Wendy Hollander, a Democrat but representing the yahoo wing on the far right, had been making an almost continuous series of inflammatory appeals: Washington should round up every suspected revolutionary-radical in the country and start executing them daily by platoons until Fairlie was released.
The Hollander proposals had a simpleminded practicality which appealed to the Birchite fringe: Orange County was solidly behind Hollander, but his native Kentucky was not.
Andrew Bee and the moderate-liberal alliances within both parties were publicly alarmed by the saber rattling of the Hollander wing. The Hollander proposals brought to mind the specter of Nazi reprisals. Even responsible conservatives like Fitz Grant were disavowing Hollander’s bloodthirsty cries for action, but Hollander had a frightening amount of support from men like House Armed Services Chairman Webb Breckenyear and FBI Director Clyde Shankland, who had been a Hoover protégé.
Bee and the liberals had reminded the public that the office of the Presidency was more important than considerations of revenge or reprisal. The life of the President-elect was the issue. When all factors were weighed the balance had to come down in favor of saving Clifford Fairlie’s life; what happened afterward—to the seven fanatics on trial in Washington, and to the kidnappers, and to the radical revolutionary movement as a whole—was a matter for later decision.
Both the left and the right employed the powers of reason and logic to support emotional conclusions. Compassion was the guiding factor for the liberals and rage was the guiding factor for the rightists. As usual Ethridge saw both sides: he had the compassion and the anger together in his own guts. In the end what decided him was the same vision that had guided him earlier: the feeling that if Fairlie could be recovered alive it would give Washington an unprecedented chance to institute reforms that could restore a stable democracy and discourage this kind of thing from happening again.
But the hard-line opposition made it tough. The voice of reprisal was loud; it was forcing Howard Brewster to listen. The Pentagon, most of the members of the National Security Council, the law enforcement chiefs and the entire right wing were calling for a preemptive crackdown on all radical activists. The national uproar was tumultuous. Not many supported Hollander’s call for reprisive executions but millions wanted the radicals jailed.
It made a kind of sense; that was why it got right to the nerve ends. But once you began that kind of crackdown it would lead inevitably to a full-scale conflict—a kill-or-be-killed war between the Establishment and the radicals. Militants at both extremes wanted just that. The fragile center held them at arm’s length—and at sword’s point.
One man had been kidnapped: and it could ignite the world.
His head throbbed, the pain fluctuating from moment to moment, stabbing behind his right eye. It didn’t worry him but it was an annoyance. The painkillers Dick Kermode had prescribed were brain-dullers as well and Ethridge hadn’t used them. He had already undergone endless examinations in Kermode’s office and at Walter Reed—an agonizing spinal fluid tap for fluid analysis, skull X rays, electroencephalograms; penetrating eye examinations; tests of plantar responses and flexion, half a dozen others he could hardly remember. All negative. He’d known they wouldn’t find anything wrong. It was tension: what could you expect? Everybody had some reaction to pressure. People got ulcers, heart trouble, asthma, even gout; with Ethridge it was sinus headaches.
He glanced at the green glow of the bedside alarm. Nearly five o’clock.
Crossing the carpet in his bare feet toward the bathroom door he felt disoriented, light-headed; he braced his hand against the door and stood still to gather strength. Perhaps he had got up too quickly, the blood rushing from his head.
He glanced back toward the beds. A faint street-lamp illumination filtered in through the lace curtains and fell across the twin beds; Judith remained sound asleep.
He stepped into the bathroom and pushed the door shut before he reached for the light switch; he didn’t want the light to wake her. His hand fumbled for the switch but suddenly there was no feeling in his fingers.
He tried the left hand. The light clicked on.
It was too bright against his eyes. He stood before the sink sweating lightly, staring down at his right hand. He tried to flex the fingers; his hand responded sluggishly, as if at a great distance.
He took it badly. His hair rose, he dragged his uneasy left hand down across his face and began to shake.
When he looked into the mirror his face was drawn with pain—unnaturally decayed, ravaged by a surreal gray putrefaction.
An abrupt red explosion: the blinding stab of pain in his head.
The mild eyes mirrored panic before they rolled up into the sockets.
Faintly he heard the thrashing clatter his limbs made as he fell across the bathtub.
10:30 A.M. Continental European Time David Lime sat behind the wheel of a blue Cortina watching the face of the bank across the street, waiting for Mario Mezetti to appear.
Shadowing him seemed the best option. Today was the fourteenth of January and Fairlie was due to be inaugurated on the twentieth; there were six days, less whatever time it took to transport Fairlie to Washington from wherever he might be found: latitude enough to spend a few hours tailing Mezetti—or even as much as a day or two. If it failed at the end of that time Lime would reconsider.
Leaving Mezetti to his own devices had already produced an impressive amount of raw information. Mezetti had booked a room at the Queen’s Hotel on Grand Parade but he evidently intended to check out today because he hadn’t renewed the booking and he had arranged with Mezetti Industries for a plane and pilot to take him to Cairo today. Surveillance teams had been alerted in Cairo and all intermediate stops where the plane might set down to refuel; and Lime had a Lear jet with British civilian markings on tap at Gibraltar to shadow Mezetti directly in the air in case Mezetti failed to keep to his flight plan.
In the meantime Mezetti had been making telephone calls every two hours at even-numbered hours. Because the calls were international—Gibraltar to Spain—it was easy enough to ascertain the number of the telephone receiving his calls; the phone was in Almería. Every call since eight o’clock the previous evening had been monitored by British and American agents but the eavesdropping hadn’t contributed much because Mezetti’s telephone calls were never answered. Mezetti would let it ring four times and hang up.
A continuation signal, Lime guessed. Someone within earshot of the recipient telephone was supposed to be listening at even-numbered hours. If the phone did not ring it would indicate Mezetti had been detained. But Lime had ordered a stakeout on the house in Almería. It had gone into effect before ten o’clock last night; since then Mezetti had made seven calls to that number but no one was there. Guardianos had combed the house and found it vacant. Neighboring houses had been evacuated, their residents taken into custody, but it didn’t look as if any of the arrested people had any connection with the kidnapping. The line had been traced from the receiving phone to Almería Central in order to find out if the kidnappers had a tap on it but none had been discovered. Even the long-distance telephone operators were being interrogated.
It was a puzzle and it nudged various suspicions in the back of Lime’s mind. But if it was a red herring it could operate either of two ways and there wasn’t time to analyze it to death. Mezetti was a warm body, Lime had a rope on him, and he intended to keep hold of its end until he saw where it was going to drag him.