The Paris Protection (6 page)

Four agents were hidden in a side room that Rebecca had helped set up during the advance team’s work. They were the command center for the Secret Service on site, responsible for monitoring the data feeds from the receptors, along with communications from the working shift of PPD agents around the hotel. If there were any problems, the thirty heavily armed CAT agents in another nearby room had the advanced training and weaponry to take on virtually any threat.

Most of these agents were men, she thought, feeling a little surge of annoyance. Within the Service’s protection detail, it was still a man’s world. She had hoped that after the election of America’s first female president, the ratio of women agents around the president would improve. And it had, but not enough to satisfy her. Rebecca was one of the very few women assigned to the detail, but even so, her duties were not directly involved with the physical shield of agents moving around the president. Her skills and focus were directed elsewhere, removed from the president’s immediate orbit but still vital to the vast team effort. She was the assistant lead on the advance team and was now the head communications agent, responsible for connecting the ground protection team with intelligence from the Joint Operations Center at Headquarters in Washington.

A voice in her earpiece said, “Firefly in Video Com. Night-watch Two. Thirty seconds.”

She recognized the voice of the president’s top guy, Special Agent in Charge John Alexander. It was a broadcast message to all two hundred agents in the area. Using basic Secret Service code words over the encrypted radio, it informed them that the president had been moved safely from the motorcade into the hotel and that she was now in the video command center set up on the twenty-sixth floor. In recent months, tensions between Russia and China had been increasing as evidence of cyber espionage emerged from both sides. And now China had threatened to cut off trade in rare earth elements to Russia. In hopes of resolving the conflict, the international community had pressed the US president to serve as a neutral moderator.

With the president back in the hotel, Rebecca needed an update from the Joint Operations Center, which she would then relay to the command center and the protection team on the ground. She walked across the beige marble floor and into the hotel’s grand ballroom. Inside, a dozen men were setting up banquet tables with velvet cloth covers, and the dais for tomorrow night’s speakers. The podium stood above everything, but it looked somehow naked with the empty space on its front where the seal of the president of the United States would be attached in the morning. Two white-uniformed men led bomb-sniffing Belgian shepherds through the room for the twentieth time this week, sniffing chair cushions and plant pots and anything else in the room that could possibly conceal an explosive device.

She stood in the center of the room, under the largest of the nine chandeliers, and called Headquarters on her encrypted satellite phone using GSM mode for indoor reception.

The JOC officer ran through the half-hourly update with her. At the moment, 8,463 open death threats against the president were being investigated. Of those, special agents had marked 92 as “highest priority,” although over time, all would be thoroughly investigated. Only a hundred and fifty threats were focused on Paris—strangely few considering how highly publicized the trip was. The Service currently had ninety agents from the Paris field office moving throughout the city, investigating various leads on the threats, and half of the JOC’s resources were concentrated on the many moving pieces involved in the president’s trip.

The call lasted only two minutes, but in that time, Rebecca had learned everything critical for updating the special agent in charge of PPD.

Leaving the ballroom, she passed a half-dozen agents wearing suit jackets tailored to conceal their weapons. This being one of the largest luxury hotels in Paris, it took her a few minutes to move past the elevators leading to the lower conference rooms, past the ground-floor piano bar, the vast open greeting area of the front lounge, the library, and the business center, until she was back at the central elevator bay.

Rebecca was just one of a hundred components on the PPD, but she was proud to be a critical member of the team entrusted with protecting the single most important thing in America: not just the woman herself, but the office of the president of the United States. Ever since George Washington had humbly accepted the first office in front of a band of victorious rebels in Philadelphia, after a heroic, bloody war for their freedom, the president of the United States had become the personification of individual freedom. Which was why so much weight rested on the shoulders of her and every other member of the Secret Service. And that burden weighed heaviest on the protection detail team.

Her father and brothers had been so proud when her application to the Secret Service was accepted. That felt like a lifetime ago, and she could only imagine how amazed they would be if they saw the details of everything she had coordinated to prepare for the president’s short stay in Paris.

The bell dinged, and the elevator doors opened on the twenty-sixth floor. Wide hallways with lush red carpeting branched in three directions. Walking down the corridor, Rebecca nodded to each of the half-dozen dark-suited agents standing at their intermittently spaced posts along the chestnut-paneled walls. Each man nodded in return, with a professionally serious expression. One greeted her by name. 

This floor was reserved entirely for the president, as were the twenty-fifth and twenty-seventh. Rebecca nodded at the men as she strode halfway down the hallway to the right of the elevator and knocked on the double doors. When they opened, she saw David standing with three other men in the center of an entryway. Behind them were the doors to the conference room where the president was teleconferencing with her cabinet.

David flashed her a brief smile, which she returned with a subtle shake of the head. Turning, she walked over to John Alexander. He had been saying something to another agent, but seeing Rebecca, he paused to receive her report.

“Agent Reid,” he said. “What’s the latest from Washington?”

“Agent Alexander,” she replied, “Washington is still tracking a few dozen high-priority investigations in Paris, but fifty-two have been resolved and cleared. Others are lower priority. I’ll have an update report sent to you.”

“Thank you,” he said. Walking to the double-doors, he opened them and entered the large conference room.

Rebecca saw a woman sitting at the conference table alone, her back to the door, facing a large video monitor that sat on the table. Short brown hair hung evenly to her shoulders, and the dark suit seemed to camouflage her amid the dozen black leather chairs around her.

