“But why would they kill him?”
“Maybe they didn't need him any more.”
“But if Altmüller is already theirs, if they've bought him and put him in their pocket—”
“The Committeemen are fanatics,” McAlister reminded him. “So far as we know, however, Altmüller's just an ordinary guy who happened to be in a position where they needed someone but where they could not place anyone. So maybe they bought him. But because he really wasn't one of them, they wouldn't trust him. You can never be sure that money will keep a man's mouth shut. But a bullet in the head does the job every time.”
“Jesus, you sound like a cold son of a bitch!” Kirkwood said, shivering slightly.
“Sorry.” He felt cold too.
“Why didn't you tell me this outside?”
“If you'd thought there was a corpse in here, you'd have gone straight to the police. You'd have insisted upon a warrant.”
“Of course.”
“And we don't have time.”
Kirkwood locked eyes with him for a moment, then sighed and said, “Where do we start looking?”
Heading for the door of the dining-room closet, McAlister said, “Check the front room. When we've finished downstairs, we'll go upstairs together.”
Grim-faced, repeatedly clearing his throat, Kirk-wood went into the living room and turned on more lights. He came back within a few seconds and said, “I think I've found a clue.”
“Clue?”
“Buckets of blood,” Kirkwood said shakily.
“Buckets” was an exaggeration, although there was certainly a cup or two of it. Or, rather, there had been a cup or two. Gouts of blood had spattered the sofa; but now it was dried into a maroon-brown crust. There was even more blood, also dry and crusted, on the floor in front of the sofa.
“Looks like you were right,” Kirkwood said.
Kneeling on the floor, rubbing his fingertips over the blood crust on the sofa, McAlister said, “And maybe I wasn't.”
“What do you mean?”
“Altmüller worked with you just this afternoon, didn't he?”
“You know that he did.”
“Did he look healthy to you?”
“Sure. Yeah.”
“He was definitely alive?”
“What are you driving at?”
“When was the last time you saw him?”
Kirkwood thought. Then: “Five-thirty.”
“The earliest he could have been killed here in his own home was six o'clock. Not even three and a half hours ago.” He patted the stains on the sofa. “If that were the case, this blood would still be damp. Even wet — congealed but wet. At the very least, this stuff has been here for a couple of days.”
The house was crypt-quiet except for the soft ticking of an antique mantel clock.
Reluctantly, Kirkwood touched the stains. “Whose blood is it?”
“Altmüller's.”
Kirkwood swayed on the balls of his feet. “But you just said—”
“I'll explain when we find the corpse.”
“Upstairs?”
McAlister got to his feet. “They wouldn't kill him and lug him up all those steps. He's in the kitchen or basement.”
“I'd still like to think he's just spending the evening at a prayer meeting.”
In the kitchen McAlister found a smear of dried blood on the lid of the freezer. “Here we go.” He opened the lid.
A rolled-up rag rug was stuffed into the freezer, and there was obviously a body inside of it.
“Help me get him out,” McAlister said.
As they lifted the rug out of the freezer, thin plates of frozen blood cracked and fell away from the rags and hit the floor and shattered into thousands of tiny shards.
McAlister peeled the rug back from one end of the corpse until the face was revealed. Dark, sightless eyes, webbed with ice crystals, gazed up at him. “Carl Altmüller.”
Surprised, Kirkwood said, “But Altmüller has blue eyes, and he isn't as old as this man!”
“This is Carl Altmüller,” McAlister repeated adamantly. “The man you're describing is the one who killed Altmüller and has been impersonating him since Thursday morning. I'd bet on it.” He was shaking inside with both fear and rage.
“Then Altmüller wasn't bought.”
“That's right.”
“Are all our federal marshals impostors?”
“The Committee would need only one or two men planted in our offices.”
“But there might be another one?”
“Yes.”
“Now what?”
“We go to the agency headquarters and pull a photograph from the files. Then I go to the White House while you get your ass to the hospital.”
“Hospital?”
