"Not really, amigo. Get this shit: They also hired a guy to kill the President. He's not a member, but was brought in from the outside. They figure that after the assassination, you people will come after them. But all their hitters will have alibis and you'll never be able to figure out how it all went down because by then, the outside man they hired will be back in Europe. He is right here in D.C. as we speak. That's all I have at the moment. But I'm working on everything you need to make some solid arrests. That is, once you tell me what's in this for me."
Hightower's appearance hadn't changed much in two years. He was about forty-five years old, tall and over-weight, with shoulder-length hair. He wore beer-bar habitué apparel: Levi's, a grayish sweatshirt with chopped sleeves, and grimy, buckle-strap motorcycle boots. He looked like a creep. In fact, he was a creep: a duplicitous ex-convict who made a living selling illegal weapons and narcotics, and ratting out his neo-Nazi pals. But Garrison knew that one had to take informants as they came. The information Hightower had given Garrison had always been reliable.
"What do you have in mind?"
"One million dollars. I ain't going to risk my sweet ass for one cent less."
Garrison looked him in the eye. "You know how it works. I can't promise you any specific amount."
"But this is bigger than anything I ever gave you before. This is a real, honest-to-Christ plot to kill the King and I am sitting right on the fucking top of it. So you people gotta come through for your man. I'm out there on fucking Front Street with the boys who play for keeps."
"If what you are telling me is true and we can make a case, that amount isn't out of the question." Garrison was aware of the reasons that informants provided information to the authorities: revenge, to avoid jail, money. If no motivation could be established, the informant was probably lying. Hightower worked solely for money.
"I'm going to want the money guaranteed, or I'm not going any further. I'll take it in cash, twenty-dollar bills."
"Where are you getting this information?"
"Can't tell you."
"That isn't the way we used to do business, Frank. My rules are up front and no games. You remember that, don't you?"
"This is different."
"I'm going to need names and phone numbers. The works. You're not going to be able to stand back too far and cam a reward of that size. You're going to have to get in the center ring."
"I'm working on it."
Garrison studied him. "I'll arrange a lie-detector test for you."
A wounded look crossed Hightower's face, as if Garrison had violated some sacred trust.
"I never had to do that before."
Garrison smiled. "You never asked for a million dollars before."
Hightower slipped his right hand into his trouser pocket and took out a white, business-sized envelope.
"Open it," Hightower said offering it to him.
"You open it, Frank."
Hightower removed a document from the envelope and handed it to him. Garrison studied it, and the hair on the back of his neck began to tingle.
"Where did you get this?"
Astonishingly, it was a copy of the current Secret Service "Commo Card," a list of the current White House Communications Agency (WHCA) radio codes and computer passwords used by the Secret Service's White House Detail. No one but White House Detail agents and members of the military-run WHCA had access to such top-secret information. And the codes were changed weekly. The code provided access to top-secret information on the Secret Service security systems, including guard posts, weaponry, alarm systems, emergency procedures, and all Secret Service radio frequencies.
"From a high-ranking member of the Disciples. And he got it from a U.S. Secret Service agent."
Garrison wanted to say bullshit, but restrained himself.
"Secret Service agent helping a terrorist organization. That's a real first, Frank."
"He's doing it for the money. The Disciples are flush. They've been getting dough from the Libyans through a secret offshore account. The rugheads like what the ADs are doing. That's why they've been getting behind their action. They are getting their licks in on Uncle Sam from behind the Disciples."
Garrison had heard the rumor about the Libyan connection in a recent foreign intelligence briefing.
"I don't hear any names to go with that Story."
"I'll get them for you. Don't worry."
Hightower straightened his cap. He had a tattoo on the back of his right hand: a cross with a circle of dots surrounding it. He'd once told Garrison he'd fashioned it while in prison using a hat-pin and the ink from a ballpoint pen.
"How do I reach you, Frank?"
