I said, "Havlicek and I were bouncing around the idea that this thing could have been staged, you know, like maybe some eleventh-hour election ploy."
Martin looked at me for a long moment, then shook his head. "I don't think there's any way," he said. "I think I know this city pretty well. I think I know politics pretty well. And I can't even imagine that anyone would dare pull such a stunt, and that it could be kept secret." He paused and added, "it would be one thing if Hutchins were down by ten points with less than two weeks left. But this thing was neck and neck. He didn't need anything this dramatic."
Good points, all, but I was increasingly unconvinced. The timing of the assassination attempt bugged me, the poor aim of the shooter, the resulting fanfare and rise in Hutchins's favorability ratings. Still, it was far-fetched, so I felt silly pushing it. I said, "At the least, we need to get someone out to Wyoming, ASAP, to pay a call on this militia leader, and I don't know if that's what I ought to be doing right now."
"You're right," Martin said. "And done. I'll send Phil Braxton"-another bureau reporter-"out there today."
"One more thing," I said. "I just got an off-the-record tip that Nichols's guys, Tommy Graham and Mick Wilkerson, are being looked at by the FBI as possibly having some sort of link to this."
Martin stared at me incredulously. "Link to the assassination attempt?" he asked, skeptically.
I shook my head.
"Who the hell is telling you this?"
"It's off the record," I said. "But it's coming from Lincoln Powers."
"Sounds like a stunt," Martin said. "Sounds like they're just trying to create some sort of negative buzz about their opponent a week before the election. We've got to be careful of that." He paused, then added, "And we also have to check it out." Then he got up and retreated to his office.
Other reporters were beginning to arrive at the bureau, including Julie Gershman, who walked in wearing a short, rust-colored skirt that inspired a sense of warmth in any man fortunate enough to see her, including me. I say this in a good way, as another indication that I was becoming whole.
She gave me a come-hither look-okay, so I have no idea what a come-hither look is, but I read about it once in my wife's Cosmopolitan-as she tucked her hair behind a tiny ear.
"We ever going to grab that drink, or are we going to continue to be two emotionless drones, coming to work, making small talk, going home?" she asked.
"Hey, you leave my lifestyle out of this, okay?"
She laughed. "Tonight?" she asked.
"Can't, unfortunately. Already meeting someone for a story. Let me dig myself out of this assassination story, and we'll get together then."
"I'm going to hold you to it," she said, and I hoped she was good for her word.
The telephone rang, and I fairly well jumped on top of it, only to find it was my friend Harry Putnam, wanting to head to the Capital Grille for steaks, cottage fries, some red wine, and cigars that night. Who am I, Dean Martin or something? Everyone thinks I'm available at the drop of a dime for an offer of a beer?
I turned up the volume on my ringer and roamed across the room, toward Havlicek. This felt all right in here today, better than I would have expected. We had some good hits behind us. We had one in the pipeline. Things were popping, and they would continue to be in the near term. Despite the debacle of Idaho, the looks I was getting, the comments, the backslaps, told me I was firmly back on top, on my game.
"Hey there, slugger," Havlicek said as I pulled up to his desk and caught a glimpse of the photos. I rounded the desk so I wouldn't have to see them.
I said, "I'll spread around a few calls on this, but only to people who'll keep the information close. I don't want to let word around on what we have."
"Good show," he said. "Let me know what you turn up. More important, let me know when you hear from your guy. You'll press him on the issue?"
"Of course. Let's just hope he calls."
Havlicek leaned back for a minute, taking his eyes off the computer screen for the first time. "He'll call," he said. "We've got him.
He's in this thing, and wants to get in deeper, and he knows we're a good vehicle. If he doesn't know that now, he'll sure know it tomorrow morning when he reads this story."
At that precise moment, I heard my telephone ringing across the room and sprinted around desks and over one chair in my attempt to reach it.
I felt like O. J. Simpson running through the airport, or maybe from a murder scene on Bundy Drive. I caught the phone mid-ring and breathlessly blurted my name. The caller promptly hung up.
Rather than stand there and agonize over what I may have missed, I punched out the number for the main switchboard at the FBI and asked for the office of Assistant Director Kent Drinker. Some, or even most, reporters would spend the better part of a full day preparing just the right questions and practicing the best tone to strike in this interview. I didn't even have anything formed in my mind. I just knew I was curious and angry, and that combination usually worked better for me than any other.
When Drinker came on the line, I said, "Sir, I'm going with a story tomorrow detailing the highly unusual fact that you paid a personal call on one of the nation's leading militia leaders a week before the assassination attempt on President Hutchins. I was hoping, for your sake more than mine, that you would see your way to providing me with some sort of rationale for your visit."
Well, that sounded pretty damned good to me, but probably less so to Drinker. All I heard on the other end was dead air, then some heavy breathing. I had half a mind to say, "Hello? Anyone home?" but wisely and successfully suppressed that urge.
Finally, he spoke. "I don't know where you could have gotten this, but you have wrong information."
"Well, if it is, then I'll run a correction. But I don't think that's going to happen. I have it solidly, reliably, and on the record that you were up at Freedom Lake the week before the assassination attempt.
If you want to deny it or dispute it, you do so at your own peril."
Federal agents in general, and assistant FBI directors specifically, are not accustomed to being addressed quite like this. No, they're used to being the ones in control, calling the shots, making others sweat. That partly explained the enjoyment I was deriving from this call. The fact I was in the right explained the rest of my good mood.
During the silence that followed, I played out my vague theories. I believed that Drinker and Nathaniel had met. If they had met, it had to have been for a reason, and I had the nagging suspicion it involved the ease with which Nathaniel had offered me the details on the Wyoming militia, and the willingness of Drinker to confirm the story. If this were indeed true, I didn't know why. But what I did know, and all that mattered in giving me the upper hand in this discussion, was that a federal agent meeting with a militia leader a week or so before an assassination attempt made for significant news, whether I knew the reason or not. In the newspaper business, that's what's known as leverage.
Drinker said, "Can we talk off the record?"
Playing hardball, I replied, "No. Not now. Not until I get some sort of on-the-record explanation."
That was met with more silence. Eventually Drinker said, "Well, then, maybe I'll just refer you to the bureau flack."
"Fine," I replied. "Either way, there's a story in tomorrow's paper about you flying out to Idaho two weeks ago. You can either enlighten me or ignore me. Your choice."
"If I tell you the truth, if that truth gets published in your paper, it puts someone's life in imminent danger. I don't want that on my head, and I don't think you want it on yours, either. We need to be off the record."
In the news media, there are four conditions of discussions between sources of information and the reporters who seek knowledge from them.