99 - Washington, D.C.
President Quaid held the plastic-wrapped sheet of paper in his hand, holding it away from his chest as if the paper itself were radioactive, rather than just its message.
“Do we know this is the real thing?” he asked, looking around the table. The same team that met after Levi’s death. The President knew this group would not have been called together if the FBI had any doubts about the authenticity of the demand letter.
“We purposely kept the name of the sailboat confidential,” Attorney General Harrison said. “I hadn’t realized before, but it’s standard operating procedure to keep secret information that only a perpetrator would know. To tell you the truth, sir, even I didn’t know the name of the boat until I saw those photographs. I doubt if you did either, sir.”
“It never mattered to me,” President Quaid said. He scratched at his forehead. People around the table looked aside. The falling hair was noticeable, as was the President’s unconscious sweep of his left hand along the table’s surface to clear it of loose hairs. Even more than the falling hair, the dark rings under his eyes evidenced the sleepless – not to mention lonely – nights he’d been suffering through for weeks.
“OK, so this is real,” he said. “Where do we go from here?” He looked around the table, almost daring somebody to speak.
General Paterson, who’d faced Vietcong machine gun fire as a second lieutenant, was the least intimidated person at the table.
“As I see it, sir, we have two choices,” he said. “We either give them what they want, set everybody loose, or we evacuate St. Louis and try our damnedest to catch them.”
“NO FUCKING WAY.” The President’s shout stunned every person sitting at the long table.
Carol Cabot, sitting to the President’s immediate left, turned to him and whispered in his ear, patting his left hand gently. She turned and gestured to an aide standing against the wall behind the President. The young man poured a glass of water and placed it in front of the President. Cabot again whispered to him and he obediently sipped the water.
“Sorry about that,” President Quaid said. “Let me make something clear. I don’t give in to threats. Never have. Never will. We will not give these people what they want. I don’t want to hear one more word about giving in. Won’t happen. Is that clear to everybody here?
“Damned Israelis never negotiated with terrorists. We won’t either.”
He looked around the table and was met with grim nods.
“Number two, we will not evacuate St. Louis. There have been enough evacuations already. It makes us look weak, turning and running away every time somebody threatens to pop us one in the nose. Americans don’t run, we fight. No more running. So, where does that leave us? I’ll entertain suggestions.”
The President sat back in his chair and turned his head briefly to look at Carol Cabot. She stared at him in admiration and clapped her hands lightly together.
“Well, sir, we can keep them out of St. Louis, for a while at least,” Gen. Cruz, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said. “We can ring the city with troops so tight that a snail couldn’t crawl through. We can provide enough air cover that no plane will get anywhere near the city. We can keep that up for as long as you say so, sir, for what it’s worth. But you know, sir, there would be nothing to stop them from sending another note, this time for Philadelphia or Detroit. We can only button down so many cities, sir.”
“I understand that, general,” President Quaid said, not especially pleased with the response he’d received. “Make it happen. I want nothing to get into that city that we don’t want in, on the ground, in the air or on water. St. Louis is on the water, isn’t it?”
“The Mississippi River, Mr. President,” Harrison said.
“I know that, Harrison,” the President retorted. “Keep the damned boats away, too.”
He looked around the table.
“Am I understood?”
Without a word, everybody nodded.
“OK, now, nobody threatens me. We need to teach these people a lesson. As you said, General, they can do this again and again. We’ve got to give them a reason not to do that.”
He turned to the Attorney General, sitting directly across from him.
“Harrison, you seem to know all about St. Louis. I assume there are Jews living there, right?”
Harrison stuttered, at a loss for words. He finally found his voice.
“I assume so sir,” he said. “I’m under the impression there are Jews pretty much everywhere in the country, sir.”
“I share that assumption,” the President said. “OK. Arrest them, every damned one of them. Take them to a camp. Today. I want it done today. They give us another letter about another city, we’ll lock those Jews up, too. It shouldn’t take long for them to get our point, now should it?”
Again, he glared around the room.
“Any questions?” he asked. Nobody responded.
As people began to rise from their chairs, the President spoke again.
“Harrison. One last thing,” he said. “When you ship them south, no buses, no fucking Greyhound vistacruisers. Send them by train. In freight cars.”