Jim McGill 05 The Devil on the Doorstep

by Joseph Flynn

  That stumped Gabbi until she looked around her apartment.

  Which wasn’t really hers at all. Gianni owned the whole building. Her occupancy of the top two floors was a gift to her for being good to him when he was just a kid. For being cool, an artist in Paris. For helping him and his friends learn how to behave well with girls so they wouldn’t end up being lonely geeks.

  The scale of Gianni’s largesse was what hit home for Gabbi. Being given a wonderful place to live and to work was truly a grand gesture from Gabbi’s point of view, but for someone of Gianni’s wealth it was just a trifle. So what was a very large bribe to Lambert might have been spare change to the person doling it out.

  Just as it would be to her kid brother if she asked him to reimburse Lambert.

  Lunch came and Gabbi, by custom, sampled everything and sent her compliments to the chef. Once she was alone again she opened the envelope. She recognized the name she saw.

  Now, she was getting somewhere.

  The Oval Office

  McGill sat and watched Patti and Galia as they viewed Byron DeWitt’s interview with Elvie Fisk on the iPad Patti held, and listened to the audio recording of Senator Howard Hurlbert speaking in plain language about assassinating the president. Neither woman reacted audibly to either presentation. Both of them, though, showed a range of emotions on their faces: anger, contempt and fear.

  They were two hardened political pros, had been through eight political campaigns together, six runs for Patti’s old house seat and twice now for the presidency. They’d gone undefeated. That didn’t happen if you weren’t as tough as armored plate.

  Still, you heard a young girl speak of thousands of armed political zealots — traitors, as far as McGill was concerned — planning to show up bearing firearms at your inauguration and make their displeasure with you known to the world, you couldn’t be blamed for worrying. On top of that, you heard the man you beat to become president talk about killing you. The rational response would be alarm.

  Neither woman wept, lamented or rent her garments.

  Patti hit the stop button on the audio recorder and looked at McGill sitting on the loveseat opposite her. Galia, sitting to the president’s left, clearly had a multitude of thoughts racing through her mind, but she waited for the president and McGill to speak.

  “Recommendations, Jim?” the president asked.

  “Get the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff in here right away. Talk to the chief justice, right after that.”

  Galia felt the need to say, “The solicitor general should do that. He represents the government in matters before the Supreme Court.”

  McGill said, “All right, for the sake of form, do that. But the president should have a word in confidence with the chief justice. Let him know how grave the danger is here, that it’s no time for half-measures.”

  The president said, “I agree. We’ll make both the video and audio recordings available to the chief justice.”

  McGill wasn’t finished. “Have the FBI assign agents to watch Howard Hurlbert. Don’t let him slip out of the country. If the technical people can establish that Hurlbert’s words were not cut and pasted together, that he really meant what we heard him say, he should be arrested.”

  Galia took a deep breath, and both the president and McGill looked at her.

  She held up both hands to placate them.

  “I’m not saying he wouldn’t deserve that,” Galia said, “but before we have Hurlbert arrested, we have to get airtight proof he was conspiring to assassinate the president. The standard we’ll have to meet here is not just securing a guilty verdict in court, but demonstrating so clearly that Hurlbert is guilty that an overwhelming majority of the country will demand his head be taken off.”

  That was exactly the idea McGill had at the moment. He felt no need to wait for a trial, though, much less a verdict. For that matter, public opinion be damned. He neither shared nor intended to act on his feelings because he knew doing either thing would only make a bad situation worse for Patti and Galia.

  The president had shared enough confidences with her husband to guess what he was thinking. To a great degree she shared his sentiments, but she couldn’t act on them either. Not without destroying her presidency.

  “Galia’s right,” she said. “My one-vote margin in the Electoral College gives Hurlbert a small measure of insulation. If I had him arrested without having indisputable evidence, I’d look like a tyrant disposing of a rival.”

