Responsibility. The knowledge that no matter how distasteful and unpleasant the job, he was better at it than anybody else. He'd fully intended to quit, to transfer out four or five years ago. Three years had been the maximum for anyone in his position when he'd gone into undercover. Now it was ten, because he'd done it for ten. Each additional day he stayed with undercover, he was extending the parameters of his own specialty. I am the Lie, he thought, and the Lie is good.
He felt lousy.
The Bureau needed him. His country needed him. The people needed him. But what about Joshua Oak? Was there anything left of him, or had he simply become an amalgam of all the different aliases he'd assumed during the last decade? A name on a post office box, a Social Security number: that much testified to the existence on earth of a man named Joshua Oak.
God, but he was tired. Maybe Corcoran was right. Maybe he ought to go straight to Nettles and say that he'd had enough, that he wanted out. Give him a nice quiet job somewhere researching kidnappings and violations of the Mann Act or something. He liked Washington. He could see himself serving out the rest of his years until retirement right here in the city. No more field work, no more getting shot at in the line of duty.
He halted, blinked. He'd long since passed his intended destination, the Smithsonian museum. Somewhere along the way he'd made a right turn, crossed Constitution Avenue, and gone straight through the Ellipse. Might as well keep going, he told himself. He crossed onto E Street and found himself walking along the back side of the White House grounds. The view here wasn't as impressive as the one from the front, with the fountain and big flagpole, but the flowers and trees were just as pretty on E Street as they were on Pennsylvania Avenue.
It was a fine day for demonstrating and a good place to do it. The serious protestors always did their demonstrating out back of the White House, where they were more likely to catch the eye of some high government official being driven in to see the President. If you wanted to be photographed you paced around out front. If you wanted to get your message across, you hung around the back driveway.
Quite a few of the unhappy today, Oak mused. You didn't rally need the signs to match up demonstrators with causes. The women in the jeans and sloppy shirts who hadn't washed their hair in a week were radical feminists. Beneath the shade of a big tree, neat and turned out as though ready for a sermon, were the anti-abortionists. Across the broad stone driveway and sharing the occasional frosty glare with their opponents were the pro-choice advocates. Yuppie fanatics versus the traditional.
There was some shoving and pushing going on among a large homogenous group that spilled out into the street. Oak identified them immediately. Beige skin, short haircuts, neatly trimmed black beards, and hints of wildness in their expressions. Pro-Khomeini Iranians, a heaping helping off Hezbollahs, asserting their right to tell their hosts where to get off. A few anti-clericals had infiltrated the carefully organized march and were doing their best to disrupt it, hence the pushing and shoving. He slowed. Pushes were starting to turn into punches as the rhetoric heated up. Both groups were utilizing to the fullest the opportunity to exercise the freedom of speech and demonstration that was denied to them in the homeland.
Oak turned his amused gaze on the other placard carriers. They had stopped marching and were staring at the riot-in-the-making. These good people were used to picketing silently, at the very most chanting in rhythm; but not too loudly or impolitely. The Iranians, never loath to allow their deepest and most primitive emotions full rein, must have looked like men from Mars to the peaceful marchers from Des Moines and Cincinnati. Anti-abortionists stood shoulder to shoulder with the Get-U.S.-Out-of-Central-Americans and the anti-vivisectionists and stared at something utterly alien to most of them: real violence, the intrusion of the outside world into their familiar venue of all-American protest.
Oak watched for their reactions with interest. After all, these were the people he'd lied for, stolen for, and risked his life for during the past ten years. Housewives, grad students with their intellectual girlfriends, professional placard wavers, all banded together unconsciously to gaze at the Farsi-spouting Middle Easterners. "How about a picnic—or maybe the beach?" he asks. "Oh no," the demure young thing replies, "let's go over to the White House and shout obscenities at the President. If you insist, we can go to Sans Souci for lunch afterward."
