Jack & Jill Read online

  Then Jack saw Jill. Jill was right on time in the lobby. Always on time. She was at the Peninsula according to plan. Always according to plan.

  She had on a silver-and-blue jogging suit, but she didn’t look as if she’d raised a sweat coming up from the Waldorf. He wondered if she had run or walked. Or maybe even caught a Yellow Cab.

  He didn’t acknowledge her in any way. He stepped into a waiting elevator and took it to his floor. Sara would take the next elevator.

  He let himself into his room and waited for her. A single knock on the door. She was on schedule. Less than sixty seconds behind him.

  “I look terrible,” she said. Sara’s first words. It was so typical of her self-effacing tone, her view of herself, her vulnerability. Sara the poor gimp.

  “No, you don’t,” he reassured her. “You look beautiful, because you are beautiful.” She didn’t look her best, though. She was showing the terrible strain of these last hours. Her face was a mask of worry and doubt, too much makeup and mascara and bright red lipstick. D day. She’d sprayed her blond hair, and it looked brittle.

  “The Waldorf is hopping already,” she reported to him. “They think an assassination attempt definitely will be made today. They’re ready for it, at least they think they are. Five thousand regular New York police, plus the Secret Service, the FBI. They have an army on hand.”

  “Let them think they’re ready,” Jack said. “We’ll see soon enough, won’t we? Now come here, you,” he smiled. “You don’t look terrible at all. Never happen. You look ravishing, Sara. May I ravage you?”

  “Now?” Sara weakly protested. It was a whisper. So tiny and vulnerable and unsure. But she couldn’t resist his strong, reassuring embrace. She never had been able to, and that was part of the plan as well. Everything had been anticipated, which was why they couldn’t fail.

  He slid out of his running shirt, exposing a glistening-wet chest. All the tufts of his hair were damp with sweat. He pressed up against Sara. She arched her body hard against him. Their pulses were racing. Jack and Jill. In New York. So close to the end.

  He could feel her heartbeat quickening, like a small hunted animal’s. She couldn’t help it. She was so scared now, legitimately so.

  “Please tell me that we’ll see each other again, even if we won’t. Tell me it isn’t over after today, Sam.”

  “It won’t be over, Monkey Face. I’m as frightened as you are right now. To feel this way is normal, and sane. You’re very sane. We both are.

  “In a few hours we’ll be on our way out of New York. All of this Jack and Jill will be behind us,” she whispered. “Oh, I do love you, Sam. I love you so much that it’s scary.”

  It was scary. More than Sara could possibly know. More than anybody ought to know, or ever would. History wasn’t for the general public—it never had been.

  Slowly and carefully, he slid a Ruger from the rear waistband of his sweatpants. His hands were sweaty. He was holding his breath now. He placed the gun against Sara’s head and fired at a slightly downward angle into her temple. Just one shot.

  A professional execution.

  Without passion.

  Almost without passion.

  The Ruger was silenced. The noise in the hotel room was no more than a tiny, insignificant spit. The harsh impact of the 9mm bullet took her out of his arms. He shivered involuntarily as he looked down on the lifeless body on the hotel rug.

  “Now it’s over,” he said. “The pain of your life is over, all the bitterness and hurt. I’m sorry, Monkey Face.”

  He put the final note in Jill’s right hand. Then he squeezed her fist so that the note crumpled naturally. He held Sara’s hand for the last time.

  And Jill came tumbling after. He thought of the words in the children’s rhyme.

  But Jack would not fall down.

  The day of ultimate madness had begun.

  Jack and Jill had finally begun.

  PART VI

  NOBODY IS SAFE ANYMORE—NOBODY

  CHAPTER

  87

  THE THICK DOCUMENT in my hands was entitled Visit of the President of the United States. New York City, December 16 and 17. It ran to eighty-nine pages and included virtually every moment from when the President would step off Air Force One at La Guardia until he reboarded at approximately two in the afternoon and traveled back to Washington.

