The South Lawn Plot (27 page)

T
HE BREEZE HAS BLOWN
steadily off the water and Pender had taken full advantage of clear skies and strong light.

He had come to northern Maine to finish off the photo project before, as he thought to himself more than once, he finished off two of the world's most important political leaders. The business of taking pictures had been a comfort. Pender did not relish killing, never had. But this mission, his final one, had many peculiar aspects to it, logistical and qualitative.

Pender had learned through experience that murder was most easily justified, in a personal sense, when the bastard deserved it.

And they all had of course. His assassination missions had invariably been carried out against men, and a lone woman, who had, each of them, been responsible for many deaths. It was a simple equation, really. By eliminating one he was certain of saving many. He did not think it murder.

As he mulled over what was past, and what was now looming very large in the near future, Pender had managed to crawl over the rocks to within a few yards of the seals. They had eyed him with only the faintest hint of interest. He in return had been playing at ignoring the beasts, trying to convince them that he was simply part of the seascape.

It was a remote place, a narrow but deep inlet on the upper coast. Not many people were around, and Pender had enjoyed the calm and quiet for three days.

Of course, he had not chosen the location. The old priest had, and as he slowly pointed the lens at the nearest seal, the animal staring back at him with sad eyes, Pender wondered what was keeping him.

The third day! That had been his instruction. Be ready for him on the third day. It had sounded biblical. But now the old man was just simply late.

Pender raised his camera a few inches, his elbows resting on raw rock just above the tide line. A suddenly stronger breeze blew off the ocean, and he shivered a little. Maine, he thought, was a far cry from the heat of New York
or Washington. And he liked it that way. His planned hideaway in Switzerland would be well above sea level, cool to cold most times of the year.

In the depths of winter he could head for the coast of southern France. Above all, he would need time to rid his body of tropical, forested Africa, a place that he loved and hated in near equal measure, hate having the edge. He needed to rest in a place that did not pull him too much either way. He needed to simply rest.

Pender's thoughts returned to the creature in his lens. He adjusted the focus slightly and steadied himself. He would have just a few seconds before his uncomfortable position would require adjustment. He wanted the seal to look straight at him, through him and beyond him. It would be that look of casual disinterest that some of the smarter animal species could pull off, even in the closest proximity to predatory man.

The seal was looking slightly to one side of Pender's optical crosshairs, but, for a split second, turned its head full on to the camera and flared its nostrils. Pender's right forefinger lightly touched the hair trigger button. There was a barely perceptible click and the shot was in the bag. The seal's look had been one of disdain rather than disinterest but it would do. It was a wrap, the final photo for the book. The final photo ever for all Pender cared right now.

“Nice one,” he said, loudly now because stealth was no longer required.

The sound of clapping hands was just yards away.

“Nice one indeed,” said the voice.

Two humans being one too many, the seal and several of its companions rolled over to one side and slipped smoothly into the water. Pender, too, rolled over and stared at the man standing on top of a rock ten yards behind his position. It was the old priest dressed in hiking gear that looked straight out of a Hillary and Tensing photograph.

“Ah, there you are,” said Pender, his left hand rising in greeting. “I was beginning to wonder.”

“Wonder is always something I would encourage,” came the prompt reply. It was unclear for a moment as to which man would make the first move, but an especially big wave showered Pender with spume. Placing his hands around the camera to protect it from the salt water he sprang up as quickly as his stiff joints would allow and covered the distance between the two of them in a series of short steps and slight leaps.

“I wasn't sure you would make it,” he said, slightly out of breath and standing on an adjoining rock.

“Oh, I've been here, or at least hereabouts, for several days,” was the response. “I see you have been photographing seals. Fascinating creatures. In the old days they were considered to be the reincarnations of drowned sailors. And perhaps they are. Come, walk with me back to the beach.”

Without waiting, the priest turned and with a litheness that belied his age negotiated several other rocks before dropping down onto the sand. Pender followed, a little more slowly. His camera would not take well to a tumble.

“Splendid day,” the priest said, his arms spread wide. “God is smiling on the world, or at least this precious corner of it.”

Pender caught up. “God might be smiling, but I'd be a little worried over what he's thinking. One of his representatives on earth plotting murder, double murder, perhaps even the multiple kind.”

The older man stopped and stubbed a booted toe in the sand. “Oh come, come, Mr. Pender. Remember, we don't always call it murder. We churchmen have notched up more than two thousand years of calling it by other names.”

“Call it what you like,” Pender retorted. “This time around it's not some bloodsucking tin pot dictator in a jungle clearing. These guys are serious shit and seriously protected. I thought the photo covers in the envelope were a mistake. But they're not, are they? You want me to pop off the president and the prime minister, and I don't even know bloody well why.”

