W. E. B. Griffin - Presidential Agent 07 (10 page)

Mulligan quickly followed and reached for the switch that would close the stair door.

“Leave it open,” the President ordered. “And turn on the TV.”

The screen showed the stage of Auditorium Three above a moving legend on the bottom,
WOLF NEWS BREAKING NEWS, THE PRESIDENTIAL PRESS CONFERENCE AT CIA HEADQUARTERS, LANGLEY, VA.

The image was of assorted people, including the Vice President, trying to do something about the non-functioning microphone.

The voice of Vice President Montvale crying “Oh, shit!” filled the passenger compartment of Marine One.

“Oh, shit,” presidential press secretary Parker said softly.

The Wolf News camera now turned to the VIP journalists in the front-row seats, finally settling on C. Harry Whelan, Jr., who was shaking his head in disbelief.

The voice of the Vice President announced, “As the President has left the building, this press conference is over.”

The camera quickly shifted to the podium, just in time to see the Vice President march away from it. Then it shifted to a shot of the dignitaries quickly hurrying after him.

“Mr. President, I have no idea what happened,” Porky Parker said. “But I’m sorry.”

“You should be,” the President said. “I never thought you had what it takes to be the President’s press secretary.”

“Excuse me?”

“You’re fired, Porky. Get off my helicopter.”

“What?”

“When I get back to the White House, I will announce that I have accepted your resignation.”

“Mr. President, I was in no way responsible for—”

“Nobody’s likely to believe that, are they, Porky? Now, get off my goddamn helicopter!”

Parker went to the door and down the door stairs.

Mulligan threw the switch that caused the door stairs to retract.

“Well, that took care of that disloyal sonofabitch, didn’t it, Bob?” the President asked.

“I thought that everything went very well, Mr. President,” Mulligan said.

“I owe you one,” the President said. He pointed toward the cockpit. “Tell him to get us out of here.”

 

 

Roscoe J. Danton had decided, without really thinking about it, that he was going to have to write a “think piece” about this clusterfuck, rather than just covering it. Other people, simple reporters, would cover the story. But he was, after all, a syndicated columnist of the
Washington Times-Post
Writers Syndicate; his readers expected more of him.

His biography, on the
Times-Post
website, written by some eager-eyed journalist fresh from the Columbia School of Journalism, said, “Mr. Danton joined the
Times-Post
immediately after his service in the U.S. Marine Corps.”

That was true, though it hadn’t happened quite the way it sounded.

Roscoe had been a Marine. He had joined the Corps at seventeen, immediately after graduating from high school. After boot camp at the Marine Corps Recruit Depot at Parris Island, South Carolina, he had been transferred to Camp Pendleton, California. A week after arriving at Camp Pendleton, a forklift had dropped a pallet of 105mm artillery ammunition on his left foot during landing exercises on the Camp Pendleton beach.

Two months after that, PFC Roscoe J. Danton had been medically retired from the Marine Corps with a 15 percent disability. He returned to his home in Chevy Chase, Maryland, and entered George Washington University as a candidate for a degree in political science.

He also secured part-time employment as a copy boy at
The Washington Times-Post
. By the time he graduated from George Washington, he had acquired a fiancé––a childhood friend he had known since they were in third grade—and decided he had found his niche in life: journalism.

This latter conclusion had been based on his somewhat immodest conclusion that he was smarter than three-fourths of the journalists for whom he had been fetching coffee in the newsroom.

This opinion was apparently shared by the powers-that-were in the executive offices of the
Times-Post
, who hired him as a full-time reporter shortly after he graduated from George Washington.

He married Miss Elizabeth Warner two months later, shortly after she found herself in the family way. By the time Roscoe J. Danton, Jr., aged five, was presented with a baby brother—Warner James Danton—Roscoe J. Danton had not only grown used to seeing his byline in the rag, but had become one of the youngest reporters ever to flaunt the credentials of a member of the White House Press Corps.

Things were not going well at home, however. Elizabeth Warner Danton ultimately announced that she had had quite enough of his behavior.

“You have humiliated me for the last time, Roscoe, by showing up at church functions late—if you show up at all—and reeking of alcohol. Make up your mind, Roscoe, it’s either your drinking and carousing or your family.”

After giving the ultimatum some thought, Roscoe had moved into the Watergate Apartments. He concluded, perhaps selfishly, that there wasn’t much of a choice between the interesting people with whom he associated professionally in various watering holes and the middle-level bureaucrats with whom Elizabeth expected him to associate socially at Saint Andrews Presbyterian Church in Chevy Chase.

Alimony and child support posed a hell of a financial problem, of course, but he had a generous and usually unchecked expense account, and legions of lobbyists were more than pleased to pick up his tabs at the better restaurants around town.

And, with the lone exception of what divorce does to kids, he’d many times decided he’d made the right decision. And rising to being a syndicated columnist for the
Washington Times-Post
Writers Syndicate was just one example.

Now Roscoe understood that if he was going to write a think piece on the clusterfuck, he was going to have to find out how it had happened, and the way to do that was get to presidential spokesman John David Parker
before
ol’ Porky returned from seeing the President off to reestablish some order and decorum.

