“Well, I want to know who’s swimming in Brookes’s many ponds these days,” Copley said. “You think there’s nothing because he has honest eyes—though, frankly, they give me the creeps. This may be another one of your famous hunches that turns out to be absolutely correct. Walter Kreski’s intuitive genius. But I have to keep after Brookes. I can’t think of anything else to do. And I don’t want to be hauled before a congressional green table, either, to tell them I’m at a dead end.”
Kreski was silent for a long time. “Steven, I think we’ve both been pursuing a dead end from the beginning,” he said finally. “We’ve been looking for the president’s assailants, just like homicide cops. We should have been looking for whoever it is that’s been planting all this false evidence—La Puño flags, Brookes’s book and magazines, the funny money, all of that.”
“What do you mean?”
“We should be trying to find out how they’ve been doing it. How that ridiculous scrap of a La Puño flag got onto that museum roof.”
“Maybe Manuel Huerta put it there himself. He may have been planting things on orders, to throw us off his compatriots. If you really believe everything we’ve collected is a plant.”
“As Brookes pointed out, we haven’t even determined if Huerta spoke English. That’s why I’m interviewing Perkins, Steve. And those other agents. I’m afraid the possibility exists that someone in my agency is involved in this—if not the assassination attempt, at least the laying of these false trails. I’m not talking to Perkins idly—because I’ve nothing else to do.”
“You have something specific?”
“Let’s just call it one of my famous hunches.”
“God help us if you’re right.”
“God help us, period.”
Kreski found Hammond waiting outside his office, but not Agent Perkins.
“The Congress is really raising hell, director,” Hammond said. “We’ve had calls from five committee chairmen plus a visit by the sergeant at arms. He had another subpoena.”
“Never mind that. Where’s Perkins?”
“On detail. Special orders.”
Kreski picked up his office radio’s microphone. “I’m going to have him pulled. I wish I could have Atherton pulled. I’m beginning to think he’s lost his mind. Cruises on the Potomac. Banquet speeches. And he picks the hotel where President Reagan was shot.”
“I suppose he’s thinking of appearances. A show of normality. The government is in the safe hands of a cool, calm, competent ‘acting president.’ This is billed as a major policy address. He’s going to talk about Central America. An opportunity to show his stuff.”
“And another opportunity for some shooter’s symbolic act.” Kreski swore, then clicked on the microphone. But he hesitated. After a moment he relaxed his thumb. “Perkins would be with Mrs. Atherton, at the VIP reception?”
“Yes, Director. SOP.”
“I don’t want to startle anybody.” He replaced the microphone on its hook. “We’ll go up there ourselves. Get us a car.”
“And driver?”
“Negative. Just us.”
The hotel should have been just a few minutes away, up 18th Street and Connecticut Avenue, but there were delays. The evening traffic was heavy, and a three-car rear-ender accident at the intersection with Connecticut compounded the congestion. Backing out of the vehicular confusion, Kreski tried making a detour down a narrow side street, but encountered a double-parked truck.
“My biggest failure when I leave this job,” he said, “will be that I never had traffic enforcement in the District of Columbia placed under the control of our agency.”
“Here comes the driver. Shall I have a few words with him?”
Kreski honked his horn. “That’s few words enough,” he said. “Anything more will just delay us further.”
The driver made an obscene gesture, then climbed laconically into his cab, started the truck, and slowly chugged away, Kreski all but pressing his own car to the truck’s bumper. Hammond again looked at his watch.
“The reception should now be over. They’ll be filing in to the head table shortly. Should I check that?”
“Affirmative. Discreetly.”
Hammond spoke quietly into his microphone. After a brief conversation he replaced it.
“There you are. The vice president should be speaking by the time we arrive.”
“If this bastard in the truck doesn’t get a move on, the vice president will be home in bed by the time we arrive. If something else doesn’t happen to him. I don’t know how we’re going to do it, but we got to impress upon him the importance of increasing his security. The country’s in damn serious trouble. The president’s wounded. If something happens to Atherton, the next in line would be the seventy-seven-year-old speaker, and after him Maitland Dubarry, God help us. As of January.”
