Power and Empire

by Marc Cameron

  “As bad as the weather is, it would be nothing for a modern container ship to negotiate.” Ryan tapped the paper with his forefinger to underscore his point. “What caused this ship to sink?”

  “According to the Mandarin speaker, the crewmen are claiming a series of explosions.”

  Burgess couldn’t contain himself. “In the engine room?”

  “That’s unknown,” Forrestal said, before turning back to Ryan. “Nothing but WAGs so far, Mr. President.” Commander Forrestal had been around long enough to know that Ryan had enough information flying across his desk; he didn’t have time for Wild-Ass Guesses.

  “Very well,” Ryan said. “Keep us informed.”

  “Thank you, Mr. President.” Forrestal turned to go, but Ryan stopped him, calling him by his first name, to take the tone of the meeting down a notch.

  “Thank you, Robby,” the president said. “Didn’t your son have a football game last weekend?”

  The commander smiled. “He did, sir. Ran for a total of sixty-four yards.”

  “Not bad for an eleven-year-old in Pop Warner,” Ryan said. “Be careful, the Patriot scouts will be looking at him before he knows it.”

  “I’ll tell him you said that, sir,” Forrestal said, excusing himself with a broad grin. Not everyone got to pass on kudos to their kid from the President of the United States.

  Ryan turned back to his advisers once the door was shut.

  “A bomb?” Secretary Burgess said. “Diesel engines don’t usually explode.”

  Scott Adler gave a slow shake of his head. “That’s one possibility,” he said. “The explosion could very easily have been a reaction of some chemicals in one of the containers. We’ll have to look at the manifest. In any case, this incident creates another problem that piles on to the issues I mentioned regarding the FONOP. I’m happy the Coast Guard was so quick to respond, but our rescue of twenty-two Chinese seamen is just another thing to make President Zhao look weak. His ships can’t even make it to Seattle without the evil capitalists lending a hand . . .”

  “You know,” Mary Pat said, nodding, “it’s a poor state of affairs, but he’s right.”

  “Maybe,” Ryan said. “All of you get into this and see what you can find out regarding terror threats toward Chinese shipping.”

  “And specific threats toward us from the ChiComs,” Burgess added.

  “That too, Bob,” Ryan said. “Although I sincerely hope any specific threats would have floated to the top already.”

  Ryan stood to show the briefing was at an end. He was careful not to put any weight on his heel.

  Ryan waited for everyone, including Arnie van Damm, to file out and their respective doors to close behind them before he hobbled toward his desk. He’d nearly made it when Mary Pat stuck her head back inside.

  “I saw you limping, Jack,” she said, affecting the motherly voice she’d used on him when they were in the CIA together. MP was one of an extremely close cohort who still addressed him by his given name—but even she rarely did it in the Oval Office. She opened her hand to reveal a golf ball with the presidential seal in her open palm. “I got this from the stash of tchotchkes Betty gives out to visitors when they can’t get in to see you. Ed had a bout with plantar fasciitis a couple years ago. It’s nothing to be ashamed of.”

  Ryan leaned back in his chair, his eyebrows raised.

  “Getting old isn’t for wusses,” he said.

  “You’re not a wuss,” Mary Pat said. “You’re an invalid.”

  Ryan sighed again. “Yeah, well, don’t spread that around. Press gets word I have a toothache and the markets drop fifty points.”

  “I will treat your condition as highly classified,” Mary Pat said, and then tossed him the ball. “You’re supposed to take off your shoe and roll this around under the arch of your foot. It works wonders.”

  Ryan looked back and forth from the golf ball to his aching foot.

  “Well,” Mary Pat said, glancing at her watch, “my boss expects me to get some work done today. I’ll leave you to your rehab.”

  • • •

  Alone again, Ryan glanced at the paper copy of his schedule on the center of his desk. It was not uncommon for the document to be vague, as the President’s daily schedule was posted on the White House website. Betty or Arnie usually added a little handwritten commentary for him in the margins of his copy. This morning, his nine o’clock simply said: Meeting.

