Executive Order

Twenty-One

Within minutes of the firefight and rescue of the President, Reeder reported in to Miggie Altuve.

“You and Patti are miracle workers,” Mig’s voice said.

“Same back at ya. How are the supplies in the cabin?”

“Enough for several months. Cupboard of canned goods, freezer fully stocked. Why?”

“You need to stay put. When I’m able, I’ll send reinforcements, but for now, remember — you have precious damn cargo.”

“Our house guest you mean? The charming Lawrence Morris?”

“The very guy. A lot’s riding on him — he’s our most direct evidence against Wilson Blount.”

“We’ll need more.”

“There’ll be plenty more, but we need Morris to build on. You and Anne sit on him — but gently. He’s our new best friend.”

Miggie didn’t sound so sure: “He says under no circumstances will he testify. That he’s given you all the help he ever will, and that you and he have a deal that you need to honor.”

“Let him know the presidential coup has been exposed and violently quashed. Let him think about which side of that he wants to come down on.”

“Okay. I assume we’re talking immunity and WitSec.”

“Oh yeah. Tell him we’re going to buy him contact lenses and, when his hair grows out, get him dyed and styled.”

Miggie laughed. “He’s already got some five o’clock shadow going on that noggin.”

“Hang in. I’ll be in touch.”

The Marines quickly had the compound under control, and if any of them were Alliance, they faded back and fell into line as predicted. Two Soviet rocket launchers, in the forest just outside the security net, were taken out by more Marines; neither of the two mercenaries manning them survived, which was both a pity and just fine with Reeder.

The cabinet gladly vacated the nuclear bunker at the President’s command and the members were helicoptered out two at a time, an effort that took several hours.

By ten p.m., Pete Woods in a fresh Ford and Carl Bishop in his black Chevy had whisked away the President and Vice President, with Hardesy and Wade riding along respectively. Not your usual presidential motorcade, but with the Secret Service and God-knew-who-else compromised, protocol be damned.

Before the President left the compound, however, he made a call to the Director of the FBI and instructed him to rescind immediately the arrest warrants on Reeder, Rogers, and the surviving members of her unit.

For now, a media blackout had descended and even intra-government reports were kept at a minimum. What would be told to the public would be discussed and controlled beforehand, and — with various agencies infiltrated by the Alliance — much of it would be marked classified and all of it strictly managed.

Still in commando camo, Reeder and Rogers arrived in Washington, DC, finding its quiet almost unsettling, as if the town had slept through its own near demise... and hadn’t it? He drove her to her apartment, where she picked up a change of clothes, and then to his townhouse, where she took the spare bedroom. This was over, the coup if not the greater threat, but they wanted to be near each other tonight — each other, and their guns. As with an earthquake, Reeder was prepared to deal with aftershocks.

Before finally giving in to their exhaustion, they sat at his kitchen table in robes, like an old married couple, and had some chamomile tea. Morning now, technically at least, but still dark out there.

“I should call Kevin,” she said.

“Not just now. I’m not fetching Amy and Melanie yet, either, or their two undeserving males. There could be some immediate retaliation, and anyway, I don’t think I’ll sleep soundly till that bastard Blount is in custody.”

“Meaning the Senator, not the son.”

“The son will be our ally, I think. He may even testify, given what happened today. Right now we have only Lawrence Morris as a witness. But we need another.”

“Who?”

“Your boss and mentor, Margery Fisk, Assistant Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.”

She’d started frowning and shaking her head halfway through that. “No, no, no... not a witness. A suspect. No, not a suspect, a perp!”

“You blame her for Jerry Bohannon’s murder, I take it.”

“And Trevor Ivanek’s, and Anne’s kidnapping, and—”

“We don’t know that. She is almost certainly compromised, but to what degree, we can’t be sure. Do you think she’s capable of fingering two of her own people for death?”

Her smirk bore no humor at all. “Who the hell knows what anybody is capable of in this thing?”

