Free Depraved Indifference by Robert K. Tanenbaum

loaded with explosives winging around over Paris freaks them out. The Interior people, and we can assume the senior government people, don’t want to piss off the Yugos too badly. After all, they owe them one for letting the consul get wasted. Mostly they don’t want a bloodbath involving Americans. The bomb that blew up in New York seems to have impressed them that these assholes mean business.”
    â€œWhat’s doing down at the airport?”
    â€œWaiting is all, according to Leland. He’s been there, and tells me they’ve got the plane parked on a side runway. There’s a tanker and a flight crew van out there, and a friend of his in civil aviation says the crew in the van is suspiciously tough-looking and muscular for French airport workers.”
    â€œSounds like their SWAT team’s in place. Will they try something?”
    â€œHard to tell. The French have never stormed an aircraft, and they’ve got a shitty record in dealing with terrorists.”
    â€œSo what are our guys doing?”
    â€œAh, that’s really interesting. The Paris chargé, a guy by the name of Oscar Raiford, is getting very mixed signals from Washington. The FBI also has a guy on the spot, Jim Toomey, flew over this morning. Out of the New York office. You know him?”
    â€œNever heard of him, but he must work for Pillman. What’s with the mixed signals?”
    â€œWell, SOP in cases like this—hijack originating on U.S. soil, American flag carrier—is to pressure the holding nation for return of the hijackers to U.S. jurisdiction and also to resist concessions to hijackers. The drill is to talk, talk, talk, figuring time is on the side of the negotiators.
    â€œOK, that’s the direction Raiford is getting from State, or was, through this morning. But Toomey was pushing in the opposite direction—give in, let them go, let the Bulgarians have them. Leland says Raiford seems confused, keeps cabling Washington for written orders. Also this guy Dettrick seems to be a big player, which is odd too.”
    â€œWho’s Dettrick?”
    â€œAccording to the cuz, a Deputy Public Information Officer at the embassy, but really the CIA station chief. Dettrick wants the plane stormed with no damn nonsense about saving lives.”
    Karp whistled. “What does Leland think of all this?”
    â€œLeland isn’t actually paid to think. He’s paid to speak good French and act snotty. But between cousins he vouchsafed to me that it’s a remarkable departure from normal policy-making. His view is that somebody would like these Croats either in Bulgaria or in the next world, but in any case not on trial in New York. And that’s about it, Butch.”
    â€œThanks, V.T. I hope it didn’t screw up your weekend.”
    â€œSubstantially. However, we WASPs are used to sexual deprivation. We had planned to perch on a settee and read aloud from The Wings of the Dove , thus whipping our etiolated libidos into white heat, but now—”
    â€œBye, V.T. Call me if you hear anything else.”

5
    T HE FBI’ S NEW YORK office was lodged in the old telephone company building on 69th and Third Avenue. The lobby still bore in mural and relief medallions some of the communication symbology dear to Ma Bell’s frozen heart—wire-girdled continents, hands across the sea, the long progress from the African drum to the self-dial telephone of 1938. Karp noticed especially the engraving on the bronze elevator doors: the thin, naked kid standing tiptoe on the globe, with electric hair under his World War I helmet, looking hopeful as he held aloft a snaky tangle of cables. This same icon had appeared on the cover of the old green New York phone books and had fascinated Karp as a child, filling his mind with maddening questions: why was the soldier playing with spaghetti? How did he stay on top of the basketball? Why did he have a leaf instead of a wee-wee? It was