We Are Holding the President Hostage (2 page)

No cause for anxiety, Robert had soothed. This was Egypt not Lebanon. Americans were not being plucked off the streets or murdered in airplanes.

For her part, she managed to blithely eschew most
information that contained reports of violence and bloodshed. One does not grow
up as the daughter of a Mafia boss without acquiring certain protective
characteristics. Think it's easy, she had asked herself ad infinitum, to be
perpetually balanced on the razor's edge between pride and loathing, between
profound love and dark uneasy guilt?

Robert also had the wisdom to accept the fact of the fierce
mutual love between father and daughter. Maria and her father spoke frequently
on the phone, an achievement in itself, considering the reliability of the
Egyptian telephone system. If Joey was out on some school project she would
have to catalog his routine and the events of his young life. The Padre doted
on every word. A baby tooth gone. An "A" on a test. A clever retort.
Apparently the stuff of grandfatherly ecstasy.

"Mommy. When is Daddy coming?" Joey whined. His
tone mirrored her own thoughts.

"Soon."

But soon didn't seem early enough and her voice lacked
conviction. Joey shrugged, shook his head, and pouted. Again she looked toward
the museum's entrance. Not far from the limousines, a young boy in striped
pajamas squatted next to a ramshackle ice-cream cart. The boy sat staring into
space, his eyes transfixed in an attitude that the Egyptians called
kayf
,
staring into nothingness. She felt Joey's tug on her arm.

"Absolutely not," she said without looking at the
boy. No explanation was required. Eating ice cream purchased from a street
vendor was like playing Russian roulette with one's stomach.

"I have to go peepee," Joey said.

She looked down at his sweaty little face and smiled. He
could, of course, have tinkled against the car's tire, a favorite habit in this
part of the world. Not the grandson of the great Padre, she told herself with a
pursed smile, as she grasped Joey's hand and started moving toward the museum's
entrance.

AHMED FELT THE TWITCHING begin in the left side of his jaw.
It was a sign of extreme tension and it annoyed him to know that he could not
control the visible throbbing. It gave him away, telegraphed to others his
anxiety, exposed his nakedness. He sat in the front seat beside the driver,
sweat pouring down his cheeks and back, his eyes, behind dark glasses, alert to
everything that moved near the entrance of the museum. His moist muscular
thighs gripped the AK47, like a giant phallus.

At thirty-five he had become a veteran of urban warfare,
skilled in hostage-taking and violent harassment. As he evolved into a
professional, the need for his services had grown considerably in this long
winter of discontent.

Indeed, he had never known any other season. Born in
southern Lebanon of a poor Shiite family, he was barely able to read before he
found himself in a PLO training camp learning the rudiments of killing. He had
joined a tiny Shiite militia recruited by the PLO as an ally against Israeli
attempts to control southern Lebanon. In those days, he believed the political
rhetoric. He could be stirred by the rousing call of Jihad, Holy War. The lure
of paradise was tantalizing.

Then the Shiites in Lebanon, buoyed by the remarkable
revolution of the Ayatollah Khomeini, switched gears and the political logic
was recalibrated. Paranoid over any kind of domination and authority, they
began to fight the PLO. Survival considerably enhanced Ahmed's professional
credentials. Soon he was fighting the hated Christians, then the Druse, then
recalcitrant Shiites, depending on the ebb and flow of politics, clashing egos
among the leadership, and the latest betrayal and double double cross.

Because of these spinning changes and floating alliances,
Ahmed, like many others before him, concluded that the only sure loyalty was to
himself. The Jihad, the driving force of Holy War, had become a matter of
dubious fervor. The prospect of paradise was now seen more as a lure for young
chickens than a possibility for an old fox like himself. He had discovered
profit in terror.

But killing and kidnapping for profit alone, given the
absence of ideology, possessed the stigma of shame. Ahmed was a man who needed
the anchor of honorable intentions. He had obeyed earlier familial injunctions,
had taken a wife and fathered a child. He was eighteen then and had not yet
come to grips with the true nature of his sexuality. The child, who had nearly
died at birth, was afflicted with a congenital heart disorder.

