Shall We Tell the President?

by Jeffrey Archer

  “Good evening, Director.”

  “Good evening, Andrews. You’ve interrupted a very important dinner. I hope you know what you are doing.”

  The Director was cold and abrupt, clearly displeased at being summoned to a meeting by an unknown junior agent.

  Mark went through the whole story from the first meeting with Stames through to his decision to go over everybody’s head. The Director’s face remained impassive throughout the long recital. It was still impassive when Mark had finished. Mark’s only thought was: I’ve done the wrong thing. He should have gone on trying to reach Stames and Calvert. They were probably home by now. He waited, a little sweat appearing on his forehead. Perhaps this was his last day in the FBI. The Director’s first words took him by surprise.

  “You did exactly the right thing, Andrews. I’d have made the same decision in your place. It must have taken guts to bring the whole thing to me.” He looked hard at Mark. “You’re absolutely certain only Stames, Calvert, you, and I know all the details of what happened this evening? No one from the Secret Service, and no one from the Metropolitan Police Department?”

  “That’s correct, sir, just the four of us.”

  “And the three of you already have an appointment with me at 10:30 tomorrow morning?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Good. Take this down.”

  Mark took out a pad from his inside coat pocket.

  “You have the Attorney General’s number here?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And my number at home is 721-4069. Learn them and then destroy them. Now I’ll tell you exactly what you do next. Go back to the Washington Field Office. Check on Stames and Calvert again. Call the morgue, call the hospitals, call the highway police. If nothing turns up, I’ll see you in my office at 8:30 tomorrow morning, not 10:30. That’s your first job. Second, get me the names of the Homicide officers working on this detail with the Metropolitan Police. Now tell me if I have this right—you told them nothing about the reason you went to see Casefikis?”

  “Nothing, sir.”

  “Good.”

  The Attorney General put her head around the door.

  “Everything under control, Halt?”

  “Fine, thanks, Marian. I don’t think you’ve met Special Agent Andrews of the Washington Field Office.”

  “No. Nice to meet you, Mr. Andrews.”

  “Good evening, ma’am.”

  “Will you be long, Halt?”

  “No, I’ll be back as soon as I’ve finished briefing Andrews.”

  “Anything special?”

  “No, nothing to worry about.”

  The Director had obviously decided nobody was going to be told the story until he got to the bottom of it himself.

  “Where was I?”

  “You told me to return to the Washington Field Office, sir, and check on Stames and Calvert.”

  “Yes.”

  “And then to call the morgue, the hospitals, and the highway police.”

  “Right.”

  “And you told me to check on the Homicide officers, get their names.”

  “Right. Take down the following: check the names of all hospital employees and visitors, as well as any other persons who can be identified as having been in the vicinity of Room 4308 between the time the two occupants were known to be alive and the time you found them dead. Check the names of the two dead men through NCIC and Bureau indexes for any background information we may have. Get fingerprints of all persons on duty and all visitors and all others who can be identified as having been near Room 4308, as well as fingerprints of the two dead men. We will need all these prints both for elimination purposes and possible suspect identification. If you don’t find Stames and Calvert, as I said, see me at 8:30 in my office tomorrow morning. If anything else arises tonight, you call me here or at home. Don’t hesitate. If it’s after 11:30, I’ll be home. If you call me on the phone, use a code name—now let me think—Julius—let’s hope it’s not prophetic, and give me your number. Make sure you use a pay phone and I’ll call you back immediately. Don’t bother me before 7:15 in the morning, unless it’s really important. Have you understood all that?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Right. I think I’ll get back to dinner.”

  Mark stood up, ready to leave. The Director put a hand on his shoulder.

  “Don’t worry, young man. These things happen from time to time and you made the right decision. You showed a lot of self-possession in a lousy situation. Now get on with the job.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Mark was relieved that someone else knew what he was going through; someone else with far bigger shoulders was there to share it.