  Included among the pages were sketches, literally of everywhere the President would be: La Guardia Airport, the Waldorf, the Felt Forum inside Madison Square Garden, the motorcade routes, alternate routes.

  The Secret Service document stated:

  10:55 A.M. The President and Mrs. Byrnes board motorcade

  Note: The president and Mrs. Byrnes proceed through a cordon of NYPD officers at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel.

  11:00 A.M. Motorcade departs Waldorf via route (code C) to Madison Square Garden, the Felt Forum

  Closed arrival.

  No press pool coverage.

  I occupied my mind with the puzzle of Jack and Jill as the time approached for the President to leave the Waldorf and then travel downtown with the motorcade of limousines, police radio cars, and motorcycles. For the past three days, the FBI, Secret Service, and New York police had been cooperating on a massive plan to try and capture Jack and Jill if they actually came to Madison Square Garden. Nearly a thousand plainclothes agents and detectives would be inside for the President’s speech. We all had doubts that it would be enough protection.

  A disturbing mania had been running through my head all morning: No one ever stops an assassin’s bullet. No one stops a bullet except the victim.

  What would Jack and Jill do? How would it go down? I believed they would be at Madison Square Garden. I suspected that they planned to do the job up close. And somehow, they planned to escape.

  The President and Mrs. Byrnes were escorted to their car at precisely five minutes to eleven. A phalanx of a dozen Secret Service agents shadowed them from the tower suite to an armor-plated limousine waiting in the hotel’s underground garage.

  I walked closely behind the main escort group. My role here wasn’t to physically protect the President. I had already told Jay Grayer how I believed the attempt would be made. It would be close in. It would be showy. But they would have a plan to escape.

  There had already been a change in plans that morning. No cordon of high-ranking policemen at the hotel’s rear entrance. No photo opportunities. The President had been convinced not to go through the open Waldorf lobby a second time.

  I watched as Mrs. Byrnes and the President walked into the limousine for the two-mile ride. The two of them held hands. It was a touching moment to witness. It fit everything I knew about Thomas and Sally Byrnes.

  No regrets.

  The motorcade began to move right on time. It was what the Secret Service called “the formal package motorcade.” There were twenty-eight cars. Six held counterassault teams. One car, “Intelligence,” held computers to keep contact with surveillance on known threats to the President. I wondered if Jack and Jill had the schedule, even the number of cars.

  The motorcade’s limos and town cars rode at almost perpendicular angles out of the steep hotel garage. Manhole covers clattered loudly under our tires. The route to the auditorium began on Park Avenue, then jogged west along Forty-seventh Street to Fifth.

  I rode with Don Hamerman, two cars behind the President. Even Hamerman was subdued and distant that morning. Nothing had happened yet. Could Jack and Jill possibly have changed their plan? Was this part of covering their trail? Would they surface when we began to doubt that they would? Would they surprise me and attack the motorcade?

  I watched everything out the car window. The morning was an eerie, out-of-body experience. The people lining the street were enthusiastic, clapping and cheering as the motorcade passed by. That was one reason why President Byrnes had decided he couldn’t hide in the White House any longer. The people, even New Yorkers, wanted a piece of him. He was a good president so far, a po
pular one, a courageous one, too.

  Who wanted to kill Thomas Byrnes, and why? There were so many potential enemies, but I kept returning to the President’s own list. Senator Glass, Vice President Mahoney, a few reactionaries in Congress, powerful men connected to Wall Street. He had said that he was trying to change the system, and the system fiercely resented the change.

  The system fiercely resented change!

  Police sirens wailed and seemed to be everywhere around us. It was a screaming wall of noise that was just right for the occasion. My eyes drifted back and forth between the cheering crowds and the quickly moving line of cars, the presidential motorcade.

  I was a part of it, and yet I also felt disconnected. I couldn’t help thinking of Dallas, John Kennedy, Robert Kennedy, and Dr. King. The past tragedies of our country. Our sorrowful history. I couldn’t take my eyes off Stagecoach.

