Lammeck looked across the small gathering. Somewhere in those winter coats and wool hats was an assassin slinking out of the twelfth century. Someone in the world was very weary of Franklin Roosevelt, enough to order him killed. The Germans and the Japanese, the known enemies, were the first choices, of course. But who else?
“Damn it,” Lammeck said aloud. “I know you’re here.”
The cart vendor shushed him to hear FDR’s acceptance speech, broadcast over loudspeakers.
Lammeck warmed his hands on the paper coffee cup and continued to survey the crowd, the security police, every lawn, building, and bush for a half mile in all directions. One thing he was sure of: The Persian woman was not sitting behind a rifle scope right now, waiting for a trough in the wind. No marksman could hit Roosevelt from beyond the White House grounds. And she was certainly not hiding inside the cordon. Dag’s Secret Service brothers patrolled every inch.
Besides, Lammeck’s gut had told him from the start that this assassin wasn’t a shooter. She was a different type, an older mold of assassin, perhaps the oldest. She hadn’t gunned down Otto and Bonny on the beach. Instead, she had knifed them, then pulled off some magic trick to put a bullet through Arnold’s brain and make his death look like suicide. Guns were for the beginner, the untrained malcontent. She was no Zangara, Booth, or Lawrence; no Leon Czolgosz, the anarchist in Buffalo who’d hid a pistol inside his bandaged hand, then shot McKinley point-blank while the President was shaking hands. Or Charles Guiteau, the deranged office-seeker who fatally plugged Garfield in the D.C. train station.
She’d have nothing in common with those petty killers.
Except one thing.
She would do her work in close.
She was an Assassin of the Alamut, trained in silent killing. She would come privately, in disguise or shadow, emerging and receding like the weapon she preferred: the blade. Slide in, out; wipe the blood; disappear.
The President finished his speech. It was a short performance, five minutes’ worth, underscoring how poorly the man must be feeling. FDR limped away on the arm of his son while the crowd cheered him off the stage.
Dag found Lammeck and came beside him. Lammeck bought him a coffee.
The two watched the crowd disperse. Would she walk away or linger?
“Dag, what kind of people get in to see Roosevelt?”
The agent lifted his coffee cup and extended a finger, pointing at the milling crowd on the Ellipse and the White House grounds.
“Them. His wife and family, their guests. World leaders and ambassadors. Senators. Congressmen. Cabinet members. White House staff.”
“Secret Service agents.”
Dag nodded. “Yep. Marine guards. White House police. The press corps. Some soldiers and heroes.”
“How about when he’s out of the White House?”
“He really only goes a few places anymore. His office next door to the White House in the executive building. He motors to that. Some weekends he goes by train up to Hyde Park. Once in a while, he heads south, down to the Little White House in Warm Springs, Georgia, where his polio clinic is. Whenever he’s in New York or Georgia, the only folks who see him are staff, guests, and local people he’s known forever. And you can bet we’ve got agents around him thick as thieves the whole time.”
“What about business travel?”
“Not as often as he used to. Like I said, his legs are letting him down. Once in a blue moon, he’ll leave the White House for an event here in the District. The last time was two weeks ago, to a Correspondents’ dinner at the Statler Hotel. We had a full security detail, private elevator, the works. Untouchable. And then there’s the big trips, cross-country or international. Again, the advance work is incredible. Reports of his itinerary are blacked out in the press. No one knows where he’s going or where he’s been until he gets back. You’d have to be deep on the inside to get a handle on Roosevelt’s schedule. And if you were on the inside, you’d have passed a pretty hefty background check first. I don’t think our little Persian gal with a knife between her teeth is going to make the cut, pardon the pun.”
Lammeck gazed at the vendor’s cart. Charcoal embers cooked a grill loaded with hot dogs, chestnuts, and pretzels.
“You said the Statler event was a dinner?”
“Yeah. You should see reporters eat when it’s free. Locusts.”
“Where was the food prepared? On-site?”
Dag sipped more coffee.
“Yep. We got that covered, too. Every waiter and cook who serves the President goes through a security check before he’s allowed to work the event. Last year, just after I joined the Service, we did a check on one hotel before a banquet and found thirteen Italians, eleven Germans, and one fugitive American murderer on the dining room staff. We deep-sixed the whole event. We even look into the guests at every hotel the Boss visits. One time this guy at the Drake in Chicago was registered with his wife. The couple was from Decatur. We checked back in Decatur and found his wife at home. Uh-oh.”
Lammeck asked, “How about the food?”
“At the White House and on the road, every bite the President eats gets analyzed by lab technicians first. He likes game and fish, and the stuff gets sent to him from pals and leaders all over the goddam world. We toss most of it and just don’t tell him.”
