What had troubled Oglethorpe during those long years was the massive indifference of his countrymen to his efforts to provide for their well-being on the day of the Ultimate Disaster. Approaching retirement, it sometimes seemed to Oglethorpe that he was a kind of ultimate disaster himself, a man of undisputed talent and ability whose hour had never seemed to come.
Yet, on this morning of Monday, December 14, it had. Oglethorpe had just given two sharp raps of his spoon to his egg when the phone rang. He almost choked hearing a Pentagon colonel introduce his caller as the Secretary of Defense. No one higher than a GS10 had ever called him at his home. Two minutes later, his breakfast in the nook uneaten, he was getting into a gray U.S. Navy sedan, preparing to speed first to his office to pick up the documents he would need in the hours to come, then to Andrews AFB.
Across the Potomac from. Oglethorpe’s Arlington home, the haggard advisers who were gathered around Jack Eastman’s conference table in the West Wing of the White House each reacted in a different way to the Dutch psychiatrist joining their group. To Lisa Dyson, the CIA’s blond Libyan Desk officer, he brought a promise of fresh our to a gathering going stale from a night of intense and occasionally acrimonious discussion.
Bernie Tamarkin, the Washington psychiatrist who specialized in dealing with terrorists, looked on Henrick Jagerman with the awe of a young cellist about to meet Pablo Casals for the first time. Jack Eastman saw in his stocky figure the incarnation of the one hope he had for a nonviolent resolution to this ghastly crisis.
The introductions completed, Jagerman took the seat Eastman indicated at the head of the table. Barely an hour ago, he had been hurtling across the Atlantic at twice the speed of sound, sipping ice-cold Dom Perignon cham-pagne and studying the psychological portrait of Qaddafi a CIA operative had given him at Charles de Gaulle Airport. Now here he was in the councils of the most powerful nation on earth, expected to offer a strategy that could prevent a catastrophe of unthinkable dimension.
“Have you established contact with Qaddafi yet?” he inquired when Eastman concluded his review of the situation.
“Unfortunately, we haven’t,” the American admitted, “although we do have a secure communications channel set up which we can use when we do.”
Jagerman looked at the ceiling. There was a large black mole in the middle of his forehead. It resembled, he was fond of pointing out, the tikka, the stain Hindus often painted there to represent the Third Eye that perceives the truth beyond appearances.
“In any event, it’s not urgent.”
“Not urgent?” Eastman was aghast. “We have barely thirty hours left to talk him out of this mess and you say getting hold of him isn’t urgent?”
“After the success of his test in the desert the man is in a state of psychic erection-clinically speaking, a state of paranoic hypertension.”
Jagerman’s tone hF.d the authoritative ring of a distinguished surgeon offering his diagnosis to a circle of interns. “That explosion has confirmed to him that he now possesses what he’s been looking for for years, absolute, total power. He sees at last, that all the possibilities he sought are open to him: destroying Israel, becoming the undisputed leader of the Arabs, master of the world’s oil supplies. Speaking to him right now could be a fatal error. Better let that stewpot cool down a bit before we take off the cover to see what’s inside.”
He pinched his nostrils with his fingers and tried to clear his aural passages, blocked by the Concorde’s abnormally rapid descent in response to the White House’s orders for speed.
“You see,” he continued, “the most dangerous moments in a terrorist situation are the first ones. Then the terrorist’s anxiety quotient is very, very high. He’s frequently in a state of hysteria that can drive him to the irrational in a second. You must ventilate him. Let him express his views, his grievances.” The Du: chman started. “By the way, these communications facilities, I presume, will allow us to hear his voice?”
“Well, there’s a possible security problem, but …”
“We must hear his voice,” Jagerman insisted. A man’s voice was for him an indispensable window onto his psyche, the element with which he could evaluate his character, the shifts in his sentiments, eventually predict his behavior patterns. In a hostage crisis, he recorded every word exchanged with the terrorists, then listened over and over again to their voices, hunting for shifts in speech patterns, in tone, in usage, looking for hidden clues that could guide his own search for mastery of the situation.
“Who should talk to him?” Eastman asked. “The President, I suppose.”
“Absolutely not.” Jagerman sounded almost shocked that Eastman had even suggested it. “The President is the person who can give him what he wants-or at least he thinks he is. He’s the last person who should talk to him.” The psychiatrist took a sip of the cup of coffee someone had placed at his elbow. “Our aim,” he went on, “must be to gain time to allow the police to find that bomb. If we let the President speak to him, how are we going to stall for time if we have to? Qaddafi can force him into a corner, a yes-or-no situation. He can demand an immediate answer he knows the President can give him.”
Jagerman noted with satisfaction that the people around the table were following his logic. “That’s why you insert the negotiator between the terrorist and authority. If the terrorist asks for something immediately, a negotiator can always stall by telling him that he has to go to speak to those in authority to get it for him. Time,” he smiled, “is always on the side of authority. As time goes by, terrorists become less and less sure of themselves. Vulnerable. As one must hope Qaddafi will.”
“What kind of person should this negotiator be?” Eastman asked.
“An older man. It’s possible he might perceive a younger man as a threat.
Someone placid, a man who will listen, who can draw him on if he lapses into silence. A father figure the way Nasser was to him when he was young.
Above all, someone who’ll inspire a sense of confidence. His attitude must be: `I sympathize with your aims. I want to help you achieve them.’ “
The Dutchman knew that task well. Five times he had had to fill it, talking terrorists through their first irrational, dangerous stage, coaxing them slowly back to reality, imposing the rhythms of normality on them, finally bringing them to accept the role he had in mind for them: becoming conquered heroes by sparing their hostages’ lives. Four times those tactics had worked brilliantly. Better in this situation, he thought, not to think about the fifth.
“The first contact will be decisive,” he continued. “Qaddafi must realize immediately that we’re taking him seriously.” His quick bright eyes surveyed the room. “In view of what he’s done, what I’m about to say may sound grotesque, but it’s a vital part of the strategy. We must begin by telling him he’s right. That not only is his complaint against Israel perfectly justified, but we’re prepared to help him find a reasonable solution to it.”