The media let him get away with it. The lesson of that was that the media was nobody’s friend. Lacking convictions of its own, it just published what people said, and so she had to speak, off the record, on deep background, or just casually, to various reporters. Some, those who covered the Environment regularly, at least understood the language, and for the most part could be trusted to write their pieces the proper way, but they always included the other side’s rubbish science yes, maybe your position has merit, but the science isn’t firm enough yet and the computer models are not accurate enough to justify this sort of action, the other side said. As a result of which, the public’s opinion-as measured in polls-had stagnated, or even reversed a little bit. The President was anything but an Environmental President, but the bastard was getting away with it at the same time using Carol Brightling as political camouflage, or even political cover! That appalled her. . . or would have under other circumstances. But here she was, Dr. Brightling thought, zipping up her skirt before donning the suit-jacket, a senior advisor to the President of the United States. That meant she saw him a couple of times per week. It meant that he read her position papers and policy recommendations. It meant that she had access to the media’s top-drawer people, free to pursue her own agenda . . . within reason.
But she was the one who paid the price. Always, it was she, Carol thought, reaching down to scratch Jiggs’s ears as she made her way to the door. The cat would pass the day doing whatever it was that he did, mainly sleeping in the sun on the windowsill, probably waiting for his mistress to come home and feed him his Frisky treat. Not for the first time, she thought about stopping by a pet store and getting Jiggs a live mouse to play with and eat. A fascinating process to watch, predator and prey, playing their parts . . . the way the world was supposed to be; the way it had been for unnumbered centuries until the last two or so. Until Man had started changing everything, she thought, starting the car, looking at the cobblestoned street-still real cobbles for this traditional Georgetown address, with streetcar tracks still there, too-and brick buildings which had covered up what had probably been a pretty hardwood forest less than two hundred years before. It was even worse across the river, where only Theodore Roosevelt Island was still in its pristine state and that was interfered with by the screech of jet engines. A minute later, she was on M Street, then around the circle onto Pennsylvania Avenue. She was ahead of the daily rush-hour traffic, as usual, heading the mile or so down the wide, straight street before she could turn right and find her parking place-they weren’t reserved per se, but everyone had his or her own, and hers was forty yards from the West Entrance-and as a regular, she didn’t have to submit to the dog search. The Secret Service used Belgian Malinois dogs-like brown German shepherds keen of nose and quick of brain, to sniff at cars for explosives. Her White House pass got her into the compound, then up the steps into the OEOB, and right to her office. It was a cubbyhole, really, but larger than those of her secretary and assistant. On her desk was the Early Bird, with its clips of articles from various national newspapers deemed important to those who worked in this building, along with her copy of Science Weekly, Science, and, today, Scientific American, plus several medical journals. The environmental publications would arrive two days later. She hadn’t yet sat down when her secretary, Margot Evans, came in with the codeword folder on nuclear-weapons policy, which she’d have to review before giving the President advice that he’d reject. The annoying part of that, of course, was that she’d have to think to produce the position paper that the President would not think about before rejecting. But she couldn’t give him an excuse to accept, with great public reluctance, her resignation-rarely did anyone at this level ask to leave per se, though the local media had the mantras down and fully understood. Why not take it a step further than usual, and recommend the closure of the dirty reactor at Hanford, Washington? The only American reactor of the same design as Chernobyl-less a power reactor than one designed to produce plutonium-Pull’-for nuclear weapons, the worst gadget the mind of warlike men had ever produced. There were new problems with Hanford, new leaks from the storage tanks there, discovered before the leakage could pollute ground water, but still a threat to the environment, expensive to fix. The chemical mix in those tanks was horribly corrosive, and lethally toxic, and radioactive . . . and the President wouldn’t listen to that bit of sound advice either.
The science of her objections to Hanford was real, even Red Lowell worried about it-but he wanted a new Hanford built! Even this President wouldn’t countenance that!
With that reassuring thought, Dr. Brightling poured herself a cup of coffee and started reading the Early Bird, while her mind pondered how she’d draft her doomed recommendation to the President.
“So, Mr. Henriksen, who were they?” the morning anchor asked.
“We don’t know much beyond the name of the purported leader, Ernst Model. Model was once part of the BaaderMeinhof gang, the notorious German communist terrorist group from the ’70s and ’80s. He dropped out of sight about ten years ago. It will be interesting to learn exactly where he’s been hiding out.”
“Did you have a file on him during your time with the FBI Hostage Rescue Team?”
A smile to accompany the terse reply. “Oh, yeah. I know the face, but Mr. Model will now transfer to flit, inactive files.”
“So, was this a terrorist incident or just a hank robbery?”
“No telling as yet from press reports, but I would not entirely discount robbery as a motive. One of the thing; people forget about terrorists is that they have to eat, too. and you need money to do that. There is ample precedent for supposedly political criminals to break the law just to make money to support themselves. Right here in America, the CSA – the Covenant, the Sword and the Arm of the Lord, as they called themselves-robbed banks to support themselves. Baader-Meinhof in Germany used kidnappings to extort money from their victims corporate and family ties.”
“So, to you they’re just criminals?”
A nod, and a serious expression. “Terrorism is a crime. That’s dogma at the FBI, where I came up. And these four who got killed yesterday in Switzerland were criminals. Unfortunately for them, the Swiss police have assembled and trained what appears to be an excellent. professional special-operations team.”
“How would you rate the takedown?”
“Pretty good. The TV coverage shows no errors at all. All the hostages were rescued, and the criminals all were killed. That’s par for the course in an incident like this. In the abstract, you would like to take the criminals down ,t live if possible, but it is not always possible-the lives of t lie hostages have absolute priority in a case like this one.”
“But the terrorists, don’t they have rights-”
“As a matter of principle, yes, they do have the same rights as other criminals. We teach that at the FBI, too, and the best thing you can do as a law enforcement officer in a case like this one is to arrest them, put them in front of a judge and jury, and convict them, but remember that the hostages are innocent victims, and their lives are at risk because of the criminals’ actions. Therefore, you try to give them a chance to surrender-really, you try to disarm them if you can.
“But very often you do not have that luxury,” Henriksen went on. “Based on what I saw on TV from this incident, the Swiss police team acted no differently than what we were trained to do at Quantico. You only use deadly force when necessary-but when it’s necessary, you do use it.”
“But who decides when it’s necessary?”
“The commander on the scene makes that decision, based on his training, experience, and expertise.” Then, Henriksen didn’t go on, people like you second-guess the hell out of him for the next couple of weeks.
“Your company trains local police forces in SWAT tactics, doesn’t it?”
“Yes, it does. We have numerous veterans of the FBI HRT, Delta Force, and other `special’ organizations, and we could use this Swiss operation as a textbook example of how it’s done,” Henriksen said-because his was an international corporation, which trained foreign police forces as well, and being nice to the Swiss wouldn’t hurt his bottom line one bit.
“Well, Mr. Henriksen, thanks for joining us this morning. International terrorism expert William Henriksen, CEO of Global Security, Inc., an international consulting firm. It’s twenty-four minutes after the hour.” In the studio, Henriksen kept his calm, professional face on until five seconds after the light on the nearest camera went out. At his corporate headquarters, they would have already taped this interview to add to the vast library of such things. GSI was known over most of the world, and their introductory tape included snippets from many such interviews. The floor director walked him off the set to the makeup room, where the powder was removed, then let him walk himself out to where his car was parked.