LEAVING WAS EASIER than arriving. Like most Western countries, America was more concerned with what people might bring in than with what they might take out –and properly so, the first traveler thought, as his passport was processed at JFK. It was 7:05 A.M., and Air France Flight 1, a supersonic Concorde, was waiting to take him part of the way home. He had a huge collection of auto brochures, and a story he’d spent some time concocting should anyone ask about them, but his cover wasn’t challenged, or even examined. He was leaving, and that was okay. The passport was duly stamped. The customs agent didn’t even ask why he had come one day and left the next. Business travelers were business travelers. Besides, it was early in the morning, and nothing important happened before ten. The Air France first-class lounge served coffee, but the traveler didn’t want any. He was almost done. Only now did his body want to tremble. It was amazing how easily it had gone. Badrayn’s mission brief had told them how easy it would be, but he hadn’t quite believed it, used, as he was, to dealing with Israeli security with their numberless soldiers and guns. After all the tension he’d felt, like being wrapped tightly with rope, it was all diminishing now. He’d slept poorly in his hotel the previous night, and now he’d get on the aircraft and sleep all the way across. On getting back to Tehran, he’d look at Badrayn and laugh and ask for another such mission. On passing the buffet, he saw a bottle of champagne, and poured himself a glass. It made him sneeze, and it was contrary to his religion, but it was the Western way to celebrate,
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and indeed he had something to celebrate. Twenty minutes later, his flight was called, and he walked off to the jetway with the others. His only concern now was jet lag. The flight would leave at eight sharp, then arrive in Paris at 5:45 P.M.! From breakfast to dinner without the intervening midday meal. Well, such was the miracle of modern travel.
THEY DROVE SEPARATELY to Andrews, Adler in his official car, Clark and Chavez in the latter’s personal auto, and while the Secretary of State was waved through the gate, the CIA officers had to show ID, which at least earned them a salute from the armed airman.
“You really don’t like the place, do you?” the junior officer asked.
“Well, Domingo, back when you were taking the training wheels off your bike, I was in Tehran with a cover so thin you could read an insurance policy through it, yelling ‘Death to America!’ with the gomers and watching our people being paraded around blindfolded by a bunch of crazy kids with guns. For a while there, I thought they were going to be lined up against a wall and hosed. I knew the station chief. Hell, I recognized him. They had him in the bag, too, gave him a rough time.” Just standing there, he remembered, only fifty yards away, not able to do a damned thing . . .
“What were you doing?”
“First time, it was a quick recon for the Agency. Second time, it was to be part of the rescue mission that went tits-up at Desert One. We all thought it was bad luck at the time, but that operation really scared me. Probably better it failed,” John concluded. “At least we got them all out alive in the end.”
“So, bad memories, you don’t like the place?”
Clark shrugged. “Not really. Never figured them out. The Saudis I understand–I like ’em a lot. Once you get through the crust, they make friends for life. Some of the rules are a little funny to us, but that’s okay. Kinda like old movies, sense of honor and all that, hospitality,” he went on. “Anyway, lots of good experiences there. Not on
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the other side of the Gulf. Just as soon leave that place alone.” Ding parked his car. Both men retrieved their bags as a sergeant came up to them.
“Going to Paris, Sarge,” Clark said, holding up his ID again.
“You gentlemen want to come with me?” She waved them toward the VIP terminal. The low, one-story building had been cleared of other distinguished visitors. Scott Adler was on one of the couches, going over some papers.
“Mr. Secretary?”
Adler looked up. “Let me guess, this one is Clark, and this one is Chavez.”
“You might even tu ‘e a future in the intelligence business.” John smiled. Handshakes were exchanged.
“Good morning, sir,” Chavez said.
“Foley says, with you, my life is in good hands,” Sec-State offered, closing his briefing book.
“He exaggerates.” Clark walked a few feet to get a Danish. Was it nerves? John asked himself. Ed and Mary Pat were right. This should be a routine operation, in and out, Hi, how are you, eat shit and die, so long. And he’d been in tighter spots than Tehran in 1979-80–not many, but some. He frowned at the pastry. Something had brought the old feeling back, the creepy-crawly sensation on his skin, like something was blowing on the hairs there, the one that told him to turn around and look real hard at things.
“He also tells me you’re on the SN1E team, and I should listen to you,” Adler went on. At least he seemed relaxed, Clark saw.
“The Foleys and I go back some,” John explained.
“You’ve been there before?”
“Yes, Mr. Secretary.” Clark followed with two minutes of explanation that earned a thoughtful nod from the senior official.
“Me, too. I was one of the people the Canadians snuck out. Just showed up a week before. I was out apartment-hunting when they seized the embassy. Missed all the fun,” SecState concluded. “Thank God.”
“So you know the country some?”
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Adler shook his head. “Not really. A few words of the language. I was there to learn up on the place, but it didn’t work out, and I branched off into other areas. I want to hear more about your experiences, though.”
“I’ll do what I can, sir,” John told him. Then a young captain came in to say that the flight was ready. A sergeant got Adler’s things.
The CIA officers lifted their own bags. In addition to two changes of clothes, they had their sidearms–John preferred his Smith & Wesson; Ding liked the Beretta .40–and compact cameras. You never knew when you might see something useful.
BOB HOLTZMAN HAD a lot to think about, as he sat alone in his office. It was a classic newsman’s place of work, the walls glass, which allowed him a modicum of acoustic privacy while also letting him see out into the city room and the reporters there to see in. All he really needed was a cigarette, but you couldn’t smoke in the Post building anymore, which would have amused the hell out of Ben Hecht.
Somebody’d got to Tom Donner and John Plumber. It had to be Kealty. Holtzman’s views on Realty were an exact mirror image of his feelings toward Ryan. Kealty’s political ideas, he thought, were pretty good, progressive and sensible. It was just the man who was useless. In another age, his womanizing would have been overlooked, and in fact, Kealty’s political career had straddled those ages, the old and the new. Washington was full of women drawn to power like bees to honey–or like flies to something else–and they got used. Mainly they went away sadder and wiser; in the age of abortion on demand, more permanent consequences were a thing of the past. Politicians were so charming by nature that most of the cookies–that euphemism went way back–even went away with a smile, hardly realizing how they’d been used. But some got hurt, and Kealty had hurt several. One woman had even committed suicide. Bob’s wife, Libby Holtzman, had worked that story, only to see it lost in the shuffle dur-
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ing the brief conflict with Japan, and in the interim the media had decided in some collective way that the story was history, and Kealty had been rehabilitated in everyone’s memory. Even women’s groups had looked at his personal behavior, then compared it with his political views, and decided that the balance fell one way and not another. It all offended Holtzman in a distant way. People had to have some principles, didn’t they?
But this was Washington.
Kealty had got to Donner and Plumber, and must have done so between the taped morning interview and the live evening broadcast. And that meant…
“Oh, shit,” Holtzman breathed, when the lightbulb flashed on in his head.
That was a story! Better yet, it was a story his managing editor would love. Donner had said on live TV that the morning tape had been damaged. It had to be a lie. A reporter who lied directly to the public. There weren’t all that many rules in the business of journalism, and most of them were amorphous things that could be bent or skirted. But not that one. The print and TV media didn’t get along all that well. They competed for the same audience, and the lesser of the two was winning. Lesser? Holtzman asked himself. Of course. TV was flashy, that was all, and maybe a picture was worth a thousand words, but not when the frames were selected with an eye more toward entertainment than information. TV was the girl you looked at. The print media was the one who had your kids.