It was only a short journey for Ahmed to reorient his
commitments. He had a new justification. Something to kill for. He had
purchased the boy and his wife a villa in Jordan, with servants and the best
medical care available. He did not visit him more than once or twice a year.
Often, he assured himself, the boy was the only thing he truly loved. Such
thoughts left him cleansed and justified.

Three scrawny men, their beards replicas of Arafat's, sat
tense in the back seat of the Mercedes. The metal of their AK47's glistened
with their sweat. Ahmed sat between the driver and the clean-shaven Jaber. He
turned in his seat, patted his head, and gave him a reassuring wink. Sweet
Jaber. A tingle in his crotch reminded him of the boy's ivory smooth body.
Another easy conquest made possible by the knowledge of Arafat's predilections.
A pederast, the man remained, whatever the whim of the moment, the enduring
role model for disenfranchised Arab youth.

He would not, of course, have picked Jaber to be with them
if he had not been absolutely assured of both his skill and his commitment. It
could be said that he had handpicked the five of them primarily for their
blindness, their absolute faith in the joys of martyrdom.

For this mission, the planning had been impeccable. Bigelow
was an Assistant Secretary of State for the American Government, a
troubleshooter on the Middle East, an emissary of the American President. The
purpose of the mission, Ahmed knew, was to embarrass the Egyptian Government
and its so-called moderate lackeys and illustrate its unreliability to the
Americans, to move the prisoner to Lebanon and parade him in front of the
cameras with all the hoopla of the usual media circus.

There was no sign of movement among the chauffeurs chatting
together outside the three official limousines. The boy squatted by his
ice-cream cart, looking lost in
kayf
. Ahmed knew that he was tense and
alert. He would have only a minisecond to place the bomb under the rear fender
of the lead car and less than that to duck away, an impossibility that had been
carefully calculated. The boy's ticket to paradise was all but assured, Ahmed
reflected.

The woman's annoying persistence had very nearly triggered
a compulsive reaction in the men. They were also edgy with heat and
expectation, their inner springs taut, which was only natural prior to an
operation.

"Hide those weapons," Ahmed had snapped in time
to inhibit their movement.

"Bitch," one of the men had mumbled.

"Don't open the window," Ahmed had warned.

But the woman, obviously an American, had been tenacious.
Her tapping on the window had made a racket. One of the chauffeurs had squinted
curiously in their direction. As Ahmed had determined by careful rehearsal, the
sun's reflection on the automobile's windshield rendered them invisible from
the chauffeurs' vantage. But he had not reckoned on sound.

"The ball is under your car," the woman had said,
pointing. A small boy stood beside her, peering into the car.

"Better move it," Ahmed finally had ordered. The
car rolled forward. The ball retrieved, the woman and her son moved back to
what was undoubtedly her own car at the edge of the parking lot.

"You think she saw something?" the young man
behind the wheel asked.

"We'll know soon enough," Ahmed said, looking at
his watch.

"Why are they this late?" Jaber whispered. Ahmed
felt his sweet breath sail past his ear.

"Maybe he is making love to a mummy," Ahmed said,
deliberately facetious. These young men reveled in facetiousness. It was
reassuring to them. Ahmed was getting edgy too.

He turned and looked behind him. No sign of anything amiss
in the parking lot. Only the woman and her boy. Holding the boy's hand, she had
begun to move toward the museum's entrance.

"What is it?" Jaber asked. "I see
nothing."

Following his lead, the others had uncovered their weapons.
He heard the familiar click of the AK47's safety mechanism, the prelude to
death. It was now a matter of experienced judgment. Would the woman accost the
chauffeurs, point to their car? He followed her with his gaze, finger on the
trigger of his weapon.

She and the boy passed the chauffeurs without a word and
walked quickly up the front steps. But he was not relieved. It was unusual for
him to doubt his instincts, which were now giving him mixed signals.

