Finally he pulled back, thinking he had never enjoyed a kiss more in his life. “Nicki, I have to run that errand, but I won’t be gone for long. While I’m away, I want you to stay here at the restaurant. You can sit at the bar and have a drink until I get back.”
“I’ll wait for you at the apartment.”
“No!”
She looked at him strangely. His reaction had been so strong. “Why not?”
“I want you to stay here at Emilio’s.” He made certain his voice was calmer. “The restaurant is closer to where I need to go, so I won’t be away from you as long.”
“But I want to put on something nice before we go out.”
Cole ran his fingers through her long blond hair, then pulled her close again. “You look stunning as you are,” he whispered into her ear. “Do me a favor and stay here.”
“Okay,” she murmured.
* * *
—
At 7:25, five minutes before the library was to close for the evening, the young man who had seemed to be taking copious notes from a World Book Encyclopedia volume rose from the long table, replaced his notebook in his backpack, slung the pack over his shoulder and moved casually toward the west wall. He was short and wore a New York Yankees baseball cap pulled low over his eyes.
When he reached the location, he knelt down, pulled the atlases from the shelves, placed them gently on the floor and extracted the cassette case from its cave. He slid the tape into his backpack, secured the pack’s buckle, took a quick look around, then rose and sauntered away. He didn’t ride the elevator to the first floor as Cole had. He preferred to walk down the wide open stairway instead. On the stairway he could see everything around him from a distance.
He moved his head and whistled softly as if enjoying a song playing on his Walkman, but a discerning eye would have noticed that the machine’s PLAY button wasn’t depressed. There was no music blaring through the earphones because that would have been stupid. Music would have blocked out other sounds, and the young man needed all his senses in perfect working order right now because he was running a gauntlet.
The guard at the library’s front door motioned to the young man to open the backpack for inspection. The young man cheerfully complied, placing the pack on the counter and continuing to move to the imagined song. The guard peered inside the pack, then removed the cassette case and checked inside it carefully.
The young man grimaced. He wasn’t concerned that the guard was going to appropriate the tape. Library videocassettes were clearly marked and this one wasn’t. But now anyone watching would have seen the guard take the case out of the pack. The young man glanced around. He noticed nothing out of the ordinary.
The guard closed the cassette case and shoved it back into the young man’s pack. The young man smiled beneath the brim of his Yankees cap, zipped up his green down jacket, grabbed the pack and moved out of the building. Once past the stone lions, he turned right onto Fifth Avenue, turned right again at Fortieth Street and continued walking until he reached Bryant Park—a large rectangle of meticulously manicured grass surrounded by tall elm trees stretching from the back of the library all the way to Sixth Avenue. On a summer evening the park would have been crowded with people enjoying comedians or musicians performing on the stage erected at the west end, but in the darkness of the cold fall evening it was deserted. The young man jogged across the grass through the gloom as a raw drizzle began to fall. He was almost home.
As he reached the other side of the park, he took a shortcut over a patch of ivy and through a grove of trees. It was a terrible mistake. The solid metal pipe smashed into the back of his skull collapsing fragments of hair and skin and bone into his brain. He fell forward onto his chest, hands above his head grasping at the ivy. He managed to pull himself forward only a few inches before he moaned pitifully and his eyes rolled back in his head. Then Agent Graham lay motionless, his fingers still clutching wet leaves.
The blond man didn’t bother removing the backpack from the young man’s corpse. He simply bent down, ripped open the buckle, shoved his meaty hand inside the pack, extracted the cassette case and opened it. From his leather coat he took out a small flashlight, cavalierly unconcerned about the possibility of being caught standing over a fresh kill. He switched on the flashlight and inspected the tape in the dim light. He pushed his tongue into the opening made by his missing lower front tooth and a tight smile crossed his thin lips. Then he extinguished the flashlight, shoved it back in his coat, closed the cassette case, pulled it tightly against his chest, turned and disappeared into the mist.
4
Avery Zahn, two-star army general and deputy director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, sat outside the Oval Office door in what was for him an undersized chair. He was six-seven—a former basketball pine-rider at the United States Military Academy—and at fifty-one he still retained the rail-slender build of his playing days. He was gangly, with large ears that stuck almost straight out from the sides of his head. During his life he’d endured an abundant amount of teasing about his ears, and as much as anything this mocking of his physical appearance was the basis for his stoic demeanor and the huge chips sitting squarely on each narrow shoulder.
The Oval Office door opened suddenly and Eric Walsh, the president’s chief of staff, poked his head out into the waiting area. “We’re ready for you,” he said self-importantly.
Zahn nodded stiffly as he rose from the seat. Walsh was the yuppie type, a type Zahn detested. Walsh wore expensive suits and flashy ties and in the morning parked his BMW in the closest space to the door of the West Wing of the White House. He was short and slight, with perfectly combed dark hair, tortoise-shell glasses and a universe-size ego. As Zahn entered the Oval Office, he ducked, an automatic reaction after years of head bumps. He didn’t care for Walsh at all, but no one saw the president without also seeing Walsh. They had been inseparable since the president’s days as governor of North Carolina.
