PART 6
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NOBODY IS SAFE ANYMORE-NOBODY
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.t 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 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 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 with everything I knew about Thomas and Sally Byrnes.
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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 popular 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 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.
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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 go, let 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.
A DROP OF SWEATslowly 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.
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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. Awhine 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.
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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 a*shole 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 ?
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.
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.
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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.
NO ONE stops an assassin bullet.
There was a fire burning inside my chest. I was moving quickly through the crowd -- searching for Kevin Hawkins everywhere.
Every nerve in my body was stretched tight and burning. My right hand rested on the hard butt of my Glock. I kept thinking that any one of these people could be Jack or Jill. The handgun seemed insubstantial in the huge, noisy crowd.
I had made it to the second row, just to the right of the ten- to twelve-foot-high stage. The light in the hall seemed to be fading, but maybe it was the light inside my head. The light inside my soul?
The President was just stepping onto the gray metal stairs.
He clasped the hand of a well-wisher. The President patted the shoulder of another. He seemed to have forced the idea of danger out of his mind.
Sally Byrnes climbed the stairs in front of her husband. I could see her features clearly I held the thought that maybe Jack and Jill could, too. Secret Service agents seemed to take up all the available space around the stage.
I was there when it finally happened. I was so close.
Jack and Jill struck with a terrible vengeance.
A bomb went off. The loudest imaginable clap of thunder struck near the stage- maybe even on the stage itself. The explosion was completely unexpected by the bodyguards surrounding the President. It detonated inside the defense perimeter.
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morning, I was thinking as I rushed forward. I noticed that my hand was bleeding -- probably from the earlier tussle with the nutcase, but maybe from the bomb.
The worst imaginable sequence of actions began to unfold, and in very fast motion. Pistols and riot-control shotguns were pulled out everywhere in the crowd. No one seemed to know where the bomb had hit yet, or how, or the actual calculations of damage done. Or what purpose the explosion was meant to serve?
Everyone dropped to the floor in the first twenty rows and up on the stage.
Thick black smoke billowed toward the ceiling, the glass roof, and overhanging steel girders.
The air smelled like human hair burning. People were screaming everywhere. I couldn't tell how many were hurt. I couldn't see the President anymore.
The bomb had detonated close to the stage. Very close to where President Byrnes had been standing, shaking hands and chatting, just a few seconds before. The ringing was still vibrating in my ears.
I frantically pushed my way toward the stage. There was no way to tell how many people had been injured, or maybe even killed, by the blast. I still couldn't locate the President or Mrs. Byrnes because of the smoke and the bodies suddenly in frenzied motion. TV cameramen were wading in toward the disaster scene.
I finally spotted a cluster of Secret Service agents huddled tightly around the President. They had him up on his feet.
Thomas Byrnes was alive; he was safe. The agents were starting to move him out of harm's way The Secret Service bodyguards acted as a human shield for the President, who didn't appear to be hurt.
I had my Glock out, pointed up at the rafters for safety I shouted, "Police!"
Several other Secret Service agents and NYPD detectives were doing the same thing. We were identifying ourselves to one another.
Trying not to get shot, trying not to shoot anybody else during the terrifying confusion. Several people in the crowd were crying hysterically I kept pushing and pulling my way toward the southwest side exit that the Secret Service had used to bring the President in.
The escape route had been established beforehand.
Beyond the glowing red EXIT sign, a long concrete tunnel led to a special visitors' parking area on the river side of the building.
Bulletproof, armor-plated cars were waiting there. What else might be waiting? I wondered. A voice in my head shouted for attention as I moved forward as fast as I could. Jack and Jill have always been a step ahead of us. They missed him Why did they miss ?
They don't make mistakes.
I was less than a dozen yards from the President and his Secret Service guards when it hit me, when finally I understood what no one else did yet.
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"Change the route out!" I yelled at the top of my voice. "Change the escape route!"
NO ONE heard me shouting. I could barely hear my own voice in the melee. There was too much noise and confusion inside Madison Square Garden.
I pushed ahead anyway, desperately following the phalanx that looked like the rabble at a prizefight from my vantage point.
The smoke from the bomb had created a kind of strobe-light effect.
"Change the escape route! Change the escape route!" I shouted over and over.
We finally entered the whitewashed concrete tunnel. Every sound echoed bizarrely off the walls. I was right behind the last of the Secret Service agents.
"Don't go this way! Stop the President!" I continued to.yell in vain.
The tunnel was full of late-arriving special guests and even more security guards. We were pushing forward against a strong tide coming the other way It was too late to change the route now. I pushed and shoved my way closer and closer to President and Mrs. Byrnes. I desperately searched the crowd for the face of Kevin Hawkins. There was still a chance to stop him.
