We Are Holding the President Hostage (12 page)

"Carmine, I want you to stay right there." He
pointed to the entrance to the presidential bedroom, which opened off the west
hall. "There are only two places where they could rush us. So watch and
listen."

The Padre moved into the dining room and signaled the
others to follow. He placed them around the polished rectangular table, and
pulled another chair to join them.

"You could have at least let me finish my main
course," the President said.

"Wasn't bad at all," the First Lady said. She
sighed. "All that planning for nothing." She looked at the Padre.
"You sure loused up the evening."

"Okay," the President said. "Now that we
have our appointment, what are you selling?"

All this small talk and wisecracks, the Padre thought, was
a defense mechanism.

"I am the father of Maria and the grandfather of
Joseph Michaels," the Padre said.

"Who?"

The President turned to the First Lady, whose expression
registered no recognition of the names.

"The woman and child who were taken hostage," the
Padre prodded.

"Oh my God," the President said. "How stupid
of me."

"Not stupid. It is simply not in the forefront of your
mind."

"True. But it obviously is in yours." The
President seemed to stop in mid-thought. "I understand. I want you to know
that."

"We have two children—" the First Lady began.

"I am not here for understanding," the Padre
said.

In the long silence that followed, the President and the
First Lady exchanged glances. For the first time since they were seized, the
Padre detected in their expressions a sense of tangible fear.

"I am as helpless as you are," the President
said, his throat scratchy. He coughed into his fist, clearing it. "I've
tried everything."

"Not quite everything," the Padre interjected.

IF YOU SHOW THEM FEAR, the President thought, they will
capitalize on it. Fortunately, he had been too stunned to react normally. He
was sure it was the same for Amy. Not one of the scenarios ever posed by the
Secret Service had mentioned this possibility. He always figured some little
piece of the puzzle had been kept from him, as if he could not be trusted. That
was the most difficult part of being President, coping with gaps in the flow of
information. Too many middlemen deciding what he should be allowed to know. Now
he was damned angry. But he kept that fury hidden as well. If he ever got out
of this madness, heads would roll.

He had expected that his captors would make a play to leave
the White House. It surprised him that they hadn't. Here in the living
quarters, surrounded by armed agents, what did these men expect to accomplish?
Sooner or later they would have to surrender. Or die. They had left themselves
no middle ground.

Was the same true for him and Amy? Hell, he shrugged,
summoning what he suspected was more bravado than courage, he had had a good
run. If he had to choose a place to die, this one was as good as any. In fact,
the best.

Thankfully, the Secret Service had not forced the issue.
Biding one's time was always the best choice. If only he could resist showing
his fear, hold it from their view, keep his mind clear, alert for
opportunities.

He had no doubt that the men were carrying liquid
explosives. Indeed, he had felt the sacks in which it was contained beneath the
leader's clothing. Soft. Pliable. A kind of waterproof plastic container
somehow fastened to their bodies. Able to explode on impact. He believed that
implicitly as his mind searched for some countermeasure. Perhaps the slash of a
razor blade, clean cut through clothes and plastic, might safely disarm them.
He would think about that. Think hard.

Contemplating the havoc that these men had wrought was
daunting. The very idea of the presidency was about to undergo a metamorphosis.
Who the hell was in charge at this moment? He had sent the Vice President on
one of those endless combination funeral and goodwill tours. The idea was to
keep him out of the country, out of the political mainstream. A string of world
leaders had died in recent weeks and Martin Chalmers was fast becoming the
perfect mourner. He wondered how long it would take him to get home. Twenty
hours. Poetic justice.

He had used Marty, used his regional clout and antecedents
to get elected, but he never brought him into the fold. Now all the people on
his own team, the people whose careers, ambitions, jobs, and futures depended
on him, were in deep trouble. And if Marty's plane blew up or he stepped on a
rusty nail, who then? The Speaker of the House. That turkey. Leadership in
depth, he thought. Sarcasm aside, these men who had taken him hostage weren't
as clever as they appeared. Didn't they know about the damned Twenty-fifth
Amendment for chrissakes?

They were all seated around the dining-room table now. The
heavy blue draperies had been drawn, a remarkably perfect fit. Not a rim of
light from the powerful floodlights seeped out from where the edges joined. The
crystal chandelier above them was lit. The table, an ironic counterpoint to
this incongruous situation, was, as always, permanently set for four, with the
usual centerpiece of fresh flowers, plates, crystal glasses, and silverware.

