Paramour

by Gerald Petievich

  Nassiri nodded. "I apologize for the little test."

  "Fine. Now what is it you want to tell me?"

  "I am a colonel in the Syrian intelligence service-"

  "I've been briefed on who you are."

  "Of course. Then I'll get right to the point. Syrian intelligence has someone in the White House."

  "How do you know this?"

  "I was assigned to the intelligence briefing staff, and I saw copies of Presidential Eyes Only papers. We had them regularly."

  "Describe these papers you're talking about."

  Nassiri rubbed his eyes for a moment. "Bond paper marked TOP SECRET and OVAL OFFICE EYES ONLY - PRESIDENT OF THE U.S. There was a presidential seal on the paper."

  "What was their content?"

  "Operation Desert journey. The papers mentioned confidential U.S. sources in the Syrian, Jordanian, and Iranian governments."

  "Was there a date on these papers?"

  "The ones I saw were dated April sixteenth and May ninth of this year."

  "Where was the date printed on the papers?" Powers said.

  "The date was on the cover sheet only."

  "The presidential seal-what color was it?"

  "I was looking at black-and-white copies ... made by a copying machine. I couldn't tell."

  "Who stole the documents?" Powers asked. Nassiri was right about the placement of the date and, as far as Powers knew, no one other than the President and a few others would even know sensitive presidential documents bore the Oval Office stamp. Such documents were hand-carried to him by high-level CIA briefers and picked up at the end of the day.

  "A U.S. Secret Service agent attached to the White House Detail."

  Powers felt the hair on the back of his neck tingle.

  "Why didn't you want to tell the CIA about this?"

  "I'm a career intelligence officer, and I've been sitting on the American desk for twelve years. I'm aware that Mr. Patterson, the Director of your CIA, is a politically ambitious man. I thought he might leak this information to the American press and harm your President. I don't want to tumble the walls of the house that takes me in. It's difficult enough just being a defector."

  "What's the agent's name?"

  "Pardon?"

  "The special agent who you said stole the documents."

  "Raymond Stryker."

  Powers felt his stomach muscles tighten. "When was he recruited?"

  "I'm not sure."

  "What else do you know about this, colonel?"

  "Stryker may have had help from another White House employee, one with high access," Nassiri said. "The Stryker operation is known to only a few high-ranking officers in my service."

  "Do you have any other information you want to give me?" Powers said coldly.

  "If you check, you'll see what I am telling you is true."

  "Is there anything else?"

  "The rest I have given to the CIA people," Nassiri said, in his precise military manner.

  Powers clicked off the transistor radio. His ears were ringing from its tinny sound as he shoved it back into his pocket. He and Nassiri walked across the sand to the beach house, and the men who'd been positioned on the beach followed.

  Miller met them at the rear door and led them back to the bedroom. He unlocked the door and shoved it open. Nassiri nodded at Powers and, without offering his hand, entered the room. Miller closed the door and locked it.

  Anxious to get back to DC and report what he'd learned, Powers moved down the hallway.

  "What did he have to say?" Miller said, as if they were old friends.

  "Nothing significant."

  "May I offer you a drink, Jack?"

  "Thanks anyway, but I have to be going."

  "Is there some reason why you won't tell us what Colonel Nassiri said?"

  "My orders were to interview him and report back to my own chain of command."

  "I can understand your reluctance to share the information. But I'm sure you understand that eventually all intelligence information filters up the chain to us."

  "Yes," Powers said, though it was common practice for both the CIA and the Secret Service to hold back sensitive White House information from each other. "But you understand I'd need authorization from my superiors to tell you anything at this point."

  "Jack, I'm not trying to cause a big flap, but I'm sure you can understand that the information would help us get a better picture of the colonel. Like you, we're just trying to do a job."

  "Sorry, but I can't help you."

  Miller glared at him. "I understand your position," he said coldly. He turned to Green, who unfastened the latch and opened the front door.

