Executive Order

Seventeen

They stayed off the interstates, avoiding as much as possible traffic-cams and other security cameras. As Rogers drove, Reeder got Miggie on the burner.

“Everybody safe?” the computer expert asked.

“Patti and I are fine.”

Quickly he told Miguel what had happened at the Monument.

“Oh, hell,” Mig said hollowly. “First Jerry, now Trevor... God. What next?”

“We do our best not to join them. Your end?”

“Everybody’s okay. No sign of a tail. Should be at the cabin soon. Nichols is sleeping in back right now.”

“Both of you need to get some rest. Sleep in shifts, when you get to the cabin.”

“That’s what we planned. GPS says you’re on the move, too.”

“We are. Patti and I’ll find somewhere we can sleep before we drop. But tomorrow I want to make a visit, first thing.”

“Anywhere special?”

“Just the cabinet member left behind for this Camp David trip, now that Amanda Yellich is off the list.”

A pause filled itself with cell-phone crackle.

“Joe, I told you before how tight a lid the Secret Service keeps on that.”

“And you’re just the guy to pry it off.”

Another crackly pause.

“I’ll get back to you,” Miguel said, and clicked off.

Reeder slept for fifteen minutes and then the burner in his hand vibrated.

“Turns out the held-back cabinet member,” Mig said, “is a familiar name.”

“Secretary of Agriculture,” Reeder said. “Nicholas Blount.”

“Jesus! If you knew that, why—”

“I didn’t. Just an educated guess, based on Lawrence mentioning the Blount dynasty. If procedure hasn’t changed, Nicky will be at home or perhaps some summer or winter place.”

“His home,” Mig said. “Chevy Chase, 6900 block of Brennon Lane. Do I have to remind you a spate of agents from your alma mater will be on hand?”

“No, but see if you can define spate.”

Miggie tapped on his tablet.

Then: “Six — three two-person teams rotating over twenty-four hours.”

“After the attempted coup last year,” Reeder said, “I expected more. But then a contingent of agents would only attract unneeded attention. Hey. Is my pal Lawrence asleep?”

“No. Wide awake and pouting.”

“Enough dashboard light to see his face?”

“Sure.”

“Ask him if Wilson Blount is the Alliance chairman. And as you do, watch his face close — you’re going to read him for me.”

“Do my best... Lawrence! Reeder wants to know if Senator Blount is the chairman of the Alliance board.”

Reeder could make out Morris’s muffled, “Hell no.”

“Hear that?” Miggie asked.

“Yeah. Did his eyes go up and to the left?”

“His left or my left?”

“Yours.”

“Yup. For half a sec, I’d say.”

“Thank Lawrence for me... I’ll check back in the morning. That concealed gun cabinet in the cabin is—”

“I remember where it is.”

They clicked off.

Rogers, at the wheel, had gathered most of the conversation from Reeder’s end and what she could hear of Miggie’s.

She asked, “So Blount is the chairman? Based on some minimal eye movement on Morris’s part?”

He gave her half a smile. “Wouldn’t exactly hold up in court. But it makes sense. The Senator is who angled to get the qualifying age for the presidency lowered last year, and now we learn that his young son is the one cabinet member not at Camp David right now.”

“It’s thin,” she said, “but credible. So we talk to Nicky Blount? How do we get past your Secret Service buddies?”

The sky was already showing patches of pink light in the east.

“Working on it,” he said.

Then he fell asleep.

When he woke up, Rogers was pulling into the entry drive of an underground garage using a keycard. Reeder twisted and saw a street sign: WOODMONT AVENUE.

Once they were settled into a space away from cameras and potential passersby, Reeder asked, “Are we anywhere special?”

“Bethesda. The Landow Building. Offices and retail, and very little traffic this early on a Saturday.”

“And you have a keycard for a parking garage in Bethesda why?”

“Gabe Sloan and I — not long after we were first partnered up — stopped some domestic terrorists who wanted to blow this place up for jihad or something. The owners asked us how often our work brought us to Bethesda and we said fairly often, and...”

