Undercover (7 page)

By the first of October, word had gotten out that Marshall was returning to the DEA before the end of the year, to go back to field work. They had promised to tell him where in the next few weeks. And they were due to ship him out in November or December. The president told him how sorry he was to hear it, but said that he admired him for his courage and the kind of work he wanted to do. Brad wanted to hear all of the gory details of his next assignment, none of which Marshall knew yet, and would never have told him. The first lady made him promise to come and see the baby. They had learned it was a girl, and Amelia was thrilled, but she was crushed to hear that Marshall was leaving, and told him that was really mean and stupid of him. She had cried when her mother told her.

“I've got to go fight the bad guys again,” he explained to her, “to keep you and your brother and new sister safe. That's what I do.”

“Why can't someone else fight the bad guys and you stay here?”

“Because I'm better at it,” he said, teasing her, but in many ways, it was true. “I'll visit you,” he said, although he knew it wouldn't be soon, and he didn't want to mislead her, “whenever I am in Washington. Besides, you're going to be busy with your baby sister. You won't miss me at all.” But he knew just how much he would miss her. He had come to love both children in the past eleven months, and had a deep affection and respect for their parents. And he knew he would be sad to leave.

The children were getting ready for Halloween again in his last weeks on the White House detail. This year Amelia had decided to be the witch in
The
Wizard
of
Oz
with a green face, and Brad was going to be an astronaut in a spacesuit that NASA had sent him, made specially for him in his size. He was very excited about it. Amelia had already practiced walking around the White House several times with her face covered in green face paint. It was a bittersweet memory, remembering he had met them exactly a year before, at Halloween.

Their mother was eight months pregnant by then, and said she was going as the Great Pumpkin this year. They were all excited about the baby, and in good spirits when the president agreed to dedicate the opening of a children's hospital in Virginia and bring the children with him. Melissa said she was very tired, but agreed to go anyway. The hospital was important to her because it was going to serve indigent children from all over the country who needed surgeries their parents couldn't afford. She had spent two years pushing the project, and the president had given it his support, so the whole family was going, and Marshall was assigned to the detail. The ceremony was scheduled for Saturday so the children could attend without missing school, and Amelia was going to cut the ribbon at the dedication. They were looking forward to it, and Marshall had a lump in his throat when he boarded the helicopter, knowing that this would be one of his last official functions with them. He had no illusions about it. He knew he would miss them terribly, particularly the children.

The helicopter landed on schedule, and a limousine was waiting to take them to the hospital. They had a full complement of Secret Service, with Marshall in the lead. He gave Melissa a hand out of the helicopter and helped her into the limousine. She was moving slowly, and she reminded him constantly of Paloma in the last days of her pregnancy, when it seemed as though her belly could stretch no further. The baby was due in three weeks, she was obviously uncomfortable, and she had been a good sport to come that day.

A large reception committee was waiting for them at the hospital, and a crowd of onlookers who had come to see the first family, and particularly the children. Amelia could hardly wait to cut the ribbon. The president moved through the crowd shaking hands, as the Secret Service pressed around him. By previous arrangement, Marshall had hung back to stand near Melissa, and there were additional agents with her and the kids.

They were given a tour of the hospital, and then came back outside, for Amelia to cut the ribbon. She was hopping up and down, she was so excited, and she stood in front of her mother during innumerable speeches, as Marshall watched the crowd, out of habit and reflex more than any real concern. It was a benign event, but he examined all the faces around them. And then suddenly in slow motion, he saw a man step forward and lift a high-powered rifle to his shoulder, take aim at the president, and in the flash of an instant shift it to Melissa, as Marshall shouted a warning. Three Secret Service men threw the president to the ground and covered him with their bodies, and Marshall leaped toward Melissa, knocking her to the ground as Amelia screamed. All hell broke loose by then. Secret Service men were everywhere. The shooter was grabbed by two of them, the president was still on the ground with two Secret Service men on top of him, the crowd was running away screaming, and Melissa was groaning. She had hit her head when she hit the ground. Brad was tackled in the arms of a Secret Service man, and Marshall was on top of Amelia. He had pulled her down and grabbed her, but he had heard a bullet whiz past them, and as he looked down at her beneath him, he could see blood everywhere, it was all over her face and his hands. He had no idea where she had been hit, but he knew she had been. He tried to pick her up and run to safety with her, but he couldn't. His left arm wouldn't pick her up, and she looked at him with terrified eyes, not even crying.

