Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine. Vol. 120, No. 3 & 4. Whole No. 733 & 734, September/October 2002

Secret Service by Charles Ardai

Charles Ardai is both a brilliant businessman — he conceived and founded Juno.com — and a talented writer. At the very start of his career, when he was still in high school, Mr. Ardai worked for EQMM and our sister publications AHMM, Asimov’s, and Analog as a subsidiary rights assistant. In 1988, the year he entered Columbia University, he made his fiction debut in EQMM. After a long absence in the business world, happily he’s back to writing fiction.

As Anders loaded his gun, he thought about the lives he’d saved. Two I presidents: Carter and LBJ. Eisenhower, too, but that was before he was president, just after the war. My God, Anders thought, was it really fifty years ago? He closed the gun, spun the chamber. More. Fifty-four years, and I’m still at it.

Two presidents, three if you counted Eisenhower. Seven senators. Maybe a dozen representatives. And who knew how many celebrities? Anders hadn’t kept count.

And like children whose parents have steered them away from a danger they never saw, all of them safely unaware. They never knew of the threat, so they never knew by how little catastrophe had been averted.

Oh, if you were a public figure you were aware of the possibility — maybe not in ’45, but these days, after John Lennon, after Hinckley, after JFK, for heaven’s sake. You knew. You knew it could happen, and you kept people on your staff to make sure it didn’t. But the sense of security such measures conveyed was a false one. Could even the best security staff prevent one madman with a weapon from getting through? The Secret Service couldn’t — Reagan was just lucky the bullet only got his lung.

Anders slipped the gun into one pocket of his blazer and his invitation into the other. You couldn’t see a bulge — Anders had selected a small gun and a large blazer.

None of the other guests would give a second glance to a white-haired man of means at a political fundraiser. His age made things easier — it had been harder to blend in with the crowd when he’d been in his twenties. But he had always managed. He sometimes thought of himself as an invisible man, unmemorable of appearance, unobserved and unremembered, but playing a more important role than anyone realized, least of all the public figures whose lives were in danger. All around them were the hobnobbers and the star-struck, the influence peddlers and the indulgence seekers, the wives in evening gowns and the mothers in facelifts — and, somewhere in the crowd, one loner with a box cutter or a pistol or a jar of acid. Anders operated quietly, spending most of his time on the fringes of a room, watching carefully but not attracting anyone’s attention. The president, the senator, the celebrity — they never knew what was happening, how close they came to disaster. But at the end of the night they were alive instead of dead at an assassin’s hands, and it was because of Anders that this was so.

Anders locked the door to his apartment, walked outside to the curb, and flagged down a taxi. Central Park raced by outside the windows. Anders felt his pulse quicken as they neared the restaurant. Getting old didn’t mean you couldn’t make a difference anymore, not after a lifetime of quietly shaping history. His only disappointment was that his contribution could never be recognized or rewarded. Not even acknowledged — the secrecy was a critical element to the success he enjoyed. But at least he knew the role he played, and knowing that some of the most important people in the world owed their lives to you was, when you came down to it, reward enough. You saw a law passed or a treaty signed and (at home, alone, with no one you could tell) you raised a glass to the faces on the TV screen, knowing that if it weren’t for you it could never have happened.

The cab pulled up outside the driveway to Tavern on the Green. Anders tipped the driver and walked the rest of the way to the front door. A liveried doorman ushered guests inside while two interns — college-age kids, freshly scrubbed and polished for the occasion-presided over a table covered with nametags. Anders smiled in recognition: No one looks at an intern, and posing as one had been one of his techniques for remaining invisible when he’d been younger. But he didn’t need it tonight. He smiled at one of them, pointed to a nametag marked “Arthur Ross,” and clipped it to his breast pocket when she handed it to him.

