The Last President. Michael Kurland

it. Ask for extension four-nine-four. They should be expecting your call by now.”

      “It’s four-thirty in the morning,” Kit objected.

      “Our government is awake twenty-four hours a day,” Warren said. “You’re here, aren’t you?”

      “Yeah, okay. I’ll call, but this better be straight. What do I tell them?”

      “They’ll tell you,” Warren said. “This is a national security matter, so don’t open up to the locals.” He indicated Veber with a jerk of his head.

      Kit nodded his head slowly. “I’ll be back.” He walked down the corridor to join Veber.

      “Have an exciting talk?” Veber asked, pulling his gaze away from the murk outside.

      “It had its points,” Kit said. “Where’s your phone?”

      Veber took him to an office down the hall and, reluctantly, left him. “Yell if you need anything. I’ll be just across the way.”

      “You bet,” Kit said, closing the door behind him. He found a District of Columbia Section white pages in the metal cabinet in one corner of the office and turned to United States Government. There was an entry for Executive Office of the President with twelve listings. One of them read:

      At Night, Saturdays, Sundays & Holidays

      Call—395-3000

      He picked up the phone and did just that. It was picked up on the second ring. “Three thousand,” a female voice answered.

      “Extension four-nine-four, please,” he said.

      “One second. It’s ringing.”

      “Hello?” A gruff male voice.

      “I’m calling from the Second District Police Station,” Kit said carefully. “There is a gentleman in one of the holding cells that suggested I call you.”

      “I see,” the voice at the other end said. “On whose behalf are you making his call?”

      “He calls himself Warren,” Kit said. “George Warren.”

      “Yes,” the voice said. “What I meant was, do you represent the Metropolitan Police?”

      “No.”

      “Then—who do you represent?”

      “To whom am I speaking?” Kit asked. He could see that there was going to be a continuing identification problem.

      “I’m an official of the executive branch,” the voice said. “I represent the President.”

      Kit made a quick decision. “I’m an officer of the Central Intelligence Agency, and I’m going to have to know to whom I’m speaking before we proceed.”

      “Oh,” the voice said. “Thank God. We certainly don’t want the local police in on this. Now listen, you’re speaking to Charles Ober. You know who I am?”

      “Yes, sir,” Kit said. Everybody in the United States had heard of Uriah “Billy” Vandermeer, the President’s Chief of Staff, and Charles Ober, the President’s Chief Domestic Affairs Adviser. The New Yorker called them the Teutonic Bobbsey Twins, and Time referred to them as the Prussian Household Guard. This was inaccurate if not unfair, since Vandermeer’s father was Dutch, and Ober was a native American for at least the last four generations. But the wisdom of Washington had it that nobody, not even cabinet officers, got to see the President without first clearing with Billy or Charlie.

      “Okay,” Ober said. “Now, have these men been, what do they call it, booked? Under what names? Have any of them talked—that is, have they said anything at all?”

      “They’ve all been booked, sir,” Kit said. “No names given. Right now they are five John Does. None of them have made any kind of statement to the police.”

      “Okay. Now, what’s the scenario? What happens next?”

      “Well,” Kit thought for a minute. “Later this morning, they’ll be taken to the Fifth Street Courthouse for a preliminary hearing for the purpose of setting bond. The judge probably won’t set bond on them unless he has valid names.”

      “Okay,” Ober said. “Well, that’s the thing we want to turn off. How do you get them out of that?”

      It was not a question Kit had expected to hear. “I can’t do that,” he said, the abrupt answer pushed out by the surprise of the question. “I mean, I can’t just tell the police to let them go.”

      “Shit!” Ober said. “Look, supposing they were your boys: CIA, Agency, like that. What would you do then?”

      “Well,” Kit said, “even that’s kind of hairy. I can’t do anything officially. If the Metropolitan Police want to book anyone at all, for any crime, for whatever reason they have, there’s nothing I can do about it. Nothing at all.”

      “What do you do then?” Ober asked. “What the fuck do we pay you for?” There was a tension in his voice that hadn’t been there before; the question was almost a petulant whine.

      “I work on a sort of unofficial understanding,” Kit told him. “Officially I can’t admit that any people who are picked up are our people.” Kit switched the phone mouthpiece to his other hand. “I suggest to the duty sergeant that the guys in his holding tank are really upright citizens and it would be a shame to charge them. He informally checks with the captain, who agrees that there wouldn’t be enough evidence to obtain a conviction, so there’s really no point in keeping them, and the charges are informally dropped.

      “But what I’m really telling them, and what they’re trusting my word on, is that there’s some national security consideration in the case.”

      “I understand that,” Ober said. He was back in control again and his voice was smooth. “What did you say your name was?”

      “My name is Young,” Kit said, refraining from adding that he hadn’t said.

      “Well, Mr. Young, you’ve put your finger on it exactly. National security is the issue. The men in that cell are members—I trust in your complete discretion—of a special White House national security unit which undertakes special, highly sensitive problems.”

      “Like bugging the Democratic National Committee?”

      “Exactly!” Ober said, sounding pleased that Kit had brought it up. “Who would you have do that? The FBI? Your people? No—you must stay above anything that could in any way be construed as political. But when we received word that the DNC was, unknowingly, being influenced by money and agents of the People’s Republic of Cuba, that had to be checked. Now, I can assure you that it would be in the best interest of your country if the investigation of the break-in were to end here. This is not an attempt to get these men off—any of them would gladly serve prison time in the interest of his country—but we cannot allow the ongoing investigation to be compromised.”

      Kit slowly shook his head. “There’s nothing I can do. Look, Mr. Ober, I’m sure that what you’re telling me is true, but I have no authority to take action on behalf of these men. You get hold of my superior and have him call me and authorize this action, and I’ll use my best influence and see what I can do.”

      “Your superior! How the hell—Wait a minute! Will you hold?” Without waiting for Kit’s assurance, Ober put the phone on hold, leaving Kit listening to that curious hollow sound of miles of phone wire connected only to itself.

      Kit leaned back in the chair with the phone cradled against his shoulder and put his feet up on the desk. For a few minutes he stared at the ceiling, trying to make some sense of the great Rorschach of cracked and blotched green paint. Then, realizing that this was slowly putting him to sleep, he turned to read the notices on the bulletin board.

      “Hello?”

      Kit sat