"This is career suicide if you go out on another limb."
"Trust me on this one. I have film."
"Start feeding the raw tape, and we'll see."
"You won't regret this," said Pepsie, hanging up.
She came out of her seat at the first knock on the van door.
"Hand it here," she said, grabbing the tape out of Buck Featherstone's fingers. She loaded it, hit Rewind, then told the technician, "Start feeding this as soon as it's racked."
Then she clapped the headphones over her ears, telling Buck, "We can't go on the air until we have proof the President's dead."
"From where I stood, it looked like the Secret Service snipers might have been trying to shoot the President."
"Are you sure?"
"No."
"What the hell," said Pepsie. "It'll make a better story that way. We can always air a retraction later. It's all coming together." Pepsie pushed one earphone tighter to her head. "Wait a minute. Something's happening."
A thin voice over the Secret Service frequency said, "Tin Woodman enroute to Crown. Repeat, Tin Woodman enroute to Crown."
"They just said the Tin Woodman is coming here. That's the Vice President. Maybe they're going to swear him in!"
FIVE MINUTES LATER a black Lincoln Continental limousine slithered through the West Gate and stopped before the diplomatic entrance in the South Portico of the White House.
The press continued to pour out of the East Gate, oblivious.
Then the hearses arrived. There were three. They remained in the White House garage less than a dozen minutes and then wound back out in a sedate line.
"Three hearses," Pepsie whispered. "Three bodies."
"The President, the First Lady and maybe Thrush Limburger," said Buck.
"Or the First Daughter." Pepsie dialed ANC again. "Greg. The Vice President just went in. Then three hearses left."
"We're still reviewing film," Greg told her tensely. "The other networks are still sorting out the shooting. They report the President has left for Andrews Air Force Base and Air Force One."
"The hearse traffic has been coming in and out of the West Gate. I think we're the only ones to spot it. We own this story."
"Hang on, Pepsie."
"By my fingernails."
AT THE NORTH PORTICO diplomatic entrance, the Vice President of the United States was greeted by the White House usher.
"What the hell is going on?" he hissed.
"Come this way, sir," the usher said solemnly.
The Vice President allowed himself to be escorted to the Oval Office. He had been dining with his family when word came that his presence was urgently required at the White House.
They were intercepted in the Oval Office reception area by the President's chief of staff. "ANC has just declared the President dead."
For the Vice President of the United States, it was as if an anvil had landed on his head. A million hectic thoughts raced through his reeling brain. His vision actually dimmed. There was a roaring in his ears.
Then the grim face of the President himself poked out of the Oval Office door.
"Don't believe everything you see on TV," he said. "But for the forseeable future, you're confined to the White House."
"What's going on? A coup?"
"We're trying to tree a possum."
"Come again?"
"I'm dead, and you don't know any different. Got that?"
"Yes, Mr. President," said a very confused and only slightly disappointed Vice President of the United States.
BEHIND THE CLOSED DOORS of the Oval Office, the President of the United States faced Harold W. Smith.
"Everything's in place."
"We have only to wait," said Smith.
"I hate deceiving the American people like this."
"Better that they temporarily mourn a living man than bury another dead President for all time."
"You know," said the President, "I ordered the Secret Service to stand down."
"I know."
"Yet they had snipers on every roof overlooking the place."
"The director of the Secret Service no doubt considered it prudent."
"Makes me wonder if those shots weren't meant to hit me. "
"That possibility cannot be discounted at this juncture," said Harold Smith.
Chapter 30
With the announcement by ANC that the President of the United States had died in a helicopter crash, the other networks, predictably, followed suit. Within twenty minutes everyone had declared the Chief Executive dead.
There was no confirmation from the White House, no comment from the other branches of government. No one went into the executive mansion and no one and nothing came out.
For all intents and purposes, the White House became an informational black hole.
National Transportation Safety Bureau teams cordoned off the destroyed helicopter, allowing no cameras within viewing range.
The press held vigil into the late hours of the night, interviewing one another to fill air time.
And the nation held its breath.
IN THE WHITE HOUSE basement, Harold Smith monitored the ongoing news coverage out of the corner of one eye as he wrestled with the problem.
His worn briefcase lay open on the desk before hire, exposing the portable computer that was connected by phone lines to the great mainframes housed in the basement of Folcroft Sanitarium.
Smith had created a flowchart on his screen in an attempt to organize what was now a large and Byzantine sequence of events.
The trouble was the chart refused to flow.
That there was a conspiracy was beyond any shred of doubt.
Someone had set on the President a Lee Harvey Oswald double, perfect down to his fingerprints and body scars, armed with perfect replica Secret Service badge and vintage Mannlicher-Carcano rifle. And had filmed it.
That same someone had tricked an obscure bartender named Bud Coggins into gunning down the Oswald double in such a way that he, too, was killed in an eerie recreation of the original Oswald's murder. Coggins was not part of the conspiracy; that much was certain. Yet even as he was unwittingly covering up for the true conspirators, his VR helmet camera was transmitting pictures of everything he saw and did to the conspirators. That had been determined by an examination of the VR helmet.
Within hours of the events in Boston, the conspiracy had already shifted into a second phase in Washington, D. C. The replica Socks had infiltrated the White House grounds exactly in time to create chaos upon the President's return. And the replica Gila Gingold had struck by the end of day one.
Yet all of these incidents seemed engineered to drive the President from Boston, to the White House and then, in the final phase, trick him into boarding a booby-trapped helicopter and a fiery death.
Why? Why not kill him in Boston and be done with it? What was the point of it all?
The desk phone rang.
"This is the D.C. medical examiner," a voice said.
"Go ahead," said Smith.
"This man I have just autopsied is not Thrush Limburger. I know this because the actual Limburger is on my TV vociferously proclaiming his innocence."
"Does he have a burr hole at the top of his head? The fake, I mean."
"He does."
"What is the likely significance of such procedures?"
"Typically this is an operation used to cure Parkinson's disease by the introduction of fetal brain cells into an affected brain. It is called a brain graft."
"I see. Are there any other applications?"
"Well," the M.E. said slowly, "the only similar operation I have heard about involves transspecies applications-grafting animal brain cells from one species to another. It is purely experimental, but very interesting in that it shows behaviors and inherent instincts can be translocated across species."
"Could animal brain cells be introduced into a human brain?"
"Only an unethical madman would attempt it."
"You have not answered my question," Smith snapped.