Churcher had always been a hell of an athlete Boulton recalled — a physical fitness maniac forty years before it had become fashionable. They had run cross-country together at Rice in the late thirties. And it was Churcher who, though totally exhausted and near collapse, would dig down inside himself and prevail through sheer will and determination. They had been close all their adult lives, and Churcher’s disappearance at sea had unsettled the DCI. He blew past the President’s secretary without even a nod.
The President waited until the door had closed behind the DCI. “I’d say he got the message.”
Keating nodded.
“Brief Pomerantz,” the President said. He turned to the window. The face he had drawn earlier on the frosted pane was still visible. He put his fingertip to the glass, and drew a hard, straight line for a mouth. “And make sure she stays zipped.”
“You realize that directly contradicts your last order,” Keating said with a lascivious smile.
The President burned him with a look. “Dammit, Phil!” he replied. “This is no time for jokes. The whole thing could blow up in our faces. And there’s too much at stake to let that happen!”
Keating nodded contritely, and left.
The President angrily spun his chair and strode from the office. He had a half hour before a National Security meeting, and he knew just how he’d spend it.
“Arlington, sir?” Cathleen asked, sensing his mood.
Hilliard nodded tensely.
Cathleen called the White House garage.
The President had lost his temper, and it bothered him — not because he’d blasted Keating unjustly, but because whenever the frustrations became that overwhelming, Jim Hilliard knew he’d lost his perspective. A walk through the National Cemetery always helped him regain it.
A light rain was falling as the stretched Lincoln proceeded up Memorial Drive.
President Hilliard got out and, declining raincoat and umbrella, walked alone amidst the identical limestone slabs that marched over the undulating terrain to every horizon.
Secret Service personnel followed on foot, maintaining a respectful distance.
The President paused solemnly at one of the water-stained headstones, and bent to straighten the small bouquet of violets that lay beneath the inscription which read:
JANET DAVIDSON HILLIARD
Janet Hilliard had never served in the military, but she had died in the service of her country.
And these were the times the President missed her most — when he needed to confide his fears and cope with his frustrations. And at these times, he would relive that tragic day in Chicago.
The Hilliards had just arrived in his hometown to kick off the campaign for his second term. Jim Hilliard was an extremely popular president. But the latest national polls had shown an unexpected surge for his opponent. And the President and his wife found the tumultuous crowds at O’Hare heartening.
They were acknowledging the cheers when the Secret Service agent saw the swift movement in the crowd, the sudden thrust of hands forward, and the deadly glint of blued metal. He dove at the President, knocking him to the ground an instant before the first sharp crack.
Janet Hilliard was standing directly behind her husband. The action that saved his life exposed her to the assassin’s fire. Not for long. Perhaps an eyeblink or two passed before another Secret Service agent had bear hugged her to the ground. But the pistol had kept firing throughout that immeasurable interlude. And Janet Hilliard had been mortally wounded.
The President won the close election that followed.
And voices on the Hill soon began whispering that the tragedy, not his record, was his edge.
The President didn’t like it; but he was enough of a realist to acknowledge that maybe, just maybe, they were right. And he privately dedicated his second term to his wife’s memory, and made arms control his number one priority so that nations wouldn’t one day do to each other what a crazed American did to Janet Hilliard. Nuclear disarmament was to be her legacy, not his, and it was being endangered.
Chapter Seventeen
On an autopsy table in Forensic Center, the Harris County coroner’s offices on Old Spanish Trail near the Astrodome, a man’s hand, the skin bleached to an opalescent gray, stuck out from beneath a shroud. The highly reflective surfaces intensified the light, which placed an eerie, surrealistic emphasis on details.
The time was 11:22 A.M., Sunday.
Doctor Tom Almquist, M.E., observed as a Houston Police Department fingerprint specialist took the hand and rolled each of the swollen fingers first across an inked pad, then across a preprinted record card.
When finished, he studied the prints, and nodded to Almquist, pleased. “Better than I expected. A couple of them are real clean. Floaters can be a bitch.”
The officer packed his equipment and left, taking the prints with him.
Almquist, a rotund black man with a bushy moustache and patient eyes, thought for a moment, then pulled the green shroud from the table and set it aside. A lower left arm, severed just below the elbow, was all that lay on the cold stainless top. Almquist hovered above the limb, studying the ragged stump.
Shredded tissue, ligaments, tendons, muscle, and blood vessels mushroomed around the crudely snapped radius and ulna bones of the forearm.
Almquist tore the wrapper from a disposable scalpel and leaned to the table. He placed the laser-honed blade on the inside of the forearm and pulled it the entire length, continuing down the wrist, palm, and center of the middle finger to the tip, splaying the tissue. Then, carefully excising the flexor carpi and the extending sheath of muscles beneath, he revealed the radial artery, and went about removing it and the branching digital vessels of the hand and finger — a lengthy, tedious process.
Almquist spent the afternoon completing the procedure and running laboratory tests on the tissue sections and blood samples he’d prepared for analysis.
One result had surprised and baffled him. He ran the test again with the same result, which prompted him to call Houston Chief of Police Hedley Coughlan.
Now, Coughlan, a well-groomed man in a knife-creased suit, was rapping a knuckle on the glass partition to get Almquist’s attention.
Almquist pulled the green shroud over his work and, peeling off his surgical gloves, entered an anteroom joining Coughlan, Andrew Churcher, and Ed McKendrick.
While Coughlan made the introductions, Andrew fought a fast-rising nausea brought on by the odor of cold flesh, chemical disinfectant, and death that had followed Almquist into the room — an odor that Andrew Churcher would never forget.
Coughlan noticed, and wrapped an arm around the young man’s shoulders. “You all right, son?” he asked compassionately.
Andrew nodded and swallowed hard.
“I’m real sorry about this,” Coughlan continued in a paternal tone. “Your father and I — well, you know how close we were, Drew. What-ever I can do.”
“Thanks,” Andrew said, regaining his composure. “Do we know what happened, Hed?” he asked.
Coughlan lifted a shoulder in a half shrug.
“We do and we don’t,” he replied. “At first, we figured his chopper went into the drink, but now—”
“Wait a minute,” McKendrick interrupted. He was glad Andrew had asked the question; he didn’t want to appear overly concerned with how Churcher had died, but it was important he know. “You have Mr. Churcher’s corpse out there, but don’t know what happened to him?”
Almquist and Coughlan exchanged uneasy looks.