Shall We Tell the President?

Friday afternoon 4 March

12:30 P.M.

Three men had arrived. None of them liked one another; only the common bond of financial reward could have got them into the same room. The first went by the name of Tony; he’d had so many names that nobody could be sure what his real name was, except perhaps his mother, and she hadn’t seen him in the twenty years since he had left Sicily to join his father, her husband, in the States. Her husband had left twenty years before that; the cycle repeated itself.

Tony’s FBI criminal file described him as five-feet-eight, a hundred and forty-six pounds, medium build, black hair, straight nose, brown eyes, no distinguishing features, arrested and charged once in connection with a bank robbery; first offense, two-year jail sentence. What the rap sheet did not reveal was that Tony was a brilliant driver; he had proved that yesterday and if that fool of a German had kept his head, there would have been four people in the room now instead of three. He had told the boss, “If you’re going to employ a German, have him build the damn car, never let him drive it.” The boss hadn’t listened and the German had been dragged out of the bottom of the Potomac. Next time they’d use Tony’s cousin Mario. At least then there would be another human on the team; you couldn’t count the ex-cop and the little Jap who never said a word.

Tony glanced at Xan Tho Huc, who only spoke when asked a direct question. He was actually Vietnamese, but he had finally escaped to Japan in 1979. Everyone would have known his name if he had entered the Los Angeles Olympics, because nobody could have stopped him from getting the gold medal for rifle shooting, but Xan had decided, with his chosen career in mind, he had better keep a low profile and withdraw from the Japanese Olympic trials. His coach tried to get him to change his mind, but without success. To Tony, Xan remained a goddamn Jap, though he grudgingly admitted to himself he knew no other man who could fire ten shots into a three-inch square at eight hundred yards. The size of Florentyna Kane’s forehead.

The Nip sat staring at him, motionless. Xan’s appearance helped him in his work. No one expected that the slight frame, only about five-feet-two and a hundred and ten pounds, was that of a superlative marksman. Most people still associated marksmanship with hulking cowboys and lantern-jawed Caucasians. If you had been told this man was a ruthless killer, you would have assumed he worked with his hands, with a garrote or nunchaki, or even with poison. Among the three, Xan was the only one who carried a personal grudge. As a child he had seen his parents butchered by the Americans in Vietnam. They had spoken warmly of the Yanks and had supported them until the bullets tore into their bodies. They had left him for dead. A target almost too small to hit. From that moment he had vowed in silent torment to avenge his loss. He escaped to Japan and there, for two years after the fall of Saigon, he had lain low, getting a job in a Chinese restaurant, and participating in the U.S. Government Program for Vietnamese refugees. Then he had gone with the offer of practical assistance to some of his old contacts in the Vietnamese intelligence community. With the U.S. presence so scaled down in Asia, and the Communists needing fewer killers, and more lawyers, they had been sorry but they had no work for him. So Xan had begun freelancing in Japan. In 1981, he obtained Japanese citizenship, a passport, and started his new career.

Unlike Tony, Xan did not resent the others he was working with. He simply didn’t think about them. He had been hired, willingly, to perform a professional task, a task for which he would be well paid and that would at last avenge, at least in part, the outraged bodies of his parents. The others had limited roles to play in support of his operation. Provided they played them with a minimum of foolish error, he would perform his part flawlessly, and within a few days, he would be back in the Orient. Bangkok or Manila, perhaps, Singapore. Xan hadn’t decided yet. When this one was over, he would need — and would be able to afford — a long rest.

The third man in the room, Ralph Matson, was perhaps the most dangerous of the three. Six-feet-two tall and broad, with a big nose and heavy chin, he was the most dangerous because he was highly intelligent. After five years as a special agent with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, he found an easy way out after Hoover’s death; loyalty to the Chief and all that garbage. By then, he had learned enough to take advantage of everything the Bureau had taught him about criminology. He had started with a little blackmail, men who had not wanted their FBI records made public, but now he had moved on to bigger things. He trusted no man — the Bureau had also taught him that — certainly not the stupid wop, who under pressure might drive backward rather than forward, or the silent slant-eyed yellow hit man.

Still nobody spoke.

The door swung open. Three heads turned, three heads that were used to danger and did not care for surprises; they relaxed again immediately when they saw the two men enter.

The younger of the two was smoking. He took the seat at the head of the table as befits a chairman; the other man sat down next to Matson, keeping the Chairman on his right. They nodded acknowledgment, no more. The younger man, Peter Nicholson on his voter-registration card, Pyotr Nicolaivich by birth certificate, looked for all the world like the reputable head of a successful cosmetics company. His suit revealed that he went to Chester Barrie. His shoes were Loeb’s. His tie Ted Lapidus. His criminal record revealed nothing. That was why he was at the head of the table. He didn’t look upon himself as a criminal; he looked upon himself as a man who wished to maintain the status quo.

