The Sentinel (8 page)

On the other hand, the concept of living without the burdens that came with the job was becoming more and more appealing. He was tired of riding on a thorned saddle. He'd nearly made it through two Administrations in one piece. He'd neither been assassinated nor involved in a scandal. He was going to leave the big white target on the Potomac with his legacy intact. There had been no war and the stock market had recovered from a two-year recession and was now healthy. He had nothing to complain about.

In the Oval Office, sunlight streamed in through the tall French doors. Jordan stood in the middle of the room on a bordered azure carpet with the Presidential seal. Hands in pockets, he listened intently to Wintergreen brief him on the Aryan Disciples threat to his life. Jordan didn't like what he was hearing. When Wintergreen finished, there was only the sound of ticking coming from an ornate grandfather clock.

Jordan glanced at National Security Advisor Helen Pierpont, who was leaning against an oversized oak desk. The expression on her face meant she was concerned. He turned to the portrait of George Washington over the fireplace.

"As I see it, the question is whether to believe the informant."

"Mr. President, Agent Garrison believes Hightower is reliable," Wintergreen said. "Without question. A proven track record."

Pierpont rubbed her eyes. "The code card corroborates his information. This can't be taken lightly."

She'd been pacing about the room, as was her habit during such briefings. She was wearing the sleek, black dress and the gold necklace Jordan had bought her for her birthday. He thought she looked more like a pampered New York socialite than a government bureaucrat. Helen Pierpont stood out in a crowd. Before coming to the White House she'd been a professor of international relations at Columbia and ambassador to Peru. She'd worked her way up in the second Jordan-for-President election campaign, and he'd personally picked her to be National Security Advisor.

Jordan made eye contact with Wintergreen.

"What's the plan, Mr. Director?"

"Agent Garrison will maintain contact with the informant."

Pierpont coughed dryly. "I think what the President means, Mr. Director, is: What proactive steps are you taking?"

"We're doing everything humanly possible."

"How about putting all your agents on the lie-detector machine?" Pierpont asked.

"Not yet-"

"That might be a good place to start, don't you think? Test everyone with access to the Secret Service radio code cards-"

"And if that doesn't uncover the turncoat, then test everyone who works in the White House-right down to the janitors if necessary," the President said, chiming in.

"That will take some time," Wintergreen said. "There aren't enough polygraph experts in the Service to get this done in anything less than a month."

"Use Army Intelligence personnel," Pierpont said. "Bring in every polygraph operator in the military if necessary."

Wintergreen turned to him. "Can do."

"That sounds like a good place to start," Jordan said to back her up.

He liked Pierpont's style. She was a mover and shaker, a woman full of surprises in more ways than one. She could deal with men like Wintergreen. She spoke Russian and German fluently, was a scratch golfer, and could quote from Henry Kissinger's
The Age of Power and Diminishing Values.
During Wintergreen's briefing, Pierpont had been slinking about the room, stopping now and then to put a hand on her hip. She was a few years younger than Jordan. She had reddish hair, green eves, and an athletic figure.

"Yes, sir," said Wintergreen.

"You're the expert on Presidential protection, Larry," Pierpont said. "Let me ask you a simple question: Is the President safe?"

Wintergreen coughed nervously. "The White House is a fully secure environment."

"That's not what I am asking."

"Pardon me," Wintergreen said bitterly. "I must have misunderstood."

"I think what Helen is asking," Jordan said, "is whether, if this information is true - if there is a terrorist spy, a co-opted Secret Service agent working on your staff-you can trust any part of your security operation. With all due respect, Larry, isn't a security system only as good as its weakest link?"

"Mr. President, it's possible that we have been compromised, but I am doing everything I can to rectify the problem in the best way I know how."

Pierpont turned to Jordan and gave him a nearly imperceptible nod.

"That should cover it, Larry," Jordan said to close the meeting.

"Because this is a matter of national priority, I would ask to have some leeway in the investigation," Wintergreen said.

Jordan furrowed his brow and wondered exactly what Wintergreen was getting at.

"Leeway?"

"I think Larry is asking about permission to conduct unauthorized searches and telephone monitoring," Pierpont said.

The first thing Jordan had learned, as President, was that acrimony never solved problems. Only consensus. Helen was taking the threat thing personally.

"Do what you have to along those lines," Jordan said. "We need to get this system back in order."

"Yes, Mr. President."

Wintergreen got up and left the room. Jordan left his chair to stretch.

"What do you think of all this, Helen?"

"Someone selling security information is a solvable security problem. The lie-detector tests should be able to clear it up."

The door was closed and they were alone. Jordan moved behind her and slipped his hands around her firm waist.

"Thank you for arranging that comprehensive briefing, Ms. Pierpont."

He kissed her neck.

"Will there be anything else, Mr. President?" she said wryly, looking him in the eye.

