It was well after dark by the time Clay Dixon returned to the White House. In the last forty-eight hours, he’d been to Atlanta, Miami, New Orleans, Houston, Dallas, and Oklahoma City, trying to drum up votes and campaign contributions for himself and the party candidates in those constituencies. He was tired, but he felt energized, as he usually did after working crowds. He loved that part of his job. He went directly to the Residence on the second floor of the White House. Although it was late, he decided to call Wildwood. He missed his daughter. And he missed his wife. He longed to have Kate back, to be able to talk with her about the campaign swing and how good he felt. Love was more about quiet things than about bedroom noise. It was something he’d always known, but he was feeling it deep down now where the real truths resided.
Annie told him that Kate wasn’t there. She was out looking at the moon. She’d have Kate call him back when she returned.
Dixon hung up feeling unaccountably anxious. He was tired, and knew he should go to bed. But he wanted to wait for Kate’s call. If it came. She was still angry with him. She’d made that clear in the few conversations they’d had recently. He thought about the report Lorna Channing had prepared, and that got him to thinking about one of its chief proponents, Bobby Lee. And thinking about Bobby got him to wondering what his friend had been able to scrape together on whatever it was that Senator William Dixon might be up to.
The phone rang. Kate, he thought happily.
“Mr. President, John Llewellyn is on the line for you.”
“Put him on.”
“Mr. President, I apologize for disturbing you at such a late hour,” Llewellyn said.
“No problem, John. Where are you?”
“In the West Wing, in my office.”
“Working late.”
“Mr. President, FBI Assistant Director Arthur Lugar is with me.”
Dixon heard the tension in John Llewellyn’s voice. “What is it?”
“It’s about Bob Lee, sir.”
His first thought wasscandal. But he knew Bobby Lee, and he’d never known a more decent man. “What about him?”
“Sir, he’s dead.”
Robert Lee had loved to sail. For twenty years, every Saturday that he could slip away, he’d taken his sailboat out onto Chesapeake Bay and spent the day cutting across salt water. Often his sons went with him, but that summer they were both gone, counselors at a camp in the Blue Ridge. Maggie, his wife, was prone to seasickness. So lately, Robert Lee had been sailing alone.
According to the only eyewitness, Lee had been in a small, isolated inlet on the sound of the Choptank River. It was early evening. The wind had shifted. The boom, as it swung around, caught Lee squarely on the side of his head, and he went overboard. The eyewitness sailed immediately to that location, but Bobby Lee had already gone under.
Divers from the Talbot County Sheriff’s Department had been called out. They arrived near twilight and began a search for the body, which they quickly found. It took them a bit more time to make the ID, to be certain that Robert Lee, to whom the sailboat was registered, was also the drowned man. The FBI had been notified immediately.
“Is the eyewitness reliable?” Clay Dixon asked. He sat in John Llewellyn’s office with Llewellyn and the assistant director of the