Under Siege (68 page)

The chairman of the Joint Chiefs arrived by helicopter fifteen minutes later. Ten minutes after that the Vice lot looking at the dangling corpses.

President arrived. Together they walked through the parking

Jake Grafton went over to where Toad and Rita were sitting in chairs. “Come on. Let’s go home. You got the car keys, Toad?” con’In MY pocket. ‘Rita, take the keys and bring the car up to the door.”

“What about Yocke?” Toad asked as Jake helped him into the front seat.

“disHe’s over with the heavies getting a story. Let’s go home.”

As the car exited the armory parking lot, Toad pointed toward the official party in the parking lot across the street. “Wonder what they’re thinking?”

“They’re politicians. Tom Shannon and the other citizens here tonight just delivered a message. They’re reading it now.

CHAMRTHIUY-7WO

ltple heard the news of the hanging on portable, batteryted mdios, then ran next door to tell their neighbors. The news seemed to drain whatever energy remained from the wounded city. The next morning it lay stunned, exhausted, its citizens cold and without power. There was no rioting, no looting, no fires. The soldiers the streets without incident as crews worked feverLW-YOU to restore power to the residential neighborhoods. The bombed substations would require weeks to repair or rebuild, but emergency repairs began to restore power to a few areas by nightfall. In the areas without power, people were evacuated to schools and auditoriums where the Army installed portable generators. The people of Washington began to reach out to help each other.

Jake Grafton spent the day in a round of meetings as the federal authorities devised ways to thwart the terrorist threat from the Extraditables in the short term. Over the long term, the problem was the cocaine industry in South America.

The next day the ban against motor vehicles was lifted and people swarmed the city in a monumental traffic jam. That evening, after conferring with the directors of the FBI, DEA, and CIA and being advised that those organizations knew of no additional terrorists in the country, General Land started pulling out the troops. He had Jake Grafton, Toad, and Rita come to his office and make a complete report. An hour later when the

rman signaled the interview was over, Jake asked for for himself and Toad. Rita was already on leave. The uest was granted.

ut in front of the Pentagon Jake asked the two lieutenants, “You want to come over to the beach house and spend Christmas with Callie and Amy and me?”

They glanced at each other, then accepted.

All the troops were out of the city on the twenty-ninth of December. The following day George Bush was discharged from Bethesda Naval Hospital and returned to the White House.

He held a news conference that afternoon that was carried live nationwide. Attorney General Gideon Cohen sat beside him.

Bush sd’he felt good and was getting better every day. He wanted to take this opportunity to publicly thank VicePresident Quayle for his excellent stewardship during his incapacity, and he did so with the leaders of the House and Senate and all of the surviving Supreme Court justices in attendance. And he announced the formation of a presidential commission to study the nation’s illegal drug problem and make recommendations on what needed to be done to solve it. Gideon Cohen was appointed chairman.

“I have asked the attorney general to chair this commission because he has been one of the harshest critics of our efforts to date. I know we can rely on him to give us a thorough, honest evaluation of our shortcomings. I promise you, we will ask the Congress to turn the commission I s recommendations into legislation.”

. Then the President got down to brass tacks. “The drug problem is a complex social issue that is not going to go away by itself. Its causes include everything from poverty in Colombia and Peru to poverty and rotten schools in this country. The crux of the problem is that so many people have been left out of the world’s evolving economy, people in the Third World, people right here in America. I don’t know that there are solutions-certainly no easy ones-but I promise you this: we are going to face the problem.”

Intended by the President to help calm the political atmosphere, which was rife with accusations and recriminations, the news conference had no such effect. It was too

little too late.

Critics like Congresswoman Samantha Strader attacked the Army’s handling of the crisis and damned Tom Shannon as a psychotic vigilante. He would have been stuffed into the same crack that held Bernard Goetz had he not been black. Unable to hurl the racist stink bomb, those who opposed tougher drug laws and tougher law enforcement and those with their own political agendas and ambitions united to demand that Shannon be tried, convicted, and hurried on his way to perdition.

Those who believed that the government hadn’t done enough to combat illegal drugs rushed to Shannon’s defense. It was wrong, they claimed, to martyour Shannon on the altar of the white man’s guilt.

