by Nick Cook
It’s less than two hours after the shooting and we’re gathered in the Director’s Crisis Center on the top floor of the Secret Service’s downtown headquarters. Cabot is laying it on about the inherent security risk of people like Guido – the ‘church incident’ – serving as proof that he was right about the peaceniks.
The President’s Chief of Staff, Reuben Kantner, brings some necessary sanity to the proceedings. He sits at the head of the table with Cabot by his side, quietly probing for details.
Reuben has almost certainly been up for hours, but even manages to look good in a crisis: his white shirt is pressed to within an inch of its life and he has none of the gray that flecks my hair.
I’m unshaven and in clothes borrowed from one of Cabot’s assistant directors.
Next to Reuben, his head in a notebook, is the director of Internal Affairs for the Metropolitan Police Department. I don’t remember his name. He looks impossibly young and is dressed more like a corporate lawyer than a cop.
Beside him, and appearing older than he did when I last saw him in the mobile command post a block from the church, is Captain Anders.
His first name, I now know, is Tobias, and it’s clear that he is struggling. Although nothing has been said openly, it is only too obvious that the ‘jumper’ was shot by one of his men.
Special Agent in Charge Jim Lefortz sits between us, tugging thoughtfully at the tips of his gray moustache. I’ve known him for nine months – long enough to appreciate why he commands such respect.
There were two routes into the Service when he joined: you were either an ex-cop or you came in via the military. Like me, Lefortz was military; he’d been a Special Investigator with Army CID.
Much of the rest was hearsay – like the cartel boss he was rumored to have shot and killed during a money-laundering sting in Jalisco; the two-inch scar on his neck from a piece of the bomb that destroyed the Oklahoma Federal Building. He says little, but when he does it is on point and delivered in his warm, authoritative New Orleans drawl. Not for nothing is he known as ‘Gentleman Jim’.
He’s a year past retirement, but was persuaded by Reuben to take on the job of White House SAIC while the Thompson administration was in transition, which many commentators still consider it to be.
The Department of Homeland Security will launch its own inquiry into the shooting, and Dr Ameline Kurtz, who heads up its Human Factors directorate, will lead it. She sits between Cabot and me, mildly anorexic and immaculate in cream and black. Like the kid-lawyer from Internal Affairs, she spends her time scribbling notes and every time I hear the scratch of her pen, I sense Anders flinch.
Cabot turns and asks him what procedures are in place for establishing the jumper’s ID.
The Special Tactics Branch Captain clears his throat and his face flushes. I could smell his body odor in the mobile command post and I can smell it now. He is in his late thirties, with Teutonic features – blue eyes, blond hair, fair skin. ‘The Chief Medical Examiner’s Office is conducting the autopsy. If his fingerprints are in the system, we’ll get an immediate match.’
‘And if they’re not?’
‘Then we’ll initiate a print search at the local level.’ Anders slides a finger from his Adam’s apple to the back of his neck to loosen his collar. ‘The decedent had severe facial burns also. If he’s from the activist community, it won’t take long for someone to come forward. We can put the details that we have out on social media—’
‘They’re already on social media! Twitter’s all over it. People are saying he’s a vet and that he had mental issues. They’re also saying that between us –’ Cabot jabs his finger at Anders and glances at Lefortz, ‘– we couldn’t organize a fuck in a whorehouse.’
Now it’s Ameline Kurtz who twitches.
‘No one gave any order to shoot,’ Anders says, quietly but firmly. Cabot has to lean forward to hear him.
‘We have a man’s brains splattered all over a church tower less than a block from the White House. So either somebody gave the order, or one of your men decided to fire for the hell of it. Neither is helping me feel the love for you right now, son, so you’d better get used to the fact you are going to be hung out to dry.’
Cabot sits back and grunts. The Crisis Center is a high-tech situation room next to his executive suite, paid for with money some say the Service should have spent on recruiting new agents. TVs occupy every spare inch of wall space, printers chatter like crickets, and telephones pepper the large mahogany table that occupies the center of the room.
