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States was greeted by the White House usher.
"What the hell is going on?" he hissed.
"Come this way, sir," the usher said solemnly.
The Vice President allowed himself to be escorted to the Oval Office. He had
been dining with his family when word came that his presence was urgently
required at the White House.
They were intercepted in the Oval Office reception area by the President's
chief of staff. "ANC has just declared the President dead."
For the Vice President of the United States, it was as if an anvil had landed
on his head. A million hectic thoughts raced through his reeling brain. His
vision actually dimmed. There was a roaring in his ears.
Then the grim face of the President himself poked out of the Oval Office
door.
"Don't believe everything you see on TV," he said. "But for the forseeable
future, you're confined to the White House."
"What's going on? A coup?"
"We're trying to tree a possum."
"Come again?"
"I'm dead, and you don't know any different. Got that?"
"Yes, Mr. President," said a very confused and only slightly disappointed Vice
President of the United States.
BEHIND THE CLOSED DOORS of the Oval Office, the President of the United States
faced Harold W. Smith.
"Everything's in place."
"We have only to wait," said Smith.
"I hate deceiving the American people like this."
"Better that they temporarily mourn a living man than bury another dead
President for all time."
"You know," said the President, "I ordered the Secret Service to stand down."
"I know."
"Yet they had snipers on every roof overlooking the place."
"The director of the Secret Service no doubt considered it prudent."
"Makes me wonder if those shots weren't meant to hit me. "
"That possibility cannot be discounted at this juncture," said Harold Smith.
Chapter 30
With the announcement by ANC that the President of the United States had died
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in a helicopter crash, the other networks, predictably, followed suit. Within
twenty minutes everyone had declared the Chief Executive dead.
There was no confirmation from the White House, no comment from the other
branches of government. No one went into the executive mansion and no one and
nothing came out.
For all intents and purposes, the White House became an informational black
hole.
National Transportation Safety Bureau teams cordoned off the destroyed
helicopter, allowing no cameras within viewing range.
The press held vigil into the late hours of the night, interviewing one
another to fill air time.
And the nation held its breath.
IN THE WHITE HOUSE basement, Harold Smith monitored the ongoing news coverage
out of the corner of one eye as he wrestled with the problem.
His worn briefcase lay open on the desk before hire, exposing the portable
computer that was connected by phone lines to the great mainframes housed in
the basement of Folcroft Sanitarium.
Smith had created a flowchart on his screen in an attempt to organize what was
now a large and Byzantine sequence of events.
The trouble was the chart refused to flow.
That there was a conspiracy was beyond any shred of doubt.
Someone had set on the President a Lee Harvey Oswald double, perfect down to
his fingerprints and body scars, armed with perfect replica Secret Service
badge and vintage Mannlicher-Carcano rifle. And had filmed it.
That same someone had tricked an obscure bartender named Bud Coggins into
gunning down the Oswald double in such a way that he, too, was killed in an
eerie recreation of the original Oswald's murder. Coggins was not part of the
conspiracy; that much was certain. Yet even as he was unwittingly covering up
for the true conspirators, his VR helmet camera was transmitting pictures of
everything he saw and did to the conspirators. That had been determined by an
examination of the VR helmet.
Within hours of the events in Boston, the conspiracy had already shifted into
a second phase in Washington, D. C. The replica Socks had infiltrated the
White House grounds exactly in time to create chaos upon the President's
return. And the replica Gila Gingold had struck by the end of day one.
Yet all of these incidents seemed engineered to drive the President from
Boston, to the White House and then, in the final phase, trick him into
boarding a booby-trapped helicopter and a fiery death.
Why? Why not kill him in Boston and be done with it? What was the point of it
all?
The desk phone rang.
"This is the D.C. medical examiner," a voice said.
"Go ahead," said Smith.
"This man I have just autopsied is not Thrush Limburger. I know this because
the actual Limburger is on my TV vociferously proclaiming his innocence."
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