CIA headquarters in Washington, DC was set back from E Street on a semicircular driveway north of The Lincoln Memorial. Some of the buildings had been thrown up as temporary offices during World War II, but the main building, which had housed the OSS during the war, was a solid work of cut stone with imposing Ionic columns supporting a heavy, unadorned cornice above the front entrance. A sign on a fence near the gate admitted that this was CIA headquarters. It was said that the sign had been put up at the request of President Eisenhower after an aide was sent for a meeting there and could not find the building. Ike suggested that most people in Washington knew where the CIA hung out, and so they might as well do something for the few who did not.
Just after ten o’clock a gray Ford sedan pulled into the driveway and parked at the apex of the curve. Cassidy watched Spencer Shaw get out of the car and enter the building.
Cassidy watched through binoculars on a tripod at a window in a building a block away. He had spent three days watching the CIA’s front entrance from this unused office on the sixth floor. Every day he filled the tin ashtray on the desk to overflowing. Occasionally he emptied it into the tin wastebasket that held the paper wrappings and empty bottles from his lunches. He used the phone on the desk to make three calls after Shaw went into the building. Finished, he looked around the office to make sure he had left nothing important, then left without locking the door behind him.
Just after eleven Spencer Shaw came out of CIA Headquarters. He got into the Ford and ran it down the driveway. A Washington, DC police car pulled across the gate to block it before Shaw reached the street. Another police car went in through the other gate and ran around the drive’s curve until it blocked the Ford from behind. A detective and a uniformed cop got out of the car blocking the front of the Ford. The cops behind opened their doors in case they were needed but stayed in the car. Cassidy dodged through the cars on E Street that had slowed to see what was happening and joined the detective at the gate.
‘Mike, is that the guy?’ Sam Watkins asked. Watkins was a tall, thin man with a bony face and dark eyes that women found trustworthy, sometimes to their regret. He had a calm, unruffled way of going about his business.
‘That’s him.’ Shaw stared at them through the windshield of the car. Both his hands were on the steering wheel, and his shoulders were hunched forward with tension. He returned Cassidy’s look without blinking.
‘Okay. Let’s go get him.’
‘Hold on a second.’
A car pulled up to the curb just down the block. Brian Cassidy got out of the front seat. He opened the rear door, and Rhonda Raskin got out and smoothed her skirt down. She nodded and started toward the waiting men. She carried a reporter’s notebook and a pen in one hand. She lifted the other slightly in greeting to Cassidy. He nodded back but made no move to join her. She moved to where she could see Shaw in the car and began to make notes. Another man got out of Brian’s car. He reached back in to retrieve a sixteen-millimeter movie camera, and then he and Brian walked up toward where Cassidy waited with the DC cops. Behind him another car parked, and Dan O’Malley, the reporter from the Washington Post, got out with a photographer.
‘Are you sure you want to do all this?’ Watkins asked, nodding toward the reporters. He had a cop’s shyness about the public witnessing an arrest.
‘TV, New York and DC newspapers, a righteous arrest, you’re going to be a hero cop,’ Cassidy said.
‘The dream comes true. Let’s do it.’
As Brian approached, he was speaking into a small microphone clipped to the lapel of his jacket. A portable voice recorder about the size of a hardback book was slung from his shoulder. The cameraman had moved out into the street so that he could film from an angle that included Brian, the police, and the car in the driveway. Cassidy heard Brian say, ‘This is Brian Cassidy. We are outside the headquarters of the CIA in Washington, DC. Washington police officers, accompanied by a detective from the New York City Police Department, are approaching the car you see parked in the driveway …’ Cassidy stopped listening. He walked around the blocking cop car and stood in front of the Ford. Shaw looked at him through the windshield with angry eyes.
Watkins tapped on the driver’s window. Shaw kept looking at Cassidy. Watkins rapped hard with his knuckles. Shaw turned his head. Watkins signaled for him to roll down the window. Shaw shifted in his seat. Watkins put his hand on his gun. Shaw rolled the window down about a foot.
‘Mr Shaw,’ Watkins said, ‘I’d like you to step out of the car. You’re under arrest.’
‘What for?’ Shaw did not look at Watkins. He looked at Cassidy.
‘The kidnapping of Miss Rhonda Raskin, and the murder of Karl Brandt and Magda Brandt.’
Cassidy watched Shaw’s eyes widen in surprise. ‘What are you talking about?’
‘Mr Shaw, please get out of the car.’ This was the moment when it could crack. Watkins took a couple of steps back to clear the door. The uniformed cop who had driven Watkins’s car put his hand on his holstered gun and moved away from Watkins to widen the angle in case Shaw came out shooting.
Shaw turned off the car and got out. He looked only at Cassidy while the uniformed cop cuffed his hands behind his back and Watkins relieved him of the .38 under his arm. Brian’s cameraman had moved around to keep Shaw centered in the frame. Brian spoke quietly into his microphone. Rhonda looked up from writing in her notebook and noticed O’Malley and his photographer. She looked at Cassidy and mouthed a sarcastic, ‘Thanks.’ He shrugged. This was O’Malley’s town, and Cassidy needed the story in tomorrow’s paper to give it weight. He needed as much public heat on this as he could get, otherwise it could go out the back door and never be heard of again.
A crowd of people had gathered outside the headquarters building. A man in a gray wool suit broke away from the group and hurried down the driveway. ‘Hello. Excuse me. Hello,’ he called as he came, demanding attention. Watkins said something to the uniformed cop, and the officer took Shaw by the arm and steered him toward the police car in the street. The man in the gray suit asked, ‘What’s going on here?’
He tried to go around Watkins, but Watkins blocked him. ‘Who are you?’
‘Assistant Deputy Director Wickersham. Where are you taking that man? Why is he handcuffed?’
‘He’s under arrest for murder and kidnapping.’
Wickersham stopped as if slapped. Watkins put a hand on his arm and turned him away from the watching crowd. He talked to him in a low voice. Wickersham looked over once toward Shaw and shook his head in disbelief.
When they reached Cassidy, Shaw jerked his arm free of the cop’s grip and stopped. The cop reached for him, but Cassidy waved him off. ‘It’s okay.’
‘I didn’t kill them,’ Shaw said. ‘I didn’t even know they were dead.’
‘The evidence says you did.’
‘Uh-uh. How did you make this happen?’
‘I didn’t.’
Shaw snorted at the lie. ‘I’ll be out in a couple of hours, maybe a couple of days, a week. It doesn’t matter. What then? You’re going to spend the rest of your life looking over your shoulder. The good news for you is it’s not going to last long.’ He nodded to the cop and walked to the back door of the patrol car and waited for the cop to open it. When he did, Shaw ducked inside without help and settled himself on the seat. He did not look at Cassidy again.