and wood splinters off his front, walked down into the well, around the table, and up to stand next to me.
'How'm I doing?' Veil asked in a low voice.
'Not bad. Damned if I don't think they're ready now to listen to your statement.'
'We'll see,' Veil said, placing the Uzi on the table in front of him, pulling up a chair, and sitting down next to me. He pulled the microphone over, tapped it with his fingernail to test if it was live. It was a somewhat eerie sensation watching Veil preparing to testify in a hall that was filled with suspended plaster dust particles, pocked with bullet holes, and reeked of cordite. My ears still rang from the thunderous gunfire.
Through it all, Orville Madison had barely moved, except to pull his chair back from the collapsed table. The marshal had backed up to the wall, and was staring wide-eyed at Veil. The senators and Madison's two aides, brushing debris off their suits and out of their hair, slowly emerged from beneath the table and glanced tentatively at the man with the Uzi seated at the witness table. Veil could easily have killed them all, and they knew it; but he hadn't, and now they were waiting anxiously to see what he was going to do.
'Seats, everybody,' Veil said dryly. 'You wanted me here in person, so here I am. Now here's my statement.'
The marshal slowly reached out for the doorknob a few inches from his left hand. Veil merely grabbed the metal stock of the Uzi, looked at the man, and slowly shook his head. The marshal dropped his hand back to his side and moved away from the door.
'Ma'am?' Veil said to the stenographer, who was still slumped in her straight-backed chair with her hands over her head. After a few moments, she slowly peered out from under one arm, and Veil gestured toward the machine in front of her. 'I won't hurt you, ma'am. Would you please continue to take a record?'
The woman sucked in a deep breath, lowered her arms, placed her hands out over the machine. Slowly, one by one, the senators began to sit back down. The aides remained on their feet, halfway between Madison and the senators, as if sensing they were trapped in a kind of no-man's-land.
'First of all, gentlemen,' Veil continued, speaking quietly into the microphone, 'it's a fact that the president of the United States has chosen to keep a sadist and a murderer as his secretary of state, even after the facts were made known to him-by both Dr. Frederickson and myself. For some inexplicable reason, Mr. Shannon has chosen to play a bizarre game rather than take advantage of the opportunity-an opportunity paid for with much pain, great risk, and the blood of innocent people-my friend and I have afforded him. I suggest to you that Mr. Shannon is badly in need of your advice and strong guidance, to say the least.
'On the afternoon of the day when President Shannon was to announce his choices for his cabinet, Madison called to inform me that he was shortly to be nominated to become secretary of state. The purpose of the call was twofold; to enable Madison to personally gloat over me in what he had reason to believe would be the last moments of my life, and to position me by the telephone, in the center of my loft, where I would presumably make an easy target for his sniper, who had been waiting for Madison to make the call. Unfortunately for Mr. Madison, I had taken the precaution of installing thick, optically distorting glass in all the windows of my loft; the sniper missed-and I made sure he didn't get a second chance.
'Now that Mr. Madison had attempted to make good on a threat he had made to me many years ago, I considered simply hunting him down and killing him. I chose not to, although he certainly deserved it, for a simple reason. In a few hours, Mr. Madison would be nominated to a lofty and very public position, and this country, which has given me so much, has seen and suffered far too many assassinations of its public officials. Also, I had absolutely no desire to make a martyr of this piece of latrine slime. As astounded as I was by the nomination, and knowing that it had triggered the attempt on my life, I assumed at the time that a new president had simply been duped by a very clever criminal who was out of control. I thought I owed it to my country to expose the man for what he was, while at the same time trying to limit the damage to the country. It was to this end that I enlisted Mongo's help. My friend was tortured and almost killed because I could not be close enough to prevent it; I was fortunate to get to him in time to save his life, but not the lives of the five people who died in the fire that Madison's men started. For those deaths, I am, in a way, as responsible as Madison, as guilty, because I was the one who'd purposely sought to panic the man. If I had foreseen the deaths of those people, perhaps I wouldn't ever have begun. But once having begun, and with five people-including two children-dead, I felt I had no choice but to continue, and to rely on Mongo's-Dr. Frederickson's-investigative skills to uncover the truth and to put together a case that the right powerful people would listen to.