Rebecca didn’t need to see the woman’s face to recognize President Abigail Clarke. Though Rebecca wasn’t on the direct shield detail, she had met the president on a few occasions. But despite the professional discipline and emotional detachment that agents were trained for, Rebecca couldn’t help feeling pride in what President Clarke represented for all women—and, for that matter, for all Americans. She knew that every agent on the protection detail would take a bullet for this president without hesitation, but deep inside, she believed that she would move faster than any of the men to dive in between this president and any threat. And yet, she had been denied the opportunity to serve in that way. She had been told that men were better protectors around a president: they were more intimidating to potential assassins, and because their bodies were bigger, they made better human shields against bullets and shrapnel. It didn’t seem to matter that she was an accomplished athlete or that her aptitude tests were in the top 5 percent of her highly qualified cadet class. But her marksmanship scores were below average, while most of the men directly surrounding the president had top marks at the Beltsville firing range. Still, it hurt being denied the opportunity to serve on the president’s direct detail.

Turning to leave the room, she caught David’s eye. He gave her a tight smile, and she replied with a subtle nod to let him know she had forgiven him. It wasn’t completely true, but in the few seconds she had waited for John to enter the conference room, she realized that neither David nor she could afford any personal distraction when protecting the president. After they returned to Washington, where the president was scheduled to be at the White House next week for Christmas, she would have time to pull David aside and continue their discussion.

Leaving the room, she walked down the wide, luxurious hallway. A small noise disturbance had been reported on the twenty-second floor, so she had radioed for another agent to meet her at the staircase there. All guests and employees had undergone a thorough background check by local police a week in advance, and the Secret Service was screening and searching everyone entering the building, so there was little likelihood of this disturbance posing a threat to the president. But as always on this job, the stakes were so high that she had to make sure they were leaving as little as possible to chance.

She opened the metal door to the stairwell and ran down the concrete steps two at a time, her equipment rattling on her belt, her holstered P229 slapping against her ribs, and her long brown hair brushing her face as she whipped around the stair landings and descended through the building.

10

SINCE SHE FIRST STEPPED INTO the Oval Office eleven months ago, President Abigail Clarke rarely had a free moment. Of course, her husband would remind her that her nonstop schedule had begun two years earlier, when she first started campaigning for her party’s nomination. Not that she had enjoyed much leisure time during her eight years as governor of Virginia before that, or the six years as a US senator before that, or as a state prosecutor for the decade before that. In some ways, her entire life had been a high-pressure race for as long as she could remember.

“No, Madame President,” said the gray-haired attorney general through the speakers. “There’s nothing else to add.” The man was one of five cabinet members on the teleconference.

President Clarke’s eyes shifted to each of the other cabinet members through the camera-monitor sync of the teleconference. “Anyone else have anything to add?”

“No, Madame President,” the others said almost in unison.

“So we all agree, it’s time for the United States to raise organized-crime syndicates to a threat level one—equal to terrorism.”

The others nodded, though the conversation of the past fifteen minutes had left everyone visibly uncomfortable over the task ahead.

As the teleconference call ended, the screens went dark. The voice of the head secretary, back at the White House, announced over the phone’s speakers that the next teleconference, with the prime minister of Israel, was scheduled to begin in ten minutes, though it could start earlier if she wanted.

“No, thank you, Stephanie,” the president said. “I could use the ten minutes. Could you please connect me to Richard?”

“Yes ma’am.” 

It had been a long day, and Abigail wanted to hear her husband’s voice, to be reminded that she wasn’t alone. She had fought many political battles over the years, most of them on partisan issues. It always frustrated her that it should be so difficult to push through legislation on the issues she was most passionate about—the ones that had driven her to politics at a young age, managing local campaigns of national candidates. The Founding Fathers had specifically designed the government to be slow at passing new laws, to ensure a gradual evolution of America, without wild swings based on sudden trends. But she couldn’t help feeling impatient at how long it took just to do what was
right
. Still, that was the plan all along. The founders had known that a complex and growing country, which would only grow larger and more complex over the centuries, must evolve either through slow change over time or—far more rarely—through sweeping change during moments when historic issues reached a boiling point. Boiling points such as the abolition of slavery, or the pernicious rise of ruthless corporate tycoons, which would have given Adams and Jefferson fits and which was eventually handicapped by Theodore Roosevelt, or FDR’s use of government to save citizens from the continuing fallout of uncontrolled economic and financial freedom. And when the country reached one of those historic cruxes, pray that the president got it right.

The phone clicked back. “Madame President, I have the First Gentleman on the phone.”

“Thank you,” she said.

The phone clicked again. “Abby.”

“Richard,” she said, feeling soothed just to hear his voice.

“How’s the trip going?”

She smiled. “It’s okay. I just wanted to hear your voice while I’m in the City of Love, and this might be the only free moment I have. I was thinking about our honeymoon when I rode through St. Germain this evening. Did you know our old café is gone?”

“Oh, no,” he said. “What happened to it?”

“I don’t know. I’ll have the CIA look into it.”

Richard chuckled. “No doubt the Russians were involved.”

Abby rolled her eyes. “You always did read too many spy novels. Do
all
history profs live in the past?”

“One of the job requirements, I’m afraid.” There was a short pause. “So how’d the summit go today? You get the traction you hoped for?”

She glanced at her watch—four minutes before her next teleconference call.

“Does anyone ever really get traction on anything at an international summit?” she said. One of the reasons she always made time to talk to her husband while traveling was so she could briefly drop the usual diplomatic and political talk and have a candid discussion with the one person in the world she could completely trust.

“Abby, you’re trying to rally the world to take on international crime syndicates. It’s the global black market, honey—it’ll be harder to fight than all the oil-rich dictators and belligerent leaders of the military-industrial complex combined.”