The President's Henchman (48 page)
Which effectively ended Colonel Seymour’s climb in rank. He would never see stars on his shoulders. A realist, he, too, resigned from the Air Force. He went home to New York City. It was only a matter of a month before he was recruited to run for the seat of a retiring member of the House of Representatives.
The chief sponsor of Seymour’s new political career was none other than Senator Roger Michaelson. In Washington, political enemies were harder to kill than vampires. As often as not, they not only survived, they multiplied.
Dikki Missirian recovered completely from his run-in with Damon Todd. His physical injuries had been minor, and the single dose of Special K that Todd had administered to him was not enough to do any lasting damage.
McGill asked his landlord, “Did Todd get the baseball bat from your office?”
Dikki nodded, embarrassed that the madman had tried to use it against McGill.
“Did you buy it for protection?”
“No, I bought it for my son.”
As far as McGill knew, Dikki didn’t have any children. Then the light dawned, “Your wife is pregnant?”
“Yes. The doctor says a boy. I don’t think there are any Armenian big leaguers. So I think, why not my son?”
McGill smiled.
“Siran and I intend to name him after you.” Dikki also said McGill’s next twelve months rent were on the house.
McGill said it would be okay to use James for the boy’s middle name. He would continue to pay his own rent. But he let Dikki cover the cost of repairs for McGill’s gunfire and rock throwing.
Fidel Castro resurfaced the morning after the Costa Gorda Incident. He spent five hours vehemently denying that the
Marina de Guerra Revolucionaria
had anything to do with the attack on the
gusanos’
toy-soldier base in the imperialist puppet country of Costa Gorda. He’d rather have seen the worms attack Cuba so they could be smashed as their grandfathers had been at the Bay of Pigs. The whole of the event in Costa Gorda was a lie. A fabrication. A
provocation!
Rant as he might, the attack was caught on video. The entire world had seen it.
What Castro couldn’t deny was that the woman in the White House had smoked him out of hiding. Shown that he was still alive, still in charge, and as defiant as ever. Given that, any notion that Cuba might inflict genocide on itself was quickly discarded.
For her part, President Grant warned Cuba publicly to commit no further acts of war against any of its neighbors. To protect Costa Gorda, she ordered the United States Navy to guard its territorial waters. It would interdict any vessel intending to do harm there.
There were several advantages to this plan. Cuba would never be able to launch another “attack” on Costa Gorda. The Miami Cubans could keep their base, but it would be blockaded as surely as Cuba itself had been in 1963. Thus the exiles would be allowed no independent troublemaking opportunities. But they would be preserved as a threat should Castro ever truly annoy the president in the future. Finally, the Navy presence would end Costa Gorda’s role as a transshipment point for drugs destined for the U.S. market, a concern of which the CIA had made the president aware as part of her daily briefing.
While Castro publicly excoriated Patricia Darden Grant, privately he admired her greatly. Forcing him out of the shadows, he had to admit, was a masterstroke. As was destroying those bastard Obregon brothers. Castro was sure that their destruction, the only deaths in the whole charade, was no accident. The president was throwing him a bone, giving him the terrorists who’d attacked his produce mart. The woman had great wiles.
At last, there was an adversary in the White House worthy of him.
McGill’s rectal polyp turned out to be benign. He promised Artemus Nicolaides he would have semiannual checkups to watch for further developments in the lower forty. He and the president took a four-day weekend on a private island in the Caribbean from which he returned to Washington no longer looking like a pale Irishman.
The Reverend Burke Godfrey remained immovable for months. He wouldn’t acknowledge that any of his followers had anything to do with threatening the lives of children. Even the offspring of the man responsible for falsely arresting and charging with murder his beloved wife Erna, who with every passing day drew closer to an unspeakable execution.
Godfrey’s denials continued even in the face of the arrest of Colm Quigley, a janitor at Saint Viviana, Abbie McGill’s high school. Quigley had officially been on vacation the day Abbie found the note, but he had keys to every door in the school, including the master key that opened all the school’s lockers. Moreover, Quigley’s coworkers on the custodial staff told the Secret Service that the man was fiercely antiabortion, to the point where he said his own church’s clerics weren’t doing enough to end the abomination.