  Relieved the confrontation was over, Powers walked outside, imagining what the neighbors would think if they knew the house next door was filled with spies. He unlocked his car, climbed in behind the wheel, and started the engine. The air was still hot. He stopped at a traffic light. A tanned man and woman in swimsuits crossed the street in front of him. They were holding hands. Powers told himself that even with the West Coast trip coming up it was a good time for a beach vacation. But though he had the names of plenty of women in his black book who would gladly join him, there were none he liked well enough to spend a week at Rehoboth Beach with, holding hands. Nor was the idea of vacationing with the other bachelors on the detail-playing poker and carousing at beach singles bars to see how many women they could pick up and seduce-particularly appealing either. He decided to save his vacation days.

  During the drive back to DC, Powers reviewed his conversation with Nassiri. Overall, if he had to guess he would say that Nassiri's information was too cut and dried. That wasn't to say it wasn't true, but there was a lot more he wasn't saying.

  ****

  FIVE

  Secret Service headquarters was situated less than a block from the White House on the top five floors of a modern office building that had a branch of the Maryland National Bank and a dingy snack shop on the first floor.

  Powers stepped off the elevator on the eighth floor. A black Secret Service Uniformed Division officer sitting at a reception desk recognized him and pushed a button. There was the sound of a lock buzzing. Powers opened the door and headed down a long hallway past office doors with plastic government-issue name tags:

  William J. Kelly, Vice Presidential Protection Division Agent-in-Charge

  Francis C. Donahue, Foreign Dignitary Protection Division Agent-in-Charge

  Rexford J. Fogarty, Director, United States Secret Service

  Though in recent years the Secret Service had been opened by government affirmative action programs to allow a few super-qualified blacks, Hispanics, and women into supervisory positions, the top slots were still held by a self-perpetuating hierarchy of New York Irish Catholics built by Director Fogarty, an obsequious bureaucrat who'd managed to hold his presidential appointment through four administrations.

  Fogarty and his hand-picked aides were known as the "Potato Head family." Kelly, in fact, was related to Fogarty by marriage. And Donahue might as well have been; his wife owned the Century 21 franchise in Fairfax, Virginia (known to agents as "Fairfax Headquarters"), where Kelly's wife, Claudia, was employed. All Secret Service agents stationed in field offices outside the District of Columbia knew that receiving a Fairfax Century 21 brochure meant they would soon be receiving official orders transferring them to the White House Detail. Not surprisingly, 87 percent of all Secret Service special agents used Claudia's services and lived in Fairfax.

  Deputy Director Peter Sullivan's office was next to Fogarty's. The door was open and Powers went in.

  Lenore Shoequist, Sullivan's pert receptionist, greeted him. A fiftyish woman favoring high heels and tight skirts, she'd married and divorced three high-ranking special agents, none below the GS-15 supervisor classification, during her twenty-year Secret Service career. She was a notorious gossip, relishing the juicy morsels of information she gleaned from the Director's circle and sharing them whenever it benefi
ted her personally. Powers often wondered how she would feel if she knew her regular daytime trysts at the Mayflower Hotel with the Special-Agent-in-Charge of the Inspection Division, Elmer Cogswell, were common knowledge to everyone in the Secret Service.

  She told him to go right in.

  Powers entered Sullivan's inner office. Sullivan was sitting behind a wide desk covered with paperwork. There were bags under his eyes that reflected loss of sleep. Though jealous Secret Service pundits referred to Sullivan as an egotist, Powers respected his leadership abilities. In fact, Sullivan was one of the cleverest men he'd ever met. In the Secret Service Training School where they'd been classmates, Sullivan had maxed the final test. On the White House Detail, Sullivan had singlehandedly revised the top secret Manual of Protective Operations, thus gaining attention from Director Fogarty. Fogarty, a former Boston transit policeman who had difficulty composing even a simple government memorandum, always made a point of appointing a good writer as his deputy. On the Secret Service management fast track, Sullivan was promoted rapidly. Assigned to Technical Security Division as a first-level supervisor, he revamped the entire White House electronic security system, allowing the Director to take the credit. His latest project was designing the security system for an international conference facility under construction inside the presidential retreat at Camp David.

