Sympathy for the Devil

by Justin Gustainis

  Arkasian pointed to the top document. "This sheet is part of the blueprint for the Garden - it's up-to-date, revised after all the new construction they did there a few years ago. The Garden is so fucking huge, the damn blueprint is spread out over five of these pages. We can come back to those later."

  He counted off five sheets, pulled them free from the pile, and put them aside. The next page wasn't a blueprint, but it seemed to be almost as detailed.

  "This is the Service's plan for bringing Senator Stark into the garden. It looks like there's going to be a floor fight for delegates this time out, which means each of the three biggies - Stark, Leffingwell, and Martinez - will be addressing the convention at different times. That doesn't usually happen, they tell me. Most years, the primary system determines the nominee months beforehand, and all they do at the convention is listen to speeches, fight over the party platform, and wait to see who the Presidential candidate's running mate is gonna be. But not this year."

  Arkasian pointed to the elaborate diagram. "This is the Stark movement plan. There's a different one for each of the three, based on the old military principle that you never follow the same route through enemy country twice. If the Service used the same procedure for each candidate, somebody who observed the first one would automatically know the others. So this is the specific strategy for getting Stark from the Secret Service vehicle - an armored Suburban, like they all are - into the Garden and onto the podium securely, and back out again when he's done orating. Check it out."

  He pointed at one edge of the drawing. "Stark will be brought in via the 23rd St. Entrance. From the street door, it is 420 feet to the first side corridor. Turn right, and then it's 190 feet to the elevator."

  Arkasian looked up and around at the others. "The public isn't allowed to use the elevators in the Garden, apart from folks in wheelchairs, things like that - and they sure as hell won't be using this one Tuesday night, when Stark is scheduled to speak."

  He rested his finger on the spot labeled Elevator 4 (Stark). "The elevator will have agents stationed at the street level entrance where Stark gets on, at the elevator door on Level C where Stark will exit, and there will be armed agents on the elevator itself, before he even gets in it."

  The finger moved again. "From the elevator, Stark and his Secret Service escort of twelve agents will turn right, and walk the length of this corridor, which is 628 feet. After that, he goes into a room designated as a holding area, and from there to the podium where he'll speak. I'm glossing over that part, because this corridor is the crucial area." Arkasian looked up at them again, his expression grim. "That's where we're going to hit him."

  "And that brings me to our third, and biggest advantage," Morris said. "If we didn't have this one going for us, the other two wouldn't be enough - not nearly enough. But we do have it, and it can be expressed in one word: magic."

  Mary Margaret Doyle walked into the suite's living room to find Sargatanas in an apparent good mood, for once. She distrusted this, of course - sometimes he was in a good humor only because he had devised some new sexual degradation to inflict upon her. Many of these had been exciting, at first. But now his torments were just something to be endured.

  "There you are," he said. "I want to talk to you about our friend Ramon Martinez."

  A jolt of fear made her heart race. He had been obsessing about the Senator from New Mexico for days now. If he had decided to do something drastic about Martinez, it could bring the whole carefully-built structure down around their ears.

  "Have you decided on a safe way to... deal with him?"

  He gave a bark of laughter. "Deal with him? I'm tempted to send you over there to fuck him. I understand Ramon has a taste for bimbos."

  As usual, she ignored the insult. "What do you mean?"

  "I heard from the Senator himself, not ten minutes ago. It seems he's been giving thought to his future, has Ramon. And, in return for my pledge to make him my running mate, he's going to throw his support to me in New York."

  "Why that's... that's fantastic!"

  "This will be during the second ballot, of course. Ramon wants the joy of hearing his name placed in nomination to be President of this Great Land of Ours, which is to be expected."

  "Yes, it's common practice - or used to be, back in the days when floor fights were the rule, rather than the exception."

  "How well-informed you are. Anyway, during the second ballot, Ramon will release his delegates, with a strong recommendation that they cast their votes for the next President of the United States, Howard W. Stark. Little do they know that they'll also be voting for the last President of the United States."

