“That figures,” said Tyson. “Right, Andrews, what have you been up to for the past twenty-four hours?”
Mark opened his regulation blue plastic portfolio. He reported that there were sixty-two senators left, the other thirty-eight accounted for, most of them having been a long way from Washington on 24 February. He passed the list of names over to the Director, who glanced through them.
“Some pretty big fish still left in the muddy pond, Andrews. Go on.”
Mark proceeded to outline his encounter with the Greek Orthodox priest. He expected a sharp reprimand for failing to remember the matter of the beard immediately. He was not disappointed. Chastened, he continued: “I am seeing Father Gregory at eight o’clock this morning, and I thought I would go on to see Casefikis’s widow afterwards. I don’t think either will have much to offer, but I imagine you want those leads followed up, sir. After that I intended to return to the Library of Congress to try and figure out why any of those sixty-two senators might wish to see an end of President Kane.”
“Well, to start with, put them in categories,” said the Director. “First political party, then committees, then outside interests, then their personal knowledge of the President. Don’t forget, Andrews, we do know that our man had lunch in Georgetown on 24 February and that should bring the numbers down.”
“But sir, presumably they all had lunch on 24 February.”
“Exactly, Andrews, but not all in private. Many of them would have been seen in a public place or lunched officially, with constituents or federal employees or lobbyists. You have to find out who did what, without letting the senator we’re after get suspicious.”
“How do you suggest I go about doing that, sir?”
“Simple,” replied the Director. “You call each of the senators’ secretaries and ask if the boss would be free to attend a luncheon on—” He paused. “—‘The Problems of Urban Environment.’ Yes, I like that. Give them a date, say 5 May, then ask if they attended either the one given on,” the Director glanced at his calendar, “17 January or 24 February, as some senators who had accepted didn’t attend, and one or two turned up without invitations. Then say a written invitation will follow. All the secretaries will put it out of their minds unless you write, and if any of them does remember on 5 May, it will be too late for us to care. One thing is certain: no senator will be letting his secretary know that he is planning to kill the President.”
The Assistant Director grimaced slightly. “If he gets caught, sir, all hell will break loose. We’ll be back in the dirty-tricks department.”
“No, Matt, if I tell the President one of her precious brethren is going to knife her in the back, she won’t see anything particularly pleasant in that trick.”
“We haven’t got any real proof, sir,” said Mark.
“Then you had better find it, Andrews, or we’ll all be looking for a new job, trust my judgment.”
Trust my judgment, Mark thought.
“All we have is one strong lead,” the Director continued. “That a senator may be involved, but we have only five days left. If we fail next Thursday, there will be enough time during the next twenty years to study the inquiry and you, Andrews, will be able to make a fortune writing a book about it.”
Mark looked apprehensive.
“Andrews, don’t get too worried. I have briefed the head of the Secret Service. I told him no more and no less than was in your report, as we agreed yesterday, so that gives us a clear run right through to 10 March. I’m working on a contingency plan, in case we don’t know who Cassius is before then; but I won’t bore you with it now. I have also talked to the boys from Homicide; they have come up with very little that can help us. It may interest you to know that they have seen Casefikis’s wife already. Their brains seem to work a little faster than yours, Andrews.”
“Perhaps they don’t have as much on their minds,” said the Assistant Director.
“Maybe not. Okay, go see her if you think it might help. You may pick up something they missed. Cheer up, you’ve covered a lot of ground. Perhaps this morning’s investigation will give us some new leads to work on. I think that covers everything for now. Right, Andrews, don’t let me waste any more of your time.”
“No, sir.”
Mark rose.
“I’m sorry, I forgot to offer you coffee, Andrews.”
I didn’t manage to drink it the last time, Mark wanted to say. He left as the Director ordered coffee for himself and the Assistant Director. He decided that he too could do with some breakfast and a chance to collect his thoughts. He went in search of the Bureau cafeteria.