“Am I going to die?” she asked him in a hoarse whisper. Her mother was on her knees by then, trying to cradle her daughter as Marshall told her not to move her, and to lie down. She was injured herself and deathly pale.

“Don't move, baby,” he said to Amelia, as he laid her down gently, as police and Secret Service rushed to help them, with the president right behind them, surrounded by agents protecting him. They put her on a stretcher and took her into the hospital, with Melissa running beside them, looking dazed, the president supporting her, and Brad running with them. A battalion of Secret Service and police had surrounded them. Doctors came from everywhere, and all eyes focused on Amelia and the blood on her face. Everyone but Secret Service and the first family were cleared from the room, as they took Amelia's clothes off and examined her face and body. A bullet had barely grazed the side of her head, there was no point of entry, and no serious damage. It was a superficial wound, only because Marshall had yanked her away so quickly and saved her. Another inch or two, and she would have been shot in the head and killed. When Melissa realized what had nearly happened to her daughter, she fainted on the spot, and doctors were brought in to examine her too. Phillip was afraid she would go into labor. He and his son had sustained no damage. Amelia was treated for shock and possible infection for the wound. They put a bandage on her head after shaving and cleaning the area, but the wound was only a flesh wound and a very small one. Marshall had never taken his eyes off her from the moment they entered the hospital, and as the president turned to thank him, Amelia smiled at Marshall.

“You saved me, Marsh,” Amelia said, and Marshall smiled with tears of relief running down his cheeks.

Melissa was conscious again by then, and they had determined that she had sustained a mild concussion when she fell to the ground, and they were going to do a sonogram to check on the baby, but it was moving, and they already found a heartbeat. A potential tragedy had been averted thanks to Marshall, his quick reflexes, unfailing instincts, and reactions. The president turned to put an arm on his shoulder to thank him with a deeply moved expression, and as he did, he saw his own hand covered with blood and the arm of Marshall's suit soaked dark in it. It was running down his arm and pooling on the floor. He hadn't even felt it.

The bullet that had grazed Amelia's head had hit Marshall's left shoulder. His arm hung at his side useless, and blood was gushing from the wound as doctors rushed to him, at a shout from the president. His head had been swimming, but all he had thought of was saving Amelia and Melissa's baby. He didn't want to happen to her what had happened to Paloma. He didn't want any of them to die.

The room was spinning as they lowered Marshall into a wheelchair, cut away his jacket and shirt, and put him on a gurney minutes later. The bullet was still lodged in his shoulder, and suddenly he didn't know where he was. Marshall looked up and saw Raul's face as they rolled him away, he was speaking Spanish, and he kept calling out the name Paloma. The other Secret Service men were crowded around, and arrangements were made to get the first family out of a back entrance and driven away to the helicopter as quickly as possible, to be treated and checked further in Washington. There was pandemonium outside the hospital as people begged to know if any of them had been killed. Vans of reporters and TV cameras had already arrived on the scene, and the shooter had long since left with the police.

“Is Marshall going to die, Daddy?” Amelia asked with a look of panic, as tears rolled down her cheeks. “He saved my life, he got shot because of me.” He had taken the bullet that had grazed her and could easily have killed her or Brad, or hit Melissa's belly. Instead, as he reacted instantly to save them, it had hit him.

The president looked somber as he answered. “No, baby, he's not going to die. But he was very brave.” His rapid actions had saved Phillip Armstrong's family, and he was deeply grateful that no one had been killed that day.

They were shepherded into the helicopter and brought back to the White House, where they were examined again. Melissa and the baby were mercifully unhurt, Phillip and Brad untouched, and Amelia's head wound remarkably clean. Melissa had a headache from the bump on her head when she'd fallen, but other than that she was fine. Only Marshall had been injured, and when Phillip inquired of the Secret Service men around him, during the next hours, he was told that Marshall was stable and still in surgery, to remove the bullet in his shoulder. He got the same answer for the next five hours, every time he asked, and was deeply concerned about him. He called and spoke to one of the doctors himself, and was told that they were trying to save the use of his left arm, as there had been considerable nerve damage, from a bullet that had been slashed to cause greater destruction on impact. It had done its job well.

