The Threat

by David Poyer

  The buzz climbed, then fell away. Dan had never seen a group of human beings so breathlessly attentive. Though he could not tell yet what they thought of what they heard.

  “I have prepared a comprehensive message recommending the legislative measures necessary to meet the requirements of Plan 21. I urge that this be made the first priority of this Congress.”

  Dan could not believe it. De Bari was proposing a massive aid program. To Palestinians, Sudanese, central Africans, Bangladeshis. And some unspecified but also no doubt massive program to combat greenhouse warming. But where would the money come from? The speechwriters, of course, had anticipated that very question.

  “Plan 21 will be funded by further reductions in military, space, and intelligence establishments still bloated by cold war–era requirements. It may be said this will leave us unready in a dangerous world. I believe it will not. The world’s peace, as well as our own, depends on our remaining strong. But neither can we depend on military strength alone.”

  Dan couldn’t help glancing at the Chiefs, in the front row. Stahl and the others listened in somber concentration.

  “It may be said that this task is too big for us,” De Bari said. “That it’s too idealistic. Or just too hard.

  “But as we look back, those years that stand out in our history are those in which the administration and Congress, working together, had the foresight to seize those initiatives for which the nation was ready—and in which they acted.

  “This is such a moment. Perhaps the last moment in which we can realize the age-old dream of a world without widespread and recurrent famine. War. And ecological degradation.”

  The murmur that rose reflected Dan’s own questions. Was it too much? Could such a self-indulgent and complacent country as theirs had become still rally to sacrifice and resolve?

  De Bari’s voice rose. “A great American once said, of the generation that made our Revolution: ‘We have it in our power to begin the world again.’

  “Have we been doing what America, and the world, expected of us? Have we looked further ahead than the next election? Above all, have we been acting? For far too long, we have not. And I bear the responsibility for that, as much as any. I too thought of myself first. I too lost sight of my duty. I too forgot—even with these to remind me—”

  And he held up his hand, splayed, so that they all could see the missing fingers—

  “That it is our duty, our trust, it is our job—that when there’s a fire, we get all the people out of the building that we can. And put that fire out.

  “But it is not yet too late. With the help of God, who has blessed us so richly, we can and will build lasting peace in the world, with security and freedom for all.”

  The vast chamber remained hushed after he finished. Then the applause began. Many sat in disapproving silence, arms folded. Others surged to their feet, shouting wildly, clapping as hard as they could. It went on and on.

  De Bari appeared at the bottom of the rostrum, his big flushed face covered with sweat. He looked vacant and shocked and exhausted. Dan picked up his burden and followed him.

  * * *

  In the limo someone turned on a radio. A commentator was saying, “You have to applaud the president for a powerful and visionary State of the Union. But the issues he raises are more complex than they may seem. Is it really in our best interest to give billions to countries who hate us, countries we’ve been giving money to for decades now with no result other than making the ruling parties richer? And then, throw billions more at a global warming ‘problem’ that may not even exist? Especially when average Americans are watching their stocks dwindle, in a market that seems to have no bottom?”

  Another station, another speaker. This one, on the left wing, assumed a cutting tone as she pointed out De Bari’s proposal was far from selfless. The provisions for tax benefits for participating businesses would transfer millions of jobs to low-wage countries. Plan 21 was a corporate giveaway, subsidizing the export of American jobs.

  “So much for lack of an issue,” the doctor said, to no one in particular. Dan nodded. He was still trying to organize his own thoughts. It was as daring a proposal as the New Deal, or the Great Society, or the Apollo program. One that would line everybody in the country up, either pro or con.

  But he didn’t have to make up his mind. What was he? Only a horse holder. A spear carrier. At most, a temple dog. It all would be decided at a level far above his. And for reasons that had nothing to do with his welfare, or that of the millions of others who believed as blindly as he did that all was for the best, that everything would turn out well.

  Sucking in his breath, trying desperately to stem his depression and fear, he gazed out at the passing city.

