His host waved Reeder toward the round table—the laptops had gone along with the lapdogs. He’d barely sat before a knock came at the door. He glanced that way as the bodyguard opened the door, accepted two white paper bags, then closed it. He came over and gave the larger bag to the former professor, who had not yet joined Reeder at the table.
“Thanks, Len,” Benjamin said. “That’s all for now.”
Len and the smaller bag went out, closing the door behind him. Private meeting, all right. Of course, Reeder figured the bodyguard would remain on duty in the corridor.
Alone now with the richest man in the United States, Reeder ignored the questions bubbling in his brain. He’d learned to keep quiet while standing presidential detail. And Benjamin somehow invoked that in him, that special respect that came with high office and, well, high finance.
Benjamin came over, grinning like a kid as he showed his guest the label on the bag—a hamburger chain long famous in the DC area.
“Five Guys,” Reeder read, grinning back.
“Hope this is all right with you. It’s not the Old Ebbitt Grill, but it’s my second favorite.”
“Five Guys was good enough for Obama and the press corps, and good enough for me.”
“You were on presidential detail back then?”
Reeder shook his head. “I came on two years into President Mathis’s term.”
Benjamin’s sigh was somber. “There’s a real tragedy and a damn shame.”
“Agreed,” Reeder said.
Just over halfway through his first term, President Edward Mathis was diagnosed with leukemia. Serving out his term, he chose not to run for a second. Instead, his GOP-picked successor, neocon Gregory Bennett, had taken over.
Reeder had been no supporter of Mathis’s right of center politics, but the late President had been a good man and an honest one, a small miracle considering what it took to get elected to the land’s highest office. Mathis died less than a year after leaving the White House, with President Bennett already pursuing a much farther-right agenda.
Benjamin handed a foil-wrapped burger to Reeder, kept one for himself, and handed Reeder a pack of fries, too. His host jerked a thumb. “Pop and water in the fridge.”
Reeder got up and went there, thinking, “Pop” and “fridge,” two good old-fashioned Midwestern words.
Kneeling as he made his selection, he asked Benjamin, “Want something?”
“Just water—pop gives me the burps anymore.”
Reeder came back and sat down with two bottles of water whose labels were those of an Ohio grocery chain. Benjamin had brought his own water rather than pay for the minibar. Reeder’s kind of guy.
As they ate, Benjamin asked, maybe too casually, “How would you like to sell me your company, Joe?”
“Not on the market, sorry. Hope the meeting isn’t over, ’cause I’m really enjoying the burger.”
That patented chuckle again. “Figured as much, but you never know unless you ask. ABC has been successful in its own right, but now with your superstar status . . .”
“Adam, please. I’m eating.” He shrugged. “ABC does okay. Has since the start.”
“Right, and then one Joe Reeder kicked ass on the Supreme Court task force, and now your business has doubled.”
“You do your homework.”
“I do. I have help, of course. But mostly it’s still me. Key to my success, if you were wondering.”
“That and common sense.”
Benjamin chewed some cheeseburger, savoring it, then swallowed and said, “We both know common sense has been in short supply in this country for some while.”
Reeder popped a couple of fries, said nothing.
Benjamin went on: “Someone needs to help return this country to the sort of common sense that Thomas Paine first wrote about, back in 1776.”
“I don’t disagree,” Reeder said.
Given recent media talk that Benjamin might be planning a run at the White House, this turn in the conversation didn’t surprise Reeder.
Benjamin continued: “Paine said, ‘From the errors of other nations, let us . . .’”
“‘. . . learn wisdom,’” Reeder finished.
Benjamin’s burger halted midair. “So you’ve read Common Sense.”
“Years ago. In high school, and again in college.”
He sat forward. “But now, Joe, we need to follow Paine’s lead, and learn wisdom from our own errors, coming together to fix what is broken in this country.”
With a faint smile, Reeder said, “Campaign speech?”
