The Inside Ring Read online

  “I do,” DeMarco said. He considered raising his right hand when he responded but decided that would be a bit much.

  Banks studied DeMarco’s face, looking for twitchy-eyed indicators of falsehood, but DeMarco, journeyman liar that he was, gave up nothing. And DeMarco was lying.

  “You better be tellin’ the truth, bud, or I’ll rip off your head and shit down your neck.”

  DeMarco looked at his watch. He suspected Banks’s problem was a family thing: one of his kids was in trouble or his wife was having an affair with someone human.

  “Okay,” Banks said again, and he took in a lungful of air through his big nose as if preparing to dive into deep waters. “I want you to investigate a Secret Service agent named Billy Ray Mattis.”

  “An agent?”

  “Yeah.”

  The name rang a bell.

  “Investigate how?” DeMarco said.

  “I want you to . . .” Banks stopped.

  “Yes,” DeMarco said. It was like trying to get a virgin’s knickers off, getting this guy to say whatever was on his mind. Finally the dam broke.

  “I want you to see if Mattis was an accomplice in the assassination attempt on the President.”

  “Whoa!” DeMarco said, half rising out of his chair. “Stop right there. Do not say another word.” DeMarco shook his head in disbelief at what he had just heard. “And anyway,” he said, “I thought the guy who shot the President acted alone.”

  “Yeah,” Banks said, “he probably did.”

  This was ridiculous, DeMarco was thinking. “Look, General,” he said, “you wanted to know about my background. Well, I’ll tell you. I’m a lawyer who does odd jobs for Congress. That’s it. If a constituent turns into a stalker, I make him go sit in a corner. If a congressman thinks his kid is doing drugs, I find out before the kid becomes a liability. If a politician thinks his wife is cheating on him, I make sure she’s not screwing a journalist. That’s the kind of stuff I do, sir. Little stuff. Small stuff. Assassinations are out of my league. Way out of my league. So if you really believe this agent was involved in the assassination attempt, you need to talk to the FBI.”

  “I don’t want to do that,” Banks said. “At least not yet.”

  “But why not?”

  Banks didn’t answer him. He just stood there looking simultaneously guilty, stubborn, and annoyed.

  In the four days since the assassination attempt Banks and Patrick Donnelly, head of the Secret Service, had been interviewed by the FBI. The press had camped out on their doorsteps screaming questions at them, and Congress, in a rare and rapid bipartisan gesture, had slapped together a nosy panel that had grilled both men for hours on how the President’s security had been so disastrously penetrated. Banks had had multiple opportunities to tell people he suspected a Secret Service agent of involvement in the assassination attempt—yet here he was, telling DeMarco he couldn’t.

  DeMarco knew he should leave. Just get his ass out of this fuckin’ chair, walk out, and never look back. He also knew if he left before finding out what was going on, Mahoney would flay him.

  Before DeMarco could decide one way or the other, Banks picked up an index card lying on the blotter in the center of his desk. He held it gingerly, by one corner, as if it was coated with anthrax, and handed it to DeMarco.

  “This is what started it all,” Banks said. “That’s not the original but that’s what it said, verbatim. I sent the original to . . . Never mind. Just read it.”

  DeMarco read: “Eagle One is in danger. Cancel Chattooga River. The inside ring has been compromised. This is not a joke.” The note was signed: “An agent in the wrong place.”

  3

  The Speaker had recently taken to walking at lunchtime in a futile attempt to prevent the heart attack that was certain to kill him. He had told DeMarco to meet him at the Taft Memorial at noon. DeMarco had arrived at twelve fifteen and it was now twelve thirty.

  At the Taft Memorial stands a ten-foot bronze statue of Senator Robert A. Taft and behind his statue is a carillon made from white Tennessee marble that rises one hundred feet into the air. The twenty-seven bells in the carillon were cast in Annecy, France, and the largest bell weighed seven tons. What Senator Taft had done to deserve such tribute had faded from memory—at least from DeMarco’s memory—but he was grateful that the memorial was located in a pleasant urban park close to the Capitol. It was a good place to wait for his boss.

  DeMarco took a seat on a wooden bench facing the memorial. He closed his eyes to nap and enjoy the sun on his face but he was soon denied this simple pleasure by two noisy squirrels. One animal was frantically chasing the other across the lawn, around bushes, up and down tree trunks. Whenever the chaser would finally corner the chasee, the trapped one would back up, feign desperation, then escape with a death-defying leap to a thin limb which seemed out of reach and incapable of bearing its weight. DeMarco didn’t know if the chase was a mating ritual or just plain fun, but there was no end to it. He wished one of the critters would miss when it jumped but the vivid image of a bushy-tailed little body, spread-eagle on the ground, a ribbon of blood oozing from its bucktoothed mouth made him change his mind.

  DeMarco was so busy fantasizing the demise of tree-dwelling rodents that he was startled when Mahoney sat down heavily on the park bench. He was even more startled by the sight of Mahoney in athletic togs: size XXX-large blue sweatshirt, blue sweatpants with white trim, and squeaky new Nikes the size of canoes.

  “I saw General Banks this morning,” DeMarco said.

  “And?” Mahoney said, still trying to catch his breath.

  “Well, sir,” DeMarco said, “Banks wants me to investigate the recent assassination attempt on the President.”

  “You?” Mahoney said.

  Mahoney’s reaction may have been appropriate but DeMarco was mildly offended.

  “Yes, sir. The General is concerned that a Secret Service agent may have had some part in the assassination attempt.”

  “Ah, that’s horseshit,” Mahoney said and looked at his watch, bored already by Banks’s silliness. “And anyway, if he’s really worried he oughta be talkin’ to the Bureau.”

  “I agree and that’s what I told him,” DeMarco said, “but the part I thought you might find interesting is that both Banks and Patrick Donnelly are withholding evidence from the FBI, and—”

  “Donnelly?” the Speaker said, turning his magnificent head to look at DeMarco for the first time.

  “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 blond 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, blond 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 apprec
iated.

  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.