The South Lawn Plot

by Ray O'Hanlon

  Had the trainee agents moved any faster to the door no assassin on earth would have been able to outpace them. Asher watched them leave. Rookies, he thought. God help us.

  His eyes were on the door, and they had remained fixed on the silhouetted figure who had appeared after the last of the lunch crowd had vanished from sight.

  “Well, look who it is,” Asher said. “Special Agent Conway. Welcome back to the world.”

  “Thanks, Pete. I see you're getting ready for the big one again. How are they doing?”

  “Oh, they'll be fine I guess. They seem bright enough, not that I'm going to inflate their egos any more than they already are. I would say the president has a fair chance with any one of them.”

  “I guess that's as much as we can expect these days,” Conway replied.

  Asher walked up the slightly inclined walkway between the rows of chairs. Conway waited in the doorway.

  “Let's step outside. I need some air,” said Asher.

  Outside the screening room the corridor was brightly lit, bare and antiseptic. But bright lights took nothing away from Cleo Conway. She had been breaking hearts at the service for years. Time actually seemed to be her friend.

  “How was Alaska?”

  “It was quiet,” Conway replied.

  That was about it for Conway's vacation, now thousands of miles away and a million years ago.

  The two walked to the end of the corridor, turned left and boarded an elevator that took them up to the ground floor. Seconds later they were standing in the early season humidity that had draped itself over Murray Drive.

  “Jeanie and the kids doing okay?”

  Asher nodded. “Fine, he said. “Kristen is a real teen now, though. It would take at least two of our best people to keep tabs on her, and believe me, sometimes I'm tempted.”

  “She'll grow out of it,” Conway said. “I did.”

  “Yeah. Anyway, it's good to see you back, Cleo. You've doubled the experience quotient around here by simply showing up.”

  Conway smiled. “You're a tease, Pete,” she said. “What have you got lined up for me?”

  “In the next couple of days, nothing much. Just settle back in. I know it's been rough. Tidy your desk, go work on that body of yours and then be ready for what's coming down the pike.”

  “And what might that be?” said Conway. “What's stirring in our beautiful world?”

  Asher drew a deep breath and let it out.

  “The threat level seems low right now. Leaving aside the China and Taiwan situation, there's the usual stuff in the Middle East, the generic sundry bad guys. And there's something rumbling again in Central Asia, and maybe Sri Lanka.”

  “Which of the ‘stans? And I thought Sri Lanka was all quiet and peaceful again.”

  Conway had always scored well in the geography tests that had been part of high school social studies. As a kid she had enjoyed pouring over maps and globes, old and new. Her father had praised her interest saying that people who grew up on large landmasses were always on the right track if they were curious about other, smaller, places in the world.

  And what else on earth was there apart from oceans, Conway had always replied.

  Her father's response had been a standing joke between the two of them: “Why Cleo, small landmasses and large islands of course.”

  The vision of her father vanished as Asher rumbled on, his deep voice occasionally throwing out hints of his equally deep southern birth.

  “Well, they've been arguing over their peace process as you know,” he said. “Remember the assassination of the Indian prime minister, what was his name? Gandhi, Rajiv Gandhi. It's a long time ago but do you recall something unusual about it?”

  “Yes, I do,” said Conway. “The lead assassin was a woman, a Tamil separatist. She was an early-day female suicide bomber, comparatively rare for the time. Why Sri Lanka? Isn't that one place we've actually avoided getting our fingers dirty, at least in relative terms?”

  “You're right,” Asher responded. “But we have word, by way of our friends over at Langley, that there is a kind of school for women assassins doing a thriving business somewhere at the northern end of the island. This school seems to be graduating more than just locals. In fact it's turning into something of an assassination academy, just for the ladies, and one with the kind of global prospectus that is making people around here nervous.”

  “Is it an al-Qaeda op?”

  “Not so far as we know, and different religious perspectives would be in play between the Tamils and the qaeda crowd,” Asher replied.

  “Nevertheless we can't get a precise handle on just who is behind it. All we know right now is that it exists, is being protected by the local bad guys and is beginning to graduate its brightest stars.”

  “And we think they might be eyeballing us,” said Conway.

  “Maybe so, maybe not. But we can't take the chance,” said Asher.

  “And as part of our response to a threat that we must assume is clear and present, you're going to be assigned to the first team.”

  “The First Lady?”

  “Never accuse me of being sexist,” said Asher, a half-smile breaking across his weathered countenance. “We'll throw in the president as well. Just for the hell of it.”

  He took only a half-step back when Conway planted a kiss on his cheek.

  “Where is he right now?” she said nodding in the direction of the nearby White House.

  “Not in town,” said Asher. “He's giving a speech in Chicago and attending a fundraiser.”

  “I'm already there,” said Cleo Conway.

  34

  MANNING STOPPED A FEW YARDS SHORT of the front door. He was early for work, though he knew that there would be a couple of his colleagues already at their desks. He gazed at the building. Embassies held secrets and spawned tales but Washington, he had long concluded, was in a league of its own, most especially since the arrival of the new ambassador.