"I want my daughter and my grandson. I want them
freed. I want them home," the man said. He spoke quickly, his tone
commanding, yet surprisingly gentle.

"You know," the President said. "I really
feel for you. But we have a problem. I represent two hundred and thirty-odd
million souls. Any crackpot demands something, he takes an American. You tell
me what I'm supposed to do."

"That, Mr. President, is why I am here," the man
answered calmly.

"He's done everything humanly possible," Amy
interjected. "You really are off the wall on this."

"Amy, please," the President said.

"It's an exercise in futility and he should know
it," Amy persisted, directing her attention to the President. "It's
wrong. What they're doing is just as inhuman as what is happening to his
daughter and grandson."

She turned to the leader. "You're not really going to
blow yourselves up. This whole thing is silly.... "Her voice trailed off.
The men watched her impassively. She waited, then shook her head and said,
"Just a stupid woman, right?"

They were tolerating her, waiting. In the distance, he
heard the telephone's ring. It seemed so inconsistently normal under the
circumstances. The men exchanged glances.

"It doesn't ring in here. Only lights up," the
President said, pointing to a console device with a speaker-phone attachment on
one corner of the buffet with a number of buttons, one of them flashing.
"It can reach to the dining table. I'm supposed to be always in
touch."

"Of course," the leader said.

The telephone continued to ring in the distance.

"Let it," the leader said.

"Can you imagine what's going on out there?" the
President asked.

He could barely imagine it himself. To contemplate the
ramifications staggered him. The country was a rudderless juggernaut. He
wondered whether provisions had ever been made for this eventuality.

"Now, Mr. President," the leader said calmly,
"all I ask is for your cooperation. I know that this is very difficult for
you."

"How kind of you to understand," Amy snapped.

"And for Mrs. President," the leader continued
without missing a beat, "we must try to ignore the circumstances and work
together."

"May I ask you a question?" The President was
genuinely confused by the man's tone.

The man contemplated the question for a moment, then
nodded.

"My wife and I are here under the most terrible
conditions of duress. You claim to be wearing an explosive device that could
blow us all to hell. You have the entire world holding its breath. We're here,
for chrissakes, in the goddamned White House, and you have the gall to ask my
cooperation. Would you please tell me what the devil is going on here?"

"I have only one thought in mind," the man
replied. "To get my daughter and grandson home safely. I am willing to die
for that mission. I'm sorry that it has come to this. We have, it seems, a
simple disagreement in method."

"He's crazy," the President said, turning to his
wife, then exploring the faces of the other men seated around the table. But
when his gaze lighted on the face of the man to whom he was attached by the
cord, he shook his head. The man's expression had become a mass of dark
wrinkles.

"Who are you?" the President asked, turning to
the leader.

"My name is Padronelli," the man said.

"Who?"

"The Padre," the younger man said.

The President was genuinely confused.

"You never heard of the Padre?"

"You mean Padre, like in father?"

The President looked at his wife. Her face reflected his
own puzzlement. Crackpots, he thought.

"Not important," the man called the Padre said.

"Mafiosa. Cosa Nostra. The black hand." The
younger man lifted his own hand, made a fist, and punched it into the air like
a hammer. "The Padre family. Little Italy. Manhattan. You never heard of
us? The President...."

The man called the Padre shot the younger man a withering
look.

"Jesus Christ," the President said. "He's a
Mafia boss."

Amy began to laugh. It started as a giggle and gained
momentum, becoming throaty, then uncontrollable as it rattled through the room.
Tears began to roll down her cheeks.

"I'll be damned," the President said.
"They've picked up the daughter and grandson of a Mafiosa boss." He
looked at the Padre and saluted. "Shades of Richard Nixon." The Padre
looked at him with a blank expression. "The Watergate tapes. Remember the
tapes. And Kennedy." He shook his head. "No, you wouldn't
remember."

The President could not recall exact quotes, only what had
lingered in his mind. Dean, the President's assistant, had suggested that what
they were doing was the sort of thing the Mafia could do better and Nixon
agreed. And Kennedy had suggested some shadowy arrangement with a Mafiosa to
knock off Fidel Castro. Often, he had thought of such a solution himself. An
organization able to bend the rules, subject to no higher authority than their
leader.

"I understand, Mr. President," the Padre said.
"Please. It is an exaggeration." Again, he looked at the younger man
and shook his head.

