Paramour (14 page)

She was among the first few passengers to arrive from the aircraft. She had applied fresh makeup and her hair was pulled back into a ponytail. A few long strands had slipped out of her barrette and were hanging below her ear. Standing there, close to her but invisible among the sea of people now edging closer to the carousel, he had the inexplicable urge to reach out and brush the loose strands back as one might with a female friend.

Feeling the effects of sleep loss since beginning the surveillance, Powers ran his hands over his face and took a couple of deep breaths. He wished he'd been able to sleep on the plane.

Luggage began to spill from a conveyor belt. Marilyn watched carefully, then stepped forward and retrieved her suitcase.

Outside the terminal, she went to an information booth and said something to the uniformed man inside. He pointed down the sidewalk. Marilyn picked up her suitcase and walked directly to a passenger bus parked curbside to the right of the terminal door. Setting her suitcase down in a row next to some other luggage being loaded by two baggage handlers, she joined a small line of passengers filing onto the bus.

Powers waited until a few people had queued behind her, and then he too joined the line.

On the bus, Marilyn paid the driver, a balding, heavy-set German with a purplish nose, and took a seat in one of the middle rows on the right.

Because Powers had no idea of his destination and thus the cost of the trip, he held out all the bills he'd obtained from the moneychanger to the driver.

"Wir fahren nur zum Kassel, nicht Griechenland,"
the driver said condescendingly. He picked a couple of bills and handed Powers some change.

Rather than chance moving down the aisle and coming face to face with Marilyn, Powers sat in an empty seat directly behind the driver.

The driver closed the door and steered onto the autobahn, a modern, four-lanes-in-each-direction highway. Powers sat back in his seat as the bus, traveling north at what he guessed was more than seventy miles an hour, whipped past sterile rest stops and rolling green hills dotted with farmhouses. After little more than an hour or so, as they passed some signs for Bad Hersfeld, Marilyn left her seat and moved down the aisle to the driver.

"In Kassel,"
she said,
"wie weit fon der hauptstadt is das hotel Zum Goldenen Hirsch?"

"Nicht weit. Vielleicht funf kilometer."

"Danke,"
she said and returned to her seat.

The bus passed a line of U.S. Army tanks entering the main gate of an American army post protected by a high chain-link fence. The sign read: CAMP WILLIAM O. DARBY, 4TH ARMORED CAVALRY DIVISION, SIXTH ARMY. A few minutes later, the green landscape on the left side of the road changed to the outline of a city.

The bus slowed down, turned off the autobahn, and proceeded along a narrow road toward town. Kassel, a city hewn by the past, was a jumble of brownish tenements, apartment buildings, modern storefronts, wood-paneled taverns, and cobblestoned alleys. Like many German cities, a cathedral spire marked the center of town.

The bus pulled up at the train station, and the driver made an announcement via the intercom. Powers made his way off the bus among other disembarking passengers and waited near a line of taxis in front of the station.

Marilyn waited until her suitcase was off-loaded from the outside luggage compartment, then picked it up and moved to a taxi. The driver, who was standing on the sidewalk, took the suitcase from her and placed it on the front passenger seat. Marilyn climbed in the back.

Powers hurried to the taxi parked behind. The back seat was filled with passengers. The last taxi in the line had no driver.

Marilyn's taxi pulled away from the curb and turned a corner.

Another taxi pulled up and Powers rushed to it. The driver was a young man with a crew cut and granny glasses. "Is there a hotel Golden Hirsch?" Powers said.

"Hotel Zum Goldenen Hirsch?"

"That's it, buddy," Powers said, climbing in.

The Zum Goldenen Hirsch was located outside the center of town at the edge of a large public park. In the middle of the park was a modem building that looked like a museum or perhaps an exhibition hall or convention center.

Powers paid the driver and hurried inside the hotel.

Marilyn was at the reception desk.

Powers crossed the lobby and sat down on a sofa as she signed in. A bellman picked up her suitcase and started across the lobby. She stopped him and gave him a tip. As he headed toward the elevator with her luggage, Marilyn walked to a car rental desk near the front and exchanged a few words with a young bespectacled female clerk wearing a dark suit. Marilyn said something in German. The clerk replied in English. Marilyn showed some identification and filled out a form. Finally, the clerk came from behind the counter and led Marilyn out the front door of the hotel.

Powers moved to a tall window providing a view of the front of the hotel and its parking lot. Outside, Marilyn followed the clerk to a line of cars parked near a tennis court. The clerk used a key to open the driver's door of a brown economy-model Mercedes Benz and pointed out some items in the interior. Marilyn nodded. The clerk locked the car again and handed the keys to Marilyn. Marilyn dropped the keys in her purse, and they walked back inside, chatting amiably.

Powers took out a pen and noted the license number of the car on a matchbook.

Back in the hotel, Marilyn crossed the lobby to the elevator, waited until it arrived, and then stepped on. The doors closed.

At the registration desk, Powers rented a room, listing his occupation in the required box of the registration card as an accountant for the firm Sullivan and Company. He surrendered his passport to the clerk and told an inquiring bellman his luggage had been lost. He sauntered to the car rental desk and went through the same general procedure to rent a car as Marilyn had. In fact, the car he was assigned was an economy-model Mercedes Benz just like the one Marilyn had rented.

