The President's Henchman

by Joseph Flynn

  A tight smile graced Chana Lochlan’s face. “Tore her a new one, did you?” And when McGill didn’t respond, she added, “Good. Wish I’d been there.”

  “The point is, the confidentiality I promised has been compromised, at least to some degree. You might want to find another investigator.”

  Chana shook her head.

  “You don’t know how hard it was for me to come to you. The only reason I did … well, I thought …” She wiped her forehead again with the towel. “It’s hard to be the objective journalist here, but I thought it was great, what you did for the president.”

  “What I did,” McGill said in a quiet voice, “was fail her terribly.”

  “I’m not overlooking that. But you didn’t let that stop you; that’s what impresses me. You set things right in the end.”

  Tell that to Andy Grant, McGill thought, but he didn’t say anything.

  He jumped, though, when Chana Lochlan put her hand on his.

  “Sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you,” she said with a grin. Then her face became sober, and she added, “I didn’t mean to bum you out, either. I just wanted to say I thought you’d be the one to get the job done for me. I still do.”

  McGill gently withdrew his hand. “Thank you.”

  She stood up. “I’ll go get the list and the bio for you now. We’ll both be more careful from now on. Especially about the list, okay?”

  McGill agreed and watched her go.

  The bio would be a standard capsulization of Chana Lochlan’s life, suitable for family reading, PR-department-approved. The list, though, would give the names of all of Chana Lochlan’s lovers. She and McGill had discussed the subject at his office. If a stranger knew her body and her sexual partialities, then he must have learned them from someone with firsthand knowledge. Someone who’d been there and done that.

  McGill took his reading material back to the office, where he could lock it in his wall safe. First, though, he and Sweetie pored over the life and times of a media celebrity, scanned the lovers’ list, and shared their first impressions.

  “Ms. Lochlan became sexually active at eighteen,” McGill recapitulated, “and by her present age of thirty-five, she’s had fourteen lovers.”

  “Take out the three years she was married, and it works out to about one new man per year,” Sweetie said.

  “Not willing or able to make a long-term commitment. One of the two.”

  Sweetie looked pensive.

  “What?” McGill asked.

  “It’s too neat. A straight-line progression: new year, new man. No repeat customers. We have a good-looking, successful, well-paid woman here. She didn’t impress any of these Romeos enough to make him clamor for a second chance? None of them meant enough to her to call him some night when she was lonely?”

  McGill said, “Does seem strange.”

  He hadn’t thought of it, he guessed, because he’d had only three lovers in his forty-six years. Might not seem like a lot, certainly not a number to brag about, but he liked to think it was because each time he’d made a terrific choice, been lucky enough to find a woman with whom he might have gone the distance.

  He certainly intended to go the distance with Patti.

  “You’re thinking maybe Ms. Lochlan left a name or two off her list,” McGill said to Sweetie. “Someone who means more to her than just a new calendar boy.”

  “Yeah … or we’re a couple of fuddy-duddies completely out of touch with the sexual cravings of the modern career woman.”

  Unable to reach a conclusion on that point, McGill told Sweetie about Galia knowing who his first client was.

  “The more I think about it, the more I think she got the scoop from someone at World Wide News. I don’t see her having a crew break in here and wire us for sound. Too Nixonian.”

  “Let’s hope so, or the ‘Chana Lochlan’s Lovers’ story could be all over the Enquirer.”

  “I’m going to have someone come in to check for bugs, just to be sure.”

  “No, I’ll do it. We’ll keep a lower profile that way.”

  McGill said thanks, then told Sweetie about his conversation with Celsus Crogher that morning. Sweetie’s face got very hard.

  “What are you going to do?” she asked.

  “Deke suggested reinforcing Barbara Sullivan’s people with Secret Service personnel.”

  “Yeah, that’d be the first thing he’d think of.”

  “I was thinking of asking you to go see how things look. The kids love you.”

  Sweetie nodded. She felt the same way about McGill’s children.

  “You want me to go now?”

  “Barb’s going to call me tonight. I’ll let you know tomorrow.”

