Jeffrey Archer

by Shall We Tell The President (lit)

  Pennsylvania Avenue - he dodged in and out of the traffic amid screeching tyres and angry expletives. He reached the parking lot and jumped into his car, fumbling for some change. Why did they make trousers that you couldn't get your hands into when you sat down? He quickly paid for his ticket and drove towards Georgetown - and Elizabeth. He glanced in the rear-view mirror. No Ford sedan in sight. He'd done it. He was on his own. He smiled. For once he had beaten the Director. He drove past the lights at the corner of Pennsylvania and 14th just as they were changing. He began to relax.

  A black Buick ran the lights. Lucky there were no traffic cops around.

  When Mark arrived in Georgetown, his nervousness returned, a new nervousness associated with Elizabeth and her world, not with the Director and his world. When he pressed the bell on her front door, he could still hear his heart beating.

  Elizabeth appeared. She looked drawn and tired and didn't speak. He followed her into the living room.

  'Have you recovered from your accident?'

  'Yes, thank you. How did you know I'd had an accident?' she asked.

  Mark thought quickly. 'Called the hospital. They told me there.'

  'You're lying, Mark. I didn't tell them at the hospital, and I left early after a phone call from my father.'

  Mark couldn't look her in the eyes. He sat down and stared at the rug. 'I ... I don't want to lie to you, Elizabeth. Please don't.'

  'Why are you following my father?' she demanded. 'He thought you looked familiar when he met you at the Mayflower. You've been haunting his committee meetings and you've been watching the debates in the Senate.'

  Mark didn't answer.

  'Okay, don't explain. I'm not completely blind. I'll draw my own conclusions. I'm part of an FBI assignment. My, you've been working late hours, haven't you, Agent Andrews? For a man singled out to work a senator's daughter's beat, you're pretty goddamn inept. Just how many daughters have you seduced this week? Did you get any good dirt? Why don't you try the wives next? Your boyish charm might be more effective on them. Although, I must confess, you had me fooled, you lying bastard.'

  Despite a considerable effort to maintain the icy control with which she had launched her attack, Elizabeth bit her lip. Her voice caught. Mark still couldn't look at her. He heard the anger and the tears in her voice. In a moment, the chilling frost had covered her emotion again.

  'Please leave now, Mark. Now. I've said my piece and I hope I never lay eyes on you again. Perhaps then I can recover some of my self-respect. Just go; crawl back into the slime.'

  'You've misunderstood, Elizabeth.'

  'I know, you poor misunderstood agent, and you love me for myself. There's no other girl in your life,' she said bitterly. 'At least not until you're transferred to a new case. Well, this case has just finished. Go find somebody else's daughter to seduce with your lies about love.'

  He couldn't blame her for her reaction, and left.

  He drove home in a daze. The occupants of the car following him were fully alert. When he arrived, Mark left the car keys with Simon and took the elevator to his apartment.

  The black Buick was parked a hundred yards from the building. The two men could see the light in Mark's apartment. He dialled six of the seven digits of her number, but then he put the phone back on the hook and turned off the light. One of the men in the Buick lit another cigarette, inhaled, and checked his watch.

  After months of bargaining, bullying, cajoling and threatening the Gun Control bill was at last to be presented to the House for their final approval.

  This was to be the day when Florentyna made an indelible mark on American history. If she achieved nothing else during her term of office she would live to be proud of this single act.

  What could prevent it now? she asked for the thousandth time. And for the thousandth time the same dreadful thought flashed across her mind.

  She dismissed it once again.

  Thursday morning, 10 March

  5:00 am

  The Director woke suddenly. He lay there, frustrated; there was nothing he could do at this hour except look at the ceiling and think, and that didn't help much. He went over and over in his mind the events of the past six days, always leaving until last the thought of cancelling the whole operation, which would probably mean even now that the Senator and his cohorts would get away scot-free. Perhaps they already knew and had disappeared to lick their wounds and prepare for another day. Either way it would remain his problem.

  The Senator woke at 5:35 in a cold sweat - not that he had really slept for more than a few minutes at any one time. It had been an evil night, thunder and lightning and sirens. It was the sirens that had made him sweat. He was even more nervous than he had expected to be; in fact just after he heard three chime

  he had nearly dialled the Chairman to say that he couldn't go through with it, despite the consequences that the Chairman had so delicately, but so frequently, adumbrated. But the vision of President Kane dead beside him reminded the Senator that everybody even now could remember exacdy where they were when John F. Kennedy was assassinated, and he himself was never going to be able to forget where he was when Florentyna Kane died. Even that seemed less appalling than the thought of his own name in the headlines, his public image irreparably damaged, and his career ruined. Even so, he nearly called the Chairman, as much for reassurance as anything, despite their agreement that they had contacted each other for the last time until late the following morning, when the Chairman would be in Miami.

