Then the evening news came on, and Ted was surprised to find a very good drawing of himself staring out of fee screen. He hadn’t thought the FBI were so close, and he settled in to watch their performance.

“Now we take you to the press office at the White House, where Assistant Director Robert Kinney of the FBI is holding a press conference.”

Bob Kinney’s face filled the screen, and Ted studied it carefully.

45

KINNEY TOOK A DEEP BREATH and leaned into the microphone. “Ladies and gentlemen, we have a suspect in the three murders and one attempted murder that have captured so much attention in past weeks.” He pressed a button, and the drawing of Teddy Fay filled the monitors in the room. “His name is Theodore Fay, and he is a retired employee of the Central Intelligence Agency. Mr. Fay worked in the Technical Services division of the Agency for more than thirty years, where he acquired the skills that he employed in these crimes. Mr. Fay is sixty-seven years of age, five feet eleven inches tall, a hundred and eighty pounds, and physically fit. He has gray hair and is balding and has green eyes. Although he has gone to some lengths to fake his own death and move his assets out of the country, we believe Mr. Fay is living somewhere within fifty miles of Washington, D.C. He may drive a recreational vehicle. We expect that, due to the nature of his work at the CIA, he has established one or more identities, complete with driver’s licenses, credit cards, and other forms of identification, including valid U.S. passports, and that he may also employ various disguises.

“We ask the cooperation of the media and the public in finding Mr. Fay, and to that end, we have established a toll-free hotline where sightings may be reported.” He flashed the number on the screen. “I am authorized by the president to say that a reward of one million dollars, tax-free, is being offered for information leading to the arrest of Theodore Fay. We regard Mr. Fay as armed and dangerous and I urge members of the public not to approach him, but to call the hotline number or local law enforcement. Now, I will take questions.” He pointed at a woman in the first row.

“Mr. Kinney, what does the FBI believe is Mr. Fay’s motive for these killings?”

“We believe that Mr. Fay is unhappy with the present political situation in the United States and that he is seeking to redress it by removing certain figures from the scene.”

“Is Mr. Fay a communist?” someone shouted.

“That is extremely unlikely,” Kinney replied. “We believe that he simply holds political views to the left of the mainstream. Obviously, he is very angry.”

“Is Theodore Fay insane?” a reporter asked.

“Our profilers think that is unlikely, at least in the legal sense of the term, but clearly he is not behaving like a normal person. Normal people do not employ violence and murder to redress grievances.”

“Mr. Kinney, when Mr. Fay is caught, where will he be tried?”

“Obviously, law enforcement agencies in Virginia and Maryland are helping in the search for Mr. Fay, but when he is arrested he will be charged in a federal court with the murder of Senator Wallace. Murder of a U.S. government official is a federal crime and carries the death penalty.”

“Mr. Kinney,” a reporter called out, “does the FBI have any physical evidence against Mr. Fay?”

Kinney felt his ears redden. “I can’t comment on the evidence at this time,” he replied. “Thank you, ladies and gentlemen,” he said, then walked off the platform.

TED MUTED the TV during the commercial and thought about the last question. Kinney had looked a little embarrassed, he thought, and well he should. Ted had left no evidence anywhere to be found, except for tiny pieces of the Vandervelt bomb, which would be of little use to the FBI lab. It was clear that the Feds were desperate now. They had identified him, but he had expected that would happen; all they had was that drawing.

The FBI’s special toll-free number would now be swamped with reports of sightings, but the man they were looking for just wasn’t there anymore.

IN HIS CELL at the Atlanta Federal Penitentiary, Ed Rawls switched off his TV set in disgust, if not despair. He began composing a new message to Kate Lee, one that he believed would lend a new urgency to any thoughts she might have of a presidential pardon. There was something new to look forward to, as well-the prospect of a one-million-dollar reward, which would sweeten his golden years considerably.

BOB KINNEY DROVE back to the Hoover Building and went up to his office. In a conference room across the hall, four agents were manning the phones, and, predictably, calls were already streaming in. Kerry Smith stood, waiting to speak with plausible callers.

“Anything promising?” Kinney asked Smith.

“One that sounds genuine, if not promising.”

“What do you mean?”

“A trucker saw someone he swears was Fay at a rest stop on I- 95.”

“Did he ID a vehicle?”

“He said there were a couple of RVs at the rest stop, but he saw Fay sitting at a picnic table, eating a sandwich.”

“You’re right, it’s genuine, but not promising. 'Useless’ might be a better word.“

Kinney pulled up a chair and picked up a phone, listening to each of the four lines in turn. Finally, he hung up. “Remember,” he said to Smith, “if we get anything from this, it will probably be only one phone call, so don’t miss it or underrate it when it comes in.” He left the building and went home.

46

KATE ARRIVED AT HER OFFICE and presided over a scheduled meeting, then she checked her email. There was one from Ed Rawls. Her first impulse was to delete it without reading it, but she couldn’t get past her curiosity.

“My Dear Kate,” it read, “Congratulations to somebody on ferreting out Teddy Fay’s name. The FBI has outshone itself, for once; they have the right man. Or rather, they don’t have him, do they? I can tell you where to find our Teddy- at one of two locations-and all I ask is my freedom and, of course, the reward the FBI has posted, to keep me in my old age. Come on, girl-let’s get this done before somebody really important gets waxed.”

Kate deleted the email and sat at her desk, staring at the Helen Frankenthaler painting hanging on the wall opposite, soaking it in. Finally, she pressed the intercom button.

“Yes, ma’am?”

“Please ask Morton Koppel, Hugh English, and Creighton Adams to come and see me right away. It’s urgent.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

THE THREE MEN were in her office in five minutes.

“Something up?” Adams asked.

“Yes, Creighton,” she said. “We talked about this before, but now we have to talk about it again, and very seriously. It’s about Ed Rawls.”

Hugh English tossed a pencil onto the conference table in disgust, while Koppel and Adams sat quietly, waiting.

“Hugh, what do we hear from Stockholm?” she asked.

English shrugged. “All right, there were four bugs in the apartment.”

Koppel spoke up. “What apartment?”

“Let me bring you up to date,” Kate said. “After dinner, when he was here, Majorov, who was KGB station head in Stockholm at the time of Rawls’s arrest, told me that Ed was not involved in the killings of Lewis and Barbara Moore, that he didn’t set them up. The Soviets learned of their activities from a bug in the Moores ’ apartment-or rather, as Hugh tells us, four bugs. I asked Hugh to have the apartment torn apart, and they were found.”

“This still doesn’t make Ed Rawls anything other than a traitor,” English said petulantly.

“It makes him less than a man who would betray two people who worked for him in Stockholm, costing them their lives. Can we agree on that?”