Director Cabot is short, pug-nosed, with small, penetrating eyes that dart around the room, giving the impression everyone’s under suspicion. He’s sixty-odd, gray-faced, with, ironically, more than a look of J. Edgar Hoover. He was appointed by the previous administration on the strength of his unblemished record for fixing broken organizations. I can see why. He’s one of those people with absolute faith in his convictions – something of a rarity right now.
‘Isn’t it a little unusual, your acting as negotiator in a situation like this?’ He turns and fixes me with his pig eyes.
‘Not really. In the six months I’ve been at the White House, I’ve got to know SAIC Lefortz well. We’ve a close working relationship. Plus I have a background in combat medicine; I know how to handle myself. And this man may have been a patient.’
‘Oh?’
‘He asked for me personally.’
‘And you have experience of this type of situation?’
‘The point was to avoid bloodshed.’
‘I asked if you had experience.’
‘My experience lies in the treatment of combat veterans – so, yes, I do.’
‘How do you know this guy was a vet?’
‘Because I know a combat injury when I see one. And some of the terminology he used was military.’
‘What did he want?’
‘He said there’s a threat to the President’s life.’
‘They all do, son.’
‘He said we should take this one seriously.’
‘Fuck’s sake!’ Cabot pushes his chair back and looks at Lefortz. ‘You got anything you want to contribute?’
Lefortz sits up. His face creases as he chews on the question.
‘Josh – Doctor Cain – said it. It was my call. The guy asked for him. I asked if Josh’d be prepared to step up. He said yes.’
‘That it?’
‘Pretty much.’
Cabot draws breath for another tirade, but is stopped by the opening bars of Elvis’s ‘Suspicion’, Lefortz’s distinctive ringtone. The crooning builds until it fills the room.
‘Sorry,’ the White House SAIC says. It takes the whole chorus for him to find his phone and kill the call.
‘The President isn’t going to restrict the First Amendment rights of anyone who wants to demonstrate their grievances,’ Reuben says before Cabot can regroup. ‘But let’s be real clear. If there is any threat to his safety, we need to know about it.’
He turns to me. ‘Josh, I want a report on my desk by midday detailing everything. Names. Dates. Places. Everything our John Doe told you.’ He looks at Anders, whose demons appear to have all but overwhelmed him. ‘I need the same from the MPD. Some ammunition for when the shit seriously hits the fan – which, trust me, Captain, it’s about to. Unlawful killing. Use of excessive force. The militarization of our police departments. It’s all going to crash down on us like a fucking tsunami.’ His tone softens. ‘You will be judged by what was going on inside your head at the moment of the shooting, Anders, so my advice is: take your time – get it all down while it’s still fresh.’
Two minutes later, I am walking with Reuben down a staircase that offers a vertiginous perspective of the nine-story building’s central atrium. At the end of the meeting, everybody dispersed except for Lefortz, whom Cabot had ordered to remain.
Reuben is tall and dark, a precise and graceful individual. He’s a year or two older than me, but works hard – a lot harder
than I do – to keep himself in shape. Knowing his intense dislike of Cabot, I congratulate him on a powerful closing speech.
He laughs somberly. ‘Nature abhors a vacuum, right? The President’s in Texas so he and the communications team can finish up on the State of the Union and then—’
He stops abruptly.
‘I’m sorry, Josh, what happened up there must have been truly horrific.’
I tell him I’m OK, and turn the spotlight back on Thompson. ‘The incident will have had some impact on his mental state, Reuben. I’ll need to have a session with him on his return.’
Beyond the atrium I see snow driven by mini twisters swirling in the yellowy-gray light. The flashing lights of a plow bounce off the glass walls of the offices around us. It’s the only vehicle moving on the street.
