Covert Warriors (Presidential Agent 7)

The White House

1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W.

Washington, D.C.

1735 18 April 2007

“Somehow that doesn’t reassure me,” the President said. “So tell me what you have on this sonofabitch Danton.”

“Excuse me?”

“Schmidt, I am in no mood to hear a recitation about the purity of the goddamn FBI. As you damn well know, J. Edgar Hoover was the most powerful man in this town because he kept dossiers on the character flaws of everybody of importance. Don’t ask me to believe that the FBI has stopped doing that. Now, tell me what you know that we can hold over the head of this goddamn Roscoe J. Danton to keep him off Wolf News tonight.”

The director of the FBI looked uncomfortable for a full thirty seconds.

“As a matter of fact, Mr. President, just before I came over here, I asked to see what we know about Mr. Danton . . .”

“And?”

“Actually, sir, Mr. Danton doesn’t seem to have many character flaws. He’s not homosexual, so far as we have been able to learn, and the affairs he does have are with single women.”

“I don’t believe that sonofabitch is a saint, Schmidt.”

“There is only one thing, and I don’t know what to make of it,” the FBI director said.

“Tell me what it is, and I’ll decide what can be made of it.”

“The day of your press conference at Langley, Mr. President, there was an unusual deposit to his bank account.”

“How unusual?”

“It was a wire deposit, Mr. President, of one million dollars.”

“Who wired it?”

“The LCBF Corporation, Mr. President.”

“Who are they?”

“I don’t know, Mr. President. The wire was from their account in Liechtenstein. And the same day of the deposit, there was a wire transfer to the IRS of three hundred ninety-five thousand dollars.”

“And what do you make of this?”

“The wire transfer to the IRS was a tax payment, Mr. President. It suggests to me that he wants to keep the IRS from getting curious.”

“I can run with that, Mr. President,” Crenshaw said. “I’ll get Mr. Danton on the phone, and tell him that unless he wants the IRS investigating not only this suspicious million dollars but everything else, to stay off Wolf News tonight.”

“Why don’t you give Mr. Danton a call, Mr. Attorney General?” the President ordered.

IX

[ONE]

Hacienda Santa Maria

Oaxaca Province, Mexico

0930 20 April 2007