To chase the idea of the woman from his mind, he went over
the details once again. Bigelow in a phalanx of security men would proceed down
the steps of the museum. As he reached the midway point, the boy would set his
fuse and roll the bomb under the lead limousine. At the same time, the driver
would move forward. Jaber and the others would step out of the car and spray
everyone but Bigelow, who would have ducked to the ground. Then Jaber and one
of the men would pick him up, throw him in the rear of their car while the
other two continued to fire away. They would disable the remaining limousines
and dash back into the car, which would already have begun to move. In
rehearsal they could do it in twenty seconds.

In a narrow, seldom-used alley one block from the museum,
behind an abandoned half-finished building, another car would be waiting.
Bigelow would be transferred to the other car along with Ahmed, Jaber, and the
driver. Their present car would be abandoned under the half-finished building
and the others would disappear in the maze of Cairo street traffic. Quick,
simple, and thorough.

At that moment the ornate doors of the museum opened.
Adrenaline shot through him. But it was only the woman and the boy emerging.
They started down the stairs. She was holding the boy's hand and he was jumping
beside her one step at a time, a laborious process in which she indulged him
with motherly patience.

Suddenly Ahmed realized that she had waylaid his attention.
His concentration had strayed. Precious seconds had been lost. The phalanx had
come out of the museum and was already moving swiftly down the stairs. But the
boy beside his ice-cream cart had been alert. The bomb was placed.

"Now," Ahmed cried, punching the driver's upper
arm. In miniseconds the car moved forward, the rear doors opened, and the
AK47's were sending their lethal message simultaneously with the blast. The
lead car of the limousine caravan rose like a feather in the wind, bursting
into flames.

Unfortunately, their split second of hesitation pushed the
schedule awry. As expected, Bigelow was flung to the ground in a reflex action
by one of his guards. But unexpectedly, he had the presence of mind to roll
toward the site of the blast instead of away from it, causing the two men who
were to pick him up and throw him into the rear of their car to hesitate
another split second. This was just enough time for one of the dying guards to
get off a round of his automatic pistol. It caught Jaber's companion in the
head, spilling his brains on Jaber's shirt.

Jaber struggled for a moment trying to get a good grip on
Bigelow, but Bigelow was not cooperating. And with good reason. He had been
caught in the cross fire. Another man stepped forward to help Jaber, but he,
too, was cut down by the guns of a surviving guard. When the last man attempted
to grab Bigelow, he was blown away.

A botch, Ahmed knew almost from the first. He looked at
Jaber, still struggling to bring Bigelow into their car. Suddenly the boy
looked up. It was futile. Briefly their eyes met. Ahmed saw the panic and knew
what it meant. Jaber, if he was not killed, would break under interrogation.
Ahmed lifted the muzzle of his automatic pistol and raked the boy across the
chest.

"Go," he shouted to his driver, jabbing the
pistol muzzle in his ribs. The driver jammed his foot on the accelerator and
the car shot forward. Then it stalled. The driver reached for the ignition key,
turned it. The motor coughed hesitantly, sputtered, but did not catch. It was
in that interval that Ahmed once again saw the woman and the boy. The stalled
car had apparently cut off their flight to another part of the parking lot.
They stood, apparently rooted to the ground by fear.

"Hello, my lovelies," Ahmed said calmly as he
jumped out of the car. At that moment the sweating driver started the motor.
Ahmed grabbed the woman and the boy and pulled them into the rear seat. Then
calmly, as if this exhibition of his courage was necessary, he stepped slowly
into the seat beside the driver. As the car disappeared around the corner, he
turned to the woman and shrugged.

"An American is an American," he said.

The woman looked at him coldly. She had, he noted,
recovered her arrogance.

"You won't get away with this," the woman hissed
as her arm shot out. Her fist glanced off the side of his head. Calmly, he
directed the pistol toward the boy's crotch.

"He'd be such a pretty little soprano," Ahmed
said, watching the woman as the blood drained from her face. After a moment,
she expelled a word. It sounded very much like "Daddy."

