The Inside Ring

‘Yes,’ DeMarco said.

‘Donnelly,’ the Speaker said again, then he grinned, his teeth yellow and strong, and DeMarco was reminded of a large rumpled bear, one that has just spotted its lunch walking toward him.

Oh God, DeMarco prayed, please don’t let this happen.

‘Tell me what Banks said, Joe,’ Mahoney said. ‘Don’t leave out a thing.’

DeMarco did and when he finished Mahoney just sat there, a small smile on his lips, a contented look on his broad Irish face. In an attempt to head off the disaster he feared was coming, DeMarco said, ‘Sir, it’s pretty unlikely this agent’s guilty of anything – even Banks admits that – but in case he is, the right thing to do is to tell the Bureau. Or the press.’

Mahoney nodded as if agreeing with DeMarco but there was a gleam in his eye. It was the gleam of a man who has sighted a sail on the horizon and knows that it’s his ship that’s coming in.

DeMarco played his last card. ‘If the FBI catches me fooling around in this, it could lead back to you. You don’t want—’

The Speaker rose slowly from the bench.

‘Help Banks out, Joe,’ he said. ‘Do whatever the man wants.’

Mahoney patted DeMarco affectionately on the shoulder. As he walked away there was a spring in his step caused by more than his new tennis shoes. He was a few paces up the sidewalk when DeMarco heard him bark a laugh and say, ‘Donnelly. I fuckin’ love it.’

4

‘Do you like chamber music, Joe?’

‘No. I like rock and roll. I like jazz. I like Ella singin’ the—’

‘That’s nice, dear. A quartet is playing Mozart in the National Art Gallery cafeteria today. Meet me there at three. And don’t be late.’

‘Do you know someone in the quartet, Emma?’

The phone was silent. ‘The cello player,’ Emma finally said, and then she laughed. ‘I’m becoming predictable in my dotage. I hate that.’

‘The last thing you’ll ever be is predictable, Emma, but what I have to tell you can’t be told in front of the cello player.’

‘I’ll send her shopping. Just be on time, Joe.’

The cafeteria was crowded and a number of spectators were standing, yet Emma sat alone at a table for four. DeMarco could imagine music lovers approaching, asking politely if they might sit, and Emma backing them off with a glance and a growl, like a lioness protecting a bloody haunch from a flock of timid vultures. At present, the lioness was serenely drinking a glass of white wine while tapping a manicured nail in time to the music.

Emma was tall and slim. Her features were patrician, her complexion flawless. Her hair, cut short and chic, was neither gray nor blonde but some mysterious shade in between. She was beautiful in an austere way and with her ice-blue eyes she reminded DeMarco of the actress Charlotte Rampling. He suspected that she was somewhere between fifty and sixty, not because she looked it, but because of what little he knew of her history.

The operative word with Emma was always ‘suspected.’ She refused to discuss herself, past or present. She would drop hints – tantalizing, inconsistent tidbits – but would never explain when asked to clarify. She admitted to having once worked for the government, but she wouldn’t say in what capacity or for which department. She claimed to be retired but was often out of town for extended periods and never returned with a tan. She lived expensively and owned a home in pricey McLean, Virginia – property that did not seem affordable on a civil servant’s pension. She was gay but something she had once said made DeMarco think she had been married and might have a child. But he wasn’t certain; he was never certain.

DeMarco knew that Emma was at times enigmatic because she chose to be, because it suited her contrary nature. But he also knew that she was sometimes elusive because she had to be.

As he walked toward her table, DeMarco glanced over at the musicians and noted, as he had expected, that the cello player was a beauty: a tall, willowy, Viking blonde – with legs to die for, spread erotically for her cello.

DeMarco pulled back a chair to take a seat next to Emma. She heard the chair scrape the floor and said without looking, ‘That seat’s taken. So are the other two.’

‘Liar,’ DeMarco said.

‘Takes one to know one,’ Emma muttered.

Pointing his chin at the cello player, DeMarco said, ‘She’s a hottie, all right.’

‘A hottie? God, Joe.’

As DeMarco listened to the quartet he wondered why all these people were here. Did they really enjoy this music or was it something they forced themselves to endure, a self-prescribed dose of sophistication, the cultural equivalent of swallowing a carrot smoothie for one’s health.

