The President's Henchman

by Joseph Flynn

  Carina Linberg. The colonel, he reminded himself. Wearing civvies and leaning over to look in his car. Kira’s car. He was still groggy and having trouble orienting himself.

  But he thought to check his rearview mirror. Cowan’s Viper was gone.

  A rap on the window brought his attention back to the colonel. It was hard to think of her as military in her sleeveless pink top and khaki shorts. She gestured to him to lower his window, and he followed orders.

  “Good morning, ma’am.” His voice came out as a croak.

  She smiled at him. “They rent rooms here, Lieutenant. You don’t need to sleep in your car.” She noticed the OSU decal on the rear window. “If this is your car.”

  “Borrowed it from a friend, ma’am.”

  “And just happened to park it in the lot of the hotel where I’m staying.”

  Welborn winced at the colonel’s admission that she’d spent the night at the Courtyard Inn.

  “You look like you’re in pain, Lieutenant. Tell you what. I owe you a breakfast. I’ll repay you now.” She stepped back from the door.

  “Ma’am, I … I …”

  “Look like you slept in a car?” She took a keycard out of a pocket and neatly flipped it onto Welborn’s lap. “Room 213. Go take a shower, brush your teeth, whatever. There’s a diner on the other side of the hotel. I’ll be waiting for you there.”

  She turned and walked away. Having given him permission to enter her room alone. Where he might peek into anything he wanted. Very interesting. But what really intrigued Welborn were her tanned shoulders and the way her backside moved inside those civilian shorts. He picked up the keycard. She’d said she would wait for him in the diner, but if he didn’t show up, she’d come back to her room and —

  “Kira Fahey,” he whispered to himself.

  He kept quietly repeating the name as he got out of the car and entered the hotel. Made it a mantra for his self-preservation. Kira, Kira, Kira.

  Sweetie was waiting at McGill’s office when he and Deke entered the reception area. She extended a business envelope to him. His name was written on it in Palmer cursive. Chana Lochlan’s name was embossed in the upper left corner.

  “Messenger brought it twenty minutes ago.”

  McGill told Deke to hold down the fort as he and Sweetie went into his office and closed the door. He took his seat behind his desk and pulled out a letter opener. But before he used it, he held the envelope up to the light. First the ceiling light, then the window.

  “What?” Sweetie asked. “You’re thinking letter bomb?”

  McGill snorted and slit the envelope open.

  “I’m thinking I’ve never been fired before. Don’t know what I’ll find in there.”

  He found a check for $20,000.

  He handed it to Sweetie and read the accompanying note aloud. “‘Mr. McGill, please accept my apology and the enclosed check for all the trouble I’ve put you through. The pressure of my job must have left me a bit overwrought. Right now, I’m truly not sure how much of that harassing phone call was real and how much was a dream. And, as silly as it might sound, I remember now that I bought that thong. I must have been repressing a buying choice I later found embarrassing. I trust you’ll keep our dealings confidential and consider this a matter that has resolved itself.’”

  McGill looked at Sweetie.

  “You remember many self-resolving matters when we were cops?”

  “Uh-uh,” Sweetie said.

  “And the money?”

  “Seems to be of the hush variety.”

  “Or worse.” McGill told her about Monty Kipp’s wet dream about topless photos, and McGill’s own fear that Kipp and Chana were out to embarrass Patti through him.

  “How’s it going to look if I cash that check?” he asked.

  “Like something you wouldn’t want to explain on World Wide News.”

  McGill turned to his computer and booted it up. He clicked on his word-processing program and started to write a response to Chana Lochlan. He didn’t get far before he stopped and looked at Sweetie.

  “My first case and not only am I fired, I violate the ethics of my new profession.”

  “Private eyes have ethics?” Sweetie asked. “Like what?”

  “Like don’t blab about your client’s case to anyone else.”

  He told her about telling Patti the details of Chana’s case.

  “So what’re you going to do?” Sweetie asked.

