weapon.
Then Whiteside tucked his pistol away. Cochrane became more aware of his own Colt revolver, sitting loaded where it always was, beneath his left armpit.
'I can't figure it out,' Cochrane said idly. 'I know Siegfried is going to try something. But everything is secure. The White House. The grounds. The Naval Station. The yacht. The Potomac itself has U.S. Navy ships perched practically on top of the Sequoia. Couldn't slip a dingy past a pair of PT boats.'
'What about the mouth of the river?' Whiteside asked. 'Could a small ship be waiting there?'
'The Navy cleared the area,' Cochrane said. 'You know about Roosevelt and his Navy. Well, maybe you don't. But the President looks out for the Navy and the Navy looks out for-'
'Excuse me,' Laura interrupted. 'But what about a single man in the water?'
'What do you mean by ‘in the water’?'
'Stephen,' she said without emotion. She recalled 'Way back, when I first met him, he used to do length of the lake. He could swim for hours. Why-'
Cochrane turned the key in the Hudson's ignition. The auto roared to life. Cochrane cut a U-turn on Pennsylvania Avenue. He pointed the car toward the bridges that allowed vantage points over the Potomac and which led to Virginia.
*
At nine-fifteen, two minutes after Cochrane's car screeched its tires and headed toward Virginia, the yellow spotlight above the White House was extinguished. Two U.S. Marines appeared on the White House roof and hauled down the Star and Stripes. Congress had adjourned. Franklin Roosevelt was traveling.
On the ground-floor rear of the White House, the President's luggage was placed in the trunk of two customized Cadillac limousines. Six extra Secret Service agents were assigned to Roosevelt's car, an extra lead car was assigned, and six motorcycle escorts from the District police, instead of the usual two, were in place and ready to lead the motorcade to the Naval Station.
Roosevelt, in the churlish mood that he had been in recently, noted the extra security immediately. 'What the hell is this?' he asked. 'An official state visit to The Sequoia?'
'Just appropriate security, Mr. President,' replied dark-eyed, bushy-haired Mike Reilly, the ranking Secret Service agent assigned to the White House.
Roosevelt eyed the extra men as they wheeled his rolling chair to the limousine. 'I never knew there was so much Republican territory between the White House and the Potomac,' he remarked, the smile returning for an instant.
His security people reacted with indulgent laughter. The White House detail was almost entirely Democrats. They helped him into the back seat of the customized presidential limousine. Two agents hopped along the running boards on each side of the automobile while Reilly strolled the short driveway that led from the White House garage to the exit gate.
He stared through, scanning to his left and right across the park behind the White House. He saw only Secret Service and F.B.I. details. He walked back to the presidential entourage and spoke to the men under his command.
'Not a German in sight,' Reilly said. 'But what can you expect from F.B.I. reports?'
His agents grinned.
'Let's move,' he said.
Reilly hopped into the lead car. On command, the rear gate of the White House swung open and the motorcade was on its way.
FORTY-TWO
'A nation of sleepers and dreamers,' thought Siegfried as he treaded water carefully past the first U.S. Navy vessel. There were sailors on the deck and obviously their mission was to guard the harbor. But none spotted the agent of the Third Reich as he slipped through the dark water fifty yards off the bow of their ship.
Siegfried reached The Sequoia after a swim of twenty-two minutes. The yacht was like a steel goliath when he reached it and touched the hull. The curve of the bow protected him from view from above. And the spy tingled with the same excitement as last time. Then he set to work.
He unbound his bomb from where it was strapped to his suit. He pressed adhesive cement to the aft starboard side of the vessel, then he pressed the metal-encased explosives firmly into the cement. He pressed hard for two minutes, treading water. The charge was just above the waterline, ten feet below the master cabin where the President and Mrs. Roosevelt usually slept.
The bomb was secure. Siegfried pushed off from the ship. He reached to the metal case around the bomb and he rapped it gently with his arm. It held. Waves and water would not remove it. Nothing would, until it detonated at 3 A.M.
He pushed off and slowly slipped away from the boat. Then he heard a commotion on the pier above him. Siegfried treaded the water and slowly moved at an angle to the Sequoia. He could see the pier. His heart almost stopped.
There was the presidential motorcade. Two long black Cadillac limousines. Siegfried did not see the leftist Mrs. Roosevelt. But as he stared from the shadowy surface of the Potomac, he did see the President.
Secret Service agents were lifting the invalid from the back of his car. Siegfried, ever conscious of details. could even see the ugly steel braces jutting upward within the President's trousers. The most powerful man in the world, some people called him, and he couldn't even walk. A prisoner of his own degenerative affliction. Siegfried almost laughed. How could Adolf Hitler even be compared with a cripple?
The spy watched a tired Roosevelt being wheeled up the gangplank and into the yacht. Then Siegfried turned in the water. The hardest work was done, he rejoiced. He treaded his way to a distance of a hundred yards from the yacht and continued smoothly through the water. He cut his speed as he successfully passed the second naval vessel.
He cut through the water purposefully now, with long, even, far-reaching strokes. He was giddy with excitement, proud of what he had done. He had affected the course of the twentieth century!
The shoreline of Alexandria, Virginia beckoned to him and grew larger as he swam toward it. The current carried him. Ten minutes after leaving the Sequoia, he spotted the illuminated spire of St. Thomas' Church.
That was his landmark. His beacon. He knew his car was a hundred feet from the church. He hurried his strokes. All that mattered now was his escape to Germany.
*
The shoreline on the Capitol side of the river, Cochrane reasoned, was impregnable. There was the United States Naval Station first, then Bolling Air Force Base due south. On the Virginia shore there was National Airport between Arlington and Alexandria. The most vulnerable part of the coastline, Cochrane then reasoned, had to be in Alexandria.
They stood on the Alexandria promenade on the west bank of the Potomac: Laura, Bill Cochrane, and Peter Whiteside. They looked at the dark river and they gazed upward to where the lights of Washington shone from a distance of two to four miles.
'Just tell me this, if you would,' Whiteside said to Cochrane. 'What exactly are we looking for?'
There was a lapse of several seconds before Cochrane could muster an answer.
'Anything,' he said. 'Anything in that river that isn't motorized has to come downstream. That means here.'
Cochrane took two heavy flashlights from the trunk of his car and handed one each to Laura and Peter Whiteside. He kept a smaller flashlight for himself. 'Why don't the two of you stay reasonably close,' Cochrane suggested as they began to walk the promenade. He held in mind that of the two of them, only Whiteside was armed.
'I'll go on ahead,' he said, starting to move southward along the bank. 'We'll do two or three hundred yards at a time, then I'll move the car to keep it with us. By the way,' he warned, 'keep your eyes on the water.'
'Pound to a penny we're wasting our time,' Whiteside said.
