Shall We Tell the President? Read online

  She still felt this was the only nation on earth that could entrust its highest office to the daughter of an immigrant.

  When the three-hour-long parade was finally over and the last float had disappeared down the avenue, Janet Brown, Florentyna Kane’s Chief of Staff, leaned over and asked the President what she would like to do between now and the first Inaugural Ball.

  “Sign all those cabinet appointments, the letters to the Heads of State, and clear my desk for tomorrow,” was the immediate reply. “That should take care of the first four years.”

  The President returned directly into the White House. As she walked through the South Portico, the Marine band struck up “Hail to the Chief.” The President had taken off her coat even before she reached the Oval Office. She sat herself firmly behind the imposing oak and leather desk. She paused for a moment, looking around the room. Everything was as she wanted it; behind her there was the picture of Richard and William playing touch football. In front of her, a paperweight with the quotation from George Bernard Shaw which Annabel quoted so often: “Some men see things as they are and say, why; I dream things that never were and say, why not.” On Florentyna’s left was the Presidential flag, on her right the flag of the United States. Dominating the middle of the desk was a replica of the Baron Hotel, Warsaw, made out of papier mâché by William when he was fourteen. Coal was burning in the fireplace. A portrait of Abraham Lincoln stared down at the newly sworn-in President while outside the bay windows, the green lawns swept in an unbroken stretch to the Washington Monument. The President smiled. She was back at home.

  Florentyna Kane reached for a pile of official papers and glanced over the names of those who would serve in her cabinet; there were over thirty appointments to be made. The President signed each one with a flourish. The final one was Janet Brown as Chief of Staff. The President ordered that they be sent down to the Congress immediately. Her press secretary picked up the pieces of paper that would dictate the next four years in the history of America and said, “Thank you, Madam President,” and then added, “What would you like to tackle next?”

  “Always start with the biggest problem is what Lincoln advised, so let’s go over the draft legislation for the Gun Control bill.”

  The President’s press secretary shuddered, for she knew only too well that the battle in the House over the next two years was likely to be every bit as vicious and hard-fought as the Civil War Lincoln had faced. So many people still regarded the possession of arms as their inalienable birthright. She only prayed that it all would not end the same way, as a House Divided.

  Thursday evening

  3 March (two years later)

  5:45 P.M.

  Nick Stames wanted to go home. He had been at work since seven that morning and it was already 5:45 P.M. He couldn’t remember if he had eaten lunch; his wife, Norma, had been grumbling again that he never got home in time for dinner, or, if he did, it was so late that her dinner was no longer worth eating. Come to think of it, when did he last find time to finish a meal? Norma stayed in bed when he left for the office at 6:30 A.M. Now that the children were away at school, her only real task was to cook dinner for him. He couldn’t win; if he had been a failure, she would have complained about that, too, and he was, goddamn it, by anybody’s standards, a success; the youngest special agent in charge of a Field Office in the FBI and you don’t get a job like that at the age of forty-one by being at home on time for dinner every night. In any case, Nick loved the job. It was his mistress; at least his wife could be thankful for that.

  Nick Stames had been head of the Washington Field Office for nine years. The third largest Field Office in America, although it covered the smallest territory—only sixty-one square miles of Washington, D.C.—it had twenty-two squads; twelve criminal, ten security. Hell, he was policing the capital of the world. Of course, he must be expected to be late sometimes. Still, tonight he intended to make a special effort. When he had the time to do so, he adored his wife. He was going to be home on time this evening. He picked up his internal phone and called his Criminal Coordinator, Grant Nanna.

  “Grant.”

  “Boss.”

  “I’m going home.”

  “I didn’t know you had one.”

  “Not you, too.”

  Nick Stames put the phone down, and pushed his hand through his long dark hair. He would have made a better movie criminal than FBI agent, since everything about him was dark—dark eyes, dark skin, dark hair, even a dark suit and dark shoes, but the last two were true of any special agent. On his lapel he wore a pin depicting the flags of the United States and of Greece.

  Once, a few years ago, he had been offered promotion and a chance to cross the street to the Bureau Headquarters and join the Director as one of his thirteen assistants. Being an assistant chained to a desk wasn’t his style, so he stayed put. The move would have taken him from a slum to a palace; the Washington Field Office is housed on floors four, five, and eight of the Old Post Office Building on Pennsylvania Avenue, and the rooms are a little like railroad coaches. They would have been condemned as slums if they had been sited in the ghetto.

  As the sun began to disappear behind the tall buildings, Nick’s gloomy office grew darker. He walked over to the light switch. “Don’t Be Fuelish,” commented a fluorescent label glued to the switch. Just as the constant movement of men and women in dark sober suits in and out of the Old Post Office Building revealed the location of the FBI Washington Field Office, so this government graffito served notice that the czars of the Federal Energy Administration inhabited two floors of the cavernous building on Pennsylvania Avenue.

  Nick stared out of his window across the street at the new FBI Headquarters, which had been completed in 1976, a great ugly monster with elevators that were larger than his office. He didn’t let it bother him. He’d reached Grade 18 in the service, and only the Director was paid more than he was. In any case, he was not going to sit behind a desk until they retired him with a pair of gold handcuffs. He wanted to be in constant touch with the agent in the street, feel the pulse of the Bureau. He would stay put at the Washington Field Office and die standing up, not sitting down. Once again, he touched the intercom. “Julie, I’m on my way home.”

  Julie Bayers looked up and glanced at her watch as if it were lunchtime.

  “Yes, sir,” she said, sounding disbelieving.

  As he passed through the office he grinned at her. “Moussaka, rice pilaf, and the wife; don’t tell the Mafia.” Nick managed to get one foot out of the door before his private phone rang. One more step and he would have made it to the open lift, but Nick never could resist the ring of a phone. Julie rose and began to walk toward his office. As she did so Nick admired, as he always did, the quick flash of leg. “It’s all right, Julie. I’ll get it.” He strode back into his room and picked up the ringing telephone.

  “Stames.”

  “Good evening, sir. Lieutenant Blake, Metropolitan Police.”

  “Hey, Dave, congratulations on your promotion. I haven’t seen you in …” he paused, “ … it must be five years, you were only a sergeant. How are you?”

  “Thank you, sir, I’m doing just fine.”

  “Well, Lieutenant, moved into big-time crime, now have you? Picked up a fourteen-year-old stealing a pack of chewing gum and need my best men to find where the suspect has hidden the goods?”

  Blake laughed. “Not quite that bad, Mr. Stames. I have a guy in Woodrow Wilson Medical Center who wants to meet the head of the FBI, says he has something vitally important to tell him.”

  “I know the feeling, I’d love to meet him myself. Do you know whether he’s one of our usual informers, Dave?”

  “No, sir.”

  “What’s his name?”

  “Angelo Casefikis.” Blake spelled out the name for Stames.

  “Any description?” asked Stames.

  “No. I only spoke to him on the phone. All he would say is it will be worse for America if the FBI doesn’t listen