He was one of a small group of Southern millionaires who had made their money in the small-arms trade. Theirs was a giant business: it was the right of every American citizen under Amendment Two of the Constitution to bear arms, and one in every four American males exercised that right. A regular pistol or revolver could be had for as little as $100 but the fancy shotguns and rifles that were a status symbol to many patriots could fetch as much as $10,000. The Chairman and his ilk sold handguns by the millions and shotguns by the tens of thousands. It had not been hard to persuade Ronald Reagan to leave the arms trade alone, but they knew they were never going to convince Florentyna Kane. The Gun Control bill had already squeaked through the House, and unless some drastic action were taken, there was undoubtedly going to be the same result in the Senate. To preserve the status quo, therefore, the Chairman sat at the head of their table.

He opened the meeting formally, as any regular chairman would, by asking for reports from his men in the field. First Matson.

The big nose bobbed, the heavy jaw moved.

“I was tuned into the FBI’s Channel One.” During his years as an FBI agent, preparing for a career in crime, Matson had stolen one of the Bureau’s special portable walkie-talkies. He had signed it out for some routine purpose and then reported that it was lost. He was reprimanded and had to reimburse the Bureau; it had been a small price to pay for the privilege of listening to FBI communications. “I knew the Greek waiter was hiding somewhere in Washington, and I suspected that because of his leg injury, he would eventually have to go to one of D.C.’s five hospitals. I guessed he wouldn’t end up with a private doctor, too expensive. Then I heard that bastard Stames come up on Channel One.”

“Cut out the profanity, if you please,” said the Chairman.

Stames had given Matson four reprimands during his service with the FBI. Matson did not mourn his death. He started again.

“I heard Stames come up on Channel One, on his way to Woodrow Wilson Medical Center, to ask a Father Gregory to go to the Greek. It was a long shot, of course, but I remembered that Stames was a Greek himself, and it wasn’t hard to trace Father Gregory. I just caught him as he was about to leave. I told him the Greek had been discharged from the hospital and that his services would no longer be needed. And thanked him. With Stames dead, no one is likely to follow that one up and, if they do, they won’t be any the wiser. I then went to the nearest Greek Orthodox church and stole the vestments, a hat, a veil, and a cross and I drove to Woodrow Wilson. By the time I arrived, Stames and Calvert had already left. I learned from the receptionist on duty that the two men from the FBI had returned to their office. I didn’t ask for too much detail as I didn’t want to be remembered. I discovered which room Casefikis was in and it was simple to reach there unnoticed. I slipped in. He was sound asleep. I cut his throat.”

The Senator winced.

“There was a nigger in the bed next to him, we couldn’t take the risk. He might have overheard everything, and he might have given a description of me, so I cut his throat too.”

The Senator felt sick. He hadn’t wanted these men to die. The Chairman had showed no emotion, the difference between a professional and an amateur.

“Then I called Tony in the car. He drove to the Washington Field Office and saw Stames and Calvert coming out of the building together. I then contacted you, boss, and Tony carried out your orders.”

The Chairman passed over a packet. It was one hundred one-hundred-dollar bills. All American employees are paid by seniority and achievement; it was no different in the criminal world.

“Tony.”

“When the two men left the Old Post Office Building, we followed them as instructed. They went over Memorial Bridge. The German passed them and managed to get well ahead of them. As soon as I realized they were turning up onto the G.W. Parkway, as we thought they would, I informed Gerbach on the walkie-talkie. He was waiting in a clump of trees on the middle strip, with his lights off, about a mile ahead. He turned on his lights and came down from the top of the hill on the wrong side of the divided highway. He swung in front of the Feds’ car just after it crossed Windy Run Bridge. I accelerated and overtook on the left-hand side of the car. I hit them with a glancing sideways blow at about seventy miles an hour, just as that damn-fool German hit them head-on. You know the rest, boss. If he had kept his cool,” Tony finished contemptuously, “the German would be here today to make his report in person.”

“What did you do with the car?”

“I went to Mario’s workshop, changed the engine block and the license plates, repaired the damage to the fender, sprayed it, and dumped it. The owner probably wouldn’t recognize his own car if he saw it.”

“Where did you dump it?”

“New York. The Bronx.”

“Good. With a murder there every four hours, they don’t have a lot of time to check on missing cars.”

The Chairman flicked a packet over the table. Three thousand dollars in used fifties. “Stay sober, Tony, we’ll be needing you again.” He refrained from saying what assignment number two would be; he simply said, “Xan.” He stubbed out his cigarette and lit another one. All eyes turned to the silent Vietnamese. His English was good, though heavily accentuated. He tended, like so many educated Orientals, to omit the definite article, giving his speech a curious staccato effect.

