Trail of the Twisted Cros Read Online Free PDF Page A

liked during emergency calls such as this.
    And as special deputy Secretary of the Treasury, Hamilton Winship frequently received such emergency communications. She knew
     when: every time a President or some other high government official was in danger. Why was that so often, she wondered angrily.
     Was the world mad with terrorist politics?
    She looked at her husband as he sat rigidly on the edge of their bed, his face a study in duty and fright and outrage. He
     was becoming a very old man, she feared. She worried about his heart. A man his age in any other line of work would be just
     fine. But could her husband stand all these jolts to his system for much longer? How could he go on coming to the rescue of
     every emergency situation? It was taking a toll on him.
    But for now, she wouldn’t pester him about retirement, something all their friends were forever discussing in terms of leisurely
     trips to exotic places around the world, or moving to some slower, gentler place, somewhere beyond the furor and the fray
     of Washington. But not her Hamilton! When she brought up the subject, he was not defensive. Nor was he angered. He was confused.
     He actually could not understand talk of retirement. And she knew why. It was because of that she couldn’t demand that he
     delegate whatever crisis he was assigning himself now. Her husband was still the best man in the country at managing crises,
     no matter the silly blather about it in the press of late as the contested province of either Al Haig or George Bush.
    When it came down to it, Hamilton Winship was the man even Haig and Bush would want in command.
    Edith Winship wiped away a tear she wouldn’t dream of allowing her husband to see. She supposed that somewhere along the line
     during this latest terrible crisis she would see Ben Slayton again.
    Slayton, her husband’s special Treasury agent, responsible to him alone, was usually in on these things at some point. She
     hardly resented it. She and Hamilton, if truth be told, adored Ben Slayton as if he were their own son. Hamilton Winship stood
     up, a familiar look of anxiety covering his face. He wiped his brow. He was sweating profusely now.
    “All right,” Winship said into the telephone. “I’ll want the full complement of crisis contingency guard at the White House…
     where’s Bush, anyway?”
    When he was answered, Winship continued:
    “Right. Beef it up around the Vice President, too. And for God’s sake, keep Al Haig nailed down to a chair.”
    Winship paused again.
    “And look, I’ll want a telephoto relay transmission of the message to Nixon in my office within ten minutes. Call over and
     have the staff prepare to receive…”
    Winship was about to hang up.
    “Wait! You say Carter is secure? What’s being done about Jerry?”
    PALM SPRINGS, California, 3:37:45 a.m. PST
    He felt the tingling in his wrist, and awoke at once.
    Twice before, he had been the target of an assassin, and now, though out of office and though most of his fellow Americans
     didn’t know it, he feared a third attempt. Would a third attempt succeed?
    Gerald Ford had thought for a time that he needed medical help for a paranoic condition. But like all former Presidents, he
     received a daily top-secret briefing from intelligence sources in Washington, and he knew. Too much for a man out of the active
     circle, perhaps—but he knew.
    And despite the ridicule about his powers of intellect, or lack thereof, Jerry Ford could put two and two together. The fact
     was, he wasn’t paranoid. The fact was, the briefings he received every day—the same as those received by his fellow has-beens,
     Carter and Nixon—provided him ample reason to believe in gunmen with plots and causes, in addition to the garden-variety deranged
     loner with thirty dollars for a Saturday-night special.
    It was why he wore the special electronic attachment to his wrist watch, suggested to him by his old friend Hamilton Winship.
     The pulsating device