Shall We Tell the President? Read online

  “That figures,” said Tyson. “Right, Andrews, what have you been up to for the past twenty-four hours?”

  Mark opened his regulation blue plastic portfolio. He reported that there were sixty-two senators left, the other thirty-eight accounted for, most of them having been a long way from Washington on 24 February. He passed the list of names over to the Director, who glanced through them.

  “Some pretty big fish still left in the muddy pond, Andrews. Go on.”

  Mark proceeded to outline his encounter with the Greek Orthodox priest. He expected a sharp reprimand for failing to remember the matter of the beard immediately. He was not disappointed. Chastened, he continued: “I am seeing Father Gregory at eight o’clock this morning, and I thought I would go on to see Casefikis’s widow afterwards. I don’t think either will have much to offer, but I imagine you want those leads followed up, sir. After that I intended to return to the Library of Congress to try and figure out why any of those sixty-two senators might wish to see an end of President Kane.”

  “Well, to start with, put them in categories,” said the Director. “First political party, then committees, then outside interests, then their personal knowledge of the President. Don’t forget, Andrews, we do know that our man had lunch in Georgetown on 24 February and that should bring the numbers down.”

  “But sir, presumably they all had lunch on 24 February.”

  “Exactly, Andrews, but not all in private. Many of them would have been seen in a public place or lunched officially, with constituents or federal employees or lobbyists. You have to find out who did what, without letting the senator we’re after get suspicious.”

  “How do you suggest I go about doing that, sir?”

  “Simple,” replied the Director. “You call each of the senators’ secretaries and ask if the boss would be free to attend a luncheon on—” He paused. “—‘The Problems of Urban Environment.’ Yes, I like that. Give them a date, say 5 May, then ask if they attended either the one given on,” the Director glanced at his calendar, “17 January or 24 February, as some senators who had accepted didn’t attend, and one or two turned up without invitations. Then say a written invitation will follow. All the secretaries will put it out of their minds unless you write, and if any of them does remember on 5 May, it will be too late for us to care. One thing is certain: no senator will be letting his secretary know that he is planning to kill the President.”

  The Assistant Director grimaced slightly. “If he gets caught, sir, all hell will break loose. We’ll be back in the dirty-tricks department.”

  “No, Matt, if I tell the President one of her precious brethren is going to knife her in the back, she won’t see anything particularly pleasant in that trick.”

  “We haven’t got any real proof, sir,” said Mark.

  “Then you had better find it, Andrews, or we’ll all be looking for a new job, trust my judgment.”

  Trust my judgment, Mark thought.

  “All we have is one strong lead,” the Director continued. “That a senator may be involved, but we have only five days left. If we fail next Thursday, there will be enough time during the next twenty years to study the inquiry and you, Andrews, will be able to make a fortune writing a book about it.”

  Mark looked apprehensive.

  “Andrews, don’t get too worried. I have briefed the head of the Secret Service. I told him no more and no less than was in your report, as we agreed yesterday, so that gives us a clear run right through to 10 March. I’m working on a contingency plan, in case we don’t know who Cassius is before then; but I won’t bore you with it now. I have also talked to the boys from Homicide; they have come up with very little that can help us. It may interest you to know that they have seen Casefikis’s wife already. Their brains seem to work a little faster than yours, Andrews.”

  “Perhaps they don’t have as much on their minds,” said the Assistant Director.

  “Maybe not. Okay, go see her if you think it might help. You may pick up something they missed. Cheer up, you’ve covered a lot of ground. Perhaps this morning’s investigation will give us some new leads to work on. I think that covers everything for now. Right, Andrews, don’t let me waste any more of your time.”

  “No, sir.”

  Mark rose.

  “I’m sorry, I forgot to offer you coffee, Andrews.”

  I didn’t manage to drink it the last time, Mark wanted to say. He left as the Director ordered coffee for himself and the Assistant Director. He decided that he too could do with some breakfast and a chance to collect his thoughts. He went in search of the Bureau cafeteria.

  The Director drank his coffee and asked Mrs. McGregor to send in his personal assistant. The anonymous man appeared almost instantly, a grey folder under his arm. He didn’t have to ask the Director what it was that he wanted. He placed the folder on the table in front of him, and left without speaking.

  “Thank you,” said the Director to the closing door. He turned the cover of the folder and browsed through it for twenty minutes, a chuckle here, and a grunt there, the odd comment to Matthew Rogers. There were facts in it about Mark Andrews of which Mark himself would have been unaware. The Director finished his second cup of coffee, closed the file, and locked it in the personal drawer of the Queen Anne desk. Queen Anne had never held as many secrets as that desk.

  Mark finished a much better breakfast than he could have hoped for at the Washington Field Office. There, you had to go across the street to the Lunch Connection, because the snack bar downstairs was so abominable, much in keeping with the rest of the building. Not that he wouldn’t have liked to return to it now instead of the underground garage to pick up his car. He didn’t notice the man across the street who watched him leave, but he did wonder whether the blue Ford sedan that stayed in his rear-view mirror so long was there by chance. If it wasn’t, who was watching whom, who was trying to protect whom?

  He arrived at Father Gregory’s church just before 8:00 A.M. and they walked together to the priest’s house. The priest’s half-rim glasses squatted on the end of a stubby nose. His large, red cheeks and even larger basketball belly led the uncharitable to conclude that Father Gregory had found much to solace him on earth while he waited for the eternal kingdom of heaven. Mark told him that he had already breakfasted, but it didn’t stop the Father from frying two eggs and bacon, plus toast, marmalade, and a cup of coffee. Father Gregory could add very little to what he had told Mark on the telephone the previous night, and he sighed deeply when he was reminded of the two deaths at the hospital.

  “Yes, I read the details in the Post.” When they talked about Nick Stames, a light came into his grey eyes; it was clear that priest and policeman had shared a few secrets, this was no jolly old Jesus freak.

  “Is there any connection between Nick’s death and the accident in the hospital?” Father Gregory asked suddenly.

  The question took Mark by surprise. There was a shrewd brain behind the half-rim glasses. Lying to a priest, Greek Orthodox or otherwise, seemed somehow worse than the usual lies which were intended to protect the Bureau from the general public.

  “Absolutely none,” said Mark. “Just one of those horrible auto accidents.”

  “Just one of those weird coincidences?” said Father Gregory quizzically, peering at Mark over the top of his glasses. “Is that right?” he sounded almost as unconvinced as Grant Nanna. He continued: “There’s one more thing I would like to mention. Although it’s hard to remember exactly what the man said when he called me and told me not to bother to go to the hospital, I’m fairly certain he was a well-educated man. I feel sure by the way he carried it off that he was a professional man, and I am not sure what I mean by that; it’s just the strange feeling that he had made that sort of call before; there was something professional about him.”

  Father Gregory repeated the phrase to himself—“Something professional about him”—and so did Mark, while he was in the car on the way to the house in which Mrs. Casefikis was sta