  Five men had already died and that had caused only a ripple: President Kane's death would reverberate around the world.

  The Senator stared out of the window for some time, focusing on nothing, then turned away. He kept looking at his watch, wishing he could stop time. The second hand moved relentlessly - relentlessly towards 10:56. He busied himself with breakfast and the morning paper. The Post informed him that many buildings had caught fire during the night in one of the worst storms in Washington's history, and the Lubber Run in Virginia had overflowed its banks, causing heavy property damage. There was little mention of President Kane. He wished he could read tomorrow's papers today.

  The first call the Director received was from Elliott, who informed him that the recent activities of Senators Dexter and Harrison revealed nothing new about the situation - not that the anonymous man knew exactly what the situation was. The Director grumbled to himself, finished his egg - sunny-side up - and read the Posts description of the demonic weather that had assailed Washington during the night. He glanced out of the window at the day, now clear and dry. A perfect day for an assassination, he thought. The bright day that brings forth the adder. How late could he leave it before letting everyone know everything? The President was scheduled to leave the White House at 10:00 am. The Director would have to brief the head of the Secret Service, H. Stuart Knight, long before then and, if necessary, the President at least one hour before that. To hell with it, he would leave it to the last minute and make a full explanation afterwards. He was willing to risk his career to catch this pernicious Senator red-handed. But risking the President's life ...

  He drove to the Bureau soon after 6:00. He wanted to be there a full two hours before Andrews to study all the reports he had ordered the evening before. Not many of his senior aides would have had much sleep last night, though they were probably still wondering why. They would know soon enough. His deputy Associate Director for Investigation, his Assistant Director for Planning and Evaluation, and the head of the Criminal Section of that division would help him decide if he should go ahead or cancel. His Ford sedan slid down the ramp to the underground parking lot and his reserved parking place.

  Elliott was there to meet him at the elevator – he was always there, never late. He's not human, he'll have to go, thought the Director, if I don't have to go first. He suddenly realised that he could be handing his resignation in to the President that night. Which President? He put it out of his mind - that would all take care of itself in its
own time, he must now take care of the next five hours.

  Elliott had nothing useful to say. Dexter and Harrison had both received and made phone calls during the night and early morning, but nothing incriminating had been picked up. No other information was forthcoming. The Director asked where the two senators were at that moment.

  'Both eating breakfast at their homes. Dexter in Kensington, Harrison in Alexandria. Six agents have been watching them since five o'clock this morning and have been detailed to follow them all day.'

  'Good. Report back to me immediately if anything unusual happens.'

  'Of course, sir.'

  The fingerprint man was next. When he arrived, the Director first apologised for keeping him up all night, though the man's face and eyes looked more alight and alive than his own had been in the shaving mirror that morning.

  Five feet four, inches tall, slight and rather pale, Daniel Sommerton began his report. He was like a child with a toy. For him, working with prints had always been a passion as well as a job. The Director remained seated while Sommerton stood. If the Director had stood, he would not have been head and shoulders above himf but head, shoulders, and chest above him.

  'We have found seventeen different fingers, and three different thumbs, Director,' he said gleefully, 'We're putting them through the Ninhydrin rather than the iodine-fume process, since we were unable to do them one at a time for technical reasons that won't bother you with.'

  He waved his arm imperiously to imply that he would not waste a scientific explanation on the Director, who would have been the first to acknowledge such a pointless exercise.

  'We think there are two more prints we might identify,' Sommerton continued, 'and we will have a read-out for you on all twenty-two of them within two, at the most three hours.'

  The Director glanced at his watch - already 6:45.

  'Well done. That won't be a minute too soon. Get me the results — even if they are negative — as quickly as possible, and please thank all of your staff for working through the night.'

  The fingerprint expert left the Director, anxious to return to his seventeen fingers, three thumbs and two unidentified marks. The Director pressed a button and asked Mrs McGregor to send in the Assistant Director for Planning and Evaluation.

  Two minutes later, Walter Williams was standing in front of him.

  Five feet eleven, fair with a thin pallid face, dominated by a magnificent high-domed forehead, lined with amusement not grief, Williams was known in the Bureau either as the Brain or W.W. His primary responsibility was to head the Bureau's think tank of six lesser but still impressive brains. The Director often confronted him with hypothetical situations to which W.W. would later provide an answer which often proved, in retrospect, to be the right one. The Director placed great faith in his judgement, but he could not take any risks today. W.W. had better come up with a convincing answer to his hypothetical question of last night or his next call would be to the President.

  'Good morning, Director.'

  'Good morning, W.W. What is your decision concerning my little problem?'

