Vice President Dumont is heading up a task force right now that is vigorously searching for ways to cut government waste. This has been a major priority of my administration and will continue to be one. Thank you all very much for your time and have a good day.” The President stepped back from the podium and waved good- bye.
Reporters continued to shout questions as Stevens walked off the stage. Once backstage, Stu Garret grabbed him by the arm and pulled him close. “What in the hell were you doing calling on someone you didn’t know?”
“She was sitting in the foreign-press section. I called on her because I thought she would ask me a question on foreign affairs. Relax, Stu, I handled it fine.” Garret frowned deeply. “Foreign affairs, my ass.
You were thinking of another type of affair. You know which reporters to call on if you want a question on foreign affairs. That was stupid.
From now on, stick with the program!”
10:40 P.M Thursday
21
THE BLUE VAN WOUND ITS WAY THROUGH THE TINY WASHINGTON, D.C neighborhood of Friendship Heights. Dark green letters strewn across the side of the van read, “Johnson Brothers’ Plumbing, 24 Hour Emergency Service Available.”
Inside were two men, both in their late twenties, both extremely fit.
They were wearing dark blue coveralls and matching baseball hats. The van slowed down and turned into a narrow, poorly lit alley. Ten yards into the alley the van rolled to a stop and the driver pulled the gear lever up and into reverse. Pulling back out into the street, the van stopped again and then headed back in the direction from which it had just come. To anyone who may have been watching, it looked as if the plumber’s van was harmlessly searching for a house in need of its services. Back in the alley, behind a row of garbage cans, the dark-haired former passenger of the van crouched silently and observed.
After several minutes, he stood and slowly started down the alley, going from shadow to shadow, quietly walking on the balls of his feet.
Six houses down, he stopped behind a garage on his right. It belonged to Mr. Harold
J. Burmiester. He grabbed a plastic bag from inside his pocket, reached over the seven-foot fence, and dumped the bag’s contents into the backyard. Huddling between the corner of the fence and the garage, he pressed the light on his digital watch.
It was 10:44 P.M. He would have to wait another fifteen minutes to make sure the bait was taken. Burmiester felt that high-tech security systems were a waste of money.
His was the only house on the block that did not have one, and the only house on the block that had never been burglarized. This distinction was directly attributable to a rather large German shepherd named Fritz. The unwelcome observer waited quietly in the shadows, as he had done on dozens of previous nights, waiting and watching, recording times and taking notes-always reassured by the punctuality of the retired banker. At 10:55, the backyard floodlight was turned on, and a silhouette of the fence was cast across the alley onto the neighbor’s garage. A moment later, the door opened and the tags on Fritz’s collar could be heard jingling as he bounded down the steps and across the yard. Every night at exactly 10:55, Burmiester would let Fritz out to go to the bathroom, then let him back in five minutes later, just in time for his owner to watch the nightly news. The dog ran straight to the back fence, where his master had trained him to go to the bathroom. Fritz was urinating on the fence when he started to sniff frantically.
Dropping his leg, he ran toward the corner where the meat had been deposited and immediately started to snap up the small pieces of beef. The motionless man listened intently as the dog feasted on the meat. After several minutes, the creaking noise of the back door opening broke the silence of the cool night air, and without being called, Fritz sprang away from the fence and ran into the house.
12:05 A.M Friday
22
Daniel Fitzgerald’s limousine lumbered north along Massachusetts Avenue. It was just after midnight, and the Senator was sitting in the backseat, drinking a glass of Scotch and reading the Post. He’d just left his third party of the evening and was on his way home.
Fitzgerald was the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee and one of the most powerful men in Washington. He had a full head of gray hair and a red, bulbous nose that was a direct result of his heavy drinking.
The Senator had two vices—women and alcohol. He had already been married three times and was currently separated from his third wife.
He’d been through approximately a half dozen treatment programs, none of which had worked. Several years earlier, he’d decided to stop fighting his addiction. He loved the booze, and that was that.
During all of the personal turmoil’s of ruined marriages, bouts with depression, and six children that he didn’t know, the Senator had always clung to one thing-his job. It was all that was left in his life.
Fitzgerald had been in Washington for over forty years. After graduating from Yale
Law School, he had gone to work for a prestigious law firm in Boston, and then, at the age of twenty-eight, he was elected to the United States House of Representatives. After serving as a Congressman for three terms, one of the two Senate seats in his home state became available. At the urging and financial backing of his father, Fitzgerald launched the most expensive campaign New Hampshire had ever seen. The political machine his father had built ensured a victory, and Fitzgerald was elected to the United States Senate.
For the last thirty-four years, he’d survived scandal after scandal and hung on to that seat like a screaming child clutching his favorite toy. Fitzgerald had been a politician his entire adult life, and he knew nothing else. He’d grown numb to the day-to-day dealings of the nation’s capital. The forty-plus years of lying, deceit, deal cutting, career trashing, and partisan politics had become so ingrained in Fitzgerald that he not only thought his behavior was acceptable, he truly believed it was the only way to do business. Dan
Fitzgerald had been pulled into the vacuum of Washington politics, and like so many before him, he’d checked his conscience and morals at the door. For Fitzgerald, such things as integrity, hard work, taking charge of one’s own life, individual freedom, and the Constitution of the United States had little meaning. To him, being a leader of