“No . . . just personal opinion. As far as seeking a certain oval-shaped office, I’m not convinced I’m the right candidate.”
False modesty? The man’s micro-expressions gave nothing away. He had obviously been trained to make his face as blank a mask as Reeder’s own, under that layer of geniality.
“Adam, was that the business you wanted to discuss? Buying me out?”
“In part. You definitely have the kind of name that could be successfully franchised nationally.”
“You mean, you like the ring of ABC Security?”
Now his host’s smile turned wry. “No. I think you know what I mean . . . but I won’t press. This is an idea you’ll either come to or not. You might think on it and get back to me—who knows? In the meantime, I have another modest proposal.”
“I hope it’s not cannibalism.”
“You know your Swift as well! A man of action and of the mind. I like that.” His cheeseburger, like Thomas Paine, was history. He used his napkin. “Joe, I want you as head of my security team.”
Reeder, also finished eating, raised a palm as if taking an oath. “I’m flattered, but no. I like being my own man. But I can offer you one of my best people . . . particularly if the assignment is temporary.”
“It would be temporary, which is why I think you might want to take it on yourself. Given your track record, I would prefer you.”
“Not a field agent anymore. Sorry.”
Benjamin folded his hands, leaned forward just slightly. “Joe, I like you. My two offers could easily become one offer—sell me your company, then come to work for me . . . for just one year. At the end of that year, if you like, you can go back to running the DC office of ABC.”
“That’s a lot of letters, Adam.”
“It’ll be a lot of numbers, Joe, on the check I write. Amy will never have a financial worry in her entire life.”
Reeder let out some air. “You really do do your homework—but no . . . though my offer of sending you my best man stands. Besides, you already have a head of security, don’t you?”
“A former colleague of yours—Jay Akers,” Benjamin said, nodding. “Jay has his strengths, but he’s . . . how was it Ian Fleming described James Bond? A blunt instrument.”
“Adam, if you have James Bond on your staff, who needs Joe Reeder?”
A warm chuckle grew into a full-throated laugh. “Look, Joe . . . for what I have planned, I need someone who can relate better within my corporate family. Who has a sense of subtlety and . . . discretion.”
“What’s your complaint with Jay? He’s a good man.”
“Perhaps, and I like having ex–Secret Service on my team . . . but Akers is rubbing my second-in-command, Frank Elmore, the wrong way. Claims Frank has me surrounded by mercenaries, for the most part. Not that there isn’t some truth in it. Sometimes it’s like I’m traveling with a band of thugs.”
“Worked for Capone.”
“But not for presidential candidates.”
“Is that what you are, Adam?”
He ducked the question. “Having your respected presence on the scene, directing my security team—even the ones who do look like thugs—would frankly allow me to bask in your highly recognizable, heroic presence.”
Hero again. He managed to keep the burger down.
Reeder said, “You’d like your personal detail to be more presidential. And I’m probably the most famous ex–Secret
Service agent around. I get that. If you don’t mind my asking, what exactly are your plans?”
Benjamin considered that. “I believe it’s time I tested the presidential waters. See what the people think. See how a speaking tour might impact the polls. Then I can make a decision that makes sense.”
“Yeah, common sense, I know.”
Benjamin held Reeder’s gaze. “Joe, you’ve been around the political circus a long time, and you know as well as I do that our country is in trouble. The right and the left continue to move farther apart, to a point where our two major parties are essentially radical fringe groups with unearned power.”
“Been that way a while now,” Reeder granted.
“The center, where most people live, has become disenfranchised as the extremes on both sides scream at the top of their lungs, drowning out any, yes, common sense. And so nothing gets done. Congress is paralyzed. It’s time for the center to take back what is rightfully theirs. It’s time for the majority to rule the country again. Time for common sense to prevail in this country once more.”
Reeder had heard enough campaign speeches in his time to recognize one a mile away. “You aren’t just testing the waters, Adam. You’re going to do this thing, aren’t you?”
