by Joseph Flynn
Sweetie nodded.
“What about her sister?” McGill asked. “What’s she doing?”
“She died at age three, childhood leukemia, before Chana was born.”
McGill winced. Stories like that always hit him hard. They conjured fears of some god-awful fate overtaking one of his kids. The same beseeching prayer always leaped to mind: Me first, Lord. Take me and spare my children. Please.
“How soon afterward was Chana born?” he asked.
“Ten months.”
“Replacement child.” A thought occurred to McGill. “What was the sister’s first name?”
“Nanette.”
“I’ll have to look that up.”
“I already did,” Sweetie told him. “It means grace.”
“Nan and Chana. Grace and graceful. Full of grace. I wonder if Chana’s parents were aware of what they were doing.”
“Harriet didn’t have that information.”
The direction the conversation had taken led McGill to a subject far closer to home. “How are my kids?” he asked Sweetie.
“Kenny’s writing a TV show featuring himself as the youngest Secret Service agent ever; Caitie’s still pretty sure the sun rises as her personal spotlight; Abbie … Abbie could use a visit.”
“Yeah,” McGill nodded. “Carolyn and the gun?”
“Your peacenik ex is a natural deadeye.”
“Could she pull the trigger?”
“To save your kids? No doubt.”
“The security’s good?”
“Yeah. Some of it’s intentionally visible to scare off anybody with a brain. Some of it is very subtle. Everybody’s totally committed, playing well with others, and armed to the teeth.”
“Good,” McGill said.
“You still want to be there, don’t you?”
“I will be. Just as soon as I can.”
Kira Fahey lived in a fifteen-story condo building just off Connecticut Avenue. She’d wanted the penthouse apartment, but her mother had insisted that she live no higher than the fifth floor, she told Welborn with a bit of a pout.
“So the fire department can reach you with their ladders,” he said.
“Yes.”
He turned back to look out the window at which he was standing.
“You still have a nice view of Rock Creek Park.”
She came over to stand next to him.
“Not as nice as it could be.”
He looked at her. “Have you always been spoiled?”
She looked back, and said, “Not as much as I’d like to be.”
Kira left him to sit on a nearby love seat. A mimosa waited for her on an end table. “My father died in a hotel fire when I was six.”
A flute of champagne without the citrus awaited Welborn should he care to join her. He did. “Can’t blame your mother for being worried.”
“I can’t, but I do anyway. Something you should know about me, I’m not a very nice person at all.”
“I saw that right away,” Welborn said.
Then he smiled, probably saving himself from getting a mimosa in the kisser.
Kira didn’t return the smile, but she kept talking. “Once I understood that my father wasn’t coming back, I begged my mother to get me a new daddy. She said not just anyone could take my father’s place, and I agreed wholeheartedly. I wanted someone just as good as my old daddy. Better if possible. My mother promised if she ever found anyone that good, she’d bring him right home.” She drained her drink. “Mother’s never remarried.”
Kira got up, went to the kitchen, and made herself another mimosa. She brought the bottle back with her and topped off the millimeter Welborn had sipped from his glass.
“What about you?” she asked. “What’s your story?”
Welborn felt sure someone like Kira would have learned of his friends’ deaths by then. So what she was asking for, he assumed, was more in the way of an overall biography. Much to his surprise, he found that he didn’t mind talking about himself in a way he’d revealed to few others.
“My mother never married,” he said.
“You bastard.”
“Yeah, I suppose so.”
“Is there some lurid Southern Gothic tale behind all this?” Kira asked.
“More of an English mystery. My mother was an early female Rhodes Scholar. Came back from Oxford with a fancy education and me in the oven.”
“That’s even more delicious.” Kira snuggled up against him. “You’re the illegitimate heir of some prestigious don.”
Welborn sighed. “Think a little higher.”
Kira blinked, didn’t come up with the answer immediately.
“Blue blood,” he hinted.
She slapped his arm. “You’re making this up.”
“Okay,” he said. He drank his champagne and refilled his glass.
“You’re not?”
“All my mother will tell me is that my father is a lovely gentleman with other obligations. But my aunt, mother’s elder sister, has dropped a hint or two over the years.”
Kira studied his face. Shook her head. “I don’t see the resemblance.”
“Not that crowd around the throne,” he said. “A cousin several rungs down the succession ladder is what I’ve been told.”
She stared at him some more. Searching for any sign of deceit.
“Could all be an elaborate joke,” he said. “Then again, Mother could have named me Bob.”
“And not Welborn,” Kira said, completing the thought. “You’re getting me excited, even if this is all a game.”
He kissed her. Chastely on the forehead. Saw she’d clearly expected more.
“We better switch to milk and cookies,” he said. “I think Major Seymour has probably grown tired of waiting for me by now.”
Welborn gently disengaged himself and stood up.
“Still going to let me borrow your other car?” he asked. Just in case the major was still lurking, Kira had said he could borrow her “work” car, a Jeep Cherokee.
“Are you falling in love with Colonel Linberg?” she asked.
