Covert Warriors (Presidential Agent 7)

“Don’t look so unhappy, Stan,” Montvale said. “He gave you the option of resigning.”

The attorney general looked at the Vice President for a moment and then gave him the finger.

“He does tend to bring out the worst in people, doesn’t he?” Secretary of State Cohen said to no one in particular.

V

[ONE]

The Mayflower Hotel

1127 Connecticut Avenue, N.W.

Washington, D.C.

1005 15 April 2007

Mr. and Mrs. J. Herbert Kramer and Mr. and Mrs. Robert V. Dabney came out of what Herb Kramer described as “the restaurant or coffee shop or whateverthehell it is off the lobby” and took seats on two couches in the lobby, from which they had a good view of both the entrance and the bank of elevators.

Herb Kramer was pleased with his breakfast of corned beef hash topped with poached eggs.

“Most of the time you get corned beef, it’s hash fresh from a can,” Herb observed. “That was homemade, from real corned beef.” Then he observed, “But they didn’t give it away, did they?”

“What the hell, it’s deductible,” Bob Dabney said. “Live it up!”

Herb and Bob were in Washington to attend the annual convention of the National Association of Wholesale Hardware Dealers. Both were in that business in Missouri, Herb in St. Louis and Bob in Kansas City. They had been pals since their days at the University of Missouri, where Bob married Kate the day after they graduated. Herb had married his Delores some years later.

They were staying at the Mayflower because of Delores. Someone had told her that the best place in Washington to see the big shots was in the lobby of the Mayflower, and Delores generally got what she wanted. She was far more interested in seeing the big shots up close than she was in seeing a bunch of old airplanes at the National Aerospace Museum, which was high on Herb and Bob’s agenda for their free time while in the nation’s capital.

They didn’t have to wait long to learn that what Delores had been told was true.

“Look!” Delores whispered loudly as a group of ten men came down the lobby to the elevator bank. “There’s Whatsisname!”

“Who?” Herb asked in a normal voice.

“The guy we see on Wolf News all the time,” Delores said impatiently.

“Roger Danton,” Kate furnished.

“Roscoe Danton,” Bob corrected her. “And there’s the President’s press secretary.”

“Ex–press secretary,” Herb said. “He got canned last week.”

“That’s right, isn’t it? What did he do?”

Bob shrugged. “Or didn’t do. It sounded like incompetence.”

“Well, I will be damned,” Herb said. “That was them, sure as Christ made little apples.”

“I wonder who the other ones are,” Delores said as the men disappeared into an elevator.

Bob and Herb shrugged.

“I wonder what they’re doing here?” Delores went on.

“They probably came to see Monica Lewinsky,” Herb said with a straight face.

“That’s right!” Delores said. “This is that place, isn’t it?”