“You heard what I said.”
“Look,” I persisted, “every one of these men has met with the President at least once, and you know that no one — I repeat — no one ever gets to meet the President in person for the first time without being cleared by the Secret Service. They’ve got to be notified twenty-four hours in advance of the meeting to check him out. Now, where are those clearances? What were they based on? Someone’s got to have files on these men!”
“I’m well aware of the procedure!” Acid dripped from Hawk’s voice.
“And there’s no file on any of them?”
“Not a trace. We’ve been checking all morning.”
It was hard for me to believe. “You’re telling me that each one of these men has had his files removed from every intelligence unit in the country?”
“No,” said Hawk deliberately. “I think that just one of them has had all the files removed. Getting rid of his own would just single him out for attention.”
“Computer banks? What about the computer banks?”
“Nothing,” said Hawk. “They’ve been reprogrammed so that the information is either erased or simply won’t appear on a print-out.”
Hawk made a difficult admission. “I underestimated our opponent, Nick. The man has more influence than I thought. I didn’t really understand how much power our man can wield. What you’ve done, Nick, has pushed him into making his move earlier than we expected. You may not have eleven days to find him.”
There was something in Hawk’s tone of voice that told me he had kept something back.
“Spit it out, Hawk. What else is there I should know?”
“As of ten minutes before this phone call,” said Hawk, “you’ve been put on the wanted list by the FBI. And the Secret Service just got word that you’ve made a dangerous threat on the life of the President. Agents from both departments will try to pick you up as soon as their Boston field offices receive word. Get the hell out of that hotel and go underground!”
“And finish the assignment?”
“Certainly!” snapped Hawk. “What else did you expect?”
And with that he hung up.
Chapter Seven
When you have to move fast, you travel as light as you can. Pierre, the miniature gas bomb that’s gotten me out of more than one tough scrape, was taped to my groin under my shorts. Hugo was strapped to my forearm in his chamois sheath, and Wilhelmina sat in her holster concealed under my summer jacket. The only other things I took with me were Malcom Stoughton’s wallet and wristwatch. There was no way I was going to leave them in the room for the Feds to find, not unless I wanted them to pin a murder rap on me along with all the other charges they’d trumped up.
I was halfway down the corridor to the elevators when a bellhop came out of a room just ahead of me. He let me pass him, and at that moment another bellhop turned the corner of the corridor about thirty feet further on. Alarms went off in my head hike a destroyer’s wha-wha-wha-wha-wha call to action stations.
Bellhops aren’t usually over six feet tall and built like pro athletes. These were. Bellhops either ignore you or, if they look at you, give you a pleasant professional hotelman’s smile. The one ahead of me was giving me a hard, calculating stare. I saw him deliberately nod his head at the other just before I heard the footsteps behind me begin to quicken.
I didn’t wait to be trapped between them. I broke into a headlong run directly at the one in front of me. About four feet from him I launched myself into the air, feet first.
He went down like a bowling pin. I was back on my feet and running. At the turn of the corridor, I bounced off the wall, racing for the emergency stairs. Behind me there was no excited outcry. There was only the menacing sound of footsteps racing purposefully after me, barely muffled by the corridor carpeting.
Hastily I threw open the door to the exit and slammed it shut behind me. At that point I had two choices. I could either run up the stairs to the roof — or I could run down to the lobby or basement. The door to the roof could be locked, so that wasn’t a wise choice. And I didn’t know the layout in the basement. It could turn out to be a dead end for me, in more ways than one.
So I took just one step away from the door, flattening myself against the wall. In less than five seconds it burst open as the first of the two bellhops ran in. I gave him no time to look around. I chopped hard at the base of his neck with the barrel of Wilhelmina. As he sagged, unconscious, I gave him a push. He tumbled down the cast iron stairs like a sack of potatoes.
The second bellhop flung open the door only a second later. He came to a dead stop as I shoved the muzzle of the Luger under his ear.
“Don’t move!” I threatened. “Not unless you want your head blown off!”
He froze, his face only inches from mine, glaring at me in repressed, impotent fury.
“Alright,” I said. “Who sent you?”
He didn’t quiver. Not a muscle. I could see that he’d made up his mind not to talk, and I didn’t have the time to persuade him otherwise. I had to get out of that hotel before the Feds arrived. I spun him around and rapped his skull with the Luger. He crumbled to the floor.
What I wanted was his uniform and time enough to get away. If two of them were on this floor after me, the odds were pretty good that there were others covering the exits to prevent me from getting out.
Peeling the clothes off the unconscious hulk of a 200 pounder is not an easy task. I wasn’t any too gentle with him, either. I was in a hurry, and if his head bounced on the concrete floor a few times, well, that was his tough luck! As it was, it took me a full five minutes to strip off his bellhop’s uniform down to his shorts. The trousers fit. The jacket was a little loose, but that didn’t matter. I folded my own trousers, turned my jacket inside out and draped both items over my left arm. I was on the point of leaving when I noticed his limp, outflung arm. What caught my eye was a silver identification bracelet on his wrist. Quickly I unhooked it and put it in my pocket.
Then, with my trousers and jacket hung over my left arm, I opened the door and boldly walked back down the corridor toward the elevator just as if I were a bellhop bringing a suit of clothes down to the valet service to be cleaned and pressed.
I pressed the “down” button and waited. It was a damned long minute and a half, but no one else showed up. The elevator doors slid open. Three businessmen carrying briefcases were inside. They didn’t look once at me. With a pleasant but impersonal smile on my face, I stood in the rear of the elevator as it descended.
The three stepped out when we reached the lobby. The doors remained open long enough for me to spot two men who seemed to be out of place in that hotel. The Ritz Carlton just wasn’t their speed. I noticed that they turned their heads, taking a hard look at the elevator as the doors slid open, and they did more than just glance at the three businessmen who left it. They scrutinized them from head to toe.
I had my head turned away, but it was the bellhop uniform that did the trick.
The elevator doors finally slid shut. The cage descended to the basement. Most hotel basements are basically alike. They’re service units for the rest of the hotel. While they may be laid out differently, they are all planned to be functional.
I made my way along two corridors, then down a third until I finally found a short flight of stairs that led me to an exit to an alleyway. I ducked back in behind the door to change back into my own clothes. A bellhop’s uniform would be too damned conspicuous out in the street. I left the outfit behind the door and walked out into the sunshine.
The streets that make up Boston’s famous Back Bay run perpendicular to the Public Garden and are parallel to each other. They are Beacon Street, Marlborough, Commonwealth Avenue, Newbury and Boylston, which is a wide boulevard. Between each of the streets, running along their entire length, matching them block after block for more than a mile, are “Public Alleys.” The alleys are barely wide enough for a car or truck to pass through. They have miniature sidewalks on which the rubbish and trash from the buildings are placed for pickup by the garbage haulers.