"I'm moving around at the moment. I'll call you when I drop anchor. In the meantime, make sure you have your people approve my reward. I know that this information is going to cause a stir with your bosses. But I'm telling you ahead of time that I'm not going to stand for being passed around from agent to agent. I'm not going to meet with anyone but you. With someone on the inside of your department working for the Disciples, it's too much of a risk."
"Frank, after all the other cases you made for me, didn't anyone in the Disciples ever suspect you of ... being the one who provided the information?"
Hightower smirked. "I noticed you didn't use the word rat."
Garrison had consciously avoided using the word. Informants didn't like to think of themselves as what they were - lepers of the underworld who were disliked by both cops and crooks.
"Why don't you just answer the question?" said Garrison.
"But I don't give a fuck what you or your pals call me. I'm in this for the money. I'm not some political dipshit who believes that the government is out to get him. I believe in the Golden Rule. He who has the gold rules. But to answer your question, I always made sure I wasn't giving you exclusive information - that I wasn't the only one who knew about what I was telling you. That way, when you people started kicking down doors, there was always someone else to blame. See, Frank Hightower doesn't believe in being out there on Front Street all alone. It's a survival thing. A man has to keep his wits in this line of work to keep from getting his fucking head blown off."
"Who else in the Disciples knows about this?"
"Only a couple of the heavies. That's why this is going to cost you some gold. I'm sticking my neck out for the last time. Once you move in on them, they'll know it was me. I'm going to need the combat pay to relocate. The Disciples will have the bloodhounds after my ass."
Garrison ran a hand through his hair. "Keep in touch, Frank."
"I will. Don't you worry about that."
Hightower walked to the down escalator and got on.
Garrison anxiously mulled over what he'd learned. He recalled an informant once reporting to him that a White House maintenance employee was going to smuggle in a vial of deadly anthrax to be released when the President lit the White House Christmas tree. After an intensive investigation, it turned out that the informant had made up the story, hoping to earn enough to pay for a sex-change operation. Intelligence work was frequently stranger than fiction.
Because of the Commo Card Hightower had provided and his record of reliability as an informant, Garrison knew the information given him had to be taken seriously. But an agent involved in an assassination conspiracy? Nothing like that had ever happened before. Traitors had scandalized the CIA and the FBI, but the close-knit Secret Service had, for its entire history, remained untouched by such disgrace. To Garrison, it was difficult to imagine.
Driving back to the White House, Garrison placed a call to the Director's office on his cell phone. A secretary answered.
"This is Agent Garrison, First Lady Detail. I need to speak with Director Wintergreen in private as soon as possible."
"He's booked up."
"It has to be today."
"What's it about?"
"A priority case."
"Four P.M. And it better be important."
The phone clicked.
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****
CHAPTER 4
IN HIS PRIVATE office in the Secret Service White House command post, Secret Service Director Larry Wintergreen finished initialing some papers he'd taken from his IN box and dropped them into the OUT box. He rose from a wide oak desk and moved to a polished credenza lined with award plaques and framed photographs. He straightened a framed photo of him with the Pope, taken during a recent Presidential visit to the Vatican. Wintergreen liked the elegant people and places to which he'd been introduced by virtue of his position. He'd vacationed at Cap D'Antibes, spent weeks skiing in Aspen, and eaten at some of the finest restaurants in the world. But it had always been sponsored by whomever he'd been protecting at the time, or paid for by his Secret Service expense account.
He was a bodyguard. But he'd always wanted more. Why not? Why should he be satisfied with half a cake? The day-to-day drudgery of standing post and trying to stay awake from midnight to eight was behind him now. He'd reached the cushy pinnacle of the Secret Service where he could make things happen. He was the Secret Service Pope - the Chief White House Centurion with duties mostly symbolic: handing out diplomas at Secret Service Training Academy graduations, fixing problems for the First Family, keeping his agents on their toes with a speech now and then, accepting and distributing awards. Wintergreen relished being Director, and still got a thrill when seeing his photograph on the cover of Time or Newsweek standing near the President.