  On his way back to the FBI office, he picked up the car microphone. “WFO 180 in service. Any word from Mr. Stames?”

  “Nothing yet, WFO 180, but I’ll keep trying.”

  Aspirin was still there when he arrived, unaware that Mark had just been talking with the Director of the FBI. Aspirin had met all four directors at cocktail parties, though none of them would have remembered his name.

  “Emergency over, son?”

  “Yes,” Mark said, lying. “Have we heard from Stames or Calvert?” He tried not to sound anxious.

  “No, must have dropped in somewhere on the way home. Never you worry. The little sheep will find their way back without you to hold their tails.”

  Mark did worry. He went to his office and picked up the phone. Polly had still heard nothing. Just a buzz that continued on Channel One. He called Norma Stames, still no news. Mrs. Stames asked if there might be anything to worry about.

  “Nothing at all.” Another lie. Was he sounding too unconcerned? “We just can’t find out which bar he’s ended up in.”

  She laughed, but she knew Nick never frequented bars.

  Mark tried Calvert; still no reply from the bachelor apartment. He knew in his bones something was wrong. He just didn’t know what. At least the Director was there, and the Director knew everything now. He glanced at his watch: 11:15. Where had the night gone? And where was it going? 11:15. What was he supposed to have done tonight? Hell. He had persuaded a beautiful girl to have dinner with him. Yet again, he picked up the telephone. At least she would be safely at home, where she ought to be.

  “Hello.”

  “Hello, Elizabeth, it’s Mark Andrews. I’m really sorry about not making it tonight. Something happened that got way out of my control.”

  The tension in his voice was apparent.

  “Don’t worry,” she said lightly. “You warned me you were unreliable.”

  “I hope you’ll let me take a raincheck. Hopefully, in the morning, I can sort things out. I’ll probably see you then.”

  “In the morning?” she said. “If you’re thinking of the hospital, I’m off duty tomorrow.”

  Mark hesitated, thinking quickly of what he could prudently say. “Well, that may be best. I am afraid it’s not good news. Casefikis and the other man in his room were brutally murdered tonight. The Met is following it up, but we have nothing to go on.”

  “Murdered? Both of them? Why? Who? Casefikis wasn’t killed without reason, was he?” The words came out in a torrent. “What’s going on, for heaven’s sake? No, don’t answer that. You wouldn’t tell me the truth in any case.”

  “I wouldn’t waste my time lying to you, Elizabeth. Look, I’ve had it for tonight, and I owe you a big steak for messing up your evening. Can I call you some time soon?”

  “I’d like that. Murder isn’t food for the appetite, though. I hope you catch the men responsible. We see the results of a great deal of violence at Woodrow Wilson, but it isn’t usually inflicted within our walls.”

  “I know. I’m sorry it involves you. Good night, Elizabeth. Sleep well.”

  “And you, Mark. If you can.”

  Mark put the phone down, and immediately the burden of the day’s events returned. What now? There was nothing practicable he could do before 8:30, except keep in touch
on the radio phone until he was home. There was no point just sitting there looking out of the window, feeling helpless, sick, and alone. He went in to Aspirin, told him he was going home, and that he’d call in every fifteen minutes because he was still anxious to speak to Stames and Calvert. Aspirin didn’t even look up.

  “Fine,” he said, his mind fully occupied by the crossword puzzle. He had completed eleven clues, a sure sign it was a quiet evening.

  Mark drove down Pennsylvania Avenue towards his apartment. At the first traffic circle, a tourist who didn’t know he had the right of way was holding up traffic. Damn him, thought Mark. Visitors to Washington who hadn’t mastered the knack of cutting out at the right turn-off could end up circling around and around many more times than originally planned. Eventually, Mark managed to get around the circle and back on Pennsylvania Avenue. He continued to drive slowly towards his home, at the Tiber Island Apartments, his thoughts heavy and anxious. He turned on the car radio for the midnight news; must take his mind off it somehow. There were no big stories that night and the newscaster sounded rather bored; the President had held a press conference about the Gun Control bill, and the situation in South Africa seemed to be getting worse. Then the local news; there had been an automobile accident on the G.W. Parkway and it involved two cars, both of which were being hauled out of the river by cranes, under floodlights. One of the cars was a black Lincoln, the other a blue Ford sedan, according to eyewitnesses, a married couple from Jacksonville vacationing in the Washington area. No other details as yet.

