The Sentinel (4 page)

She pointed above the mantel to an oil painting of a svelte blonde, the wind blowing her hair as she hurried along a dark, cobblestone street with a band of sunken-eyed orphans.

"That one was painted by Carleton Phipps - a recluse who paints naked on the porch of a cabin in Idaho."

Garrison could hear the waves outside. "I'll bet that becomes a real hardship for him in January."

Her courtly laugh revealed perfect, white teeth. It occurred to Garrison that beauty was, as someone once said, in the symmetry. Nothing about Eleanor Jordan was out of balance. Nothing at all. She turned back to the stove to cook. He admired her for a moment, and then walked across the kitchen and turned off the stove.

"Pete-"

He wrapped his arms around her. They kissed, and her tongue met his. He embraced her tightly, and the sound of the waves seemed to get louder. Then, in a blurry trance, he swept her into his arms and carried her to the sofa. They devoured each other with kisses and undressed one another. He could hear her breathing. His tongue flicked her erect nipples. Then, moving lower, he kissed her abdomen, her navel. Her hips began to move. He gently tasted her sex, making love to her with his tongue for a long time, her hands grasping his head tightly. She pulled him up, kissing him hungrily, reaching for his hardness. They melded together, her legs wrapping around him. As he was locked with her in the driving tempo of sex, her deepening warmth consumed him. They kissed and bit one another feverishly until, finally, pressing her lips to the nape of his neck, she cried out in orgasm. Garrison continued to ravish her, and then, finally thrusting his hips in a paroxysm of brain-throbbing ecstasy, he too found release.

As they ate, they chatted about an upcoming Russian summit meeting to be held at Camp David and journalist Joe Kretchvane's unauthorized biography of her, which she said he was slanting to put her in the worst possible light.

"Pete, what's being done about the Aryan Disciples threat?"

"More agents on post, more scrutiny of White House visitors, less scheduled Presidential stops. Other than that, the security plan remains pretty much the same. Don't worry. We have it under control."

"Did you know Agent Meriweather?"

"Not very well. But he was well liked."

"What was his background?"

"He used to work in the Technical Security Division before being assigned to the White House Detail."

"What do they do?"

"Electronic eavesdropping."

She nodded. "Do you miss the Presidential detail?"

He got up and walked to the sliding-glass door.

After a moment, she joined him. The sea was calm and dark gray. Close to shore, a swell curved into a frosty wave, roaring from right to left, then bursting onto the beach, an arm of surf reaching out, only to disappear forever in thirsty, moonlit sand.

"The answer to your question is yes. I miss the action."

She kissed him. "I'm not trying to toy with you, Pete. I trust you. I could feel it the first day we met. I don't feel that way with everyone, but there was something about you. I don't know why, but there is an electricity between us." She nuzzled her head to his shoulder. "You feel good."

"Feelings aren't the problem. It's reality that gets people in trouble."

He knew that if the word ever got out, he would be fired. Both he and she would end up as voodoo dolls for the world press to stick pins in.

"No one will ever know," she said.

Garrison's experience, his common sense, and the discipline inculcated by his training told him that even the thought of being with her was crazy and dangerous. But he could smell her hair and her perfume. He wanted her. He wanted her and nothing else mattered. The thought flashed through his mind that he would like to stay
with her all night, but that it was impossible.

She tenderly kissed his cheek. "It's my fault."

"It's nobody's fault."

"I don't care about him anymore. You don't believe me."

"Then why don't you leave him?"

"And be the only First Lady to walk out on her husband? The price is too high. No, I'm stuck in the White House for another few months. After the new Administration comes in, it's over between him and me once and for all. In the meantime, I'll put up with the charade. Pete, when you were married, were you happy?"

"For a while."

"What happened?"

"Being on the detail, I traveled with the President constantly, and my wife wanted a husband who could be home with her. It just didn't work."

"She wanted more from the relationship than you were willing to give?"

"That's probably the way she would describe it."

Garrison hated talking about himself. He considered it a sign of weakness. Gabbing about one's feelings was for TV gurus, totem worshipers, and alfalfa-sprout eaters.

"Do you keep in touch with her?"

"We exchange Christmas cards. I don't blame her for leaving. She's better off without me."

"Do you miss her?"

"It's been five years."

On the wall was a framed photograph of a well-groomed, gray-haired matron.

"Who is the lady in the photo?" he asked.

"My mom. My father turned her into an alcoholic. He was a cold man - aloof. She worshipped him. She sat in our wonderful old house in Pacific Heights and secretly drank her bottle of brandy every day-after she'd gotten her charity work out of the way, of course. She was an intelligent, talented person who never recovered from my father abandoning her. He spent my mother's last Christmas in Aruba with a twenty-two-year-old stripper. Good old Dad. He pushed me into marrying my first husband, who turned out to be a lot like him - a user. He was killed sailing drunk off Cabo San Lucas. When my father died, I took stock of my life. I'd been raised rich. I'd attended the right schools, dated the right men. What did I have to show for it? Nothing. Then a friend introduced me to Senator Russell Jordan. He had White House written all over him. I decided to make my own man. I set out to take him to the top. My inheritance money put Russell Jordan into the White House. Not his staff, not his advisors. Me. And to return the favor, he hung me on his political tree like a cheap ornament. I guess it's true that women seek out men like their father. Crazy, isn't it?"