  'Most interesting, Director ... I feel, to be fair, the answer is simple, even when we look at the problem from every angle.'

  For the first time that morning a trace of a smile appeared on the Director's face.

  'Assuming I haven't misunderstood you, Director.'

  The Director's smile broadened slightly; W.W. neither missed nor misunderstood anything, and was so formal that he didn't address the Director even in private as Halt. W.W. continued, his eyebrows moving up and down like the Dow-Jones index in an election year.

  'You asked me to assume that the President would be leaving the White House at X hundred hours and then travelling by car to the Capitol. That would take her six minutes. I'm assuming her car is bullet-proof and well covered by the Secret Service. Under these conditions would it be possible to assassinate her? The answer is, it's possible but almost impossible, Director. Nevertheless, following the hypothesis through to its logical conclusion, the assassination team could use three methods: (a) explosives; (b) a handgun at close range; (c) a rifle.'

  W.W, always sounded like a textbook. 'The bomb can be thrown at any point on the route, but it is never used by professionals, because professionals are paid for results, not attempts. If you study bombs as a method of removing a President, you will find there hasn't been a successful one yet, despite the fact that we have had four Presidents assassinated in office. Bombs inevitably end up killing innocent people and quite often the perpetrator of the crime as well. For that reason, since you have implied that the people involved would be professionals, I feel they must rely on the handgun or the rifle. Now the short-range gun, Director, is not a possible weapon on the route itself because it is unlikely that a pro would approach the President and shoot him at close range, thereby risking his own life. It would take an elephant gun or an anti-tank gun to pierce the President's limousine, and you can't carry those around in the middle of Washington without a permit.'

  With W.W., the Director could never be sure if it were meant to be a joke or just another fact. The eyebrows were still moving up and down, a sure signal not to interrupt him with foolish questions.

  'When the President arrives at the steps of the Capitol, the crowd is too far away from her for a handgun to (a) be accurate and (b) give the assassin any hope of escape. So we must assume that it's the best-tested and most successful method of assassination of a Head of State - the rifle with telescopic sights for long range. Therefore, the only hope the assassin would have must be at the Capitol itself. The assassin can't see into the White House, and in any case the glass in the windows is four inches thick, so he must wait until the President actually leaves the limousine at the steps of the Capitol. This morning we timed a walk up the Capitol steps and it takes around fifty seconds. There are very few vantage points from which to make an assassination attempt, but we have studied the area carefully and you will find them all listed in my report. Also the conspirators must be convinced that we know nothing about the plot, because they know we can cover every possible shooting site. We think an assassination here in the heart of Washington unlikely, but nevertheless just possible by a man or team daring and skilful enough.'

  'Thank you, W.W. I'm sure you're right.'

  'A pleasure, sir. I do hope it's only hypothetical.'

  'Yes, W.W.'

  W.W. smiled like the only schoolboy in the class who can answer the teacher's questions. The Brain left the room to return to other problems. The Director paused and called for his other Assistant Director.

  Matthew Rogers knocked and entered the room, waiting to be asked to take a seat. He understood authority. Like W.W. he would never become the Director, but no one who did would want to be without him.

  'Well, Matt?' said the Director, pointing to the leather chair.

  'I read Andrews' latest report last night, Director, and I really think the time has come for us to brief the Secret Service.'

  'I will be doing so in about an hour,' said the Director. 'Don't worry. Have you decided how you'll deploy your men?'

  'It depends where the maximum risk is, sir.'

  'All right, Matt, let's assume that the point of maximum risk is the Capitol itself, at 10:06, right on the steps - what then?'

  'First, I would surround the area for about a quarter of a mile in every direction. I'd close down the Metro, stop all traffic, public and private, pull aside for interrogation anyone who has a past record of making threats, anyone who's on the Security Index. I'd get assistance from the Met to provide perimeter security. We'd want as many eyes and ears in the area as possible. We could get two to four helicopters from Andrews Air Force Base for close scanning. In the immediate vicinity of the President, I'd use the full Secret Service Presidential detail in tight security.'

  'Very good, Matt. How many men do you need for such an operation, and how long would it take them to be ready if I declared an emergency procedure now?'


  The Assistant Director looked at his watch – just after 7:00. He considered the matter for a moment. 'I need three hundred special agents briefed and fully operational in two hours.'

  'Right, go ahead,' said the Director crisply.

  'Report to me as soon as they're ready but leave the final briefing to the last possible moment, and, Matt, I want no heliopters until 10:01. I don't want there to be a chance of a leak of any sort; it's our one hope of catching the assassin.'

  'Why don't you simply cancel the President's visit, sir? We're in enough deep water as it is, and it's not entirely your responsibility in the first place.'