Murder in Foggy Bottom - Margaret Truman [52]
As she leaned against a short wall, closed her eyes, and allowed her cheek to touch the cool marble, the 707’s commander taxied to the end of the runway and then applied full thrust to the engines. Rock knew she should take a seat and buckle up, but she didn’t move. No one would come looking for the secretary of state and insist she sit. A minute later, the Boeing four-engine aircraft was airborne and headed across the Atlantic on a new, important mission of many important missions.
Before the planes had been shot down, she’d been mired in days and nights of diplomatic game playing, feting heads of state large and small, gregarious and dour, friendly and antagonistic. Strange, and wearying, this business of diplomacy, she sometimes thought. She’d read Isaac Goldberg’s The Reflex and jotted down one of his observations about diplomacy: “Diplomacy is to do and say the nastiest things in the nicest way.” Once, when she’d recited that line to a friend at dinner, he’d retorted with something Adlai Stevenson had said on the subject: “A diplomat’s life is made up of three ingredients, protocol, Geritol, and alcohol.”
All of it true; so much ceremony, disingenuous rhetoric, accommodation of those not deserving of being accommodated, speeches—always a speech to give, an award to bestow, or a plaque to graciously receive.
But then there were those times when the froth of the job gave way to substance, when brokering a peace between a small country’s warring factions took hard-nosed skill and attitude. Those were the times when the stakes were high for America, and the secretary of state’s resolve matched that of others in the government charged with preserving and protecting the nation’s sovereignty and vital interests.
This was one of those times.
She returned to the conference room and rejoined the three men. “Sorry to keep you waiting,” she said. “I appreciate you joining me on this trip at the last minute.”
“We’ve all had our bags packed and under the desk since it happened,” McQuaid said.
“I know,” Rock said grimly.
The Secretary turned to Dr. Shulman, the weapons expert from the Pentagon. “Why don’t you begin.”
He adjusted half-glasses, consulted typewritten notes, and began the briefing with, “The fact is, Madam Secretary, that the three planes were caused to crash by missile strikes, Russian-made missiles, a type generically known as MANPADs.”
“Which means?” Rock said.
“Man Portable Air Defense Systems, shoulder-launched missiles.”
“Go on.”
She knew what MANPADs were because she’d been briefed more than once on the type of missiles used in the attacks. But she wanted to hear it again before the meetings in Moscow. It was as though that by hearing it repeatedly, some spark of understanding might emerge to help her understand how and why anyone would shoot down commercial aircraft carrying the most innocent of civilians—men, women, and children living ordinary yet important lives, lives that no other person had a right to take from them. Finding who was responsible for these inhuman acts, and bringing them to justice, had come to consume her, as it had everyone else involved in the investigation.
Shulman continued.
“Actually, Madam Secretary, our own Stinger missiles are the most common example of MANPADs; there are probably more of them in the hands of terrorist groups than any other type. Our estimate is that tens of thousands of Stingers have ended up on the world weapons underground.”
“That’s a lot of missiles,” Rock said.
“Yes, it is,” Shulman said. “We don’t know how many missiles have been used to bring down civilian planes over the years—Stingers, French Mistrals, Soviet SA-18s and 14s—they’re all available on the black market—but we know that some have.”
Rock pulled a State Department report from her briefcase before he could continue. “This report goes back almost ten years,” she said. “The intelligence agencies and terrorism experts were deeply concerned back then that these MANPADs would be used to bring down civilian planes.”
She consulted another piece