‘When will this end, Emma?’ DeMarco said. ‘I’ll slip into a coma if it goes on much longer.’

‘Sit there and be quiet,’ Emma said. ‘It’s time you learned to appreciate something other than the Dixie Chicks.’

The quartet finally finished and the cello player handed her instrument to a pimply-faced volunteer. She wagged a finger at him in a stern you-be-careful-with-that gesture, then moved toward Emma’s table, blonde mane flying behind her, long thoroughbred legs flashing. Had Emma not been his friend DeMarco would have been jealous. Hell, he was jealous.

Seeing DeMarco, the cello player hesitated when she reached the table but Emma said, ‘It’s all right, Christine, sit down. Christine, this is Joe. Joe’s a bagman for a corrupt politician.’

‘Jesus, Emma,’ DeMarco said.

‘Which one?’ pretty Christine asked.

Thankfully, Emma ignored her question and said, ‘Joe, be a good bagman and fetch Christine a glass of white wine.’

‘Yes, ma’am,’ DeMarco said.

DeMarco returned with Christine’s wine and a Pepsi for himself. Emma was complimenting Christine on her playing, gushing how the third movement had almost moved her to tears. DeMarco rolled his eyes when he heard this; bamboo splinters jammed under her toenails wouldn’t move Emma to tears. To his relief Emma finally said, ‘Dear, I have some business with Joe. Something tedious. Would you mind if I met you at your suite in an hour? I’ll bring some of that champagne you like.’

‘And strawberries?’ Christine asked.

‘Strawberries too,’ Emma said.

As Christine walked away, Emma shook her head and muttered, ‘Strawberries and champagne. What a cliché.’ Turning to DeMarco, she said, ‘So, Joseph, what’s the problem? Might I assume that shit Mahoney has once again dropped you in the soup?’

‘The Speaker was at a dinner the other night, drunk as a Lord, when he decided to loan me to Andy Banks.’

‘Homeland Security?’

‘Yeah. So I meet with General Banks this morning and he tells me he has a small problem.’

‘Joe, I have a lovely friend waiting for me.’

‘Banks thinks a Secret Service agent may have been an accomplice in the assassination attempt on the President, and both Banks and Patrick Donnelly are withholding information from the FBI.’

‘Well! You do know how to get a girl’s attention.’ Then Emma said exactly what Mahoney had said: ‘Tell me what Banks told you, Joe. Don’t leave out a thing.’

5

Philip Montgomery and the President had been roommates at Harvard. Montgomery was the best man at the President’s wedding, and the President had returned the favor for two of Montgomery’s three nuptials.

The President went on to become governor of his home state, then U.S. senator, then President. He was a bright man, though not a brilliant one, and felt he was dodging his responsibilities if he worked less than sixteen hours a day. Montgomery, the President’s opposite in temperament, was a literary genius who drank like Tennessee Williams and played and fought and fucked like Hemingway. He was a master of the twelve-hundred-page epic that blended fact and fiction so artfully that it was difficult to tell which parts were which, not that his readers particularly cared.

Every year, for more than twenty years, the President and Montgomery got together for three or four days to enjoy various pastimes: skiing, hunting, fishing, river rafting – and a lot of drinking. This annual holiday with Montgomery, an event that was highly publicized, was the only time the President appeared to let his hair down. As for Montgomery, his hair was always down. After being elected to the highest office in the land, the President continued to enjoy his reunions with Montgomery and insisted that his Secret Service detail be as small as possible. The reason for this was to minimize the number of people seeing him and a Pulitzer Prize winner behaving like drunken fools. Like the time they threw empty whiskey bottles into the Bitterroot River and blasted them to bits with automatic weapons borrowed from the President’s bodyguards; hardly an activity he wanted reported to either the environmentalists or the gun-control crowd.

This year Montgomery and the President had decided to do a little fishing in Georgia, on the Chattooga River. The dates of the trip – July 14 to July 17 – had been established long in advance as is necessary with a president’s schedule, but according to Banks the location of the trip wasn’t finalized until late May. Naturally, a host of people knew about the trip and the number of potential leaks was almost infinite.