“Ever catch any poison?”
“Just once. Someone slipped strychnine into a batch of marlin shipped up from Cuba. The guy who sent the fish was above suspicion, so it was obvious someone in the mail chain did it. Never caught ‘em.”
Lammeck watched the last of the inauguration assembly disperse. Every woman walking alone, he imagined, was her.
With a steamy breath, Dag shook his head. “So no dice, Professor. I know what you’re thinking and she ain’t getting to him inside the White House. Not unless she runs for office, gets a presidential appointment or a job at a newspaper, joins the military or the Secret Service, or dates one of FDR’s married sons. Or she’s really the Queen of fucking Sheba.”
For the past six days, Lammeck had walked the perimeter around the White House, looking across the open lawns. Every footstep, he probed for the way in, knowing she was doing the same. What kind of cover story was available to her, to get close? A job? What work could she do that didn’t require a serious background investigation by the Secret Service or FBI? Clerical work, certainly; the war administration was brimming with girls who typed and filed, but she had no shot in any of the sensitive agencies and no hope of a high position. Cooking, cleaning? Again, even those jobs around Roosevelt required an intense background scrutiny, both inside the White House and at any location the President visited. Not even the most convincing fake identification papers could get her a real mom and a dad and a high school diploma and a tenth-grade teacher to testify what a good kid she’d been.
Dag’s right. She won’t get inside with a government job. She’ll have figured that one out by now.
Sex?
What if Dag’s joking reference was right? Could she be busy seducing someone high up, someone who might unwittingly introduce her to the President? That might be motive enough to take a menial task in some government sweatshop.
Lammeck told Dag this.
Dag said, “If that’s what you want to check out, I’ll talk to Mrs. Beach about getting us all the government hiring records in D.C. for the past two and a half weeks.”
“I know you’ll enjoy that.”
Dag spit in the sooty snow piled beside the sidewalk.
“And she’ll tell me that the two of us will be the ones to check out every one of those girls. So clear your schedule, Professor.”
“I get your point.”
Lammeck took Dag’s coffee cup back to the cart for a refill. The vendor stopped shuttering his kiosk to pour the last of his coffee before wheeling away. There’d be little business on a Saturday afternoon now that the ceremony was over.
Dag accepted the refill. The two of them stood bouncing on their
toes in the emptying street. The D.C. police began to dismantle traffic barriers and yellow sawhorses.
“That was a shitty inauguration,” Dag observed. “Depressing.”
Lammeck asked, “If you had to pick someone to sleep with to get to Roosevelt, who would it be?”
“Some guy in good shape. A good listener. And no smokers, I hate that.”
Lammeck nodded understandingly. Dag punched his shoulder, spilling coffee. “Hey, I was kidding.”
“No, I agree. Smoking is a filthy habit.”
“Screw you. Listen, Professor, you got any idea what you’re asking? If I go to Mrs. Beach and ask her to clear it with Reilly for that kind of info, who’s banging who, what high-up has got himself a new girlfriend, it’ll be the first time in sixty years that old bat has laughed. This is D.C., the center of the free world. Power’s like money in this town, and these guys spend it on a lot of things. Women is one of them. They’d rather see Roosevelt dead in the street than have us check if Senator Bullshit is getting laid outside his home, you know what I’m saying? And even if we do get some leads, again...”
“I know. It’ll be just you and me running them down. Dag, do you like baseball?”
“Yeah. What’s that got to do with anything?”
“Because it’s becoming clear to me we’re not going to hold her to a single. We might not catch up to her until she’s already rounded third.”
“A play at the plate?”
“If we’re lucky. We’ll need a break if we’re going to change the odds.”
“We’ll get one.”
“Why so sure?”
“We got time. In two days the President’s on his way out of the country to a big meeting. That’s where Reilly’s off to. They’re not back for a month. So the Persian broad can’t do a thing to the Boss because he won’t be here.”
Lammeck wondered if the assassin knew this.
“Where’re they going?”
Dag shook his head. “Can’t tell you.”
Lammeck began to object.
“Hold it right there,” Dag cut in. “I know that bit about how you need to know everything she does. But some of this stuff is classified and I flat-out can’t tell you. If she knows and you don’t, then good for her. But she didn’t hear it from me. Okay?”
Lammeck tossed his coffee in the trash bin. This was rotten news, that Dag kept information from him. He was sure the assassin’s sources didn’t hold anything back from her. So he was at another disadvantage, as if there weren’t enough shackles on him already.
Roosevelt was leaving town. That meant she had a whole month to do nothing but embed herself even more deeply into the city. To get into position while the two of them flailed at nothing but her shadow.
