The Sentinel (2 page)

"I can see some punk getting cold feet. These street types think they're tough until something like this goes down."

Kallenstien was a tall, spindly woman with a natural tan and close-cropped ebony hair.

"If a robber was going to take someone off, why would he pick a floor where there are only six cars parked?"

"Maybe a transient was sleeping in a car and just got the idea. Maybe it was a crime of opportunity."

"There is nothing to indicate that," Breckinridge said.

"If you want to get right down to it, there is nothing to indicate anything except that he got blown up."

Kallenstien was Breckinridge's best friend. They were pals and they shared everything in their lives. Breckinridge valued her ideas, as well as her support and her counsel.

"Street robbers who need a fix wait for the first victim they see," said Kallenstien. "What happens after that doesn't always fit with anything we know. You have to look at it through the eyes of the sociopath who did it. That is, unless you think Charlie was doing another agent's wife, or owed someone a lot of money. That's a different story altogether. In that case, it could be a premeditated murder."

Kallenstien was a member of a police family - the only daughter of a high-ranking officer in the New York City Police Department.

"Charlie wasn't involved in anything like that," said Breckinridge.

A flashbulb went off, the police photographer taking the millionth shot since she'd arrived.

A police detective joined them.

"What are you folks doing here?"

Breckinridge said, "We're assigned to Secret Service Protective Research Division, the division responsible for gathering information about threats to Secret Service protectees. We've been sent here to monitor the homicide investigation and determine whether Agent Meriweather's death was a simple street robbery that went bad, or something else - a security matter."

He was tall, black, and had a goatee. A cigarette was dangling from his lips, and he wore a hat with a small feather in it.

"What do you think?"

"I'm bothered by the fact that the robber didn't take his wallet or gun."

"Lady, sometimes investigations are uneven. Not everything fits a pattern. You Secret Service people probably haven't seen a lot of this kind of thing like we have."

"I spent five years on the Tulsa Police Department before joining the Service."

He wrote something on his clipboard. "Right on."

She reached in her purse and handed him her business card.

"I'd like copies of your homicide reports."

"No problem."

He dropped the card in his shirt pocket and walked toward the other end of the garage to join some other officers. The high-ranking Secret Service officials who'd been there earlier had departed, leaving the case to Breckinridge.

The elevator doors opened. Two coroner's deputies got off with a wheeled gurney. For the first time since arriving at the scene, Breckinridge felt tears. She swallowed and looked over at Kallenstien, who was solemnly staring at the gurney.

"There's nothing else for us to do here, Rachel."

Breckinridge and Kallenstien departed, and walked down the street bantering back and forth as they often did in cases, going over the same ground as if the dialogue might suddenly give them a key to the investigation. A tour bus cruised by them, heading toward the White House. Velvety clouds covered Washington, D.C., like a shawl.

At the Telco Bank Building, they entered through the lobby and rode the elevator to Secret Service Headquarters Protective Research Division (PRD,) on the fifth floor. The ceiling-high shelves lining the walls in the office contained handwriting, fingerprint, photograph, and voice-tape records on people who'd exhibited an undue interest in the President of the United States. Threat calls received by the White House switchboard were transferred to Protective Research Division twenty-four hours a day. PRD gathered information from eighty Secret Service offices in the continental U.S. and five foreign countries, and from other U.S. intelligence agencies including the NSA, FBI, and CIA. Once a person was identified as violent and having an unusual interest in the President, his name was placed in the computerized PRD data-threat bank.

The phone on Kallenstien's desk was ringing. She lifted the receiver.

Across the desk from her, Breckinridge dropped her purse and sat glumly. Her feet ached from standing on the garage floor for the last four hours, and she felt like she had a piano wire cinched around her head. She took out a compact and checked her makeup. She had full lips and eyelashes, and she had worn her hair in a utilitarian French braid since the day a mental patient she'd been interviewing lunged through the bars of his cell and grabbed her ponytail. Her natural skin tone was a blithe mixture of color that matched her father's dusky, half-Cherokee complexion. She was thirty-four years old, five-five, high-hipped, and more buxom than she wanted to be. Her tight, dark skirt and an open-collar blouse had been a birthday gift from her former husband, who'd filed for divorce shortly after she joined the U.S. Secret Service.

Kallenstien made notes as she spoke on the phone, then set down the receiver.

"Three threat-call referrals: a remote-controlled glider-bomb launched at the White House from the planet Uranus, an Egyptian-led conspiracy to put rat poison in the President's toothpaste, and a brain-ray attack on the White House led by the reincarnated Nostradamus. And we have a priority message from the White House mailroom. They have something for us."

