At the same time, William A. Cozzano himself was emerging quietly from an elevator tucked into a dimly lit corner near the restaurant on the next floor down. He was accompanied by his son and daughter and two Secret Service agents. The Cozzanos were dressed in running clothes. They padded down a gray-carpeted stairway and exited onto a brick patio behind the hotel, two stories below street level, which led directly onto a herringbone-brick jogging path. Beyond the path was the C&O Canal, a narrow trench of stagnant water lined with massive, moss-covered masonry blocks.
The President-elect wanted to go for a damn jog with his family. Was that too much to ask? It would be his last opportunity to do so as a private citizen. He wanted to do it in Rock Creek Park, which was where he normally jogged when he was in D.C., but the Secret Service didn’t like that idea. They had gotten positively jumpy about Floyd Wayne Vishniak, who was still at large. During his escapade at Ogle Data Research, Vishniak had displayed cunning and well-developed marksmanship skills. He was still firing off demented manifestoes to various newspapers and magazines. Everyone knew that Cozzano liked to jog in Rock Creek Park, and with its dense vegetation and myriad ways in and out, it would be like the happy hunting grounds for Vishniak.
Cozzano was a demanding sort. He didn’t merely want to go jogging in an incredibly dangerous place: he was insisting on privacy too. He wanted to stage a diversion and send the journalists on a wild goose chase so that he could just run with his son and daughter.
The Secret Service agreed to a compromise. If Cozzano would go running in Arlington—in an area that was not quite so Floyd-friendly—then the Secret Service would stage the diversion for him. So far it was working perfectly.
Fifty feet away, the canal passed underneath the Rock Creek Parkway and joined up with Rock Creek itself. Three more Secret Service cars were idling on the side of the Parkway, wheels up on the curb, waiting for them with doors open. This little motorcade would spirit them away to Arlington, where they could go jogging on the flawlessly groomed parade grounds of Fort Myer, next to the National Cemetery, under the protection of military police and Secret Service.
Cozzano had been talking football with the Secret Service men all the way down the stairs. As they crossed the brick patio, Mary Catherine drew close to her brother and said, “James, this is important. Remember when we were kids? Remember Follow the Leader?”
“Sure,” James said sunnily, mistaking this for idle nostalgia.
“We’re about to play the world’s most important game of Follow the Leader. Don’t screw it up,” Mary Catherine said.
“Huh?”
They were stepping onto the jogging path. Mary Catherine reached into the open top of her belt pack and flipped the toggle switch on the end of her black plastic RadioShack contraption.
William A. Cozzano stopped dead for a moment and shouted, “Hey!”
He was staring off into the distance, focusing on something that wasn’t there.
“Dad?” James said. “Are you okay?”
Cozzano shook his head and snapped out of it. He looked at James and Mary Catherine for a moment, thinking about something. Then he glanced at the Secret Service men as if noticing them for the first time. “Nothing,” he said. “I just remembered something. Déjà vu, I guess.”
The family, trailed by the two agents, began to jog down the path, which angled up and away from the canal toward the edge of the parkway. A few yards short of the waiting cars, Mary Catherine broke sharply to the right, thrashed through some brush, and skittered down the jumbled pile of boulders that made up the creek’s bank. She was followed by her father and, somewhat uncertainly, by James.
“Sir?” one of the Secret Service men said. They had fallen well behind the Cozzanos and were watching them pick their way toward the confluence of the canal and Rock Creek.
“Just stay there,” Cozzano said. “We’re going to pick up some of this litter. It’s a national disgrace.”
The whole family disappeared beneath the parkway. The Secret Service men stood dumbfounded for a few moments, then ran down the bank, awkward in their suits and trench coats and leather shoes, trying to regain sight of the Cozzanos. But all they saw was the creek.