  "That will put us over the top. Leffingwell won't even be close."

  "You know, I think I'm starting to be glad that our little plot to do Leffingwell in didn't succeed. I expect he'll find the taste of defeat to be far more bitter than any poison we could have slipped into his iced tea."

  "So, I assume that Martinez is no longer 'that spic cocksucker' around here?"

  "Don't be stupid. Of course he's still a spic cocksucker. But now he's our spic cocksucker."

  After Morris and Libby had finished explaining the broad outlines of the plan they had conceived, Morris asked, "What do you think?"

  After a couple of seconds, Peters said, "I think we better get Ashley back here, since she's got such a big role to play."

  "Good idea," Morris said.

  "I'll strive to watch my language while the lady is present," Finlay said dryly.

  Peters said, conversationally, "Ashley, please."

  The words were barely out of his mouth when there was a knock on the suite's door.

  "I'll get it," Peters said.

  As Ashley entered the room and walked back to her seat, Morris said to her, "We've been plotting - and since you're going to play such a major role, we thought you should be here."

  "Fine," she said pleasantly. "I always love a good plot."

  After Morris explained what he had in mind for her to do, Ashley clapped her hands together girlishly. "Ooooh, that sounds like fun. I even get to take my clothes off!"

  Soon thereafter, they broke for a room service lunch. When the waiter knocked on the door, by prearrangement the others quietly went into one or the other of the bedrooms, and closed the doors. There was no reason why they should all be seen together - even by a room service waiter.

  Morris opened the suite's door so that the man could wheel in the big cart with their food. "Just lay it out on the table, if you would," Morris said. "My friends will be back soon."

  The waiter complied, then presented Morris with the bill. As he was signing, they could hear from one of the bedrooms a woman's voice yelling, "Yes, yes, right there, right there, yes, oh yesss!" This was followed by some inarticulate grunting sounds. The waiter could not help smiling, but wisely said nothing. Morris added a better-than-average tip and handed the bill back.

  "Just call us for pickup when you're done, sir - or wheel the cart into the hall, if you prefer."

  As he opened the door to leave, the waiter looked back and said, expressionlessly, "Enjoy your afternoon."

  Morris waited a few seconds, then called, "Y'all can come out now!"

  From the room where the sex noises had originated came Libby, Peters - and Ashley, who was grinning.

  "That's an interesting sense of humor you've got there, Ashley," Morris said.

  "What? Me? Oh, you mean those noises?" Ashley tried to look innocent, and failed miserably. "That wasn't me - that was Libby."

  Morris looked toward Libby, who responded with a shrug and an indulgent smile. "Sorry, Quincey. I just couldn't control myself."

  After eating, the group spent another couple of hours finding holes in the plan, and fixing them. They discussed various things that might go wrong, and worked out ways of dealing with them.

  Finally, Morris looked around at this, his most motley of crews - the two witches, the demon, the priest, the damned soul and the Secret Service
guy - and said, "Anything else you want to say? Anybody?"

  Receiving no response apart from a few headshakes, he went on, "Then I guess we might as well call it a day. I'd ask that we meet back here a week from Sunday. Although hotel space in the whole metro area is going to be impossible to find during convention week, a considerable bribe to the hotel manager has got us this suite again for that whole period - which we probably won't need, since it all hits the fan Tuesday night, when Stark comes to the Garden to give his speech. But, you never know."

  "One thing," Ashley said. "Maybe this was already discussed during my absence, but why don't we hit Stark at his hotel, before he goes to the Garden? I'm sure Jerry here could find out for us where the guy is staying."

  "We did talk about that, actually." Morris said. "Thing is, we'd never get close, not through all the security. And even if we somehow did, there's no way to get out afterwards. At least with the Garden, we know he's coming to us, when and where. We can prepare the ground in advance. And the layout of the place gives us at least a chance of getting clear afterward."

  "Okay," Ashley said. "Just a thought."