Roscoe quickly got out of his seat and left Auditorium Three.

He found Parker almost immediately. Porky was leaning against the corridor wall just outside Auditorium Three, looking, Roscoe thought, more than a little dazed.

“Dare I hope to have a moment of time with my favorite presidential spokesman?”

“Make that ex–presidential spokesman,” Parker replied.

“You got canned over that royal screwup? So soon?”

Parker nodded.

“They wouldn’t even let me back in there,” Parker said, nodding toward the uniformed CIA security people standing outside the door to Auditorium Three.

“And now you need a ride back to our nation’s capital, right?”

Parker considered that a moment and then said, “Yeah, I guess I do. You have a car?”

“Indeed I do. Come on. Let’s get out of here.”

Roscoe just then changed his mind about covering this story as a think piece.

The head wrote itself—“Presidential Spokesman Fired”—and he had already composed the obvious lead: “In an exclusive interview with this reporter, former presidential spokesman John David Parker told . . .”

It was almost sure to make Page One above the fold.

 

 

The Lincoln Town Car, with Edgar Delchamps at the wheel, was parked very close to the entrance of the garage in a slot that a neatly lettered sign announced was RESERVED FOR ASSISTANT DEPUTY DIRECTOR NUSSBAUM.

Roscoe ushered Parker into the backseat of the car and slid in beside him.

“Get us out of here,” Roscoe ordered.

“What the hell happened in there?” Delchamps asked. “We watched it on the Brick.”

“My pal is about to tell us. John, say hello to Edgar and Two-Gun.”

“I thought you looked familiar, Mr. Parker,” Two-Gun said, turning in the seat to offer his hand.

 

 

“So the President said, ‘When I get back to the White House, I will announce that I have accepted your resignation. Now get off my goddamn helicopter,’ and I did,” Parker finished.

“And when you went back in the building, they wouldn’t let you in the auditorium?” David Yung asked.

“They even took my ID badge,” Parker said.

“I don’t suppose anyone cares what I think,” Delchamps said, “but just off the top of my head, Roscoe, I think your pal was set up.”

“Otherwise, the security guys wouldn’t have been waiting for you to take your ID badge.”

“So what do I do now?” Parker asked, and then answered his own question. “Go back to my apartment and lick my wounds, I guess.”

“If you go back to your apartment, the press will be there for your version of what happened,” Roscoe said. “And until we figure this out, no matter what you tell them, you’re going to look like an incompetent who got fired for cause, or a disgruntled former employee saying unkind—and frankly hard to believe—things about our beloved President. Or both. Probably both.”

“So what do I do?” Parker asked again.

“When in doubt, find a hole and hunker down until things calm down,” Delchamps said.

“Go to a hotel or something?” Parker asked.

“Or something. Roscoe, is Brother Parker really a pal of yours?”

“He’s a pal of mine,” Roscoe declared.

“Problem solved,” Delchamps announced.

“Meaning what?” Roscoe asked.

“You’ll see.”

 

 

The house, which was large and could be described as a “Colonial mansion,” sat on an acre of manicured lawn well off West Boulevard Drive. The landscaping on a grass-covered rise—a berm—in the lawn prevented anyone driving by from getting a good look at the front door of the house.

There was a neat cast-bronze sign just inside the first of two fences:

The first fence was made of five-foot-high white pickets. Hidden on the pickets were small cameras, and both audio and motion sensors.

The second fence, closer to the house, was of cast iron, eight feet tall, and also held surveillance cameras and motion sensors. Every twenty feet there were floodlights.

As Edgar Delchamps steered the Town Car up the drive, a herd of canines—if “herd” is the proper term to describe a collection of six enormous, jet-black Bouviers des Flandres—came charging around the side of the house.

They waited patiently for the substantial gate to open, then when the Lincoln rolled past, they followed it, gamboling happily like so many outsize black lambs.

“What’s with the dogs?” Porky Parker asked.

“Clinical studies have shown that having access to dogs provides a number of benefits to elderly people, so we use them in our geriatric services program,” Two-Gun Yung replied. “That makes them deductible. You have no idea how much it costs to feed those big bastards.”

“They also serve to deter the curious,” Edgar Delchamps added.

He stopped the Lincoln before a four-door garage, pulling it alongside one of the two black GMC Yukons parked there.

Everyone got out of the Town Car as one of the garage doors rolled upward.

A grandmotherly type in her early fifties appeared at a door in the rear of the garage. Her name was Dianne Sanders, and she was listed on the payroll of Lorimer Manor, Inc., as resident housekeeper.

The herd of Bouviers des Flandres gamboled on toward her. She put her fingers to her lips and whistled shrilly. The dogs stopped as if they had encountered a glass wall.

“Go chase a cat,” Mrs. Sanders ordered sternly, pointing out the garage door.

Reluctantly but obediently the herd slowly walked out of the garage.

She looked at Delchamps and said: “Am I supposed to pretend I don’t know who your friends are? In addition to inside plumbing, Lorimer Manor offers television.”

“Think of that one,” Delchamps said, pointing at Parker, “as a lonely stranger desperately needing the hospitality of friends. And also some lunch, if that’s possible. I thought you knew Roscoe.”