“Where are you at? Are you at the house? When can we come over?” Marilyn reached out and took my free hand and nodded at me.
“We’re at the funeral home. We’re just about to leave and go home,” she told me.
“We’ll meet you at the house.”
“Thank you!”
I hung up and slipped my phone back in my pocket. I stood up and helped Marilyn to her feet. She was no longer crying, but her eyes were puffy and wet. The kids looked confused and hurt. They might not have been as close as Harlan and I, but they had played with their children and been on vacations with them. I turned to the nearest Secret Service Agent and said, “Change of plans. We are heading over to the Buckminster residence in Alexandria, not the Naval Observatory.”
He looked shocked and said, “Mister President, we can’t…” Then he stopped as he saw the look in my eyes. “Yes sir, understood.” He began speaking into his mike. “Jumper is on the move, diverting to…”
Jumper was my Secret Service codename, taken from my time in the 82nd. I recalled when it had been assigned to me that it was a name taken from one of Clancy’s books. Marilyn’s codename was Jelly Jar, after the jams and jellies we made together, and it irked her to no end. I had damn near died laughing when I first heard it. The kids were Biker, Trouble One, and Trouble Two at my suggestion. They actually liked their codenames.
There had been some plans to go over to the White House at some point and meet some people, but it wasn’t anything that couldn’t be put off. The Buckminsters had bought a split level in a fairly typical upscale suburban development in Alexandria. Anna Lee had commented to me at the time that it was the first place they had lived that she didn’t have to plan for their next move. We had a convoy of lead and chase cars and my limo and a dummy limo to act as a decoy. When we got there, a lead car had already arrived and ‘secured’ the area. With my luck they had probably shot the neighbors. The Secret Service had a level of institutional arrogance and chutzpah beyond anything I had ever run across.
After we got out, I ignored my protectors and simply walked to the front door and knocked. An agent was already inside, and he opened the door, and looked around, then allowed us in. Anna Lee and Mary Beth were sitting on the couch together, and Tyrone was off to the side. Marilyn immediately sat down next to Anna Lee and they hugged. The twins sandwiched Mary Beth between them. They were just a year or so younger than Mary Beth, who was a college freshman at Virginia Tech. Tyrone was still in high school, a freshman or sophomore, I thought.
Tyrone was the only one by himself, so I went over to him and reached out and shook his hand. Charlie followed along behind me. Tyrone was like a robot, moving on remote control. I went into the dining room and grabbed a chair and brought it back and sat down next to him. “Tyrone.” He didn’t say anything or even look at me. I put my hand on his knee and nudged him. “Tyrone, Earth to Tyrone.”
Tyrone smiled and turned his head, and then got serious again. “Sorry about that, Uncle… Mister… what do I call you now, Mister President?”
I chuckled at that. “Whatever you want, Tyrone. If you want to call me Uncle Carl, go ahead. If you think you’re too old for that, just call me Carl. I won’t mind. Tell your brother and sister the same thing.” He nodded at that. I looked over to the sofa, where all the women were crowded together hugging and crying. “I’m not ready for that. Where can we talk?”
“Yeah. Let’s go in the family room.” Charlie and I followed him down a half flight of stairs into their finished basement. He plopped down on the couch and I sat down in an old armchair next to him. I sent Charlie off to find a few cold cans of Coke. “I don’t know which is worse, the not knowing for the last few days, or the knowing, now,” said Tyrone.
“Tell me what happened, Tyrone.”
“I mean, it was just a normal day. Dad said he was going over to the Pentagon to meet some people, and then after lunch he was going back to his office, but after the plane hit, we never heard nothing. Mom tried to call him but had to leave him a voicemail and he never called. He never came home and we couldn’t get anybody to answer our calls when she called over there. A cop showed up today and told us!”
“Oh, shit!” I muttered lowly. “What’d he say?”
“Oh, man, it was awful. He said they had a body, with Dad’s wallet and identification, at the morgue. He wasn’t a soldier anymore, so they had the police tell us,” he answered.
“Oh, shit!”
“I mean, he wasn’t rude about it or nothing, but… I mean, how do you tell somebody something like that? Do you have to take lessons or something?”
I shrugged. “Yeah, in the Army you do have to take lessons in it. They have special teams to do that.”
“Man, that must suck.”
“I don’t think I could do it, Tyrone,” I told him. “Have you guys gotten in touch with Roscoe?”
“Mom called, but they’re on lockdown. She left a message with somebody.”
I sighed. “Maybe I can do something about that. Let’s go talk to your Mom.”
Roscoe Buckminster was a first class cadet at West Point, what everybody else would call a senior. Roscoe had wanted to follow in his father’s footsteps in the Army, but decided to apply to West Point. Since their official address of record was still in Mississippi, when Harlan had asked me for a little help, I spoke with one of their Senators and did a little horse-trading for his appointment. It was actually really routine Congressional back scratching, but the Buckminsters were suitably impressed. It wasn’t a college lifestyle I would have enjoyed, but Roscoe seemed to like it.
We went back upstairs and I found the girls were off in Mary Beth’s room and Charlie went in search of them. I sat down next to Anna Lee and said, “Tyrone told me you tried to reach Roscoe, but they were locked down. Did you ever reach him?”
“No. Can you call him?”
“You bet.” I wasn’t terribly surprised. When we went to DEFCON Three, they locked up the military bases, and by definition West Point was a military base. They had probably issued bazookas to the cadets and told them to man the wire. I looked around the room and found my Personal Assistant, Mindy, and waved her towards me. Mindy had been my assistant since my Congressional days, had followed me to the West Wing when I became the VP, and was still with me. How she had managed to do all that and get married and have two kids at the same time was a most impressive feat of time management!
“Grab a pad and pen and start taking some notes.” I pulled out my cell phone and called the switchboard. “Get me the Superintendant of West Point, or if he’s not there, whoever is in charge. Call me back as soon as you can.” I flipped the phone shut and said, “As soon as they call, we’ll get you on the line with Roscoe. Mindy, we’ll probably need to make some arrangements to get him back here.”
“Thank you, Carl,” Anna Lee said.
“Did you and Harlan ever talk about where he wanted to be buried?” Marilyn and I had decided on a small public cemetery in Dulaney Valley. Since I wasn’t Catholic, we couldn’t both be buried in a Catholic cemetery. “I can make arrangements for Arlington, I’m sure.”
She shook her head. “No, Harlan wanted to go home. He wanted to be buried at the family plot in Buckminster.”
“Fair enough.” Just at that, the phone I was holding buzzed. I flipped it open. “Hello?”
“Lieutenant General William Lennox, sir. How can I help you?”
“General, thank you for calling. Are you still on lockdown there?” I asked.