"Daddy," he said with a chuckle. "No Daddy
can help you now."

AS HE HAD DONE with religious punctuality for more than a
quarter of a century, Salvatore Padronelli, the Padre as he was called, planted
his black Thom McAn shoes beneath the table of the private back room of Luigi's
Trattoria on Mulberry Street. It was located one block from his modest
two-story house in which he had resided for forty years. As always, the table
was covered with a crisp checkered tablecloth. On it was the usual basketed
bottle of Chianti, a container of standing breadsticks, and a half dozen small
tumblers. The table was round. It could seat six comfortably.

The Padre always sat with his elbows on the table, and when
he was not drinking or eating, he clasped gnarled stubby fingers. His face was
thin, but he was not hollow-cheeked and he did not shave more than three times
a week. It was not uncommon to see his chin stubbled with spiky gray hairs. His
head was bald except for wisps of fine hair that lay helter-skelter on his
pate. He wore dress shirts, old white-on-white designs, the cuffs frayed,
button closed to the neck, but no tie. For some reason, he rarely wore jackets
that matched his pants, much to the despair of his housekeeper, Mrs. Santos.

Rosa, his late wife, had kept him neater, well-shaven and
well-groomed. Yet no amount of carelessness or lack of grooming could detract
from the alertness of his green eyes, penetrating and predatory. The Padre was
sixty-nine years old.

Another man sat at the table with the Padre. Angelo
Petinno, a narrow, small-boned man with a thin mustache and a head of thick
silvery hair. He had the look of a man who eschewed sunshine and fresh air. His
skin was dead white. In bygone days he would have been referred to as the Consigliari,
but the Padre had decreed that such nomenclature should be avoided wherever
possible. This was America. The Padre was American-born. The time had come for
the organization to disassociate itself from media clichés.

As leader, a kind of chairman of the board, the Padre, of
course, demanded respect, but he drew the line on reverence. He knew that his
power and his ability to delegate it were essential to the organization's
health. He felt uncomfortable and distrusting when people treated him like some
sainted Godfather of movie legend.

Angelo Petinno, his companion at the back-room table, was
known as "the Pencil." He was called that not because of his mustache
but because he was always making notes in pencil on little scraps of paper. The
notes were indecipherable to anyone but himself and they reflected the various
decisions and decrees handed down by the Padre.

These decisions were always scrupulously carried out by the
Pencil through a network of underlings. The Pencil was an organizational
genius. When he wrote something down on the Padre's orders, the Padre always
considered it done.

No telephone calls were ever taken in the back room of
Luigi's, although there was a pay phone for private use, but only in extreme
emergencies. When someone called the Padre on the pay phone, its very ring
constituted a four-alarm alert. All "business" was conducted by the
Pencil in a small building two blocks away on which was posted a battered sign.
It read "Import-Export." The phones there were swept three times a day
for government taps, which meant a constant switching of lines.

Near the back door, which Luigi had had installed on the
Padre's instructions, rested a little square table. When the Padre held court,
two leathery-faced men of uncertain age sat at the little table. One was Vinnie
Barboza. Only behind his back did they call him "the Prune" because
of the peculiarity of his facial wrinkles, especially when angered.

Seated with him was Carmine Giancana, "the
Canary," a nickname based upon his resemblance to the Italian fighter
Primo Canero, for those who remembered. Often he was forced to dispel the
confusion about the origin of his nickname, since Canary had other
connotations.

Beneath their somber suits both men carried an enforcing
mechanism known as the Magnum. For nearly a decade they had had little use for
them, although the weapons were always kept carefully cleaned and oiled just in
case.

At a table in the main room of Luigi's sat two other men.
One was Rocco Mondavano, known as "the Talker" for his penchant for
silence. The Talker talked only when absolutely necessary. He was the keeper of
the gate. No one could speak to the Padre without the Talker consulting first
with the Padre. He was the intermediary, a good choice, since it was the
economy of language that particularly endeared him to the Padre. That and his
swift expertise with the razor.