Three of them charged under the bridge, but ran into an obstacle: several homeless men. They had apparently been awakened by the Cozzanos. Now they were up on their feet and feeling frisky. These men occupied a bottleneck: a rocky stretch of bank between the buttress of the bridge and the bank of the creek. One of them was even standing in the water, thigh-deep.
There were harsh words and some shoving. The Secret Service men did not fare well in the shoving match, because, as they had started to notice, all of the homeless men were astoundingly large, and, considering their lifestyle, inhumanly strong. By the time the Secret Service got around to pulling guns, and the homeless men held up their hands apologetically and let them pass, they had completely lost track of the Cozzanos.
Above them, tires were squealing out on the Rock Creek Parkway. The noise was made by half a dozen large rental cars skidding sideways, across both sets of lanes, blocking all traffic.
The drivers of these vehicles, an unexceptional lot of reasonably well dressed, middle-aged men, seemed to be the least excited people in all of Washington. They ignored the honking horns and shouted obscenities from the instant traffic jam that had materialized behind their roadblock. With the calm self-possession of a combat veteran, each driver strolled around his vehicle and jabbed a knife into each of the four tires before turning his back on his crippled vehicle and sauntering into the park.
If any of the furious drivers in the traffic jam had bothered to look up at the Four Seasons, which stood at the intersection of M and Pennsylvania like the cornerstone of the whole neighborhood, they would have seen Cy Ogle looking back at them from the window of his suite.
He had just received a telephone call from the man on duty in the closest GODS truck, informing him that a sudden burst of microwave noise had broken their link with Cozzano, and that they were unable to reestablish the connection. “Argus is not receiving any inputs,” the man said. “Repeat: Argus is on his own.”
The stream channel was shallow and lined with large blocks of brown rock. As soon as they got past the “homeless” men, the Cozzanos plunged into it, picking up their knees as they ran, Walter Payton style, to keep them up out of the icy water, and forded Rock Creek. Far above their heads was another bridge, much larger and higher: Pennsylvania Avenue. As soon as they got past the buttresses of the bridge they scrambled up onto the eastern bank, which even in winter was covered with a mixture of bamboo, ivy, and reeds. This was difficult territory, but William and Mary Catherine had been training hard for this and they didn’t object to getting wet. Mary Catherine had been using all the slings and arrows of sibling rivalry to get James to whip himself into shape; he couldn’t really keep up with them, but he had the minor advantage of being in a state of shock.
Rock Creek now ran between them and the parkway. This side of the park was more heavily wooded and had no road or bicycle path, just a little footpath paralleling the bank. All of them were still running as hard as they could, Mary Catherine leading the way, James bringing up the rear, still trying to gasp out questions when he wasn’t sucking wind. His confusion was only deepened when he noticed that his father and sister had begun to rip off their clothes as they ran, dropping a trail of sweatshirts and tank tops in his path. Mary Catherine looked over her shoulder, into his eyes, and he knew that he was supposed to do the same. The world had gone crazy anyhow, why not run around Washington, D.C., stark naked?
They paused somewhere between N and P streets. Mary Catherine and William had gotten all the way down to gym shorts and running shoes, and James was able to catch up as soon as they stopped running.
William crashed down the bank. A cube of solid masonry projected from the bank and into the stream, carrying a storm sewer outfall a couple of feet in diameter. William A. Cozzano, thigh-deep in icy water, le
aned into it for a moment with his left arm and shoulder, and emerged carrying a couple of plastic garbage bags weighted with stones. He threw them up onto the bank and then climbed up after them.
Mary Catherine was stark naked by this point. She ripped open one of the bags to expose folds of dark green cloth, and a few pairs of running shoes. The shoes were labeled in magic marker: WILLY, M. C., and JAMES. She tossed the appropriate pairs to James and William, then hauled the clothing out: three identical sweatsuits.
The change of clothes ate up about thirty seconds and then they were running down the footpath again. Mary Catherine was carrying a small black plastic box in her hand; the blazing red light on one end danced up and down as she pumped her arms. She had dropped to a slower, sustainable pace. They passed under several more towering stone bridges, at one point fording the creek again in order to keep it between them and the Parkway.
