“Not yet.”
“I will inform the president. When are you making the Sabot arrests?”
“At zero dark hundred hours, tonight,” Palumbo said.
“Then it’s all moot. When the Sabot Society is neutralized, the threat to America will end. Then if your investigation turns up anything about Hiccock, you’ll be free to prosecute.”
“How’s that?” Tate asked.
“Simple. I’ll recommend the president cut him loose as SciAd tomorrow. The press will read it as his failure to achieve results. In two weeks, his name will score lower than Mike Gravel on unaided recall polls. Then you can throw the book at him, if you want.”
“Thanks, Ray.”
Ray felt the need to add a personal note to Palumbo, knowing how hard it was to do what he had just done. “Agent Palumbo, if it matters, I was starting to like Hiccock. But, we all serve the president. If Hiccock is innocent then he will understand the need for distance. If he’s guilty, then who cares what he thinks?”
“It’s a raw deal any way you sell it, Sir,” Palumbo said as he left. Tate nodded to Reynolds and followed.
Alone in his office, Reynolds breathed deep. What just happened? What a good kid that agent was, not selling out his friend. What was it about Hiccock that made people stand up for him? Moreover, what was it about Tate that made even his own men hate him? He shook his head. He scratched a cryptic note to fire Hiccock and moved on to the new legislative agenda. Now that the FBI solved the case, the president should go up in the polls and along with that his political capital. Reynolds needed to be ready.
“Fire Hiccock?” the president said. “Ray, I’m looking at this morning’s agenda and I see ‘Fire Hiccock.’ Why?”
“Sir, can you excuse your man?”
“Don, would you give us a minute?” The president waited until the Secret Service agent closed the door behind him. “Now what’s this all about?”
“Would you consider just firing him because I’m asking you to and therefore absolving yourself of any need to testify before one committee or another?”
The president weighed these words and decided against common sense. “Tell me. Hiccock’s been a team player, I owe him at least that much.”
“The FBI has uncovered a very disturbing link between the Sabot Society and Hiccock. His father may have been a founding member.”
“Whoa … What?”
“Sir, I should point out that this has not yet been proven, but Bernard Keyes and Harry Hiccock may have been involved in the sabotage of a New York City subway in the sixties, the first traceable action of the Sabot Society.”
“That long ago?” The president chewed on this for a while. “And the thinking is that Hiccock buffaloed me into taking the investigative teeth out of the FBI’s efforts?”
“Whether it’s true or not, it has the appearance …”
“And appearance is as good as reality in this office.”
“Unfortunately.”
“So we cut him?”
“Again, unfortunately. If he’s not guilty, then everyone would understand that he failed in his investigation and you had no choice.”
“But in actuality we are really separating ourselves to avoid collateral damage.”
“Just in case.”
“Do I have a choice?”
“Yes. He might resign.”
“You think he would?”
“I don’t know. Could go either way. It’s worth a shot.”
“You or me?”
“If I do it, that leaves you with a lot of deniability.”
“Okay, you float it by him, see if he bites. Ray, Tate and his people at the FBI are sure, aren’t they?”
“You mean about Hiccock? No, they aren’t sure.”
“I meant about this Sabot thing. The arrest tonight, this is the end, right?”
“It will be the end, according to Tate.”
The president shook his head. “Sometimes this job bites the big one.”
“There’s an historic quote.”
No big secret — politicians hated “Boy Scouts.” They were mirrors held up to men whose faces were soiled tilling the political fields. Boy Scouts, in their wholesome reflection, made them feel dirty and grimy. Reynolds, who also once believed in the idealistic notion of pure public service, was emotionally torn. At first, Hiccock seemed to be the mother of all Boy Scouts, out to change the world and truly selfless. The possibility of someone else actually living the ideal, the lofty goal he once strove to achieve, is what gnawed at him. His downfall was how quickly the dream was diluted by the gallons of blood shed in the act of political survival. Ray and hundreds of other politicians would fight right up to the line where their own personal power was threatened, then “do the politically expedient thing” and compromise. Deep down, at the bottom of it all, political power worked because it threatened the one thing cherished most by those who fought to attain it — the power itself. In Reynolds’s case, this permitted the backroom deals, the strange bedfellows, and the “enemy of my enemy is my friend” style of thinking. To a politician, the only real issue was surviving at all cost.
Misery loving company, buried deep inside Reynolds was the selfish hope that Hiccock was not a Boy Scout but a traitor. Ray hoped Tate was right about Hiccock’s true mission being to hamper the investigation, to distract from his father’s, as well as his own, beliefs.
As if on cue, Hiccock appeared at Ray’s door. “Ray, you wanted to see me?”
“Have a seat, Bill.”
“Uh-oh, you never call me Bill. What’s wrong?”
“I would like you to resign, effective immediately.”
“Wow, that’s not a ‘Bill,’ that’s a ‘William’ if I ever heard one. Why would I do that?”
“To save the president embarrassment.”
“Why would the president be embarrassed?”
“Bill, a connection between you and the Sabot Society has been revealed.”
“Me?”
“Actually your father.”
“My dad? Are you nuts? He’s retired.”
“Back in the sixties he worked with the leader of Sabot. Together they may have sabotaged a New York City subway. Those facts are a little murky but there is enough there to present the appearance of impropriety.”
Hiccock did not appear to be insulted or outraged. He seemed to be weighing each piece of information in his mind, scientifically, seeing both sides of the argument at once.
If he’s guilty, he has a great way of not showing it, Reynolds thought.
“No one ever accused my dad …”
“It was in a confidential police department file. Political pressures may not have had the cops dig too deep way back then.”
“That’s it? No grainy photographs of my father at the meeting wearing a Sabot hood? No scratchy-voiced informant turning state’s evidence? Just a supposition in some cop’s file folder?”
“Bill, you brought this on yourself. You made an enemy of Tate and his reach far exceeds your grasp of political realities.”
“And those same political realities mean if I don’t resign then you’ll fire me?”
“Either way, you are finished in this administration.”
“And the president?”
“He’s hoping you’ll fall on your sword.”
“What’s going to happen to my father?”
“That’s up to your good friend Tate after the FBI arrests the leaders of the Sabot Society.”
“Are they positive the society is behind all these terrorist acts?”
“They are swarming in tonight. Should all be over by the eleven o’clock news.”
Hiccock just sat there. Then his face changed and his eyes set. “I will not resign. I will, however, take a leave of absence to deal with a family matter. My dad is about to be attacked and I need to be there with him.”