“They gave you each a permanent parking pass. I got a few perks myself on the job. Who knows about this?”

“The late Gabriel Sloan. How long should we sleep?”

“Make it two hours.”

“Okay.” She set the dashboard alarm. “I’ll take the back. That seat you’re in reclines. Try not to snore.”

He grinned at her, and it felt good. “Same back at you.”

Sleep didn’t take him immediately, possibly because of the catnaps he’d caught on the ride. He worked out a tentative plan to get in to see Nicky Blount, and wondered if he was too geared up to fall asleep again, and then did.

When the dash alarm buzzed, Reeder quickly leaned over and shut it off. He rubbed his face, his neck. He hadn’t realized how exhausted he was. Standing post all those years had taught him to survive on little or no sleep. But he was older now.

Rogers was still deep asleep, and snoring a little, but gently. He decided to let her sleep a while, then got out of the car and called Miggie.

Mig, Nichols, and their sullen charge were at the cabin and fine.

“But I’m still keeping an eye on various e-mails,” Miggie said, “including, and especially, Fisk’s. The Bureau has finding us high on its priority list, and the AD has other agencies in on it now.”

Reeder gave up a wry chuckle. “So we’re wanted dead or alive.”

“Well, I wouldn’t go that far...”

“I would. The more agencies she brings in, the more infiltrated ranks we’re dealing with. Listen, I need some names.”

“Any names in particular?”

“Just those of the Secret Service agents assigned to Nicky Blount today.”

Silence followed, with just crackle enough to say the connection hadn’t been broken. Getting Secret Service assignments was no small task, even for a hacker of Miggie’s magnitude. Reeder was asking a lot.

Then Mig’s voice returned: “Get back to you.”

Reeder made another call. He was wrapping it up when Rogers exited the rear of the Dodge, yawning, stretching, saying, “What the heck time is it?”

“Almost nine,” he said. “I shut the alarm off to let you sleep in.”

“So I got two hours and twenty minutes instead of just two hours. You’re a prince, Joe. Talk to Miggie yet?”

He told her about their conversation.

Smoothing her clothes, Rogers looked around the parking facility and said, “We better get out of here. Even on Saturday, people are coming already.”

“We need to leave this car here,” he said. “It’ll be hot by now.”

“And, what, walk to Nicky Blount’s?”

“I’ve taken care of that. Let’s find a place for breakfast. Need to kill a little time, and I could eat.”

“I could, too,” she admitted.

They found a nearby hotel restaurant to have breakfast and he explained that a fresh and secure car would be delivered to them within the hour. Told her he had a friend with a used car lot who did business with ABC Security, and would drop off a nondescript vehicle.

“Trust this guy?” she asked.

They were in a booth, both drinking coffee.

“My people cleared him, couple years ago, when he was falsely linked to a chop shop. Remember last year when I sneaked Chris Bryson’s widow and son out of town? That’s where I got the car for them.”

The vehicle, dropped at a corner Reeder had designated, proved to be a Buick Regal, nice enough but a good ten years old. He had her drive again. They’d gone less than a block when she asked, “You think these Secret Service agents could be Alliance?”

“I’ve already tangled with one SS agent, so as much as it makes me sick, we have to think that way. Doing otherwise might be suicidal. Minimally, I need to know who we’re dealing with.”

They were taking a second pass past Nicky Blount’s two-story red-brick Cape Cod, its flat yard bulging with impeccably trimmed bushes, when Miggie called back.

“Agents on duty are Chad Holmberg and Ronald Parker,” Mig said. “Their shift goes to noon, so should be no surprises.”

“Ronald Parker, huh?”

“That’s right — know him?”

“Stood post with Ron, back in the day. Could be a break. Know anything about Holmberg?”

“Spotless record. Came on a couple years ago.”

“Thanks, Miggie. How’s your happy mountain home?”

“It’s got everything but a ski lift. Our guest keeps complaining to the management, though.”

“His hair will grow back someday.”

Miggie was laughing a little as Reeder clicked off.

Rogers pulled around the corner and parked on Cummings Lane.