After cleverly managing to avoid being identified with the two Secret Service Directors who'd resigned during the scandal-ridden Clinton years, Wintergreen had volunteered for the campaign protection detail of leading Presidential contender Russell Jordan. Shortly after Jordan's inauguration, Jordan had promoted him to the Directorship. Wintergreen knew that being Secret Service Director was a unique position, earned by years of balancing on the White House tightrope.
Being Secret Service Director was an unusual job in an unusual agency. Created in 1865 as a Federal law enforcement agency, the Secret Service's mission until 1901 had been to investigate and arrest counterfeiters. Presidential protection operations began only after the assassination of President McKinley. Only since the 1950's had the Vice President and the First Lady been included as protectees. The Service was still relatively small and close-knit in those days, when every agent in the Service was a Roman Catholic and the entire upper echelon staff consisted of heavy-drinking New York Irishmen. The agency grew rapidly after the assassination of President Kennedy, and then expanded exponentially after the assassination of Senator Robert Kennedy and the wounding of President Reagan. Wintergreen believed himself overqualified as an agent - a routine post-stander - a cigar-store Indian. He'd been destined to be Director, and he thrived in the White House Secret Service. The gold-braided hallways were finally his. It was his time.
Gilbert Flanagan leaned in the doorway.
"Pete Garrison is here."
Thirty-eight years old Adjutant to the Director Flanagan was a lanky, six-foot Alabamian whose sideburns were slightly too long. He was Wintergreen's personal envoy to the rest of the Secret Service, his right-hand man, his most trusted minion and commander of the Secret Services' Special Operations Team (SOT) that Wintergreen used in sensitive Presidential threat cases. SOT had recently flown to Ethiopia to apprehend the leader of a Sudanese terrorist cell whose mission had been to kill President Jordan.
Though Wintergreen had an ample staff that included seven assistant directors, Flanagan was the one he trusted with delicate issues. Most importantly, Wintergreen used him as an executive assistant and gave him special, confidential tasks to carry out discreetly. In the Secret Service, the most political of security agencies, a man of unquestioned loyalty was indispensable.
Flanagan owed Wintergreen his allegiance. Years earlier, Flanagan had inadvertently mishandled a confidential-informant fund while working on a terrorist task force. He'd been in danger of being relieved of command by a Secret Service inspection team, but Wintergreen had whitewashed the incident and rescued Flanagan's career. And to insure Wintergreen's loyalty, Wintergreen had promised to reward him with a promotion to Assistant Director some day.
Wintergreen winked. "Send him in."
He stood in front of the trophy case, believing that being on one's feet was the best way to communicate, particularly in the White House.
"Sorry to break into your schedule," Garrison said.
"Close the door."
Garrison complied.
"How are things on the Valentine detail, Pete?" Valentine was the Secret Service radio code name for First Lady. The President's designation was Victory. The members of the Jordan Administration were all Vs.
"Not bad."
"When I assigned you to her, you told me you didn't want to spend your career sitting in a golf cart as she played a round with the Red Cross ladies."
"Uh, I'm getting used to it now. The reason I'm here-"
"Like I told you. Working the Valentine detail for a year certainly didn't do my career any harm, Pete. To get ahead in the Service, an agent has to be versatile. It's not just about riding the running boards. It's about diplomacy. That's the word for it. Diplomacy. I understand you have something you want to discuss-"
"A threat case."
"Shoot."
Garrison recounted what he had learned from informant Frank Hightower: that an unnamed Secret Service agent assigned to the White House Detail and a hired assassin from Europe were involved in an Aryan Disciples plot to assassinate the President. Garrison handed Wintergreen copies of a code card Hightower had given him. Wintergreen licked his lips and formed an expression of concern on his face as he studied the items.
"Frank Hightower. What can you tell me about him?"
