by Bob Mayer
“Now hold on there, lass.”
Lily paused. She smiled, then wiped it away as she turned. The man was next to the case, but had yet to pick it up.
“No need for you to rush away, is there?”
“I just do what I’m told,” Lily said.
The man laughed. “Do you now? Do you indeed?”
Lily heard movement to her right, where a large black van was parked. “You’ve been paid.”
“But why are they paying us when we didn’t complete the job?” the man asked.
“Perhaps your services were no longer needed.”
The man laughed. “Now, lass. I’m not stupid. I’ve been in this business a long time. I’d be willing to bet the pot at the end of the rainbow that is supposedly in this briefcase is not gold but either explosives or a tracking transmitter.”
Lily shrugged, feeling the weight of the armor cloak on her shoulders. “I have no idea. I just do what I’m told.”
“You keep saying that.” The man took something out of his pocket, put it next to the briefcase and began backing up. “So why don’t you do what I tell you and come over here and open the case. Then, if you’re still able, run that detector over it.”
Lily walked forward, knelt next to the case, flipped the latches and opened it. Bundles of money were packed tightly inside. She took the detector, turned it on, and ran it over the money. The bright light remained green. She placed it on top of the money and stood.
“Satisfied?”
The man came walking forward, smiling. “Somewhat.”
She heard a van door slide open behind her and footsteps approaching. “I’ll be on my way.”
“No so fast,” a voice from behind said.
Lily slowly turned. A man in army greens was approaching, a gun held in his hands. Lily recognized a Glock 10mm, semi-automatic. A good gun, but not army issue. He had gold oak leaves on his shoulders, the same rank Lily had held before her ouster. He stopped four feet from her. Proper training. Out of arms reach, maintaining the advantage the gun gave him.
Lily heard the slight squeak as the briefcase was closed. The major’s eyes shifted ever so slightly, looking behind her to his partner and she sprang into action. As there was the click of the briefcase closing, she had the wakizashi out and slicing. The major’s eyes shifted back to her just as the blade slashed through the extra foot of buffer he’d thought he had and severed gun hand from arm.
She followed the momentum, spinning. The other man was scrambling for the gun in his pocket and she slammed the blade into his upper arm, slicing through so hard, it buried itself inches deep in the side of his chest.
“Jesus, Mary and Joseph!” the man exclaimed in shock.
The Surgeon spun about, cutting the opposite way, taking off his left arm at the same point.
Blood was spurting from both severed limbs.
She didn’t pause to admire the view, swirling back to the major. He was on his knees, trying to pry the gun from his dead hand. She ended his efforts by taking his head off with one clean blow.
Lily stepped back, finally appreciating her work as arterial blood spurted from the neck for several moments before the body toppled over. She faced the armless Irishman and imitated his brogue. “Kind of sucks don’t it, lad?” She laughed, feeling the freedom of the kill. She stretched her arms over her head, blood dripping from the blade.
“Ah, fuck, fuck, fuck me,” he muttered, staggering, blood pouring.
Lily knew he wouldn’t last much longer. She wanted to try something.
She did a 360, going down to her knees, putting her shoulders and arms and body into the blade. It went through the first ankle cleanly. She could feel the tug as the steel cut the second, but it was through.
He was down, more blood pouring out of both severed ankles. She stood over him and showed him the blade. “Top quality steel. Not that cheap shit your people put on the Titanic that ripped apart when it hit the iceberg. Top of the evening to you, lad.”
His face was a mixture of shock and confusion. Lily laughed. She sheathed the sword, picked up the Glock and briefcase and walked away.
She began whistling.
************
Ducharme glanced over at Evie. “Why did Burns cow-tow to you? I doubt because you’re the Curator of Monticello. Was it because you were in the CIA?”
Her face tightened. “It’s because of my ex-husband.”
“Who is?” Ducharme pressed.
“He’s still in the Agency and has some clout.”
