The problem with security in a case such as this was that you had to set your procedures in stone, and clever as the Secret Service people undoubtedly were, their arrangements had to fit parameters both known and predictable. He checked his watch. How to confirm his suspicions? For starters, he needed a few minutes at rest. Directly across from Giant Steps was a convenience store, and that he’d check, because the enemy would have a person there, maybe more than one. He pulled in, parked the car, and went in, spending a minute or so blundering about.
“Can I help you?” a voice asked. Female, twenty-five– no older than that, but trying to look young. One did that with the cut of the hair and a little makeup, Movie Star knew. He’d used female operatives himself, and that’s what he’d told them. Younger people always appear less threatening, especially the females. With a smile of confusion and embarrassment, he walked to the counter.
“I’m looking for your maps,” he said.
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“Right there under the counter.” The clerk pointed with a smile. She was Secret Service. The eyes were too bright for the person to be in such a menial job.
“Ach,” he said in disgust, selecting a large book map that would show every residential street in the district– county, they called them in America. He lifted it and flipped pages, one eye trained across the street. The children were being led outside to the playground. Four adults with them. Two would have been the normal number. So, at least two–three, he realized, spotting a man in the shadows, hardly moving at all. Large man, 180 centimeters or so, wearing casual clothes. Yes, the playground faced the dwelling with the garage. The watchers had to be there. Two more, perhaps three, would be in the dwelling, always watching. This would not exactly be easy, but he it’ow/ofknow where the opposition was. “How much for the map?”
“Printed right there on the cover.”
“Ach,ja, excuse me.” He reached into his pocket. “Five dollar, ninety-five,” he said to himself, fishing for the change.
“Plus tax.” She rang it up on the register. “Are you new to the area?”
“Yes, I am. I am teacher.”
“Oh, what do you teach?”
“German,” he replied, taking his change, and counting it. “I want to see what houses are like here. Thank you for the map. I have much to do.” A curt European nod punctuated the encounter, and he left without a further look across the street. Movie Star had a sudden chill. The clerk had definitely been a police type. She’d be watching him right now, probably taking down his license number, but if she did, and if the Secret Service ran the number, they’d find that his name was Dieter Kolb, a German citizen from Frankfurt, a teacher of English, currently out of the country, and unless they pressed, that cover would be sufficient. He pulled north on Ritchie Highway, turning right at the first opportunity. There was a community college on a hill nearby, and in America those all had parking lots.
It was just a matter of finding a good spot. This was it. The intervening woods would soon fill out with the com-
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ing of spring, blocking visual access to Giant Steps. The rear of the house whose garage probably held the Chevy Suburban support vehicle had only a few windows facing in this direction, and those were curtained. The same was true of the preschool itself. Movie Star/Kolb lifted a pair of compact binoculars and scanned. It wasn’t easy with all the tree trunks between him and the objective, but thorough as the American Secret Service was, its people weren’t perfect. None were. More to the point, Giant Steps was not a favorable location for quartering so important a child, but that wasn’t surprising. The Ryan family had sent all of its children here. The teachers were probably excellent, and Ryan and his physician wife probably knew them and were friendly with them, and the news stories he’d copied down from the Internet emphasized the fact that the Ryans wanted to keep their family life intact. Very human. And foolish.
He watched the children cavort on the playground. It seemed to be covered with wood chips. How natural it all was, the little ones cocooned in bulky winter clothes–the temperature was eleven or twelve, he estimated–and running about, some on the monkey bars, others on swings, still more playing in what dirt they could find. The manner of dress told him that these children were well looked-after, and they were, after all, children. Except for one. Which one he couldn’t tell from this distance–they’d need’ photos for that, when the time came– but that one wasn’t a child at all. That one was a political statement for someone to make. Who would make the statement, and exactly why the statement would be made didn’t concern Movie Star. He’d remain in his perch for several hours, not thinking at all about what might result from his activities. Or might not. He didn’t care. He’d write up his memorized notes, draw his detailed maps and diagrams, and forget about it. “Kolb” was years past caring about it all. What had begun with religious fervor for the liberating Holy War of his people had, with the passage of time, become work for which he was paid. If, in the end, something happened which he found politically beneficial, so much the better, but somehow that had never taken place, despite all the hopes and dreams and fiery rhetoric, and what sus-
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tained him was the work and his skill at it. How strange, Movie Star thought, that it should have become so, but the passionate ones were mainly dead, victims of their own dedication. His face grimaced at the irony of it. The true believers done in by their own passion, and those who sustained the hope of his people were those who . . . didn’t care anymore? Was that true?
“MANY PEOPLE WILL object to the nature of your proposed tax plan. A really fair plan is progressive,” the senator went on. Predictably, he was one of the survivors, not one of the new arrivals. He had the mantra down. “Doesn’t this place rather a high burden on working Americans?”
“Senator, I understand what you’re saying,” Winston replied after taking a sip from his water glass. “But what do you mean when you say ‘working’ Americans? I work. I built my business from the ground up and, believe me, that’s work. The First Lady, Cathy Ryan, makes something like four hundred thousand dollars per year–much more than her husband, I might add. Does that mean she doesn’t work? I think she does. She’s a surgeon. I have a brother who’s a physician, and I know the hours he works. True, those two people make more than the average American does, but the marketplace has long since decided that the work they do is more valuable than what some other people do. If you’re going blind, a union auto worker can’t help you; neither can a lawyer. A physician can. That doesn’t mean that the physician doesn’t work, Senator. It means that the work requires higher qualifications and much longer training, and that as a result the work is more highly compensated. What about a baseball player? That’s another category of skilled work, and nobody in this room objects to the salary paid Ken Griffey, Jr., for example. Why? Because he’s superb at what he does, one of the–what?–four or five best in the entire world, and he is lavishly compensated for it. Again, that’s the marketplace at work.
“In a broader sense, speaking in my capacity as a mere
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citizen instead of a Secretary-designate, I object strongly to the artificial and mainly false dichotomy that some people in the political arena place between blue-collar and white-collar workers. There is no way to earn an honest living in this country except by providing a product or a service to the public and, generally speaking, the harder and smarter you work, the more money you make. It’s just that some people have greater abilities than others. If there is an idle-rich class in America, I think the only place you find them is in the movies. Who in this room, if you had the choice, would not instantly trade places with Ken Grif-fey or Jack Nicklaus? Don’t all of us dream about being that good at something? I do,” Winston admitted. “But I can’t swing a bat that hard.
“Okay, what about a really talented software engineer? I can’t do that, either. What about an inventor? What about an executive who transforms a company from a loser to a profit-maker–remember what Samuel Gom-pers said? The worst failure of a captain of industry is to fail to show a profit. Why? Because a profitable company is one that does its job well, and only those companies can compensate their workers properly, and at the same time return money to their shareholders–and those are the people who invest their money in the company which generated jobs for its workers.