“Which plane will you be on?” Howard asked, reaching for a pen.
Sanger made the soft snorting sound again. “Don’t worry, Agent Howard,” he said. “You’ll have no trouble finding us.”
The line went dead, leaving Howard wondering what the Secret Service man had meant. He collected his car from the office parking lot and drove quickly to the airport, parking in front of the General Aviation terminal. As the electronic doors hissed open to allow him into the terminal building, he saw a line of airport workers and passengers standing in front of the large picture window which overlooked the tarmac. As he walked up to them he realised with a jolt what they were looking at. Standing alone was a majestic Jumbo Jet, resplendent in a blue and white livery with the gold and black presidential seal on its belly. Air Force One. The spectators stood in silence, awed by the glistening symbol of Presidential authority. The plane was in pristine condition as if it had just rolled off the Boeing assembly line. Howard stood behind two baggage handlers and watched as a team of overalled workers busied themselves refuelling the jet. They were being supervised by two men in dark suits wearing sunglasses and carrying walkie-talkies.
Howard frowned as he studied the plane. The President had no official visit scheduled for Phoenix that he knew of, and the FBI would have been informed as a matter of course. He headed for the doors which led to the tarmac. His way was barred by two more Secret Service agents, wearing matching sunglasses and black suits. Howard identified himself before reaching slowly into his jacket to pull out his ID. Both agents tensed and the one on the right, the younger of the two, began to move his hand towards his waist. Howard smiled and slowed his movements, opening the wallet and showing his FBI credentials.
The older agent carefully checked the ID. “Are you carrying, sir?” he asked. Howard shook his head. The agents relaxed and stepped to the side. The younger pushed open the door for Howard, his face unsmiling.
“Bob Sanger’s waiting for you on board, sir,” said the older agent. “Have a nice day.”
As Howard walked across the tarmac to the gleaming jet, he heard the younger agent talking into his walkie-talkie. There were half a dozen agents standing at various points around the plane and several looked at Howard as if they were checking him out. They had earpieces from which wires disappeared into the collars of their jackets. A gust of wind blew the back of one agent’s jacket up around his waist and Howard caught a glimpse of a machine pistol in a nylon holster in the small of his back. Even Howard, an eight-year veteran of the FBI, felt nervous under the scrutiny of the stone-faced men in dark suits.
The giant plane epitomised the power and the glory of the United States of America, both in its sheer size and its technological superiority, and it pulled at his insides the way the National Anthem and the raising of the Stars and Stripes always did. It was more than patriotism, more than pride, it was an instinctive reaction that he couldn’t have controlled if he’d wanted to. He felt as if he should salute the plane, or bow his head in reverence.
A flight of stairs led up to the main hatch and another Secret Service man stood at the bottom, a walkie-talkie in his hand. He motioned for Howard to go up the steps. They seemed to go on for ever and Howard began to truly appreciate the immense size of the plane. Yet another agent waited at the top of the stairs and he led Howard down a corridor to a large meeting room with eight white leather seats surrounding a boat-shaped mahogany table. A man in his mid-forties was sitting in one of the high-backed chairs, a walkie-talkie and a computer printout on the table in front of him. Unlike the rest of the Secret Service agents, he wore a pair of delicate pince-nez eyeglasses and had hung his jacket over the back of his chair. As Howard entered the room the man looked over the top of his glasses like a college professor disturbed in the middle of correcting papers. He smiled and removed the spectacles. “Agent Howard?” he asked. Howard nodded and the man stood up and shook his hand, introducing himself as Bob Sanger. He waved Howard to one of the empty seats as the agent closed the door, leaving the two men alone.
“Is the President here?” Howard asked, his voice almost a whisper.
Sanger smiled and shook his head. “No, he’s on the back-up plane today. This is SAM 28000, it’s been in for repairs to one of the communication systems, so the President has been using SAM 29000 for the last few weeks. They’re identical, though. In fact, right now the President is probably sitting in the duplicate of my chair.”
