Just the same, whoever it was made a clever escape.
The six-hundred-foot-long lobby had been emptied of all but police officials, the medical examiner's staff, and the morgue crew. I saw Agent Grayer and walked over to him. Jay looked as if he hadn't slept in weeks, as if he might never be able to sleep again.
“Alex, thanks for getting down here so quickly,” the Secret Service agent said. I liked working with him so far. He was smart and usually even-tempered, with absolutely no bullshit about him. He had an old-fashioned dedication to his job, and especially to the President, both the office and the man.
“Anything worthwhile turn up yet?” I asked him. “Besides another corpse. The poem.”
Grayer rolled his eyes toward the glittering chandeliers hanging above us. 'Oh yeah. Definitely, Alex. We found out some more about the murdered student. Charlotte Kinsey was just starting her second year at Georgetown Law. She was bright as hell, apparently. Did her undergraduate at New- York University.
However, she only had average grades as a Hoya, so she didn't make law Review:'
“How does a law student fit into the pattern? Unless they were shooting at Justice Franklin and actually missed. I've been trying to make some connection on the way over. Nothing comes to mind. Except that maybe Jack and Jill are playing with us?”
Grayer nodded. 'They're definitely playing with us. For one thing, your illicit sex theory is still intact. We know why Charlotte Kinsey didn't excel at Georgetown. She was spending quality time with some very important men here in town. Very pretty girl, as you'll see in a second. Shiny black hair down to her waist.
Great shape. Questionable morals. She'd have made a terrific attorney.'
The two of us walked over to the dead woman's body. The law student was lying facing away from us.
Beside the body was a bag she had been carrying. I couldn't see the bullet hole, and Charlotte Kinsey didn't even appear to be hurt. She looked as if she'd just decided to take a nap on the floor of the terrace at the Kennedy Center. Her mouth was open slightly, as if she wanted one last breath of the river air.
“Go ahead, tell me now,” I said to Jay Grayer. I knew that he had something more on the murder. “Who is she?”
“Oh, she's somebody, after alk The girl was President Byrnes's mistress,” he said. “She was seeing the President, too. He skipped out of the White House and saw her the other night. That's why they killed her. Bingo, Alex. Right in our face.”
My chest felt seriously constricted as I bent over the dead woman. Claustrophobia again. She was very pretty. Twenty-three years old. Prime of her life. One shot to the heart had ended that.
I read the note they had left in the law student's handbag.
Jack and Jill came to The Hill Your mistress had no clue, Sir.
She was a pawn But now she's gone And soon we'll get to you, Sir.
The poetry seemed to be getting a little better. Certainly it was bolder. And so were Jack and Jill. God help us all, but especially President Thomas Byrnes.
And soon we'll get to you, Sir.
THE MORNING after the murder, I drove eight miles down to Langley, Virginia. I wanted to spend some time with Jeanne Sterling, the CIKs inspector general and the Agency's representative on the crisis team. Don Hamerman had made it clear to me that the Agency was involved because there was the possibility a foreign power might be behind Jack and Jill. Even if it were a long shot, it had to be checked. Somehow, I suspected there might be more to the involvement than just that. This was my chance to find out.
Supposedly, the Agency had a lead that was worth checking out. Since the Aldrich Ames scandal, and the resulting Intelligence Authorization Act, the CIA had to share information with the rest of us. It was now the law.
I remembered the inspector general very well from our first meeting at the White House. Jeanne Sterling had listened mostly, but when she spoke, she was highly articulate and spotlight-bright.
Don Hamerman told me she had been a professor of law at the University of Virginia years before joining the Agency Now her job was to help clean up the Agency from the inside. It sounded like an impossible task to me, certainly a daunting one.
Hamerman told me she had been put on the crisis team for one reason: she was the Agency's best mind.
Her office was on the seventh floor of the modern gray building that was the hub of CIA headquarters. I checked out the Agency's interior design: lots of extremely narrow halls, green-hued fluorescent lighting everywhere, cipher locks on most of the office doors. Here it was in all its glory: the CIA, the avenging angel of U.S. foreign policy.
Jeanne Sterling met me in the gray-carpeted hallway outside her office. “Dr. Cross, thank you for coming down here. Next time, I promise we'll do it up in Washington. I thought it best if we meet here. I think you'll understand by the time we're finished this morning.”
“Actually, I enjoyed the drive down, needed the escape,” I admitted to her. 'Half an hour by myself. Cassandra Wilson on the tape deck. 'Blue Light 'Til Dawn.“ Not so bad.”
“I think I know exactly what you mean. Trust me, though, this won't be a trip in search of the wild goose. I have something interesting to discuss with you. The Agency was called in on this with good reason, Dr. Cross. You'll see in a moment.”
Jeanne Sterling was certainly far removed from the stereotypical CIA Brahmin of the fifties and sixties. She spoke with a folksy, enthusiastic, mid-Southern accent, but she sat on the Agency's Directorate of Operations. She was considered crucial to the CIAs turnaround; indeed, its very survival.
We entered her large office, which had a commanding view of woods on two sides and a planted courtyard on another. We sat at a low-slung glass table covered with official-looking papers and books. Photographs of her family were up on the walls.
Cute kids, I couldn't help noticing. Nice-looking husband, tall and lean. She herself was tall, blond, but a little
