Hazardous Duty pa-8 Read online

  “Mr. Hoboken did not elect to share that with me, Mr. Danton,” the massive Irishman said. “He sent me to offer you a ride to the White House, where he is waiting for you, sir.”

  “Please tell Mr. Hoboken that while I appreciate his courtesy, unfortunately my schedule is such…”

  Several things then occurred with astonishing rapidity.

  Mr. Mulligan raised his hand above his head.

  A GMC Yukon Denali with darkened windows suddenly appeared. Two muscular men erupted from it, grabbed Roscoe’s arms, lifted him off the ground, carried him to the Yukon, and deposited him in the backseat.

  Supervisory Special Agent Mulligan got in the front seat and the Yukon started off.

  “What the hell is going on here?” Roscoe demanded.

  “Actually, Mr. Danton, it’s the President who wants to see you. I didn’t want to say that where there was a chance I might be overheard.”

  [TWO]

  The Oval Office

  The White House

  1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W.

  Washington, D.C.

  1005 8 June 2007

  “Good morning, Roscoe,” President Clendennen said cordially. “I really appreciate your coming here on such short notice.” Then he ordered, “Put Mr. Danton down, fellas, get him a cup of coffee, and then get the hell out.”

  The Secret Service agents carried Roscoe to an armchair and dropped him into it. Supervisory Special Agent Mulligan held open the door as they left, then closed it after them, and crossed his arms as he leaned on it.

  “I hope you didn’t have to interrupt anything important to come here, Roscoe,” the President said. “The thing is, Robin and I had what we think is a splendid idea, and we wanted to share it with you as soon as possible.”

  Hoboken said: “I’m sure you remember asking me, Roscoe, if the President — you referred to him as ‘the leader of the free world’—had given me ‘anything else about his out-of-the-box thinking about his unrelenting wars against the drug trade and piracy, to be slipped to you when no one else was looking.’”

  “Clearly,” Roscoe admitted.

  “Well, Roscoe,” the President said, “no one’s looking now. Mulligan makes sure of that.”

  “Now this is sort of delicate, Roscoe,” Hoboken said. “By that I mean if anything came out — by that I mean, if anything came out prematurely—in the interest of national security, the President would have to — by that I mean, I would have to, speaking for the President, as we don’t want to involve him at all — deny any knowledge of it at all. You understand that, of course.”

  “I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about,” Danton confessed.

  “What he means, Roscoe,” the President said, “is that this is just between us. Okay?”

  “What is just between us, Mr. President?” Danton asked.

  “My out-of-the-box thinking that you asked him about.”

  “And what exactly is that?”

  “What would you say if I told you that I have decided to enlist the services of Lieutenant Colonel Castillo in my war against the Mexicans and the Somalians.”

  “Your war against the Mexicans and the Somalians?”

  “What the President meant to say, Roscoe,” Hoboken interjected, “is the Mexican drug cartels and the Somalian pirates. President Clendennen has absolutely nothing against the Mexican or Somalian people. Quite the opposite—”

  “Roscoe knows that, for Christ’s sake,” the President said. “So, what do you think, Roscoe?”

  “What do I think about what?”

  “About getting Colonel Castillo’s opinion of the Mexican and Somalian problems.”

  “What the President meant to say—” Robin Hoboken began.

  “Roscoe knows what I meant,” the President interrupted. “Well, Roscoe?”

  “I would say you have two problems, Mr. President,” Roscoe said. “The first is to find Colonel Castillo, and then to get him to agree to do what you want him to do.”

  “A representative of General Naylor is going to meet with Castillo either late today or early tomorrow,” the President said. “He will relay to him my request that he enter upon temporary active duty to do what I want him to do.”

  “That’s very interesting, Mr. President.”

  “And as I’m sure you know, Roscoe, I’m the Commander in Chief, and Castillo is a retired officer so that ‘request’ is more in the nature of an order than a ‘pretty please.’”

  “I suppose that’s true, Mr. President.”

  “Now here’s where you fit in, Roscoe,” the President said.

