The President's Assassin (22 page)

Phyllis stared at me a moment, I’m sure thinking how pleased she was that she hired me. She finally said, “Both of you take a moment to pat each other on the back. Then get cleaned up and join us in the conference room.”

Watching her back as she walked away, Jennie whispered to me, “Don’t tangle with that lady, Sean. That’s professional advice, if you’re interested.”

“Yeah, thanks. Let’s see...don’t mess with her...never screw with you...watch my ass around George—hey, with teamwork like this, why do you think we haven’t caught these clowns yet?”

“Have you ever considered...?”

“What?”

“These conflicts—if I’m getting too personal, let me know—but Sean, you have what we call authority issues.”

“You mean this is my fault?”

“Look, I really like you...” She paused. “To be perfectly blunt, your career prospects would improve a lot if you stopped taunting your bosses.”

“All right. You
are
getting too personal.”

She apparently changed her mind about her promise, however. She said, “In a way, you’re like Jason Barnes. Predestination. I’ll bet your father was also very strong-willed and overbearing. Transferral. Now you’re taking it out on your bosses.”

“I’m not...look—”

“You need to hear this.”

“I do not.”

“I’m offering you an insight into your own nature because...because we’re partners and...friends.”

“Did it occur to you that partners and friends don’t want to be psychoanalyzed?”

“Excuse me—I’m trying to be helpful.” She stepped back and stared at me a moment. She asked, “Are we having a fight?”

I was too busy sulking to answer that.

She mentioned, “Because sometimes I
am
too nosy for my own good.”

“Right. Drop the subject.”

“Fine.” After a moment she remarked, “We’re both tired, wrung out, and irritable. We need showers, a decent meal, and sleep.”

“Oh...you get less nosy and pushy when you’re clean and well rested?”

“Watch it.”

“Well...what do you suggest?”

“I thought, after we finish debriefing, we’d slip out for a few hours and get hotel rooms.”

“I’m not sure that’s—”

“There are hotels in Crystal City. Only five minutes from here. If needed, we’d be back in minutes.”

I looked at Jennie. I did not get the sense there was anything more to this than was offered—a good meal, a warm shower, a little rest. But there could be more, and it was either an even better idea than it sounded or an invitation to real problems. Then I thought about Janet up in Boston, and I was sure there was a thick ream of forensics reports, intel updates, and witness statements on my desk waiting to be read. No, this just wasn’t going to work. I didn’t need the complications, emotional or otherwise.

I said, “Good idea.”

She smiled. “Now, loosen up. The Bureau doesn’t like it when you threaten our fearless leader. We’ll get Barnes. Soon.”

I nodded, and indeed, I hoped her confidence wasn’t misplaced. But it’s a truism that the best hopes don’t always lead to the best outcomes. Also, something was gnawing at me, something missing I was sure was obvious, or should have been obvious. But what? I really needed a few hours of sleep. Jennie said, “Go brush your teeth. If Townsend sniffs your breath, he’ll have you shot.”

“I don’t work for him.”

“I know. Think he cares?”

Gee, I really missed the Army. There, you at least knew where you stood, and who could take you down. It’s hard to mount your best defense when you don’t know where the front is, and who’s in your rear.

So into the building we both went, Jennie directly to the ladies’ room, while I went directly into the men’s room, where I dutifully brushed my teeth, and washed my face, and tried to cleanse my mind of naughty thoughts.

I’m sure I mentioned that Agent Margold was quite attractive. The thing is, the past few hours we’d been rubbing shoulders, brushing arms, all those annoying gestures two people usually do who can’t wait to jump into the sack together. Unless I was misreading this, and she was just gracious and warm. And I was just horny.

The truth was we were partners and we had become friends. To move to the next level somebody has to make the next move, and somebody has to reciprocate, or not reciprocate, which gets a little sticky.

A stall door opened behind me and Director Mark Townsend walked out, began washing his hands and staring into the mirror.

I said, very nonchalantly, “Good morning, sir.”

“Drummond.”

I was making a retreat toward the exit, until he said, “Hold it.”

Boy, good thing I brushed my teeth.