Banks had received the warning letter four days before the President was scheduled to depart for Georgia and the first thing he did was call Patrick Donnelly, director of the Secret Service. Donnelly told Banks it was damn unlikely that an agent had sent the letter. In fact, he found it amusing that Banks had given the letter any credibility at all – not an attitude the general appreciated.

Banks pointed out to Donnelly that the letter had been printed on Secret Service letterhead, placed in a Secret Service business envelope, but most important, it had been delivered via the department pouch. The pouch was a mailbag delivered by armed courier and used to transport classified documents between Secret Service headquarters on H Street and Banks’s office on Nebraska Avenue. Only personnel inside Secret Service headquarters, a secure facility, had access to the pouch and it was delivered directly to Banks’s executive assistant.

Then there was the jargon in the note: Eagle One and the inside ring. ‘Eagle One’ was the President’s code name. The ‘inside ring’ was those agents closest to the President whenever he was on the move. The outside ring was the agents guarding the perimeter: agents in the crowd, on rooftops, manning strategic control points. If the outside ring was penetrated, the inside ring was to die protecting the Man.

Donnelly still claimed the letter was a hoax. Maybe an agent had sent it – a lot of his people weren’t happy with changes Banks had made since taking over Homeland Security – but that still didn’t mean there was any truth to the letter. Then Donnelly, a master of the bureaucratic full nelson, dared Banks to call up the President and ruin his long-awaited vacation based on an unsigned note that claimed he was at risk from his own bodyguards. Banks didn’t make the call, but he did keep the warning letter.

Seven days later Philip Montgomery and a Secret Service agent were killed and the President was wounded. After the assassination attempt, Banks was racked with guilt, terrified the note had been authentic and that he had failed to act upon it. He called Donnelly and told him that he was sending him the warning letter. He wanted it analyzed for fingerprints and DNA in saliva on the envelope seal, and for Donnelly to make an effort to find out who had put it in the pouch.

Donnelly tried his best to talk Banks out of having the letter analyzed. He told him if he sent the letter to a lab and started questioning people, the contents of the letter would be leaked to the media within hours. Absolutely the last thing they needed, Donnelly said, was to give birth to a preposterous theory that the Secret Service could have been involved in the assassination attempt. But Banks insisted. Donnelly may have been a presidential appointee but Banks was still his boss.

The next day Donnelly came to see Banks. Although he categorically dismissed the possibility of Secret Service complicity, he did take steps to convince Banks that the warning letter was bogus. First, he told Banks, in accordance with standard Secret Service procedures for incidents like this, all the agents at Chattooga River were given polygraphs to see if they were involved. All the agents had passed as would be expected. And if this wasn’t good enough, there was the timing of the note and its relationship to the men assigned to the inside ring.

At Chattooga River the outside ring consisted of more than sixty agents. The cabin where the President had stayed was selected not only because it was located near several good fishing holes but also because it was in an isolated area with limited access. Three days before the President’s arrival the Secret Service sent a large advance team to the area, drew an imaginary circle five miles in diameter around the cabin, then blocked off all roads and trails into the area and manned these entry points with agents. Following this, they searched the area inside the circle by air and on foot to make sure no one was there. All people entering the area before the President’s arrival were escorted through to make sure they left, and after the President arrived, people were not allowed to enter at all. Periodic surveillances of the area were conducted by helicopter during the entire time the President was visiting.

Confident the perimeter was secure, and in keeping with the President’s explicit direction to minimize the number of on-site guards, the inside ring at Chattooga River consisted of only four agents: Billy Mattis, Robert James – the agent who was killed while covering the President with his own body – Richard Matthews, and Stephen Preston.

The inside ring had been selected on July 5th and the warning note was sent to Banks five days later, July 10th. At the time the letter was sent agents Matthews and Preston had not been assigned to the Chattooga River detail. Two other agents had been assigned but those two men, who carpooled together, were in a traffic accident on the Beltway on July 12th and Matthews and Preston were last-minute substitutes. Thus, explained Donnelly, whoever wrote the note couldn’t have been referring to Matthews or Preston. Banks argued that maybe one of the two agents who had been originally assigned had compromised the President’s security before the traffic accident, and that the accident had been a ruse to avoid being at Chattooga River the day of the shooting. Donnelly said this was damned unlikely since the accident had involved a head-on collision with a cement mixer.

