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     instead, crippling the former Governor of Alabama for life.
    That was the stuff of public consumption. Along with a few other high-level intelligence men in Washington, Winship knew of
     other attempts not detected by the media.
    In June of 1957, for instance, a lunatic inspired by billboards calling for the impeachment of Earl Warren and political tracts
     which accused President Eisenhower of actively assisting the “international Communist conspiracy,” was nabbed on the fourteenth
     hole at Burning Tree Country Club when Secret Service agents accompanying the President noticed something amiss about the
     golf bag of an odd-looking man who spent a lot of time in the rough searching for errant balls. Agents discovered a shotgun
     where a seven-iron should have reposed.
    A few months after Lyndon Johnson left office to retire at the Pedernales ranch he had acquired while a high-rolling Senator
     from Texas, he was fired on from a helicopter as he rode the range of his spread in an open-top Lincoln Continental. The murderous
     pilot was shot down out of the sky. The Secret Service managed to trace the identity of the dead assassin, and because he
     was a recluse inventor with no special reason to go after Johnson, also managed to keep the lid on the story.
    Not long after Jimmy Carter was in office, he signed a blanket amnesty order, forgiving offenses against young men who had
     avoided conscription during the Vietnam War years. A deranged ex-Marine sharpshooter made an appearance outside the White
     House gates during a ceremony on the South Lawn. An agent of the Treasury’s I.R.S. investigation unit happened to spot the
     young man on the street as he hoisted what appeared to be a pool-cue carrying-bag through the gate bars in the general direction
     of President Carter. Again, the incident went unnoticed by the public.
    Winship thought for several moments about the Carter incident, reflecting on the irony of Carter’s would-be assassin being
     an ex-Marine sharpshooter. Kennedy’s assassin was an ex-Marine sharpshooter.
    Winship stood in the bank of floor-to-ceiling windows of his office, directly behind his desk, the windows looking over toward
     the White House.
    “This new President,” he said aloud, though he was alone in the office. “I wonder how long before he’s attacked?”
    He shook his head, clasped his hands behind his back and paced.
    “It wasn’t a week before they went after Bush,” he said, as if trying to help his thinking by verbalizing the incident.
    He stopped in his tracks. “The Mannlicher-Carcaño!” he said. “My God!”
    Winship returned to his desk and dropped heavily into his chair. He shuddered. He wiped his forehead with a handkerchief and
     opened the Slayton dossier.
    For the next twenty minutes, Winship read intently, occasionally issuing a favorable grunt as he came across entries such
     as Slayton’s military career as a fighter-bomber, his strong linguistic abilities, his expertise in Oriental martial arts
     and now the newest episode of his career as a T-Man—the discovery and defusing of a bomb timed to detonate some time during
     the arrival of Vice President Bush to a London reception party, the act of a cool and thorough professional.
    Cool and professional despite certain drawbacks in his character, Winship thought. He recollected the first time he met Benjamin
     Justin Slayton.
    It was three years ago, when Slayton was a rookie with the Treasury Department, just nicely past his academy training, and
     assigned to the Bureau of Foreign Asset Control. Hamilton Winship made an inspection tour of the B.F.A.C. one afternoon and
     was horrified by the sight of one of his T-men, namely, Ben Slayton, and his hair.
    “What’s your name, son?” Winship asked after a starchy march to Slayton’s desk, covered with a clutter of papers and sandwich
     wrappers.
    “Slayton. Benjamin J. And you?”
    Winship didn’t identify himself. “I would have thought you were