Then Bob made his recommendations.

1) Secret Service should be informed at earliest possible date of the Soviet attempt and brought in on our side. But they have to be made to understand that the point of the operation is not only to safeguard the President’s life but to apprehend and interrogate the Soviet-Iraqi shooting team and its support units.

2) Radio networks should be authorized and interjurisdictional limits set, so that SS knows exactly its responsibilities and this agency knows what it can do too.

3) Monitoring of St. Louis Cathedral in New Orleans should begin immediately; almost surely the shooting team will begin to modify and adapt it prior to 1 March. At the same time surveillance should be extremely discreet, so as not to scare away “the bird.” As enemy investigation of the site will almost certainly be thorough, it is further recommended that no direct observational devices or planted listening devices be employed. They would be onto those in a second. A very good way might be to observe from above – F4Js at 20,000 feet orbiting in circle – with infrared cameras for heat signatures, in the way the Air Force did in Vietnam when it was interdicting the Ho Chi Minh Trail.

4) An aerial search of greater New Orleans bayou and swamp area should be commenced immediately in order to locate the site of Russian preparation. In order to adjust to climatic conditions in late winter/ early spring, the shooting team will almost certainly hold several live fire run-throughs under circumstances as exact as possible so that Solaratov knows exactly what to expect as to load performance and so forth.

5) The President should of course be warned, but if he is as courageous as he proved to be in the war against Iraq, he will insist upon taking part in the exercise to lure the shooting team onward, rather than using a double or canceling the event. His earliest participation is necessary.

6) On day of event, counter sniper teams should be stationed concentrically from the President’s speaking position as indicated on map. These positions are located roughly 600 yards out and are oriented away from, rather than toward, the President. Each unit should be equipped with one Remington Model-40A1 rifle with Unertl 10× scope and carry duty load of M852 Match Accuracy Lake City Arsenal 7.62mm NATO cartridges, in order to engage the Soviet-Iraqi team in the event of actual shooting. (I would like to lead one of these units, and I prefer to locate myself at the starred site on the map on the day of the event; if necessary, and given the proper command authority, I can take out the Soviet – Iraqi team before any harm is done. I’ll shoot the shooter through center mass and the spotter – if there is one – in the left body quadrant; a quick reactive team can almost certainly get to him before he comes out of shock and begins self-destruction procedures. He should be an interesting intelligence source.)

7) Debriefing of captured Soviet and/or personnel should begin immediately so that we may act on their intelligence immediately; in Vietnam, interrogation information was sometimes squandered when we reacted too slowly.

He stopped typing.

That was it.

What else was there?

Well, of course there was one other thing and it was the thing that no man could plan for. Luck. One only prayed for it, and maybe it would be there and maybe it wouldn’t.

He looked at his watch. Time to sleep; tomorrow he’d send the report to the people he now believed represented the Central Intelligence Agency.

He stripped and crawled into bed. Mike bounded up too, for the big soft stupid dog liked to touch him ever so slightly through the covers in sleep.

But at four he awakened and went back and read the document over. It seemed good. He couldn’t sleep however. He knew it was absurd but he felt he was being watched or something. He sat back and tried to work out his feelings about his new employers.

He didn’t trust them. But they were all he had.

And then he thought: I need an edge. I need a way to keep these boys from turning on me if things go wrong. He tried to think of what that might be, but he couldn’t come up with a thing.

It was humiliating. Nick had become a complete and total gofer, a clerk, a fool. He bustled through the corridors with files and coffee and doughnuts like Hazel the maid. Howdy Duty hardly let him talk to the Secret Service people at all, leaving that delicate task to himself; Nick had been appointed head eunuch.

“Hey, Memphis, your slip is showing,” his ex-partner Mickey Sontag yelled out as Nick raced from the file room to a former storage room now bearing the important title on the door JOINT SECRET SERVICE/BUREAU MEETING GROUP, where the federal bodyguards and the sanctimonious Utey had set up shop.

“Yeah, yeah” said Nick helplessly, knowing he was running late, pissed as hell that Ginny Feany, mistress of the files, had not found the dope on one Clark Clarkson, White Knight of the Lafayette Parish Ku Klux Klan, quite fast enough.

“Boy, they running you ragged, old Saint Nick.”

Nick was thirty-four; this old shit had to stop.

But “Yeah, yeah” was all he could think to say.

In the meeting, the senior Secret Service guy, Phil Mueller, was sounding off as usual like General Patton for a squad of his own troops and for Howdy as well.

“And this is the last of them?”

“He says it is,” answered Utey for Nick, before Nick could answer for himself.

“Even the inactives, the discontinueds, the imprisoned and the dead ones?”

“All of them, Phil.”

“So with your files, with our information, and with the stuff from the National Crime Index, we got what, total maybe two hundred fifty names? Triaged into three categories, Alphas, Betas and Charlies, for bad risk, possible risk, and should-be-checked-out. How’s the numbers on it? You getting through the Alphas?”

“Uh, Phil,” said one of the Secret Service joes, “we’re working them pretty hard. I’ve got three teams on them, that’s six guys for fifty-six of them, I’ve got a Beta team, and we’ve got a hundred twenty-four Betas, the rest Charlies.”

“How’s it shaping up timewise?”

“I think we’ll make the Alphas, no sweat, if we bring some of our other people in. I think we’ll make most of the Betas, too, we get a break or two. But it’s those damn Charlies that have us worried. I just don’t think, manpowerwise, we’re going to get very far into them.”

“Um,” said Mueller.

“A thought, Phil,” said Howdy Duty.

“Yes, Howard.”

“Maybe Nick could work the Charlies. Most of it’s phone, no? Checking up?”

“Hmmm,” said Mueller.

“He’d be more than willing, right, Nick?”

Nick just sat there, stewing.

Great. What these guys were doing – what they always did prior to a visit by the Man – was developing, in coordination with local law enforcement and cooperating federal agencies, a regional list of known wackos, screwballs, right- and left-wing dingbats, survivalists, and others fitting the potential risk profile. These people were then investigated by teams to determine location and current situation; if some signal of instability was detected by the officers, then surveillance was sometimes mandated; more frequently, the guys were simply rousted savagely, detained, had the shit scared out of them, then sent on their way. It was painstaking, boring work, absolutely the dullest. But it was Secret Service policy to know where all the nuts were stored before the Man got into gun range.

“But the bomb – ” Nick began.

“Can wait,” snapped Mueller. “You get digging into the Charlies, okay, Memphis?”

“He’ll do it,” assured Utey. “Nick, you won’t mind putting in the extra time, will you?”