  He’d just pressed his intercom when the door opened and his secretary stuck her head in. The woman’s prescience really did border on a superpower.

  “What’s next, Betty?”

  “Special Agent Montgomery, Mr. President, the new special agent in charge of your protection detail. He asked for five minutes to introduce himself.”

  Grouchy from the pain in his heel, Ryan dropped the golf ball on the carpet and began to roll it around under his foot. “I liked Joe,” he muttered. “We got along well. He was good at his job. Why couldn’t they just leave me Joe?” Ryan glanced up at his secretary’s passive face. It was the closest she would ever come to chastising him—even when he deserved it.

  “Lovely dress, Betty,” he said, by way of apology for his sulking.

  “Thank you, Mr. President,” she said. “Special Agent O’Hearn will do a fine job as deputy director.” She raised her eyebrows and tilted her head like a mom, telling him to give the liver and onions a chance. “This Montgomery fellow seems like a very nice man.”

  “Send him in,” Ryan said.

  Betty placed a file folder in the center of Ryan’s desk and excused herself with a benign smile.

  Prepared by the Secret Service, the folder contained the new agent’s photo, work history, and biography. Ryan had asked them to include his detail agents’ shooting scores and short bios of their families as well. It was the analyst in him. He’d already read Montgomery’s file but left his copy in the residence on the mile-high stack of briefs, budgets, and political ballyhoo he had to read every day along with the PDB.

  Special Agent in Charge Gary Montgomery stepped in a moment later, wearing an expensive gray wool suit. His charcoal-colored hair was cut neat and short, just long enough to part. Ryan smiled. Everyone got a haircut and bought a new suit for their first meeting in this office—if they had the time. He remembered his first time in the Oval and shuddered a little.

  Ryan guessed the agent at around six-three and well over two hundred pounds—with the ferocious look and thick neck of a guy you’d want protecting you when the shit hit the fan. People in the private sector—and even other countries—tended to hire their bodyguards by the pound, but the U.S. Secret Service was different. The agency understood that big didn’t necessarily mean competent.

  Ryan had been around long enough to know that at some point in their careers, virtually all agents in the Secret Service had to punch their tickets by working on some kind of protection; the best were assigned to PPD—Presidential Protection Detail. But even those assignments could range from any one of a variety of positions—advance agent scouting locations prior to the President’s arrival, outer perimeter, countersurveillance, or lowly post-stander at any of dozens of doors at any given venue.

  While Ryan respected the entire agency, the SAIC and the principal detail agents who worked within arm’s reach—“inside the bubble,” they called it—were the best of the best. PPD agents didn’t have to be large in stature—but they did have to be extremely good at their job. From all accounts, Gary Montgomery was both. It said something about the man that he now stood in Ryan’s office with a gun under his suitcoat. Not many people in the world got to do that. The file said his range scores were near perfect with both his SIG Sauer pistol and the MP5 SMG. There was a lightness to the way he stood, with his large hands hanging easily at his sides, as if he knew right where they were if he needed them. The bio said he’d boxed at the Univer
sity of Michigan, so it made sense that he would be self-assured. Still, it would take months to develop the relationship Ryan had with Joe O’Hearn. And the level of understanding shared between him and Andrea Price-O’Day—forget about it.

  “Welcome to the Big Show,” Ryan said, referring to what the agents themselves called PPD. His eyes narrowed as he studied the new addition to his detail. “We’ve met before . . .”

  Montgomery possessed a disarming smile for such a ferocious-looking man. “I was warned you had an incredible memory, Mr. President.”

  “So we have met?”

  “Not officially,” Montgomery said. “I served as whip of the VP detail shortly after Special Agent Price-O’Day became SAIC on yours.”

  Ryan sighed. Andrea Price-O’Day was one tough human being. She’d picked him up and dusted him off—both figuratively and literally—during his first moments as President. That was what? A million years ago? Not many agents in the Secret Service could say they’d gotten a field promotion from the President to lead PPD—but then, considering the carnage that had led up to that promotion, no one wanted that kind of bragging rights. The longtime agent in charge of his detail, Andrea had retired after injuries sustained protecting him in Mexico City. Ryan was sure Montgomery knew the story.