“You're going to show the photograph to a young woman of the streets who has fallen on bad times recently.”
Kirkwood said, “Oh, yeah.”
PEKING: SATURDAY, 2:00 P.M.
General Lin Shen-yang was in the embassy drawing room, pacing back and forth, when Canning and Lee Ann came down from the third floor. He was not at all what Canning had been expecting. By all Western standards, of course, he was somewhat on the short side, as were most of the Chinese. But he was not also slender and wiry like many Chinese men; instead, he was broad and muscular, and he had the face of a barbarian warrior. He did not move with the serenity or perfect grace of an oriental; rather, his manner was aggressive, quick, extremely energetic. The moment that they entered the room he strode toward them.
Stubbing his cigar in an ashtray, Webster got out of an easy chair and made the introductions.
The general and Lee Ann conversed in Chinese for more than a minute. From the way she was smiling, Canning could tell that Lin was flattering her.
Then the general turned to Canning and shook hands. In nearly unaccented English he said, “There are two vans waiting outside. I've got six soldiers in the one. We'll ride in the other. We have no time to waste, and I would appreciate it if you were to give me the names of your deep-cover agents in the Peking area.”
“Not quite so fast,” Canning said. “I've got a few things to explain.”
“Then explain,” the general said impatiently.
“There is a certain procedure we will follow,” Canning said. “I'll give you only one name at a time. Together we'll go and arrest that man and bring him here to the embassy.” He pointed to the polygraph that stood in its steel security case in the center of the room. “We will interrogate him here, using that machine. If he is not the trigger man for Dragonfly, he will remain here in the embassy until he can be flown back to the United States on one of our own aircraft. Then we will proceed to the second name. And then to the third. I will not turn any of these agents over to you — not even the trigger man for Dragonfly.”
Incredibly, the general nodded and said, “Perfectly understandable. I would insist upon the same terms if our roles were reversed.”
Amazed, Canning said, “That's quite reasonable of you.” His opinion of the general rose considerably.
“I do not wish to waste time in pointless arguments,” Lin said. “I will only warn you that if this Dragonfly should be used, the People's Republic would have no recourse but to declare war against your country.”
Canning nodded.
“We are not frightened of your nuclear weapons,” the general continued. “You have surely heard of the network of tunnels that honeycomb all of Peking. Because of much practice and regular drills, the entire populace can be underground in seven minutes.”
Canning had, indeed, read of this fabulous creation. It was an entire underground city: fuel depots, power plants, kitchens, stores of food and clothing, medical stations, living quarters… Every thirty or forty feet, along every major street and most of the minor ones as well, there were steps leading down into this vast undercity. Every apartment house, store, theater, restaurant, and office building had one, two, or even three entrances to the system of nuclea
r-proof tunnels. The concrete warrens reached out more than twenty miles beyond the city limits, into the green countryside, a perfect escape route constructed by the People's Liberation Army back in the 1960s. Although they both knew that the tunnels would not be much good when the city was attacked by chemical-biological weapons, Canning said, “I believe we understand each other, General Lin.”
WASHINGTON: FRIDAY, 10:50 P.M.
Her name was Heather Nichols, and she was in bad shape. Her long hair was pinned back from her face, damp with perspiration. Her left ear was swollen and bruised. She had a long cut on her left jaw. Her lips were split, swollen into thick purple ridges. Tubes disappeared into her nostrils, which were thoroughly braced with wooden splints and bloody gauze. Her right eye was swollen completely shut. Her left eye was open, although barely; and she watched him with suspicion and perhaps hatred.
The intern said, “She can't talk at all. She lost several teeth. Her gums are badly lacerated, and her tongue's cut. Her mouth is swollen inside as well as out. I really don't think—”
“Can she write?” Kirkwood asked.
“What?”
“Can she write?”
“Well, of course she can write,” the intern said.
“Good.”
“Though not at the moment, of course.” His voice gained a note of sarcasm. “As you can see, the fingers of the poor girl's left hand have been well broken. Her right arm is taped to that board, and she's got an I.V. needle stuck in there.”
