The walk to the Capitol took just under five minutes at the regulation 120 steps per minute. Such a pace was impossible in the slippery footing, but after about four minutes, a long time by television standards, the ivory dome of the Capitol became faintly visible in the pointillist mist of snowflakes that surrounded it. Though only Mallory and his party knew this, the Capitol itself was not their immediate destination, and to the surprise of the TV crews, they went into the Hart Senate Office Building. For security reasons, the plan called for them to take the senatorial underground train to the Capitol, then emerge onto the central steps leading down to the plaza. As Mallory stood before the microphones at the bottom of the steps, this would place the columns of the east face, the rotunda, and the huge flag that flew over the building, directly behind him.
A pair of youthful staffers waiting for Mallory and Grant by an open elevator in the lobby of the Hart building briefed them on the weather as the car descended into the subbasement. “The networks are complaining about standing outside in the snow,” the female said. “It’s bad for their equipment—they have to keep wiping off the lenses—and they’re all afraid of catching cold.”
“They suspect we’re doing it just to make them suffer,” the male added. “We confirmed their suspicions, playing straight with the media.”
Mallory said, “Recommendation?”
“We can hold the news conference in the Old Supreme Court Chamber,” the female said. “That’s all cleared with the powers that be. Lockwood is upstairs with the congressional leadership in Sam Clark’s office, waiting to watch you on the tube. There’s no chance of running into him.”
“That chamber is like a crypt,” Mallory said. “Voices echo. I don’t like the symbolism. Is Lockwood moving his show in out of the snow?”
“Apparently not, Mr. President. The word is that he’s determined to hold the ceremony outside. The Secret Service is very upset. They’ll be playing blindman’s buff in a blizzard with the Eye of Gaza. That’s a factor to consider.”
“We’ll stick to the plan,” Mallory said. “I’ve never done anything to offend the Eye of Gaza.” He smiled at his young people. “We don’t want the pundits to say we were driven indoors while the old rail-splitter braved the blizzard.”
As he spoke, the elevator doors opened onto a phalanx of photographers. He had voiced the word “pundits” with a wry twist that made his staff smile, and it was a grinning bunch of lithe, neatly dressed, supremely confident people that the cameras captured. Mallory’s sense of the ridiculous amused Susan deeply. It was the first thing she had liked about him, and despite the cameras she turned to him now and gave him a look of strong sensual affection.
Time was short, and they went outside again immediately. At the stroke of eleven-thirty, Mallory took his place behind the massed microphones, which were being protected from the weather by a network employee holding another golf umbrella. Because Mallory was so punctual, the camera lights went on just before he spoke his first word, and despite the deadening effect of the snow, he heard the faint snicker of several dozen tape recorders being switched on as the reporter’s digital watches all displayed the half hour at more or less the same instant.
Speaking as always without visible text or notes, Mallory said, “What I have to say to the American people this morning will not take long. It is my belief, based on detailed and unquestionably authentic evidence that has already been made available to President Lockwood, that the last presidential election was corrupted by fraud, rendering the officially certified result null and void. Through the use of highly advanced computers owned by the United States government, a small group of criminal conspirators falsified the election returns in California, New York, and Michigan, crediting Mr. Lockwood with several thousand votes that were not, in fact, cast in his favor. The total number of votes thus counterfeited was sufficient to change the outcome of the election by giving my opponent a tiny plurality of the popular vote in the states in question, and hence their electoral votes. This means, very simply, that my opponent was not elected President of the United States. I was.
“Last night I informed President Lockwood in person of these facts and presented him with the full file of evidence available to me. I invited him to step aside as President in a constitutional manner while this matter is investigated by the means laid down by the law of the land. He has not responded to this suggestion, or offered any other way out of the dilemma in which this atrocious fraud has placed him and the American people. But the principle involved is simple. If he was not elected by the people, he cannot be President.
“A few minutes from now, Mr. Lockwood is scheduled to take the oath of office. If he goes ahead and does so, under what I am prepared to prove beyond a reasonable doubt are false pretenses, then I will defend the American people and the Constitution of the United States by taking every legal action open to me to evict him from the office he has usurped, to make certain that the truth of this matter is pursued and the underlying motive for this atrocious crime is established, and to ensure that justice is done in regard to all concerned. That is all I have to say. I will take questions for ten minutes exactly.”
Most of the reporters gathered below him on the steps had just come from the meeting with Lockwood, and they were still under the influence of the emotion it had generated. Julian had been right to crowd them into a small space; the experience had heightened their normal instinct to run as a pack. It seemed to Mallory that they were breathing in unison, as if they had merged into a single being. He had noticed this phenomenon on other occasions when he had made these people angry. This time he had gone further than ever before, not only by placing in question the legitimacy of an election they had all—or nearly all—hoped Lockwood would win but, what was worse, by revealing a secret they had not even dreamed existed. Like the rest of the Washington Establishment, they lived by the illusion that they were insiders, choosing their friends, their clothes, their manners, their vocabularies, even their children’s schools, to sustain the impression that they knew things that ordinary mortals could never know. Now Mallory was adducing evidence that there was an inside of whose existence they had never been told by the people they trusted most. The psychological effect of this revelation, with its undertone of betrayal, threatened everything they believed themselves to be.
