"Hey, Edna. Loved the kimono."
"Have you ever considered a career in politics, Admiral?" Roosevelt kept the grin from his face as he asked, but the tone of his question was playful.
Kolhammer played it straight down the line. "I really don't believe it's appropriate for serving military officers to publicly involve themselves in the political process, Mr. President."
"Really?"
The Oval Office was empty, save for the two of them. The others had all left some twenty minutes earlier. A storm front was coming in from the west. Gusts of wind pasted wet leaves against the windows. Roosevelt wondered whether Kolhammer was just being polite. He might well be a registered Republican.
"You don't think that was politics, Admiral? Sandbagging Hoover like that? Is it common practice for the military in your day to put spies on the tail of civil servants they don't like?"
A smile crinkled a fine network of wrinkles at the corner of Kolhammer's eyes. "We've had some trouble with apparent espionage efforts in the Zone, Mr. President. It's what you'd expect, with so much advanced R and D going on there now. So it was only natural for my security to mount an effort to close down the operation."
"On your own."
"We had interagency help. From the Secret Service and the OSS. You can imagine our surprise when the trail led us to a hotel room in Florida. And the terrible shock of finding Mr. Hoover there. In a kimono."
Roosevelt snorted, unable to contain himself. "I think he'd call it a bathrobe. Tell me, Admiral, what was the Secret Service and Colonel Donovan doing offering interagency help for a domestic security matter? That's not within their fief?"
"Nobody knew that, until they knew it, sir," the admiral replied. Completely deadpan. "When I received the data from my security people-" He nodded at the video stick Roosevelt was rolling around in his palm. "-I immediately informed the other services that we had a problem. It was the considered opinion of us all that the only way to resolve the matter was to take it to the chief executive."
"I'll bet it was," said Roosevelt. His mouth felt like it was full of dry leaves and dust. He wanted to know a lot more about these "security people" of Kolhammer's who'd caught the FBI director with his pants down. They didn't sound like your run-of-the-mill night watchmen. Still, if there were problems here, there was also opportunity. An especially strong gust of wind threw a heavy twig into the window behind him. He expected to hear thunder start up in the next few minutes.
The admiral remained sitting at ease in front of him, giving nothing away.
"I imagine you'll want to know what I'm going to do about this?" said Roosevelt.
"It's really none of my business, except where it impinges upon the security of the Special Administrative Zone, Mr. President."
"No," Roosevelt agreed. "It's not."
He said nothing else, expecting to draw Kolhammer out with his silence. But the admiral remained po-faced. "Well, I'm not going to sack him today, if that's what you were hoping. But then as I understand it, in your day, what a man does in the privacy of his own home is his own business. Is that right?"
"It is, Mr. President. In his home… or his motel room."
Roosevelt contained a chuckle with only the fiercest of efforts. He wondered how on earth Kolhammer did it.
He placed the video stick into a desk drawer.
"What matters now are results, Admiral. Mr. Hoover knows I want results on the questions of who set those bombs, and how they managed it. If he is to have a future as director of the FBI, he'll get me those results."
For the first time Kolhammer offered something without being asked. "He'd get them a lot quicker if he didn't have so many agents crawling around the Zone. Or following your wife, with all due respect, Mr. President."
Roosevelt used his tongue to work free a piece of meat that stuck between his teeth during lunch. It covered his reaction to Kolhammer's comment about Eleanor. He'd been livid when he'd seen the data about how Hoover had been opening her mail and having her followed around. But he wasn't about to lay that card on the table. As much as he'd come to respect and even like Phillip Kolhammer, he still wasn't a hundred percent sure about him. After all, he could well be a Republican, couldn't he?
"I'll make sure the Bureau stops wasting its time in California, Admiral. You can be certain of that."
"I'd like to be, Mr. President."
Roosevelt patted the desk where he'd deposited the data stick. "You can."
28
True Grit was the best goddamn movie Eddie Mohr had ever seen. It was a hell of a shock, seeing John Wayne all fat and old and grizzled, but Mohr had seen enough birthdays to have no trouble imagining himself like that, so it wasn't entirely a bad thing. After all, even missing one eye and carrying a huge spare tire, Rooster Cogburn didn't give much away in the ass-kickin' stakes.
Mohr had seen the movie five times now: two times for free on the base up at San Diego, and three times on his own dollar at a theater in downtown L.A., where he was now. The youngsters, they all preferred that Star Wars shit, but it just left him cold. How you could get into something that was so far removed from reality, he just didn't know. But True Grit was as real a story as he'd ever seen, even the bit at the end with John Wayne doing his one-man cavalry charge, reins between his teeth, six-shooter in one hand and Winchester in the other. That was a great fucking ending, not like that dumbass Apocalypse Now. He'd had to see that one in the Zone, because it was banned everywhere else, and he wondered why the hell he'd bothered when that bald bastard chopped up that poor fucking cow.
Mohr shook the image from his head as Marshal Cogburn yelled at the bad guys to fill their hands. After three weeks without a break, he was gonna enjoy-
"Oh, goddamn. What now?"
The lights in the theater came up, and the management came on over the PA, telling everyone they had to get out in a fast but orderly fashion. Luckily Grauman's Egyptian Theater, a less famous cousin to Grauman's Chinese a few blocks west, was only a third full, because there was nothing orderly about the way most of the patrons suddenly flew for the exits. Some idiot even shouted that there had to be a bomb in the joint.
Mohr rolled his eyes to heaven. He dawdled at the rear of the crush, ready to start pulling people off each other if it got out of hand. But the ushers and the good sense of a couple of other customers prevented a serious bottleneck from building up. As the choke point cleared, he saw a couple of AF uniforms at the exit. A black airman and a white sailor.
"Hey, you guys know what's up?" he asked.
The black guy, a flight sergeant, inclined his head toward the manager in the lobby, who was quickly handing out refunds and trying to hurry the stragglers outside. "He said a bomb went off on a trolley car over at Van Nuys. The city is shutting down the electric railway and all sorts of stuff. Like theaters, I guess."
"Oh, for fuck's sake," said Mohr.
"Hey, chief, how we gonna get back if they shut down the rail?" asked the sailor, a young middie whose name tag read LINTHICUM.
"Initiative, Mr. Linthicum. Let's get out of here and find a bus. You coming with us, Sarge?"
Fight Sergeant Lloyd thought it best if he did.
They collected their refunds and stepped out into the bright light of a warm autumn morning. Mohr was still squinting into the sun when the tomato hit him.