He told his colleagues that while he wouldn’t renounce his own faith, he was a regular viewer of Salvation’s Path, Burke Godfrey’s Sunday morning television show, and sent a check to the minister every other week.
Once Quigley was brought in for questioning, he not only admitted to leaving the note, he boasted of it. But he either wouldn’t or couldn’t name anyone else who was threatening the McGill children.
For his part, Burke Godfrey denounced the man. Said he wasn’t a member of
his
church. Hadn’t been born again. And for Pete’s sake, this Quigley fellow didn’t even own a computer, so how could he be part of some Internet conspiracy?
As with a certain Cuban dictator, Godfrey found himself protesting in the face of TV pictures. Specifically, the picture of Caitie McGill. The idea of taking vengeance on such an innocent child outraged the American people.
Worse for Godfrey, a poll taken on whether Erna should be executed or spared came down with 72 percent in favor of capital punishment. Nobody read polls more closely than politicians, and those who had long been dear friends to the reverend began to distance themselves. As went the reverend’s political support, so too did his financial backing.
The core held true, but less ardent believers tuned out. Viewership of Godfrey’s TV show declined. A consultant told the minister he’d made a mistake treating Colm Quigley the way he had. His rejection of the man narrowed the public perception of who was acceptable in his eyes and, by extension, God’s eyes.
You shut people out, they’d do the same to you.
Finally, Godfrey had to relent. On a beautiful fall Sunday, he mounted his pulpit, looked into the camera, and asked any misbeguided souls threatening the lives or the welfare of Abigail, Kenneth, and Caitlin McGill to cease. It wouldn’t help Erna. It wouldn’t help anyone at all. He never admitted any knowledge of or involvement with any parties who might have threatened those children.
His lawyers had been very clear with him on the need to make that point.
He did announce, that Sunday, the formation of a new group called Innocent Christians. Henceforth it would work to achieve the release of all Christians, including Catholics, from false imprisonment. Capital cases would be given priority, but those incarcerated for lesser crimes of which they were innocent would also be beneficiaries of IC’s efforts.
The reverend was putting up the biggest tent he could. When reporters asked him about the falsely convicted of other faiths or no particular belief at all, he had his answer ready.
“Let them find Jesus or look for help somewhere else.”
That was good enough for his friends in politics and his fringe audience.
Endorsements and money began to flow again.
After Godfrey’s change of heart, the threats against the McGill children began to diminish and within a couple of weeks the few holdouts calling for blood in chat rooms were being flamed by the overwhelming majority of other cyberbelievers. So reported SAC Celsus Crogher.
Which meant Abbie, Kenny, and Caitie could go to school with only their usual complement of bodyguards. Better yet, the relaxation of tension was sufficient to let them play with their friends again. A feat for which Caitie took full credit, much to her brother’s annoyance.
McGill thought Sweetie should share in the credit — and even Galia, too.
He walked into her office the day after the confrontation with Godfrey, and said, “You were the one who alerted the TV stations. That’s why they had their camera crews in Lafayette Square.”
Galia didn’t deny it.
“You inspired me,” she said. “I know how you feel about your children. I can imagine how I would have felt putting one of my boys out there when he was Caitie’s age. So I decided the moment was too good not to put to political use. Put Caitie’s face on national TV, and it would not only help the president against her right-wing opponents, it would also get the country behind protecting your children.”
“Thank you,” McGill said.
Galia nodded.
The two of them passed a moment of uncomfortable silence.
“We should probably continue to keep a professional distance,” she said.
“Not like each other, you mean.”
“Exactly.”
“No worries.” McGill flipped a white index card on Galia’s desk.
“What’s that?”
“My recipe for focaccia,” he said.
She gave him a blank look.
“You asked me for a contribution to the
First Ladies Cookbook
, remember?”
She did. The two of them smiled. Knowing their clashes would continue.
