by Joseph Flynn
“I kin talk cowboy,” Crogher said in a drawl he’d never used in the White House.
This time Galia and Welborn made a point of not looking at each other.
“Anything else we should know about you?” Galia asked.
“I’m fluent in Latin.”
The chief of staff shook her head in wonder.
“Not a problem for me,” Welborn said.
“Good, so the two of you will be able to work together. We’ll need some sort of cover story for you,” Galia said. “I was thinking —”
“I have a summer home down that way,” Welborn said. “A house on a hundred acres of land. We could pose as hired hands.”
Now, the looks of surprise were directed at Welborn.
Somewhat abashed, he said, “The queen — the one in London — gave it to Kira and me as a wedding present.”
“Okay,” Galia said, feeling a bit like Alice in Wonderland, “that should do. Now, as to what you should look to do —”
“Infiltrate the bad guys and learn everything we can as fast as we can,” Celsus said.
“With emphasis on the guy from NASA,” Welborn added. “He’s most likely the one to head up any drone assault, if that’s their game. But is he still around?”
Galia said, “His name is Arlo Carsten, and as of late this afternoon, yes, he’s still in Newport News. Staying at the Colonial Suites where the meeting with the others was held.” She gave them a phone number for Merilee Parker. “Ms. Parker works for me, covertly. She’ll provide you with the latest information she has once you arrive. Please don’t do anything to call undue attention to her.”
Both men nodded.
“Now, all we need is a pickup truck,” Welborn said. “Something that looks like it belongs to a couple of working stiffs but runs like a hot rod.”
Showing why she was chief of staff, Galia said, “I’d think Leo Levy would know where you could get something like that.”
Chapter 4
McGill’s Hideaway — The White House — Wednesday, January 9, 2013
Doing his best not to be bothered by the presence of Patti and Sweetie, McGill held his pose as Gabbi Casale put the finishing touches on his official portrait. The way his head was turned, his focal point was looking out a window. Aside from bare branches and a gray sky, there wasn’t a lot to see … except in his peripheral vision.
Patti and Sweetie were both smiling. Each of their faces expressed the particular affection she held for McGill. He should have been pleased. Warmed that he was held in such esteem. Not today, though. He was miffed that he wasn’t the first to see what Gabbi had wrought.
Childish, he knew, but he didn’t see ever sitting for a painted portrait again.
Seemed like he should have gotten the first look.
Then the better part of his nature came to the fore.
Told him to get over himself. He relaxed. Without slouching.
“Much better,” Gabbi said, noticing the change immediately.
McGill refrained from laughing at himself.
“Better yet,” Gabbi said. “The light in your eyes is perfect. Hold that thought.”
Ms. Casale was yet another amazing woman he was privileged to know. McGill thought he had to be doing something right. He must have drifted off into reverie because some time later he heard Gabbi say, “Voila.”
“Done?” McGill asked.
“Except for the signature,” Gabbi said.
A few turns of her wrist added that.
“Does it look like Rory Calhoun?” McGill asked Patti and Sweetie.
They both shook their heads.
“May I?” he asked the artist.
Gabbi bobbed her head and stepped back.
McGill walked over to look at the painting. Patti and Sweetie stood at one shoulder; Gabbi stood next to the other. McGill couldn’t find the words to express his feelings. It was him, all right. The level of detail was astounding. Each line, curve and plane of his face was immediately familiar. Exactly right. The palette was perfect, too. The texture of his skin, hair, even eyelashes, and the light in his eyes, were all made real by the most subtle shadings of color. His colors.
All in all, the portrait made him feel he’d have to become a better man just to be worthy of it. Have the people who knew him say, “That was Jim McGill, all right. On his better days.”
Now, he knew how Yves Pruet could feel so invested in the Renoir he’d lost. It wasn’t just the monetary value of the work or the prestige of the artist. A good painting could capture a moment dear to those most involved. A great painting could share the feeling of that moment with the world.
“So I’ve left you at a loss for words,” Gabbi told him. “Try to let me down gently.”
An unexpected wellspring of sentiment took hold of McGill.
He kissed Gabbi on each cheek and embraced her.
The artist turned red, what with the president standing three feet away.
Patti understood and took pity on Gabbi. “He does that with me all the time.”
Sweetie added, “Yeah, me, too.”
McGill stepped back from Gabbi and said, “I try not to get mushy with Deke and Leo. It’s a wonderful painting, Gabbi. I didn’t know you could make so much of so little.”
“Faux modesty is part of his act, too,” Patti said.
“But you captured that beautifully,” Sweetie said.
McGill laughed and told Gabbi, “Those two had a lot of time to work up their routine.”
“You forget,” Gabbi told McGill, “I’ve seen you when things got rough and tumble. I think I’ve got a good fix on who you are. That’s why I’m pretty sure the check for my fee won’t be late.”
Patti said, “Another kidder.”
Gabbi extended her hand to Patti, “Madam President, it’s been so good to see you again.” Shaking Sweetie’s hand, she said, “A real pleasure to meet you, Margaret. Please let me know if you and your husband ever come to Paris.”
