"I want you both to stay put in this room. Make yourselves comfortable but stay away from those files. Understood? I'll go down and intercept the President and his party when they come in. It will give me a chance to brief him on what you've told me. I'm sorry but as of now you're both under house arrest. A precaution I have to take. There'll be Security agents outside that door so don't give them any trouble."
Kanin and I exchanged baffled glances.
"Jeezis, Abe," Kanin grunted. "Don't lay it on like that. You make me feel like a Commie spy—"
"All the same," Markham said stiffly, walking toward the alcove that held the elevator. "You'll do as I say. This affair has gotten far enough out of hand and I want no more slip-ups. Just stay put. I'll be back as soon as I have a chance to alert the President."
You can't argue with that kind of whip-cracking. He was pulling rank on us but what could we do? A private cop and a bagman who had bollixed up his job. We were both silently fuming and thinking it over when Markham disappeared into the elevator and dropped out of sight.
The big room never seemed more awesome or quiet.
Kanin kept shaking his head. In the bruised condition he was in, as big as he was, he was as forlorn as any kid who's been told he can't go to the circus because he's been a bad boy.
"Can you tie that?" He swallowed noisily. "If Abe comes on like that, what the hell do you suppose the rest of them will say?"
"Take it easy. He believed you. He's just playing it safe. Don't forget—he's responsible twenty-four hours a day for the protection of his boss. Our boss, too."
"I know, I know," Kanin wailed. "But he didn't have to sound so righteous, did he?"
"Forget it, Kanin. Chances are he also wants to send a detail out to Ardway's place to check our story. He's no dummy. He knows what to do. He'll want some kind of confirmation for what we told him. It's all moving too fast—he has to be sure of his ground. He didn't get those stripes being a fool."
Kanin roved the wide room, discontentedly. I parked on one of the soft leather chairs and studied him. Just like in the cell out at the mansion, I was surprised to see how big he really was. He dwarfed the furniture he paced around. The dome gleamed eternally through the draped windows.
"How come there wasn't a second bag?" I asked. "A backup bag just in case something like this happened?"
He stopped pacing and shrugged. "Makes sense, don't it? Having two. But you'd be surprised. No matter how many people fought for one, nobody could buck the President. Remember LBJ? He used to hate his bagman. Couldn't stand being followed everywhere he went. Guess it's pretty much the same with the Chief. Makes them nervous, I guess. Maybe two was asking too much. Besides, it's not a popular job, I can tell you. Because of what you're carrying—all that power, the chances to blow up the world—well, I didn't win any popularity contests, I can tell you."
I nodded. His eyes glittered strangely.
"For my dough I think you're right about the Veep, Noon. He wouldn't have gone for broke on a thing like this. But those others—people like Ardway and some of the party whips might have. Oatley is off base on his politics a little—even for a Vice-President. But these methods—trying to kill people, snatching me—just isn't up his street. No matter what Cornell told you."
"Well, we'll know before long." It was the only constructive thing I could add. "Now sit down and stop wearing holes in that carpet."
He glared at me but he parked himself on a sofa across from me. His eyes roved around the room, awed by the decorations, the furnishings, the glamour of the fact that this was the room where a country's president hung his hat sometimes.
"Haven't been in here that often," he muttered. "Gets you every time, doesn't it? His desk, his chairs, his room, the files—"
Suddenly, the faint hum of the elevator could be heard. I tensed. It was too early for Markham to be coming back. He'd only been gone about ten minutes at the most. Kanin looked at me and lapsed into silence. He began to look meek and penitent all over again. The poor slob was going through a private hell, but there was nothing I could do to bail him out.
We both looked at the alcove and the smooth polished metal elevator door. A lighted car loomed into view behind a rectangular glass aperture set in the upper part of the door.
The low hum faded. Silence again.
Then the door slid open.
