“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 White 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.
As he was walking up the curving drive to the portico, intending to go to “the shed”—where Yukon drivers on call waited — a Secret Service agent of the presidential security detail intercepted him.
He signaled with an index finger for O’Grogarty to follow him, and led him to a men’s room just inside the building.
“Wait here,” he said. “Someone wants to see you.”
Supervisory Secret Service Agent Robert J. Mulligan appeared five minutes later, checked to see that they were alone in the room, and then leaned his considerable bulk against the door to ensure they were left that way.
“How did it go, Sean?” Mulligan asked.
“I was in the Old Ebbitt about twenty minutes,” O’Grogarty replied. “C. Harry came in, asked if I had anything—”
“Nobody saw the two of you together, right? I told you that was important.”
O’Grogarty shrugged. “I don’t think so, but we were at the bar. He asked if I had anything—”
“Anybody hear him ask?”
O’Grogarty shook his head.
“When I nodded, he put a fifty on the bar. Nobody saw him do it. Then I told him what I had was worth more than fifty bucks, and he put another fifty on the bar. Two twenties and a ten. Then I told him about the President going to Fort Bragg tomorrow. And that nobody was to know.”
“He believed you?”
O’Grogarty nodded.
“He said if I could find out why, there’d be more money in it for me.”
“Good man!”
“Thank you, sir.”
“Speaking of money…” Mulligan said.
“Yes, sir,” O’Grogarty replied, and took the one hundred dollars C. Harry had given him from his pocket. He gave the fifty-dollar bill to Mulligan.
“The President calls this ‘redistribution of the wealth,’” Mulligan said. “It’s something he really believes in.”
> “You mean he gets the fifty dollars?”
“No, of course not. The President says he’s worked too hard for his money to redistribute any of it. What it means is you had to give me half of what C. Harry gave you, and I’ll have to give half of that to Mr. Hoboken. That’s fair. You wouldn’t have C. Harry’s fifty unless he bribed you, and the leak to C. Harry was Hoboken’s idea.”
“Yes, sir.”
“I probably shouldn’t tell you this, Sean, but I see a good future for you in the Secret Service. Keep up the good work!”
“I’ll try, sir.”
Mulligan patted O’Grogarty on the shoulder, pushed himself off the men’s room door, and left.
[SIX]
Quarters #3
Yadkin and Reilly Road
Fort Bragg, North Carolina
0605 15 June 2007
Colonel Max Caruthers, who was six feet three and weighed 225 pounds, and Captain Albert H. Walsh, who was even larger, were in the foyer of Quarters #3. The cordless telephone on the sideboard rang. Caruthers was closer to it, and answered it.
“General McNab’s quarters.”
“Who is this?” the caller demanded sharply.
There was an implication in the question that the telephone had been answered incorrectly. As, indeed, it had. What the protocol called for was for Colonel Caruthers to have answered the telephone by saying, “Sir, General McNab’s quarters. Colonel Caruthers speaking, sir.”
He had not done so for several reasons. Among them were that he was not only a colonel, but a colonel/brigadier general designate, which meant that when the chair warmers in the Pentagon finally finished doing their bureaucratic thing, he would swap the silver eagles of a colonel for the star of a brigadier general. That, in turn, meant that there were very few people around Fort Bragg in a position to remonstrate with him for answering the telephone in an incorrect manner.
But the primary reason he had failed to follow the protocol properly was that his ass was dragging. He had three minutes before he was finished accompanying General McNab on his ritual five-mile morning run around Smoke Bomb Hill and other Fort Bragg scenic attractions. This was understandably somewhat more difficult for someone weighing 225 pounds than it was for someone weighing 135 pounds, as did Lieutenant General Bruce J. McNab.
When they arrived at Quarters #3, and General McNab had announced his intention to grab a quick shower, Colonel Caruthers had collapsed into the chair in the foyer before the general had made it to the second floor.
“Who’s calling?” Colonel Caruthers demanded, not very pleasantly.
“This is Colonel J. Charles DuBois, the Pope FOD.”
FOD stood for field officer of the day, in other words the senior officer representing the commanding general that day. “Pope” made reference to the Air Force base abutting Fort Bragg, not to the head of the Roman Catholic Church.
“Charley, this is Max,” Colonel Caruthers said. “What the hell does the Air Force want this time of the morning?”
“I have to speak to General McNab.”
“Why?”
“He’s the senior officer present on either Bragg or Pope. The other general officers are off somewhere.”
“I meant about what, Charley,” Caruthers said, impatiently.
“We have a Level One Situation, Max. The protocol states that the senior general officer present will be informed without delay.”
“What kind of a Level One Situation?”
“The protocol states the senior general officer present gets informed, Max, not his senior aide-de-camp.”
There were five Situation Levels, ranging in importance up from One — in layman’s terms, Peace & Tranquillity—to Five, which implied something like The War Is About to Begin.
Colonel Caruthers erupted from his chair with an agility remarkable for someone of his bulk and, cordless phone in hand, took the stairs to the second floor three at a time. He bounded down the corridor and — knowing that Mrs. McNab was in the kitchen preparing coffee — burst into the master bedroom.