  A blue Ford sedan. Although he had not really been concentrating, it kept repeating itself in his brain—a blue Ford sedan? Oh no, God, please no. He veered right off 9th Street onto Maine Avenue, narrowly missing a fire hydrant, and raced back towards Memorial Bridge, where he had been only two hours before. The roads were clearer now and he was back in a few minutes. At the scene of the accident the Metropolitan Police were still thick on the ground and one lane of the G.W. was closed off by barriers. Mark parked the car on the grassy verge and ran up to the barrier. He showed his FBI credentials and was taken to the officer in charge; he explained that he feared one of the cars involved might have been driven by an agent from the FBI. Any details yet?

  “Still haven’t got them out,” the inspector replied. “We only have two witnesses to the accident, if it was an accident. Apparently there was some very funny driving going on. They should be up in about thirty minutes. All you can do is wait.”

  Mark went over to the side of the road to watch the vast cranes and tiny frogmen groping around in the river under vast klieg lights. The thirty minutes wasn’t thirty minutes; he shivered in the cold, waiting and watching. It was forty minutes, it was fifty minutes, it was over an hour before the black Lincoln came out. Inside the car was one body. Cautious man, he was wearing a seat belt. The police moved in immediately. Mark went back to the officer in charge and asked how long before the second car.

  “Not long. That Lincoln wasn’t your car, then?”

  “No,” said Mark.

  Ten minutes, twenty minutes, he saw the top of the second car, a dark blue car; he saw the side of the car, one of the windows fractionally opened; he saw the whole of the car. Two men were in it. He saw the license plate. For a second time that night, Mark felt sick. Almost crying, he ran back to the officer in charge and gave the names of the two men in the car, and then ran on to a pay phone at the side of the road. It was a long way. He dialed the number, checking his watch as he did so; it was nearly one o’clock. After one ring he heard a tired voice say, “Yes.”

  Mark said, “Julius.”

  The voice said, “What is your number?”

  He gave it. Thirty seconds later, the telephone rang.

  “Well, Andrews. It’s one o’clock in the morning.”

  “I know, sir, it’s Stames and Calvert, they’re dead.”

  There was a moment’s hesitation, the voice was awake now.

  “Are you certain?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Mark gave the details of the car crash, trying to keep the weariness and emotion out of his voice.

  “Call your office immediately, Andrews,” Tyson said, “without releasing any of the details that you gave me this evening. Only tell them about the car crash—nothing more. Then get any further information about it you can from the police. See me in my office at 7:30, not 8:30; come through the wide entrance on the far side of the building; there will be a man waiting there for you. He’ll be expecting you; don’t be late. Go home now and try to get some sleep and keep yourself out of sight until tomorrow. Don’t worry, Andrews. Two of us know, and I’ll put agents on the routine checks that I gave you to do earlier.”

  The phone clicked. Mark called Aspirin, what a night for him to have to be on duty, told him about Stames and Calvert, hanging up abruptly before Aspirin could ask any questions. He returned to his car and drove home slowly through the night. There was hardly another car on the streets and the early-morning mist gave everything an unearthly look.

  At the entrance to his apartment garage he saw Simon, the young black attendant, who liked Mark and, even more, Mark’s Mercedes. Mark had blown a small legacy from his aunt on the car just after graduating from college, but never regretted his extravagance. Simon knew Mark had no assigned spot in the garage and always offered to park his car for him—anything for a chance to drive the magnificent silver Mercedes SLC 580. Mark usually exchanged a few bantering words with Simon; tonight he passed him the keys without even looking at him.