They say when a momentous, really important event happens in a lifetime, any man's, it's bound to come unannounced. Without a warning, a hint, or a tip. They are right. But I do have a manhunter's instinct. It comes from being on the trail so many years. An almost hyperdeveloped sense of time and place. So don't ask me why. I just knew that when that elevator door opened, something big was going to happen. I am not a prophet, a tea-leaf reader, or even a doomster, but there was an aura in that room just at that precise moment. Kanin with his eyes on the door, myself alert and ready. Not that I was capable of any sensible kind of action. But all the warning bells and alert tocsins and danger signals were going like sixty.
Congressman Charles Cornell stepped out of the elevator. With a silent, almost stealthy quick rush of sound. His tall distinguished figure almost ran into the room, despite his advanced years. His owl's face was contorted in an expression of near-pain and his impeccable attire of gray tweed coat, bowler hat, and cravat with diamond stickpin shouted of his position in life.
He saw us and came forward purposefully. His face was stony and hard, and the old Colt .45 he tugged from his coat pocket looked as deadly as a gun can under the circumstances.
Kanin swore, his face a bewildered mask, and I rose slowly to my feet. My brain had stopped working.
Cornell reached me and his stony demeanor broke. For the first time in our friendship, he was babbling like an old man.
He was also handing me the Colt .45, his movement quick and spasmodic.
"Ed, thank God—here." He thrust the weapon at me the wrong way, barrel first. "Wolves, my boy. All wolves. But they won't get away with this. I came from the EOB as fast as I could."
It was too fast, too quick. I shook my head even as my fingers closed around the .45. It was an old-style highway patrolman's gun. A formidable revolver that could stop a man or a car.
"Charley—" It was all I could say.
Cornell wagged his head at Kanin, as if he recognized him, and turned back to me. The grimness and the pain hadn't left his face.
"There's no one you can trust here, Ed. No one. Wait till the President comes back from the Pentagon. Bar that elevator door. Luckily, I was able to convince the agents downstairs I was on my way to the library to look up a point of congressional law. Markham didn't see, thank God, but I suppose his myrmidons will be along any minute. There's madness in the world, son. There's nobody you can trust in Washington. What are we all coming to?" He had said this last in a helpless wail, gyrating his arms. Color came to his face. Anger and determination.
"Congressman," I said very carefully, hefting the gun, seeing that it was fully loaded. "What the hell are you talking about?"
Cornell was busy keeping an eye on the elevator.
"Perhaps we should barricade it. And lock that back exit. No telling what they'll try. Ed, Ed—" He ran down, beginning to tremble now. I took hold of his shoulder with my free hand and made him look at me. I'd never seen him so upset. Kanin could only stand around and stare helplessly.
"Charley," I said softly. "Please?"
He took a deep breath, shook himself and took my arm off his shoulder. He was in charge of himself once more. But the strain still told in his bold, owl's face.
"A plot," he said. "A conspiracy. The whole Bagman affair. It isn't Oatley, it's Markham. Markham, the President's own right-hand man. The snake in the grass. The Judas whose thirty pieces of silver will be the admiral's baton with the entire Navy placed at his command in the new order if they get the President out and Oatley in. The man's a poor, benighted dupe. He never would have known. I misjudged him. It's Markham. The man downstairs. He's
responsible for all this. Doesn't Kanin here realize that? Didn't he know that it was Markham who engineered the whole filthy business at Convention Hall with the cooperation of Detwhiler of the S squad?"
"No, he didn't," I said, hornets buzzing in my brain trying to land sensibly. "And neither did I. Charley, this is a hot potato. How did you find all this out?"
He blinked at me, looking more like an owl than ever.
"Ed, why do you ask me these things? You were out at Ardway's. Felicia told me. You must know. When she contacted me at the EOB by phone, I thought—" He peered at me, frowning, but his eyes were still on the elevator door.
He was going too fast. There was only one thing that was important right now. Only one thing to consider first.
"Wait a minute. Did you know about the meeting at the Pentagon at seven o'clock and did it take place?"
"Of course, it did. I was phoned because you didn't put in an appearance. I didn't know why until Felicia—"
"Then it wasn't canceled? There wasn't a power failure?"
