Under Siege (31 page)

“A few more days. You’ll see. Just a few more days.” Harrison Ronald sighed. “C’mon, help me up. My ass is frozen and my legs are getting stiff. I gotta go see Freeman.”

“What if he decides that you might have been in it with the others and it just got fucked up?”

“There’s that,” Harrison Ronald said sourly. “But you didn’t have to say it, man.”

“There’s no telling,” Hooper insisted. “It could go down like that.” “If it does, it’s been nice knowing you.”

“What about a wire? You could wear a wire. We could wait just a block away.”

“You gotta be shitting me!”

Hooper sat back down and watched Ford go down the steps and turn east to go around the front of the Memorial. It was too late for the subway so he had some walking to do. Maybe he would call Freeman from someplace.

Hooper felt cold. The steps were cold and the air was cold and he was cold. He pulled his coat tightly around him and sat looking at the lights of comArlington.

DmDo iation DR-UO

the morning headline screamed.

In the backseat of his limo on the way to his office, White House chief of staff William C. Dorfman read the story with a growing sense of horror. Six passengers on a bus had been killed and five injured-three critically-at ten-eighteen p.m. last night when a 1988 Pontiac Tmns-Am slammed into a busload of Japanese museum directors and their famininlies on the street near the National Collection of Fine Arts. The Japanese had just attended a reception at the museum and were returning to their hotel when the Pontiac smashed into the side of the bus. Witnesses estimated the car was traveling at seventy miles per hour just prior to impact. The two men in the automobile had died instantly. Two Uzi submachine glms were found in the wreckage.

A husband and wife from Silver Spring died five or six minutes earlier when the same vehicle, chasing an older fourr sedan, precipitated a head-on collision at an intersection on Bladensburg Road. The driver of a large truck belonging to a wholesale grocer had swerved to avoid the Pontiac and had struck the car driven by the Maryland couple.

Finally, if all that weren’t enough, the body of a black man in his mid-twenties had been found in a bullet-riddled Chrysler abandoned on H Street, three blocks from the White House. Police believed this to be the car the Pontiac dishad chased. Ten pounds of cocaine and crack had been recovered from the car, which had also contained an Uzi submachine gun.

The story contained accounts by three or four witnesses who told of the passenger in the Pontiac blazing away with an automatic weapon at the Chrysler as tore Bladensburg Road and Maryland Avenue at speeds of up to ninety miles per hour. Eight vehicles had been reported with bullet damage and police expected to learn of more.

TW-O photoand accompanied the story. One was of the Chrysler shot full of holes and the other was of a Japanese woman in a kimono drenched with blood being assisted toward an ambulance.

Before he finished the story, Dorfman snapped on the limo’s small television. The morning show on the channel that came up was running footage of the wrecked bus with the nearly unrecognizable remains of the Pontiac buried in its side. Shots of ambulance attendants leading away crying, bleeding victims followed.

Oh, my God! Why did that woman have to be wearing a kimono?

As if the savings-and-loan insider fraud debacle and the crises in the Baltic republics and Cuba weren’t enough! And to make life at the top truly perfect, George Bush had a press conference scheduled for this afternoon. God! The reporters would be in a feeding frenzy.

Dorfinan turned down the sound on the television and dialed the car telephone.

“Why wasn’t I informed of this bus incident last night?” he roared at the hapless aide who answered. He ignored the aide’s spluttering. He knew the answer. Procedure dictated that the chief of staff be informed immediately of national security and international mcidents, and a car-bus wreck had not fit neatly into either category. Still, he had to do something to blow off steam and the aide was an inviting target. The little wart never went beyond his instructions, never showed an ounce of initiative.

I’m going to have to get out of this fucking business before I have a heart attack, Dorfman told himself. I’m thirty pounds overweight and take those damn blood pressure pins and this shit is going to kill me. Sooner rather than later.

When he charged into his office, an aide started talking

Dorfman could open his mouth. “The Japanese bassador wants an audience with the President. This morning.”

“Get the Mouth in here.” That was the White House press secretary. “And where’s that memo Gid Cohen sent over here last week? The one that lists all the antidrug initiatives he recommends?”

