by Stuart Woods
“Why do we need to be armed to go to the White House?” Stone said. “They’ll just take them away from us as soon as we get there.”
“Just leave them in the glove compartment,” Dino said. “Is there anything else in there?”
Stone removed a thick black envelope and pulled a tab that broke the seal. v we the sHe shook out the contents onto the glove box door and looked at the four plastic cards that came out.
“Okay, we’ve got two White House passes marked ‘Staff,’ and two wallets with CIA ID cards.” He handed one of each to Dino, who examined them.
“Looks like we clip the White House passes to our lapels. What do we do with the CIA IDs?”
“I don’t know. They’ve never given us those before,” Stone replied.
Dino clipped the White House pass to his lapel, stuck the CIA wallet in his inside pocket, and started the car. “Oh,” he said, “here’s the map from the door pocket. Keep me out of trouble.”
Stone opened the map and found Manassas, then found the White House. “First,” he said, “drive out the gate.”
Dino did so, and a minute or two later they were driving north on the interstate. “Hey,” he said, “I forgot to ask where we’re staying.”
“At the Hay-Adams,” Stone said. “Sixteenth and H Streets.”
“And how do I get there?”
“It’s across Lafayette Park from the White House.”
“And how do I get there?”
Stone consulted the map. “Straight ahead. I’ll let you know when to turn. This is your local knowledge?”
“Right. You give me directions,” Dino said, “and my local knowledge wi
ll get you there.”
3
THEY CHECKED IN, AND A BELLMAN TOOK THEM TO THE TOP floor of the hotel, thence to a pair of double doors.
“We need two doors?” Dino asked.
The bellman opened the door, and they walked into a large sitting room. Stone gave the bellman a fifty. “His room is the worst one,” he said, indicating Dino.
“They’re both very nice,” the bellman said, hesitating.
“How about the smallest bathroom?” Stone asked.
“Once again, both very nice.”
“Okay,” Stone said, pointing to the door on his right, “put my bags in that one.”
Dino went and opened the door to his room. “Can we manage this on five hundred per diem?”
Stone shook his head. “I’m splurging. It’s the first time I’ve spent any of Arrington’s bequest. You can chip in half your per diem.”
“Deal,” Dino said, walking into his room. The bellman followed with his bags.
Stone went into his room, unpacked his bags, and put things in dresser drawers. He grabbed a handful of things on hangers and gave them to the bellman. “Pressed and back in an hour?”
“Better make it an hour and a half,” the man said. “You’ve got a lot of stuff here.”
Dino added some things to his burden, and the man left. Dino walked over to a set of French doors and opened them. “Wow,” he said.
“Wow what?”
“Come out here and look at this.”
Stone walked out and found himself on a terrace, nicely furnished. Then he looked out over op|Lafayette Park and saw the White House, neatly framed by trees. “Wow,” he said.
“How much are you paying for this?” Dino asked.
“I don’t want to know,” Stone said. “I never again want to know how much anything costs.”
“Let’s keep this gig going as long as we can,” Dino said. “How about some lunch on our terrace?”
They ordered from room service and were soon sitting on their terrace, allowing the air-conditioning to waft through the French doors to combat the August heat in Washington. They ate, and stared at the White House.
“There are people on the roof,” Stone said.
“Well-armed people, no doubt,” Dino replied, popping a French fry into his mouth. “And I’ll bet those box things conceal ground-to-air missiles.”
“Don’t do anything threatening,” Stone said. “They could put one right through the French doors.”
“You still have no idea why we’re here?” Dino asked.
“I haven’t received any messages from the ether,” Stone replied.
STONE WAS STRETCHED OUT on his bed, watching MSNBC on the large flat-screen TV, when the bellman returned with his clothes and hung them in the closet.
“I hope you’ll be very comfortable here,” the man said, doing the bellman shuffle.
Stone gave him a twenty. “We’ll struggle through,” he said.
“Just let me know if you need anything at all, Mr. Barrington.” The man left, taking the room service table with him.
Stone drifted off, and Holly came into his head. He was caressing her ass when Dino rapped on the doorjamb.
“We’re due over at the neighbors’ house in an hour,” he said. “You’d better shake your ass.”
Stone reflected that that was what Holly had been doing when he had last imagined her. “Right,” he said, putting his feet on the floor. “I’ll grab a shower.” He did so, freshened his shave, and got into clean clothes.
THE VALET BROUGHT THE SUV under the hotel portico, and Stone walked around it once. The license plate contained only a four-digit number, 4340, and there were no manufacturer’s badges on the car, just black paint. He checked out the door locks as he got into the passenger seat. “All the locks are beefy,” he said as Dino got in. “And I’d be willing to bet that this is one of Mike Newman’s armored vehicles. The Agency is one of his clients.” Mike Newman was the CEO of Strategic Services, Stone’s biggest client, on whose board he served.
“That makes me nervous,” Dino said, closing his door. He looked at the key in his hand and pressed a button on it. The car started. “That makes me nervous, too. You think they think somebody’s going to shoot at us or put a bomb in the car?”
