“Like when he goes to Fort Bragg, for example?”
“When he goes anywhere, Harry.”
“There’s a story going around that he’s going to Fort Bragg tomorrow morning.”
“Where did you hear something like that?”
“Telling you where and from whom I learned this would betray my source. And I never do that. Suffice it to say that he is close to the center of things in the White House.”
“I think this fellow is pulling your chain, Harry.”
“I think you’re being less than honest with me, Robin Redbreast, my fine-feathered friend.”
“Harry, you know I don’t like it when you call me that.”
“I know. That’s why I do it. You leave me no choice but to go on the air tonight — probably on Wolf News at Five O’clock with J. Pastor Jones, or on Andy McClarren’s As the World Spins at seven, or maybe, probably both, with the story that President Clendennen is about to make a secret trip that Presidential Spokesman—”
“That’s Spokesperson, Harry,” Presidential Spokesman Hoboken interrupted. “Spokesperson. There is absolutely no sexism in the Clendennen White House.”
“… refuses to talk about.”
“Can we go off the record here, Harry?” Hoboken asked.
“What would be in that for me?”
“The gratitude of the President.”
“Gratitude for what?”
“Are we off the record?”
“Momentarily.”
“Gratitude for understanding a certain problem he and the First Lady are having.”
“That wouldn’t have anything to do with the First Mother-in-Law being a world-class boozer, would it?”
“Hypothetically speaking, Harry—”
“We’re back on the record, Robin Redbreast,” C. Harry said. “The last time you sucker punched me with that hypothetical business, I swore I’d never let you do it again.”
“Very well. Then hypothetically speaking on the record: What if a member of the President’s family was in the hospital in Mississippi and the President wanted to visit her without attracting the attention of the White House Press Corps—”
“And having it come out she’s a boozer, you mean?”
“If an allegation was made that that fine old lady had a drinking problem—”
“The voters may not like it?”
“… that the President and the First Lady were doing their best to cope with—”
“With a remarkable lack of success—”
“… and that, despite being fully aware of the pain it would cause to not only that poor, sick old lady, but to the First Lady and the President himself, a certain journalist wrote the story anyway—”
“News is news, Robin,” C. Harry said.
“… because he believes news is news, and to hell with compassion—”
“Nice try, Robin,” C. Harry said.
“… and this story would get out — about this hypothetical journalist, I mean — because other members of the White House Press Corps, jealous of our hypothetical journalist’s scoop, would fall all over themselves to paint our hypothetical journalist as cold-hearted and unfeeling. They might even go so far as to suggest that it wasn’t really a scoop.”
“Meaning what?” C. Harry demanded.
“That our hypothetical journalist had paid for his information, bribed some underpaid White House staffer for it. If that hypothetical happened, of course, the Secret Service would have to investigate. Paying government employees to give you information they’re not supposed to give you, as I’m sure you know, Harry, is a Class A felony.”
C. Harry considered everything for a long moment, and then asked, “Is that what it is, he’s going to Mississippi to see the First Mother-in-Law?”
“I regret,” Hoboken said formally, “that there is nothing vis-à-vis the President’s travel plans that I can tell you at this time, Mr. Whelan.”
“Screw you, Robin Redbreast,” Mr. Whelan said, and hung up.
[FIVE]
When he walked back to the White House from the Old Ebbitt, Sean O’Grogarty was quickly passed onto the White House grounds by the uniformed Secret Service guards. Not only did they know him but he had the proper identification tag hanging around his neck.
As he was walking up the curving drive to the portico, intending to go to “the shed”—where Yukon drivers on call waited — a Secret Service agent of the presidential security detail intercepted him.
He signaled with an index finger for O’Grogarty to follow him, and led him to a men’s room just inside the building.
“Wait here,” he said. “Someone wants to see you.”
Supervisory Secret Service Agent Robert J. Mulligan appeared five minutes later, checked to see that they were alone in the room, and then leaned his considerable bulk against the door to ensure they were left that way.
“How did it go, Sean?” Mulligan asked.
“I was in the Old Ebbitt about twenty minutes,” O’Grogarty replied. “C. Harry came in, asked if I had anything—”
“Nobody saw the two of you together, right? I told you that was important.”
O’Grogarty shrugged. “I don’t think so, but we were at the bar. He asked if I had anything—”
“Anybody hear him ask?”
O’Grogarty shook his head.
“When I nodded, he put a fifty on the bar. Nobody saw him do it. Then I told him what I had was worth more than fifty bucks, and he put another fifty on the bar. Two twenties and a ten. Then I told him about the President going to Fort Bragg tomorrow. And that nobody was to know.”
“He believed you?”
O’Grogarty nodded.
“He said if I could find out why, there’d be more money in it for me.”
“Good man!”
“Thank you, sir.”
“Speaking of money…” Mulligan said.
“Yes, sir,” O’Grogarty replied, and took the one hundred dollars C. Harry had given him from his pocket. He gave the fifty-dollar bill to Mulligan.
“The President calls this ‘redistribution of the wealth,’” Mulligan said. “It’s something he really believes in.”
“You mean he gets the fifty dollars?”
“No, of course not. The President says he’s worked too hard for his money to redistribute any of it. What it means is you had to give me half of what C. Harry gave you, and I’ll have to give half of that to Mr. Hoboken. That’s fair. You wouldn’t have C. Harry’s fifty unless he bribed you, and the leak to C. Harry was Hoboken’s idea.”
“Yes, sir.”
“I probably shouldn’t tell you this, Sean, but I see a good future for you in the Secret Service. Keep up the good work!”
“I’ll try, sir.”
Mulligan patted O’Grogarty on the shoulder, pushed himself off the men’s room door, and left.
[SIX]
Colonel Max Caruthers, who was six feet three and weighed 225 pounds, and Captain Albert H. Walsh, who was even larger, were in the foyer of Quarters #3. The cordless telephone on the sideboard rang. Caruthers was closer to it, and answered it.
“General McNab’s quarters.”
“Who is this?” the caller demanded sharply.