She leaned on the wheel and gave him a furrowed-brow look. “Only two agents?”

“It’s the Secretary of Agriculture, Patti.”

Shaking her head, she said, “But there’s some kind of conspiracy going on and—”

“Who knows that?”

“Us. The conspirators.”

“Bingo.”

Her eyebrows lifted and lowered. “Do we have anything particular in mind? I could knock at the front door and ask if they’ve seen my missing dog.”

“Before I knew Ron Parker was on the job, I was thinking we’d go in the back way with our guns out and try not to shoot anybody. Killing a federal agent is a hard one to walk back.”

“That was your plan?”

“I didn’t say I was proud of it, but sudden and swift has its merits. I doubt Nicky is leaving the house for work much less play — they’ll have him on lockdown till the Camp David meet is over and everybody’s home.”

“So how does this Ron Parker fit in?”

“That’s the new plan.”

“What is?”

“He’s a smoker.”

He explained what he had in mind.

“That’s not a plan, Joe. You could easily wind up behind bars or dead.”

“But you’ll still be on the outside, and can link up with Mig, Lucas, Wade, and Nichols, and go on with the fight.”

“I don’t like it. Not one little bit.”

But she got out of the car with him, and took a walk around the block, checking to see if any agents they didn’t know about were posted or on patrol, and watching for anybody not resembling well-off suburban parents or kids. Finally they cut between two houses. All the backyards on the block were connected, with plenty of trees to pause behind, and no fences.

They moved through the shadows of the well-shaded, country club — tended backyards until they were in back of the Cape Cod, finding an American beech whose thick trunk was plenty for them to stand behind. The beech and the expanding reach of its considerable branches, grasping the sky, took up much of the space back here. White steps went up to a back porch at right, next to which was a concrete patio with a glass table with central umbrella, six chairs, and a gas grill. For now the yard was deserted. Kids were playing two doors down, yelping and squealing.

Reeder had the anonymous nine in his waistband, and another tucked similarly in back. Rogers had her hand on the butt of her holstered Glock.

They waited. Ten minutes. Twenty. Now and then, Rogers glanced at him, but he didn’t bother returning it. His eyes stayed on those back porch steps and the little landing.

Secret Service agent Ron Parker, his short blond hair going white at the temples, his blankly average features a blank slate, stepped out from the porch onto the landing and casually shook out a cigarette from a pack already in hand. His eyes traveled, but nothing watchdog-like was in it — just a boring morning with only some sunshine to recommend it. Parker blocked the light breeze with his left hand while he lit the smoke with his right.

Reeder gave Rogers a glance that said a dozen things, but mostly to stay out of sight, then stepped from behind the beech, his arms spread away from his body, hands raised just slightly.

The Secret Service agent on the little landing reacted not at all. Had Reeder’s hands not been up, Parker’s response would have been otherwise, and almost certainly deadly. For now, the agent’s ice blue eyes gave away nothing, his face as blank as Reeder’s usually was, while Reeder was sending his old friend a small, somewhat apologetic smile.

Then Parker let out air and glanced behind him at the house, before slowly walking down the handful of steps and meeting Reeder at the edge of the patio. It was hardly noticeable when the agent’s eyes skimmed past his unexpected guest to slowly scan the woods behind the houses.

“Peep,” he said. “Been a while.”

They might have met accidentally on a street corner.

“A while,” Reeder admitted.

“Did you figure to do your old pal a solid,” Parker said, his smile as small and faint as Reeder’s, “and give yourself up? Who can’t use a gold star in their file?”

“Consider it a white flag,” Reeder said, “not a surrender. So what have you heard?”

“That you and the Special Situations bunch are off the reservation, you mean?”

“Not off the reservation at all, Ron. I’m working for the President. Again.”

“Really. Can you prove that?”

“Is that something I’d lie about?”

Both men just looked at each other with their patented blank expressions.

Glancing across the yard again, past the beech and the thicket beyond, Parker took a long drag on his cigarette, then let the smoke stream out. “You’re not alone, are you?”

“What do you think?”

