Honor Among Thieves

by Jeffrey Archer

“OK, boss. Understood.”

  Cavalli checked his watch again. It was 9:36 and the traffic was now flowing smoothly. He walked over to the officer coordinating the shoot for the city’s motion picture and television office.

  “Don’t worry,” said the Lieutenant even before Cavalli had opened his mouth. “The traffic will be stopped and the detour signs in place by nine fifty-nine. We’ll have you moving on time, I promise.”

  “Thank you, Officer,” said Cavalli, and quickly dialed Al Calabrese.

  “I think you’d better start getting your boys back…”

  “Number one has already left with two outriders. Number two’s just about to go; after that, they leave at twenty-second intervals.”

  “You should have been an army general,” said Cavalli.

  “You can blame the government for that. I just didn’t get the right education.”

  Suddenly, Pennsylvania Avenue was ablaze with lights. Cavalli, like everyone else, shielded his eyes and then, just as suddenly, the lights were switched off, making the morning sun appear like a dim light bulb.

  “Good sparks,” Cavalli heard the director shout. “I could only spot one that didn’t function. The seventh on the right.”

  Cavalli stood on the sidewalk and looked towards the corner of 13th Street. He could see the first of Al’s limousines with two outriders edging its way back through the traffic. The sight of the shining black limo made him feel nervous for the first time.

  A tall, well-built, bald man wearing dark glasses, a dark blue suit, white shirt and a red, white and blue striped tie was walking towards him. He stopped by Cavalli’s side as the first of the two outriders and the leading police car drew in to the curb.

  “How are you feeling?” asked Cavalli.

  “Like all first nights,” said Lloyd Adams. “I’ll be just fine once the curtain goes up.”

  “Well, you sure knew your lines word perfect last night.”

  “My lines aren’t the problem,” said Adams. “It’s Marshall’s I’m worried about.”

  “What do you mean?” asked Cavalli.

  “He’s not been able to attend any of our rehearsals, has he?” replied the actor. “So he doesn’t know his cues.”

  The second car drew into line, accompanied by two more outriders, as Al came running across the sidewalk and Lloyd Adams strode off in the direction of the trailer.

  “Can you still do it in eleven minutes?” asked Cavalli, looking at his watch.

  “As long as Chief Thomas’s finest don’t foul things up like they do every other morning,” said Al. He headed towards the cars and immediately began to organize the unfurling of the presidential flag on the front of the third car before checking on any specks of dirt that might have appeared on the bodywork after one trip around the block.

  The staff van drew up in line. Scasiatore immediately swung around on his high stool and, through a megaphone, told the actor, the secretary, the Lieutenant and the physician to be ready to climb into the third and fourth cars.

  When the director asked for the Lieutenant and the physician, Cavalli suddenly realized that he hadn’t seen Dollar Bill or Angelo all morning. Perhaps they’d been waiting in the trailer.

  The fourth limousine drew up as Cavalli’s eyes swept the horizon, searching for Angelo.

  The Klaxon sounded again for several seconds, this time to warn the film crew that they had ten minutes left before shooting. The noise almost prevented Cavalli from hearing his phone ringing.

  “It’s Andy reporting in, boss. I’m still outside the National Archives. Just to let you know it’s no busier than when you checked up an hour ago.”

  “At least someone’s awake,” said Cavalli.

  “There can’t be more than twenty or thirty people around at the moment.”

  “Glad to hear it. But don’t call me again unless something goes wrong.” Cavalli flicked off the phone and tried to remember what it was that had been worrying him before it rang. Eleven vehicles and six outriders were now in place. One vehicle was still missing. But something else was nagging at the back of Cavalli’s mind. He became distracted when an officer standing in the middle of Pennsylvania Avenue began shouting at the top of his voice that he was ready to stop the traffic whenever the director gave the word. Johnny stood up on his chair and pointed frantically to the twelfth car, which remained obstinately stuck in traffic a couple of hundred yards away.

