Wildcard. Rachel Lee
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matter known to very few. I’m not such a fool as to believe that help would come with no strings attached. If I were to accept your offer, I’d want to know who I would be beholden to.”
Cohen looked up at the clouds for a moment, as if he were considering what to say, although Veltroni had no doubt he had long since rehearsed every possible move and countermove in this verbal sparring match.
“Is it not enough to say I am a man who thinks the world would not be improved by the chaos that would arise from these discoveries?” Cohen asked.
“No,” Veltroni said. “I am far too old to believe in convenient altruism.”
“You are a cynic, my friend.”
“I am a realist,” Veltroni answered.
“The defense of all cynics and depressives,” Cohen replied with a quick chuckle. “You don’t see the glass as half-empty. It simply is half-empty, correct?”
“Mockery is a dangerous game, Mr. Cohen. Even a dog tires of being poked with a stick. And I lack the saintly patience of that species.”
“Please, Monsignor, let us not devolve into boys, strutting about the schoolyard with our chests out. That would demean us and serve no one but your enemies.”
Veltroni was not accustomed to being lectured, nor to being patronized. His temper flared, his jaw clenching for a moment, before he bit back his reply and forced himself to take a long, slow breath. Wading into battle with an unknown enemy was the height of folly, and he was no fool. But signing a blank check to a stranger was equally foolish.
“It seems,” Veltroni said, “that we have little more to discuss. I cannot consider your offer unless I know what is involved. My superiors—and I do have them, even if my organization is not a formal organ of the Church—would not permit it. We could sit here and joust all day, but, as I said, I am not blessed with saintly patience.”
Cohen watched Veltroni rise and walk away. Another man might have regretted the course of the conversation, but Cohen had expected nothing more. Veltroni might lack patience, but Cohen did not. The Guardians had waited over three thousand years for a conjunction of opportunity such as now existed. A few more weeks were but a drop in a vast river of time.
Veltroni was not yet desperate. But he would be, and sooner than he knew.
7
Fredericksburg, Virginia
Tom and Miriam reached the door of her house just in time to keep the courier from departing.
“I’m Miriam Anson,” she said to the courier. “I believe that’s for me.”
“Identification?”
She showed him her Bureau ID. His eyebrows lifted, but he said nothing, merely had her sign a receipt. Then he was off, whistling, and Miriam and Tom entered her home with the box.
“I take it Terry came through,” Tom said as she dropped both the box and her keys on the dinette.
“You betcha.”
“So this is lunch?”
“Well, whatever you can find in the fridge is lunch. Unless you want to eat videotapes.”
The thrill of the hunt was rising.
“Pastrami and homicide,” he said, returning moments later. “Extra mustard.”
She opened a bottle of water. “You want to tell me what you’re looking for? We already know no one caught the assassin on camera.”
“Well, it’s really quite simple.” He used a key to cut the tape on the box. “I want to know what the Secret Service was doing during the shooting.”
She raised her brows. “Conspiracy involving the Secret Service?”
He shrugged and pulled a stack of videocassettes from the box. “We’re supposed to disprove a conspiracy, right? Well, I’m about to disprove one angle everyone is going to be screaming about.”
She nodded slowly. “Maybe,” she said.
“Right. Maybe. No one’s expecting us back, I hope.”
“Tom, at the moment I don’t think Kevin much cares if we fall off the edge of the earth, as long as we don’t get in the way of the ‘real’ investigation.”
“My thought exactly.”
He held up the tapes and gave her a crooked smile. “Shall we?”
Tom and Miriam were still hard at work in her living room later that night. It had become their base of operations. She had dragged in a whiteboard on an easel she’d packed away in a closet, some dry erase markers, a folding table and the torchère from her bedroom, which made the entire room nearly as bright as day.
They had watched the videos repeatedly and were now assembling a time line on the white board, listing who was where when.
Finally Miriam tossed her marker down in frustration. “I don’t see anything out of line.”
“I do.” As he stood looking at the time line, Tom pointed out each item he mentioned. “Okay, we’ve got one agent on the podium with him.”
“Right.”
“One in front of the podium on the ground floor.”
“Right.” She flopped on the couch.
“And two near the back of the room, right?”
“Right.”
“And none, absolutely none, outside in the lobby.”
“Well, Grant wasn’t out there.”
“Hmm.” Tom closed his eyes and pictured again what he’d seen on the tapes. “Wrong,” he said.
“Wrong?”
“Wrong. Most definitely wrong. There were nearly two hundred people in the lobby, and a constant flow of people in and out of the ballroom. Nobody was checking credentials at the ballroom door?”
“Campaign staffers were,” Miriam said. “Senior people were allowed in, and the rest were in the lobby. I’d guess that’s standard procedure in these things.”
“Maybe.” Tom opened his eyes and sat on the other end of the couch. “It’s possible. But Terry says they’re running down a bunch of threatening letters, right?”
She nodded. “That’s what he’s hearing. Shop talk. Lawrence’s protection team was busier than hell with all the hate mail. But he was the frontrunner. Terry didn’t sound like anyone thought it was unusual.”
Tom nodded. “The protection detail should have been more alert.”
She leaned toward him. “Tom, you can’t second-guess them. It won’t do any good. There were four agents there. Five counting the supervisor in the video room. That should have been enough. Those guys know their jobs.”
“Sure.” He rubbed his chin. “On the other hand, ‘those guys’ let someone change the parade route in Dallas. Did you know Kennedy’s limo nearly had to stop when it took that hard left turn onto Elm, and even so, it almost hit the curb? He was a sitting duck. And that was strictly against Secret Service regulations at the time.”
Miriam let out a sigh of exasperation. “Tom, things happen. Unforeseen things. It doesn’t make a conspiracy.”
“I’m not saying conspiracy. I’m just saying that somebody screwed up.”
“Okay. Okay.” She pushed her hair back from her face. “I’ll go with that. Security was a little lax. But in crowds like this…” She shrugged.
“You’re a good devil’s advocate, Miriam.” He smiled.
“How am