“No,” Lime said. “There’s time. And I don’t need a traffic snarl of rubberneckers paralyzed by the siren.” He sat back and closed his eyes and wondered if his face reflected the inner scowl.
Chad Hill said, “I hope to God you’re wrong.”
He probably was wrong. But it was a possibility.
The timing was what suggested it. Stratten’s group had arrived in Washington about a week ago; the reinforcements from Los Angeles had arrived a few days later. When you moved into an area and you had it in mind to do violence, you didn’t spend any longer than you had to setting things up. So whatever they planned to do, they planned to do it soon.
Killing Barbara Norris had been an act of desperation; if they’d had sufficient time they’d have done it more dramatically or more quietly. One or the other. The job they’d done on Norris was the kind of thing you did when you didn’t have time to do it better. If the vicious mutilation had been intended as a message then its delivery had been hasty: with sufficient time they’d have planted the body where it would have attracted more attention. The front step of a newspaper building or the side door to a police station or the foot of the Lincoln Memorial.
So they were in a very big hurry now. That meant it was probably on for today.
They had a sense of dramatics. You could tell that by the arrogant set of Stratten’s head in the photo, if not by what they had done to Norris. So it was a good bet their master plan would involve something public, something big, something not merely violent but catastrophic. Because of the odds you had to rule out the probability of an attempt on the President’s life. The President only had seventeen days left in office: he hardly made a priority target.
What was left? The President-elect was junketing in Europe. They weren’t likely to go to all this trouble merely to plant bombs in the Pentagon or the Library of Congress; Stratten didn’t look the sort who would take much satisfaction from the anonymous bombing of symbolic buildings.
So it wasn’t far fetched and it wasn’t even unlikely that they planned to set off bombs in the Capitol Building during the hour when the new Congress was being sworn in.
11:50 A.M. EST The Vice-President-elect was about to turn and enter the Capitol when he felt weight beside him and looked around to see Senator Fitzroy Grant at his elbow. Grant gave him the benediction of his lifted cigar and extended his hand, and they shook hands formally because they were in public. The Senate Minority Leader said, “Too bad about those young people down there with their picket signs. Spoils a flavorful day, doesn’t it?”
“Oh, I don’t know, Fitz. I think if they weren’t down there we’d miss them. You get so used to them.”
Fitzroy Grant had a dewlappy face and bassett eyes set in deep weathered folds; a sly figure, full of insinuation and Edwardian gallantry; an engaging grin and the vanity of polished shoes and good clothes and cared-for hands. He ran a palm over his head carefully, not dislodging the neat wave in his senatorially white hair and waved genially to a passerby. When Ethridge glanced that way he saw that the passerby was Senator Wendell Hollander of Kentucky, elderly and bowlegged, coming up the steps like a crab. Hollander was puffing; he didn’t look at all well, but then he hadn’t looked well in the eighteen years Ethridge had known him. Hollander was the picture of the seedy, rheumy, larcenous and crafty Southern politician, but of course that was only the surface stereotype perpetuated by the press: underneath Hollander was as sober as a Jersey City judge and as gentle as a school of piranha.
Hollander came forward busily disposing the muscles of his face toward lines indicative of pleasure. He was a little deaf and shouted. “Mr. Vice-President-elect, suh! Mr. Senator!”
“Hello Wendy.” Ethridge almost managed to make his voice sound cordial. There was the ritual of handshaking. Ethridge hated Wendell Hollander and he was certain Hollander hated him, but neither would ever admit it; their hostilities were covered by a warm surface pleasantness which if anything had intensified since the election because they were now members not only of opposite parties but of separate branches of the government. Wendell Hollander was Chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee and President pro tern of the Senate, and it was unquestioned that the club would reconfirm him in both posts today. Hollander’s seniority was impeccable; he had sat in the Senate since 1937.
Hollander extracted a gold chain from his vest pocket, consulted the snap-lid gold watch, made a loud remark about not wanting to be late, and crabbed his way into the Capitol building. Fitzroy Grant’s eyebrows cocked upward in amusement and Ethridge said, “If there was ever an unimpeachable argument for demolishing the seniority system, Wendy is it.”
“You can put that in the bank,” Grant said. “I’ve spent twenty years trying to argue with him and you just can’t do it. He only raises his voice and talks right through you. Nobody can match Wendy’s inane oversimplifications and half-truths and downright absurdities. Now and then I get in a word and one-up him, and he rears back on his dignity and leaves the room.”
“He’s a dangerous man, Fitz. We can’t afford to go on condoning these old crackerbarrel fossils who see Communists in every phone booth and want to make Asia into a desert.”
“Well I suppose. But he’s hard to dislodge. The man’s a hero in those regions where it’s known as fact that the nation is in the final stages of Communist subversion.”
“Funny,” Ethridge murmured, “I seem to remember you expressing the same sentiments back around the time of Joe McCarthy.”
It made Senator Grant smile. “I thought the campaign was over, Mr. Vice-President—or would you like to compare voting records?”
“Mr. Minority Leader,” Ethridge said with a feeling of happy comfort, “I believe it’s time we went inside and attended the formalities.” And the two old friends turned to enter the Capitol.
As they did, a big yellow-haired man in a coffee-stained topcoat intercepted Ethridge’s Secret Service detail and began to talk swiftly into Agent Pickett’s ear.
Ethridge was about to walk past the men when Agent Pickett took a sidewise pace which courteously barred his path. “Excuse me sir. This is Mr. Lime from our headquarters.”
The big blond man nodded. “Mr. Vice-President.” A cigarette hung in the corner of Lime’s wide flexible mouth. He had an amiable bulldog face and a cheap haircut and big hard violent hands.
Lime said, “I don’t mean to cause alarm——”
“But you’re about to,” Ethridge said, smiling to take the edge off it. “Whenever a man starts out by saying that it means he’s about to kick you in the guts.”
It made Lime smile a little before he said, “These things almost always come to nothing. But you need to be advised—we think it’s possible a radical group plans to bomb the Capitol.”
“When?”
He saw Lime’s eyes narrow with quick respectful scrutiny and it wasn’t hard to tell why. Ethridge had brushed past all the obvious and commonplace reactions—What? Bomb the Capitol? Why that’s outrageous! You can’t let them get away with that! Who are they? What makes you think anything like that’s afoot! No: “When?”
Lime said in answer, “We’ve got no hard information. But if they do it at all they’d be likely to do it with both houses in session.”
“In other words right now?”
“It’s possible,” Lime conceded.
“Do you want to clear the building?”
He saw Lime hesitate. Ethridge said, “Of course I have no way to advise you—I don’t know how serious the threat is.”
“That’s the trouble,” Lime admitted. “We don’t know that there’s any threat at all.”
“Have you got your people inside searching?”