The Lie (34 page)

“Yes you can.”

Watching his wife’s face, Fleming saw the whole poisonous truth gradually take hold inside her.

“Oh, God,” she said.

She glanced around slowly at the small White House parlor in which they were sitting.

“You wanted all this
that
badly?”

“You know I did.”

She nodded tiredly, as if this knowledge alone made her an accessory before the fact. “But how could you?”

“When it came down to it, it wasn’t all that difficult.”

Fleming sat unmoving for a moment, his eyes shut.

“The thing was,” he said, opening his eyes, “once the idea was suggested, I didn’t have to do a damn thing except let events
take their course. I mean not a
thing
. Not a call made. Not an order given. I don’t know whether it makes it better or worse, but I’m certain that if some specific
action had been required of me, this whole abomination would have died unborn.”

“I assume we have your blessed friend Ken to thank for all this.”

Jayson Fleming did not answer.

His wife’s gray eyes were cold. “Talk about snakes in Eden.”

“Washington is nobody’s Eden, Amy. There are no innocents in this town. Least of all
me
. And Ken never put a gun to my head. All I had to do was say no.”

Amy took one of Fleming’s hands in both of hers. She half turned toward him on the couch. “Why can’t you still say no?”

Fleming looked at her.

“It’s probably too late to do anything for Maggie,” she said. “But Jimmy is still very much alive. Why can’t you just tell
Ken you’ve changed your mind and want him to call off the rest of it?”

“You’re assuming I
want
the rest of it called off.”

“I
have
to assume that,” Amy said.

“Why?”

“Because I can’t believe either one of us would be able to live with your
not
calling it off.” Amy paused. “I certainly know
I
couldn’t.”

He looked down at her two hands, holding his, and said nothing.

“Besides,” she said, “if you didn’t want to save whatever remains of your own soul by backing out of what you yourself described
as ‘this whole abomination,’ why did you tell me about it at all?”

“It’s too late for Ken to call it off,” he finally said. “The order has already gone down and there’s no fail-safe button
to hit.”

“Then do it yourself. Call security at the hospital. Tell them you’ve been anonymously warned of another attempt on the president’s
life. Tell them you want Jimmy secretly moved.”

Fleming’s eyes were hooded. “It’s not that simple. If I bypass Ken Harris on this I could be opening up a whole new can of
worms.”

“What is it? Are you afraid of the man?”

“Don’t you think I should be?”

“What I think,” Amy said quietly, “is that you should be a lot more afraid of quietly sitting still for the murder of the
president of the United States.”

The vice president’s eyes turned gloomy.

“You’re wasting precious minutes,” said his wife. “If you don’t move now, you could lose your one chance to save three lives.
Jimmy’s, yours, and mine.”

Moments later Jayson Fleming had Tommy Cortlandt on the phone in Berlin.

“P
AULIE
?”

Red-eyed, unshaven, and still in yesterday’s clothes, Paulie Walters glanced toward the doorway of the intensive care unit
and saw Tommy Cortlandt beckoning to him.

It was just past 9:00
A.M.
Berlin time, and the hospital staff had finished the president’s early-morning ministrations. Now Jimmy Dunster was dozing
fitfully

Paulie rose stiffly from his chair, left the room, and joined the CIA director, who waited a short distance down the corridor
from the morning shift of U.S. Secret Service agents and German police.

“How is he doing?” asked Cortlandt.

“Fine. As long as he’s asleep.”

“And when he’s awake?”

“Mostly he asks if his wife is officially brain dead yet, and wishes
he
were.”

“Listen,” said Cortlandt. “I just had a call from the vice president. He’s very upset. He’s heard something about another
try at Dunster and he wants him moved at once.”

“To where?”

“Someplace where every crazy in the world doesn’t know precisely where he is and how to get at him.”

“You mean to another hospital?”

“That would be unnecessary and dangerous. I’m keeping him right here in this one, but in a completely different section. Only
involved staff will know where that is.”