The other man was Benjy Mustoni, known since he was barely
thirty as "the Kid." He was the second son of the Padre's lifetime
friend Angelo Mustoni, deceased now for a dozen years.

The Padre had made his friend a deathbed promise, a
contract of binding significance, to take Benjy under his wing. He had obeyed
the promise warily. He used Benjy to deal with the new blood, usually sons and
nephews of the old faithful who were scrambling to become "made" in
the organization. Unfortunately for these younger men, the Padre never fully
trusted anyone more than ten years younger than himself, which meant that the
men close to him grew considerably grayer as time progressed.

This distrust of younger men had heightened after the death
of his sons, Gino and Mario. They had been his blood heirs and they had died
unnecessarily of the most potentially lethal of all terminal ailments—ambition.
They had confused age with weakness, the old ways with stubbornness, the
ancient methods with ignorance. Not that the Padre was an enemy of new ways of
doing business.

His father had warned him that he must move with the times.
This did not mean that to fulfill the terms of modernization he had to move out
of his small house in Little Italy and live like a king in a palace on Park Avenue. The old neighborhood was a protected watershed where strangers came at their
peril. These days he rarely went beyond its boundaries.

Perhaps the outside world had simply grown too big to
understand. Perhaps men felt a need to belong to something they could touch and
feel in their hearts. Perhaps such things as honor, loyalty, adventure,
rebellion, and danger were more important than mere survival and safety.

The Padre's love and respect for his father had been
intense. Not a day went by, even now, thirty years after the old man had died,
when he did not measure his decisions against his father's. The man was, it was
true, old country, his English poor, his dress sloppy, but his knowledge of
men, his ability to lead and inspire were uncanny. To betray his father was
inconceivable. Where had he gone wrong with his own sons?

He had warned them about dealing with heroin. It destroyed
a human being's chance to survive, to fight back. Trafficking in these types of
drugs went beyond the pale of legitimate plunder. His father had made that
choice years before. He had reinforced these points to his sons again and
again.

They had been murdered through a contract put out jointly
by the black gangs of Harlem, and he had been obliged, as a solemn duty, to
extract his revenge. It had been a bloody business, necessary, preordained.
Step on my foot and I will cut off your head. Cut off my head and I will cut
off ten of yours. It was the lesson of punishment learned at his father's knee.

He drank the first drink of the day and felt the sweet and
gentle Chianti warm against his palate. The Pencil did not drink anything
stronger than iced tea. Luigi waddled in from the kitchen, as he had done for
twenty-five years, perspiring, wiping his chapped chunky hands on his apron.

"And how many today, my Padre?" was his
invariable query.

Habit, Padre knew, was essential to firm rule. It
encouraged the ritual of obedience. At that moment the Talker rose and moved
into the room.

"The Chinee," he said.

The Padre nodded. Actually the Chinee, as he was called,
was Japanese. The Padre quickly remembered his last name. Mr. Akito. He
addressed all representatives of groups outside the family by either their
formal title or mister.

A tiny, polite little man who served as the agent for their
little dumping operation, the Chinee arranged with his co-horts in Japan to dump electronic equipment on American shores through the good offices of the Padre
and his organization. The goods were actually shipped out of Japan for less
than a quarter of their value, transshipped in mid-ocean, then moved through
the organization onto the organization-controlled docks and into the so-called
free market-place.

It was enormously complex and profitable, the kind of
business that the Padre favored. He enjoyed duping governments and their
bureaucratic and corrupt minions. Also, he liked the Chinee, liked his solemn
little rituals.

"Ah, linguini with the white," Luigi said as he
rushed back to the kitchen. As the Padre's caterer, Luigi's role was never to
forget a guest's favorite dish or beverage.

In the doorway stood the Chinee, bowing with exquisite
grace and politeness. The Padre and the Pencil stood up, although neither returned
the bow, nor was it expected. The Padre directed the Chinee to sit on a chair
beside him.