Every face I encountered registered shock. The eyes I saw were wide with fear, and they were searching my face. Suddenly, there were several loud pops in the heart of the tunnel. Gunshots!
Five shots seemed to explode inside the tight phalanx of people around the President. Someone had gotten inside the defense perimeter. My body sagged as if I'd been shot myself.
Five shots. Three quick -- then two more.
I couldn't see what had happened up ahead, but suddenly I heard the eeriest sound. It was a high-pitched wall, a keening.
Five shots!
Three -- then two more.
The keening sound was coming from where I had last seen fleeting glimpses of President Byrnes, where the shots had exploded just a few seconds before.
I shoved my body, all my weight, against the crowd and forced myself toward the epicenter of the madness.
It felt as if I were trying to swim out of quicksand, to pull myself free. It was almost impossible to walk, to push, to shove.
Five shots. What had happened up ahead?
Then I could see. I saw everything at once.
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My mouth felt incredibly dry. My eyes were watering. The bunkerlike tunnel had become strangely quiet.
President Thomas Byrnes was down on the gray cement floor. A lot of blood was flowing in rivulets, spreading down his white shirt. Bright red blood drained from the right side of his face, or maybe the wound was high in his neck. I couldn't tell from where I was.
Gunshots. Execution-style.
A professional hit.
Jack and Jill, those bastards!
It was their pattern, or close to it.
I waded forward, roughly, shoving people out of my way, I saw Don Hamerman, Jay Grayer, and then Sally Byrnes. Everything seemed to be happening in slow motion.
Sally Byrnes was trying to get to her husband. The First Lady didn't appear to be hurt. Still, I wondered if she was a target, too. Maybe Jill's target? Secret Service agents were holding Mrs. Byrnes back, trying to protect her. They wanted to keep her away from the bloodshed, from her husband, from any possible danger.
I saw a second body then. The shock was like a low hard punch to my stomach. No one could have anticipated this terrible scene.
A woman was down near the President. She'd been shot in her right eye socket. There was a second wound in her throat.
She appeared to be dead. A semiautomatic lay near her sprawled body.
The assassin ?
Jill?
Who else could it possibly be?
My eyes were drawn back to the motionless figure of Thomas Byrnes. I was afraid that he was already dead. I couldn't be sure, but I believed he'd been hit at least three times. I saw Sally Byrnes finally reach her husband's body. She was weeping uncontrollably, and she wasn't the only one.
JACK SAT STILL and calmly watched the maze of bumper-to-bumper cars and tractor-trailers stalled on West Street near the entrance to New York's Holland Tunnel.
He could hear radios blaring on each side of his black Jeep.
He observed the troubled and confused faces inside the cars.
A middle-aged woman in a forest-green Lexus was in tears. A thousand sirens screamed like banshees on the loose in midtown.
Jack and Jill came to The Hill. Now everyone knew why, or at least they thought they did.
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Now everyone understood the seriousness of the game.
Turn off your news reports, he wanted to tell all these well-meaning people approaching the tunnel out of New York. What's happened has nothing to do with any of you. It really and truly doesn't. You'll never know the truth. No one ever will. You can't handle the truth, anyway. You wouldn't understand if I stopped and explained it to you right here.
He tried not to think about Sara Rosen as he finally rode into the long, claustrophobic tunnel that snaked beneath the Hudson.
Beyond the tunnel, he drove south on the New Jersey Turnpike, then on 1-95 into Delaware and points farther south.
Sara was the past, and the past didn't matter. The past didn't exist, except as a lesson for the future. Sara was gone. He did think about poor Sara as he ate at the Country Cupboard near the Talleyville exit on the turnpike. It was important to grieve.
For Jill, not for President Byrnes. She was worth a dozen Thomas Byrneses. She had done a good job, a nearly perfect job, even if she had been used right from the start. And Sara Rosen had definitely been used. She had been his eyes and ears inside the White House. She had been his mistress. Poor Monkey Face.
As he approached Washington about seven that night, he made a vow: he wouldn't sentimentalize about Sara again. He knew he could do that. He could control his own thoughts.
He was better than Kevin Hawkins, who had been a very good soldier indeed.
He had been Jack.
But he was no longer Jack.
Jack no longer existed.
He was no longer Sam Harrison, either. Sam Harrison had been a facade, a necessary safeguard, a part of the complex plan. Sam Harrison no longer existed.
Now his life could be simple and mostly good again. He was almost home. He had completed his Mission: Impossible, and it was a success. Everything had gone almost perfectly Then he was home, pulling into the familiar rounded driveway that was filled with colorful seashells and tiny pebbles and a few children's toys.
