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.Mark had blown a small legacy from his aunt on the car just after graduating from college, but never regretted his extravagance.Simon knew Mark had no assigned spot in the garage and always offered to park his car for him - anything for a chance to drive the magnificent silver Mercedes SLC 580.Mark usually exchanged a few bantering words with Simon; tonight he passes him the keys without even looking at him.‘I’ll need it at seven in the morning,' he said, already walking away.'Okay, man,' came back the reply.Mark heard Simon restart the car with a soft whoosh before the elevator door closed behind him.He arrived at his apartment; three rooms, all empty.He locked the door, and then bolted it, something he had never done before.He walked around the room slowly, undressed, throwing his sour-smelling shirt into the laundry hamper.He washed for the third time that night and then went to bed, to stare up at the white ceiling.He tried to make some sense out of the night's events; he tried to sleep.Six hours passed, and if he slept it was never for more than a few minutes.Someone else who didn't sleep that night for more than a few minutes was tossing and turning in her bed at the White House.Abraham Lincoln, John F.Kennedy, Martin Luther King, John Lennon and Robert Kennedy.How many citizens distinguished and unknown needed to sacrifice their lives before the House would pass a bill to outlaw such self-destruction?'Who else must die?' she remarked.'If I myself there is no hour so fit as.'She turned over and looked at Edward whose expression left no doubt that such morbid thoughts were not on his mind.Friday morning, 4 March6:27 amEventually Mark could stand it no longer and at 6:30 am he rose-, showered, and put on a clean shirt and a fresh suit.From his apartment window, he looked out across the Washington Channel to EastPotomacPark and went over in his mind all that had happened yesterday.In a few weeks the cherry trees would bloom.In a few weeks…He closed the apartment door behind him, glad simply to be on the move again.Simon gave him the car keys; he had managed to find a space for the Mercedes in one of the private parking lots.Mark drove the car slowly up 6th Street, turns left on G and right on 7th.No traffic at this time of morning except trucks.He passed the Hirshhorn Museum as he crossed into Independence Avenue.At the intersection of 7th and Pennsylvania, next to the National Archives, Mark came to a halt at a red light.He felt an eerie sense of nothing being out of the ordinary, as though the previous day had been a bad dream.He would arrive at the office and Nick Stames and Barry Calvert would be there as usual.The vision evaporated as he looked to his left.At one end of the deserted avenue, he could see the White House grounds and patches of the white building through the trees.To his right, at the other end of the avenue, stood the Capitol, gleaming in the early morning sunshine.And between the two, between Caesar and Cassius, thought Mark, stood the FBIBuilding.Alone in the middle, he mused, the Director and himself, playing with destiny.Mark drove the car down the ramp at the back of FBI Headquarters and parked.A young man in a dark blue blazer, grey flannels, dark shoes, and asmart blue tie, the regulation uniform of the Bureau, awaited him.An anonymous man, thought Mark, who looked far too neat to have just got up.Mark Andrews showed him his identification.The young man led him towards the elevator without saying a word; it took them to the seventh floor, where Mark walk noiselessly escorted to a small room and asked to wait.He sat in the reception room, next to the Director's office, with the inevitable out-of-date copies of Time and Newsweek; he might have been at the dentist's.It was the first time in his life that he would rather have been at his dentist's.He pondered the events of the last fourteen hours.He'd gone from bring a man with no responsibility enjoying the second of five eventful years in the FBI to one who was staring into the jaws of a tiger.His only previous trip to the Bureau itself had been for his interview; they hadn't told him that this could happen.They had talked of salaries, bonuses, holidays, a worthwhile and fulfilling job, serving the nation, nothing about immigrant Greeks and black postmen with their throats cut, nothing about friends being drowned in the Potomac.He paced around the room trying to compose his thoughts; yesterday should have been his day off, but he had decided he could do with the overtime pay.Perhaps another agent would have got back to the hospital more quickly and forestalled the double murder.Perhaps if he had driven the Ford sedan last night, it would have been he, not Stames and Calvert, in the Potomac.Perhaps.Mark closed his eyes and felt an involuntary shiver run down his spine.He made an effort to disregard the panicky fear that had kept him awake all night — perhaps it would be his turn next.His eyes came to rest on a plaque on the wall, which stated that, in over sixty years of the FBI's history, only thirty-four people had been killed whileon duty; on only one occasion had two officers died on the same day.Yesterday made that out of date.Mark's eyes continued moving around the wall and settled on a large picture of the Supreme Court; government and the law hand-in-hand
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