"With great respect, my friend," the Chinee said,
executing another smaller bow as he sat down. The Padre poured him a drink. He
lifted his glass, lowered his eyes, and sipped. The Chinee's precise textbook
English amused the Padre and he felt himself obliged to emulate it.

"To you as well, Mr. Akito."

"And your daughter and grandson. I wish them great
bounty and good health." The Chinee emptied his glass and the Padre
refilled it.

"And likewise to your wife and children."

The best wishes continued, covering their colleagues and
finally themselves.

Luigi brought their food. The Padre's lunch rarely varied.
Broiled fish and buttered pasta. For the Chinee, he served the linguini with
white clam sauce.

It amazed the Padre to see the anomaly of this Oriental
eating pasta with such skill, never a strand unraveled. After a few mouthfuls,
the Chinee put down his spoon and fork and delicately wiped his lips. The
Padre, who had been eating sparingly more for form's sake than from lack of
appetite, soundlessly put down his knife and fork.

"We have a troublesome problem, my friend," the
Chinee began. His smile never left his face.

"Troublesome?"

"Three hijackings last week," the Chinee said,
still smiling, his hands serenely clasped at the edge of the table. "They
have knowledge beforehand of our movements."

"Someone on the inside?"

The Chinee nodded but did not move his hands.

"You think it is at our end?" the Padre asked.
This was the first consideration. The crime of betrayal was one of the first
magnitude.

"I am afraid this is true."

The Padre felt his stomach congeal; the bit of fish that he
had ingested seemed to expand into a hard ball. Betrayal, unfortunately, was
endemic to organizations such as his. Try as he might, there was no stopping it
beforehand. One could only gamble on a man's character. Only in performance,
the Padre knew, within parameters that required absolute obedience to the
principle of loyalty, could a man be truly tested and judged.

"Have you any ideas?" the Padre asked.

"I do."

Both knew that the Chinee would not have come to the Padre
if he did not have information on the culprits. Only the Padre was allowed to
make decisions on enforcement. The Chinee drew a piece of paper from his
pocket. On it was written the name of the perpetrator. The act of recording the
name was not merely an allegation or even an indictment. It was a guilty
verdict. He passed the paper to the Padre, who, in turn, passed it to the
Pencil, who recorded it on another slip of paper. Then he burned the Chinee's
piece of paper in an ashtray.

Dominic Tameleo was the name of the accused. The man's dark
face sprang into the Padre's mind. A friend of Benjy. With great effort he
forced his features to remain serene. Another second-generation member, he
sighed, hoping it did not signify that the organization was at risk. It was one
of his principal fears.

The Chinee resumed eating his pasta. The Padre continued to
pick at his food. But his mind was already devising a plan. Enforcement did not
always mean death. Indeed, elimination sometimes was less effective than a
living example.

After a long silence, the Chinee emptied his plate and
cleared his palate with the Chianti. Once again the Padre filled their glasses
and they toasted the health of their respective families. Nothing more needed
to be said on the issue between them. Someone in the Padre's organization had
breached the code of honor, the contract. This must now be dealt with.

The transaction between the Padre and the Chinee was now
officially over. The moment appropriate to departure had come. They stood up.
The Chinee bowed, took two steps backward, bowed again, and departed.

When he was gone, the Talker appeared once again.

"Benjy," the Padre said. The Talker nodded, his
eyes closing at the same time.

The young man came in from the other room. He was handsome,
slender, and wore an expensive pin-striped suit cut in an Ivy League style, a
button-down white shirt with a yellow tie that picked up the flecks of yellow
in his hazel eyes. He was, the Padre knew, a ladies' man, a dangerous hobby in
their line of work. Nevertheless, he had promised the boy's father, and to date
the boy was a "made" member. He had killed on demand with his own hands.
Such an act assumed a solemn entitlement.

"Tameleo," the Padre whispered.

"Him?" Benjy said, his lip curling, his Adam's
apple jumping in his throat. "No way."

"Mark him, Benjy," the Padre said.

"But I..." Benjy's words suggested the kind of
protest that had to be dealt with quickly.