  “I’ll need it at seven in the morning,” he said, already walking away. “Okay, man,” came back the reply.

  Mark heard Simon restart the car with a soft whoosh before the elevator door closed behind him. He arrived at his apartment; three rooms, all empty. He locked the door, and then bolted it, something he had never done before. He walked around the room slowly, undressed, throwing his sour-smelling shirt into the laundry hamper. He washed for the third time that night and then went to bed, to stare up at the white ceiling. He tried to make some sense out of the night’s events; he tried to sleep. Six hours passed, and if he slept it was never for more than a few minutes.

  Someone else who didn’t sleep that night for more than a few minutes was tossing and turning in her bed at the White House.

  Abraham Lincoln, John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King, John Lennon and Robert Kennedy. How many citizens distinguished and unknown needed to sacrifice their lives before the House would pass a bill to outlaw such self-destruction?

  “Who else must die?” she remarked. “If I myself there is no hour so fit as …”

  She turned over and looked at Edward whose expression left no doubt that such morbid thoughts were not on his mind.

  Friday morning

  4 March

  6:27 A.M.

  Eventually Mark could stand it no longer and at 6:30 A.M. he rose, showered, and put on a clean shirt and a fresh suit. From his apartment window, he looked out across the Washington Channel to East Potomac Park and went over in his mind all that had happened yesterday. In a few weeks the cherry trees would bloom. In a few weeks …

  He closed the apartment door behind him, glad simply to be on the move again. Simon gave him the car keys; he had managed to find a space for the Mercedes in one of the private parking lots.

  Mark drove the car slowly up 6th Street, turned left on G and right on 7th. No traffic at this time of morning except trucks. He passed the Hirshhorn Museum as he crossed into Independence Avenue. At the intersection of 7th and Pennsylvania, next to the National Archives, Mark came to a halt at a red light. He felt an eerie sense of nothing being out of the ordinary, as though the previous day had been a bad dream. He would arrive at the office and Nick Stames and Barry Calvert would be there as usual. The vision evaporated as he looked to his left. At one end of the deserted avenue, he could see the White House grounds and patches of the white building through the trees. To his right, at the other end of the avenue, stood the C
apitol, gleaming in the early morning sunshine. And between the two, between Caesar and Cassius, thought Mark, stood the FBI Building. Alone in the middle, he mused, the Director and himself, playing with destiny.

  Mark drove the car down the ramp at the back of FBI Headquarters and parked. A young man in a dark blue blazer, gray flannels, dark shoes, and a smart blue tie, the regulation uniform of the Bureau, awaited him. An anonymous man, thought Mark, who looked far too neat to have just got up. Mark Andrews showed him his identification. The young man led him towards the elevator without saying a word; it took them to the seventh floor, where Mark was noiselessly escorted to a small room and asked to wait.

  He sat in the reception room, next to the Director’s office, with the inevitable out-of-date copies of Time and Newsweek; he might have been at the dentist’s. It was the first time in his life that he would rather have been at his dentist’s. He pondered the events of the last fourteen hours. He’d gone from being a man with no responsibility enjoying the second of five eventful years in the FBI to one who was staring into the jaws of a tiger. His only previous trip to the Bureau itself had been for his interview; they hadn’t told him that this could happen. They had talked of salaries, bonuses, holidays, a worthwhile and fulfilling job, serving the nation, nothing about immigrant Greeks and black postmen with their throats cut, nothing about friends being drowned in the Potomac. He paced around the room trying to compose his thoughts; yesterday should have been his day off, but he had decided he could do with the overtime pay. Perhaps another agent would have got back to the hospital more quickly and forestalled the double murder. Perhaps if he had driven the Ford sedan last night, it would have been he, not Stames and Calvert, in the Potomac. Perhaps … Mark closed his eyes and felt an involuntary shiver run down his spine. He made an effort to disregard the panicky fear that had kept him awake all night—perhaps it would be his turn next.