Roscoe looked at the stage and saw on the faces of the assembled dignitaries that they were as surprised by President Clendennen’s sudden departure as he was.
Secret Service agents and the CIA police kept the press corps from chasing the President and Porky into the corridor. The chasing press and those who hadn’t chased the President now turned their attention to the podium.
And the podium was empty.
The dignitaries looked at one another in visible confusion, until finally both DCI A. Franklin Lammelle and Vice President Charles W. Montvale at once began heading for the podium.
Lammelle deferred to the Vice President, and stepped back into line.
Montvale stepped to the podium and was under immediate assault by shouts of “Mr. Vice President!” from the press corps.
Danton shook his head at the sight of the melee, and thought, This has turned into a Chinese clusterfuck!
“When everybody has calmed down. .” Vice President Montvale began, and then stopped when he realized his microphones were not working and his voice could not be heard over the shouts asking for his attention.
He first looked at the microphones in front of him for a switch, and then, finding none, bent to look behind the podium to see if he could find a switch there.
Lammelle broke ranks again and went to the podium to help.
Unbelievable! Danton thought. Un-fucking-believable!
CIA functionaries, uniformed and in suits, came to the stage and the podium to help.
A moment later there came a piercing electronic scream, quickly followed by a full volume broadcast of the Vice President’s voice saying, “Oh, shit!”
This served to almost quiet the room.
“As the President has left the building,” the Vice President’s voice came over the loudspeakers, “this press conference is over.”
That’s “Elvis has left the building,” Montvale!
The Vice President then stepped away from the podium and walked briskly off the stage. The other dignitaries quickly followed him. CIA functionaries kept the press away from them.
The CIA can’t even make their microphone work!
And since this farce is on eleven zillion television sets around the world.
Wait a minute! I’m missing something here!
What the hell?
The glistening Sikorsky VH-60 White Hawk helicopter, known as Marine One when carrying the President, was waiting for the President beside the CIA headquarters building.
Supervisory Secret Service agent Robert J. Mulligan, a tall and stocky forty-five-year-old, came out of the building and quickly checked to see that everything-other Secret Service agents, a fire engine, and an ambulance-was as it should be, and then signaled to the President that he was free to board Marine One.
Mulligan had been on Vice President Clendennen’s security detail, but as one of the agents, not as the supervisory special agent in charge. When Clendennen had suddenly become the President, he announced he wanted Mulligan to head his security detail. When it had been-very tactfully-pointed out to President Clendennen that there already was a supervisory agent in charge of the Presidential Security detail, the President had replied, “I don’t want to argue about this. Mulligan will do it. Got it?”
President Clendennen, trailed by Porky Parker, walked quickly to the White Hawk and climbed aboard, failing to acknowledge the salute of the Marine in dress blues standing by the stair door.
Mulligan quickly followed and reached for the switch that would close the stair door.
“Leave it open,” the President ordered. “And turn on the TV.”
The screen showed the stage of Auditorium Three above a moving legend on the bottom, WOLF NEWS BREAKING NEWS, THE PRESIDENTIAL PRESS CONFERENCE AT CIA HEADQUARTERS, LANGLEY, VA.
The image was of assorted people, including the Vice President, trying to do something about the non-functioning microphone.
The voice of Vice President Montvale crying “Oh, shit!” filled the passenger compartment of Marine One.
“Oh, shit,” presidential press secretary Parker said softly.
The Wolf News camera now turned to the VIP journalists in the front-row seats, finally settling on C. Harry Whelan, Jr., who was shaking his head in disbelief.
The voice of the Vice President announced, “As the President has left the building, this press conference is over.”
The camera quickly shifted to the podium, just in time to see the Vice President march away from it. Then it shifted to a shot of the dignitaries quickly hurrying after him.
“Mr. President, I have no idea what happened,” Porky Parker said. “But I’m sorry.”
“You should be,” the President said. “I never thought you had what it takes to be the President’s press secretary.”
“Excuse me?”
“You’re fired, Porky. Get off my helicopter.”
“What?”
“When I get back to the White House, I will announce that I have accepted your resignation.”
“Mr. President, I was in no way responsible for-”
“Nobody’s likely to believe that, are they, Porky? Now, get off my goddamn helicopter!”
Parker went to the door and down the door stairs.
Mulligan threw the switch that caused the door stairs to retract.
“Well, that took care of that disloyal sonofabitch, didn’t it, Bob?” the President asked.
“I thought that everything went very well, Mr. President,” Mulligan said.
“I owe you one,” the President said. He pointed toward the cockpit. “Tell him to get us out of here.”
III
ONE
Auditorium Three CIA Headquarters McLean, Virginia 1120 12 April 2007
Roscoe J. Danton had decided, without really thinking about it, that he was going to have to write a “think piece” about this clusterfuck, rather than just covering it. Other people, simple reporters, would cover the story. But he was, after all, a syndicated columnist of the Washington Times-Post Writers Syndicate; his readers expected more of him.
His biography, on the Times-Post website, written by some eager-eyed journalist fresh from the Columbia School of Journalism, said, “Mr. Danton joined the Times-Post immediately after his service in the U.S. Marine Corps.”
