Rubicon, p.10
Rubicon, page 10
“I’m sorry, senator; everyone’s nerves are a little on edge these days.” The director of the CIA opened a black notebook, glanced down the first page and turned to the second. “We know that the plan was conceived and executed by al Qaeda. We know that the terrorist who carried it out had been in the United States for almost a year.”
Hart looked at him with unconcealed contempt.
“We know this because he mailed a video tape to a Los Angeles television station and told everyone what he was going to do, but no one sent anything to Al Jazeera, and no one from al Qaeda - or any other terrorist organization - has claimed credit for what happened. Don’t you find that just a little unusual, Mr. Townsend; just a little strange?”
Townsend’s mouth began to twitch nervously. He picked up a pencil and held it tight in both hands, twisting it slowly back and forth.
“I shouldn’t think that someone who was about to blow himself up would lie about the reasons he was doing it, senator - or name the wrong organization.”
“I’m sure you’re right, Mr. Townsend, but then that doesn’t really answer my question, does it?”
When the committee session ended, Charlie Ryan followed Hart to his office. He dropped into a chair the other side of Hart’s desk. Hart looked past him, to the far end of the room and the windows streaked with rain from a passing storm.
“We could not stop it,” said Hart, his gaze still on the window. “The FBI, the CIA; we did not even know where to start. If anyone had said anything about an assassination attempt we would have assumed that the president would be the target. We should have known better. What better way to show that democracy is not safe anywhere than to murder one of the two candidates for the most important office in the country?”
Slowly, and with an effort, Ryan pulled himself up. The world since Los Angeles had become harsh and oppressive. Everything now seemed a burden. There were no good times anymore.
“People are scared to death. No one knows what to do. It’s a little hard to tell everyone that they ought to go about the normal business of their lives when one presidential candidate is dead and the other one has canceled all public appearances.”
Hart looked straight at him.
“And everyone is looking for someone to blame. You heard it in the committee. People want to go after someone and they don’t much care who it is. You heard what the president said the other night, that the only way to stop something like this from happening again is to stay with the fight, go after the terrorists wherever they are and for as long as takes. Remember what he said: ‘If we don’t change the world, the world will change us.’ We both know what is going to happen next. They’ll want even fewer restrictions on what they can do, and given the mood of the country, Congress will give them anything they ask for.”
“There might be one or two members who object,” said Ryan as they exchanged a glance.
Hart’s gaze drifted off, his mind on other things. Dull thunder echoed softly in the distance. A fragile shaft of sunlight broke the gray darkness and painted everything in shades of yellow.
“It’s been difficult, hasn’t it?” asked Ryan. He tried not to sound too sympathetic. He did not want Hart to think that he had any doubts about his ability to deal with what had happened.
Hart looked back at him, started to apologize, and then, because they were friends, gestured helplessly with his hands.
“Every night I have the same nightmare. It’s always in slow motion: that kid in the tan wind breaker, the terrorist who did not look like a terrorist at all, standing there as calm as anything. Then the secret service agent - Albert Humphreys, as brave a man as I ever saw - diving for him. He seems to float in the air, just hang there, his arms stretched out. And then, a split second later....”
Hart closed his hand into a fist and beat it gently against his chin. He shuddered at what he knew he would never for the rest of his life forget. He shook his head as if to say he was all right; then shook it again because he was not really sure.
“There is a story in the Times this morning,” he remarked after a short pause. “There is some suggestion that the election should be delayed. The National Committee meets this weekend to pick another candidate, but with barely two months left there isn’t much time for someone to mount a serious campaign.”
“I read the article. There is a group over at Justice looking at how it could be done.”
Hart was surprised, though when he thought about it, he realized that it was bound to happen.
“There were those who wanted to postpone the city elections in New York after 911. And after Katrina, there were those who wanted to postpone the election for mayor of New Orleans. But they didn’t do it then and we shouldn’t do it now. We’ve never postponed a presidential election. That would be like surrender, don’t you think, if we did that?”
“You’re right, we can’t,” agreed Ryan. “Or at least we shouldn’t. But what’s going to happen this weekend? The Douglas campaign is worried. No one wants to talk about any of this in public, but they think there could be a terrific wave of sympathy, the kind of situation where people believe the only way to show the terrorists that they can’t decide the election is to vote for whoever takes Alworth’s place.” Ryan gave Hart a searching glance. “The one they’re really worried about is you. After that speech you made at the convention, after what you did in Los Angeles after the attack, the nomination is yours for the asking.”
“I didn’t run before, when I had the chance; and now.... No, not after what I saw. It would seem like taking something from the dead, something that had never belonged to me. It should be someone who ran in the primaries.”
“That isn’t a good reason, Bobby,” insisted Hart. “Everyone who ran in the primaries against Alworth lost. You could pull the country together. Douglas is a fool. He’ll be worse than what we have now, if that’s possible.”
