CHAPTER SIX

The sign on the front door of Ferguson Home Security Electronics declared, "Closed for inventory and product liquidation." Yet the parking lot was already filled with official-looking cars and unmarked vans, and guys and gals wearing fretful expressions and blue and gray suits were parading in and out of the entrance.

It struck me that the locals might find all this activity a little distracting, uncharacteristic perhaps, even mysterious. To belabor my aforementioned point, had they pursued my quirky yet ingenious suggestion to make this a VD clinic, the sign could read, "Incurable airborne gonorrhea discovered-enter at invitation only" For sure this would explain the odd visitors with stricken faces, and nobody was going to be sniffing through the garbage or absently wandering into the building.

I was happy to see Lila, our receptionist, seated at her desk, disguised as usual as a sexy front-desk clerk. She looked up as I entered, but I detected no hint of recognition on her face. To my surprise, she said, "All right, pal… stop right there."

"What?"

"Hands where I can see them. Remove your ID slowly I have a gun under this desk-it's pointed at your balls."

"But, miss, I'm a CIA bureaucrat. I have no balls."

She laughed.

I leaned across her desk and in all seriousness said, "If you haven't received the warning, there is a guy running around town impersonating an FBI agent. He's got real-looking creds, he's armed, and he's dangerous."

"I hadn't heard."

"He's using the alias George Meany, and if he shows up here and flashes his creds, you should blow his balls off."

She laughed again and informed me, "Special Agent Meany arrived nearly an hour ago."

"And did you at least kneecap him?"

"Please. He was very nice and charming. Also cute. Is he married?"

"No. But you're married."

"Oh…"

She laughed again. Women are such bad judges of men.

But appearances aside, Lila was a smart and perceptive lady Which was a prerequisite for her job, since she belonged to the Agency's security service, and probably knew, ten ways to kill me with her eyelashes. She signed me in, commenting, "I hear you had a fun morning."

"I had an interesting morning."

"It's sure getting weird around here."

"It was weird here before this morning"

She shrugged and said, "Phyllis is in her office with Mort. She wants you to join her right away"

So I left Lila, and by the door that led into the converted rear warehouse I noted that some tidy and efficient soul had already installed a bulletin board showing the temporary residents where to set up, and where to sit, who'd be on whose team, who'd have what phone numbers, and, more helpfully, the phone numbers for some nearby pizza and Chinese delivery joints. I hate to sound incorrigibly sexist, but when women have the reins, the little things do get taken care of.

Also I observed a bunch of temporary partitions that appeared to have been hastily erected to divide the equally temporary occupants into roughly three groups: Agency employees, Feds, and Homeland Security bureaucrats.

I should mention that in the federal culture, walls are the foundations upon which you build trust, teamwork, and fluid communications. Just kidding.

I walked through the maze of cubicles and walls without seeing anybody I knew, found Phyllis's crib at the rear of the building, and entered. She nodded at the heavyset man seated comfortably in a chair in front of her desk, whose face I only vaguely recognized. She said, "I believe you two know each other."

Not really, though I did recall being briefly introduced to Mort Silverman around my second day on the job. He was short, bald, and broad of girth-fat, actually, a gent of Jewish descent with an elegant Bronx patois who handled Middle Eastern affairs for the team. I was not really sure what this meant, and the Office of Special Projects does not really encourage its employees to give a shit. Unlike me, Mort was a regular CIA employee, and his official title was project officer, as was mine, so we were roughly equal in rank.

Anyway, the three steaming cups of coffee on the desk suggested that Phyllis had already been notified by Lila that I was in the building, and further indicated that Phyllis was laying it on thick.

She apparently read my mind, because she offered me a seat with an ingratiating smile and then ordered Mort, "Tell him what we know."

Mort handed me a slim folder stamped "TOP SECRET-Sensitive Sources," followed by the usual string of initials indicating sources and collection methods and the compartments you'd better belong to if you open the file. I wasn't in any of the right clubs, but with the White House Chief of Staff decomposing on a morgue slab, protocols were falling by the wayside, fast. Mort asked me, "You heard about the bucks on the President, right?"

"Where do I sign up?"

"Hey, pal, if I knew, why would I be sittin' here?"

Ha-ha. Phyllis stared at us, I'm sure thinking that men have a really neat sense of humor.

Mort informed me, "Inside the folder's what we know. Read4 it when you get time. It's like a mystery novel with the back half missing. Thing is, we learned about it only a few weeks ago"

Agency people are great folder builders, and I flipped it open and scanned the cover page, an abbreviated guide to all that followed. Essentially, we had first learned of the bounty not through any of the sophisticated collection means listed on the cover, but an announcement on Al Jazeera, the Arabic-language news channel. Details to follow.

I looked at Mort. "This is for real?"

"Real as it gets."

Phyllis chose this moment to say, "It does look implausible, doesn't it? It was aired three or four times before the night shift at the counterterrorism cell noticed. Of course, we got them to remove it from the broadcast."

Mort said, "Yeah, but it was prime time over there and Al Jazeera's on satellite-Middle Easterners, Americans of Arab descent, Indonesians, Pakistanis… its audience is huge. Plus Arabs are big-time bullshitters, and these days they all got a cell phone, so word spreads fast around the souks and tea rooms."

Naturally, I asked, "And how did Al Jazeera learn about it?"

"Back it up a bit," Mort replied. "There was a Web site posting the offer and reward."

"A Web site?"

"Yeah. Called www. killtheprez. com."

"This is a joke, right?"

"That's what we thought. At first. After this morning, I might think differently." He handed me a color page. "What do you think of this?"

I took a moment to study it, apparently a reproduction of the Web page under discussion. The background was pink, the print a crazy mixture of fonts, colors, and writing styles, reminiscent of one of those old-style circus posters, with floating balloons and clownish little figures dancing around the page. It certainly looked like a joke, or like somebody so contemptuous of this President that even an offer to assassinate him deserved to be treated facetiously

I next read the offer, splashed in bold blue letters across the top: "KILL THE AMERICAN PRESIDENT AND EARN $100,000,000 UNTRACEABLE