Howard looked around the plush room. “I can’t believe I’m having a meeting on Air Force One.”
Sanger sat back in his chair. “Strictly speaking, it’s only Air Force One when the President is on board. At the moment this is just a Boeing 747-200B with a presidential paint job. The President is due to visit Los Angeles in a couple of weeks and we’ve been putting the security teams there through their paces. As you can imagine, we’re still nervous about LA, after what happened in 1992.”
Howard nodded. He looked out of one of the windows and saw the refuelling teams move away from the plane. One of the men in overalls waved goodbye to a Secret Service agent but he was ignored. Several of the agents walked up the stairs to the plane, talking into their radios.
“We’re dropping into Dallas for a threat assessment meeting with the head of security there, and then we’re onto Washington,” Sanger continued. He saw the look of alarm flash across Howard’s face. “Don’t worry, Agent Howard, you’re not coming with us. The pilot’s under instructions to hold until you leave the plane. Do you want a coffee?” Howard shook his head. “Okay,” continued Sanger, “let’s get down to business. Jake tells me you think there’s going to be an attack on the President.”
“He told you about the video?”
“He did. Do you have it with you?”
Howard took it out of his jacket pocket and held it out to Sanger. The Secret Service man pointed to a television console and VCR and Howard went over to it and slotted in the cassette. Sanger removed his glasses and the two men watched the video in silence. When it had finished Sanger began polishing his glasses with a white linen handkerchief. “Have you identified the snipers yet?”
“No, but we think they are military-trained. Navy SEALs, maybe.”
Sanger raised his eyebrows. “What makes you think that?”
“The types of weapons they’re using, and the distances involved.”
Sanger nodded. “Okay, I’ll run through our quarterlies for you, to see if we’ve any military snipers.”
“Quarterlies?” said Howard.
“We keep a close eye on anyone who has ever threatened the President; it’s our equivalent of your Most Wanted List, but it’s a lot longer. We’ve about five hundred names on it at the moment, and our agents visit them every three months. That’s why we call them quarterlies. We’ve a watch list too, with approaching ten thousand names on it, but they’re not visited on such a regular basis. What we do is cross-check the names on the lists with hotel registers and company payrolls in the areas where the President is due to visit. If we get a match, we interview them and if necessary remove them for the duration of the visit. We’ll check the watch list for your snipers, too, of course, but to be honest they’re generally all talk. It’s the quarterlies we worry about.”
“I doubt if the men we’re looking for would have written threatening letters,” said Howard. “They seemed too professional for that.”
“I agree,” said Sanger, “but until you give us a name or a photo to go on, there isn’t much else we can do.”
“We’re working on better pictures of the snipers,” continued Howard. “We’ve some computer experts trying to digitally enhance the video.” Howard leant forward. “There is another reason I wanted to make contact with you. We might have a way of identifying where the snipers plan to carry out their hit.” He briefly explained Andy Kim’s scheme as Sanger continued to polish his spectacles.
Sanger appeared impressed. “That’s one hell of an idea,” he said. “Our computer boys might want
to take a look at his program.”
“I’m sure he’d be more than happy to show them,” said Howard. “He’s very keen to help. What he needs now is the President’s itinerary for the next few months. We already have his official functions, but we need a more detailed itinerary: every appointment, every route, even the private functions. If Andy can program them into his computer model, he can see if there are any scenarios which match the rehearsal.”
Sanger put his glasses back on and looked at Howard over the top of the lenses. “How secure is this Mr Kim?” he asked.
“He’s a mathematics PhD at Georgetown University. His wife works for us as a computer researcher. Andy Kim is okay.”
“He’d better be,” said Sanger. “We wouldn’t want the President’s itinerary getting into the wrong hands, would we?”
Howard smiled. “I’ll take the responsibility,” he said.
Sanger also smiled, but there was little warmth in it. “I’m glad to hear that, but responsibility isn’t the issue. The President’s safety is. Who else but Kim is involved?”
“His wife. And we’re seconding four or five of our programmers to work with him. The itinerary won’t leave our labs, all the work will be done there.”
