Shall We Tell the President? (3 page)

By contrast, Mark Andrews had been one of
the more unusual FBI entrants. After majoring in history at Yale he finished
his education at
Yale
Law
School
,
and then decided he wanted some adventure for a few years before he joined a
law firm. He felt it would be useful to learn about criminals and the police
from the inside. He didn’t give this as his reason for applying to the Bureau -
no one is supposed to regard the Bureau as an academic experiment. In fact,
Hoover
had regarded it so
much as a career that he did not allow agents who left the service ever to
return. At six feet Mark Andrews looked small next to Calvert. He had a fresh,
open face with clear blue eyes and a mop of curly fair hair long enough to skim
his shirt collar. At twenty-eight he was one of the youngest agents in the
department. His clothes were always smartly fashionable and sometimes not quite
regulation. Nick
Stames
had once caught him in a red
sports jacket and brown trousers and relieved him from duty so that he could
return home and dress properly. Never embarrass the Bureau. Mark’s charm got
him out of a lot of trouble in the Criminal Section, but he had a steadiness of
purpose which more than made up for the Ivy League education and manner. He was
self-confident, but never pushy or concerned about his own advancement. He
didn’t let anyone in the Bureau know about his career plan.

Grant
Nanna
went
over the story of the frightened man waiting for them in Woodrow Wilson.

‘Black?’ queried Calvert.

‘No, Greek.’

Calvert’s surprise showed in his face.
Eighty per cent of the inhabitants of
Washington
were black, and ninety-eight per cent of those arrested on criminal charges
were black. One of the reasons the infamous break-in at the Watergate had been
suspicious from the beginning to those who knew
Washington
at all well was the fact that no
blacks were involved, though no agents had admitted it.

‘Okay, Barry, think you can handle it?’

‘Sure, you want a report on your desk by
tomorrow morning?’

‘No, the boss wants you to contact him
direct if it turns out to be anything special, otherwise just file a report
overnight.’
Nanna’s
telephone rang.

‘Mr
Stames
on the
radio line from his car for you, sir,’ said Polly, the night switchboard
operator.

‘He never lets up, does he?’ Grant confided
to the two junior agents, covering the mouthpiece of the phone with his palm.

‘Hi, boss.’

‘Grant, did I say that the Greek had a
bullet wound in his leg, and it was infected?’

‘Yes, boss.’

‘Right, do me a favour, will you? Call
Father Gregory at my church, Saint Constantine and Saint Helen, and ask him to
go over to the hospital and see him.’

‘Anything you say.’

‘And get yourself home, Grant. Aspirin can
handle the office tonight.’

‘I was just going, boss.’

The line went dead.

‘Okay, you two - on your way.’ The two
special Agents headed down the dirty grey corridor and into the
service
elevator. It looked, as always, as if it required
a crank to start it.
Finally outside on
Pennsylvania
Avenue
, they picked up a Bureau car.

Mark guided the dark blue Ford sedan down
Pennsylvania Avenue
past the National Archives and the
Mellon Gallery. He circled around the
lush Capitol grounds and picked up
Independence
Avenue
going
towards the south-east section
of
Washington
.
As
the two agents waited for a
light to change at 1st Street, near the Library of Congress, Barry scowled at
the
rush-hour traffic and looked at his watch.

‘Why didn’t they put Aspirin on this damn
assignment?’

‘Who’d send Aspirin to a hospital?’ replied
Mark.

Mark smiled. The two men had established an
immediate rapport when they first met at the
FBI
Academy
at
Quantico
. On the first day of the training
course, every trainee received a telegram confirming his appointment. Each new
agent was then asked to check the telegram of the person on his right and his
left for authenticity. The manoeuvre was intended to emphasise the need for
extreme caution. Mark had glanced at Barry’s telegram and handed it back with a
grin. ‘I guess you’re legit,’ he said, ‘if FBI regulations allow King Kong in
the ranks.’

‘Listen,’ Calvert had replied, reading
Mark’s telegram intently. ‘You may just need King Kong one day, Mr Andrews.’

The light turned green, but a car ahead of
Mark and Barry in the inside lane wanted to make a left turn on
1st Street
. For the
moment, the two impatient FBI men were trapped in a line of traffic.

‘What do you imagine this guy could tell
us?’

‘I hope he has something on the downtown
bank job,’ replied Barry. ‘I’m still the case agent, and I still don’t have any
leads after three weeks.
Stames
is beginning to get
uptight about it.’

‘No, can’t be that, not with a bullet in
his leg. He’s more likely to be another candidate for the nut box. Wife
probably shot him for not being home on time
for
his stuffed vine leaves.’

‘You know, the boss would only send a
priest to a fellow Greek. You and I could wallow in hell as far as he’s
concerned.’

They both laughed. They knew if either of
them were to land in trouble, Nick
Stames
would move
the
Washington
Monument
stone by stone if he thought it
would help. As the car continued down
Independence
Avenue
into the heart of south-east
Washington
, the traffic
gradually diminished. A few minute later, they passed
19th Street
and the DC
Armory
and reached
Woodrow
Wilson
Medical
Center
.
They found the visitors’ parking lot and Calvert double checked the lock on every
door. Nothing is more embarrassing for an agent than to have his car stolen and
then for the Metropolitan Police to call and ask if he could come and collect
it. It was the quickest way to a month on the nut box.

The entrance to the hospital was old and
dingy, and the corridors grey and bleak. The girl on night duty at the
reception desk told them that
Casefikis
was on the
fourth floor, in Room 4308. Both agents were surprised by the lack of security.
They didn’t have to show their credentials, and they were allowed to wander
around the building as if they were a couple of interns. No one gave them a
second look. Perhaps,
as agents, they had become too security conscious.