  “If you divert the traffic now,” shouted Johnny, “that one’s never going to end up in the motorcade.”

  The officer remained in the middle of the road and waved the traffic through as fast as he could in the hope of getting the limousine there quicker, but it didn’t make a lot of difference.

  “Extras on the street!” shouted Johnny, and several people whom Cavalli had supposed were members of the public strolled onto the sidewalk and began walking up and down professionally.

  Johnny stood up on his chair again and this time turned to face the crowd huddled behind the barriers. An aide handed him a megaphone so that he could address them.

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” he began, “this is a short cut for a movie about the President going to the Hill to address a joint session of Congress. I’d be grateful if you could wave, clap and cheer as if it were the real President. Thank you.” Spontaneous applause broke out, which made Cavalli laugh for the first time that morning. He hadn’t noticed that the former Deputy Police Chief had crept up behind him during the director’s address. He whispered in his ear, “This is going to cost you a whole lot of money if you don’t pull it off the first time.”

  Cavalli turned to face the ex-policeman and tried not to show how anxious he felt.

  “The holdup, I mean. If you don’t get the shoot done this morning, the authorities aren’t going to let you go through this charade again for one hell of a time.”

  “I don’t need to be reminded of that,” snapped Cavalli. He turned his attention back to Johnny, who had climbed down from his chair and was walking over to take his seat on the tracking dolly, ready to move as soon as the twelfth vehicle was in place. Once again, the aide passed Johnny the megaphone. “This is a final check. Check your positions, please. This is a final check. Everyone ready in car one?” There was a sharp honk in reply. “Car two?” Another honk. “Car three?” Another sharp honk from the driver of Lloyd Adams’s car. Cavalli stared in through the window as the bald actor removed the top of his wig box. “Car four?” Not a sound came from car four.

  “Is everyone in car four who should be in car four?” barked the director.

  It was then that Cavalli remembered what had been nagging at him; he still hadn’t seen Angelo or Dollar Bill all morning. He should have checked earlier. He hurried towards the director as a naval Lieutenant jumped out of a car which he’d left stranded in the middle of the road. He was six feet tall, with short-cropped hair, wearing a white uniform with a sword swinging by his side and medals for service in Panama and the Gulf on his chest. In his right hand, he carried a black box. A policeman began chasing after him while Dollar Bill, carrying a small leather bag, followed a few yards behind at a slower pace. When Cavalli saw what had happened he changed direction and walked calmly out into the middle of the road, and the naval officer came to a halt by his side.

  “What the hell do you think you’re playing at?” barked Cavalli.

  “We got held up in the traffic,” said Angelo lamely.

  “If this whole operation fails because of you…”

  Angelo turned the color of his uniform as he thought about what had happened to Bruno Morelli.

  “And the sword?” snapped Cavalli.

  “A perfect fit.”

  “And our physician. Is he fit?”

  “He’ll be able to do his job, I promise you,” Angelo said, looking over his shoulder.

  “Which car are you both in?”

  “Number four. Directly behind the President.”

  “Then get in, and right now.”

  “Sor
ry, sorry,” Dollar Bill said as he arrived, panting. “My fault, not Angelo’s. Sorry, sorry,” he repeated as the back door of car four was held open for him by the Lieutenant, who was gripping his sword. Once Dollar Bill was safely in, Angelo joined the would-be physician and slammed the door behind him.

  The policeman who’d been chasing Angelo took his notebook out as Cavalli turned around looking for Tom Newbolt. Tom was already running across the road.

  “Leave him to me,” was all he said.

  The second van with surveillance cameras on board screeched to a halt to complete the line. The front window purred down. “Sorry, boss,” said the driver. “Some jerk just dumped his car right in front of me.”

  The clock on the Old Post Office Tower struck ten. At that moment, on a signal from the coordinating officer, several policemen walked out into the road. Some held up the traffic coming down Pennsylvania Avenue while others placed diversion signs to direct the cars away from where the filming was taking place.

