Cut to a shot of Cozzano, James, and Mary Catherine sitting together on the sofa. Zoom into a talking-head shot of Cozzano alone.
The President-elect made a heartfelt statement of thanks to the American people, expressed his happiness with his daughter's career plans and his son's excellent book, and incidentally, announced his cabinet nominees.
Then he stood up and introduced them personally. The cabinet-to-be were all gathered around the huge dining room table, dressed in cozy sweaters, drinking cider. They interrupted the convivial routine for a moment as Cozzano introduced them, one by one, to the American people. They were good-looking, confident, bipartisan, and multicultural.
Finally Cozzano returned to his seat by the fire to address a few last words of greeting and holiday cheer to the American people. Cozzano had developed a sense of timing that was positively eerie. He brought his little speech to a close just in time to cut back to the Scoreboard clock at the bowl game.
On the eighteenth of January, the Cozzanos climbed on to a chartered plane and flew to Washington, D.C. Journalists from around the world were converging there at the same time. So were members of the incoming administration and transition team, all of Cy Ogle's top people, several big GODS trucks full of electronics, Floyd Wayne Vishniak, and an irregular caravan of buses, cars, and airplanes carrying old teammates and Marine comrades-in-arms of William A. Cozzano.
58
At eight o'clock on the morning of Inauguration Day, a cluster of Secret Service agents burst from the elevators and into the lobby of the Georgetown Four Seasons Hotel, striding calmly but implacably across hardwood floors, green oriental carpets, and weathered brick. At the same time, a motorcade of three dark cars was spiraling out of a parking garage down the street. The motorcade pulled into the brick driveway at the front entrance just as the cluster of agents, and the dignitaries hidden among them, was bursting through the brass front doors. Within a few seconds, the cars and the people were gone, trailed by a few journalists who had been quick enough to notice that the President-elect was on the move.
At the same time, William A. Cozzano himself was emerging quietly from an elevator tucked into a dimly lit corridor near the restaurant on the next floor down. He was accompanied by his son and daughter and two Secret Service agents. The Cozzanos were dressed in running clothes. They padded down a gray-carpeted stairway and exited on to a brick patio behind the hotel, two stories below street level, which led directly on to a herringbone-brick jogging path. Beyond the path was the C&O Canal, a narrow trench of stagnant water lined with massive, moss-covered masonry blocks.
The President-elect wanted to go for a damn jog with his family. Was it too much to ask? It would be his last opportunity to do so as a private citizen. He wanted to do it in Rock Creek Park, which was where he normally jogged when he was in D.C., but the Secret Service didn't like that idea. They had gotten positively jumpy about Floyd Wayne Vishniak, who was still at large. During his escapade at Ogle Data Research, Vishniak had displayed cunning and well-developed marksmanship skills. He was still firing off demented manifestoes to various newspapers and magazines. Everyone knew that Cozzano liked to jog in Rock Creek Park, and with its dense vegetation and myriad ways in and out, it would be like the happy hunting grounds for Vishniak.
Cozzano was a demanding sort. He didn't merely want to go jogging in an incredibly dangerous place: he was insisting on privacy too. He wanted to stage a diversion and send the journalists on a wild goose chase so that he could just run with his son and daughter.
The Secret Service agreed to a compromise. If Cozzano would go running in Arlington - in an area that was not quite so Floyd-friendly - then the Secret Service would stage the diversion for him. So far it was working perfectly.
Fifty feet away, the canal passed underneath the Rock Creek Parkway and joined up with Rock Creek itself. Three more Secret Service cars were idling on the side of the Parkway, wheels up on the curb, waiting for them with doors open. This little motorcade would spirit them away to Arlington, where they could go jogging on the flawlessly groomed parade grounds of Fort Myer, next to the National Cemetery, under the protection of military police and Secret Service.
Cozzano had been talking football with the Secret Service men all the way down the stairs. As they crossed the brick patio, Mary Catherine drew close to her brother and said, "James, this is important. Remember when we were kids? Remember Follow the Leader?"
"Sure," James said sunnily, mistaking this for idle nostalgia.
"We're about to play the world's most important game of Follow the Leader. Don't screw it up," Mary Catherine said.
"Huh?"
They were stepping on to the jogging path. Mary Catherine reached into the open top of her belt pack and flipped the toggle switch on the end of her black plastic Radio Shack contraption.
William A. Cozzano stopped dead for a moment and shouted, "Hey!"
He was staring off into the distance, focusing on something that wasn't there.
"Dad?" James said. "Are you okay?"
Cozzano shook his head and snapped out if it. He looked at James and Mary Catherine for a moment, thinking about something. Then he glanced at the Secret Service men as if noticing them for the first time. "Nothing," he said. "I just remembered something. Déjà vu, I guess."
The family, trailed by the two agents, began to jog down the path, which angled up and away from the canal toward the edge of the parkway. A few yards short of the waiting cars, Mary Catherine broke sharply to the right, thrashed through some brush, and skittered down the jumbled pile of boulders that made up the creek's bank. She was followed by her father and, somewhat uncertainly, by James.
"Sir" one of the Secret Service men said. They had fallen well behind the Cozzanos and were watching them pick their way toward the confluence of the canal and Rock Creek.
"Just stay there," Cozzano said. "We're going to pick up some of this litter. It's a national disgrace."
The whole family disappeared beneath the parkway. The Secret Service men stood dumfounded for a few moments, then ran down the bank, awkward in their suits and trench coats and leather shoes, trying to regain sight of the Cozzanos. But all they saw was the creek.
Three of them charged under the bridge, but ran into an obstacle: several homeless men. They had apparently been awakened by the Cozzanos. Now they were up on their feet and feeling frisky. These men occupied a bottleneck: a rocky stretch of bank between the buttress of the bridge and the bank of the creek. One of them was even standing in the water, thigh-deep.
There were harsh words and some shoving. The Secret Service men did not fare well in the shoving match, because, as they had started to notice, all of the homeless men were astoundingly large, and, considering their lifestyle, inhumanly strong. By the time the Secret Service got around to pulling guns, and the homeless men held up their hands apologetically and let them pass, they had completely lost track of the Cozzanos.
Above them, tires were squealing out on the Rock Creek Parkway. The noise was made by half a dozen large rental cars skidding sideways, across both sets of lanes, blocking all traffic.