The third agent was the man who was killed: Agent James. Donnelly ruled him out based on his distinguished record, the fact that he had served the Secret Service for twenty-five spotless years – and that he died saving the President’s life. Banks, however, countered Donnelly’s logic, suggesting that maybe the assassin had shot Agent James to silence him. Donnelly said that idea was absurd; it was clear from the video of the shooting that the first shot hit Montgomery by accident, the second shot winged the President but didn’t kill him, and the third shot had been aimed at the President but missed and hit the agent. Banks had to agree with him.

This left a single agent: Billy Ray Mattis. Mattis also had an impressive record, but since he hadn’t been killed like Agent James or assigned after the warning letter had been sent like the other two agents, Donnelly couldn’t rule him out as definitively as the other three men. But the main problem with Mattis, Banks told DeMarco, was that he looked hinky on the video. Hinky.

The next day, while Banks was still stewing over what to do about the warning letter, the body of Harold Edwards was found along with the suicide note that said he’d acted alone. Donnelly called Banks shortly after the discovery of Edwards’s body and said that the lab had drawn a blank on the warning letter: no fingerprints, fibers, saliva, anything. He also said that he’d personally talked to the courier who’d delivered the pouch to Banks’s office and the courier had no recollection of any agent giving him a letter for delivery to Banks.

But Banks still wasn’t happy.

6

Most people had left the art gallery cafeteria immediately after Christine’s quartet finished playing. A cleanup crew was now stacking chairs and clearing off tables, and the man in charge was giving Emma and DeMarco looks encouraging them to leave. Emma was impervious to the looks.

‘I don’t get it,’ Emma said. ‘What exactly does Banks want you to do?’

‘He says he wants me to see if there’s a link, no matter how remote, between Mattis and the assassination attempt,’ DeMarco said. ‘He’s not convinced Mattis is guilty of anything, and at the same time he’s not a hundred percent positive he’s innocent either. All he wants me to do is check out Mattis and then he says he can rest with a clear conscience.’

‘A politician striving for a clear conscience,’ Emma said, ‘is like Sir Percival searching for the Grail.’

‘Aside from that medieval insight, Emma, what do you think?’

‘Joe, sweetie, we’re in Washington, D.C. Here live the fine people who brought you the Bay of Pigs, Watergate, Iran-Contra, and invisible weapons of mass destruction. Do I think it feasible that a government agency – particularly one headed by a weasel like Patrick Donnelly – could be involved in an attempt to kill a president? The answer is yes. Do I think it likely? The answer is no.’

Emma took a sip of her wine. ‘And the reason Banks wants you to investigate Mattis is because he looks “hinky” on this video?’

‘I guess. Banks says he’s a big believer in listenin’ to his gut, and his gut’s tellin’ him there’s something wrong with Mattis. By the way, the agent in the video, the one who dropped his sunglasses? That was Billy Ray Mattis.’

‘Is that why Banks is suspicious of him?’ Emma said.

‘I don’t know, but Mattis was also the agent who stood directly in front of the President after the shooting started. That last bullet the sniper fired, the one that killed that other agent, went right between his legs. Missed his johnson by an inch.’

‘Small target,’ Emma muttered. ‘Who took the video, by the way?’

‘A local station out of Gainsville. The President thought it would be a treat for them to get an exclusive of him and Montgomery flying off in the helicopter. They were given about four hours’ notice.’

A member of the cleaning crew stopped at their table, a dignified-looking Hispanic. He asked Emma politely if she’d be leaving soon so his crew could finish cleaning up. Emma just stared at the poor guy until he backed away, bowing, making apologies in two languages.

‘And there’s something else that’s bothering Banks,’ DeMarco said.

‘Oh?’ Emma said.

‘Yeah. Patrick Donnelly. He says Donnelly’s response to the warning note was out of character. I don’t know how long Donnelly has been director of the Secret Service but—’

‘A long time,’ Emma said.

‘—but according to Banks he doesn’t have a reputation as a guy who goes out on a limb and he certainly doesn’t go out on a limb for his agents. Banks said he was surprised that Donnelly didn’t try to get the Chattooga River trip canceled just to cover his ass. At a minimum, he should have switched out the agents assigned to the inside ring, but he didn’t do that either.’

‘I agree,’ Emma said. ‘So why didn’t he?’

