Edward Llewellyn: Prelude to Chaos

The camera had been focused on the Presidential party and it showed something I would not have believed possible. It showed the two agents flanking the President flinging themselves sideways at the first shot. Not in front of him as duty demanded, but away from him, exposing him to a second. The agent on his right was Stefan Sline. And the agent on his left was Sherry.

Sherry Cranston and I had once been lovers, a relationship forbidden between agents; a restriction on her freedom which Sherry had resented and which I, infatuated, had ignored. The year I shared with Sherry was the best and the worst of my life. We had nothing in common except our mutual passion and our lethal skills. We opposed each other in almost everything else. She belonged to the new breed of agent who claimed the right to hold political opinions like any other citizen of the United States. And she had never hidden her belief that Grainer as a General and a monopoly capitalist was aiming to become the first American Caesar.

I froze the moment of Grainer’s death on the screen and stared at it for a long time. Sline and Sherry had dived instantly and simultaneously; as though they had expected the shot and planned their move. I ran and reran the videotape, looking for some innocuous reason for their joint action. At last I took the cassette and forced my way into the Director’s office.

He was surrounded by aides and ringing telephones. I threw out his aides, silenced his phones, ignored his furious protests, and snapped the cassette into his viewer. His protests stopped when he saw the first scene, and when I held the action at the instant that the bullet struck the Director started to shake. He was still shaking when the tape ended.

“It could be that they misjudged the direction, Gavin!”

“It could be,” I agreed. I did not have to emphasize the unlikelihood of two trained agents making the same mistake at the same moment “Sherry and Stefan—they’re two of our best!”

I did not contradict him. “Why was I sent to search the observation deck just before that happened?”

“You were detached?” He stared at me. “I didn’t know!” The Director had known nothing and now was finding out too much. “I’m sure there’s an explanation. Don’t say anything about this to anyone. Not until I’ve had time to investigate. It must be a tragic coincidence.” He stood up, still shaking. “I’ve got to be at Randolph’s swearing-in.” He took the cassette from the viewer. “I’ll keep this until the matter’s cleared up.”

“I never want to see it again!” I was not an especial admirer of Humboldt who had been promoted above his ability, but he was of the old school and I trusted his devotion to the Service. If there was an acceptable explanation for what the tape showed, he would find it. I hoped it would be the truth.

I had lost any desire to get drunk, and when I reached my apartment I watched Randolph taking the oath of office. I knew him to be an honest man who had rejected overtures that he betray his Chief and become the party nominee. Now he was looking sad and worried as the Presidency was forced upon him.

Mike Randolph had been a good Governor of Virginia and would be more popular with people and party than Grainer had ever been. He was the first Vice-President in generations who had been allowed to keep a high enough profile to become well-known to voters outside his home state. The refusal to allow another near the throne was a characteristic which most previous American Presidents had shared with the Ottoman Caliphs, the Soviet Secretaries, and the Chinese Chairmen. Grainer had broken with that custom and encouraged Randolph to display his talents. Amiable and intelligent, he got along well with Congress because, unlike his Chief, he believed in the sharing of power and government by consensus.

He was also a true Virginian in that he placed loyalty to his friends above almost every other virtue, and among his friends were the leaders of his party. It would be some time after his almost certain election in November before the electorate realized that characteristics which were virtues in a Governor could be disasters in a President.

Mike Randolph was looking sad and worried. Many of those around him were trying to look sad but were definitely not worried. The cameras panned across the faces of the Cabinet and rested on Gerald Futrell, the Attorney General, a man whom Grainer had admired and mistrusted—the man who controlled the service in which I served. The shock and grief on his face was totally convincing and completely false.

Every assassination generates conspiracy theories. We hate to think that our futures can be drastically changed by some fanatic with a gun. Yet that is what happens with most assassinations, even when the killers are a small group aiming for anarchy. Madman or idiots, killing the wrong man for the wrong reason. We prefer to imagine complicated conspiracies for we would rather be struck by rational evil than buffeted by blind chance. The universe must be deterministic. The good God does not play at dice.

I knew this human tendency, as strong in myself as in anybody else, and I had been suppressing suspicions of conspiracy from the moment I had killed the assassin. The sight of Futrell’s face on the television screen made my vague suspicion concrete. And triggered a memory of Helga saying something important—I couldn’t remember what. All I could think of was hatred. For there stood a man whose ambitions were great and whose ethics were insignificant.

Professional killers value life highly—their own as well as their victims. That assassin had thought himself safe; he would have been had I not noticed the curtain move. So how had he got into that off-limits room? Why had Sline and Sherry acted in unison to expose the President to a second shot? Why had his armored vest not stopped the first? Why had I been separated from him minutes before it was fired? And had Humboldt been horrified by what he had seen on the tape or by the fact that the tape existed? Those were the questions gnawing at my mind when the telephone rang. And, us I feared, it was Sherry.

Apart from exchanges necessary in shared duties we had not spoken to each other since our last bitter row. So why was she calling me, only hours after the man we had both sworn to protect had been murdered?

“Gavin—I need you! I can’t get through the night! I failed so miserably. For God’s sake come and talk to me. You were always able to drive out my devils!”

Whatever else was false, that last was true. I had to give the woman who could still wring my heart the benefit of every hope. “Sherry—I’m on my way.”

“You’ve still got a magcard for my building?”

“I’ve still got it. I’ll let myself in.”

“Then please, Gavin—please come at once!”

Every apartment building in the wealthier parts of Washington was now protected by coded interlocks. I found the magcard for Sherry’s under a pile of shirts and, as I collected it, I came across my old Walthers .38 PPK, my back-up gun when I had been clandestine. As an afterthought—or forethought—I slipped it into my pocket.

She was waiting for me in a nightdress. “I only collected enough courage to ring you after I’d spent an hour struggling to go to sleep,” she explained as she fixed me a bourbon and water, before dropping onto the sofa we had shared so often.

She had evidently tried to go to sleep in the nightdress I had always found the most exciting. I took my drink and sat stiffly in the chair facing her while she arranged herself in a position to match her gown. Madam Recamier in nylon! Even while I hated what I suspected she had done I could not ignore her beauty. Nor refrain from pitying her self-confidence. They had trained her in duplicity so well that she he was looking sad and worried as the Presidency was forced upon him.