The President's Henchman

by Joseph Flynn

  “Very well. I’ll give the final go-ahead at that time.”

  Dismissed, the two men got up to leave. Before he left, though, Director Van Owen told the president that Field Officer Cheveyo’s spinal surgery had been successful.

  “I’m glad to hear that. Please let me know what he has to say.”

  Which reminded the president she had yet to talk with SAC Crogher about the incident.

  Chapter 26

  Leo had just pulled McGill’s car to the curb in front of Chana Lochlan’s Georgetown address when Deke turned to McGill, and told him, “SAC Crogher’s on the phone for you.”

  McGill didn’t want to wrangle with Celsus at the moment.

  “Take a message,” he said.

  “It’s about your family.”

  McGill grabbed his phone. “What is it?”

  “Captain Sullivan of the Evanston PD tried to reach you at the residence. When she learned you were out, she talked to me. Your daughter, Abigail, has been threatened.”

  Those last six words were filled with a compassion McGill had never suspected Crogher could possess. Still, they chilled him. As did the SAC’s terse summary of the threat.

  There’s nowhere we can’t reach you.

  But McGill thought: Oh, yes there is.

  He instructed Crogher where his children were to be taken immediately.

  “That was my idea, too,” Crogher told him.

  Great, McGill thought, he and Celsus were starting to think alike.

  “And their mother?” Crogher asked.

  “Her, too. The kids will need her.”

  McGill didn’t think Carolyn would balk.

  “And Mr. Enquist?”

  Lars. Carolyn’s new mate. The gentle man who hadn’t liked his wife having a gun. He had a business to run. Responsibilities to the people whose prescriptions he filled. To the people he employed. It wouldn’t be easy for him to drop everything, close his doors, and go into hiding.

  For that matter, maybe Carolyn would balk. How could she leave Lars? How did she choose between her children and her husband?

  In a quieter voice, McGill continued, “The threat is against my children. Their safety comes first. Please ask their mother and Mr. Enquist if they would like to accompany Abbie, Kenny, and Caitie. If one or both choose to remain behind, please let them know they will be protected with all the resources we can muster. If they both choose to leave Evanston, reassure Mr. Enquist that we will find the personnel needed to keep his business open.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Eamon Lochlan answered the door to his daughter’s town house. His face was drained of color except for the large dark circles under his eyes. He was unsteady on his feet, as if he hadn’t eaten in too long a time. Perhaps worst of all, an air of guilt hung about him as if he’d committed some misdeed for which there was no redemption.

  McGill put a hand around Professor Lochlan’s left arm to give him support. Per his custom, Deke was ready to enter the premises first for McGill’s safety. But McGill asked Eamon if there was anyone in the house besides him and Chana.

  “No,” the man answered. Then he added, “Not physically.”

  The response was suspicious enough that Deke started to slip past McGill. But McGill shook his head, and asked Eamon again, “Just the two of you, you’re the only ones here?”

  The professor nodded.

  McGill told Deke, “You and Leo cover the front and rear entrances. Nobody gets in.”

  Deke said, “I can’t let you —”

  “I’m armed, remember?”

  Deke did, but he still hated to disregard procedure.

  “Sometimes you’ll just have to trust me,” McGill told him.

  He stepped inside with Eamon Lochlan, closing the door behind them. The first thing McGill noted was that Chana Lochlan’s immaculate housekeeping had been destroyed. None of the furnishings was damaged, but a rumpled blanket lay across the sofa; glasses filled to different levels with liquids of various colors had been left without coasters on tables; used facial tissues were scattered everywhere as if a Kleenex factory had exploded.

  “Is Chana in her office?” McGill asked.

  “Nan is in the kitchen,” Eamon told him.

  “Nan?”

  “That’s who she was when I went to answer the door,” the professor told him.

  McGill was the first to enter the room. Chana — as far as he could see — was sitting at the kitchen table with a plate of untouched scrambled eggs in front of her. Even from the doorway, the eggs looked cold. Chana, fittingly, looked like she’d never want to eat again.