That was true, though it hadn’t happened quite the way it sounded.
Roscoe had been a Marine. He had joined the Corps at seventeen, immediately after graduating from high school. After boot camp at the Marine Corps Recruit Depot at Parris Island, South Carolina, he had been transferred to Camp Pendleton, California. A week after arriving at Camp Pendleton, a forklift had dropped a pallet of 105mm artillery ammunition on his left foot during landing exercises on the Camp Pendleton beach.
Two months after that, PFC Roscoe J. Danton had been medically retired from the Marine Corps with a 15 percent disability. He returned to his home in Chevy Chase, Maryland, and entered George Washington University as a candidate for a degree in political science.
He also secured part-time employment as a copy boy at The Washington Times-Post. By the time he graduated from George Washington, he had acquired a fiance-a childhood friend he had known since they were in third grade-and decided he had found his niche in life: journalism.
This latter conclusion had been based on his somewhat immodest conclusion that he was smarter than three-fourths of the journalists for whom he had been fetching coffee in the newsroom.
This opinion was apparently shared by the powers-that-were in the executive offices of the Times-Post, who hired him as a full-time reporter shortly after he graduated from George Washington.
He married Miss Elizabeth Warner two months later, shortly after she found herself in the family way. By the time Roscoe J. Danton, Jr., aged five, was presented with a baby brother-Warner James Danton-Roscoe J. Danton had not only grown used to seeing his byline in the rag, but had become one of the youngest reporters ever to flaunt the credentials of a member of the White Ho
use Press Corps.
Things were not going well at home, however. Elizabeth Warner Danton ultimately announced that she had had quite enough of his behavior.
“You have humiliated me for the last time, Roscoe, by showing up at church functions late-if you show up at all-and reeking of alcohol. Make up your mind, Roscoe, it’s either your drinking and carousing or your family.”
After giving the ultimatum some thought, Roscoe had moved into the Watergate Apartments. He concluded, perhaps selfishly, that there wasn’t much of a choice between the interesting people with whom he associated professionally in various watering holes and the middle-level bureaucrats with whom Elizabeth expected him to associate socially at Saint Andrews Presbyterian Church in Chevy Chase.
Alimony and child support posed a hell of a financial problem, of course, but he had a generous and usually unchecked expense account, and legions of lobbyists were more than pleased to pick up his tabs at the better restaurants around town.
And, with the lone exception of what divorce does to kids, he’d many times decided he’d made the right decision. And rising to being a syndicated columnist for the Washington Times-Post Writers Syndicate was just one example.
Now Roscoe understood that if he was going to write a think piece on the clusterfuck, he was going to have to find out how it had happened, and the way to do that was get to presidential spokesman John David Parker before ol’ Porky returned from seeing the President off to reestablish some order and decorum.
Roscoe quickly got out of his seat and left Auditorium Three.
He found Parker almost immediately. Porky was leaning against the corridor wall just outside Auditorium Three, looking, Roscoe thought, more than a little dazed.
He’s probably thinking he’ll soon have to face the famed wrath of Joshua Ezekiel Clendennen.
“Dare I hope to have a moment of time with my favorite presidential spokesman?”
“Make that ex-presidential spokesman,” Parker replied.
“You got canned over that royal screwup? So soon?”
Parker nodded.
“They wouldn’t even let me back in there,” Parker said, nodding toward the uniformed CIA security people standing outside the door to Auditorium Three.
“And now you need a ride back to our nation’s capital, right?”
Parker considered that a moment and then said, “Yeah, I guess I do. You have a car?”
“Indeed I do. Come on. Let’s get out of here.”
Roscoe just then changed his mind about covering this story as a think piece.
The head wrote itself-“Presidential Spokesman Fired”-and he had already composed the obvious lead: “In an exclusive interview with this reporter, former presidential spokesman John David Parker told. .”
It was almost sure to make Page One above the fold.
The thing I have to do now is keep the rest of the media boys and girls away from him.
The Lincoln Town Car, with Edgar Delchamps at the wheel, was parked very close to the entrance of the garage in a slot that a neatly lettered sign announced was RESERVED FOR ASSISTANT DEPUTY DIRECTOR NUSSBAUM.
I wonder if Delchamps told the guard his name was Nussbaum, or whether the guard recognized Delchamps and, having heard the ice-pick-in-the-ear story, decided that the agency dinosaur could park anywhere he chose to.
Roscoe ushered Parker into the backseat of the car and slid in beside him.
“Get us out of here,” Roscoe ordered.
“What the hell happened in there?” Delchamps asked. “We watched it on the Brick.”
“My pal is about to tell us. John, say hello to Edgar and Two-Gun.”
“I thought you looked familiar, Mr. Parker,” Two-Gun said, turning in the seat to offer his hand.
“So the President said, ‘When I get back to the White House, I will announce that I have accepted your resignation. Now get off my goddamn helicopter,’ and I did,” Parker finished.
“And when you went back in the building, they wouldn’t let you in the auditorium?” David Yung asked.
“They even took my ID badge,” Parker said.
