“Forgive me, Mr. Ellsworth,” Naylor said, “for not sharing your pleasure in our successfully deceiving the President.”
“What would you have us do?” Lammelle asked. “Go to the Vice President and the Cabinet and ask them to bring on the men in the white coats and the straitjacket?”
“This is going to end badly,” General Naylor said.
“Possibly,” Lammelle said. “Everybody knows that. But the operative word is ‘possibly.’ It is also possible that we’ll get away with it.”
“Possible, but unlikely,” Secretary Cohen said. “He told you and Truman to come up with a plan to shut down that Mexican airfield. What are you going to do about that?”
“Take a long time coming up with a plan,” Lammelle said. “Hoping that he’ll forget he told me that.”
“And if he doesn’t forget?” General Naylor asked.
“Then I will stall him, using Castillo, for as long as I can.”
“And what if that doesn’t work?” Naylor asked. “What if he says, ‘Shut down that Mexican airfield now’?”
“Correct me if I’m wrong, General,” Truman Ellsworth said, “but wasn’t General Patton quoted as saying… something along this line—‘Don’t take counsel of your fears’?”
“That’s your recommended course of action?” Naylor demanded tartly. “‘Don’t worry about it!’”
Just as tartly, Ellsworth replied, “General, our course of action, repeat, our course of action, mutually agreed between the four of us, is to indulge the President as long as we can do that without putting the country at serious risk. I don’t see any greater risk to the country coming out of that meeting than I did going in. If you do, please share what you saw with us.”
“The President told you and Lammelle to prepare a plan to shut down that airfield,” Naylor said.
“And I just told you, General,” Lammelle said, “that we will do so very, very slowly. If he persists in this notion to the point where I think it’s necessary — let me rephrase, to the point where the four of us, repeat, the four of us, think it’s necessary — we will have Natalie explain to him that shutting down that airfield would be an act of war. If he still insists, then, presuming we four are then in agreement, the four of us will go to the Cabinet and tell them he’s out of control. Do you agree with that, or not?”
Naylor did not reply directly. Instead, he said, “I don’t think any of us should forget that the President, under the War Powers Act, has the authority to order troops into action for thirty days wherever and whenever he thinks that’s necessary. During those thirty days, if he tells me to shut down that airfield, I’ll have to shut down that airfield.”
“I think, General, that each of us is aware of the War Powers Act,” Secretary Cohen said. “We’ll have to deal with that if it comes up.”
“Relax, Allan,” Lammelle said. “Three will get you five that the Sage of Biloxi has already forgotten that notion and is now devoting all of his attention to getting the First Mother-in-Law out of jail.”
Ellsworth chuckled. Secretary Cohen smiled.
“And there’s one more thing, General,” Ellsworth said. “Have you noticed that Hackensack—”
“I think you mean Hoboken, Truman,” the secretary of State corrected him gently.
“Right. Hoboken. Have you noticed what a splendid job Hoboken does with what are known, I believe, as ‘Presidential Photo-Ops’?”
Cohen, Lammelle, and Naylor all shrugged, suggesting, in the cases of Cohen and Naylor, that they were not aware of the splendid job Presidential Spokesperson Hoboken was doing with Presidential Photo-Ops. Lammelle’s shrug asked, so to speak, “So what?”
“Every time a dozen Rotarians,” Ellsworth clarified, “or for that matter eight Boy Scouts, come to Washington, they can count on getting their picture taken with the President.”
“And Special Agent Mulligan,” the secretary of State said. “He’s usually in the picture.”
“At the risk of repeating my shrug,” Lammelle said, “so what?”
“When they are recording themselves for posterity, Frank,” Ellsworth explained, “they won’t have time to worry about seizing a Mexican airfield. It’s a matter of priority. Getting your picture in the paper with the Rotarians or the Boy Scouts helps your reelection chances. Thanks to Mulligan and Hoboken, I don’t think we really have to worry about getting ordered to seize the Mexican airfield.”
“You may have something there, Truman,” Lammelle said.
The conversation was interrupted by the arrival of their vehicles. Following the protocol of rank, Secretary Cohen’s Yukon arrived first. Charlene Stevens jumped out and opened the right rear door for her, and Cohen got in without saying anything else and drove off. Then Ellsworth’s Jaguar Vanden Plas pulled up and he got in it, and it drove off. Lammelle’s Yukon was next, and he got in and drove off. Finally General Naylor’s Suburban pulled up, a sergeant jumped out of the front seat and removed the covers from the four-star plates, and then held the right rear door open for the general.
[TWO]
The Cabinet Room
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W.
Washington, D.C.
0935 14 June 2007
“Mr. President,” Presidential Spokesperson Robin Hoboken had asked the moment the door closed on Secretary Cohen and the others, “did you mean what you said about wanting to shut down that Mexican airfield, the one Castillo calls ‘Drug Cartel International’?”
“By now, Robin, you should know that — unlike some other politicians I can name — I always mean what I say.”
“Mr. President, I have an idea—”
“Oh, for Christ’s sake, Hackensack,” Supervisory Secret Service Agent Mulligan said, “not again! Every time you have one of your ideas, you get the Commander in Chief in trouble.”
“What did you say?” the presidential spokesman demanded angrily.
“I said, Hoboken, that every time you get one of your ideas, you get the President in trouble.”
“No, you didn’t. You called me Hackensack and you know you did.”
“You’ll have to admit, Hackensack, that Mulligan is right,” the President said. “Sometimes your ideas, while well intentioned, are really off the wall.”
“Now you’ve got the Commander in Chief doing it!” Robin fumed.
“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 to, 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.”
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