The old man turned and faced the water. He put his hands in pockets in the front of his windbreaker, thus giving himself the appearance of a meditating monk in a habit.

“Well, I'm glad you want to know why, Mr. Pender,” he said. “I can only assume that we're off the mark and the mission has been accepted in principle.”

“I guess so,” said Pender. “But the question why goes beyond this job. This is the last time I will work for you and your people, and I still don't quite get how you can reconcile killing with all the love-your-fellow-man stuff.”

“
Judica me, Deus, et discerne causam meam de gente non sancta. Ab homine iniquo et doloso erue me
.”

The priest repeated himself, almost in a chant, before looking directly at Pender. Pender said nothing but his expression invited a translation.

“'Judge me, Oh God, and plead my cause against an ungodly nation. Oh
deliver me from the unjust and deceitful man.' It's a psalm, Mr. Pender. Number forty-two to be precise, and I think it should answer your question.”

“It might be an answer to God. But unlike him, I'm not exactly all knowing,” said Pender. “Why Spencer and why the American president?”

The old man was silent again for a few moments.

“Of course you deserve an explanation,” he said eventually.

“You may or may not be aware of the deaths of four priests in England this past while. The newspapers, one in particular, has attempted to draw links between the deaths but has been unable to do so thus far in a definitive sense.

“However, there is a link, a very specific one, and it can be traced back to our prime minister.”

Pender felt a slight tingling sensation in the back of his neck, not so much at the suggestion that a political leader had been up to no good, but rather because it appeared that he would this time learn a good deal more than usual about the reasons for his assignment. In the past, he had been offered little and had sought less. But those jobs were of little consequence compared to the task that was now facing him.

He could barely contain his curiosity. He wanted to interrupt with more questions as the old man continued with his outline of a plot that, if pulled off successfully, would stand out boldly, infamously, on history's pages for centuries to come.

“In the course of his life, the prime minister has belonged to more organizations than just his political party,” said the priest.

“Yeah, his local cricket club, I suppose,” Pender interrupted.

The priest paused, and in so doing signaled his own impatience.

“I suppose that might be the case,” he said after a few seconds. “But he was also a man who worked in the shadows, in intelligence, you understand.”

“Ah,” said Pender, cutting across the older man again. “MI5 was it, no MI6, more Spencer's line I would think.”

“I believe he dabbled in both, but also in another sphere. Let's just say there is more to British intelligence than branches Five and Six, just as there are more players in American intelligence than the sixteen or so agencies the United States admits to.”

“Superb,” said Pender. “The ultimate intelligence agency. Nobody knows the bloody thing even exists.”

“Precisely.”

The old man raised his hand, a signal that Pender was now to listen, and only listen. And so, over the course of the next hour a story that had been more than four centuries in the making was revealed by the older man to the younger.

Pender was transfixed. More than once he felt he had to pinch himself. The old priest had clearly lived his entire adult life in a world that was one foot in the seventeenth century, the other in the present, barely.

When the telling was done, the priest dropped his head, exhausted but relieved at having passed on his secrets. He was the last of his order, and he had borne them alone since the deaths of his four companions.

Now Pender shared those secrets. But why, he wondered, had he been told everything?

“Because,” said the priest, “you possess the moral character and mental ardor necessary to carry on our mission.”

“But I'm only interested in a payday,” Pender interjected.

The old priest laughed. “You are very particular about what you accept payment for, just as we have been very particular over the years over what we pay for. Our particulars are a fine match, Mr. Pender, rest assured.”

Pender said nothing for a moment.

“But why assassinate the American president? Why not just kill Spencer? Surely assassinating Packer is going to stir up the mother of a hornet's nest?”

The old priest clapped his hands. The sound, however, was almost drowned out by a massive wave that had crashed ashore with the advancing tide.

“That,” he said triumphantly, “is the very essence of our plan. The assassinations will take place on the South Lawn of the White House, at the epicenter of American power. The reaction will be immense, the investigation unparalleled in American history. And it will traipse down the wrong road entirely.

“You see, the Americans will never for one minute believe that their man was merely, shall we say, collateral damage. Packer, of course, must have been the primary target, and our poor, unfortunate prime minister just, well, an unfortunate peripheral casualty having been in the wrong place at the wrong time. Not for one second will the Secret Service and the rest of them think that their man was simply history's most powerful red herring.”

Pender, his eyes narrowed and his head shaking slightly from side to side, absorbed as best he could the assassination of the President of the United States as a mere ruse.

“But how in the name of Christ am I going to pull this off? This is the White House we're talking about, not some jungle clearing, or wide open public place.”

The old man, joining his hands as if in prayer, smiled.