  He was on his third overseas posting, and it was easily his most important thus far. The embassy itself hinted at the prestige that came with a Washington assignment. But not too loudly, he had decided. Manning operated his own rough grading system for embassy compounds, their exteriors and interiors.

  While most in Washington were roughly appropriate, he felt, some were grandiose and excessive. One or two were downright outrageous given the economic circumstances of the nations they represented.

  Manning reckoned that a country's sense of self, or just its sense, could be fairly assessed by what lay behind an embassy's front gate. Ireland's embassy did not have a gate. It had been found wanting for a few other details in the recent time when the Republic had transformed itself from being a small nation on the western fringe of Europe to being a rather rich small nation occupying a kind of bridge between Europe and the United States.

  Despite the darker economic outlook, the end of the Hibernian Dream as one colleague had put it, the embassy's move would go ahead as it was deemed time for a larger diplomatic outpost than the Sheridan Circle quarters, one that would more accurately reflect the country's progress, its admittedly stalled ambition, and its hoped-for return to better days. That was the argument in favor at any rate.

  This he had learned just a few days ago in a briefing given to top-level diplomatic staff by the ambassador. The news had not taken Manning or his colleagues entirely by surprise. What had taken them off guard was the announcement by the ambassador that a new building had already been located and paid for.

  This almost Teutonic efficiency had raised eyebrows and set tongues wagging. Where was it, they asked, but the ambassador had replied that she could not give the location away just yet because a few papers had yet to be signed. She didn't want to put a hex on the deal, she had said.

  “Hex, me arse. You just like keeping your little secrets,” said Manning, glancing at his watch.

  The structure that was soon to be the former embassy was, to the more educated eye, a four-floor, semi-detache
d Louis XV1-style limestone house built in 1906. It stood on a fan-shaped lot across from the traffic circle that was home to the bronze image of General Philip, “Little Phil” Sheridan, a Civil War hero of the Union who had been born of Irish parents, had come into the world on a ship crossing the Atlantic, or had been born in Ireland and carried onto a ship within days of his arrival on earth. Records were a little unclear with regard to baby Sheridan. The destruction wrought by the adult Sheridan on the forces of the Confederacy had, however, been more than well documented.

  The previous ambassador had been a bit of a Civil War buff and had regaled visitors to the embassy with Little Phil stories. His successor had merely inquired who the silly little man on the horse was. She had also made it clear that she wasn't interested in any answer.

  The embassy's first floor was for receptions, and the new ambassador had plenty of questions about such affairs. Moreover, she expected detailed answers. The first floor had once included the ambassador's office, but with all the confusion over moving, that sanctum had been moved up another level. The building currently housed roughly twenty people, about half of them being accredited diplomats. The overall number of occupants had been edging up in recent months, and with the impending move, more were now anticipated. America was once and again Ireland's best friend in the world, and there would be a need for more Irish hands to pump American ones.

  Manning rather liked the soon to be ex-embassy, even though it did seem more suited to diplomacy in the age of horse and buggy. He was particularly curious about what secrets, real and potential, it might have gathered down the years. His lingering paranoia, which had been bolstered by the encounter atop the mountain, had tempted him in the direction of a little more eavesdropping than usual. He had idly considered what might be gained from bugging the place, particularly the ambassador's office. He had done a little private research on the web about listening devices. The embassy, so far as he could gather, had not been swept for bugs in a long time, if ever.

  Typically Irish, he thought. Too trusting by far. The British, he knew, would turn a place upside down before moving into it. And they would turn it upside down again once they had set up shop. The British expected to be bugged. They hoped that others would try. It was an acknowledgement that you still counted for something in the world.

  Manning was unaware of it, as was everyone else, but the Sheridan Square offices had been bugged once. Not by the British, although they had considered it and once halfheartedly attempted it, but by the Russians in their former guise as the Soviets.

  Back in the early 1970s, the KGB had succeeded in planting a device in a phone in the then first secretary's office. Moscow at the time was keenly interested in the events in Northern Ireland. Tapping into the unstated sentiments of the Irish government had been considered a key element in the formulation of Moscow's strategy for the Troubles, how to take advantage and, perhaps, foment even deeper discord.

  The Soviets had monitored Irish chat, both in the building and on the phone for about six months. The listeners had discovered that some rural Irish accents could be difficult to decipher, that diplomats were sometimes less than subtle in their romantic dalliances and that there was, not infrequently, vigorous debate in the embassy with regard to Northern Ireland and what to do about Irish American supporters of the IRA. The phone was eventually changed and the bug went into the garbage with it. The KGB did not attempt to replace its device.

  Now, three decades later, the embassy was throwing things out again in anticipation of the move to new and better digs. So much stuff and so little room, the ambassador would say as she supervised the clearing out of anything she declared to be sinful clutter. Nobody dared point out that the new place would actually have more room.

  The ambassador had also made it abundantly clear that with new quarters firmly established she was going to take on the British in the social stakes. As the peace process had lumbered on, not always in the direction anticipated or hoped for in Dublin, Her Majesty's diplomats had stepped up a kind of hearts, minds and stomachs campaign aimed at convincing anyone who cared that London's intentions were in the right place and its way of moving the Irish situation forward, was, naturally, the most advantageous to all. The tactic had been pursued with vigor at the spacious British Ambassador's residence on Massachusetts Avenue.