"Is it?" The President glanced at his wife, who
had taken a napkin from the setting and was wiping her eyes. "He's in
control of the goddamned President of the United States and he says it's an
exaggeration."

Then he turned back to confront the Padre. The Padre! A
fantasy gone amuck. Forgive me, he wanted to say. But how can I take this
seriously? He did not say it. Instead, he asked, "So what can you do that
I can't?"

"As I said, all I am asking for is your
cooperation."

It was too ludicrous a request to consider. He wondered if
it was time to reveal the provisions of the Twenty-fifth Amendment, to lay the
facts on the line for this deluded man. All right, the President told himself,
he is crazed with grief and anxiety, and, despite his apparent calm, he has
perpetrated an act that, if he ever gets out of this alive, will assure him a
lifetime's stay in a mental hospital or a prison. Or worse.

He looked at Amy. Only Amy provided the real evidence of
their danger. As President, he was the necessary ingredient for this delusion.
But Amy was the hostage, the final persuader. Humor dissipated in his mind. No,
it was not funny, not at all.

"You have resources," the Padre said, his voice
barely above a whisper, as if he distrusted the earlier sweep of the listening
bugs. "You have your intelligence services, your armies, your
communications connections, your undercover teams, your..." The Padre
paused. His tongue flicked over his lips, an odd gesture. "Your
authority."

"My authority?" He considered it through a long
pause, noting, too, the Padre's laundry list of presidential resources. He
lifted his eyes and locked his gaze on the Padre, who returned it. "Your
action has effectively destroyed my authority," the President finally
said.

"We shall see," the Padre replied.

The President went over it in his mind. The Twenty-fifth
Amendment. The mechanics of succession. He hadn't really thought about it much.
There had not been a recent occasion for it to be considered.

When Reagan was shot, he remembered, there had been some
confusion about it. But when he had undergone surgery for cancer he had written
a letter handing over the power of the presidency temporarily to the Vice
President. It had been in writing. Yes, it specifically said "in
writing." In the event of death there were clear-cut legalities. But in
the event of capture ... Hell, it had not happened in the history of the
republic. He dug deeper into his recollection of the amendment.

Barring a written acknowledgment that he was not capable of
serving, the full Cabinet had to meet along with the Vice President and choose
a temporary successor within, he believed, forty-eight hours. If they could not
agree, Congress had to form a parallel body to choose a new President. He
seemed to recall twenty-one days. For crying out loud, it was July. They were
all on junkets somewhere. Maybe this fellow wasn't all that dumb.

"So what would you have me do?" the President
asked.

"First we must know the circumstances."

"What circumstances?"

"Who has taken my daughter and grandson? Where are
they held? What is being asked for their freedom?"

"Do you seriously believe that I keep all this
information in my head?"

Must he explain the dynamics of presidential leadership?
Essentially, he dealt with priorities and options. His staff presented him with
information, suggested courses of action and consequences. He made decisions
based on weighing the ideal and applying whatever weapons of political
persuasion he could muster to achieve an effect that was as close to the ideal
as possible. Much of the time, he dealt in compromises, accommodation.
Sometimes abject surrender. How could he explain to this man the difference
between democracy and dictatorship?

"You have people, resources," the Padre said.

"The President has people," the President
corrected. "Under these circumstances, I doubt that I'm still the
President." He looked toward Amy, who seemed confused.

"Well then, Mr. President," the Padre said
patiently. His pose of respect was getting under the President's skin, another
emotional irritant. "Who would be the person most likely to know all the
circumstances that affect my daughter and grandson?"

The President turned the question over in his mind. Jack
Harkins, of course. He took an odd pleasure in contemplating the prospect of
Harkins' involvement. At last, the bastard would have someone who talks his
language.

"Probably the CIA," he said with a touch of
malevolence. "The head of the CIA would have access." The President
looked toward Amy, repressing a desire to wink. "But you still have to
deal with the matter of authority, specifically mine. I have, at the moment, a
severe credibility problem."

The Padre nodded. Then he got up from the table and walked
to the buffet, bringing the telephone console to the table and placing it in
front of the President. He stretched out the wire to the speaker-phone and put
it in the center of the table.

"I think any request would be useless," the
President said. They were, he was certain, waiting for the kidnappers to make
the first move. Undoubtedly, by now, the most authoritative crisis-management
team had been mobilized. The man in charge, he knew, heaven protect us all, was
the Vice President, who was surely speeding home from Asia.