  Galia said, “Worse than that. You’d leave yourself open to accusations that Hurlbert knew you’d won the election by deceit or other criminal means. You had to lock him away in an attempt to shut him up or at least destroy his credibility.”

  McGill asked, “Is that what you’d do, Galia?”

  The chief of staff put a hand lightly on the president’s shoulder and said, “If someone tried to lock up my candidate without solid gold evidence, you’re damn right I would.”

  “Good to know,” McGill said.

  The president looked at her husband and her chief of staff. “I think it’s safe to assume that Senator Hurlbert wasn’t talking in his sleep when he spoke of killing me. He was in conversation with a co-conspirator. I think that’s where we start. Recreate his public movements since the election, find out with whom he’s been plotting.”

  “A good job for the FBI,” McGill said.

  “Agreed,” the president told him.

  Galia concurred.

  McGill said, “The FBI will also need to see who’s called on Hurlbert lately, at home or anywhere else he might have spent the night. In fact, I’d weigh any after-dark meetings more heavily than daylight get-togethers.”

  “Evil plans are hatched most often while good people sleep?” the president asked.

  McGill said, “Sounds melodramatic, but that’s been my experience. The big exception is a round of golf. Some guys come up with their craziest ideas on the links.”

  “I’ll mention your suggestions to Director Haskins,” the president said. “Do either of you have any idea, off the top of your heads, about who might have been conspiring with Hurlbert?”

  “I want to say Roger Michaelson,” McGill said, “only because the obvious answer is usually the right one. But that doesn’t feel right to me. When Michaelson and I played our little game of basketball, we beat each other black and blue, but he never threatened to sic his lawyers, the cops or anyone else on me. But maybe I’m wrong.” Looking at Galia, he added, “Can you find out if Michaelson and Hurlbert were buddies in the Senate cloak room?”

  The chief of staff nodded.

  The president then asked for Galia’s opinion.

  “I agree with Mr. McGill. I’d be very surprised if it were Michaelson.”

  “You have someone else in mind?”

  “Representative Philip Brock.”

  “Why him?”

  “Brock raised Michaelson’s name on Didi DiMarco’s show. A source told me that Brock might also have played a role in Michaelson being hired by WWN.”

  That was news to both the president and McGill.

  “Michaelson is back in town?” he asked.

  Galia nodded. She told the president, “On a normal day, I’d have told you by now, Madam President.”

  McGill thought about the new development.

  He said, “If Michaelson had stayed home in Oregon, he’d have a much lower profile. It would be much harder to pin anything on him. Having him here in Washington while this mess is playing out —”

  “Is more than just a bit convenient,” the president said.

  “A straw man set up only to be knocked down,” McGill agreed.

  Galia said, “Meanwhile, there’s Brock. He makes a speech in Virginia saying you didn’t steal the election, it only looked like you did. The he goes on Didi DiMarco’s show and says that was only a joke. He made a point of saying he doesn’t have any ambition to reach for a leadership position in the House caucus, but then he suggests a way for the Democrats to
form a majority coalition.”

  “You’re saying the guy’s slippery as an eel?” McGill asked.

  “I’m saying if he was the one talking treason with Howard Hurlbert, he’d have made sure to edit out his half of the conversation. The part that might reveal his asking leading questions.”

  “What would be the point of all these machinations, Galia?” the president asked.

  Galia told her, “Brock said on the DiMarco show that the True South members in the House would never work with the Democrats, and he’s right about that. But what better way would there be to get moderate Republicans to work with the Democrats than to discredit True South by making their founding father look like Lee Harvey Oswald. If Hurlbert were arrested, Congress would be in turmoil. Many members of True South would rebrand themselves under another name, but the chances are good that enough House Republicans would affiliate with the Democrats to prove they weren’t party to Hurlbert’s treason.”

  McGill agreed with Galia’s take on the situation and said, “That would make Brock look good, like he’d seen realignment coming before anyone else. He wouldn’t have to campaign for a leadership position, it would come to him.”