  By way of a barely subtle response, it had been decided in Dublin that Sheridan Circle, and the nearby but separate ambassador's residence on S Street, would both go on the block. What would then be sought was a building and compound large enough to combine both residence and embassy. The British would no longer be allowed to go unchallenged in the never-ending game of ear bending.

  This was, more or less, the official rumor.

  One or two of Manning's colleagues had, rather unkindly he thought, suggested that the appointment of Phillipa Evans as ambassador had been necessitated by her well known, or at least well rumored, private lifestyle and the many connections it brought with it.

  Whatever the reason for the shipping out, it didn't really matter all that much to Manning. He wasn't sure if he wanted to remain a diplomat for much longer anyway. He reckoned he would never make ambassador to a first rate capital such as Washington, no matter how evident his style or talent.

  Manning had walked to work. He had left his sleeping wife and daughter at the Georgetown house and had covered the distance with an even, steady stride. There would be few mornings as cool as this once the month turned. Already, the city on a swamp was beginning to heat up as spring advanced.

  A few minutes and ritual greetings later, Manning walked slowly up the winding staircase that led to the ambassador's office. Ambassador and her first secretary had agreed to set aside time to discuss the grand move.

  It was perhaps a coincidence, perhaps not, he thought but the transfer of the embassy from its present location to its new, decidedly upscale address, was about to occur, serendipitously some were saying, under the gaze of an ambassador who was herself known to be something of a mover in matters including, but not entirely confined to, real estate. The thought made Manning smile.

  The stairs duly conquered, as if some mountain's precipitous ridge or col, Manning stood at the door of the ambassador's office. He tapped gently before turning the handle and stepping smartly into the perfumed preserve of his superior. She was, however, absent from the room. It was a couple of minutes beyond their scheduled meeting so Manning decided to wait. Might as well get it over, he thought.

  The office was unrecognizable from the form it had taken under the new occupant's predecessor, and this, to just about everybody, had seemed more than a little over the top with the decision to vacate now revealed.

  Still, the lady's style was above reproach, all had agreed. Manning walked over to the sideboard that was crowded with framed photographs. Some were professional, but most were family snapshots, Phillipa with siblings, parents and cousins, her husband, who always seemed to be in another country doing business, a few of mother with daughter at various ages. There seemed to have been quite a few garden parties at a large country house. Most of the recent photos were of Evans on the job.

  Evans was, no doubt about it, a woman of stunning good looks. She was close to fifty, for sure, or might have even reached that landmark. But the years had treated her very kindly. Her upbringing had doubtless helped. Her family, more than financially comfortable, had ensured that their daughter's had been a life of few material worries.

  Phillipa, so the arbitrators of such matters had concluded, could be described as latter day Anglo-Irish, though not entirely big house Protestant.

  Either way, she was a vivacious, utterly worldly woman, an Irish Pamela Harriman, her chosen work a glove fit for her many evident talents. Manning was by no means the only one who had been just a little smitten.

  Manning turned sharply as he heard Evans enter the room. She beamed, and he nodded and smiled in return. He was surprised, and though he would not admit it to anyone, a little dis
appointed that she was accompanied by a man that he had never seen before.

  “Good morning, Eamonn,” said Evans. “Sit down, will you? We have some serious matters to discuss.”

  Here we go, Manning thought as the ambassador's companion extended his hand.

  35

  SAMANTHA WALSH opened her eyes. It took a couple of seconds before she quite remembered where she was.

  “Oh, Nick,” she said. But Bailey was not in the bed beside her.

  She sat up, pulling the bed covers upwards as she did so. She glanced at the clock.

  “Oh, Christ,” she said. But just as quickly she settled back into the mattress. She was not working today. Finally she had some time to herself after what had been an especially intense immersion in the shady art of protecting very important persons.

  Walsh was vaguely unsettled by the fact that the first person she had sought out once she had obtained her free weekend was Nick Bailey. She had imagined that their affair had been casual and unlikely to progress very far. But last night had changed that, somewhat at any rate.

  The sound of a door closing with a thud brought Walsh's eyes to bear on the bedroom door. Bailey tiptoed into the room, barefoot but otherwise fully dressed, with the look on his face of a boy sneaking out of school.

  “It's all right. I'm awake,” Walsh said.

  “So you are, so you are,” said Bailey. “I popped out for a quick smoke. Wasn't going to do that in here because you don't, and besides, I don't want to be accused of nailing a copper with secondhand smoke.”

  “Very kind of you, Nick. You should give them up. It's a disgusting habit.”

  Bailey ignored the jibe, walked over to a dresser, pulled open a door and extracted a pair of blue socks. He examined the socks, with his nose as well as his eyes. Seemingly satisfied, he sat in the cat-scratched jumble sale cloth chair that doubled as a clothes horse and pulled them on. Walsh watched and wondered quite what she saw in him.

  “You were very lively last night,” she said after a few moments. “Anyone would think you had been celibate for a year, not just a couple of weeks. Or has it been three?”