“One of our undercover people, temporarily on loan to the FBI from his regular police job.”
“A cop drove like a freaked-out maniac through the heart of downtown Washington and got eleven people killed?”
“What the hell do you think he ought to have done?” the director demanded. “Let them shoot him?”
“Well, Jesus, I think you ought to ask the Japanese ambassador that question. Maybe he can give you an answer. One escapes me just now.”
George Bush broke in. “Our guy okay?”
“Got grazed by two bullets. But he’s okay. Shook as hell.”
“You got enough to arrest Freeman McNally?”
“No, sir,” said Gideon Cohen. “We don’t. Oh, we have it chapter and verse from the undercover man, but we’re going to need more than just the testimony of one man. And most of his testimony will be hearsay. He’s had little personal contact with McNally.”
“When?”
“Soon. But not yet.”
“The press is gonna crucify us,” Dorfman muttered.
“Had to happen sooner or later,” Gideon Cohen remarked to no one in particular.
“Explain.”
“We’ve got over four hundred murders a year here in the District, something like eighty percent of them drug related. It was just a matter of time before some tourists or political bigwigs got caught in a crossfire.”
“I don’t buy that. This drug chase in the downtown sounds like sloppy police work to me. Where were the uniformed police while these people were playing Al Capone and Dutch Schultz on Constitution Avenue?”
Cohen sneered. “Jesus, Dorfman, get real! If four hundred middle-class white people had been slaughtered last year in Howard County, there’d have been a mass march on Washington before the Fourth of July. They’d have dragged you politics-as-usual guys out of the Capitol kicking and screaming and hung the whole damn crowd.”
“I think we’re wasting our time pointing fingers at the cops,” George Bush said dryly and adjusted the trousers of his eight-hundred-dollar suit. “The Japanese ambassador is coming over in a little while to hand me my head on a plate. The country is in an uproar. So what was politically impossible last week is possible now. That’s all any politician can ever try to do, Gid — the possible. I’m not the Pied Piper. I can’t take them where they don’t want to go. And I’m not apologizing for that. I’m not Jesus Christ either.”
Bush picked up Cohen’s wish list from his desk. “A federal ID card for every man, woman, and child in the country? That’ll never wash. The Supreme Court says they can burn the flag as political protest. They’ll be using these cards for toilet paper.”
“That’d be nice to have, but—”
“A national, mandatory drug rehab program? For an estimated ten billion per year? Where are we going to get the money? For another federal bureaucracy that will be so big and bloated it won’t help anybody.”
“It would—”
“And an overhaul of the criminal justice system,” the President continued. “ ‘Streamline and eliminate delay’ you say. The procedures of the criminal justice system, obsolete and inefficient though they are, are mandated by the Bill of Rights according to the nine wise men on the Supreme Court. We’d need a constitutional convention to revise the Bill of Rights. Despite widely held opinions to the contrary, I am not damn fool enough to advocate opening that Pandora’s box.”
Cohen said nothing.
“Some of this stuff we can do. I’ve marked the items. Now, Gid, you and Bill and the secretary of the Treasury get together and come up with specifics. You’ve got two hours. We’ll get the Senate and House leadership over here and brief them, then we’ll go to the press conference and see if I can get through that with a whole hide. I don’t suppose they’ll have many questions about Cuba or Lithuania or foreign aid to the Soviets, all subjects I’ve spent two days reviewing.” He threw up his hands. “In the meantime the Japanese ambassador, one of the best friends America has in the Japanese government, wants to tell me what he thinks of American law enforcement. Mr. FBI Director, you can sit here with me and sweat through that.”
This morning in his Pentagon cubicle Captain Jake Grafton read with professional interest the stories in the Washington Times and the Post about the chase and spectacular accident of the previous evening. As the senior officer in the Joint Staff counternarcotics section, he routinely read the papers to learn what the public press had to say about the drug problem. The press, he knew, defined the issues for the electorate, which in turn set the priorities for the politicians. The issues with which the government sought to grapple were those nebulous perceptions created by the passing of selected raw facts through these imperfect double filters: any public servant who failed to understand this basic truth was doomed to frustrated ineffectiveness. Despite the fact that he had spent his professional life in a military organization solving simpler, more clearly defined problems, Jake Grafton, farmer’s son and history major, instinctively understood how things worked in a democracy.
At a cubicle behind him, Jake could hear one of his colleagues, an air force lieutenant colonel, explaining the operation of the computer terminals to Toad Tarkington. A terminal rested on every desk. Tarkington seemed to be soaking up the procedures with nonchalant ease. Jake glanced at the dark screen on his own desk and smiled wryly. He had struggled like Hercules to acquire computer literacy while Tarkington seemed to pick it up as naturally as breathing.
Beside the front-page story in the Post about the car-bus crash was another story that the captain read with interest. By Jack Yocke, datelined Havana, Cuba, it was, the tag line promised, the first in a five-part series.
The story was about a rural family and its trek to the capital to personally witness the downfall of Castro. Why they came, what they saw and ate, where they slept, what they wanted for themselves and their children, these were the strands that Yocke wove. The story was raw, powerful, and Jake Grafton was impressed. Perhaps there was more to Jack Yocke than—
The telephone interrupted his perusal of the paper. He folded it and laid it on his desk.
“Captain, would you come to my office, please.”
Four minutes later he stood in front of his boss, a two-star army general. When he had first reported to the Joint Staff Jake had studied the organization chart carefully and, after counting, concluded that there were fifty-seven flag officers between him and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, a four-star army general. Major General Franks was the fifty-seventh down from the top. Jake Grafton had already discovered how short that distance really was.
“Captain, would you go to the chairman’s office on the E-Ring. He is going over to the White House in a few minutes and he wants the senior officer in the counternarcotics section to accompany him.”
“Yes, sir,” Jake Grafton said, and made his exit. He didn’t ask General Franks what this was about because Franks probably didn’t know.
Leaving the Joint Staff spaces, Jake Grafton was hailed by the door attendant. Jake returned Mr. James’ greeting with a preoccupied smile.
Hayden Land was brusque this morning. “They’re in a snit over at the White House. Dorfman ordered me to appear. Ordered me! That man has the personality of a cliff ape.”
The general’s aide accompanied Hayden Land and Jake to the White House. As they rode through the streets in the chairman’s limo, General Land briefed both the junior officers: “The President is going to announce new initiatives to combat the drug business. The White House staff have two proposals that affect the military. They want to increase the number of army teams patrolling the Mexican border, and they want a carrier battle group put into the eastern Caribbean or the Gulf of Mexico.”