The Sentinel (14 page)

"You tell me."

Garrison stared. "You really don't know?" Prefontaine said coldly. "One day I came to work and I had transfer orders waiting for me. She said she didn't know anything about it. I figured Wintergreen was making room for one of his fair-haired boys. Was he?"

"If I'd wormed my way into the job, I wouldn't be asking you what happened, would I?"

"Who knows? All I know is that I got the boot. If you didn't arrange it, then the only thing I can figure is that I pissed someone off. Maybe someone figured I knew too much."

"You mean about D day and all that."

"The Frau was interested in what the Man was up to with Pierpont, and asked me a few questions about what I had heard. I dummied up because I didn't want to get involved. Later, she hinted that she would like to find out what was going on. I didn't bite. I just wasn't going to put myself in a cross between her and the man. I'm not saying that is the reason I was forced to walk the plank, but it's a possibility. But what the hell. I'm not the first agent to get shuffled off a detail because someone thought he knew too much."

"Well, I had nothing to do with it."

"The way I see it, after you got in your jam with that pie-thrower, you knew you were on your way out the door. Maybe you thought weaseling your way onto her detail was a way to stay assigned at the House until you could slide back in with the Man himself."

Garrison stood. "I just told you I had nothing to do with it," he said staring him in the eye.

"Good luck in the assignment."

Prefontaine headed for the door.

Garrison sat and mulled over what Prefontaine had said. Maybe he was right. Maybe the President had been trying to limit agents from learning too much about First Family marital problems. During the Clinton scandals, Garrison had seen both agents and supervisors go and come from the White House. But it didn't matter. He had other things to think about: like an assassination conspiracy.

****

CHAPTER 11

THE NEXT MORNING Garrison hurried down a White House corridor, heading for the South Lawn.

"Garrison," someone shouted from inside the pressroom.

He stopped. Joe Kretchvane came to the doorway, smiling broadly. He was a journalist whose unauthorized biographies of Presidents Bush and Clinton and other VIPs had caused them great embarrassment. His writing technique was to ferret out unbecoming details from his target's enemies.

"Good morning, Joe."

"Agent Garrison. The Dragon Lady's Man Friday. Do you have a moment?"

"Not really."

"What's this I hear about a big Presidential threat investigation?"

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"I hear there's a divorce in the wind."

"Mine was final months ago."

"You know what I am talking about. Do you deny the Man and his Dragon Lady are going to split the sheets?"

Kretchvane was about thirty years old. His full beard and styled hair gave him a "Wolf Man" appearance. His beard was crusty, as if it had been dunked in soup a hundred times. He wore a T-shirt, a photographer's vest, and tennis shoes. Garrison detested him. But in Garrison's position, it never paid to show anger. It was impossible to win a battle with an unscrupulous boor like Kretchvane, or any newsie for that matter. Being a Secret Service agent was about blending in with the woodwork and protecting oneself by utilizing protocol.

"News to me," Garrison said.

"You're a bad liar."

"Joe, for as long as you've known me, have I ever answered even one of your questions?"

"No. But lots of people do. In fact I have them waiting in line. And that includes federal gumshoes like you. People have to have a reason for handing someone up. You've simply never had a reason to tell me secrets. One day you will. You'll get screwed and you'll want to get back at someone."

"How's your unauthorized biography going?"

"Did she tell you to ask that?"

"Who?"

Kretchvane tugged his beard. "Fuck you too, Garrison. But since you asked, I'll tell you that my book will be a best-seller. Not that the scoop in it compares to Clinton jacking off in the Oval office or Bush making a fool of himself, but the facts I've gathered about the First Lady are nonetheless compelling. I've got her. I've got her
down."

"Such as?"

"Her father made his millions by being a crook. Her first husband married her for her money, and then dumped her. After he was killed in a boating accident, she told her attorney that she was glad he was dead. She once received treatment for depression. I have the medical records. But you know something, Garrison? I still haven't figured out exactly what makes her tick."

"Who knows what makes any woman tick?"

Kretchvane smiled. "You sound like Jay Leno."

"Do you ever have trouble going to sleep at night, Joe?"

Garrison moved to go by him and Kretchvane stepped in front of him, blocking his way.

"Not at all. You can tell the Dragon Lady that I know about the counterattack against me that she has planned."

"What counterattack is that?"

She's hired someone to ghostwrite an autobiography for her. She figures that publishing it at the same time my book comes out will soften the effect my book will have on her public image. She's a clever bitch, the Dragon Lady. But you tell her that I'm going to sell a lot of copies anyway. That's what the First Amendment is all about."

"Joe, may we speak off the record?"

"Certainly."

"If you don't get out of my way, I'm going to knock you on your ass."