“I was in car with Tony whole evening when we got your orders to eliminate two men in Ford sedan. We followed them over bridge and up freeway and when German swung across path of Ford, I blew both back tires in under three seconds, just before Tony bounced them. They had no chance of controlling car after that.”

“How can you be so sure it was under three seconds?”

“I’d been averaging two-point-eight in practice all day.”

Silence. The Chairman passed yet another packet. Another one hundred fifties, twenty-five hundred dollars for each shot.

“Do you have any questions, Senator?”

The Senator did not look up, but shook his head slightly.

The Chairman spoke. “From the press reports and from our further investigation, it looks as if nobody has connected the two incidents, but the FBI just aren’t that stupid. We have to hope that we eliminated everybody who heard anything Casefikis might have said, if he had anything to say in the first place. We may just be oversensitive. One thing’s for certain, we eliminated everybody connected with that hospital. But we still can’t be sure if the Greek knew anything worth repeating.”

“May I say something, boss?”

The Chairman looked up. Nobody spoke unless it was relevant, most unusual for an American board meeting. The Chairman let Matson have the floor.

“One thing worries me, boss. Why would Nick Stames be going to Woodrow Wilson?”

They all stared at him, not quite sure what he meant.

“We know from my inquiries and my contacts that Calvert was there, but we don’t actually know that Stames was there. All we know is that two agents went and that Stames asked Father Gregory to go. We know Stames was on his way home with Calvert, but my experience tells me that Stames wouldn’t go to the hospital himself; he’d send somebody else—”

“Even if he thought it was a serious matter?” interrupted the Chairman.

“He wouldn’t know it was a serious matter, boss. He wouldn’t have known until the agents had reported back to him.”

The Chairman shrugged. “The facts point to Stames going to the hospital with Calvert. He left the Washington Field Office with Calvert driving the same car that left the hospital.”

“I know, boss, but I don’t like it; I know that we’ve covered all the angles, but it’s possible that three or more men left the Washington Field Office and that there is still at least one agent running around who knows what actually happened.”

“It seems unlikely,” said the Senator. “As you will discover when you hear my report.”

The lips compressed in the heavy jaw.

“You’re not happy are you, Matson?”

“No, sir.”

“Very well, check it out. If you come up with anything report back to me.”

The Chairman never left a stone unturned. He looked at the Senator.

The Senator despised these men. They were so small-minded, so greedy. They only understood money, and Kane was going to take it away from them. How their violence had frightened and sickened him. He should never have allowed that smooth-talking plausible bastard Nicholson to pump so much into his secret campaign funds, although God knows he would never have been elected without the money. Lots of money, and such a small price to pay at the time; steadfast opposition to any gun control proposals. Hell, he was genuinely opposed to gun control anyway. But assassinating the President to stop the bill, by God, it was lunacy, but the Chairman had him by the balls. “Co-operate, or be exposed, my friend,” he had said silkily. The Senator had spent half a lifetime sweating to reach the Senate and what’s more, he did a damned good job there. If they stopped him now he would be finished. A public scandal. He couldn’t face it. “Co-operate, my friend, for your own good. All we need is some inside information, and your presence at the Capitol on 10 March. Be reasonable, my friend, why ruin your whole life for a Polish woman?” The Senator cleared his throat.

“It is highly unlikely that the FBI knows any details about our plans. As Mr. Matson knows, if the Bureau had anything to go on, any reason to think that this supposed threat is any different from a thousand others the President has received, the Secret Service would have been informed immediately. And my secretary has ascertained that the President’s schedule for this week remains unchanged. All her appointments will be kept. She will go to the Capitol on the morning of 10 March for a special address to the Senate—”

“But that’s exactly the point,” Matson interrupted with a contemptuous sneer. “All threats against the President, no matter how far-fetched, are routinely reported to the Secret Service. If they haven’t reported anything, it must mean that—”

“It may mean that they don’t know a thing, Matson,” said the Chairman firmly. “I told you to look into it. Now let the Senator answer a more important question: If the FBI knew the details, would they tell the President?”

The Senator hesitated. “No, I don’t think so, or only if they were absolutely certain of danger on a particular day; otherwise they’d go ahead as planned. If every threat or suggestion of a threat were taken seriously, the President would never be able to leave the White House. The Secret Service report to Congress last year showed that there were 1,572 threats against the President’s life, but thorough investigations revealed that there were no actual known attempts.”

The Chairman nodded. “Either they know everything or they know nothing.”

Matson persisted. “I am still a member of the Society of Former Special Agents and I attended a meeting yesterday, and no one there knew a damn thing. Someone would have heard something by now. Later, I had a drink with Grant Nanna, who was my old boss at the Washington Field Office, and he seemed almost uninterested, which I found strange. I thought Stames was a friend of his, but I obviously couldn’t push it too far, since Stames was no friend of mine. I’m still worried. It doesn’t make sense that Stames went to the hospital and no one in the Bureau is saying anything about his death.”

