The President's Henchman

by Joseph Flynn

  In the general election, Patti and her running mate, Governor Mather Wyman of Ohio, were the all-but-unanimous choice of Republican voters; the conservatives had nowhere else to go if they hoped to have any influence. She carried independents four to one. Even a third of the Democratic vote went her way.

  Given a mandate, she promised to govern from the center and work in a bipartisan fashion whenever possible. Which, of course, pissed off the left and the right no end. Both extremes claimed that the new president would blur party identities.

  What really scared them, of course, was that she would start her own centrist party. Make it the first new major political party since the early nineteenth century, leaving them at the margins, consigned to purgatory if not hell.

  So the new president, while hugely popular, was not without her share of enemies.

  Or challenges.

  Like the one from the Pentagon that Galia was telling her about.

  “Her name is Carina Linberg,” Galia informed the president. “She’s a colonel in the Air Force. Works in military intelligence at the Pentagon. Until yesterday, it looked like she’d be the youngest woman in that branch of the service ever to become a general.”

  Patti knew a cue when she heard one. “And now?”

  “Now she’s being investigated to see if she should be brought before a court-martial.” Galia gave it a beat. She had a sense of timing, too. “For adultery.”

  That stirred the president’s memory. “Wasn’t there another case like this some years back? Another woman in the Air Force. A bomber pilot, I think.”

  Galia nodded. As usual, she had the facts at her fingertips. “Lieutenant Allison Neely. In that case, however, Lieutenant Neely had two lovers. One was a married civilian employee of the Air Force and the other was an Air Force enlisted man. Lieutenant Neely was ordered by her base commander to stop seeing both men. She didn’t. So the charges against her also included refusal to obey an order and fraternization with enlisted personnel.”

  The president nodded. “Now, I remember. It was those charges the military said were most important. Lieutenant Neely’s conduct was detrimental to the good order and discipline of the service … and at the time I agreed with them.”

  “Much to the displeasure of NOW and other feminists,” Galia reminded her.

  The president shrugged. Any political decision was bound to anger someone.

  “So how is this case different?” she asked.

  “Colonel Linberg was sleeping with a Navy man. Captain Dexter Cowan. Her naval counterpart in military intelligence. She claims he told her he was divorced. He says he told her he was separated from his wife, but that he and Mrs. Cowan were talking about a possible reconciliation. Both sides agree that Captain Cowan didn’t wear a wedding ring to work.”

  “So there are no other charges against Colonel Linberg? The military can’t say the adultery is incidental to more serious infractions?”

  “No, Madam President. Adultery is the sole charge.”

  “How often does that happen?”

  Galia flipped a page in her notebook. “There were sixty-six cases in the Air Force last year that included adultery charges. Sixty-five of them also included other serious charges.”

  The president sat back in her chair. “The exception was another woman?

  “A man.”

  “Even so. It looks like this is a handy charge to trot out when you want to ruin someone’s career.”

  “Including yours,” Galia said, closing her notebook.

  “Hence the mention of Roger Michaelson.”

  “Exactly. The junior senator from Oregon has an abiding hatred for you.”

  Patti Grant wasn’t about to argue that point.

  Galia continued, “There is absolutely no reason why the Air Force couldn’t resolve the Colonel Linberg matter administratively; that would be the most common way to dispose of it. If it wasn’t dropped entirely as an unprovable he-said, she-said case.”

  The president’s mind leaped ahead. “If I side with Colonel Linberg, the Pentagon will think I’m a meddling woman who never wore a uniform. Someone not fit to be commander in chief.”

  “And your loose Hollywood morals will finally be revealed.”

  “But if I side with the military, I’ll be fair game for millions of women, and not just movement feminists. I’ll be destroying the career of a talented woman for an offense that’s based on one man’s word. An offense that would never even be prosecuted in a civilian court.”

  “Yes, but if a court-martial finds Colonel Linberg guilty of adultery, she could end up serving prison time at Fort Leavenworth.”

  “Either way, my administration could be crippled at the outset.” The president nodded to herself. “You’re right, Galia. This is worthy of Roger Michaelson. Is there any proof he’s actually involved?”

  “Other than his seat on the Senate Armed Services Committee? Not yet.”

  “And who do you have waiting outside to see me?” The president wasn’t just making a good guess; she knew Galia Mindel.

  “The Air Force chief of staff, General Altman.”

  “Fine, I’ll have a cup of coffee with him. But who will do the actual investigation on this case?”

  Galia bit her lip. “That would be someone from the Air Force’s Office of Special Investigations.”

  “Find out who that someone is,” the president instructed. “Have his service record on my desk in an hour; have him ready to see me in ninety minutes.”

  Lieutenant Welborn Yates was twenty-four years old. He had blonde hair, blue eyes, and pink cheeks. A trim five-ten with good shoulders, he could have been a poster boy for the Air Force, not one of its criminal investigators. His arrival at the Oval Office was punctual to the second. Saluting and standing at attention, he looked so young to the president she felt she must already be wizened and white-haired. It took Galia’s clearing her throat to bring Patti out of her reverie.

  “At ease, Lieutenant,” the president said. “Please take a seat.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” he said with a soft South Carolina drawl.

