We sprinted through the metal detector, past the startled policeman who had leaped out of his chair and was reaching for his gun. I heard a collision of bodies behind me, and when I glanced back over my shoulder I could see that Francisco, bless his quick-thinking and courageous permanent-associate-investigator's heart, had hurled himself through the air and into the man in order to save us from being shot in the back.
His effort was for naught. I had only glanced back for a split second, but when I looked ahead again I saw that five men, three of them large enough to play on the San Diego Chargers' line, had materialized between us and the double doors. They were all in a crouched firing stance. One had his gun aimed at Francisco, and the other four had a direct bead on Garth and me.
"Freeze!" the man in the middle of the pack shouted, his voice cutting like a chainsaw through the cacophonous clapping and cheering coming from the television speaker hanging above his head.
Garth and I, the bottoms of our bare feet coated with gravel, slid to a halt and raised our hands. I shouted back, "Listen to us!"
"Shut up! Don't talk!"
"Get the president and vice president off the stage right now," I said loudly but calmly, carefully enunciating each word. "They're about to be shot."
"I said don't talk! Lie down on your stomachs with your arms out to the sides! Do it right now, or you're dead men!"
Garth and I glanced at each other, and once again I could see that we were thinking the same thing. With our reports and warnings we had created quite a fuss over the past few days, and there was enormous tension. As disciplined as these Secret Service agents were, their trigger fingers had to be getting a bit itchy, and I didn't much care for the irony of Garth and me dying as a direct result of the very alertness and caution we had labored so hard to bring about. If we were a few yards short of the goal line, there was nothing to be done about it, except do what we were told or risk being gunned down. We lay down on our stomachs, spread our arms out to the sides.
Instantly four of the men sprang forward, while the fifth rushed over to Francisco. Guns were held to the backs of our heads while our hands were roughly pulled behind our backs and our wrists cuffed. I could hear the cuffs being snapped on Francisco's wrists, and I was very conscious of the smell of industrial-strength wax on the cold stone where my cheek rested.
Something had changed besides our situation; something was different, and with my thoughts racing and heart pounding it took me a few moments to realize what it was.
The applause and cheering had stopped; there was dead silence from behind the doors and over the television monitors.
Then a voice, very faint but still audible, could be heard over the television speaker. The voice said, "Don't do it."
The voice, as muted as it was, sounded familiar. Suddenly the hands that had been holding my head to the marble lifted. Five Secret Service agents and their three captives all looked up at the television monitors, transfixed. And I now realized who had been in the limousine that had passed us on Twelfth Avenue.
It appeared that being Speaker of the House of Representatives was good enough to get you not only a police escort through New York City, but into the convention of the opposing party, and even onto the convention floor itself. It also appeared that William P. Kranes had taken my advice and bellied up to the bar with some of his loonier right-wing admirers. Somebody had given him an earful, and he obviously hadn't liked what he'd heard. Perhaps for the first time the full import of what Garth and I had been trying to tell him had finally sunk in, and he wanted no part, however passively, of any assassination plot. He did not want to preside over the corpse of a country.
The camera picked him up, and then zoomed in on the pudgy man as he slowly walked down the center of the carpeted well separating the stage from the convention delegates. He didn't know where to look, and so he was looking everywhere, out across the sea of faces, alternately waving his arms and then making thrusting motions with his palms out, as if to push back the death he knew was lurking in the hall.
"Don't do it,"he repeated, his voice being barely picked up by the microphone on stage. His voice sounded like it was coming from the far end of a long tunnel. The camera moved back to include the stage, where everybody except a dozen scurrying Secret Service agents was staring at Kranes in stunned amazement. "This isn't the way. It won't do you any good. I won't be president. I don't want to be president. I've resigned as Speaker of the House, so it isn't-"
Suddenly there was a blur of motion and sound. Secret Service agents had already surrounded the president and vice president, but still two young men whom I immediately recognized as the assassins appeared on the apron of the well, holding their guns aloft, searching for their targets. An instant before they were shot dead by Secret Service agents, the head of William P. Kranes exploded in an expanding mist of blood, flesh, and bone that sprayed the faces of the people on the stage and in the front rows of the screaming delegates.
The screams and shouts increased in volume as the pandemonium breaking loose could clearly be heard through the heavy doors as well as over the television speakers.
"Hey, big guy," Garth said to the burly agent standing over him and gaping at the television monitor. "You want to cut us loose now? It looks like you've got other business to attend to."
Epilogue
My God," Mary Tree said, lifting her head off Garth's shoulder and looking over at me. "Harper and I can't leave you two alone for more than a day, can we? Garth almost breaks his neck falling off a horse, of all things, and then both of you wind up almost getting your hearts cut out in some voodoo temple!"
Almost was, of course, the delicious operative word. Other good news was that I hadn't drooled, awake or asleep, for almost a week, and my headache had finally disappeared after the fourth day. I took these as hopeful signs that Mongo the Magnificent was not going to end as Robby the Zombie. In fact, all things considered, I was feeling pretty good.
Garth's wife, the folksinger Mary Tree, had canceled three concerts in Norway and Sweden to fly back to New York when news of what had happened, and the Fredericksons' involvement in events, had hit the news services around the world. And Harper Rhys-Whitney, who was now officially my fiancee, had returned from her latest snake-hunting expedition in the Amazon rain forest and was sitting at my side on the sofa in my apartment. Garth and Mary lounged in easy chairs across from us, and Francisco and his lover, Tony, sat in straight-backed chairs on either side of them. Tony, Francisco's "type," turned out to be a wiry, very soft-spoken principal dancer with the New York City Ballet. We had invited Francisco to bring Tony and join us for drinks before we went our separate ways- Garth and Mary back to Europe to resume her tour, and Harper and I off to Tahiti. The dancer kept glancing shyly and admiringly at Francisco, who appeared very pleased with himself.
"Robby," Harper said seriously, reaching over and squeezing my hand, "do you really think it was the CIA that killed Kranes?"
I gazed into Harper's impossibly maroon eyes, then glanced at Garth, who grunted and rolled his eyes toward the ceiling. He said, "You can bet your pet python and the snake farm on it, Harper."
"Dr. Frederickson-"
"Don't call me 'Dr. Frederickson,' Tony. And don't call me 'Robert' or 'Robby,' because only my mother and Harper do that, probably because they know I hate it, and only Francisco can't seem to escape the need to call me 'sir.' My name's Mongo."