  Cavalli turned his attention to the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue, a mere seven hundred yards away. It was still bumper to bumper with slow-moving traffic.

  “Come on, come on!” he shouted out loud as he checked his watch and waited impatiently for the all-clear.

  “Any moment now,” shouted back the officer, who was standing in the middle of the road.

  Cavalli looked up to see the blue-and-white police helicopter hovering noisily overhead.

  Neither he nor the officer spoke again until a couple of minutes later when they heard a sharp whistle blow three times from the far end of Pennsylvania Avenue. Cavalli checked his watch. They’d lost six precious minutes.

  “I’ll kill Angelo,” he said. “If—”

  “All clear!” shouted the coordinating officer. He turned to face Cavalli, who gave the director a thumbs-up sign.

  “You’ve still got thirty-nine minutes,” bellowed the officer. “That should easily be enough time to complete the shoot twice.” But Cavalli didn’t hear the last few words as he ran to the car, pulled open the door and jumped into the seat next to the driver.

  And then a nagging thought hit him. Looking out the side window, Cavalli began to scan the crowd once again.

  “Lights!” screamed the director, and Pennsylvania Avenue lit up like Christmas Eve at Macy’s.

  “OK, everybody, we’re going to shoot in sixty seconds.”

  The limousines and motorcycles switched on their engines and began revving up. The extras strolled up and down while the police continued to divert the commuters away from the scene. The director leaned back over his chair to check the lights and see if the seventh in line was working.

  “Thirty seconds.” Johnny looked at the driver of the first car and said through the megaphone, “Don’t forget to take it easy. My tracking dolly can only manage ten miles an hour going backwards. And walkers”—the director checked up and down the sidewalk—“please look as if you’re walking, not auditioning for Hamlet.”

  The director turned his attention to the crowd. “Now, don’t let me down behind the barriers. Clap, cheer and wave, and please remember we’re going to do the whole exercise again in about twenty minutes, so stick around if you possibly can.

  “Fifteen seconds,” said the director as he swung back to face the first car in line. “Good luck, everybody.”

  Tony stared at Scasiatore, willing him to get on with it. They were now eight minutes late—which with this particular President, he had to admit, added an air of authenticity.

  “Ten seconds. Rolling. Nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one—action!”

  The woman pushing the laundry basket down the corridor ignored the “Do Not Disturb” sign on room 1137 and walked straight in.

  A rather overweight man, sweating profusely, was seated on the edge of the bed. He was jabbing out some numbers on the phone when he looked around and saw her.

  “Get out, you dumb bitch,” he said, and turned back to concentrate on redialing the numbers.

  In three silent paces she was behind him. He turned a second time just as she leaned over, took the phone cord in both hands and pulled it around his neck. He raised an arm to protest as she flicked her wrists in one sharp movement. He slumped forward and fell off the bed onto the carpet, just as the voice on the phone said, “Thank you for using AT&T.”

  She realized that she shouldn’t have used the phone cord. Most unprofessional—but nobody called her a dumb bitch.

  She replaced the phone on the hook and bent down, deftly hoisting the Special Assistant to the President onto her shoulder. She dropped him into the laundry basket. No one would have believed such a frail woman could have lifted such a heavy weight. In truth the only use she had ever made of a major in physics was to apply the principles of fulcrums, pivots and levers to her chosen profession.

  She opened the door and checked the passageway. At this hour it was unlikely there’d be many people around. She wheeled the basket down the corridor until she reached the housekeepers’ elevator, faced the wall and waited patiently. When the elevator arrived she pressed the button that would take her to the garage.

  When the elevator came to a halt on the lower ground floor she wheeled the basket out and over to the back of a Honda Accord. The second-most popular car in the United States.

  Shielded by a pillar, she quickly transferred the Special Assistant from the basket into the trunk of the car. She then wheeled the basket back to the elevator, took off her baggy black uniform, dropped it into the laundry basket, removed her carrier bag with the long cord handle and dispatched the laundry basket to the twenty-fifth floor.