“The lab is in Washington?” asked Sanger. Howard nodded. “I’ve a suggestion,” continued Sanger. “Why don’t Kim and the programmers move over to our offices in the White House? We’ve all the computing power they could need. I presume all his programs can be put on disc and brought over?”
“I suppose so,” said Howard. “That could work.”
“Good,” said Sanger. “That’s agreed, then. Anything else I can help you with?”
“I have a question,” said Howard.
“Shoot,” said Sanger. He grinned. “If you’ll forgive the pun.”
“Are you planning to beef up security?”
“Because of what happened in Arizona? The straight answer is no. Not because we don’t take the threat seriously, but because the President is already the most protected man on this planet. Every city he goes to is swept clear of potential trouble-makers before he even sets foot there, no-one gets near him without being checked by one of our agents. We have helicopters overhead, we have our men on the ground, and we have an intelligence network second to none.”
Howard listened to the Sanger lecture, but all he could think of was the attempted assassination of Ronald Reagan when he was President, shot by a boy for no other reason than to impress a Hollywood actress, despite being surrounded by the men in black sunglasses. He felt that Sanger was being too dismissive of the snipers, but knew that he still didn’t have enough information to press the panic button.
“You know how many death threats the President of the United States receives each month?” Sanger asked. Howard shook his head. “It never amounts to fewer than three figures,” said the Secret Service chief. “Some are written, some are phoned in, some actually walk into the White House and start shouting. We investigate them all, but we don’t pull the President out of the public eye each time there’s a threat. He’d never attend a public function if we did.”
“But this is different,” said Howard, “this is being planned like a military operation.”
“That’s true. But you can’t yet say when or where they’re going to strike. And from what Jake told me, you’re not even sure that the President is the target. Am I right?” Reluctantly, Howard agreed. Sanger sensed Howard’s reluctance and he leaned forward. “Only a madman would think it worth killing the President,” he said. “There is nothing to gain — the Vice-President’s policies wouldn’t differ one iota from the policies of the incumbent. This is not a JFK situation.”
“And a madman wouldn’t be able to plan an operation of this complexity; is that what you’re saying?”
“That’s it exactly. The sort of assassination attempts we’ve seen in recent years have all been the lone madman type, either attention-seekers or psychopaths. There have been no organised assassination attempts, no conspiracies. That’s the reason for my scepticism. Who would want to kill the President? The Russians are our allies now, even Castro is looking to build bridges. The Iraqis, the Iranians, all our old enemies are keen to start trading with us again. No, I believe a major hit is being planned, but I don’t think for one minute that the President is the target.” He held up his hands. “I’m not saying I won’t offer you every facility; I’d be a fool if I refused to help. But unless you give something harder, I won’t be cancelling any of his appearances.”
“That’s understood,” said Howard. He knew that the Secret Service man was right. Crying wolf wouldn’t help anyone’s long-term career prospects.
“Having said that, if your computer model does indeed match any of the Presidential venues, well, that’s a whole new ball game. Look, I’ll be in DC tonight, call my office tomorrow and we’ll arrange for Kim and your programmers to come over. The sooner we get started, the better.”
Sanger stood up and held out his hand. The two men shook. “Do you smoke?” Sanger asked. Howard said he didn’t but Sanger handed over two packets of cigarettes and a book of matches, each with a large Presidential seal on them. “Take these anyway,” he said, “souvenirs of Air Force One.”
As Howard stepped off the stairway and onto the tarmac the men in black suits were walking back from the terminal, looking at their watches and whispering into their walkie-talkies. The huge jet engines began to whine and by the time he was starting his car the 747 was rolling majestically down the taxiway.
The two men sat in the darkened room, watching the television monitor. The picture was black and white, though the image was being recorded in colour. On the table next to the video-recorder were two large reel-to-reel tape-recorders, the tapes hissing slightly as they passed over the recording heads. One of the men, tall and thin with sandy hair and a sallow complexion, was lounging in a deck chair and holding a pair of headphones in his lap, while the other, overweight with slicked-back black hair, stood behind the camcorder on its tripod and looked down its long lens, through the Venetian blinds at the street below.
