Hazardous Duty (Presidential Agent 8)

“Robin here told me that only last week. Which made me wonder what else is going on around here that I don’t know about.”

“Mr. President,” Natalie said, “I would suggest that with Hoboken and Mulligan looking after you, there’s very little of that sort of thing.”

“You’re right,” the President said. “I only wish I was as sure of the loyalty of other people around here as I am of theirs.”

Then he added: “Have a good time playing golf at the Greenbrier, Natalie.”

[FIVE]

In the Secretary of State’s Yukon

Approaching Joint Base Andrews, Maryland

1835 15 June 2007

One of the three cellular telephones Charlene Stevens always carried with her rang—giving off a sound like that of a feline in heat—and she quickly put it to her ear.

She listened and then said, “Thanks. You are now forgiven for not putting out the garbage.”

She turned from the front passenger seat to address Secretary Cohen.

“That was my Lord and Master, boss.”

Secretary Cohen understood Charlene was referring to her husband, Arthur, who was known as “King Kong” to his fellow Secret Service agents, possibly because he stood five feet five inches tall and weighed 135 pounds.

“Arthur said,” Charlene reported, “that Mulligan just called the Presidential Flight Detachment and told them to get a chopper ready for a flight to carry two agents to the Greenbrier Valley Airport.”

“Damn!” Natalie Cohen said.

“And when the Air Force guy said you were getting ready to go there and were usually willing to carry people with you, Mulligan not only cut him off but said he didn’t even want you to know he was sending agents there.”

“Pull off somewhere, please, Tom,” Secretary Cohen ordered the Yukon’s driver as she searched in her purse for her CaseyBerry.

She pushed one autodial button and five seconds later A. Franklin Lammelle came over the phone’s loudspeaker.

“And how may the CIA be of service to the secretary of State?”

“Get on the phone and tell everybody the Greenbrier’s off,” she said.

“What happened?”

She told him.

“Do you think he figured this out himself, or was Mulligan involved?”

“I think he was suspicious—he’s paranoid about a coup—and Mulligan poured gasoline on those embers.”

“So no meeting?”

“Unless we can find someplace else to hold it, I really don’t know what to do.”

“Someplace else isn’t that much of a problem. I’ve got a safe house outside Harrisburg that isn’t in use at the moment.”

“Harrisburg, Pennsylvania?” she asked incredulously.

“Harrisburg, Pennsylvania,” Lammelle confirmed. “And everybody but McNab and Naylor could drive there. And you could tell Naylor to visit the Indiantown Gap Military Reservation, using his airplane and taking McNab with him.”

She considered that a moment. “This safe house of yours is really safe?”