The path dead-ended at the fence of Oak Hill Cemetery, which ran downhill from Georgetown and all the way to the creek’s edge. They made a left and ran parallel to the fence, following a footpath in the red, rocky soil, terraced by innumerable exposed tree roots. A few stray gravestones poked askew from the carpet of ivy.
Cemetery gates loomed on their right and they had emerged into the city again. They were in Montrose Park. It was two blocks long and a couple of hundred feet wide, bordered on one side by the woods and on the other by an alley that ran behind a row of old four-story red brick apartments. This was a bad stretch of blacktop, patches on top of older patches, covered with mud, leaf litter, and parked cars with the usual odd D.C. mixture of license plates. A delivery van, painted with the logo of a ubiquitous local diaper service, was sitting there with its motor running.
Mary Catherine ran up to it, hauled open the back doors, and motioned James and William in. They climbed in the back and she followed, pulling the doors shut behind them. They all collapsed, unable to do much more than suck in oxygen. But Mary Catherine was laughing, James was sputtering and starting to ask questions, and William’s mind was elsewhere.
Mary Catherine was thinking that, no matter what else happened today, they had all gone out for a vigorous run together, just like the old days, and they had gotten wet and messy and enjoyed themselves. Now she was ready for all hell to break loose. She caught her father’s eye for a moment and realized he was thinking the same thing.
They drove for fifteen or twenty minutes, not really knowing where they were, and then the truck stopped, and they could hear a garage door grinding shut behind them.
They staggered upstairs and found themselves in an old town house with plywood windowpanes. Mattresses and a few pieces of junk furniture were scattered around. But it had a few touches that made them feel at home: a coffeemaker on the floor, its red light shining cheerfully, and a sack of bagels next to a stack of paper plates, and, sitting on the floor in the middle of the room, chewing on a bagel and going over some papers, one Mel Meyer.
“Willy, if you can hear me, get your left hand over here and grab this pen. You have a hell of a lot of papers to sign before we get you dressed,” Mel said.
“James,” Mary Catherine said, “grab some coffee. I have a few things to tell you.”
fifty-nine
IN DOWNTOWN Rosslyn, Virginia, a man in a nice suit and a trench coat, wearing a neatly trimmed beard, and hair so short that his scalp almost showed through, emerged from a Metro station and walked up the street to a mailbox. He removed a standard legal-sized envelope from his breast pocket, held it between his hands, and contemplated it for a few moments. Then he dropped it into the mailbox. He continued down the street, turned a corner, and walked downhill toward Key Bridge. Ahead of him, on the far side of the Potomac, he could see Dixie Liquors, which was on M Street, which would take him through the center of Georgetown and onto Pennsylvania. You could fire a bullet straight down the centerline of Pennsylvania and it would pass through the middle of the White House and continue down to the presidential lectern on the reviewing stand on the Capitol steps.
Unfortunately Floyd Wayne Vishniak’s Fleischacker was not quite powerful or accurate enough for that. He would have to follow much the same route on foot. But that was okay. He had planned this thing pretty well, had left himself plenty of time to get there. As he walked across Key Bridge, pounded by a cold crosswind that found every leak in his trench coat, he mentally reviewed the contents of the letter, which he had written at one o’clock this morning in the front seat of his pickup truck, parked in the holler in West Virginia.
Floyd Wayne Vishniak, esq.
Parts Unknown
United States of America
Letters to the Editor
Washington Post
Washington, D.C.
Dear Mr. (or Miss, Mrs., or Ms.) Editor:
As of yesterday A.M. I have spent, or maybe the right word is wasted, a total of $89.50 on your worthless rag, and this is not counting money spent on the other papers and magazines I had to buy just to cross-check all of the so-called facts you printed and find out which were true and which were false.
