"It's him," Alicia's voice came back over the intercom in the Oval
Office. By now it looked as disheveled as the Situation Room in the
basement.
"What?" Hansen said. "The son of a bitch is on the phone again? At this
hour?"
"What do you want me to do?" she asked.
"Just a minute." He clicked off the intercom and returned to his other
call. "Caroline, I don't know. Just play it by ear and do the best you
can. Press Secretaries get paid for giving non-answers. Tell the
goddamn Post we have no comment. Try and make a deal. Say you'll give
their team an exclusive, deep background, just for them, if they'll
hold off another few hours to give us time to sort this out. Tell him
we promise not to give the Times anything fit to print until after
their deadline tomorrow. The late edition." He paused. "You're probably
right, but give it a shot anyway. Look, I've got to go."
He reached over and pushed a second button on the console.
"Yes."
"Mr. President," came the voice, its accent more pronounced now, "I
know you think you can recover this facility with an assault, but I
want to assure you that any such action would be a very costly
mistake."
"The only mistake that's been made so far was made by you. Going there
in the first place." Hansen glanced at the listing of his commitments
for the next day. Ted would have to cancel all of them. This wasn't how
the presidency was supposed to be. Nobody told him he would be spending
days on end negotiating with a criminal threatening mass murder.
"Let me put it like this," the voice went on. "If there is an assault,
all I have to do is retire to the lower level of the facility and then
detonate one of the nuclear devices I now have armed. It's radio-
controlled."
"If you want to commit suicide, then go ahead," Hansen said. What kind
of bluff was that? he wondered.
"Let me put your mind at ease," came the voice, as measured and secure
as it was foreboding. "My revolutionary colleagues and I will be at the
main power coil, which is buried at least three hundred feet below the
bedrock here. It is a ready-made bomb shelter. Any invading force,
however, would be vaporized, along with all the civilians."
"You'd never escape," Hansen shot back. "What's the point?"
"That remains to be seen. But what you have to ask yourself is whether
you are prepared to have a nuclear disaster in the Aegean."
On that point, Hansen admitted to himself, the son of a bitch had a
point. The political costs, not to mention the economic costs, would be
staggering.
"Look," he said, "you're proposing a scenario neither of us wants. It
would be irresponsible and immoral. Though I suppose those points don't
disturb you very much."
"Let me help your thought processes. You have twenty minutes, starting
now. If at the end of that time you can't assure me that the assault
has been called off--please don't bother to deny that one is imminent--
then what will happen will be on your hands." He paused. "Incidentally,
I also will bring Professor Mannheim to the phone then, and you can
explain to him why he is about to die. I am putting this line on hold.
You now have nineteen minutes and forty seconds." The phone went
silent.
Hansen stared at Ed Briggs, sitting bleary-eyed across on the couch,
then returned his gaze to the desk, noting the time on the digital
clock.