Protect and Defend (36 page)

It was all neatly choreographed—this meeting; Gage’s concerns about Caroline; his implicit hint of things to come; Harshman’s intervention. Casually, Chad replied, “The hearing’s two to three weeks off, Mac. The staff has a lot of preparation to do.”

“Two to three
weeks
,” Gage echoed with mild incredulity. “Not months? Sounds like Caroline Masters is on the fast track to confirmation.”

Reflexively, Chad counted votes on the committee: all eight Democrats were with him and, of the ten Republicans, Paul Harshman had perhaps three allies. “As of now,” Chad responded, “Judge Masters looks qualified. I won’t belabor the problems our party has with women. It doesn’t do for us to look obstructionist.”

“Not obstructionist,” Gage demurred. “Responsible. Has your staff explored her personal life at all?”

Does he already know about the daughter?
Chad wondered. “We have,” he answered with studied calm. “But we’re more focused on her judicial record, like this new case you mentioned. This gratuitous vetting of personal lives can boomerang on us all.”

“It’s hardly gratuitous,” Paul Harshman interjected. “Not only does Masters have an ongoing relationship with Sarah Dash, but she’s never been married. How do we know she shares our values?”

Beside him, Chad felt Kate Jarman stir. “Neither has Kate,” Chad retorted, “and no one doubts
her
values. But if it turns out that Caroline Masters is a member of dykes on bikes, I’ll give you a heads-up.”

An unamused smile crossed Harshman’s bony features; behind wire-rim glasses, his eyes narrowed to slivers.
So typical
, his expression said. “You’ve been sitting on those FBI files,” he prodded. “Anything in
there
we should know?”

It was a pincer movement, Chad thought—if Caroline Masters had personal problems, Gage and Harshman were telling him, it was Chad’s job to expose them. “There’s nothing in the files,” Chad said flatly.

This was the literal truth; so far, the FBI had not uncovered the facts of Brett Allen’s birth. But Chad felt it lurk beneath the discussion—a ticking bomb which, Chad hoped, he alone could hear. “No one’s meaning to be critical,” Gage assured him. “But you’re not a lawyer, Chad, and this is your first hearing as chairman. The nomination of a new Chief Justice is a lot to cut your teeth on, and we want to give you all the support we can.”

This tone of kindly condescension, with its reminder of the stakes involved, would not be lost on anyone. Around them, Chad felt their fellow senators—with curiosity and a calculation of their own self-interests—watching two men who badly wanted to be President. Smiling, Chad answered, “I think I can get by, Mac. I think I can get
all
of us by, and without throwing away the next election.”

The pointed response induced a deeper silence; Chad had taken the subject of their conflicting ambitions, their competing claims to electability, and dragged it into the room. “There are rumors out there,” Paul Harshman said sharply. “Some believe Masters is sleeping with Kilcannon. There are stories he played around on his ex-wife, you know.”

Sure
, Chad thought,
just like there are rumors about you and both of your ex-wives
. “So what should I check out first?” he inquired pleasantly. “Your idea that Masters is gay, or the pernicious rumor that she’s straight?”

Harshman’s face went rigid with dislike. It was another small marker, Chad supposed, in Harshman’s increasing resolve to deny Chad the party’s nomination by any means at hand. “Maybe in San Francisco,” Harshman retorted, “no one cares. But you’re getting a little too casual, Senator.”

“And politics,” Chad rejoined, “is getting a little too rancid. If we’re not careful, the voters will start gagging, and then spit us all out.”

“Now wait a minute.” Gage held up a hand, speaking in a tone of reason. “Paul’s concerned that we all avoid a serious mistake. Under the circumstances, I don’t think it’s too much to kick these hearings back a bit.” He summoned a joshing tone. “You won’t find Joe McCarthy in
this
crowd, Chad. And you don’t want folks like Paul thinking you like Kerry Kilcannon more than him.”

So there it was, Chad thought—an implicit accusation of disloyalty, which Chad could refute by postponing the hearings on Caroline Masters. But, for Chad, this marked the point where Gage’s imagination failed him: long ago, Chad Palmer had faced far worse.

Until Beirut, it sometimes seemed to Chad that the world had been created just for him.

