“Finding out the identity of the people who brought down that plane is now our number one security priority. Are they domestic or foreign? Is a foreign government involved? I want to know, the families of the victims want to know and the American people want to know. Your job is to help us find out.
“I’m now going to turn this meeting over to Jurgen, who will give your agencies and departments various assignments. Harry Estep at the FBI will be everyone’s point of contact, and he will report three times a day to Jurgen, who will personally brief me three times a day.”
The president surveyed the group, then stood. Everyone in the room scrambled to his or her feet and stayed there until he was out of the room.
The meeting went on for another hour. When it was over and everyone had their marching orders, Jake lingered to see if Sal Molina wanted to talk. Apparently he didn’t. Molina and Al Grantham walked out together engaged in conversation.
Zoe Kerry and I were back in Langley about noon. Grafton had just returned and put me and Max Hurley to work drafting memos to the department heads, whom he wanted to see immediately. Hurley and I attended the meeting and sat in the back where we could take notes and run for files if required. Harley Merritt was there and sat beside Grafton.
The department heads were four men and three women. All of them looked like competent and capable civil servants, which I hoped they were. In the next few weeks I suspected I would find out, one way or another. In my sojurn at the Company I had already had run-ins with a couple of them. Still, I was big enough to let bygones be bygones.
Grafton summarized the White House meeting and said, “We have our marching orders. We are to conduct a nation-by-nation intelligence review to see if we can find any hint or trace of a covert operation to assassinate the president.”
“What about the murder of Mario Tomazic?” Merritt asked bluntly.
“Have we found any hint of a possible foreign motive for wanting him dead?” Grafton asked.
“Not yet. But we have only gotten our feet wet so far.”
“What if we assume the murder of Tomazic and the attempted assassination are linked? Will that help?”
It might, the assembled brains decided.
“In any event, let’s get at it. The president said this morning that finding the identity of the culprits behind the downing of Air Force One is our number one national security priority. You will use as many of your people as you need to get this done, without letting our intelligence gathering go into the toilet in the interim. You’ll have to use your best judgment. All vacations are canceled, effectively immediately. Call anyone on vacation and tell them to get back here. If you need to work people ten or twelve hours a day, that’s fine with me. Saturdays and Sundays, too, if necessary. However, I’d like to ensure everyone gets at least one day a week off. If we don’t do that, people will burn out.”
There was more, and it took another half hour. Then Grafton ran the EAs out and huddled with each of the department heads for a half hour or so apiece going over what was happening in their shops.
Hurley and I got back to work. There were intel assessments to review, and Grafton’s notes to turn into memos, plus all the usual paperwork that infects every federal bureaucracy. I learned that the EAs were supposed to attend to all this, prepare short memos for Grafton, write stuff for his signature, maintain his calendar, answer queries from other government agencies, all of it. Already I was missing Anastasia Roberts. Hurley and I had secretaries, so we put them to work.
By six that evening I was exhausted. We let most of the secretaries go home and kept drafting memos about every whisper on the planet for the boss to read. How he managed to wade through this stuff on a daily basis was a mystery to me.
Grafton kicked out the last department head about six thirty and asked for me. I went into his office with a pile for his in-basket and placed it where it belonged.
He got up, shook my hand, moved the chair around for me to sit in and called for coffee. When he was ensconced in his executive leather chair behind the desk and we both had hot steaming cups of java, he said, “The DC bomb squad went through my place this morning. There were three sticks of dynamite in my desk, a small homemade bomb. If I had opened the little drawer where I keep my pencils and pens, the dynamite would have exploded. Thank you, Tommy.”
I didn’t know what to say. Just thought about it. Finally I said, “That guy was a pretty cool dude, waltzing in and out, never knowing when the Internet might come back on.”
“He’s stopped fooling with accidents,” Grafton mused. “Now it’s just plain murder, like with Maxwell.”
“Why? I don’t understand why.”
Grafton used the eraser on a pencil to scratch his head. “If we knew that, we’d know who.”
I thought about it. “He won’t come back if all he’s after is a high-ranking official to pop. There are thousands of them. Well, hundreds, anyway. If he does come back, it’s because someone wants you, specifically, dead.”
Grafton just grunted. I didn’t know if that was a grunt of agreement or “opinion noted and filed.”
“Where are you sleeping tonight?”
“Amy’s house in Laurel.” Amy was the Graftons’ daughter. “Callie went there this morning. But we gotta go home tomorrow night. All our stuff is there.”
“I drafted a memo for your signature. It’s in the in-basket.”
He dug it out. As he read it, I thought it was a pretty good job for my first executive decision. The memo was to Joe Waddell in security, telling him that he was to provide two armed guards at Grafton’s residence around the clock starting at eight o’clock tomorrow morning. They were to wear bulletproof vests, carry weapons and be visible. Every exit except the front door was to be sealed so it couldn’t be opened from outside. Only residents of the building with proper ID were to be admitted. The guards were to carry handheld radios and report in every hour on the hour. Two men around the clock were also to be stationed in front and back of Harley Merritt’s house in Bethesda.
Grafton reached for a pen. “You draft this?” he asked with eyebrows up.
“Yes, sir.”
He signed it. “You got a future pushing paper,” he said. He tossed it across the desk. “This morning at the White House it was pointed out that there aren’t enough federal security officers to guard every public official in this town, even the agency and department heads. Not to mention the members of Congress, all five hundred and thirty-five of them, and the Supreme Court justices. Homeland recommended bringing in army troops, but the president said no. He’s worried that it will look like the federal government has panicked.”
“In light of the bomb in your condo, maybe it’s time to panic,” I said.
“I would bring in troops now, if it were my decision,” Grafton said thoughtfully. “One more assassination of a high public official will certainly create real panic. Which is worse, another death or the appearance of overreacting?”
I was used to the way Grafton thought through problems. He was just thinking aloud, so his listeners could see where his thoughts were going. Sort of like shining a flashlight on the forest ahead, trying to see the trail hidden in the darkness.