by Dean Koontz
"True enough," the President said. Dissatisfied with the results of the first exploration, he began to make another search of his ears, beginning again with the left one. "Our anti-missile system can stop anything they throw at us. They don't have a saturation system like Russia does. We'll intercept two or three hundred miles from shore. But the fallout won't leave either Los Angeles or San Francisco very damned healthy."
Rice turned to McAlister. "The Chairman wants to know the name of the agent you're sending over to General Lin."
"They want time to run their own background check on him," the President said, giving up on his waxless ears and drumming his fingers on the desk. "They haven't said as much. But that's what I'd want to do if the roles were reversed."
"The only problem is that The Committee may be able to monitor all communications between us and the Chinese," McAlister said softly, worriedly.
"Not likely," Rice said.
"It would go out on the red phone," the President said. "That line can't be tapped."
"Any line can be tapped," McAlister said.
The President's jaw set like rough-formed concrete.
"The red phone is secure."
"I'm not questioning your word, Mr. President," McAlister said. "But even if the red phone is safe, we can get my man killed by giving his name to the Chinese too early in the game. The Committee will have sources in China's counterintelligence establishment. Once the Chinese have the name and start running a background check, The Committee will know who I'm sending. They'll have my man hit before he's safe in Peking."
"For God's sake!" Rice said, huffing with frustration. "Look, we're dealing with dangerous, crackpot reactionaries who have gotten deep into the CIA, perhaps deep into the FBI as well. For fifteen years now they've corrupted the democratic process. I think we all agree on that. We all understand what a grave matter this is. But these Committeemen aren't omniscient! They aren't lurking everywhere/"
"I'd prefer to act as if they were," McAlister said, shifting uncomfortably in his chair.
The President continued to drum his fingers on the desk, using his left hand to counterpoint the rhythm he had developed with his right. He looked at McAlister from under his bushy eyebrows and said, "I think Andy's right about this."
"Caution is admirable," Rice said. "But we've got to guard against paranoia."
The President nodded.
Wondering if he had gotten into a position where he would once again have to defy a President or resign his office, McAlister said, "I don't want to transmit my man's name to the Chinese any sooner than twelve hours before he's due in Peking. That's cutting it close enough so that The Committee won't have time to organize a hit."
"Twelve hours," the President said.
"The Chairman won't like that," Rice said. His small, deep-set eyes and his pursed lips admonished McAlister.
"Whether or not he likes it, that's the way I want it."
Rice's face was gradually mottling: red, pink, and chalk-white. He was like a malfunctioning boiler swelling up with steam. A rivet would pop any second now.
In a surprisingly quiet voice the President said, "From the way you're talking, Bob, I assume that you've found a man you think you can trust."
"That's right, sir."
Taking his cue from the President, Rice controlled his anger. "An agency man?"
McAlister told them how his morning had gone thus far: a visit to the British Embassy to pick up the set of forged papers that the SIS had prepared for him, a thorough search of his Mercedes until he located the transmitter he had known would be there, a quick switch of the transmitter to the tractor-trailer that had stopped for a red light, a meeting with the agent who would be sent to China . . .
While McAlister talked, the President used a thumbnail to pick incessantly at his artificial teeth. He made a continual click-click-click noise. Occasionally he found a bit of tartar, which he carefully inspected. In public McAlister had never seen the man pick his teeth or bore at his ears or clean his fingernails or crack his knuckles or pick his nose. And even in the Oval Office he didn't begin worrying at himself unless he was under pressure to make a policy decision. Now, wound tight by the Dragonfly crisis, he was rapidly going through his entire repertoire: he stopped picking his teeth, and he began to crack his knuckles one at a time.
When McAlister finished talking, the President said, "You've neglected to mention the agent's name." He smiled.
Crack!: a knuckle.
"Before I tell you," McAlister said, "I feel strongly that I should receive your assurance that you won't pass it along to the Chairman any sooner than I want it to be passed."
Rice started to say something, decided that silence was at least valuable if not golden, and glowered at the President's hands just as another knuckle cracked.
The President got up and went to the Georgian window behind his desk. He stared at the traffic that moved through the rain down on Pennsylvania Avenue. He obviously knew, as did McAlister, that the name did not really matter. Getting the name was important not for practical reasons; it was merely a matter of face now. "What would you do if I refused to give you that assurance? Would you tell me his name—or defy me?"
"Mr. President," McAlister said, "I would do neither."
"Neither?"
"I would resign, sir."
Not turning from the window, the fingers of both hands tangled behind his back and writhing like trysting worms, the President said, "That's out of the question. This has to be resolved quickly, and you're the only man I know who can handle it. You have my assurance."
"You promise, sir?"
"Yes, Bob. The Chairman will get the name twelve hours before your man gets to Peking. My promise. Don't push it any further."
Doggedly, McAlister said, "One step further, sir."
The President said nothing.
McAlister said, "I wouldn't want to talk any more about this if I thought we were being recorded. The tape might get into the hands of a Committeeman."
Turning to face them, grinning humorlessly, the President said, "Do you think any President since Nixon would be foolish enough to record his own conversations?"
