The black, four-door Buick Roadmaster carried Virginia license plates. Attached to the plates was a strip of metal on which was stamped ALEXANDRIA 1954, as proof the owner had paid his 1954 Alexandria city automobile tax. The car showed none of the other decalomania, however, that many of the cars in the Washington, D.C., area showed, thus identifying them as military personnel attached to the Military District of Washington, or as employees of the federal government authorized to park in Section B, Parking Lot III, of the Department of Labor, or so on.
There was nothing about the car, in other words, that made it appear to be anything but the car of someone who lived in
Alexandria, Virginia. But when it turned off Pennsylvania Avenue, the normally closed gates of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue were open, and the two guards on duty touched their caps in salute and waved it through without stopping it either to examine the driver’s identification or to telephone to see if he was expected, though it was late at night.
The driver proceeded to the entrance nearest the Executive Office Building, the ornate old Army-Navy-State Department Building. Two marines, in dress blues, came out to the car before it had stopped.