  Lieutenant Yates took the chair next to Galia. Once he was released from his rigid posture, Patti could see how nervous he was. A muscle twitched in a pink cheek. Looking at her only made him more tense. His eyes darted around the room. Then they fastened on McGill’s picture, Patti saw. Something about it seemed to tell him everything was okay.

  Jim’s shit-eating grin, she thought.

  Or maybe that she would have such a photo in the Oval Office.

  Patti read from Lieutenant Yates’s personnel folder. “You trained to be a fighter pilot.”

  Turning back to her, he said, “Yes, ma’am.”

  She closed the folder and looked at the young man not as his ultimate superior but as one human being to another. “I’m very sorry for the losses you suffered, Lieutenant. Your friends’ deaths and your chance to fly.”

  “Thank you, ma’am.”

  “Are you still receiving psychological counseling?”

  Welborn blinked, but didn’t look away. “Only at such times as I feel the need, ma’am … Not so often anymore.” He looked as if that was all he had to say, but then he added, “Mostly, these days, I find comfort in talking with my mother.”

  “She’s a good woman, your mother?”

  “The best, ma’am.” Welborn then lightened the moment with a grin. “Why, I believe she even voted for you.”

  The president smiled, too. “Please give her my thanks and tell her I’ll do my best to live up to her trust.”

  “I will, ma’am.”

  “Lieutenant, in reading your record, I see that you’ve completed your Criminal Investigator Training Program and your OSI agency-specific coursework. You’re now a federally credentialed special agent. But you are in your first-year probationary period. Do I have all that right?”

  “Yes, ma’am, you do.”

  Galia stood up. Welborn started to get to his feet, too, unsure if he wa
s suddenly being dismissed. The chief of staff waved him back into his seat.

  “Please excuse me, Madam President, but there’s another matter that requires my attention. If that’s all right with you.”

  The president nodded; sure that Galia had scripted her departure, even though she hadn’t shared that knowledge with her boss. Before leaving, Galia handed the president a sheet of paper.

  “Perhaps this will add to your conversation with the lieutenant,” she said, and departed.

  Patti took in the contents of the page at a glance. She slipped it into Yates’s personnel folder and turned her attention back to him.

  “You have an office at Andrews, Lieutenant?” Andrews Air Force Base, in nearby suburban Maryland, was the headquarters of the Office of Special Investigations.

  “A desk, ma’am.”

  “The Colonel Linberg matter is your first investigation?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Have you done any work on it yet?”

  “No, ma’am. The file landed on my desk only an hour before I was ordered to report here. I was reading it and contemplating my first interview with the colonel when I got your call.”

  She looked at the young man in front of her for a long moment, thinking this was what being president was all about. The power to change people’s lives profoundly. Though not necessarily for the better.

  “Lieutenant, you’ll soon have an office. Here at the White House.”

  Welborn’s eyes went wide.

  “And I’ll be the one who decides how your probationary period works out,” the president added. “Get everything you need from your desk at Andrews. Your new digs will be waiting for you when you get back.”

  The president stopped into a briefing in the pressroom, unannounced. The newsies all had the manners to get to their feet without being told, and Patti sat them back down again.

  “I just stopped by to make sure you’re not abusing my press secretary too badly.”

  “Just badly enough, ma’am,” a voice in the back called out, drawing a laugh.

  “Fair enough. Let Aggie know if you have any suggestions how we might all work better together. Feel free to offer constructive self-criticism, too.”

  The president was about to leave when David Gregory snagged her with a question, “Madam President, have you seen that some media outlets have started to refer to you by your initials, PDG?”

  “Yes, I’ve noticed that, David.”

  A mischievous smile lit the reporter’s face. “But have you heard that some people say that your initials stand for Pretty Damn Good?”

  Keeping a perfectly straight face, she answered, “That’s close to what I’ve heard, but I believe you left out the comma. It should be: Pretty, damn good.”

  The president dazzled the reporters with her best smile and left with a wave. Knowing the sound bite would be all over the news that night.

  McGill was already home when the president returned to the residence for the night. He hadn’t seen his wife the night before; the press of business had kept her away until he was already asleep. Now, he had two bottles, each in a silver ice bucket, waiting for her. Poland Springs Sparkling Mineral Water. Leapfrog California Chardonnay. Patti sat next to her husband on the drawing room sofa and opted for the water.

  “I’m gainfully employed again,” McGill told her. “My first client.”

  “I know,” Patti said.

  “You know?”

  “I’m the president. I know everything.”

  McGill wasn’t omniscient, but he was pretty quick. “Galia told you. And no way Sweetie, Deke, or Leo told her. So she’s either got my office bugged or somebody on the client’s side ratted her out.”

  “Chana Lochlan. I stopped by the pressroom today to take a good look at her.”

  Patti wasn’t the jealous type, McGill knew, but her curiosity was relentless.

  “If Galia has my office bugged, are you going to fire her?”

  “I’ll slap her wrist. Tell her not to do it again.”

  “Good to know where I stand in the pecking order.”