“But the fingers of her right hand are free,” Kirk-wood said.
“Yes, but we don't want to pull the needle loose,” the intern said obstinately.
“Give me your clipboard.”
Heather's one good eye darted quickly from one to the other, hating both of them.
“I think you're exciting her too much,” the intern said. “This is all highly irregular to begin with and—”
Kirkwood snatched the clipboard out of his hand, ignoring his protests. There was a pen attached to the clipboard. He put the board at Heather's side and closed her fingers around the pen.
She dropped it.
“She's been feeding intravenously for two hours now,” the intern said. “She hasn't been able to move that arm, and of course her fingers are numb.”
Kirkwood leaned close to the girl and said, “Miss Nichols, you must listen to me. I've got a photograph in this envelope. It might be of the man who did this to you. I need to find out for sure. If it is him, we'll be able to get other evidence, and we'll put him behind bars.”
She continued to glare at him.
“Do you understand me?”
She said nothing.
He put the pen in her hand.
This time she held on to it.
He fumbled with the manila envelope for a moment, extracted the eight-by-ten glossy of Andrew Rice. He held it up in front of her; his hand was shaking.
She stared at it.
“Is this the man?”
She just kept staring.
“Miss Nichols?”
The intern said, “I must object. This is all too much for her. She's isn't up to—”
“Heather,” Kirkwood said forcefully, “is this the man who beat up on you?”
Her hand moved. The pen skipped uselessly across the sheet of paper. Then she got control of it, scribbled for a moment, and at last wrote one word:
yes
THE WHITE HOUSE: FRIDAY, 11:05 P.M.
McAlister and the President were sitting at opposite ends of a crushed-velvet couch in a small office off the chief executive's bedroom. The only light came from the desk lamp and one small table lamp; the room was heavy with shadows.
The President was wearing pajamas and a dressing gown. He was cracking his knuckles, one at a time, being very methodical about it. He smiled every time one of them popped with especially good volume. “Bob, if what you tell me is even half true—”
The telephone which stood in the middle of the glass-and-chrome coffee table rang twice.
“It'll be your man,” the President said.
McAlister picked up the receiver.
The White House operator said, “Mr. President?”
“Bob McAlister.”
“I have a call for you, Mr. McAlister. It's a Mr. Bernard Kirkwood.”
“Put him through, please.”
Bernie said, “Are you there?”
“Did you see her?” McAlister asked.
“Yes. She says it was Rice.”
“She's positive?”
“Absolutely. Now what?”
“You want to go home to bed — or do you want to be in on the end of it?” McAlister asked.
“Who could sleep tonight?”
“Then get over here to the White House. I'll leave word at the gate that you're to be let through.”
“I'll be there in ten minutes.”
McAlister hung up and turned to the President, who had thrust his left hand under his pajama shirt and was scratching his right armpit. “That was Kirk-wood, sir. The girl has positively identified Rice as the man who assaulted her.”
The President took his left hand out of his pajamas. Then he thrust his right hand into them and furiously scratched his left armpit. His handsome face was bloodless. “Well. Well, well!” He stopped scratching his armpit and stood up. “Then I guess we have no choice but to proceed according to the plan you outlined a few minutes ago.”
“I see no alternative, sir.”
“What a sewer.”
“Yes, sir.”
“They've brought us down to their level.”
McAlister said nothing.
The President scratched his nose, then the back of his neck. “Where do you want Rice? Here?”
“The Pentagon would be better,” McAlister said. “It's nice and quiet at this hour. There's a security-cleared doctor already on duty there, so we won't have to rout some other poor bastard out of bed.”
“The Pentagon it is,” the President said, one hand poised before him as if he were trying to think of one more place to scratch.
McAlister glanced at the wall clock: 11:15. “As soon as I leave, would you call Pentagon Security and tell them that I'm to have their full cooperation?”
“Certainly, Bob.”