He saw his little girl come running out of the house, her blond hair streaming. He saw his wife close behind her, also running.
Tears rolled down her cheeks and down his own. He wasn't afraid to cry. He wasn't afraid of anything anymore.
Jesus God, mercy, the war was finally ended. The enemy, the evil one, was dead. The good guys had won, and the most precious way of life on earth was safe for a little while longer--for the lives of his children, anyway.
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No one would ever know how and why it had happened, or who was really responsible.
Just as it had been with JFK in Dallas.
And RFK in Los Angeles.
And Watergate and Whitewater and most every other significant event in our recent history. In truth, our history was not knowing; it was being carefully shielded from the truth. That was the American way
"I love you so much," his wife whispered breathlessly against the side of his face. "You are my hero. You did such a good, brave thing."
He believed it, too. He knew it deep within his heart.
He wasn't Jack anymore. Jack no longer existed.
IT WASN'T OVER!
At a little past noon, the Secret Service received news from the NYPD of another homicide. They had strong reason to believe it was related to the shooting of President Byrnes.
Jay Grayer and I rushed to the Peninsula Hotel, which is just off Fifth Avenue in midtown. We were completely numb from the horror of the morning and still couldn't believe the President had been shot.
Even so, we had all the details of the latest murder.
A chambermaid at the hotel had discovered a body in a suite on the twelfth floor. There was also a poem from Jack and Jill in the room. A final poem?
"What is the NYPD saying?" I asked Jay during the ride uptown. "What are the details?"
"According to the initial report, the dead woman might be Jill. Jill could have been murdered -- or maybe she committed suicide. They're reasonably certain the note is authentic."
The mysteries inside horrific mysteries continued. Was this death part of the Jack and Jill scheme, too? I thought that probably it was, and that there were even more layers to unravel -- layers upon layers --
before getting to the core of the horror.
Grayer and I emerged from a gold-plated elevator onto the crime-scene floor. New York police were everywhere. I saw emergency medics, SWAT team members in helmets with Plexiglas face masks, uniforms, homicide detectives. The scene was instant bedlam. I was worried about evidence contamination, leaks to the press.
"The President?" one of the New York detectives asked us as we arrived. "Any word? Any hope?"
"He's still hanging in there. Sure; there's hope," Jay Grayer said; then we moved on, away from the cluster of detectives.
At least a dozen New York police and FBI agents were crowded into the hotel suite. The ominous sounds of police sirens rose from the streets below. Church bells pealed loudly, probably at nearby St.
Patrick's Cathedral, just south on Fifth Avenue.
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A blond woman's body lay on the plush gray carpet next to an unmade double bed. Her face, neck, and chest were covered with blood. She was wearing a silver-and-blue jogging suit.
A pair of wire-rim eyeglasses were on the rug near her Nike sneakers.
She had been shot execution-style -- as the early victims of Jack and Jill had been.
One shot, close to the head.
Very professional. Very cold.
No passion.
"Was she ever on any of our suspect lists?" I asked Grayer. We knew that the dead woman's name was Sara Rosen. She had been cleared as part of the White House staff. She'd escaped detection during two
"thorough" investigations of the staff, and that was the scariest piece of evidence yet.
"Not that we know of. She was something of a fixture at the White House communications office.
Everybody liked her efficiency, her professionalism. She was trusted. Jesus, what a mess.
What a disaster. She was trusted, Alex."
Part of the left side of her face was gone, ripped away as if by an animal. Jill looked as if she had been caught by surprise. Her eyebrows were arched. There was no fear in her eyes.
She had trusted her killer. Was it Jack who had pulled the trigger?
I noticed the smudging around the wound, the gray ring. It was a close-range discharge. It must have been Jack. Professional.
No passion. Another execution.
But is this really Jill? I wondered as I bent over the body The contract killer Kevin Hawkins had died at St. Vincent's Hospital downtown. We knew that Hawkins had disguised himself as a female FBI agent to get into Madison Square Garden. He had used the concussion bomb to get his target where he wanted, when he wanted. He'd been waiting in the exit tunnel, dressed as a woman. It had worked. What was Kevin Hawkins's relationship to this woman? What in hell was going on?
"He left a poem. Somebody did. Looks like the others," Jay Grayer said to me. The note was in a plastic evidence bag. He handed it to me. "The last will and testament of Jack and Jill," he said.
"The perfect assassination," I muttered, more to myself than to Grayer. "Jack and Jill both dead in New York. Case closed, right?"
The Secret Service agent stared at me and then slowly shook his head. "This case will never be closed.
Not in our lifetime, anyway"
"I was just being ironic," I said.