They were not false. The unconscious figure beneath him was a special agent for the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Among his ID papers was the unit to which he had been assigned two months and ten days ago—one day after the meeting of Inver Brass at Cynwid Hollow, Maryland.
Milos removed the dart, carried the man out to the road and placed him behind the wheel of the blue car. He concealed the torch and the gun beneath the seat, closed the door and walked back to his rented car around the bend. He had to find a telephone and reach a man at the Federal Bureau in Washington.
‘There’s no information on that unit,’ said Varak’s contact at the FBI. ‘It came down through administration circles, its origin in California, in San Diego, I think.’
‘There’s no California White House now,’ objected Milos.
‘But there’s another “House”, in case you’ve forgotten.’
‘What?’
‘Before I go on, Checkman, we’re going to need some data from you. It concerns an operation out of Prague that’s gathering fruit over here. It’s minor but irritating. Will you help us?’
‘Certainly. I’ll find out whatever I can. Now what is the house in San Diego, California, that can cause the Bureau to form a special unit?’
‘Simple, Checkman. It belongs to the Vice President of the United States.’
It is agreed then. Congressman Evan Kendrick will be the next Vice President of the United States. He will become President eleven months after the election of the incumbent.
In silence, Varak hung up the phone.
* * *
Chapter 26
It had been five weeks since the calamitous ceremony in the White House’s Blue Room, a calamity compounded by Ringmaster Dennison’s incessant attempts to focus everyone’s attention on the presenter of the Medal of Freedom award and not on the recipient. The conductor of the Marine Band had misread his instructions. Instead of playing a haunting pianissimo of ‘America the Beautiful’ under the President’s peroration, he plunged into a fortissimo version of the ‘Stars and Stripes’, all but drowning out the chief of state. It was only when Congressman Kendrick stepped up to receive the award and express his thanks that the band struck the chords of the song in a low, swelling pianissimo, adding emotional impact to the recipient’s self-effacing words. To the ringmaster’s fury, Kendrick had refused to read the brief speech given to him by Dennison ten minutes before the ceremony, thus instead of extolling the President’s ‘secret but extraordinary assistance’, he thanked all those he could not mention by name for saving his life and bringing about the solution of the Masqat crisis. This particular moment was embarrassingly punctuated by a loud whispered ‘Shit!’ from the ranks of Langford Jennings’s aides on the platform.
The final insult to the ringmaster was brought about solely by himself. During the short photo session where no questions were permitted because of antiterrorist strategies, Herbert Dennison absently withdrew a small bottle of Maalox from his pocket and drank from it. Suddenly cameras were aimed at him, strobes exploding, as the President of the United States turned and glared. It was too much for the acid-prone chief of staff. He spilled the chalk-white liquid over his dark jacket.
At the end, Langford Jennings, his arm around Evan’s shoulders, had walked out of the room and into the carpeted hallway. ‘That went beautifully, Congressman!’ exclaimed the President. ‘Except for a certain asshole who’s supposed to run these things.’
‘He has a lot of pressure on him, sir. I wouldn’t be too harsh.’
‘On Herb?’ said Jennings quietly, confidentially. ‘And have to do what he does? No way… I gather he gave you something to read and you wouldn’t do it.’
‘I’m afraid he did and I wouldn’t.’
‘Good. It would have looked like a damned cheap set-up. Thanks, Evan, I appreciate it.’
‘You’re welcome,’ said Kendrick to this large charismatic man who kept surprising him.
The ensuing five weeks had been as Evan thought they would be. The media clamoured for his attention. But he kept his word to Herbert Dennison and would continue to keep it. He refused all interviews, claiming simply that to accept one would make him feel obliged to accept all, and that would mean he could not adequately serve his constituency, a constituency, incidentally, he continued to hold. The November election in Colorado’s ninth district was merely a ritual; under the circumstances the opposition could not even find a candidate. Yet in terms of the media, some were more succinct than others.
‘You big son of a bitch,’ had teased the acerbic Ernest Foxley of the Foxley show. ‘I gave you your first break, your first decent exposure.’
‘I don’t think you understand,’ Kendrick said. ‘I never wanted any breaks, any exposure.’
After a pause the commentator replied. ‘You know what? I believe you. Why is that?’
‘Because I’m telling you the truth and you’re good at what you do.’
‘Thank you, young man. I’ll pass the word and try to call off the hounds, but don’t give us any more surprises, okay?’
There were no surprises to give anyone, thought Kendrick angrily, driving through the Virginia countryside in the early December afternoon. His house in Fairfax had become a virtual base of operations for Khalehla, the property given a large measure of sophistication by way of the Central Intelligence Agency’s Mitchell Payton. The director of Special Projects had first ordered the construction of a high brick wall that fronted the grounds, admittance achieved through a wide white wrought-iron gate electronically operated. Surrounding the property an equally tall mesh fence was placed deep in the earth, the green metal so thick it would take an explosive, a blow torch or a furiously manipulated hacksaw to break through, the invading sounds heard easily by a unit of guards. Payton then had a continuously ‘swept’ telephone installed in Evan’s study with extension lights in various other rooms that told whoever saw them to reach that instrument as quickly as possible. A communicating computer had been placed alongside the phone and was hooked up to a modem connecting it solely to the director’s private office. When he had information he wanted Khalehla or the congressman to evaluate, it was immediately transmitted, all printouts to be shredded and burned.
In accordance with the President’s publicly stated instructions, Special Projects had moved swiftly at the beginning and assumed responsibility for all security measures mounted to protect the hero of Oman from terrorist reprisals. Kendrick was impressed, initially because of the security arrangements. In the space of one hour after a presidential limousine had driven him away from the estate in Maryland, Mitchell Payton had total control of his movements, in a sense, of his life. The communications equipment came later, quite a bit later, the delay due to Khalehla’s obstinacy. She had resisted the idea of moving into Kendrick’s house, but after eighteen days of hotel living and numerous, awkward out-of-the-way meetings with Evan and her ‘Uncle Mitch’, the latter had put his foot down.
‘Damn it, my dear, there’s no way I can justify the cost of a safe house solely for one of my people, nor would I list the reason if I could, and I certainly can’t install the equipment we need in a hotel. Also, I’ve passed the official word from Cairo to DC that you’ve resigned from the Agency. We can’t afford you in the sector any longer. So I really don’t think you have a choice.’
‘I’ve been trying to convince her,’ Kendrick had interrupted in the private room of a restaurant across the Maryland border. ‘If she’s worried about appearances I’ll put it in the Congressional Record that my aunt’s in town. How about an older aunt with a face lift?’
‘Oh, you bloody fool. All right, I’ll do it.’
‘What equipment?’ Evan asked, turning to Payton. ‘What do you need?’
‘Nothing you can buy,’ answered the CIA director. ‘And items only we can install.’
The next morning a telephone repair truck had drawn up at the house. It was waved on to the grounds by the Agency patrols, and men in telephone company uniforms went to work while over twenty stonemasons were completing the wall and ten others finishing the impenetrable fence. Linemen climbed successive poles from a junction box, pulling wires from one to another and sending a separate cable to Kendrick’s roof. Still others drove a second truck around the rear drive and into the attached garage where they uncrated the computer console and carried it into the downstairs study. Three hours and twenty minutes later, Mitchell Payton’s equipment was in place and functioning. That afternoon Evan had picked up Khalehla in front of her hotel on Nebraska Avenue.
‘Hello there, Auntie?’
‘I want a dead bolt on the guest room door,’ she had replied, laughing as she threw her soft nylon bag into the rack behind the seat and climbed in.
‘Don’t bother, I never mess with older relatives.’