Shall We Tell the President? (14 page)

We’ve run Rossi through all the computers —
nothing. Obviously a false name. Same story at the Georgetown Inn. The
proprietor said the room had been hired for the day of 24 February by a Mr
Rossi, food to be supplied, but no service, cash paid in advance. Rossi was
about five-feet-eight, dark complexion, no distinguishing features, dark hair,
sunglasses. The proprietor thought he “seemed Italian”. No one at the hotel
knows or cares who the hell went to lunch in that room that day. I’m afraid it
doesn’t get us very far.’

‘I agree. I suppose we could pull every
Italian answering that description off the street,’ said the Director. ‘If we
had five years, not five days. Did you turn up anything new at the hospital,
Matt?’

‘It’s a hell of a mess, sir. The place is
full of people coming and going, all day and most of the night. The staff all
work shifts. They don’t even know their own colleagues, let alone outsiders.
You could wander around there all day with a torchlight in your hand and no one
would stop you unless they wanted a light.’

‘That figures,’ said Tyson. ‘Right,
Andrews, what have you been up to for the past twenty-four hours?

Mark opened his regulation blue plastic
portfolio. He reported that there were sixty-two senators left, the other
thirty-eight accounted for, most of them having been a long way from
Washington
on 24
February. He passed the list of names over to the Director, who glanced through
them.

‘Some pretty big fish still left in the
muddy pond Andrews. Go on.’

Mark proceeded to outline his encounter
with the Greek Orthodox priest. He expected a sharp reprimand for failing to
remember the matter of the beard
imme-diately
. He was
not disappointed. Chastened, he continued: ‘I am seeing Father Gregory at eight
o’clock this morning, and I thought I would go on to see
Casefikis’s
widow afterwards. I don’t think either will have much to offer, but I imagine
you want those leads followed up, sir. After that I intended to return to the
Library of Congress to try and figure out why any of those sixty-two senators
might wish to see an end of President Kane.’

Well, to start with, put them in
categories,’ said the Director. ‘First political party, then committees, then
outside interests, then their personal knowledge of the President. Don’t
forget, Andrews, we do know that our man had lunch in
Georgetown
on 24 February and that should
bring the numbers down.’

‘But, sir, presumably they all had lunch on
24 February.’

‘Exactly, Andrews, but not all in private.
Many of them would have been seen in a public place or lunched officially, with
constituents or federal employees or lobbyists. You have to find out who did
what, without letting the senator we’re after get suspicious.’

‘How do you suggest I go about doing that,
sir?’

‘Simple,’ replied the Director. ‘You call
each of the senators’ secretaries and ask if the boss would be free to attend a
luncheon on —’ he paused ‘— “The Problems of Urban Environment”. Yes, I like
that. Give them a date, say 5 May, then ask if they attended either the one
given on,’ the Director glanced at his Calendar, 17 January or 24 February, as
some senators who had accepted didn’t attend, and one or two turned up without
invitations. Then say a written invitation will follow. All the secretaries
will put it out of their minds unless you write, and if any of them does
remember on 5 May, it will be too late for us to care. One thing is certain: no
senator will be letting his secretary know that he is planning to kill the
President.’

The Assistant Director grimaced slightly.
‘If he gets caught, sir, all hell will break loose. We’ll be back in the
dirty-tricks department.’

‘No, Matt, if I tell the President one of
her precious brethren is going to knife her in the back, she won’t see anything
particularly pleasant in that trick.’

‘We haven’t got any real proof, sir,’ said
Mark.

‘Then you had better find it, Andrews, or
we’ll all be looking for a new job, trust my judgement.’

Trust my judgement, Mark thought.

‘All we have is one strong lead,’ the
Director continued. ‘That a senator may be involved, but we have only five days
left. If we fail next Thursday, there will be enough time during the next
twenty years to study the inquiry and you, Andrews, will be able to make a
fortune writing a book about it.’

Mark looked apprehensive.

‘Andrews, don’t get too worried. I have
briefed the head of the Secret Service. I told him no more and no less than was
in your report, as we agreed yesterday, so that gives us a clear run right
through to 10 March. I’m working on a contingency plan, in case we don’t know
who Cassius is before then; but I won’t bore you with it now. I have also
talked to the boys from Homicide; they have come up with very little that can
help us. It may interest you to know that they have seen
Casefikis’s
wife already. Their brains seem to work a little faster than yours, Andrews.’

‘Perhaps they don’t have as much on their
minds,’ said the Assistant Director.

‘Maybe not. Okay, go see her if you think
it might help. You may pick up something they missed. Cheer up, you’ve covered
a lot of ground. Perhaps this morning’s investigation will give us some new
leads to work on. I think that covers everything for now. Right, Andrews, don’t
let me waste any more of your time.’

‘No, sir.’

Mark rose.

‘I’m sorry, I forgot to offer you coffee,
Andrews.’

I didn’t manage to drink it the last time,
Mark wanted to say. He left as the Director ordered coffee for himself and the
Assistant Director. He decided that he too could do with some breakfast and a
chance to collect his thoughts. He went in search of the Bureau cafeteria.

The Director drank his coffee and asked Mrs
McGregor to send in his personal assistant. The anonymous man appeared almost
instantly, a grey folder under his arm. He didn’t have to ask the Director what
it was that he wanted. He placed the folder on the table in front of him, and
left without speaking.

‘Thank you,’ said the Director to the
closing door.

He turned the cover of the folder and
browsed through it for twenty minutes, a chuckle here, and a grunt there, the
odd comment to Matthew Rogers. There were facts in it about Mark Andrews of
which Mark himself would have been unaware. The Director finished his second
cup of coffee, closed the file, and locked it in the personal drawer of the
Queen Anne desk. Queen Anne had never held as many secrets as that desk.