McAlister nodded. "My man's name is David Canning."
"He's on assignment here at the White House," Rice said.
"Why Canning?" the President asked.
McAlister told him why. He also explained that Canning would travel as Theodore Otley and would leave Washington in two hours, on a four o'clock flight to Los Angeles. "I'm sending him by a series of civilian airlines, from Los Angeles to Tokyo and finally to Peking."
"That seems a waste of time," Rice said, shaking his head disapprovingly. "Why not lay on a direct government flight—"
"Which might easily be set up to explode over the ocean," the President said.
"Exactly," McAlister said. "The Committee would have to know about it. They'd either put a bomb aboard here or at a fuel stop on the way."
Reluctantly, grudgingly, Rice said, "I suppose you're right. We've been behaving like chronic paranoids, but they've left us no other way to behave."
The President said, "You'll be trying to break the Dragonfly project from this end?"
"Yes, sir," McAlister said.
"Have you been doing any thinking about why Dragonfly hasn't already been triggered?"
"That's the question that kept me up most of last night," McAlister said. "I can't find an answer I like."
Looking at his watch, the President said, "Anything else, then? Anything more you need, Bob?"
"In fact, there is, sir," McAlister said as he got to Ms feet.
"Name it."
"I'd like twelve federal marshals put under my control, four men each in three eight-hour shifts. I'll need them for the protection of my investigative staff."
Glancing at Rice, the President said, "See to that, Andy."
Rice struggled out of his chair, which squeaked with relief. "They will be in your office tomorrow morning at eight-thirty,"
he said. "You can brief them then and divide them whatever way you want."
"Thank you."
"And now I have a request," the President said.
McAlister said, "Sir?"
"From now on, don't go anywhere without your bodyguard."
"I don't plan to, sir."
"It'll get worse. They'll get desperate the closer we get to Dragonfly."
"I know," McAlister said.
"My God," Rice said, "What are we coming to when the highest officers of the land can't trust their own subordinates? These reactionary bastards have nearly driven us into a police state!"
No one had anything to say about that.
When McAlister left the Oval Office, the warrant officer looked up to see if the President might be at the open door with news of the world's end. Then he went on with his reading.
McAlister felt a bit weak behind the knees and in the pit of his stomach. He had known four Presidents and had been appointed to office by two of them. He had seen that they were all flawed, sometimes tragically so. They were all, in whole or part, vain and foolish, misinformed and sometimes even crooked. Yet he had not lost his respect for the office—perhaps because it was the keystone of that system of laws and justice which he so admired—and he stood in awe of any halfway decent man who held it. His intellect and emotions had reached a compromise on this subject, and he experienced no need to analyze his feelings. This was simply how he was, and he had grown accustomed to the weakness in his knees and stomach after every conference in the Oval Office.
Don't you know you're from a fine Boston family with a forty-foot genealogical chart? he asked himself. A Boston family. There is no better. Didn't you listen to your mother? She told you at least a million tunes. And your father. Didn't anything he said get through to you? You're Bostonian, old Bostonian! You're from the stock that patronized the Atlantic Monthly, and your father was a member of the Porcellian Club at Harvard! Don't you know that no one's better than you?
He laughed softly.
He still felt a bit weak.
When McAlister entered the back corridor, the guard at the end saw him coming and said, "Leaving now, Mr. McAlister?"
"As soon as I get my coat."
The guard pulled on his rain slicker and went out to see that the Mercedes was brought around.
Beau Jackson was not in the cloakroom.
McAlister put down his attaché case and went to the open-front wall-length closet. As he put on his coat he noticed a thick black-and-gold hardbound book lying on the hat shelf. With the curiosity of a book lover, he picked it up and looked at the title: The Complete Kafka—The Stories, Annotated and Analyzed. On the flyleaf there was a three-inch-square bookplate:
From the Library of
B. W. JACKSON
Beau Jackson came out of the lavatory into the cloakroom. He stopped and stared at the book in McAlister's hands, and said, "Somebody left that here last week. It yours, Mr. McAlister?"
"Belongs to a B.W. Jackson. Know him?"
The black man smiled. "Surprise you?"
"Not really. I've always figured you can't be what you seem to be." He put the book back on the hat shelf.
Carrying McAlister's attaché case, Jackson walked him across the cloakroom, into the hall. "Then I guess I belong here."
McAlister pulled up his hood, buttoned his coat collar. "Oh?"
Handing him the case, Jackson said, "Around here a lot of people just aren't what they seem to be."
Grinning, McAlister said, "You mean that you're disappointed with the way the boss has been running things? You're sorry you voted for him?"
"I did vote for him," Jackson said. "And for once in my life I figure maybe I pulled the right lever." His broad, dark face was sober, almost glum. "Compared to that Sidney Greenstreet of his, the boss is as real and genuine and unphony as they come."
"Sidney Greenstreet?" McAlister said, perplexed.
At the end of the hall, the guard came back inside and said, "Car's ready, Mr. McAlister."
"Who's Sidney Greenstreet?" McAlister asked the black man.
Beau Jackson shook his head. "If you aren't a fan of the old movies, then it can't mean anything to you. Just goes right over your head."