  21

  THE WHITE HOUSE

  Dan spent the night on the sofa in the aides’ office, and got up still seething. His depression had been converted, by some mysterious alchemy, to rage. He could have understood if Blair had called it quits. He wasn’t easy to live with. And neither the Navy nor Defense gave you much chance at a normal life. But why couldn’t she just have told him. Instead of moving on to someone else?

  Even if he was the most powerful man in the world.

  * * *

  He found batteries ripe in the charger, ready lights glowing, and plucked them. Next he checked the monitor, updated from the Secret Service office in the subbasement that located POTUS on the Eighteen Acres. Just now it showed him in the Oval. Unusually early, Dan thought.

  Looking out the window, he saw the demonstration had grown again overnight. Now the protesters surrounded the building. Signs bobbed. Someone was shouting through a bullhorn, though Dan couldn’t make out the message. Maybe it didn’t matter. Now more than ever, you were either for Bad Bob or against him.

  The schedule showed De Bari in the Residence that afternoon. No doubt working on his upcoming speech to the UN, to explain why he was sending American troops into the Middle East after pulling them out of everywhere else. Trying to bring peace to a place that hadn’t seen any in a thousand years. Or ever, if you took the Old Testament’s word for it.

  Dan found Major Upshaw next door to the Oval Office, on the chair reserved for the mil aides in the secretary to the president’s office. The football was under her chair. As he came in she stood, hand coming up briefly to smooth the front of her jacket. Dan recognized the gesture. Francie liked to carry the Beretta in a shoulder holster, to lighten the satchel. She said it was so heavy it gave her a backache. “He’s about to leave. Ready to take it?”

  He said he was. She glanced around, then drew the handgun with a quick nervous gesture and handed it over. He checked the safety and tucked it into his belt. Later he’d find a restroom and strap on the holster. Or just stow it back in the case.

  Upshaw set the case down on the chair. Keeping her back to him—no doubt out of habit—she dialed in the combination. The lid unsnapped. She moved so he could see, and took out the battery set. He handed over the fresh ones, and heard a click as one seated in the transceiver.

  She held out the clipboard with the custody form. He ran his eye over the open case. Spare magazine. Backup charged battery. The radio, its top visible and the stub of its antenna, folded but still capable of receiving the alert signal. The red plastic spine of the SIOP manual, the black spines of the others.

  He took the pen and scribbled his initials. “I relieve you,” he said, and saluted. It might look silly to a civilian, but all the aides did it. Then she was tapping off down the corridor. When he took her chair the seat was still warm.

  * * *

  As ever, the detail was first to appear, the agents rolling out ahead of the oncoming Presence like altar boys before a monstrance. The press secretary, then the secretary of defense’s Taftesque bulk nearly plugging the hallway. Ringalls, looking shrunken between the overweight SecDef and the none-too-small De Bari. But then they halted. The president’s voice was peremptory, cutting. “Don’t give me that bullshit, Charlie.
Just make it happen.”

  Dan was getting to his feet, ready to follow, when he saw Ouderkirk, the shaven-headed sergeant from the counterdrug office, beckoning from the Roosevelt Room. He pointed to his chest: Me? The staffer nodded. Dan went to the door. The sergeant gestured again, urgently.

  He crossed the corridor. Ouderkirk muttered, “You on duty right now?”

  “Yeah. I am. What do you want?”

  “We need you to come by 303 once you get off.”

  “Counterdrug? Why? What’s the problem?”

  “No problem. Just that we need you to sign the debrief forms. You went over to the East Wing so fast we never got you signed out.”

  Dan said he’d be off in six hours and would come by then. Ouderkirk nodded and turned away.

  The president was still outside the Oval Office, talking loudly to Ringalls, Weatherfield, and now his other old Nevada buddies too, Gino Varghese and Happy Harry Hedley. De Bari sounded angry. Looking to his left, Dan noticed a man in a gray suit heading down the corridor away from him. The corner of a large file box he was carrying was just visible. But he couldn’t quite tell who it was, and the man didn’t look back, so Dan went back into the secretary’s office.

