The Hunt for Red October - Tom Clancy [155]
"Indeed. Thank you for coming down." They did not shake hands this time either.
Ritter walked into the hall without passing through the anteroom. He stopped to look down into the atrium of the Hart building. It reminded him of the local Hyatt. Uncharacteristically, he took the stairs instead of the elevator down to the first floor. With luck he had just settled a major score. His car was waiting for him outside, and he told the driver to head for the FBI building.
"Not a CIA operation?" Peter Henderson, the senator's chief aide, asked.
"No, I believe him," Donaldson said. "He's not smart enough to pull something like that."
"I don't know why the president doesn't get rid of him," Henderson commented. "Of course, the kind of person he is, maybe it's better that he's incompetent." The senator agreed.
When he returned to his office, Henderson adjusted the venetian blinds on his window, though the sun was on the other side of the building. An hour later the driver of a passing Black & White taxicab looked up at the window and made a mental note.
Henderson worked late that night. The Hart building was nearly empty with most of the senators out of town. Donaldson was there only because of personal business and to keep an eye on things. As chairman of the Select Committee on Intelligence, he had more duties than he would have liked at this time of year. Henderson took the elevator down to the main lobby, looking every inch the senior congressional aide—a three-piece gray suit, an expensive leather attache case, his hair just so, and his stride jaunty as he left the building. A Black & White cab came around the corner and stopped to let out a fare. Henderson got in.
"Watergate," he said. Not until the taxi had driven a few blocks did he speak again.
Henderson had a modest one-bedroom condo in the Watergate complex, an irony that he himself had considered many times. When he got to his destination he did not tip the driver. A woman got in as he walked to the main entrance. Taxis in Washington are very busy in the early evening.
"Georgetown University, please," she said, a pretty young woman with auburn hair and an armload of books.
"Night school?" the driver asked, checking the mirror.
"Exams," the girl said, her voice a trace uneasy. "Psych."
"Best thing to do with exams is relax," the driver advised.
Special Agent Hazel Loomis fumbled with her books. Her purse dropped to the floor. "Oh, damn." She bent over to pick it up, and while doing so retrieved a miniature tape recorder that another agent had left under the driver's seat.
It took fifteen minutes to get to the university. The fare was $3.85. Loomis gave the driver a five and told him to keep the change. She walked across the campus and entered a Ford which drove straight to the J. Edgar Hoover Building. A lot of work had gone into this—and it had been so easy!
"Always is, when the bear walks into your sight." The inspector who had been running the case turned left onto Pennsylvania Avenue. "The problem is finding the damned bear in the first place."
The Pentagon
"Gentlemen, you have been asked here because each of you is a career intelligence officer with a working knowledge of submarines and Russian," Davenport said to the four officers seated in his office. "I have need of officers with your qualifications. This is a volunteer assignment. It could involve a considerable element of danger—we cannot be sure at this point. The only other thing I can say is that this will be a dream job for an intelligence officer—but the sort of dream that you'll never be able to tell anyone about. We're all used to that, aren't we?" Davenport ventured a rare smile. "As they say in the movies, if you want in, fine; if not, you may leave at this point, and nothing will ever be said. It is asking a lot to expect men to walk into a potentially dangerous assignment blindfolded."
Of course nobody left; the men who had been called here were not quitters. Besides, something would be said, and Davenport had a good memory. These were professional officers. One of the compensations