At the White House Executive Office Building entrance, Breckinridge and Kallenstien showed identification to the uniformed officer. He let them in, and they walked down a highly waxed hallway to a door marked TRAVEL ACCOUNTING SERVICES. Using her Secret Service master key, Breckinridge unlocked the door, and they entered the White House mailroom, where every letter and parcel addressed to the White House was X-rayed and searched for explosives, poisons, and bio-hazards before being distributed to the addressee. It was a large windowless, cement-walled cubicle filled with X-ray machines. The room had been engineered so that a bomb detonation inside it would collapse its floor into the basement, leaving the rest of the building and the nearby White House unscathed. On the walls hung X-rays and color photographs of known bombs, including an enlarged photograph of a C-4 bomb with an electric clock-timer that looked like the kind used in some recent terrorist bombings.

The duty agent opened a file drawer, took out a clear-plastic evidence bag, and handed it to Breckinridge. In it was a typed letter.

"This arrived here a few minutes ago by private courier."

Kallenstien looked over her shoulder as Breckinridge read:

TO THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES:

As loyal, God-fearing Americans we are proud to take responsibility for the execution of one of your Secret Service bodyguards. The purpose of this action was to show you how vulnerable you and all the members of your quisling United Nations-Communist-international-order-government are to the direct action of true patriots. As you have now seen, we are able to defeat your Secret Service security group. We chose the time and the place and we can do it again.

We intend to rid the United States of America of political vermin and our action today is the beginning of the end for all traitors. Let the world know that we will make the supreme sacrifice. We will risk everything to stand up for the sacred American Bill of Rights.

You, Mister Communist President, you who has besmirched the American nation and all its proud sons, are next on our execution list. Say your prayers.

Long live the white race!

THE ARYAN DISCIPLES OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

"The ADs," Kallenstien said.

Breckinridge knew about the neo-Nazi Aryan Disciples of the United States of America, the most dangerous extremist group in the U.S., whose members included insane right-wing political zealots and dangerous ex-convicts. Members of the Aryan Disciples were responsible for a long series of violent acts, including the bombing of the Ronald Reagan Federal Building in D.C. that killed twenty-nine people and wounded eighty; and the bombing of the Houston and Albuquerque federal buildings that killed another forty-two people. Recent rumors had it that the Libyan Army Intelligence Service had been secretly funding some Aryan Disciples terrorist actions.

"It arrived by private courier service," the duty agent said. "The driver who signed the delivery paperwork has a route in Alexandria. There are no other clues."

Breckinridge signed an evidence receipt.

"Thanks. By the way, this case is classified from here on."

"I'll mark the file."

Breckinridge and Kallenstien crossed the street, heading back to Headquarters.

"If they figured they could get Charlie alone when he was coming off duty, they had to know that he would be carrying a gun," Breckinridge said. "Why take that risk when they could have hit him when he was off duty; at the grocery store or on a golf course when there would be a good chance that he would be unarmed? And if this were an Aryan Disciples thing, why would they murder him a block from the White House? They had to know that other agents park in that lot too. One of them could have been nearby and seen what was going on-"

"Maybe they want to throw it in our faces."

"Rachel, this is the first time the Aryan Disciples have claimed responsibility for a terrorist action - a complete change of M.O. And they've never directly threatened the President. Up to now they've always targeted Cabinet officers and lesser officials. The IRS. Federal buildings."

"They could be looking for press coverage."

"It doesn't fit. Why would they believe that killing an off-duty Secret Service agent would gain them more attention than their usual actions - like detonating a bomb in a public building?"

"Maybe they are trying to change their methods just to be clever. Just to keep us all guessing."

"We're guessing, all right," Breckinridge said after a silence.

Later, at her Georgetown two-bedroom apartment, Breckinridge unlocked the door and turned on the lights. The message light on her answering machine was flashing. She pressed PLAY.

"Martha, This is your mother. I just called to say hi, but I guess you are still working. Please make sure you eat a good dinner. Love you. Bye."

"Okay, Mom."

She pressed REWIND.

Breckinridge had chosen to enter the law-enforcement field while at Oklahoma State. After five years with the Tulsa Police Department, she decided that the nearly all-male power structure would keep her from getting promoted out of her radio car, so she joined the U.S. Secret Service. To avoid the boring ex-President and Foreign Dignitary Protection Details to which most female Secret Service agents were assigned, she maneuvered herself into the Protective Research Division, where she'd been working inordinate amounts of overtime, hoping to eventually get promoted to the White House Detail.

Her divorce was final. Ted had been the "man of substance" her mother had told her to marry: a steady, nine-to-five lawyer who'd convinced her there was no reason his career would conflict with her Secret Service aspirations. His direct, straightforward approach - the lifetime commitment - had caught her off guard. Just the word marriage. He'd dazzled her with his poise and uprightness. But she knew their relationship wasn't going to last. It wasn't that she didn't like the idea of having a life partner she could share everything with. But the moment they'd moved in together, he'd changed from romantic suitor to demanding prosecutor. It had become clear to her that he considered her less than an equal life partner. She'd believed his words rather than his actions, and she'd known better. She'd allowed herself to be a dreamer. Now she was alone again and much wiser for the experience.