“You mean the remarks I need to give at the vice president’s funeral?” Corbin Talmidge resumed suddenly.
“They’re being prepared now. We can go over them for the first time tonight.”
Fortunately, perhaps anomalously, her husband could still give a prepared speech. It had proven the one saving grace, but it no longer satisfied the press’s demands that he make himself more available. There were rumblings of something afoot with his health, rumors the White House Press Office had managed to deflect and define up until this point.
And they only needed to continue doing that for three more days now. Three more days until America was changed forever.
“She was a good person,” the president said.
“Yes, she was,” the first lady agreed.
“I just saw her, didn’t I? Was it yesterday?”
“No, dear.”
“Last week?”
“Last month,” the first lady said.
“Oh,” the president said, looking confused.
Stephanie Davenport had been ushered into the Oval Office just over a month ago for a lunch her husband’s chief of staff had canceled too late, though Merle Talmidge suspected an increasingly suspicious vice president had gotten the message and had shown up anyway. The first lady been dealing with something else at the time, and the Secret Service agent who’d passed the vice president through was new to the detail. By the time Merle Talmidge got there, the damage had already been done; she could see the concern, fear, and befuddlement on the vice president’s face, could see that it had taken her all of five minutes alone with Corbin Talmidge to realize his deteriorating condition.
FIVE WEEKS EARLIER …
What’s going on?” Stephanie Davenport demanded, in the private office off the Oval that was normally utilized as a waiting room for guests.
“I don’t think I know what you—”
“Yes, you do. Is it dementia, Alzheimer’s, a stroke?”
“It’s not a stroke,” Merle Talmidge managed to assure her.
“I guess that answers my question.”
The first lady had grasped the vice president’s arm tenderly, a show of friendship. “Please, Stephanie.”
“Shouldn’t it be ‘Vice President Davenport,’ under the circumstances?”
“We’re going to deal with this appropriately. We just need a little more time.”
“How much time?”
“A month. I promise. That’s all.”
“And it’s too much, with the election so close.”
“Do you want to take my husband’s place that badly, Vice President Davenport?”
Davenport’s eyes looked as sharp as daggers. “Do you?”
* * *
Merle Talmidge had known in that moment that the vice president was a threat, but one she believed could be mitigated, stalled at least for a brief period. The timetable for the operation had been moved up as much as possible. Even then, though, Davenport’s concerns quickly escalated to the point that she had insisted on a clandestine independent review of the president’s condition. It had been around that time that she’d scheduled her own angioplasty procedure at Walter Reed, providing the first lady the opportunity to have the problem remedied in a wholly different fashion by placing a time bomb in the vice president’s chest. She had pushed Davenport as far as she could, put her off for as long as she could. But when the threat she posed became too great and it became obvious she intended to force the issue, that bomb had to be detonated.
The vice president’s funeral had been scheduled for the very day that would change America forever, with the unfolding of a plot that she and others had hatched to maintain the administration’s hold on power in the face of the president’s otherwise inevitable decline. And once that plot came to fruition, the election that was just six months away would be utterly forgotten. Americans would be left with far too much on their minds to worry about voting.
“Why do I have to do this?” the president asked her suddenly, looking up from the stack of letters.
In counterpoint to his deteriorating mental condition, Corbin Talmidge still looked strong and vital, not all that much different from when they’d met, more than thirty years before. He had the same build, the same hair, the same smile, and the same eyes, though those eyes had lost their certainty and luster in a gaze that had grown increasingly tentative and unsure. It was like living with someone who was forever waking from a nightmare in the middle of the night in abject disorientation. But there were still enough moments where those eyes took on a youthful innocence and vibrancy, the look that had made her fall in love with him from the first time they’d met, though these days their view was considerably narrowed.
“To offer comfort and support, just like at that boy’s funeral.”
“Our son’s…”
“No, dear, someone else’s son, remember?”
“Oh. If you say so.”
“And congratulations in some cases, as well,” the first lady picked up. “And thanking them for their service.”
“Thanking who?”
“The people those letters are addressed to.”
“Why do I have to sign them?” the president asked, his gaze shifting back to the pile before him.
“Because you want to.”
“I do?”
Merle Talmidge nodded. “You’ve always had a gift for seeing the good in people and wanting to see them rewarded for that. Those letters provide that opportunity.”
“Oh.”
His interest renewed, the president slid the next letter from the top of the stack and readied his pen. “I forgot how to write my name.”
“Want me to help you?”
He nodded, looking more like a child than the president of the United States. “And my hand hurts.”