The Director drank his coffee and asked Mrs. McGregor to send in his personal assistant. The anonymous man appeared almost instantly, a grey folder under his arm. He didn’t have to ask the Director what it was that he wanted. He placed the folder on the table in front of him, and left without speaking.
“Thank you,” said the Director to the closing door. He turned the cover of the folder and browsed through it for twenty minutes, a chuckle here, and a grunt there, the odd comment to Matthew Rogers. There were facts in it about Mark Andrews of which Mark himself would have been unaware. The Director finished his second cup of coffee, closed the file, and locked it in the personal drawer of the Queen Anne desk. Queen Anne had never held as many secrets as that desk.
Mark finished a much better breakfast than he could have hoped for at the Washington Field Office. There, you had to go across the street to the Lunch Connection, because the snack bar downstairs was so abominable, much in keeping with the rest of the building. Not that he wouldn’t have liked to return to it now instead of the underground garage to pick up his car. He didn’t notice the man across the street who watched him leave, but he did wonder whether the blue Ford sedan that stayed in his rear-view mirror so long was there by chance. If it wasn’t, who was watching whom, who was trying to protect whom?
He arrived at Father Gregory’s church just before 8:00 A.M. and they walked together to the priest’s house. The priest’s half-rim glasses squatted on the end of a stubby nose. His large, red cheeks and even larger basketball belly led the uncharitable to conclude that Father Gregory had found much to solace him on earth while he waited for the eternal kingdom of heaven. Mark told him that he had already breakfasted, but it didn’t stop the Father from frying two eggs and bacon, plus toast, marmalade, and a cup of coffee. Father Gregory could add very little to what he had told Mark on the telephone the previous night, and he sighed deeply when he was reminded of the two deaths at the hospital.
“Yes, I read the details in the Post.” When they talked about Nick Stames, a light came into his grey eyes; it was clear that priest and policeman had shared a few secrets, this was no jolly old Jesus freak.
“Is there any connection between Nick’s death and the accident in the hospital?” Father Gregory asked suddenly.
The question took Mark by surprise. There was a shrewd brain behind the half-rim glasses. Lying to a priest, Greek Orthodox or otherwise, seemed somehow worse than the usual lies which were intended to protect the Bureau from the general public.
“Absolutely none,” said Mark. “Just one of those horrible auto accidents.”
“Just one of those weird coincidences?” said Father Gregory quizzically, peering at Mark over the top of his glasses. “Is that right?” he sounded almost as unconvinced as Grant Nanna. He continued: “There’s one more thing I would like to mention. Although it’s hard to remember exactly what the man said when he called me and told me not to bother to go to the hospital, I’m fairly certain he was a well-educated man. I feel sure by the way he carried it off that he was a professional man, and I am not sure what I mean by that; it’s just the strange feeling that he had made that sort of call before; there was something professional about him.”
Father Gregory repeated the phrase to himself—“Something professional about him”—and so did Mark, while he was in the car on the way to the house in which Mrs. Casefikis was sta
ying. It was the home of the friend who had harbored her wounded husband.
Mark drove down Connecticut Avenue, past the Washington Hilton and the National Zoo, into Maryland. Patches of bright, yellow forsythia had begun to appear along the road. Connecticut Avenue turned into University Boulevard, and Mark found himself in Wheaton, a suburban satellite of stores, restaurants, gas stations, and a few apartment buildings. Stopped by a red light near Wheaton Plaza, Mark checked his notes. 11501 Elkin Street. He was looking for the Blue Ridge Manor Apartments. Fancy name for a group of squat, three-story faded-brick buildings lining Blue Ridge and Elkin streets. As he approached 11501, Mark looked for a parking space. No luck. He hovered for a moment, then decided to park in front of a fire hydrant. He draped the radio microphone carefully over his rear-view mirror, so that any observant meter maid or policeman would know that this was an official car on official business.