  “The President likes you, Roscoe,” Robin Hoboken said. “You must know that. He wouldn’t think of fitting anyone else in the White House Press Corps in. He told me that when I went to him and told him you had asked me if he had anything about his out-of-the-box thinking he wanted me to slip to you when no one else was looking. He said, correct me if I’m wrong, Mr. President, ‘It has to be old Roscoe who fits in, or nobody.’”

  “That’s what I said,” the President confirmed. “And I’m sure you understand that when I said ‘old Roscoe’ it was a figure of speech. I don’t know exactly how old you are, Roscoe, but you certainly look younger than that. What I should have said was, ‘It has to be young Roscoe who fits in, or nobody.’”

  “Fits in where, Mr. President?” Roscoe asked.

  “You tell young Roscoe, Robin,” the President said.

  “You probably have been wondering, Roscoe, what you may do for your President, not what your President can do for you, but if so, you’re wrong. This is a case where we’re going to tell you what the President is going to do for you, and later, what you can do for President Clendennen.”

  “Which is?”

  “I’m going to arrange for you to be with Colonel Castillo on this mission,” the President said. “Wherever it takes him, Mexico, Somalia, wherever.”

  “I don’t think that Colonel Castillo would be agreeable to that, Mr. President,” Roscoe said.

  “And while you’re with him you can keep the Commander in Chief and me up-to-date on how things are going,” Robin Hoboken added.

  “I don’t think Colonel Castillo would be agreeable to me going along with him, Mr. President, and—”

  “He was agreeable to you going along with him when he nearly got us into a war with Venezuela by invading their island and stealing that Russian airplane, so why not now? Besides, I’m not going to suggest he take you along; I’m going to tell him.”

  “‘Whither Colonel Castillo goeth, thou wilt go,’ so to speak,” Robin contributed.

  “… and,” Roscoe continued after a moment, “I know he won’t want me making reports on how, or what, he’s doing.”

  “He doesn’t have to know about that,” the President said. “As a matter of fact, it would be better if he didn’t. Keep that part of this under your hat.”

  Roscoe gathered his courage.

  “Mr. President, I’m honored and flattered—”

  “Why don’t you wait until the Commander in Chief tells you what he’s going to do for you before you thank him?” Robin asked, just a little sharply. “That way you would know what you’re thanking him for.”

  “Robin and I are going to make sure, Roscoe,” the President said, “that as an expression of our appreciation for your cooperation in this matter, no one else will have the story. If I’m not mistaken, I think they call that a ‘scoop.’

  “When it comes out — and it will — that my out-of-the-box thinking has caused significant advances in my unending war against the Mexicans and the Somalians—”

  “The President meant to say, of course,” Robin interjected, “his war against the Mexican drug cartels and the Somalian pirates. As I said a moment ago, the President has nothing but the highest regard for the people of Somalia and Mexico.”

  “Roscoe knows that, for Christ’s sake,” the President said, somewhat snappily. “Why do you have to keep telling him?”

/>   “I thought, Mr. President, that it was better to repeat it, in case it had slipped Roscoe’s mind.”

  “Do you know what a cretin is, Roscoe?”

  “Yes, sir. A high-level moron.”

  “And I’ll bet that someone like you knows what a rhetorical question is. Right?”

  “I think so, Mr. President.”

  “Sometime when you have a spare moment, Roscoe, you might tell Robin.”

  “Yes, sir. I’ll be happy to.”

  “As I was saying, Roscoe, when it comes out that we’re making significant advances against the drug cartels and the pirates, the press will wonder how that happened. They will ask questions, and I will tell them. A week after I tell you you can write the story about my out-of-the-box thinking. And you write the story. Now, is that a scoop, or isn’t it?”

  “Yes, sir. That would be a scoop,” Roscoe replied. He found his courage again. “Mr. President, I can’t go along with this.”

  “You know what would happen, Roscoe, if you refused an offer like this from your Commander in Chief?”

  “No, sir.”