“Are you going to add security?”

“I’m loading the hospital with agents, but not too visibly, not so the president will be easy to locate. There’ll be two disguised
agents in the corridor supply closet, outside his room, plus four more in two opposite rooms, looking like patients. You’ll
be Jimmy Dunster’s roommate.”

They started back along the corridor.

“Is this a real threat?” asked Paulie. “Or just another nervous rumor?”

“They’re all real threats. Until they’re not. Especially when they’re called in by the pro tempore president of the United
States.”

To Paulie, it seemed to go off with the brisk, clean efficiency of a well-planned military operation.

At exactly 9:45
A.M.
, all corridor and elevator traffic between room 714 of the Hoffman Pavilion and room 561 of the Allstein Pavilion was halted
at both ends for just seven minutes while President Dunster was being moved on a wheeled stretcher from one room to the other.

Paulie walked close beside him.

“Where… are they taking me?” Jimmy Dunster said.

“New quarters, Mr. President.”

“Someone still trying to… blow me away?”

“Don’t even think such things, sir.”

“I wish him… luck.”

The small group and their patient entered a waiting elevator.

Then they were down on the fifth floor and moving along another long, empty corridor with its doors closed on both sides.

They reached room 561 of the Allstein Pavilion without passing another person.

Inside the room, Jimmy Dunster’s plastic tubes were attached to the same assortment of monitoring, breathing, and feeding
devices to which they had been connected in his previous unit.

A bearded doctor checked his patient’s charts and vital signs.

Paulie removed his clothes and put on a hospital gown and robe that were the same pale green color as his sterile mask. Then
he took two 9-millimeter automatics out of their holsters, slipped one into a pocket of his robe, and placed the other under
the pillow of the second bed in the room.

When the doctor and nurses left, Paulie stretched out on the bed and briefly closed his eyes. Then he opened them and lay
there, waiting.

Five feet away, the president slept.

C
OMING IN OUT OF THE SUN’S GLARE
, Anna took a moment to adjust her eyes to the duller light of Holy Cross General’s lobby.

Little seemed to have changed since her earlier visit. Maybe there were fewer reporters and photographers, inasmuch as President
Dunster’s death now appeared less imminent. But the number of posted guards seemed the same, along with the subdued air of
bustle.

The big change was in Anna herself.

In a clean, freshly pressed white uniform, she was a prettier version of several hundred other nurses on the hospital’s huge
staff.

She wore a seniority badge pinned to her uniform, the gold pin of a nursing society, and an official Holy Cross nametag that
identified her as Ilsa Stein.

Walking leisurely, she started toward the elevators that would take her up to the seventh floor of the Hoffman Pavilion.

She passed several nurses wearing the same uniform she had on. They nodded and half smiled, and she nodded back.
The sisterhood
.

The first hint of possible trouble struck Anna when she had left the elevator on the seventh floor, turned a corner, and did
not see the four dark-suited security men who had been posted there last time.

Reaching room 714, she glanced in and saw that it was empty and that the bed had been stripped of its sheets.

Hurrying out of the corridor, Anna took an elevator down to a large, well-lit basement cafeteria. She picked up a mug of black
coffee and settled herself at an empty corner table that offered a good view of the place and everyone entering or leaving
it.

Why had they suddenly moved the president?

Going over the question calmly, Anna could see only two reasons for the move. One, of course, was medical. The other would
have had to do with security. She was in no position to ask questions of anyone in a position to offer answers.

So she would just have to be patient, take whatever time might be required, and do it the hard way.

During her first visit, while sitting for over an hour in the ICU waiting area, she had carefully studied every nurse and
doctor who entered the president’s room. It was an old discipline that had not only helped her recognize key individuals on
other assignments, but had once actually saved her life.

What Anna hoped to do now was simply to sit here until she saw some member of President Dunster’s medical team enter the cafeteria
on a break, and then follow when that person left.