Ariana Casefikis burst into tears at the mere sight of Mark’s badge. She looked frail; only twenty-nine, her clothes unkempt, her hair all over the place, her eyes gray and still full of tears. The lines on her face showed where the tears had been running, running for two days. She and Mark were about the same age. She didn’t have a country, and now she didn’t have a husband. What was going to happen to her? If Mark had felt alone, he was certainly better off than this poor woman.
Mrs. Casefikis’s English turned out to be rather better than her husband’s. She had already seen two policemen. She told them that she knew nothing. First the nice man from the Metropolitan Police who had broken the news to her and been so understanding, then the Homicide lieutenant who had come a little later and been much firmer, wanting to know things she hadn’t the faintest clue about, and now a visit from the FBI. Her husband had never been in trouble before and she didn’t know who shot him or why anybody would want to. He was a gentle, kind man. Mark believed her.
He also assured her that she had no immediate cause for worry and that he would deal personally with the Immigration Office and the Welfare people about getting her some income. It seemed to cheer her up and make her a little more responsive.
“Now please try to think carefully, Mrs. Casefikis. Have you any idea where your husband was working on 23 or 24 February, the Wednesday and Thursday of last week, and did he tell you anything about his work?”
She had no idea. Angelo never told her what he was up to and half the jobs were casual and only for the day, because he couldn’t risk staying on without a work permit, being an illegal immigrant. Mark was getting nowhere, but it wasn’t her fault.
“Will I be able to stay in America?”
“I’ll do everything I can to help, Mrs. Casefikis. That I promise you. I’ll talk to a Greek Orthodox priest I know about finding some money to tide you over till I’ve seen the Welfare people.”
Mark opened the door, despondent about the lack of any hard information either from Father Gregory or from Ariana Casefikis.
“The priest already give me money.”
Mark stopped in his tracks, turned slowly, and faced her. He tried to show no particular interest.
“Which priest was that?” he asked casually.
“He said he help. Man who came to visit yesterday. Nice man, very nice, very kind. He give me fifty dollars.”
Mark turned cold. The man had been ahead of him again. Father Gregory was right, there was something professional about him.
“Can you describe him, Mrs. Casefikis?”
“What do you mean?”
“What did he look like?”
“Oh, he was a big man, very dark, I think,” she began. Mark tried to remain offhand. It must have been the man who had passed him in the elevator, the man who had earlier kept Father Gregory from going to the hospital and who, if Mrs. Casefikis had known anything at all about the plot, would no doubt have dispatched her to join her husband.
“Did he have a beard, Mrs. Casefikis?”
“Of course he did,” she hesitated, “but I can’t remember him having one.”
Mark asked her to stay in the house, not to leave under any circumstances. He made an excuse that he was going to check on the Welfare situation and talk to the Immigration officials. He was learning how to lie. The clean-shaven Greek Orthodox priest was teaching him.
He jumped into the car and drove a few hundred yards to the nearest pay phone on Georgia Avenue. He dialed the Director’s private line. The Director picked up the phone.
“Julius.”
“What is your number?” asked the Director.
Thirty seconds later the phone rang, Mark went over the story carefully.
“I’ll send an Identikit man down to you immediately. You go back there and hold her hand. And, Andrews, try to think on your feet. I’d like that fifty dollars. Was it one bill, or several? There may just be a fingerprint on them.” The telephone clicked. Mark frowned. If the phony Greek Orthodox priest weren’t always two steps ahead of him, the Director was.
Mark returned to Mrs. Casefikis and told her that her case would be dealt with at the highest level; he must remember to speak to the Director about it at the next meeting, he made a note about it on his pad. Back to the casual voice again.
“Are you sure it was fifty dollars, Mrs. Casefikis?”
“Oh, yes, I don’t see a fifty-dollar bill every day, and I was most thankful at the time.”
“Can you remember what you did with it?”
“Yes, I went and bought food from the supermarket just before they closed.”