He surveyed the White House, the bare winter streets, the warren of buildings on all sides. He turned away.
“Where are you?” Lammeck asked into the cold air.
* * * *
“THERE YOU ARE,” JUDITH murmured under her watch cap.
The two were just like they’d been described. The old woman in Newburyport was doing a much better job now with her intelligence. Judith had given her good reason to improve.
The two men stood beside a vending cart, sipping coffee with the crowd falling away. They seemed to be having a squabble. Both were speaking with their hands, waving their coffee cups to make points. The smaller of the two kept his eyes on the White House in the distance. The bigger one kept scanning the dispersing crowd. He looked only once at Judith. His eyes skipped off her quickly, and why wouldn’t they? He was looking for a woman. She had wrapped down her breasts, pulled the wool cap low over her hair and ears, and walked to the inauguration garbed in laborer’s boots and overalls beneath a bulky overcoat. She wore glasses, drank coffee, smoked cigarettes, and stood in the street with the colored workers who’d come because they idolized Roosevelt.
Again Judith glanced at the pair standing next to the hot-dog cart. The smaller one was the tip-off. He fit the description exactly that the woman from Newburyport had forwarded. A disheveled-looking man, battered fedora on his head, raincoat wrinkled like a dried fig. Six foot, lean and pale. He had a mistrustful face. This was the Secret Service agent who’d made a week’s worth of inquiries in the little fishing town. Went to the beach every day to stare. Ate in the same restaurants, took notes, talked to no one but the police. Tried to be discreet and was noticed because of it.
But it was the larger man who caught her eye. He was good-looking behind his trim brown beard. He carried a large frame, a worthy chest and belly. He looked a bit of a fop, but she guessed at an agile mind from his owl-quick glances, and a harder body than his girth suggested. According to the old woman’s report, he’d appeared nine days ago in Newburyport and stayed only one day before leaving with the other one. So the larger man was the expert.
With the President’s speech finished, Judith drifted with the crowd, to watch the pair from a distance. The two stayed side by side even after the vendor packed up and departed. They continued talking and gesturing, oblivious, as if no one were looking for them.
Finally they split up. Judith could follow only one. She chose the big man.
* * * *
This period was the most distressing in the whole of my experience as White House physician. The President did not seem able to rid himself of a sense of terrible urgency.
—LT. COMMANDER HOWARD BRUENN
FDR’s doctor
* * * *
* * * *
CHAPTER NINE
February 10
Aurora Heights
Arlington, Virginia
MRS. TENCH LEANED OVER Judith’s shoulder.
“You have such lovely handwriting, dear.”
“Thank you.”
“Where did you learn that? In school?”
“In New Orleans, yes, ma’am.”
“Shall I tell you who all these names are?”
Judith set down her pen while the woman pointed out the place cards Judith had been inscribing.
“This is my Mr. Tench’s boss, the Secretary of the Navy. He’ll be without his wife. This is a general who’s quite high up at the Pentagon. I don’t know what he does but it’s extremely hush-hush. And his wife. This man is an absolute drunken bore but he does something with the budget so everyone in Washington has to be tolerant of him. That’s his wife, poor thing. And,” she added prettily, “me. And Mr. Tench.”
Judith sat at the table where the evening’s dinner would be served in two hours. From the kitchen, behind the swinging door, Mrs. P.’s preparations sent aromas through the brick house. Judith tried to stay out of the kitchen; every time she entered, Mrs. P. came up with a chore or a barb. The old woman had been in a bothered state all afternoon.
“Don’t you look nice,” Mrs. Tench said. She tugged a lace frill at Judith’s shoulder to make it lie more evenly on the powder blue uniform.
“Now, remember, always serve food from the left and drinks from the right. Keep an eye on the water and the coffee, let the men at the table pour the wine and liquor. Never take a dish away until someone nods for you to do it. Say ‘May I,’ not ‘Can I.’ And please don’t try to carry so many dishes at once, dear. You have very strong hands, but it’s just not ladylike. This is a private home, not a hash house.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Now, set out each of the place cards where I showed you. Then go help Mrs. P. in the kitchen. I’m going to lie down for a while before my husband gets home. Alright?”
The woman swept out of the dining room. Judith completed the task at the table, then pushed on the kitchen door.
Mrs. P. stirred a great pot of soup, steam swirling around her. She looked up only briefly when Judith entered.
“Peel me some garlic,” the old cook told her.
Judith found the cloves and a paring knife. She checked the knife’s sharpness. Unsatisfied, she took a whetstone from a drawer. Sitting, she drew the blade’s edge over the surface with
slow satisfaction.
The Assassins Gallery - [Dr Mikhal Lammeck 01] Page 16