  The president said, “Howard Hurlbert doesn’t have Bobby Beckley to protect him anymore. Especially from his own worst instincts. I can see a sharp operator manipulating him.”

  The president lapsed into silence, keeping her thoughts to herself.

  Allowing Galia to fill the void.

  The chief of staff said, “There would be risks in having the FBI watch Brock, too. Congress would not be amused to learn of a president ordering the surreptitious monitoring of one of their own. Doing it to a senator and a representative, that would cause an uproar. True South and everyone else will howl, including your new Democratic colleagues, Madam President.”

  “But if Brock is behind Hurlbert’s treasonous ideas,” McGill said, “he can’t go unwatched.”

  The president found merit in both points of view. The FBI, she said, would run light surveillance on Brock with a large cast of different agents and only where he might be doing business, the Capitol or his House office building. They would pay special attention to any meeting he might have with Hurlbert.

  “That’s giving him a lot of leeway,” McGill said.

  “It’s also where Galia comes in.” The president turned to her chief of staff. “Your unofficial snoops will have to keep their eyes open for Brock in any public venue, the way Merilee Parker did in Virginia.”

  McGill said, “That helps but it’s still not dedicated surveillance.”

  “I know, Jim, but it’s what we can do for the moment. If we come into possession of something else akin to the audio recording of Hurlbert making his threats, we’ll step it up.”

  McGill nodded, accepting the political limits of the situation.

  He said, “If Brock is as smart as we think he might be, he could be watching for a reaction from us. He might be laying low already, just going about routine business. If he spots someone watching him, he won’t do anything incriminating. We want him to think he hasn’t even shown up on our radar.”

  Galia said, “Yes, but if he’s really so smart, would he buy that?”

  McGill said, “The one weakness smart bad guys have? They’re all too ready to underestimate the opposition. It makes them feel good to think the other guy is a dummy.”

  Galia conceded the point. “You’re right. That’s true in politics, too.”

  The president asked her husband, “When I speak with the chairman of the joint chiefs, how many battalions should I ask him to muster for the inauguration?”

  McGill said, “That’s best left to him, but frontline troops should be in the lead and they should be on the mall as soon as possible. Minutes after the chief justice issues an order forbidding anyone from bringing a firearm to the event. People who want a good spot at a public gathering stake out their places early. It’s much easier to control a crowd before it coheres than when it’s entrenched.”

  “I agree,” Galia said, “we’ll have to move quickly. With your permission, Madam President, I’ll go contact the solicitor general right now. We’ll need the chief justice to issue the no-firearms-on-the-Mall injunction before the military takes up its positions.”

  With a nod, the president gave her permission, and Galia left the president and McGill alone in the Oval Office. She looked at her husband, a personal question clearly on her mind, but she deferred it for the moment. Moved on to another point.

  The president told McGill, “Using the military domestically is a very sensitive issue. After 9/11, my predecessor’s attorney general wrote an opinion that it was the use of the military for law enforcement purposes that was prohibited not the performance of military functions such as fighting off terrorist attacks. Is that what you see happening here? A pitched battle at the scene of my public inauguration?”

  “Well,” McGill said, “what was it Elvie Fisk told the FBI? Ten thousand armed members of paramilitary extremist groups intend to take up a position close to the spot where you’ll take your oath of office. The local cops better not try to give them any shit unless they have them outnumbered and outgunned.”

  The president said, “That was one young girl talking, possibly repeating braggadocio.”

  “Can we take the chance she doesn’t have it exactly right?” McGill asked.

  “No,” the president said, “we can’t.”

  The two of them spent a silent moment looking at each other.

  The president came back to her personal question.

  “You seem quite content to have me delegate tasks to all the proper authorities, Jim, but I know you. You’re not an armchair general. What do you intend to do about all this?”

