I rolled faster, and faster, concentrating with all my might, glancing at the faces intermittently, head bowed, listening. The thoughts were coming in a torrent now, a confusing, kaleidoscopic, almost psychedelic rush of emotions and ideas and notions, glimmerings of the most private feelings, the most banal contemplations, anger, love, suspicion, excitement…
… promoted over me how can…
Faster.
… from the darned Department of Justice if…
Move!
Again and again my eyes swept the rows of spectators, then the row of well-dressed senatorial aides, then the stenographers seated before the mahogany podium at their silent keyboards, all of whom were bowed in ferocious concentration over their keyboards.
No.
didn’t put anything in writing and there shouldn’t be any records…
A murmur swept the room. I looked up toward the front of the room as I advanced across the front row of spectators, and saw the door at the front of the room open a crack.
Faster.
… Kay Graham’s dinner party when the Vice President asked me… I swiveled my head from side to side desperately. Where was the gunman? No sign of him yet, not a sign, and Hal was about to appear, and it would all be over!
… the legs on that babe if there’s any way to get her phone number maybe I can ask Myrna to call personnel but then won’t she…
And suddenly, with a jolt, I saw that I had completely overlooked the most obvious place of all! I whirled my head toward the podium, toward the steno pool, and when I noticed an odd discrepancy, I felt my stomach muscles tense.
Three stenographers. Two of them, the two women, were typing away furiously, the continuous folded sheets of paper moving up out of their stenotype machines and around to the receptacle tray.
One of them, however, did not seem to be working. He, a dark-haired young man, was looking up at the door. Odd that he would have the leisure to look around when his colleagues did not; how easy it would be to insert a professional gunman into the stenographic pool. Why the hell hadn’t I thought of it? I jerked my chair toward him wildly, studying him in quarter profile, and the stenographer glanced idly around at the audience, and…
… and I heard something.
Not from the stenographer, who was too far away for me to read his thoughts. But over my left shoulder, just ahead.
Zwölf.
Just a blip of a word, seemingly a nonsense word at first, but then it came clear: it was German. A number. Twelve.
Elf.
There it was again, from over my shoulder. Eleven. Someone was counting in German.
I whipped the chair back around, away from the row of senators, toward the audience. Someone seemed to be striding toward me; I could see a shape in my peripheral vision. And a voice, spoken: “Sir? Sir?”
Zehn.
A security guard was moving toward me, gesturing to me to move out of the front of the room. A security guard, tall and crew cut, dressed in a gray suit, holding a walkie-talkie transmitter.
Where the hell? Where the hell? I ran my eyes up and down the front row, looking for a likely gunman, and glimpsed a pleasingly familiar face, probably someone I knew, some old friend, and kept searching-
And heard: Acht Sekunden bis losschlagen. Eight seconds to strike.
And saw that pleasingly familiar face again, and recognized it: Miles Preston. Just a few feet away.
My old drinking buddy, the foreign correspondent I had befriended in Leipzig, East Germany, years ago.
Miles Preston?
Why was he here? If he was covering the event, why wasn’t he in the press gallery? Why would he be here?
No, of course.
The press gallery was located too far away.
The foreign correspondent I had befriended… No. He had befriended me.
He had come up to me, sitting alone at the bar. Introduced himself.
And then he was in Paris when I was there.
He had been assigned to me, a brand-new CIA boy. A classic black cultivation. His job had been to cultivate a friendship, subtly learn what he could-
Foreign correspondent: an ideal cover.
The security guard began to lope toward me, quickly and with great determination.
Miles Preston, who knew so much about Germany.
Miles Preston was not a British subject. He was-he had to be-a Stasi plant, a German agent, now gone freelance. He was thinking in German.
Zwölf Kugeln in der Pistole. Twelve bullets in the chamber.
And our eyes locked.
Sechs.
I recognized Miles, and he-I was sure-he recognized me. Beneath my disguise, my gray hair and beard and glasses, it was my eyes, the glint of recognition in my eyes, that identified me.
He gave me a cold, almost impassive stare, his eyes narrowing slightly. Then he returned his fierce gaze to the precise center of the room. To the door that was now open a crack.
It was him!
Ich werde nicht mehr als zwei brauchen. I will need no more than two.
A man emerged from the door at the front of the room.
The room broke out in excited whispers. Spectators craned their necks, struggling to get a glimpse.
Sicherung gelöst. Safety off.
It was the chairman of the committee, a tall, gray-haired, barrel-chested man in a dove-gray suit. I recognized him as the Democratic senator from New Mexico. He was engaged in conversation with someone entering behind him, a man in shadow.
Gespannt. Cocked.
But I recognized the silhouette.
Ausgang frei. Exit clear.
The man behind him was Hal Sinclair. The audience had yet to realize who it was, but in a second or two they would. And Miles Preston would-
No! I had to act now!
Hier kommt er. Los. Here he comes-now! Bereit zu feuern. Ready to fire.
And then Harrison Sinclair, tall and proud, dressed immaculately, his beard shaven, his hair neatly trimmed, strode slowly through the door, accompanied by a bodyguard.
There was an audible gasp throughout the crowd, and then the hearing room erupted.
SEVENTY
The room was in an uproar, whispers becoming loud murmurings and excited exclamations, steadily louder and louder.
The unthinkable. The surprise witness was… a dead man. A man the nation had buried, had mourned, months ago.
The press gallery was in turmoil. Several people at the back of the room were running out, probably to place telephone calls.
Sinclair and the committee chairman, cognizant of the commotion Sinclair’s appearance had caused, but oblivious of what was about to happen, continued walking across the hearing room floor to the witness box, where Hal was to be sworn in.
As the crew-cut guard rushed toward me, his hand at his holster, closing the gap between us, coming closer and closer…
Miles had gotten to his feet, unnoticed in all the pandemonium. Reached his hand inside the breast pocket of his suit jacket.
Now!
I depressed the button at the front of the right armrest, which caused the teak panel to flip upward, exposing the gun, grip up, barrel down, fitting snugly into the metal arm tubing.
Two shots only.
That was the drawback of the American Derringer, but it was a price I had to pay.
It was already cocked. I drew it out, slid the safety to the side with my thumb, and-