"When I was working PRD he provided reliable information - enough to make four solid convictions. He has connections with dealers of illegal weapons and other paramilitary types both here and in Canada and Europe. He likes to think of himself as a soldier of fortune. His motivation has always been money. He wants a million dollars for the case."
"I'm glad he's not greedy," Wintergreen said facetiously.
"He's not asking for cash until after the arrests are made."
Wintergreen picked up a plastic pitcher from his desk. He poured water into a glass and took a drink. "That's encouraging."
"Hightower is reliable."
"Pete, how do you see this?"
"Going by what he has done for us in the past and the fact that he turned over a Commo Card, I think he may be telling the truth."
Wintergreen coughed. "Frankly, this sounds like a case where the information and the informant sound a little too good to be true. But we have to move on the information. I want you to stay with your normal duties but continue handling Hightower. You've worked with him in the past. You know him. If there is a demand on your time from the First Lady Detail, take vacation days and I will recredit them to you later. You'll be point man on this. That way no one in the world will know what we're up to. In case the information may fit with the Meriweather murder, bring Martha Breckinridge up to speed."
"Okay."
"Keep this top secret, Pete."
"I'll open an internal investigation file-"
"I don't want a formal internal investigation opened at this point. If we have an insider working for the Disciples, he might smell a rat and pull back into his shell. Handle this off the record until something jells. Keep me informed at every step."
"Will do."
"Any questions?"
Garrison said there wasn't, then left the office.
Wintergreen felt pleased. He sensed that time was condensed. He could handle difficult situations, while others, the brown-baggers in life, sat on the steps and ate their measly stale sandwiches, whining and crying in their beer. Wintergreen remembered an incident when he'd been a junior agent. He'd been on Air Force One returning from a Presidential trip to the West Coast, and the shift leader had told the entire shift that they were continuing on du
ty after working twelve days straight. When he and the others had complained, a veteran shift leader had told him: See the President sitting up there sipping whiskey, with the newsies? He doesn't give a damn about how many, hours you work. In fact, unless you get promoted to Director, you can stay twenty years and no President will ever know your name. Get used to it. And get used to the long hours. You're not the President, and in the White House you are lower than the lowliest appointed assistant, and only slightly higher than the steward who serves coffee in the Red Room. You're nothing but part of the woodwork.
Now that Wintergreen had achieved the rank, he figured he owed no one. In the paramilitary U.S. Secret Service. he had the power of an Army general. He gave orders and his White House Detail agents jumped to carry them out. The White House was a good place to be.
A sign on the wall behind his desk read, "THE PRIORITY IS PRESIDENTIAL SECURITY."
He got up and straightened it.
****
CHAPTER 5
IN THE WHITE House private quarters dining room, President Russell Jordan sat alone at a gleaming mahogany table, sipping coffee and reading from a stack of newspapers and cables that were stacked neatly on a hand-carved maple teacart.
He glanced at a Washington Times headline. "President Agrees to Russian Summit Meeting." He wasn't looking forward to wrangling with the Russians at Camp David, but he had an ace up his sleeve: an aid package that had been put together by his allies in Congress. Summit meetings were always about money, and the successful ones always involved lots of Uncle Sugar's dough for the opposing sides. Jordan recognized this as a fact of political life. It had been one of many dismaying lessons he'd learned in office. No wonder that Presidents were all cynics. Previous Presidents had faced war, cold war, hostage-taking incidents, recessions, and the 9/11/01 terrorist attacks on the New York World Trade Center and the Pentagon - when terrorists of all stripes had figured out that they could gain worldwide attention by using violence for their cause.
In the Jordan Administration, the back-alley war against terror had become a fact of life. Every year of his Administration there had been federal buildings and military facilities destroyed by bombs. In the last eighteen months alone, four U.S. ambassadors had been assassinated. Nothing Jordan had ever read, no advice or counsel, had prepared him for the day-by-day stress of dealing with such violence and all its lasting ramifications while, at the same time, holding his fingers in the dikes of domestic political crises.
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