McGill said, “But you’re heading to Saint Bart’s, right?”
“After a few days in Chicago to see my family,” Gabbi said.
“Of course. After that, though,” McGill asked, “do you think you might lend me a hand for a few days?”
Having just completed McGill’s portrait, Gabbi drew the only available conclusion.
“You want me to help you with an investigation?”
Patti and Sweetie decided to say their goodbyes, leaving McGill and Gabbi alone.
“It involves Yves Pruet,” McGill explained. He told her about the missing Renoir and how he felt the magistrate was holding something back on him. “I could ask him what it is, but I’d hate to have a lie come between us. Worse than that, I don’t want something to go badly wrong for him while he’s visiting our country.”
Gabbi didn’t want that either.
“I’ll delay my trips to Chicago and Saint Bart,” she said. “What do you want me to do, remembering that I’m just a civilian these days.”
“But you still have friends in the State Department, right?”
Gabbi had been a regional security officer for the State Department the last time she’d worked with McGill.
“Yes,” she said.
“And maybe you still have a a friend or two among the French police?”
“I do. This is starting to sound like more than an art theft.”
“That’s what I want to find out. The Pruet family’s summer home is in Avignon. That was where the Renoir was stolen. The man suspected of taking it, I was told, is known as —”
“Laurent Fortier. Is that a good guess?”
“You’ve heard of him?” McGill asked.
“The joke among the lower ranks of artists in France is that one day you’ll be good enough to have Fortier steal your work.”
McGill grinned. He thought he had Gabbi hooked now.
“You’re more than good enough,” he said.
“But there are still days I wake up sore from that beating I took under
the Pont d’Iéna.”
“Me, too. If you’re not up to it, I’ll understand.”
“Yeah, right.” Gabbi shook her head. “You’re lucky I’ve got soft spots for both you and M’sieur le Magistrat. Okay, I’ll go to Avignon. But I’m not going to get into any fights.”
“Please don’t. Stealth is what I want.”
Gabbi was happy to hear that.
Bonifant Cafe — Silver Spring, Maryland
Representative Philip Brock sipped his espresso. He was saving his pain au chocolat for the moment. A copy of the Washington Post, minus the sports section, occupied the opposite half of the small corner table. The two women running the shop, sisters Brock thought, would give him a look every few minutes. They were keeping track of his needs, more coffee, another pastry, but they were also trying to place him. He seemed familiar but they weren’t sure why.
Brock looked like he was born to be on television: full, neatly trimmed dark hair topped an oblong face with a strong jaw. Features of average size were symmetrically placed. A bright, broad smile courtesy of Dr. Kepperman’s orthodontic labors was easily displayed. Most business days he was dressed by Brooks Brothers. Today, Ralph Lauren did the honors.
The default choices for guessing his occupation, that close to Washington, were politician, lobbyist or the new TV anchorman in town. It was only when someone got a good look at Phil Brock’s eyes that the range of possibilities broadened to include the intelligence community or possibly a military contractor.
Once, a particularly forward woman to whom he was introduced at a fundraiser for a colleague had whispered into his ear, “Do you kill people?”
“Not yet,” he replied.
Seemingly disappointed, she went away.
He wondered if his lack of homicidal experience was limiting his dating opportunities. He didn’t have any particular objection to the idea of taking a life. But he’d never felt a personal grievance against anyone so great as to move him to murder.
He hadn’t suffered any childhood scarring at the hands of either his mother or father. They were good people, smart, too. All of them had gotten along well enough when he was young and dependent. As soon as he reached the point where he could earn his own way in the world, though, it became clear he didn’t really love the people who’d raised him. Couldn’t really think of anyone he loved.
He appreciated his parents’ efforts. He returned their investment in him as if he were a blue-chip stock that paid quarterly dividends. The first check he sent home was for twenty-five hundred dollars, and none of the ones that followed was ever for less. While the money he sent home arrived like clockwork, birthdays, anniversaries and professional honors were never acknowledged.
For their part, Mom and Dad eventually stopped trying to interest him in their lives. They signed his checks over to their preferred charities, a development Brock found amusing. He started sending the checks directly to the charities, in honor of his parents, he wrote, to make sure they knew what he was doing.
By the time he left banking and went into politics, as a conservative Democrat, he was sure Mom and Dad felt a great relief that he didn’t try to involve them in his campaign. Or even ask them to wear campaign buttons. Their politics were decidedly to the left of the positions he espoused. They considered themselves refugees from Dixie, fortunate to have gotten out early.
He didn’t favor right-wing positions just to twit his parents. The way he saw things, the Republicans, especially the True South variety, were going off the deep end. The Democrats were taking their turn being the grown-ups. But, at heart, he thought, people wanted things to change slowly if at all. The middle class had hit an iceberg but the band was still playing and no one wanted to admit it was time to run for the lifeboats.
What a lot of people did want was to cling to the remnants of the lives that remained to them: their jobs if not the salaries they used to make; their devalued health insurance plans which they still preferred to uncertain government alternatives; their social standing which allowed them to think they were keeping their heads a bit higher above water than people they didn’t like anyway.
