by Joseph Flynn
“Why are you looking so sad?”
Welborn blinked and saw Kira standing in the doorway to his office.
“Thinking about the guys,” he said.
Kira knew which guys Welborn meant. She nodded in sympathy.
“I had an idea,” she said. “Wanted to ask your opinion first.”
“Tell me.”
“You know how we had to postpone our wedding?”
“I have some memory of that, yes,” Welborn said.
Kira cut him some slack; a moment ago, he’d been mourning a loss.
“I don’t want to postpone it again. I want to be your wife soon. Though I will concede there are moments when I wonder what the hurry is.”
Welborn grinned. “Let’s do it right now. Go to city hall, get married on our lunch hour.”
“I was thinking of something with just a bit more charm.”
“Do you really think we’ll be unlucky again? Have to set another date?”
“You’ve heard what’s happened to Kenny McGill?”
He had, but he didn’t know how Kira had come by the news.
But then the White House tom-toms might have sounded while he was elsewhere.
“And my uncle told me something in confidence,” Kira said.
Her uncle the vice president, Welborn knew.
“I won’t ask you to break that confidence,” Welborn said. “But I’ll take it to be a matter of significance.”
“It is, and thank you for not asking.”
“You’re sensing that storm clouds might be gathering?”
“I am.”
“Can we allow enough time to have your mother and my parents join us at the river?” he asked. “Nuptials along the Potomac might be nice.”
Kira liked the idea. She told Welborn, “I did call Father Nguyen. His schedule is fairly open this week.”
Francis Nguyen, they’d agreed, would be the celebrant at their wedding ceremony.
“That’s a good sign. Ms. Fahey, I will marry you any time of day or night, any day of the week. Whenever you will have me.”
“I’ve always suspected as much,” she said with a smile.
Welborn laughed and added, “And if I’m busy doing derring-do, I’ll get it done.”
The Missirian Building, Georgetown, P Street
Hugh Collier never did get past Deke Ky. The Secret Service special agent backed him down the stairs and onto the sidewalk outside Dikki Missirian’s first investment in American real estate. By the time Collier stepped outside, Ellie, the camera operator and the sound guy had already vanished.
The whole thing was like something out of a movie, Collier thought. One of those films where everything looked normal, but people behaved in ways you’d never expect. He had to remind himself this was Patricia Darden Grant’s Washington not Vladimir Putin’s Moscow. Journalists didn’t fear for their lives in the United States, and they didn’t disappear.
Even so, he was dead sure the slant-eyed bastard with his right hand under his suit coat would have shot him dead, had he tried to bull past him. Collier was a quick bloke, had moves on the football field that left defenders grabbing at air. But that was his game. The game on the stairs was one he’d never played, there was far more at stake and he knew in his bones he’d come out second best.
But where the hell had Ellie and the words-and-pictures men gone?
Whisked off to the gulag, all of them?
Replaced by an exotic bird — looked a bit Persian — with her own concealed weapon and a glint in her eye every bit as predatory as the Asian bastard. The two of them exchanged a glance. The bastard gestured to the woman, pointing down. Collier knew he wasn’t free to go. Custody had just been passed.
The woman pulled a chair out from one of the two café tables outside the building.
“Have a seat,” she told Collier.
“And if that’s not what I care to do?” he asked.
“Then I’ll arrest you.”
“On what charge?”
“Refusing to obey a lawful order from a federal agent,” Deke said.
A newsman being pushed around by feds would have been brilliant theater for WorldWide News, if only there had been a camera to capture it. Uncle Edbert would have soiled himself in his excitement. But Hugh Collier didn’t see so much as a curious onlooker with his cell phone out.
He sat down. Not liking being bullied at all.
That was normally his prerogative.
Jim McGill appeared a moment later, followed by Sweetie and Rockelle Bullard. Right behind them came Dikki Missirian carrying a tray holding bottles of Perrier, glasses and a bowl of mixed nuts. He waited for McGill and the ladies to be seated and served the refreshments. He nodded to everyone and went inside.
McGill sat opposite Collier, with Sweetie to his right and Rockelle to his left.
He extended his hand to Collier. “I’m Jim McGill.”
Collier took McGill’s hand. Each of them was strong; neither was adolescent. The handshake was just that, not a test of the other guy’s pain threshold.
“Hugh Collier.”
“Of WorldWide News.”
“You’d been alerted to my approach,” Collier said.
McGill wasn’t about to give away anything.
Collier told him, “Might have been your people saw us coming. Or perhaps someone inside my organization gave you a call.”
McGill’s response was indirect. “What do you want, Mr. Collier?”
Sir Edbert Bickford’s nephew sipped Perrier from the bottle and looked at McGill.
“If not a public figure, Mr. McGill, you’re a figure of public interest. You’re married to the president of the United States, you work as a private investigator after a long career as a policeman. Your exploits both in uniform and in a private capacity are becoming legendary.”
McGill smiled. He looked at Sweetie.
“Legends in our own time,” he said.
