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“The General Services Administration has put someone in touch, and my fiancee is screening them for me. I’ll let the final decision be hers anyway.”
“You’re a wise man, Bob. Have you made any personnel changes yet?”
“I’ve appointed Special Agent Kerry Smith to be my chief of staff, sir, but I intend to make other changes as part of a more sweeping revamping of the Bureau’s management. It will be some weeks before I’ll be ready to do that.”
“I understand. Well, that wraps it up for today. Thank you all for coming.”
As the group was shuffling out, Kinney stepped up to the president. “Mr. President, may I have a moment alone?”
“Of course, Bob.”
“And I’d like for the director of Central Intelligence to stay, as well.”
“Kate, hang on a minute, will you?” Lee said.
When the room had been cleared the president invited Bob and Kate Lee to sit down again. “Now, what is it, Bob?”
“Mr. President, I have to tell you that, at the time of my appointment, I inadvertently misinformed you about the disposition of the Theodore Fay case.”
“How so?”
“When I returned to the Bureau, after the press conference, I learned that evidence had surfaced, literally, indicating that Fay parachuted from the airplane and survived the explosion.”
The president grimaced. “And we’ve been telling the press that was resolved.”
“Yes, sir; I’m very sorry about that.”
“Well, if you didn’t have the information at the time, you couldn’t give it to me, could you? Tell me why you think Fay is alive.”
“There is incontrovertible physical evidence that the pilot’s door of the airplane was jettisoned prior to the explosion and that Fay made his way to a disused summer cottage, where he changed clothes, buried his parachute and stole a bicycle. He rode that to Kennebunk, where he ditched the bicycle and got a Greyhound bus to Boston. From there he got another bus to Atlantic City, New Jersey, where he disappeared. We have so far been unable to trace his movements from there.”
“Do you think he may still be in Atlantic City?” the president asked.
“I think it’s more likely that he made his way to a major city- New York and Philadelphia are easily reached from there, but he could have backtracked and gone anywhere.”
“I suppose I’ll have to make an announcement to the press,” Lee said.
“Sir, I’d rather you didn’t, if that’s possible.”
Kate chimed in. “Bob has a good point, Mr. President. It would be better if we didn’t announce to Fay that we’re still after him, and even if you made the announcement and Bob made Fay number one on the FBI’s most-wanted list, I doubt if that would be of much help. Fay is far too slick to get spotted by an ordinary citizen from a wanted poster.”
“I see your point,” the president said. “All right, I’ll wait until you catch him, and then I’ll say I knew all along Fay was alive.”
“Mr. President,” Kinney said, “I have to be absolutely frank with you. It’s very unlikely that we will catch Theodore Fay, unless he commits another murder.”
“Bob is right,” Kate said. “Fay is an extremely resourceful man, and he knows how to disappear.”
“Well,” Lee said, “I’m not going to sit around hoping he murders somebody else. We’ll keep this knowledge among the three of us and whoever else in both your agencies needs to know.” He paused for a moment. “And I think I’d better share it with the ranking members of both parties on the senate intelligence and judiciary committees.”
“Thank you, sir,” Kinney said, standing up.
“And thank you, Bob, for telling me about this.”
As he and Kate Lee walked out to their cars, she tugged at his sleeve. “How can we help, Bob?”
“I think the only thing you can do right no
w is to comb the Agency’s files again for any information about Fay that might be useful to us. I’ll assign Kerry Smith to go over what you find.”
