“Doing what?” Clendennen asked.
“Calling me Hackensack!”
“Why would I call you Hackensack, Hoboken?” the President asked.
“Probably because Mulligan did, Mr. President,” Robin replied.
“If I called you Hackensack, Hoboken, it was a slip of the tongue,” Mulligan said.
“Hah!” Robin snorted.
“What’s the big difference?” the President asked.
“I would say population, Mr. President,” Robin said. “Hoboken is right at fifty thousand and Hackensack right at forty.”
“There’s only forty people in Hackensack?” Mulligan asked. “I would have thought there were more than that.”
“Forty thousand people, you cretin!” Robin flared.
“Are you going to let him call me that, Mr. President?” Mulligan asked.
“You called him Hackensack, which he doesn’t like, so he called you cretin. I’m not sure what that is, but what’s grease for the goose, so to speak. Say, ‘Yes, sir.’”
“Yes, sir, Mr. President,” both said in unison.
“Well, Robin, let’s hear this nutty idea of yours and get it out of the way.”
“Mr. President, I’m sure you share my confidence that Operation Out of the Box will be successful; after all, it is your idea.”
“That’s true,” President Clendennen admitted. “It’s obviously one of my better ideas.”
“And it would be a genuine shame if when Operation Out of the Box is successful that you didn’t get all the credit you so richly deserve for it.”
“Well, as my predecessor, Harry S Truman, said, ‘You can get a lot done if you don’t look for credit.’”
“President Truman didn’t say that, Mr. President,” Mulligan said. “President Truman said, ‘The buck stops here.’ That movie-star president… What’s his name?”
“Ronald Something,” Robin Hoboken said.
“Not ‘Something,’ Robin,” the President said. “His name was President Reagan.”
“His name was Ronald Reagan,” Mulligan said. “He was the President. He was the one who said you can get a lot done on credit.”
“Belinda-Sue says too much credit is what’s ruining the country,” the President said. “And, for once, she may be right.”
“I’m not talking about that kind of credit, Mr. President,” Robin Hoboken said.
“I wasn’t aware there was more than one kind,” the President said. “The kind I know is where you charge something, pay for it, and then can buy something else because your credit is good.”
“The kind I’m talking about, Mr. President,” Robin Hoboken said, “is where people recognize that you’ve done something good.”
“Like what, for example?”
“For example, coming up with an idea like Operation Out of the Box.”
“And how could I make that happen?” the President asked.
“What I was going to suggest, Mr. President, is that we take a photographer down to Fort Bragg and have him shoot you planning the operation to seize Drug Cartel International Airfield.”
“Try saying ‘take your picture,’ Robin,” the President said. “Having a photographer ‘shoot me’ makes me uncomfortable.”
“Yes, sir. Sorry, sir.”
“Why would I do that?”
“So that after Castillo and his Merry Outlaws seize Drug Cartel International, your political enemies—C. Harry Whelan, Junior, of Wolf News, for example—couldn’t say you were taking credit for something you had very little, if anything, to do with.”
“Stop calling them ‘Merry Outlaws,’ Robin,” the President said, then cleared his throat dramatically. “Start calling them ‘Clendennen’s Commandos.’”
“Sir?”
“You heard me. Clendennen’s Commandos!”
“Yes, sir.”
“That has a nice ring to it, Mr. President,” Mulligan said.
“Yes, it does,” the President agreed. And then his face clouded.
“I see a couple of problems with this, Hoboken,” he said. “Like, for example, if I go to Fort Bragg, everybody will know.”
“Not if we sneak down there, Mr. President,” Hoboken replied. “Use a little-bitty airplane, a Gulfstream Five, instead of that great big 747.”
“That’d work,” the President said, after a moment’s thought.
“And it wouldn’t really be a secret that we’re going there, Mr. President. What you’d be doing there would be the secret. C. Harry Whelan would know you’re going down there, have been there, et cetera, but he wouldn’t know why—”
“Until Clendennen’s Commandos have seized Drug Cartel International?”
“Yes, Mr. President. That’s the idea.”
“How would C. Harry Whelan know I’m going to Fort Bragg?”
“We’d leak it to him. We leak things all the time.”
“Just one more itsy-bitsy problem, Robin. What if Castillo gets his ass kicked when he tries to seize Drug Cartel International?”
“Then we deny knowing anything about him or any of this.”
“Can we get away with that?”
“Not a problem, Mr. President. I lie successfully to the press on a daily basis.”
“Set it up, Robin. I want to leave first thing in the morning.”
“Mr. President,” Mulligan said, “if you’d like, we could stop in Biloxi and see about getting the First Mother-in-Law out of jail.”
“Screw her,” the President said. “I can’t let the old bag keep me from carrying out my duties as President.”
[THREE]
The Old Ebbitt Grill
675 Fifteenth Street, N.W.
Washington, D.C.
1155 14 June 2007
C. Harry Whelan, who had not seen Roscoe J. Danton around town for several days and thus wondered what the miserable sonofabitch was now up to in his perpetual quest to upstage him on Wolf News, telephoned Danton’s unlisted number.
