“Yes, sir,” said Mark.
“I don’t believe a goddamn word of it,” said Nanna. “Now you’re in the middle of this, somehow, and maybe you can nail the bastards who did it. When you find them, grind their balls into powder and then call me so that I can come help you, because if I lay my hands on those bastards …”
Mark looked at Grant Nanna, and then tactfully away again, waiting until his superior had regained control of his face and voice.
“Now, you’re not allowed to contact me once you leave this office, but if I can help at any time, just call me. Don’t let the Director know, he’d kill us both if he found out. Get going, Mark.”
Mark left quickly and went to his office. He sat down and wrote out his report exactly as the Director had instructed, bland and brief. He took it back to Nanna, who flicked through it and tossed it into the out-box. “Neat little whitewash job you’ve done there, Mark.”
Mark didn’t speak. He signed out of the Washington Field Office, the one place in which he felt secure. He’d be on his own for six days. Ambitious men always wanted to see a few years ahead, to know the shape of their careers; Mark would have settled for a week.
The Director pressed a button. The anonymous man in the dark blue blazer and light gray trousers entered the room.
“Yes, sir.”
“I want a full surveillance on Andrews, night and day; six men on three shifts reporting to me every morning. I want detailed background on him, his education, girl friends, associates, habits, hobbies, religion, organizational affiliations, everything by tomorrow morning, 6:45. Understood?”
“Yes, sir.”
Aware that Senate staff members would be suspicious of an FBI agent who asked for information about their employers, Mark began his research at the Library of Congress. As he climbed the long flight of steps, he remembered a scene from All the President’s Men, in which Woodward and Bernstein had spent innumerable fruitless hours searching for a few slips of paper in the bowels of the building. They had been trying to find proof that E. Howard Hunt had checked out materials on Edward M. Kennedy. And for an FBI agent on the trail of a killer, just as for the investigative reporters, it would be tedious research, not glamorous assignments, that would make the difference between success and failure.
Mark opened the door marked “Readers Only” and strolled into the Main Reading Room, a huge, circular, domed room decorated in muted tones of gold, beige, rust, and bronze. The ground floor was filled with rows of dark, curved wooden desks, arranged in concentric circles around the reference area in the center of the room. On the second floor, visible from the reading area through graceful arches, were thousands of books. Mark approached the reference desk and, in the hushed tones appropriate to all libraries, asked the Clerk where he could find current issues of the Congressional Record.
“Room 244. Law Library Reading Room.”
“How do I get there?”
“Go back past the card catalog to the other side of the building and take an elevator to the second floor.”
Mark managed to find the Law Library, a white, rectangular room with three tiers of bookshelves on the left-hand side. After questioning another clerk, he located the Congressional Record on one of the dark brown reference shelves along the right-hand wall. He carried the unbound volume marked 24 February, to a long, deserted table and began the tedious weeding-out process.
After leafing through the digest of Senate business for half an hour, Mark realized that he was in luck. Many senators had apparently left Washington for the weekend, because a check of the roll calls on 24 February revealed that, of the one hundred senators, the number present on the floor never exceeded sixty. And the bills which were voted on were sufficiently important to command the presence of those senators who might have been hiding in the nooks and crannies of the Senate or the city. When he had eliminated those senators who were listed by the Whips of each party as “absent because of illness” or “necessarily absent,” and added those who were merely “detained on official business,” Mark was left with sixty-two senators who were definitely in Washington on 24 February. He then double-checked the other thirty-eight senators, one by one, a long and tiresome task. All of them had for some reason been out of Washington that day.
He glanced at his watch: 12:15. He couldn’t afford to take time off for lunch.
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-feeteight, 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 er
ror, 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 t
hat 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.”