Page 38 of Shall We Tell the President? (Kane & Abel 3)

“Brooks, Byrd, and Thornton are not involved, sir.”

“The first two don’t surprise me,” said the Director. “It never made any sense that they were, but I’d have put a side bet on Thornton. Anyway, how did you dispose of those three?”

Mark described his brainstorm about the Senate dining room, and wondered what else he had overlooked.

“You should have worked all of that out three days ago, shouldn’t you, Mark?”

“Yes, sir.”

“So should I,” said the Director. “So we’re down to Dexter and Harrison. It will interest you to know that both men, along with almost all of the senators, intend to be in Washington tomorrow and both are down to attend the ceremony at the

Capitol. Amazing,” he mused, “even at that level, men like to watch their crimes enacted.

“Let’s go over it once again, Andrews. The President leaves the south entrance of the White House at 10:00 A.M. unless I stop her, so we have seventeen hours left and one last hope. The boys in Fingerprints have isolated the bill with Mrs. Casefikis’s prints on it. The twenty-second, we may be lucky—with still another half dozen to go we shouldn’t have had a hope before ten o’clock tomorrow. There are several other prints on the bill, and they will be working on them all through the night. I expect to reach home by midnight. If you come up with anything before then, call me. I want you here in the office at 8:15 tomorrow. There’s very little you can do now. But don’t worry too much; I have twenty agents still working on it, though none of them knows all the details. And I’ll only let the President into the danger zone if we have a fix on these villains.”

“I’ll report at 8:15 then, sir,” said Mark.

“And, Mark, I strongly advise you not to see Dr. Dexter. I don’t want to blow this whole operation at the last moment, because of your love life. No offense intended.”

“No, sir.”

Mark left, feeling slightly superfluous. Twenty agents now assigned to the case. How long had the Director had them working round the clock without telling him? Twenty men trying to find out whether it was Dexter or Harrison, without knowing why. Still, only he and the Director knew the whole story, and he feared the Director knew more than he did. Perhaps it would be wiser to avoid Elizabeth until the following evening. He picked up his car, and drove back to the Dirksen Building and then remembered he had left the hearings’ transcripts at the Committee Office. When he got there he found himself drawn toward the telephone booths. He had to call her, he had to find out how she was after her accident. He dialed Woodrow Wilson.

“Oh, she left the hospital—some time ago.”

“Thank you,” said Mark. He could feel his heart beat as he dialed her Georgetown number.

“Elizabeth?”

“Yes, Mark.” She sounded—cold? frightened? tired? A hundred questions were racing through his mind.

“Can I come and see you right now?”

“Yes.” The telephone clicked.

Mark left the booth, conscious of the sweat on the palms of his hands. One more job to do before he could drive off to Elizabeth, pick up those damned papers from the Senate Gun Control Hearings.

Mark walked toward the elevator and thought he could hear footsteps behind him. Of course he could hear footsteps behind him; there were several people behind him. When he reached the elevator, he pressed the Up-button and glanced around at the footsteps. Among the crowd of Senate staffers, congressmen, and sightseers, two men were watching him—or were they protecting him? There was a third man in dark glasses staring at a Medicare poster, even more obviously an agent, to Mark’s quick eyes, than the other two.

The Director had said that he had put twenty agents on the case, and three of them must have been allocated to watch Mark. Hell. Soon they would be following him back to Elizabeth and Mark did not doubt that the Director would learn about it immediately. Mark resolved that no one was going to follow him back to Elizabeth’s. It was none of their damned business. He’d shake the three of them off. He needed to see her in peace, without prying eyes and malicious tongues. He thought quickly as he waited to see which of the two elevators would arrive first. Two of the agents were now walking toward him, but the one by the Medicare poster remained motionless. Perhaps he wasn’t an operative after all, but there certainly was something familiar about him. He had the aura of an agent; other agents can sense it with their eyes shut.

Mark concentrated on the elevator. The arrow on his right lit up and the doors opened slowly. Mark shot in and stood facing the buttons and stared out at the corridor. The two operatives followed him into the elevator, and stood behind him. The man by the Medicare poster started walking toward the elevator. The doors were beginning to close. Mark pressed the Open-button, and the doors parted again. Must give him a chance to get in, and have all three of them together, Mark thought, but the third man did not respond. He just stood, staring, as if waiting for the next elevator. Perhaps he wanted to go down and wasn’t an agent at all. Mark could have sworn … The doors began to close and at what Mark thought was the optimum point, he jumped back out. Wrong. O’Malley managed to squeeze himself out as well, while his partner was left to travel slowly but inevitably up to the eighth floor. Now Mark was down to two tails. The other elevator arrived. The third agent stepped into it immediately. Very clever or innocent, Mark thought, and waited outside. O’Malley was at his shoulder—which one next?

Mark strolled into the elevator and pressed the Down-button, but O’Malley was able to get in easily. Mark pressed the Open-button and sauntered back out. O’Malley followed him, face impassive. The third man remained motionless in the elevator. They must be working together. Mark jumped back in and jabbed the Close-button hard. The doors closed horribly slowly, but O’Malley had walked two paces away and was not going to make it. As the doors slammed together, Mark smiled. Two gone, one standing on the ground floor helpless, the other heading for the roof, while he was descending to the basement alone with the third.

O’Malley caught up with Pierce Thompson on the fifth floor. Both were out of breath.

“Where is he?” cried O’Malley.

“What do you mean, where is he? I thought he was with you.”

“No, I lost him on the first floor.”

“Shit, he could be anywhere,” said Thompson. “Whose side does the smart-ass think we are on? Which one of us is going to tell the Director?”

“Not me,” O’Malley said. “You’re the senior officer, you tell him.”

“No way I’m telling him,” Thompson said. “And let that bastard Matson take all the credit—you can be sure he’s still with him. No, we’re going to find him. You take the first four floors and I’ll take the top four. Bleep immediately when you spot him.”

When Mark reached the basement, he stayed in the elevator. The third man walked out and seemed to hesitate. Mark’s thumb was jammed on the Close-button again. The door responded. He was on his own. He tried to make the elevator bypass the ground floor but he couldn’t; someone else wanted to get in. He prayed it was not one of the three men. He had to risk it. The doors opened and he walked out immediately. No agents in sight, no one studying the Medicare poster. He ran toward the revolving doors at the end of the corridor. The guard on duty looked at him suspiciously and fingered the holster of his gun. Through the revolving doors and out into the open, running hard. He glanced around. Everyone was walking, no one was running. He was safe.

Pennsylvania Avenue—he dodged in and out of the traffic amid screeching tires 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 toward 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 senators’ daughters’ 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 without another word.

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 dialed 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.

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