Would Brett have receipted it? Probably not. Again, he’d been a gentleman about everything. He would not have humiliated Ed that way. Ed had done the honorable thing by resigning, and Brett would have responded honorably, undoubtedly shaken his hand with a sorrowful look, and that would have been that. Two minutes fifteen.
Decision. Rutledge tucked the letter in his jacket pocket, headed for the door, switched off the lights, and returned to the corridor, stopping short of his own office door. There he waited half a minute.
40
“Hi, George.”
“Hello, Mr. Rutledge.”
“I just sent Wally down to get coffee for the floor.”
“Good idea, sir. Bad night. Is it true that–”
“Yeah, afraid so. Brett was probably killed with all the rest.”
“Damn.”
“Might be a good idea to lock his office up. I just checked the door and–”
“Yes, sir.” George Armitage pulled out his key ring and found the proper one. “He’s always so–”
“I know.” Rutledge nodded.
“You know, two weeks ago I found his vault unlocked. Like, he turned the handle but forgot to spin the dial.” A shake of the head. “I guess he never got hisself robbed, eh?”
“That’s the problem with security,” the Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs sympathized. “The big boys never seem to pay attention, right?”
HOW BEAUTIFUL IT was. Who had done it? The question had a cursory answer. The TV reporters, with little else to do, kept telling their cameras to look at the tail fin. He remembered the logo well enough, having long ago participated in an operation that had blown up an aircraft with the red crane on its rudder fin. He almost regretted it now, but envy prevented that. It was a matter of propriety. As one of the world’s foremost terrorists–he used the word within his own mind, and in that private place relished the term, though he couldn’t use it elsewhere–such an event ought to have been his doing, not the work of some amateur. For that’s who it had been. An amateur whose name he would learn in due course, along with everyone else on earth–from television coverage. The irony was striking enough. Since puberty he’d devoted himself to the study and practice of political violence, learning, thinking, planning–and executing such acts, first as a participant, then as a leader/commander. And now what? Some amateur had outstripped him, had outstripped the entire clandes-
EXECUTIVt 41
tine world to which he belonged. It would have been embarrassing except for the beauty of the event.
His trained mind ran over the possibilities, and the analysis came rapidly. A single man. Perhaps two. More likely one. As always, he thought with a tight-lipped nod, one man willing to die, to sacrifice himself for the Cause– whatever Cause he might have served–could be more formidable than an army: In the case at hand, the man in question had possessed special skills and access to special means, both of which had served his purpose well.
That was luck, as was the single-actor aspect to the feat. It was easy for a single man to keep a secret. He grunted. That was the problem he’d always faced. The really hard part was finding the right people, people whom he could trust, who wouldn’t boast to or confide in others, who shared his own sense of mission, who had his own discipline, and who were truly willing to risk their lives. That last criterion was the price of entry, once easy enough to establish, but now it was becoming so much harder in a changing world. The well into which he dipped was running dry, and it did no good to deny it. He was running out of the truly devoted.
Always smarter and farther-seeing than his contemporaries, he himself had faced the necessity of participating in three real operations, and though he’d had the steel in his soul to do what had to be done, he didn’t crave to repeat it. It was too dangerous, after all. It wasn’t that he feared the consequences of his action–it was that a dead terrorist was as dead as his victims, and dead men carried out no more missions. Martyrdom was something he’d been prepared to risk, but nothing he’d ever really sought. He wanted to win, after all, to reap the benefits of his action, to be recognized as a winner, liberator, conqueror, to be in the books which future generations would read as something other than a footnote. The successful mission on the TV in his bedroom would be remembered as an awful thing by most. Not the act of a man, but something akin to a natural disaster, because, elegant as it was, it served no political purpose. And that was the problem with the mad act of one dedicated martyr. Luck wasn’t
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enough. There had to be a reason, a result. Such a successful act was only so if it led to something else. This manifestly had not. And that was too bad. It wasn’t often that–
No, the man reached for his orange juice and sipped it before he allowed his mind to proceed. Wasn’t often? This had never happened, had it? That was a largely philosophical question. He could say, harkening back to history, that the Assassins had been able to topple or at least decapitate governments, but back then such a task had meant the elimination of a single man, and for all the bravura shown by emissaries of that hilltop fortress, the modern world was far too complex. Kill a president or prime minister–even one of the lingering kings some nations clung to–and there was another to step into the vacant place. As had evidently happened in this case. But this one was different. There was no Cabinet to stand behind the new man, to show solidarity and determination and continuity on their angry faces. If only something else, something larger and more important had been ready when the aircraft had made its fall, then this thing of beauty would have been more beautiful still. That it hadn’t could not be changed, but as with all such events, there was much to learn from both its success and failure, and its aftermath, planned or not, was very, very real.
In that sense it was tragic. An opportunity had been wasted. If only he’d known. If only the man who’d flown that airplane to its final destination had let someone know what was planned. But that wasn’t the way of martyrs, was it? The fools had to think alone, act alone, and die alone; and in their personal success lay ultimate failure. Or perhaps not. The aftermath was still there. . . .
“MR, PRESIDENT?” A Secret Service agent had picked up the phone. Ordinarily it would have been a Navy yeoman, but the Detail was still a little too shell-shocked to allow just anyone into the Sit Room. “FBI, sir.”
Ryan pulled the phone from its holder under the desktop. “Yes?”
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“Dan Murray here.” Jack nearly smiled to hear a familiar voice, and a friendly one at that. He and Murray went back a very long way indeed. At the other end, Murray must have wanted to say Hi, Jack, but he wouldn’t– couldn’t be so familiar without being so bidden–and even if Jack had encouraged him, the man would have felt uncomfortable to do so, and would have run the further risk of being thought an ass-kisser within his own organization. One more obstacle to being normal, Jack reflected. Even his friends were now distancing themselves.
“What is it, Dan?”
“Sorry to bother you, but we need guidance on who’s running the investigation. There’s a bunch of people running around on the Hill right now, and–”
“Unity of command,” Jack observed sourly. He didn’t have to ask why Murray was calling him. All those who could have decided this issue at a lower level were dead. “What’s the law say for this?”
“It doesn’t, really,” Murray replied. The discomfort in his voice was clear. He didn’t wish to bother the man who had once been his friend, and might still be, in less official circumstances. But this was business, and business had to be carried out.
“Multiple jurisdictions?”
“To a fare-thee-well,” Murray confirmed with an unseen nod.
“I guess we call it a terrorist incident. We have a tradition of that, you and I, don’t we?” Jack asked.
“That we do, sir.”
Sir, Ryan thought. Damn it. But he had another decision to make. Jack scanned the room before replying.
“The Bureau is the lead agency on this. Everybody reports to you. Pick a good man to run things.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Dan?”
“Yes, Mr. President?”
“Who’s senior over at FBI?”
“The Associate Director is Chuck Floyd. He’s down at Atlanta to give a speech and–” Then there would be the Assistant Directors, all senior to Murray …
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“I don’t know him. I do know you. You’re acting Director until I say otherwise.” That shook the other side of the connection, Ryan immediately sensed.