Conspiracy

121

Rubens waited until he had reached his office to call the President. Even so, it was only just 6:00 a.m. The switch-board operator gave him Mark Kimbel, the most junior aide to the chief of staff.

“Mr. Rubens, what can we do for you?”

“I have important information for the President,” said Rubens.

“Important enough to wake him up?”

“No,” said Rubens. “But he should call at his earliest con ve nience.”

President Marcke called Rubens back an hour later.

“What’s going on, Billy?”

“The man who was identified as Sergeant Tolong and buried at Arlington National Cemetery is not Sergeant Tolong,” said Rubens.

“Is it Ball?”

“We’re working on that,” said Rubens. The FBI had been unable to obtain DNA samples to match relatives; tracking them down, obtaining and testing samples, and most of all doing it with the legal paperwork necessary to be used in court would take some time.

“Assuming you’re right, linking this Chief Ball and Tolong won’t actually prove that McSweeney was involved in the theft of the money, will it?” asked Marcke.

“No, sir. As I said, there may in fact be no link.”

“Which would mean he would get away with it, wouldn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“What do you think the senator’s reaction would be if someone told him what you know now? In other words,” explained the President, “if you said that the attempt on his life may have had something to do with the theft of money in Vietnam, and that we think he’s being pursued by one of the men.”

“I don’t know.”

“As we saw with the Vietnam information, word will leak at some point,” explained the President. “Let’s see if it will give us some advantage. Don’t mention that we suspect he may have ended up with the loot, or is otherwise involved.”