  “No, I’ll go as soon as I can get a flight. I’m supposed to see an apartment at lunchtime, but I’ll blow that off.” Sweetie had been living in a hotel for months.

  “Go look at the apartment. I’ll get you on a midafternoon flight. People are happy to do me favors. You’d think I was someone special.”

  McGill and Deke had lunch on a bench at the National Mall. Leo ate in the car. It was McGill’s treat, kosher dogs, fries, and soft drinks all around. The Mall was McGill’s favorite place in town, but then it was easy to like a national treasure. Some critics complained that too many monuments were forcing their way onto the Mall, and McGill could see the time coming when the word would have to be given: Sorry, full up.

  Maybe it would even fall to Patti to be the hardnose who had to do it.

  For all its museums and memorials, the Mall was also a place simply to enjoy being outside on a sunny day. People tossed Frisbees on the grass or played lunchtime soccer. Mothers pushed children in strollers, guides gave bicycle tours, and everybody from tourists, to office workers, to formations of Marines chanting in cadence, jogged along the pathways.

  And the parking on adjacent Jefferson and Madison Drives was free.

  McGill said to Deke, “Great place.”

  The special agent nodded, as he ceaselessly scanned their surroundings. He said, “Some people come here and just smile. Others cry. But for the same reason.”

  “It reaffirms their faith that we can accomplish great things?” McGill asked.

  Deke was about to answer when he suddenly looked toward Third Street, just west of the Capitol. Something had caught his eye, and he reached under his suit coat for his Uzi. McGill quickly got to his feet and turned to see what was the matter.

  What he saw was a naked woman with long blond hair astride a white horse. The woman had the horse moving in their general direction at a trot. Deke had his weapon out now, but his finger was not yet on the trigger. Off target, off trigger.

  McGill said, “I don’t think she’s carrying any concealed weapons.”

  Deke didn’t respond. He just kept watching. As did everyone else on the Mall. Reminded McGill of a scene from the old science-fiction movie, The Day the Earth Stood Still, when a flying saucer landed on the Mall. A spaceman with a giant robot or a naked woman on a horse, they were both showstoppers.

  Then a scrum of rugby players wearing Georgetown T-shirts decided that the au naturelle equestrienne was a prize worth capturing. They ran after her, but the rider saw them coming and urged her mount to a gallop. McGill and Deke watched as she charged by.

  Then Deke looked around, suspecting that the woman might have been a diversion for other malefactors. But none was to be found. And now people were looking at the man with the automatic weapon in his hands. He tucked it back under his coat before anyone got too alarmed.

  “You had enough excitement?” he asked McGill.

  “You think she’ll do an encore?”

  “I can’t believe she did it at all.”

  Both men looked to the west. As the rider reached Seventh Street, she brought her mount smartly about and rode it into a waiting horse trailer. A man wearing a baseball cap and sunglasses closed the doors behind the woman and the horse and quickly drove off.

  “You don’t know her,
do you?” McGill asked Deke.

  He nodded. “Yeah, I do. Never saw her like that, but she used to date a guy I know.”

  “What does she do? Some kind of exotic entertainment?”

  Deke looked at McGill. “She’s the chief legislative aide to the Minority Leader of the House of Representatives.”

  “Oh,” McGill said. Then he added, “Glad she’s not a member of the president’s party.”

  Chapter 8

  Damon Todd was drawing stares. Not that there was anything special about his size: five-foot-ten, 180. His dark brown hair was cut short and brushed forward. His eyes were gray-blue and restless. His nose was strong and straight. His lips were full but masculine. A good-looking guy, but no more compelling than the new faces found on magazine covers every week.

  What set Todd apart was his muscular definition. It started at his hairline. Every muscle in his body stood out in sharp relief. His body-fat composition was 1.75 percent, and he was thinking the .75 might be more than he needed. His skin was a canvas stretched tight over every sinew. Veins and arteries stood out in sharp relief. Great vascularity as muscleheads liked to say. The complete package was almost overwhelming.