“Which supermarket, Mrs. Casefikis?”
“Wheaton Supermarket. Up the street.”
“When was that?”
“Yesterday evening about six o’clock.”
Mark realized that there wasn’t a moment to lose. If it weren’t already too late.
“Mrs. Casefikis, a man will be coming, a colleague of mine, a friend, from the FBI, to ask you to describe the kind Father who gave you the money. It will help us greatly if you can remember as much about him as possible. You have nothing to worry about because we’re doing everything we can to help you.”
Mark hesitated, took out his wallet and gave her fifty dollars. She smiled for the first time.
“Now, Mrs. Casefikis, I want you to do just one last thing for me. If the Greek priest ever comes to visit again, don’t tell him about our conversation, just call me at this number.”
Mark handed her a card. Ariana Casefikis nodded, but her lackluster gray eyes followed Mark to his car. She didn’t understand, or know which man to trust: hadn’t they both given her fifty dollars?
Mark pulled into a parking space in front of the Wheaton Supermarket. A huge sign in the window announced that cases of cold beer were sold inside. Above the window was a blue and white cardboard representation of the dome of the Capitol. Five days, thought Mark. He went into the store. It was a small family enterprise, privately owned, not part of a chain. Beer lined one wall, wine the other, and in between were four rows of canned and frozen foods. A meat counter stretched the length of the rear wall. The butcher seemed to be minding the store alone. Mark hurried towards him, starting to ask the question before he reached the counter.
“Could I please see the manager?”
The butcher eyed him suspiciously. “What for?”
Mark showed his credentials.
The butcher shrugged and yelled over his shoulder, “Hey, Flavio, FBI. Wants to see you.”
Several seconds later, the manager, a large red-faced Italian, appeared in the doorway to the left of the meat counter. “Yeah? What can I do for you, Mr., uh …”
“Andrews, FBI.” Mark showed his credentials once again.
“Yeah, okay. What do you want, Mr. Andrews? I’m Flavio Guida. This is my place. I run a good, honest place.”
“Yes, of course, Mr. Guida. I’m simply hoping you can help me. I’m investigating a case of stolen money, and we have reason to believe that a stolen fifty-dollar bill was spent in this supermarket yesterday and we wonder now if there
is any way of tracing it.”
“Well, my money is collected every night,” said the manager. “It’s put into the safe and deposited in the bank first thing in the morning. It would have gone to the bank about an hour ago, and I think—”
“But it’s Saturday,” Mark said.
“No problem. My bank is open till noon on Saturday. It’s just a few doors down.”
Mark thought on his feet.
“Would you please accompany me to the bank immediately, Mr. Guida?”
Guida looked at his watch and then at Mark Andrews.
“Okay. Give me just half a minute.”
He shouted to an invisible woman in the back of the store to keep an eye on the cash register. Together he and Mark walked to the corner of Georgia and Hickers. Guida was obviously getting quite excited by the whole episode.
At the bank Mark went immediately to the chief cashier. The money had been handed over thirty minutes before to one of his tellers, a Mrs. Townsend. She still had it in piles ready for sorting. It was next on her list. She hadn’t had time to do so yet, she said rather apologetically. No need to feel sorry, thought Mark. The supermarket’s take for the day had been just over five thousand dollars. There were twenty-eight fifty-dollar bills. Christ Almighty, the Director was going to tear him apart, or to be more exact, the fingerprint experts were. Mark counted the fifty-dollar notes using gloves supplied by Mrs. Townsend and put them on one side—he agreed there were twenty-eight. He signed for them, gave the receipt to the chief cashier, and assured him they would be returned in the very near future. The bank manager came over and took charge of the receipt and the situation.
“Don’t FBI men usually work in pairs?”
Mark blushed. “Yes, sir, but this is a special assignment.”
“I would like to check,” said the manager. “You are asking me to release one thousand four hundred dollars on your word.”
“Of course, sir, please do check.”