“Yes, Mr. President? What is your pleasure?”
“Please bring the Vice President and me another brandy.”
“Yes, sir.”
The steward turned to bring the order, but the President held up his hand.
“One moment.”
“Sir?”
“You’re not Jack Klosner, the regular steward.”
“No, Mr. President. I’m Seaman First Class Lee Tong. Seaman Klosner was relieved at ten o’clock. I’m on duty until tomorrow morning.”
The President was one of the few politicians whose ego was attuned to people. He spoke as graciously to an eight-year-old boy as he did to an eighty-year-old woman. He genuinely enjoyed drawing strangers out, calling them by their Christian names as if he’d known them for years.
“Your family Chinese, Lee?”
“No, sir. Korean. They immigrated to America in nineteen fifty-two.”
“Why did you join the Coast Guard?”
“A love of the sea, I guess.”
“Do you enjoy catering to old bureaucrats like me?”
Seaman Tong hesitated, obviously uneasy. “Well… if I had my choice, I’d rather be serving on an icebreaker.”
“I’m not sure I like coming in second to an icebreaker.” The President laughed good-naturedly. “Remind me in the morning to put in a word to Commandant Collins for a transfer. We’re old friends.”
“Thank you, Mr. President,” Seaman Tong mumbled excitedly. “I’ll get your brandies right away.”
Just before Tong turned away he flashed a wide smile that revealed a large gap in the middle of his upper teeth.
12
A heavy fog crept over the Eagle, smothering her hull in damp, eerie stillness. Gradually the red warning lights of a radio antenna on the opposite shore blurred and disappeared. Somewhere overhead a gull shrieked, but it was a muted, ghostly sound; impossible to tell where it came from. The teak decks soon bled moisture and took on a dull sheen under the mist-veiled floodlights standing above the pilings of the old creaking pier anchored to the bank.
A small army of Secret Service agents, stationed at strategic posts around the landscaped slope that gently rose toward George Washington’s elegant colonial home, guarded the nearly invisible yacht. Voice contact was kept by shortwave miniature radios. So that both hands could be free at all times, the agents wore earpiece receivers, battery units on their belts and tiny microphones on their wrists.
Every hour the agents changed posts, moving on to the next prescheduled security area while their shift leader wandered the grounds checking the efficiency of the surveillance network.
In a motor home parked in the drive beside the old manor house, agent Blackowl sat scanning a row of television monitors. Another agent manned the communications equipment, while a third eye-balled a series of warning lights wired to an intricate system of alarms spaced around the yacht.
“You’d think the National Weather Service could give an accurate report ten miles from its forecast office,” Blackowl groused as he sipped his fourth coffee of the night. “They said ‘light mist.’ If this is light mist, I’d like to know what in hell they call fog so thick you can dish it with a spoon?”
The agent in charge of radio communications turned and lifted the earphones on his headset. “The chase boat says they can’t see beyond their bow. They request permission to come ashore and tie up.”
“Can’t say I blame them,” said Blackowl. “Tell them affirmative.” He stood and massaged the back of his neck. Then he patted the communications agent on the shoulder. “I’ll take over the radio. You get some sleep.”
“As advance agent, you should be bedded down yourself.”
“I’m not tired. Besides, I can’t see crap on the monitors anyway.”
The agent looked up at a large digital clock on the wall. “Zero one fifty hours. Ten minutes till the next post change.”
Blackowl nodded and slid into the vacated chair. He had no sooner settled the earphones on his head than a call came from the Coast Guard cutter anchored near the yacht.
“Control, this is River Watch.”
“This is Control,” Blackowl replied, recognizing the voice of the cutter’s commander.
“We’re experiencing a problem with our scanning equipment.”
“What kind of problem?”
“A high-energy signal on the same frequency as our radar is fouling reception.”
A look of concern crossed Blackowl’s face. “Could someone be jamming you?”
“I don’t think so. It looks like cross traffic. The signal comes and goes as if messages are being transmitted. I suspect that some neighborhood radio freak has plugged onto our frequency by accident.”
“Do you read any contacts?”
“Boat traffic this time of night is nil,” answered the commander. “The only blip we’ve seen on the oscilloscope in the last two hours was from a city sanitation tug pushing trash barges out to sea.”
“What time did it go by?”
“Didn’t. The blip merged with the riverbank a few hundred yards upstream. The tug’s skipper probably tied up to wait out the fog.”
“Okay, River Watch, keep me assessed of your radar problem.”
“Will do, Control. River Watch out.”
Blackowl sat back and mentally calculated the potential hazards. With river traffic at a standstill, there was little danger of another ship colliding with the Eagle. The Coast Guard cutter’s radar, though operating intermittently, was operating. And any assault from the river side was ruled out because the absence of visibility made it next to impossible to home in on the yacht. The fog, it seemed, was a blessing in disguise.
Blackowl glanced up at the clock. It read one minute before the post change. He quickly reread the security plan that listed the names of the agents, the areas they were scheduled to patrol and the times. He noted that agent Lyle Brock was due to stand post number seven, the yacht itself, while agent Karl Polaski was slated for post number six, which was the pier.
He pressed the transmit button and spoke into the tiny microphone attached to his headset. “Attention all stations. Time zero two hundred hours. Move to your next post. Repeat, move to the next post on your schedule.” Then he changed frequencies and uttered the code name of the shift leader. “Cutty Sark, this is Control.”
A veteran of fifteen years in the service, agent Ed McGrath answered almost immediately. “Cutty Sark here.”
“Tell posts numbers six and seven to keep a sharp watch on the river.”
“They won’t see much in this slop.”
“How bad is it around the dock area?”
“Let’s just say you should have issued us white canes with red tips.”
“Do the best you can,” Blackowl said.
A light blinked and Blackowl cut transmission to McGrath and answered the incoming call.
“Control.”
“This is River Watch, Control. Whoever is screwing up our radar signals seems to be transmitting continuously now.”
“You read nothing?” asked Blackowl.
“The geographic display on the oscilloscope is forty percent blanked out. Instead of blips we receive a large wedge shape.”
“Okay, River Watch, let me pass the word to the special agent in charge. Maybe he can track the interference and stop any further transmission.”
Before he apprised Oscar Lucas at the White House of the radar problem, Blackowl turned and gazed curiously at the television monitors. They reflected no discernible image, only vague shadows wavering in wraithlike undulation.
Agent Karl Polaski refixed the molded earplug of his Motorola HT-220 radio receiver and wiped the dampness from his Bismarck mustache. Forty minutes into his watch on the pier, he felt damp and downright miserable. He wiped the moisture from his face and thought it odd that it felt oily.