“It’s the CIA, Dino,” Stone replied. “It’s probably all they had.”
They made their way to Pennsylvania Avenue. “Which gate do we use?” Dino asked.
“There,” Stone said, pointing. “That’s the one you see in the movies all the time.”
Dino swung into the drive and stoppiv>ve and ed at the gate. Two uniformed officers wearing Secret Service badges approached, one on each side. Stone and Dino presented their White House IDs.
“Names?” an officer asked.
“Barrington and Bacchetti,” Dino replied. “Sounds like a delicatessen, doesn’t it?”
The officer maintained a stone face as he checked a clipboard. “Right, Mr. Barrington,” he said.
“Bacchetti,” Dino corrected him.
“Right. Straight ahead, under the portico. Somebody will meet you.”
The gate opened and Dino drove through.
“Slowly,” Stone said. “I want to take this in.”
“It’s not our first time here, you know.” They had attended a White House dinner a couple of years before.
“I know, but I didn’t take it all in that time.”
Dino pulled to a stop under the portico, and a man on each side of the car opened the doors. One of them drove the car away, and the other opened the door to the building. They presented their IDs at a reception desk, and the young man who had opened the door led them down a hallway until they came to an elevator. When they got in, he pressed an unmarked button and stepped out of the car. “You’ll be met,” he said.
The elevator rose; Stone couldn’t be sure how far. He didn’t know the car had stopped until the doors opened. They stepped into a broad hallway, and a man in a dark suit with a small badge of some sort on his lapel waved them to a sofa against the wall. “Please be seated. Someone will come for you shortly.”
They sat. A little way down the hall another Secret Service agent stood at a loose parade rest before a large door.
They had been on the sofa for perhaps five minutes when the elevator door opened, a
nd the first lady of the United States stepped out, followed closely by Holly Barker. The first lady was also the director of Central Intelligence, Katharine Rule Lee, and it had taken an act of Congress to overlook the inconvenience that nepotism had been involved in her appointment.
“Mr. Barrington, Lieutenant Bacchetti,” the director said, walking over and extending her hand. “It’s good to see you both again.”
They had already leapt to their feet to renew their acquaintance, previously made at the White House dinner.
Mrs. Lee led the way down the hall to the guarded door, which was opened for her by the Secret Service agent. “Come in,” she said, sweeping into a large, handsomely furnished living room. “The president is on his way back from the West Coast and will be here in time for dinner. In the meantime, what would you like to drink?”
“Mr. Barrington will have a Knob Creek on the rocks,” Holly said to a man in a white jacket, “and Lieutenant Bacchetti will have a Johnnie Walker Black the same way.”
“I see you’ve been drinking wit
h them,” the first lady observed.
4
STONE SIPPED HIS DRINK SLOWLY AND HAD A LOOK AROUND. IT was the living room of an upper-class American family, complete with good paintings and family photographs in silver frames on the grand piano. He wondered when somebody would get around to why he and Dino were there.
“I understand you’re now a partner at Woodman and Weld,” the first lady said.
“For about a year,” Stone replied. “For a long time previously I was of counsel to the firm, and I worked from my home office. I still do.”
“What sort of clients do you work for?” she asked.
“My largest client is Strategic Services,” he said.
“I know them, of course.”
“I also serve on their board.”
“Mike Newman is a good man,” she said. “Almost as good as his predecessor.”
Stone was about to agree when the door opened, and the president of the United States breezed in, followed by a man carrying his luggage. “Good evening, all,” he said.
Everyone but his wife leapt to their feet and made the appropriate greetings.
“You’re early,” his wife said.
“Not inconveniently so, I hope. Will you all excuse me while I get out of this suit?” Without waiting for a reply, he walked into another room and closed the door behind him.
Mrs. Lee looked at her watch. “They must have had a hell of a tailwind,” she said.
“West to east will do that for you,” Stone observed. “It’s tougher going the other way.”
“Oh, that’s right, you’re a pilot, and I understand you’ve moved up to a jet. We will want to hear about that.”
“Of course,” Stone replied.
“We may as well wait until he’s back before I brief you.”
Stone nodded. He was nursing his drink, wanting a clear head for this meeting, whatever it was about.
The president came back wearing a cardigan sweater, and the butler was waiting for him with a drink. He collapsed in a large armchair that Stone had avoided, correctly guessing it had a regular occupant.
“How was your flight down?” he asked Stone.
“Uneventful, Mr. President.”
“At home, we like to be called Kate and Will,” the president said. “Uneventful is the best kind. I miss flying. The Secret Service won’t let me, you know. They can’t get a team of a dozen agents onto my Malibu, and the required jet fighter team wouldn’t be able to fly slowly enough to escort me.”
“I can see the problem.”
“I’m out of here in another eighteen months, though, and I’ve sworn to fly home to Georgia in my own airplane. Fuck the Secret Service and the Air Force.”
Stone laughed. “Only you can get away with that.”
“Will,” his wife said, “I think I’d better get to why Mr. Barrington and Lieutenant Bacchetti are our guests this evening.”
