Six Seconds

31

Washington, D.C.

The plot to kill the pope played out in grainy photos on the computer monitor of Special Agent Blake Walker of the U.S. Secret Service.

The gun rose from the crowd in St. Peter’s Square. A Browning 9-mm semiautomatic pistol.

In the right hand of Mehmet Ali Agca who fired five shots at Pope John Paul II.

The first round penetrated the pope’s stomach, the second hit his hand, the third his arm. The fourth and fifth shots wounded spectators.

The Holy Father fell back into the arms of his secre tary.

May 13, 1981.

A day most of the world would not forget, Walker thought. He was lead advance agent with security for the pope’s upcoming U.S. visit. For Walker, a stickler for research, this was the umpteenth time he’d studied papal assassination attempts.

Next.

The Philippines. 1995.

During a papal visit, firefighters in Manila were called to an apartment fire near the Embassy for the Holy See, where the pope was to sleep. Among the ruins they discovered: bomb-making material, the route of the papal tour marked on maps and two sets of priests’ cassocks.

Suspects were tied to the first attack on the World Trade Center.

That one was chilling; so was the next.

During the pope’s recent visit to South America, a violent group of Marxist extremists cut power to the airport as the pope’s plane was making a night landing. Every single light went black on the ground. The pilots couldn’t see. At the last moment they aborted the landing and flew to another site. Later, airport police rushed to investigate an abandoned truck in a forest road near a runway. Inside they found a shoulderlaunched surface-to-air missile that had malfunctioned.

Walker studied the database index.

So many confirmed attempts. Now, as time ticked down on the pope’s U.S. visit, intelligence agencies were picking up more chatter and more threads of new potential threats every day. As Walker loosened his tie, there was a knock on his door and his assistant ap peared.

“Fran’s calling again.”

His face tensed at his ex-wife’s name but he stayed focused on his work.

“I can’t take it. Tell her I’ve got back-to-back meet ings.”

“She demanded I tell you that it’s about support.”

“Annette, I can’t talk to her now.”

Six Seconds 201

“Sure thing, boss.”

The door closed and Walker exhaled. He’d never wanted the divorce.

For a shining moment he remembered sweeter times as a rookie with the NYPD. On the beat and at night school at John Jay. Then the move to D.C. to join the FBI where he met Fran, a paralegal. Then came the births of their daughters, his commendations, second ments to counterterrorism at the CIA, then the Secret Service, Presidential Protective Division, then Intelli gence.

Always on call. Always on the road. Always on edge.

Then Fran started accusing him of loving his job more than her and the girls. Then she’d found a new boyfriend at their church: Miller Higby, a nine-to-five accountant to help her nag for support payments, which Walker had never missed.

Never.

That would be an error.

Walker couldn’t afford errors. Not in his line of work. He’d come close to a career-killer once.

Thanks to an asshole reporter named Ray Tarver.

Walker had met him briefly at an event. Shot the breeze, traded cards. Months later Tarver called cold saying he was going to run a story alleging Russian mobsters had compromised members of the White House security detail. The story was that the mobsters had blackmailed agents over gambling debts. Tarver claimed he had it documented on a classified CIA report; Blake Walker was one of the extorted agents.

Walker nearly lost his mind.

The story could not be true.

But instead of informing his superiors, Walker ac tually started suspecting agents who might have been behind the damning story. It drove him crazy. He started his own secret investigation of his colleagues. At the same time, after days of intense work, Walker persuaded Tarver to share the document, which was key to his story.

Walker had the document analyzed. The experts questioned its authenticity.

Just like the entire story.

Tarver refused to tell Walker how he got his docu ment. Walker couldn’t rule out that maybe Tarver was set up. Or had fabricated it. Tarver killed his story. Walker killed his investigation.

Tarver did have sources everywhere. But they played him. Walker figured him for a flake, so infatuated with conspiracies that he couldn’t distinguish between fact and fantasy. Someone would feed him a line and off he’d go. When Walker thought of the harm the case could have inflicted on the detail, his blood bubbled.

But it didn’t stop Tarver.

Tipped to other conspiracies, the guy kept popping up. Exaggerating a grain of truth or trying to parlay rumor or innuendo into fact. Walker kicked himself for his knee-jerk reaction to Tarver’s first story. Kicked himself for ever suspecting his colleagues. It taught him to be very suspect of reporters like Ray Tarver.

Word had traveled fast about what happened to Tarver up in Canada. And it was in the Post. His wife, his kids. All of them. A real shame.

It made Walker wonder if the poor bastard had ever landed a true story.

Walker had to get ready for the next conference call. As he collected his files, his computer beeped with an intel bulletin from the Department of Homeland Security.

Something about a ship with hostile cargo. The threats and risks just kept coming.

Like the one with that priest out in Montana. Father

Andrew Stone. Months in advance he posts online, for the entire world to see, details of the pope’s visit to tiny Cold Butte. It posed a risk as a gift for long-range plotters. Shaking his head, he glanced at his printout of the newsletter. He couldn’t do much about it and sought some relief in the fact that Cold Butte was the smallest venue of the tour.

In the middle of nowhere. We shouldn’t have to worry too much about Montana.

As Walker closed his computer files, he glanced again at the photos of John Paul II from that May in 1981.

Aga’s hit pulled Walker back to his own heartstopping day with the president.

Summer.

Shaker Heights, Ohio. Mall parking lot. The presi dent’s moving along a good crowd, shaking hands. Walker spots the guy. Alone. White, late twenties. Stone cold face and something in his hand. Instinct and training kick in. Walker has him on the ground. The team gets the president in the car and out of there. The gun is real. It is loaded. The kid had been dumped by his girl and thought that killing the president would win her back. “It would show her just how much I loved her.”

The kid was that close.

Just like all the others.