“Then I called Tony in the car. He drove to the Washington Field Office and saw Stames and Calvert coming out of the building together. I then contacted you, boss, and Tony carried out your orders.”
The Chairman passed over a packet. It was one hundred one-hundred-dollar bills. All American employees are paid by seniority and achievement; it was no different in the criminal world.
“Tony.”
“When the two men left the Old Post Office Building, we followed them as instructed. They went over Memorial Bridge. The German passed them and managed to get well ahead of them. As soon as I realized they were turning up onto the G.W. Parkway, as we thought they would, I informed Gerbach on the walkie-talkie. He was waiting in a clump of trees on the middle strip, with his lights off, about a mile ahead. He turned on his lights and came down from the top of the hill on the wrong side of the divided highway. He swung in front of the Feds’ car just after it crossed Windy Run Bridge. I accelerated and overtook on the left-hand side of the car. I hit them with a glancing sideways blow at about seventy miles an hour, just as that damn-fool German hit them head-on. You know the rest, boss. If he had kept his cool,” Tony finished contemptuously, “the German would be here today to make his report in person.”
“What did you do with the car?”
“I went to Mario’s workshop, changed the engine block and the license plates, repaired the damage to the fender, sprayed it, and dumped it. The owner probably wouldn’t recognize his own car if he saw it.”
“Where did you dump it?”
“New York. The Bronx.”
“Good. With a murder there every four hours, they don’t have a lot of time to check on missing cars.”
The Chairman flicked a packet over the table. Three thousand dollars in used fifties. “Stay sober, Tony, we’ll be needing you again.” He refrained from saying what assignment number two would be; he simply said, “Xan.” He stubbed out his cigarette and lit another one. All eyes turned to the silent Vietnamese. His English was good, though heavily accentuated. He tended, like so many educated Orientals, to omit the definite article, giving his speech a curious staccato effect.
“I was in car with Tony whole evening when we got your orders to eliminate two men in Ford sedan. We followed them over bridge and up freeway and when German swung across path of Ford, I blew both back tires in under three seconds, just before Tony bounced them. They had no chance of controlling car after that.”
“How can you be so sure it was under three seconds?”
“I’d been averaging two-point-eight in practice all day.”
Silence. The Chairman passed yet another packet. Another one hundred fifties, twenty-five hundred dollars for each shot.
“Do you have any questions, Senator?”
The Senator did not look up, but shook his head slightly.
The Chairman spoke. “From the press reports and from our further investigation, it looks as if nobody has connected the two incidents, but the FBI just aren’t that stupid. We have to hope that we eliminated everybody who heard anything Casefikis might have said, if he had anything to say in the first place. We may just be oversensitive. One thing’s for certain, we eliminated everybody connected with that hospital. But we still can’t be sure if the Greek knew anything worth repeating.”
“May I say something, boss?”
The Chairman looked up. Nobody spoke unless it was relevant, most unusual for an American board meeting. The Chairman let Matson have the floor.
“One thing worries me, boss. Why would Nick Stames be going to Woodrow Wilson?”
They all stared at him, not quite sure what he meant.
“We know from my inquiries and my contacts that Calvert was there, but we don’t actually know that Stames was there. All we know is that two agents went and that Stames asked Father Gregory to go. We know Stames was on his way home with Calvert, but my experience tells me that Stames wouldn’t go to the hospital himself; he’d send somebody else—”
“Even if he thought it was a serious matter?” interrupted the Chairman.
“He wouldn’t know it was a serious matter, boss. He wouldn’t have known until the agents had reported back to him.”
The Chairman shrugged. “The facts point to Stames going to the hospital with Calvert. He left the Washington Field Office with Calvert driving the same car that left the hospital.”
“I know, boss, but I don’t like it; I know that we’ve covered all the angles, but it’s possible that three or more men left the Washington Field Office and that there is still at least one agent running around who knows what actually happened.”
“It seems unlikely,” said the Senator. “As you will discover when you hear my report.”
The lips compressed in the heavy jaw.
“You’re not happy are you, Matson?”
“No, sir.”
“Very well, check it out. If you come up with anything report back to me.”
The Chairman never left a stone unturned. He looked at the Senator.
The Senator despised these men. They were so small-minded, so greedy. They only understood money, and Kane was going to take it away from them. How their violence had frightened and sickened him. He should never have allowed that smooth-talking plausible bastard Nicholson to pump so much into his secret campaign funds, although God knows he would never have been elected without the money. Lots of money, and such a small price to pay at the time; steadfast opposition to any gun control proposals. Hell, he was genuinely opposed to gun control anyway. But assassinating the President to stop the bill, by God, it was lunacy, but the Chairman had him by the balls. “Co-operate, or be exposed, my friend,” he had said silkily. The Senator had spent half a lifetime sweating to reach the Senate and what’s more, he did a damned good job there. If they stopped him now he would be finished. A public scandal. He couldn’t face it. “Co-operate, my friend, for your own good. All we need is some inside information, and your presence at the Capitol on 10 March. Be reasonable, my friend, why ruin your whole life for a Polish woman?” The Senator cleared his throat.
“It is highly unlikely that the FBI knows any details about our plans. As Mr. Matson knows, if the Bureau had anything to go on, any reason to think that this supposed threat is any different from a thousand others the President has received, the Secret Service would have been informed immediately. And my secretary has ascertained that the President’s schedule for this week remains unchanged. All her appointments will be kept. She will go to the Capitol on the morning of 10 March for a special address to the Senate—”
“But that’s exactly the point,” Matson interrupted with a contemptuous sneer. “All threats against the President, no matter how far-fetched, are routinely reported to the Secret Service. If they haven’t reported anything, it must mean that—”
“It may mean that they don’t know a thing, Matson,” said the Chairman firmly. “I told you to look into it. Now let the Senator answer a more important question: If the FBI knew the details, would they tell the President?”
The Senator hesitated. “No, I don’t think so, or only if they were absolutely certain of danger on a particular day; otherwise they’d go ahead as planned. If every threat or suggestion of a threat were taken seriously, the President would never be able to leave the White House. The Secret Service report to Congress last year showed that there were 1,572 threats against the President’s life, but thorough investigations revealed that there were no actual known attempts.”
The Chairman nodded. “Either they know everything or they know nothing.”
Matson persisted. “I am still a member of the Society of Former Special Agents and I attended a meeting yesterday, and no one there knew a damn thing. Someone would have heard something by now. Later, I had a drink with Grant Nanna, who was my old boss at the Washington Field Office, and he seemed almost uninterested, which I found strange. I thought Stames was a friend of his, but I obviously couldn’t push it too far, since Stames was no friend of mine. I’m still worried. It doesn’t make sense that Stames went to the hospital and no one in the Bureau is saying anything about his death.”