“Something I can do for you?”
“I just wanted to thank you for setting up what I needed for the co-op board application,” she said. “I moved in yesterday, and the place is great.”
“Glad to be of help,” Lance said. He went back to the pad in his lap, then looked up again. “Something else?”
“Well, yes. I wonder if it would be okay if I… got in touch with Stone Barrington. I mean, if it would be okay from a security standpoint.”
Lance seemed to suppress a smile. “Sure, why not? After all, he’s under contract to the Agency, so he’s one of us, in a way.”
“Thanks, Lance.” Holly turned and walked out of the room again, happy.
Thirty-eight
THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES and the director of Central Intelligence were sitting on the floor of the White House residence living room, eating pizza, drinking beer and watching “The West Wing.” A commercial break arrived.
“You know,” Will said, “Jed Bartlet has an easier time being president than I do.”
“What? With his getting shot in an assassination attempt and his daughter getting drugged by her boyfriend and kidnapped and having to let John Goodman be president and throw him out of the Oval Office? You think that’s easier?”
“Well, not that stuff, maybe, but he seems to have an easier time being right than I do. And Leo, his chief of staff, seems to do all the hard work, too. My chief of staff doesn’t do all the hard work.”
“You don’t have the slightest idea what she does when she’s out of your sight,” she said. “She probably works three times as hard as you do.”
“Are you questioning my work ethic?” Will asked. “You wound me.”
“Oh, horseshit! Sure, you work hard, well, pretty hard anyway. And anyway, there are compensations when you’re president.”
“What compensations?” Will demanded. “I don’t see any compensations. I mean, you could say I get driven everywhere, but I’d really rather drive myself, but the Secret Service won’t let me, except on the farm, and even then they get all nervous.”
“Poor baby,” she cooed, patting his knee.
“And why can’t I ever get a pizza through security while it’s still hot? I hate cold pizza, except at breakfast, and why won’t Domino’s leave the green peppers off the Extravaganza special, like I ask them to?”
“Well, maybe if they knew the Extravaganza was for the president instead of the guard at the main gate, they’d pay more attention.”
“I thought of that, but the Secret Service won’t let me tell them it’s for me; I guess they’re afraid there’s somebody at Domino’s who would poison me if they knew. And why can’t I own a Porsche instead of a Suburban? I always wanted a Porsche.”
“Then why didn’t you have one before you were president? I like Porsches.”
“Because I was a senator, and I had to drive a Suburban, because it was built in Georgia-at least, I think it was. And even if it wasn’t, I couldn’t be seen driving a foreign car. Can you imagine what the Republicans could make of that? ”A white wine-drinking, quiche-eating, “West Wing”-watching, Porsche-driving president?“ They’d go nuts.”
I think the American people might like a pizza-eating, beer-drinking, Porsche-driving president,“ she said, handing him another beer. ”Wouldn’t the NASCAR dads like that, if they knew?“
“A Heineken-drinking president who wouldn’t eat good American green peppers on his pizza? I doubt it. They’d barbecue me at a tailgate party, or something.”
“Poor baby,” she said, patting his knee again.
“And another thing: why can’t I just let Teddy Fay run amok? He’s doing a better job of killing America’s enemies than a certain intelligence agency I could name. Why do I have to sic the law on him?”
“Tell you what,” she said. “You give me a written authorization to kill America’s enemies, regardless of their diplomatic status or location, and I’ll run amok for you. I’d like nothing better than machine-gunning fake diplomats in sidewalk cafes in Paris or planting bombs in the cars of the terrorists’ Swiss bankers.”
“You would, wouldn’t you?” Will laughed. “You’d be out there shooting them yourself, wouldn’t you?”
“Damn straight, I would!”
“Would you settle for heating up this pizza? It’s getting pretty clammy.”
Kate got to her feet and grabbed the box. “Oh, all right. I guess heating pizza will have to do,” she said as she disappeared into the kitchen.
The commercials ended, and Will went back to watching “The West Wing.” He resolved to try to be more like Jed Bartlet.
THIRTY-NINE
TEDDY FAY TACKED THE PHOTOGRAPHS of five men and one woman on his bulletin board and sat back to read each of their files. For some reason-it may have been the man’s face-he strongly wanted to go after one Hadji Asaam who, under another name, was listed as a chauffeur at the Iranian embassy. Asaam was an assassin, pure and simple, and he had already been in the country for eight days. How long before he would be instructed to ply his real trade? Of course, there would be Agency or FBI surveillance on him, but he would find a way to lose them when he wanted to work. In the meantime, he was driving an attache around New York, probably learning the streets.
His decision made, Teddy went to a newsstand and bought several newspapers. Back in his shop, he went carefully through the classifieds, until he found something that suited him in the Village Voice:
Vespa 180, only 1200 mi, pristine, $3K for quick sale.
He called the number. “I’m interested in your Vespa,” he said. “If it’s as described in the paper, I’ll buy it for cash today.”
“It’s exactly as I described it,” the young man said. “You’ll love it.”
“You have the registration and the insurance card?”
“Yep.”
“You have the title? It doesn’t have a loan on it, does it?”
“Nope, I have the title.”
“Can you meet me at the Twenty-third Street Lexington subway stop at two o’clock? We can do the deal right there; I’ll bring cash.”
“Sure, I’ll be there. What’s your name?”
“Jeff Snyder. Yours?”
“Bernie Taylor.”
“See you at two, Bernie.” Teddy hung up.
He went through his makeup kit and selected a prominent nose and a large mustache. Half an hour later he was somebody else. At one-thirty, he walked down the street to the subway stop at 63rd and Lex, and took the train downtown. At street level, Bernie was sitting on the scooter, waiting.
“Let’s go for a ride,” Teddy said, indicating that Bernie should take the passenger seat. Teddy hadn’t driven a Vespa for years, but how much could have changed? He drove quickly around the block; the engine ran as it should, and the gears shifted smoothly. Teddy stopped.
“You’ll throw in the helmet for three grand?”
“Sure,” Bernie said.
Teddy handed him an envelope containing thirty one-hundred-dollar bills. He waited while Bernie counted the money carefully without actually salivating.
“Here’s the registration and title,” he said. “And the insurance card, but you’ll have to change it to your name. Oh, and it has a full tank of gas.”
“A pleasure doing business with you,” Teddy said. He pocketed the papers and drove away. Back at his workshop, he parked the scooter in the downstairs hallway and went upstairs to start planning his surveillance, based on the daily schedule of the attache Asaam would be driving. He would not have long to wait, since the attache was picked up daily at precisely six p.m. and driven to his apartment twenty blocks away. Teddy liked the idea that it would be at rush hour.