“Speaking of security problems, Meathead got himself rolled by a prostitute in Northeast. He even got cut up a little.”
An opportunity came to get around the truck, and Kreski seized it, slamming down the accelerator and roaring by. The driver made another obscene gesture as they passed.
“Don’t we have a detail on Dubarry?”
“A one-man tail. Dubarry kept him at arm’s length so the guy wouldn’t interfere with his social life. I guess he was able to evade our agent using one of those side doors he has.”
“I want a full unit on him. At all times.”
“Director, we’re spread kind of thin.”
“Spread us thinner, even if you have to start emptying non-Washington field offices. He may be Meathead Dubarry, but he will shortly be fourth in line for the presidency of the United States. I don’t want any more casualties.”
Kreski’s car radio, set to the agency’s main frequency, crackled into life. The voice of Special Agent Leonardi, in charge of vice presidential security, urgently but quietly requested backup teams at the hotel. He gave the code phrase they used for “death threat.”
“Son of a bitch!” said Hammond.
Kreski clicked on the siren and set it at a high-frequency warble, weaving flat out through the traffic in Connecticut Avenue like a fighter plane cutting through an enemy bomber formation. He should have driven like this all the way. Reaching the hotel, he ignored the side entrance where the vice president’s motorcade waited—and where former President Reagan had taken a bullet in 1981. Instead, bouncing his car over the curb, he sped down the curving drive to the main doors leading to the lobby. It would be the quickest route to the ballroom. With other agents hurrying behind, they bounded up the rising escalator, pushing people out of their way in thorough Secret Service fashion. At the doors to the ballroom, they stopped, and walked in as though all was normal.
The guests, glittering in evening gowns and black tie, still sat at the crowded tables, but were talking excitedly. There were only a few empty seats at the long head table that curved along the dais opposite, but they included those where the vice president and his wife would be sitting. Leonardi, one of Kreski’s most trusted veterans, hastened up to him.
“Where’s Atherton?” Kreski said.
“In the kitchen.”
Bobby Kennedy was shot in a hotel kitchen. Kreski started to make his way down across the huge ballroom floor, Leonardi at his side, Hammond just behind. Kreski paused. “Dick. Secure all the doors. No one in or out. No one.”
“Yes, sir.” Hammond turned quickly away.
Kreski, moving on, lowered his head to Leonardi’s. “Explain this. Quick.”
“‘Seashore,’” Leonardi began, using the detail’s code name for Mrs. Atherton, “opened her dinner program and a note fell out, in Spanish. She doesn’t speak Spanish so she handed it to Secretary of State Crosby next to her, who does.”
“And?” said Kreski, pushing aside a waiter.
“It translated as, ‘Now you will die, for our victory.’”
Kreski swore. “Was it signed?”
“Yes. With the words, ‘La Puño.
’”
The director swore again, and quickened his pace. “The ‘you’ in ‘now you will die,’ was it the singular, ‘usted,’ or the plural, ‘ustedes’?”
“It was ‘ustedes.’”
“Okay. We’re going to have to shut this place down. I want everyone in the room interviewed, and all, I repeat, all hotel personnel held in quarantine. Damn, half the waiters here must be Hispanic. Have the secretary of state make the announcement.”
“Director, you better talk to the vice president first. He wants to make his speech. I’ve tried to get him out of here, but he won’t budge.”
Atherton was standing by a stainless-steel serving table, a cordon of Secret Service around him, weapons drawn.
“Walt,” said the vice president, sharply. “Get these thugs of yours away from me! I’ve got to make my speech.”
“Mr. Vice President, with all due respect, what you’ve got to do is get the hell out of here at once. If you won’t leave voluntarily, we’ll carry you out.”
“You do that and I’ll have your job, Walt. You’re in enough trouble as it is.”
“If I have to lose my job in order to perform it, sir, fine. But I’m going to perform it.”