  She straightened up her Laura Ashley dress before climbing into the car and placing her carrier bag under the front seat. She drove out of the parking lot onto F Street, and had only traveled a short distance before she was stopped by a traffic cop.

  She rolled the window down.

  “Follow the diversion sign,” he said, without even looking at her.

  She glanced at the clock on her dashboard. It was 10:07.

  Chapter Fourteen

  As the lead police car moved slowly away from the curb, the director’s tracking dolly began running backwards at the same pace along its track. The crowds behind the barriers started to cheer and wave. If they had been making a real film the director would have called, “Cut” after twenty seconds because that fool of a coordinating officer was still standing in the middle of the road, hands on hips, oblivious to the fact that he wasn’t the star of the film.

  Cavalli didn’t notice the officer as he concentrated on the road ahead of him. He phoned through to Andy, who he knew would still be seated on the bench on 7th Street reading the Washington Post.

  “Not much action this end, boss. A little activity at the bottom of the ramp but no one on the street is showing any real interest. Is everything all right your end? You’re running late.”

  “Yes, I know, but we should be with you in about sixty seconds,” said Cavalli, as the director reached the end of his private railroad track and put one thumb in the air to indicate that the cars could now accelerate to twenty-five miles per hour. Johnny Scasiatore jumped off the dolly and walked slowly back down Pennsylvania Avenue so he could prepare himself for the second take.

  Cavalli flicked the phone off and took a deep intake of breath as the motorcade passed 9th Street; he stared at the FDR Monument that was set back on a grass plot in front of the main entrance of the Archives. The first car turned right on 7th Street; a mere half block remained before they would reach the driveway into the loading dock. The lead motorcycles sped up and when they were opposite Andy standing on the sidewalk, they swung right and drove down the ramp.

  The rest of the motorcade formed a line directly opposite the delivery entrance, while the third limousine drove down the ramp, coming to a halt exactly opposite the loading dock.

  The counter-assault team were the first onto the street, and eight of them quickly formed a circle facing out
ward around the third car.

  After the eight men had stared in every direction for a few seconds, Cavalli jumped out of the second car, ran across to join them and opened the back door of the third car so that Lloyd Adams could get out.

  Calder Marshall was waiting on the loading dock, and walked forward to greet the President.

  “Nice to meet you, Mr. Marshall,” said the actor, thrusting out his hand. “I’ve been looking forward to this occasion for some time.”

  “As, indeed, have we, Mr. President. May I on behalf of my staff welcome you to the National Archives of the United States. Will you please follow me.”

  Lloyd Adams and his entourage dutifully followed Mr. Marshall straight into the spartan freight elevator. As one of the Secret Service agents kept his finger on the “open” button, Cavalli gave the order for the motorcade to return to its starting point. Six motorcycles and the twelve vehicles moved off and began the journey back to rejoin the director and prepare for the second shoot.

  The whole exercise of getting the actor into the building and the motorcade started on its return journey had taken less than two minutes, but Cavalli was dismayed to see that a small crowd had already gathered on the far side of the road by the Federal Trade Commission, obviously sensing something important was taking place. He only hoped Andy could deal with the problem.

  Cavalli quickly slipped into the elevator, wedging himself behind Adams. Marshall had already begun a short history of how the Declaration of Independence had ended up in the National Archives. “Most people know that John Adams and Thomas Jefferson drafted the Declaration that was approved by Congress on July 4th, 1776. Few, however, know that the second and third Presidents died on the same day, July 4th, 1826—fifty years to the day after the official signing.” The elevator doors opened on the ground floor and Marshall stepped out into a marble corridor and led them in the direction of his office.

  “The Declaration had a long and turbulent journey, Mr. President, before it ended up safely in this building.”

  When they reached the fifth door on the left, Marshall guided the President and his staff into his office, where coffee awaited them. Two of the Secret Service agents stepped inside while the other six remained in the corridor.