“Was he your Rick?” Kincannon asked.
“Yes.”
“What happened? Why’d you split? Leave the Agency?”
“Both for the same reason,” Evie said. “My father—“ she paused, then continued. “My father was Army. Old school, went to Vietnam when he was 18 as a private and never looked back. Got a battlefield commission on his second tour there. Rose through the ranks. Retired thirty-three years later as a three star general, after commanding VII Corps in Germany just before Desert Storm. Actually, he was forced to retire after disagreeing with the plan to invade Iraq.”
“Damn,” Kincannon said. “That’s where I recognized the name. Served under your father a long time ago.”
Evie continued. “While he was in, he was gone most of the time. My mother died when I was twelve. Drank herself to death. My father put me in boarding schools near wherever he was stationed.” She fell silent after that brief, grim summary.
Ducharme winced as Kincannon pushed. At times the Sergeant Major was a blunt instrument where something more delicate was called for. “And? I don’t get the connection with your father and your divorce and leaving the Agency.”
“I didn’t leave the Agency,” Evie said. “They gave me the boot. And when they did, so did Donald.” She looked over her shoulder at Kincannon. “My father said the worst moment of his life—and this was a man wounded four times in combat—was the day after he retired and flew back to the States. He got off the plane and there was no one there. Not a soul. You know how the Army fawns over generals. Especially three stars, a Corps Commander in charge of a hundred thousand troops. He got off that plane and he was suddenly a nobody.”
She shifted her gaze to Ducharme. “Can you imagine how devastating it was? To be out of something you’d given thirty years to, bled for? And now to realize it all meant nothing in the end. Without the uniform, he didn’t exist.”
“Happens to everyone,” Kincannon observed. Sympathy wasn’t his long suite, but Kincannon wasn’t one who dwelled on future possibilities, even though he faced the same fate.
“My father lost it. Completely. He turned against everything he’d been committed to. He made speeches against the war—and you have to remember that first one was kind of popular. It just got worse. He ranted. He went crazy. He gave himself a heart attack. He died. Synopsis version,” she added, with a glance at Ducharme.
“So what the fuck?” Kincannon said. “What’s that have to do with the Agency?”
“My father had enemies—people he’d pissed off—and even with him dead, they went after him. They pulled my top secret Q-clearance. No clearance, I was done at the Agency. I was done at the Agency, Donald was done with me. I was an embarrassment.
“So I went back to college. Got my PhD. Got the job at Monticello, a nice out of the way place for me to work, still a Federal employee, got my health insurance, got a retirement down the line. And that’s my story. Satisfied?”
“Not really,” Ducharme said.
“Now, now,” Kincannon said in his gentlest voice. “And McBride?”
Evie shrugged, but it was a weak attempt to hide her emotions, Ducharme could see. “My mentor. My friend.”
“Do you know where the thumb drive is that decrypts McBride’s computer?” Kincannon asked.
“No,” Evie said. “There are a lot of loose ends. I don’t quite understand the time delay on that message from LaGrange. You mentioned that it was a quote from Custer’s last order
.”
“Custer’s last written order,” Ducharme said. “Who knows what the hell he was ordering when they got over-run. Probably ‘retreat’ when he crashed on the harsh rocks of reality. He was a lousy officer. Did you know he twice shot his own horse in the head while hunting mounted? I mean, what the hell? And while he executed some of his own Seventh Cavalry soldiers for going AWOL, he himself went AWOL when he wanted to see his wife.”
“The order,” Evie prompted.
So she was the only one who got to go off task and play ‘did you know’. “It was an order given by someone who was going to die. I think my Uncle knew there was a good chance he was doomed. I’m not sure his will to live was very strong after his son’s death.” Ducharme took a deep breath, collecting himself. “And he didn’t want me there when he was killed. Perhaps he feared for my safety. But he wanted me to know what happened. Or if he hadn’t been killed, to meet with me after he rendezvoused with your Mister McBride.”
