Covert Warriors (Presidential Agent 7)

“Otherwise, both sides would think of us as spies, not journalists,” Cesno had announced, more than a little piously.

Whereupon he had been shot out of the saddle by Admiral Stans-field Turner, who had been director of the CIA under Jimmy Carter.

“Frank,” the admiral had said, “what do you think the Russians or the North Koreans—or anybody—think when they look at someone like you? Noble member of the Fourth Estate or spy?”

“David,” Roscoe J. Danton inquired, “how much of a bite would the IRS take from that million?”

[THREE]

Auditorium Three

CIA Headquarters

McLean, Virginia

1100 12 April 2007

Auditorium Three, unofficially known as the Director’s Auditorium, was a multipurpose room which could be used as a small theater capable of hosting forty people in theater-style seating and another eight in more elegant seats in the front row, each provided with a small table and a telephone. It could also be used as a dining room capable of feeding as many as sixty people, with five tables, each seating a dozen guests.

It was secure, which caused it also to be known as the Director’s Bubble, which meant that great effort was expended just about daily to ensure that nothing said or seen in the room could possibly be heard or seen anywhere else.

That sort of security wasn’t a consideration today, where what was to be said by President Joshua Ezekiel Clendennen would be heard and viewed in real time all over the world.

There was security, of course. Not only was this the headquarters of the CIA, but the President of the United States was going to be there. As were the Vice President, the secretary of State, and other very senior officials.

There are so many Secret Service guys in here, Roscoe J. Danton thought as he entered Auditorium Three, that they’re falling all over each other.

They’re competing for space with the State Department security guys—and gals—protecting Natalie Cohen, the Army security guys protecting Naylor, and the CIA’s own security guys keeping an eye on both Frank Lammelle and the store in general.

Edgar Delchamps and Two-Gun Yung had dropped off Danton at the main entrance, saying they’d wait for him in the parking garage, which caused Danton to again recall the allegation—which he believed—that Delchamps had taken out a CIA traitor in the parking garage by inserting an ice pick into his auditory canal, thereby saving the Agency from the embarrassment that trying the sonofabitch would have caused.

Some of the White House Press Corps filled most of the seats in the auditorium. There were far more members of that elite body than there were seats for them here today.

When Roscoe had shown his White House Press Corps credentials to the first of three security points—the “outside” one, near the main entrance—one of Lammelle’s security people had handed him another credential, this one a plastic-sealed card on what Roscoe thought of as a “beaded dog tag chain.” He looked at it. It held his photo and the legend PRESIDENTIAL PRESS CONFERENCE AT CIA HEADQUARTERS 1100 APRIL 12TH 2007.

“You’re on the reserved-seating list, Mr. Danton,” the man said.

Roscoe found this interesting, because before he had been so rudely awakened, he had had no intention of coming out here today and hadn’t asked for credentials, let alone a reserved-seat reservation.

He knew the protocol for events like this, at which there would be far more seats requested by members of the White House Press Corps than were available. The “host”—in this case, Frank Lammelle—and Porky Parker would put their heads together and decide who got in. And who would have to wait outside, fuming.

Roscoe intuited that he was on the reserved-seating list because of Lammelle, not Porky Parker. While he had no problems with Porky, Porky could be expected to hand out reserved seats to the elite of the White House Press Corps, and Roscoe knew that he wasn’t a member of that elite. Close, but no golden ring.

And he further intuited that it was due to his new status as a member—however uncomfortable—of the Merry Outlaws. At the beginning, Frank Lammelle had headed the CIA delegation of the alphabet agencies looking for Charley Castillo.

Lammelle even had an air-powered dart gun—

Straight out of a superhero comic book.

Jesus, that would have made a great story if I could have written it!

—with which he planned to tranquilize Castillo so that he would be amenable to being loaded aboard the Moscow-bound Aeroflot plane.

After Vic D’Alessandro—surprise, surprise!—had shot Lammelle with Lammelle’s own Super Agent Whiz Bang air gun in Cancún—where his pursuit of Castillo had taken him—Lammelle had awakened in the middle of a desert in Mexico, at a secret airfield the Merry Outlaws had dubbed Drug Cartel International.

There, when he saw what Castillo’s Merry Outlaws were doing, and compared it to what the President was trying to do to Castillo, Lammelle had changed sides. He hadn’t gone to the Venezuelan island but had made a large, maybe even essential, contribution to the operation.

If I have a CaseyBerry, Roscoe thought, you can bet your ass Ca