The Inside Ring

‘Liar,’ DeMarco said.

‘Takes one to know one,’ Emma muttered.

Pointing his chin at the cello player, DeMarco said, ‘She’s a hottie, all right.’

‘A hottie? God, Joe.’

As DeMarco listened to the quartet he wondered why all these people were here. Did they really enjoy this music or was it something they forced themselves to endure, a self-prescribed dose of sophistication, the cultural equivalent of swallowing a carrot smoothie for one’s health.

‘When will this end, Emma?’ DeMarco said. ‘I’ll slip into a coma if it goes on much longer.’

‘Sit there and be quiet,’ Emma said. ‘It’s time you learned to appreciate something other than the Dixie Chicks.’

The quartet finally finished and the cello player handed her instrument to a pimply-faced volunteer. She wagged a finger at him in a stern you-be-careful-with-that gesture, then moved toward Emma’s table, blonde mane flying behind her, long thoroughbred legs flashing. Had Emma not been his friend DeMarco would have been jealous. Hell, he was jealous.

Seeing DeMarco, the cello player hesitated when she reached the table but Emma said, ‘It’s all right, Christine, sit down. Christine, this is Joe. Joe’s a bagman for a corrupt politician.’

‘Jesus, Emma,’ DeMarco said.

‘Which one?’ pretty Christine asked.

Thankfully, Emma ignored her question and said, ‘Joe, be a good bagman and fetch Christine a glass of white wine.’

‘Yes, ma’am,’ DeMarco said.

DeMarco returned with Christine’s wine and a Pepsi for himself. Emma was complimenting Christine on her playing, gushing how the third movement had almost moved her to tears. DeMarco rolled his eyes when he heard this; bamboo splinters jammed under her toenails wouldn’t move Emma to tears. To his relief Emma finally said, ‘Dear, I have some business with Joe. Something tedious. Would you mind if I met you at your suite in an hour? I’ll bring some of that champagne you like.’

‘And strawberries?’ Christine asked.

‘Strawberries too,’ Emma said.

As Christine walked away, Emma shook her head and muttered, ‘Strawberries and champagne. What a cliché.’ Turning to DeMarco, she said, ‘So, Joseph, what’s the problem? Might I assume that shit Mahoney has once again dropped you in the soup?’

‘The Speaker was at a dinner the other night, drunk as a Lord, when he decided to loan me to Andy Banks.’

‘Homeland Security?’

‘Yeah. So I meet with General Banks this morning and he tells me he has a small problem.’

‘Joe, I have a lovely friend waiting for me.’

‘Banks thinks a Secret Service agent may have been an accomplice in the assassination attempt on the President, and both Banks and Patrick Donnelly are withholding information from the FBI.’

‘Well! You do know how to get a girl’s attention.’ Then Emma said exactly what Mahoney had said: ‘Tell me what Banks told you, Joe. Don’t leave out a thing.’

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Philip Montgomery and the President had been roommates at Harvard. Montgomery was the best man at the President’s wedding, and the President had returned the favor for two of Montgomery’s three nuptials.

The President went on to become governor of his home state, then U.S. senator, then President. He was a bright man, though not a brilliant one, and felt he was dodging his responsibilities if he worked less than sixteen hours a day. Montgomery, the President’s opposite in temperament, was a literary genius who drank like Tennessee Williams and played and fought and fucked like Hemingway. He was a master of the twelve-hundred-page epic that blended fact and fiction so artfully that it was difficult to tell which parts were which, not that his readers particularly cared.

Every year, for more than twenty years, the President and Montgomery got together for three or four days to enjoy various pastimes: skiing, hunting, fishing, river rafting – and a lot of drinking. This annual holiday with Montgomery, an event that was highly publicized, was the only time the President appeared to let his hair down. As for Montgomery, his hair was always down. After being elected to the highest office in the land, the President continued to enjoy his reunions with Montgomery and insisted that his Secret Service detail be as small as possible. The reason for this was to minimize the number of people seeing him and a Pulitzer Prize winner behaving like drunken fools. Like the time they threw empty whiskey bottles into the Bitterroot River and blasted them to bits with automatic weapons borrowed from the President’s bodyguards; hardly an activity he wanted reported to either the environmentalists or the gun-control crowd.