“Ah, Mr. Pender, you are off the hook on that one. You will not carry out the killing assignment. All you have to do is take the most important photograph of your life.”

C
ONWAY REMEMBERED
the first time she had stood here. It was in her early days as a trainee agent, a tour of the West Wing for the young men and women who would someday be charged with protecting all who worked within, and one in particular.

She remembered that day in detail. It was snowing, and the White House had looked like a Christmas card. Her father had once received one, signed by his president, or perhaps by an assistant, or a machine, it was impossible to tell. It didn't matter. The card had taken center stage on the living room mantle until well into the spring of the following year.

She had been standing for ten minutes after declining the offer of a chair. The Oval Office was only feet away, up a short stair, through a door and then just a turn. The waiting area was, she thought, surprisingly small, as indeed was the White House overall.

Incredible, really, so much power concentrated in a square footage that was miniscule compared to those mega mansions of the super rich.

The walls were dotted with photographs of the president with visiting dignitaries and world leaders. There were a few of the president and the First Lady, and the obligatory shot of the president and his pet dog, a Brittany Spaniel. There was a lone photo of the dog itself on the lawn just a few yards away from where Conway, her right foot tapping impatiently on the blue carpet, waited for her meeting with the man she was sworn to protect, with her own life if necessary.

Conway pulled her cell phone from her pocket and checked it. Yes, it was switched off, just as it was when she had checked it two minutes before. She made a mental note to change the ring tone to something more somber and low key than the current hip-hop jingle, something jazzy perhaps, or better again, patriotic.

A White House assistant, a ridiculously young woman in a gray suit, appeared at the top of the stair and with a less than convincing smile motioned Conway to follow her.

“The president is ready to see you now,” the woman said. She had turned on her heel before even finishing her line. Conway followed, trying to be as casual as possible.

Remind me, honey, not to take a bullet for you, she thought.

She was in the Oval Office. It was full of people, standing, sitting, walking. At first she did not see Packer at all but then picked him out in a knot of people to one side of the presidential desk. The young assistant spoke to an older assistant who moved to the president's side. The senior assistant said something to Packer that was impossible to make out amid the buzz of conversation. Not for the first time, Conway wondered how and why the president was sparing time for her with the country on the brink of war.

Packer was gesticulating, waving, and as if by magic, people began to disperse in all directions. It took only a few seconds before the room was empty but for the president, Conway and an aide who had dropped some papers on the floor beside the main doorway. Once they were retrieved, he was gone. Guard and guarded were alone.

Packer, moving to the chair behind his desk, motioned to Conway to take a seat in front of it.

“Special Agent Conway, delighted you could make it,” the president said in what passed for a cheerful voice under the circumstances. She could tell he was tired and under a lot of stress.

“Delighted to be here, Mr. President,” she responded as she took her seat. As if I had any choice, she thought.

Packer was looking through a file, presumably her own, Conway reckoned.

“Outstanding,” he said eventually. “It's fantastic that you're coming to work with me. We need more women up front and out there, though of course I don't mean necessarily in harm's way.”

He was doing his best, Conway thought, forgivingly. The president, she well knew, had a reputation for being a bit overly familiar sometimes, less than discreet, at least verbally. But so far in his presidency he had not been caught in any overt act of excessive personal zeal.

Packer was staring at the file again. Conway decided to move things on a bit.

“I'm well aware, Mr. President, that this is a most pressing time. If you would like we could meet when the situation is a little more calm,” she said.

Packer looked up, a slightly puzzled look on his face. “No, not at all, forgive
me, but it's your fault really, your file is really right out there. You're a regular Indiana Jones in a skirt, or at least pantsuit.”

Conway said nothing in response but fixed the president with her most agreeable official smile.

“I knew your father,” Packer said. The effect was as he desired. Conway was taken aback, and it showed. The leader of the free world had regained control of the conversation.

“That I did not know, sir. How? Where?”

Packer, clearly pleased with himself, lowered his head and leaned over his desk in what could best be described as a conspiratorial manner.

“Well,” he said, extending the final two consonants for a full two seconds, “We met each other in Vietnam. I was a young congressman, wet behind the ears on one of those fact finding missions, co-dels they call them. We were in Saigon holed up in a downtown hotel, the Carvel or Caravelle, as I recall. We were being dragged all over the place meeting with South Vietnamese officials, the president, of course, and more generals and colonels than we had in the entire United States Army. Couldn't believe how much brass they had in the ARVN. More brass than balls, that was often the problem.

“Anyway, I'm wandering. Saigon, of course, was hotter than Hades, hotter than even this town in August, so I think we were slowly going nuts. One member of our group came down with some bug and had to be shipped back stateside pronto. Just as we're about to stage our very own coup we had a trip organized by the embassy to a place much closer to the action, out of town about thirty miles or so, up near Cu Chi and the Big Red One base, you know what I mean, First Infantry Division.”