“Then wait half an hour before you call Rice. That'll give me time to reach the Pentagon and get ready for him. Tell him to come to the Mall Entrance and that he'll be met there.”
“No problem.”
Bending over, McAlister began to gather up the copies of Prescott Hennings' magazines, which were strewn over the coffee table.
“Could you let those here?” the President asked. “I'm not going to be able to sleep tonight. I might as well find out what Andy Rice is really like.”
“I'd like to have one issue to throw at him for psychological effect,” McAlister said. “I'll leave the rest.”
They went out of the office and across the President's private bedroom.
At the door, the chief executive stopped and turned to McAlister. “Bob, it appears you're right about Rice beating up that girl. And it looks like he's behind this Dragonfly business. I hate to admit I've been made a fool of, but I've got to face facts. But one thing…”
“Yes, sir?”
“It seems to me that the rest of your theory is a bit too far-fetched. How could these Committeemen seize the government?”
“Assassination,” McAlister said without hesitation.
“But the Vice-President isn't a Committeeman, surely.”
“Then they'll assassinate him, too,” McAlister said.
The President raised his eyebrows.
“They'll assassinate however many they have to— until they get to that man in the line of succession who is one of theirs.”
The President shook his head no, vigorously. “It's too much killing, Bob. They could never get away with all of it. It's too bizarre.”
“I don't know whether it's population pressures, future shock, the en
d product of a permissive society, or what,” McAlister said morosely. “But there are pressures working within this country, pressures that are producing madmen of a sort we've never known before. I think they're capable of anything, no matter how bizarre it seems.”
“No,” the President said. “I can't go along with that.”
McAlister sighed and shrugged. “You're probably right, sir,” he said, although he didn't think the President was right at all.
“You're right about Rice and Dragonfly, but you're altogether wrong about the rest of it.” He opened the bedroom door, escorted McAlister into the hall, and turned him over to the Secret Service agent who was on duty there. “Get back to me the minute he cracks, Bob.”
McAlister nodded, turned, and followed the Secret Service man down the long hall toward the elevator.
PEKING: SATURDAY, 4:00 P.M.
The first CIA deep-cover agent was a sixty-eight-year-old man named Yuan Yat-sen. He had been thirty-nine years old when Mao Tse-tung's soldiers had driven Chiang Kai-shek and his corrupt army from China's mainland, back in 1949. An advocate of Chiang's policies, a successful landlord and prosperous banker, Yuan had lost everything in the revolution. Perhaps he could have rebuilt his fortune on Taiwan. But money was not all that he lost. A band of Maoist guerillas had slain Yuan's wife and three children. His business was half his life — and his family was the other half. Although he fled to Taiwan, he could not manage to pick up the broken pieces of his life and start anew. He loathed Maoists, dreamed of slaughtering them by the tens of thousands; and a thirst for revenge was all that kept him going. He had been perfect for the CIA. In 1950, while he was growing ever more bitter in Taipei, he was approached by agency operatives and signed up for deep-cover work. Near the end of that year he was dropped back onto the mainland, where he assumed a new name and a past that was not linked to Chiang Kai-shek. In the confusion that followed the war, he was able to pass without much trouble. Indeed, he had gradually gained recognition as an educator and a revolutionary theorist. Today he was the third man in the prestigious Bureau of Education Planning.
They had found him in a park near his office, taking an afternoon break with an associate. He had surrendered without resistance.
They were all back in the embassy drawing room. Ambassador Webster sat in an easy chair, smoking one of his long Cuban cigars and watching the proceedings with interest. General Lin paced impatiently and kept looking at his watch. Lee Ann was sitting on a cushioned cane chair in the center of the room, and Yuan Yat-sen was facing her from another chair only three feet away. Electrodes were pasted to Yuan's temples; a sphygmomanometer was wrapped tightly around his right arm, controlled by an automatic device that was part of the computer; brightly colored wires trailed back to the sophisticated polygraph which Canning had taken from its steel security case.
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