The middle class in microcosm, he thought. The wealthy were too busy making money to demonstrate and the poor had better things to do, like figuring out how to get enough that week to feed their kids. There they stood, the overweight and the fashionably anorexic, the blacks with their white supporters, the whites with their black supporters, claiming the right to tell Canadian seal hunters what they could and could not hunt, claiming the right to have the government pay so they could send their kids to private schools, claiming, claiming…
The Vietnam vets protesting against cuts in veterans' programs were the only ones present with any common sense. They pulled up their threadbare fatigues and started moving as far away as possible from the now violent mob of Iranians. Oak was nodding to himself. He didn't mind doing dirty work for those guys because they'd gone off and done some dirty work for him. The rest of them could go to hell.
No, that wasn't fair. They weren't bad people, they tried to be compassionate and understanding. They just didn't know much about the world beyond their private lives. Without the Joshua Oaks of the world to look after them they'd be defenseless. Now they stood and stared, paralyzed by the explosion of violence that had erupted before them, seemingly out of nowhere.
Something came whizzing toward his head. With instinct born of long practice, he ducked to his left. It shattered against the tall wrought-iron gate that enclosed the White House grounds. The Iranians had not been schooled in the polite formalities of dignified American protest but rather in the crucible of Third World passions where people lost brothers and wives to opposing interests instead of arguments. Their disagreement was turning ugly and threatening to suck innocent, uninvolved bystanders into the maelstrom.
Both factions had been swollen by the arrival of reinforcements who had arrived in vans and trucks with unexpected swiftness—too swiftly for their appearance not to have been prearranged. Rocks, clubs, bottles, and sticks began to take the place of flailing fists. The park across the street was raining Iranians.
Time to move. Curious to see which side would prevail, he searched for a place of relative safety against the fence. There was no reason for real panic. The Bureau, not to mention the Metropolitan Police Department, kept constant watch on such large groups of potential troublemakers. They would know in advance about any planned confrontation. Oak expected them to arrive to clean up the mess at any moment.
Unless this was escalating beyond the intentions of the organizers. That had been known to happen. The confrontation might very well have been planned as a peaceful one that had gotten out of hand despite the best intentions of the participants.
The anti-abortionists were collecting their neatly printed placards and shooing their co-opted children out of the way, casting a few venomous glances behind them. The shouting of slogans in Farsi had given way to a full-fledged Persian riot. The Vietnam vets were breaking beer out of ice chests. They seemed to be enjoying the show. But many of the remaining placard carriers were too stunned to know whether to retreat, stand still, scream for help, or leap into the fray. Their sensory systems had been overloaded.
Oak saw one middle-aged Iranian, here to visit immigrant children perhaps, fall to the ground grabbing at his face. Blood streamed from his nose and mouth.
Another rock sailed past, this once arcing far over Oak's head. It cleared the fence and landed on the perfectly manicured lawn beyond. Something to occupy the groundskeepers the next day. Additional landscaping courtesy of Teheran.
The police were late. Oak was mildly surprised at such tardiness. There was no danger of the demonstration actually spilling over onto White House grounds, of course.
The Secret Service would see to that. But they wouldn't step beyond their jurisdiction to suppress trouble that posed no threat to the President or his family.
Oak felt sympathy for some of the older combatants, but not to the point of intervening. This was not his fight and the Bureau took a stern view of its agents involving themselves in outside altercations. But if the cops didn't put in an appearance pretty soon, some of the bystanders were going to get hurt. A number of them found themselves trapped between the ebb and flow of the mob and the unyielding iron fence. A couple of the women thus pinioned started to scream. Off to one side, a trio of Get-U.S.-Out-of-Central-America girls were clinging to one another for comfort. They looked scared.
Screw Nettles, Oak thought, and started toward them, shoving one Iranian out of the way. The man glanced back murderously, saw that the individual who had pushed him was not one of his brothers in Islam, and returned his attention to the holy war at hand.
