“Absolutely. Now what?”
“You want to go home to bed — or do you want to be in on the end of it?” McAlister asked.
“Who could sleep tonight?”
“Then get over here to the White House. I'll leave word at the gate that you're to be let through.”
“I'll be there in ten minutes.”
McAlister hung up and turned to the President, who had thrust his left hand under his pajama shirt and was scratching his right armpit. “That was Kirk-wood, sir. The girl has positively identified Rice as the man who assaulted her.”
The President took his left hand out of his pajamas. Then he thrust his right hand into them and furiously scratched his left armpit. His handsome face was bloodless. “Well. Well, well!” He stopped scratching his armpit and stood up. “Then I guess we have no choice but to proceed according to the plan you outlined a few minutes ago.”
“I see no alternative, sir.”
“What a sewer.”
“Yes, sir.”
“They've brought us down to their level.”
McAlister said nothing.
The President scratched his nose, then the back of his neck. “Where do you want Rice? Here?”
“The Pentagon would be better,” McAlister said. “It's nice and quiet at this hour. There's a security-cleared doctor already on duty there, so we won't have to rout some other poor bastard out of bed.”
“The Pentagon it is,” the President said, one hand poised before him as if he were trying to think of one more place to scratch.
McAlister glanced at the wall clock: 11:15. “As soon as I leave, would you call Pentagon Security and tell them that I'm to have their full cooperation?”
“Certainly, Bob.”
“Then wait half an hour before you call Rice. That'll give me time to reach the Pentagon and get ready for him. Tell him to come to the Mall Entrance and that he'll be met there.”
“No problem.”
Bending over, McAlister began to gather up the copies of Prescott Hennings' magazines, which were strewn over the coffee table.
“Could you let those here?” the President asked. “I'm not going to be able to sleep tonight. I might as well find out what Andy Rice is really like.”
“I'd like to have one issue to throw at him for psychological effect,” McAlister said. “I'll leave the rest.”
They went out of the office and across the President's private bedroom.
At the door, the chief executive stopped and turned to McAlister. “Bob, it appears you're right about Rice beating up that girl. And it looks like he's behind this Dragonfly business. I hate to admit I've been made a fool of, but I've got to face facts. But one thing…”
“Yes, sir?”
“It seems to me that the rest of your theory is a bit too far-fetched. How could these Committeemen seize the government?”
“Assassination,” McAlister said without hesitation.
“But the Vice-President isn't a Committeeman, surely.”
“Then they'll assassinate him, too,” McAlister said.
The President raised his eyebrows.
“They'll assassinate however many they have to— until they get to that man in the line of succession who is one of theirs.”
The President shook his head no, vigorously. “It's too much killing, Bob. They could never get away with all of it. It's too bizarre.”
“I don't know whether it's population pressures, future shock, the end product of a permissive society, or what,” McAlister said morosely. “But there are pressures working within this country, pressures that are producing madmen of a sort we've never known before. I think they're capable of anything, no matter how bizarre it seems.”
“No,” the President said. “I can't go along with that.”
McAlister sighed and shrugged. “You're probably right, sir,” he said, although he didn't think the President was right at all.
“You're right about Rice and Dragonfly, but you're altogether wrong about the rest of it.” He opened the bedroom door, escorted McAlister into the hall, and turned him over to the Secret Service agent who was on duty there. “Get back to me the minute he cracks, Bob.”
McAlister nodded, turned, and followed the Secret Service man down the long hall toward the elevator.
The first CIA deep-cover agent was a sixty-eight-year-old man named Yuan Yat-sen. He had been thirty-nine years old when Mao Tse-tung's soldiers had driven Chiang Kai-shek and his corrupt army from China's mainland, back in 1949. An advocate of Chiang's policies, a successful landlord and prosperous banker, Yuan had lost everything in the revolution. Perhaps he could have rebuilt his fortune on Taiwan. But money was not all that he lost. A band of Maoist guerillas had slain Yuan's wife and three children. His business was half his life — and his family was the other half. Although he fled to Taiwan, he could not manage to pick up the broken pieces of his life and start anew. He loathed Maoists, dreamed of slaughtering them by the tens of thousands; and a thirst for revenge was all that kept him going. He had been perfect for the CIA. In 1950, while he was growing ever more bitter in Taipei, he was approached by agency operatives and signed up for deep-cover work. Near the end of that year he was dropped back onto the mainland, where he assumed a new name and a past that was not linked to Chiang Kai-shek. In the confusion that followed the war, he was able to pass without much trouble. Indeed, he had gradually gained recognition as an educator and a revolutionary theorist. Today he was the third man in the prestigious Bureau of Education Planning.
They had found him in a park near his office, taking an afternoon break with an associate. He had surrendered without resistance.
They were all back in the embassy drawing room. Ambassador Webster sat in an easy chair, smoking one of his long Cuban cigars and watching the proceedings with interest. General Lin paced impatiently and kept looking at his watch. Lee Ann was sitting on a cushioned cane chair in the center of the room, and Yuan Yat-sen was facing her from another chair only three feet away. Electrodes were pasted to Yuan's temples; a sphygmomanometer was wrapped tightly around his right arm, controlled by an automatic device that was part of the computer; brightly colored wires trailed back to the sophisticated polygraph which Canning had taken from its steel security case.
The three-foot-square portable computer monitored Yuan's pulse, blood pressure, skin temperature, rate of perspiration, and brain waves. Furthermore, it listened to his voice and analyzed the stress patterns which were beyond his conscious control. Instantly assimilating these indices, the computer translated them into a purple line that glowed across the center of a small read-out screen. If the line was comparatively still, the subject's answers were close to the truth. If the line began to dance and jiggle, the subject was most likely lying. It was a very complicated yet simple machine; Canning had seen it used, had taken a course in its use, and he trusted it.
Because Yuan Yat-sen spoke no English, Lee Ann would ask all the questions.
Canning turned to her now. “We'll start off with questions we know the answers to. The first one is —'What is your name?' ”
She relayed the question to Yuan.
“Yuan Yat-sen,” he said.
The purple line vibrated for a moment.
Smiling, Canning said, “Very good. Now ask him to tell you his real name, the name he was born with and not the one he adopted when he became a deep-cover agent.”
Lee Ann asked the question.
Yuan said, “Liu Chao-chi.”
The purple line did not move.
The questioning led to the Dragonfly project, but for the next ten minutes the purple line rarely moved.
