There was no prestige to be gained by reviewing newspapers, wire reports, foreign periodicals, and then trying to pry sensitive information out of the bureaucracy to determine if the Agency might be in for an embarrassment. Most Agency people preferred to keep the past underground. And that meant keeping it far from the seventh floor of Langley. Who knows what Wenner might do with their secrets, their tales of old? Be ahead of the curve? Not in this regard. If you start digging, you can stir up all sorts of muck.

The Directorate of Administration located the new unit in a satellite office in Rosslyn, a long five miles from headquarters. The cryptonym assigned to the operation was ICEMAN. All code names were chosen by a computer at random. But Lancette had wondered if someone was sending her a message.

On the television, a network was replaying the footage once more. She typed in a series of commands. The DUO-SHOTS program was working fine. It kicked out a series of photographs of the assassin. As an overweight hippie ten years ago. As a fit-and-trim business executive six months ago. She prepared the packages for the relevant offices throughout the Agency. Old and current files would be checked. Under the director’s orders, an ICEMAN request had to be responded to within twenty-four to forty-eight hours. But the project depended on the individual bureaucrats who conducted the review in each office. Any of them, Lancette realized, could miss that one relevant file—for whatever reason.

She began transmitting the material to the communications center at Langley. From there, her request would fan out through the innards of the Agency. She hoped there would be no matches.

6 - Memorial Bridge June 21

6

Memorial Bridge June 21

The armored, black limousine crossed Memorial Bridge into the District. In the long rays of the setting sun, the Lincoln Memorial took on a reddish tint. Addis felt weird; he was riding alone with the new President. There was a small army of Secret Service agents in the cars and vans accompanying them, with Washington police officers at the front and rear of the motorcade. But except for Addis and the two plain-clothed, armed men in the front seat, Sam Mumfries was on his own during his first trip to the White House as President.

Earlier that day Mumfries had flown to his home state for a party fund-raiser with the businesspeople who had supported him for decades. A stiff man of patrician bearing, Mumfries four years ago had been bested in the primaries by Hanover. Then Hanover named him to the ticket, giving Mumfries and his Lone Star friends hope for the future. Four more years—then eight for us, Mumfries had been saying at a private club in Dallas that afternoon, when an advance person whispered the news.