by Joseph Flynn
He put his gun to the back of Arlo’s head and told him, “I think my friend and the lady are old enough not to need a chaperone.”
Then he took the steak knife out of Arlo’s hand.
McGill Investigations, Inc. — Georgetown
“I wasn’t going to shoot him,” the man holding the gun said, speaking of Dikki. “I wasn’t going to let him stop me, either.”
Five steps up the staircase, McGill, also with his gun in hand, said, “Holster your weapon.”
“You first,” the man said. “You and your friends.”
The guy still had his gun pointed at Dikki.
Wisely, Dikki didn’t precipitate any gunfire by attempting to flee.
For the moment, McGill thought keeping the conversation going was the best course.
“Who are you?” he asked.
“FBI,” the man said.
“Osgood Riddick?” McGill asked.
Surprise registered in the man’s eyes, but he nodded.
McGill put his gun away. Sweetie and Deke didn’t.
“You can go now, Dikki,” McGill said.
“I meant no trouble,” the landlord said.
“It wasn’t your fault,” McGill said. “You weren’t the one who overreacted.”
Dikki nodded and disappeared into his little office under the staircase.
McGill told Riddick, “Put your gun away, if you want to come upstairs. If you don’t, get the hell out. If you ever come here again waving a gun around, you and I will get together on your next day off and have a little talk.”
McGill turned his back on Riddick and climbed the stairs.
McGill sat behind his desk and watched Riddick enter his office, preceded by Sweetie, followed by Deke. Going by the scowl on his face, he failed to appreciate all the personal attention he was getting. Made him feel less than the reigning power in the room.
Something the special agent wasn’t used to when dealing with civilians.
As he stood in front of McGill, Sweetie and Deke moved to flank him.
“You going to ask me to sit down?” Riddick asked.
“No. You must have something to say or you wouldn’t be here. Be concise, then go.”
Riddick nodded. “You’re working a case for a client looking for a painting. Stop.”
McGill grinned. “Well, you know how to follow directions.”
“Yeah. Otherwise, I’d have said, ‘Stop or I’ll arrest your ass.’”
“Has the Bureau recovered Magistrate Pruet’s painting, the original not the forgery? If you have, and return it to the magistrate by, say, nine a.m. tomorrow morning, my work is done.”
Riddick barely moved his lips when he said, “We don’t have it.”
“That’s a shame,” McGill said. “I’d have liked to help, but now I can’t. I have an obligation to my client, and so far I’ve heard no legitimate reason to desist.”
Riddick glared at McGill, taking a moment to share his expression of unhappiness with Sweetie and Deke, and said. “You’re all civilians here.”
Deke understood what was coming next and said, “Are you really that stupid?”
Sweetie said, “Worse than that, he’s a zealot.”
McGill knew Sweetie was attuned to extremism, religious or otherwise.
He said, “Let me guess, Riddick. Not only do you not want me anywhere near your investigation, you were none too pleased with the candidate who won the last two elections for president. Especially the last one.”
Riddick’s face grew red, persuading Deke and Sweetie that McGill was right.
But he wasn’t finished.
McGill said, “You backed off after Magistrate Pruet told you he was a friend of mine and of the president, and that’s been eating you ever since, hasn’t it? Damn woman stole the presidency. You shouldn’t have to worry about what she might think. So you decided you wouldn’t, and you came here to … do what? Try to intimidate me?”
“Get on your feet,” Riddick told McGill, “you’re under arrest.”
The special agent looked at Sweetie and Deke and said, “You try to interfere, I’ll arrest both of you, too. And don’t tell me you were Secret Service, pal,” he said to Deke, “because that doesn’t matter. You aren’t shit now.”
Deke started to move, but McGill held up a hand, forestalling him.
He looked at Riddick. The man did have the power of arrest. Even if he hadn’t offered a reason for doing so, he might have some sort of justification in his back pocket that would let a judge side with him. Resisting arrest would make things a bigger mess for Patti. It would be a bad enough if the story that he’d been taken in hit the media at all.
Only McGill didn’t judge the special agent to be in a rational state of mind.
If he submitted to —
“I said get up, goddamnit!” Riddick shouted.
He started to reach for his weapon when Elspeth Kendry appeared in the doorway behind him, gun in hand, and said, “Secret Service. Show me your hands right now or I will blow your fucking head off.”
McGill rolled his chair to the right to give Elspeth a clean line of fire.
Riddick had no way of knowing who was behind him.
The woman might be just who she claimed or a secretary with balls.
Riddick went for his weapon, and collapsed in a heap when Elspeth slammed the butt of her Glock into the back of his head. She kicked Riddick’s weapon away from him. He twitched and she dropped a knee on the small of his back.
Everybody in the room heard the sound of a bone breaking.
Unfazed, Elspeth cuffed him and turned to make sure Holmes was unhurt.
“Dikki called me,” she said.