Kretchvane smiled lewdly. "When are you going to get off her detail and go back to protecting the President?"

"Who knows?"

"Don't you think protecting the President's wife is below you?"

"No. Do you?"

"What do you think of her? Off the record."

"I'm not paid to think."

Garrison shoved by him and continued down the hall.

"Have fun at Camp David," Joe called.

Garrison found Walter Sebastian on the South Lawn, standing near the Presidential helicopter, directing some White House stewards in the process of loading the craft for the trip to Camp David.

"We're loaded up," Sebastian said. "This chopper will shuttle up and back twice, then stand by at the Camp for the Man. We will have another chopper for our detail."

"Can you handle the trip up for me?"

"You're not going?"

"I have to take care of a couple of errands," Garrison said. "I'll take a chopper up later today. I already ran it by the First Lady."

Sebastian nodded. "No problem. By the way, that asshole Joe Kretchvane has been asking questions about you."

"What kind of questions?"

"There's a rumor going around that you may have to take the lie-detector test again and that you showed deception on one of the questions. I heard it from one of the secretaries in the travel office."

"Like they say, there are no secrets in the Secret Service."

"You okay, Pete?"

"It's nothing. I botched one of the questions and someone is probably trying to make a big deal out of it. You know how they do."

"As I see it, lie-detectors are nothing but witchcraft anyway," Sebastian said. "Hell, I've seen guilty crooks pass polygraph examinations one after the other." Sebastian furrowed his brow. "The lie-detector tests are probably a ruse. Wintergreen is telling everyone he is testing every member of the detail because of some routine security matter, but I think it's much bigger than that. I think it's a major case. An internal thing. Why else would they bring in every polygrapher on the East Coast?"

"Who knows?" Garrison said, and his words didn't sound believable.

"Yeah, who knows?" Sebastian said studying him.

"What is this errand you have to take care of?"

"Huh?"

"The reason you are missing the flight."

"Uh, a neighbor has one of her old boyfriends stalking her. I told her I would go with her to Metro to make a report."

"What does she took like?"

"Why, you looking for a date?"

Sebastian smiled. "Ask her if she knows how to make decent chili."

"I'll do that."

Garrison anxiously departed the White House by the Executive Office Building exit.

He told himself he had to be flexible, ready for anything. He was alone and would be dealing with a blackmailer. It wasn't going to be easy without backup. Anything could happen in Washington, D.C., an unusual city with hidden agendas, middlemen, procurers, espionage dead drops, and a murder rate that was higher than all the cities of Europe added together. Lacking the sophistication of New York or Paris. D.C. had its own established rituals, cliques, and secrets.

Walking in the direction of the Mayflower Hotel, he could feel the humidity on his face and clothing. It was tangible and onerous, a portent of a summer downpour that could ripple the Potomac, cleanse the Capitol dome, cause a thousand bureaucrats to fight over taxis, and cancel reservations at the Old Ebbitt Grille. It could release pent-up lightning, burst the storm drains along Massachusetts Avenue that would take the inefficient D.C. bureaucracy weeks to repair. It would also lower the District's daily crime rate by more than half because dope dealers would stay inside and have fewer business disputes.

At the Mayflower, a friendly doorman in a white uniform said hello to Garrison and opened a shiny, brass-framed door.

In a high-ceilinged lobby accented with elaborate flower arrangements, a group of Japanese tourists milled about near the front desk. In the lounge area across from a marbled check-in counter, two well-dressed young women sat at a small table, a middle-aged man was reading a book, and three businessmen huddled over some papers. Garrison thought no one looked suspicious. He moved past the elevators to the restaurant, a spacious, open room with white pillars among a sea of linen-covered tables, nearly all of which were occupied. He checked his wristwatch: 11:50 A.M.

Returning to the front desk, he turned right and entered the dimly lit Town and Country cocktail lounge, a wood-paneled replica of an English gentleman's club. On the walls hung framed prints of pointing beagles and setters. Two well-dressed men sat at the bar conversing. At the opposite end of the room some college-age men and women lounged on a sofa. To their right, glass doors led to the street. Garrison slid onto a barstool. A white-coated young bartender placed a linen napkin in front of him. Garrison wondered if the bartender might be working with the blackmailer. But it was just a thought. Garrison's best guess was that no one in the place had anything to do with the extortion letter. He ordered a Coca-Cola.

At precisely noon, the telephone rang. The bartender walked to the other end of the bar and picked up the receiver.

"Hello ... Hold the line." The bartender turned. "Is there a Mr. Garrison here?" Garrison motioned to the bartender. The bartender pointed to an extension phone on the wall. "Line one, sir."

Garrison picked up the receiver.