“Okay, okay,” said the Chairman. “If we don’t get her on 10 March, we may as well quit now. We go ahead as if nothing had happened, unless we hear any rumbles — and that’s in your hands, Matson. We’ll be there on the day, unless you stop us. Now let’s plan ahead. First I’ll go over Kane’s schedule for that day. Kane” — no one in that room except for the Senator ever called her the President — “leaves the White House at 10 A.M. She passes the FBI Building at three minutes past, she passes the Peace Monument at the northwest corner of the Capitol grounds at five minutes past. She gets out of her car at the east front of the Capitol at six minutes past. Normally, she would go in the private entrance, but the Senator has assured us that she will milk this visit for all it’s worth. It takes her forty-five seconds to walk from the car to the top of the Capitol steps. We know that Xan can easily complete the job in forty-five seconds. I will be watching at the corner of Pennsylvania Avenue when Kane passes the FBI Building. Tony will be there with a car, in case of an emergency, and the Senator will be on the Capitol steps to stall her, if we need more time. The most important part of the operation is Xan’s, which we have worked out to a split second. So listen and listen carefully. I have arranged for Xan to be on the construction crew working on the renovation of the front of the Capitol. And, believe me, with that union it was no mean feat to place an Oriental. Take over, Xan.”

Xan looked up. He had said nothing since his last invitation to speak.

“Construction on west front of Capitol has been going on for nearly six months. No one is more enthusiastic about it than Kane. She wants it finished in time for her second Inaugural.” He grinned. All eyes were upon the little man, intent on his every word. “I have been part of work force now for just over four weeks. I am in charge of checking all supplies that come onto site, which means I am in site office. From there, it has not been hard to discover movements of everybody connected with construction. The guards are not from FBI, Secret Service, or from CIA, but from Government Building Security Service. They are usually a lot older than normal agents, often retired from one of services. There are sixteen in all, and they work in fours on four shifts. I know where they drink, smoke, play cards, everything; no one is very interested in site because at moment it overlooks nothing and it’s on least-used side of Capitol. A little petty theft from site but not much else to excite guards.” Xan had total silence. “Right in middle of site is biggest American Hoist Co. crane in world, number 11-3-10, specially designed for lifting new parts of Capitol into place. Fully extended, it is 322 feet, almost double regulation height allowed in Washington buildings. Nobody expect us on west side, and nobody figure we can see that far. On top is small covered platform for general maintenance of pulleys, used only when it is flat and parallel to ground, but platform becomes like a small box in effect. It is four feet long, two feet three inches in width, and one foot five inches in height. I have slept there for last three nights. I see everything, no one can see me, not even White House helicopter.”

There was a stunned silence.

“How do you get up there?” asked the Senator.

“Like cat, Senator. I climb. An advantage of being very small. I go up just after midnight and come down at five. I overlook all Washington and no one see me.”

“Do you have a good view of the Capitol steps from such a small platform?” asked the Chairman.

“Perhaps it will take four seconds,” Xan replied. “View allows me to see White House as no one has ever seen it. I could have killed Kane twice last week. When she make official visits, it will be easy. I can’t miss—”

“What about the other workers on Thursday? They may want to use the crane,” the Senator interrupted.

This time the Chairman smiled. “There will be a strike next Thursday, my friend. Something to do with unfair rates for overtime, no work while Kane is visiting the Capitol to emphasize their point. One thing is certain, with no one on the site other than some ageing guards, nobody will be eager to climb to the top of a crane that is all but open to the world. From the ground it doesn’t look as if a mouse could hide up there, let alone a human being.” The Chairman paused. “Xan flies to Vienna tomorrow and will be back in time to report the results of his trip at our final meeting next Wednesday. By the way, Xan, have you got your can of yellow paint?”

“Yes, stole one from site.”

The Chairman looked around the table — silence. “Good, we seem to be well organized. Thank you, Xan.”

“I don’t like it,” mumbled Matson. “Something’s wrong. It’s all too easy, it’s all too clever.”

“The FBI has taught you to be overly suspicious, Matson. You’ll discover that we’re better prepared than they are, because we know what we’re going to do and they don’t. Fear not, you’ll be able to attend Kane’s funeral.”

Matson’s big chin moved up and down. “You’re the guy that wants her dead,” he said sourly.

“And you’re being paid to see it happens,” said the Chairman. “Right, we meet again in five days to go over the final plan. You will be told where to report on Wednesday morning. Xan will have returned from Austria long before then.”

The Chairman smiled and lit another cigarette. The Senator slipped out. Five minutes later, Matson left. Five minutes later, Tony left. Five minutes later, Xan left. Five minutes later, the Chairman ordered lunch.