  “A couple of things come immediately to mind,” the President said. “Like, for example, I ask your pal C. Harry Whelan to come see me, the way I asked you. And I tell ol’ C. Harry that I first thought of you to provide this service to your Commander in Chief, but then I heard something that really shocked me about you.”

  “What would that be, Mr. President?”

  “I wouldn’t make any wild accusations, of course, but I would tell ol’ C. Harry that I heard that the IRS was looking into the one million dollars you recently deposited into your account at the Riggs National Bank and ask him if he had heard that your columns were for sale to the highest bidder. I sort of think that would excite ol’ C. Harry’s journalistic curiosity, don’t you, Roscoe?

  “I’d tell ol’ C. Harry I didn’t believe for a second that the million dollars had come from Somalian pirates and/or Mexican drug lords, but you never know, and the IRS was going to find out. And suggest to him that if he found out where that money had come from before the IRS did, he’d have two scoops.”

  The President let that sink in a moment.

  “‘Don’t make any hasty decisions’ has always been my motto, Roscoe,” the President went on. He turned to Supervisory Special Agent Mulligan. “Get those two goons of yours to take Mr. Danton back to the Watergate. He’s got some thinking to do.”

  He turned back to Roscoe Danton.

  “Give me a call, Roscoe. Before five, and tell me what you’ve decided to do.”

  [THREE]

  Lorimer Manor

  7200 West Boulevard Drive

  Alexandria, Virginia

  1155 8 June 2007

  If it had been anyone else but Miss Louise Chambers, the silver-haired septuagenarian who proposed the motto for Lorimer Manor and rammed it through the Management Committee and then insisted it be applied, there probably would have been no motto.

  “Ask not what Lorimer Manor can do for you, but what you can do for Lorimer Manor” sounded socialist at best, the naysayers complained.

  But Miss Chambers prevailed, in large part because she had early on enlisted the support of Mr. Edgar Delchamps. It was whispered about that she had plied him with most of a half-gallon of twenty-four-year-old Dewar’s Scotch whisky before seeking his support, but however she got it, she had it.

  And while the personal courage of the ladies and gentlemen of Lorimer Manor, all of whom were retired from the Clandestine Service of the CIA, could not be questioned, none of them was willing to take on the most carnivorous of all their fellow dinosaurs, as Miss Chambers and Mr. Delchamps were universally recognized to be.

  What Edgar Delchamps decided he could do for Lorimer Manor was enlist the contribution of someone who was not a resident of Lorimer Manor, but who had laid his head on one of its pillows often in the past and was sure to do so again in the future.

  He went to David W. Yung, Junior, and announced, “Louise Chambers tells me she has a hole in her schedule, noon on the first Friday of each month, so you’re elected.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “You know Louise is chairwoman of the Lorimer Education and Recreation Committee, right?”

  “So what?”

  “I told you: She has a hole in her schedule, which you’re going to fill by either doing magic tricks — pulling a rabbit out of a hat, for example — or delivering some sort of educational lecture.”

  “Why should I do that? I don’t live there.”

  “Because you’re interested in the welfare and morale of the senior citizens, and also because if you don’t, Louise will booby-trap your new electric automatic flushing toilet. She was very good at that sort of thing in her prime.”

  “As a matter of fact, there is something I could talk to the old folks about, but you’d have to help me.”

  “Help you how?” Delchamps inquired dubiously.

  “Move charts onto the easel, that sort of thing.”

  “What the hell, Two-Gun, why not?”

  Edgar Delchamps was arranging charts and diagrams on the easel and David W. Yung, Junior, Esquire, was standing at his lectern preparing to deliver this month’s lecture, “How to Turn the Gaping Gaps in the IRS Code to Your Advantage,” to the ladies and gentlemen residing in Lorimer Manor when Miss Louise Chambers got quickly out of her La-Z-Boy recliner, walked to his lectern, and whispered in his ear.

  “David, dear,” the elegantly attired septuagenarian said, “I think you and Edgar should see to your journalist friend. It appears to me that something has him scared shitless.”

