Out in the corridor, he lurches groggily and stumbles out of sight around a nearby corner just before two cops come racing out of the stairwell. As they run forward, elevator doors open, decanting several more cops into the corridor. All of ’em squeeze into the vacant office, because it’s the one whose door stands open—the cops go in fast, guns up, and the first ones trip over the stunned Slade, who lies clutching his injured head.
Even more cops enter; they part to make way for a veteran sergeant, Dickinson. He takes in the scene with a quick look around. Then he makes a face; it expresses volumes.
Below, in the lobby, there’s a willy-nilly darting of cops. A uniformed bald cop, having lost his hat somewhere, burrows into a crowd of officials and reporters and cops. Among them is Dickinson. There’s a babbling racket of simultaneous conversations. The bald cop approaches Dickinson. “Who’s catching?”
“All the way to the top. Commander Clay.”
“Oh shit.” The bald guy immediately straightens his uniform and examines his brass and shoe polish.
Up in the unfurnished office the scene is very busy. A technician threads his way through the throng, struggling to reach Commander Denise Clay, forties, a black woman in immaculate uniform. She is homicide chief of detectives. She’s talking to an officer: “… Probably still in the building. I want double security on every exit—doors, windows, roof, basement, every rathole. Go.”
Now she turns to face a handsome business-suit gent—Colonel Vickers. He’s near 50—very youthfully so. A uniformed cop is talking on a walkie-talkie.
The officer behind Commander Clay talks into a cellular phone: “… Got the outside exits covered. She wants to start a sweep in the basement, work your way up—”
Vickers grabs the officer. “What’s going down?”
“Who the hell are you?”
Clay and Dickinson approach on collision course just as Vickers swings violently around in anger. They nearly butt heads. Vickers is roaring now: “What the fucking hell’s going on? You let him get loose?”
Dickinson snaps, “Who’re you?”
And Clay says to the officer with the cell phone, “Officer, show this gentleman out.”
Vickers shows his ID. “No ma’am. Not me. Colonel Vickers …”
Clay gives it a glance. She does a take and examines the ID. “White House?”
The officer with the phone is on it again. “I said he’s loose in the building! Bottle him in …”
Down there, outside the building, squad cars and motorcycles squeal into sight, bringing massive reinforcements … Cops push a growing corps of press and TV back across the street, farther from the building …
In a law firm’s low-partitioned bullpen typists at computer terminals watch as cops, with guns up, search methodically. Corners, closets, under desks.
The lobby now is utterly still. Armed police stand guard at the entrances in silent tableau … The elevators … Paramedics carry Slade out on a stretcher …
And in the multi-story garage a sudden deafening noise precedes the appearance of white-helmeted cops on motorcycles who come roaring up the ramps.
And up in the unfurnished office Clay is barking at the uniformed officer with the cell phone: “Shut down every elevator …”
The officer begins to relay the instructions into his phone …
In the elevator shaft Radford clings to a narrow perch high up inside the shaft. He’s got a firm grip with one hand; in the other he holds Slade’s service revolver. Several elevators are at various levels; two or three are moving. Then suddenly, jarring the cables, all the elevators stop. Radford reacts to the sound of men’s footsteps in a nearby corridor. He can hear voices but can’t make out the words.
On the double doors nearest him is stenciled the legend “7th floor.” Abruptly the point of a crowbar appears, sliding through between the doors. It begins to pry the doors apart …
Radford reacts. Reaches out, nearly loses his balance, gets a grip on one of the thick cables, swings out into space …
The revolver falls from his grasp, tumbles down into darkness; after a significant and scary length of time he hears the sound when it hits bottom.
The crowbar has slipped, allowing the doors to close again, but now it’s prying them open again …
Radford clings to the swaying cable …
No choice. He allows himself to begin sliding down the cable. He goes faster and faster, dwindling downward …
The crowbar has pried the doors open enough for a cop to stick his face through; several hands hold the doors apart for him. He looks up, around, down.
All the cables are swaying.
And after a moment the cop speaks. “Nothing. Let’s go.”
In the dark at the bottom of the elevator shaft, Radford picks himself up slowly. His hands are bleeding. He lurches to one side, finds his balance uncertainly, begins groggily to feel his way around the concrete walls, searching for a way out …
In the unfurnished office frantic activity continues: Clay, Vickers, Technician. Vickers now holds a CB radio; he’s trying to listen to it while he badgers Clay: “What’ve you got on the assassin?”
The technician talks to Clay, overlapping: “Remington 40-XC National Match. Caliber 308.”
Vickers scowls. “That’s a target rifle.”
The technician says, “Yeah. We’re trying to raise the serial number. Acid.”
Vickers says into his radio, “You can assure the director we’ve got the lid screwed tight.” He cups the mouthpiece and glares daggers at Clay. “The United Nations Secretary General wants to know what the fuck’s going on here.”
Clay hasn’t got time for him. She’s tagging Dickinson: “How many men on the roof? Where’s that chopper?”
In a basement corridor a cop prowls with a nightstick past a large metal ventilation grille in the wall—a return-duct for the air-conditioning system, through which Radford, hands bleeding, filthy and grease-stained, peers out while he tries to dry the blood from his palms on his shirt. He sees the cop open a door on the opposite side of the hall and looks in: glimpse of a utility-furnace room. The cop shuts the door and comes toward Radford’s grille and turns; he posts himself on guard, his back to the wall, half blocking the grille.
Radford looks up … the inside of the duct is constricting, claustrophobic.
He’s sweating.
The cop beyond the grille doesn’t budge.
Dickinson and the bald cop walk into the unfurnished office with a uniformed Army medical corps major—Dr. Huong Trong. Dickinson walks the doctor up to Clay. “Commander—this is Major Trong … Doctor Trong.”
Clay is glad to see Trong. “Okay!” She takes the doctor by the arm and steers him toward the cut-glass hole in the window. “C. W. Radford. One of yours, I think.”
“Used to be,” Dr. Trong concedes. “Belongs to the V.A. now … You believe he’s the assassin?
“Smoking gun—literally, Doc—his fingerprints all over it—and the injured cop gave us a positive make on his Army photograph. Doesn’t leave much reasonable doubt.”
Dr. Trong says, “Did anybody actually see him do it? Because if they didn’t, you might want to keep an open mind.”
Vickers scowls at Dr. Trong. “What’re you, Major? Japanese?”
“Korean.”
“Yeah.”
The cop stands with his back to the grille. Two SWAT officers jog quickly past, toting riot shotguns; they nod to the cop; he nods back. They jog out of sight … Abruptly the grille comes slamming out from the wall, knocking the cop off his feet, and behind it Radford explodes from the duct, elbow-chops the cop and drags the insensate man (including nightstick) through a doorway into the utility-furnace room … When the door closes behind them the corridor is empty and silent …
Dickinson is bitching to Clay. “Reinforcements getting jammed up in the afternoon rush hour.”
Clay says, “I called a shift for traffic control …”
Vickers is menacing now. “Commander Clay—if you let the scumbag get away—”