  "We each have our preparations to make in the meantime, and I'd suggest you all make whatever personal arrangements you need to, in case things don't work out for us the way we planned."

  "Aw, what's the worst that can happen?" Peters asked with a crooked grin. "We get killed? Hell, I did that once already - it ain't so bad."

  Chapter 43

  There was a knock at the door, followed by a male voice saying, "Senator? We'd like to leave in about five minutes, if that's okay."

  "Fine, we'll be ready."

  Mary Margaret Doyle bustled about the room, but with purpose. "I think I've got everything," she said, "including the final draft of the speech."

  "Why bother?" Sargatanas asked. "There are two teleprompters, remember?"

  "Yes, and I also remember that in 1994 Bill Clinton was giving his State of the Union address before Congress, and some dolt loaded the prior year's State of the Union into the teleprompter - which Clinton only found out when the thing started rolling."

  "Goodness. What did he do?"

  "He had the speech he was supposed to be giving memorized, so he pretended to be reading it off the prompter. They got it fixed midway through. Some people said later that it was the best speech he ever gave."

  "Indeed? Not bad, for a mere human. I could do the same, of course, if necessary."

  "I have no doubt you can," she said. "But a little extra redundancy never hurts."

  The convoy of six black, unmarked Jeep Suburbans made their slow way down Broadway. Stark and Mary Margaret Doyle were in the third one, along with four Secret Service agents, including the driver.

  The agent sitting next to Mary Margaret Doyle turned to her and asked, "Ms. Doyle? Everything okay?"

  "Yes, fine," she said. "One of these stupid false eyelashes came loose, and it's making my eye tear. I've got it now."

  The agent privately wondered why a loose eyelash in one eye would make tears slide down both of her cheeks, but Secret Service agents are trained to discretion.

  "Just look at all those people," Stark said.

  The sidewalks on both sides were jammed the whole way. Some of the pedestrians seemed to be moving, or trying to. But others just stood at the barriers, waving signs and shouting. They had no idea who was in the black SUVs, but it was widely known that those were the Secret Service's vehicle of choice when transporting dignitaries.

  "There must be thousands of them," Mary Margaret Doyle said. "What do they want?"

  "Lots of them are protesting something, ma'am," the agent in the shotgun seat said. "Some are against the war, some are for the war, some of them oppose the federal budget cuts, some favor nuclear energy, some oppose nuclear energy, and some want us to nuke Saudi Arabia. The animal rights people are here, and the anti-timber people, and some anarchists, who are against everything - there's something for everybody."

  "But... even if the Senator were already President, he couldn't do anything about some of those things."

  "I don't believe they care, ma'am."

  The agent turned away from Mary Margaret Doyle and spoke into the radio transmitter on his wrist.

  "CX, this is S-3. I have Dragon and Princess about two minutes out." He seemed to listen for a moment, then said "Roger that."

  The Secret Service had recently changed the code name designations for Stark and Mary Margaret Doyle. She liked his new one better, but thought that 'Attila' had a certain cachet that 'Princess' just didn't carry.

  Soon the little convoy pulled up to the curb outside one of Madison Square Garden's many entrances.

  "Please don't exit the vehicle until we give you the 'All Clear,' folks," the agent in front said. Since there was a burley bodyguard sitting next to each door, disobedience was highly unlikely.

  The agent spoke into his wrist mike again. "Roger. Disembarking now." He turned to the back seat passengers. "Time to go, folks. Curbside only, please."

  Then they were out of the SUV and walking toward the door of the building, agents in front, behind, and on either side of them. In the distance, people yelled and chanted. They entered Madison Square Garden, walked down a hall and turned right, agents standing at all four points of the intersection where they turned.

  Then there was an elevator open, agents outside and inside. Into the elevator, a brief descent, the elevator door opening onto a windowless area of hallways and closed doors. "We'll be taking you to the holding area now. You can relax for a while before it's time to go upstairs."

