Abuse of Power - Michael Savage [129]
The crowd was too dense to know for sure, but Jack doubted that Senator Harold Wickham or Lawrence Soren or Swain or any of the other men he’d met on that island were present. He’d have caught a glimpse of one of them by now. He imagined they were all far away by now, in transit or already relaxing in their homes, waiting to read about the success of their treachery in tomorrow’s newspapers. That was further indication that whatever they were planning was still a go. Otherwise, those men would be here.
Cowards, every single one of them. Leaving the dirty work to the fanatics they’d snookered into believing it was the will of Allah.
As Tony and Jack waited their turn, a uniformed officer moved along the security line with a bomb-sniffing German shepherd on a leash.
Jack checked his watch, a spare Rolex he always kept in the drawer by his bed. It would never replace his father’s Hamilton, but it was accurate and that was good enough for now.
The time was nearing half past eight.
The President wasn’t due to make his remarks until nine P.M., and no sign of his motorcade had been in evidence. As usual, he’d make a last-minute entrance, give his speech, then let the Secret Service whisk him back to Air Force One for the flight back to D.C.
Assuming he was still alive.
As they moved to the front of the security line, Jack and Tony took their keys from their pockets and deposited them into a tray provided by a uniformed guard. Tony went through the scanner first and got through clean. But as Jack stepped through the beeper went wild and his heart kicked up a notch. The security guard stopped him, gesturing to the Rolex, and Jack quickly removed it, laying it in the tray. He went through the scanner again and managed not to set off any more alarms. He was glad, then, he was wearing a vest and jacket. His shirt was miserably damp with perspiration.
He moved with Tony to retrieve their belongings.
Hurdle one taken care of.
Just past the security station was the museum’s Court of Honor, a large, rectangular courtyard surrounded on all sides by lighted Ionic marble columns. A gigantic bronze cast of Rodin’s masterpiece The Thinker sat on a high pedestal near the front of the courtyard, and just beyond this, rising up from the floor, was a blue glass pyramidal skylight.
Placed in strategic viewing positions all about the courtyard were roped-off glass display cases, each featuring a work of Islamic art—a thirteenth-century Syrian glass beaker with an ornate design running through it, a piece of carved Egyptian ivory depicting men at war, a Kashan wall tile featuring a fire-breathing dragon, a Mughal dagger with a hilt made of gold, rubies, and emeralds.…
People were everywhere, browsing the displays, laughing, talking, drinking white wine and champagne and sampling hors d’oeuvres offered on trays by waiters in crisp white jackets. A string quartet of lovely young women played a gentle classical tune—Beethoven, String Quartet No. 1 in F major, Opus 18. He and Tony moved together, working their way from display to display.
Exchanging glances, they each reached into their pockets and worked at unscrewing the miniature flashlights attached to their key chains. These were really nothing more than hollowed-out tubes. Inside each tube was an earbud transmitter-receiver that Mike Abernathy had scored through his black market contacts. They connected wirelessly to plastic microphones in their ties—the kinds that wouldn’t upset metal detectors—and were activated by a depression switch inside a cuff link. They were military grade and set to a seldom-used frequency that the Secret Service wasn’t likely to detect.
That was the theory anyway.
Each man glanced around for prying eyes, but the other patrons were too rapt in their own small talk to pay attention to them. Pretending to scratch his head, each man nonchalantly popped the device into his right ear. It was small enough that it sat snugly inside the ear canal and was nearly invisible