Eastman gestured with his head to the translator.
“Your arrangements are satisfactory,” Qaddafi replied when he had finished.
“I am now ready to address the President.”
“Thank you, sir,” Eastman answered politely. “The President has asked me to tell you first that he takes the contents of your letter with the utmost seriousness. He is conferring now with our senior people to discuss how we can best take action on your proposals, and has asked me to serve as his personal liaison with you as we try to reach together some resolution of the issues you have raised. There are a number of points in your letter on which we would like to ask you for clarification. Have you considered what interim security arrangements are to be made on the West Bank as the Israelis withdraw?”
The three psychiatrists exchanged satisfied smiles. Eastman was slipping brilliantly into his role of negotiator, ending with a question that would force Qaddafi to go on talking and at the same time lead him to believe he was going to get what he wanted.
There was a long silence before Qaddafi came back on the line. Even in Arabic, everyone in the room could detect the change in his tone.
“Mr. Eastman. The only person in your country to whom I am prepared to speak is the President.”
The men at the table waited for Qaddafi to continue, but only the faint drone of the sound amplifier emerged from the squawk box.
“Stall,” Tamarkin said to Eastman. “Tell him you’ve summoned the President.
He’s on the way. Tell him anything you want, just as long as you keep him talking.”
Eastman had resumed speaking for only a few seconds when Qaddafi’s voice came back on the line. This time the Libyan spoke directly in English.
“Mr. Eastman, I am not going to tumble into your traps as easily as that.
If what I have to discuss with the President is not important enough for him to receive my communication himself, I have nothing further to say to you. Do not contact me again if the President is not prepared to talk personally with me.”
Again the drone of the amplifier came over the open line. “Mr. Qaddafi?”
Eastman said.
“Eagle One to Eagle Base.” It was the Air Force Brigadier in the Doomsday jet. “Fox Base has cut the circuit.”
Angelo Rocchia and Jack Rand cruised slowly southeast down Hicks Street, the street indicated by the pickpocket Angelo had grilled a few minutes earlier. The street, it seemed to the Denver-based agent, was almost as miserable, as depressing as the one they had driven through earlier on their way to the docks: the same obscene graffiti on the walls, the same shattered windows, padlocked doors, the same cannibalized hulks of the cars abandoned by the curb. 1n a third-floor window just above their car, Rand spotted an old derelict, a woman, peering down at them. Yellow-gray hair was strewn around her head in a disordered jumble. One hand clutched a faded housecoat around her shoulders, the other the neck of a pint of Four Roses. Pasted to the window, just beneath her gaunt face, was a string of paper cut-out dolls. Rand shuddered. There was more despair, more hopelessness writ upon that face than the young agent was prepared to handle. He turned to Angelo beside him.
“What do we do?” Rand asked. “A door-to-door?”
Angelo was silent a moment, thinking. “No,” he answered. “We do that, the word’ll get around the heat’s on the street. They’ll figure we’re from Immigration. Half of these people are illegals. Hit some of these places here, what you have to be concerned about is you don’t get trampled by the mob running out of the front door. We got to figure out something else.”
They passed a tiny grocery store, a hole in the wall with a couple of half-empty crates of wilted vegetables piled against its window. Angelo noted the proprietor’s name painted in white on the door panel.
“I got an idea,” he said, looking for a parking place.
The two picked their way along the rubble-and garbage-littered sidewalk, back to the grocery store.
“Let me do the talking in here,” Angelo warned.
Once again there was the familiar tinkle of a bell over the door. The odor of garlic, of cheap salami and of cold cuts assaulted their nostrils as they stepped inside. It was, Rand observed, a cramped cubbyhole of a place, not even half the size of the Holiday Inn bedrooms he had so often slept in. Cans, bottles of oil, packages of pasta, dried soups, noodles were strewn about in a disordered jumble. In the ancient freezing cabinet, packages of frozen foods, TV dinners, pizzas, some torn open, others filthy from being picked over, were littered about.
The face of a plump elderly woman in black, gray hair gathered in a tight bun at the nape of her neck, rose up above a refrigerating cabinet crammed with milk, butter and an array of frozen junk foods. She eyed warily the two unfamiliar faces intruding into her store.
“Signora Marcello?” Angelo asked, coming down hard with the accent.
The woman grunted.
Angelo moved a step closer to her, consciously stressing the space separating him from Rand. His voice dropped to a husky half-whisper. “I got a problem. I need a little help.” There was no question of telling her he was a cop, he knew that. Older women like her, born in the old country, didn’t talk to cops, period. “Niece of mine, nice Italian girl, got mugged last Sunday coming home from the ten-o’clock Mass over there to Saint Anthony’s on Fourth Avenue.”
He leaned toward the woman, as though he was a priest about to hear her confession. “That’s the fidanzato,” he whispered, jerking a thumb at Rand.
An intimation of dislike crossed her face. “He’s not an Italian, but what are you going to do, kids the way they are these days? Good Catholic boy, though. German.”
He drew back slightly, sensing the bond of understanding that was growing between him and the woman. His heavy head moved back and forth in apparent sadness and disbelief. “Would you believe that people could do a thing like that to a nice girl, one of ours, just received Our Lord, right there almost on the church steps? Beat her up, grab her bag?”
He stepped closer until his face was only inches from Signora Marcello’s, his voice a whisper, each of his words designed to arouse her prejudices. “South Americanos, they were. Spics.” He spat out the last word. “They come from around here.”
Angelo reached into his pocket and drew out the photos of Torres and Yolande Belindez. “Friend of mine, Italian detective downtown, got me these pictures.” Angelo grimaced. “But cops, you know, what could they do?” He tapped the pictures. “Me, I’m the oldest. I’m going to get them. For the honor of the famiglia, capito? You ever seen these two?”
“Ai, ai,” the old woman groaned. “Jesus, Mary, Joseph! Whatsa become this place?” She reached for a pair of broken glasses. “This one I know.” A gnarled finger thumped the picture of the girl with the big tits. “She come in here every day, buy a bottle of milk.”
“You know her name?”
“Sure. Itsa Carmen. Carmen something.”
“You know where she lives?”
“Down the street, next to the bar. Three buildings, all alike. She lives there.”
The only person in the National Security Council conference room not shocked by Qaddafi’s brutal interruption of his communication with Eastman was the President. He had expected it. Heads of state, no matter how irrationally they may behave, do not respond to the same psychological imperatives as desperate and isolated terrorists.
“Wait a decent interval,” he ordered, “then tell the Doomsday I’m on the line ready to talk to him.” He glanced along the table to the three psychiatrists. “Gentlemen, while we’re waiting I want you to give me the best advice you can on how to deal with this man. Dr. Jagerman?”