Unbelievable! Danton thought. Un-fucking-believable!
CIA functionaries, uniformed and in suits, came to the stage and the podium to help.
A moment later there came a piercing electronic scream, quickly followed by a full volume broadcast of the Vice President’s voice saying, “Oh, shit!”
This served to almost quiet the room.
“As the President has left the building,” the Vice President’s voice came over the loudspeakers, “this press conference is over.”
That’s “Elvis has left the building,” Montvale!
The Vice President then stepped away from the podium and walked briskly off the stage. The other dignitaries quickly followed him. CIA functionaries kept the press away from them.
The CIA can’t even make their microphone work!
And since this farce is on eleven zillion television sets around the world.
Wait a minute! I’m missing something here!
What the hell?
The glistening Sikorsky VH-60 White Hawk helicopter, known as Marine One when carrying the President, was waiting for the President beside the CIA headquarters building.
Supervisory Secret Service agent Robert J. Mulligan, a tall and stocky forty-five-year-old, came out of the building and quickly checked to see that everything-other Secret Service agents, a fire engine, and an ambulance-was as it should be, and then signaled to the President that he was free to board Marine One.
Mulligan had been on Vice President Clendennen’s security detail, but as one of the agents, not as the supervisory special agent in charge. When Clendennen had suddenly become the President, he announced he wanted Mulligan to head his security detail. When it had been-very tactfully-pointed out to President Clendennen that there already was a supervisory agent in charge of the Presidential Security detail, the President had replied, “I don’t want to argue about this. Mulligan will do it. Got it?”
President Clendennen, trailed by Porky Parker, walked quickly to the White Hawk and climbed aboard, failing to acknowledge the salute of the Marine in dress blues standing by the stair door.
Mulligan quickly followed and reached for the switch that would close the stair door.
“Leave it open,” the President ordered. “And turn on the TV.”
The screen showed the stage of Auditorium Three above a moving legend on the bottom, WOLF NEWS BREAKING NEWS, THE PRESIDENTIAL PRESS CONFERENCE AT CIA HEADQUARTERS, LANGLEY, VA.
The image was of assorted people, including the Vice President, trying to do something about the non-functioning microphone.
The voice of Vice President Montvale crying “Oh, shit!” filled the passenger compartment of Marine One.
“Oh, shit,” presidential press secretary Parker said softly.
The Wolf News camera now turned to the VIP journalists in the front-row seats, finally settling on C. Harry Whelan, Jr., who was shaking his head in disbelief.
The voice of the Vice President announced, “As the President has left the building, this press conference is over.”
The camera quickly shifted to the podium, just in time to see the Vice President march away from it. Then it shifted to a shot of the dignitaries quickly hurrying after him.
“Mr. President, I have no idea what happened,” Porky Parker said. “But I’m sorry.”
“You should be,” the President said. “I never thought you had what it takes to be the President’s press secretary.”
“Excuse me?”
“You’re fired, Porky. Get off my helicopter.”
“What?”
“When I get back to the White House, I will announce that I have accepted your resignation.”
“Mr. President, I was in no way responsible for-”
“Nobody’s likely to believe that, are they, Porky? Now, get off my goddamn helicopter!”
Parker went to the door and down the door stairs.
Mulligan threw the switch that caused the door stairs to retract.
“Well, that took care of that disloyal sonofabitch, didn’t it, Bob?” the President asked.
“I thought that everything went very well, Mr. President,” Mulligan said.
“I owe you one,” the President said. He pointed toward the cockpit. “Tell him to get us out of here.”
III
ONE
Auditorium Three CIA Headquarters McLean, Virginia 1120 12 April 2007
Roscoe J. Danton had decided, without really thinking about it, that he was going to have to write a “think piece” about this clusterfuck, rather than just covering it. Other people, simple reporters, would cover the story. But he was, after all, a syndicated columnist of the Washington Times-Post Writers Syndicate; his readers expected more of him.
His biography, on the Times-Post website, written by some eager-eyed journalist fresh from the Columbia School of Journalism, said, “Mr. Danton joined the Times-Post immediately after his service in the U.S. Marine Corps.”
That was true, though it hadn’t happened quite the way it sounded.
Roscoe had been a Marine. He had joined the Corps at seventeen, immediately after graduating from high school. After boot camp at the Marine Corps Recruit Depot at Parris Island, South Carolina, he had been transferred to Camp Pendleton, California. A week after arriving at Camp Pendleton, a forklift had dropped a pallet of 105mm artillery ammunition on his left foot during landing exercises on the Camp Pendleton beach.
Two months after that, PFC Roscoe J. Danton had been medically retired from the Marine Corps with a 15 percent disability. He returned to his home in Chevy Chase, Maryland, and entered George Washington University as a candidate for a degree in political science.
He also secured part-time employment as a copy boy at The Washington Times-Post. By the time he graduated from George Washington, he had acquired a fiance-a childhood friend he had known since they were in third grade-and decided he had found his niche in life: journalism.
This latter conclusion had been based on his somewhat immodest conclusion that he was smarter than three-fourths of the journalists for whom he had been fetching coffee in the newsroom.
This opinion was apparently shared by the powers-that-were in the executive offices of the Times-Post, who hired him as a full-time reporter shortly after he graduated from George Washington.
He married Miss Elizabeth Warner two months later, shortly after she found herself in the family way. By the time Roscoe J. Danton, Jr., aged five, was presented with a baby brother-Warner James Danton-Roscoe J. Danton had not only grown used to seeing his byline in the rag, but had become one of the youngest reporters ever to flaunt the credentials of a member of the White House Press Corps.
Things were not going well at home, however. Elizabeth Warner Danton ultimately announced that she had had quite enough of his behavior.
“You have humiliated me for the last time, Roscoe, by showing up at church functions late-if you show up at all-and reeking of alcohol. Make up your mind, Roscoe, it’s either your drinking and carousing or your family.”
After giving the ultimatum some thought, Roscoe had moved into the Watergate Apartments. He concluded, perhaps selfishly, that there wasn’t much of a choice between the interesting people with whom he associated professionally in various watering holes and the middle-level bureaucrats with whom Elizabeth expected him to associate socially at Saint Andrews Presbyterian Church in Chevy Chase.
Alimony and child support posed a hell of a financial problem, of course, but he had a generous and usually unchecked expense account, and legions of lobbyists were more than pleased to pick up his tabs at the better restaurants around town.