Jack Yocke’s articles in the Post merely drew the lines for the combatants. Saint or sinner, Tom Shannon stood at the vortex of the developing firestorm. Curiously, he stood alone. After a quiet conference with his chief adviser, Will Dorfman, George Bush decided not to have the FBI or police attempt to discover the identities of the people who had accompanied Shannon to the armory. Those seeking to destroy Shannon were likewise not interested in having the stories of a thousand victims of the drug trade paraded before the public one at a time, night after night, ad infinitum. So Tom Shannon was the only man charged, for conspiracy with a person or persons unknown to lynch 382

people.

When Jack Yocke went to see him in the hospital, Shannon grinned. “Nobody wants to try us all, but they think if they try just me all the other victims will go away. Won’t happen. Those people buried too many kids, buried too many husbands.”

“What about legalization of dope?” Jack Yocke asked toward the end of the interview. “There’s a lot of talk about that since Christmas. What do you think?”

Personally I’m against it,” Shannon said. “There’s too fools who’ll get addicted. Off the record, though, I k that’s what will have to be done. We’ve got to get the big money out of the business. If the money is gone the criminals will go. That’ll stop the recruitment of kids just out of diapers to a life of using and abusing, a life of crime and ignorance and squalor. A whole generation of black kids is going down the toilet. It’s an obscenity that’s got to stop.”

Remarkably, in spite of the hurricane-velocity winds building inside the, beltway, life elsewhere in America returned quickly to normal. The soaps went back on television during the day and the sitcoms returned at night. Critics complained of the sexual innuendo that passed as humor this winter on the tube. A network executive said the critics didn’t know what was funny.

The ball fell in Times Square on New Year’s Eve and a great many people awoke the next morning with a hangover, but not as many as in past years, some pollster said in a headline story, because people these days were drinking less. Southern Cal won another Rose Bowl.

During the first week of January two former executives of a large Texas savings and loan pleaded guilty to twenty-eight counts of bank fraud and asked the court to put them on probation.

The wife of a well-known movie star sued her husband for divorce and claimed he was having an affair with his latest leading lady. The betrayed wife went from one syndicated morning talk show to the next telling her story and explaining tilde to the sympathetic hosts the financial hardships that loomed as she tried to survive on half a million a month and keepthe kids in school.

Iran had a little earthquake. Another ayatollah died while a blizzard stranded airline passengers in Denver, and Whitefish, Montana, reported record low temperatures. . The Democrats wanted to know when the administration was going to get serious about raising taxes and the Republicans wanted to know when the Democrats were going to get serious about cutting government spending.

unced he waspy. at l-Another congressman anno .:

I And the network that had rights to televise the Superbowl ally kicked off the hype with a show in which milliontdft football players explained how their teams had overcome adversity this past year.

b-Cherry quietly While all this was going on Senator Bo reaped from the U.s. Senate. He told the Florida newspapers that-he was tired and had done all he could for his country. Guessing who the governor would appoint to fill the diversion of the hour in Florida. Cherry’s seat became i A fine wet rain, almost a mist, fell almost continuously in Washington that first week of the new year. Then the wind picked up and blew the clouds eastward out to sea. Thanos Liarakos glanced again at the street sign and once sulted his map. He drove slowly for several more again con blocks, then found the street he wanted. The trees in this suburban tract development were small and sticklike in the anemic sunlight. They would grow larger of course, but it would take twenty or thirty years for these neighborhoods to look settled, permanent. He found the building he wanted and drove another half then walked back. The block looking for a parking place, sprawling one-story brick structure was surrounded on three sides by a chain-link fence. Inside the sturdy wire were sandboxes and swings and child-powered merry-go-rounds. And children. Lots of them, squealing, running, laughing.

Liarakos went in the front door and down the empty hallway. He paused outside the door marked OFMCE, squared his shoulders, then went in.

“Miss Judith Lewis, please. Is she around?”

The owlish-looking young woman with a heavy sweater and shiny pink lips sitting behind the desk noted his suit and tie, grinned perfunctorily, and said, “She has playground duty. Might be in back.”

“And how … ?”