“Probably,” he admitted with a twinkle and a smile. “Almost certainly. But don’t quote me.”
“Big step,” Reeder said.
“Yes it is—and we’re kicking this off with what I’m calling ‘A Citizen’s State of the Union’ speech next Tuesday, at Constitution Hall. It would be my pleasure, even if you’re reluctant to come officially on staff, to have you join me at the rally. You and a guest, if you like. What say?”
Reeder gestured to the Five Guys bag, in which wadded-up wrappers and napkins now resided.
“After a feast like this,” he said, “it would be ungracious of me to decline.”
Benjamin leaned forward and clutched Reeder’s forearm. “Joe, we’re going to do great things together. Help me lead the country we love back to where there’s some real harmony, and make these damn political parties work together, not against each other.”
“We’ll just start,” Reeder said, “with me saying yes to your invite.”
The billionaire’s smile was an embarrassed one. “Got carried away a little, didn’t I? Sorry. Thanks for coming, Joe. And I look forward to seeing you at the rally. I’ll put the arrangements in motion.”
Benjamin rose.
So did Reeder. “Uh, before I go . . . can I ask you something? Kind of out of left field?”
“Certainly.”
“A friend of mine died the other night.”
“Oh, I’m sorry to hear that.”
“Thank you. The police call it suicide, but I know better. His name was Chris Bryson. In the weeks before his death, he received a few calls from your company.”
“Which company?”
“CSI. He may have been an investor, or somebody of yours may have wanted him to look into something. He was a security consultant. Name doesn’t mean anything to you, does it? Chris Bryson?”
“No, I’m sorry to say it doesn’t. But you have my sympathies, and I’ll check with my people and see what those calls were about.”
“I’d appreciate that. Sorry to bother the CEO with such trivialities.”
“The death of one good man is a loss to us all.”
“Thomas Paine?”
He shook his head, smiled a little. “Adam Benjamin. And that you can quote.”
Heading out to his car, Reeder admitted to himself that everything Benjamin said did make sense, common or otherwise. But a guy who stood up in public saying such things, particularly if that guy got some traction . . . ?
Might not get carried away as much as carted out.
On his back.
“The liberal left can be as rigid and destructive as any force in American life.”
Daniel Patrick Moynihan, United States Senator from New York, 1977–2001, Ambassador to India and the United Nations.
Section 36, Lot 2261, Arlington National Cemetery.
FIVE
Sometimes Amy Reeder longed for her father’s gift at reading people—spotting and interpreting the tiny behavioral tells of their moods, their inner thoughts, their outright lies. Right now, for instance, she had no fricking idea what her boyfriend, Bobby Landon, might be thinking.
Well, one thing she could read: he was pissed.
Not that that was anything unusual lately.
Sitting on the couch in her Georgetown apartment, still in the gray suit she’d worn to her part-time job as a senatorial intern, Amy inconspicuously brushed away the beginnings of a tear.
She would not dignify Bobby’s belligerence with a single drop.
Slender legs tucked under her, the twenty-one-year-old knew she was wrinkling her slacks, buying herself time with an iron or expense at a dry cleaners, but at this point didn’t really give a damn. Her long brown hair, tucked up in a bun, stayed perfectly in place as she shook her head.
How many times had they had this same damn argument? Once a week? Maybe, for a while. Of late, more like daily.
Bobby tromped back in from the kitchen, brown eyes flaring, fists balled, ponytail swinging. The contrast between him in his ancient Che Guevara T-shirt, ragged jeans, and worn sneakers and her professional attire from Ann Taylor made her feel at once invaded and a stranger in her own apartment.
“I told you the Common Sense douche bags,” he said, not quite yelling, “are holding a big-ass rally on Tuesday. You knew that.”
“And you know,” she said, working to keep her anger in check, “that I cannot go to events like that anymore. We had this talk before I accepted the internship.”
“Which I was in favor of!”