“I can’t. I couldn’t before because of Helen, and now, after what’s happened…”
It was what Ryan had long suspected: Hart had given up his chance at the presidency because of his wife. He admired him for that.
“How is she, anyway? Better?”
Hart looked away.
“Better? – Yes, I suppose.
Ryan got up to leave.
“Don’t worry,” he said with a grim smile. “The country will get through this. We’ve been through worse.”
“Yes, we have, haven’t we?”
Hart remembered the panic he had seen all around him that awful day in Los Angeles, but he also remembered countless acts of heroism. People, some of them with severe wounds of their own, rushed to the assistance of others. And if there had been some congressmen and senators who could think of nothing better to say than shouted outrage and mindless cries for revenge, there had been those like Charlie Ryan who had counseled patience and fortitude and a decent respect for the opinions of others. The country had done about as well as could have been expected, and a good deal better than almost any other country would have done.
Hart stayed in Washington the rest of the week. Both the House and the Senate had been called back into session within days of the assassination. Political campaigning had been brought to a halt while the country buried its dead and tried to come to terms with what had happened. American forces had been put on alert throughout the world and the national guard had been called out to help protect against another attack at home. Everyone was waiting to see what would happen next.
On Friday afternoon, David Allen had the news everyone, or at least everyone in Washington, had been was waiting for.
“It’s going to be Jeremy Taylor. That’s what I’m told by sources inside the national committee.”
Taylor, the senior senator from Illinois and a ranking member of the Senator Foreign Relations Committee, had run for the nomination but had not been able to generate wide popular support. He had been one of the first candidates to drop out.
“Solid, respectable - but he didn’t win a single primary.”
“No one cares about that,” replied Allen. “He’s what you just said he is – solid and respectable, someone people trust. He has the kind of stability the country needs. And he knows more about defense policy and the armed forces than almost anyone around. He’ll run rings around Douglas in the debates.”
“What about the other question? What’s the national committee going to do about delaying the election?”
“No one wants to do it now. Taylor will bring over some of his own people, but the organization put together for Alworth will stay in place. They think they can win, and I’m not sure I don’t agree with them.”
Hart glanced at his watch. “It’s after nine. Why don’t you get out of here?”
Allen threw a quick glance at the pile of work on his desk. That was not the reason he was still here, and Hart knew it. There were always stacks of paper on Allen’s desk.
“You wouldn’t be here if I wasn’t still here. You don’t have to guard me. Nothing is going to happen here.”
Allen started to deny it, but Hart stopped him with a look.
“I’m leaving in a few minutes anyway. It’s been a long day. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
Still protesting that he had work to do, Allen grabbed his coat from the rack and headed out the door. Hart went back to his office, jotted down a few notes about things he wanted to do the next day, and then gathered up his things. With his briefcase tucked under his arm, he closed the door to his private office and left the building.
The moon had passed behind the clouds and a heavy mist hung over the tree-lined street. A dark wind sighed through the thick autumn leaves. Hart thought he heard something. He stopped and looked behind him, but there was nothing there. He taunted himself for how easily since Los Angeles he let his imagination play havoc with his senses. Between that, and watching Gunther Kramer die, he wondered if his nerves were shot, whether he was having the kind of delayed reaction he had often read about. He was always telling people not to let their fears run away with them, and yet fear, not of what might happen to him, but just fear of what might happen, seemed to follow him everywhere he went.
He reached the car and started to open the door. He thought he heard it again, a footstep right behind his own.
“Fool!” he cried out loud, ashamed of his own weakness, but then a hand suddenly came out of nowhere and grabbed him by the arm. Spinning around, he found himself face to face with a ghost.
“It can’t be...!”
Dieter Shoenfeld assured him that it was. And then, before Hart could say another word, Shoenfeld hurried around to the other side of the car.
“Get in!” he cried. “We have to get out of here. We can’t afford to be seen.”
Chapter Eleven
Dieter Shoenfeld had changed. His face had become gaunt and the circles around his eyes deeper, and darker, than before. He was a man on the verge of exhaustion.
“Why didn’t you call me?” asked Hart. “Why didn’t you let me know you were here? When I didn’t hear from you I thought...”
“That I was dead.” He looked across at Hart, who had begun to drive. “There have been times the last few days when I thought I was, or was about to be. It’s a miracle I’m still alive. It’s a miracle you’re still alive.”
There were a dozen questions Hart wanted to ask. He did not think in terms of destinations, places they could go; he drove at random, staying close to the Capitol.
He turned his head just long enough to catch Shoenfeld’s eye.
“A miracle I’m still alive? Tell me what’s going on. Why this sudden need for secrecy?”
“After what I have to tell you, that won’t be a question you will need to ask.” He looked ahead. “Where are we going?”
“Where are you staying? We can talk there.”
Shoenfeld sat in the darkness, staring out at the Capitol all lit up at night. He did not say anything, he just kept looking out the window, a strange expression on his face.