Two of the Secret Service men had stayed with him at the hospital, and four others showed up shortly after. The senior agent on the scene called their superior, who called Bill Carter, who drove out to Virginia immediately and together the seven men waited for Marshall to emerge from surgery. There was no question in anyone's mind, he had saved Melissa and Amelia Armstrong. The surgeons who came out to talk to them during the surgery told them that they were performing microsurgery to save the use of Marshall's left arm. The bullet had done incredible damage, and at one point during the surgery, he had nearly died from the loss of blood.

At eight o'clock that night, all three surgeons came to tell Bill and the others that Marshall had survived, but the nerve damage was too extensive—he would never regain the use of his left arm. There was silence among the seven men who listened, and they knew what it would mean to Marshall, and what it would have meant to any of them. His career in the Secret Service and the DEA was over. He was irreparably impaired. He might regain some minimal function in his left arm over time, but not enough to operate as an undercover field agent in the DEA, or as a Secret Service agent. He had saved three lives, Melissa's, Amelia's, and the baby's, and had given up the use of his left arm to do it. It was what he had dedicated his life to do, and they all knew that he wouldn't have changed it. But they also knew that Marshall Everett's life, as he had known it, and all that he had lived for until that moment, was forever altered. It was a death sentence for the way he wanted to live his life. Bill Carter sat silently, wondering if he would survive it. Marshall would never work in the field or in any active role again.

The president had Marshall transferred to Walter Reed Hospital by helicopter, as soon as he was well enough to be moved. As they had suspected initially, the final verdict was that his left shoulder and arm had suffered irreparable damage. The president had had three specialists called in, and all concurred with the surgeons' prognosis. He would never regain full use of his left arm, or possibly any at all. They were going to keep him in the hospital for several weeks to watch his progress, and also to begin rehab and physical therapy as soon as possible, so the arm didn't atrophy too quickly. He would have to work hard to maintain his recovery, and not have it affect his balance. His left arm hung now like a dead weight at his left side. And as he lay in bed at the hospital, Marshall knew what that meant. It was easy to figure out, but hard to understand. He had risked his life for six years of brutally dangerous undercover work and emerged unscathed. And in the last two weeks of his year in the Secret Service, at a ribbon-cutting ceremony at a hospital, his career had ended while trying to save a woman, an unborn baby, and a little girl. He didn't regret for an instant his instinctive act of courage, but the irony of it didn't escape him. Six years in the South American jungles, hunting drug dealers, hadn't killed him, but a ribbon-cutting ceremony had. Life as he had known it was forever changed. He could never again be a DEA agent, or even perform the Secret Service job he had considered tame. All he could have was a desk job, which he didn't want.

The president visited him to thank him personally for what he'd done, but it was so soon after surgery, Marshall hardly remembered. And Melissa and Amelia came to see him as soon as he was well enough to have visitors. Melissa brought tears to his eyes when she told him that they were giving the baby his name as a middle name, because he had saved her life. It was some small consolation for the baby who had died because of him, when Raul shot Paloma once he knew who Marshall was. He wondered if he was meant to atone for it in this way. And Amelia came to visit in her Halloween costume, complete with green face so he could see it. She had kissed him on the cheek, and got some of her face paint on him, but he didn't mind. And, to make her feel better, he said it was okay about his arm.

“Are you mad at me about your arm?” she asked him softly, looking worried, as her mother gently rubbed her hands over her huge belly.

“Of course not. I'd have been a lot madder if you had died. I couldn't let that happen to you,” he said gently. He had been willing to take a bullet for her, or any member of her family. That was why he was there, and he had done his job. The surgeons had told him he could lead a normal life, and do anything that didn't require the use of two hands, like being an agent of the DEA or protecting the president of the United States, or playing the violin or the piano, or working undercover. And he knew that a desk job at the Pentagon would kill him. He was born to prowl the jungle and try to outwit the bad guys who ran the drug cartels, and risk his life. He had no idea what he would do now, but surely nothing he had ever done or cared about. It was going to be an enormous adjustment. But as they kept reminding him, at least he was alive. He just didn't know why.

“Thank you for saving my life,” Amelia said with her green face, “and my mom's, and the baby's. Will you come and visit us? My dad says you can't go to South America now.”

“No, I can't,” Marshall confirmed, trying not to sound upset about it, but Phillip and Melissa knew that he was. Inevitably. At thirty, his career was over, and he had been a hero, even right up to the last day. His instincts had saved them from tragedy.