"What are you talking about?" He wagged his head angrily. "Ed, haven't you been listening, son? Markham's downstairs and he can't afford to have you and Kanin alive! There's no telling what scheme he'll hatch to cover your dead bodies. Both of you."
The jumbled pieces started to slip into place. All the little odd matters that altogether added up to something. I remembered all the features of Commander Abe Markham now. It always looks so clear when the facts come tumbling down. Markham picking me up at the hearing, taking me to see his President and not frisking me the way he should have, advanced neutralizing device or not. Markham putting on the eternal act of looking faithful and willing to give up his life. The man was a great actor. Too good. He couldn't have been real and I should have seen it. And where did Cornell's information come that Felicia Carr was a Red agent? From the Director, of course, and Markham had passed that information on for what it was worth. Why? I didn't have the answer to that yet nor did I know how Felicia had managed to infiltrate herself back into Cornell's good graces, but there was no time for that now.
Cornell was right. If Markham was all he said he was, then the time was getting short. The Chief might be on his way back from the Pentagon now—the meeting that Markham had trick-phoned for our benefit so he could tell us it hadn't happened. So he could stall even more, for his own reasons.
I didn't trust anybody in Washington, but I did trust Congressman Charles Cornell. The eagles in his eyes could never let the country down. They just couldn't.
"Lennie," I said.
"Yeah, Ed?"
"Looks like a siege. We better hold the fort down."
"You said it, pal." As perplexed as he was, the chance to redeem himself was a drug to him. He took Cornell by the arm and guided him behind the presidential desk. "You sit there, Congressman. Noon and me will handle this."
"Be careful," Cornell begged. "It's so hard to believe this is happening here. In the White House. Those agents downstairs may be as loyal as the night is long but if Markham isn't—well, they'll obey him and that's all there is to it. Damned chains of command. Nobody ever really knows anything!" His voice trailed off angrily again.
"Red tape is red tape." I took one of the chairs and dragged it toward the alcove to form a barricade. "And where did you get this six-shooter? I thought you were against firearms."
"It pays to be prepared, doesn't it?" he muttered grimly. "That was given to me three months ago by the highway patrol as an expression of appreciation for my helping pass a salary increase legislation. It wasn't a bribe—so I kept it. I'm glad I did."
"Amen to that—" I broke off because the elevator car was making its low hum once more. We all tensed like children expecting a ghost to materialize. It was bound to be Markham this time. Coming back to get something going about the disposal of Noon and Kanin.
It was.
The door opened and he shouldered out, as military as ever. Two tall civilians with him, directly behind him, fanned out at his flanks. They were grim-faced, tight-eyed, and solemn as executioners. Markham didn't see the Congressman right away. The alcove was slightly dimmer than the main room, and coming from it, you had to adjust your vision to the change of lighting.
"There's been a change in plan," he called out as he came in with his two flunkies. "You two will leave the White House right now and rendezvous with the President an hour from now at a place these men will take—"
He stopped in his tracks. The men with him halted, too.
He saw Congressman Charles Cornell. He saw Leonard Kanin half-hidden by a filing cabinet, and last but not least, he saw me. The Colt .45 was trained right at his chest on a direct line with all those medals, decorations, and awards.
"Hello, Benedict Arnold," I said lightly. "Tell me. What kind of medal do you get for shooting traitors?"
He froze where he stood. The men with him were baffled. The blood drained out of his face right before our eyes. The tall erect figure did an uncharacteristic slump. The lean body twitched almost uncontrollably. The well-groomed sandy hair tumbled a lock. I felt no sympathy at all for him. It was difficult not to press the trigger of the .45 and send him flying into a dirty grave. There were so many dead GI's in Vietnam.
The agents on either side of him raised their arms, beginning to mouth protests and expressions of anger. And uncomprehension.
Commander Abraham Markham could say nothing. Cornell glared at him.
We were all in that position when the President of the United States came marching out of the elevator demanding to know what was going on.
