Paramour (26 page)

"After all that went down I thought somebody was going to be rolled up for sure."

"You off duty?" Landry said.

Sneed nodded. "Till tomorrow at sixteen hundred hours."

"Feel like a drink?"

"You talked me into it."

At Blackie's, Landry phoned Doris and told her he wouldn't be home for dinner. He spent the rest of the evening in conversation with Sneed. Sneed was drinking bourbon on the rocks, and as the evening wore on he became less and less inhibited.

As they talked and drank, Landry would leave his glass half full as it was replaced by Tiffany the bartender, to avoid becoming inebriated. Conversely, Sneed would jiggle
ice and down what was left in his glass whenever Tiffany got around to refilling drinks. By 11 P.M. Sneed was drunk and complaining bitterly about why he hadn't been promoted to lieutenant colonel-though of course not mentioning that he'd passed up more than one opportunity at a regular field command leading to promotion in order to stay in his comfortable White House job.

At midnight Sneed checked his watch, the first time he'd done so all evening.

Fearing that Sneed would leave and he would have wasted the entire evening, Landry decided to wait no longer. "Operation Fencing Master," Landry said. "How did you know about it?"

"Shit fire. There ain't no secrets in this man's army," Sneed said, lifting his glass.

Landry considered a follow-up question but held back. If he said the wrong thing, Sneed would realize he was probing for information.

Sneed finished his drink and set the glass down. "I knew it was something big. They don't roll out every examiner at Fort McClellan and send them to DC just for the fuck of it. "

"They sure as hell don't," Landry said. Examiners?

"One of the examiners they sent up here is an old friend from the Five-eleventh. He said they did everyone simultaneously on a Sunday . . . at their homes."

"Lucky the word never got out," Landry said. What the hell was he talking about?

Sneed chuckled. "Hell, the
Washington Post
would have had a damn field day. Headline: 'Cabinet and highest White House staff made to sit down on lie box. '"

"You can say that again," Landry said. Lie detector tests!

"Did you get tested?"

"Me? No. No one in Secret Service was tested as far as I know," Landry said.

"As I understand it, they only asked one question: 'Are you now working or have you ever worked for a hostile intelligence agency?' Is it true Morgan told everyone if they refused the test, it would be considered a resignation?"

"I heard a rumor to that effect," Landry said, feeling he had to answer.

Sneed looked him in the eye. "You sure you knew about this in the first place? I don't want to be talking out of turn."

Landry sipped his drink. "Nothing happens at the House without the Secret Service knowing about it."

Sneed slapped Landry on the shoulder and checked his watch again. "I'd better be going," he said, climbing off his bar stool. He headed for the door.

Landry remained at the bar after Sneed left, his mind swirling with what he'd learned.
The entire cabinet forced to take lie detector tests? Ray Stryker killing himself? A CIA agent getting killed during a presidential visit? Powers quitting his job suddenly?
Coming to a decision, he left the bar and returned to the White House.

At the East Gate, Landry stopped at the guard booth. Howard Singer, the uniformed officer on duty, came to his feet.

"How you doin', my man?"

"Fine, Mr. Landry. Working late tonight?"

"I just thought I'd stop by to see how things are going on the night shift. Any suggestions on how we can increase security-make things better?"

"No, sir. Things seem fine to me."

"That's good, Howard," Landry said. He turned and entered the White House itself. Once inside, he stepped into the logistics office. From the window, he had a view of the guard booth. Singer was on the phone, making one quick call after another, informing all guard posts that Landry was present conducting an unannounced inspection-exactly what Landry wanted him to do. Inspecting posts was a legitimate reason for the Agent-in-Charge of the presidential detail to be in the White House after midnight.

At the upstairs elevator bank, Landry stopped and made small talk with Agent Jim Anderson, the only other black on the White House Secret Service Detail. Anderson told him that Singer had, as Landry had suspected, notified everyone the Agent-in-Charge was in the White House.

Landry continued down the hall to Morgan's office. Using the White House master key he kept on his key chain, he opened the door and entered, closing the door behind him.

Recalling the safe diagrams kept on file in W-16, he surmised Morgan kept his private papers in the Diebold safe against the facing wall. The number 8336 was stenciled on the top of the safe. Memorizing the number, he left the office and continued down the hallway. At the end of the hall, he took the stairs down to W-16. Agent Harrington, the acting shift leader, had his suit coat on and his tie straightened. Landry told him he'd forgotten a phone number and opened the file cabinet next to the radio console. He thumbed through files until Harrington was busy answering a radio call, then reached to the back of the drawer for the safe combination file. Quickly, he found the combination for number 8336, repeated it three times to himself, then shoved the file back into its place.

"Can I help you find anything?" Harrington said.

"I was just looking for my shift report. I had some more calls from the press about Capizzi and his little act today."

"Capizzi is a deluxe, grade-A, tournament-class pain in the ass. An asshole's asshole."

"He is that," Landry said. "But look at it like this: he probably can't help the way he is. His mom and dad may have been assholes."