“I'm glad,” Amelia said stubbornly, “because now the bad guys can't kill you, and maybe they would have. My dad says you were really lucky before, and maybe you wouldn't have been so lucky this time.” Marshall knew that he would rather have died than lead a hampered life. They had told him that there were innumerable things he could learn to do with one arm—drive, ski, play tennis, do sports, work on his computer—and he was right-handed, but he was far too distinctive to send back out into the field now, a one-armed undercover agent. He wouldn't be able to load a gun fast enough, or defend himself against a drug dealer in a confrontation. He was going to get an honorable discharge from the DEA, based on disability, with an enhanced pension for life, for service above and beyond the call of duty, defending the president's life. The president had personally ordered the enhanced pension. It was a more than honorable end to his career, but an end nonetheless. He could start a business now, buy a house, or live more than comfortably on his pension for the rest of his life. And he had earned hazardous duty pay for all his years undercover, and had saved most of it. But he had no idea what to do with himself now. The rest of his life lay before him like a terrifying wasteland. It was a lot to absorb. But each time he looked at Amelia and Melissa, he was glad he had done it. He hadn't made a choice, he had just done it by instinct as part of his job. He would have made no other choice, and he felt as though he were paying back his debt to the universe for the innocent people who had died because of him.

The week after her visit to the hospital, Amelia called to tell him that her mother had had the baby. It had come a week early, but the baby was fine, and Amelia had been to the hospital to see her and loved her. She couldn't wait for Marshall to see her too. He lay in his bed after her call, thinking about them. They had everything that he had sacrificed and never really wanted when he was younger, until Paloma: children, a family, stability, a home. And he had been willing to give that up again, and now his whole life had been changed. He felt suddenly very old, thinking of himself with one arm. And he felt stupid for feeling sorry for himself, but without the career he had loved, at times he wished he were dead. As part of his rehab, they insisted on psychotherapy, and they wanted to give him career counseling, which he refused. What could he do now with his training? Hire himself out as a one-armed hit man? Bill Carter reminded him that there was a lot he could do at the DEA if he wanted to, at a desk, processing information, and using his language skills and thorough knowledge of the drug cartels, but sitting at a desk was of no interest to him. A lot of retired DEA, CIA, and FBI guys got into the security business in some form, but that didn't interest him either. It was all too easy. He was thirty years old, not fifty, and the last year, although he loved the first family, had been much too quiet for him, until the last day. It was what he had been trained for, but not the end he had expected—a bullet that ended not his life but his career.

At their insistence, Marshall spent Thanksgiving with the Armstrongs, and he held Daphne Marshall Armstrong in his one good arm. She stared up at him with a look of surprise. She looked just like Amelia and her mother, and was a tiny delicate blonde. She was three weeks old by then, and he couldn't help thinking that his baby with Paloma would have looked something like her, since Paloma had been as fair as Melissa. But it was all history now. Everything in his life felt like history, and all the excitement in his life was behind him.

He spent Christmas alone in his apartment, trying to figure out what to do with the rest of his life, and got drunk on red wine, after a stiff scotch. He knew that that was another option—he could turn into a drunk and do nothing at all. There were times when the idea appealed to him, and Bill Carter noticed that when he took him to lunch, to see how he was doing, Marshall had two tequila Bloody Marys before lunch. There were lots of guys who left the DEA with a disability, or Justice, or the CIA or FBI, but they all had to find a way to make their lives work after that, without turning into drunks or giving up on life. Bill gave him a lecture about it, and Marshall pretended to listen but really didn't care. He urged Marshall to get out and be with people, which Marshall thought was easy for him to say since he still had a job. And dating seemed even more improbable. He hadn't been out with a woman since he left Colombia and Paloma was killed, almost two years ago, and he didn't know if he ever would again. He couldn't imagine any woman he would ever love as much. And now with a dead left arm, he only felt like half a man, or a seriously damaged one, and dating was the farthest thing from his mind. He had decided he was better off alone, and had no desire to see anyone at all, even the Secret Service agents he had worked with, and come to like. He felt like an object of pity, seeing them now.

In January, still isolated, he learned that he was to be decorated for his act of heroism. The ceremony was scheduled for the end of the month. He was to receive the Public Safety Officer Medal of Valor, for extraordinary valor above and beyond the call of duty. It was similar to the Congressional Medal of Honor. All the men he knew at the DEA and the Secret Service were going to be there, and the first family.