The first lady eased an armchair behind the big Resolute desk, presented to President Rutherford B. Hayes by Queen Victoria in 1880, built from English oak timbers salvaged from the British exploration ship HMS Resolute, and mostly a fixture in the Oval Office ever since. She had practiced signing her husband’s name so much over these past few months that her elbow ached. Corbin Talmidge had actually gotten through more of the letters than she’d expected, a nominal improvement over the process last week. A small victory, since the big ones were in the past now, salvageable only in memory.
With one exception, that exception being the biggest victory of all—a victory for her husband’s administration and for all of the United States, though at a cost that would change the country forever.
Of course, Corbin Talmidge never would have conceived, much less approved, of such a plan. He had too big a heart, too much genuine fondness for those like the boy buried earlier in the day. As a result, he’d become the most popular president in a generation. Corbin Talmidge had won the presidency as the antipolitician. The country had fallen in love with him, and the affair continued to this day.
And now it would be prolonged. Indefinitely. At least long enough to secure the vision of America the first lady now held in her husband’s place. First and foremost, the team of like minds she had assembled needed to go about selecting the right candidate for vice president.
But who? And, under the circumstances, what if no such person existed?
The first lady slid the stack of letters before her and began signing them robotically as her husband looked on with a distant expression that seemed whimsical.
“Can I watch television?”
“Later.”
“Can you turn it on for me?”
“Of course.”
The first lady signed ten more letters before he spoke again.
“What was his name?”
“Who, dear?” she asked her husband.
“The boy whose funeral it was.”
“I’m afraid I don’t remember.”
“I should know his name. My own son and I can’t remember his name.”
Merle Talmidge let that go, knowing the president’s attention w
ould be diverted soon enough.
“Shouldn’t I be signing those letters?” he asked suddenly.
“You need to rest.”
“I’m not tired.”
“You have a lot of work ahead of you.”
“Can I watch television now?”
“I wonder what you’d say if you knew the truth,” the first lady said, as she continued scrawling her husband’s name in the proper place. “Would you tell me to stop? Would you tell me I’d gone too far?”
The president just looked at her.
“This was the only way to keep you from embarrassment and pity. You don’t deserve that. You’re much too good a man. So I’m really doing this for you. I’m committed because I know in my heart you would approve of the ends, despite the means.”
“I’m not mean,” Corbin Talmidge insisted.
“No, you’re good, and what we’re doing is good for the country. The country needs you, and the people will need you to comfort them in the wake of the greatest tragedy the United States has ever faced, one that will leave scars for generations. But it’s a tragedy to be celebrated, my love.”
“Like a birthday party?” the president asked her.
“Pretty much, yes, as a matter of fact.”
“I’d like a birthday party. When’s my birthday?”
“Two months ago.”
He looked down, then up again. “Did I have a party?”
“A big one,” the first lady lied.
“What about presents?”
“Lots of them.”
The president beamed. “How many?”
Merle Talmidge tapped the top of the stack of letters. “This many. These are the thank-you notes.”
“Then I want to sign them! Let me sign them!”
“I thought you wanted to watch television.”
“After I sign them,” Corbin Talmidge said, sliding them back before him and centering himself in his chair again. “Will you watch with me?”
“Sure, I will.”
“But I get to choose the show.”
“Of course you do.”
“And not the news. I hate the news. Boring.”
Not for long, the First Lady of the United States almost said out loud. Not for long …
“I don’t know what I’d do without you,” her husband was saying.
Merle Talmidge looked at him with a start, a crystallizing thought striking her like a lightning bolt. So clear and vivid, she couldn’t fathom how she hadn’t considered it before.
Of course!
“I’d like to discuss something with you,” she said to her husband.
Before he could respond, though, Merle Talmidge heard a knock and watched the entry door to the Oval Office open and then close behind her chief of staff, Alan Moorehouse. She saw the look on his face and had a sense of what he was going to say even before he spoke.
“We’ve got a problem, ma’am.”
CHAPTER
35
WASHINGTON, DC
Not the same stents?” Brixton asked.
Kendra Rendine nodded. “Looks like we’ve both had interesting days, Robert.”
“That’s one way of putting it.”
“What’s the other.”
“Scary.”
Brixton had met Kendra Rendine for dinner at the Mansion on O Street, a magnificently renovated classical residence on a quiet, historic, tree-lined street in Dupont Circle, within walking distance of the White House and Embassy Row. Originally built in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the Mansion retained many period details, including original Tiffany stained glass windows. But the room in which Brixton and Rendine were dining boasted no windows. It was one of the little-known, and little-used, private interior rooms, among the Mansion’s total inventory of more than a hundred, accessible through one of the more than seventy secret doors that were among the worst-kept secrets in Washington.