“I’m almost impressed,” Sweetie said. She had her eyes on Collier, not pushing it, just keeping up a light pressure.
“Don’t underestimate yourself, Ms. Sweeney. You’ve cut quite a swath yourself.”
“Pride is a sin, Mr. Collier. A deadly one.”
“So it is, but we’ll all expire from something. Might as well make life interesting.”
Collier turned to Rockelle.
“I’m sorry, I wasn’t briefed on you.”
“My publicist got laid off,” she told him.
“Some sort of police, though,” he guessed.
“The touchy sort.”
Turning back to McGill, Collier said, “My brief is to do an in depth study of the life and times of James J. McGill, how he manages his roles as the president’s henchman, a private investigator and who knows what else.” Collier turned to look at Sweetie, just long enough to suggest he thought she might be more than a friend to McGill. “How do you do all that and manage to keep such a low profile?”
McGill knew he’d better wrap things up before Sweetie took an active dislike to Collier. “I’d tell you, except I signed an exclusive deal with Ken Burns, effective as soon as the president leaves office.”
“So you’ll be of no help to me?” Collier said.
“None at all.”
Collier raised a name from the past. “All because Monty Kipp made an unfortunate joke about putting President Grant on page three?”
Page three was where Sir Edbert ran photos of incompletely dressed women in the foreign editions of his tabloid newspapers. Kipp, the former Washington bureau chief of WorldWide News, had, in an inebriated moment, confessed his ambition to put the president on page three. McGill had discouraged him.
Chana Lochlan had told him of Kip’s scheme, too.
At the moment, Collier was fishing for confirmation of that fact.
And trying to see just how simple a mark McGill might be.
McGill stood up. “I have a lot to do, Mr. Collier. I’m a private citizen, despite being married to the pres
ident. As for the inquiring minds who might like to know me better, tough. Special Agent Kendry will tell you how much elbow room you’ll need to give me.”
Collier got to his feet. “That could be a story in itself.”
“Run with it,” McGill told him. He turned to leave.
Deke and Elspeth moved in on Collier.
“One last thing, Mr. McGill.”
McGill looked back. “What’s that?”
Collier told him, “Clare Tracy says hello.”
McGill smiled. “Nice to hear from her again.”
He turned and went back into Dikki’s building.
Wondering how the hell Collier had learned about Clare.
GWU Hospital
Carolyn Enquist had never heard of HLA. Not many people had. Hearing that the acronym stood for human leukocyte antigen didn’t clear matters up any. In fact, being brought face to face with her ignorance of Kenny’s disease only served to scare her.
Nick and the squadron of doctors and nurses he’d enlisted had taken Kenny off to begin his … the word that came first to Carolyn’s mind was ordeal, but she amended that to treatment. Then, accompanied by a silent prayer, she changed treatment to cure.
One nurse had stayed behind, a mature woman whose pretty face made her seem younger than her years. Her name tag read Barbara Marcos. She had questions for the family, starting with whether they knew what HLA was.
She wasn’t surprised at Carolyn’s inability to answer.
But she’d learned from the intake report that Lars Enquist was a pharmacist.
“Mr. Enquist, do you know about HLA?”
Lars said, “They’re proteins, markers. Most of the body’s cells have them. ”
Caitie piped up. “Why’s that important?”
Lars looked at the nurse. She gestured to him to continue.
He told Carolyn, Caitie and Abbie. “The markers are like your personal brand. Your immune system recognizes your brand, knows it’s not something foreign that has to be attacked.”
Lars glanced at Barbara Marcos to make sure he had it right.
She nodded, and Lars continued.
“The donor bone marrow cells are what help a patient recover, but that can’t happen if the patient’s own body attacks those cells.”
“How do you know who’s a good match?” Abbie said.
“We’re family,” Caitie said, “we should all match, right?”
Barbara shook her head. “Full siblings, same mother and father, have a twenty-five percent chance of matching. To find whether any of you match or not, we’ll need a sample of your blood to test.”
Carolyn said, “But with the girls and me and my former husband, we should have a match among the four of us, shouldn’t we?”
It became clear why Barbara Marcos had been chosen to talk with the family. She knew the facts and she wouldn’t shy away from them, but the depth of her caring was clear on her face. She said, “It would be great if the math worked that way, but it doesn’t.”
“Why not?” Caitie asked indignantly. “Twenty-five percent times four equals a hundred percent. One of us has to be a match.”
“I wish that were so, but in this case you can’t add individual percentages or multiply them. I’m afraid the number you have to keep in mind is this: Approximately seventy percent of patients who need a bone marrow donor have to go outside the family.”
“Oh my God,” Carolyn said.
Lars put an arm around her. “I’ll be tested, of course.”
“Thank you, Mr. Enquist,” Barbara said.
Abbie and Caitie put their arms around their stepfather.
Then Caitie looked at Barbara and beamed.
“Sweetie!” she said.
“I beg your pardon.” Barbara didn’t understand.
The others did and bobbed their heads.
Carolyn said, “Margaret Sweeney, a dear friend.”
“She would consider donation?”