Everything was automatic, all the men had to do was to replace the videotape every eight hours and to change the audio tapes every ninety minutes. Most of the time there was only one man in the room, but it was just before three o’clock in the afternoon, the time when they changed shifts, and Don Clutesi, the man at the window, had decided to stay on for a few minutes to chat with Frank Sullivan.
The camcorder was trained on the bar across the street from the apartment block they were in, and had been for the last three months. The electronic eavesdropping devices were a recent addition: one had been inserted into the telephone by the men’s room, the other was inside a power socket behind the bar. Both had been installed by FBI technicians after they’d engineered a power blackout of the whole block one Friday afternoon.
Sullivan took off the headphones. “That’s the new guy,” he said, looking at the monitor. Clutesi squinted at the figure walking along the sidewalk, his shoulders hunched and his hands thrust deep into the pockets of his sailor’s pea jacket. “His name’s O’Brien, Damien O’Brien.”
“Irish?” asked Clutesi.
“British passport, but born in Belfast. We’re running the details through our London liaison office.”
“Green card?”
“No, tourist. He came in through JFK on March 17 and INS gave him a six-month B2 visa. He shouldn’t be working.”
Clutesi chuckled. “Was he expected?”
“Apparently not. He visited the bar a few times as a customer and then Shorty hired him as a barman.”
“And we’ve nothing on him?”
“Not as Damien O’Brien, that’s for sure. And we haven’t got a match with any photographs yet. We’re trying to get a new face from the Academy to go in and get a glass for prints, but it’s taking time to arrange.”
Clutesi nodded. “Yeah, but those Paddies can smell a Fed a mile off. We need a youngs
ter, someone fresh. We can’t rush it.” He watched as the man in the pea jacket pushed open the door and went inside, then turned round to face his colleague. “What do you think?”
Sullivan shrugged. “Could be on the lam from the Brits. We’ll know soon enough.” He slid the headphones back on and leaned back in the deck-chair.
“I’m going,” Clutesi mouthed, pointing at the door. “See you tomorrow.” Sullivan gave him a thumbs-up. He was listening to Shorty tell a particularly dirty story about two Protestant farmers and a sheep.
Andy Kim drove the red Cherokee Laredo up to the barrier and wound down his window. “I can’t believe this, I really can’t believe this,” he said to his wife.
“I know, I have to keep pinching myself,” Bonnie whispered. She giggled, but stopped abruptly when a guard appeared at Andy’s window, a clipboard in his hand.
“Andy Kim and Bonnie Kim,” said Andy, before the guard could speak. “We’re expected. We’re supposed to go to the West Wing.”
Bonnie leaned over and showed her FBI credentials to the unsmiling guard. He nodded and consulted his clipboard and then waved to a colleague to raise the barrier. “Park in bay 56, someone will meet you there,” he said brusquely and handed them both temporary visitor badges.
Andy nudged the vehicle down the driveway and wound up the window. “Friendly,” he said to Bonnie.
“They’re not paid to be friendly, I suppose,” she replied.
They both looked to the left as they headed slowly down the driveway. The White House gleamed in the afternoon sun as if it had been freshly painted. The grass surrounding the building seemed unnaturally green, like Astroturf, though the operating sprinklers suggested that it was the genuine article. “My parents brought me here as a kid, just after they got citizenship,” said Andy. “We queued for two hours in August, so they could see the house where the President lived. ‘Our President’ they kept saying, as if he was their personal representative. They were so proud that they could finally call themselves Americans.” He saw the bay where they were to park and he edged the car between a convertible white Saab and a black Lincoln. “We were herded through the public rooms like sheep, they barely gave us time to see anything because of the lines outside.” He switched off the engine and looked across at his wife. “They’d have been so proud of what we’re doing now. Actually working at the White House, helping the President.”
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