Past the doorman, a pair of Secret Service operatives watched all the guests coming in. Anders watched them in turn. The transparent plastic earpieces coiled behind their ears were the dead giveaway, but even without them Anders would have recognized them by type and posture: humorless, beefy, tall, short hair, dark suits. You could tell a Secret Service man anywhere, which was one of the things that made them so ineffective. As human shields they were fine, or as pursuers if anything went wrong, or even as a subtle but very visible deterrent to frighten off the less committed and the less crazy. But all it took was one person who was a little more committed or more crazy, and the best the Secret Service could do would be to catch him after the fact. And why? Because they were too easy to spot, and that in turn meant easy to avoid. You want to talk about secret service, Anders thought, I’ll show you fifty-four years of secret service.

Past the mahogany walls of the entrance, past the chandeliers and mirrors of the corridors, past the swinging doors through which the waiters came with trays of full or empty dishes, past the string quartet warming up and the bartender mixing his tenth gin and tonic of the night, past all these preliminaries, was the podium where the candidate would speak. Already lit by two spotlights, one with a pink gel intended to make this stiff politician look warmer and more human. Anders walked around the empty podium, glanced casually inside the wooden lectern, tapped a finger against the foam-rubber cap of the microphone. Then moved on. The room was filling, but not full. A man in white stood ready to carve the roast beef under the heat lamp before him, but so far the handful of people hungry enough to fill a plate had contented themselves with the ravioli and gnocchi in the metal trays to one side.

Anders walked the length of the room to the second bar at the far end and when he made it to the head of the line asked for a club soda. He sipped his drink as he walked outside, through a pair of French doors, to the courtyard. Man-sized hedges formed a barrier to the outside world, while two more Secret Service men paced just inside them, looking this way and that. A few couples were circulating, admiring the paper lanterns hanging from the branches of the crooked tree that was the courtyard’s centerpiece. Anders watched them for a moment and kept circulating himself. You never knew — you couldn’t tell about people just by looking at them, Anders himself proved that — but he didn’t think any of these couples were the sort to do the deed.

It was how he spent the night: watching, assessing, moving on. Guessing. Who, other than he and the Secret Service men, had a gun secretly tucked into a jacket pocket? Behind all the smiles and satisfied looks, who burned with hatred or, more dangerous still, hid a dispassionate impulse to kill?

When the candidate finally arrived, escorted by guards on both sides, the crowd swarmed around him, eager to get a bit of his attention, a look, perhaps a handshake to tell people about later if the man won. The room had gone from sparsely filled to standing-room-only, and around the candidate himself it was like iron filings drawn to a magnet. It wasn’t that the people in the room loved him, but they had paid a thousand dollars, or five thousand, or however much, to be in the same room with him, and by God they were going to get their money’s worth. He was their candidate, and if he won he would be their president, and if they got close enough to shake his hand or exchange a few words, well, they’d dine out on stories of concocted closeness for the next four years.

Anders stayed out of the fray, stirring the ice in his glass. A drink in your hand was protective coloration, like the blue blazer and the nametag he wore on it. He stood near the podium and waited as the crowd shifted toward him, getting more densely packed and louder as the candidate came closer. It was hot, from all the bodies, from the lamps, from the lack of air now that the French doors were closed and bolted. As the crowd packed more tightly around him, he caught glimpses of the candidate. He could see, then a head was in his way, then he could see again. He saw a hand reaching in toward the candidate’s breast pocket — but it only held a business card, swiftly snatched by someone on the candidate’s staff. Would the candidate pose for a photo? For a big donor — of course. Anything. An arm around the candidate’s shoulders, a flash going off, two opportunities, but not this time; tonight a flashbulb was only a flashbulb, an embrace only an embrace.

The speech, when it came, was awkward and stiff, despite the best efforts of the lighting team to warm the candidate up. Anders remembered earlier speeches by earlier generations of candidates and couldn’t help thinking that the quality of political speakers was at an all-time low. You don’t expect a JFK anymore, never mind a Jefferson or a Lincoln — but when what you get isn’t even a Reagan (say what you will, the man could put a speech over), isn’t even an LBJ, how can you help being disappointed?