This year Montgomery and the President had decided to do a little fishing in Georgia, on the Chattooga River. The dates of the trip – July 14 to July 17 – had been established long in advance as is necessary with a president’s schedule, but according to Banks the location of the trip wasn’t finalized until late May. Naturally, a host of people knew about the trip and the number of potential leaks was almost infinite.

Banks had received the warning letter four days before the President was scheduled to depart for Georgia and the first thing he did was call Patrick Donnelly, director of the Secret Service. Donnelly told Banks it was damn unlikely that an agent had sent the letter. In fact, he found it amusing that Banks had given the letter any credibility at all – not an attitude the general appreciated.

Banks pointed out to Donnelly that the letter had been printed on Secret Service letterhead, placed in a Secret Service business envelope, but most important, it had been delivered via the department pouch. The pouch was a mailbag delivered by armed courier and used to transport classified documents between Secret Service headquarters on H Street and Banks’s office on Nebraska Avenue. Only personnel inside Secret Service headquarters, a secure facility, had access to the pouch and it was delivered directly to Banks’s executive assistant.

Then there was the jargon in the note: Eagle One and the inside ring. ‘Eagle One’ was the President’s code name. The ‘inside ring’ was those agents closest to the President whenever he was on the move. The outside ring was the agents guarding the perimeter: agents in the crowd, on rooftops, manning strategic control points. If the outside ring was penetrated, the inside ring was to die protecting the Man.

Donnelly still claimed the letter was a hoax. Maybe an agent had sent it – a lot of his people weren’t happy with changes Banks had made since taking over Homeland Security – but that still didn’t mean there was any truth to the letter. Then Donnelly, a master of the bureaucratic full nelson, dared Banks to call up the President and ruin his long-awaited vacation based on an unsigned note that claimed he was at risk from his own bodyguards. Banks didn’t make the call, but he did keep the warning letter.

Seven days later Philip Montgomery and a Secret Service agent were killed and the President was wounded. After the assassination attempt, Banks was racked with guilt, terrified the note had been authentic and that he had failed to act upon it. He called Donnelly and told him that he was sending him the warning letter. He wanted it analyzed for fingerprints and DNA in saliva on the envelope seal, and for Donnelly to make an effort to find out who had put it in the pouch.

Donnelly tried his best to talk Banks out of having the letter analyzed. He told him if he sent the letter to a lab and started questioning people, the contents of the letter would be leaked to the media within hours. Absolutely the last thing they needed, Donnelly said, was to give birth to a preposterous theory that the Secret Service could have been involved in the assassination attempt. But Banks insisted. Donnelly may have been a presidential appointee but Banks was still his boss.

The next day Donnelly came to see Banks. Although he categorically dismissed the possibility of Secret Service complicity, he did take steps to convince Banks that the warning letter was bogus. First, he told Banks, in accordance with standard Secret Service procedures for incidents like this, all the agents at Chattooga River were given polygraphs to see if they were involved. All the agents had passed as would be expected. And if this wasn’t good enough, there was the timing of the note and its relationship to the men assigned to the inside ring.

At Chattooga River the outside ring consisted of more than sixty agents. The cabin where the President had stayed was selected not only because it was located near several good fishing holes but also because it was in an isolated area with limited access. Three days before the President’s arrival the Secret Service sent a large advance team to the area, drew an imaginary circle five miles in diameter around the cabin, then blocked off all roads and trails into the area and manned these entry points with agents. Following this, they searched the area inside the circle by air and on foot to make sure no one was there. All people entering the area before the President’s arrival were escorted through to make sure they left, and after the President arrived, people were not allowed to enter at all. Periodic surveillances of the area were conducted by helicopter during the entire time the President was visiting.