  It struck me as almost impossible, as unthinkable, that two of the three major assassinations remained mysterious and unsolved in most people’s minds. Two of the three major murder cases of our century had never been satisfactorily cleared.

  The VIP garage underneath Madison Square Garden was a concrete bunker, which was painted bright white. There must have been a hundred Secret Service and New York police gathered there to meet us. The Secret Service agents all wore earphones that plugged them into the Service’s cellular net.

  I watched Thomas and Sally Byrnes slowly get out of their armored car. I watched the President’s eyes. He seemed steady and confident and focused. Maybe he knew exactly what he was doing: maybe his way was the only way for this to go.

  I was less than a dozen feet away from the President and his wife. Every second they were out in the open seemed an eternity. There were too many people there in the parking garage. Any of them could be a killer.

  The President and Sally Byrnes were smiling, talking smoothly and easily to important well-wishers from New York. They were both very skilled at this. They understood the tremendously important ceremonial role of the office. The symbolism and the absolute power. That was why they were here. I very much liked their sense of duty and responsibility. Nana was wrong about them. I was convinced they were decent people trying to do their best. I understood how difficult their jobs were. I hadn’t realized this before I came to the White House.

  Nothing must happen to President Byrnes or Sally Byrnes, I thought—as if an act of will could stop an assassin’s bullet, stop terrible things from happening there in the garage or upstairs in the packed Felt Forum.

  Any one of these people could be Jack or Jill, I kept thinking as I watched the crowd.

  Get the President and his wife out of here. Do it now! Let’s go, let’s go.

  The Kennedy Center in D.C.! The shooting of the law student, Charlotte Kinsey, in a public place, just like this! My mind kept going back to that particular killing.

  Something had happened there, something revealing about Jack and Jill. The pattern had been broken! What was the real pattern?

  We began to walk upstairs to the jam-packed auditorium.

  If Jack and Jill are willing to die, they can succeed here. Easily!

  And yet it seemed to me that they planned to get away with this. That was the one pattern of theirs that was consistent. I didn’t see how that could happen in the middle of Madison Square Garden—not if they chose to attack here.

  The real Jack and Jill—the President and the First Lady of the United States—had arrived. On time.

  CHAPTER

  88

  A DROP OF SWEAT slowly rolled off the tip of my nose.

  A tractor-trailer was sitting on my chest.

  The thunderous noise coming from inside the concrete-and-steel auditorium added to the escalating confusion and chaos. It was decibels beyond deafening once we were inside. Nearly ten thousand people had filled the auditorium by the time we arrived.

  I moved toward the main auditorium stage with the rest of the security entourage. Secret Service agents, FBI, U.S. marshals, and New York police were posted everywhere around the President. I searched everywhere for Kevin Hawkins. Hopefully, at his side, Jill.

  President Byrnes never let his smile or his step falter as he entered the auditorium. I remembered his words: “A threat by a couple of kooks can’t be permitted to disrupt the government of the United States. We can’t allow that to happen.”

  It was warm in the building, but I was in a cold sweat—as cold as the winds blowing off the Hudson River. We were less than thirty yards from the massive stage that was filled with celebrities and well-known politicians, including both the governor and the city’s popular mayor.

  Cameras flashed blinding light everywhere, from every imaginable angle. A whine of feedback lashed out from one of the stage microphones. I adjusted a five-pointed star on the left lapel of my suit jacket. The star was color-coded for the day. It identified me as part of the Secret Service team. The day’s color was green. For hope?

  Jack and Jill had kept all their promises so far. They could have found a way to get weapons inside. There were at least a thousand handguns, but also rifles and shotguns inside the huge amphitheater. The police and other security guards had them.

  Any one of them could be Jack or Jill.

  Any one of them certainly could be Kevin Hawkins.

  Don Hamerman was at my side, but it was too loud for us to talk in anything approaching normal tones. Occasionally, we leaned close and shouted into each other’s ear.

