“Except for the part where you blew Dag’s surveillance. Now I’ve got one wrecked car, one dented car, and a whole handful of citizen and D.C. cops’ complaints. Anything I missed?”
Lammeck shrugged, wondering what had happened to Reilly’s role as the good cop. But he wasn’t in the mood to be stuffed into Reilly’s doghouse. Lammeck was, after all, a private citizen. He glared straight back at Reilly.
The chief asked. “How did Judith know?”
Lammeck was ready. It was one of the two reasons he made this appointment with Reilly. First, to tell him:
“It was your fault.”
Reilly eyed Lammeck hard, then leaned forward, elbows on his desk. Lammeck continued before the chief could rebut.
“You increased the security around the White House. If you’d asked me, and you didn’t, I would have tried to stop you. Judith saw that. Hell, anyone walking past on the sidewalk could see it. The sudden extra guards tipped her off that something was different. She probably tried to make contact with her connection in Newburyport to check it out and came up empty. So she went through the same logic I did and figured out the car she was driving was hot. Then she dumped it and made a monkey out of me, fair enough. My guess is she bought another. And she’s too smart to have bought it anywhere close by. Out in Virginia or Maryland, for cash, I’ll bet. We’ll never trace it. That’s the bad news.”
“So there’s good news?”
“What happened tells me that after a lot of trouble on my part, she and I are finally thinking alike.”
Reilly eased off his elbows. He leaned back in his chair, tapping fingers on his blotter.
“What was I supposed to do, Professor? Hang the President out to dry? Not after you convinced me that there’s a very gifted and extremely dedicated level-six killer in town. Exactly what steps should I take? Now that I am asking you.”
Lammeck inclined his head in a show of appreciation, then launched ahead.
“I’ve told Dag a hundred times, Chief, but it’s not sinking in. Judith’s not going to come from a direction where you can spot her. You won’t catch this woman sneaking over the White House lawn or setting up a rifle in a window somewhere. She’s going to come out of a shadow, from some corner you’ve overlooked. She’s going to be a guest of one of Roosevelt’s friends or some big shot at a dinner, at a birthday party or a wake, some kind of occasion where you think you’ve got every angle covered. She’ll be a cook or a maid, or a socialite, or anything in between. But I guarantee you that another hundred agents around the White House won’t save the President.”
Reilly listened and never stopped his finger tapping.
The chief asked, “So what do we do? Just wait on her?”
“Keep your guard up. Make sure there’s no new hires of domestic help in the White House; shut Judith completely down along those lines. Double background checks on every hotel or public location the President visits. Keep the number of guests he entertains to a minimum.”
“And what else?”
“I assume you don’t want me taking part in any more car chases.”
“You assume correctly.”
“I’m going to keep trying to anticipate her. For the first time in two months, I’m beginning to sense I’m right behind her. Every time we close off another avenue, it limits her choices, and I get that much closer.”
Reilly finally stopped tapping.
“Professor, I’ll keep my peace on just how peculiar it is that you can think like a female Persian assassin. Or that you spend all night and day dreaming up ways to murder my president. That being said, how can I help you?”
This was the second reason Lammeck had set up today’s appointment.
“I need an open invitation to every embassy party, State Department reception, gala, whatever, that goes on in the District. I want a list of functions all the way down to cocktail parties, weddings, and christenings thrown by senators, congressmen, lobbyists, Cabinet members, and White House staff.”
“You getting bored in Washington, Professor?”
Lammeck cleared his throat. “You and Mrs. Beach have the same sense of humor, did you know that, Chief? It’s belittling and funny at the same time. It’s enough that I put up with Dag’s perpetual bad mood. But I’d appreciate it if when I visit this office you and your attack dog out there spare me your wit and do what I ask. I’m not here to make friends or be your pincushion. Understood?”
“Loud and clear, Professor. We work hard around here and maybe we get a bit punchy. I apologize for myself and I will so inform my Doberman. As for Dag, I can’t help you with him. You’re on your own there. What else?”
“I need you to vet every one of those functions I mentioned. No one attends without a written invitation off a prepared guest list. Anyone who brings a female guest who’s not a family member has to personally vouch for that guest, and I want names and addresses for every one of them.”
Reilly gave Lammeck an indulgent smile. He shook his head.
“That’s a big job, Professor, and, frankly a little naive of you. With the war winding down and the end of blackouts last year, Washington’s throwing more parties than Versailles. Everyone from ambassadors to senators is hosting a shindig to jockey for influence after the peace. We’ve got Cave Dweller old-money socialite parties all the way to the Cuban embassy and the aluminum lobby. Remember, Washington’s the only major capital in the world that’s not occupied or close to the front lines. So every dethroned king and queen and exiled leader in the world is here. And I got to tell you, Professor, the local hostesses are falling on them like junkyard dogs on a soup bone. I can’t police them all or keep track of who’s attending what. I don’t have the manpower to do it.”