McGill’s Hideaway — The White House
“I honestly didn’t have a good answer,” McGill told Patti.
He was standing at a window, looking out at the grounds and the city beyond the fence.
“If the guy had seemed halfway rational, I’d have let him put handcuffs on me and take me in, count on you and the other powers that be to straighten things out. But the bastard had pulled his weapon on Dikki Missirian, for Christ’s sake. Might not make him textbook crazy, but it comes pretty damn close.”
Sitting on the room’s leather sofa, the president looked at her husband. Saw his shoulders were still hunched with tension. His mind was still running the horror show of all the things that might have gone wrong that evening.
“From what you told me,” Patti said, “you also promised to fight the man if he ever came back to your office.”
McGill turned from the window and walked over to the sofa, sat next to Patti.
“Came back and waved his gun around,” he said.
“Even so, you implicitly challenged his authority in front of witnesses. Having done that, allowing yourself to be bound, placed in his custody and taken from public view would not have been a smart thing to do.”
“I didn’t know he was going to concoct a false arrest because I wouldn’t knuckle under.”
Patti nodded. “But you’ve at least heard stories of other federal or local officers doing similar things.”
McGill took a beat and admitted he had.
“Maybe my experience is what led me astray. Coming from Chicago, cops know better than to arrest the wrong people. Meaning people with the clout to take their jobs from them.”
“Someone like the president’s husband?” Patti asked.
“Yeah, exactly. Especially when he was sitting peacefully in his place of business. Not having broken so much as a littering ordinance. As for challenging his authority, I’d have busted the SOB’s head if he’d actually hurt Dikki.”
“Which, of course, you know how to do. That might not have looked so good for either of us.”
“I know. I keep thinking of all the things that might have gone wrong.” A new thought occurred to McGill. “There’s no chance Elspeth will be in trouble for what she did, is there?”
A chill smile appeared on Patti’s face.
A knock sounded at the door to the room.
Presidential instructions had been given for no interruptions. Patti said, “I’ll get this.”
McGill stood and went back to his spot at the window. He could hear Patti speaking with Galia. Had to be either her or Jean Morrissey. No one else would intrude. He heard the conversation end and the door close. A moment later Patti stood beside him.
“Tidings of comfort and joy?” McGill asked.
“Riddick was not acting on anyone’s orders. His superiors didn’t even know he was in Washington. The director is trying to decide what to do with him. Unless I seriously disagree with his conclusion, I’m going to leave the matter to him.”
McGill asked, “What he did isn’t grounds for dismissal?”
“Of course, it is. It’s the terms of separation that need to be clarified. Medical expenses and the like. Elspeth fractured the man’s lumbar spine. It looks like he’ll be paraplegic.”
“Ah, hell.”
“She was justified in landing on his back?” Patti asked.
“He jerked or twitched or something. He was moving. In the moment, I don’t know if anyone could tell if the movement was voluntary. I’d say she was fully justified.”
“Then she’ll be all right,” Patti said.
All McGill could do was shake his head, and stop the motion abruptly.
Patti noticed and said, “What is it?”
“That damn Inauguration Day assassination video just popped into my head. I just realized what’s wrong with it?”
“What?”
“Well … the reason I didn’t know what to do about Riddick was because the very idea was so unexpected, a federal agent staging a phony bust on the president’s husband.”
Patti said, “Okay, and that leads to?”
“You always have incredible protection because you need it. But on Inauguration Day it gets ratcheted up over the moon, everybody from cops to feds to the military is on alert. The Secret Service showed us that drone attack getting through, but you can bet they’ll be as ready for that as anything else.”
“You really think so?” Patti asked.
“I do. But before Inauguration Day your protection might be a little off its form because everybody’s looking ahead.”
“And afterward there’s bound to be an inevitable letdown,” Patti said.
“Right,” McGill said. “So if there is going to be an assassination attempt, it’s going to happen before or after January twenty-first.”
“Before,” Patti said, grasping the situation clearly now. “So I won’t even get to take the official oath of office at the White House on January twentieth. If I die before then, they’ll have made me a one-term president, nullified my reelection.”
McGill’s thoughts didn’t concern political consequences.
He thought if anyone killed Patti, they’d better get him, too.
Or his vengeance would be both certain and monstrous.
Chapter 5
Number One Observatory Circle — Washington, DC — Thursday, January 10, 2013
The presence of James J. McGill in the White House should have been a lesson to the Secret Service. Namely that the world was changing and they would have to adapt. As with most institutions, however, the status quo was always to be preferred. Without expressing any partisan leanings, the men and women who protected the life of the president hoped that the administration of Patricia Darden Grant would be a singular exception, at least long enough for everyone currently on the job to retire with a full pension.
Most, if not all, of their number longed for a return to traditional norms: a male president who understood the need to put security concerns before personal whims; a dutiful first lady, not employed outside the home and certain to respect the limits on her freedom of movement; children, ideally none. Failing that a small number of young ones still under the influence of their parents so special agents need not become either the good or bad nannies.