He walked to the dispenser, yanked out a paper towel, and began wiping his hands. He wore the same blue business suit and the same awful paisley tie from the day before. Remarkably, his suit still looked pressed, his white shirt appeared freshly starched, and there were no bags under his eyes, leading me to wonder if this man was born permapressed. He asked, not at all absently, “Agent Margold, you’ve worked with her for twenty-four hours now. What do you think of her?”

Had this question come from anybody but Townsend, I would have replied it was none of his business and to go pound sand. But she was a vassal in his kingdom, so she was his business, and though I wasn’t one of his vassals, I didn’t want him to make me his business. While not often enough, there are occasions when I obey my survival instincts.

I therefore answered honestly, but selectively. “I find her highly competent, professional, and effective. Margaret Barnes was a hostile witness, a practiced liar, and totally confused. A few hours ago, I watched Agent Margold cut through thirty years of lies, evasions, and camouflage so dense the witness was lost in it. It was an impressive sight.”

“Is that right?”

“Yes sir.”

“And do you have any views regarding her overall management of this case?”

“I thought George Meany was managing this case.”

“Meany is
in charge
of this case. But Agent Margold seems to have uncanny instincts for where to be, and when. De facto,
she
appears to be managing this case.”

He looked me in the eye and said, “I ask, because I’m getting conflicting reports about her. Some sources are telling me she is not competent, nor is she a team player. This Bureau operates effectively only when it functions collectively, and unfortunately, my D.C. Field Office appears to be experiencing teamwork issues. Do you understand? At this moment, on this case, I cannot afford this problem. But the source of this problem is eluding me.”

It wasn’t hard to guess the source of the conflicting reports. George Meany has a lot of bad habits, an aversion to frontal assaults among them.

But generally speaking, I make it a practice not to rat out my peers, or even my bosses, to the bigger bosses. They get paid the big bucks because they’re supposed to possess the intuition and insight to sort the sycophantic idiots from the nondescriptly competent. That’s the theory. Of course, there is another theory, called the Peter Principle.

I did not think this applied here, however, and said, “Sir, I don’t believe you got where you are by listening to subordinates tell you how to think. You should rely on your own instincts and judgment.”

He changed the subject, sort of, and suggested, “Also, I think you and Agent Margold are becoming attached to one another. So perhaps I shouldn’t be asking you. Perhaps you’ve developed an emotional bias in this matter.”

I must have blushed, because he immediately commented, “Nothing wrong with it, Drummond. I met my own wife on a case. She was a forensics specialist, and I was the case agent. A murder and castration case, and the wife was our chief suspect.” He ended this tale, saying, not for the first time, I’m sure, “You could say we fell in love over a pair of detached testicles.”

“I thought that came after you said, ‘I do.’”

He laughed. “Twenty-seven years...not once have I even considered cheating on my Joan.”

“I’ll bet.”

He glanced at his watch, and this brief moment of bonding was over. He began walking to the door, then he stopped and faced me again. He asked, “Did you know George Meany prior to this case?”

“We worked a case together once.”

He nodded, but did not amplify that thought. But it was apparent that George’s whispered insights had not been limited to Agent Margold. Wouldn’t it be interesting to know what George had to say about yours truly? Or maybe not.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

A
T
5:00
A.M
., J
ENNIE WAS ALREADY SEATED AT THE TABLE
,
THUMBING
through a clutch of papers, when I followed Townsend into the conference room. The only regulars missing from this gathering of greats were Director Peterson, still enjoying his prerogative to stay miles away from this thing, and Mr. Gene Halderman, who was enjoying a night’s sleep, proving he wasn’t a total idiot.

George, looking the worse for wear, opened the meeting. “Let’s begin with a wrap-up of the progress we’ve made over the past six hours. Keep it brief.” He pointed at his watch and added, as if we needed a reminder, “The morning witching hour is almost here.”

He directed a finger at Jennie, who led off with an interesting, albeit slightly technical assessment of both Margaret and Jason Barnes’s mental states, a concise summary of the Barnes family history, and a wrap-up of the connections that bound Calhoun Barnes to Phillip Fineberg and indirectly, to Jason Barnes.