Two well-dressed young men appeared on either side of the trio and started escorting them away from the fray. Oak halted, cast his eyes over the demonstrators to see if anyone else was in trouble. Most of the other placard wavers had managed to slip clear of the combat zone, but one apparently had lingered too long in the center.
She was crouched back against one of the trees that projected through the sidewalk. Clubs and axe handles were being wielded dangerously close to her with great enthusiasm. She looked lost as well as frightened. Just an unlucky pedestrian, Oak mused. Not even a demonstrator. Well, she would be all right if she had the sense to stay close to the tree.
A couple of fleeing anti-nukies rushed past her and one man bumped her right side. He stumbled, recovered his balance, and kept running. But the impact had sent her staggering away from the protective bulk of the tree and out into the mobs. Her sunglasses were sent flying, to be pulverized by jostling, positioning feet.
Where the hell were the cops? Oak wondered as he forced his way through the mob. One of the rioters found the man heading toward him a worthy opponent without bothering to inquire if he was pro- or anti-Khomeini and swung a thin metal whip at him. Car antenna, Oak noted absently as he ducked the swing and brought the heel of his right hand up against the other man's nose. The demonstrator collapsed, both hands going to his face. Oak pulled the blow. He didn't want to break the man's nose, but neither was he in the mood to catch something like a car antenna across his right eye. No one else confronted him as he made his way through the loud, angry mob toward the sidewalk tree.
She was still trying to find her glasses. He reached down and gently grabbed her shoulder, pulling her erect.
"Forget it. They're gone."
"What? My…"
"Your glasses. Busted. Come on."
She wasn't completely paralyzed because she nodded and followed him. Despite the stunned expression she wore, she was quite attractive, Oak thought. Slim, medium build but not skinny.
"Are you a policeman?" she shouted above the babble of the mob.
"Just another spectator like yourself." They were heading back toward the fence now. Oak didn't want to be caught out in the street when the cops finally arrived and the Iranians scattered in all directions. "Which of these happy groups are you with?"
"With? I don't—Oh, you mean the other demonstrators. I'm not with any of them. I'm just a tourist. I was taking pictures around front and somebody told me I should circle the grounds because it looks different from back here. The White House, I mean."
He put a protective arm around her shoulders, pointed. "There's a guard box over there. We can't go inside but these people will stay away from it."
"Okay."
He hustled her through the mob until they were standing close to the armored guard station.
"You all right?"
She nodded once and then, as if remembering something she'd left at home, added a smile. "I'm okay, thanks." She straightened her dress and then began rummaging through her purse. While she excavated, Oak rapped hard on the bulletproof window of the station. The man inside ignored him until Oak removed his ID and pressed it up against the glass. Still the man hesitated, then finally walked over and opened the window.
"I'm breaking security talking to you. What do you want?"
"What do I want? Where the hell are the cops?"
"They'll be here any minute," the Secret Service man told him.
"Why so long?"
"Traffic accident at New York and Twelfth. They have to detour around."
"Figures." So much for security efficiency, he thought.
"Listen, I'm not supposed to do this, but seeing that you're with the Bureau I'll let you and your lady friend inside. Door's around back."
"She's not my lady friend. Just some tourist I pulled out of the stampede before she got trampled. My good deed for the day. No, thanks, but I don't want to compromise you. We'll be all right here. I just wanted to make sure we weren't going to be stuck here all day."
"You won't. Listen."
Oak could hear the approaching sirens clearly. In a minute the rioters would also, and then the battle which had been so enthusiastically joined would evaporate as fast as a pan of water on the steps of Persepolis. The participants would melt away in the grass of the Mall or the shadows of nearby government buildings, or retreat back into the cars and vans which had disgorged them in the first place.
"Get much of this?" Oak asked the Secret Service man conversationally.
