Frederick Forsyth - The Negotiator

The service was in the small Episcopalian church on Fair Street, far too small to hold all who wanted to attend. The First Family was in the front two rows of pews, with the Cabinet behind them and a variety of other dignitaries in the rear. At the family’s request it was a small and private service-foreign ambassadors and delegates were asked to attend a memorial service in Washington to be held later.

The President had asked for privacy from the media, but a number had turned up anyway. The islanders-there were no vacationers on the island in that season-took his wish very literally. Even the Secret Service men, not known for their exquisite manners, were surprised to be upstaged by the grim and silent Nantucketers, who quietly lifted several cameramen physically out of the way and left two of them protesting the ruin of their exposed film rolls.

The casket was brought to the church from the island’s only funeral parlor on Union Street, where it had rested during the time between its arrival by military C-130-the small airfield could not take the Boeing 747-and the start of the service.

Halfway through the ceremony the first rains came, glittering on the gray slate roof of the church, washing down the stained-glass windows and the pink and gray stone blocks of the building.

When it was over, the casket was placed in a hearse, which proceeded at walking pace the half mile to the Hill; out of Fair Street, over the bumpy cobblestones of Main Street, and up New Mill Street to Cato Lane. The mourners walked in the rain, headed by the President, whose eyes were fixed on the flag-draped coffin a few feet in front of him. His younger brother supported a weeping Myra Cormack.

The way was flanked by the people of Nantucket, bareheaded and silent. There were the tradesmen who had sold the family fish, meat, eggs, and vegetables; restaurateurs who had served them in the scores of good eating houses around the island. There were the walnut faces of the old fishermen who had once taught the tow-haired youngster from New Haven to swim and dive and fish, or taken him scalloping off the Sankaty Light.

The caretaker and the gardener stood weeping on the corner of Fair Street and Main, to take a last look at the boy who had learned to run on those hard, tide-washed beaches from Coatue up to Great Point and back to Siasconset Beach. But bomb victims are not for the eyes of the living and the casket was sealed.

At Prospect Hill they turned into the Protestant half of the cemetery, past hundred-year-old graves of men who had hunted whales in small open boats and carved scrimshaw by oil lamps through the long winter nights. They came to the new section where the grave had been prepared.

The people filed in behind and filled the ground, row on row, and in that high open place the wind tore across the Sound and through the town to tug at hair and scarves. No shop was open that day, no garage, no bar. No planes landed, no ferries docked. The islanders had locked out the world to mourn one of their own, even by adoption. The minister began to intone the old words, his voice carried away on the wind.

High above, a single gyrfalcon, drifting down from the Arctic like a snowflake on the blast, looked down, saw every detail with his incredible eyes, and his single lost-soul scream was pulled away down the wind.

The rain, which had held off since the church service, resumed again, coming in flurries and squalls. The locked sails of the Old Mill creaked down the road. The men from Washington shivered and huddled into their heavy coats. The President stood immobile and stared down at what was left of his son, immune to the cold and the rain.

A yard from him stood the First Lady, her face streaked with rain and tears. When the preacher reached “the Resurrection and the Life,” she seemed to sway as if she might fall.

By her side a Secret Service man, open-coated to reach the handgun beneath his left armpit, crew-cut and built like a linebacker, overlooked protocol and training to wrap his right arm around her shoulders. She leaned against him and wept into his soaked jacket.

John Cormack stood alone, isolated in his pain, unable to reach out, an island.

A photographer, smarter than the rest, took a ladder from a backyard a quarter of a mile away and climbed the old wooden windmill on the corner of South Prospect Street and South Mill Street. Before anyone saw him using a telephoto lens, and by the light of a single wintry shaft that penetrated the clouds, he took one picture over the heads of the crowd of the group by the side of the grave.

It was a picture that would flash around America and the world. It showed the face of John Cormack as none had ever seen it: the face of an old man, a man aged beyond his years, sick, tired, drained. A man who could take no more; a man ready to go.

At the entrance to the cemetery the Cormacks stood later as the mourners passed by. None could find words to say. The President nodded as if he understood, and shook hands formally.

After the few from the immediate family came his closest friends and colleagues, headed by the Vice President and the six members of the Cabinet who formed the core of the committee seeking to handle the crisis for him. With four of them-Odell, Reed, Donaldson, and Walters-he went back a long time.

Michael Odell paused for a moment in an attempt to find something to say, shook his head, and turned away. The rain pattered on his bowed head, plastering the thick gray hair to his scalp.

Jim Donaldson’s precise diplomacy was equally disarmed by his emotions; he, too, could only stare in mute sympathy at his friend, shake his limp, dry hand, and pass on.

Bill Walters, the Attorney General, hid what he felt behind formality. He murmured, “Mr. President, my condolences. I’m sorry, sir.”

Morton Stannard, the banker from New York translated to the Pentagon, was the oldest man there. He had attended many funerals, of friends and colleagues, but nothing like this. He was going to say something conventional, but could only blurt out: “God, I’m so sorry, John.”

Brad Johnson, the black academic and National Security Adviser, just shook his head as if in bewilderment.

Hubert Reed of the Treasury surprised those standing close to the Cormacks. He was not a demonstrative man, too shy for overt demonstrations of affection, a bachelor who had never felt the need for wife or children. But he stared up at John Cormack through streaked glasses, held out his hand, and then reached up spontaneously to embrace his old friend with both arms. As if surprised at his own impulsiveness, he then turned and hurried away to join the others climbing into their waiting cars for the airfield.

The rain eased again and two strong men began to shovel wet earth into the hole. It was over.

Quinn checked the ferry times out of Dover for Ostende and found they had missed the last of the day. They spent the night at a quiet hotel and took the train from Charing Cross in the morning.

The crossing was uneventful and by the late morning Quinn had rented a blue medium-sized Ford from a local rental agency and they were heading for the ancient Flemish port that had been trading on the Scheide since before Columbus sailed.

Belgium is interlaced by a very modern system of high-class motorways; distances are short and times even shorter. Quinn chose the E.5 east out of Ostende, cut south of Bruges and Ghent, then northeast down the E.3 and straight into the heart of Antwerp in time for a late lunch.

Europe was unknown territory for Sam; Quinn seemed to know his way around. She had heard him speak rapid and fluent French several times during the few hours they had been in the country. What she had not realized was that each time Quinn had asked if the Fleming would mind if he spoke French before he launched into it. The Flemish usually speak some French, but like to be asked first. Just to establish that they are not Walloons.