  Which was why people just had to look at him.

  Then look away quickly before he caught them.

  Because you wouldn’t want a guy like him mad at you.

  Todd’s attention was on the man seated across the table from him at the Potbelly’s Sandwich Works shop on L Street. He was wondering if the CIA hired Indians. Not Hindus, Native Americans. The guy had a coppery cast to his skin, straight black hair, and an aquiline nose. Pretty distinctive-looking for a profession where you were supposed to blend in. But maybe all that stuff about being able to lose yourself in a crowd was just TV crap. Get a guy who made people look twice, play against expectations, and maybe nobody would ever suspect him.

  Or the fucking guy could be a cop. But then Todd had never heard of an Indian cop either. Not outside of someplace like Arizona or New Mexico.

  “Something wrong?” the guy asked. He’d shown Todd an ID in his car. It said he was a CIA field officer, and his name was Daryl Cheveyo.

  “Never met anyone in your line of work before,” Todd said. “Just trying to match reality with preconception.”

  That seemed to satisfy him. But Todd started to wonder if Cheveyo had backup. He might not be a cop, but the Agency could have called the cops.

  Todd looked around, trying not to be obvious about it. The shop was packed. All the tightly spaced tables around them were full. A line of people going out the door was waiting to place orders. There was even a black man with gray hair playing blues guitar on a tiny elevated stage — had to reach it with a ladder — opposite the cashier.

  It wasn’t the kind of place Todd would’ve picked for their meeting.

  “Why’d we meet here?” he asked.

  Cheveyo swallowed the bite of his tuna sandwich and chased it with a drink of orange soda. “Lunch was the only time I had to meet you today. Your sandwich okay?”

  Todd hadn’t touched his turkey breast with sprouts on wheat. Not that he wasn’t hungry. He could have polished off a dozen sandwiches. But he had a midday workout scheduled before he could eat, and discipline was everything.

  “I’m saving it for later.”

  “Okay.”

  Todd began to drum his fingers on the table. What he felt like doing was hurling it through the window. And the Indian spook right with it. But he didn’t think that kind of volatility would help his cause. He saw that Cheveyo was looking at him and stilled his fingers.

  “Your people are studying my data?” Todd asked.

  He’d made a cold call to the CIA and sent copies of all his research papers to Langley. Trusting that the Company would see the value in what he was proposing, he hoped they would overlook the liberties he’d taken with his test subjects and not turn him in to the cops.

  Lately, though, he’d begun to worry that the CIA would simply steal his work. No way he could complain to the cops. Of course, if they wanted to rob him, they’d better kill him, too.

  “They’re looking at it in great detail.”

  “And great interest?”

  “That’s not for me to say.” Cheveyo returned his attention to his sandwich.

  Summoning all his self-control, Todd said in an even tone, “I hope you can understand why I’m on edge here. You people are my last chance for validation.”

  “We appreciate that, Doctor. Try to be patient a little longer.”

  Todd wasn’t sure Cheveyo should have used his professional title. Felt like the spook was giving away his secrets. But hearing it also reminded him who he was, calmed him down.

  Didn’t make him any less hungry, though. He was always hungry these days. Holding off on the sandwich until later was pure torture. Thing was, he’d gotten to the point of liking the pain. He said, “You don’t mind me asking, are you Native American?”

  Cheveyo looked at him. “Half. My dad’s Hopi; my mom’s Anglo.”

  “Your family name, does it have any special meaning?”

  The CIA man nodded. “Cheveyo means spirit warrior.”

  Todd liked that. “You bring any special talents to your job?”

  “I’m just a nose-to-the-grindstone guy … but I speak Navajo.”

  A Wind Talker?

  Would Cheveyo have shared that with him if things weren’t looking up? Or if the CIA hadn’t already decided to kill him. Hard to say which it was.

  If they gave him a chance, though, they’d invite him to join up.

