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  "I understand, sir," he said, and slowly nodded. He had the resigned look of a condemned man about to step before a firing squad.

  "Good. Now, before you do either of those two things, call Kranes's office. It's vital that you break through to talk to him personally. Mentioning my name should do the trick, but don't take any shit from secretaries or flunkies. Refuse to get off the line until someone does contact him and mentions my name. Only if all else fails do you leave a message. The message is that Garth and I are catching the next shuttle to Washington. We have to talk to him about two matters- one of important personal concern to him, and the other concerning vital national security. He'd damn well better be prepared to meet with us as soon as we get there, or we immediately call a press conference. Got all that?"

  "I've got it, sir," he said, reaching for the telephone.

  I started to walk out of the office, then stopped in the doorway and turned back. When you'd spent the night being shot and slashed at, sprinkled with zombie dust, and dropping from tall buildings in a single bound, it's amazing the small things that come to mind-my mind, at least. "Francisco?"

  He stopped dialing, hung up the telephone, and looked inquiringly at me. "Is there something else that needs to be done, sir?"

  "No. I'm just curious as to why you keep calling me 'sir.' I told you a long time ago that you should call me Mongo."

  He flushed slightly. "I can't help it, sir. It's habit. You're my boss."

  "Garth's your boss too. You don't call him 'sir.'"

  "It's different with Garth. You're the one who interviewed and hired me."

  "You don't have any prejudice against dwarfs, do you, Francisco?"

  He snapped back in his chair, obviously alarmed. "Oh no, sir!"

  "Only kidding. I seem to recall one occasion when you did call me Mongo."

  He swallowed hard, said, "That was when we thought Garth was dead. I'd just given you the news. I felt so terrible for you. I'd. . never seen you look like that before."

  I thought about it, nodded. "All right, Francisco. I don't want to make you uncomfortable. I just wanted to remind you that you don't have to keep calling me 'sir' all the time."

  "Yes, sir," Francisco replied, smiling wryly as he once again picked up the telephone receiver and started dialing. "Thank you."

  I went up to my apartment, where Garth was waiting for me. He'd already removed my spare guns from my safe and laid them out on the bed. He'd also made me a sandwich, which I much appreciated. I ate quickly, washing down the sandwich with a glass of milk, then bagged the jeans and sneakers that had been contaminated with the yellow powder, showered, and quickly dressed in clean.clothes. We were on our way out when the intercom on the wall buzzed. I went back, pressed the button.

  "What is it, Francisco?"

  "I was able to speak with Representative Kranes, sir. He'll see you as soon as you get to Washington. He's sending a car and driver to pick you up at the airport."

  "Thank you, Francisco. Good work."

  Chapter 10

  The office of the Speaker of the House of Representatives was furnished in rococo and as large as a handball court. We were ushered into his office, and as soon as the heavy wood door closed behind us he leaped up from behind his desk. His jowly face was florid, and his pudgy hands trembled. "What's this threat of holding a press conference?!" he shouted at me as Garth and I walked across a quarter acre or so of thick, beige carpeting toward his desk. "I suppose you're looking for more money now! I thought we had a-"

  "Shut up," Garth said curtly, without waiting to be introduced. "Who else besides my brother did you talk to about your problem with copying other people's poems?"

  Kranes opened and closed his mouth, then slowly sank back down in his cushioned leather chair. He seemed nonplussed, totally taken back by Garth's effrontery, or his question, or both.

  "This is my brother, Garth," I said as I walked up to the desk and leaned on it. "Now that the introductions are over, be kind enough to answer his question. Who did you talk to about Thomas Dickens after I visited you in Huntsville?" "What the hell happened to you?"

  "Never mind what happened to me. We may get to that. Answer the question."

  Still appearing thoroughly confused, Kranes looked back and forth between Garth and me with narrowed eyes. Finally he said, "I didn't talk to anybody about him. You think I'm a fool?" "

  "That's what we're here to find out."

  "As you surmised, it wasn't exactly a story I wanted to get around."

