18
SEVEN-TWENTY WEDNESDAY MORNING East Coast time,
General Johnson left the Pentagon. He was out of uniform, dressed
in a lightweight business suit, and he walked. It was his preferred
method of getting around. It was a hot morning in Washington, and
already humid, but he stepped out at a steady speed, arms swinging
loosely through a small arc, head up, breathing hard.
He walked north through the dust on the shoulder of
George Washington Boulevard, along the edge of the great cemetery
on his left, through Lady Bird Johnson Park, and across the
Arlington Memorial Bridge. Then he walked clockwise around the
Lincoln Memorial, past the Vietnam Wall, and turned right along
Constitution Avenue, the reflecting pool on his right, the
Washington Monument up ahead. He walked past the National Museum of
American History, past the National Museum of Natural History, and
turned left onto 9th Street. Exactly three and a half miles, on a
glorious morning, an hour’s brisk walk through one of the world’s
great capital cities, past landmarks the world’s tourists flock to
photograph, and he saw absolutely nothing at all except the dull
mist of worry hanging just in front of his eyes.
He crossed Pennsylvania Avenue and entered the
Hoover Building through the main doors. Laid his hands palms down
on the reception counter.
“The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff,” he
said. “To see the Director.”
His hands left two palm-shaped patches of dampness
on the laminate. The agent who came down to show him upstairs
noticed them. Johnson was silent in the elevator. Harland Webster
was waiting for him at the door to his private suite. Johnson
nodded to him. Didn’t speak. Webster stood aside and gestured him
into the inner office. It was dark. There was a lot of mahogany
paneling, and the blinds were closed. Johnson sat down in a leather
chair and Webster walked around him to his desk.
“I don’t want to get in your way,” Johnson
said.
He looked at Webster. Webster worked for a moment,
decoding that sentence. Then he nodded, cautiously.
“You spoke with the President?” he asked.
Johnson nodded.
“You understand it’s appropriate for me to do so?”
he asked.
“Naturally,” Webster said. “Situation like this,
nobody should worry about protocol. You call him or go see
him?”
“I went to see him,” Johnson said. “Several times.
I had several long conversations with him.”
Webster thought: face-to-face. Several long
conversations. Worse than I thought, but understandable.
“And?” he asked.
Johnson shrugged.
“He told me he’d placed you in personal command,”
he said.
Webster nodded.
“Kidnapping,” he said. “It’s Bureau territory,
whoever the victim is.”
Johnson nodded, slowly.
“I accept that,” he said. “For now.”
“But you’re anxious,” Webster said. “Believe me,
General, we’re all anxious.”
Johnson nodded again. And then he asked the
question he’d walked three and a half miles to ask.
“Any progress?” he said.
Webster shrugged.
“We’re into the second full day,” he said. “I don’t
like that at all.”
He lapsed into silence. The second full day of a
kidnap is a kind of threshold. Any early chance of a resolution is
gone. The situation starts to harden up. It starts to become a
long, intractable set-piece. The danger to the victim increases.
The best time to clear up a kidnap is the first day. The second
day, the process gets tougher. The chances get smaller.
“Any progress?” Johnson asked again.
Webster looked away. The second day is when the
kidnappers start to communicate. That had always been the Bureau’s
experience. The second day, sick and frustrated about missing your
first and best chance, you sit around, hoping desperately the guys
will call. If they don’t call on the second day, chances are they
aren’t going to call at all.
“Anything I can do?” Johnson asked.
Webster nodded.
“You can give me a reason,” he said. “Who would
threaten you like this?”
Johnson shook his head. He had been asking himself
the same question since Monday night.
“Nobody,” he said.
“You should tell me,” Webster said. “Anything
secret, anything hidden, better you tell me right now. It’s
important, for Holly’s sake.”
“I know that,” Johnson said. “But there’s nothing.
Nothing at all.”
Webster nodded. He believed him, because he knew it
was true. He had reviewed the whole of Johnson’s Bureau file. It
was a weighty document. It started on page one with brief
biographies of his maternal great-grandparents. They had come from
a small European principality which no longer existed.