Mark finished a much better breakfast than
he could have hoped for at the Washington Field Office. There you had to go
across the street to the Lunch Connection, because the snack bar downstairs was
so abominable, much in keeping with the rest of the building. Not that he
wouldn’t have liked to return to it now instead of the underground garage to
pick up his car. He didn’t notice the man across the street who watched him
leave, but he did wonder whether the blue Ford sedan that stayed in his
rear-view mirror so long was there by chance. If it wasn’t, who was watching
whom, who was trying to protect whom?

He arrived at Father Gregory’s church just
before 8:00 am and they walked together to the priest’s house. The priest’s
half-rim glasses squatted on the end of a stubby nose. His large, red cheeks
and even larger basketball belly led the uncharitable to conclude that Father
Gregory had found much to solace him on earth while he waited for the eternal
kingdom of heaven. Mark told him that he had already breakfasted, but it didn’t
stop the Father from frying two eggs and bacon, plus toast, marmalade, and a
cup of coffee. Father Gregory could add very little to what he had told Mark on
the telephone the previous night, and he sighed deeply when he was reminded of
the two deaths at the hospital.

‘Yes, I read the details in the
Post
When
they talked about Nick
Stames
, a light came into his
grey eyes; it was clear that priest and policeman had shared a few secrets,
this was no jolly old Jesus freak.

‘Is there any connection between Nick’s
death and the accident in the hospital?’ Father Gregory asked suddenly.

The question took Mark by surprise. There
was a shrewd brain behind the half-rim glasses. Lying to a priest, Greek
Orthodox or otherwise, seemed somehow worse than the usual lies which were
intended to protect the Bureau from the general public.

‘Absolutely none,’ said Mark. ‘Just one of
those horrible auto accidents.’

Just one of those weird coincidences?’ said
Father Gregory quizzically, peering at Mark over the top of his glasses. ‘Is
that right?’ He sounded almost as unconvinced as Grant
Nanna
.
He continued: ‘There’s one more thing I would like to mention. Although it’s
hard to remember exactly what the man said when he called me and told me not to
bother to go to the hospital, I’m fairly certain he was a well-educated man. I
feel sure by the way he carried it off that he was a professional man, and I am
not sure what I mean by that; it’s just the strange feeling that he had made
that sort of call before; there was something professional about him.’

Father Gregory repeated the phrase to
himself - ‘Something professional about him’ - and so did Mark, while he was in
the car on the way to the house in which Mrs
Casefikis
was staying. It was the home of the friend who had harboured her wounded
husband.

Mark drove down
Connecticut Avenue
, past the Washington
Hilton and the National Zoo, into
Maryland
.
Patches of bright, yellow forsythia had begun to appear along the road.
Connecticut Avenue
turned into
University Boulevard
,
and Mark found himself in
Wheaton
,
a suburban satellite of stores, restaurants, - gas stations, and a few
apartment buildings. Stopped by a red light near
Wheaton
Plaza
,
Mark checked his notes:
11501
Elkin Street
. He was looking for the Blue Ridge
Manor Apartments. Fancy name for a group of squat, three-storey faded-brick
buildings lining
Blue Ridge
and Elkin streets.
As he approached 11501, Mark looked for a parking space. No luck. He hovered
for a moment, then decided to park in front of a fire hydrant. He draped the
radio microphone carefully over his rear-view mirror, so that any observant
meter maid or policeman would know that this was an official car on official
business.

Ariana
Casefikis
burst into tears at the mere
sight of Mark’s badge. She looked frail; only twenty-nine, her clothes unkempt,
her hair all over the place, her eyes grey and still full of tears. The lines
on her face showed where the tears had been running, running for two days. She
and Mark were about the same age. She didn’t have a country, and now she didn’t
have a husband. What was going to happen to her? If Mark had felt alone, he was
certainly better off than this poor woman.

Mrs
Casefikis’s
English turned out to be rather better than her husband’s. She had already seen
two policemen. She told them that she knew nothing. First the nice man from the
Metropolitan Police who had broken the news to her and been so understanding,
then the Homicide lieutenant who had come a little later and been much firmer,
wanting to know things she hadn’t the faintest clue about, and now a visit from
the FBI. Her husband had never been in trouble before and she didn’t know who
shot him or why anybody would want to. He was a gentle, kind man. Mark believed
her.

He also assured her that she had no
immediate cause for worry and that he would deal personally with the
Immigration Office and the Welfare people about getting her some income. It
seemed to cheer her up and make her a little more responsive.

‘Now please try to think carefully, Mrs
Casefikis
. Have you any idea where your husband was working
on 23 or 24 February, the Wednesday and Thursday of last week, and did he tell
you anything about his work?’

She had no idea. Angelo never told her what
he was up to and half the jobs were casual and only for the day, because he
couldn’t risk staying on without a work permit, being an illegal immigrant.
Mark was getting nowhere, but it wasn’t her fault.

‘Will I be able to stay in
America
?’

‘I’ll do everything I can to help, Mrs
Casefikis
. That I promise you. I’ll talk to a Greek
Orthodox priest I know about finding some money to tide you over till I’ve seen
the Welfare people.’

Mark opened the door, despondent about the
lack of any hard information either from Father Gregory or from
Ariana
Casefikis
.

‘The priest already give me money.’

Mark stopped in his tracks, turned slowly,
and faced her. He tried to show no particular interest.

‘Which priest was that?’ he asked casually.

‘He said he help. Man who came to visit
yesterday. Nice man, very nice, very kind. He give me fifty dollars.’