The president decorated him with a moving speech in the East Room, and then Marshall's eyes filled with tears when the president had Amelia pin the medal on him. He hadn't expected that, and there was thunderous applause, and a reception afterward. The medal was gilt and blue enamel with a five-pointed star on a red, white, and blue ribbon. It meant more to Marshall than he had thought it would. It turned out to be one of the highlights of his life, along with the baby he had saved, who now bore his name. But it didn't solve the problem of what to do next. He still had considerable pain in his shoulder, and he was doing exercises to strengthen his left arm. He could raise his forearm a few inches now, which was helpful for minor tasks, but he couldn't grip a ball in his left hand, or do anything useful with it. And his left arm hung dead at his side. He had become remarkably adept at doing everything with one arm, including driving a car.

And without a job, he had nothing to do with his nights. He didn't want to hang out with the Secret Service men or other agents he knew, who talked about work all the time. He had nothing to add. He drove to New England for a few days, and went skiing in Vermont, and managed relatively well. And when he came back, he was cruising the Internet one night, and found himself on a site offering apartment and house rentals in Europe. He had nothing else to do, so he drifted through their listings, for villas in Tuscany, a palazzo in Venice, a summer home in the south of France, a farmhouse in Provence, and several apartments in Paris. There were also several quaint-looking cottages in the Cotswolds that didn't appeal to him at all, knowing the climate there. And he didn't know why, but he stopped at the listing of apartments in Paris, and was surprised at how inexpensive they were. He wasn't really interested in them, but after a few glasses of wine, anything seemed intriguing to him at night, including the mating habits of lions, or a variety of insects, and he'd spent an entire night, after too much to drink, learning about UFOs. His nights were long and sad.

And for some reason that made no sense, there was an apartment in Paris that sounded good to him. He looked at the photographs that had been posted, it was furnished and looked airy and sunny. It was in the sixteenth arrondisement, on a side street off Avenue Foch, according to the map, close to the Arc de Triomphe, and a park called Bagatelle. It was a fairly fancy residential neighborhood.

“What the hell would I do in Paris?” he said out loud to himself. But what would he do anywhere else? His fluent Spanish was of no use in France. But Paris seemed like a good place to sit around and drink and feel sorry for himself for a few months. The apartment was available for six months to a year. It had a living room, a large sunny bedroom, and a small kitchen with a dining area. There was an elevator, and a terrace with a narrow view of the Eiffel Tower, which was shown lit up at night. He thought it would be a good way to get lost. It wasn't South America, where he would long for his old life, or Spain, which would seem like second best to the Spanish-speaking countries he knew in South America that had a whole different flavor. England was too dreary in the winter, but he had been to Paris once and liked it, and he could travel from there to other countries around Europe, like Italy, or ski in Switzerland. He was tired of the Secret Service guys he had worked with calling him out of pity, asking him how he felt and what he was doing. Telling them he felt like shit and wasn't doing anything never seemed like the right answer, and he was tired of lying to them and saying he was fine. He wasn't fine, but he didn't want to tell them the truth. And the decoration and medal he'd gotten had begun to seem like a poor trade for his left arm. He was feeling sorry for himself, and he knew it, but maybe doing so in Paris was far enough away not to matter. At least it would be a change of scene, and if he hated it, he could come home. He had to give up his apartment anyway, because it belonged to the DEA. They had extended his time there while he was on the presidential detail with the Secret Service, and again after he'd been injured, but he knew that sooner or later, he'd have to find his own place. So why not move to Paris for a few months while he figured out what to do and where to go next?

He e-mailed the listing of the apartment in Paris, and got a response the next day. The rent was actually less than stated in the ad, they had just lowered the price, and it was something he could easily afford. And feeling a little crazy for doing it, he agreed to a starting date in two weeks. He rented it for six months, with an option to renew for another six. The owner said he was moving to Brussels but wanted to keep his Paris apartment. The owner warned him that it was perfect for one person and was feasible though tight for a couple, since it had few closets, like most Paris apartments. But it was impossible with a child. The owner said his furniture was mostly leather, in good condition, and he wanted to keep it that way. The apartment had a masculine feel to it, since the owner was a man, which had made it seem appealing. It wasn't fussy, overcrowded, or feminine.