A growing reputation as a double-crosser had forced Krell to flee Africa for South America. Then he dropped out of sight. But rumor had it he had always remained available to the right party at the right price to broker arms deals. Mohammed Sahhan was certainly the right party, and the random violence promised by the PVR was right up Krell’s alley. If he was in with Sahhan, he should know where the guns and armaments were. Seize them and Christmas Eve would stay peaceful.
The problem was how to confront Krell while he was alone and vulnerable. Blaine was considering the best way to make his move when Sahhan’s speech abruptly ended after forty-five minutes. In the course of it, Blaine estimated, a good third of the audience had lost interest. The remaining 400 or so applauded Sahhan as he exited slowly, some with levels of enthusiasm so high that their hands threatened to snap from the effort.
Sahhan’s bodyguards immediately fronted the stage to keep everyone back. That ruled out this moment for approaching Krell and left Blaine with only the reception as an option.
George Washington University was located in the heart of the capital, bordered by Pennsylvania Avenue on one side and Virginia Avenue on another. The entrance to Alumni House was just down from the Lisner Auditorium on Twenty-first Street. Blaine waited outside, watching people enter, before being satisfied there was a sufficient number to hide himself among. He climbed the steps and displayed his invitation to the uniformed guard, who eyed him warily.
The reception was being held in a suite of rooms usually reserved for the most exclusive alumni functions. The furniture and decor were surprisingly extravagant. For the moment Blaine could spot neither Sahhan nor the fat arms broker. Women in black and white outfits walked around balancing trays bearing champagne glasses and various hors d’oeuvres. For those guests who preferred something other than champagne, a pair of bars had been set up at the end of the spacious room.
There was a stirring in the rear and McCracken didn’t have to see him to know that Sahhan had arrived. The white guests, campus and local officials probably, lingered noticeably back while others flocked to congratulate Sahhan on the success of his speech and catch any further words he might utter.
Still no Krell. This kind of gathering had never been the fat man’s cup of tea. Blaine would have to draw him out, and that meant taking the offensive. Ordinarily such a move in such an atmosphere would have been out of the question, the risk of exposure to the enemy hardly worth the bother. But Christmas Eve was too fast approaching to save anything for tomorrow, so Blaine started across the room toward Sahhan with no real idea yet of what he was going to do when he got there.
He managed to down a pair of champagnes on the way to the group surrounding the PRV leader as he politely answered questions. A pair of monstrous bodyguards flanked him. The sunglasses, of course, were still on, and he was holding a glass of what looked like soda water in his hand. Sahhan made a weak joke and the group laughed almost on cue. Blaine was the only white among them, and when the black leader rotated his concealed eyes around, they locked on him long enough to provide the opening Blaine needed.
He stepped forward. “I enjoyed your speech very much, Mr. Sahhan, but I do have one question.”
Sahhan looked surprised. His head tilted a bit to the side. “Please.”
Blaine didn’t hesitate. “Do you honestly believe that crap about a conspiracy of landlords and bankers, or do you just use it as propaganda to give your followers a concrete enemy?”
With that there was dead silence broken only by a single champagne glass sliding to the carpet. The huge bodyguards looked first at each other and then at Sahhan uncertainly. Other guards, sensing trouble, approached from the doorways.
Sahhan held them off with a wave of his hand and cracked a slight smile which broke the tension. “An insolent question, sir, but one I suppose I am obliged to answer. Who asks it, though?”
Blaine edged a bit more forward. “Sam Goldstein of the Associated Press.”
Sahhan’s smile vanished at that. He eyed Blaine like a boxer sizing up his opponent before the opening bell.
“Yes, Mr. Goldstein,” he said smoothly, “I believe everything I said to be based in truth.”
“ ‘Based in truth’ or true? There’s a difference, Mr. Sahhan.”
“None that I can see.”
“Then you must not be looking too hard.”
Silence spread through the rest of the room. Other guests approached slowly, forming a circle around the two verbal combatants the way kids do for a schoolyard fight. Blaine knew the crowd was against him and didn’t care. He needed to keep the conversation going until Krell made his appearance among the rest.
Sahhan closed the gap between them to barely a yard, with his two bodyguards riding every step. “Let me tell you what I see, Mr. Goldstein. I see black unemployment standing at nearly twenty percent, more than three times that of whites. I see continually successful attempts by Congress and the judicial branch to take back what little we gained in the sixties. I see civil rights cases now decided before a trial ever takes place. Tax exemptions are granted to schools that discriminate and we have lost ground with the Voting Rights Act instead of gaining it.”
“All true and all unjust,” Blaine agreed, “but hardly conspiratorial.”
“But I’m not finished, Mr. Goldstein.” Sahhan knew he had the crowd now and worked it. “Look out the window and I’ll tell you what you’ll see. The proportion of black families headed by women has increased to almost fifty percent. One out of four black babies today is born to a woman nineteen or younger and nearly ninety percent of these mothers are unmarried. Hundreds of thousands of blacks every year are cut off from food stamps, and the school lunch program is dwindling to nothing. People like you are filled with questions and challenges, but would you pose them after witnessing a baby die from rat bites? Or a family of eight bundled up in motheaten blankets in front of a kitchen stove in the middle of winter? I could list more examples, hundreds more, but I know you wouldn’t hear them because you’re still not listening. No one ever listens … until they are made to.” Then, to his bodyguards, “Remove him from here. He reeks of everything we despise, everything that has caused our desperation.” Sahhan thrust a skeletal finger in McCracken’s direction and returned his attention to the crowd. “It is his kind who will soon know a day when we will fight them on their own terms. Their chances have been exhausted. Their fate is sealed. Remove him!”
Blaine felt the powerful hands of the two giant bodyguards grasp him at the shoulders and begin shoving backward. He was able to hold his ground against them long enough to utter one last sentence.
“Merry Christmas, Sahhan.”
Their eyes met through the dark sunglasses, and Blaine could feel Sahhan’s panic. The fanatic had grasped his meaning. His mouth dropped, but before he could respond, if he had meant to, the huge bodyguards had yanked Blaine toward the rear exit. McCracken guessed there would be a beating in store for him outside and had to decide how much of it to take before putting the two men down.
Not much, he decided after they had tossed him down a set of steps in the back of Alumni House. He was rising slowly from the cement, when a familiar voice froze him.
“I got orders to take over from here.”
The bodyguards held their ground. A fat man passed down the steps between them, followed by a pair of men who seemed smaller but just as deadly. He stopped on the second step, so as McCracken stood up their heights were equal, and Blaine found himself staring into the yellow eyes of Luther Krell.