He had been born outside Cleveland, the oldest of six children in a family of little means. But Chad never felt disadvantaged: gifted with an agile mind, blond good looks, and the sinewy frame of an athlete, Chad became a leader. From elementary school, there had always been someone—a teacher, minister, or coach—to help him to the next rung. By the time he reached his junior year, and conceived the ambition to fly, the local congressman was happy to press for Chad’s admission to the Air Force Academy.

His parents had not wanted him to go; they lacked experience with the military, and had visions of the Ivy League. But though Chad’s first year was harsh, his pride and resilience helped him survive months of sleeplessness and hazing, and his ambition made him want to. At graduation, Chad was the sixth in his class. But, for Chad, that was merely a warm-up to the first time he broke the sound barrier.

This was not long in coming. Cocky and competitive, blessed with reflexes and hand-eye coordination that even his instructors found astonishing, Chad shot through flight school at the top. Swiftly, he progressed from F-4 fighters to the new F-15, careening through Okinawa, Thailand, much liquor, and the many women who always came so easily, too engrossed in living every moment to value Allie as he might have. His deepest regret was that he had missed out on Vietnam.

In fact, he concluded, his life was a series of near misses with adventure. After a tour in fighter-weapons school, where he mastered a top-secret laser-guided bomb-delivery system— nicknamed “Paved Spike“—Captain Chad Palmer had been sent to Iran. The Shah wanted his air force trained to repel the Russians in Afghanistan; the Shah’s real problem, it turned out, was closer to home. Chad was on leave when the Ayatollah Khomeini drove the Shah into exile. The reports which
followed suggested that some of Chad’s colleagues in the Iranian air force had been tortured for information, then killed.

Which was why Chad Palmer found himself in a smoky bar in Beirut, city of a hundred factions and a thousand temptations, moodily drinking to their memory. His luck had held, he supposed—the Russians, Afghans, and Iranians would want badly to know about Paved Spike, and they would not have treated him with kindness. Quite systematically, he set out to get drunk.

Five scotches seemed to do the job. Chad sat watching the bartender, an amiable Maronite Christian with a crucifix around his neck, chat up a melange of customers—a slim Frenchwoman, businessmen of various nationalities, a couple of Marines. Some other night he would have let the Frenchwoman find him, but tonight he didn’t give a damn. He kept thinking about his closest Iranian pilot friend, Bahman, and wondering if he was dead.

As Chad drank, a collage of images engulfed him: the sinuous twisting smoke from a cigarette, the bartender’s gleaming cross, the dark-eyed Frenchwoman’s sidelong glances. Though they looked nothing alike, her slender body, somehow voluptuous despite her narrow hips, reminded him of Allie’s. Except, Chad remembered, that Allie was eight months pregnant.

He had not seen her for the last four of them. In three weeks, Chad was due home; at first dimly, then with increasing vividness, Chad imagined holding a newborn son.

Abruptly, he stood. It must be morning in the States; he would go back to his hotel, shake off his thoughts of death, and call her. He barely noticed the bartender picking up a telephone.

Outside, the air was hot and dense, smelling of exhaust fumes and lamb shish kebab from a restaurant with its doors and windows open. He was more drunk than he had realized, Chad thought. After a few steps he paused to remember the direction of his hotel.

Suddenly, three men emerged from a nearby alley; before he could react, they wrenched him into its shadows. Arms pinned behind him, Chad was fighting to keep his balance when something cracked him over the head.

Then there were only impressions—the foul garlic breath
of an assailant, a shooting pain in his shoulder as they threw him into a van. A second sharp blow filled his skull with pain and the darkness with red stars. As the three men bound his arms, Chad realized that he must have been walking in the right direction, and that the bartender must have called them. After the third blow he remembered nothing.

C
HAD AWOKE
in darkness, nauseated, remembering only scraps of what seemed an endless journey—drugged and beaten, he recalled being thrown in the trunk of a car, hearing terse phrases in Arabic. Now he could see nothing. He did not know where he was, what time of day it was, whether it was dark or light, whether anyone but his nameless captors knew what had become of him. Filled with disbelief, Chad began crawling, one hand held out blindly in front of him. From beneath came the pungent smell of dirt, and then his hand touched stone.