Thirty seconds later the memo from Cohen was on his desk. Let’s see, the AG wants to change the currency to make hoards worthless-we can do that. It’ll piss off the bankers and change-machine manufacturers and little ol’ ladies with mattresses full of the stuff, but … He wants special courts and more federal judges and prosecutors to handle drug cases: okay, bite the bullet and do it. He wants to fund a nationwide drug rehab program: we’ll need hard dollar info on that. He wants to fold the DEA in with the FBI and make one super agency. Christ, that will drive the Democrats bonkers.

A national ID card? Dorfman wrote no and underlined it. More prisons, mandatory sentencing for drug crimes, changes in the rules of criminal procedure, a revision of the bail laws, an increased role for the military in interdicting smuggling

…

Dorfman kept reading, marking yes, no, and maybe. When he had originally received this memo he glanced at it and discarded it as yet another example of Cohen’s lack of sensitivity to political reality. Well, he told himself now, reality was changing fast.

When the press secretary came in, Dorfman didn’t bother to look up. “What’re you going to say about the bus deal?”

“That the President will have a statement at his news conference. The government offers its condolences on behalf of the American people to the citizens of Japan who lost relatives last night. A quote from the President that says this accident was a tragedy.”

“Let me see the quote.” Dorfman scanned the paper, then passed it back “Okay. What is the President going to say at the news conference?”

I’ve got two speechwriters working on it. Have something for you in about an hour.”

“G. Do it.” Two minutes later, with Cohen’s memo in hand, William C. Dorfman headed for the Oval Office to see the President.

The secretary in his outer oiffice called after him: “The attorney general’s on the phone. He wants to come over and see the President. He has the director of the FBI with him.” 4601*.19 Dorfman and Bush had framed a strategy to respond to the public relations crisis posed by the death of six Japanese VIP’S and were fleshing it out when the attorney general and the director of the FBI were shown into the Oval Office fifteen minutes later.

“What do you have on this bus thing?” President Bush asked the FBI director.

vnng “For public consumption, we’re working on it, follo ” every lead. Doing autopsies on the people in the cars. When we know who they are, we’ll work backward. For you only, one of our undercover agents was driving the car being chased. He was delivering ten pounds of coke and crack for Freeman Mcationally’s drug syndicate when the people who were supposed to be guarding the shipment tried to rip him off. Those were the three men who died, two in the Pontiac and one in the Chrysler.” Dorfman couldn’t believe his cars. He goggled. “Say again. The part about the undercover agent.”

“Our man was driving the Chrysler.”

“FBI?”

“One of our undercover people, temporarily on loan to the FBI from his regular police job.”

“A cop drove like a freaked-out maniac through the heart of downtown Washington and got eleven people killed?”

“What the hell do you think he ought to have done?” the director demanded. “Liet them shoot him?”

“Well, Jesus, I think you ought to ask the Japanese ambassador that question. Maybe he can give you an answer. One escapes me just now.” George Bush broke in. “Our guy okay?”

“Got grazed by two bullets. But he’s okay. Shook as hell.”

“You got enough to arrest Freeman Mcationally?”

“No, Sir,” said Gideon Cohen. “We don’t. Oh, we have it chapter and verse from the undercover man, but we’re going to need more than just the testimony of one man. And most Df his testimony will be hearsay. He’s had little personal contact with Mcationally.”

“When?”

“Soon. But not yet.”

“The press is gonna crucify us,” Dorftnan muttered. “Had to happen ,” Gideon Cohen remarked to no one in particular. “Explain.”

“We’ve got over four hundred murders a year here in the District, something like eighty percent of them drug related. It was just a matter of time before some tourists or political bigwigs got caught in a crossfire.”

“I don’t buy that. This drug chase in the downtown sounds like sloppy police work to me. Where were the uniformed police while these people were playing Also Capone and Dutch Schultz on Constitution Avenue?”’@.

Cohen sneered. “Jesus, Dorfman, get real! If four hundred middleclass white people had been slaughtered last year in Howard County, there’d have been a mass march on Washington before the Fourth of July. They’d have dragged you politics-as-usual guys out of the Capitol kicking and screaming tilde and hung the whole damn crowd.”