  She sat motionless, her eyes open but giving no sign that she saw him or anything else. He’d seen as much expression in the eyes of murder victims. His first impulse was to call for an ambulance. But Eamon Lochlan squeezed past him and went to his daughter. He dropped to both knees next to where she sat and took her hand. Chana looked down at him.

  “Nan,” he asked, “is that you?”

  “Yes, Daddy.”

  The voice McGill heard wasn’t Chana Lochlan’s; it belonged to a very young girl.

  “I’ve brought someone to talk with you.”

  She looked at McGill, and said, “I don’t know him.”

  McGill moved to the table, sat opposite Chana. He looked right at Chana. Or Nan. He let a small smile form on his face and gestured at the plate of eggs.

  “May I,” he asked, “if you’re not hungry?”

  She pushed the plate over to him. McGill picked up the salt and pepper and spiced the food. He wasn’t looking at them, but he knew both Lochlans were watching him. He took his first forkful of eggs. Cold all right but still tasty.

  McGill looked up, directed his gaze at Eamon.

  “You think I might have a cup of coffee? Maybe a couple of pieces of toast.”

  Eamon Lochlan blinked at the request, as if it had been made in a foreign language. Then he put a hand on the table and got to his feet. He turned a flame on under the coffeepot on the stove and opened a plastic bag of bread.

  “Medium on the toasting and butter, okay?” McGill said.

  Eamon nodded.

  McGill turned to the woman seated opposite him.

  “How long have you been Nan?” he asked.

  “Always.”

  “That long? Really?”

  She frowned. “Almost. Chana was just saving my place.”

  Professor Lochlan brought McGill’s coffee and toast. Then he retreated.

  McGill sipped his coffee, and said, “That’s too bad. That you’re Nan, I mean.”

  “Why?” The tone of the little girl voice had turned petulant.

  “Because someone asked me to say hello. To Chana.”

  “Who?”

  “Graham Keough.”

  “I don’t know him.”

  But the look on her face said otherwise.

  “He was Chana’s first boyfriend.”

  Nan’s denial started to give way.

  “Nice guy, Graham,” McGill said. “He saved Chana’s life.”

  Remembrance and tears filled the eyes looking at McGill.

  “Fact is, he still loves Chana.”

  She reached across the table and took McGill’s hand.

  “He does?” Chana asked in her own voice.

  “Very much, I’d say. He never found anyone else.”

  Tears fell from Chana’s eyes, and she smiled. Right before she passed out.

  McGill carried her to the sofa in the living room, put the blanket over her. He checked her pulse. Steady and strong. He lifted her eyelids and shined light from a lamp into her eyes. Her pupils were equal in size and reactive to the light. He was no doctor, but he had one on call.

  He phoned Artemus Nicolaides and asked him if he made house calls.

  Nick said he’d be there in ten minutes.

  McGill went to the front door. Leo was there. He had his gun out, held against the side of his leg. McGill noticed that Leo had the engine of McGill’s car runn
ing. McGill told him that Dr. Nicolaides would be arriving soon, and he should be let in.

  Returning to the living room, he found Professor Lochlan down on his knees again. He was gently stroking his daughter’s brow. She was still unconscious. McGill’s heart went out to the man.

  “She was surprised to see me,” Eamon Lochlan told McGill. “Quite happy at first. Less so when I told her my news.”

  “Is that when all this started?”

  Eamon looked up as McGill gestured to the general disarray of the room.

  “Not immediately. Chana — cat least I think it was Chana — suggested that we go out to dinner to celebrate my good news … and so the two of us could have one last dinner together … just the two of us.”

  “Where did you go?”

  “We didn’t. I pleaded fatigue, but that wasn’t the real reason. I sensed that Cha — my daughter was in an emotionally fragile state. I didn’t want her to suffer a breakdown in public. Chana being a celebrity of sorts, she shouldn’t be exposed to any negative publicity. I know there are photographers lurking everywhere to capture such moments.”

  McGill, himself, had been warned of that very fact by Press Secretary Aggie Wu.

