coat, his shirt, tie, trousers, socks and cap. He threw them all in a pile in the corner, then unlocked Arnie’s handcuffs and quickly stripped him of his uniform. As he put it on he found that the shoes were at least two sizes too small, and the trousers a couple of inches too short. He had no choice but to pull up his socks and stick with his trainers, which were at least black. He didn’t think that in the mayhem he was about to cause anyone would recall that they had seen a Secret Service agent who wasn’t wearing regulation shoes.

Connor retrieved his tie from the pile of clothes in the corner and bound Arnie’s ankles tightly together. He then lifted up the unconscious man and held him against the wall, placed his arms around a steel beam which ran across the width of the Jumbo-Tron, and clamped the handcuffs on his wrists. Finally he took a handkerchief out of his pocket, rolled it up into a ball and forced it into Arnie’s mouth. The poor bastard was going to be sore for several days. It wouldn’t be much compensation that he would probably lose those extra pounds the SAIC had berated him about.

‘Nothing personal,’ said Connor. He placed Arnie’s cap and dark glasses by the door, and picked up his rifle: as he’d thought, an M-16. It wouldn’t have been his first choice, but it could do the job. He quickly climbed the steps to the second-floor landing where Arnie had been sitting, picked up his binoculars and, through the gap between the ad panel and the video screen, scanned the crowd below.

Eleven thirty-two.
It had been three minutes and thirty-eight seconds since Connor had entered the JumboTron. He’d allowed four minutes for the take-over. He started breathing deeply and evenly.

Suddenly he heard a voice behind him.

‘Hercules 3.’

At first he couldn’t work out where the sound was coming from, but then he remembered the small two-way radio attached to Arnie’s belt. He snatched it off. ‘Hercules 3, go ahead.’

‘Thought we’d lost you there for a moment, Arnie,’ said the
SAIC
. ‘Is everything OK?’

‘Yep,’ said Connor. ‘Just needed to take a leak, and thought I’d better not do it over the crowd.’

‘Affirmative,’ said Braithwaite, breaking into a laugh. ‘Keep scanning your section. It won’t be long before Red Light and Waterfall come out on the field.’

‘Will do,’ said Connor, in an accent his mother would have chastised him for. The line went dead.

Eleven thirty-four.
He looked around the stadium. Only a few of the red and yellow seats remained unoccupied. He tried not to be distracted by the scantily-clad Redskinettes kicking their legs high in the air directly below him.

A roar went up from the stands as the teams emerged from the tunnels at the south end of the stadium. They jogged slowly towards the centre of the field, as the crowd began to sing ‘Hail to the Redskins’.