“I want to know who this man was,” she said, turning the dead man’s ashen face toward her with the toe of her navy blue pump.
“Adam Knight,” Crosby said, rolling his lips until they turned white. “He was the agent in charge of the CIA Director’s detail. I should call the FBI.”
“I’m sure the Secret Service is doing just that,” the Japanese woman said.
Crosby’s jaw hung slack. A wisp of thinning hair hung down across a pasty forehead. “That was amazing,” he said. “That thing you did with his hand… you saved the Vice President’s life.”
“I panicked.” Ran tried to downplay the speed with which she’d dispatched the shooter. It was much better if people thought her merely McKeon’s sullen concubine rather than his protector. “And he was sloppy. Anyone could have done it.”
It took the better part of an hour for Secret Service personnel from both POTUS and VPOTUS details to confer and decide to give the all clear for the White House campus. A team of agents from the Washington Field Office of the FBI — as well as Director Bodington himself — arrived twenty-one minutes after the shooting, but were forced to sit outside until the Secret Service decided to admit them. Once inside, they had complete control over everything but the President and Vice President’s immediate security. Since the shooter was a government agent, albeit CIA and not their respective agencies, tensions regarding turf and jurisdiction ran into the stratosphere. Bureau agents milled about conducting interviews and casting looks of blame while the Secret Service personnel glared back at the interlopers who dared to invade their sacred ground.
After four hours and a heated Oval Office chat between Director Bodington and the President, all investigating agents decided they had all the evidence they needed.
President Drake demanded a meeting with McKeon and Ran in his personal study as he had the White House back to himself. The study was located off the Oval Office. It was more private, and absent the peephole in the door leading out to his personal secretary and body man’s area.
Fuming at the dictatorial summons, McKeon found himself unsteady on his feet at having been so close to death. It wasn’t so much that he was afraid of dying — he simply had too much left to do and did not want to see his father’s legacy ruined because of some madman with a vendetta.
Hartman Drake fumed and paced in the tiny office like a caged cat wearing a bow tie. He’d tossed his suit jacket over the arm of a leather couch and worked to remove gold cuff links while he was on the move. He was not a tall man, but hours in the gym — hours when he should have been doing his job — had given him an incredible physique for a politician of any age. Veins bulged on the side of his bullish neck as if he’d pulled the bow tie too snug.
McKeon sat on the far end of the couch next to the window overlooking the Rose Garden, more exhausted than he’d been in a very long time. He’d already fielded a call from his wife, who’d heard about the shooting on the news. The call had set Ran even more on edge and she moved even closer to him, sitting all the way forward on the edge of the couch, her body taut as if she planned to spring up and fend off another attack at any moment.
She had changed out of her blood-soaked business suit and into a pair of jeans and a black cotton blouse with long sleeves. It looked hot for summer in DC but it hid the tattoos that covered her body from shoulder to just above the knee. In any case, McKeon was not at all sure that Ran felt normal sensations like hot and cold weather.
“What the hell happened?” Drake demanded, falling back in a thick leather chair and throwing his feet up on his desk. “I’m not about to set foot in Seattle if we can’t even keep some crazy assassin from slipping into the White House. Best security in the world, my ass. Who was this guy?”
“The lead agent on Director Ross’s protective detail,” Ran offered, deadpan.
McKeon chose his words carefully. “We cannot cancel the trip to Seattle,” he said. “The Japanese advance team has been here for a week. Plans have been set. I don’t have to tell you how crucial this meeting is.”
Drake waved away the words, ripping off his bow tie. “I am aware of how important it is.” His eyes narrowed, glaring as if he was accusing McKeon of something.
“What is it?” McKeon asked, anger at the other man’s impudence rising in his gut. “Say what’s on your mind.”
“This guy who got in,” Drake said. “This assassin, he went after you?”
“A target of opportunity within the administration.” McKeon rolled his eyes.
“No.” Drake set his jaw like a bulldog, not buying any of it. “Everybody says this guy badged his way in here looking for an agent on your detail right from the beginning. That means you were the primary target.”
McKeon shook his head in dismay. “Are you actually angry that the assassin didn’t come to kill you?” He’d thought it impossible that Hartman Drake’s self-absorbed delusions could ever surprise him.
“What I am angry about,” Drake fumed, “is that the American people think you are the one running this show. I read the commentaries. Everyone’s saying we’re a co-presidency and calling me the Lieutenant Commander in Chief. It’s bad enough that half the Congress insists on calling me ‘Acting President.’ ”
McKeon shrugged. “Technically, you are the acting president. This is new ground constitutionally. But it doesn’t matter. You have the powers of the President so—”
“Do I?” Drake spat. “Because I tried to call a cabinet meeting last week and David told me we couldn’t because you were not available! Do you hear what I’m saying? I can’t call a meeting to run the country because the VP isn’t able to attend.”
McKeon patted Ran softly on her knee, trying to calm himself as much as her. Her entire body hummed with pent up energy but Drake was too self-absorbed to see it. Had he taken the time to really look at her, he would have seen that the gleam in her eye and the particular crook of her lips meant she was on the verge of punching him in the throat with her thumb dagger.
“What do you want me to say?” McKeon muttered. “Shall I tell you that you are the wisest man I know and say it was you who put together this entire plan to send the United States spiraling into a terrible and final Götterdämmerung? Do you—?”
“You and your fifty-dollar words.” Drake smirked, shaking his head. “What the hell is a Götterdämmerung?”
McKeon stood to his full height and doubled his fists. McKeon was normally composed to the point some would consider bland, but Drake’s idiocy caused his head to shake. “You would have starved to death as a small boy if my father had not taken you from your filthy Tajik existence and placed you in a good home…” He clenched his teeth, breathing deeply to try and regain his composure. “What is it you want from me?”
“What I want,” Drake said, lips quivering with a mixture of fear and frustration, “is for you to treat me with the respect I deserve. I am, after all, the most powerful man on the planet — something it would do you well to remember.”
He reached behind the desk and picked up a gym bag. “I have to go to the gym and work off some steam,” he said. “In the meantime, both of you get the hell out of my—”
A knock at the door cut him off.
“Mr. President.” David Crosby’s muffled voice came through the door. It was unlocked, but with Drake’s tendency to bring pert female staffers back into his office, the Chief of Staff knew better than to open it uninvited. Drake invited him in.
“I’m sorry to bother you, Mr. President,” Crosby said, looking relieved that he didn’t have to sneak some girl out the back hallway. “You’re needed in the Situation Room. Something to do with Chinese submarines.”