  The landlord was a lawyer named Putnam Shady. He owned a two-story brick town house on Florida Avenue and said it was worth $950,000. There was no mortgage; he owned it outright. He wanted $850 per month for the one-and-a-half-room-plus-bath apartment in his basement. He’d set the rent at the amount necessary to pay for one-half of his monthly business lunches. As long as restaurant prices held stable, he said, the rent would be, too.

  He was trying to be funny, but Sweetie didn’t laugh. She went into the bathroom, found it small — shower stall, no tub — but clean. The appliances in the kitchenette were also small but new and a good brand. The main room was reasonably big, maybe fifteen-by-fifteen, and the closet was more than adequate to hold all the clothes she owned. The whole place was painted white, the floor was polished hardwood, a decent amount of light came in through the front windows, and there was no smell of water seepage or sewer gas.

  For a woman who’d felt comfortable in a cubbyhole at a convent, it was great.

  “Any problem if I put a floor safe in the closet?” Sweetie asked.

  “For ma’amselle’s jewelry?”

  Sweetie pulled back her sport coat and revealed her gun.

  Some people saw a lethal weapon and got scared. Others were immediately fascinated. Putnam Shady was the first guy Sweetie ever saw who got hot. He’d given her the eye as soon as he’d seen her and had been taking discreet peeks ever since, but seeing the hip-holstered Beretta put his inhibitions down for the count. Now he stared and didn’t care if she noticed.

  “Problem about the gun?” Sweetie asked.

  “You’re a police officer?” he inquired in return.

  The notion seemed to excite him further.

  “Used to be. I retired. I work private investigations now.”

  Sweetie’s age and occupation were entered into whatever fantasy matrix the lawyer was constructing. He was about ten years younger than she was, Sweetie figured, and not a bad-looking guy, but if he got too flaky, she’d look elsewhere.

  As it was, she looked at her watch. She had to get to the airport. The McGill kids needed her. She didn’t have any more time to —

  Putnam Shady interpreted her gesture and expression correctly. He put his eyes back in his head and cleared his throat.

  “A safe is actually a very good idea. For your, um, weapon and any other valuables you might have. I’ll have it put in at my expense so the work will be up to
my standards. Think I’ll get one for myself while I’m at it. A safe, that is.”

  He straightened his lapels and extended his hand to Sweetie. The perfect gentleman now.

  “The place is yours if you want it.”

  Sweetie’s doubts lingered, but she had a plane to catch, and she didn’t like having to say her rosary every night in a room where the TV and the paintings were bolted down. She took Shady’s hand. Being a lawyer, he thought to add, “You do have references, of course.”

  “One or two,” Sweetie answered.

  Welborn Yates sat in his White House office transcribing his audiotaped interview with Colonel Carina Linberg into a cryptic shorthand a rocket-scientist friend at the Air Force Academy had taught him. Later, he’d enter it into a password-protected file on his personal laptop. Only when the president asked to see it would he decrypt and print out the file.

  He wasn’t sure that he would include the fact that he was trying very hard not to fall for Colonel Linberg. Honesty on that point might call his objectivity into question.

  The colonel hadn’t come on to him, not in any obvious way. That would have raised his suspicions immediately. It was just that she’d been decent enough to talk to him like he was a human being and not just a wet-behind-the-ears junior officer. Or an antagonist who was out to get her.

  “At first, I just liked Dex’s looks,” she told Welborn over coffee and a raspberry croissant. “He’s a handsome man, gorgeous, really, in his Navy blues.”

  Welborn sipped his own coffee without interrupting. He’d asked her how she came to be other than professionally involved with Captain Dexter Cowan.

  “I’ve felt that way a time or two before,” she said. “I guess it’s only natural for a woman in my profession to like men in uniform. Some of them are so damn handsome.”

  She paused to look at Welborn, as if really seeing him for the first time. Her eyes seemed to say, “You should know, you’re one of them.”

  The conversational opening was there, but Welborn declined to take it.

  Colonel Linberg continued. “But nobody ever sent me head over heels before until Dex. All the more so as I came to learn he was more than just a pretty face. He’s knowing, funny, considerate … and, sorry to say, a damn liar.”