“I can go over to the FBI and ask Director Hoover.”
“You’re playing hardball.”
“Like you said, he’s your president.”
“I still can’t do it. Neither can Hoover.”
“Listen, Chief. I’m not trying to catch her at these parties. I want her to catch us.”
Reilly looked confounded.
Lammeck leaned forward, pressing his case: “Just give me enough agents to be a visible presence, to get people noticing at these functions that something’s up. I need her to smell a rat. Now that you’ve let the cat out of the bag, I need her to know we’re right on her ass. She won’t know how many social events we’re watching, but she will sniff that we’re on the prowl for her in that arena and that’ll spook her away. I want to herd her down to the fewest number of possibilities. Take me at my word, Chief. This woman has the ability and the cunning to find a way in. I need to slam as many doors in her face as I can. That’s the only way I can catch her.”
Reilly resumed his Irish smile.
“I’m sure you meant we, Professor.”
Lammeck stood, finished. Reilly kept his seat.
“I’ll have Secret Service credentials sent to your hotel,” the chief said. “Flash that paperwork at any embassy or office in D.C. and you’re in the door. You have any trouble, you call Mrs. Beach. She’ll take care of it.”
Lammeck knew this to be true.
“Thank you, Chief. Sorry about that bout of bad attitude there.”
“No problem, Professor. I look at it like this: I’m sure you really are thinking like our gal assassin. And I’m hoping she doesn’t like me very much, either.” Reilly changed his mind about sitting and stood for Lammeck. “Now get out of my office and go find her, so she can tell me that herself.” ’
* * * *
March 3
Washington, D.C.
“STAND STILL.”
“It’s too tight.”
Dag fidgeted like a boy in his First Communion suit. Lammeck struggled to button the starched white shirt at Dag’s neck.
“If you’d gone to pick up your own tux, you could’ve had it fitted. I had to guess your size, so you take what you get.”
Lammeck stood back, the button secured. He watched Dag manhandle the
clip-on bow tie. Lammeck took a seat on the edge of his hotel room bed. The mattress was covered with the files and party schedules Mrs. Beach had sent over for this week’s events.
“You’ve never worn a tux before, have you?”
“Why would I? Pansy clothes.”
“Well, stick a shiv in your pocket and you’ll feel more comfortable.”
“I might.” Dag finished and presented himself stiffly for inspection. Lammeck tucked and tugged a few items into line. Dag would pass, but, Lammeck wondered, for how long? He expected Dag’s clothes to wilt and the cummerbund to pop at any moment.
“Let’s get you to the party before you go back to being a pumpkin.”
Dag said nothing in the Blackstone Hotel elevator, but busied himself digging fingers around the tux, prying it loose from his frame here and there. Climbing into Dag’s replacement government car in the lot, Lammeck noted how it seemed Dag had already driven this vehicle hard. Pages of the Post, paper coffee cups, coins, and emptied Goody’s Headache Powder packets spoiled the floorboards. Lammeck sighed and shot his cuffs.
On the drive, Dag finally asked, “Okay, walk me through this.”
“What do you know?”
“All I got was a call from Reilly telling me to put on a monkey suit and go with you to the Luxembourg embassy instead of staying out on the street looking for her. Why I should do this, I can’t fucking fathom. But I’m sure you have a reason, Professor. Good or bad, you’ve always got a reason.”
Lammeck gazed at Dag and admired him for a moment. This bony, jangly man had killed three German guards in the forests of France to escape. Dag was a hard pill to swallow, but he was always bold, and though the agent lacked subtlety he was dutiful and stubbornly loyal. Dag was capable of killing, he was willing to die, and this made him heroic.
“There’s only two types of people who get in to see FDR. The great and the small. The people who serve and those who get served. I think Judith is working both angles. Tonight, we’re working one side of that.”
“You think she’s honey-trapping some ambassador or something?”
“I have no idea. But I want Judith to see Secret Service agents every time she turns around. I want to funnel her down to the path of least resistance. That’s where we’ll find her.”
“And exactly where will that be?”
“I can’t begin to guess.”
Dag shoehorned an aggravated finger into his tight shirt collar.
“You have no goddam idea what you’re doing, do you, Professor? You haven’t from the start.”
Lammeck grinned. Surprisingly, Dag grinned back.
At the embassy, the agent would not give the keys to the teenage valet for parking, but put the car right in front of the building and left it, flashing his credentials.
“Uh-uh,” he said to Lammeck. “No teenage kid is getting my keys. Not after the other day.”
The two ascended the steps to the Luxembourg embassy with a formal, perfumed crowd on all sides. Though Luxembourg was still occupied by the Germans, the free Dutch maintained this embassy as well as their own with income from their colonies. Starting last August when Paris was liberated, the French embassy had returned to full swing. The Russian embassy celebrated a new victory against the Nazis every week. The British delegation mounted lavish events to compete in the last frontier of dominance left to them in Washington, the social network. The many Latin American embassies, roundly ignored before the war, now assumed the mantle of keeping Washington amused in the stead of so many European embassies who’d had their lights put out. Lammeck, on the steps of his first embassy reception, had no notion of the magnitude of Washington’s drive to socialize with itself.
