Hazardous Duty (Presidential Agent 8)

“Roscoe Danton.”

Casey pushed a button and learned that Mr. Danton was in The Round Robin Bar of the Willard Hotel in Washington, D.C.

“And who do we have in Washington who can best extract this information from Mr. Danton?”

“Delchamps? Or maybe Yung?”

“Precisely. One or the other, preferably both.”

“Thank you. I’ll keep you in the loop.”

“Please do.”

Casey pushed the appropriate buttons and learned that Mr. Yung was in his office in the Riggs National Bank building and Mr. Delchamps was across the Potomac River at Lorimer Manor, an assisted living facility at 7200 West Boulevard Drive in Alexandria, Virginia.

He pushed the button that would connect him with the latter.

[TWO]

The Round Robin Bar

The Willard Hotel

1401 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W.

Washington, D.C.

1730 5 June 2007

When David W. Yung and Edgar Delchamps walked in, Roscoe J. Danton was sitting at the bar about to sip at his third serving—at $27.50 per serving—of Macallan’s twenty-four-year-old scotch whisky. The intoxicant was being provided to him by the lobbyist for the American Association of Motorized Wheelchair Manufacturers, who was delighted to provide a journalist such as Mr. Danton with anything at all he wished to drink.

If he did so, the lobbyist reasoned, it was possible—not likely, but possible—that Mr. Danton’s columns might not echo the scurrilous stories going around that the furnishing of products of the AAMWCM, which cost an average of $4,550, absolutely free of charge to mobility-restricted Social Security recipients was near the top of the list of outrageous rapes of the Social Security system.

“Well, there he is,” Mr. Yung said.

“How are you, ol’ buddy?” Mr. Delchamps added.

Mr. Danton turned from the bar to see who was talking to him. As he did so, Mr. Delchamps offered his hand. In a reflex action, Mr. Danton took it.

“Your car is here, Roscoe,” Mr. Yung said.

“Parked illegally, so we’ll have to hurry,” Delchamps said. “Say goodbye to the nice man, Roscoe, and come along.”

Intending to say, “I’m not going anywhere with you,” he got only as far as “I’m not…” before an excruciating pain began in his hand and worked its way quickly up his arm to his neck.

Mr. Delchamps had grasped Mr. Danton’s hand with an ancient grip he had learned from an agent of the Chos-n’g-

l, the North Korean Department of State Security, whom he had turned during his active career in the Clandestine Service of the CIA.

No lasting damage was done to the gripee’s body, the agent had taught him, but as long as pressure was applied, gripees tended to be very cooperative.

Waiting in the NO STANDING ZONE outside the street door of The Round Robin was a black, window-darkened Yukon Denali SUV bearing the special license plates issued by the Commonwealth of Virginia to the physically handicapped. On the door was lettered in gold LORIMER MANOR HANDICAPPED TRANSPORT # 2.

The rear door was open. Through it one could see the driver, who looked like an actress sent over from Central Casting in response to a call for “an elegant grandmother type in her seventies,” and, sitting on his haunches in the captain’s chair beside her, a dog, a 125-pound Bouvier des Flandres.

Mr. Yung quickly climbed in, and then Mr. Delchamps, still clutching Mr. Danton’s hand, assisted him in getting in, then got in himself.

“Where we going?” the driver inquired.