For a long moment McAlister stared into the other man's watery chocolate-brown eyes. Then he said, "You're an original, Mr. Jackson." He went down the last stretch of the hallway toward the door that the guard was holding open for him.
"Mr. McAlister," the black man called after him.
He looked back.
"You're sure enough the only one I ever met here who is just exactly what he seems to be."
McAlister couldn't think of anything to say. He nodded stupidly, embarrassed by the compliment, and he went outside into the rain and wind that lashed the capital.
SIX
The Executive Office Building
Crossing the small reception lounge at two-twenty that afternoon, Andrew Rice told his secretary, "Officially, I'm not back yet. I don't want to talk to anyone. I don't want to see anyone. I'm not feeling very well." And before she had a chance to tell him who had telephoned during the morning, he hurried past her desk and went into his private office and slammed the door behind him.
The office was a reflection of Rice himself: the furniture was large, bulky, heavy; the chairs were overstuffed; there was a slight but pervading sloppiness about the place. The wall shelves overflowed with books that had been jammed into them every which way. The desk was six feet by four feet, held three telephones, and was littered with dozens of letters and memoranda and government reports. Three rumpled easy chairs, all of them wide enough and deep enough to comfortably accommodate Rice himself—therefore, so large that they dwarfed many other men—were arranged in a semicircle around a water-stained oak-and-chrome coffee table.
Roy Dodson was sitting in the easy chair nearest the windows. Because he was six four and weighed two-twenty, the chair did not dwarf nun. He was holding a cup of coffee in one hand and a recent issue of a news magazine in the other. When Rice came in, Dodson leaned forward and put both the coffee and the magazine on the low oak table.
Rice said, "We have to move fast."
Dodson got up.
Not bothering to take off his raincoat, scarf, or hat, Rice went around behind the desk and collapsed into a king-size, caster-equipped, posturematic chair. He pulled several paper tissues from a chrome dispenser on the desk; he wiped his face, which was greasy with perspiration. "McAlister's man is David Canning."
"He's had a desk job for years."
"Obviously, McAlister doesn't think the man's gone to seed, desk job or no desk job," the fat man said. "Get out of here. Get to a public phone." He picked up a pen, scribbled on the back of a used envelope, and handed the envelope to Dodson. "That's the number of a phone in the agency's main file room. It'll be answered by a Miss Rockwalt. She's one of ours. She'll find Canning's home address for you."
"Then?"
"You take two men out to his house. Look it over. Find a way to hit him."
"Make it look like an accident?"
"There's no time for that approach," Rice said irritably. "He's leaving Washington on a four o'clock flight to Los Angeles."
"Which airline? Which airport?" Dodson asked. "It might be a lot easier to hit him in an airport parking lot or restroom than in his own home."
"Well, I don't know which airline or which goddamned airport," the fat man said. "McAlister didn't say. If I'd insisted on knowing, I'd have had to explain why I was so damned curious."
Dodson nodded. "One problem."
"What's that?"
"The only other men I know in our group are Maxwood and Hillary. Maxwood's in Texas on an assignment. Hillary's here in the city, but I don't know where. How do I reach him? Who do I get for backup?"
The fat man thought for a moment. Hillary and an agent named Hobartson were on security duty at Wilson's laboratory. They could be spared for this. "I'll get to Hillary and his partner. They'
ll meet you downstairs in the lobby at a quarter of three— twenty minutes from now." He shook his head. "I just don't see how you're going to have time to hit Canning before he leaves for the airport."
"Maybe we won't have to set him up at home. If we can get there in time to follow him, we can still do the job at the airport."
"Get moving."
"Yes, sir." Dodson took his coat from a hook on the back of the door, and he went out, closing the door behind him.
Rice's three telephones were three different colors: one black, one blue, and one white. The white phone was a private top-security line that did not pass through the building's switchboard. He lifted the white receiver and dialed the unlisted number of the laboratory.
The man on the other end did not identify himself or the place from which he was speaking. "Hello?"
"Hillary?"
"Yes."
"This is the Spokesman." That was the name Rice used with agents of The Committee, for nine out of ten of his men did not know who he was.
"Sir?"
"You and your partner leave that place and go to the first-floor main lobby of the Executive Office Building. At two forty-five you'll meet Dodson there. He has a job he'll explain to you."
"Yes, sir."
"You haven't much time. Don't be late."
"We're leaving now."
Rice put down the receiver, opened a desk drawer, and put his right hand into a bag full of chocolate-covered marshmallow cookies. He ate one of them, licked his fingers, and flicked an intercom switch.
"Yes, Mr. Rice?"
"Miss Priestly, I need a list of all U.S. marshals assigned to the Washington area. Do we have a thing like that on file?"
"No, sir."
"Then get hold of Fredericks over at the Justice Department. Ask him to have such a list hand-delivered to me within the half-hour. Tell him it's connected with a matter of national security."
"Yes, sir."
Finally, he took off his scarf and hat, stood up and wrestled loose of his coat. He didn't bother to hang up anything; he tossed the garments onto the nearest easy chair.
Now what?