The first question came from Patrick Graham. His famous voice shook with emotion. “Are you suggesting that President Lockwood was personally involved in the theft of the presidential election?”
“No,” Mallory said.
“Let me follow up. Do you think Frosty Lockwood is capable of such a thing?”
“In my opinion, no,” Mallory said. “That’s why I suggested to him that he step aside while the issue is being investigated, in order to avoid contamination.”
Another reporter, also visibly shaken, demanded, “Then who’s supposed to have done this terrible deed?”
“Supposition has nothing to do with it, Mr. Rodaghast. This is an open-and-shut case. You have all been provided with the facts as they are known up to the moment, including the names of conspirators that have so far come to light.”
“You mean the alleged conspirators?”
“No. I mean what I said—conspirators, pure and simple. The evidence is unequivocal.”
A wrenlike woman shouted the next question in a surprisingly powerful contralto. “Are you telling the American people everything you know about this?”
“It has always been my policy to confide fully in the people,” Mallory said. “I think it’s an excellent policy, and I recommend it to everyone who speaks or writes to the people. As time goes on, we may know more. Believe me, Philomena, if new facts come to light, I won’t be the one to cover them up.”
“Do you expect that your majority on the Supreme Court will be a help to you in this matter?”
“If by that peculiar choice of words, Miles, you mean the five justices I appointed owing to the tragic circumstances of a few years ago,
I would say to you that your question is a cynical insult to them and to the highest court in the land. One of those distinguished jurists, Chief Justice Goodrich, was laid to rest only yesterday.”
The weather was now so bad that Mallory could barely see his questioners, and except for those with trained voices, like Graham and the little contralto, he had difficulty hearing what they said. However, their collective attitude was unmistakable. They did not want to believe what he was saying to them.
Elbowing aside a gesticulating reporter from his own network, Patrick Graham asked the last question. “Supposing you’re right, and these conspirators, as you call them, did steal enough votes in California, New York, and Michigan to give Lockwood the election. How do you know they stole those votes from you? Why couldn’t they have been stolen from Nguyen Van Dinh, who finished third in California, or from the Vegetarian candidate, or a few at a time from half a dozen other candidates on the ballot?”
“That’s an ingenious question, Patrick, and I’m sure the President’s lawyers will take note of it,” Mallory said. “But it will get them nowhere. The fact of the matter, fundamental and inescapable, is that the election was stolen. Therefore Lockwood cannot assume the presidency for a second term without violating the first principle of American democracy—that the people, and only the people, are empowered to choose the President. And if he attempts to continue in office, I will fight him to the last breath in my body. The American voters gave me the presidency. I must claim it or betray them—and that, sir, I will never do. Thank you.”
Graham shouted another pugnacious question. Mallory ignored him. Stepping away from the microphones, he walked toward Grant, who had been standing behind him and off to the left, out of the frame. Now the cameras captured the look of loving admiration and approval she gave to him.
Then, as millions afterward saw over and over again in slow motion, she spotted something beyond Mallory. The sight horrified her. Her expression changed instantaneously from wifely affection to one of such ferocious female protectiveness that she looked more than ever like some impossibly smart and beautiful great cat. And like a cat, she sprang with amazing quickness past Mallory, placing her body between his figure and that of a gunman who suddenly materialized out of the storm. This person wore a white hooded caftan, his face covered by a gas mask, and as he rose up out of the snow where he had been lying, he fired a pistol with almost unbelievable rapidity.
The first two shots shattered Grant’s skull, killing her instantly. Four more high-velocity 9mm Parabellum rounds passed through her dead but still upright body and struck Mallory’s torso with enough force to make him stagger, but because he was wearing a bulletproof liner under his overcoat, he was not wounded.
Even as he looked down at the spreading circle of scarlet that seeped from Grant’s body, Mallory could not believe that she was dead, or even injured.
10
Susan Grant’s assassin was not captured or, as more often happens in such cases, killed on the spot. There were a number of reasons for this, the most important being the gunman’s evasive actions and the effectiveness of his disguise. His face was completely hidden by the gas mask. He dropped two grenades onto the snow before he began shooting. The first to explode released an improved type of CS gas that induced violent nausea and excruciating abdominal pain on inhalation. This prostrated Mallory, his security men, and such police as were present, as well as the journalists attending the news conference. The second was a common smoke grenade that discharged a cloud of dense vapor into which the killer vanished theatrically in his white ethnic costume.