  “So, I suggested that we stay in, and I’d cook for her. I can do more than fix breakfast, and Chana has always enjoyed my cooking. She agreed. Dinner seemed to go well. I thought her spirits were picking up, that she genuinely felt happy for my good fortune.”

  “What turned things around? Did you ask her about the mysterious phone call?”

  “I was just about to when … when Nan appeared.”

  “Appeared?”

  “Made herself known. You heard her voice just now. When I first heard it, I almost fell off my chair. Perhaps it would have been better if I had. Then I could have attributed it to a fall. As it was, I was looking at my daughter and hearing another person’s voice come out of her mouth. For one horrible moment, I thought I was going mad.”

  McGill could understand. If one of his kids started talking in a stranger’s voice …

  “It must have been even worse once she identified herself,” he said.

  Professor Lochlan’s voice grew quiet, small. “It was … Nan. My God, but my heart was an open wound when Nan died. I was torn by grief and rage and a consuming frustration that there was no one upon whom I might take vengeance for my loss.”

  McGill nodded. “You wanted to see your daughter grow up. Share in her joys, shoulder the burden of her sorrows.”

  “Yes, yes exactly.” Tears coursed from Professor Lochlan’s eyes. “And after her death one of my favorite punishments for myself was to imagine in great detail the life Nan would never have.”

  “Did you share any of those dreams with Chana?”

  “No! Of course not.”

  “Not consciously, you mean. You made no direct comparisons.”

  “No.”

  “But you kept Nan’s pictures on display because you loved her, and trying to hide the fact of her existence from Chana would only have made things worse.”

  “Yes.”

  “And you raised Chana the way you’d started to raise Nan.”

  “Yes.”

  McGill sighed. He asked, “Did you and your wife, as educated people, know how similar the meanings of your two daughters’ names are?”

  Eamon Lochlan’s voice was barely a whisper. “Yes.”

  So undoubtedly had Chana learned of the similarity, McGill was sure. She knew, probably from a very early age, how much her parents wanted her to be like her sister. Chana had probably imagined the kind of life Nan would have lived, too. Then she took things one step farther. Instead of imitating her deceased sister, she became her.

  Nan reborn. Chana was only the mask.

  She gave her father, the only parent she loved, the greatest gift she could possibly give him. So why, after all this time, was he taking another wife? Wives were treacherous; just look at Mom. Why was her father leaving her?

  Eamon Lochlan got to his feet. He took a small vial out of his pocket. The kind with a rubber top used to fill syringes. He handed it to McGill.

  McGill read the label aloud: “Ketamine hydrochloride.”

  He looked to the professor for an explanation.

  “I didn’t know what it was, either,” Lochlan said. “So I Googled it. It’s an anesthetic. At least, that’s its legitimate use. It’s also sold as a street drug called Special K. It’s said to produce a dreamy high in small doses; a near-death experience in greater amounts. My daughter has never done illegal drugs.”

  “Then, what?” he asked.

  “Nan told me Dr. Todd was here. Recently. She said he was the one who helped her to come back.” A shudder passed through Professor Lochlan. “I want Nan to rest in peace. I want Chana to live with peace of mind. I have to get her away from here. I was going to take her home, but I don’t think that’s safe. Todd can find us there.”

  His face, already ashen, twisted in fear. “Oh, God. I’ve got to get Imogene out of there, too. But where can we go?”

  McGill, fortunately, had an answer. He’d send the Lochlans and Imogene to the same place he was sending his own children.

  “I have access to a retreat in the Maryland mountains. Very lovely. Completely secure.”

  Eamon Lochlan understood exactly where he meant. “You mean —”

  “Camp David,” McGill said.

  Chapter 27

  Sweetie had in fact said a rosary. She asked not only that McGill’s battered body heal quickly, but also implored the Blessed Mother to turn Senator Michaelson’s enmity against the president — and now McGill — into tolerance if not love. She also asked that the joy she’d felt in seeing Michaelson get so badly bruised be turned into compassion for the man.

  That was a lot of heavy lifting to ask even for the Mother of God.