The commanding general, United States Special Operation Command, was sitting, in his birthday suit, at his wife’s mirrored vanity, which reflected his face in three views as he trimmed and waxed his mustache.
He turned to Colonel Caruthers and calmly inquired, “Something on your mind, Max?”
“A Level One Situation, General,” Caruthers said, as he thrust the telephone at him.
General McNab rose to his feet as he took it.
Naked, holding the telephone in one hand and his mustache comb in the other, he did not look much like a recruiting poster for Special Forces.
“McNab,” he said calmly.
He listened to what Colonel J. Charles DuBois had to say.
“I’m on my way, Colonel,” he said. “If this is an example of Air Force humor, I suggest that you and anyone else involved in this commit hara-kiri before I get there.”
He handed back the telephone to Caruthers.
“Tell Bobby to have the engine running and the door open when I get there. I will be down directly.”
Bobby was Staff Sergeant Robert Nellis, the driver of General McNab’s Chrysler Town & Country minivan.
Colonel Caruthers said, “Yes, sir,” and bounded down the hall and stairs as quickly as he had come up them.
Three minutes and some seconds after he had ordered Colonel Caruthers to tell his driver to have the engine running and the door open, Lieutenant General Bruce J. McNab came out the front door of his quarters.
He now looked like a recruiting poster for Special Forces — for that matter, like a recruiting poster for the entire United States Army. He was wearing his dress blue uniform. It was said, more or less accurately, that he had more medals than General Patton, and today he was wearing them all.
General McNab jumped in the front seat of the Town & Country and ordered, “Pope! We need to be there yesterday!”
Sergeant Bobby Nellis started off with smoking tires.
“Sir, are you going to tell me what the Situation Five is?” Colonel Caruthers inquired.
“Would you believe me, Colonel, if I were to tell you the President of the United States and Commander in Chief of its armed forces is about to land at Pope?”
“Sir, I would have difficulty believing that.”
“Why?”
“He’s been here before, sir. The Secret Service and the press always start arriving three days before him. And there has been no ‘heads-up’ that I’ve heard.”
“My thinking exactly. Have you ever heard, Max, that great minds follow the same path?”
“No, sir. But I will write that down so that I won’t forget it.”
[SEVEN]
Base Operations
Pope Air Force Base, North Carolina
0625 15 June 2007
Sergeant Nellis slammed on the brakes, threw the gearshift in park, then erupted from the Town & Country and raced around the front of it to open the door for General McNab.
He didn’t make it. McNab was already out of the van.
“A little slow, weren’t you, Bobby?” General McNab inquired.
Colonel J. Charles DuBois, USAF, rushed to the van, saluted, and said, “You just made it, General. There it is!”
He pointed to an aircraft just about to touch down.
“That’s not Air Force One,” General McNab replied. “That’s a C-37A.”
“Sir,” Sergeant Nellis said, “any aircraft with the President aboard is designated Air Force One.”
McNab turned and glowered at him.
“Sorry, sir,” Nellis said, deeply chagrined.
“Sorry won’t cut it, Sergeant. I’ve told you and told you and told you: Sergeants don’t correct generals even when generals say something stupid!”
“Sir, it just slipped out!”
“You’ve got to learn not to let corrections of general officers just slip out. Colonel Caruthers, just as soon as we get to the bottom of what’s going on here, cut the or
ders! It’s Officer Candidate School for the loudmouth here.”
“Yes, sir,” Caruthers said.
“And just to cut off the Avenue of Escape and Evasion Sergeant Loudmouth is thinking of — flunking out of OCS and going back to an A-Team — call Fort Benning and tell them if he flunks out, he’s to be sent to the Adjutant General’s Corps!”
“Yes, sir,” Colonel Caruthers said.
“Not the Adjutant General’s Corps, sir, please!” Sergeant Nellis begged.
“Why not? They’re always trying to correct honest soldiers. You’d be right at home with those paper pushers. Say, ‘Yes, sir.’”
“Yes, sir,” Sergeant Nellis said. He seemed on the brink of tears.
The C-37A turned off the runway and taxied to the base operations building, where it stopped.
The stair door unfolded.
Supervisory Secret Service Agent Robert J. Mulligan came down the stairs, followed by Sean O’Grogarty, who Mulligan at the last minute had decided to bring along, thinking he might be useful. Technically, O’Grogarty was undergoing “on-the-job training.”
Next to come down the stairs was an Army officer, a full colonel in Battle Dress Uniform that also bore insignia identifying him as a member of the Adjutant General’s Corps.
Colonel Caruthers, at the sight of the apparition, momentarily lost control and blurted, “Who the fuck are you?”
The AGC colonel answered the question by marching up to General McNab, saluting crisply, and announcing, “Sir, Colonel R. James Scott, deputy chief, Office of Heraldry, Office of the Adjutant General, reporting VOPOTUS to the C in C Special Operations Command for indefinite temporary duty, sir!”
McNab returned the salute in a Pavlovian reaction and was about to ask several questions when three more men came down the stair door and forestalled this intention. Two of the men were festooned with an assortment of still and motion picture cameras. The third was Presidential Spokesperson Robin Hoboken.
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