“Screw the press. I don’t want his wife, Stella, to raise any false hopes of a trade until, and if, it becomes the new policy of the United States.”
With that, the men left the room. Mitchell looked out the window into the Rose Garden. He knew that any effort through the U.N. was futile; international law didn’t cover this unless the U.S. was going to accuse Egypt of being complicit. Besides, his own administration’s Middle East initiatives would preclude strong-arming a friend in the Security Council. At best, a public display of condemnation was a publicity stunt that could possibly have misdirection value if U.S. forces had to go in. Mitchell also knew committing U.S. forces, to invade a sovereign nation — an ally — was risky business. On the other hand, to let an ambassador die, only to protest it to the world afterwards, seemed like a damn bad use of a good man’s life. Yet, to save him by any means of negotiated release meant to hang an open season hunting tag on any official of the U.S. Government. For a moment, Mitchell had a terrible thought:
His personal assistant entered quietly and said softly, “Mr. President, the Speaker of the House is here for your 10:15 meeting.” Like so many other Americans that morning, Mitchell had to relegate any further thought of the ambassador’s dilemma to a far recess of his mind so that the rest of his brain could work on the matter’s of the Nation’s business.
The Hiccocks started their Saturday twice. They awoke at 8:30, each thinking what the other was thinking, then acting upon it, so neither left the bed. At 9:10 they both collapsed into a deep sleep until 10:20, when Janice rolled over and opened her eyes.
“Bill, it’s 10:20.”
Bill spoke into the pillow. “Errrrmp.”
She patted him on his butt until he lifted his head. “Good morning, almost afternoon.”
They showered, dressed, and went to a local diner for breakfast.
“No matter what, we are just looking,” Bill said. “We are not buying anything.”
“Exactly. We’re going to see our options then sleep on it.”
“We have lots of time. We don’t have to rush into anything.”
“Exactly.”
It was a beautiful, sun-shiny, day. They drove for 45 minutes to a store out on the highway that Cheryl’s sister had recommended.
Forty minutes later, Bill was ruing the fact that they didn’t take the old wagon. Tied to the top of the Caddy was the big box holding the crib. Jutting out from the tied-down open trunk was the stroller box and the back seat was crammed with little blankets, pillows, and stuffed animals. With over 300 I.Q. points between them, the one thing they did that was smart in ‘Babies R Us,’ was not commit to any gender specific color scheme or wallpaper.
“Didn’t we say we were just looking?” Bill said, as he drove no faster than 40 miles per hour, lest the wind shear lift the crib’s box into somebody’s front grill.
The nursery wasn’t ready yet. It wasn’t even a nursery, and it still had to be divested of the books, junk, and old exercise equipment that lived there. Bill put the crib, stroller, and other stuff in the garage. He then began tinkering with a lamp he started rewiring last winter.
“I made you a sandwich,” Janice called out from the kitchen.
“Just a minute.” Bill snaked the new cord through the body of the lamp and out the top. He left enough hanging out to be able to work with when he would wire the new socket to it, later, after lunch.
The TV was on in the kitchen and CNN was all over the ambassador story with graphics and serious music calling it “Summit with Death?” They had silhouetted the grainy image of Greeley from the terrorists tape and it now flew back over the graphics of a masked terrorist as thunderous theme music played. Being CNN, there was a panel of talking heads who didn’t beat the living shit out of the one “Intellectual” who espoused that the taking of the ambassador was “justifiable” due to America’s continuing suppression of the Arab sentiments in the world. Instead, they simply went to commercial. Bill just shook his head.
“Did you know him?” Janice asked.
“Greeley? No, never met him, although I hear he was… is, a good man.”
“The news is now saying his ambassadorial appointment was a political payoff for campaign contributions.”
“Well, ain’t that a scoop! They are only about a hundred years late on catching on to that dirty little secret. But that’s the soft posts like Canada or Portugal, where some political appointee can’t screw it up too bad. Egypt is prime time, Class one. Those only get career Foreign Service Officers. The press is just looking for any way to slam Mitchell because he isn’t one of them.”
“Because he isn’t a newsman?”
“No, because he’s neither Fox news “Right,” or CNN “Left,” and they both hate that neutrality, like he was selling the secret formula of Coca Cola to the Russians.
“So what do you think is going to happen?” Janice asked as she poured Bill and herself more iced tea.
“Thanks. This is just a guess, but I’d say there’s a delta force or SEAL strike team warming up the coffee right about now waiting for someone to drop a dime on where the man is being held.”
“What about Egyptian sovereignty?”
“That’s covered under ‘Posse comi — fuck ‘em.’”
It took a second for Janice to realize that Bill had just bastardized ‘Posse Comitatus.’
Bill added, “If they get a 20 on this guy, our guys will go in first, snatch him back, then spin it as a joint U.S./Egyptian intelligence op or some kind of bullshit so that the Egyptians save face.”
“Okay, so now I feel better.”
Bill was in the middle of going through a box of stuff in order to throw most of it out and put what was left in a smaller box from which, if he continued the process, he could whittle down the contents of the ten boxes that were taking up valuable baby space in the garage down to one. He was going through old checks and photographs when he heard a familiar voice.
“You
“Joey, I don’t believe it. I just found this in the box.”
Bill handed Palumbo an old photograph: a picture of the two of them and some other guys standing in front of a pipe held up by two braced two-by-fours.
“Hey, the high bar, Muzzi, Johnny ‘No’, Soccio, Mush, B.O. Look at the mop of hair on your head!”
“Look how skinny we were.” Hiccock laughed as he tossed the picture back in the keeper box. “What brings you round this way on a Saturday?”
“Something is bugging me and I thought I’d run it by you.”
“Wanna beer?”
“Nah.”
“Okay, then shoot.”
“You remember Brooke Burrell out of the New York Bureau office?”
“Sure do. She was point on the whole virus thing and the poison gas tank plot in New York. Solid agent.”
“One of the best. She and I had a talk, off the record. A lot of it was just agent-to-agent, you know? ‘How do I do this, how should I handle that?’ But she said one thing that…Have you heard the latest out of Egypt?”
“That they took Greely to set El Benham free? Yeah.”
“She had an inkling that Alzir knew he wasn’t going to be in custody long.”
“Have they ever done this before?” Bill asked as he decided to throw out a desk calendar from 1999.
“Not one for one like this, and if they have it’s usually a low-level or convenient grab. A local police chief or U.S. military captive. But it’s always reactive, almost improvised by them. This has pre-meditated all over it.”
“And you’re telling me this because?”
“Brooke had a sense about this guy knowing he was going to be sprung, and now she’s right.”
Bill looked at him in a way that said, “So?”
“This is a big play. They wouldn’t do this kinda thing if we caught Al Qaeda number 1. This Alzir guy is deeply connected to something else, something bigger.”
