Shall We Tell the President? (17 page)

Mark looked at him, about to speak.

‘No, don’t add anything about Nick; that’s
why you’re here, and don’t ask me to change my opinion of the Bureau. I’ve been
a crime reporter for over thirty years and the only change I’ve seen in the FBI
and the Mafia is that they are both bigger and stronger.’ He poured the
sambuca
into his coffee, and took a noisy gulp. ‘Okay. How
can I help?’

‘Everything off the record,’ said Mark.

‘Agreed,’ said
Stampouzis
.
‘For both our sakes.’

‘I need two pieces of information. First,
are there any senators with close connections in organised crime and second,
what is the attitude of the mob to the Gun Control bill?’

‘You don’t want much, do you?’ said the
Greek sarcastically. ‘Where shall I begin? The first is easier to answer
directly, because the truth is that half the senators have loose connections
with organised crime, by which I mean the Mafia, however out of date that is.
Some don’t even realise it but if you include accepting campaign contributions
from businessmen and large corporations directly or indirectly associated with
crime, then every President is a criminal. But when the Mafia needs a senator
they do it through a third party, and even that’s rare.’

‘Why?’ queried Mark.

‘The Mafia needs clout at the state level,
in courts, with deals, local by-laws, all that. They’re just not interested in
foreign treaties and. the approval of Supreme Court justices. In a more general
way, there are some senators who owe their success to links with the Mafia, the
ones who have started as civil court judges or state assemblymen and received
direct financial backing from the Mafia. It’s possible they didn’t even realise
it; some people don’t check too carefully when they are trying to get elected.
Added to this are cases like
Arizona
and
Nevada
, where the Mafia
runs a legit business, but God help any outsiders who try to join in. Finally,
in the case of the Democratic party, there’s organised labour, especially the
Teams-
ters
Union
.
There you are, Mark, thirty years’ experience in ten minutes.’

‘Great background. Now can I ask you some
specifics. If I name fifteen senators, will you indicate if they could fall
into any of the categories you have mentioned?’ Mark asked.

‘Maybe. Try me. I’ll go as far as I feel I
can. Just don’t push me.’

‘Bradley.’

‘Never,’ said
Stampouzis
.

‘Thornton.’

He didn’t move a muscle.

‘
Bayh
.’

‘Not that I have ever heard.’

‘Harrison.’

^!
No
idea. I don’t know much about
South
Carolina
politics.’

‘Nunn.’

‘Sam Sunday-School? Scout’s Honour Nunn?
You’ve got to be kidding.’

‘Brooks.’

‘Hates the President but I don’t think he’d
go that far.’

Mark went down the list. Stevenson, Biden,
Moynihan, Woodson, Clark, Mathias.
Stampouzis
shook
his head silently.

‘Dexter.’

He hesitated. Mark tried not to tense.

‘Trouble, yes,’
Stampouzis
began. ‘But Mafia, no.’ He must have heard Mark sigh. Mark was anxious to know
what the trouble was; he waited but
Stampouzis
didn’t
add anything.

‘Byrd.’

‘Majority leader. Not his style.’

‘Pearson.’

‘You’re joking.’

‘Thank you,’ said Mark. He paused. ‘Now to
the Mafia’s attitude towards the Gun Control bill.’

‘I’m not certain at the moment,’ began
Stampouzis
. ‘The Mafia is no longer monolithic. It’s too
big for that and there has been a lot of internal disagreement lately. The
old-timers are dead set against it because of the obvious difficulty of getting
guns legally in the future, but they are more frightened by the riders to the
bill, like mandatory sentences for carrying an unregistered gun. The Feds will
love that; for them it’s the best thing since tax evasion. They will be able to
stop any known criminal, search him, and if he is carrying an unregistered gun,
which he is almost certain to be, wham, he’s in the court-house. On the other
hand, some of the young Turks are looking forward to it, a modern-day
Prohibition for them. They will supply unregistered guns to unorganised
hoodlums and any mad radical who wants one, another source of income for the
mob. They also believe the police won’t be able to enforce the law and the
cleaning-up period will take a decade. Does that get near to answering the
question?’

‘Yes, very near,’ said Mark.

‘Now, my turn to ask you a question, Mark.’

‘Same rules?’

‘Same rules. Are these questions directly
connected with Nick’s death?’

‘Yes,’ said Mark.

‘I won’t ask any more then, because I know
what to ask and you’re going to have to lie. Let’s just make a deal. If this
breaks into something big, you’ll see I get an exclusive over those bastards
from the
Post?’

‘Agreed,’ said Mark.

Stampouzis
smiled and signed the check; the last comment had made Mark Andrews
a legitimate expense.

Mark looked at his watch; with luck he
would make the last shuttle from La Guardia.
Stampouzis
rose and walked to the door; the bar was still full of men drinking heavily,
the same men with the same wives.

Once on the street, Mark hailed a cab. This
time, a young black pulled up beside him.

‘I’m halfway there,’ said
Stampouzis
, puzzling Mark. ‘If I pick up anything that I
think might help, I’ll call you.’

Mark thanked him and climbed into the cab.

‘La Guardia, please,’

Mark rolled down the window,
Stampouzis
stared in briefly.

‘It’s not for you, it’s for Nick.’ He was
gone.

The journey back to the airport was silent.
When Mark eventually reached his own apartment, he tried to put the pieces
together in his mind ready for the Director the following morning. He glanced
at his watch. Christ, it was already the following morning.

7:00 am The Director listened to the
results of Mark’s research in attentive silence and then added his own
unexpected piece of information.