McGill didn’t make focaccia for Thanksgiving dinner, but he and Caitie worked with the White House chef in making the stuffing for the turkey. Kenny sat and watched, eating a bowl of ice cream, making sure no ingredients were left out. Abbie had remained in the residence with her mother, Lars, Sweetie, and Patti.
Carolyn and Lars, despite McGill’s high anxiety, had never been in any danger.
“We pulled a fast one,” Carolyn told McGill.
She’d gotten in touch with him after seeing Caitie’s face on television.
“We made the reservations at the resort, but we purposely didn’t keep them.”
“Why did you do that?”
“Lars didn’t want to travel with the gun, and I didn’t know if I could legally. So, we tried to be clever. Drop clues where we were going, then stay at Lars’s cousin’s condo in Minneapolis. A private residence in another state. The cousin’s from his mother’s side, so the last name is different. Who was going to find us?”
“Not the FBI,” McGill said. “Did you have a good time?”
“Great. Until I saw our daughter on TV in the midst of a hostile crowd.”
“It worked out pretty well. And I’d tried many times to reach you. I worried, too.”
They decided all was well that ended well. No harm, no foul.
And now the whole family was together for Thanksgiving at the White House.
Which went splendidly until Blessing appeared at McGill’s side.
“I’m sorry to interrupt, sir, but SAC Crogher would like a word. He says it’s urgent.”
“He wants to see me, not the president?”
Patti, seated at the opposite end of the table, was aware something was up.
The others were engaged in family reminiscing.
“Yes, sir. He asked to speak with you.”
“Thank you, Blessing.”
When McGill stood up, everyone noticed, and conversations stopped.
“I’ll be right back,” he said with a smile. “Have to see a man about a dog.”
Patti picked up the conversational baton as he left the room. Blessing had left Crogher in McGill’s Hideaway. When McGill entered the room, he saw the SAC standing in front of the fireplace, staring reflectively at the flames. Hardly what he’d expect from Crogher.
“Celsus,” McGill said.
Crogher looked at him.
“Is it about my children?” McGill said. “More threats?”
“No, sir. We believe the children are safe. This time it’s you.”
“Me?”
“Started at the beginning of the week. A little chatter on some of the more extreme sites at first. Then it picked up steam, became widespread. Gist is, kids aren’t fair game. But you are. You should have been the target in the first place. Just like Andy Grant was.”
McGill stared at the flames a moment himself.
Looking back at Crogher, he asked, “How serious do you think it is?”
McGill thought he saw tears in Crogher’s eyes, and that scared him.
“We think it’s very serious. Tonight, outside his mother’s home in suburban Virginia, Special Agent Donald “Deke” Ky was shot by a sniper.”
Joseph Flynn has been published both traditionally — Signet Books, Bantam Books and Variance Publishing — and through his own imprint, Stray Dog Press, Inc. Both major media reviews and reader reviews have praised his work. Booklist said, “Flynn is an excellent storyteller.” The Chicago Tribune said, “Flynn [is] a master of high-octane plotting.” The most repeated reader comment is: Write faster, we want more.
Contact Joe at
Hey Joe
on his website:
www.josephflynn.com
All of Joe’s books are available for the Kindle or free Kindle app through
www.amazon.com
.
The President’s Henchman
, A JimMcGill Novel [#1]
The Hangman’s Companion
, A Jim McGill Novel [#2]
The K Street Killer,
A Jim McGill Novel [#3]
Part 1: The Last Ballot Cast,
A Jim McGill Novel [#4 Part 1]
Part 2: The Last Ballot Cast,
A Jim McGill Novel [#4 Part 2]
The Devil on the Doorstep,
A Jim McGill Novel [#5]
McGill’s Short Cases 1-3,
Three Jim McGill Short Stories
Nailed
, A Ron Ketchum Mystery
Defiled,
A Ron Ketchum Mystery Featuring John Tall Wolf
Tall Man in Ray-Bans
, A John Tall Wolf Novel
Pointy Teeth
: Twelve Bite-Sized Stories
Insanity® Diary:
A Sixty-Something Couple Takes Shaun T’s 60-Day Challenge
You may read free excerpts of Joe’s books by visiting his website at:
www.josephflynn.com
.
