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Somehow, she always came out like that anyway. Sara the freshly starched.
She hurried outside, where a grimy yellow cab was already waiting at the curb,
wagging a tail of smoke. The wind whooped and howled up and down K Street.
At five-twenty, the yellow cab pulled up in front of her workplace. The
Liberty Cab driver smiled and said, "A famous address, my lady. 50, are you
somebody famous?"
She paid the driver and collected change from a five-dollar bill.
"Actually, I might be someday," she said. "You never know."
"Yeah, maybe I'm somebody, too," the driver said with a crooked smile. "You
never know."
Sara Rosen climbed out of the cab and felt the early December wind in her
face. The pristine building before her looked strangely beautiful and imposing
in the early-morning light. It appeared to be shining, actually, glowing from
the inside out.
She showed her ID card, and security let her pass inside.
She and the guard even shared a quick laugh about her being a workaholic. And
why not? Sara Rosen had worked inside the White House for nine years.
PART 3
THE PHOTOJOURNALIST
THE PHOTOJOURNALIST was the last piece in the complex puzzle. He was the final
player. He was working in San Francisco on December 8. Actually, the
photojournalist was playing the game in San Francisco. Or rather, he was
playing around the outer edges of the game.
Kevin Hawkins sat in a scooped-out, gray plastic chair at Gate 31. He
contentedly played chess with himself on a PowerBook. He was winning; he was
losing. He enjoyed it either way Hawkins loved games, loved chess, and he was
close to being one of the better players in the world. It had been that way
ever since he'd been a bright, lonely, underachieving boy in Hudson, New York.
At quarter to eleven he got up from his seat to go play another kind of game.
This was his favorite game in the world.
He was in San Francisco to kill someone.
As he walked through the busy airport, Kevin Hawkins snapped off photograph
after photograph -- all in his mind.
The prizewinning photojournalist was outfitted in his usual studied-casual
manner: tight black cord jeans with a black T-shirt, tribal bracelets from
several trips to Zambia, a diamond stud earring. A Lcica camera was looped
around his neck on a leather strap decorated with engravings.
The photojournalist slipped into a crowded bathroom in Corridor C. He observed
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a ragged line of men slouched at the urinals.
They are like pigs at a through, he thought. Like water buffalo, or oxen,
taught to stand on their hind legs.
His eye composed the shot and snapped it off. A beauty of order and sly wit.
The Boys at the Bowl.
The urinal scene reminded him of a clever pickpocket he had once seen operate
in Bangkok. The thief, a keen student of human nature, would snatch wallets
while gents were in midstream at a urinal and were reluctant, or unable, to go
after him.
The photojournalist couldn't forget the comical image whenever he entered an
airport men's room. He rarely forgot any image, actually. His mind was a
well-run archive, a rival to Kodak's vast storehouses of pictures in
Rochester.
He peered at his own image, a rather haggard and pasty-white face, in one of
the cloudy bathroom mirrors. Unimpressive in every way, he couldn't help but
think. His eyes were war-weary, an almost washed-out blue. Gazing at his eyes
depressed him -- so much so that he sighed involuntarily.
He saw no other mind pictures to take in the mirror. Never, ever, a picture of
himself.
He started to cough and couldn't stop. He finally brought up a thick packet of
despicable, yellowish paste. His inner core, he thought. His animus was slowly
leaking out.
Kevin Hawkins was only forty-three, but he felt like a hundred.
He had lived too hard, especially the last fourteen years. His life and times
had been so very intense, often flamboyant and occasionally absurd. He had
been burned, he often imagined, from every conceivable angle. He had played
the game of life and death too hard, too well, too often.
He started to cough again and popped a Halls into his mouth.
Kevin Hawkins checked the time on his Seiko Kinetic wristwatch.
He quickly finger-combed his lank, grayish blond hair and then left the public
bathroom.
He merged smoothly with the thick corridor traffic rolling past on the killing
floor. It was almost time, and he was feeling a nice out-of-body buzz. He
hummed an old, absolutely ridiculous song called "Rock the Casbah." He was
pulling a dark Delsey suitcase hinged on one of those cheap roller
contraptions that were so popular. The "walking" suitcase made him look like a
tourist, like a nobody of the first order.
The red-on-black digital clock over the airport passageway read 11:40. A
Northwest Airlines jet from Tokyo had landed just a few minutes earlier. It
had come into Gate 41, right on schedule.
Somepeople just know how to fly. Wasn't that Northwest's tag line?
The gods were smiling down on him; Kevin Hawkins felt a grim, humorless smile
of his own. The gods loved the game, too.
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Life and death. It was their game, actually.
He heard the first strains of a noisy commotion coming from the connecting
Corridor B. The photojournalist kept walking ahead, until he was past the
point where the two wide corridors connected.
That was when he saw the phalanx of bodyguards and wellwishers He saw no other
mind pictures to take in the mirror. Never, ever, a picture of himself.
He started to cough and couldn't stop. He finally brought up a thick packet of
despicable, yellowish paste. His inner core, he thought. His animus was slowly
leaking out.
Kevin Hawkins was only forty-three, but he felt like a hundred.
He had lived too hard, especially the last fourteen years. His life and times
had been so very intense, often flamboyant and occasionally absurd. He had
been burned, he often imagined, from every conceivable angle. He had played
the game of life and death too hard, too well, too often.
He started to cough again and popped a Halls into his mouth.
Kevin Hawkins checked the time on his Seiko Kinetic wristwatch.
He quickly finger-combed his lank, grayish blond hair and then left the public
bathroom.
He merged smoothly with the thick corridor traffic rolling past on the killing
floor. It was almost time, and he was feeling a nice out-of-body buzz. He
hummed an old, absolutely ridiculous song called "Rock the Casbah." He was
pulling a dark Delsey suitcase hinged on one of those cheap roller
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