An identical wish list applied to the vice president.
Former VP Mather Wyman had been the ideal package, a mature responsible man with a deceased wife and no children. Couldn’t ask for better. That he turned out to be gay mattered not at all as his behavior had been impeccable and his secret came out only after he’d resigned.
Vice President Jean Morrissey, the current office holder?
She was the next step in evolutionary change. Another woman. A single woman. One whose oath of office didn’t include a vow of chastity. Good God Almighty. The Secret Service realized it would have to check out her every boyfriend. Right back to the day they were christened, assuming that was their faith tradition.
If the Secret Service found out something they didn’t like about a guy, what were they supposed to do? Tell the VP, “Sorry, Ma’am, your boyfriend doesn’t make the grade?” Why? Well, he has a record of: illegal drug use, nonpayment of child support, improper use of an expense account. And those were just the kinds of things that had tripped up members of Congress.
What if Madam VP fell for a seriously bad guy?
Like a visiting academic who was really a computer hacker for the Chinese army. A Wall Street banker who was a Bernie Madoff disciple. An Arizona rancher who’d married six times without ever getting a divorce.
Imagining awful pairings for Jean Morrissey briefly became a popular exercise in black humor at the Secret Service. Suggestions came in from offices around the country. Other federal agencies got wind of the game and asked if they could play, too.
Just before one foolhardy agent could take “Who’s Kissing the Veep Now?” global on social media, the vice president called the director of the Secret Service into her office and had a little talk with him.
“I know the problems my social life might cause for your people,” she told David Nathan. “So here’s what I propose to do. I’ll keep things polite with any man I might meet. If I think there’s a chance I might like to know someone better, I’ll talk with the special agent in charge of my security detail. Ask to have the man vetted, confidentially. If there’s a reason why I shouldn’t take the relationship to a personal level, all you have to do is put up the stop sign.
“I won’t ask you the reason why I shouldn’t go forward. Likewise, if the gentleman in question is cleared, I won’t ask you about his particulars either.”
Nathan said, “Madam Vice President, don’t you think any perceptive man would realize he’ll be checked out before he’s allowed to get close to you?”
“I do. If he’s somebody with something to hide, he’ll back off fast, and so much the better. If he’s a good guy, a standup guy, he’ll shrug it off, and he’ll go up in my estimation.”
The director understood, without saying so, that a venerable agency of the federal government had just morphed into a dating service.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“I’ll also try to make things easier for you by never dating a politician, a lobbyist or a member of the military. That should eliminate a lot of possible conflicts of interest.”
“Very wise,” Nathan said.
“Any suggestions as to other limitations I might consider?”
The director took a breath, thinking, “As long as you’ve asked.”
He said, “It might be a good idea to avoid temperamental types.”
Jean Morrissey smiled. “Wouldn’t be smart to get into shouting matches and force your people to decide when it was time to step in.”
“Exactly.”
“That’s reasonable. I’ll also impose a curfew, say one a.m. to eight a.m. No overnight male visitors. Let your people dial it back just a little during the wee hours.”
“That’s very kind
of you, Madam Vice President. Will that be all?”
“I think we’ve got it covered. Thank you, David.”
The director got to his feet and offered one last thought, “I hope you’ll find someone who makes you very happy.”
“Me, too,” Jean Morrissey said.
She knew the director’s sentiment wasn’t entirely selfless.
Fourteen vice presidents had gone on to sit in the Oval Office.
Protecting a president who was still dating would be a much stickier problem.
True to her word, no man got to spend the night at the vice president’s official residence, but so far two lucky gents got to stay until closing time and one of them, Mark Naughton got invited back for breakfast twice. Including that morning. He brought his Volvo S60R to a gentle stop at the gate to the grounds of the United States Naval Observatory.
Naughton had indeed been christened, but Director Nathan had decided that wasn’t good enough. The Secret Service had checked out his parents as well to assure they were loyal Americans without the taint of either mental instability or criminal activity. The worst that could be said of any of the Naughtons was they all seemed to have the gifts of effortless brilliance, cinematic good looks and self-deprecating humor.
Mark Naughton was the youngest headmaster of DC’s elite Cameron School in its one hundred and forty-eight-year history. He’d charmed the vice president by telling her that he always behaved in a way that would make his student body proud.
She’d responded, “Good thing your school doesn’t have a girls’ ice hockey team.”
They’d hit it off so well that the new Secret Service betting pool was when the date of the couple’s wedding engagement would be officially announced.
Even the prospect of marriage, though, didn’t mean Mark Naughton could skip a security check. He might be Jack Armstrong 2.0, but that didn’t mean some bad actor might not try to use him to further an evil design. Say by attaching a remotely triggered explosive device to his car.
The agents on the gate rolled mirrors under his car to check for that possibility.
Cleared of that concern, Mark popped the lid of his trunk so the Secret Service could make sure that —