“That’s right, you were. And you were fine with it when I said working for a senator, participating in protests was out for me.”
He stopped pacing. Breathed in and out, slowly, like a man fighting a panic attack. Finally he let out a long period-at-the-end-of-a-sentence sigh.
“You’re right,” he said, holding up surrender hands. “You’re right, you’re right. I’m sorry.”
“. . . What?”
He came over and sat next to her. “I’m way out of line. I encouraged you to take the damn job.”
“You did,” she said.
“Figured you were in a position to do some good from within. From inside the belly of the beast.”
“But not in a subversive way, Bobby. I’m not a spy. I’m trying to see how the system operates, and see if I can have some small impact . . . and make that work in favor of what we believe in.”
“I get that,” he said, utterly calm now.
She arched an eyebrow at him. “This is still you, right? You aren’t an alien or anything, and I’m going to find a pod in the kitchen?”
He smiled, embarrassed. “No. It’s me. Hotheaded, frustrated me. I’m starting to feel like I’m on the inside looking out. You know what guys my age who go to protests alone are usually trying to do, don’t you?”
“Get laid?” she asked with a half smile.
“I was trying to think of a more graceful way to say it. But you’re not wrong. We’ve been a team, baby, and it’s hard sitting on the bench. These are important times. We’re on the brink here.”
She patted his leg. “Every generation feels that way. And I trust you not to pick up some latter-day hippie chick at the rally.”
He gave her a kiss. Small, sweet kiss.
“I get carried away sometimes,” he said. “I’ll be better.”
She studied him. “I am a little surprised that you got worked up about these Common Sensers. What’s so bad about standing in the middle of the road? Other than both sides trying to run you over.”
He shrugged. “They’re not as bad as the Spirit jagoffs, I’ll give you that. But the Sensers sure as hell will slow any small progress we might make in this country.”
“The Spirit” was more officially t
he Spirit of ’76 Movement, a splinter off the old Tea Party that had sprouted into a tree.
Bobby was saying, “And Wilson Blount and his old-school right-wing cronies? You’re right, they are so obviously worse. I mean, those assholes are always up to some damn self-interested thing.”
“Goes without saying,” she said, hoping to cut off what appeared to be a building rant.
No such luck: his eyes were flaring again.
“Did you know that old man Blount got that asshole Cunningham from Montana to sneak a line item into the highway construction bill? Lowering the age for becoming president from thirty-five to thirty?”
“I did know,” she said calmly. “It got some media play. But Blount claims he’s only trying to encourage the youth of America. To show younger people, young voters, that he respects them.”
“That’s blather for the idiots. Blount has his eyes on the presidency for that puke-face kid of his, Nicky.”
“I haven’t heard anything like that,” she said, eyes narrowing. “Where did you get that?”
He raised and shook a “right on” fist. “Inhabit America website. Right now, they’re at the top of a short list of anybody spreading the truth.”
Inhabit America was viewed, at least by the left, as the next logical step after the old Occupy Movement. They espoused sweeping change to nearly every aspect of the country that was still touched by the neocon legacy of President Bennett. Inhabit America was Bobby’s latest hobbyhorse.
Of course, Amy followed Inhabit America online, too; but her experience from her new job had already made her more skeptical of sites like Inhabit and their self-proclaimed “truth.”
“So we have Blount and his bunch going after the White House,” Bobby was saying, getting himself going again, “while these white-bread Common Sensers are preaching their ‘Meet Us in the Middle’ nonsense. They just love to go on talk radio and cable news and present their old-time Americana bull, boasting that they aren’t on either side. Come on! Who isn’t more on one side than the other? They need to get off the goddamn fence!”
When she had first met and started dating Bobby, his save-the-world progressive notions had seemed to her noble, and she had joined in willingly. But the more time she spent on the Hill, the more she realized that Bobby’s simple answers were not reality-based. Governments had budgets, with thousands of programs, each begging for its share from the national coffers, each with defenders on the right or left.
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