“I don’t suppose anyone cares what I think,” Delchamps said, “but just off the top of my head, Roscoe, I think your pal was set up.”
“Otherwise, the security guys wouldn’t have been waiting for you to take your ID badge.”
“So what do I do now?” Parker asked, and then answered his own question. “Go back to my apartment and lick my wounds, I guess.”
“If you go back to your apartment, the press will be there for your version of what happened,” Roscoe said. “And until we figure this out, no matter what you tell them, you’re going to look like an incompetent who got fired for cause, or a disgruntled former employee saying unkind-and frankly hard to believe-things about our beloved President. Or both. Probably both.”
And I won’t have a story.
“So what do I do?” Parker asked again.
“When in doubt, find a hole and hunker down until things calm down,” Delchamps said.
“Go to a hotel or something?” Parker asked.
“Or something. Roscoe, is Brother Parker really a pal of yours?”
“He’s a pal of mine,” Roscoe declared.
Did I say that because Porky is a good guy who’s always been straight with me? Or because I can see my story getting lost?
“Problem solved,” Delchamps announced.
“Meaning what?” Roscoe asked.
“You’ll see.”
TWO
7200 West Boulevard Drive Alexandria, Virginia 1255 12 April 2007
The house, which was large and could be described as a “Colonial mansion,” sat on an acre of manicured lawn well off West Boulevard Drive. The landscaping on a grass-covered rise-a berm-in the lawn prevented anyone driving by from getting a good look at the front door of the house.
There was a neat cast-bronze sign just inside the first of two fences:
Lorimer Manor
Assisted Living
No Soliciting
The first fence was made of five-foot-high white pickets. Hidden on the pickets were small cameras, and both audio and motion sensors.
The second fence, closer to the house, was of cast iron, eight feet tall, and also held surveillance cameras and motion sensors. Every twenty feet there were floodlights.
As Edgar Delchamps steered the Town Car up the drive, a herd of canines-if “herd” is the proper term to describe a collection of six enormous, jet-black Bouviers des Flandres-came charging around the side of the house.
They waited patiently for the substantial gate to open, then when the Lincoln rolled past, they followed it, gamboling happily like so many outsize black lambs.
“What’s with the dogs?” Porky Parker asked.
“Clinical studies have shown that having access to dogs provides a number of benefits to elderly people, so we use them in our geriatric services program,” Two-Gun Yung replied. “That makes them deductible. You have no idea how much it costs to feed those big bastards.”
“They also serve to deter the curious,” Edgar Delchamps added.
He stopped the Lincoln before a four-door garage, pulling it alongside one of the two black GMC Yukons parked there.
Everyone got out of the Town Car as one of the garage doors rolled upward.
A grandmotherly type in her early fifties appeared at a door in the rear of the garage. Her name was Dianne Sanders, and she was listed on the payroll of Lorimer Manor, Inc., as resident housekeeper.
The herd of Bouviers des Flandres gamboled on toward her. She put her fingers to her lips and whistled shrilly. The dogs stopped as if they had encountered a glass wall.
“Go chase a cat,” Mrs. Sanders ordered sternly, pointing out the garage door.
Reluctantly but obediently the herd slowly walked out of the garage.
She looked at Delchamps and said: “Am I supposed to pretend I don’t know who your friends are? In addition to inside plumbing, Lor
imer Manor offers television.”
“Think of that one,” Delchamps said, pointing at Parker, “as a lonely stranger desperately needing the hospitality of friends. And also some lunch, if that’s possible. I thought you knew Roscoe.”
“Only by reputation,” she said.
“You know he’s one of us,” Yung said.
“I heard.”
“And now that you know that, Mr. Parker,” Yung said, “we’ll have to kill you.”
Oh, Jesus, here we go again!
Porky will go bananas.
“May I ask what’s going on here?” Parker asked. “What is this place?”
“Of course you can ask, but as Two-Gun just said, what you know can get you killed,” Delchamps said. He smiled, then added: “Well, let’s go get some lunch.”
In the house, Parker looked around. Plate-glass windows across the back wall offered a view of an enormous grassy area. There was a croquet field and a cabana with a grill beside an enormous in-ground swimming pool. Two of the Bouviers, their red tongues hanging and their stub tails wagging, were looking in through one of the plate-glass windows; the rest of the herd was chasing birds on the grass.
And Parker noted the residents: First he saw four elderly men, two in wheelchairs, three of whom looking roughly as old as Edgar Delchamps. There also was a very large-six-foot-two, 220-pound- and very black man wearing aviator sunglasses who appeared to be in his late thirties, and a woman who looked about sixty. She had a chrome walker next to her chair at a large dining table that was covered with food.
In the center of the table was a centerpiece: Two dinosaurs, each about two feet long, faced each other. There was a pink bow around the neck of one of them.
“I think everybody knows who Mr. Parker is,” Delchamps announced to the residents.
Everybody nodded.
“He wants to know what’s going on here,” Delchamps said, “what this place is. Can I tell him?”
“Is he a friend?” one of the men in a wheelchair asked.
“Roscoe vouches for him,” Delchamps said, “and Roscoe-in case you didn’t know-is one of us.”
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