  “I’m going to confession. Then I’ll run a couple of miles of penance. After that, I’m flying home to see my kids.”

  “But you’re not giving up on your new line of work.”

  “I’ve never been a quitter. And you wouldn’t you let me anyway, would you?”

  “No.”

  Sweetie nodded at the computer.

  “So what are you going to tell, Ms. Lochlan?”

  “That she must have misunderstood our fee agreement. A check for the overage will be available to her, and her alone, to pick up at this office anytime during regular business hours.”

  “You’re not going to let her get away without a heart-to-heart.”

  “Right.”

  “And if she comes in while you’re away?”

  “You don’t have the combination to the office safe.”

  “That’s true,” Sweetie said. “We’ll have to change that.”

  Welborn’s mantra for self-preservation worked. He didn’t wait for Colonel Linberg to come back to her room and find him in bed. He spotted her in a corner booth in the diner, a cup of coffee in front of her, reading the Washington Post. To his surprise, she had a pair of reading glasses perched on the end of her nose.

  That should have made him think of the age difference between them. Instead it made him think that the glasses would be the first things to come off when … Kira, Kira, Kira, he repeated to himself as he walked over to the booth.

  “May I sit down, ma’am?” he asked.

  She glanced up. “You’d look rather foolish just standing there.”

  Welborn took that as a yes and sat.

  “So which of us were you following?” she asked, lowering her newspaper.

  “Ma’am?” he said, stalling.

  She took her glasses off, and Welborn felt his pulse quicken.

  The arrival of the waitress provided a welcome interruption. Welborn forsook a cup of coffee in favor of a glass of ice water. He also asked for a large orange juice and a bran muffin. The colonel ordered French toast with strawberries on the side. The waitress smiled and left.

  Carina Linberg said, “I made a phone call while I was waiting for you.”

  “Ma’am?”

  “I had a friend run the license plate of that car you slept in.”

  Welborn stiffened. He hadn’t thought military intelligence would have access to civilian databases. Now he knew better. OJT.

  “It belongs to Kira Fahey, Vice President Wyman’s niece.”

  “Yes, ma’am, it does.”

  “The friend who dug up that information also found photos of Ms. Fahey. He sent me one.” She brought up a photo of a smiling Kira on the screen of her cell phone and showed it to Welborn. “Attractive young lady.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  The colonel put her phone away. “And you know her well enough to borrow her car. Unless, of course, you stole it.”

  “It was a loan.”

  “All perfectly innocent.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “So who were you following, Lieutenant? Captain Cowan or me?”

  “Neither of you. I was on my way to call on you at home when I saw the captain’s car in the parking lot. I pulled into the hotel lot to check the plates, make sure it was his vehicle, and I decided to wait.”

  “To catch us almost in the act.”

  Before Welborn could say anything, the waitress returned with their orders. She topped off the colonel’s coffee and said to let her know if they needed anything else.

  “I was hoping
I wouldn’t, ma’am,” Welborn told the colonel.

  She looked at him as she chewed her first bite.

  “But then I woke you up this morning.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “But I wasn’t with Captain Cowan.”

  “No, ma’am.”

  “Do you know what went on at this hotel last night, Lieutenant?”

  When he was slow to answer, she told him. “There was a seminar called Command Careers after the Military. It was put on by a civilian head-hunting firm with offices around the country. I attended and so did Captain Cowan. Separately. We saw each other but never exchanged so much as a hello.”

  Welborn remained silent.

  “You should be able to get a list of the people present. They’ll tell you.”

  “Why did you take a room, ma’am, when you live nearby?”

  “I’m having my condo painted. So I can sell it faster. Get a better price.”

  Welborn asked, “Why are you asking for a RILO, Colonel?”

  She put down her fork and sipped her coffee.