  Sullivan motioned for Powers to close the door. Powers complied.

  "Cup of coffee, Jack?"

  "No, thanks," Powers said. From the street below came the sound of a distant siren.

  "What does this defector look like?"

  Careful not to omit any details, Powers related what he'd learned from Nassiri, including the dates on the documents Nassiri said he'd seen. Without a word, Sullivan left his desk and moved to a large Diebold safe in the corner of the room. He opened a drawer, took out a folder, and thumbed the pages quickly. "Was Nassiri sure about the dates?"

  "He didn't hesitate-"

  "The shift reports show the President in residence at Camp David on April sixteen and May nine," Sullivan said softly. He closed the file and slid it back in the drawer. "What was the reaction of the spooks when you refused to tell them what Nassiri said?"

  "Pissed off."

  Sullivan returned to his desk. For a moment he just sat there, going over the notes he'd made as Powers briefed him. Finally, he swallowed. "Nassiri said Stryker may have had someone helping him, someone with high access?" he said, avoiding eye contact.

  "Right."

  "Maybe Marilyn Kasindorf."

  "You know her?" Powers asked.

  "The Special Projects Unit where she works is responsible for preparing intelligence summaries for the President, using information from the most sensitive CIA sources." He turned his swivel chair toward the window. "Was there anything else of hers in Stryker's place, anything other than the parking pass, that could tie him to her?"

  "No. We checked everything."

  "The kind of briefing documents Nassiri says he saw are stored in the Special Projects Office," Sullivan said numbly, as if traumatized. "Memoranda the President reads before every foreign policy meeting or visit by a head of state. National Security Council stuff. If this kind of information has been compromised it could explain the failure of the last summit meeting . . . For that matter, it could explain a lot of this administration's foreign policy problems in the Middle East."

  Gloomily, Sullivan turned back to the desk and reached into his IN box for a folded copy of Time magazine. He handed it to Powers. On the People on the Move page, Sullivan's photo was in the upper right-hand corner under the caption THE PRESIDENT'S MAN. "I'm the youngest Deputy Director in the history of the U.S. Secret Service," he said flatly. "I didn't get here by being out on the running board with you, Jack. I made compromises."

  "Aren't you being a little harsh on yourself?" Powers wondered why Sullivan, a most direct man, was suddenly turning the subject to himself.

  Sullivan picked up a half-empty coffee cup and studied it. "There are three types of agents in Uncle Sam's Secret Service. Those like you who work the White House, those who work field investigations, and power-seekers like me, who scrape and scratch their way up the promotion ladder." He took a sip of coffee and set the cup down. "As a supervisor, my duties have little to do with the Secret Service, really. Hell, I could be working for General Motors-or the post office, for that matter-managing people, putting out fires, catering to the people above me on the ladder. What I do has little relation to protecting the President. Sometimes I wish I had just remained on the detail as a working agent."

  Powers fidgeted uncomfortably. He'd never heard Sullivan, a formal man, bare his feelings in this way.

  Sullivan stood up and sauntered to a steel office door at his right. Stenciled on the door in red letters were the words SECURE FACILITY. He tapped numbers on a cipher lock above the doorknob. There was a snap as the bolt opened electronically. The door was the thickness of a bank safe. With some effort, Sullivan pulled it open. He turned and motioned Powers to follow him inside.

  In the soundproof 20-by-20-foot room was a long conference table with a thick see-through acrylic top and some clear plastic chairs. In the comer was a gray Diebold filing cabinet safe. The walls, floor, and ceiling were covered with a silvery metallic cloth called an "ear blanket." The material had been invented after years of research conducted by the Secret Service Technical Security Division to find a way of shielding the White House from intrusion by electronic eavesdropping. The fabric was reputed to be the ultimate protection from all known electronic eavesdropping equipment transmitting on any frequency in the world.

  Sullivan flipped a wall switch activating the air conditioning, pulled the heavy door closed, and turned a bar latch locking them in.

