by Joseph Flynn
“I didn’t want you to toss and turn,” McGill said.
She gave him a look, but then kissed his cheek.
“I would have, thank you. But you will have to tread lightly in Paris.”
“I brought rubber soled shoes.”
“Jim, please, I’m being serious.”
“I’ll be good,” he promised.
“You didn’t bring your handgun, did you?”
He shook his head. The president took that as a sign of good judgment.
“The Elysee Palace insists you’ll have to coordinate your efforts with those of the investigating magistrate in the case.”
“Do you know who that is?” McGill asked.
“His name is Yves Pruet.”
“A good man? Fair and honest?”
The president considered how to respond.
“Honest to a fault,” Patti finally said.
“How can honesty be faulted?” McGill asked.
“When it becomes politically inconvenient.”
“Oh, yeah, that,” McGill said.
Before he could inquire as to the nature of the inconvenience, Patti added, “The French also insisted that you have at least one official American bodyguard.”
The president’s henchman frowned. “Who?”
Patti could see McGill was imagining the worst. She patted his hand.
“The State Department’s Regional Security Officer,” the president said.
A fed, McGill thought. Probably a snooty one, being from State. Instead of displaying annoyance, though, he tried for a show of graciousness.
Taking Patti’s hand, he said, “Thank you for all your help.”
Patti laughed. “You’re pretending to be a good sport.”
“I am.”
“You hate be saddled with anyone.”
“I do.”
“Might not be as bad as you think. The RSO’s name is Gabriella Casale, and she shares your hometown.”
An Italian girl from Chicago? McGill thought that might not be so bad after all. At the very least, she had to know where to get a good pizza in Paris. He smiled, for all of two seconds, and then he realized he’d just heard the good news.
Asking for the bad, he was told: “You get to work in France only as long as I’m working in London.”
“It’s not like I intended to loiter,” McGill responded.
RAF Northolt
2
Air Force One landed at RAF Northolt, the military airfield west of London used by the Queen. The president’s party was met by the Home Minister, the Lord Mayor of London and a gaggle of other dignitaries. Greetings and handshakes were exchanged by all the principals. McGill’s grip was firm and brief, accompanied by a nod and a polite smile. He took care to remember faces and names to avoid embarrassing either the president or himself should he ever encounter any of these people again. As he added information to the old gray matter, something struck him as odd.
He whispered to Patti at the first opportunity, “Where’s the prime minister? He have a dental checkup or something?”
Never losing her public smile, Patti murmured in reply, “The relationship between our countries is special, the one between Norvin Kimbrough and me leaves much to be desired.”
McGill filed that away in memory, too.
He thought maybe he ought to pay a little more attention to politics.
After the formalities were out of the way, the president crossed the tarmac to Marine One. The helicopter had arrived in advance and would carry the president to Winfield House, the U.S. ambassador’s residence in London. Flying there was a security measure the Secret Service had insisted on, and the Brits had agreed to it as a means to avoid traffic snarls on their motorways.
McGill kissed his wife goodbye outside the helicopter.
“You don’t want to fly with me?” the president asked.
McGill said, “Thought I’d take the train to Paris. Less fuss.”
He’d researched ways to get to Paris after talking with Emilie LaBelle. The Eurostar, a high-speed train, left from St. Pancras International Station in London, dived into a tunnel that had been dug under the Channel, emerged in France and concluded the trip at the Gare du Nord. He’d booked a round-trip ticket, not forgetting about dinner with the Queen.
Patti smiled. “I thought you might do something like that.”
“You checked me out,” McGill said. “You know exactly which train I’m on.”
“I do,” the president said.
“And you’ve arranged for someone to hold my hand so I don’t get lost.”
“I have. Someone to hold each hand, in fact.”
At a nod from the commander in chief, two tall muscular Americans stepped out of Marine One. They wore sport coats and slacks, but their physical bearing was military and their demeanor screamed Semper Fi. Yielding to the inevitable, McGill extended his hand and introduced himself.
“You guys play poker?” McGill asked.
They did. The younger Marine even took a new deck of cards out of a pocket. Another detail Patti had thought of to make the trip with two bodyguards less burdensome.
McGill kissed his wife once more and whispered, “I love you, too.”
3
The president’s henchman wasn’t the only senior member of the American party to eschew the flight on Marine One. As she stood on the tarmac, Chief of Staff Galia Mindel was approached by an Englishman of middle years wearing a black suit.
“Ms. Mindel, if you’ll please accompany me, Sir Robert is waiting for you.”
The driver led Galia to a black Rolls Royce Phantom and opened a rear door. The chief of staff usually took a seat emphatically, as if to announce the weightiest presence in the room had arrived. Now, she did her best to emulate an autumnal leaf drifting to earth. She managed her entrance with sufficient grace that neither the driver nor Sir Robert Reed, the Queen’s personal secretary, guffawed. The driver closed the door and in a moment they were off.
