At the entrance to the cemetery the Cormacks stood later as the mourners passed by. None could find words to say. The President nodded as if he understood, and shook hands formally.
After the few from the immediate family came his closest friends and colleagues, headed by the Vice President and the six members of the Cabinet who formed the core of the committee seeking to handle the crisis for him. With four of them-Odell, Reed, Donaldson, and Walters-he went back a long time.
Michael Odell paused for a moment in an attempt to find something to say, shook his head, and turned away. The rain pattered on his bowed head, plastering the thick gray hair to his scalp.
Jim Donaldson’s precise diplomacy was equally disarmed by his emotions; he, too, could only stare in mute sympathy at his friend, shake his limp, dry hand, and pass on.
Bill Walters, the Attorney General, hid what he felt behind formality. He murmured, “Mr. President, my condolences. I’m sorry, sir.”
Morton Stannard, the banker from New York translated to the Pentagon, was the oldest man there. He had attended many funerals, of friends and colleagues, but nothing like this. He was going to say something conventional, but could only blurt out: “God, I’m so sorry, John.”
Brad Johnson, the black academic and National Security Adviser, just shook his head as if in bewilderment.
Hubert Reed of the Treasury surprised those standing close to the Cormacks. He was not a demonstrative man, too shy for overt demonstrations of affection, a bachelor who had never felt the need for wife or children. But he stared up at John Cormack through streaked glasses, held out his hand, and then reached up spontaneously to embrace his old friend with both arms. As if surprised at his own impulsiveness, he then turned and hurried away to join the others climbing into their waiting cars for the airfield.
The rain eased again and two strong men began to shovel wet earth into the hole. It was over.
Quinn checked the ferry times out of Dover for Ostende and found they had missed the last of the day. They spent the night at a quiet hotel and took the train from Charing Cross in the morning.
The crossing was uneventful and by the late morning Quinn had rented a blue medium-sized Ford from a local rental agency and they were heading for the ancient Flemish port that had been trading on the Scheide since before Columbus sailed.
Belgium is interlaced by a very modern system of high-class motorways; distances are short and times even shorter. Quinn chose the E.5 east out of Ostende, cut south of Bruges and Ghent, then northeast down the E.3 and straight into the heart of Antwerp in time for a late lunch.
Europe was unknown territory for Sam; Quinn seemed to know his way around. She had heard him speak rapid and fluent French several times during the few hours they had been in the country. What she had not realized was that each time Quinn had asked if the Fleming would mind if he spoke French before he launched into it. The Flemish usually speak some French, but like to be asked first. Just to establish that they are not Walloons.
They parked the car, took lodgings in a small hotel on the Italie Lei, and walked around the corner to one of the many restaurants flanking both sides of the De Keyser Lei for lunch.
“What exactly are you looking for?” asked Sam as they ate.
“A man,” said Quinn.
“What kind of a man?”
“I’ll know when I see him.”
After lunch Quinn consulted a taxi driver in French and they took off. He paused at an art shop, made two purchases, bought a street map from a curbside kiosk, and had another conference with the driver. Sam heard the words Falcon Rui and then Schipperstraat. The driver gave her a bit of a leer as Quinn paid off the taxi.
The Falcon Rui turned out to be a run-down street fronted by several low-budget clothing shops, among others. In one, Quinn bought a seaman’s sweater, canvas jeans, and rough boots. He stuffed these into a canvas bag and they set off toward Schipperstraat. Above the roofs she could see the beaks of great cranes, indicating they were close to the docks.
Quinn turned off the Falcon Rui into a maze of narrow, mean streets that seemed to make up a zone of old and seedy houses between the Falcon Rui and the River Scheide. They passed several rough-looking men who appeared to be merchant seamen. There was an illuminated plate-glass window to Sam’s left. She glanced in. A hefty young woman, bursting out of a skimpy pair of briefs and a bra, lounged in an armchair.
“Jesus, Quinn, this is the red light district,” she protested.
“I know,” he said. “That’s what I asked the cabdriver for.”
He was still walking, glancing left and right at the signs above the shops. Apart from the bars and the illuminated windows where the whores sat and beckoned, there were few shops. But he found three of the sort he wanted, all within the space of two hundred yards.
“Tattooists?” she queried.
“Docks,” he said simply. “Docks mean sailors; sailors mean tattoos. They also mean bars and girls and the thugs who live off girls. We’ll come back tonight.”
Senator Bennett Hapgood rose at his appointed time on the floor of the Senate and strode to the podium. The day after the funeral of Simon Cormack both houses of Congress had once again put on the record their shock and revulsion at what had happened on a lonely roadside far away in England the previous week.
Speaker after speaker had called for action to trace the culprits and bring them to justice, American justice, no matter what the cost. The President pro tem of the Senate hammered with his gavel.
“The junior senator from Oklahoma has the floor,” he intoned.
Bennett Hapgood was not known as a heavyweight within the Senate. The session might have been thinly attended but for the matter under discussion. It was not thought the junior senator from Oklahoma would have much more to add. But he did. He uttered the habitual words of condolence to the President, revulsion at what had happened, and eagerness to see the guilty brought to justice. Then he paused and considered what he was about to say.
He knew it was a gamble, one hell of a gamble. He had been told what he had been told, but he had no proof of it. If he was wrong, his fellow senators would put him down as just another hayseed who used serious words with no serious intent. But he knew he had to go on or lose the support of his new and very impressive financial backer.
“But maybe we do not have to look too far to find out who were the culprits of this fiendish act.”
The low buzz in the chamber died away. Those in the aisles, about to depart, stopped and turned.
“I would like to ask one thing: Is it not true that the bomb which killed that young man, the only son of our President, was designed, made, and assembled wholly within the Soviet Union, and provably so? Did that device not come from Russia?”
His natural demagoguery might have carried him further. But the scene disintegrated in confusion and uproar. The media carried his question to the nation within ten minutes. For two hours the administration fenced and hedged. Then it had to concede the contents of the summary of Dr. Barnard’s report.
By nightfall the bleak and black rage against someone unknown, which had run like a growling current through the people of Nantucket the previous day, had found a target. Spontaneous crowds stormed and wrecked the offices of the Soviet airline Aeroflot at 630 Fifth Avenue in New York, before the police could throw a cordon ’round the building. Its panic-stricken staff ran upstairs seeking shelter from the mob, only to be rebuffed by the office workers on the floors above them. They escaped, along with the others in the building, through the help of the Fire Department when the Aeroflot floors were set afire and the whole building evacuated.
The NYPD got reinforcements to the Soviet Mission to the United Nations at 136 East 67thStreet just in time. A surging mob of New Yorkers tried to force their way into the cordoned-off street; fortunately for the Russians the blue-uniformed lines held. The New York police found themselves wrestling with a crowd intent on doing something with which many of the policemen privately sympathized.