Reuben checks his phone, glances at the sky and nods. ‘I’ll set it up.’
With the airports and train stations closing, the capital is heading toward shutdown, and Andrews Air Force Base with it.
After too many years of back-and-forth, sledgehammer politics, not everyone had been convinced the Democratic Senator from Texas, Robert S. Thompson, was the man for the job. The election had been exceptionally close – the popular vote won by a margin of less than 200,000, and for a year, it seemed Thompson himself couldn’t quite believe he’d done it.
There was shock, paralysis even, at the heart of his government in those first months. But now Reuben wants his boss back. Thompson needs to reassert his authority on what could be the most important address of his career. I’m not privy to what the President’s State of the Union will contain, but anyone who’s ever glanced at a TV or news site during his campaign could take a pretty good swipe at its messaging points: terrorism, conflict, humanitarian crises, poverty, disease and environmental catastrophe abroad; education, civil rights, racism, immigration, the war on gun-crime, the drugs trade and healthcare closer to home – not to mention tackling the multi-trillion-dollar federal budget deficit.
‘Want a ride?’ Reuben presses the button for the elevator that leads down to where the Beast lurks – the President’s armor-plated, ten-ton limousine. ‘I’m headed for the Hill, but I can drop you off at the Northeast Gate.’
‘Thanks. But I could do with the walk.’
He glances at the sky again and gives me a suit-yourself shrug. ‘Sure you’re OK?’ he asks again. There is something sad about his smile, but that’s nothing new these days.
‘Seemed like you were coaching Anders back there. What’s going to happen to him?’
‘To stay out of jail, he will need to convince a whole lot of people that his use-of-force decision was reasonable – from the perspective of a reasonable officer on the scene and not with the twenty-twenty vision of hindsight. If he gave the order, it will be on tape. If he didn’t, the Keystone Cops accusation will stick. Either way, I’m sorry to say, Cabot is on the money.’
The elevator doors open. He steps into it.
‘Reuben?’
He turns and holds the doors.
‘What do you think—?’
‘Relax,’ he says. ‘Lefortz knows what he’s doing and you can leave Cabot to me. Get that report done, then go home. Get some rest.’
The doors close and I am left standing beside the foot-high silver letters that proclaim the motto of the United States Secret Service to the handful of people in the atrium: ‘Worthy of Trust and Confidence’.
It’s an eight-block, twenty-minute walk to the White House and, despite the sub-Arctic temperature on the streets, I really could do with it.
When trauma strikes, traumatic stress follows, generally because we fail to process what has happened. Thinking about the events of the past six hours, much as I don’t want to, will help me come to terms with them.
Whilst the sequence of actions that led to the shooting is still unclear, my subconscious has been replaying the sights, sounds, smells and emotions of the encounter. And something has bubbled up to the surface: the handshake moment – the moment I knew Guido and I were in business, that there was trust between us – was triggered by his telling me that I would leave no stone unturned in my efforts to protect the President. No Stone Unturned. The promise that Reuben, Lefortz and I made when this thing started – nine months ago, when Thompson’s nightmares began.
3
‘IN THE WHITE HOUSE, THE PRESSURES ARE BEYOND ANYTHING THAT human beings are designed to handle,’ a presidential adviser once said. Presidents are made of the same stuff as you and me and, occasionally, they break.
A recent study by one of our leading medical faculties concluded that nearly half the presidents between 1789 and 1974 met the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders’ criteria for mental illness.
By most definitions, Robert S. Thompson was in rude mental health when he took office, if you ignored the madness that would make one want to be president in the first place.
But four months into his administration, he had a dream – the kind that sticks to you for days, like smoke. He told no one – to begin with, not even Jennifer, his wife.
Then he had another.
And another and another.
They took on many different forms, but always ended the same way: with his assassination.
Soon, he was losing sleep – to the point where he was getting maybe a couple of hours a night – and people began to notice that he had lost his campaigning sparkle. That was the point at which he opened up to Jennifer.