A famous print ad for Rolls Royce once noted that the loudest sound the car made was the gentle ticking of its clock. That was back in analog days of springs and gears. In the digital age, there wasn’t a sound to be heard as the car rolled along in complete silence. Galia thought, though, that a smile as bright as the one Sir Robert directed at her ought to generate a hum.
He was strikingly handsome. Close to her own age, Galia estimated. Late fifties. Dark hair going elegantly silver. Strong brow, nose and mouth. Chiseled cheeks, broad jaw. Skin that glowed with good health and expensive care. And dark, dark eyes looking straight at—into—Galia.
“Countermeasures operative, sir,” the driver said as they entered the motorway.
A dark glass partition slid up, dividing the front and rear of the passenger compartment.
“Countermeasures against what?” Galia asked.
“Everything but personal failings,” Sir Robert replied. “Most pertinent to our situation, against eavesdroppers who might care to overhear our discussion.”
He nodded to the window next to his head. Outside, Galia saw a cell tower.
Sir Robert said, “There are always blackguards about who turn useful tools to nefarious ends.”
“Using cell towers to snoop on conversations in people’s cars?”
“If you have a mobile phone along for the ride and it’s powered up.”
Galia did. She would have turned it off if the countermeasures hadn’t been operative.
“That’s amazing,” she said.
“Only insofar as it wasn’t thought of first thing. But then maybe it was. Rumor has it the notion was conceived by your NSA, and you know those chaps consider the whole world to be their personal radio program. In any case, it really wouldn’t do to have anyone poking his unwashed nose into Her Majesty’s private affairs.”
Galia wondered which Sir Robert feared more, foreign agents or Fleet Street snoops.
“Nor the president’s business,” she added.
“I’m quite certain
President Grant’s conversations are equally protected.”
Which was Sir Robert’s polite way of telling her he knew things she didn’t.
Galia made a mental note to become better informed on such matters.
Getting back to business, she said, “You asked to see me, Sir Robert. To convey a message to the president, I assume.”
“To convey a message and Her Majesty’s gratitude … and to avail myself of the opportunity to meet you personally.”
Galia had to concentrate on the fact that her shoes were too tight to keep from blushing. This gorgeous man wanted to meet her in person? She had too good a mind to take that at face value. But up in a dusty attic corner of her consciousness a young girl was simpering.
She suspected Sir Robert with those penetrating dark eyes saw that weak-kneed child. But he was too much the gentleman to say anything.
Galia stuck to the safe path. “Her Majesty’s gratitude is for the president agreeing to extend her stay in London?”
“Precisely, and the message is Her Majesty would be pleased if President Grant could join her for a private lunch at the palace on the day preceding the dinner with the other heads of state.”
Galia said, “I’ll be happy to extend the invitation and let you know the answer.”
That was the way these things had to be done, of course, through intermediaries. If you couldn’t make lunch with the queen at the palace, you didn’t tell the old girl herself. You passed the word to Sir Robert—with your deepest regrets.
“You’re very kind,” Sir Robert told Galia.
And you’re completely gorgeous, she thought, and so full of it.
Wasn’t he?
Maybe it didn’t matter. Either way, the guy gave her goosebumps.
Galia graced Sir Robert with her best smile.
Aboard the Eurostar
4
Sergeant Merritt Nolan leaned forward over the table between the seats where he, Colonel Alan Ellison and McGill had been playing poker since the Eurostar train had left London and said in a quiet voice, “Permission to speak freely, sir?”
McGill deferred to the senior Marine.
“Granted.”
Being a meticulous sort, the sergeant looked at McGill.
“Sir?”
“Sure, go ahead,” McGill said.
“Mr. McGill, you are without a doubt the luckiest card player I have ever seen.”
Not wanting to discourage the young man, McGill said, “Pretty much lucky in general.”
The two Marines had won only three hands combined during the course of the two hour and twenty-five minute trip. McGill looked at Ellison.
“You feel the same way, Al?”
“Permission to speak freely, sir?”
“Absolutely.”
“Mr. McGill, you are one of the sneakiest mothers I’ve ever had the pleasure to meet.”
The sergeant sat back in his seat, clearly surprised at just how freely the field grade officer had spoken to the president’s husband. But give the guy credit, he just smiled at the crack like he’d heard a good one.
Colonel Ellison continued, “You’d be a formidable opponent, sir. I’m glad you’re on our side.”
Sergeant Nolan sat forward again. He’d been careful to keep his voice down throughout the trip, but the Business Premier coach was sparsely filled and they really hadn’t had to worry about eavesdroppers.
Looking at his superior officer, Nolan asked, “Are you saying, sir, that Mr. McGill isn’t lucky?”
“Son, he played us like rubes at a carnival. We both started out looking for his tells, and he kept giving them to us, one after another, no two the same, no pattern to discern, basically none of them true, but he kept roping us in anyway. You, being younger, fell for more of them than me.” The colonel paused to look McGill in the eye, and turned back to the sergeant. “You wouldn’t want to get into a fight with this man; you’d never know what he might throw at you.”
“That right, sir?” the sergeant asked McGill.
“Mostly I’m lucky,” the president’s henchman said.