He kissed her.

"What are your secrets, Pete?"

"I don't have any."

"You're angry about being transferred from the Presidential detail, aren't you?"

"You could say that."

"What happened?"

"I screwed up. It doesn't matter."

"Talk to me, Pete. Please."

"It happened at the State Department picnic on the South Lawn. We'd been briefed about how a radio talk-show host had hired someone to throw a pie in the President's face. I spotted the suspect. He was dressed as a waiter. When I confronted him, he spit at me. I slammed the pie into his face and it knocked him unconscious. The Director charged me with 'conduct unbecoming an agent.' I was transferred to your detail because the position was open and no one else wanted the job."

"You feel like you failed yourself."

"I got the shaft."

She kissed him. "You're not a failure in my book."

Garrison returned to the security room later, dazed and exhausted. He studied himself in a gold-framed mirror over the sofa.

"You really know how to complicate your life, don't you?" he said out loud.

He was six feet tall. He had clean features, short, sandy hair, and blue eyes. His shoulders fit his suit neatly. He'd been having an affair with the First Lady of the United States and he felt like some stupid, gawky teenager. He knew well what untoward familiarity with a Secret Service protectee could lead to. It was bad enough for an agent to allow himself to be used to perform servile chores like carrying suitcases and golf clubs for a protectee, much less getting involved sexually. He'd broken the first commandment of Secret Service protection. Though he wanted to believe otherwise, he knew, deep down that it was possible Eleanor might be using him. She was on the rocks with the President. Would she shout out his name during an argument?

He paced the security room, then plopped into a recliner and turned on the television. An anchorman droned on about the President's plans to hold a private Camp David foreign policy conference with the President of Russia. Changing channels, Pete watched a Dan Duryea movie, thinking about Eleanor: the look in her eyes when they had sex, the curve of her neck, her hair. He told himself he should have never gotten involved. But he'd wanted her. He'd wanted the closeness. Admittedly, he was infatuated with Eleanor Jordan. He felt for her a sublimated possessiveness that one could feel for a woman who could never be his. And it was clear to him that she was his impulsive counterpart, his partner in the thrill, the buzz that came from the most dangerous of illicit relationships. But Garrison wasn't unaccustomed to danger. He'd spent his life seeking it out.

As a teenager, he'd raced motorcycles and had once nearly been killed in a crash. In the Army, he'd volunteered for paratrooper school and later for training as an Army Explosive Ordnance technician. Before his promotion to the White House Detail, he'd worked in a special Secret Service bomb detail, and had volunteered for a tour of duty on a risky terrorism task force that had required him to work undercover among killers and ex-convicts for over a year. But he hadn't allowed himself to become involved with Eleanor for a simple thrill. There was something about her....

Shortly before eight A.M., Garrison stood at the glass door, staring outside, thinking about the night before. Outside, the first morning light had illuminated a grayish, endless panorama of waves and the kelpy foam lining the shore. He heard three radio transmitter clicks, the daily code for
Agent approaching.

Walter Sebastian walked into the room carrying a box of doughnuts and a large container of coffee.

"You look like a sack full of doorknobs, Pete."

"I'll be doing better after I catch some rack time."

Using one of the field office cars parked outside, Garrison drove to the nearby Ramada Inn and went to his room. He showered and crawled into bed, exhausted and feeling discomfited about what had happened. He closed his eyes and recalled the first day he'd reported for duty at the First Lady Detail. He and Eleanor had chatted casually between her appointments and they'd had a few discussions about her schedule. He'd found her distracted, but not aloof. She was a woman under stress.

The first time he'd accompanied her jogging they'd gotten to know one another....

Arriving in Rock Creek Park, Garrison climbed out of the limousine and looked about quickly, scanning the high ground. Seeing nothing unusual, he opened the rear passenger door for the First Lady. She wore a blue Nike warm-up suit, running shoes, a baseball hat, and sunglasses - an appropriate but unassuming outfit. Garrison could see how the President had fallen for her. She was attractive no matter what she wore-healthy and athletic, without the pampered, made-up look that many women had.

Under shadows cast by tall oak trees, Garrison and the First Lady jogged
along the bank of a meandering stream.

"You seem familiar with the trail, Pete."

"This is the path President Clinton liked.

Garrison had chosen the route after reviewing Secret Service reports on the First Lady Detail's previous jogging activities. The Park had last been chosen six weeks earlier. He knew that, while a previously announced trip presented great danger to a protectee, an unannounced activity negated the possibility of an assassin lying in wait.