“So what do we do?” Dillon asked.

“Go to Washington and see the President, but first, I’m going to phone Blake Johnson. As for you, Chief Inspector, make sure the Lear is standing by at Farley Field.”

Blake Johnson was forty-eight, a tall and handsome man with jet-black hair who looked years younger than he was. A Marine at nineteen, he’d come out of Vietnam with a Silver Star, two Purple Hearts, and a Vietnamese Cross of Valor. His law degree at Georgia State had taken him into the FBI.

One day in June three years earlier, he had been shadowing Senator Jake Cazalet because of death threats received from certain right-wing fascist groups. The police escort had lost the Senator’s limousine, but Blake Johnson, carving his way through heavy evening traffic, had arrived just as an attack was taking place. He had shot both men involved, had taken a bullet in his left thigh.

It was the start of an enduring relationship with Jake Cazalet and had brought him to his present appointment as Director of the General Affairs Department at the White House.

This was supposed to be an outfit responsible for various administration matters and was known, because it was downstairs, as the Basement. In fact, to those in the know, it was the President’s private investigative squad and one of the most closely guarded secrets of the administration. It was totally separate from the CIA, the FBI, the Secret Service. In fact, the whispers about it were so faint that few people believed it existed. Cazalet had inherited it, and had taken advantage of the retirement of the previous incumbent to offer the job to Blake Johnson.

Ferguson used his direct Codex Four line to the Basement office, and Johnson, at his desk, answered at once.

“Say who you are.”

“Charles Ferguson, you bugger.”

“Charles, how goes it?”

“Bad, I’m afraid. I’ve got very serious trouble for you and the President, and I mean serious. I know it’s strange, but no communication with the Prime Minister, please.”

“That bad?”

“I’m afraid so. I’ll leave in an hour with Dillon and Chief Inspector Bernstein. Dillon’s been up to his neck in this thing. We must see the President at the White House the moment we get in.”

“Not possible. He’s gone down to his own house for a couple of days on the beach at Nantucket. Time to reflect.”

“This is life and death, Blake.”

There was a pause. “I see.”

Ferguson took a deep breath. “You’re his friend, Blake. Tell him it refers to the safety of… one who was lost but now is found.”

“Jesus, Charles, what is this, a parlor game?”

“I can’t say more, not now. Just tell him. He’ll know what I mean. So will Teddy Grant. You’ve got to trust me on this, Blake – this is as important as it comes.”

And Johnson was all efficiency now. “Okay. Don’t come into Washington International. Make it Andrews Air Force Base. I’ll tell them to expect you. They’ll arrange a helicopter to drop you on the beach at Nantucket as they do for the President.”

Ferguson said, “No CIA, Blake, no security services of any description. Just come yourself.”

“I’ll take your word for it, Charles. Okay, I’ll go ahead and prepare the President. I’ll see you there,” and he put down the phone.

Ferguson said, “Right, let’s get moving. No time to waste on this one,” and he led the way out.

On the beach at the old house near Nantucket, the President walked, tracked by two Secret Service men and his dog, Murchison, a black flatcoat retriever. The wind was blowing, the surf tumbling in, and it was good to be alive and away from Washington. He called the nearest Secret Service man over, an enormous black ex-Marine called Clancey Smith, who had served in the Gulf.

“Light me a cigarette, Clancey,” the President said. “Can’t manage in this wind.”

Clancey took two Marlboros from his pack, lit them inside his storm coat, and passed one to the President.

Cazalet laughed. “Didn’t Paul Henreid do that for Bette Davis in Now Voyager?”

“Must have been before my time, Mr. President.”

At that moment, there was a cry and they turned and saw Teddy Grant running toward them. Murchison bounded forward to meet him and they arrived together, Teddy breathless.

“For God’s sake, Teddy, what is it?” Cazalet demanded.

Teddy gestured to Clancey, who withdrew, and only then did he deliver the bad news.

There was the usual press of people outside the White House on Pennsylvania Avenue, tourists mostly, taking pictures and hoping for a sign of the good and the great, maybe even the President, but there were no TV cameras.

Mark Gold turned up the collar of his coat against the light rain and smiled at the nearest policeman. “No TV today. They can’t have lost interest in Cazalet that quickly.”

The policeman shrugged. “He ain’t here. Went down to Nantucket for a day or two. If you’d been here earlier, you’d have seen the helicopter.”

“Heh, I’m sorry I missed that.”

Mark Gold turned away through the crowd and walked some distance along Pennsylvania Avenue to where he had left his car. He was a senior computer operator in the Defense Department, a graduate of Columbia University in computer science. He couldn’t remember when he’d last visited a synagogue. His older brother, Simon, had been different, a deeply religious man who’d given up a lucrative job as a broker on the New York Stock Exchange to emigrate to Israel to farm on a kibbutz in the north near the Golan. He had been killed, along with twelve other people, when Hamas terrorists had blanketed the kibbutz with seven rockets.

Gold had gone to Israel, too late for any funeral, but to pay his respects, had stood at the grave of a much-loved brother, filled with a deep rage, so that when Aaron Eitan had accosted him, ostensibly for sympathy, but sounding him out, it was good to have someone to pour out his anger to.

It had ended with him being picked up by car, blindfolded, and delivered to a back street house in Jerusalem. When his blindfold had been removed, there was Judas in his black hood seated at a table.

So, Mark Gold was a Maccabee and proud to serve. It gave his life a sense of purpose, and his ability to access Defense Department computers was more than useful to the organization. He could even hack in to CIA records at Langley.

Before starting the car, he took out the special satellite-linked mobile phone and punched the coded series. Judas answered very quickly.

“It’s Gold. The President’s gone to his house at Nantucket for the weekend. I presume that’s where our friends will go.”

“Did you check the hotel?”

“Yes, reservations confirmed.”

“They’re certain to go there after Nantucket. Dillon, of course, will have performed his task. You can take care of him at the Charlton as we agreed.”

“Consider it done.”

Gold put the phone in his pocket, switched on the engine, and drove away.

When the Lear jet landed at Andrews Air Force Base, the news wasn’t good. The young major who was waiting to greet them saluted formally.

“My respects, General.”

“Brigadier,” Ferguson told him.

“We could have a problem. Nantucket, the whole area, is subject to fog a lot. We usually drop the President on the beach right outside his home by helicopter. That may not be possible today.”

“So where would we go?”

“There’s an air force base nearby. You’ll proceed onwards by limousine. It’s all been taken care of.”

“Then let’s get on with it,” Ferguson said.

Ten minutes later, the three of them were strapping into a helicopter that took off almost instantly.

When Mark Gold went into Sammy’s Bar, it was early evening and the place was almost empty. The black man with dreadlocks at the corner table was Nelson Harker and just now he was reading the Washington Post.