every morning. I want detailed background on him, his education, girl friends, associates, habits, hobbies, religion, organizational affiliations, everything by tomorrow morning, 6:45. Understood?â
âYes, sir.â
Aware that Senate staff members would be suspicious of an FBI agent who asked for information about their employers, Mark began his research at the Library of Congress. As he climbed the long flight of steps, he remembered a scene from All the Presidentâs Men, in which Woodward and Bernstein had spent innumerable fruitless hours searching for a few slips of paper in the bowels of the building. They had been trying to find proof that E. Howard Hunt had checked out materials on Edward M. Kennedy. And for an FBI agent on the trail of a killer, just as for the investigative reporters, it would be tedious research, not glamorous assignments,
that would make the difference between success and failure.
Mark opened the door marked âReaders Onlyâ and strolled into the Main Reading Room, a huge, circular, domed room decorated in muted tones of gold, beige, rust, and bronze. The ground floor was filled with rows of dark, curved wooden desks, arranged in concentric circles around the reference area in the center of the room. On the second floor, visible from the reading area through graceful arches, were thousands of books. Mark approached the reference desk and, in the hushed tones appropriate to all libraries, asked the Clerk where he could find current issues of the Congressional Record.
âRoom 244. Law Library Reading Room.â
âHow do I get there?â
âGo back past the card catalog to the other side of the building and take an elevator to the second floor.â
Mark managed to find the Law Library, a white, rectangular room with three tiers of bookshelves on the left-hand side. After questioning another clerk, he located the Congressional Record on one of the dark brown reference shelves along the right-hand wall. He carried the unbound volume marked 24 February, to a long, deserted table and began the tedious weeding-out process.
After leafing through the digest of Senate business for half an hour, Mark realized that he was in luck. Many senators had apparently left Washington for the weekend, because a check of the roll calls on 24 February revealed that, of the one hundred senators, the
number present on the floor never exceeded sixty. And the bills which were voted on were sufficiently important to command the presence of those senators who might have been hiding in the nooks and crannies of the Senate or the city. When he had eliminated those senators who were listed by the Whips of each party as âabsent because of illnessâ or ânecessarily absent,â and added those who were merely âdetained on official business,â Mark was left with sixty-two senators who were definitely in Washington on 24 February. He then double-checked the other thirty-eight senators, one by one, a long and tiresome task. All of them had for some reason been out of Washington that day.
He glanced at his watch: 12:15. He couldnât afford to take time off for lunch.
Friday afternoon
4 March
12:30 P.M.
Three men had arrived. None of them liked one another; only the common bond of financial reward could have got them into the same room. The first went by the name of Tony; heâd had so many names that nobody could be sure what his real name was, except perhaps his mother, and she hadnât seen him in the twenty years since he had left Sicily to join his father, her husband, in the States. Her husband had left twenty years before that; the cycle repeated itself.
Tonyâs FBI criminal file described him as five-feeteight, a hundred and forty-six pounds, medium build, black hair, straight nose, brown eyes, no distinguishing features, arrested and charged once in connection with a bank robbery; first offense, two-year jail sentence. What the rap sheet did
âYes, sir.â
Aware that Senate staff members would be suspicious of an FBI agent who asked for information about their employers, Mark began his research at the Library of Congress. As he climbed the long flight of steps, he remembered a scene from All the Presidentâs Men, in which Woodward and Bernstein had spent innumerable fruitless hours searching for a few slips of paper in the bowels of the building. They had been trying to find proof that E. Howard Hunt had checked out materials on Edward M. Kennedy. And for an FBI agent on the trail of a killer, just as for the investigative reporters, it would be tedious research, not glamorous assignments,
that would make the difference between success and failure.
Mark opened the door marked âReaders Onlyâ and strolled into the Main Reading Room, a huge, circular, domed room decorated in muted tones of gold, beige, rust, and bronze. The ground floor was filled with rows of dark, curved wooden desks, arranged in concentric circles around the reference area in the center of the room. On the second floor, visible from the reading area through graceful arches, were thousands of books. Mark approached the reference desk and, in the hushed tones appropriate to all libraries, asked the Clerk where he could find current issues of the Congressional Record.
âRoom 244. Law Library Reading Room.â
âHow do I get there?â
âGo back past the card catalog to the other side of the building and take an elevator to the second floor.â
Mark managed to find the Law Library, a white, rectangular room with three tiers of bookshelves on the left-hand side. After questioning another clerk, he located the Congressional Record on one of the dark brown reference shelves along the right-hand wall. He carried the unbound volume marked 24 February, to a long, deserted table and began the tedious weeding-out process.
After leafing through the digest of Senate business for half an hour, Mark realized that he was in luck. Many senators had apparently left Washington for the weekend, because a check of the roll calls on 24 February revealed that, of the one hundred senators, the
number present on the floor never exceeded sixty. And the bills which were voted on were sufficiently important to command the presence of those senators who might have been hiding in the nooks and crannies of the Senate or the city. When he had eliminated those senators who were listed by the Whips of each party as âabsent because of illnessâ or ânecessarily absent,â and added those who were merely âdetained on official business,â Mark was left with sixty-two senators who were definitely in Washington on 24 February. He then double-checked the other thirty-eight senators, one by one, a long and tiresome task. All of them had for some reason been out of Washington that day.
He glanced at his watch: 12:15. He couldnât afford to take time off for lunch.
Friday afternoon
4 March
12:30 P.M.
Three men had arrived. None of them liked one another; only the common bond of financial reward could have got them into the same room. The first went by the name of Tony; heâd had so many names that nobody could be sure what his real name was, except perhaps his mother, and she hadnât seen him in the twenty years since he had left Sicily to join his father, her husband, in the States. Her husband had left twenty years before that; the cycle repeated itself.
Tonyâs FBI criminal file described him as five-feeteight, a hundred and forty-six pounds, medium build, black hair, straight nose, brown eyes, no distinguishing features, arrested and charged once in connection with a bank robbery; first offense, two-year jail sentence. What the rap sheet did
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