So the tears rilled down from behind those opaque lenses as Vincent Capezzi stood post over the coffin that had been strapped to the master bed in the flying White House. Other agents stood outside the door. Capezzi had wanted to be alone with the fallen man.
"We did our best," he said in a low voice as if the dead, unhearing ears could hear every word. "I want you to know that. We did our best for you. But there was nothing we could do."
The coffin, a simple white capsule of composite material, sat mutely on the oval bed.
"And you knew the risks. It doesn't make it right, but you knew the risks when you took the damn job."
There came a knock at the door.
"What is it?" Capezzi said impatiently. He had not finished what he had to say.
"ANC is reporting the President is dead," a voice said.
"Goddamn," said Capezzi, taking off his glasses and wiping his eyes with a linen handkerchief.
"It just broke."
"Has the Man been informed?"
"No."
"I'll do it," he said. When he stepped out into the narrow corridors, the glasses were back on his face and his face was again a fleshy rock.
Thank God for shades, he thought to himself as he knocked on the door with the Presidential seal.
A hoarse, dispirited voice said, "Yes?"
"Capezzi, sir. May I come in?"
"Is it important?"
"Very."
The door unlocked from within, and Vince Capezzi stepped in.
THE PRESIDENT of the United States wore shock on his face like a crumbling mud pack. He was looking out the window at the winter clouds, which reared up like gray-black mountains. He turned in his seat.
He wore a blue poplin windbreaker, the Presidential patch over his heart. There was still blood and brain matter on his shirtfront from the shooting.
"ANC has you dead," Capezzi told him.
The President of the United States snapped out of his spell. "Don't they know better than to go on the air with wild speculation?" The President caught himself. Since the day he took office, they had been tracking his political highs and lows as if he were some kind of fool IPO stock on NASDAQ.
"The other networks are sure to follow. It's a panic situation."
"Has the First Lady been told?"
"Yes. First thing. If she hears the bulletin, she'll know to discount it."
"And the wife of the agent who took the bullet meant for me?"
"No wife. No immediate family."
"Small comfort in that," the President said bitterly.
"He knew the risks of wearing his hair cut like yours and stepping out of the limo first, Mr. President. It was an invitation to take the first shot."
The President looked up. "What is it you boys call that duty?"
"Playing the designated goat, sir."
"I want his sacrifice made known to the American people."
"Sorry, sir. If we released those details, the next sniper will hold back that first shot until he's certain he has the right skull in his cross hairs."
The President made a tight fist. He rubbed his puffy eyes wearily. "I look like a low coward, running away like this," he said bitterly.
"Sorry. But in the event this is a conspiracy and not some lone agent, you have to be returned to the White House. It's for your own personal safety."
The President's eyes flared. "I needed to give that speech. You had no right to hustle me away like that! I'm the damn President of the United States."
"Our mandate to protect you supercedes your wishes," Capezzi said, trying to keep his voice calm. "You need to issue a statement, Mr. President, reassuring the nation."
The President seemed to deflate like a tire. "What I really need is a fresh shirt."
"I'll send your chief of staff in."
Vince Capezzi started to leave.
"Tell him to take his time. If the networks all go on the air with unsubstantiated rumors, they deserve to eat their broadcasts."
"Yes, sir," said Vince Capezzi, closing the door behind him.
Politicians, he thought. A good agent lay in his coffin, a bullet meant for the Chief Executive in his brain, and the true target still had the presence of mind to shuffle the deck before he dealt the next hand.
LIKE A REPEATING IMAGE, six stone-faced Secret Service special agents blocked Pepsie Dobbins's attempt to enter the Science Center at the University of Massachusetts Harbor Campus.
They were resealing the entrance doors with white barrier tape. Two ends of a broken seal hung from the spot where one of two sets of double doors came together.
"I'm Pepsie Dobbins," she said. "What can you tell me?"
"Get lost."
"I mean, what can you tell me about the conspiracy to assassinate the President?"
"Nothing."
"Ah-hah! Then there is a conspiracy."
Behind their aviator sunglasses the six stony faces grew long.
"Nobody said that," an agent said.
"Nobody has contradicted it, either," said Pepsie. She turned to her cameraman. "Did you get that on tape?"
The cameraman nodded. A mistake. Two burly agents strode up to him and relieved him of his Minicam. One said, "I'm confiscating this as evidence in an ongoing investigation" as the other slapped white protective tape over the cassette port.
"Don't you dare!" Pepsie snapped.
"It's done. And you have exactly thirty seconds to leave this campus or we'll confiscate you. "
"I still have my quote," Pepsie warned. "And if you people are involved in any cover-up, ANC News will be the first to see you hung."
"That's 'hanged,'" an agent said.
"How many people involved in the conspiracy?" demanded Pepsie.
"No comment."
"Hah! Another nondenial. Further evidence of conspirators."
"Get stuffed."
Pepsie stormed off campus saying, "We've got to get to the local affiliate."
"Why?" her cameraman asked. "You don't have film."
"We have a Secret Service agent explicitly not denying that there was a conspiracy to assassinate the President of the United States."
"Is that a double negative?" the cameraman asked as they went looking for their cab.
"I don't care what they call it, it's news."
The cabbie was still in the idling Boston taxi down in the underground garage when they got there.
As they got in, they found him fiddling with the cab radio.
"Boy," he said. "You'd think the Secret Service would be talking over a secure channel at a time like this."
Pepsie's eyes and voice grew eager. "You can pick them up?"
"What do you think I've been doing while I've been waiting? The limes crossword?"
"Well, don't just sit there," Pepsie said, pulling a minicassette recorder from her purse. "Turn up the volume so we can all hear."
The tense, urgent voices of the Secret Service crackled over the tinny dash radio.
"They're bringing the shooter's rifle down now," a voice said.
"They sure it's a Mannlicher?"
"It says Mannlicher-Carcano on the barrel, stamped big as life" came the hushed reply.
"What's a Manhiemer-Carbano?" Pepsie wondered aloud.
"Mannlicher-Carcano," the cabbie said. "It's a piece-of-shit Italian rifle."
"How do you know?"
"Hell, everybody knows what a crummy rifle the Carcano is. Even though Oswald did pretty well by it."
"Oswald?"
"Lee Harvey Oswald. The nut who shot Kennedy."
Pepsie frowned. "I thought Sirhan Sirhan shot Kennedy."
"Sirhan shot Robert Kennedy. I'm talking about Jack."
"I wasn't born then," said Pepsie, who hated it when baby boomers flaunted the fact that she hadn't been alive during most of the sixties.
The Secret Service voices continued. "Call out the serial number. I'll radio it to the BATF's NFTC for tracing."
"What did he say?" Pepsie wanted to know.
"He said," the cabbie said patiently, "he's going to radio the Mannlicher's serial number to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. The NFTC is their National Firearms Tracing Center. They can trace any gun manufactured in this country that way."