‘Andrews, we may be able to narrow your
list of fifteen senators even further. Last Thursday morning a couple of agents
picked up an unauthorised transmission on one of our KGB channels. Either
temporary interference from some commercial station caused us to tune in a different
frequency momentarily or else some guy is in possession of an illegal
transmitter for our frequency. The only thing our boys heard was: “Come in,
Tony. I just dropped the Senator back for his committee meeting and I’m ...”
The voice stopped transmitting abruptly and we couldn’t find it again. Perhaps
the conspirators had been listening in on our conversations, and this time one
of them without thinking started to transmit on our frequency as well; it’s
easy enough to do. The agents who heard it filed a report concerning the
illegal use of our frequency without realising its particular significance.’

Mark was leaning forward in his chair.

‘Yes, Andrews,’ said the Director. ‘I know
what’s going through your mind: 10:30 am. The message was sent at 10:30 am.’

‘10:30 am, 3 March,’ said Mark urgently.
‘Let me just check . . . which committees were already in progress. ..’ He
opened his file. ‘Dirksen
Building
..
that hour ... I have the details at hand somewhere, I know,’ he continued as he
flicked through his papers.

‘Three possibilities, sir. The Foreign
Relations and Government Operations committees were in session that morning. On
the floor of the Senate they were debating the Gun Control bill: that seems to
be taking up a lot of their time right now.’

‘Now we may be getting somewhere,’ said the
Director. ‘Can you tell from your records how many of your fifteen were in the
Capitol on 3 March and what they were up to?’

Mark leafed through the fifteen sheets of
paper and slowly divided them into two piles. ‘Well, it isn’t conclusive, sir,
but I have no record of these eight’ - he placed his hand on one of the piles -
‘being in the Senate that morning. The remaining seven were definitely there.
None on the Government Operations Committee. Two on Foreign Relations - Pearson
and Nunn, sir. The other five are Brooks, Byrd, Dexter, Harrison and Thornton.
They were all on the floor. And they were all on the Judiciary Committee, Gun
Control bill, as well.’

The Director grimaced. ‘Well, as you say,
Andrews, it’s hardly conclusive. But it’s all we have, so you concentrate on
those seven. With only four days, it’s a chance we will have to take. Don’t get
too excited just because we had one lucky break, and double-check that those
eight could not have been in Dirksen that morning. Now, I am not going to risk
putting seven senators under surveillance. Those folks on the Hill are
suspicious enough of the FBI as it is. We’ll have to use different tactics.
Politically, we can’t take a chance on a full-scale investigation. I’m afraid
we’ll have to find our man by using the only clues we’re certain of - where he
was on Thursday, 24 February at lunchtime, and this 10:30 Judiciary Committee
meeting last week. So don’t bother with the motive - we needn’t waste time
second-guessing that, Andrews. Just keep looking for ways of narrowing the
list, and spend the rest of the day at the Foreign Relations Committee and the
floor of the Senate. Talk to the staff directors. There is nothing they don’t
know - public or private — about the senators.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘And one more thing. I’m having dinner with
the President tonight so I may be able to glean some information from her which
could help us reduce the number of suspects.’

‘Will you tell the President, sir?’

The Director of the FBI paused. ‘No, I
don’t think so. I still believe we have the problem under control. I see no
reason for worrying her at this stage, certainly not before I’m convinced we’re
likely to fail.’

Finally the Director passed over an
Identikit picture of the Greek priest. ‘Mrs
Casefikis’s
version,’ he said. ‘What do you think of it?’

‘It’s not a bad likeness at all,’ said
Mark. ‘Maybe a little fleshier around the jaws than that. Those men really know
their job.’

‘What worries me,’ said the Director, ‘is
that I’ve seen that damn face before. So many criminals have come across my
path that to remember one of them is almost impossible. Maybe it will come to
me.’

‘I do hope it comes before Thursday, sir,’
said Mark, without thinking.

‘So do I,’ Tyson replied grimly.

‘And to think I was only twenty-four hours
behind him. It hurts.’

‘Think yourself lucky, young man. If you
had been ahead of him, I think
Ariana
Casefikis
would now be dead and so might you. I’ve still
got a man on Mrs
Casefikis’s
home just in case he
returns, but I think he is far too professional a bastard to risk that.’

Mark agreed. ‘Professional bastard,’ he
repeated.

The red light on the internal telephone
winked.

‘Yes, Mrs McGregor?’

‘You’ll be late for your appointment with
Senator Hart.’

Thank you, Mrs McGregor.’ He put the phone
down. ‘I’ll see you at the same time tomorrow, Mark.’ It was the first time he
had called him Mark. ‘Leave no stone unturned; only four days left.’

Mark took the elevator down and left the
building by his usual route. He didn’t notice he was being followed from the
other side of the street. He went to the
Senate
Office
Building
and made
appointments to see the staff directors of the Foreign Relations and Judiciary
committees. The earliest either could manage was the following morning. Mark
returned to the library of Congress to research more thoroughly the personal
histories of the seven senators left on his list. They were a rather varied
bunch, from all over the country, with little in common; one of them had
nothing in common with the other six, but which one? Nunn - it didn’t add up.
Thornton
–
Stampouzis
obviously didn’t care for him but what did that
prove? Byrd - surely not the majority leader?
Harrison
-
Stampouzis
said he was against the Gun Control
bill, but so was almost half the Senate. Dexter - what was the trouble
Stampouzis
wouldn’t tell him about? Perhaps
Elizabeth
would enlighten
him tonight. Ralph Brooks, a strangely intense, driven man and certainly
lacking any affection for Kane, that was for sure. Pearson - if he turned out
to be the villain, no one would believe it: thirty-three years in the Senate,
and always playing honest
Casca
in public and
private.