Dragonfly

“We brought in the FBI,” McAlister said. “They've got some of the best forensic men combing the house. But I don't have much hope that anything'll come from that. For one thing, we can't trust everyone in the FBI. And for another, these killers are professionals. They don't leave fingerprints.”

“What about the police?”

“We didn't inform them,” McAlister said. “If we had, the press would have been crawling all over the house. And sure as hell, someone from the Times or the Post would pick up on the whole Dragonfly mess by tomorrow morning.”

“They're good reporters,” the President said.

“One other thing about Cofield.”

“What's that?”

“He was killed no more than half an hour before we got to him.”

The President clicked his tongue: he had come full circle. “So it isn't just a case of The Committee routinely killing off the men who worked with Wilson.”

“That's right. Cofield was killed because the other side knew we wanted to talk to him. And the only way they could know that is if they've got somebody inside my organization.”

“Who?”

“I haven't any idea.” He rattled the ice cubes in his glass and wished he could put the phone down to go get another drink. He was ordinarily a light drinker, but these last several months had given him a taste for Wild Turkey.

After clicking his tongue twice, the President said, “What are you going to do?”

“Just be careful, watch everyone closely, and hope the damned son of a bitch will trip himself up sooner or later.” Ordinarily, he was no more of a curser than a drinker. But that had changed too.

“It's not likely that he will,” the President said after a few seconds of thought. “Trip himself up, I mean.”

“I know. But I don't see how else I can handle it.”

“What about the agent that Berlinson killed out there in Carpinteria? Anything on him yet?”

“No leads at the moment. Not on him or his partner. We're verifying the whereabouts of every current and ex-agent, but this is going to take a good deal of time.”

“Have you heard from Canning?”

“His cover is blown.”

“But how is that possible?”

“I don't know,” McAlister said wearily. “The only people who knew about him were me, you, and Rice.”

“Where is he now?”

“Tokyo.”

“Then it's about time for us to send his name along to the Chairman.”

“No, sir. Canning just arrived in Tokyo. He's a full day behind schedule, thanks to some trouble he ran into in Los Angeles.” He quickly explained about that.

“Yes, Bob, but now that his cover has been blown, I don't see any reason for us to keep his identity a secret from the Chairman until the very last minute.”

“Well, sir, the Chairman's going to want to know how Canning will be arriving in Peking. You can tell him our man will be aboard one of the two dozen authorized flights from Tokyo to Peking. But I'd like to keep that a secret until the plane is in the air.”

“Okay,” the President said. “We'll send all the data except the name of the flight — and we'll stat that by satellite as soon as it takes off from Tokyo. Which flight is it?”

“For now,” McAlister said, “I'd like to keep it a secret from you as well as the Chairman, sir.”

The President hesitated, sighed, and said, “Very well. Is there anything else?”

Once more the President had stopped clicking his tongue. McAlister was happier when he could hear that sound, for then he didn't have to wonder what the man was doing. He longed for another series of clicks. He thought; I'm going mad. And he said, “Sir, there's something I believe we have to do, but it's beyond my jurisdiction. Are you open for a suggestion?”

“I'm always open for suggestions.”

“Arrest A. W. West.”

There was a long silence on the line.

“Sir,” McAlister said, “we strongly suspect that he's one of the men behind The Committee, behind Dragonfly. Arresting him might throw the organization into confusion. That might buy us time. And they might panic, start making mistakes.”

“We have no proof against him,” the President said sternly. “We may suspect that West is behind it, but we have nothing that would convince a judge.”

“Then arrest him for the Kennedy assassinations. We know that he was one of the people who financed all of that.”

“We have circumstantial proof. Only circumstantial proof. We may know that he was part of a conspiracy, but again we have nothing to show a judge, nothing concrete. Furthermore, I thought we had all made a policy decision not to open that can of worms and throw the country into a turmoil.”

McAlister sagged in his chair.

“Do you agree, Bob?”

“Yes, sir,” he said, exhausted. The bourbon was getting to him. His mind was clouded.

“I'll leave instructions with my secretary to put you through to me at any hour. If something comes up, call me at once.”

“Yes, sir. And, Mr. President?”

“Yes?”

“If you have any speaking engagements over the next few days — cancel them.”

“I have none,” the President said soberly.

“Don't even go for walks on the White House grounds.”

“And stay away from windows too?”

“Sir, if you were assassinated now, we'd be thrown into such turmoil that we'd never be able to stop Dragonfly — if it's stoppable under any conditions.”

“You're right, of course. And I've had the same thoughts myself. Did you take my advice about a bodyguard?”

“Yes, sir,” McAlister said. “There are five men stationed in my house tonight.”

“FBI?”

“No, sir. I don't trust the FBI. These are Pinkerton men. I hired them out of my own pocket”

“I suppose that's wise.”

McAlister sipped some of the melted ice in his glass. “We sound like true psychotics, thoroughbred paranoids. I wonder if we're ready for an institution?”

“Someone once said that if you think everyone is out to get you, and everyone is out to get you, then you're not a paranoid but merely a realist.”

Sighing, McAlister said, “Yes, but what are we coming to? What are we coming to when wealthy men can hire the assassination of the President — and get away with it? What are we coming to when private citizens and crackpot elements of the CIA can find the means to wage biological warfare against a foreign country? What are we coming to when all this can be happening — and you and I are so relatively calm about it, reasonable about it?”

“Bob, the world isn't going to hell in a handbasket — if that's what you're saying. It got pretty bad there for a while. But we're straightening it up, cleaning it up. That's what my administration is all about.”

And how many times have I heard that before? McAlister wondered.

The President said, “Bit by bit we're putting it all back together, and don't you forget that.”

“I wonder,” McAlister said. He was seldom this morose, and he realized that Dragonfly was the final catalyst necessary to start major changes in him. He didn't know what those changes might be; they were still developing. “Sometimes I think the world just gets crazier and crazier. It certainly isn't the world that I was taught about when I was a young man in Boston.”