The colonel snorted.
McGill had taken the two Marines for three hundred euros, a little better than four hundred dollars at that day’s exchange rate. He made the two servicemen feel better about their losses by pushing most of the money back at them.
“Donate it to the Fallen Warrior Scholarship Fund,” he said.
A charity dedicated to providing college funding to the children of those who had given their last full measure of devotion.
McGill kept the equivalent of fifteen dollars for himself.
Had to have something to show for his time.
The colonel said, “In Paris, that’ll get you a cup of coffee, you don’t go somewhere fancy.”
Gare du Nord, Paris
5
The Marines relinquished custody of McGill to RSO Gabriella Casale at the bustling rail station that was Gare du Nord. As they stood off to one side, nobody paid the four Americans any special attention. The French may have liked to linger over a good meal but they scurried through transportation hubs like anyone else.
The State Department’s regional security officer was tall and trim. An olive complexion deepened by the beginning of a summer tan stood in exotic contrast to her blonde hair and gray-green eyes. She wore a loose fitting cotton top over black pants and Chuck Taylors. A silk scarf was draped loosely around her neck. The scarf, shirt and sneakers were varying shades of peach, each nicely complimenting Ms. Casale’s natural coloring.
After taking a good look at the RSO, Sergeant Nolan turned to Colonel Ellison and said, “I’ll grant you, sir, Mr. McGill may well be sneaky, but damn me if he isn’t lucky, too.”
The colonel glanced at Ms. Casale and nodded. “Your argument’s looking better.”
The two Marines shook hands with McGill, nodded to the RSO and departed.
After they’d gone, Gabriella Casale asked McGill, “So are you?”
“Pardon.”
“Sneaky and lucky.”
“Pretty much. They go hand in hand.”
Paris
6
McGill and RSO Casale exited the station.
“People call me Gabbi,” she told McGill.
He said, “Funny name for a diplomat.”
She grinned and conceded, “Ironic anyway.”
As they stepped out onto the street, McGill took his first look at Paris. The sun was casting a golden light. The trees wore spring green leaves. Buildings all around, even the ones that needed touching up, had a feeling of age and a sense of place. Paris, from the little he could see of it, looked like a painting just waiting to be framed. It was no mystery why artists would thrive there.
On a less refined level of awareness, he spotted a uniformed cop standing next to a car parked at the curb. The cop was twirling a white baton by its leather loop. Engaging his own police instincts, McGill noted the car was a silver sedan, stylish, and bore a badge that identified it as a Peugeot 607.
Speaking quietly, McGill asked, “You carrying, Gabbi?”
“Discreetly.”
Good answer, McGill thought. Take precautions but don’t advertise them. They were both protected by diplomatic immunity, so the worst thing that could happen was—
Gabbi walking up to the cop and bussing him on each cheek?
“Merci, Andre,” Gabbi said to the cop who’d been watching her car.
He saluted her and opened the passenger door of the Peugeot for McGill.
“Bienvenue, m’sieur,” he said to McGill.
“Merci,” McGill replied, exhausting ten percent of his French vocabulary.
The guy closed McGill’s door as Gabbi got behind the wheel.
They drove off and he asked, “You have a good working relationship with the locals?”
Gabbi glanced at him. “With as many as I can. My job has been a lot easier since your wife’s inauguration. Before that, it was a full-time job just to keep things amicab
le.”
“You know Magistrate Yves Pruet?”
“Only by reputation and the file I read. His office is where we’re heading now.”
They drove along the Seine. McGill watched the tourist boats plying the river. He saw workboats moored along both banks. He wondered if anyone fished the waterway.
Before he could look for people with rods and reels, his cell phone played “Take Me Out to the Ballgame.” A personal call. If Patti were calling, the ringtone would be “Hail to the Chief.” The techies at the White House had set up the system for him.
“Hello,” McGill said.
“Dad, it’s me.” His eldest child, Abbie.
“Hello, sweetheart. How are you?”
The pause that followed was long enough to answer McGill’s question: not well.
“Something wrong, Abbie?”
“Dad, how would you feel if I changed my last name?”
Close to the last thing he’d ever expected to hear from Abbie—short of marriage.
But McGill did his best to play along. “To what?”
“Roberts.” His ex-wife’s maiden name.
“You don’t like being Abigail McGill anymore?”
“I love it … but I think it could be a problem.”
“How’s that?”
“It could mess up my college application,” Abbie said.
“Honey, you’ve got stellar grades, astronomical test scores, and extracurriculars that show real compassion. How could a name throw a monkey wrench into all that?”
“I’m not worried that I won’t get in, Dad. I’m worried that I will get in — because I have the same last name as the man who’s married to the President of the United States. People might make the connection, you know.”
“Oh,” he said.
He hadn’t thought of that. Another item on the long list of unanticipated consequences of being married to the occupant of the Oval Office. He didn’t doubt that Abbie had it right. How many offspring of powerful politicians got clouted into elite schools? A lot.
“You want to be considered strictly on your own merit,” he said to his daughter.