“Will Holly be OK?” Johnson asked quietly.
The recent file pages recounted the death of
Johnson’s wife. A surprise, a vicious cancer, no more than six
weeks, beginning to end. Covert psychiatric opinion commissioned by
the Bureau had predicted the old guy would hold up because of his
daughter. It had proven to be a correct diagnosis. But if he lost
her too, you didn’t need to be a psychiatrist to know he wouldn’t
handle it well. Webster nodded again and put some conviction into
his voice.
“She’ll be fine,” he said.
“So what have we got so far?” Johnson asked.
“Four guys,” Webster said. “We’ve got their pickup
truck. They abandoned it prior to the snatch. Burned it and left
it. We found it north of Chicago. It’s being airlifted down here to
Quantico, right now. Our people will go over it.”
“For clues?” Johnson said. “Even though it
burned?”
Webster shrugged.
“Burning is pretty dumb,” he said. “It doesn’t
really obscure much. Not from our people, anyway. We’ll use that
pickup to find them.”
“And then what?” Johnson asked.
Webster shrugged again.
“Then we’ll go get your daughter back,” he said.
“Our Hostage Rescue Team is standing by. Fifty guys, the best in
the world at this kind of thing. Waiting right by their choppers.
We’ll go get her, and we’ll tidy up the guys who grabbed
her.”
There was a short silence in the dark quiet
room.
“Tidy them up?” Johnson said. “What does that
mean?”
Webster glanced around his own office and lowered
his voice. Thirty-six years of habit.
“Policy,” he said. “A major D.C. case like this? No
publicity. No media access. We can’t allow it. This sort of thing
gets on TV, every nut in the country is going to be trying it. So
we go in quietly. Some weapons will get discharged. Inevitable in a
situation like this. A little collateral damage here and
there.”
Johnson nodded slowly.
“You’re going to execute them?” he asked,
vaguely.
Webster just looked at him, neutrally. Bureau
psychiatrists had suggested to him the anticipation of deadly
revenge could help sustain self-control, especially with people
accustomed to direct action, like other agents, or soldiers.
“Policy,” he said again. “My policy. And like the
man says, I’ve got personal command.”
THE CHARRED PICKUP was lifted onto an aluminum
platform and secured with nylon ropes. An Air Force Chinook
hammered over from the military compound at O’Hare and hovered
above it, its downdraft whipping the lake into a frenzy. It winched
its chain down and eased the pickup into the air. Swung around over
the lake and dipped its nose and roared back west to O’Hare. Set
its load down right in front of the open nose of a Galaxy
transport. Air Force ground crew winched the platform inside. The
cargo door closed on it and four minutes later the Galaxy was
taxiing. Four minutes later again it was in the air, groaning east
toward Washington. Four hours after that, it was roaring over the
capital, heading for Andrews Air Force Base. As it landed, another
borrowed Chinook took off and waited in midair. The Galaxy taxied
to its apron and the pickup was winched out. The Chinook swooped
down and swung it into the air. Flew it south, following I-95 into
Virginia, forty miles, all the way to Quantico.
The Chinook set it down gently on the tarmac right
outside the vehicle lab. Bureau techs ran out, white coats flapping
in the fierce downdraft, and dragged the platform in through the
roller door. They winched the wreck off the platform and pulled it
into the center of the large shed. They rolled arc lights into a
rough circle around it and lit them up. Then they stood there for a
second, looking exactly like a team of pathologists getting ready
to go to work on a corpse.
GENERAL JOHNSON RETRACED his steps exactly. He
made it down 9th Street, past Natural History, past American
History, his mouth forced into a tense rigid oval, breathing hard.
He walked the length of the reflecting pool with his throat
clamping and gagging. He swung left onto Constitution Avenue and
made it as far as the Vietnam Wall. Then he stopped. There was a
fair crowd, stunned and quiet, as always. He looked at them. He
looked at himself in the black granite. He didn’t stand out. He was
in a lightweight gray suit. It was OK. So he let his vision blur
with his tears and he moved forward and turned and sat against the
base of the wall, sobbing and crying with his back pressed against
the golden names of boys who had died thirty years ago.