Kira’s question came out of the blue. Or maybe out of the misapprehension that she was about to lose out on a bastard Americanized military-gumshoe royal to another woman. Welborn had the grace to keep a straight face. And to give her a straight answer. “I was infatuated, maybe. Until I started to think better of it. Now I just want to make sure she gets a fair shake.”
“But if she’s going to resign …”
“That request hasn’t been granted yet.”
“Well, how do things look for her?”
Discussing an investigation with unauthorized personnel was taboo; that had been drummed into him time and again at Glynco. On the other hand, the president herself had said Kira was his liaison. And Kira was lending him her car, aiding him in his work.
His classroom training hadn’t anticipated such situations.
He told her, “This morning and afternoon, I interviewed eight military officers and two civilians who worked with both Colonel Linberg and Captain Cowan. All ten of them told me they knew the captain was married and separated, not divorced. None of them could specifically remember sharing that information with Colonel Linberg.”
Kira said, “But if everyone she worked with knew …”
“Right. Nobody has to point a finger directly. The weight of their collective testimony is enough. How could Colonel Linberg be ignorant of what was common knowledge?”
“You’re still skeptical, though.”
“There’s a very old expression in the armed forces,” Welborn told her. “It’s called closing ranks. Today, I could hear footsteps falling into line all over the parade ground.”
Kira gave him the keys to her Jeep.
Major Seymour wasn’t skulking outside Kira Fahey’s building. Maybe he felt he’d seen enough, Welborn thought. He could report to General Altman that Lieutenant Yates had driven with the vice president’s niece from a bar in Annapolis to her dwelling in Wash
ington for … well, most likely, for purposes unbecoming an officer and a gentleman.
Not that they could get him for anything illegal. Like adultery. Neither he nor Kira was married. Nor had they engaged in intercourse. Though it might embarrass Ms. Fahey to admit that a man had visited her lair and left her with nothing more than a peck on the brow.
He’d have to ask Colonel Linberg if there was anything in the UCMJ against forehead kissing. Given her duty of copying all the rules and regs, she ought to know. Then he’d ask her why she wanted to resign.
He was very eager to talk to Carina Linberg about that. And he wanted to watch her carefully as she answered. He’d have done so already if Major Seymour hadn’t gotten in the way. Now, he’d have to check out the major, too. Investigate a superior officer who was the personal aide to the Air Force Chief of Staff.
He didn’t remember his mother telling him there’d be days like this.
But Galia Mindel had, more or less. Warned him that there’d be people out to screw with him. People who undoubtedly had agendas of their own to advance.
Colonel Linberg had told him her workday ended at 1700 hours. Which meant he’d have to visit her at home. Kira’s home computer had access to the colonel’s address. She had even printed a map for him so he could find his way.
Made him feel, somewhat uneasily, as if he’d picked up an unofficial partner.
He drove out New York Avenue. The rain had stopped, and traffic was light. He rolled past the National Arboretum and soon came to Route 50 East. It’d take him right back to Annapolis if he wanted. But he was only going to Landover, where Colonel Linberg had a condo, and the Washington Redskins played football at FedEx stadium.
He never got to Landover. Because his fighter pilot’s eyes saw a navy blue Dodge Viper parked in the lot of a Courtyard Inn just off the highway, two miles short of the colonel’s dwelling. He wondered what the chances were it could it be just a coincidence, somebody else’s sports car.
No chance at all after Welborn pulled into the lot and saw the license plate.
He looked at the motel, trying to guess which room Cowan was in.
“So what’s the story, Captain?” Welborn asked himself. “Your deal with the brass gives you continuing immunity? You can keep shacking up with the colonel, and she’s the only one who has to pay the consequences?”
Welborn parked Kira Fahey’s Cherokee in a space directly across the lot from the Viper. He slid down in his seat and adjusted the rearview mirror so he’d be able to see if anyone got in either side of the sports car.
He hated the thought that Carina Linberg was in the hotel having sex with Dexter Cowan. Because if she came out of the hotel with him, he’d have to report what he’d seen. Become a witness against her. Damn! Couldn’t they have driven to Baltimore? Parked the damn Viper indoors. He almost wished —
Oh, God. They’d really done it to him, he thought. The president and her husband. He was about to wish he’d brought Kira Fahey with him. To insulate him against his feelings of jealousy.
Brought on by his infatuation for Carina Linberg.
The president and her henchman had foreseen he might make a fool of himself and a disaster of his investigation, and they’d provided him with Kira as an inoculation against a runaway libido. He wondered if Kira knew what her role was in all this. That thought made him smile. It also reassured him that he had some really smart people in his corner.
He was pretty sure he was going to need them.
Chana Lochlan lay sleeping peacefully in her bed. She was nude. Damon Todd stood next to the bed looking down at her. She’d always been lean and firm. Now, with her increased workouts, her muscle definition was starting to show. She’d hit the weights hard for him, and her appearance excited him greatly. But all he did was gently kiss her shampoo-scented hair and pull the top sheet over her shoulders.
“You’re so beautiful, so strong. You’ve always been my inspiration,” he murmured. “I’ve loved you from the start.”
