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“Twelve hours, if we want all our crews aboard. It’s summer and one-third of our people are on leave, most of them in Japan.”

“How long before the CIA can come up with a reasonably tight plan to grab these two Japanese?”

“I should have something by this afternoon,” Murphy said, but it was just a guess and it was clear that the President understood it.

“Before anything else happens I want to see those plans in writing on my desk, including contingencies if something should go wrong. In the meantime have Seventh prepare to sail.” The President glanced up at the wall clock. “I want them ready to get underway by nine this evening. But they’re to stay put until I give the order.”

“Yes, sir,” Admiral Mann said.

“I want this kept from the media for as long as possible,” the President warned, “No screw-ups.” He looked around the table but no one said anything. “If there’s nothing else, we’re finished here for this morning.”

Everybody gathered their papers and headed out, but the President motioned for Murphy and Secor to remain. When they were alone he picked up the telephone. “Send Pierone down.” Dr. Gerald Pierone Jr. was director of the FBI.

“How is McGarvey holding up?” the President asked. “It was his girlfriend, the Frenchwoman, who was killed, wasn’t it? And his daughter hurt?”

“Yes, sir,” Murphy said. “I haven’t spoken to him since the bombing, but Tom Doyle has. McGarvey is holding up okay, but he’s mad as hell.”

“So am I. But is he mad enough to take the job?”

“I don’t know. I wish I did, but he’s had a lot of crap thrown at him in the past six months. First the business about his parents, then Howard Ryan’s handling of his daughter and now this. But it was his idea to get Seventh Fleet out of Tokyo Bay and round up Kabayashi and Hironaka.”

“Does he think kidnapping them is possible?”

Murphy had to smile. “With McGarvey just about anything is possible if he’s motivated.”

“I would think that the attack on his daughter and girlfriend would be plenty of motivation,” Secor said, wide-eyed behind his wire-rimmed spectacles.

“I wouldn’t care to put it to him quite that way, Harold,” Murphy said.

“I didn’t mean that as crassly as it sounded, and you know it. We’ve all had our share of crap, as you put it, thrown at us. Doesn’t stop us from doing our jobs. At this point we need him.” Secor came from a privileged family, he held doctorates in history and political science and before he’d been tapped for government service he had been head of Harvard’s department of history. He didn’t know the meaning of personal adversity.

“I’ll be talking to him soon. Right now he’s with his daughter and ex-wife at the hospital.”

“Bring him over here, and I’ll talk to him if you think it’ll help,” the President said.

“That won’t be necessary. McGarvey will only take the job if he believes he can made a difference,” Murphy said. He had to wonder if in the end any of them made any difference.

Dr. Pierone walked in and set his briefcase on the table. “Good morning, Mr. President.”

“Morning, Gerald. I asked the general to sit in on this since the investigation concerns one of his people.”

Pierone turned to Murphy. He was a medical doctor. Before he’d been appointed to head the FBI, he’d served on the boards of four major hospitals and an HMO. “If you’re talking about McGarvey, he’s our prime resource. He was right there in the middle of it, and he took out three terrorists in the middle of Canal Bridge on Wisconsin Avenue in front of a dozen witnesses. We’d very much like to finish interviewing him.”

“Our Internal Affairs people are handling the investigation, and if they come up with anything of value to your case we’ll hand it over, naturally,” Murphy said.

Pierone was fuming. “Twenty people are dead and three others probably won’t make it. We want some answers, because this was no Oklahoma City. The attack wasn’t some random act of terrorism. It was directed. And at the very least Mr. McGarvey will have to stand a coroner’s hearing on the three men he killed.”

“We’ll see about that last part. But if you’re right about the rest, and I’m not saying that you’re not, we may be in for some further trouble,” Murphy said heavily. On the way over he’d decided to hold nothing back, no matter how disturbing it might be.

“You’re talking about somebody from McGarvey’s past, right?” Secor said. Murphy thought that the President’s national security adviser looked diffident.

“It could have been a reaction to proposing him as DDO.”

This was news to Pierone. “I hadn’t heard about that. But the list of people who did know could be a start.”

“There are only a few of us at the CIA, plus the President’s staff, and, I’m assuming, a few key people on the Hill.”

“That’s right,” the President said, tightly. “These terrorists were Asians?”

“Yes, Mr. President,” Pierone said. “We don’t have any identification on them yet, their fingerprints are not in our files, but we’re working with Interpol and a few other international agencies.”

“Could they have been Japanese?”

“It’s possible, even likely.”

The President shot Murphy a significant look. “Where’s the FBI’s investigation right now?

“We’re interviewing witnesses,” Pierone said. “Naturally we want to talk to McGarvey. Of all the people who survived, his would be the most useful testimony.” He turned again to Murphy. “What has he said to your people?”

“He thinks the attack might have been directed at him by someone who doesn’t want him taking the job.”

“That’s not what he told my people.”

“Since then he found out that his ex-wife has received a number of anonymous threats warning her to convince her husband to refuse the job.”

“Is the CIA making a connection between McGarvey and someone in Japan who might want him dead?” Pierone.asked.

“It’s one of the possibilities I think you should consider.”

“Then I think it’ll be a good idea if I send someone over later this morning to begin liaising. I don’t want this to turn out like two years ago. We still haven’t fully recovered.”

“There are other considerations here,” Secor said.

“The only consideration is that there’s been another terrorist act on American soil. The fifth in as many years. And if you want to bring down an administration, just stop protecting the people. Or become perceived as ineffectual in stopping terrorism.”

“Your point is made,” the President said. “The CIA will fully cooperate with you, in so far as the investigation concerns domestic issues. But if foreign evidence is uncovered that in our opinion directly involves your work you’ll be given access to that material as well. In the meantime, Mr. McGarvey is off-limits unless he turns down our offer.”

“We’ll debrief him and send along the pertinent details,” Murphy conceded. It was clear that Pierone thought his hands were being tied, which in fact they were.

He nodded finally. “Then I’ll do my best, Mr. President.”

“That’s all I can ask,” the President said.

* * *

Harold Secor walked over to the office of Tony Croft, the President’s adviser on foreign affairs, in the Executive Office Building a few minutes after ten, a worried frown on his professorial face. The President was meeting with the national Democratic Party chairman in the Oval Office and would be tied up for at least a half hour. It gave Secor a few minutes to sit in on a meeting that he considered politically explosive.

Croft and a half dozen of his staffers were seated around his office with Stewart Dewitt, the President’s assistant for economic affairs; Clinton Scott, special consultant to the President for fund-raising activities and Joseph Lee, the major foreign contributor to President Lindsay’s reelection campaign. Considering all the media attention over the past three or four years on political fund-raising activities, the Taiwanese businessman’s presence here was dangerous, and Secor had told the President just that. But Lee was willing to continue contributing large sums of money, for so-called soft access to the White House, and the administration was willing to keep receiving it.