Line of Succession (16 page)

“I'm sorry sir. You need at least two of us with you at all times. Preferably four.”

“You're giving
me
orders, Meyer?”

“No sir. I've got my own orders, that's all.”

They stopped just outside the circle of the slow circling rotors. The pilot was coming out to meet them, stooping low under the blades, a Negro lieutenant in Navy fatigues. He was fifteen pounds overweight, had a neat trimmed black-on-black moustache and slightly bulbous cheeks the roundness of which was accentuated by the wad of gum he was chewing. He emerged, stood up and rendered a crisp salute. “Mr. President-elect.”

Cord had come over from the crippled chopper. “Where's the mechanic, Lieutenant?”

“Be along on the second machine,” the black lieutenant said. He removed his fatigue cap to reveal a completely bald head; wiped his pate with his sleeve and replaced the cap.

McNeely turned. “What second machine?” He had the lieutenant's face on a bias toward the light and saw the ridge of a dark scar that ran along the jawline.

The lieutenant was chewing with the open-mouthed insouciance of the chronic gum addict. “Fleet didn't have a Huey to send, sir, so they ordered two Thirteens out. The other one will be along in a few minutes—they had to wait for the mechanic to get his gear. Captain said you'd probably want a second machine for the gentlemen from Secret Service.”

Fairlie was nodding, reaching for his briefcase which was in one of the aides' hands. “That's fine then. Meyer, pick yourself a side-man and the three of us will ride this one. Liam, you come along in the second helicopter with two more of the boys. That soothe your feathers, Meyer?”

McNeely was swiveling on his heels. “Where's Anderson?”

Cord said, “He went to find a socket-wrench set.”

“He's got a hell of a sense of timing.”

Fairlie was moving toward the idling chopper. “Never mind, I'll ride with the lieutenant here.”

“But Anderson knows the route—he knows the landing spot, the timing.…”

“Is he the only pilot alive? Good Lord, Liam, give the information to the lieutenant here and let's take off—we're more than half an hour late as it is.”

Rifkind had turned toward the black lieutenant. “I'll have to look at some ID.”

“Sure.” The lieutenant took out his documentation and Rifkind flipped through it and handed it back. Rifkind was a man who stuck to the letter.

Cord had his two ratings over at the new chopper filling its fuel tanks from a gasoline cart. The lieutenant went over to the Huey with Cord and for a minute the two Navy officers stood plotting course on Cord's charts, after which the black lieutenant folded them and carried them forward, nodding briskly to Rifkind, popping a new stick of gum into his mouth.

They climbed aboard, Fairlie and Rifkind and Rifkind's number two, and the black lieutenant who strapped in and talked into a microphone and acknowledged responses from his earlappy headset. The ratings topped up and withdrew the gasoline hose and capped the tank, and Fair lie leaned forward to wave at McNeely.

McNeely gave him thumbs-up and the chopper lifted off a few feet, swung back and forth with a pendulant uncertainty, got its bite in the air and soared away. McNeely stood in the whipping down-draft and watched its graceful tilt and sway toward the mountain pass.

The chopper dwindled with distance. Haze absorbed it over the mountains.

Cord stood beside him, a scowl deepening, and with a sudden growl Cord turned and yelled at the ratings who were trundling the gasoline cart away across the ramp. “Hey. Go on back there and find out what the hell's holding up Lieutenant Anderson.”

There was a brief discussion among the five remaining Secret Service agents as to which two would ride with McNeely. The reporters had already begun to scatter toward the parking lot and their hired cars.

Within a few minutes McNeely heard another helicopter and turned to watch it emerge from the haze, pushing between the peaks.

Cord was at McNeely's shoulder. “That's funny. I thought he said they couldn't get the other Huey.”

And one of the ratings was running full tilt up the deck stairs, shouting. McNeely couldn't make out the words. The rating ran halfway forward across the deck and stopped, red-faced and out of breath, and made himself heard:

“… tenant Anderson back there—I think he's dead, sir!”