  Then they were coming toward him, the same way he’d first seen De Bari, months before, flanked by the agents of the protective detail. He was still chewing out his cronies as he came. Weatherfield looked sick. The president’s gaze slid past Dan as if he were greased. By now, so did the Secret Service’s. Only Barney McKoy nodded. Dan hefted the satchel and fell in at the rear.

  He was fastening the security strap when three hands rose simultaneously to three left ears. McKoy said, gaze darting down the corridor as his hand slid inside his jacket, “Anarchy. Anarchy!”

  Dan went taut too. “Anarchy” meant an assassination attempt was under way. The detail contracted like the spiny shell of some primitive animal around the man they protected. Whose voice rose, demanding to know what was going on.

  McKoy: “The control room says someone just called the switchboard, Mr. President.”

  “You get crank calls all the time,” De Bari shouted. “What’s the big goddamn deal all of a sudden?”

  “This didn’t sound like a crank, Mr. President. He had a strong foreign accent. He said truck bomb. Now. Headed for the West Executive gate.”

  De Bari’s tone changed. He asked where his wife was. McKoy, brow furrowed, was listening to his radio. He made a hand signal to his team. To De Bari he said, “We’re going to evacuate you both, sir. Then everyone one else on the Eighteen. This way. Through the Residence.”

  “Why not just out the—”

  “If it’s coming in West Executive, sir, we need to get you as far away as we can.”

  All this time they’d been hiking along. Now the retinue broke into a not-quite-in-step trot along the corridors. Dan kept up. The case jolted his arm. It seemed heavier than usual. Probably just because he was trying to run with it. But the unsecured pistol was working its way out from under his belt. He grabbed it just as it started down his pants leg, and wedged it under his belt, rather than his waistband. They hurried down a flight of stairs, then turned into the mansion.

  “A truck bomb?” De Bari wheezed. “Can’t you stop it at the gate?”

  “They go right through gates, Mr. President. And if it’s a truck bomb, it’ll be big.”

  A group of donors, or maybe just better-dressed-than-usual tourists, were having their pictures taken in front of the Library fireplace. They gasped at De Bari’s sudden appearance. Cameras came up as the president, ever the campaigner, waved and grinned without breaking stride. McKoy made a hand signal to the docent. A moment later she was herding the tourists out, disregarding their protests that they’d not yet seen the whole White House.

  Under an arched entrance into the ground-floor corridor. The parquet floor creaked as they hammered over it. The agents’ faces looked ever more grim. Dan wondered what they were hearing through those flesh-colored earpieces.

  He felt his heart skipping beats, and not just from running. A truck bomb. Of course. How else to get through the pat-downs, briefcase scanners, bomb-sniffing dogs, metal detectors, uniformed security. A truckload of explosive would take out the whole West Wing and half the Old Executive. McKoy was probably heading for the PEOC. That deep in the ground, even tons of explosive would be just a rumble overhead.

  But the protective detail had other plans. McKoy led them up a flight of marble steps toward the South Lawn. As they emerged onto the portico the marines were falling in to line the path.

  Marine One had landed. Its turbines whined hot smoke as it squatted. Another party emerged from the East Wing. Dan caught a glimpse of Letitia De Bari. Not far behind came a scramble of photographers and videocam crews.

  He kept following the man who was the nucleus of that moving circle, that self-sacrificial wall of flesh. In public view, they’d slowed to a brisk walk. With his free hand, the one not locked to his responsibility, Dan put his cap on and tugged his service dress blouse down over the pistol.

  The scrum reached the landing pad and parted, falling back to let the president and first lady board.

  De Bari ushered his wife inside. Then turned on the topmost step, the presidential seal behind him on the gleaming fuselage. He lifted a fist to the cameras, looking stern and resolute. The crowd noise swelled as the protesters caught sight of him. Bottles and cans bounced on the grass. Dan caught the flash of annoyance on De Bari’s face.