“If not one of us here or my former husband, she’d be our first choice,” Carolyn told Barbara. “I have no doubt she would help Kenny.”
“That’s good. Think of as many people as you can, ones who would be willing to donate. The wider the net you can cast, the better.”
Then Caitie asked, “How do you get bone marrow from someone anyway?”
Barbara Marcos turned to Lars to see if he might be of help again.
He was. “What they do, Caitie, is something called a bone marrow harvest. They take the stuff they need from your pelvic bone.”
Caitie tried to imagine that. “But how do they get into your backbone?”
“With a needle.”
Caitie grimaced, as did Abbie and Carolyn.
Barbara said, “There’s also another way. It’s called peripheral blood stem cell donation, PBSC for short. Cells are taken from circulating blood, then the blood is returned to the donor. No spinal involvement at all.”
“Why don’t they just do it that way all the time?” Abbie asked.
Barbara told her, “The doctors have to decide which way would work best for each patient.” Then she added, “You’ll ask Mr. McGill to come by and give a blood sample?”
“Of course,” Carolyn said. “Jim wouldn’t have it any other way.”
As they headed off to have their blood drawn, Carolyn whispered to Barbara Marcos, “What if none of us is a match? Neither family nor friends.”
“Then we go to the registry and look for a donor.”
“Does that work?”
“Sometimes.” Barbara said.
That was always the hardest answer she had to share.
The Oval Office
Attorney General Michael Jaworsky arrived punctually and paid close attention to the video recording of the president’s conversation with Erna Godfrey. Every so often he made a note on the pad of paper resting on his lap. Each note occasioned a small nod of his head.
The president watched the recording sitting perfectly still.
This time she did not cry when she heard that the soul of Andy Grant was at peace.
Galia Mindel kept one eye on the video and the other on the president and the attorney general. She deeply hoped each of them would want to proceed with an immediate indictment of the Reverend Burke Godfrey as a co-conspirator in the murder of the president’s first husband. Doing so, however, would not be without consequences.
The political ramifications would be huge. The religious right of the president’s own party would explode in rage. Loud protest would also issue from conservative Democrats. Fundamentalist religious figures would cry that one of their own was being persecuted. Political enemies large and small would accuse the president of subverting the very institution of matrimony, saying that Patricia Darden Grant had purchased Erna Godfrey’s testimony against her husband by commuting her death sentence. The most vicious among the opposition voices would assert that a further reduction of Erna’s sentence would be granted once Burke Godfrey was convicted and, no doubt, sentenced to death.
Burke Godfrey’s trial would be exactly the kind of three-ring political circus no incumbent president needed as she geared up for reelection. Barring the start of a major war or a complete economic collapse, U.S. v. Godfrey would be the wall-to-wall story of every news outlet in the country.
Despite the brass-knuckle battles that would ensue, Galia couldn’t wait to get started. Her sense of justice was biblical in nature, and specifically Old Testament. She saw no way in the world she wouldn’t want the head of any man who had killed her husband, and she expected no less of Patti Grant, but …
Before Patricia Darden Grant’s election, Galia remembered, she had pointedly limited her role in Erna Godfrey’s trial to sworn testimony. She’d given no interviews on the subject. Once in office, she’d stayed well clear of making any effort to expedite the damn woman’s execution. She’d even decided to commute Erna’s death sentence without any counsel from Galia.
No one had advised her on that matter but her current hu
sband — Galia being unaware of the president’s discussion of the matter with the Queen of England.
Galia wondered what James J. McGill would have the president do with Burke Godfrey. He’d said, at one time, everyone involved in the death of Andrew Hudson Grant should be strapped to a gurney.
Had he experienced any change of heart about that?
“Galia?” the president said.
The chief of staff snapped to attention, straightening in her chair.
“Yes, Madam President?”
“The video’s over, but you’re still staring at the television.”
Before Galia could say anything, the attorney general intervened.
“It is a thought provoking piece, Madam President. Ms. Mindel is obviously looking at it from many angles.”
Michael Jaworsky had been the smartest, toughest, most effective U.S. attorney in the country before the president had nominated him to his current post. He’d put away mobsters, terrorists and investment bankers. That last class of ne’erdowells had their defenders in Congress, but Michael Jaworsky, a lifelong bachelor, had been confirmed by a vote of ninety-three to five.
“Thank you, Michael,” Galia said. “You’d make a good defense lawyer.”
Jaworsky laughed. “Perish the thought.”
The president refocused her subordinates on the matter at hand.
“What would you advise, Michael?”
The attorney general glanced at his notes. “The first thing we do is put Lindell Ricker and Walter, Penny and Winston Delk into protective housing. If you’ll permit me, Madam President, I’d like to do that right now.”
“By all means,” the president said.
Jaworsky made the call, cupping his hand around the phone’s mouthpiece. Neither woman was more than a few feet from him, but neither heard a word he said as he gave the order that the four active accomplices to Erna Godfrey’s murder of Andy Grant be sheltered in ways that would protect them from any violence, planned or coincidental, that might befall them in their respective federal prisons.