Stephen Leather - The Long shot

There was a clock radio by the bed and Cole Howard set it for 8 a.m. so that he could telephone his wife first thing in the morning. Bob Sanger had arranged for cars to pick up the FBI agents at eight-thirty prompt. When the alarm went off Howard rolled over, switched it off and groped for the phone. He misdialled the first time and woke up an old man who by the sound of it didn’t have his teeth in. Howard redialled and Lisa answered on the fourth or fifth ring.

“Hiya, honey,” he said.

“Cole?”

Yeah, right, thought Howard. How many early morning phone calls did she get from guys calling her ‘honey’? She was obviously still unhappy. “Yeah, it’s me. How are the kids?”

“They’re fine.”

That was all. No questions, no concern, just the children are fine, why the hell are you bothering me so early in the morning? “You up already?”

“Golf,” she said.

The monosyllabic treatment. Always a bad sign. “Yeah? Who are you playing?”

“Daddy.”

A two-syllable word, but not one that Howard wanted to hear. “Honey, I’m sorry,” he said, the words spilling out before he could stop them. He didn’t feel in the least bit responsible for the argument but he wanted it to end, and if the only way of achieving that was by apologising, then so be it.

“There’s nothing to be sorry about,” she said, which meant that there was.

“Okay, well, I just wanted to let you know that I got here safely, that’s all.”

“Okay,” she said, as if his safety was the very last thing on her mind. “Well, look, I’m supposed to be teeing off at eight and I’ve a lot to do. Do you know when you’ll be back?”

“Two weeks at the most,” he said. She didn’t complain, she didn’t gasp in horror, she just said okay and ended the call. Ouch, thought Howard, was he in trouble.

He shaved and showered and went down to the reception area, where O’Donnell and Clutesi were already waiting. “Ed says we should go on ahead and he’ll take the second car,” said O’Donnell.

The three men made small-talk during the drive to the White House, not knowing how secure the driver was. They had to show their FBI credentials to gain admittance and the guard checked their names off against a list on his clipboard.

Bob Sanger was already at his desk, working his way through a stack of computer printouts. He greeted them but didn’t ask about Mulholland, so Howard guessed the FBI chief had already called in. Sanger took them along to an office which he’d had made ready for the FBI team, and introduced them to an overweight, middle-aged secretary by the name of Helen who was to be assigned to them for the extent of their stay. She was cheerful and eager to please and had already arranged for their White House passes, which they clipped to the breast pockets of their jackets.

Howard looked around the office, and realised immediately that there wouldn’t be anywhere near enough telephone extensions or desks. He turned back to Helen but before he could speak she told him that she’d already been onto the relevant White House departments and that equipment and supplies would be arriving later in the morning. Howard asked her to show him where Andy Kim and Rick Palmer were working and she smiled brightly and took him down to the ground floor and along a corridor to a mahogany door. “It used to be a secretarial pool,” she said. “I once spent eighteen months behind that door. We called it The Tomb.”

Howard smiled. “I know exactly what you mean,” he said. “I spent a few months in a place called The Tomb, myself.”

She left him at the door and Howard watched her large thighs rub together as she waddled rather than walked down the corridor. He could hear the sound of nylon hissing against nylon long after she’d turned the corner.

Howard knocked on the door and went in. Andy Kim was there, sitting in front of a large colour VDU, with Bonnie standing behind him, her hair tied back in a long ponytail. They both looked dog-tired and Howard realised that neither of them had slept the previous night. There were a dozen desks crammed into the office, a large white board on which computer language and several complex equations had been written in red and black ink. To the left were two small camp beds. The Kims were engrossed in the computer terminal and it was only when Howard went to stand behind them that they realised he was in the room.

“Cole!” said Bonnie. “Hi! Andy said you’d be here for a while.” There were dark bags under her eyes and her hair was less shiny than he remembered. Her husband was clearly tired, too, more so than when he’d seen him the previous night.

Andy Kim stood up and shook hands with Howard, but avoided his eyes. Howard sensed that he was embarrassed and that things weren’t going well. “You two look like you could do with a good night’s sleep,” said Howard.

Bonnie squeezed her husband’s shoulders. “He hasn’t slept for three days,” she said.

“I must be doing something wrong,” Andy hissed, his eyes on the screen. “I must be missing something.”

Howard wasn’t sure what to say. The news that the snipers were planning to make their move within the next two weeks had clearly shaken Andy, but Howard didn’t want to appear condescending by telling him not to worry.

“We’re going back to square one,” Bonnie explained. “We’re checking all the angles and distances in the model first, then we’re going to check all the venues from today onwards.”

“But I’m sure we did it right the first time,” said Andy.

“Andy, you’ve got to remember that it might not be the President who’s the target. You could be doing everything right and still not get a match. Have you tried any of the other possibilities? The Prince of Wales, for instance, or the British Prime Minister?”

Andy looked up. “They didn’t match either, but I’m sure it’s the President they’re after,” he said. “I can feel it. And if they succeed, it’ll be my fault. I couldn’t live with that, Cole. I really couldn’t.”

Bonnie smiled nervously at Howard as if apologising for his touchiness. “What will you be doing, Cole?” she asked.

“We’ve a lead on the snipers and the people who are helping them,” he said. “The Bureau and the Secret Service are working together to try to find them.”

“What are your chances?” asked Andy sharply.

Howard shrugged. “I’m hopeful,” he said.

“What sort of odds?” Andy pressed.

Howard smiled tightly. “I dunno, Andy. You can’t treat an investigation like an equation. There’re so many influences, not the least being luck. We could literally stumble over them, they could get pulled in for speeding or one of our men could walk right by them. I can’t give you odds.”

A computer printout was lying by the side of the visual display unit and Howard picked it up. “It’s a list of the President’s appointments for the next two weeks,” Bonnie explained.

Howard flicked through it. Most were on the East Coast, though there was a two-day trip to Los Angeles and visits to Dallas and Chicago. “Dallas,” he mused, loud enough for the Kims to hear.

“I thought we were concentrating on the East Coast?” said Bonnie.

“Sorry, I was just thinking out loud,” said Howard. “It’s hard not to think of Dallas when you think of a presidential assassination. But the evidence we have points to it being on the East Coast.” He continued to read through the printout. The President was a busy man, no doubt about it, with up to twenty visits a day: breakfast meetings, lunchtime speeches, opening ceremonies, tours of factories, fund-raising activities, sports events. Howard wondered when the man actually found time to run the country. “I hadn’t realised he moved around so much,” he said. “I guess we always think of the President as sitting in the Oval Office.”