"You have a point," Harrington said as Landry left the room.

"I'm going to make one more run through the House before I go," Landry said, because he knew Harrington would follow him on the closed-circuit camera. "Have a good night."

"You too, Ken."

Landry checked the outside posts, chatting amiably with each of the agents on duty, then made his way back into the House through the bowling alley. He returned upstairs to Morgan's office. Thankful there was no closed-circuit camera on this floor, again he used the key to enter Morgan's office. Inside, he closed the door gently and ran to the safe. He dialed the combination as fast as he could, yanked open the top drawer, and quickly checked file tabs. In the second drawer, flipping through tabs, he became concerned that Harrington, wondering what he was doing upstairs for so long, might investigate. He could hear himself breathing.

He found the file. The tab was marked FENCING MASTER.

He opened it. There were only two pages. He ran to the copying machine on the other side of the room. Thankfully someone had left it on and he didn't have to wait for it to warm up. He copied the two memos, shoved the copies in his jacket pocket, and rushed back to the safe to return the originals. He closed the drawers, locked the safe, and ran to the door.

Taking a deep breath, he stepped into the hallway and pulled the door closed behind him. He walked briskly down the hall, his heart beating wildly. Taking the elevator to the first floor, he made his way out of the White House and walked along G Street. Passing Secret Service headquarters, he had the terrible feeling that at any moment someone might rush up, arrest him, and yank the stolen memos from his pocket. He entered the four-story parking garage at Nineteenth and G Street where he rented a space by the month, then stopped and looked behind him. Seeing there was no one on the street, he let out his breath and loosened his necktie. Still not taking any chances, he didn't so much as take the memos from his pocket until he was safely inside his automobile.

At the Georgetown Arms, Powers had changed clothes, unplugged his telephone, closed the curtains, and lain down on the sofa. Hell, he needed time to think.

The living room was decorated with impersonal Georgetown Arms furnishings: a thin-cushioned sofa, a small veneer coffee table, an oversized commercial oil painting of a sailing ship on an indigo sea. Though the room looked like a hotel cubicle as much as a rented flat, the place had suited him perfectly . . . when he was a Secret Service agent. In fact, the sum total of his belongings-out-of-season clothes, a tennis racket, a baseball mitt, some books (biographies mostly, because he didn't care much for fiction), a few marksmanship trophies, and a couple of shoe boxes containing such items as his army discharge papers and a framed Secret Service commendation awarded by Director Fogarty for his actions during the attempt on President Ford's life, fit nicely into two army footlockers. This lack of possessions had made it convenient for him to abandon the apartment at a moment's notice when sent on long-term Secret Service protection assignments.

For a moment Powers considered phoning Sullivan and telling him about what had happened at Highland. But Sullivan had lined up the job in the first place, and Powers would rather die than ask him for the same favor again. Besides, Powers told himself, he could always get a job. There were any number of bodyguard services in DC, most of them run by retired Secret Service agents. The problem was he'd been a security agent for the President of the United States, and he didn't relish the idea of being a bodyguard for some alcoholic businessman with a Lear jet or a twenty-two-year-old Saudi prince on vacation. Still, he had to find a way to earn a living soon because he had only two thousand dollars in savings. He went into the kitchen and made another drink.

At about 1 A.M., dizzy-drunk and sick of both liquor and the sight and sound of television, he went in the bathroom and vomited into the toilet. Cupping his hands under the tap, he washed his mouth out with water, then staggered into the bedroom and stretched out on the bed.

Lying on his back with the room spinning, he found himself dwelling on Ray Stryker and the bloodstained drape in the Special Projects conference room. He still considered the act of suicide cowardly and foolish, but thinking about it over and over made it seem somehow no longer repulsive ... a legitimate consideration for human beings perhaps. Who was to say suicide was right or wrong? He breathed deeply a few times. Thankfully, blackness took him....

The street lights were out and Marilyn, dressed the way she'd been the first day he'd seen her, was running away from him through the exhibit hall at the art show. He tried to run after her, but his clothes were made of lead and he couldn't keep up. He was out of breath as he continued after her, knocking down the paintings and sculptures in his way. She stopped and looked back at him, then continued on. For the life of him, he couldn't catch up.

The door buzzer sounded.

Powers awoke. Figuring whoever it was would eventually go away, he didn't move. The buzzer continued for a while, then finally stopped. He closed his eyes again. Peace.

A few minutes later, there was the sound of a key being slipped into the front door lock. Powers sat upright.

"Jack?" It was Landry. Powers said nothing.

There was the sound of footsteps. Landry stood in the bedroom doorway. "Jack. You okay?"

"Fine."

"Why haven't you been answering your telephone?"

"How did you get in here?" Powers said.

"I talked Mrs. Hammerstrom out of a key." Landry flicked the bedroom light switch and Powers covered his eyes. "I've been trying to reach you, my man."

"Whataya want?"

"I came here to talk."

"What about?"

"Why don't you get up?"

"Because I don't feel like getting up."