Atherton pushed his way between two of the agents to stand face to face with Kreski. When he spoke his voice was lower, but angrier.
“Will you stop thinking of yourself and your procedures for one minute and think about your damned country?” the vice president said. “We have a military crisis in Central America, Mr. Kreski. We have a political crisis in this country. Ambassadors from most of the world’s nations are out in that audience, Mr. Kreski, including all the Latin American ones. The Soviet ambassador is here. Now do you want to show them, show the world, show the people of America that the vice president of the United States, at the moment the only visible representative of constitutional authority, can be kept from speaking out on the most critical foreign policy issue now facing this nation by any crank who scribbles a note?”
“We don’t know it’s a crank, sir.”
“Who in hell else can it be? You’ve said yourself this La Puño business is a fraud. How many assassins send death threats first?”
Kreski looked down. “Some of the mental cases do. There’s always a risk.”
“There’s risk in everything we do. You have to balance it with the needs of the country. Remember what you said to that congressional committee? The president is safe up at Camp David, but the American people want him down here.” Atherton moved even closer. “If I leave here now, Walter, I know exactly what you’re going to do. You’re going to turn that ballroom out there into a Secret Service version of a 1920s speakeasy raid. Do you realize the international outrage that’s going to cause, the panic it’ll cause here? What it might unleash or provoke in Central America?”
Kreski stared into Atherton’s dark, glittering eyes. “I’m going to do what I have to do.”
“I’m not going to let you. I promise you I’ll leave the instant my speech is done. No curtain calls. No opening jokes. You can station agents at every table if you like. I don’t care if you have a man with an Uzi sitting on my dinner plate. In fact, considering what’s on the menu, I wish you would. But I am going to make that speech. This is America, Walt. Teddy Roosevelt finished his speech.”
“While wounded.”
“I’m wearing my Kevlar vest,” Atherton said, patting his tuxedo front. “You see, a Washington stuffed shirt.”
He gripped Kreski’s shoulder in manly fashion, then propelled himself forward toward the doors to the ballroom. Kreski gave a slight nod and the cordon of agents reformed and hurried to make a protective accompanying wedge around Atherton. Kreski quickly motioned to Leonardi.
“I don’t want any agents sitting on Atherton’s plate, but I want at least half a dozen within reach of it—hands on weapons. And the instant he’s done, get him out. Tell Dick Hammond.”
“Yes, sir.”
Kreski hesitated, then spoke again quickly. “Where’s Mrs. Atherton?”
“Shawcross had her taken upstairs. She was nearly hysterical.”
“How much security do you have up there?”
“None now, sir. As soon as they administered a sedative, I had her sent home. With the vice president’s approval. She was really in bad shape, director. She’s been upset for days.”
“Sent her home how?”
“I broke out one of the limousines and a couple of chase cars.”
“You busted a vice presidential motorcade? You violated procedure like that?”
“Sir, she was a basket case! And I’m taking that death threat seriously.”
“How long ago did they leave?”
“I gave the order just a few minutes before you arrived. They should be out of here now. We held an elevator.”
“Who’d you give the detail to?”
“Agent Perkins.”
Kreski bolted, not for the door to the ballroom but a side exit leading to a service hall. He knew the interior of this hotel better than he did that of the Treasury Department. A back stairs took him to another service corridor and an unmarked door opening onto the lobby. Loping through the milling guests, he was in his car within a minute, squealing away from the curb and out the drive, careening across Connecticut Avenue. He tried raising Perkins on his radio, but there was no response. He wasn’t sure which route Perkins would take to the vice presidential mansion—if he went there at all—but Kreski would use S Street.
He swerved onto it and sped up the hill. He was just gliding down the other side by the Irish ambassador’s residence when he heard the sharp, shattering crack of an explosion off to his right. At the bottom of the hill, skidding right onto Massachusetts Avenue through a red light, he could see the harsh bright flicker of flames ahead, somewhere by the long bridge across Rock Creek Park.