  “The VP detail?” Ryan mused, instead of boring the agent with bloody memories. “The Little Show with free parking.” The Naval Observatory, home to the VPOTUS, offered agents a place to park—something not available to them at the White House.

  “You know your Secret Service culture, sir,” Montgomery said.

  “Just enough to get me in trouble.” Ryan closed the file folder. “Welcome aboard, Gary.”

  “Thank you, Mr. President,” Montgomery said. “I thought I should stop by and introduce myself before I get started in case you had any questions.”

  “You’re not handling the Tokyo advance for the G20?” Ryan asked.

  “No, sir,” Montgomery said. “I’ve assigned Assistant Special Agent in Charge Flynn. I thought it more important I stay here and get my feet planted firmly in the detail. It allows me to get to know you and your idiosyncrasies so that I can better prot—”

  Ryan’s head snapped up. “I have idiosyncrasies?”

  “You do, sir,” Montgomery said.

  “Name one.”

  Montgomery’s hands hung still and relaxed. He cocked his head to one side. If he was nervous, he didn’t show it.

  “For starters,” he said. “You test your agents.”

  “This isn’t a test.”

  “Of course not, Mr. President.”

  Ryan smiled in spite of the pain in his foot. This guy was direct. Direct was good. “Well, maybe it is a test, but it’s a good-natured test. I’m sure we’ll get to know one another well enough.”

  “Very well,” Montgomery said, taking that as a dismissal. He paused at the door to the secretaries’ office, then shook his head as if thinking better of something. At least he’d picked the right door; agents had been known to walk into the personal study. “I beg your pardon, Mr. President, but I happened to overhear DNI Foley mention that you might have a bout of plantar fasciitis going on. I don’t know if you are aware of this, sir, but that particular malady is also known as ‘policeman’s foot.’ Protective agents are on our feet for long hours, standing post and whatnot. I feel your pain, Mr. President, and I have some tried-and-true remedies if you’re interested.”

  Ryan thought for a moment, then motioned to the leather chairs in front of the Resolute desk and leaned forward, all ears.

  This Montgomery guy might work out after all.

  7

  THREE HOURS EARLIER

  Magdalena Rojas leaned her head against the window in the backseat of her pimp’s Chrysler 300 sedan and wondered if tonight might possibly be the beginning of a different chapter in her life.

  She was a small thing, bony at the knees and elbows, and not quite five feet tall. Parrot wanted his girls to look nice, so he gave her plenty of makeup and a brush when she needed to tame her wayward black hair. Even that was thinner than it had been. Others might not be able to tell, but she could. She’d been beautiful once. Her father had told her so when she was little. Other men in her home country used to say it all the time—and mean it. But the men she went with now hardly even took the time to speak. Some of them were scared of her. Those were the worst. They had to hurt her to be real men.

  Magdalena could not understand how a grown man could be so frightened of a thirteen-year-old girl.

  She touched the outline of the item in the pocket of her nylon gym shorts and felt a flicker of hope. It had been so long since she’d possessed any hope at all that even a hint of the emotion caused a deep and abiding pain in her chest.

  Parrot wasn’t driving. He’d gone ahead in a different vehicle. That was something. His long dreads made him look like the Predator from the movies and he had to be one of the meanest pimps in the known universe—at least that’s what Blanca said, and she was his favorite. And because she was his favorite, he’d chopped the shit out of her when she pissed him off—that’s what he called a whipping, getting chopped.

  Didn’t nobody wanna get chopped by Parrot.

  Magdalena had nearly fainted when she saw how bad he’d hurt his favorite, especially considering what she now carried hidden in her pocket. But Parrot had decided to let Reggie drive the girls home because he looked more like a college kid than a pimp and the cops wouldn’t hassle him so much. Reggie might have looked like a college kid, but he was almost as mean as Parrot. He was just sneakier about it.

