Jamal reached into his pocket and simply removed a duplicate set of keys. He pressed the remote and, with a click, the door of the Ambassador’s compartment was unlocked. The diplomat was unceremoniously shoved into the back of one of the vans. Jamal rode with him and was the last person the Ambassador, the embodiment of American foreign policy, saw as one of the men jabbed him with a needle that would knock him out for an hour or so. The two vans then sped off in opposite directions leaving 13 security officers, all co-workers and associates of Jamal, dead or seriously wounded.
The men in the truck shouted, “Allah Akbar.” God is great.
At 7:30, Bill entered his office. The big news of the day was a videotape of a captured U.S. Ambassador kneeling before an Islamo-fascist flag as a hooded man held a gun to his head. In a halting, clouded voice, the armed man spouted a string of invectives against the country his captive represented. Obvious to anyone, except the anti-American crowd watching on Al Jazeera, was the fact that he was drugged, beaten, and under some duress. The Americans were threatened with the usual time limit to stop doing something that this group thought violated the sanctity of their beliefs, or the Ambassador would be beheaded. Unfortunately, everyone in the world except the “true believers” and the family and loved ones of the captive, were already bored with this brutal, theatrical bloodletting.
Like millions of Americans, Bill placed the horror of the man’s plight in a corner of his mind and made way for the challenges of the day. Today that meant three staff-level meetings and a presentation to the Department of Transportation on the impact magneto-electric hover technology for high-speed trains would have on the environment and U.S. energy supplies.
Bill remembered that, in his or her country of assignment, an ambassador outranks any other American official, resident, or visiting government types, even outranking the Secretary of State or Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, everyone, except the President himself.
Joey Palumbo knocked on the doorjamb. “Cheryl wasn’t at her desk, so I invited myself in.”
“No problem. How are you today?”
“Good,” Joey said as he flopped into the chair opposite Bill’s desk.
“Any idea how they got the Ambassador?”
“I hear there’s a security tape that shows it was an inside job.”
“Some local worker?”
“No, one of ours.”
“No shit!”
“That’s the only way to grab an ambassador without a full company of marines.”
“A double agent?”
“Fucking traitor. Must have masterminded the whole thing.”
“Et tu brute.”
“Et tu-xactly. Listen, I ran the Ensiling thing. All my sources are coming up natural causes — and these guys are good! You’ve got the Viennese Prefect of Police, Interpol, and a guy I know who’s working private security for an oil company over there. They all agree — no funny business.”
“Thanks Joey. It sounded weird when he told me, but I guess Peter’s got an overactive imagination.”
“Anything else I can do for you, buddy?”
“Yes, I have a meeting at three. Can you tell me how you would go about derailing a mag lev train?”
“Very cautiously, since I don’t have the sligthest friggin’ idea what a ‘mag lev’ is!”
Bill tossed a thin, stapled stack of papers over his desk to Joey. “Take a minute to read that. Magnetic levitation is going to be the next big thing in trains. I want you to tell me if there are any more security risks than there are with conventional trains.”
“First off, ask your dad, he’s the choo-choo engineer. And second, why don’t you put this up on the rings and see what you get back?”
“I was just about to when you walked in, so you get to have a head start.”
?§?
Jamal knew the number. “Station Chief now…”
“There is no station chief here,” the voice on the other end said. “Who is calling?”
“Listen, this is Jamal. Don’t waste my time and give me the CIA station chief this instant.” He looked up at his men smiling. “Technically there are no CIA officers in Egypt.”
The other end connected with a beep sequence that meant the call was being recorded. “Rumson. Who is this?”
“Earl, this is Jamal. The Islamic Brotherhood has captured an enemy of Islam and he will be tried and executed in accordance with Muslim law.”
“You are illegally detaining the personal representative of the President of the United States of America and that is an act of war. You must release him immediately.” The “
“You are wasting your breath, my time, and his few remaining minutes.”
“What do you want, Jamal?”
“A trade: the Ambassador for Sheik Alzir El Benhan.”
“Who?”
“You’re wasting time.” Jamal closed the cell phone, dropped it to the floor, and stamped it into pieces.
?§?
“Who?” President Mitchell was having a bad day already. Now his Secretary of State, Charles Pickering, was playing “Name that Terrorist” with him.
“He was the mastermind behind the influenza attack. We have him in a maximum security prison in Indiana.”
“We don’t negotiate with terrorists.”
“This is trading.”
“Are you saying there’s a difference?”
“Yes. It’s one for one. And it’s back channel, not trading out in the open.”
“The world already knows Greely has been abducted. When he suddenly pops up, Chuck, they’re gonna know!”
“We can generate some heat in Turtle Bay and make it look like the kidnappers unilaterally acceded to the will of the United Nations. Only we’ll know it’s one for one.”
“Yeah, and about that, it’s only one for one if you don’t count the dozen or so who were killed to kidnap the ambassador and you don’t count the 26,000 estimated flu deaths this ‘Sheik’ caused,” the President said sharply, then added, “And how is he a Sheik, all of the sudden?”
“Ambassador Greeley is an outstanding American who fought for this country in uniform, gave of his personal wealth to myriad charities as a civilian, and serves his country in a class one post to this day as
“Serious matter? Ah hell, Chuck!”
“Sorry, wrong choice of words. Of course, you are serious. I meant that this terrorist offer is serious.”
“Look, if we do this ‘trade’ then every Ambassador Extraordinary amp; Plenipotentiary who works for you, for me, becomes the coin of the realm to every fanatic with a grudge against the U.S. or General Motors for that matter. You know that.”
“The alternative is to show the world we can’t get our ambassador back.”
“How long do we have?”
“Maybe 24 to 36 hours. Then they’ll either kill him, contact us, or, worse, send out an Al Jazeera video.”
Mitchell turned to his Chief-of-Staff, Ray Reynolds. “I want to know if I have any military options. Press the Egyptians hard on where they are holding him. Get me any international law — hell, even diplomatic protocol — that we can have Susan wave at the Security Council up in New York. And for God’s sake hold this tight.”
“I agree,” Pickering said. “We must consider this ‘close hold.’ The press would have a field day.”