The blast had been of such violence it had obliterated several sections of the concrete bridge railing and buckled the roadway. Four vehicles had been demolished—the vice presidential limousine, the rear chase car, a small sports car that had been caught passing by in the opposite lanes, and the square, blackened, flattened, nearly atomized remains of what likely had been a small van. It had been parked at the side of the bridge halfway on the sidewalk, doubtless as though stalled or in distress, a four-wheeled blockbuster bomb.
A few blocks down, Kreski could see the lights of the huge British Embassy still aglow. Just beyond was Observatory Hill and the Vice President’s House. “Seashore” had almost made it home.
There were other victims. Two other civilian vehicles in the opposite lanes had been hit and were slewed to the side, their occupants screaming and crying. A short distance ahead the lead Secret Service car, badly damaged but not burning, also sat sideways. Kreski could see two figures moving in it.
He went first to his chief responsibility. The vice presidential limousine, like all those in the White House service, was heavily armored, but this bomb could have destroyed an entire building. Mrs. Atherton’s body was a mangle, her head and a dangling arm extending from the crumpled rear door. In the front seat two blackened bodies, hunched over but sitting as though staring ahead, were still aflame.
Kreski glanced through the vacant gap where the bridge railing had been, into blackness. Whoever had detonated the device was by now long gone north or south on Rock Creek Parkway. Dodging around still burning debris and litter, Kreski hurried up to the lead car of the detail. The man in the right-hand seat appeared to be badly injured and was moaning, but the driver, Agent Dunne, seemed merely stunned.
“Car bomb,” he said, between breaths. “Caught us broadside. No chance.”
“Are you all right?”
“Yeah. Think so. Kelleter took some metal. He’s bleeding.”
Kreski could hear nearing sirens, approaching from both directions. Georgetown Hospital was not far. He touched Agent Kelleter’s shoulder and looked into his face. The man looked back, nodding, then groaned.
&n
bsp; The director stood up. “Where’s Perkins?” he asked.
“He was driving the limousine,” Dunne said. “I guess he bought the farm.”
Kreski looked back to the blackened, flame-flickered form framed by the twisted windshield of the limousine. Now there were two Manuel Huertas.
13
Dresden needed to rest his travel-weary body and too slowly healing injuries, and also to take a careful look around him. If he was correct that Charlene’s killers were not pursuing him, a great many police agencies surely were. He was extremely lucky to have gotten as far as he had.
He was in St. Louis, at a downtown hotel where he hoped to find a working television set, and a reasonable expectation of not getting rolled or murdered during the night, but one cheap and nondescript enough to avoid credit card routines and eyebrows raised at the roustabout clothing he had acquired on the road. His only request was for a room with a view of the street, and it was granted without comment. The hostelry was not one to attract conventions, and the mailboxes behind the elderly desk clerk were filled with keys. Dresden’s room proved to be small and dank, but the television did function and the window overlooked the hotel’s entrance, dismal vista as that was.
He dropped his bag in the closet, leaving the Magnum in it. His other pistol he carried in his belt at his back. His money was in his boots and the videotapes and voice prints in the deep pockets of the army surplus field jacket he had bought in Amarillo. He had also bought some army-issue gloves. The cold was probably normal for the Midwest, but he found it numbing.
An hour’s limping amble about downtown St. Louis’s scruffier streets produced no sign of anyone who seemed interested in him except for a couple of shivering prostitutes and a slowly moving police car that hesitated only briefly before continuing on. He paid it no apparent attention, though it made his back turn wet with sweat. Finally, he made his way to a more respectable district, took a decent meal in a coffee shop, and bought some newspapers. He also, without much guilt, bought a fifth of Early Times.
The newspapers were full of stories about the bombing in Washington that had killed the vice president’s wife. The Chicago Tribune had pages and pages of them, including a short but very gracefully written biography of Mrs. Atherton. She was near Dresden’s age, had grown up in Carmel, and was a graduate student at Stanford at about the time Charley had been dating a girl there. He wondered if he had ever met Mrs. Atherton when she was young. The accompanying photograph was of a beautiful woman, but it did not jar his memory.
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