Hazardous Duty (Presidential Agent 8)

“I was in the Old Ebbitt about twenty minutes,” O’Grogarty replied. “C. Harry came in, asked if I had anything—”

“Nobody saw the two of you together, right? I told you that was important.”

O’Grogarty shrugged. “I don’t think so, but we were at the bar. He asked if I had anything—”

“Anybody hear him ask?”

O’Grogarty shook his head.

“When I nodded, he put a fifty on the bar. Nobody saw him do it. Then I told him what I had was worth more than fifty bucks, and he put another fifty on the bar. Two twenties and a ten. Then I told him about the President going to Fort Bragg tomorrow. And that nobody was to know.”

“He believed you?”

O’Grogarty nodded.

“He said if I could find out why, there’d be more money in it for me.”

“Good man!”

“Thank you, sir.”

“Speaking of money…” Mulligan said.

“Yes, sir,” O’Grogarty replied, and took the one hundred dollars C. Harry had given him from his pocket. He gave the fifty-dollar bill to Mulligan.

“The President calls this ‘redistribution of the wealth,’” Mulligan said. “It’s something he really believes in.”

“You mean he gets the fifty dollars?”

“No, of course not. The President says he’s worked too hard for his money to redistribute any of it. What it means is you had to give me half of what C. Harry gave you, and I’ll have to give half of that to Mr. Hoboken. That’s fair. You wouldn’t have C. Harry’s fifty unless he bribed you, and the leak to C. Harry was Hoboken’s idea.”

“Yes, sir.”

“I probably shouldn’t tell you this, Sean, but I see a good future for you in the Secret Service. Keep up the good work!”

“I’ll try, sir.”

Mulligan patted O’Grogarty on the shoulder, pushed himself off the men’s room door, and left.

[SIX]

Quarters #3

Yadkin and Reilly Road

Fort Bragg, North Carolina

0605 15 June 2007

Colonel Max Caruthers, who was six feet three and weighed 225 pounds, and Captain Albert H. Walsh, who was even larger, were in the foyer of Quarters #3. The cordless telephone on the sideboard rang. Caruthers was closer to it, and answered it.

“General McNab’s quarters.”

“Who is this?” the caller demanded sharply.

There was an implication in the question that the telephone had been answered incorrectly. As, indeed, it had. What the protocol called for was for Colonel Caruthers to have answered the telephone by saying, “Sir, General McNab’s quarters. Colonel Caruthers speaking, sir.”

He had not done so for several reasons. Among them were that he was not only a colonel, but a colonel/brigadier general designate, which meant that when the chair warmers in the Pentagon finally finished doing their bureaucratic thing, he would swap the silver eagles of a colonel for the star of a brigadier general. That, in turn, meant that there were very few people around Fort Bragg in a position to remonstrate with him for answering the telephone in an incorrect manner.