The timing device was ticking. Harrison dropped the bomb and dived for cover but the FBI man switched his headlights on and caught Harrison blindingly in the beams.

Kavanagh was coming out of the Chevrolet with his gun but there was a wink of orange flame arid a roar from the dark open garage across the street and Kavanagh pitched onto his face.

Harrison got up to run—he couldn’t stay there, the bomb had thirty seconds at most.…

He felt the bullets thud into him but before he went under he heard the earsplitting thunder of the satchel bomb. Something whacked agony against the back of his neck.

4:43 A.M. EST The shots alerted Riva and he reached for the walkie-talkie. “Copasetik?”

When they didn’t answer right away he switched on his lights and drove for the mouth of the street.

A pair of cars came swerving into it. Saw him approaching and slewed across the pavement to block his exit. Riva turned the wheel and floored the pedal, ramming the Dodge up onto the sidewalk, heading for the open boulevard beyond them. But he had their headlights straight in his eyes and it was hard to see.

He heard the bomb go off. Something starred the windshield in front of his face. His wheels banged up across the concrete and the car was slithering on wet snow, the rear wheels shrieking. He spun the wheel to go with the skid and crashed into one of the cars.

He dived across the seat and got out the far door, rolling, bringing the silencer-pistol up. But his eyes were still blinded from the headlights and he couldn’t find a target and then three or four of them were shooting him from behind the lights.

5:10 A.M. EST Four Secret Service cars formed a convoy escort around the limousine and there were pairs of motorcycles fore and aft. Speaker of the House Milton Luke and his wife were surrounded by a flying wedge of security agents from the door of their apartment to the elevator, down to the ground floor, across the lobby, through the doors and across the sidewalk to the waiting limousine. The Lukes settled in the back seat looking aged and half asleep and showing the signs of having dressed hurriedly. Men were emerging from the building with the Lukes’ two overnight bags; more clothing would follow later.

The sirens climbed to a shriek and the limousine pulled out into Wisconsin Avenue.

The burst of engine power sent a hot stream of waste gases through the limousine’s exhaust pipes and the heat ignited the detonator of the hosepipe bomb. When it exploded it ruptured the gasoline tank and the fuel exploded.

The rear section of the limousine was blown to fragments and the passengers with it. The noise was audible thirty blocks away.

8:40 A.M. EST In the clamor of the war room Satterthwaite couldn’t hear the President’s voice. He went out and across into the private conference room and picked up the phone. “Yes Mr. President.”

The President’s voice was thin against the sound of trucks and helicopters and sirens that penetrated the frosty window. The Army was grinding its way through Washington.

“Bill, I want you to get over here as soon as you can.”

“Of course sir.”

“We’ve got a problem here by the name of Wendy Hollander.”

“I wish that were the only problem we had.”

“No you don’t,” the President said, and rage trembled in his voice. “I’d settle for every other problem we’ve got in preference to Wendy Hollander.”

“I don’t follow that, sir.”

“You think about it and you will. Listen, he’s over here camping in the Lincoln Sitting Room. I want you to try and get him off my back for a few hours until I’ve had time to get my head in working order.”

“How am I supposed to do that?”

“Hell, I don’t care. Put him in command of a battalion of shock troops, he ought to love that.”

The President was showing his strain. After a moment Satterthwaite said, “You intend to keep pouring these troops into the city, sir?”

“I do.”

“I don’t think it’s necessary.”

“Well then you’re wrong,” Brewster snapped.

“The FBI nailed them all. There aren’t any of them left, we know that.”

“We’ve been told that. We don’t necessarily know it. And we’ve got to make a show of force.”

“Yes sir. But we’d better keep a tight lid on them.”

“Let’s worry more about keeping a tight lid on the crazies, Bill.” And the President hung up.

The net hadn’t yet been thrown; the roundup was not underway but nothing would stop the pressure for it this time. Milton Luke and Representatives Jethro and Wood and all their wives were dead.

Satterthwaite listened to the wail of sirens and the clatter of Army trucks moving through the streets and when he moved to the window he saw an armored limousine moving up Pennsylvania Avenue surrounded by jeeps in which soldiers were standing up with rifles and submachine guns leveled at sidewalks and windows; they looked ready to fire at anyone who moved.

He didn’t know who was inside the limousine; it could have been anyone, those who moved at all moved like colonial administrators traveling through revolution-torn jungle provinces.

The city was not under siege but it thought it was and perhaps that amounted to the same thing. The Army was reacting with the vexation of a laboratory rat presented with a no-exit maze: all ammunitioned up and no one to shoot.

Anguish blazed in Satterthwaite’s eyes. He turned away from the window but a new siren went by, perhaps no louder than the others, and he reacted as he would have to a fingernail’s scrape across a blackboard: with an involuntary shudder. He went back into the hallway and entered the war room, found Clyde Shankland and made himself heard over the din:

“I’ve got to go to the White House. Have you got anything more for me?”

The FBI Director had a telephone at his ear. “Tell him to wait. Put him on Hold.” He put the receiver down and looked at Satterthwaite. In his left hand Shankland held a pencil upright, bouncing its point on the table as if to drill a hole in the surface. “We’ve traced Raoul Riva back to the Cairo Hotel. Of course he wasn’t using that name. But it was him. He only had two visitors—the same two guys several times during the past few days.”

“The two that were with him last night?”

“Yeah. Harrison and the dead guy, Kavanagh.”

“Well that’s what Harrison said, isn’t it.”

“I’m not ready to believe the son of a bitch yet.”

“But everything confirms it. Doesn’t it?” He put it to Shankland as a challenge but Shankland only shrugged. Satterthwaite said angrily, “You’re not listening to the rumors are you? Of all people you ought to know better.”

“What rumors?”

“About the enormous conspiracy.”

Shankland said in his flat prim nasal voice, “Mr. Satterthwaite, we thought we had them all the first time and it turned out we were wrong.”

“You still think there’s an endless supply of them coming out of the woodwork?”

“I’ll only repeat what I said to the Security Council an hour ago. Until we’ve got dependable airtight information to confirm what Harrison says, I have to go on record as recommending a full-scale crackdown.”

That was the way Shankland always talked. He was straight out of the Hoover mold.

Satterthwaite said, “What else have you got for the President?”

“Well they still had three bombs left. Unexploded ones, in the back seat of that Chevrolet.”

“Any idea who they were meant for?”

“Harrison says it was flexible. They figured to hit whoever was available—they’d figured out ways to hit eight or nine VIPs on the outskirts of Washington.”

“Harrison,” Satterthwaite said. “Is he going to pull through?”