“Guess so. She’s mad about Dad not being here. And she doesn’t like him much.”

“Mumfries?”

“Yeah.” Using the remote, Jack aimlessly changed channels. “She was looking at him on television, when he was talking about meeting with these teachers—”

“The historians?” Addis interrupted.

“Yeah, them. And she started crying again. Said he reminded her of my grandfather.”

Jack pushed his wheelchair next to a table and picked up a baseball magazine.

“See what I’ve been trying to do?”

Reading, Addis thought. The brain damage that Jack had suffered in the car crash had inhibited his ability to read.

“That’s good.”

“Lem gave me this”—he held out the magazine—”but he didn’t bring me anything from New Orleans.”

“He probably was busy with his mother.”

“He always brings me back something.”

“Maybe he forgot. There’s a lot for him to do.”

“Are you coming tonight?”

Addis knew what he meant: the television studio. She was bringing Jack? Perhaps this was Carey’s idea.

“I don’t think so.”

Jack flipped a few pages of the magazine.

“You still going to come around?” he asked, his face in the magazine.

“Yes, I will.”

“Why?” Jack asked.

“To see you,” Addis said.

Jack almost smiled.

38 - Langley June 30

38

Langley June 30

“Turn it up, please,” Lancette said to the security officer.

They were a mile from the entrance to CIA headquarters. He ignored her request. She leaned over and increased the volume on the radio.

“So last night I hear noises. But I afraid to go downstairs to see. I wait and I hear nothing. Then I hear it again. So I call police.”

It was a woman’s voice, thickly accented, high in pitch.

“And when police come, I go downstairs, and we go together. There, we see, window is broken. I open the door for police, and they look. They tell me, nobody here. So I go, I go upstairs. Then this morning—I get up at six, there is bang, bang at door. There is men. They say they from government. They say they want to go to downstairs apartment. I open door for them. I do that. And they look everywhere. They look in closet, they look in drawer, they look under bed. Then they ask me many, many questions about Mr. Dawkins. I ask why they want to know. They don’t say. They say it’s in-vest-a-ga-tion. Then I know why.”

“You realized that Mr. Dawkins was a suspect in a conspiracy to kill President Hanover?” a male voice asked.

“I knew it was because of the President Hanover.”

“And you’re saying there was a break-in at his apartment before the federal agents appeared.”

“Window is broken,” she said.

“What can you tell us about Mr. Dawkins?”

“He is quiet—”

The security officer turned off the radio. He picked up the car phone, dialed a number, and reported he was at the front gate.