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dope …” He shook his head slowly. “We have to take positive steps, that’s true enough, but the President cannot appear as an ineffectual bumbler, an incompetent. That’s a sin the voters won’t forgive. Remember Jimmy Carter?” His voice turned hard: “And he can’t advocate some crackpot solution. He’d be laughed out of office.”
    “I’m not asking for political hara-kiri,” Cohen said wearily. “I just want to get this dope kingpin up here where we can try him with enough security so that we don’t have any incidents. We need to ensure no one gets to the jurors. The jurors have to feel safe. We will get convictions.”
    “We’d better,” Dorftnan said caustically.
    “Will, you’ve argued all along that what was needed here was more cops, more judges, and more prisons,” Cohen said, letting a little of his anger leak out. ““Leave the rehab Programs and drug-prevention seminars to the Democrats,” you said. Okay, now we have to put Aidana in prison. This is where that policy road has taken us. We have no other options.”
    “I’m not suggesting we let him go,” Dorfman snarled, his aggressive instincts fully aroused. “I’m wondering if you’re the man to put him in the can.”
    The President waved his hands to cut them offand rose to his feet. “I don’t fancy having to apologize to this asshole and buy him a plane ticket back to Medellin. Bring Aidana to Washington. But announce this as your decision, Gid. I’ve got a plane to catch.” He paused at the door. “And Gid?”
    “Yessir.”
    “Don’t make any speeches about repealing the Fourth Amendment. Please.”
    Cohen nodded.
    “Everybody’s getting panicky. Ted Kennedy says cigarette smoking leads to drug abuse. That dingy congresswoman Strader-wants to put a National Guardsman on every corner in Washington. Somebody else wants to put all the addicts in the army. A columnist out in Denver wants us to invade Colombia-I’m not kidding-as if Vietnam never happened.” Bush opened the door and held it. “Maybe we should put all the addicts in the army and send them to Colombia.” Dorfman tittered.
    “You’re a good attorney general, Gid. I need you to keep thinking. Don’t panic,”
    Cohen nodded again as the President went through the door and it closed behind him.
    Henry Charon took twenty minutes to circle the White House grounds. On the west side of the executive mansion he found himself across the street from a gray stone mau teum that his map labeled the Executive Office Building.
    He was standing facing it with his hands in his Pockets when he heard the sound of a helicopter. He turned. One was coming in from the southeast, lower and lower over the tops of the buildings, until it turned slightly and sank out of Sight, hidden by the trees, on the grounds behind the White House.
    Henry Charon retraced his steps south along the sidewalk, looking for a gap in the trees and shrubs where the helicopter would be visible. He could find no such gap. Finally he stopped and waited, listening to the faint tone of the idling . engines. The sound had that distinctive whop-whopjet
    Whop as the downwash of the rotors rhythmically pulsed it.
    The chopper had been on the ground for four and a half minutes by Charon’s watch when the engine noise rose in pitch and volume. In a few seconds the machine became visible above the trees. The nose pitched down and the helicopter began to move forward. Now it laid over on its side slightly and veered right as it continued to climb, its engines apparently at full power. The mirage distortions that marked the hot jet exhausts were plainly visible. continued to climb and accelerate. Finally it was hidden by The machine finished its turn to the southeast and one of the buildings over beyond the Treasury. Which one? Henry Charon consulted his map.
    With his hand in his pockets, Charon walked past the White House on constitution Avenue and proceeded east.
    Six blocks north, in the Washington Post