Reuben was the second person in whom he confided. Relieved that the changes he’d seen in his boss had an explanation, he urged Thompson to see the White House Doctor.
Thompson refused: The doctor was an appointee of the previous administration. He might even be in on it.
Reuben knew then that he had a problem: what had manifested in the President’s dream-state had now been pulled into his waking reality. So he picked up the phone and rang me.
Reuben and I have known each other a long time. We’ve served together and fought together.
Two years after returning from Iraqi Freedom, George W. Bush’s war against Iraq, he landed a job in Washington as a security adviser to Senator Tod Abnarth, an old friend of his parents, and the first politician to back Thompson for the White House.
For as long as I’ve known Reuben he’s been ambitious, but I don’t hold that against him. He’s motivated by a deal more than fame and power. Like me, his sensibilities have been forged by war, but Reuben’s strengths lie in administration – mine in hands-on medicine. After Iraq, we each chose a new path.
For reasons that are still hard for me to examine, let alone discuss, I chose to retrain. I returned to the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences in D.C., known as USU, where I undertook a four-year residency, which included a year at Georgetown University. I graduated as a fully qualified physician and psychiatrist.
By then, Reuben’s political career had started to take off, so we got together less often.
With a specialism in the treatment of the mental and physical impacts of trauma under my belt, primarily in the military sphere, I returned to active duty. I ended up as the head of the medical facility for US Central Command and US Special Operations Command at MacDill Air Force Base, on Florida’s Gulf Coast.
Embedded within the hospital was what I like to think is now one of the premier trauma units in the country, so when I first got the call from Reuben, I wasn’t wild about the idea of coming back to Washington. I wasn’t wild, either, about working for the President.
Thompson is young, moneyed Texas, clever and unblemished by scandal. He speaks eloquently, and has a picture-perfect family.
His wife, Jennifer, is a strikingly beautiful and successful attorney and a former human rights lawyer. She is intensely proud of her African American roots. Their three kids – five, eight and ten years old – are so stereotypically cute and well mannered they could have won Thompson the election on their own.
It wasn’t hard to
see what those who’d voted for him had bought into: the promise of a better world, a world without division.
But for my money, and evidently a fraction under half the country’s voters, there was something a little too slick about Bob Thompson.
So, to begin with, I said no.
Reuben flew down to see me, drove me out to a secluded beach somewhere south of the base, and in the course of a long walk, told me about the breadth of Thompson’s ambition and what he wanted to achieve. The dreams, he said, threatened to derail it all, and there was no one else – no one – he could trust to see Thompson, to examine him, and not have it leak.
‘See him, Josh, see him once, and offer him the benefit of your advice. Of all people, I understand what you had in D.C. – what you had and lost. But it’ll only be for a day. Two at the outside. Then you’ll be back on a plane and back with your patients.’
So, I flew up, only for a day – two at the outside – to see Thompson; to give him – to give them both – the benefit of my advice.
‘One man’s paranoia is another man’s due caution’ remains a particularly helpful adage for anyone in Washington with political ambition, but I felt the President’s increasing wariness was most probably adaptive: a means of coping. It wasn’t, in my opinion, evidence of anything pathological, like an underlying illness.
For a while, my diagnosis made the President feel better. I saw him breathe a sigh of relief when I told him this, and his health, according to Reuben, improved steadily from that moment.
Inside of two days, I was back with my patients in Florida and Thompson was soon pretty much back to his old self.
But while the nightmares diminished in frequency, they did not go away. And when they came for him, they were brutal.
Reuben flew to Florida to see me again and, after some back and forth, offered me a new deal. The incumbent White House Doctor, an Army brigadier-general who was coming up for retirement anyway, would be let go. If I’d agree to it, I’d replace him. There would be no fanfare; no approvals had to be sought; the appointment was entirely at the discretion of the President.
