glove. The Arab gun salesman never looked happier as Robert Kranz took back the money for Dr. Dolomo, who had explained that they were all at war and that money was the main ingredient for that war.
As ordered, Robert dropped the swab away from himself and carefully removed the rubber glove. Then with four pistols and an American grenade apiece, Robert and the other Powie, who was still working on his fear, went into the terminal and bought tickets for a flight filled with American passengers headed back to an American airport. According to plan, they returned to the outside perimeter and walked through an open spot in the linked fence.
The biggest danger was getting run over by one of the planes taking off. Once they found their plane, however, Athens security, already scorched by the world press for laxness, moved in.
Two burly guards surrounded them.
“You two. You just walk through fence?”
“No,” said Robert.
“You got guns?”
“No,” said Robert.
“Okay. You good guys. Go ahead.”
Athens security having been breached, Robert Kranz and the other Powie entered the plane.
Five miles above the Atlantic, as prescribed, they screamed hysterically that it was a hijacking, ran up and down the aisles hitting people with the butts of their guns, and then told the captain of the aircraft that he would either fly to Harbor Island or they would all be dead. A real shot into a real aircraft seat with a person's thigh in between convinced the pilot they were all going to die unless he did what Robert Kranz said.
“There's no airport at Harbor Island,” said the captain, looking at his charts. “We've got to land at Nassau. It's the only one big enough for us.”
“Look at your map. You will land here,” said Robert, pointing to the Atlantic side of Harbor Island.
“That's a beach. How the hell can we take off from a beach?”
“I don't know. Do what you're told and you won't be hurt. We don't want to hurt you. We won't hurt anyone if you cooperate.”
Before they got to Harbor Island the pilot was met by naval aircraft warning him to veer away from the quarantined airspace.
“I can't. A lunatic has got a gun at my head and I can lose all my passengers.”
“Veer.”
“Sorry, no,” said the pilot, whose first responsibility was for the safety of those aboard.
“Veer,” came the order again from the naval aircraft.
“No,” said the pilot.
Below on Harbor Island the engineer watched the Navy tomcats backing away from the passenger jet.
Rubin Dolomo coughed and didn't even bother to look up.
“They've backed down,” said the engineer.
“Of course,” said Rubin. He knew the Navy world. It would have to. He had figured out what made hijackings against America so successful. It wasn't who the hijackers were, it was who the Americans were. They were people who cared enough to protect human life. In the real world that made them very vulnerable.
Could anyone imagine a Russian plane being hijacked?
Rubin Dolomo watched the large Boeing 707 come down on Pink Beach. That was a show. With surgical precision, the pilot skillfully brought the center of the plane down on the hard-packed sand at the edge of the water, palm trees on one side and open sea on the other, and the belly met the sand as gently as a soap bubble.
It was a bright morning on Harbor Island as Powie guards moved in to relieve Robert Kranz and his quaking partner. The crew was kept on the plane while the passengers were taken to prearranged spots around the island so that if any part of the island were bombed, the passengers would be hit. They were, as Rubin had figured out, “our living sandbags.”
It was noon before the news media arrived by boat from Eleuthera Island, having used political clout to break through the naval quarantine. As soon as it was learned that the Navy was blockading Harbor Island, almost every major commentator was accusing the Navy of suppressing news. Was America at war with a Bahamian island? If so, why wasn't it declared?
The American government did not have a right to hamper the freedom of the press, and the Navy patrol boats were ordered to give way to the throngs of cameramen and reporters.
Rubin was ready for them. He put the television cameramen in old cattle pens and the newspaper reporters in lamb pastures, with the news photographers assigned to goat pens. Anyone leaving the prescribed route was whipped by Powie guards.
One reporter, in an effort to establish the humanity of the Poweressence movement, was lacerated so severely that he passed out. Another Powie threw a glass of water in his face, bringing him to, and immediately it became a story of Powie medical care for the wounded.
When he was ready, Rubin Dolomo called Beatrice.
“It's all yours, precious dove,” he said. “They're going to give you the world.”
* * *
In the White House the President and Smith watched as Beatrice Dolomo spoke live to the American people. Almost every station across the country broke into programming to broadcast the live announcement of the Harbor Island hijacking.
“Good people of America,” said Beatrice Dolomo, her face in even heavier makeup for the cameras. “I have never had anything against the American people. In fact, I am an American. I do not wish to harm the innocent passengers, because we like the passengers. What I seek, and what we all seek, is religious freedom. Today, languishing in American jails are people whose only crime was that they dared to be positive instead of negative. I refer to one who is dear to our hearts. Our good friend Kathy Bowen from
Beatrice finished reading the prepared statement, smiled especially broadly at a very handsome reporter, and then nodded to Rubin.
Rubin assured everyone that the passengers were safe and feeling better than ever before because some initial Poweressence was being given to them.
“This amazing new form of reaching our ancient power roots has given help to millions, solved sleeping problems, cured eye defects, made success out of failure, and given people a new lease on life. For your free character test that will tell you who you are and how you can be stress-free forever, all you have to do is contact the Poweressence temple in your neighborhood.”
The President turned from the set.
“They're murderers and crooks, and I'm going to tell that to the country,” he said. “Dammit. They're getting millions of dollars' worth of free advertising. And we're helpless. I'm more afraid of their formula than I am for those poor passengers. This just complicates things.”
This time when the Queen of Alarkin phoned she wasn't kept waiting by State Department channels for a half-hour. She was put right through.
Her demands were simple. Drop the mail-fraud, conspiracy-to-commit-murder, accessory-to-murder-before- the-fact, extortion, and embezzlement charges against Rubin and herself, and the President could be hailed as a peacemaker to the world. Fail, and he would be trashed throughout the nation.
“Honey,” said the President, “I wasn't elected to make deals with petty con men. You go ahead and trash. No deal. America is not for sale.”
By evening it seemed as though almost every station had a program on religious intolerance in America. Persecution of Catholics, Jews, Mormons, and Quakers was now made to seem like a mere prelude to the latest in religious intolerance.
Professor Waldo Hunnicut was on the air again. It was he, after President Sadat was shot, who blamed America and not the fundamentalist Muslims who did the shooting. He blamed America for the massacres by the Khmer Rouge, whom America had once fought, and he now blamed America for the hijacking.
“I have yet to speak to one president in America who really understands religious freedom.”
When he tried the same trick with Congress the next day, two representatives cut him short, explaining that he was just another “blame-America-first-for-everything” nut.
But the media did not investigate his background. Instead they interviewed beautiful Kathy Bowen in jail. Her
