Wildcard. Rachel Lee

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СКАЧАТЬ none, outside in the lobby.”

      “Well, Grant wasn’t out there.”

      “Hmm.” Tom closed his eyes and pictured again what he’d seen on the tapes. “Wrong,” he said.

      “Wrong?”

      “Wrong. Most definitely wrong. There were nearly two hundred people in the lobby, and a constant flow of people in and out of the ballroom. Nobody was checking credentials at the ballroom door?”

      “Campaign staffers were,” Miriam said. “Senior people were allowed in, and the rest were in the lobby. I’d guess that’s standard procedure in these things.”

      “Maybe.” Tom opened his eyes and sat on the other end of the couch. “It’s possible. But Terry says they’re running down a bunch of threatening letters, right?”

      She nodded. “That’s what he’s hearing. Shop talk. Lawrence’s protection team was busier than hell with all the hate mail. But he was the frontrunner. Terry didn’t sound like anyone thought it was unusual.”

      Tom nodded. “The protection detail should have been more alert.”

      She leaned toward him. “Tom, you can’t second-guess them. It won’t do any good. There were four agents there. Five counting the supervisor in the video room. That should have been enough. Those guys know their jobs.”

      “Sure.” He rubbed his chin. “On the other hand, ‘those guys’ let someone change the parade route in Dallas. Did you know Kennedy’s limo nearly had to stop when it took that hard left turn onto Elm, and even so, it almost hit the curb? He was a sitting duck. And that was strictly against Secret Service regulations at the time.”

      Miriam let out a sigh of exasperation. “Tom, things happen. Unforeseen things. It doesn’t make a conspiracy.”

      “I’m not saying conspiracy. I’m just saying that somebody screwed up.”

      “Okay. Okay.” She pushed her hair back from her face. “I’ll go with that. Security was a little lax. But in crowds like this…” She shrugged.

      “You’re a good devil’s advocate, Miriam.” He smiled.

      “How am I supposed to take that?”

      “You make me think more clearly. That’s how.”

      Surprising her, he reached for the remote and switched on the TV and VCR again. He hit Rewind, and a bewildering array of images flashed before her eyes. Apparently this was one of the security tapes, in full living color.

      Suddenly a picture froze on the screen.

      “What do you see?” he asked.

      “Jerry Connally and Grant embracing.”

      “And where’s the agent?”

      “Left rear.”

      “Right.” He skipped ahead. “And now?”

      “Grant’s coming down the steps from the stage with Jerry.”

      “Right. And the agent is still on the stage.” Tom jumped forward again. “Still not following them.” Forward again. “He’s still on the stage. If I remember correctly, the other agents in the room stayed where they were, too. Except for the guy in front of the podium.”

      Another picture showed that agent turning in the direction Grant and Jerry had gone. The next showed him take a step in that direction. The agent on the podium never moved a muscle.

      “Now,” said Tom, “call me crazy, but I want to know why that agent on the stage never moved. You know the protocol for protection teams in a crowd, Miriam. A moving box, with the principal in the middle.”

      “The crowd had been vetted, Tom.”

      “Maybe. Maybe.”

      He switched tapes to one with film of the lobby outside the ballroom. Grant and Jerry appeared in the doorway, stepping out into the crowd. The Secret Service agent was holding the door, eyes on Lawrence.

      “It looks innocent enough to me,” Miriam said. “Do me a favor and don’t replay the shooting.”

      “I won’t. But it’s not innocent. The agent is looking at Lawrence, see?” He pointed. “They’re trained not to look at the principal but at the crowd.”

      “Lawrence is passing him, Tom. It’s a glance. He’s a human being. I’m sorry. I just don’t think there’s enough here to hang the security detail out to dry.”

      After a few more minutes of discussion that went nowhere, Miriam went to bed. Tom replayed the news video that Jerry had sent. Only one of the news crews had been in the lobby…giving the world the unforgettable images that were still being broadcast.

      Nothing.

      Finally, to give his head a chance to clear, he picked up his files and drove back to D.C., where he could work on the Dixon conundrum without disturbing Miriam.

      Like any good agent, he’d found an irregularity, and he was determined to run it to ground. So far he had only a probably illegal loan from a major bank to a slightly off-the-edge sheep rancher in Idaho who funded a private militia group that so far seemed to consist of five men and their dogs.

      Which wasn’t a hell of a threat to the security of the United States. After Waco and Ruby Ridge, the FBI wasn’t about to ride in with guns blazing over six wackos with some semiautomatic weapons.

      But the money…a quarter of a million dollars… That was too much to ignore. And for a while it silenced a small girl’s cry of betrayal.

      It was the links. And he’d long ago learned that few links in life were purely accidental. Like attracted like. Harrison Rice had attracted Edward Morgan, whose sister had attracted a military cadet named Wesley Dixon—a man who by all accounts was destined for stars on his shoulders until he went…nuts?

      Not nuts. If he was nuts, his wife would have left him and his brother-in-law wouldn’t have risked giving him a shady loan. Ergo, Wes Dixon wasn’t nuts, and nothing about him and his apparently crazy turn in life had caused a break between him and the powerful establishment he’d once belonged to.

      That had Tom’s nose twitching like mad. If Dixon still had an in with the power elite, then he must in some way be useful to them. The question was, was he still on the A-list, or had he been demoted?

      That was surprisingly easy to learn, thanks to all the security put in place since September 11, 2001. It didn’t take much effort to get his computer to spit out the records of all Dixon’s air travel in the last two years.

      It was a pretty picture. It seemed he regularly traveled to New York and Boston, and once to D.C. His wife often traveled with him, but not always. He maintained connections.

      Tom sighed and rubbed his eyes, not wanting to admit that he was getting too tired to think clearly. Admitting that would mean going back to his room to sleep, a guest room in Miriam’s house, a room with not one thing to identify it as his own space, even temporarily. Even in the bathroom, СКАЧАТЬ