She could hear the upcoming scuttlebutt before it happened. Two of her agents had royally screwed up. There would be an investigation-an old-fashioned witch-hunt. Jezzie Flanagan was on the hot seat. Since she was the first woman ever to hold her job, the fall, if it came, would be steep and painful, and very public.

She finally spotted the one person she'd been looking for in the crowd-and hoping not to find. Secretary of the Treasury Jerrold Goldberg had already arrived at his son's school. Standing with the secretary were Mayor Carl Monroe, an FBI special agent she knew named Roger Graham, and two black men she didn't recognize right off. Both of the blacks were tall; one of them extremely so, huge.

Jezzie Flanagan took a deep breath and walked quickly over to Secretary Goldberg and the others.

“I'm very sorry, Jerrold,” she said in a whisper as she arrived. “I'm sure the children will be found.”

“A teacher” was all Jerrold Goldberg could manage. He shook his head of close-cropped white curls. His eyes were wet and shiny. “A teacher of children, little babies. How could this happen?”

He was clearly hearthroken. The secretary looked ten years older than his actual age, which was forty-nine.

His face was as white as the school's stucco walls.

Before coming to Washington, Jerrold Goldberg had been at Salomon Brothers on Wall Street. He'd made twenty or thirty million in the prosperous, thoroughly crazy 1980s. He was bright, worldwise, and tested on his wisdom. He was as pragmatic as they came.

On this day, though, he was just the father of a kidnapped little boy, and he looked extremely fragile.

CHAPTER 8

WAS TALKING to Roger Graham from the FBI when the Secret Service supervisor, Jezzie Flanagan, -joined our group. She said what she could to comfort Secretary Goldberg. Then the talk quickly turned back to the apparent kidnapping, and the next steps to be taken.