  “Isn’t it obvious, Lieutenant? Somebody’s out to get me. Somebody I can never beat. That’s who you should be looking for. The person who decided to end my military career. See what his motives are.” She smiled and shook her head. “The funny thing is, now that I know my days in the Air Force are coming to an end, I’m relieved. Happy, even. I’ve served my country for eighteen years, and soon I’ll be a free woman again — unless, of course, they lock me up.”

  She took another sip of coffee.

  “You didn’t sleep with Captain Cowan last night, ma’am?”

  “No. Have you slept with the vice president’s niece?”

  Welborn started to answer but Carina Linberg held up a hand.

  “I don’t really want to know. I just wanted to make a point. As a civilian, you’d be free to tell me to fuck off. That’s pretty appealing, don’t you think?”

  The colonel got up and told him she’d pick up the check on her way out.

  Welborn ate his bran muffin, washed it down with the orange juice. He hadn’t found any incriminating evidence in the colonel’s room because he hadn’t looked. He’d had two reasons for that. He didn’t think he could pull off a search without her noticing, and he hoped she’d trust him more when she saw her stuff hadn’t been tossed.

  But he had checked the view out the room’s window. It looked directly down on the parking space where Captain Cowan’s navy blue Viper had been parked last night. So maybe the colonel hadn’t slept with captain, but he’d probably been in the room. Ready to jump out the window in case anyone had messed with his precious car.

  The waitress came by again. “Can I get you anything else, hon?”

  “No, thanks. I have to go see the president.”

  “Of the United States?”

  “That’s the one.”

  The waitress laughed. Asked if she could have a few minutes with her when he was done.

  The president had no time for McGill. That was what her personal secretary, Edwina Byington, told him. The president was in the Situation Room and couldn’t be disturbed.

  “For how long?” McGill asked.

  “I’m sorry, sir, I don’t know.”

  “Foolish question,” McGill said.

  “Yes, sir.”

  Edwina’s eyes twinkled, and the corners of her mouth turned up. She was laughing with McGill not at him. During his first week in the White House, McGill had asked Patti how many people in her administration would end up writing books about their experiences. Patti’d said, “Everyone with a word processor and a grudge … and everyone who has too many good stories to keep secret.” McGill had come to think he’d enjoy reading Edwina’s book the most.

  “At the next opportunity,” McGill said, “please inform the president that I’m flying home to see my children. I’ll be chartering the use of a government plane, so if she needs to see my smiling face for any reason, I can get back here in a hurry.”

  “Yes, sir, I’ll do that.”

  Edwina’s smile turned warm, and he felt maybe he’d earned a nice passage in her book.

  “Oh, and if he’s available, would you please ask SAC Crogher to meet me in the residence ASAP?”

  Edwina said she would and picked up the phone to call the Secret Service boss. On the way out of the West Wing, McGill saw a clean-cut young man on his way in; if he had Patti’s description right, this had to be the one and only Lieutenant Welborn Yates. His suspicion was confirmed when the young man snapped to attention, started to salute him, hesitated, and then followed through. Turning bright red as he did.

  McGill returned the salute. “It’s okay, Welborn. Cops salute, too.”

  Crogher beat McGill to the residence. They went to the drawing room. McGill gestured to the SAC to have a seat. Normally, this would have been considered common courtesy, and while Crogher complied, McGill could tell he was ill at ease. Sitting wasn’t one of his usual activities.

  Taking his own chair, McGill asked, “Would you be happier standing?”

  Crogher wasn’t about to admit any weakness. “I’m fine. Thank you.”

  “We’re never going to get along, Celsus,” McGill said, “but we both want the same thing. For nobody to get hurt, especially the president.”

  “And you. And your children.”

  McGill didn’t think for a minute that Crogher was sucking up. He was just being thorough. Which was all you could ask for from someone doing his job.

  He’d called for Crogher because he was being thorough, too.

  “There’s someone who’s come to my attention. I think she might deserve your attention, too. Special attention, in fact.”

  It would have been impossible for Crogher to sit any straighter, but his spine seemed to elongate. “Regarding Holly G?”