Because of the pointed hood, some eyewitnesses, including a few highly trained observers of the Washington press corps, mistook the assassin’s caftan for the regalia of the Ku Klux Klan. However, the garment, commonly worn in North African countries, was found abandoned in the snow a few yards away, along with the killer’s gas mask and a semiautomatic pistol manufactured in Vietnam under Austrian license. The weapon and the fourteen cartridges remaining in its extracapacity twenty-round clip were made entirely of nonmetallic materials. The olive-drab gas mask and gas canisters, also made of plastic, were obsolete U.S. military issue with all identifying numbers removed. Such hardware was readily available on the open market.
By the time Macalaster had regained consciousness and extricated himself from the paramedics and the Capitol police who had been summoned by the guards at the Library of Congress, his information about the assassin was of little use to the authorities. He had not made eye contact with the man; this was something most men avoided in public toilets. He did not remember the man’s face—only his coat, the badge he had presumably robbed from Monty Love, and his luxuriant Oriental hair. That fact that Macalaster thought his scalp was blue suggested that the suspect might have been wearing a wig. Macalaster also thought he was well under six feet tall and slender. He looked much taller and huskier on videotape—an effect, Macalaster suggested, of his hooded caftan, which he was probably wearing on top of his blue overcoat with the astrakhan collar.
Macalaster was surprised to learn that the local police, not the FBI, were investigating the assassination. He said so to the homicide detective in charge.
“The Metropolitan Police have jurisdiction over all homicides committed in the District of Columbia,” the detective said.
“Even in cases like this?”
“You mean even when white people get offed? Yeah. Amazing, eh? What have you got to tell me?”
The detective listened deadpan to Macalaster’s theory. It was obvious that he did not believe that the man Macalaster had seen was the assassin. “It would have been impossible for him to get through Mallory’s security with a gun, a gas mask, and two grenades concealed on his person,” he explained.
“Why? They were all made of plastic, which doesn’t show up on X rays.”
“Trust us. It couldn’t be done.”
“Then how did the weapons get to the scene of the crime?”
“Maybe they were buried on the Capitol grounds a long time before and dug up. Or stashed in some other way. We’re looking at a lot of territory with many potential hiding places—trees, flower beds, fountains, statues, underground plumbing and wiring. We’ll find the answer to that question.”
“Will you just consider the possibility that what I’m telling you has significance?”
“You bet. But so does the fact that Mr. Love was robbed of his solid gold presidential Rolex watch that he got for Christmas, his expensive Mont Blanc pen and pencil, and his wallet, containing two hundred forty-six dollars and plastic. Terrorists don’t usually waste their time on stuff like that.”
“All that could have happened afterward. Someone could have come in after I left, seen him lying there, and robbed him.”
The detective nodded solemnly, holding Macalaster’s eyes with a steady gaze of his own opaque brown ones. “True,” he said. “The world is full of opportunists. Do you happen to remember if Love usually wore a fifteen-thousand-dollar gold Rolex?”
“No.”
In an involuntary reaction that interested the detective, Macalaster smiled faintly as he answered because he thought that the watch was probably a fake made in Russia, and that Monty Love, an incurable player of angles, was hoping to collect from his insurance company for the loss of a genuine Rolex.
Love, who had suffered a depressed fracture of the skull and lower-back injuries whose exact nature had not yet been identified, never saw his assailant’s face. Out of long habit, he told the police, he had been sitting there going over his notes. He remembered nothing but being yanked off the seat with incredible force, and the subsequent explosion of white light and pain in his head.
The police hypothesis was that the killer had buried himself in one of the snowbanks created when the Capitol steps were shoveled. He had done this, they speculated, before the news conference began, under cover of the falling snow, and had burst forth, steady as an automaton, after lying doggo for more than an hour
under a heap of slush. If this was so, Macalaster thought, he was one cold-resistant fanatic.
According to the time display on the networks’ videotape of the crime, the assassin had fired his first shot at precisely 11:48:54 A.M. Macalaster asked the detective a question: “If he attacked Monty Love between eleven and eleven-five in the Library of Congress, how could he have walked across First Street, gone through security, made his way across the plaza to the foot of the Capitol steps, and then burrowed into this snowbank while dozens of TV people were stringing cables and setting up their equipment twenty feet away?”
“Good question, assuming your suspect is the shooter,” said the detective. “The only part we can answer is the last part. The snowbank was eight point six meters from the camera stand. Visibility was about five meters.”
“Didn’t any of the security people check the snowbanks?”
“No assassin has ever concealed himself in one before, so it wouldn’t be part of the routine.”
“How did the assassin know that?”
“Maybe he just took a chance … ” The detective paused. “Look, this procedure will take up less of your time if you let us ask the questions.”
Macalaster knew that he would get nowhere by arguing. As often happens in Washington, and, he reflected, probably also happened in Ur of the Chaldeans, no one wanted to hear arguments that challenged the collective wisdom of the day.
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