“Rome,” he said finally, and to no apparent purpose. “Years ago, the first time I came here, that was the immediate, almost overpowering impression I had. Rome, what it must have been like, two thousand years ago, a city at the center of the world, every building, every street, the outward expression of its greatness. Washington was built to be a city just like that, with long broad avenues and the Capitol, the center of government, up on a hill, dominating everything else.”
“Dieter, I don’t think I quite understand what all this has to do with....”
“Rome,” repeated Shoenfeld. “I forgot what Rome became.”
There was something tired and frantic in the way Shoenfeld was talking. Nothing he said made sense.
“When is the last time you had any sleep?” asked Hart, certain that must be the cause of it. “Tell me where you’re staying. I’ll take you there. You can take a shower, change clothes, and then we’ll get something to eat and you can tell me everything that has happened the last couple of weeks.”
Shoenfeld reached across and put his hand on Hart’s shoulder.
“I know you think I’m rambling, and perhaps I am a little, but there is something I am trying to say.”
“Tell me after dinner. Now, where am I taking you?”
“I’m not staying anywhere. I didn’t check into a hotel; I came right from the train station....”
“The train station? You didn’t fly into Washington?”
“New York, I took the train down. I couldn’t take the chance.”
“What chance? I don’t understand.”
Shoenfeld shook his head. He would explain later.
“I have something you need to see. Can we go to your place, your house in Georgetown? It should be safe there. I don’t think anyone followed me. I think I lost them in New York.”
“Lost them in.... Yes, of course we can go to my place. You can stay there, too. There is plenty of room. But why are you afraid someone might be following you?”
“Because I found out what Rubicon means. It isn’t over, Bobby. Gunther was right: Rubicon has just begun.”
Shoenfeld was nervous, cautious, and so high-strung he could barely sit still. He kept looking around to see if anyone was following them. Each time they passed through an intersection, his eyes darted from one side of the street to the other as he sank lower in his seat. He held a black briefcase in his arms, the only luggage he had.
“I had a letter from an attorney in Damascus, a man of shall I say doubtful character, but someone Gunther had apparently known for years, someone with whom, at least on occasion, he had done some business. He wrote to tell me that Gunther had left a package with him that was to be delivered to me should anything ever happen to him. Because Gunther was now ‘unfortunately dead,’ - that was the phrase he used - he wished to turn it over. He went on to detail certain expenses - rather exorbitant expenses, as it seemed to me - which he had incurred in keeping this package in his custody. He said that because Gunther had been a friend of his, he was willing to bear something of a loss, and would accept no more than the equivalent of ten thousand dollars for his trouble. There was of course the further difficulty that for obvious reasons he could only accept cash. He suggested I come to Damascus where we could make the exchange in person.”
“And so you went to Damascus....”
Shoenfeld glanced over his shoulder, out the back window.
“The same car has been following us for blocks.... No, he turned. It’s all right. What? Yes, I went to Damascus. I was going there anyway. I had to find out what happened to Gunther and what he had learned about Rubicon. I thought there might be something in his apartment - a scrap of paper, perhaps even a journal - something he had written down that might give me a start.”
“And was there?” asked Hart, eager to know what Shoenfeld had found.
But Shoenfeld had too much to tell and he did not want to leave anything out. He blinked his eyes in quick succession, waving his hand to ward off interruption.
“I got to Damascus two weeks ago. It seems like two years. The lawyer was waiting for me in his office, a dark, fly-infested hole of a place in a walkup third floor landing. There was only one window, but a cheap curtain kept out the light. I thought at first that it was because the heat in Damascus was almost unbearable, but then, as my eyes adjusted to the darkness, I decided that the curtain probably always covered the window, at least when the lawyer was not alone. He had the most singularly repulsive face I have ever seen: fat, with thick, blubbery lips and tiny, evil eyes. That would have been enough to make him ugly, but something had been done to him, something that.... You could not tell at first. He had a habit of keeping his head turned at an angle, so that what you saw was mainly the left side of his face, but even with that, he could not keep it hidden, not all of what had been done to him. The right side of his face, starting with his eye and going down to the corner of his lip was a cruel, gruesome disfigurement, what was left after the flesh had been eaten away with acid. He told me that it had been done by the secret police when he was a young law student and had made the mistake of circulating a petition calling for free and fair elections.
“‘I had not realized,” he told me with a truly ghastly grin, ‘that we already had free and fair elections and that President Assad always won them with more than ninety-nine percent of the vote.”
Shoenfeld held the briefcase tighter to his chest. For a moment, remembering what he had seen, he stared straight ahead. A look of grim resolve start into his eyes.
“He managed somehow to finish up his studies; but there was never a chance, after what was done to him, that he would have much of a career. He lived on the fringe, a kind of outcast, and took what work he could get. He became a part of the Syrian underground, to the degree to which there is one. That was how he met Gunther; or rather, how Gunther met him. He doesn’t know how Gunther found about him. All he would tell me was that Gunther seemed to know everyone.”