Certainty hit McNeely an abrupt physical blow. The Secret Service agents were running but McNeely grabbed Cord by the arm. “Never mind him. Get on your Goddamned radio and let me talk to Fleet.
Now!
”

1:43
P.M.
Continental European Time
Fairlie had experienced it before but the sensation was always disturbing: the bubble canopy extended down to the level of your feet and it was as if there were nothing under you but air.

The chugging racket of the engine made conversation difficult; none of them spoke very much. The black lieutenant had a sure hand on the controls, one gloved fist on the cyclic stick and the other on a smaller lever at the left, both feet gently heel-and-toeing the pedals. The air was pungent with oil smoke and the spearmint aura of chewing gum.

He watched the jagged upheaval of the Pyrenees slide by beneath. Pamplona off somewhere to starboard—he thought of the running of the bulls; he had been there for it once, the Fiesta de San Fermin, summer of '64. His first and last bullfights: he had found he disliked them intensely. It wasn't the blood that angered him, it was the predestined formality of the slaughter. Spanish bullfighting and Spanish-style dancing had that in common: they had dehumanized these activities, shaped them into rote mannerisms—the bullfight and the flamenco dance had not changed in hundreds of years, they were static rituals, there wasn't a scintilla of creativity in them anymore. That worried him because it implied a key to the Spanish character which he did not comprehend. He was not altogether confident of his ability to persuade Perez-Blasco of anything at all, but he hoped the man was not a bullfight aficionado or a flamenco buff. Impossible to understand a nation of people who were satisfied with art forms that had ceased developing at the time of Velazquez and El Greco.

The helicopter swayed in gentle ballet through the valleys and passes of the mountains. A strange free feeling of dreamlike three-dimensional movement: he wondered if hallucinatory drugs had anything on this. He was a little frightened by the visual precariousness and that added something keen to his pleasure; he caught Rifkind's puzzled glance and realized he was grinning like a schoolboy.

A change in the engine's note; a tilt in the seat under him. He reached for a grip. The black lieutenant's expletive was loud and angry: “Oh Jesus.”

Rifkind, straining forward, put his preternaturally white face over the lieutenant's shoulder. “What—what?”

“Not two in a row,” the lieutenant growled.

“What is it?
”

“Man we got trouble.”

Fairlie's grip tightened on the handhold.

“Losing fuel.… She ain't pumping right.” The lieutenant's gloved hands were all over the controls, his head shifting as his eyes whipped from point to point. “Man, I think we blew a hole in the gas line someplace.”

Immediate childish anger exploded in Fairlie: what the devil was wrong with Navy's maintenance?

The black lieutenant was growling urgently into his radio microphone. Rifkind's eyes had gone round, the second agent was kneading his knuckles, Fairlie's fingers started to ache from squeezing the steel. The lieutenant flung the microphone down and jabbed at controls; the helicopter was changing its drumbeat, lurching a little now, and the lieutenant was talking to himself: “Oh man, oh man.”

Rifkind let out an odd little sound—a cry, choked off; the lieutenant shot him a look. “Everybody take it easy now. Oh man, oh man. Listen, we ain't in no real danger, just take it easy. I got to find a place to set her down. Look for somewhere flat. Mr. President-elect, I do apologize sir, I do apologize.”

“Just ease us down,” Fairlie heard himself say in a voice filled with perjured calm.

Rifkind's eyes came around, grateful; Rifkind even essayed a smile. Fairlie found himself gripping Rifkind's shoulder in a gesture of reassurance.

Rifkind's number two was pointing past the lieutenant's shoulder. “That looks pretty flat.”

The lieutenant glanced that way. “I don't know. You can't tell about those snowdrifts—sometimes nothing under them but air.… Wait now, look over there—that look like houses to you?”

Coils of thin mist hung in the passes; it was hard to make out detail; Rifkind said in a high-pitched tone, “It looks like a farm doesn't it?”

“Farm with a nice flat yard,” the lieutenant said. “Aeah, we can make that easy.” He sat back visibly relieved. The jaws resumed their rumination on the chewing gum. “All right, now you gentlemen snug up your seat belts real tight if you don't mind and sit back tight against your seats, hear? We'll set down like a fly on a soap bubble, I give you my promise. Everybody just take it easy…” The lieutenant kept talking like a wrangler soothing an alarmed horse: after a while the words became repetitive and lost meaning but Fairlie found the steady sound of the lieutenant's voice had a good hypnotic effect and he thought, he's a good man.