Richard Jamison, president of the United States, was doing his best to terminate a telephone conversation and motioned for Zahn to sit in the chair positioned to the left side of the great desk. It was a black captain’s chair—Duke University’s motto etched into the back in gold lettering—and was larger, though only slightly more comfortable, than the chair in which Zahn had been sitting outside the Oval Office.
Zahn eased into the chair while Walsh sat in the one on the right side of the president’s desk. Jamison stood behind the desk, gazing out through the large window into the night, charming someone at the other end of the phone. As much as Zahn disliked Walsh, he liked Jamison. Not because he wanted to, but because he had to. Jamison was personally responsible for Zahn’s appointment as deputy director of the DIA. It was an appointment that had revived a foundering military career. Zahn knew why Jamison had selected him over several more deserving candidates, but that was all right. You took what you could get in this world, any way you could get it.
Jamison was tall, tanned and graying slightly at the temples. He possessed movie-star good looks and a silver tongue Zahn knew was also forked. Zahn shrugged to himself. Maybe that was just something politicians were born with, and something they needed to possess in order to succeed.
“We thank you for your support, Senator,” Jamison said politely. “My love to Alice and the girls.” He nodded several times, smiling into the phone’s mouthpiece, trying to disengage. “Right, goodbye.” His smile evaporating, he replaced the receiver on its cradle and glanced at Walsh as he sat in the chair behind the huge desk. “Eric, the good senator from Michigan is a pompous asshole.”
Walsh put a hand to his face to hide a grin. Jamison used profanity liberally when he was conducting small meetings in the Oval Office. The habit amused Walsh because Jamison had managed to craft such a virtuous public image.
“And his wife’s as fucking ugly as the south end of a northbound wolverine.” Jamison winked at
Walsh. “Quite a little slut in her college days, too, if our information is correct.”
This time Walsh chuckled out loud.
Zahn had been absentmindedly fiddling with his military hat, which lay on his lap. At the sound of Walsh’s laughter, Zahn glanced up and saw the president staring at him.
“Hello, General Zahn,” Jamison said cordially.
“Hello, Mr. President.” Zahn could only imagine how Walsh and the president would joke about his ears after he left. When Walsh had leaned into the waiting area outside the Oval Office, Zahn had caught the young man looking at them. But if Walsh and Jamison wanted to have a little fun at his expense, that would have to be acceptable. After all, Jamison had caused his military stock to rise after a long slide. And there was that other matter as well.
“How are you this evening, General?” the president asked.
“Fine.”
“And as talkative as ever, I see.”
Walsh chuckled again.
Zahn shifted uncomfortably in his chair without saying anything. He felt the perspiration building beneath his uniform. He was too self-conscious to easily endure any kind of attention.
“Right.” Jamison folded his hands together atop the desk and cleared his throat. Zahn was as stiff as a board, and it was silly to think that he might all of a sudden become an interesting conversationalist. It was better to get down to the matter at hand than to try and drag any shred of personality out of the general.
In his peripheral vision Zahn noticed Walsh’s posture subtly stiffen as the president’s demeanor became serious.
“Update me on Operation Snowfall,” Jamison demanded abruptly. He was all business now. “Specifically, what we talked about last week.”
“Yes, Mr. President.” Zahn was happy. The idle chitchat, something for which he had never possessed an affinity, was over. Now they could get to work. “We should acquire what we seek this evening, if we haven’t already,” Zahn said, checking his watch. “I have a report, from the man I told you about, that Cole Egan took something out of a safe-deposit box at the Chase Bank branch at Fifth Avenue and Forty-third Street in Manhattan this afternoon. We believe what he retrieved from the box is what we’re looking for.”
The president reclined in the chair and chewed thoughtfully on the end of his gold Cross pen for a moment. “Really?” He was surprised that it could be over so quickly, but then Zahn was efficient. He wasn’t someone you’d spend more than a few seconds conversing with at an Embassy Row cocktail party or a state dinner, but he was coldly efficient, and therefore the perfect man to head this mission.
“Yes, Mr. President.”
The president leaned forward over the desk. “You know how goddamn important this mission is to me.”
“Yes, Mr. President.” Zahn was like a puppy dog in Jamison’s presence.
A minute of silence ensued as the president took in this unexpectedly positive piece of information.
Zahn began rocking slightly in his chair. It was what he always did when he was about to address someone of superior rank without being prompted, and when he thought what he was about to say was humorous. “Kind of ironic.” Zahn cackled through his nose when he laughed. “Isn’t it, Mr. President? This whole thing, I mean.” It was a feeble attempt at something other than his typically stoic demeanor, and it failed miserably.
The president’s eyes narrowed. “It sure as shit is,” he hissed. He had no desire to be reminded of the irony.
Walsh shook his head. What an idiot Zahn was.
Zahn nodded nervously, wishing he could have taken back his comment.
“General Zahn, I hope for your sake everything works out well this evening. I informed my associate that you would acquire what we seek very soon. He was delighted to hear that.” Jamison pointed a finger at Zahn. “I don’t want him to be disappointed,” he said ominously. “I can’t have that.”
“I understand, Mr. President.” It was all Zahn could do to speak.