“And now where are we headed?” Evie asked. “Something to do with that order?”
Ducharme nodded. “West Point. To another grave. Of a man who gave an order, not yet knowing he was about to die.”
4 March 1905
President Theodore Roosevelt listened to the sounds of revelry from the ballroom with deep satisfaction. He had the people’s mandate now. Even though he’d been President for three years, ever since McKinley was struck down by an assassin in Buffalo in 1901, he’d felt a degree of lame-duck status. He’d held power because of a single bullet, not the will of the people. At least that’s what some had whispered. Not swearing his oath of office on a Bible after McKinley expired had also caused great controversy, an oversight he had not repeated earlier today.
“Father.”
Roosevelt’s shoulders slumped as he heard the familiar voice. He didn’t bother to turn. “Yes, Baby Lee?”
“I come bearing greetings,” Alice Roosevelt said.
Roosevelt finally turned and faced his daughter. She was his first born, but he had spent little time with her over her twenty years of life. He supposed that had contributed to her independent spirit, to the point where many considered her out of control. Sometimes he regretted abandoning her to relatives after her mother, his wife Alice, died two days after her birth. But on the same day, his own mother had died and the dual blows had been too much to take. He’d headed west, losing himself on the frontier for several years with his grief.
“From whom?” Roosevelt asked. Sometimes he missed those days, riding with Sheriff Bullock of Deadwood, hunting, ranching and just being out in nature. Almost as much as he missed his first wife. He never used her name and thus he never used his daughter’s given name, something he knew irritated her, but he could not bear the pain.
Alice was draped in a silk dress, risqué to say the least. Roosevelt knew better than to say anything to her about it. He’d been asked once by a visitor after Alice interrupted a meeting in the Oval Office for the third time whether he could control her. He’d answered truthfully: ‘I can either run the country or I can attend to Alice, but I cannot possibly do both.’
“From the American Philosophical Society.”
Roosevelt stiffened, focusing on his daughter. “What do those old fools want?”
Alice almost twirled, the silk catching the light. She’d bought enough of it on the recent junket to Japan and China to make a thousand dresses. He did have to admit, though, that she had done well diplomatically, enchanting the Emperor of Japan and the Empress Dowager of China. Of course, she’d also jumped into the ocean liner’s swimming pool fully clothed along with some fool congressman. Wherever she went, scandal followed.
“They are not all old fools,” Alice said.
“Just tell me what they want so I can get back to the celebrations,” Roosevelt said, looking past her to the door leading to the election party.
“Ah, father,” Alice said, coming close and looking up at him with soulful eyes. She had inherited her mother’s beauty and sometimes he wondered if that’s why he kept his distance from her—the memory was too sharp, the pain too deep. He averted his gaze.
“Yes?”
“I know this is your party, father,” she said. “But really, you’d want to be the bride at every wedding, the corpse at every funeral, and the baby at every christening. You like the attention.”
“The old Philosophers,” he prodded, trying to get her back on task. Her tongue was as sharp as her wit and he bore many a scar from both.
“As I said, and you did not hear, being occupied with your own thoughts as always, they are all not so old any more. In fact, one is quite young. The youngest ever elected Chair.”
“What fool did they pick?”
“And not just the youngest,” Alice said, with a smile that lit up the room, “but also the first woman.”
Roosevelt felt an icy feeling grow in his gut, much as he had felt in Yellowstone the first time he faced a grizzly. “They didn’t.”
“They did.”
Roosevelt closed his eyes and sighed. This was the last thing he would have expected. Which is why, he knew, the guardians of the Allegiance had done it. “What do they—you-- want?” he demanded through gritted teeth.
Alice hopped up and sat on the lid of a grand piano, her legs dangling, exposing too much ankle. “We know you inherited the Spanish-American War after McKinley’s untimely departure from this mortal coil. We were not pleased with the ‘causus belli’ for that war. ‘Remember the Maine’ indeed.” She peered at her father. “You were under-secretary of the Navy at the time. Perhaps you know something about that event you have not shared with your own daughter?”