It came up toward them slowly, three or four scrubby little buildings in a flat white groin of the mountains. The helicopter's engine was sputtering noisily now but the black lieutenant did not act worried. The hands were steady on the controls; Fairlie felt the seat tip under him as the lieutenant put the chopper into a nose-high attitude and the descent slowed until Fairlie had no sensation of movement.

The farm had a look of disuse and long abandonment: paneless windows gaped, there were no livestock, the buildings looked ready to collapse. But as they closed slowly Fairlie began to see he had been mistaken. Smoke curled vaguely from the house chimney and the yard between house and barn had been chewed up by vehicles and foot tracks. Twin ribbons of tire tracks followed a thin corkscrew road away into the canyons below.

The lieutenant set the chopper down so gently Fairlie hardly felt the bump.

He heard a gusty exhalation and realized it had been Rifkind. Rifkind's number two was scanning the buildings and he had a gun in his fist and Fairlie said mildly, “Put that thing down out of sight, please.”

The lieutenant was talking into his microphone, reading coordinates off his chart into the radio: “Fox zero-niner, about the middle of the northwest quadrant. It's a little old farm, you can see the buildings from quite a ways up, you ought to find us easy. Repeat, coordinates Fox zero-niner, center of northwest quadrant. Over.…”

Rifkind was scraping a palm down across his face and the number two was baleful: “They should've come out to have a look at us by now.”

“Well maybe they think we're revenooers.” The black lieutenant had an engaging grin.

“That's not all joke,” Rifkind muttered. “Basque country—they do a lot of smuggling up here. Back and forth over the French frontier. These hills are full of Basque nationalists who fought Franco in the thirties and never got over it.”

The rotors finally were coming to rest—whup-whup-whup. The lieutenant said, “Most likely nobody's home. But I'll have a look. Everybody sit tight.”

The lieutenant pushed his door open and stepped down. Rifkind and his number two were watching the farmhouse with taut squints and Fairlie leaned forward for a better view.

The lieutenant was standing on the snow beside the open door. He had stripped his gloves off and was sizing up the farmhouse, in no hurry to move in; he used his hands to light a cigarette and then he turned a slow full circle to scrutinize the yard. Fairlie could not follow his glance beyond the periphery to the left; the helicopter was blind to the rear.

The lieutenant completed his turn. Then coolly as if there were nothing remarkable about it he snapped his cigarette into Meyer Rifkind's face.

Fairlie had no time to absorb it. Men appeared from the blind rear of the chopper—the door was opening on the right side, the lieutenant was jabbing the bunched rigid fingers of his hand into Rifkind's diaphragm; Rifkind folded up in his seat and sucked for breath, clawing for his service revolver; the abruptness of it electrified the skin of Fairlie's spine, he began to twist in his seat, and someone to his right fired a shot.

The number two's head snapped to one side: magically as if by stop-motion photography a dark disk appeared above his eyebrow, rimmed at the bottom by droplets of crimson froth. The lieutenant was hauling Rifkind out of the helicopter. A hand reached in past the number two, toward Fairlie; he saw it in the corner of his vision. There was another gunshot—Rifkind's hand went out to break the fall but by the time his body had fallen that far it was dead and the arm was crushed underneath.

Fairlie had just a glimpse of the gas pistol before he passed out.

10:20
A.M. EST
Bill Satterthwaite carried in his pocket the genuine symbol of status in Washington: a radio-activated beeper which uttered sounds when the White House wanted him.

It was mostly a source of sophisticated amusement. Washington hostesses joked about it (“My dear, when Bill's beeper goes off in the middle of my hors d'oeuvres I never know whether to continue the dinner or rush everyone into the basement in case it's World War Three”). The thing angered his wife, fascinated his sons, baffled the diplomats who came from countries where nothing ever required unseemly hurry.

Satterthwaite was one of the handful who hadn't been searched on entering the courtroom and that was a symbol too.

The courtroom was jammed. Reporters and sketch artists filled the seats. Satterthwaite sat near the side of the room, polishing his glasses, prepared to be bored.