Designated Targets

“I’ll bet it was,” said Roosevelt. His mouth felt like it was full of dry leaves and dust. He wanted to know a lot more about these “security people” of Kolhammer’s who’d caught the FBI director with his pants down. They didn’t sound like your run-of-the-mill night watchmen. Still, if there were problems here, there was also opportunity. An especially strong gust of wind threw a heavy twig into the window behind him. He expected to hear thunder start up in the next few minutes.

The admiral remained sitting at ease in front of him, giving nothing away.

“I imagine you’ll want to know what I’m going to do about this?” said Roosevelt.

“It’s really none of my business, except where it impinges upon the security of the Special Administrative Zone, Mr. President.”

“No,” Roosevelt agreed. “It’s not.”

He said nothing else, expecting to draw Kolhammer out with his silence. But the admiral remained po-faced. “Well, I’m not going to sack him today, if that’s what you were hoping. But then as I understand it, in your day, what a man does in the privacy of his own home is his own business. Is that right?”

“It is, Mr. President. In his home . . . or his motel room.”

Roosevelt contained a chuckle with only the fiercest of efforts. He wondered how on earth Kolhammer did it.

He placed the video stick into a desk drawer.

“What matters now are results, Admiral. Mr. Hoover knows I want results on the questions of who set those bombs, and how they managed it. If he is to have a future as director of the FBI, he’ll get me those results.”

For the first time Kolhammer offered something without being asked. “He’d get them a lot quicker if he didn’t have so many agents crawling around the Zone. Or following your wife, with all due respect, Mr. President.”

Roosevelt used his tongue to work free a piece of meat that stuck between his teeth during lunch. It covered his reaction to Kolhammer’s comment about Eleanor. He’d been livid when he’d seen the data about how Hoover had been opening her mail and having her followed around. But he wasn’t about to lay that card on the table. As much as he’d come to respect and even like Phillip Kolhammer, he still wasn’t a hundred percent sure about him. After all, he could well be a Republican, couldn’t he?

“I’ll make sure the Bureau stops wasting its time in California, Admiral. You can be certain of that.”

“I’d like to be, Mr. President.”

Roosevelt patted the desk where he’d deposited the data stick. “You can.”

28

LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA

True Grit was the best goddamn movie Eddie Mohr had ever seen. It was a hell of a shock, seeing John Wayne all fat and old and grizzled, but Mohr had seen enough birthdays to have no trouble imagining himself like that, so it wasn’t entirely a bad thing. After all, even missing one eye and carrying a huge spare tire, Rooster Cogburn didn’t give much away in the ass-kickin’ stakes.

Mohr had seen the movie five times now: two times for free on the base up at San Diego, and three times on his own dollar at a theater in downtown L.A., where he was now. The youngsters, they all preferred that Star Wars shit, but it just left him cold. How you could get into something that was so far removed from reality, he just didn’t know. But True Grit was as real a story as he’d ever seen, even the bit at the end with John Wayne doing his one-man cavalry charge, reins between his teeth, six-shooter in one hand and Winchester in the other. That was a great fucking ending, not like that dumbass Apocalypse Now. He’d had to see that one in the Zone, because it was banned everywhere else, and he wondered why the hell he’d bothered when that bald bastard chopped up that poor fucking cow.

Mohr shook the image from his head as Marshal Cogburn yelled at the bad guys to fill their hands. After three weeks without a break, he was gonna enjoy—

“Oh, goddamn. What now?”

The lights in the theater came up, and the management came on over the PA, telling everyone they had to get out in a fast but orderly fashion. Luckily Grauman’s Egyptian Theater, a less famous cousin to Grauman’s Chinese a few blocks west, was only a third full, because there was nothing orderly about the way most of the patrons suddenly flew for the exits. Some idiot even shouted that there had to be a bomb in the joint.

Mohr rolled his eyes to heaven. He dawdled at the rear of the crush, ready to start pulling people off each other if it got out of hand. But the ushers and the good sense of a couple of other customers prevented a serious bottleneck from building up. As the choke point cleared, he saw a couple of AF uniforms at the exit. A black airman and a white sailor.

“Hey, you guys know what’s up?” he asked.