[TWO]
“Mr. President,” Presidential Spokesperson Robin Hoboken had asked the moment the door closed on Secretary Cohen and the others, “did you mean what you said about wanting to shut down that Mexican airfield, the one Castillo calls ‘Drug Cartel International’?”
“By now, Robin, you should know that — unlike some other politicians I can name — I always mean what I say.”
“Mr. President, I have an idea—”
“Oh, for Christ’s sake, Hackensack,” Supervisory Secret Service Agent Mulligan said, “not again! Every time you have one of your ideas, you get the Commander in Chief in trouble.”
“What did you say?” the presidential spokesman demanded angrily.
“I said, Hoboken, that every time you get one of your ideas, you get the President in trouble.”
“No, you didn’t. You called me Hackensack and you know you did.”
“You’ll have to admit, Hackensack, that Mulligan is right,” the President said. “Sometimes your ideas, while well intentioned, are really off the wall.”
“Now you’ve got the Commander in Chief doing it!” Robin fumed.
“Doing what?” Clendennen asked.
“Calling me Hackensack!”
“Why would I call you Hackensack, Hoboken?” the President asked.
“Probably because Mulligan did, Mr. President,” Robin replied.
“If I called you Hackensack, Hoboken, it was a slip of the tongue,” Mulligan said.
“Hah!” Robin snorted.
“What’s the big difference?” the President asked.
“I would say population, Mr. President,” Robin said. “Hoboken is right at fifty thousand and Hackensack right at forty.”
“There’s only forty people in Hackensack?” Mulligan asked. “I would have thought there were more than that.”
“Forty thousand people, you cretin!” Robin flared.
“Are you going to let him call me that, Mr. President?” Mulligan asked.
“You called him Hackensack, which he doesn’t like, so he called you cretin. I’m not sure what that is, but what’s grease for the goose, so to speak. Say, ‘Yes, sir.’”
“Yes, sir, Mr. President,” both said in unison.
“Well, Robin, let’s hear this nutty idea of yours and get it out of the way.”
“Mr. President, I’m sure you share my confidence that Operation Out of the Box will be successful; after all, it is your idea.”
“That’s true,” President Clendennen admitted. “It’s obviously one of my better ideas.”
“And it would be a genuine shame if when Operation Out of the Box is successful that you didn’t get all the credit you so richly deserve for it.”
“Well, as my predecessor, Harry S Truman, said, ‘You can get a lot done if you don’t look for credit.’”
“President Truman didn’t say that, Mr. President,” Mulligan said. “President Truman said, ‘The buck stops here.’ That movie-star president… What’s his name?”
“Ronald Something,” Robin Hoboken said.
“Not ‘Something,’ Robin,” the President said. “His name was President Reagan.”
“His name was Ronald Reagan,” Mulligan said. “He was the President. He was the one who said you can get a lot done on credit.”
“Belinda-Sue says too much credit is what’s ruining the country,” the President said. “And, for once, she may be right.”
“I’m not talking about that kind of credit, Mr. President,” Robin Hoboken said.
“I wasn’t aware there was more than one kind,” the President said. “The kind I know is where you charge something, pay for it, and then can buy something else because your credit is good.”
“The kind I’m talking about, Mr. President,” Robin Hoboken said, “is where people recognize that you’ve done something good.”
“Like what, for example?”
“For example, coming up with an idea like Operation Out of the Box.”
“And how could I make that happen?” the President asked.
“What I was going to suggest, Mr. President, is that we take a photographer down to Fort Bragg and have him shoot you planning the operation to seize Drug Cartel International Airfield.”
“Try saying ‘take your picture,’ Robin,” the President said. “Having a photographer ‘shoot me’ makes me uncomfortable.”
“Yes, sir. Sorry, sir.”
“Why would I do that?”
“So that after Castillo and his Merry Outlaws seize Drug Cartel International, your political enemies — C. Harry Whelan, Junior, of Wolf News, for example — couldn’t say you were taking credit for something you had very little, if anything, to do with.”
“Stop calling them ‘Merry Outlaws,’ Robin,” the President said, then cleared his throat dramatically. “Start calling them ‘Clendennen’s Commandos.’”
“Sir?”
“You heard me. Clendennen’s Commandos!”
“Yes, sir.”
“That has a nice ring to it, Mr. President,” Mulligan said.
“Yes, it does,” the President agreed. And then his face clouded.
“I see a couple of problems with this, Hoboken,” he said. “Like, for example, if I go to Fort Bragg, everybody will know.”
“Not if we sneak down there, Mr. President,” Hoboken replied. “Use a little-bitty airplane, a Gulfstream Five, instead of that great big 747.”
“That’d work,” the President said, after a moment’s thought.
“And it wouldn’t really be a secret that we’re going there, Mr. President. What you’d be doing there would be the secret. C. Harry Whelan would know you’re going down there, have been there, et cetera, but he wouldn’t know why—”
“Until Clendennen’s Commandos have seized Drug Cartel International?”
“Yes, Mr. President. That’s the idea.”
“How would C. Harry Whelan know I’m going to Fort Bragg?”
“We’d leak it to him. We leak things all the time.”
“Just one more itsy-bitsy problem, Robin. What if Castillo gets his ass kicked when he tries to seize Drug Cartel International?”
“Then we deny knowing anything about him or any of this.”
“Can we get away with that?”
“Not a problem, Mr. President. I lie successfully to the press on a daily basis.”
“Set it up, Robin. I want to leave first thing in the morning.”
“Mr. President,” Mulligan said, “if you’d like, we could stop in Biloxi and see about getting the First Mother-in-Law out of jail.”
“Screw her,” the President said. “I can’t let the old bag keep me from carrying out my duties as President.”
[THREE]