‘It’s going to be a long job.’
‘Need help?’
Charlie considered the question, thinking again about relying on others and the danger of banana skins. He said: ‘Probably some impressive government-sounding pressure later, but at the moment I’d like to try it by myself.’
‘Run it your way,’ said Wilson, supportively.
‘I’m going to book into an airport hotel.’
‘I don’t give a damn about the cost.’
Charlie hoped Harkness had been in the room to hear the remark: it would ruin the deputy’s day. Cautiously Charlie said: ‘Let’s keep the other checks in place.’
‘They are,’ assured Wilson.
Charlie worked upon the assumption that the dark-skinned man would have moved with the professional expertise he had shown in Primrose Hill Park. Which meant 7 p.m. on the 13th would have been a comfortable arrival for whatever flight he was catching but not too early, because trade-craft training on both sides is that a loitering person attracts attention. And a professional would not have taken that risk, even in a crowd-concealing situation like an airport departure lounge. Charlie decided three hours was the absolute maximum. Ten o’clock then. Still a haystack but at least it had a shape. He hoped. It was a hope that faltered almost at once. Charlie realized he’d embarked upon a practically impossible task, trying alone to work out what he wanted by studying the ABC flight guide. So he sought guidance from the deputy duty officer in the control tower, confident the man’s specialized knowledge would avoid banana skins. When Charlie explained what he wanted the man shook his head in bewilderment, complaining that it would take forever, but Charlie said it wouldn’t, because he was concentrating only on seven European destinations. It was still very late when together they produced the final list.
Between seven and ten o’clock on the night of the 13th four aircraft departed London Heathrow for Vienna, five for Paris, two for Geneva, one for Brussels, three for Madrid, two for Berlin – via Frankfurt, of course, where he could have disembarked and re-routed to any of the target cities – and three to Rome, with one internal connection to Venice.
‘I wish you luck, whatever you’re trying to do,’ said the man when they finished.
Charlie booked into the Ariel Hotel, eased his protesting feet from his Hush Puppies and ordered turkey sandwiches and a bottle of whisky from room service, the Director’s remark about expenses still clear in his mind. Eighteen aircraft, he thought. How many people made up a cabin crew? Depended on the aircraft, he supposed, but he decided to calculate using an average of ten. Which gave a maximum of a hundred and eighty people to question, if the enquiry went its full length. Like the control tower official had said, he needed luck. A lot of it.
‘Well?’ demanded Clayton Anderson.
‘All set, Mr President,’ said the Secretary of State.
‘It sure as hell better be,’ said Anderson.
Chapter Eleven
Clayton Anderson reckoned he was on stream to reverse a trend and it was about goddamned time, after Watergate and Irangate and every Cabinet member and his brother from all those previous goddamned administrations filling up the cash boxes against their inevitable end-of-term retirement. He guessed those goddamned Ivy League Eastern newspapers had tried hard enough – knew they’d tried hard, from some of their half-assed enquiries – but they hadn’t come within a mile of getting an armlock on Clayton Lucius Anderson. Throughout the first four years of his presidency until now, halfway through the second term, there hadn’t been a whiff of scandal anywhere, everyone who mattered keeping their trouser fly properly zipped and up front in church on Sundays, like they should have been, reassuring all those good folks out there in heartland America that Washington DC was at last in safe, firm hands. He’d achieved a hell of a lot to reassure those good folks out there in heartland America. In the first term he’d sat on inflation tighter than a man on a hog-tied calf and rallied the domestic economy with the right sort of fiscal policy that gave the farmers and domestic industry the protectionist edge they’d been demanding. Only right that domestically the polls should show him the most popular White House incumbent since Truman. So now it was time to go for the big one, the coup that was going to take him from office remembered not just as honest Johnnie Appleseed but as the international statesman who solved an insoluble problem and brought to the Middle East the peace that had defeated every world leader and every government since the creation of Israel. The International Room was already prepared at the memorial library in Austin – bigger and better than Lyndon Johnson’s – and this was going to be its focal point. Which was why there couldn’t be any screw-up.
‘Quite sure?’ he demanded.
‘Nothing’s been overlooked, Mr President.’ James Bell, the Secretary of State, replied respectfully although the two men were old friends from Congress days. Bell’s appointment had been his reward not only for successfully masterminding Anderson’s election the first time but for retaining those Congress links and associations, minimizing over the past six years any conflict between Capitol Hill and the White House.
‘It’s got to be more than just getting them around the same table,’ insisted the President, unnecessarily. ‘There’s got to be some hard, concrete proposal at the end of it. A homeland.’
‘We’ve worked on it for a year, six months before anything leaked publicly,’ reminded Bell. ‘Jordan want it and Syria want it and Egypt want it and Arafat wants it and the very fact that Israel is finally prepared to come face-to- face is proof that they want it, too.’
Anderson, who was a hard-boned, heavy featured, angular man, swung his chair around from the Oval Office desk, so that he could look out over the gardens and the Washington Monument beyond. He said: ‘So what about Moscow?’
‘I personally sounded them out, during the visit in July,’ reported the Secretary of State. ‘There wasn’t any doubt. They want it settled as much as everyone else. It’s gone on too long, like a running sore.’
‘You think we can trust them?’ Anderson had a Texan’s suspicion of anything communist, which had made the international gatherings during his presidency difficult. He didn’t even like the colour red.
‘The Middle East has been draining the Soviets dry for years. Now their reforms mean they’ve got to divert money away from the military and from military aid and into their domestic economy,’ said Bell. He was a shiny cheeked, roly-poly man who didn’t intend returning to his New York law practice when Anderson’s term was over. He was as aware as the President how successful the administration had been and was already receiving approaches from businesses wanting the respect and prestige of his name on their boards. There was also the television approach and that appealed to him. Nothing tacky, of course. The sort of advisory capacity, commenting upon momentous world events, that Kissinger had. And there was the book, of course. And the lecture circuit, like Kissinger again. Bell was calculating $2 million at least, when it all came together. It meant they could go on living in Georgetown and he knew Martha would like that. She enjoyed Washington: the impression of being at the centre of things. He’d already decided to take her to Geneva.
‘I mean this to work, Jim.’
‘So do I, Mr President.’
‘So what’s our security cover?’
‘I’ve given the CIA Director a personal briefing. Every station in every involved country is on maximum alert, for anything that might sound a bell,’ reported the Secretary of State.
‘And Geneva itself?’
‘Quite separate from the normal Secret Service cover the CIA are sending a team of ten,’ said Bell. ‘The supervisor is a man named Giles, Roger Giles. He’s their Middle East expert; served as station chief in Amman and Cairo. Brought back to Langley two years ago to head the desk there. First-class guy.’
It was unfortunate the country didn’t any longer erect monuments to their presidents like that obelisk out there beyond the White House lawn, thought Anderson, swivelling back into the room. He said: ‘You know what’s a pity?’
