“Yes, of course.”

“I assume you don’t suspect any members of Congress of being a party to whatever it is you suspect?”

“No. It appears to be a small group of radicals.”

“Well they won’t get onto the floor of either chamber then. They’ll be in the visitors’ gallery if they’re in the chambers at all, is that right?”

“Yes.”

“And your men are searching there? Posting themselves there to prevent anyone from throwing things?”

“As much as possible, yes.”

“Then I think we’d better proceed with things on schedule,” Ethridge said. He looked at his watch: eleven fifty-seven. “I don’t mean to seem callous but we’ve been bombed before. It’s never done much injury or damage. The Constitution requires that this Congress convene at noon today, and unless you have something very strong to go on, I don’t think we should attempt to evacuate the Capitol.”

Agent Pickett, always conscientious, said in his Alabama drawl, “That’s what Mr. Lime said to me, sir, but for the sake of your safety I think I ought to recommend that you not go inside until we’ve checked it out.”

“That may take an hour,” Ethridge said. “They’ll be starting the proceedings in two minutes’ time.”

“Yes sir,” Pickett said. “I still think it might be a good idea for you to wait, sir.”

Lime said, “We’ll have to leave that to you,” and turned to hurry into the building.

Ethridge looked around. Fitzroy Grant had been buttonholed by someone else and had already disappeared inside. Ethridge touched Ted Pickett’s sieve. “Come on, then, I don’t want to be late,” and walked in under the high doorway.

12:05 P.M. EST The Washington press corps numbered more than two thousand accredited correspondents from the United States and thirty foreign nations. Armed with press cards which Stratten had obtained from a source he hadn’t divulged, Bob Walberg and his sister and three others had gained entry to the Capitol and its two press galleries half an hour before. It had gone just as smoothly as Stratten had predicted. Yesterday the Walbergs and the others had shaved their beards and trimmed their hair and fitted themselves into the Establishment clothes they were now wearing; Stratten had filled their wallets with all manner of false ID.

And Stratten had briefed them thoroughly. The Capitol had been bombed twice before. In 1915 a German instructor from Cornell University had protested American arms sales to the Allies by setting off an explosive device in the Senate reception room; it hadn’t done much damage. In 1970 radicals had exploded a bomb in the Senate wing—a powerful explosive planted in a men’s lavatory on the ground floor. Only one bomb, but it had damaged seven rooms: knocked down walls and blown doors off their hinges. The plastic explosive Bob Walberg carried was considerably more potent than that—and his companions carried four more like his. And this time it was for real: the 1970 explosion had gone off in the small hours of the morning when there had been almost no one in the building. Today Congress was in session and Stratten had both wings covered: three in the House chamber, two in the Senate. It was going to do one hell of a job on the Establishment.

Right on, Bob Walberg thought. Reporters milled around him, getting in and out of seats, squeezing along the aisles of the press gallery. It was a cinch to spot the Secret Service agents in their business suits, giving everybody the eye. He kept a straight face while he lifted the briefcase onto his lap and snapped it open. He knew the guards were watching his movements but they had poked through the briefcase down at the door before they’d admitted him and they hadn’t found the bomb then so they weren’t going to spot it now. Nobody was going to find it until it was too late.

Along the back row of the press gallery stood a few men in uniform but Stratten had said not to worry about them. They were the Capitol Police Force and most of them were patronage appointees—students, part-timers.

He took a notebook and pencil out of the case and snapped the case shut. As he did so he glanced at his watch: ten past noon. The proceedings were late getting started, but then it was always like that. As he set the briefcase down under the seat between his ankles he touched the rivet under the brass catch to start the time mechanism. It could always be stopped—that was the advantage of using a stopwatch for a time device. But it was ticking now and Bob Walberg knew he had thirty minutes to get away and his nostrils dilated and he began to sweat.

The galleries were settling down. At the far end of the press gallery he saw Sandra, looking professional with a pad in her lap and a pencil poised over it.

Below him Congressmen were getting settled in their semicircular rows of chairs. The Speaker of the House, Milton Luke, emerged from a door behind the Speaker’s rostrum. The Doorkeeper was ushering in dignitaries, bringing them down the center aisle and seating them. Bob Walberg’s seat was in the third row of the press gallery, above the rostrum and a few yards to its left; he judged the distance critically and decided the bomb in his case would take out a good part of the left-hand section of Representatives’ seats.

Somebody was tapping a microphone, blowing into it to test it; the sounds were echoing over the loudspeakers. The Chaplain of the House was at the rostrum and Bob Walberg heard his aged voice crackle over the PA system: “Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord.…” And Bob Walberg thought automatically Psalms 33:12 and had a moment’s image of Sabbath School at Temple in Culver City, the rabbi talking in gentle reasonable words about the goodness of God and men. It made him remember his Bar Mitzvah and the Schwinn bicycle his father had given him. Stupid middle-class phony liberal with his smelly delicatessen and his NAACP contributions and his sickening hypocrisy.

“Almighty God,” the Chaplain intoned, “we pause at the beginning of this Ninety-fifth Congress to thank Thee for Thy providential care over us.…”

The summer of Bob Walberg’s Bar Mitzvah they had had the riot in Watts and he remembered his father loading the shotgun: Those bastards come down my street we’ll see what happens, hey? His father with the socialist platitudes and the color TV that was the first in the neighborhood, the slave wages he paid the black and Mexican workers who mowed his lawns and cleaned out the deli and kept house for the Walbergs while the Walbergs spent weekends in Las Vegas and sent Bob and Sandra to camps and schools for middle-class problem children.

“… Thy wisdom and Thy grace unto this new Congress as we climb this holy hill of our nation’s life and pray that Thou endow all those who serve Thee in this place with nobility of spirit and character. In the Redeemer’s name we pray. Amen.”

The Reverend Mosley stepped down and the Clerk of the House approached the microphone. Bob Walberg looked at his watch.

“Representatives-elect to the Ninety-fifth Congress, this is the day fixed by the Twentieth Amendment of the Constitution and Public Law nine-four-dash-six-four-three of the Ninety-fourth Congress for the meeting of the Ninety-fifth Congress of the United States. As the law directs, the Clerk of the House has prepared the official roll of the Representatives-elect. Credentials for the four hundred and thirty-five districts to be represented in the Ninety-fifth Congress have been received, and are now on file with the Clerk of the Ninety-fourth Congress.…”

It was no good telling him what a hypocritical old klutz he was. He wouldn’t know the truth if it kicked him in the teeth. Sending contributions to Israel and keeping his accounts in a bank that did business with South Africa and you just couldn’t make him see.