“No, don’t send Aspirin. Send two youngsters.”
“How about Calvert and Andrews?”
“Agreed,” replied Stames. “If you brief them right away, I can still make it in time for dinner. Call me at home if it turns out to be anything special.”
Grant Nanna left the office, and Nick smiled a second flirtatious goodbye to his secretary. She was the only attractive thing in the WFO. Julie looked up and smiled nonchalantly. “I don’t mind working for an FBI agent, but there is no way I would ever marry one,” she told her little mirror in the top drawer.
Grant Nanna returned to his office and picked up the extension phone to the Criminal Room.
“Send in Calvert and Andrews.”
“Yes, sir.”
There was a firm knock on the door. Two special agents entered. Barry Calvert was big by anybody’s standards, six-feet-six in his stockinged feet and not many people had seen him that way. At thirty-two, he was thought to be one of the most ambitious young men in the Criminal Section. He was wearing a dark green jacket, dark nondescript trousers, and clumpy black leather brogues. His brown hair was cut short and parted neatly on the right. His tear-drop aviator glasses had been his sign of nonconformity. He was always on duty long after the official check-out time of 5:30 and not just because he was fighting his way up the ladder. He loved the job. He didn’t love anybody else, so far as his colleagues knew, or at least not on more than a temporary basis. Calvert was a Midwesterner by birth and he had entered the FBI after leaving college with a B.A. in sociology from Indiana University and then took the fifteen-week course at Quantico, the FBI Academy. From every angle, he was the archetypal FBI man.
By contrast, Mark Andrews had been one of the more unusual FBI entrants. After majoring in history at Yale he finished his education at Yale Law School, and then decided he wanted some adventure for a few years before he joined a law firm. He felt it would be useful to learn about criminals and the police from the inside. He didn’t give this as his reason for applying to the Bureau — no one is supposed to regard the Bureau as an academic experiment. In fact, Hoover had regarded it so much as a career that he did not allow agents who left the service ever to return. At six feet Mark Andrews looked small next to Calvert. He had a fresh, open face with clear blue eyes and a mop of curly fair hair long enough to skim his shirt collar. At twenty-eight he was one of the youngest agents in the department. His clothes were always smartly fashionable and sometimes not quite regulation. Nick Stames had once caught him in a red sports jacket and brown trousers and relieved him from duty so that he could return home and dress properly. Never embarrass the Bureau. Mark’s charm got him out of a lot of trouble in the Criminal Section, but he had a steadiness of purpose which more than made up for the Ivy League education and manner. He was self-confident, but never pushy or concerned about his own advancement. He didn’t let anyone in the Bureau know about his career plan.
Grant Nanna went over the story of the frightened man waiting for them in Woodrow Wilson.
“Black?” queried Calvert.
“No, Greek.”
Calvert’s surprise showed in his face. Eighty percent of the inhabitants of Washington were black, and ninety-eight percent of those arrested on criminal charges were black. One of the reasons the infamous break-in at the Watergate had been suspicious from the beginning to those who knew Washington at all well was the fact that no blacks were involved, though no agents had admitted it.
“Okay, Barry, think you can handle it?”
“Sure, you want a report on your desk by tomorrow morning?”
“No, the boss wants you to contact him direct if it turns out to be anything special, otherwise just file a report overnight.” Nanna’s telephone rang. “Mr. Stames on the radio line from his car for you, sir,” said Polly, the night switchboard operator.
“He never lets up, does he?” Grant confided to the two junior agents, covering the mouthpiece of the phone with his palm.
“Hi, boss.”
“Grant, did I say that the Greek had a bullet wound in his leg, and it was infected?”
“Yes, boss.”
“Right, do me a favor will you? Call Father Gregory at my church, Saint Constantine and Saint Helen, and ask him to go over to the hospital and see him.”
“Anything you say.”
“And get yourself home, Grant. Aspirin can handle the office tonight.”
“I was just going, boss.”
The line went dead.
“Okay, you two — on your way.” The two special agents headed down the dirty gray corridor and into the service elevator. It looked, as always, as if it required a crank to start it. Finally outside on Pennsylvania Avenue, they picked up a Bureau car.
Mark guided the dark blue Ford sedan down Pennsylvania Avenue past the National Archives and the Mellon Gallery. He circled around the lush Capitol grounds and picked up Independence Avenue going toward the south-east section of Washington. As the two agents waited for a light to change at 1st Street, near the Library of Congress, Barry scowled at the rush-hour traffic and looked at his watch.
“Why didn’t they put Aspirin on this damn assignment?”
“Who’d send Aspirin to a hospital?” replied Mark.
Mark smiled. The two men had established an immediate rapport when they first met at the FBI Academy at Quantico. On the first day of the training course, every trainee received a telegram confirming his appointment. Each new agent was then asked to check the telegram of the person on his right and his left for authenticity. The maneuver was intended to emphasize the need for extreme caution. Mark had glanced at Barry’s telegram and handed it back with a grin. “I guess you’re legit,” he said, “if FBI regulations allow King Kong in the ranks.”
“Listen,” Calvert had replied, reading Mark’s telegram intently. “You may just need King Kong one day, Mr. Andrews.”
The light turned green, but a car ahead of Mark and Barry in the inside lane wanted to make a left turn on 1st Street. For the moment, the two impatient FBI men were trapped in a line of traffic.
“What do you imagine this guy could tell us?”
“I hope he has something on the downtown bank job,” replied Barry. “I’m still the case agent, and I still don’t have any leads after three weeks. Stames is beginning to get uptight about it.”
“No, can’t be that, not with a bullet in his leg. He’s more likely to be another candidate for the nut box. Wife probably shot him for not being home on time for his stuffed vine leaves.”
“You know, the boss would only send a priest to a fellow Greek. You and I could wallow in hell as far as he’s concerned.”
They both laughed. They knew if either of them were to land in trouble, Nick Stames would move the Washington Monument stone by stone if he thought it would help. As the car continued down Independence Avenue into the heart of south-east Washington, the traffic gradually diminished. A few minutes later, they passed 19th Street and the D.C. Armory and reached Woodrow Wilson Medical Center. They found the visitors’ parking lot and Calvert double-checked the lock on every door. Nothing is more embarrassing for an agent than to have his car stolen and then for the Metropolitan Police to call and ask if he could come and collect it. It was the quickest way to a month on the nut box.
The entrance to the hospital was old and dingy, and the corridors gray and bleak. The girl on night duty at the reception desk told them that Casefikis was on the fourth floor, in Room 4308. Both agents were surprised by the lack of security. They didn’t have to show their credentials, and they were allowed to wander around the building as if they were a couple of interns. No one gave them a second look. Perhaps, as agents, they had become too security conscious.