“Probably Rogers. She’s head of Special Situations, and you two cracked the Supreme Court case a couple years back. Congratulations, by the way.”

“Appreciate it.”

“So, then — why don’t you tell me why you’re here before my partner comes out to see whether I set myself on fire or something?” He stubbed the cigarette under the toe of his shoe.

“I need to have a word with Nicholas Blount.”

Parker barked a laugh. “I don’t care how far back we go, Peep, that ain’t happening.”

Reeder’s reply would have been much the same had their roles been reversed. “Ron, I’m standing here talking to you, and not barging in with a gun in my hand, because I trust you.”

That appreciably threw Parker. “Yeah, well, that’s good to hear. The part where you trust me. The gun part, though? Not so much. Let’s say you walk away and I never saw you. That’s the most I can give you.”

“Do you trust your guy Holmberg?”

Parker’s eyes narrowed. “You know my partner’s name? What the hell—”

“Never mind that. Have you worked with him long enough to trust him? Because not everybody in government right now can be. Trusted.”

Just barely, Parker glanced back at the house. “I trust him. He’s young and he’s new but he’s straight.”

Parker meant what he said, or did if Reeder could trust his kinesics training.

Reeder asked, “Trust him with your life, though?”

“That’s the job, isn’t it?”

“What I’m saying, Ron, is — if you trust him, I do, too.”

“I said I trusted him.”

Not a single micro-expression of doubt.

“Okay,” Reeder said. “Go tell your trustworthy partner that a former agent, who’s wanted for questioning by the FBI, is in the backyard. And that you want him to look the other way just long enough for you to tell Nicky Blount that I want to talk to him about the American Patriots Alliance. Got that? The American—”

“I’ve heard of it. One of those Illuminati nonsense deals.”

“If you say so. But tell him. If Nicky doesn’t want to speak to me, I’m gone. Vapor. My word on it. But if Nicky does come outside to talk to me, you let him do so. You can watch from the porch, but out of earshot.”

Parker had started shaking his head already. “No deal, Peep. Look, man, we stood post together and I trusted you with my life and you did the same with me. I’ll even take your damn message in to Nicky... but if he does want to talk, you come inside to do it. No way I’m letting him come out here in the open.”

Reeder understood that. A lot harder to protect Nicky outdoors, especially when Reeder had brought backup. “Fair enough, Ron... and thanks.”

A smirk cut the otherwise blank face. “Don’t thank me yet. First I have to sell Holmberg. He may think it wasn’t tobacco I been smoking out here.”

Parker went back inside, and Reeder waited. If this didn’t go as he hoped it would, he’d have a choice between battling two of his brother SS men or just holding his fists behind him for the cuffs. He hoped, when she saw him go inside, that Rogers wouldn’t overreact; she might do something rash. He’d take that risk to talk to Nicky Blount.

A distant siren was just giving him second thoughts when the back door opened and Parker waved him to the steps. Parker held up a hand to freeze Reeder at the bottom, then said, “Guns stay outside.”

Very professional now, coolly so.

Parker nodded toward the grill and Reeder got the point, opening its lid and putting both his handguns in, and the expandable baton.

“Cell, too.”

Reeder did so, then lowered the lid.

From the top of the steps, Parker said, “You have ten minutes, Peep, and only because Blount wants to grant you that. Then you’re gone. An hour after that, I report spotting you in the yard. Got it?”

“Got it. Thanks.”

Inside the good-size enclosed porch, Reeder stood for a frisk without having to be asked. Parker, of course, found nothing. Then the SS agent led Reeder into a spacious, gleaming-white, ultramodern kitchen, with a center island that might have come with its own zip code.

Waiting in the kitchen on either side of that island were two men: tall, blond, blandly handsome Nicholas Blount in a button-down blue shirt, jeans, and running shoes; and — in a pristine gray suit Reeder might have worn back in the day — a sharp-eyed, trimly athletic-looking man of thirty or so who had to be agent Chad Holmberg.

“Secretary Blount,” Reeder said with a nod.