"Naw. These guys are pretty smart. The Bahktiar supporters are here all the time, parading back and forth with their signs, but the Ayatollah ass-kissers don't show up too often. They know they're liable to be deported if they're arrested more than twice. Now me, if they'd lend me an Abrams tank for about thirty minutes I'd clean up the whole bunch of them permanently, but what the hey, I'm just a hired hand and can't set policy. You know what that's like."
"Yeah, I know what that's like." Someone was shaking his arm and he looked over into the anxious face of the woman he'd rescued.
"Look, down over there. Can't you do something? Can't somebody do something!"
Oak tried to see what the woman was pointing at. There, lying on the ground out in the open away from a tree or trash can or anything that might provide temporary protection, was an old man. He was trying to use a long walking stick to struggle back onto his feet, but every time he made the effort another of the rioters knocked him down. He didn't look like he could keep it up much longer. If he fell down and stayed down he risked taking a kick in the head or worse.
Oak tried to imagine how he'd come to be caught up in the riot. He didn't look like a demonstrator, or a tourist either for that matter. He was well dressed, though something about his attire struck the FBI man as peculiar. He might be a minor government bureaucrat, but he looked older than the mandatory retirement age and that opinion didn't jibe with the presence of the knotty walking stick. Maybe he was retired from one of the nearby bureaucracies. Oak knew people like that, unable to leave the center of power for the boredom of the provinces. They ended up hanging around the places where they'd worked, pestering former friends and slowing up the wheels of government a little more than usual.
"He'll work his way clear. They're not interested in him; only in bashing one another."
She shoved her face toward his. "How can you stand here and let him get trampled like that?"
"He isn't getting trampled."
She seemed to hesitate, fighting with herself. "Well, if nobody else is going to help him…"
He reached out for her, too late to prevent her from dashing back into the very crowd from which he'd just rescued her. He could see her flailing away at the two Iranians who threatened to stumble over the old man, beating them with her handbag. One of them turned and took a wild swing which barely gazed her, but it was hard enough to knock her backward. Another punch might connect and do some real damage.
"Shit," he muttered. How do you save a woman who doesn't want to be saved? He plunged back into the mob a second
time.
Reaching her wasn't as difficult as he'd first thought it would be because the police were starting to pull up in their cruisers, blocking off E Street at both ends and just itching for an Iranian or two to take a swing at them.
The rioters were much too clever for that. Those who couldn't make it cleanly back to their vehicles or to the crowded Mall beyond dropped their makeshift weapons and surrendered peacefully. Most of them had been involved in similar confrontations before. They might choose to ignore most of the social customs of the country hosting them but they knew how the police operated as well as the cops themselves. They plastered big friendly smiles on their faces and surrendered without incident. Oak could see the frustration boiling in the duty cops' expressions. You couldn't clobber a demonstrator who smiled, put his hands politely atop his head, and surrendered.
The woman was still swinging her handbag as he helped her and the old man back to the guard box. The Secret Service man had shut the window and was talking on an inside phone, no doubt reporting to his superior inside the White House itself.
The demonstration was shutting down as rapidly as it had started. In five minutes there wouldn't be an Iranian in sight. Within an hour or so the more peaceful picketers would have resumed their derogatory vigils outside the President's home.
Any of them would have been outraged to wake up one morning to find picketers marching outside their own bedrooms, but who thought of the White House as somebody's home? It was a symbol, there to be picketed or toured, but not to be lived in. Oak blinked. The old man was talking to him.
"Thank you very much for your help, sir."
He appeared to be in good shape, though still shaken by the violence of the confrontation he'd found himself swept up in. Considering his probable age, Oak thought he was handling himself very well. Tough old bird. His hands weren't shaking and he'd managed to hang on to his walking stick throughout the fighting. The only thing Oak was sure of right away was that the man wasn't a paper-pusher. The muscles beneath his coat testified to that. Then Oak realized what it was that had struck him as peculiar about the old man's appearance.
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