But Anders knew it didn’t matter. A man like this could get elected — a man like this would get elected — and smart or foolish, eloquent or tongue-tied, deserving of his status or wholly, sadly unsuited to the mantle he wore, a man like this represented power, and for a certain type of person an irresistible target. You could change the course of history by killing a man — one thrust of a knife at the right moment in history and Mozart never writes his symphonies, one bullet and Spiro Agnew is your president. An instant passes, at its end a man is either alive or dead, and history quietly forks this way or that as a result. The man with his finger on the trigger is as important, in that instant, as the man on the other side of the gun. More important, even: In that instant, the balance of power shifts. The nobody wrenches history to his will while the history-maker becomes... nothing. History made.

Anders watched the crowd coalesce as the speech ended, joined politely in the applause as the candidate stepped out from behind the podium and began his retreat. Smiling, waving, reaching out to shake the hands thrust out at him as he passed. The guards vigilant and attentive, but what could they do? So many hands, no time to check them all, and such friendly hands (surely the risk must be lower here, in a gathering of paid supporters, than, say, on a public street) — you watch, you stand prepared to react, but you don’t prevent the donors from getting what they came for.

Anders knew how simple it would be for a man with a gun to push his way through the crowd right at this moment, press up against the candidate, and pull the trigger. No chance of getting away with it, of course, but the candidate would still be dead, so what did that matter? As the candidate drew closer, Anders felt his heart begin to race. If it was going to happen (and it could, he uniquely knew it could), this was when it would, in the press and chaos of this human maelstrom. He looked from face to face around him: laughing, nodding, drinking, trying to talk above the roar, each face like the ones around it, none more memorable than his, none less, but every one a potential killer, each a man who could change history if he chose to. And in the middle of it all, like the eye of a hurricane, the candidate inexorably advancing. Anders felt his gun through the fabric of his blazer, felt the hard metal press against the inside of his wrist. He knew from years of practice how quickly he could draw and fire — a matter of seconds, even in a crowd like this. The candidate was close enough now that Anders could hear his voice, the clipped, sparse phrases of feigned recognition, repeated over and over. Only two layers of people stood between them, then one, then they were facing each other, Anders and the candidate, and the candidate’s questing hand shot firmly in Anders’s direction.

How simple it would be, Anders thought, for someone in my position to pull his gun and fire, and in that instant change the world forever. How simple and irreversible. This man could be the president of the United States just a few months from now, or he could be dead an instant from now, and which it will be depends entirely on the choice I make now. How often does a man hold the world’s future in his hand? How often is it given to a simple man like me, an invisible one of the invisible millions, to choose which path history takes at the fork?

Anders raised his hand and gripped the candidate’s. It lasted a second, no more — just long enough for politeness. “Thank you, Arthur, I can’t tell you how much your support means to me,” the candidate said, all in one breath but with a passing semblance of sincerity — not worse than Carter, not really worse than LBJ at the Civic Center back in ’66; but then how well or badly can anyone do in a single sentence? A moment later, the candidate was three people away, then five, then just a receding head in a sea of heads, and finally gone.

Anders felt flushed and lightheaded. I’ve done it, he thought. If this man is elected, it is by my grace: I could have prevented it, and I chose not to. Everything this man does from today forward, I, Eric Anders, gave him the chance to do. A man stood before him with a loaded gun, and I kept him from being shot. His life hung in the balance, and I saved it.

How often can one man decide the course of history? Any man can do so once, and gain notoriety in the process — look at Hinckley, look at Princip. But a man who is willing to remain forever unknown, unheralded, unappreciated, and unrewarded? A man who, faced with the opportunity, the means, the power, and the will to act, chooses to refrain? Such a man can shape history, oh, let’s say three dozen times in fifty-four years.

And if, as the years advance and the inevitable end draws near, he should finally decide the time has come to make his mark, to teach the world his name? To point history down the other path for once? Why, then, all the years will have prepared him well, and no precautions will stop him.

On his way out, Anders passed the Secret Service men at the front door. They paid no attention.