“Of course, my love, go ahead.”
“Please,” Stone said, “it’s Stone and Dino.”
She smiled, then continued. “Stone and Dino, you may recall that a year ago there was a murder on the grounds of the White House.”
“I remember hearing about it on the news. The husband took his own life shortly thereafter, and was blamed for the killing.”
“That is correct. Her name was Mimi Kendrick, and her husband was Brixton Kendrick. She was my social secretary, and he was, in effect, the manager of the White House, in charge of the physical plant and the office arrangements.”
Stone made a note of the names.
“The problem is,” the first lady said, “Will and I don’t believe Brix killed his wife.”
“Oh?”
She shook her head. “The investigation was, to Will’s and my mind, inconclusive. Because the Kendricks were federal employees on what, in effect, is a government reservation, the D.C. police were not involved. The FBI and the Secret Service conducted the investigation. Secret Service personnel are not trained as detectives, and it’s my own belief, perhaps colored by my association with the CIA, that FBI agents are not awfully good at investigating homicides, either.” She looked at her nails. “It’s possible that the White House staff were too willing to accept the Bureau’s conclusions, given the proximity of the midterm elections. Will didn’t want a stink, either, and I, in my position, was not about to publicly criticize the Bureau.”
“I understand,” Stone said.
Will Lee spoke up. “I’m a lame-duck president now, and I don’t really give too much of a damn about stepping on bureaucratic toes or contradicting the wise. I want to know, both for the sake of justice and for my own satisfaction, what actually occurred, and if there is a responsible person still out there, I want to see him tried and convicted.”
The first lady cleared her throat. “Holly suggested that, because of your current status with the NYPD, Dino, and because you, Stone, are a retired homicide detective, and because you are both under contract to the Agency, you two might be best qualified to review the investigation quietly and draw conclusions.”
“I see,” Stone replied.
“We’d be glad to do that,” Dino said. “Will we have access to the FBI’s file on the case?”
She handed Dino a briefcase that was resting against her chair. “Everything’s in here,” she said. “The Secret Service file, too. Take it all with you after dinner.”
“Anybody want another drink before we dine?” the president asked.
Everyone demurred.
“Good, I’m hungry.”
Stone noticed that dinner had not been announced, but as soon as the president was seated, food began magically arriving. They dined on a rib roast of beef, rice, and green beans, and a bottle of good California Cabernet.
THEY STAYED FOR A quick brandy after dinner, then the president rose, signaling their imminent departure. “Do you have any questions?” he asked Stone and Dino.
“Not at the moment, Mr. Pr—Will. Whom should we contact when we do?”
The first lady spoke up. “Call Holly first, and if she doesn’t satisfy you, call me at my office. My secretary will know your names. If we need to meet again, we’ll do it here. In the meantime, the White House staff will be apprised of your identities, and you may prowl around with an escort appointed by the chief of staff, Tim Coleman. Just call him, if you need to.”
Stone and Dino said their good-byes, and Holly left with them.
When they were in the eleinoe in thvator, Stone asked, “Holly, what have you gotten us into?”
“After you’ve read the file, you can tell me,” she replied. “Where did you choose to stay?”
“At the Hay-Adams.”
“Nice. Are you sharing a room?”
“No, Dino has his own accommodations.”
“Good, then you may invite me back for a drink,” she said. “I’ll drive myself and meet you there.”
The elevator doors opened, and the
y w
ere escorted back to the entrance, where their cars awaited.
5
STONE AND DINO GOT OUT OF THEIR SINISTER SUV AT THE Hay-Adams, and Holly pulled in behind them. Stone turned to Dino. “Go to your room,” he said.
“Yes, Poppa, and be sure to close your door so I can’t hear your pitiful cries.”
Stone opened the car door for Holly and told the valet to put it on his tab.
“Where’s Dino?” Holly asked.
“He’s been sent to his room.”
“Oh, good.”
Stone led her to the elevator and thence to the suite.
“My goodness,” Holly said, “is the Agency paying for this?”
“Only to the extent of your miserable per diem,” Stone replied. “Drink?”
“Oh, yes; brandy, please.”
Stone poured them each one from the generous bar on the sideboard, and they sat down on the sofa, with the sight of the brightly lit White House through the French doors in the distance. Dino’s door was tightly shut.
Holly set down her glass, took Stone’s face in her hands, and kissed him firmly, then she picked up her glass again and took a sip. “I want to tell you some things,” she said. “Personal things.”
“All right,” Stone said, not sure where this was leading.
“I know, perhaps better than anyone else, what you’ve been going through since Arrington’s death.”
Stone said nothing.
“You’ll remember, since you were a witness to his murder during that bank robbery, that the love of my life, Jackson Oxenhand-ler, was taken from me in much the same way that Arrington was taken from you.”
“Yes, I remember.”
“I remember what I went through during the months that followed. I remember the dreams I had, the yearnings that could not be fulfilled, the pain, the constant pain. The pain, by the way, lessens after a while, then goes away.”
