Джон Болл: The First Team

“Very well, suppose that you had personal enemies in this building who knew of your condition, where you were, and that you were not only unguarded, but that there was no one to avenge you if they struck. How long would you last?”

Once more Zalinsky propped himself up on his elbows. “All right, I am a sick man. I cannot defend myself. In my office sits Gregor Rostovitch. Do you believe that he will remove himself simply to please me if I call him and suggest it? You met him, you should know.” He reached for a glass of water; Hewlitt handed it to him.

“I don’t want you to call the colonel, I want you to call the Actor,” Hewlitt said. “He is balancing on a tightwire right now. Let him release the hostages in the name of humanity and the whole world will approve.”

“And Gregor Rostovitch will sit in his chair within a month.”

The phone beside Zalinsky’s bed rang once softly. Reaching over with some effort the administrator picked it up. “It will be the message,” he said.

Hewlitt contained himself and kept his face impassive, but with an effort. He had been making his play, and it was the one time that he did not want to be interrupted for any reason.

Zalinsky listened to the instrument and then his face visibly changed color. “There is no possibility of a mistake?” he asked in his own language. Once more he listened; then he spoke a few brief words and hung up. After that he pulled bedclothes up under his chin and surveyed Hewlitt with renewed interest. “Your timing,” he said finally, “I admit that it is superb. You will know very shortly anyway so I tell you now, Colonel Rostovitch is dead. Is it now that you are going to kill me?”

Hewlitt repeated back the news, in English, as though to convince himself that he had heard correctly. “Colonel Rostovitch is dead, you absolutely affirm this?”

“I have just been so told.”

Hewlitt kept his face as composed as it had been. He had gambled before and he had won; he was prepared to gamble again. “Mr. Zalinsky, I will tell you the absolute truth: we will not permit the hostages to be killed and we have very strong ways to prevent that. But the most merciful thing is for you to give the order that they are to be released. There is no one in this country to challenge your authority and I know you — you would not do this thing that Rostovitch had planned because you are too good a manager — the price to your own people would be unthinkable. You are the man who shut down the steel mill while you put the machines where they had to be; this is the same thing. You are tough, but you are not, and never will be, insane like Rostovitch.”

“You knew that Rostovitch was to be killed then?”

Hewlitt saw a sudden ray of light. “I came here to see you. Before you knew what was to happen, you told me that I had assassinated myself.”

Zalinsky looked at him, then eased himself back onto his pillows. “If I am to die,” he said, “return to me what I did for your Major Landers and let it be very quick and painless. I am not a man of great physical courage; at least I do not wish to be exterminated.”

Hewlitt continued the role he had unwittingly assumed. “Mr. Zalinsky, I have specifically given the order that you are not to die, that your recovery is to continue with the best care that we can give you, and that you are to be treated with consideration, if you will do this one thing that will redeem you before the whole country that I represent. It is the only possible decision. Otherwise, our submarine will fire. And you know that it is not sunk; you told me so yourself a few minutes ago.”

Zalinsky raised his arms and rubbed his face. Then he picked up the telephone and called for Major Barlov once more. When he had him on the line he asked for a further report on the death of Gregor Rostovitch. When that had been done, he said, “Very well. List the names of the hostages and then let them go for the time being. I will make a decision within twenty-four hours.”

“You are a very great man,” Barlov said over the line.

“Are you one of them too?”

Apparently Barlov did not presume to take that seriously. “Excellency, I venture to say to you that I feared greatly for our country; the power of the submarine, it is terrible. Of this I know. And my wife and family, you know where they live.”

“And mine also,” Zalinsky said. “But it is the jackals I consider now — if we get into this, they will gather to devour our flesh and there are a great many of them.”

“As I said, excellency, you are a great man. You see things to which others are blind.”

“Give the necessary orders in my name.”

“Yes, excellency. What shall I do with the man who caused Colonel Rostovitch to depart from us?”

“You have him in custody?”

“Yes, excellency.”

“Be careful that he does not escape. If he were to escape, I could not avenge my dear friend Gregor as I wish to do.”

“Your wishes will be carried out, excellency. I shall keep you informed. Speed your recovery.”

“I am feeling very much better already; I will be back into my office soon.” He hung up, then turned to Hewlitt. “What is now to happen?” he asked in English.

“I heard the conversation,” Hewlitt said, “and I say the same. Speed your recovery.”

He turned and left while he was still in command of himself.

The conference room at Thomas Jefferson was usually extremely well ordered, a reflection of the man whose desire to keep things shipshape had characterized his many years in the Navy. For almost twenty-four hours that standard had been abandoned as the room became a strategy center, plans headquarters, restaurant, message command post, and very nearly a dormitory. The members of the First Team occupied it almost continuously, and there was a steady flow in and out of the second level of command and all of the support personnel who worked directly with the managers of the operation. Occasionally used coffee cups were cleared away and accumulations of discarded notepaper were removed, but the atmosphere in the room became continuously heavier nonetheless and there was no fault in the air conditioning.

The admiral sat, and he paced up and down. He consulted charts, conferred with his colleagues on a hundred different points, and read incoming messages with almost savage eagerness the moment that they were received. Like the good commander that he was, he gave careful thought to the idea of surrendering himself and his colleagues. He explored the idea fully and rejected it: it would betray the President, the country, and the whole complex organization that had been so painstakingly constructed to meet the exact emergency with which it was now confronted. To throw all of that away would be to sentence the entire country to serfdom for the indefinite future, and that was not the purpose of the command that he headed. He had the Magsaysay; at least he was determined to carry on with the assumption that he did, and with that single but almost unbelievably potent force available he was in the game to win. In warfare there were no second prizes.

He left the room and returned in a blackened mood. He called over one of the service personnel who was emptying ashtrays and pointed. “It’s all out of toilet paper in there,” he declared.

“I’m sorry, sir,” the man answered. “I hope that there was something else available.”

“What did you expect me to use — a moonbeam?” Haymarket barked.

The man didn’t blink. “If you accomplished that, sir, I would like to shake your hand.”

The admiral relented and smiled; there was not a man or a woman in the underground complex who had not been hand-picked. “Fix it, will you?” he finished mildly and went back to his work.