  "Close associates? Family? Your wife?"

  He shook his head nervously. "I didn't want anybody to know- not associates, and especially not my family. Have you-"

  "What about Taylor Mackintosh, the actor? He claims to be a real good buddy of yours. Maybe you had a couple of drinks together, wanted to bare your soul? Did you discuss this problem with him?"

  "You do think I'm a fool," he said, making a dismissive gesture with his hands. "Mackintosh would be the last person on earth I'd bare my soul to. I've been avoiding him for years, and I won't even take his phone calls. The man is mentally ill."

  "Think real hard. Who did you mention Thomas Dickens' name to?"

  "I don't have to think hard," he replied tersely, impatience now evident in his tone. "I told you I did not discuss this matter with anyone. Now, if you're not here to squeeze me for more money, why don't you tell me why you are here? I really do have a very busy schedule."

  I glanced at Garth, who looked at me and nodded once. It meant my brother the empath and human lie-detector believed Kranes was telling the truth. Garth took a gold-plated Montblanc pen out of a holder on the desk, wrote on a piece of the Speaker's embossed stationery, and shoved the paper under the other man's nose.

  Kranes glanced down at the message on the paper, then looked up sharply. "What?!"

  He abruptly stopped speaking when I put a finger to my lips, then motioned with my head toward the door to his office. He hesitated a few moments, then abruptly rose and walked with us to the door, which Garth held open for him.

  "Get rid of your Secret Service detail," I said quietly.

  "I can't get rid of them."

  "Then tell them to keep their distance. I don't want anyone else hearing what I have to tell you-yet."

  Kranes spoke to his receptionist, then said something to the two dark-suited men sitting nearby. There was no discernible response from either of them, but when we walked through the warren of outer offices they stayed behind at a respectful distance. When we reached the wide marble hall outside the suite of offices, Kranes immediately turned on Garth and snapped, "What the hell do you mean, my office is bugged?!"

  "It means just that," Garth replied evenly. "If what you've told us is the truth, then your office must be bugged."

  I said, "Let's go get a drink, Mr. Speaker. I think you're going to need one."

  "I don't want a drink!" he said sharply, wheeling on me. "I have important appointments all day, and I have to catch a flight to California at five-thirty! I demand you tell me why you think my office is bugged, and who you think is bugging it!"

  Garth abruptly gripped the other man by the elbow and gently but firmly escorted him the length of the hallway and around a corner. Kranes walked very stiffly. I followed, and behind me I could hear the click of the Secret Service agents' heels on the marble as they followed behind us all. I wondered what they were thinking about this little tete-a-tete between two strangers-if we were strangers to them-and the man they were assigned to guard.

  When we had all made it around the corner, Garth stopped, turned the Speaker toward him, said in the same soft, even tone, "The CIA is bugging your office, Kranes. They've probably got your home wired too. They take the old adage about keeping friends close and enemies even closer very literally. They're keeping tabs on you and your visitors because you're very important to them and all the other fascists in this country."

  'That's ridiculous, Frederickson! And don't you imply that I'm a-"

&nb
sp; "Keep your voice down. They intend to make you president."

  That got his attention. He looked inquiringly at me, then back at Garth. "Are you serious?"

  "If you think this is a joke, that was the punch line. You are the CIA's candidate for president, and they know how to run a hell of a winning campaign. Ask the Chileans."

  Something, perhaps an image of himself sitting in the Oval Office, must have flashed across his mind, because he suddenly paled, and his breathing became rapid and shallow. "But I don't understand. It isn't my time yet to be president. My advisors all tell me-"

  "The company doesn't give a shit what your advisors say," I interrupted, "any more than they care about what you want or the electorate wants. They're apolitical. They only care about what they want, and they want you in the White House. Right now there are some very strange things going on outside these hallowed halls, and what they all add up to is that the CIA is trying to engineer the assassinations of the president and vice president. Voila, President William P. Kranes."