“It was a Spanish mine,” Roosevelt snapped. “There is nothing more to it.”
“A most convenient mine,” Alice said. “We sense the long reach of the Cincinnatians.” She waved a hand, dismissing that topic. “The Allegiance has only been invoked once and even then, didn’t have to be used. Another President was warned. We see a dangerous trend, though. Jefferson, Polk and Lincoln all superseded their authority. Johnson did too, but he got impeached, simpleton that he was. The Cincinnatians have pushed this country into illegal and unjust war more than once in their desire for an American Empire. Much like the Romans did so long ago.”
Alice continued. “But you have to allow those three earlier Presidents their motives. Both Jefferson and Polk saw a threat our country’s commerce: Jefferson not wanting to lose access to New Orleans and ending up with much more than he could have ever dreamed of in territory; Polk wanting access to San Francisco and also ending up with much than he too could have ever dreamed of. Lincoln’s motivation was to preserve the Union at any cost, although one might see an inherent paradox from the Founding Fathers in that. The Confederacy was, after all, exercising its states’ rights to separate from the Union. Something Jefferson would most likely have applauded.”
Roosevelt knew this was revenge. For all those years he’d shuttled her from relative to relative. He’d once tried to send her to a very proper school for girls in New York City and she had sent back a letter promising: ‘If you send me, I will humiliate you. I will do something that that will shame you. I tell you I will.’
And now she had done something far, far worse.
“You’ve won four more years, father,” Alice said. “Congratulations. But we know what you have done and what you want to do. The Philippines. Colombia. Honduras. The Dominican Republic. Cuba. The Canal you want built.” She laughed, a most pleasant sound, contrasting the words that came from her mouth. “’Speak softly and carry a big stick. You will go far’?”
“What do you want?” Roosevelt finally gave in, facing her directly.
“Jefferson wrote ‘Conquest is not in our principles. It is inconsistent with our government.’ You seem to take the opposite point of view, father.”
“What do you want?”
“We know you are popular. We know confronting you with the Allegiance would be dangerous for
the country. So we offer a compromise. You get four more years. But we want you to publicly promise tonight, this very evening, that you will not run for re-election in 1908.”
Roosevelt took a step back as he’d been hit by a bullet himself. “You joke.”
“I’m afraid not, father. We will confront you if you don’t make the promise. It will be a bloody mess, for both you and the country, if the military has to act after you are confronted. You can spend the next four years enjoying your Presidency or defending it.”
“A lot can happen in four years,” Roosevelt said.
Alice nodded and hopped off the piano. “I know, father. But I also know you. I told the other Philosophers that if you gave your word, you would keep your word.”
A muscle rippled along the side of Roosevelt’s jaw.
Alice hooked her arm through his and propelled him toward the door. “Come. Let’s have you make the announcement, then join the party.” She paused just before the door and looked up at him. “After all, father, four more years; certainly enough time for you to enjoy the Presidency. And then you can go back to civilian life and enjoy your family. Correct?”
With those last bitter words she shoved open the doors to the waiting crowd, which cheered upon seeing the newly elected President.
Chapter Eleven
Lieutenant General Atticus Parker (US Air Force, retired) checked his watch once more and drummed his fingers on the arm of his chair. He glanced at the door to his office then turned his head and looked out the window, where he could see the rear of Independence Hall, a view he found appropriate in the gray of early dawn. Covering its six as they used to say when he flew fighters. He was seated in a room in Philosophical Hall on Fifth Street, on the same block as the more famous hall where the Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation and the United States Constitution were all signed. A pretty powerful trifecta of documents. In Parker’s opinion, the greatest political writing in the world, albeit a considerable amount of it borrowed by the Founding Fathers from other earlier writers, truth be known.