‘Banks doesn’t know, but it’s just one more thing that’s making him nervous.’

‘I’ll tell you another thing that would make me nervous if I was Banks,’ Emma said.

‘What’s that?’

‘Why didn’t the person who wrote that letter send it to Donnelly, the guy directly in charge of the Secret Service, instead of Banks?’

‘I hadn’t thought of that,’ DeMarco said.

Emma was silent for a moment before saying, ‘So why doesn’t Banks just call up the FBI, tell ’em about the warning letter, and let them investigate?’

‘He says he’s not willing to unleash a media hurricane about Secret Service involvement in the assassination attempt based solely on his gut feeling. And he’s particularly not willing to do that now that they’ve got Edwards’s suicide note.’

‘So he wants you looking into this instead of the Bureau?’

‘Yeah. At least I won’t leak the story to the Post. Well, maybe not.’

‘I guess you’re better than nothing,’ Emma muttered.

‘Thanks for that vote of confidence, Ms Emma, but frankly I agree with you and that’s what I told Mahoney. But once I told him Donnelly was acting weird on this thing, he insisted I get involved.’

‘What’s Mahoney have against Donnelly?’

‘I don’t know. And there’s one other thing: Banks doesn’t think Donnelly really had that note analyzed.’

‘He thinks Donnelly lied to him?’ Emma said.

‘Yeah. Banks doesn’t think there was enough time to check the letter out, not if they analyzed for DNA and questioned people and stuff like that. And when I told Mahoney that, his big ears really perked up.’

‘From what I’ve heard about Donnelly,’ Emma said, ‘I suppose anything’s possible.’ She ran a hand through her short hair as she thought over everything DeMarco had told her. ‘Tell me something, Joseph,’ she said. ‘That note said the inside ring had been “compromised,” whatever the hell that means. Exactly how could any of those four agents guarding the President that morning have compromised his security?’

‘Good question, Emma, and I don’t know. They certainly protected him when the shooting started, and the dates and location of the trip were hardly state secrets. And if the FBI had found some major hole in the Service’s security procedures, that would have been all over the news by now. So far no one is blaming the Secret Service for misconduct, dereliction of duty, or anything else. Not yet, anyway.’

‘Well,’ Emma said, gathering up her purse, ‘this is all very interesting, Joe, but as I said earlier, I have a lovely friend waiting for me. Is there anything else you wanted?’

‘Yeah. How ’bout asking your buddies to do a records check on Mattis? See if he knew Harold Edwards. Check out his finances, his history, that sorta thing.’

‘He’s a Secret Service agent, sweetie. I doubt the databases will be revealing.’

‘We gotta look.’

‘We?’

DeMarco shook his head in despair. ‘Why in the hell would Mahoney want me fooling around with something like this, Emma? I mean, Jesus. If he wants to cause Donnelly a problem all he has to do is leak this shit to the Post.’

‘Honey, I think the Speaker is playing a zillion-to-one long shot. I don’t think he believes there’s a snowball’s chance in hell that Mattis or anyone else in the Secret Service was involved in the assassination attempt. But he hopes they were. And if they were, he can destroy Patrick Donnelly – not just annoy him with some unflattering press.’

‘That damn Mahoney,’ DeMarco said.

‘Come on, Joe, quit whinin’ and let’s get crackin’. You have to take me someplace where they sell fresh strawberries.’

7

DeMarco passed under the Capitol’s Grand Rotunda without an upward glance. To reach the stairway leading to his office he had to excuse his way through a cluster of tourists, their sunburned necks straining skyward as they gazed reverently at the painted ceiling above them. The tourists irritated him. He was in a bad mood already because of this nonsense with Banks, but it bugged him, every day when he went to work, these rubberneckers in their baggy shorts blocking the way.

He descended two flights of stairs. Marble floors changed to linoleum. Art on the ceiling was replaced by water stains on acoustic tile. The working folk dwelled on DeMarco’s floor. Here clattered the machines of the congressional printing office and directly across from his office was the emergency diesel generator room. The diesels would periodically roar to life when they tested them, scaring the bejesus out of DeMarco every time they did. And just down the hall from him were shops occupied by the Capitol’s maintenance personnel. Considering what DeMarco did some days, being located near the janitors seemed appropriate.