Confident the perimeter was secure, and in keeping with the President’s explicit direction to minimize the number of on-site guards, the inside ring at Chattooga River consisted of only four agents: Billy Mattis, Robert James – the agent who was killed while covering the President with his own body – Richard Matthews, and Stephen Preston.

The inside ring had been selected on July 5th and the warning note was sent to Banks five days later, July 10th. At the time the letter was sent agents Matthews and Preston had not been assigned to the Chattooga River detail. Two other agents had been assigned but those two men, who carpooled together, were in a traffic accident on the Beltway on July 12th and Matthews and Preston were last-minute substitutes. Thus, explained Donnelly, whoever wrote the note couldn’t have been referring to Matthews or Preston. Banks argued that maybe one of the two agents who had been originally assigned had compromised the President’s security before the traffic accident, and that the accident had been a ruse to avoid being at Chattooga River the day of the shooting. Donnelly said this was damned unlikely since the accident had involved a head-on collision with a cement mixer.

The third agent was the man who was killed: Agent James. Donnelly ruled him out based on his distinguished record, the fact that he had served the Secret Service for twenty-five spotless years – and that he died saving the President’s life. Banks, however, countered Donnelly’s logic, suggesting that maybe the assassin had shot Agent James to silence him. Donnelly said that idea was absurd; it was clear from the video of the shooting that the first shot hit Montgomery by accident, the second shot winged the President but didn’t kill him, and the third shot had been aimed at the President but missed and hit the agent. Banks had to agree with him.

This left a single agent: Billy Ray Mattis. Mattis also had an impressive record, but since he hadn’t been killed like Agent James or assigned after the warning letter had been sent like the other two agents, Donnelly couldn’t rule him out as definitively as the other three men. But the main problem with Mattis, Banks told DeMarco, was that he looked hinky on the video. Hinky.

The next day, while Banks was still stewing over what to do about the warning letter, the body of Harold Edwards was found along with the suicide note that said he’d acted alone. Donnelly called Banks shortly after the discovery of Edwards’s body and said that the lab had drawn a blank on the warning letter: no fingerprints, fibers, saliva, anything. He also said that he’d personally talked to the courier who’d delivered the pouch to Banks’s office and the courier had no recollection of any agent giving him a letter for delivery to Banks.

But Banks still wasn’t happy.

6 (#ulink_2bf971c0-3e40-5fc0-bea8-aec7a535b782)

Most people had left the art gallery cafeteria immediately after Christine’s quartet finished playing. A cleanup crew was now stacking chairs and clearing off tables, and the man in charge was giving Emma and DeMarco looks encouraging them to leave. Emma was impervious to the looks.

‘I don’t get it,’ Emma said. ‘What exactly does Banks want you to do?’

‘He says he wants me to see if there’s a link, no matter how remote, between Mattis and the assassination attempt,’ DeMarco said. ‘He’s not convinced Mattis is guilty of anything, and at the same time he’s not a hundred percent positive he’s innocent either. All he wants me to do is check out Mattis and then he says he can rest with a clear conscience.’

‘A politician striving for a clear conscience,’ Emma said, ‘is like Sir Percival searching for the Grail.’

‘Aside from that medieval insight, Emma, what do you think?’

‘Joe, sweetie, we’re in Washington, D.C. Here live the fine people who brought you the Bay of Pigs, Watergate, Iran-Contra, and invisible weapons of mass destruction. Do I think it feasible that a government agency – particularly one headed by a weasel like Patrick Donnelly – could be involved in an attempt to kill a president? The answer is yes. Do I think it likely? The answer is no.’

Emma took a sip of her wine. ‘And the reason Banks wants you to investigate Mattis is because he looks “hinky” on this video?’