At this point Phyllis raised her hand and asked a reasonable question. She said, “Why would he lift a finger to avenge a death I would have thought he celebrated?”

From the expressions around the table, everybody shared this same frame of inquiry. So Jennie offered an abbreviated version of the explanation she had earlier provided me. She let this sink in a moment, then advised us, “Love and hatred are the most intense and direct human emotions. When they become confused, the individual becomes a psychosexual mess.”

I suggested, “So he’s nuts?”

“I prefer the clinical expression,” she replied. “Completely bonkers.” Which got a few chuckles. She then cautioned all of us, “The point is, whatever wobbly equilibrium existed inside Jason’s head is totally gone. In Jason’s mind his father was a towering, monumental figure. He believes we drove and hounded him to death, and he now intends to punish us.”

I’d heard enough about Jason Barnes’s loopiness and, thankfully, nobody asked another question.

So Jennie brought us back to the present, saying, “But at this point, Sean and I were confronted with a number of holes. We were forced to make some educated guesses about what happened here—in Washington.” She looked at Townsend. “Sir, it’s very important to confirm some of those deductions.”

He nodded.

Jennie asked, “Was it Phillip Fineberg who provided the canceled checks?”

“It was.”

“Could you explain what circumstances led to that?”

“Yes...well, Fineberg had been feeding me charges for weeks. Usually over the phone, and he requested anonymity, which is fairly common in background checks. He had many disparaging things to say about Calhoun Barnes, some of which might be factual, and some of which sounded frivolous, even questionable. Eventually I told him we needed evidence to corroborate his charges.”

“And how did he respond?”

“He promised to get back to me.”

“And he did.”

“At a cocktail party in Georgetown about a week later, he pulled me aside and gave me the canceled checks. I handed them over to your office.”

“That was before my time. Who in my office, and how did my office respond?”

Townsend thought about it a moment. “John Fisk, your predecessor. First, John assigned some agents to verify the authenticity of the checks.”

“And the checks were verified?”

“That’s correct.”

“And the checks were drawn from Calhoun’s family account?”

“Also correct. And with that to go on, a second team was assigned to run down the three judges whose names were on the checks. Two were dead, from natural causes. The third was found in a retirement community in Florida. Advanced Alzheimer’s. Completely senile.”

“Then you carried the packet to the White House?”

“No. I carried the evidence to the Attorney General. Meade Everhill from his office was present. We reviewed what we’d gathered, and it was Everhill’s legal judgment that we had enough to at least proceed with a criminal probe.”

“Then the White House?”

“Only then.”

“In addition to the President, the President’s legal adviser, the White House Chief of Staff, the Attorney General, Meade Everhill, and presumably the White House spokesman, who else was involved?”

Townsend pointed at Mrs. Hooper. “Her.”

Mrs. Hooper squirmed in her seat. She insisted, “But my presence would be known only to the other people in that meeting. I...Jason Barnes would have no reason to target me.”

To which Townsend replied, “Don’t presume that.” Turning to Mr. Wardell, he asked, “Your people know who accesses the Oval Office. Correct?”

“Of course.”

“Is a written log kept?”

“Always, for scheduled meetings. Of course, during the day certain favored staffers, like Mrs. Hooper, pop in and out spontaneously.”

“There, you see—” Mrs. Hooper was saying.

“However,” Wardell spoke over her, “in those instances, the agent at the President’s door notifies the operations center. Those names are also entered into the log.”

“I thought they might be,” Townsend commented. “Could Jason Barnes have accessed that log?”

“I can’t rule it out. He had an ops center pass and plenty of friends who work there. He could have seen the log himself, or a friend could have checked it for him.”

I had the impression Director Townsend and Chuck Wardell did not particularly care for Mrs. Hooper, and this exchange was curious. When the big bosses clash, it’s never a good idea to step in the middle. But Townsend did not strike me as small-minded or vindictive, and something seemed to be going on here. Jennie looked at me, and I raised my eyebrows. Jennie asked Townsend, “Could you explain how the decision was made, for our benefit?”