  Kranes's eyes went wide, and he glanced nervously at the two dark-suited men standing perhaps fifteen yards away, at the head of the corridor. "The two of you are crazy," he said in a sibilant whisper. " 'Assassination' isn't a word one tosses around lightly up here."

  "Oh, that toss was too light for you? I guess I'll have to try my curve, slider, and fastball. You obviously haven't been paying attention to what Garth and I have been telling you."

  "Leave me alone," he said, actually shying away. "If you think there's a plot to assassinate the president, it's the Secret Service you should be talking to, not me."

  "I've already told the FBI, and I have to assume they've briefed the Secret Service. I can assure you that the FBI is taking this very seriously; check with them yourself if you think Garth and I are telling you some fairy tale. All that can be done is being done, you can be sure. There's nothing the Secret Service can do at the moment but take their usual defensive posture. That's one reason-but not the only reason-we're here talking to you."

  "Why me?"

  "Because you're in the best position to stop it."

  "What on earth-"

  "You and I had a deal," I said, stepping closer to him. "It turns out you didn't break it, and neither have I-so far. Our deal is the reason I haven't mentioned the plagiarism matter to any of the authorities, and I've been talking to a hell of a lot of them. But your connection to Thomas Dickens is going to surface eventually. There could be a lot of history written on what's happened, and what's about to happen. Some people may even charge Garth and me with culpability in the assassinations of a president and vice president because we withheld certain details explicitly linking you to Thomas Dickens and CIA-run killers. It's going to come out, Kranes, especially if the president and vice president end up dead-because then we'll have to disclose it. It's better that you do it, now, if you want the history books to be kind to you. Then you'll work with the Secret Service. Like I said, you're the person in the best position to put a stop to their plan, or at least slow it down."

  Kranes eyed me suspiciously. "How could the poetry incident possibly have anything to do with this supposed assassination plot you're telling me about, and what would discussing the incident accomplish except possibly destroying my career? Maybe that's what this is really about. You said you talked to the FBI, but why aren't the two of you working with the Secret Service?"

  "Because we don't have anything else to contribute-except you-and we have bigger fish to fry."

  The jowly man shook his head and laughed nervously. "This is absolutely preposterous! You are trying to destroy my career! Either that, or you're both insane. You say there's a plot to assassinate the president and vice president, but you don't have time to work with the Secret Service because you have bigger fish to fry. What fish would those be?"

  "Finding the murderers of a certain poet, you fat shithead," Garth said, his tone soft as a knife slicing through silk as he abruptly reached out and grabbed Kranes's tie close to the knot, lifting the startled and suddenly choking Speaker of the House up on his toes. "You think that's funny? You make me sick. Every time I hear one of you loudmouthed bigots talk about the need for a 'color-blind society,' I want to puke. Where was your mouth back in the sixties? Your family probably owned slaves."

  "Uh, Garth," I said, touching my brother's arm as both Secret Service agents started running toward us, reaching inside their suit jackets. "Perhaps it might be a good idea to leave the extraneous political discourse for another time."

  The men were almost on us when Kranes, still up on his toes and red-faced, raised his right hand and desperately signaled for the agents to stop. They stopped, but their hands remained inside their suit jackets, on their guns. Finally Garth released his grip on the man's tie. The two agents backed away, but not as far as they had been.

  Kranes, wide-eyed, turned toward me. "What's he talking about? What poet?"

  "Thomas Dickens is dead, Mr. Kranes," I replied. "He was savagely murdered in the same manner as possible witnesses in our Haitian investigation were murdered, which is one reason we know for a fact that the CIA was behind it. The only reason they could have had for doing it was to save you possible embarrassment before or after your swearing-in. They don't want any distractions or questions about your character. Now, if I didn't say anything to anybody, and you didn't say anything to anybody, and Thomas Dickens didn't even know your real name, it led us to deduce that the CIA must have your offices here and in Huntsville bugged. Get it?"

  "My God," Kranes whispered hoarsely. He was beginning to look frightened. "But why. . how. .?"