  The Chrysler’s leather seats were freezing and Magdalena wanted to ask Reggie to turn up the heat. It was cold outside and Parrot hadn’t told them they’d be going all the way south of Dallas, so she’d worn only her usual gym shorts and tank top. Reggie kept looking at her in the rearview mirror and licking his lips, so she decided to put up with the cold.

  She’d hoped to see some stars on the drive back home, but Parrot told Reggie to stay in the city where the lights were bright and there was more traffic so the car would blend in. It was better for all of them, the pimp told Magdalena, because if he or Reggie got arrested, then they’d all get arrested. That’s the way cops did things in the United States. They arrested you and put you in with other whores who might have a sharpened toothbrush with them. He said those whores would stab you in the eye because they thought you looked more beautiful than they did. Parrot was mean, but Magdalena believed him because she’d seen girls who’d been stabbed in jail. They weren’t beautiful anymore, but she thought they probably had been, once.

  She gave up on seeing any stars and let her head loll to the side so she could check on Blanca.

  Her friend lay in the seat next to her, asleep now but breathing fitfully. She wasn’t much bigger than Magdalena, and one of her johns had gotten rough tonight and dislocated her shoulder. She’d bitten the man and Parrot had chopped her with the buckle end of his belt—probably broken some ribs to go along with her shoulder. That was how he taught them. Sleep in too long—feel the belt. Catch the clap from some guy for doing your job—get a couple shots of antibiotics, then get chopped because Parrot was pissed you let yourself get sick. Magdalena had gotten used to the sound of the last few inches of leather slithering out of the loops on the bastard’s jeans. Sure, the beat-downs left marks, but some men even got turned on by a few bruises. The doctor who gave them their shots sure as shit didn’t care.

  And anyway, the doc was in on it, just like Reggie, the guy who looked like a college kid.

  Reggie had offered to let Magdalena sit up front with him tonight and even choose the radio station. She’d declined, saying she wanted to rest—but no amount of rest was enough for the work she had to do at the bar tomorrow and the next day . . . and the day after that.

  She looked at the sleeping girl beside her and shook her he
ad. Pobrecita, poor little thing. Blanca had fallen into this life accidentally. She deserved pity. Magdalena was different. She had chosen this life—or, at least, that’s what her mother told her.

  • • •

  Jacó, Costa Rica, sprawled across the lap of the jungle-covered Talamanca Mountains at the mouth of the Gulf of Nicoya, faces the open waters of the Pacific. The picturesque village is famous for three things: incredible surfing, expatriate norteamericanos, and legal prostitution.

  For most of his adult life, Miguel Rojas ran a small zip-line business that catered to affluent tourists. It did not make him wealthy, but Miguel could support his family and still have time to walk along the beach with his three daughters, including his favorite, Magdalena—until the cable parted and sent him plunging into the deep jungle gorge below. Miguel had not died immediately. There were many medical expenses, as well as the eventual cost of the funeral. His wife’s job cleaning rooms at the Hotel Cocal & Casino was not enough to cover the crushing weight of it all.

  A month after the funeral, Magdalena’s mother sat her down and explained to her that as the eldest of the three Rojas daughters, it fell to Magdalena to “open her kitchen,” so the family could pay its debts and her younger sisters could continue to go to school.

  Prostitution was not only legal in Jacó, but culturally sanctioned. Procreation recreation was, in fact, one of the driving forces of the local economy. Internet travel sites extolled the beauty and variety of the surfing and the young women. Cocaine was plentiful, as was rampant theft and street crime, but there was also good food, dancing, copious amounts of liquor, and hundreds of girls who worked the restaurants, clubs, and bars—without scary pimps looking over their shoulders.

  These working girls made enough money during the tourist season that they had savings to spend during the lull, buying food, shopping for clothing, eating at local cafés, until the surfers—or men with more sinister motives—returned to the village. A girl who worked hard and didn’t get played into lowering her prices for handsome but hard-luck beach boys could make enough money to support a family and have a few nice things of her own.