The elevator took them gradually,
grudgingly, to the
fourth floor. A man on crutches and a woman in a
wheelchair shared the elevator, chatting to one another
as though they
had a lot of time to spare, oblivious
to the slowness of the elevator.
When they arrived at the fourth floor, Calvert walked over to a nurse and asked
for the doctor on duty.

‘I think Dr Dexter has gone off duty, but
I’ll check,’ the staff nurse said and bustled away. She didn’t get a visit from
the FBI every day and the shorter one with the clear blue eyes was so
good-looking. The nurse and the doctor returned together down the corridor. Dr
Dexter came as a surprise to both Calvert and Andrews. They introduced
themselves. It must have been the legs, Mark decided. The last time he had seen
legs like that was when the Yale Cinema Club had shown a re-run of Anne
Bancroft in
The Graduate.
It was the first time he had ever really
looked at a woman’s legs, and he hadn’t stopped looking since.

‘Elizabeth Dexter, MD’ was stamped in black
on a piece of red plastic that adorned her starched white coat. Underneath it,
Mark could see a red silk shirt and a stylish skirt of black crepe that fell
below her knees. Dr Dexter was of medium height and slender to the point of
fragility. She wore no make-up, so far as Mark could tell; certainly her clear
skin and dark eyes were in no need of any help. This trip was turning out to be
worthwhile, after all. Barry, on the other hand, showed no interest whatever in
the pretty doctor and asked to see the file on
Casefikis
.
Mark thought quickly for an opening gambit.

‘Are you related to Senator Dexter?’ he
asked, slightly emphasising the word Senator.

‘Yes, he’s my father,’ she said flatly,
obviously used to the question and rather bored by it - and by those who
imagined it was important.

‘I heard him lecture in my final year at
Yale Law,’ said Mark, forging ahead, realising he was now showing off, but he
realised that Calvert would finish that damn report in a matter of moments.

‘Oh, were you at Yale, too?’ she asked.
‘When did you graduate?’

‘Three years ago,
Law
School
,’
replied Mark.

‘We might even have met. I left Yale Med
last year.’

‘If I had met you before, Dr Dexter, I
would not have forgotten.’

‘When you two Ivy Leaguers have finished
swapping life histories,’ Barry Calvert interrupted, ‘this Midwesterner would
like to get on with his job.’

Yes, thought Mark, Barry will end up as
Director one day.

‘What can you tell us about this man, Dr
Dexter?’ asked Calvert.

‘Very little, I’m afraid,’ the doctor
replied, taking back the file on
Casefikis
. ‘He came
in of his own volition and reported a gun wound. The wound was septic and
looked as if it had been exposed for about a week; I wish he had come in
earlier. I removed the bullet this morning. As you know, Mr Calvert, it is our
duty to inform the police immediately when a patient comes in with a gunshot
wound, and so we phoned your boys at the Metropolitan Police.’

‘Not our boys,’ corrected Mark.

‘I’m sorry,’ replied Dr Dexter rather
formally. ‘To a doctor, a policeman is a policeman.’

‘And to a policeman, an MD is an MD, but
you also have specialties - orthopaedics, gynaecology, neurology - don’t you?
You don’t mean to tell me I look like one of those flatfoots from the Met
Police?’

Dr Dexter was not to be beguiled into a
flattering response. She opened the
manilla
folder.
‘All we know is that he is Greek by origin and his name is Angelo
Casefikis
. He has never been registered in this hospital
before. He gave his age as thirty-eight. . . Not a lot to go on, I’m afraid.’

‘Fine, it’s as much as we usually get.
Thank you, Dr Dexter,’ said Calvert. ‘Can we see him now?’

‘Of course. Please follow me.’ Elizabeth
Dexter turned and led them down the corridor.

The two men followed her, Barry looking for
the door marked 4308, Mark looking at her legs. When they arrived, they peered
through the small window and saw two men in the room, Angelo
Casefikis
and a cheerful-looking black, who was staring at
a television set which emitted no sound. Calvert turned to Dr Dexter.

‘Would it be possible to see him alone, Dr
Dexter?’

‘Why?’ she asked.

‘We don’t know what he is going to tell us,
and he may not wish to be overheard.’

‘Well, don’t worry yourself,’ said Dr
Dexter, and laughed. ‘My favourite mailman, Benjamin Reynolds, who is in the
next bed is as deaf as a post, and until we operate on him next week, he won’t
be able to hear Gabriel’s horn on the Day of Judgement,
letalone
a state secret.’

Calvert smiled for the first time. ‘He’d
make a hell of a witness.’

The doctor ushered Calvert and Andrews into
the room, then turned and left them. See you soon, lovely lady, Mark promised
himself. Calvert looked at Benjamin Reynolds suspiciously, but the black
mailman merely gave him a big happy smile, waved, and continued to watch the
soundless
$25,000 Pyramid;
nonetheless, Barry Calvert stood on that side
of the bed and blocked his view of
Casefikis
in case
he could lip-read. Barry thought of everything.

‘Mr
Casefikis
?’

‘Yes.’

Casefikis
was a grey, sick-looking individual of medium build, with a
prominent nose, bushy eyebrows, and an anxious expression that never left his
lace. His hair was thick, dark, and unkempt. His hands seemed particularly
large on the white bedspread, and the veins stood out prominently. His face was
darkened by several days of unshaven beard. One leg was heavily bandaged and
rested on the cover of the bed. His eyes darted nervously from one man to the
other.

‘I am Special Agent Calvert and this is
Special Agent Andrews. We are officers with the Federal Bureau of
Investigation. We understand you wanted to see us.’