“Down the corridor to the first left and straight on out. You can’t miss it.”

“Thank you.”

Judith Lewis was standing with her arms folded across her chest listening to a young boy tell a tale of woe, with much pointing and gesturing. She bent down and wiped his face and stroked his hair. As she did so the lower edge of her coat dragged in the dirt. That, Liarakos suspected, was not a detail that would bother Judith Lewis very much. The child grinned finally and ran off to join his friends. “Hello, Judith.”

She turned and saw him, then rose to her feet. “Hello,” she acknowledged without enthusiasm. She half turned away so she could watch the children. He approached and stood beside her, also watching the children. “How was your holiday?” he asked.

“Fine.” Her voice was hard and flat. She checked her watch. “Beautiful youngsters.”

“Recess is over in three minutes. Say what you came to .4

say.

“Okay. That Cuban general, Zaba, knows enough to convict Chano Aldana. And he’s talking, singing his heart out. I’ve been reading transcripts of his interrogations. If the prosecutors can get Zaba on the stand they can get a conviction.”

“Why are you telling me all this?”

“Isn’t it obvious?”

“I’m not going back to work for you, Mr. Liarakos. I thought I made that plain.”

“What you made plain, Ms. Lewis, is that you thought Chano Aldana was the devil incarnate and ought to be locked up so he can’t continue to murder and terrorize and sell poison to ruin the lives of children like these.”

“You were equally definite in your opinion, Mr. Liarakos, as I recall.” Her voice was acidic. “Like every wealthy, successful criminal, Aldana deserves the best legal defense money can buy, and that of course is you. And if you can hoodwink and bamboozle the jurors, it’s your sworn duty to do so. Then you go home to your beautiful wife and children and eat a gourmet dinner and rest your weary soul, your

duty well and truly done. Isn’t that the spin you want on it? Oh, I haven’t forgotten our last conversation, Mr. Liarakos. I doubt that I ever will. It brought into very stark relief all the doubts I’ve had through the years of law school and practice.” The bell rang. All the children charged for the door. “If you’ll ex-was she began, but he interrupted: “I came to ask you to come back to work.”

She stared at him as the schoolyard emptied and the last of the children disappeared inside.

“Listen, there’s more to the legal profession than the Chano Aldanas of the world. Someone has to be in a position to help all these people who need someone to speak for them. Someone has to represent Jane Roe and Karen Ann Quinlan and John T. Scopes and all the rest of the folks who can’t speak for themselves. That’s why you went to law school, isn’t it?”

“Yes, it is.” She said it softly, almost inaudibly. She lifted the hem of her coat and brushed at the loose dirt that clung there. “Where do you think you get the experience to help that one client in a hundred? You get it by going to court every day, wrestling with the prosecutors and the judges and the system. Someone has to know how to work the system.”

She turned and aced the schoo .

“Someone has to care. Someone has to fight it every blessed day and do the best they can. If someone doesn’t, the little people are going to go down the slop chute. Now I ask you, if you won’t do it, who will?”

“You keep asking these goddamned rhetorical questions, Mr. Liarakos,” she said bitterly. “And you’re representing Chano Aldana.”

“He paid the fee. The firm needs the money. I neet money. I’ll do my level best for the bastard.”

“Why?”

“Ms. Lewis, if you have to ask, you’d better stay here with the grade-school kids.”

“Aldana is going to walk.”

Liarakos snorted. “No, he isn’t. Zaba knows enough to convict Aidana. I’ve been reading the transcripts of the interrogations. He’s singing like a bird. They got everything chapter and verse. Names, locations, dates, amounts, quantities-everything. Zaba was the Cuban connection and he personally met with Aidana at least seven times. He even arranged for a couple of murders of DEA agents by Cuban intelligence. The prosecutors have got it.”

“S. What are you going to do?”

“Me? I’m just going to give Aldana a hundred percent of my best efforts and the prosecutors are going to nail his guilty hide to the wall. Clarence Darrow couldn’t get the sonofabitch off. There’s no way. I’ve been doing this for a lot of years and I know. Aldana’s guilty and the jury will see that and he’ll go up the river for the rest of his natural life. “And you?”