“Mr. Reeder,” Nicky said.

Then the piercing hazel eyes of Senator Blount’s youngest son went first to Holmberg then to Parker, at Reeder’s side.

“Gentlemen,” he said, with a hint of Southern drawl, “if you’ll excuse us?”

Parker said, “Sir, I wouldn’t advise that.”

“I must insist.”

Holmberg and Parker exchanged glances that seemed to say nothing but spoke volumes to Reeder.

The younger agent said, “I’ll just step into the living room, Mr. Secretary.”

Holmberg left, but Reeder had no doubt he’d just stepped outside the room, and would stay nearby. But at least a closed door would separate their conversation from the agent.

Parker gave Reeder a hard sideways look, then said, “I’ll be just outside, if I’m needed.”

Where you can catch another smoke, Reeder thought, almost letting a smile slip, though blocking the exit did make sense.

The two men faced each other across the island.

“We know each other well enough, I think,” Nicky said, the drawl still lightly in evidence, “for first names... don’t we, Joe? You did me a favor once, being discreet when you could have embarrassed me.”

Nicky Blount had been in the Verdict Bar when Justice Venter was shot and killed; at the time Venter’s law clerk, Nicky had (to put it bluntly) pissed himself.

“And you were very helpful in the investigation,” Reeder said. “So we aren’t adversaries... unless you’re part of the sub-rosa organization we’re about to discuss.”

“I’m not,” Nicky said with a single head shake. “I’m aware of the Alliance, of course, though the vast majority of Americans either haven’t heard of it, or write it off as an urban legend... Coffee? Or iced tea maybe? I have a pitcher, if—”

“Thank you, no. We have limited time.”

That simple statement was loaded a lot of ways.

Nicky sat at the island and Reeder took the stool across from him.

“I love my father,” Nicky said.

What might have seemed a non sequitur was a remark — an opening salvo — that Reeder did grasp. For one thing, it confirmed that Senator Blount was a key player in the Alliance; so did the concern for his father that Nicky’s words underscored.

“When we first met, Mr. Reeder... Joe... I was just a green kid, new to DC and its ways.”

“We’re only talking two years, Nicky.”

He nodded. “I don’t claim I’m on top of every twist and turn in this town. But I’m not naive — I’m not who you met, even if it wasn’t so very long ago.”

“Okay. How many twists and turns are you on top of?”

Nicky’s shrug was casual but his eyes were grave. “Well, I know what kind of murky waters I’m swimming in. I’ve seen deals made, favors traded.”

“Politics,” Reeder said.

“The President assigned you,” Nicky said, “to look into who sent those four CIA agents to their deaths, isn’t that right?”

Reeder didn’t answer.

His host’s smile was not without charm. “Joe, I am in the cabinet. I do know things. You really think you can deliver on that mission, when you’re running from your own people?”

“Kind of a challenge,” Reeder admitted.

“Anyway, there are more pressin’ matters.” Nicky shrugged again. “As I say, I love my father. And in his way, I know he loves me. But my father’s two greatest loves are power and heritage. And those two loves come together in the obsession to see one of his sons in the White House.” A sigh. “Nathaniel, of course, was the chosen one. And he might well have been president by now, Governor of Mississippi and all, beautiful wife and three lovely kiddies, but then... well, you know the story.”

As former Louisiana governor Edwin Edwards had once proclaimed, “The only way I can lose this election is if I’m caught in bed with a dead girl or live boy.” In Nathaniel Blount’s case, it had been the latter — two at once.

And while Nathaniel’s governorship had somehow survived, his presidential plans were deceased.

Nicky said, “What you may not know, Joe, is that one of those young men was underage, and required my father making quite the series of deals with various and sundry devils. Nothing new for him, of course.”

“One such deal being,” Reeder commented, “the lowering of the age to serve as president.”

Nicky slid off his stool. “All this talk has me dry. I’m gonna have some of that iced tea. Join me?”

“Sure.”

“It’s sweetened. I know you Yankees don’t like it that way.”

“I’ll survive.”