So I know full well that you will screw everything up. So here is some information. The name is spelled V-I-S-H-N-I-A-K (see top of page). I am not a psycho. Just a concerned American citizen.
And please don’t screw this up: I—me—Floyd—did this ALL BY MYSELF. I did not get help from anyone—no co-conspirators, foreign governments, terrorist groups, or anyone else.
Yes, as hard as it might be for you smug East Coast bastards to comprehend, a hick from the sticks is actually capable of doing something ALL BY HIMSELF.
See you in Hell—where we can look forward to many interesting conversations.
You will be hearing from me again soon, I am sure.
Sincerely,
Floyd Wayne Vishniak
By the time he had made it across Key Bridge he had decided that it was a good letter. He turned right underneath the red neon sign of Dixie Liquors and headed for the center of Washington.
On the southeastern fringe of Capitol Hill, just beyond the boundary between the yuppified zone and the ghetto, a tour bus made a difficult turn into a narrow alley running through the center of a block. Facing on the alley was a long, low, one-story cinderblock building, a former box-printing plant. Air burst from its brakes and the bus settled to a stop in the alley. The door opened up and men began to climb off. They walked in single file around the front of the bus and entered the building through a wide steel door, which was flanked on the inside and the outside by middle-aged men with nervous eyes and guns in their armpits.
Most, but not all, of the men were enormous. They ranged in age from their early thirties to their mid-fifties. Some of them were wearing dark suits already and some were carrying them in garment bags. They filed into the building, which was a single huge room. It was mostly empty; its concrete floor was scarred where huge pieces of machinery had been uprooted and dragged away. Most of the illumination was provided by skylights. But when all of the men had come inside, the door had been closed, more lights were turned on.
Already in the room was a busload of more men matching the same general description, drinking coffee from a couple of big industrial percolaters set up on a folding table, eating vast quantities of doughnuts. A lot of these men knew each other and so in some ways the atmosphere was like that of an old class reunion. But they were generally subdued and serious. This was especially true of those men who weren’t huge.
The huge ones were former professional football players. The others were Vietnam veterans. They instinctively formed up into two separate groups, on opposite ends of the room. The Vietnam veterans had served with Cozzano in the mid- to late sixties and were, for the most part, older than the football players, and from a wider economic range: this group included corporate presidents, highly paid lawyers, janitors, auto mechanics, and homeless people. But today they were all dressed more or less the same, and they greeted each other wordlessly, with hugs and long, intense, two-handed hands
hakes.
A few minutes after the second bus had arrived, one of the veterans, a big, round-headed, round-shouldered black man, walked to the center of the room, whistled through his fingers, and shouted, “Listen up!”
The conversation rapidly dropped to zero. All of the men moved to the edges of the room, facing inward. “My name is Rufus Bell. For today, you can call me Sarge,” said the man. “I have three people to introduce. First of all, the woman who will be our new Vice President in an hour and a half: Eleanor Richmond.”
She had been standing by the coffee table. Now she walked into the center of the room. Scattered applause started up and rapidly exploded into an ovation. Rufus Bell whistled again.
“Shut up!” he yelled. “We don’t want to bother the neighbors.”
“Thank you all,” Eleanor said.
Bell continued, “I would also like to introduce Mel Meyer, who will be the acting Attorney General of the United States.”
Mel acknowledged by removing the cigar from his mouth momentarily.
“Finally,” Bell said, “the Chief of the District of Columbia Police, who’s going to swear you all in.”
The Chief was snappy in full dress uniform. He walked to the middle of the room and got no applause at all; his appearance, and his bearing, radiated no-nonsense authority. He turned to face the men around the edges of the room and examined them closely for several moments, making individual eye contact with every man in the room.
“This is some serious shit,” the Chief said, “not some kind of a fun little field trip. If you’re not willing to lay down your life in the defense of the Constitution of the United States, right now, then stay in this building for the next three hours and you’ll be fine.”