Chase scanned every face there, not seeing Prothero among them. He looked to his left, seeing black faces, brown faces, pink and yellow faces all smearing into a creature with a thousand eyes, noses, and mouths. Where was he?
A hand touched his shoulder and he spun around, his heart crashing in his chest.
"Sorry I wasn't there to meet you." Prothero leaned forward, speaking into his ear. "I felt Ingrid deserved my moral support."
Chase grinned stupidly. The man he was seeking had been sitting above the tunnel exit in a triangular wedge of seats, not five yards away.
Prothero was staring into Chase's sweat-drenched face. "What is it? What's wrong?"
They withdrew a little way down the tunnel, out of sight of the auditorium. Chase spoke rapidly while the tall, immaculate senator listened gravely. Chase, was beginning to feel that his suspicions were imaginary, rather ludicrous in fact, though Prothero took it all very seriously. He suggested that they return to the hospitality suite, post two guards outside, and watch the rest of the speech on TV. "You may or may not be right, Gavin, but I don't believe in taking risks."
Back in the suite and with the guards outside, Chase wondered whether he was experiencing the thin end of paranoia. He'd been edgy to begin with and now he felt foolish.
Prothero stood in the middle of the room, his long tanned face pensive, eyes fixed on the large screen. "Who are they?" he asked without turning his head.
"I think it's a religious sect that calls itself the Faith."
"Black robes, shaved heads?" Prothero glanced swiftly at Chase, who nodded. Something was evidently troubling Prothero. He said, "There was a mob of them at the entrance as I came in earlier. If it was me they were after they had their opportunity then. Why risk coming inside the building to make an attempt?"
Chase didn't know. He tried a weak guess. "Perhaps that was a diversion. Perhaps they were hoping . . ." His voice trailed away. He'd run out of weak guesses.
Prothero gave him a long searching look. He went to the telephone and lifted the receiver. "He was a kid, you say, the one you saw?"
"Eighteen, possibly even younger."
The furrows in Prothero's forehead deepened into crevices. "They'd send a young kid to assassinate somebody?"
"What better age for a fanatic? Their ideals are still potent and their convictions unshakable, and at that age violence is the one sure answer. It's only as you get older that the issues change from black and white to murky shades of gray." Chase's voice had an ironic lilt to it. He realized that he was speaking from personal experience, defining his own present dilemma.
"The answer to what though?" Prothero said, punching buttons. "What are these fanatics hoping to achieve? What is it they want? It can't be simply religious belief that motivates--" He broke off, requesting a full security alert and a thorough search of the building.
Chase listened, his eyes on the larger-than-life Ingrid Van Dorn in glowing color; even the giant screen didn't do her justice. The TV director cut from a close-up to a long shot of the podium. On a normal-size screen the background detail would have been lost, but here Chase could make out the features of the people on the dais behind her and even the faces of some of the audience on the extreme right of the platform, just within the arc of lights.
Something flashed and winked like two bright silver dollars. Light reflecting on spectacle lenses. Chase stiffened. He took a step nearer, staring, his eyes aching as they probed the picture for detail. And there --there it was--shaven head on the stalk of a neck, glasses flaring light. The kid was in the auditorium. He was watching his victim: Ingrid Van Dorn.
"It isn't you, it's her!" Chase was pointing. "Can you see him, watching her, waiting!"
Prothero was turned to stone. He held the phone below the artful silver wing of hair, mouth half-open, arrested in midword. The mouth worked but no sound came out.
"Tell security," Chase said rapidly, "for God's sake they've got to stop him."
"Go!" Prothero shouted.
The two white-helmeted guards, quietly conversing, were thrust apart as Chase charged from the room and ran toward the main chamber. He shouted at them to follow him but didn't waste time glancing over his shoulder to see if they had obeyed. He bounded up the stairs, along a corridor, turned a corner, and ran headlong up the short tunnel into the daylight brightness of the auditorium.
For one frozen panic-stricken instant he was disoriented. Left of the platform or right? He swung around and back again. Then got his bearings. Left, you bloody fool, left--the opposite side!
Chase leaped onto the platform. The dignitaries and officials seated behind the podium gaped. Ingrid Van Dorn looked up, her voice faltering and dying away until the auditorium was filled with a vast silence. It was as if time had stopped for the twenty-three hundred people in the main chamber, who sat transfixed.