Nicky got them glasses of tea on ice, talking all the while. “Another devil of a deal was having the right people whisper in President Harrison’s ear gettin’ me on the cabinet when that openin’ came up last year. Papa made it clear these things had cost him dearly, and made it crystal clear I was to keep my pecker in my pants and there would be no more weed, either, else there’d be hell to pay.”

“The end game is to get you into the White House.”

Nicky, seated again, nodded. “But not necessarily by the will of the people.”

Something cold crawled up Reeder’s spine. “By the will of the Alliance, you mean?”

Another nod, a glum one. “Havin’ a Southern boy like myself as Secretary of Agriculture is certainly helpful, and it’s an impressive item on my résumé, but it’s not the kind of power my Papa wants... needs. He assumes if I were president, he could control me. That the Alliance would have their man in the most important chair in the world.”

“He’s admitted this to you?”

Nicky sipped his tea, gestured with his free hand. “In so many words. It was only this past year that he revealed the Alliance itself to me... making it clear I was not to be in any way affiliated with the group, not on the board or for that matter even just a member in good standin’. I had to be my own man, he said.”

“Meaning his man.”

“Oh, yes, and of course, when the time comes, the Alliance’s man.”

Reeder sipped his tea, hating the sweetness. “Knowing what you know, Nicky, you could be your own man.”

“Possibly. There are moments where I think that’s a distinct possibility, Joe. But I also know the power my father wields over me. My weakness is that I do love him, and that I want him to love me... laugh at that if you like.”

“Not laughing.”

A loose-limbed shrug. “I hope I could resist his influence. But right now, I’m worried. Worried that I’m Secretary of Agriculture not because Tennessee is a farm state, but to get me into the line of succession.”

“You’re way down that list,” Reeder said, “but that has occurred to us. We think we’re looking at a plan to take out the President and Vice President at the Camp David meeting.”

“What if it’s more than that? Everyone’s there, Joe, but me — everyone but me! If a bomb drops on Camp David... you’re looking at the President.”

The silence in the kitchen was like the terrible stillness after a bomb blast itself.

Calmly, Reeder said, “We realize that. And if Harrison and the VP are taken out, the rest of the Cabinet would be targets in the fleeing motorcade. That’s how we read it.”

Nicky’s smile was a terrible thing. “But what if people from within staged a coup? Some of us know that that almost did go down last year.”

Reeder shook his head. “At Camp David? The Secret Service would never let that happen.”

But hadn’t he fought an SS agent in that alley?

Nicky was saying, “The Alliance has people marbled through the government like fat in a rib-eye steak. Men and women in government service with their own take on patriotism — almost certainly including certain members of the Secret Service!”

Reeder fought back nausea.

Nicky pressed on: “Who better to kill the President and Vice President and every cabinet member above me in the line of succession? Who better than the very people assigned to guard them?”

“Some tainted people might be in the Secret Service,” Reeder admitted, “but surely not in the presidential detail. That’s the elite of the elite — the men and women willing to put their lives on the line. To take a bullet.”

“Like you did. For a president you disliked.”

“Hated!”

Nicky shook a forefinger at him. “And if you shared the Alliance’s beliefs, who would have been better placed than you to dispatch a bullet rather than take one? Someone like that, maybe several, who knows how many, are ‘guarding’ President Harrison right now.”

“Come forward with what you know about the Alliance,” Reeder said. “Right now! We’ll arrange for every media outlet to carry it, and that would nip in the bud any goddamn Camp David coup.”

“No,” Nicky said.

“... No?”

“We’re talking about my father, and my suspicions. I know things, but I don’t know of any plan to do a damn thing at Camp David or anywhere else.”

“Plausible deniability,” Reeder said.

“It goes beyond that, because all I have are those suspicions. Guesses. And a man can’t testify to those, not that I would. All I can do is point you in the right direction and hope to hell I’m either wrong... or that you can stop this insanity. By the way, I don’t even want to be president, puppet or otherwise.”

The two men were staring at each other when Parker stepped in from outside.

“That’s ten minutes,” the agent said. “Time to go, Peep.”