Danton had an automated telephone system. Ordinarily it worked like most of them. In other words, Roscoe J. Danton’s recorded voice would announce that he was sorry he couldn’t take the call right now, but if the caller would kindly leave his name and number after hearing the beep, he would get back to them as soon as he possibly could.
But that was before Mr. Edgar Delchamps reasoned that Roscoe’s callers would be curious if, after leaving their names and numbers, Roscoe didn’t get back to them at all. And he didn’t want to change the message to “I’ll be out of town for a few days and will get back to you just as soon as I return,” as that would make people even more curious. So he explained the problem to Dr. Aloysius Casey, and they came up with a solution.
The result of this was that when C. Harry dialed Roscoe’s number, he got a recorded voice that said with a heavy Slavic accent, “Embassy of the Bulgarian People’s Republic. Press one for Bulgarian, two for Russian, or three…”
C. Harry, concluding he had misdialed, broke the connection and carefully punched in Roscoe’s number again.
And got the same Bulgarian message. This time he listened to the message all the way through. When he’d heard it all, he pressed five, which the Bulgarian said was for English.
This time he got a crisp American voice: “FBI Embassy surveillance, Agent Jasper speaking. Be advised this call will be recorded under the Provisions of the Patriot Act as amended. Anything you say may be used against you in a court of law.”
C. Harry broke the connection with such force that he knocked his BlackBerry out of his hand.
Jesus Christ, he thought, if they trace that call, I’ll be on the FBI’s list of known Bulgarian sympathizers!
Determined to find Roscoe J. Danton and learn what the sonofabitch was up t
o, C. Harry entered the Old Ebbitt, where he knew Roscoe habitually went for a pre-luncheon Bloody Mary.
Roscoe was not at his usual place at the bar. But five stools down the bar was a familiar face, that of Sean O’Grogarty, a large redheaded young man of Irish heritage wearing an almost black suit of the kind favored by Secret Service agents.
Roscoe happily thought: O’Grogarty just might know where Roscoe is!
C. Harry took the empty stool beside O’Grogarty but did not speak to him at first. Neither did O’Grogarty acknowledge C. Harry. C. Harry thought of Sean as his “mole in the motor pool,” and neither wished to have people know they knew one another.
Mr. O’Grogarty was a member of the uniformed division of the Secret Service, but he didn’t wear a uniform on duty. He was out of uniform, so to speak, because he was a driver of one of the White House’s fleet of two-year-old Yukons, in which members of President Clendennen’s lesser staff were chauffeured hither and yon.
A delegation of lesser staff personnel had gone to Supervisory Secret Service Agent Mulligan—who was in charge of everything the Secret Service did in and around the White House—and complained that having uniformed officers drive the vehicles and usher them into the backseats thereof gave the impression they were being arrested.
Mrs. Florence Horter had been chosen as the delegation’s spokesperson not only because she looked like Whistler’s mother but also because she suffered from an ocular malady that caused her eyes to water copiously whenever she squinted.
She borrowed a wheelchair, had herself wheeled into Mulligan’s office, and, squinting, asked, “Please, Mr. Mulligan, sir, could the drivers be put into civilian clothing? I don’t want to have my grandchildren think I’m being busted.”
Mulligan knew the real reason the lesser staff people wanted the drivers in mufti was because they wanted people to think they were upper-level staff people. Upper-level members of the President’s staff had, of course, their own brand-new Yukons, which were driven by Secret Service agents.
Mulligan granted the request, however, as he knew doing so would place the lower-level staff people in his debt. One day, inevitably, he would need a favor from them, and they would owe him one.
Mulligan had not come to this plan of action on his own, but rather had learned it from Mr. Francis Ford Coppola’s three-part masterpiece titled The Godfather. Every time he watched it—and he watched at least one of the three parts once a week, usually on Sunday, when he came home from Mass—Mulligan was deeply impressed by how easily the moral lessons of the Mafia saga could be applied to the White House and to official Washington in general.
For a long time now, whenever he had a problem, he had asked himself how Marlon Brando would deal with it.
At the bar, C. Harry Whelan ordered a Johnnie Walker Black on the rocks. When it was served, he picked it up and took a long look down the bar toward the Fifteenth Street entrance, and with the glass still at his mouth, he softly inquired, “Got something for me?”
When he saw in the mirrors behind the rows of whisky bottles that O’Grogarty had nodded, C. Harry laid a fifty-dollar bill on the bar.
“It better be good, O’Grogarty.”
“So good it’s worth two of these bills,” O’Grogarty replied.
C. Harry considered that for a long moment before adding two twenties and a ten on the bar.
“He whose name we dare not speak is going to Fort Bragg,” O’Grogarty said sotto voce.
C. Harry’s hand slammed down on the money.
“That’s not worth a hundred bucks,” C. Harry declared.
“He’s going there secretly,” O’Grogarty amplified. “First thing tomorrow morning. And not in Air Force One.”
“What do you mean, not in Air Force One?”