  McGill said, “I still have to help Yves Pruet. As to the bigger picture … I’ll find a way to keep busy.”

  They both knew he would tell her specifically what his intentions were, but only if she really wanted to know. Understanding that there were things a president — and a wife — were better off learning only after the fact. Patti nodded.

  She said to McGill, “You know the line of movie dialogue I’ve always hated most?”

  “Be careful?”

  “That’s it.”

  “Some things go without saying,” McGill said.

  Inspiration Hall — Washington, DC

  Ethan Winger, the FBI’s art consultant, was twenty-two years old, a prodigy and a dropout.

  He’d applied to Yale, been admitted and spent one semester there. All to please his mother, Bonnie. She’d not only raised him successfully but also tended to the manifold needs of Ethan’s father, Lawford. The elder Winger had taught painting in the fine arts program at the University of Iowa, his alma mater, in Iowa City, his hometown.

  Lawford’s talent, though, quickly outgrew his modest Midwestern roots.

  That was despite the U of I having a highly regarded fine arts department. It wasn’t, however, considered to be the equal of Yale’s program. New Haven boasted not only the number one fine arts department in the country but also the top painting faculty. After exhibiting work in New York, London and Paris, to glowing reviews, Lawford Winger was invited to join the gang at Yale.

  He asked for a week to consider the offer.

  He shared his reservations with Bonnie. “I don’t know if I’d be comfortable on the East Coast. We’re doing fine here. Iowa City would be a good place for Ethan to grow up.”

  Their child was then two years old and thriving.

  Bonnie, a sixth generation Iowan herself, said, “Okay.”

  Listening to the tone carrying the word, Lawford interpreted his wife’s response as, “Damn!”

  Bonnie had been Lawford’s first: nude model and lover.

  There was precious little he wouldn’t do for her.

  So he said, “Why don’t we drive out there just to see what we’ll be missing. Make a little vacation of it.”

  “Make me one deal,” Bonnie tol
d him. “If you see one person on that faculty who is even a notch better painter than you, you’ll take the job.”

  “With the understanding that once I surpass that uppity bastard we can come back home,” Lawford said.

  They agreed to each other’s terms and set out for New Haven the following week in their five-year-old Volvo, a car they’d bought with its reputation for safety in mind. In the fashion of artists and their models, though, they overlooked many of life’s mundane details. Such as checking to see whether the tires on their safe car should have been replaced.

  They were rolling east on U.S. 90 when a thunderstorm struck and the rain came down in torrents. The turnoff to highway 91 south, which would take them straight into New Haven, was no more than a mile or two ahead. Given the weather, though, they decided their best course was to spend the night right there in Chicopee, Massachusetts.

  Grateful that Ethan was managing to sleep through the storm in the backseat, Lawford strained to see the next exit sign through the blurred smear of his windshield. Bonnie, who’d been trying not to let her teeth chatter in fright, told her husband, “I think there’s something up there on the right. It’s not moving.”

  Lawford had been trying to look farther ahead. He brought his sight line down. Saw what Bonnie had pointed out. A vehicle sat on the shoulder just ahead. It looked to Lawford like he should be able to pass by cleanly from where he was in the right lane. Not wanting to take any chances, however, he thought the better idea would be to move to the left lane.

  He checked the driver’s side mirror to see if he could make the move safely.

  That was when Bonnie screamed.

  Lawford looked back to the road ahead. The vehicle that had been on the shoulder, a rental truck, had pulled onto the road. Lawford swerved left, hoping to get around it. But the truck angled into the left lane. Lawford cut the wheel back to the right. His tread-bare tires hit a pool of standing water on the highway and the Volvo hydroplaned.

  The car turned sideways and surfed along the highway for a hundred yards, before it came to a rise in the pavement and flipped. Over and over. Somehow it never collided with the truck that caused Lawford’s desperate attempt at evasion. The rescue crew found the Volvo resting on its roof and thought they had three dead on their hands.