  The president’s code name was Holly G, after the character Holly Golitely, played by Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast at Tiffany’s. The president considered the name a compliment.

  “Yes.”

  “A threat? Direct or indirect? Where did you hear or see it?”

  “It’s not a threat of any kind yet. It’s a matter of someone who has regular access to the White House and periodic access to the president. This person has displayed behavior I consider erratic. I’m not saying this is a bad person, certainly not a hostile person. But she could be emotionally … uncertain right now.”

  “Who is she?”

  “Chana Lochlan.”

  Crogher’s eyes widened a micron, as much surprise as he was capable of showing.

  “But you’re working for her,” he said.

  “I was. She fired me. And no, I’m not trying to get even with her. Just keep a special eye on her and try not to let her or anybody else know you’re doing it.”

  Crogher wanted to know all the details.

  McGill refused to tell him. He’d already compromised his confidentiality agreement with Chana as far as he intended to. He told Crogher that the Secret Service had its secrets and so did he. Crogher didn’t like that. Not at all.

  They were back where they started. Working toward the same goals. Fighting each other all the way.

  On the floor of the basketball court at the Political Muscle health club, Senator Roger Michaelson drained a shot from beyond the three-point line — the NBA three-point line, not that chip shot they used in college. Swish. After many years of grueling physical therapy and countless workouts, he felt … well, almost as good as he used to when he was young.

  Problem was, he was middle-aged now. He couldn’t compete against elite athletes half his age, and unlike golf, pro hoops didn’t have a senior’s tour. He’d come a long way in life, but he’d never gotten the opportunity he’d wanted most.

  More times than he’d care to admit, that still pissed him off.

  So he played against guys half his age who were merely good recreational players. He played hard. Threw elbows. But hardly ever had to take any in return. Who was going to mix i
t up with a U.S. senator? Not the lobbyists, congressional staffers, and rising bureaucrats who played ball on the Political Muscle court.

  He told everyone that when he stepped onto the court he was just another guy; he didn’t want any special consideration, and he certainly wouldn’t give any. But the other players couldn’t help themselves. Couldn’t trust that he’d keep his word. They had to err on the side of caution. They had their careers to consider.

  Still, it was better competition than he’d ever find in the Senate gym. Most of his esteemed colleagues were older than him and none of them had the physical skills to play girls’ field hockey. Then, one day, Walter Deschay showed up at the Political Muscle court. Six-six and 210 pounds of shining ebony muscle. He was new to town and probably didn’t know any better. He thought anybody who stepped onto the court was fair game. You played ball, you better be ready to take your lumps.

  He was out of the University of Arkansas. Played second string for the Razorbacks for three years. Had every move in the book but didn’t finish strong. Needed to work on his jumper, too. A booster in the Arkansas delegation of the House had brought him to Washington and gotten him a job in the Department of Agriculture.

  Roger Michaelson was going up to tip in a shot that a teammate had missed when Walter slammed into him, grabbed the ball, and left the senator flat on his ass. From his seat on the floor, Michaelson watched Walter rifle a pass to a fast-breaking teammate, grab the rebound of the missed shot for a put-back, and knock another guy on his ass. Michaelson loved Walter as a player from that moment on.

  He looked forward to his games against Walter more than he looked forward to tropical vacations with his wife. For nine months they went at it, and he knew Walter loved competing against him, too. They were always the first two to arrive for games.

  Michaelson checked into Walter’s job performance and was happy to discover that he was a first-rate worker. Went beyond what was asked of him and always had a joke or a good word for everyone in his department. The senator was determined that Walter was going to have an exceptionally successful career in government service.

  Then, one winter night, Walter took his dog out for his constitutional. Two street vermin held Walter up at gunpoint. He’d had to take a glove off to get at his wallet. One of the punks thought he wasn’t moving fast enough. So he shot Walter’s dog. Walter immediately jumped the shooter, actually wrested the gun away and broke the punk’s wrist doing it. But the accomplice shot Walter in the head, killing him instantly.