  Especially the last part. Sweetie had overheard McGill, on any number of occasions, liken her to St. Michael, and she relished the comparison. Nothing pleased her more than doing God’s work, but she most enjoyed doing it with muscle. Smiting the ungodly was her thing.

  The phone rang. Sweetie was at the office of McGill Investigations, Inc. She thought somebody ought to drop by from time to time. Just in case a would-be client had slipped a message under the door. She answered on the second ring.

  “McGill Investigations,” she said.

  “Is that my favorite tenant?” Putnam Shady asked.

  Sweetie rolled her eyes. That was what she got for thinking of herself as angelic. A call from her lawyer-lecher-landlord. God’s justice was swift indeed.

  “I’m your only tenant, Putnam,” she said, “but the rent’s not due.”

  “You wound me, Margaret.”

  “I’m a terrible person. Something for you to keep in mind.”

  “Oh, I do. Believe me, I do.”

  She’d tried to warn him, and all she’d done was stoke his fantasies. Truly, she was being punished for her sins. Still, she liked her apartment.

  “There’s a reason for this call?” she asked.

  “I belong to a gym,” he replied.

  “Good for you. Try hitting the weights a little harder.”

  “I have. I’m sore all over. I could use some relief.”

  “Putnam …” She was about to say she could really make him hurt, but that would be exactly what he wanted to hear. “… get to the point.”

  “I was in the locker room after my lunchtime workout and happened to hear the Merriman brothers spewing venom about the senior partner of your firm.”

  “Wait a minute. Do you work out at Political Muscle?”

  “Mmm-hmm.”

  “And who are the Merriman brothers?”

  Her landlord chuckled. “You really need to learn who’s who in this town. I’d be happy to teach you.”

  “Maybe later. Who are they?” Sweetie grabbed a pen to make notes.

  “Anson Merriman is a fellow advocate. He’s number one on the staff representing the intere
sts of American Aviation to Congress.”

  “He’s a big-shot lobbyist.”

  “Correct. Much bigger than me.”

  “And his company does what, make airplanes?”

  “Fighter planes, cargo planes, tanker planes, missiles, guidance systems, radar, sundry electronics. Multimultibillions of dollars of government contracts. All secured by the efforts of a battalion of lawyers and a like number of retired generals.”

  Sweetie got all that down in her neat parochial school penmanship.

  “Okay, what about the other Merriman?”

  “That would be the Big Billy Goat Gruff, Robert Merriman. He’s the true source of power in the family. Bob is Senator Roger Michaelson’s chief of staff. He’s in quite the rage over the beating your friend administered to his boss. He’s vowing vengeance.”

  Then as if he could read Sweetie’s mind, Putnam added, “If you’re writing this down, you might want to underline that last point.”

  With his boss in the hospital, Robert Merriman received the Reverend Burke Godfrey in Senator Michaelson’s office. The better to impress the self-important preacher from down I-95 in Virginia. It didn’t keep the televangelist from being snotty, though.

  “It rains a lot out there in Oregon, doesn’t it?” Godfrey asked.

  “Except when there’s a drought,” Merriman answered.

  Godfrey’s eyes brightened. “Droughts? I never heard of that, not in the Northwest.”

  “It happens.”

  “Maybe that’s God telling you people something.”

  “Or maybe it’s part of a naturally recurring weather pattern.”

  “The weather does what God tells it to do,” Godfrey asserted.

  “You’d know better than me,” Merriman replied.

  The preacher pointed a finger at the chief of staff.

  “I get enough of my people praying hard enough, maybe we can get God to flood that state of yours. Visit it with plagues and torments.”

  “And that would be your idea of winning friends and influencing people?”

  “I don’t see any friends! Not around this office. I was told Senator Michaelson is going to lead an effort — a crusade — to free my poor wife from that abomination of a death sentence the government obscenely imposed on her, but wait a minute, brother! The senator gets into a basketball game — a basketball game! — with that corrupt former cop who lives in the White House. Senator Michaelson takes a few elbows, and now Erna will just have to suck it up and keep on waitin’ to die. That ain’t right! Not right at all!”