  Patti kissed McGill. As always, he could imagine a thousand violins starting to play as the closing credits of a movie rolled. “You know where you stand,” she said. “But I do need Galia.”

  “Your pacification effort is working, don’t stop now.”

  “Jim, I need a favor.”

  The nice thing about being married to a trained communicator, it was easy to pick right up on her tone. McGill stopped joking and sat back. He opened his hands wide.

  “Whatever I can do.”

  She told him about Colonel Carina Linberg and Lieutenant Welborn Yates.

  “Welborn?” McGill asked.

  “A lovely young man. Dedicated to the service of his country.”

  “Working his first case. Likely susceptible to pressure from above, if I’m reading between the lines right.”

  Patti nodded. “That’s why I moved him to the White House. To shelter him. I’ve taken quite a liking to him.”

  McGill only nodded. He wasn’t the jealous type either.

  “Lieutenant Yates and three friends, all Air Force, were on their way back to California after another buddy got married in Las Vegas. It was the wee small hours of the morning, they were a block away from the freeway entrance when a car ran a red light and broadsided them.”

  “Welborn was the sole survivor,” McGill said, knowing immediately.

  “Four fighter jocks. Only one thought himself mortal enough to need a seat belt, and Welborn, despite his seat belt, sustained damage to his right inner ear. Doesn’t keep him from doing most things, but he can’t take the multi-G forces of flying fighter jets.”

  McGill poured a glass of wine for each of them.

  “Gets worse, doesn’t it?” he asked.

  “The driver of the other car walked away, was never found, and the car had been stolen the night before. No identification has ever been made.”

  McGill sipped his wine. “So Welborn stays in the military and learns the skills he figures he’ll need to track the SOB down someday.”

  “I’m told an OSI posting is the second-most-popular career choice in the Air Force, but, yes, that’s my assumption, too. Which tells me he has a strong sense of justice.”

  “Or vengeance.”

  “You haven’t met him.”

  McGill shrugged and drank some more wine.

  “So you think the kid will play it straight on the Linberg case,” he asked, “with you giving him political cover?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you’d like me to do what, tutor him? Let him know the kinds of things that don’t get covered in the textbooks and the lectures.”

  “Exactly. Only he’ll never see you. I’ll be your go-between.”

  “Our little secret?”

  Patti nodded.

  “Unless Galia has the residence bugged, too,” McGill said.

  “That would be cause for termination.”

  McGill smiled. “Like I said, whatever I can do.” He kissed his wife and excused himself to take a shower.

  Patti took her wineglass and went to a window looking out on Lafayette Square. Using her free hand, she pulled back a curtain that McGill had closed. A dozen or so protestors walked a tight, relentless circle, as they’d done every day since she’d moved into the White House. The Peace Vigil people who’d camped out opposite the White House continuously since 1981 had ceded some of their space to the new group. Each of the protestors carried the same sign: FREE ERNA.

  Erna Godfrey. Current resident of the Federal Death Penalty Facility in Terre Haute, Indiana. Wife of Reverend Burke Godfrey, pastor of the Salvation’s Path Church.

  The woman who’d killed Patti’s beloved first husband, Andy Grant.

  Chapter 4

  Two Years Earlier

  Andy Grant was the kind of billionaire who opened his own front door when someone rang the bell. Of course, Andy’s doorbell was located outside a gate
three hundred feet from his house, and hidden TV cameras revealed just who had come calling. The Grant estate was protected on the north, west, and south by twelve-foot-high ivy-covered walls. Motion detectors and other electronic devices warned against climbers and vaulters. On the east lay a private beach and Lake Michigan.

  In the depths of some of the colder winters, it would have been possible to ice-skate onto the grounds, but no one had tried that yet. Nor had any other form of seaborne attack been launched.

  But the first thing Chief McGill said after Andy had introduced himself that warm morning in late May was, “You’ve got to do something about your waterfront exposure.”

  “What would you suggest, mining the beach?” The question came not from Grant, but from his wife, the congresswoman, who’d heard McGill’s comment as she descended the main stairway.

  “I don’t think you’re zoned for that,” McGill said evenly, “and it might upset the neighbors if one of their dogs wandered over and got blown up.”

  Like her husband, Patricia Darden Grant was dressed casually; she wore shorts and a sleeveless top. Unlike her husband, she was barefoot. Unlike her husband, she was hostile.

  Something Andy Grant was far too sharp to miss, far too genial to let go unameliorated.

  “The chief’s done his homework, Patti,” he said. “He not only knows the neighbors have dogs but where they like to drop their loads.” He turned to McGill with a grin. “Maybe we can get a zoning exception.”

  “My profession is giving money away wisely,” Andy Grant said. He had curly ginger hair and smart green eyes. Average in height, he looked as if he enjoyed one too many cupcake per day. But he seemed comfortable with his appearance and moved with physical grace.

  The discussion had moved to the terrace above the beach at the back of the house. Andy and McGill sipped lemonade from tall tumblers at a round glass-topped table. A third glass awaited the congresswoman’s thirst. She worked nearby fussing with potted plants that looked perfectly tended to McGill. But then, gardening wasn’t the point. She was close enough to overhear every word without having to look at the bothersome cop.