And that did it.
Markham, perhaps unable to face the man he had betrayed or just simply incapable of coherent civilized thought, went for a gun. Or something inside the tailored lining of his naval tunic.
Cornell blurted a warning. An old man's voice ragged with fear and terror. The President halted in his tracks, his famous eyes bewildered with the picture of a man he knew and loved suddenly behaving like an impossible assassin. His mouth literally fell open.
Commander Abraham Markham clawed a sleek black automatic from his coat, faded back between the two tall grim-eyed civilians, and tried to snap off a shot at me. A quick, killing shot. Somehow I guess he figured if he killed me he could have talked his way out of anything. A dead, shut mouth could not give testimony against him. I don't know what he would have done about old Cornell. I guess there wasn't time to think that one out.
He didn't have a chance.
I'd had the drop on him before he even got going. I didn't have to be the fastest gun in the west. Only the most careful. I didn't want to kill him either.
The highway patrolman's gun in my hand kicked softly back against my wrist as I dropped to one knee, taking Hogan's Alley dead aim on Markham. The single shot blasted around the high-ceilinged office like a ball making a strike in a bowling alley.
Markham screamed like a woman and went slamming back into the alcove, the sleek black automatic still clutched in his fist.
He went down like a chopped tree.
The gun followed.
And after that there was nothing but him moaning like a loser as he tried to use both hands to stanch the flow of blood from his shattered right kneecap.
I had pulled more than the rug out from under him.
And all his private worlds and dreams of conquest had ended.
Love Me, Love My Life
Operation Cleanup took place the rest of that eventful day. A president lost his right-hand man, perhaps some of his trust in human nature, but he also regained his Bagman, his nuclear codes and patterns, and stabilized his government. As well as his own position as the man in power.
Once the facts were clearly established and Commander Abraham Markham's guilt firmly fixed in the big wheel of under-the-table political skulduggery, the Chief moved fast. Nobody moved faster. For once, I could see how quickly a government could move when its administration, jeopardized by interior termites, positively identified and
labeled them for what they were. No amount of red tape could halt or snarl the long arm of presidential authority. The conspiracy was crushed in toto. Not a whitewashing, just a steamrollering of the opposition.
With bells, bugles, and Fourth of July firecrackers on.
For openers, the Chief delivered Markham over to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, not trusting the immediate S squad boys anymore. For another, he dispatched three Lincoln limousines filled with agents loaded down with riot guns and categorical imperatives to Walter Ardway's mansion on the hill overlooking the Potomac. A crack troop of U.S. Army soldiers, already on the alert, thanks to the gloomy predictions of the Joint Chiefs during the Pentagon discussion, surrounded the White House in all directions, a sight which must have baffled any streetwalkers or passersby in the immediate vicinity. It was as if the Chief feared a military takeover and he was not in the mood or mind for juntas, no matter how seemingly circumscribed by the situation. There was a lot of official housecleaning to be done and he meant to do it.
Rowles, my old friend from the Bureau, handled the raid on Ardway's mansion. It turned out a roaring success. Besides rounding up the two Spanish-speaking gunmen whom Leonard Kanin and I had routed, and the old dazed caretaker, still wondering what had really happened as he sat in his stone pillbox, Kanin's missing thermonuclear dynamite was found. The papers, the codes, the patterns, the thick envelopes with the many wax seals and signatures, were uncovered in a huge wall safe in the Ardway library. Rowles phoned the news back jubilantly and the President must have let out a deep sigh of relief. Then putting the mansion under armed guard, Rowles and his men waited for Walter Ardway to return.
He never did.
That is, not in this life.
He tried to grab a flight out of Dulles Airport about eleven o'clock under the assumed name of Walter Benson, but he was spotted by two Federal agents on the job. The President had granted the Bureau his wholehearted endorsement of an all-out effort to find the man. By that time, every road in and out of Washington was being checked. A great national menace had to be apprehended.
The Doomsday Bag Page 15