Allie
.

Kneeling, Chad tried to concentrate his mind.

He knew nothing about his captors. But in the Middle East hostages were used as pawns, traded for terrorists in prison. If these men wanted information, he knew only one thing of any use. Paved Spike.

Standing, Chad struck his head against cement.

He fell to his knees, stunned. The cell was designed to limit movement. The only exercise for his legs would be from squatting.

For endless time—there was no way to measure it—Chad squatted or crawled or tried to sleep, or drained his wastes in a corner of the cell.

Finally, a light awakened him.

Startled, he struggled to his knees. It was a flashlight, blinding after the long time in darkness.

“Who are you?” he asked.

“Paved Spike.”

The voice was soft, English accented by Arabic or perhaps Farsi. The two words, though dreaded, told Chad what he wished to know.

“‘Paved Spike’?” he repeated in a tone of bewilderment. “‘Paved Spike’?”

The flashlight drew back, then struck him across the mouth. Stunned, Chad fell sideways, tasting blood, feeling fragments of tooth on his tongue.

“Paved Spike,” the voice repeated. “Tell us how it works.”

Chad closed his eyes. The Code of Honor was ingrained in him, the duty to give them nothing of value. A second thought swiftly followed: once he told them what he knew, his usefulness might end. And, with that, his life. He lay exposed in the light like a trapped animal.

The door closed, and it was dark again.

To gather strength, Chad tried to sleep. His uniform was so soiled by dirt and sweat and urine that he began to itch.

Sometime later, the door opened again.

In the circle of light, a brown hand held out a metal bowl half-filled with what looked like gruel.

Chad restrained himself from eating until the light went out and he heard the door shut. Then he pawed the lukewarm stuff into his mouth by hand.

He had barely finished when the door opened again.

Now there were two of them, he deduced from their footsteps. With brutal efficiency, they bound his arms behind his back, then jerked his legs backward and bound his feet to his arms. Clamping his jaw, Chad fought to keep silent.

Slowly they began twisting the rope between Chad’s wrists with a stick they used as a lever. Chad’s arms strained to leave their sockets until, helpless, he cried out.

“Paved Spike,” the same voice intoned, and then the cell went dark and silent.

The agony was so severe that Chad was on the brink of passing out. Instead, by degrees, he began to lose feeling in his feet and arms. He wondered what it would be like to lose their use.

They had learned this technique from the Vietcong; a teacher at the academy had described it. Chad prayed these men would go no further. The door opened. Kneeling, the two men hung Chad from a hook in the ceiling by the ropes which bound his hands.

When his arms wrenched from their sockets, Chad lost consciousness.

He awakened to searing pain which made him sob, and the same insinuating voice.

“Paved Spike.”

Eyes shut tight, Chad tried to remove himself to another place. He focused on Allie, the son he imagined. They were what he had to live for.

“We know you were with the Shah. We know you were trained on Paved Spike.”

Islamic terrorists, Chad guessed. They needed to understand our weapons systems—perhaps for Iran, Libya, or the Russians, perhaps to learn what the Israelis already knew. “What’s Paved Spike?” Chad managed.

They hung him up again.

After a time, his hands and feet swelled up. Chad tried returning to Allie, imagining her body melding with his. They were making love when Chad blacked out again.

The faceless men continued the slow, relentless breakdown of his body and spirit.

Sometimes they hung him up. Sometimes they beat him with rubber straps which smelled like they’d been stripped from tires. Sometimes they made him sit on a sharply pointed stool with his hands tied behind him, straining his haunches. Always, when he fell off, they would beat him. He was never alone; never did they allow him to sleep.

His mind stopped reasoning. It was hard to know what was worse—the sleeplessness which exploded into hallucination and madness, or the excruciating pain of hanging from the ceiling while curled in a ball, feeling and smelling his own wastes. Though the rubber strap had broken his nose and many of his teeth, Chad preferred it—at least the pain was finite, and he could pass out lying down.

Awakening, shattered and disoriented, Chad felt moist lips against his ear.

“Tell us about Paved Spike,” his tormentor whispered, “and we will tell your wife you are alive. Otherwise you will remain for her and your government as you are now—dead.”