  "You're third in the line of succession, Mr. Speaker. Remember?"

  "But I don't want to be president," he replied absently. "At least not yet."

  "Irrelevant. With the president and vice president dead, you're it. There's no election to wait out."

  Kranes shook his head stubbornly. "But the next election is only a few months away. ."

  "I think they may have plans for the next election, and we'll get to that. In the meantime, three months is enough time for you to go through a whole laundry list of executive actions, appointments, and proposed pieces of legislation that would sail right through the Congress that your party controls. The first one or two hundred things you'd want to do as president are totally predictable; they're only interested in two of them."

  "This is insane. You're slandering-"

  "The men who founded OSS, and later the CIA, were idealists as well as cowboys. They were our great white knights, our Paladins, during the Cold War. A lot of good men and women sacrificed their lives to protect this country's secrets and steal the enemies'. Members of the Operations Directorate rode into hell to save Western civilization."

  "Are you being sarcastic, Frederickson?"

  "I am not. It's the simple truth. But it's also the truth that when they rode out again they had begun to look to some of us just like the KGB. By the end of the Cold War, they'd only gotten uglier. The Russian KGB is, at the most, operating at very low voltage in their Federal Security Service over there. Ours is still sparking away, and these people are very dangerous."

  "I don't agree at all with that characterization of the CIA," Kranes said stiffly.

  "I understand that, Mr. Speaker. I also understand that, even if you did agree with it, you'd argue that it's necessary to have such an organization working clandestinely, even occasionally beyond the law, because we still live in a dangerous world, and we have to be prepared to fight fire with fire. Even if our guys have turned ugly, the enemies they're up against are even uglier. You'd say we have no choice but to trust our own people."

  "That is exactly right."

  "You consider the aims of the Presidential Commission Garth and I are working for to be potentially very damaging to the national security of the United States. In fact, given that the potential damage should be obvious even to a child, you believe the members of the commission and the people working for them to be n
ot only unpatriotic, but very likely traitorous."

  "That is also exactly right," he replied, drawing himself up slightly and thrusting out his chin. "You state my feelings more precisely than I ever would, Frederickson."

  "So what would one of your first acts in office as president be regarding this commission?"

  "I'd disband it," Kranes answered without hesitation.

  "Bingo. And what about the work the commission has already done up to this point? What about all the files and raw data? What if the final report had almost been completed?"

  This time he did hesitate, and I prompted him with a wiggling finger. "Making public any part of the commission's raw data and speculations would be damaging to national security," he said at last. "I'd order it sealed."

  "Right again. You're on a roll. Those are the two things the CIA desperately wants, the only two things they give a damn about. Do you see now why they're so eager to get you into office as quickly as possible? If they can get you into the Oval Office now, even for a few weeks, it won't matter to them who wins the next election. The issue will be moot; the commission will have been disbanded, and all its work product safely squirreled away, or even shredded."

  He hesitated again, but this time I didn't prompt him. I wanted him to think about it, let the picture I had painted come into sharper focus and unfold before his eyes. Apparently he didn't like what he was seeing, for he finally said, "I have many personal friends in the CIA, Frederickson. They're decent people. Patriots. They'd never be part of a conspiracy like the one you're describing."

  "And they're probably not. Don't misunderstand me, Kranes; I'm not suggesting that the director of the Central Intelligence Agency sits down every morning for a breakfast meeting with the heads of his departments to discuss how this operation is going. The director doesn't know about this, I can assure you; probably only an infinitesimal number of people over at Langley even have a hint of what's going on, and the director of Operations himself probably isn't one of them. This gig is being run by a handful of people in Ops, but the work of this handful of unelected people could be enough to subvert the Constitution of the United States and change the very nature of this country for the foreseeable future. The fact that such a tiny number of men could effectively operate within the confines of such a massive organization shows the extent of the corruption of the entire organization itself. They're supposed to stop people like this, not nurture them, but the CIA isn't going to be able to stop them any more than they were able to bring themselves to finally stop Aldrich Ames, after it was too late."