“They laid on a Gulfstream. You know, that little airplane?”
“I know what a Gulfstream is. No limousine?”
“Just him and Robin Hoboken, Mulligan, a photographer, and a couple of Protection Detail guys.”
“What are they going to do at Fort Bragg?”
“If I knew that, C. Harry, it would cost you a lot more than a hundred bucks.”
“If you can find out, it would be worth more—a little more—than a hundred.”
C. Harry lifted his hand off the bills on the bar. O’Grogarty pocketed them, and then pushed away from the bar and walked quickly out of the Old Ebbitt.
[FOUR]
The Office of the Presidential Spokesperson
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W.
Washington, D.C.
1210 14 June 2007
Presidential Spokesperson Robin Hoboken looked at the caller ID window of his desk telephone, and then picked up the receiver.
“How may I be of assistance to the preeminent journalist of Wolf News?” he inquired of C. Harry Whelan.
“By telling me why I’ve been dropped from the pool.”
The pool to which Mr. Whelan referred was the small group of journalists who accompanied the President when he went anywhere and then made their reporting of presidential activities available to those members of the White House Press Corps who were not privileged to accompany the President.
The journalists who received the “pool” matériel then wrote their reports of the President’s travel and activities in a manner that suggested—but did not say so directly—that they had been along on the trip. This was known as “journalistic license.”
“C. Harry, old buddy, you have not been dropped from the pool. Trust me, the next time President Clendennen goes anywhere, you’ll be among the first to be invited to go along.”
“Like when he goes to Fort Bragg, for example?”
“When he goes anywhere, Harry.”
“There’s a story going around that he’s going to Fort Bragg tomorrow morning.”
“Where did you hear something like that?”
“Telling you where and from whom I learned this would betray my source. And I never do that. Suffice it to say that he is close to the center of things in the White House.”
“I think this fellow is pulling your chain, Harry.”
“I think you’re being less than honest with me, Robin Redbreast, my fine-feathered friend.”
“Harry, you know I don’t like it when you call me that.”
“I know. That’s why I do it. You leave me no choice but to go on the air tonight—probably on Wolf News at Five O’clock with J. Pastor Jones, or on Andy McClarren’s As the World Spins at seven, or maybe, probably both, with the story that President Clendennen is about to make a secret trip that Presidential Spokesman—”
“That’s Spokesperson, Harry,” Presidential Spokesman Hoboken interrupted. “Spokesperson. There is absolutely no sexism in the Clendennen White House.”
“. . . refuses to talk about.”
“Can we go off the record here, Harry?” Hoboken asked.
“What would be in that for me?”
“The gratitude of the President.”
“Gratitude for what?”
“Are we off the record?”
“Momentarily.”
“Gratitude for understanding a certain problem he and the First Lady are having.”
“That wouldn’t have anything to do with the First Mother-in-Law being a world-class boozer, would it?”
“Hypothetically speaking, Harry—”
“We’re back on the record, Robin Redbreast,” C. Harry said. “The last time you sucker punched me with that hypothetical business, I swore I’d never let you do it again.”
“Very well. Then hypothetically speaking on the record: What if a member of the President’s family was in the hospital in Mississippi and the President wanted to visit her without attracting the attention of the W
hite House Press Corps—”
“And having it come out she’s a boozer, you mean?”
“If an allegation was made that that fine old lady had a drinking problem—”
“The voters may not like it?”
“. . . that the President and the First Lady were doing their best to cope with—”
“With a remarkable lack of success—”
“. . . and that, despite being fully aware of the pain it would cause to not only that poor, sick old lady, but to the First Lady and the President himself, a certain journalist wrote the story anyway—”
“News is news, Robin,” C. Harry said.
“. . . because he believes news is news, and to hell with compassion—”
“Nice try, Robin,” C. Harry said.
“. . . and this story would get out—about this hypothetical journalist, I mean—because other members of the White House Press Corps, jealous of our hypothetical journalist’s scoop, would fall all over themselves to paint our hypothetical journalist as cold-hearted and unfeeling. They might even go so far as to suggest that it wasn’t really a scoop.”
“Meaning what?” C. Harry demanded.
“That our hypothetical journalist had paid for his information, bribed some underpaid White House staffer for it. If that hypothetical happened, of course, the Secret Service would have to investigate. Paying government employees to give you information they’re not supposed to give you, as I’m sure you know, Harry, is a Class A felony.”
C. Harry considered everything for a long moment, and then asked, “Is that what it is, he’s going to Mississippi to see the First Mother-in-Law?”
“I regret,” Hoboken said formally, “that there is nothing vis-à-vis the President’s travel plans that I can tell you at this time, Mr. Whelan.”
“Screw you, Robin Redbreast,” Mr. Whelan said, and hung up.
[FIVE]
The Portico
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W.
Washington, D.C.
1215 14 June 2007
When he walked back to the White House from the Old Ebbitt, Sean O’Grogarty was quickly passed onto the White House grounds by the uniformed Secret Service guards. Not only did they know him but he had the proper identification tag hanging around his neck.
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