'Oh,' she said, feeling a trifle foolish.
He went to his dresser and withdrew his pistol from the second drawer. He checked it as he disappeared down the stairs. She listened.
Moments later, she heard the door unlock. Then there was an animated, tormented conversation. Bill's voice. Another man. She recognized it.
Peter Whiteside.
She found her own clothes, ran a comb through her hair, and paused at a mirror. She looked like a very sinful girl who had slept over at a strange man's house without even bringing her own things. Such was life, she reasoned. She was entitled to her own imperfections. Then she stopped at the head of the stairs. Snatches of conversation rose up from the living room. .. shot to death by the filthy bastard. Two of my best bloody men..' Whiteside's impassioned voice: 'My own fault, I should have assigned fifty men to guard him… and what the bloody hell do we do now? Fowler is loose again!'
'For starters, we don't panic,' Bill Cochrane answered. Laura tiptoed down the stairs and saw a greatly shaken Peter Whiteside standing in the living room with Bill. Whiteside's face was ashen.
'Mind?' Whiteside asked, opening a decanter of Scotch and pouring himself some.
'Suit yourself,' Bill answered, his arms folded before him.
Whiteside gulped down three fingers of liquor as if it were water.
'And Laura's missing, too,' Whiteside said urgently. 'Tried to reach her since six this bloody morning. Called the hotel, finally had the bell captain check her room.'
'And?' Cochrane asked.
'Never returned there last night.' Whiteside threw down another gulp of whiskey.
'Is that a fact?' Cochrane asked.
'Laura's perfectly safe,' Laura said from where she watched the conversation.
Whiteside whirled as if addressed by a ghost. 'But we're going to have to do something about her former husband,” she added.
Whiteside stared at her. Then his gaze shifted to Cochrane. 'Oh. I see,' he finally said. He looked as if he were about to deliver a lecture on morality.
Cochrane interceded and saved the moment. 'After you've finished drinking your breakfast, Peter,' he said, 'we'll have to get moving. I suspect Fowler's right here in Washington.'
'Here? Why?'
'He's stalking Roosevelt.'
'Oh, my Lord!' Whiteside, who was having a bad morning, exclaimed. He reached for the bottle again.
'Well,' Cochrane said, 'it's about time you both knew, isn't it? That's all we're doing. Preventing an assassination that could change the world.'
*
There followed a day of quiet panic in the District of Columbia. Cochrane hit the pavements almost immediately and ferreted out anyone in the Bureau or Secret Service with whom he could still obtain an open ear. To most field agents, he was still a leper. The Secret Service was not partial to obtaining their leads from the F.B.I. and Frank Lerrick was either 'out' or 'unavailable' whenever Cochrane called.
All Bill Cochrane wished to convey was that Siegfried, or Rev. Stephen Fowler, had slipped the leash of British intelligence and was probably in Washington.
'So what's new about that?' asked one of the White House Secret Service detail.
'Just be extra vigilant,' Cochrane advised.
'We'll keep our eyes extra open,' came the response, heavy with sarcasm.
In the early afternoon Cochrane found his way into Bureau headquarters and onto the sixth floor. Most of the Bluebirds were absent: more empty desks and listening posts than Cochrane had ever seen. The place had an air of summer vacation or lunch hour, this in late November and in the middle of the afternoon.
He looked again for Frank Lerrick and failed to find him. Lerrick, since that previous morning, had gained the title of Acting Operations Chief, whatever that meant. Bill Cochrane supposed it was some sort of move designed to fill the vacuum left by Dick Wheeler's 'sudden retirement due to illness,' as insiders were asked to call it.
Cochrane drove by the White House and parked across on Pennsylvania Avenue by the curb. He sat and analyzed the street. He 'made' as much of the plainclothes security as he could. His spirits were lifted slightly. Somewhere, perhaps, someone had been listening to him that afternoon. There was extra security.
For Siegfried? Or simply because most of Washington knew the unofficial news anyway: Congress was an hour or two from Thanksgiving adjournment. The President would be leaving for Warm Springs as soon as the final gavel cracked.
Cochrane pondered: a man needing heavy security, he knew from experience, is most vulnerable en route. In public places-in transit-a ring of security is most difficult to set.
Lincoln, he recalled, was shot in a theater. Garfield was shot at a train station. McKinley took a bullet at a public meeting hall. President Roosevelt, himself, escaped death in a Miami motorcade in 1933 when a bullet intended for him hit Mayor Cermack of Chicago.
Transit, thought Cochrane. Where in transit? He had been too close to Siegfried not to have some understanding of the man's moves. He knew a bomb was probably already made. Where was it?
Cochrane turned over the engine of the Hudson and drove to the Washington Naval Station. Cochrane showed his F.B.I. credentials at the main gate. Already he could see that security was tighter than usual. The word had spread. Something was going on.
'Are you with the F.B.I. contingent already here?' a Naval Shore Patrol man asked.
'That's right, sailor,' Cochrane said.
The sailor waved him past while another sailor stood ten feet away with a carbine. Cochrane parked in the first space available. He walked toward the presidential yacht. He pinned his F.B.I. shield to his lapel and kept his hands visible.
The ship was ringed with sixteen Shore Patrol members, eight different posts, two men at each post. Cochrane glanced to the deck and saw a stronger presence there than usual. He moved down the pier a hundred feet from where The Sequoia was berthed and stared at the water.
No movement at all along the waterline of the ship. He raised his eyes. There were two armed US Navy vessels in the Potomac Harbor, visitors he had never seen before. One was a hundred yards upstream from The Sequoia, the other was a hundred yards downstream. Both dwarfed the presidential yacht. Cochrane studied them.
'Satisfied, Cochrane?' a voice asked.
Cochrane's head turned to his left. There was Frank Lerrick, who had spotted him, then appeared quietly at his side.
'I'll be more satisfied when the President arrives safely wherever he's going,' Cochrane answered.
Lerrick looked angry. 'Same old Bill Cochrane,' he said. 'Not your case anymore, but you have to keep nosing into it. Don't you understand what 'dismissed' means?'
'Maybe not. But my resignation's not effective till the end of the month, anyway.'
Lerrick drew a breath. The wind was kicking up and the banks of the river were chilly. 'What can I do to get rid of you?' Lerrick asked. 'Short of having you locked up?'
'Convince me that your security is more than ample. I think there'll be an attempt on the President before he leaves this harbor.'
'Impossible.'
'Convince me,' Cochrane again challenged.
Frank Lerrick went a long way toward convincing him. The yacht had been tossed inside out, Lerrick said. Even panels from walls had been taken off and riveted back on. Everything that could move had been picked up, shaken, and put back into place. Ten army demolitions experts had gone through the ship that very afternoon, and when they had finished, the District bomb squad had repeated the same procedure.
'You couldn't slip a wet cough drop on or off that boat,' Lerrick said.
'How about the harbor?' Cochrane asked.
Lerrick motioned to the PT boats. 'Navy operation all the way.'
'What about a mine at the mouth of the river?' Cochrane asked.