Conway nodded.

“That's where I met your pa. He was working some anti-tunnel operation, though clearly, by the size of him, he wasn't going into any of them. That job was for those crazy tunnel rats. After a briefing and a tour of a couple of local hamlets, with half a regiment in tow to protect us, it was time to get back to town. Well, I was having none of that. I bent your father's ear, telling him that I wanted to stay out for the night, taste a little of the real war when the VC were roaming around after dark.

“Of course, he was having none of it but I made it easy for him, persuaded him I was sick and not able to travel on those damn bumpy roads. I told him I was a freshman congressman and half the men my age in the state were lining up to take my job if something bad happened. Took a bit of persuading, but
your Daddy was up to it once I had worn him down. The rest of the group went back to Saigon, and I got to hole up in a tent with your dad. We even went out on a bit of a patrol, though I think he faked it for my benefit.

“We just went round and round the camp perimeter. Still, I got me a bit of a story to tell back home and of course legend soon took over. Within a few weeks I was reading about how I had been on patrol in Injun country and my escorting unit had come under fire.

“You know those hometown reporters, just so hungry and enthusiastic. All I had to say was it wasn't quite that bad. I didn't elaborate and only finally put the brakes down when one kid, nice fella, was writing Audi Murphy's name in a story about my ramblings in Veet-Nam, as old Lyndon called it.

“It was getting embarrassing, but the story kind of lasted. Congressman Packer on night patrol. I still have the story in a scrapbook somewhere. But, Jesus Christ, Agent Conway, Cleo, your father was such a fine soldier, and a gentleman. We didn't foul up in Vietnam because of men like him. It was because of men like me who couldn't tell a war fact from a war bond.”

Packer was sitting back in his chair now, staring over and beyond Conway, lost in some long past moment, a hot night in a South East Asian clearing, a soldier with a slow, steady voice steering him safely through the darkness.

“Hell of a soldier,” he said, clearly to himself.

Conway was unsure what to say, what to do. She had been trained to deal with important people right up to the president, but in a very particular, stilted way. A president speaking like this was not in the book, although one of her instructors had told her, and the rest of her class, that presidents did often bond with particular agents, for whatever reason. The agents, however, could never fully respond, get too close in return. And it was with those words ringing in her memory that Conway looked at the president and said nothing.

Packer, after a few more moments, seemed to gather himself. He sighed, stood up and walked around the desk.

“I apologize,” he said. “An old man getting sentimental.”

“No apology necessary, Mr. President,” Conway replied. “I'm glad that my father was able to be of service.”

Packer, however, had already moved past the moment.

“Come over here,” he said, walking to the far side of the room and a dark wood bookcase stuffed with hardcovers, not all of them new.

“You know,” he said, “every president likes to make this office reflect his
interest, her interests too, of course. Some do it with paintings, some with bronzes, photos or paperweights and stuff on the desk.

“My idea was to select what I thought, or what some of my people thought, was the best biography of each occupant of this office. And here they are, all forty-five of them. The space at the end is me, a blank, ha ha. But seriously, Cleo, I hope you don't mind me calling you by your name, it comforts me to have the company. I feel these guys are with me when it counts, like now, when we face the perilous hour.”

Packer was staring at the volumes, again lost in the moment.

“Obviously I'll take them with me when my time is up. Don't want to let them fall into the hands of the enemy. And I'm not necessarily talking about the other party.”

Conway allowed herself a smile. It was the president's little joke. Her time was up. Packer began to walk towards the door she had entered. She remembered a photo of her father's. Kennedy speaking to television cameras, the still shot taken from a position showing the door. The Oval Office looked small in the photograph, and really, all things considered, it was small.

“Agent Conway.” Packer brought her back. “I've been asked and I've agreed, wholeheartedly I might add, that you be the newest agent in my detail. Your boss, that old cowboy Dalton, will be giving you a full briefing in a few days. You'll be on duty for the first time at a South Lawn event we're having in a couple of weeks. It's all to do with Ireland and peace and investment, that kind of thing. A very clean and cleared list of guests, a home game, although I can't promise to stay behind the rope; you know me.”

Conway was trying not to shake. She nodded, stupidly, she thought.

“I don't want you to get all wound up now,” said Packer. “This should be an easy introduction, perhaps the easiest day you're going to get on this job for a while.”

Conway, standing as straight as she could, looked into her president's eyes.

“Yes, sir,” she said. “Yes, Mister President. Thank You. I will not let you down.”

Packer nodded. “I know,” he said. “Because right now that's exactly what your father is telling me.”