She wrapped her arms around him and they kissed. From the beginning, the sex between them had been wild and irrepressible. There was something about her, an enigmatic quality he found enthralling. It had something to do with the way she could look him in the eye. Though reserved and remote in official business, she was the most sexually uninhibited woman he'd ever met. The two dynamics acted on him electrically, and he found himself thinking about her constantly. Theirs was an affair that hadn't dimmed though an entire Administration.

"What did she say about getting the paperwork started?" Helen asked.

"She didn't reject the idea outright."

"Did you tell her that it would be so much easier to bring the lawyers in now?"

"It's not that easy."

"Why?"

"She could blow the divorce out to the press. She could ruin the party and me."

"She's not going to do anything like that."

"How can you be so sure?"

"I know women."

"Well enough for me to risk being made out to be the worst heel in the Western world?"

"Eleanor's public image is more important to her than life itself. She will eventually go along with the program. She will take the easy way."

"I'm not so sure. Please have patience." She pulled away from him. "It's no fun being in limbo like this, Russell. It makes me feel cheap. Damn it. You either love me or you don't. I've put up with all the tiptoeing, and now all I am asking is that we move forward. Please."

He'd been drawn to Helen Pierpont for the first time at a West Palm Beach political fund-raiser. She had a way of focusing her attention on him that he'd found hypnotic. When he'd appointed her National Security Advisor, the media had loved it, and had referred to her as a "think-tank star," the author of two well-received texts on foreign policy, which she had written while teaching at Yale and the Fletcher School of Diplomacy. At the time, Jordan recalled thinking how nice it was when one's personal and professional interests meshed so closely. Now, the public knew Helen Pierpont as the one who navigated a steady course through the dangerous straits of international politics.

She had also been the one who'd alerted him to a Democratic Party ambush, one that could have finished him in the election. She'd single-handedly engineered a deal with Governor Alfred Cord of California, placing Cord in the Vice Presidency and collapsing the radical right wing of the party, insuring the Jordan nomination. Without her, Jordan would have been a one-term President like Bush and Carter, politicians rejected at the peak of their power and influence, tossed aside by a fickle public. While Eleanor reminded him every day of what she had done for him, Helen stood quietly at his side. She was his support, his rock. Helen loved him without reservation.

"I'll talk to her again," he said.

"I don't know where the hell I stand."

He leaned down to kiss her neck. "Yes, you do."

"Say it."

"I love you, Helen."

"I hate lurking around like this. I can tell that the agents know. I can tell by the way they look at me. I hate the role of
other woman-"

"I love you more than I can say."

"Honey. "

Reaching behind her, he grasped her taut buttocks and pulled her to him.

"I have thirty minutes before I have to meet with the Ambassador to Iran," he whispered.

"Then you'll have to concentrate."

"Yes, ma'am."

She kicked off her shoes and moved toward a blue-and-white-striped sofa.

He pressed a button on the wall. The curtain began closing slowly, automatically, left to right, dimming the glare from the South Lawn. His heart raced and he unfastened his belt.

After she left, Jordan opened the curtain and stared through the tall windows at the South Lawn, where a workman was setting up a microphone for an awards presentation later. A stranger driving by on Constitution Avenue and seeing Jordan now might describe him as a stockbroker or a Wall Street businessman. At sixty, his features were etched with maturity lines. His hair was full, parted and graying heavily only at the temples. He was six feet tall, and watched his weight so assiduously that his personal tailor had been making custom-made business suits from the same body form since his first inauguration seven and a half years earlier.

Jordan recalled standing at the window then, believing he was at the center of the universe, the apex of unfathomable power. It hadn't taken him long to learn that Presidential authority was a fleeting wisp of smoke. It required dodging scandal, assuaging powerful egos every minute of every day, being strapped to a telephone, wheedling one's way from one crisis to another, walking a tightrope with no respite, and peddling one's ass to party fat cats. The day-to-day pressure was something he could have never anticipated. As a Senator from California he'd dealt with complex, intractable issues for years. But nothing had prepared him for the trials of the Oval Office.

Thankfully, he'd survived. He'd taken his lumps while watching his political allies and followers drop off one by one as his own popularity inevitably ebbed in the second half of his second term. There were only two Cabinet officers remaining of those appointed at the beginning of the Administration. But he'd nearly made it to the finish line.

And now terrorists were out to assassinate him.

****

CHAPTER 6

BRECKINRIDGE ANXIOUSLY DROVE along the Potomac River into the Old Town section of Alexandria, Virginia, a milieu of eighteenth- and nineteenth- century streets lined with brick and wood-frame buildings and wrought-iron fences encircling brick courtyards. Because of traffic, it had taken her about twenty minutes to get there from D.C. She swerved into a long driveway leading inside a newly built condominium complex. The street names were Duke and Prince.