Brock stepped into that social context of gnawing insecurity not with the promise that he would make things better — even the gullible would have trouble swallowing that one — but that he would manage the decay so that things would get worse a little less quickly. The path to oblivion would be a slow slide rather than a horrifying plunge.
Small comfort, he felt, was better than none at all.
Thing was, he was able to sell his message, and win votes, because he really believed his take on the world and the U.S. in particular was right on the money. He might have scrambled along with so many other politicians to latch onto the hind teat of the great cash cow that was the ever diminishing number of ever richer plutocrats.
The problem with that, it was a short-term game. The fat cats would become bigger targets in the end, that was all. They and their toadies would all come to grief. Once a critical mass of people woke up on a given day and realized that all their futures held was more misery, they would look to make someone pay for letting things getting to that point.
The guy living on the top of the hill in his palace — mansion, if you preferred — was the obvious target. But the people who lived on the slopes of the hill who fetched and carried for the wealthy, they’d get it in the head, too.
Brock had jokingly compared that fool Howard Hurlbert to Czar Nicholas, but that was an apt example of how bad things could get. When the Bolsheviks decided that the old order had to go, they not only executed the royal family, they killed all the Romanovs’ servants, too.
Right down to the royal family’s cook.
What had that poor sonofabitch done?
Cooked for the wrong people was what.
There were lots of cooks in Washington these days. They might call themselves lobbyists, lawyers or fair and balanced journalists. But when push came to shove, they were all cooks. They fed the machinery of a corrupt system. The only way out that Brock could see was to amass some money, spread it around in some small, warm country, endear yourself to both the government and the locals. Then as the end approached at home make your getaway with enough cash, though gold would really be better, to live comfortably if not lavishly in your chosen retreat.
Brock found Costa Rica agreeable.
He wasn’t waiting for the end to come to the U.S. either. He was doing what he could to hasten the day. That and build up his traveling money.
A man stepped into the café. He had a perma-tan complexion, an aquiline nose and had gone Brock’s Ralph Lauren one better by wearing Pierre Cardin. In his hand, he carried the sports section of the Post. He spotted the congressman, smiled and stepped over to his table.
He tucked the sports section into the middle of Brock’s newspaper.
Letting the congressman know his money had been deposited. Brock got to his feet and moved the paper aside to clear table space for his guest. The two men shook hands.
Doctor Bahir Ben Kalil was the personal physician to the Jordanian ambassador to the United States. Jordan, of course, was America’s most trustworthy Arab ally. The two men had met at a State Department function the ambassador, a frail fellow, and his doctor had attended. One handshake and a look in the other man’s eyes was all it took for Brock and Ben Kalil to recognize a kindred spirit.
Brock felt sure that while the good doctor was on his government’s payroll, his loyalties lay elsewhere. It was a short jump to guess where. Brock might have picked up a phone and suggested to the FBI that Ben Kalil deserved to be watched for terrorist connections either at home or abroad. But he didn’t.
The doctor knew Brock saw him for what he was, but the opposite was also true. He recognized the congressman not as a patriot but as a wrecker. Ben Kalil thought it might be useful to cultivate such a man. He was the one who had reached out to Brock.
His intuition was rewarded.
Brock came up with a truly stunning
idea.
The outsourcing of acts of foreign terror to American dupes.
The Oval Office
Vice President Jean Morrissey entered the room looking as grim as either the president or Galia Mindel could ever recall seeing her. She’d just come from her office. The Secret Service, at the president’s direction, had given her a private screening of the drone assassination video.
That wasn’t strictly necessary.
A good vice president did what she was told without needing to know the reason why. But that wasn’t the way Patricia Darden Grant did things. She wanted her number two to know she was a full partner, not an afterthought.
In response to that consideration, and what she’d just seen, the vice president stepped up to the president and gave her a hug. She said, “Madam President, that had to be a horrible video for you to watch.”
“It was. Please have a seat, Jean.”
The president took her place behind her desk, smiled and shook her head.
“Look at us,” she said. “Three women running the government.”
“Long overdue,” Galia replied.
“No,” the president said, “we had to wait for the country to tell us it was time. That and maybe wait for women to become a majority of voters.”
“That and have women make up their own minds, not just echo their husbands’ votes,” the vice president said.
“In any case,” the president said, “hooray for us. Here we are. Unfortunately, as you’ve just seen, Jean, there are bastards who can’t stand the idea of us, well mostly me, being here. Would like to blow us to bits. That being the case, Galia will spend the day with you bringing you up to speed on everything you’ll need to know if they should get their way.”
Jean Morrissey nodded. Didn’t protest that such a thing would never happen.
The president appreciated that. Planning for the worst case was imperative.
“The Secret Service would be greatly relieved,” the president continued, “if I canceled the ceremonial inauguration on January twenty-first. I’m not going to do that. Allowing myself to be seen as intimidated would be bad for the country, bad for me, bad for you and bad for the chance of another woman being elected president in the next hundred years.”