“Good. When you have procured the damn thing, I want to be informed immediately. You may call Mr. Walsh at any hour tonight.” Jamison gestured in his chief of staffs direction. “That will be all, General Zahn.”
“Yes, sir.” Zahn rose and walked out the door, which clicked shut behind him.
“What do you have on Zahn?” Walsh asked, an impish grin tugging at the corners of his mouth. “Why is he so petrified of you?”
The president stood up, turned and gazed out through the window into the darkness beyond. “General Zahn comes from a very old, very high-profile Southern family. A family that has called Charleston, South Carolina, home for two hundred years.” Jamison loosened his bright red tie. “A very traditional Southern family from a very traditional Southern town, where gentlemen are gentlemen and ladies are ladies,” he said in his smooth North Carolina accent.
“What’s your point?” Walsh asked impatiently. He was the only one in Washington who could get away with so impertinent a tone.
“My point is that General Zahn leaves his wife and children one night a month for his lover, which wouldn’t be so bad in and of itself. Hell, we’ve all strayed at one time or another. But I doubt Zahn’s mother, father, sister and the rest of his extended family would want to hear that the general’s lover is a nineteen-year-old male cadet enrolled at the Citadel. That might be cause for some explaining on the Charleston social circuit.”
Walsh’s grin grew wider. “Having that kind of information seems to make General Zahn fairly malleable.”
“Very malleable.” Jamison turned away from the window.
“So that’s why you had no hesitation about informing Zahn of the circumstances.” Jamison could be secretive about his motives sometimes, even with his chief of staff. Now Walsh was finally being shown the light on this issue.
“Hell, that’s why I promoted him to deputy director of the DIA, and why I gave him responsibility for the mission. Our associate will be monitoring our progress carefully. Whoever was leading the mission would have asked questions. I can be open with Zahn and answer any of his questions because I know he’ll take whatever I tell him to his grave without telling anyone else. Closet homosexuals are good that way, especially ones with wives and children.”
“Mmm.” Walsh wanted to go over the bigger picture one more time. He had counseled the president against all of this many times over the last few days, and it seemed to him worth one more review. “Do you really feel this whole thing is necessary?”
“Absolutely,” the president answered forcefully. “You know how much I want a second term, and I don’t have the financial war chest for the campaign, not like the one you tell me my opponent will have, anyway. I don’t have time for thousands of coffee meetings and dinners, either. And there’s so much scrutiny on campaign finance these days, I don’t want to have to count on a substantial amount of fundraising to win reelection.” Jamison sat back down in his chair. “I need votes, Eric, and what we are doing will ensure that I get them. As it did the first time around. As it did in 1960.” Jamison thought back to Zahn’s comment about irony. The general had been right on the button in more ways than one.
“But you’re the incumbent,” Walsh argued. “Stay the course and you’re a lock to be reelected next year.”
“Tell Jimmy Carter and George Bush that,” Jamison said quietly, gazing down at his desktop. “I can’t change my mind now anyway. My associate wouldn’t take kindly to that.”
Walsh nodded in resignation.
“We’re already in bed together,” Jamison pointed out. “We might as well make the sex good.”
“I suppose,” Walsh agreed.
The president glanced up, forcing a positive tone into his voice. “How did the attorney general hearings go today?”
Walsh waved his hand as if swatting at a fly. “Ah, the senators on the committee are all chiding her on her lax record monito
ring the casinos while she was attorney general for New Jersey, but ultimately they’ll approve her. We’ve got the votes. It’ll only be another couple of days before we can break out the champagne and toast her appointment.”
The president smiled. “Good.” Things were progressing on schedule. His associate would be happy.
5
The lone guard seated behind the main lobby’s long front desk wore a plain light gray business suit, as all Gilchrist & Company security personnel did when they were on duty. He also packed a snub-nosed .38 in a leather shoulder holster beneath the suit coat. Most of the guards were former New York City policemen. They never smiled, rarely engaged in conversation with nonsecurity personnel and were coldly efficient in protecting the Gilchrist premises.
Cole held up his plastic photo identification card as he signed the after-hours register. The guard nodded stiffly, and Cole moved to the elevator banks. As the car ascended, he checked his wristwatch. It was pushing eight o’clock. He had kissed Nicki goodbye after leading her back inside Emilio’s, then caught a cab to the Gilchrist Building. After he finished here, he would return to Emilio’s and pick her up. Cole smiled. He couldn’t wait to be with her again. They would tell each other many things tonight. Things they had always wanted to say, but never had.
The elevator stopped on eight, and the doors slid open to a dimly lit floor. As Cole stepped into the hallway and the elevator doors closed behind him, he suddenly realized how quiet it was here. The only sound was the hum from the few fluorescent bulbs still lighted. He moved through the glass doors leading to the inner offices, turned right, and walked down a long dark corridor toward the screening room he had used this afternoon to view the tape.
Halfway there Cole stopped suddenly. A shadow at the end of the corridor seemed to be moving. He squinted. There it was again. He swallowed hard as he realized the moving shadow was only being made by a bulb about to die. Stay calm, he told himself. Control your fear.
The Legacy Page 5