  Even then, it was difficult to hear more than an isolated word or phrase.

  “He’s taking too long to walk to the stage!” Hamerman said. I think that’s what he said.

  “I know it. Tell me about it,” I shouted back.

  “Watch the crowd movement,” he yelled at me. “They’ll stampede if they see a gun pulled. President’s spending too much time out in the crowd. Is he taunting the killers? What does he think that he has to prove?”

  The chief of staff was right, of course. The President seemed to be daring Jack and Jill. Still, we might get lucky with the trap inside the crowded hall.

  Suddenly, the crowd did start to stampede! The crowd began to part.

  “Kill the son of a bitch! Kill him!” I heard the shouts a row or two ahead. I moved quickly, pushing, clawing my way forward in a hurry.

  “Watch it, you bastard,” a woman turned and yelled in my face.

  “Kill him now!” I heard up ahead.

  “Let me through!” I shouted as loud as I could.

  The man who was causing the scene up ahead had shoulder-length blond hair. He wore a baggy black parka with a black backpack attached.

  I grabbed him at the same time as someone else from the other side of the aisle. We brought the blond man down hard and fast. His skull crunched against the cement floor.

  “New York police!” the other guy holding the blond man yelled.

  “D.C. police, White House detail,” I yelled back. I was already patting down the suspect. The New York cop had his gun in the suspect’s face.

  I didn’t recognize the blond as Kevin Hawkins, but there was no way to tell for sure, and absolutely no way for us to take a chance on him. We had to take him down. There was no choice about that.

  “Kill the bastard! Kill the President!” the blond man continued to scream.

  He was absolutely crazy, everything was, not just this asshole on the floor.

  “You hurt me!” he started to yell at me and the New York cop. “You hurt my head!”

  Madman? I wondered.

  Copycat?

  Diversion?

  CHAPTER

  89

  KAMIKAZE ATTACK! It was coming any second now. A killer willing to commit suicide. That was why this couldn’t be stopped. It was also why President Byrnes was the walking dead.

  Kevin Hawkins hadn’t experienced any problems getting into a prime position in the noisy, crowded auditorium. He had used his imagination and visual skills to create an unusual identity for himself.
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br />   Hawkins was now a tall brunette woman dressed in a dark blue pantsuit. He wasn’t a very good-looking woman, he had to admit, but he was much less likely to draw attention because of it.

  Hawkins also had a Federal Bureau of Investigation ID, which was authentic down to the stamp and thickness of the paper. It identified him as Lynda Cole, a special agent from New York. The photojournalist stood at Lynda Cole’s seat in the sixth row and calmly observed the crowd.

  Snapshot.

  Snapshot.

  He took several mind photos, one after the other, mostly of his competition. The FBI, the Secret Service, the NYPD. Actually, he didn’t believe that he had any real competition.

  Kamikaze. Who could stop that? No one could. Maybe God could. And maybe not even God.

  He was impressed by the sheer numbers of the opposition, though. They were serious about trying to derail Jack and Jill this morning. And who knew? Maybe they would succeed with their superior numbers and firepower. Stranger things had happened.

  Hawkins just didn’t believe that they could. Their last real chance had been before he’d gotten inside the building—not now. The photojournalist versus the FBI, the Secret Service, the U.S. marshals, and the NYPD. That seemed reasonable enough to him. It seemed like a pretty fair game.

  Their elaborate preparations struck him as being ironic. He waited for the target to appear. Their game plan was an essential part of his. Everything they were doing now, every step, had been anticipated and was necessary for kamikaze to work.

  “She’s a Grand Old Flag” began to play from the loudspeakers, and Hawkins clapped along with the others. He was a patriot, after all. No one might believe it after today, but he knew that it was so.

  Kevin Hawkins was one of the last true patriots.

  CHAPTER

  90

  NO ONE stops an assassin’s bullet.

  There was a fire burning inside my chest. I was moving quickly through the crowd—searching for Kevin Hawkins everywhere.