  The air conditioning came on in the room, and Powers felt a chill.

  "Sorry about the air, but if I turn it off we'll suffocate in here," Sullivan said.

  "No problem."

  Sullivan rubbed his hands together briskly and looked up at the air-conditioning vent. "I've had GSA here to fix this air conditioning three times. They fiddle around with the thermostat for a while, then say it's fixed. But nothing changes." He coughed.

  Seeking refuge from the air conditioner's direct breeze, Sullivan moved to the corner of the room and leaned back against the wall. "I want to thank you for the professional way you and Landry have been handling everything."

  "No problem." What the hell is going on?

  "I've been playing the political game in this town ever since I became an agent," Sullivan said. "Maneuvering, backstabbing, playing both sides of the fence, making deals to get ahead. Four years ago, I made a decision as to who I thought had the best chance of being elected President. I pulled some strings and got myself assigned as a supervisor on his campaign protective detail and made a point of ingratiating myself with the staff-with the hope that after the election I would be their Secret Service man. Well, it worked. Since the President was elected I've had the inside track. The White House staff has come to confide in me more than they do the Director."

  For Powers, the room seemed to grow smaller.

  "Last week David Morgan informed me that when Fogarty retires I'll get the Directorship," Sullivan continued.

  "Congratulations," Powers said, wondering what Sullivan was leading up to.

  "It's everything I ever wanted, the culmination of all my hopes." Sullivan looked Powers in the eve. "It also means I'll be promoting people I trust. Like a guy named Jack Powers."

  "Pete-"

  "I consider you the best protection man in the outfit, Jack."

  "I don't know what to say."

  Sullivan cleared his throat. "I guess what I'm saying is that the immediate future is extremely bright for both you and me. That is, if we can get past this obstacle."

  "Obstacle?"

  "Over the years, David Morgan has come to trust me completely," Sullivan said. "He calls on me to handle sensitive tasks he doesn't even entrust t
o the closest members of his White House staff." He picked up a pencil and tapped it rapidly on his desk blotter. "If I let you in on this, there's no way back. You understand?"

  "You'll have to transmit that in the clear for me, Pete. Are we talking about something more than Stryker's suicide?"

  "We're talking embarrassment to the President," Sullivan said. "Actually, maximum embarrassment. I need you to conduct an in-house investigation ... a political chore. A varsity political chore so sensitive that once I let you in the tent you have to stay in."

  Powers's throat suddenly felt dry. "You're saying that if I allow you to tell me, there's no backing out?"

  Sullivan nodded.

  Powers swallowed. "Is what I'll be asked to do legal?" he said after a pause.

  "The mission itself isn't covered under specific Secret Service jurisdictional authority, if that's what you mean. But I can assure you it's not illegal. It will have to be handled on a strict need-to-know basis, but there's no hidden agenda, no trapdoor waiting to spring open. And if the going gets tough, I promise you won't get dropped like a hot spud."

  Powers had been in the Secret Service long enough to fear the potential mire accompanying all unofficial or quasi-official investigations. "You and I were still in Training School during Watergate, Pete," he said. "I don't want to get involved in anything political now."

  "This has political ramifications, but it's a matter affecting the national security."

  Powers trusted Sullivan. Besides, being promoted to Agent-in-Charge of the White House Detail would mean a raise, a government car with home-to-work driving privileges, and the opportunity to set his own work schedule. "I'll handle the assignment," Powers said.

  Sullivan swallowed twice. "The President has been having an affair with Marilyn Kasindorf," he said, in a barely audible tone.

  Powers felt utter astonishment. Like all Secret Service agents, he knew a wealth of inside information about the personal lives of the Presidents and Vice Presidents and, for that matter, their wives and families and members of the cabinet and White House staff. Agents of the White House Detail discussed these tidbits among themselves, but never with anyone else. All special agents knew enough-hell, had forgotten enough-to fill any number of bestsellers with the details of White House behavior. But no agent had ever written a White House kiss-and-tell book.