Lammeck and Dag were met at the door by a handsome young embassy functionary who took only a passing interest in invitations. The young man raised his eyebrows at Dag’s Secret Service badge, then directed them to a sign-in book. Inside, diplomats and their belles danced, gaggled and gossiped, swapped emptied champagne flutes for full, ate and laughed with heart. Lammeck’s spirits, already worried, sank. Reilly was right. There was absolutely no way to police this. And there were two other large embassy events plus a dozen cocktail parties scheduled within five blocks elsewhere on Mass. Ave. and Sixteenth Street, just on this one Saturday evening. Other agents were covering those functions, but the task was gargantuan. In this silken world, Judith could be anywhere.
“Jesus,” Dag breathed, entering the great hall. Looking at the gowned and coiffed women, Dag stopped pulling at his tux and began to preen. He smoothed a palm over his hair.
“Dag, listen,” Lammeck called over the din of a five-piece jazz band and international nattering. “There’s maybe four hundred people here...”
Dag’s eyes stayed on the dancing, gabbing crowd, an attractive bevy.
“Dag!”
The agent’s head snapped to Lammeck. “Alright, alright.”
“There’s four hundred people in this place, and maybe a dozen of them have any shot at ever getting to Roosevelt. I’m going to look over the guest register and see who’s here. Congressmen, presidential staff, celebrities, ambassadors, anyone who jumps out at me. You find the host and flash your badge. Get in some conversations, let the word out that the Secret Service is around. And please, I beg you, if you can’t be pleasant, be polite.”
Dag spit in both palms and rubbed them together, as if he were about to grab an ax handle.
“You betcha, Professor. I’m on it. Polite.” Dag laughed, walking off. “Sure.”
* * * *
March 8
Washington, D.C.
JUDITH CLOSED THE LITTLE post office box door.
At the counter, she canceled the box. This morning she wore her government girl clothes, a cornflower blue wool skirt with matching jacket and white blouse. A March of Dimes pin was attached to her lapel above a blue silk carnation. On other days she’d come in dressed in her maid uniform. The old black mailman behind the counter smiled as he handled the paperwork. He asked if she was moving away. Judith said probably. He said he would miss seeing her. “I can’t figure you out, girl.”
“If you did, I’d have to marry you or kill you,” Judith replied pleasantly.
The geezer cackled. “Maybe we could do both. Just kill me slow-like.”
She winked.
The D.C. mornings had finally brightened and warmed. Awaking crocuses and daffodils lent some color to the long-sullen earth. Judith did not like the chilly, enclosing dawns of the mid-Atlantic winter; the concrete and marble of this city cosseted the cold deep into the day. She missed the distant African sierras and the warmth of her own home.
Judith walked to her car in the post office lot. She drove five blocks west and quickly found a parking spot on Fifteenth, with a clear view of the White House’s east and south gates. She left the car to walk for a newspaper and coffee.
Judith would not go to work at either of the Tench households today. The unhappy couple was still out of town and would not be back until the middle of the month. With a Post folded under her arm and a coffee heating her palm, she strode one circuit around the White House, peering at the Secret Service traipsing the greening grounds, sweeping it with dogs and automatic rifles. Clearly, Roosevelt was back in his fortress.
Something had changed in this operation. Someone was forcing her hand.
No mail had come from Newburyport in seventeen days.
She walked away from the White House, east down Pennsylvania Avenue. Her steps were slow, dodging through the morning cascade of workers headed to their desks in the Departments of Commerce, General Accounting, Internal Revenue, Justice, Trade, all aligned side by side on the avenue. Over the heads of the throngs on the sidewalk with her, the U.S. Capitol filled the horizon of the broad boulevard, like a giant at the other end of a seesaw. Judith was not bothered by the magnitude of America and its national city, its spires and columns, traffic, hordes of workers, monuments, or all the Secret Service men panning for her. She was no
t in a battle with them for Roosevelt’s life. Someone hoping to go unnoticed, just like her, opposed her.
In this kind of one-on-one combat, the first rule was to find the weapon. Ignore all but the weapon.
She guessed who it had to be: the expert, the one the Secret Service had brought in. He was the large, handsome man who’d stood with the rumpled agent at the inauguration. In several coded letters, the old woman in Newburyport had written Judith as much as she could find out about him, before she’d fallen silent two and a half weeks ago. Before the security around the President had increased a hundred percent.
On the eastern side of the Capitol stood the Library of Congress. Inside the caverns of shelves and great labyrinth of desks and leather chairs, it was a simple matter to ask for and receive the doctoral dissertation of Mikhal Lammeck.
The Assassins Gallery - [Dr Mikhal Lammeck 01] Page 24