  Another long, linoleum-covered hall stretched before them. Two agents walked about fifty feet ahead, four more were directly in front of Stark and Mary Margaret, two each walked on either side, four more were directly behind, and two more lagged further back, looking over their shoulders frequently. Senator Stark and his Chief of Staff were so well protected that nothing could possibly happen to them.

  They had covered about half the length of the long hallway when Fright Night began. For real.

  Special Agent Charlie Vincent was working trail on the Stark escort with Pete Brewster next to him. Walking backwards at any speed is clumsy and hard to keep to a straight line; you tend to bump into stuff. So agents in their position walk normally but look over their shoulders a lot. Every time it was the same: walk-look-nothing; walk-look-nothing; walk-look-nothing; walk-look-man with a gun.

  Vincent saw him first, although where the figure had appeared from he couldn't have told you. Vincent yelled "Gun!" as he was supposed to, and very quickly produced his own weapon, the Sig Sauer P229 that most agents use. Brewster's pistol was brought to aim a bare half-second behind his.

  What Vincent had seen was a broad shouldered man with black hair and a dark overcoat who was aiming a handgun in their direction. Since a weapon was already in evidence, Vincent and Brewster were authorized by regulations to fire without having to yell "Freeze!" or any such nonsense.

  They each fired four times, very fast. Secret Service agents have to re-qualify with a pistol every couple of months, and the standard is high. Every Secret Service agent in the Protective Division is a superb shot. Agents Vincent and Brewster were thus surprised when a man who had surely just been shot at least six times in the chest turned and ran way.

  "Body armor," Brewster said.

  "Yeah, gotta be," Vincent said, and they took off after the fleeing figure.

  The rest of the detail did exactly what they were supposed to upon hearing the dread word "Gun." They moved the protectee (in this case two of them) very fast in the direction opposite danger - here, that meant straight ahead. They were also prepared to deal with danger from the front. Nothing says the bad guys can't work as a team, too. The agents were prepared for any individual brandishing a weapon.

  They were not prepared, however, for the naked woman.

  They couldn't have said where she came from, either. The nearest corner was 200 feet behind her. There were
no side doors in this section. But there she was.

  She wore noting but black high-heeled shoes, just like porn stars and strippers do. She had no weapon - her hands were empty, and she surely had no place to hide one.

  To each of the agents, she was a vision of his personal fantasy - whether movie star, porn star, TV actress, supermodel, Miss February of 2004, or, in one man's case, his sixth-grade teacher, Miss Evans.

  She walked toward them, a welcoming smile on that beautiful face that looked so different to each of them. The only two people not affected by her beauty and raw sensuality were Mary Margaret Doyle (who was as heterosexual as a June day is long), and Howard Stark, who knew something was amiss, but not yet what it was.

  When she spoke, her voice was just... wonderful. "Good evening, folks," she said, the smile still in place. "How's everybody doing tonight?"

  Discipline, so firmly ingrained in these agents, finally reasserted itself. One man got his Sig Sauer out and pointed at the vision of female perfection. "Freeze! Stand still! Hands on your head!"

  She looked at him with raised eyebrows, and stopped. Then she slowly put her hands atop her head, which of course only displayed her perfect breasts more prominently. "You mean like this?" she asked sweetly.

  Then, in an instant, the vision of loveliness became a vista of horror beyond description, as the demon known in some circles as Ashley gave these brave agents of the U.S. Secret Service an unfiltered look at her true form.

  It only lasted a second; Ashley had agreed, somewhat reluctantly, not to expose these dedicated men to so much of herself that their minds would be destroyed permanently. The effect was essentially what had recently afflicted a priest and Secret Service agent in a New Jersey hotel room. This experience may have been a little worse than theirs, since the agents had no indication that a vision of Hell was on its way.

  Three of the men passed out, their brains refusing to accept any more of this horrific sight. Several others fell to the floor and immediately curled into a fetal position. Five of them sank slowly to the floor and sat there sobbing, as if at their only child's funeral.