Next, he used a house phone, dialed the hotel operator, and learned Marilyn was in Room 202. He took the elevator to the second floor and checked the location of her room. Then, after inspecting the stairway exits and hallways, he returned to the lobby. There he examined the physical layout of the hotel and determined one could get from the guest rooms to the lobby by either the lobby elevator or one of two stairwells leading from the floors. Thus he would be able to monitor Marilyn's movements by sitting in the lobby.

If Marilyn decided to leave the hotel, however, he would be at a disadvantage because he was alone and had no one to help him on the surveillance. If she walked through the lobby and headed for her rental car, it would be impossible to be discreet in rushing out of the hotel to jump in his own car before she drove away. But if he sat outside in his rental car prepared to follow her, he'd be unable to monitor her movements inside the hotel and might be sitting outside as she met with foreign agents. After some thought, he concluded that, as sensitive as the investigation was, if he was to monitor her activities he'd need at least one other person to help him cover both the interior and the exterior of the hotel at the same time.

In his room, using direct dial, he phoned both Sullivan's office and his home number to request help, but both were busy. Frustrated, he racked the phone.

In the lobby, he took a seat on a sofa in the corner and took a few deep breaths. It was 1 P.M. by the ornate clock on the wall above the elevator.

During the next seven hours, other than for a quick trip down the corridor to the hotel's clothing store to purchase a change of clothes and some underwear he figured he would need, Powers didn't leave the lobby. Sitting with the clothing for a while, he finally tipped a bellman to take it to his room.

As the afternoon passed, he did nothing but move from sofa to sofa and exercise his legs by pacing about and, every hour or so, try to reach Sullivan by phone.

At 10 P.M., Powers made a pretext call to the hotel kitchen and learned Marilyn had taken dinner in her room.

****

TEN

During the flight to California on
Air Force One,
young White House staff members pestered Landry with questions about the LA presidential visit, using him to double-check possible glitches in the schedule. "Ken, do you know the arrival time at the museum? Ken, can you give me the number of cars in the motorcade at the City Hall stop?"

Landry, having learned many years ago that showing hostility was never a sound course in organizational culture and, in fact, could be career poison for a black man, calmly complied. Each time he would take out his copy of the Secret Service Advance plan and provide the correct information. Sometimes he wished he had never worked so hard to get promoted. If he had remained just a working agent, he'd be off duty and could be sleeping during the trip or lounging in the Secret Service cabin shooting the bull with the guys. On the other hand, he had to admit relishing being not only the only Secret Service agent but the only black seated with the rich white boys in the power cabin. His dead father, a bricklayer who'd spent his life as the only "colored man" (his father's term) employed by the Colantonio Masonry Company in Baltimore, Maryland, would have been proud.

But even with the pester factor, the trip would have been relatively uneventful if he hadn't been seated next to Capizzi. The Secret Service White House Detail maxim was There Is Always One; no matter how cohesive a detail, no matter how well the agents worked together at all hours of the night and day, enduring inclement weather, dangerous assignments, and heavy stress, assigned to every shift was one agent the others would come to resent.

Capizzi was the one.

Known as "Easy Capizzi" in the small world of U.S. Secret Service agents, he was an opportunist whose only loyalties were to anyone above him in rank. Capizzi had managed to get himself promoted to Civil Service GS-13 rank by selling Amway products after work for Agent-in-Charge of the Secret Service Personnel Division Steve Garrison, one of the top Amway salesmen in the United States. Then, to curry favor with the Director's golfing partner, Agent-in-Charge of Inspection Division Elmer Cogswell, Capizzi reported Garrison for selling Amway soap from the trunk of his government car while on duty. Assigned under Agent-in-Charge of Protective Research Division Todd Bundy, an alcoholic, Capizzi became a two-fisted drinker. Working in Foreign Dignitary Division, though a baptized Roman Catholic, Capizzi joined the Mormon church to impress his supervisor, Latter-Day Saints Deacon Earl Borchard.

"My favorite actor is Denzel Washington," Capizzi told Landry now, in his New York accent. "Always has been."

"I like him too. "

"I heard there was a mix-up in the reservations at the hotel," Capizzi said, taking a shot at the agent handling the reservations, for whom Capizzi held a grudge. "If there aren't enough rooms, I'm willing to sleep in the command post."

"I'll keep that in mind," Landry said, wondering if Capizzi could feel his sense of repulsion.

"I can sleep anywhere after the Marines," Capizzi said, hoping Landry would assume he was a veteran like himself. But Landry had made a point of studying the background of every man assigned to the White House Detail, and he knew Capizzi had served as a yeoman in the Navy reserve.

"Do you know any good soul food restaurants in LA? I love soul food."

"I'm afraid not," Landry said, dreading a possible invitation to dinner.

"If you want, I can drive the limo when we get to LA. I know a lot of agents hate to be wheel-man, but it doesn't bother me at all. To me it's just one more day toward twenty."

"Thanks for offering, but that slot is already filled," Landry said. Capizzi always volunteered for any duty that would put him near the President during a scheduled photo opportunity. Landry closed his eyes for a while and imagined Capizzi opening the aircraft door during flight and jumping out, never to be seen again.