A far-better-kept secret was that a number of federal organizations had laid claim to their own private rooms that could be utilized on short notice toward virtually any purpose. Being a haven for heads of state, foreign dignitaries, and business leaders, along with leaders of the entertainment industry, made it easy for less noticeable Mansion patrons to come and go as they pleased, hiding in plain sight, where press and media seldom, if ever, paid attention to their presence.
Brixton had no idea what the Secret Service utilized this particular room for, wondering if it had been chosen for the letters of Abraham Lincoln that adorned the walls, along with a beautiful portrait of Lincoln that dominated the decor. Combined with the leather-bound books adorning a series of shelves, the overall effect was to create a chamber boasting true elegance, no bigger in size than an ordinary conference room. And tonight, with only a single table occupying that space, it actually seemed absurdly large for their purpose.
On Rendine’s instruction, he had used a side door marked “Emergency Exit Only” to gain admittance, plugging in the code she’d provided. Rendine was already waiting when he was escorted to the room by a plainclothes security guard posted just inside that secretive entrance. To avoid interruptions, they used iPad-like devices to order their meals, specifying when the first course should be served, along with the intervals for the succeeding ones.
“Scary how?” Rendine asked Brixton.
“You go first. Back to this bit about the stents.”
He listened to her explain what she’d learned from Patricia Trahan, before she transitioned to the fact that all those who had participated in the procedure performed on Vice President Stephanie Davenport were currently unreachable, or perhaps worse, with the exception of the cardiologist who’d been viewing everything from above.
“Incredible,” was all Brixton could say.
“Incredible that somebody would murder the vice president, yes. That they subsequently made the people who participated in the procedure disappear, not so much. They couldn’t risk leaving anyone out there who might remember something that could hurt them.”
“Except for this Patty Trahan.”
“She wasn’t listed as a participant. Her only role was to deliver the instruments and the stents that were used in the procedure.”
“Which were different from what Trahan remembers.”
“She was certain that the stents she delivered to the operating room were the so-called smart kind.”
“While the autopsy photos show that the stents removed postmortem were the ordinary variety that had been originally ordered for the vice president,” Brixton completed.
Rendine held his stare. “Looks like this friend of yours in New York was spot on.”
“So a switch was made,” Brixton said, picking things up from there. “Someone substituted the stents that ultimately killed Stephanie Davenport for the ones that were supposed to be implanted during the procedure.”
“There should be security camera footage I can review,” Rendine said, nodding as her voice drifted off.
“But…”
“But whoever’s behind this would never leave that kind of trail. Whoever made the switch would never leave any fingerprints behind, either real or figurative. And that person isn’t who we’re after anyway.”
“We’re after whoever gave the order,” Brixton reasoned. “And I think I may be able to shed some light on that.”
Brixton proceeded to tell Rendine about his meeting with Panama, after the prints on the jacket he’d been wearing the night before had been identified as belonging to the man known as Brian Kirkland. She listened without interruption, although it was clear from her expression that she had numerous questions to go with a palpable sense of unease. When Brixton was finished, she jumped in right at the point where he’d left off.
“So we’re going on the assumption that the schematics recovered from that UPS Store mailbox are directly connected to the bombing on the Metro.”
“That’s right.”
“And connected as well to the apparent murder of the vice
president.”
“I don’t think we need to use the word apparent anymore,” Brixton told her, “but the answer’s yes—through this man Brian Kirkland. Don’t bother writing that down, because he’s got a dozen names, and that particular one won’t lead anywhere at all. He thought for a moment. “You mentioned a period around the time of her procedure, when you noticed a change in the vice president.”
Rendine nodded. “It was just before the procedure, by a week or so, but it continued afterward.”
“And you also mentioned that it started after a meeting with the president in the Oval Office.”
“That’s right.”
“Did you ask the vice president about that?”
“Strictly against protocol—I mentioned that too.”
Brixton weighed the impact of that timeline. “So Stephanie Davenport leaves that meeting with the president distressed over something, and a week or so later those smart stents were implanted during her angioplasty procedure.”
Rendine nodded. “It was seven days. I checked.”
“And she was dead a month after that.”
Another nod. “I’ve run the minute-by-minute diary reports from all protective shifts for that entire period.”
“And?”
“No gun, smoking or otherwise. In the time I can account for, everything was strictly routine.”
“No meetings or phone calls which raised any flags?”
“Not according to the detailed logs and reports generated by agents in the field.”
“You think the president shared something that unsettled Davenport during that meeting a week before her procedure. And whatever it was, it might well be somehow connected to the Metro bombing and, now, to whatever’s coming next,” Brixton said, thinking again of those structural plans recovered from the so-called Brian Kirkland’s UPS Store mailbox. “They knew I went to New York,” he added, after a pause. “They knew I met with the professor and my ex-girlfriend.”
Murder on the Metro Page 16