“I think we’re wasting our time pointing fingers at the cops,” George Bush said dryly and adjusted the trousers of his eight-hundred-dollar suit. “The Japanese ambassador is coming over in a little while to hand me my head on a plate. The country is in an uproar. So what was politically impossible last week is possible now. That’s all any politician can ever try to do, Gid-the possible. I’m not the Pied Piper. I can’t take them where they don’t want to go. And I’m not apologizing for that. I’m not Jesus Christ either.”

Bush picked up Cohen’s wish list from his desk. “A fedend ID card for every man, woman, and child in the

ry? That’ll never wash. The Supreme Court says they count can burn the flag as political protest. They’ll be using these cards for toilet paper.”

I’THAT’D be nice to have, but-was

“A national, mandatory drug rehab program? For an estimated ten billion per year? Where are we going to get the money? For another federal bureaucracy that will be so big and bloated it won’t help anybody.”

“It would-was

“And an overhaul of the criminal justice system,” the President continued. ““Streamline and eliminate delay’you say. The procedures of the criminal justice system, obsolete and inefficient though they are, are mandated by the Bill of Rights according to the nine wise men on the Supreme Court. We’d need a constitutional convention to revise the Bill of Rights. Despite widely held opinions to the contrary, I am not damn fool enough to advocate opening that Pandora’s box.”

Cohen said nothing.

“Some of this stuff we can do. I’ve marked the items. Now, Gid, you and Bill and the secretary to ..: get together and come up with specifics. You’ve got two hours. We’ll get the Senate and House leadership over here and brief them, then we’ll go to the press conference and see if I can get through that with a whole hide. I don’t suppose they’ll have many questions about Cuba or Lithuania or foreign aid to the Soviets, all subjects I’ve spent two days reviewing.” He threw up his hands. “In the meantime the Japanese ambassador, one of the best friends America has in the Japanese government, wants to tell me what he thinks of American law enforcement. Mr. FBI Director, you can sit here with me and sweat through that.”

This morning in his Pentagon cubicle Captain Jake Grafton read with professional interest the stories in the Washington Times and the Post about the chase and spectacular accident of the previous evening. As the senior officer in the Joint Staff counternarcotics section, he routinely read Papers to learn what the public press had to say about drug problem. The press, he knew, defined the issues for electorate, which in turn set the priorities for the politicians. The issues with which the government sought to grapple were those nebulous perceptions created by the passing of selected raw facts through these imperfect double filters: any public servant who failed to understand this basic truth was doomed to frustrated ineffectiveness. Despite the fact that he had spent his professional life in a military organization solvin simpler, more clearly defined problems, Jake Grafton, farmees son and history major, instinctively understood how things worked in a democracy.

At a cubicle behind him, Jake could hear one of his colleagues, an air force lieutenant colonel, explaining the operation Of the computer terminals to Toad Tarkington. A terminal rested on every desk. Tarkington seemed to be soaking up the procedures with nonchalant ease. Jake glanced at the dark screen on his own desk and smiled wryly. He had struggled like Hercules to acquire computer literacy while Tarkington seemed to pick it up as naturally as breathing.

Beside the front-page story in the Post about the car-bus crash was another story that the captain read with interest. By Jack Yocke, datelined Havana, Cuba, it was, the tag line promised, the first in a five-part series. The story was about a rural family and its trek to the capital to personally witness the downfall of Castro. Why they came, what they saw and ate, where they slept, what they wanted for themselves and their children, these were the strands that Yocke wove. The story was raw, powerfid, and Jake Grafton was impressed. Perhaps there was more to Jack Yocke than The telephone interrupted his perusal of the paper. He folded it andlaid it on his desk.

“Captain, would you come to my office, please.”

Four minutes later he stood in front of his boss, a two-star army general. When he had first reported to the Joint Staff Jake had studied the organization chart carefully and, after counting, concluded that there were fifty-seven flag officers between him and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, a four-star army general. Major General Franks was the fifty-seventh down from the top. Jake Grafton had already discovered how short that distance really was.