'At no time did I foresee, or possibly could have conceived, that the president of the United States would not only turn his back on the truth and continue to protect the man, but actually try to keep him in his post; at no time could I have imagined that members of the United States Congress would turn their eyes from the truth and allow themselves to be manipulated by a president. Truly, politics must carry a danger of its own kind of madness. Had I to do it over again, I would certainly proceed in a different way. But, to my regret, I can't do that-any more than I can restore the lives of the thirteen people Madison has killed while pursuing me. But I'm still not going to kill Orville Madison, gentlemen; that would be far too easy on all of you. Instead, I leave him with you; he's your problem now, not mine. And while you and this wretched administration are pondering what finally to do about him, I think it's time for me to pursue justice in the third branch of the government. I'm curious to see what my own trial for murder will bring out, and what the reaction of the public will be to my testimony and that of the brave men sitting beside me. As of this moment, I am surrendering myself into the custody of Detective Lieutenant Garth Frederickson.'
Veil clicked on the Uzi's safety catch, then abruptly slid the weapon across the table to Garth. This done, he leaned back in his chair, crossed his legs, and casually folded his arms across his chest as he stared back at the dust-covered senators sitting on the debris-littered dais.
It was beginning to feel like Homecoming Week in the Old Senate Office Building, and it wasn't a bad feeling at all. This time even Garth reacted, grunting with surprise and turning around with me in time to see Mr. Lippitt, looking rather odd-at least to us-in a finely tailored three-piece suit, come ambling down an aisle out of the darkness into the light. Veil, it seemed, was not the only uninvited guest who knew how to pick locks.
Mr. Lippitt, a head shorter than the man who walked beside him, hadn't changed at all since I'd last seen him; he never seemed to change. I had no idea how old the Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency was, and I didn't think anyone else did, either. Mr. Lippitt, with his totally bald head, piercing brown eyes, and electrifying, commanding presence, seemed to be forever. I knew only that he had fought in World War Two, which would put him well past the age when most men his age would have retired. But Mr. Lippitt was neither retired nor retiring; from the moment he had made his presence known, there had been no question about who was in charge in this meeting hall.
Veil slowly rose as the men approached, pushed back his chair, stood very straight, and saluted.
'Well done, Colonel,' the tall, stiff-backed, gray-haired man with Lippitt said, returning Veil's salute. 'Very well done.'
It had to be General Lester Bean, I thought. Our old friend had brought quite a surprise with him, and it explained a lot of things-if not everything. Lippitt hadn't turned his back on us after all; he simply hadn't been able to help us, or even communicate, without tipping off Madison that he was baby-sitting Veil's ex-commanding officer, waiting for-now.
Lippitt came over to Garth and me, squeezed our shoulders. 'It's good to see you, my friends,' the old man said, smiling warmly. 'I'm deeply sorry I wasn't able to respond to your calls; I thought it best to keep our point of attack completely hidden. Orville Madison is a formidable opponent.'
Indeed. 'I think we understand, Mr. Lippitt,' I replied. 'Better late than never.'
Lippitt nodded slightly. 'Somehow, I knew you'd say that. Also, you know what faith I have in your ability, and Garth's, to handle any situation. I was never really worried about you.'
'Funny, Lippitt; somehow I knew you'd say that.'
Mr. Lippitt turned toward the dais. 'Gentlemen, may I be permitted to address this gathering?'
'Of course, Mr. Lippitt,' John Lefferton said, shaking his head slightly as he used a handkerchief to wipe perspiration from his neck. 'Would you care to join us up here?'
'I certainly would not,' Lippitt answered curtly. 'What I have to say won't take that long. It's past time-long past time-that this unfortunate business was wrapped up.'
An ashen-faced Orville Madison slowly rose to his feet. 'Lippitt,' he said in a low voice, 'I want to talk to you.