He sat in a chair and watched Chana turn on her side as she slept. Pale light slanted in through the partially open bedroom door. It fell across the right side of her face.
She’d told him about James J. McGill, of course. Going to him for help. Todd blamed himself for that. He’d missed visiting her last year. He’d left her alone for such a long time only once before — and disaster had resulted. She’d gotten married.
But the fact that she’d upped her workout and bought the thong showed that a level deep in her subconscious she still anticipated an annual visit from him. She’d been his first and most successful subject. He’d helped her to become what she had desperately wanted. There shouldn’t have been any degradation of that persona.
After all, that was what he was trying to sell to the CIA: a foolproof technique for alternative personality creation. What was he supposed to say now? Oops.
Thankfully, he had the opportunity to learn from his mistake and correct it. He was sure that Chana would want it that way, too. They would become partners in a new, exciting round of experimentation. Everyone would be happy.
With the possible exception of James J. McGill. Chana would call him in the morning. She’d told Todd that McGill had the green thong she’d bought to model for him. That gnawed at him. He wanted that thong back. Not one just like it. That one.
If McGill hadn’t been the president’s husband, Todd would have gone after it. After him. He didn’t like people who intruded on his plans. But McGill had to have Secret Service protection. And his wife was the ultimate master of the CIA. He didn’t want to screw that up.
So okay, if McGill accepted the news, maybe he could forget the thong.
But if McGill didn’t …
CIA Field Officer Daryl Cheveyo watched from the shadows as Damon Todd departed from Chana Lochlan’s town house. He knew who lived there because he’d punched the address into his personal digital assistant. The Company had PDAs like nobody else’s. There was no such thing as an unlisted phone number to them; they never had to address a letter to “occupant.”
He saw Todd turn the corner of the block and disappear. Cheveyo slipped from the shadows and walked the opposite way. What he’d learned that night had chilled him.
Damon Todd had gotten a senior congressional staffer to ride a horse nude on the Mall. He’d gotten a member of congress to sing opera in the House of Representatives. And now … now he’d visited a reporter who had regular access to the White House. Which begged the question: What did Todd have in mind for Chana Lochlan?
Cheveyo got into his car for the drive to Langley, debating with himself whether Todd would actually try to assassinate the president, using a reporter as his tool, if the CIA didn’t hire him.
He wondered if the Company would share his report with the Secret Service.
Chapter 15
Saturday
On most Saturdays, the president slept in. All the way to 6:00 a.m. McGill’s everyday hour to rise. Getting up at the same time, the First Couple swam together in the White House pool. Well, Patti swam. McGill lumbered, stopped for a breath at the end of each length, then pushed off the pool wall, the only time he got the feeling he was moving with any grace.
Patti had worked with him on his stroke, his breathing, and his kicking. Flip turns were out of the question. McGill had made some improvement, but the basic problem was that he never felt relaxed when he knew the water was too deep to touch bottom. His muscles tensed. His heartbeat raced. He became short of breath much sooner than he ever would have running.
He’d told Patti once, “I must’ve been a drowned cat in a previous life.”
When they got out of the pool, McGill joined Patti in doing resistance training. But he used only one station — the chin-up bar. He did one set of as many reps as he could manage without having a stroke. That day he gutted out twenty-four.
Patti looked over from where she was doing leg extensions, and said, “I’m told Lieutenant Yates can do one hundred pull-ups without s
topping.”
McGill sneered at her.
He moved on to the second stage of Father McNulty’s Holy Trinity of Physical Fitness. Sit-ups. McGill could do, and did, one hundred of those. After that, came push-ups. Fifty-seven. Father McNulty had devised the regimen of chin-ups, sit-ups, and push-ups because his parish — and McGill’s as a child — had no school gymnasium. Everyone worked out in the lunchroom.
The good father told all his young charges that no matter what cross life gave them to bear, these exercises would give them the muscle to carry it. So break a sweat for Our Lord.
Once a week, on the same day he heard their confessions, Father McNulty also had the children run around the block as many times as they could. Technically, this was a fourth exercise and should have ruined the allusion to the Trinity, but the canny priest had a new name for running: physical penance. No matter how many “Our Fathers” and “Hail Marys” the children of St. Andrew’s school might have to say after their confessions, their souls weren’t cleansed until they finished running.
The one thing Patti had added to McGill’s fitness routine was stretching. It was understandable how Father McNulty had missed that. The Church taught dogma not flexibility.
After showering and changing their clothes, Patti and McGill sat down to breakfast in the residence, and the phone rang. Normally, the president wasn’t to be disturbed during meals. Unless it was something important. Patti put down her seven-grain toast and picked up the phone.
“Yes.” She listened impassively. “No, no, that’s all right.” She handed the phone to McGill. “For you. Sweetie. Tell her she can call anytime.”
McGill told Sweetie she could call anytime, and listened.
“Oh,” he said. “Yeah, I’ll be there in ten minutes.”
He put the phone down and looked at Patti.
“Chana Lochlan called my office. I’ve been fired.”
Welborn’s eyes fluttered open, and he saw someone staring at him.