  Above him, in the cockpit window, the commanding officer of HMX-1 was looking down anxiously at the boarding ladder, headset clamped to his ears. The engine noise rose, like an impatient cabdriver gunning his engine.

  De Bari ducked inside. Dan glimpsed him at the big side window making his way aft. The secretary of defense was still with him, and by the way he was moving his hands, still talking.

  McKoy stood by, hand to his ear. His gaze examined Dan, dropped to the satchel. He gave the briefest of micronods: Go on, board.

  Dan went up the ladder, turned right, and found himself alone with the De Baris and Weatherfield in the passenger compartment. He slung the satchel under the bench seat as McKoy and another agent, the female one, the minimum protective detail, pounded in after him. They dropped into seats opposite Dan and buckled in.

  Through the window he saw photographers falling to one knee, aiming lenses like snipers. Past them, more trash was sailing over the fence. The video crews were getting that as well, then panning to the helo. Zooming in on what was probably Robert De Bari’s frown, framed in the big window.

  The blades had been revolving. Now he heard the transmission whine and then the chop of the blades going to positive pitch. The lift pressed him into his seat, harder than usual. Dan wondered who exactly had called about the truck. “A strong foreign accent.” It didn’t seem logical to go to all the trouble and risk to build a bomb, then phone in a warning.

  As the ground dropped away he caught a glimpse of the roof. A countersniper looked up from the balustrade, rifle lowered, shielding his eyes from the sun as the helo climbed into it. The gardens and lawn spread in the tentative green of late winter. A nimbus seemed to hover amid the treetops, and below them glowed the bright yellow buds of the first daffodils.

  It looked so grand. Again he felt the glory and power, gazing down at the sheer classic beauty of this building, knowing all it meant to the country. For all the tawdry doings and the failed men who’d passed through its doors, it was the stage of history. Whatever else happened, he’d remember the time he’d served here. From this height the crowd might have been festive, tossing not debris but brightly colored flowers. The walls and columns shone in the sun.

  The horizon tipped and wheeled. A heaving sea of car glass, car metal, glittered Ellipseward. The white shaft of the Washington Monument rammed into the sky. The Tidal Basin shone like just-poured lead. Beyond it a speedboat unzipped the Potomac’s gown. They were headed south, but he didn’t know where. Ther
e were no plans for travel this afternoon, so they couldn’t just advance the schedule.

  He leaned to see past McKoy, who looked more relaxed now they were off the ground. Weatherfield was still talking, wincing and jerking his shoulders the way the guy always did. Dan wondered what they were discussing. The concerted refusal of the Joint Chiefs to make plans for the Palestinian occupation, most likely. You could argue that as a good thing or a bad thing. He wasn’t sure himself which way the truth lay.

  He suddenly wondered, the question coming from nowhere: Why had Marine One been waiting, if no travel was scheduled?

  They droned over the Potomac, still gaining altitude. Above them passenger jets chalked contrails on blue velvet. Once again, as he had on the flight to Camp David, he thought how easy it would be to assassinate the president in the air. Any of the light planes that were probably all around them, in the crowded airspace of northern Virginia, could fly into them. It would be suicide, but there seemed to be more and more fanatics these days. He looked at McKoy again, then at the other Secret Service agent. Her name was Lee, Leigh, something like that. Blond. She looked back from behind dark wraparounds, expressionless as a death mask.

  The PES crept out from beneath the seat, walked across the floor by an invisible hand. Despite meticulous maintenance, Marine One still had a chopper’s inherent vibration. He stretched out a shoe, hooked it, and pulled it back. Looked up to find Leigh’s eyes still on him. He gave her a smile but got only that flat stare.

  He dropped his gaze. Looked at the satchel again.

  Had it really felt heavier than usual?

  Yeah, right. He grinned at himself and sat back. Amusing himself with the idea. If you wanted to get something aboard Marine One or Air Force One, what better way than to give it to the mil aide?