This was the only place to eat in the hospital.

All she had to do was keep her eyes open, drink her coffee, and wait.

An hour later a young, dark-haired nurse with an even-featured face and a large mole high on her right cheek walked into the
cafeteria. Anna remembered the mole.

The nurse sat down with a sandwich, a diet cola, and a copy of
Der Spiegel
. She barely glanced up from her food and magazine for twenty minutes.

When she finally rose and left the cafeteria, Anna was a short distance behind her.

They entered an elevator along with a few others and got out on the fifth floor. From there, they walked through busy corridors
and passed a sign that read Allstein Pavilion. Anna kept a full twenty-meter interval between them. She
extended it farther as she saw her guide stop at a nursing station.

Come on
.

Anna leaned against a wall, pretending to read a notice.

At the nursing station, she picked out two doctors and another nurse whom she recognized as having been in and out of the
president’s old ICU.

She was in the right place.

But where were the missing security guards?

Anna watched the two doctors and one of the nurses leave the station, head farther down the corridor, and disappear into a
room on the left.

From the way the room numbers ran, it figured to be room 561. Farther along the corridor, a couple of white-uniformed orderlies
were casually unloading a wheeled cart into a large linen and general supply room.

They were clearly security guards.

H
ERE
I
GO AGAIN
, thought Kate Dinneson.

She felt the same excitement, anticipation, and fear she had felt immediately before her last nocturnal break-in.

It was a few minutes before 1:00
A.M.
Naples time when Kate made her move, leaving her car in a twenty-four-hour permit-parking area and walking two short blocks
to the small, four-story office building she was about to enter.

There was no security guard on duty, the alarm system was simple enough to neutralize, and Kate was able to pick open a rear
basement door in less than five minutes.

Climbing a single flight of stairs, Kate was in the sprawling, floor-wide offices of the Neapolitan Commercial Real Estate
Company.

She saw row upon row of matching desks, computers, and all the very latest in electronic communications equipment.

No fumbling and wasting of time, she warned herself. This had to be done quickly and efficiently. She had to be out of here
before the location could be checked out and acted upon.

With only a small flash for light, Kate moved about until she had spotted the eight fax machines she would need for the almost
simultaneous transmissions she was to make.

She took a manila envelope from her bag and removed eight copies of the open letter that Nicko had typed above the name of
Professor Alfred Mainz.

Moving fast, she slipped a copy of the letter into the slot of each of eight fax machines, punched in the previously determined
fax numbers for the seven managing editors of the leading newspapers in New York, London, Paris, Berlin, Ottawa, Tokyo, and
Rome, and added an eighth number for the bureau chief of the International News Service in Washington.

Hurrying from one to the other, she hit the send button on all the machines.

The eight copies were transmitted in just under fifty seconds.

Seven minutes later, Kate left the building through the same basement door through which she had entered.

At about the same time that Kate was driving back to Sorrento from Naples, Daniel Archer was flying into Rome’s Leonardo da
Vinci Airport on Nicholas Vorelli’s private jet.

It was raining as they landed, and a man with an umbrella was waiting for Archer as he deplaned. The man escorted him to a
gray Mercedes parked less than fifty feet away on the apron.

I could get used to this
, he thought.

Swinging his attaché case into the front passenger seat, Archer slid behind the wheel and headed for Rome.

At 2:25
A.M.
he entered the lobby of the Del Guardo Building, whose many international brokerage and currency-trading tenants were open
for business around the clock.

Carrying his executive attaché case, he walked past a pair of uniformed security guards, signed in as a visitor to the offices
of the Provident Asset Management Corporation, and took one of many self-service elevators to the third floor.

From there, Archer slipped unobserved through an emergency fire exit and down five flights of steps to a utility area in a
vast sub-basement. He heard equipment humming. There was no one in sight and the entire area was as brightly lit as a ballroom.
Then he checked the schematic that Nicko had given him and moved on.