  Two-Gun looked at the door to the recreation room, saw Roscoe J. Danton’s face, and immediately agreed with Miss Chambers’s analysis of the situation.

  “You’ll have to excuse me a moment,” he announced to his audience, and started toward the door. Miss Chambers and Mr. Delchamps followed him.

  “What’s up, Roscoe?” Two-Gun asked.

  “You two bastards got me into this mess,” Roscoe replied. “And you sonsofbitches are going to have to get me out of it!” He heard what he had said, and added, “Please excuse the language, ma’am.”

  “Hell, a man who doesn’t swear is like a soldier who won’t… you know what,” Louise said. “And you know what Patton said about soldiers who won’t you know what.”

  “Tell us exactly what’s bothering you,” Delchamps said.

  “I was kidnapped,” Roscoe announced.

  “Who kidnapped you, dear?” Louise asked.

  “The Secret Service,” Roscoe announced.

  “But you got away, obviously,” Louise said. “Good for you!”

  “Why did the Secret Service kidnap you?” Two-Gun asked.

  “The President told them to.”

  “Cutting to the chase, Roscoe,” Delchamps said, “why did the President tell the Secret Service to kidnap you?”

  Roscoe told them.

  “Frankly, Roscoe,” Delchamps said, “I don’t see that as much of a problem.”

  “Actually, I would suggest that it offers a number of interesting opportunities, scenario-wise,” Louise said.

  “That’s because the President is not sending you two to Mogadishu,” Roscoe said. “With the choice between lying to the President or having Castillo kill me for telling the truth.”

  “Well, I’ll admit that Mogadishu isn’t Paris,” Louise said, “but the current scenario sees Charley going to Budapest before he goes to Mogadishu. I’ve always loved Budapest.”

  “Roscoe, you know that Charley’s not going to kill you unless he has a good reason,” Delchamps said. “But since you’re concerned, what we’ll do is see what our so-far-unindicted co-conspirators have to say.”

  He took his CaseyBerry from his pocket and punched the buttons that set up a conference call between the secretary of State, the director of the Central Intelligence Agency, and himself. He also activated the speakerphone function.

  When green LEDs ind
icated the circuit was complete, he said, “Langley, Foggy Bottom, this is Mission Control. We may have a little problem.”

  Neither Secretary Cohen nor DCI Lammelle saw any great problems in Roscoe’s situation. To the contrary, Mr. Lammelle saw it as a great opportunity to provide the President with disinformation.

  “I don’t see where Roscoe has any choice but to do what the President wants him to do,” Secretary Cohen said.

  “Except tell him what’s really going on, of course,” Lammelle said.

  “Looking at Roscoe’s face,” Delchamps said, “I suspect he’s considering another alternative. Like, for example, going to the President, telling him what’s really going on, and placing himself, so to speak, at the mercy of the dingbat in the Oval Office.”

  Roscoe, who had in fact been considering that alternative, did not reply.

  “You know what would happen in that happenstance, Roscoe?” Delchamps asked rhetorically. “Two things. One, the President would tell you to join Charley and do what he told you to do. Two, Sweaty would consider that what you had done had placed her Carlos in danger and she would come after you with her otxokee mecto nanara.”

  “With her what?”

  “It means latrine shovel,” Louise explained. “I don’t know about you, dear, but I wouldn’t want any woman, much less a former SVR podpolkovnik protecting her beloved, coming after me with an otxokee mecto nanara.”

  Thirty minutes later, after his third stiff drink of twelve-year-old Macallan single malt Scotch whisky, Roscoe called the White House, asked for and was connected with the President, and then read from the sheet of paper on which Edgar Delchamps had written his suggestions vis-à-vis what Roscoe should tell the Commander in Chief:

  “Mr. President, sir, after serious consideration, I have decided to accept your kind offer to serve my Commander in Chief to the best of my ability.”

  He did not read the last four words Mr. Delchamps had suggested: “So help me God.” That was just too much.

  [FOUR]