“Good point. You know what I think?”

“What do you think?”

“We should talk to her.”

The next morning, eight a.m. Sunday, as arranged, they found Margery Fisk waiting for them at a table in the Starbucks on Wisconsin Avenue NW. Most of the business seemed to be grab-and-go, the tables on either side of Fisk vacant.

She looked small and not at all the executive in navy-blue sweats and white running shoes; her hair was freshly washed and back in a ponytail, making her look young unless you really looked.

The table was at the side window, with just three chairs. They went through the line — dark roast for Reeder, medium for Rogers, cream for both — then he took the chair across from Fisk, Rogers the one next to her.

“Public place, as requested,” Reeder said.

Fisk’s smile was small and bitter. “I thought it might keep me from getting shot.”

“Then maybe you shouldn’t sit by the window.” He shrugged. “But you’re not mob and this isn’t a pasta joint. Should be fine. Or are you thinking of how Patti here may be feeling about you now?”

The AD’s eyes stayed on Reeder. “How did you get my home number, anyway?”

“We have our ways.” Miggie Altuve being most of them. “So here’s the basic program. You tell us everything you know and perhaps you don’t face treason charges, which by the way would almost certainly mean execution... Can I get you another coffee? I see your cup is empty.”

Bleak amusement touched her lips. “I’m fine. Thanks for your thoughtfulness, though.”

Rogers, coldly but with a tremor in her voice, asked, “How long have you been Alliance?”

Fisk shook her head. “I’m not Alliance and I never have been.”

Reeder said, “We’re getting off to a bad start.”

Fisk said, “I don’t deny complicity in this thing. But the American Patriots Alliance... isn’t that what they call themselves?... I thought was just National Enquirer nonsense.”

Eyes hooded, Rogers said, “I saw Lawrence Morris leaving your office.”

“By the way,” Reeder said pleasantly, “Lawrence is in our custody. So we have a kind of baseline for comparison, here.”

Fisk said, “I think I will take another coffee.”

Reeder got it for her.

Then, settling across from her again, he said, “You were saying?”

“Morris has probably already told you this. He came around and said if I cooperated with ‘certain people’ in government, who were not fans of President Harrison, I would be next in line for the Director’s chair.”

“The next president would appoint you.”

She nodded.

“What did they want from you?”

Tiny shrug. “What they had in store for me over the long haul, I couldn’t say. First order of business was to assign the Yellich death to the Special Situations Task Force.”

Reeder and Rogers exchanged glances.

Reeder said, “To keep tabs on the unit.”

Fisk nodded again, sipped her coffee; it was too hot.

Reeder said, “What did you tell Morris?”

“I told him no.”

“Bullshit,” Rogers said.

“I did tell him no.” Fisk sighed. “That was before Senator Blount called me.”

Reeder straightened; Rogers, too.

He asked, “When was this?”

“Right there with Morris in the office, sitting across from me. How he signaled that old bastard I have no idea. But suddenly there was that buttermilk Southern drawl in my ear.”

Reeder frowned. “Threatening you?”

“Not exactly. Not directly. It was as if he was an old friend checking in with me. Understand, I had met with the Senator on occasion and dealt with him on some matters — a powerful man like that gets around, and gets his way. But suddenly we were old friends.”

“How so?”

Her eyes closed. Tight. “He talked to me about my husband and the work he does at his company, and how distressing it was that accidents occurred sometimes in the plant. He mentioned my son in college at Georgetown and my daughter at NYU and congratulated me on how fine they were, what outstanding young people, but wondered how I could bear having them live in such dangerous cities where ‘any terrible thing’ might happen.”

“A Southern-fried threat.”

Her eyes opened and she trained their near blackness on Reeder. “You have a daughter, Mr. Reeder. How would you have reacted?”

“I’d have tracked him down and beaten him to death. But that’s just me.”

Fisk stared at the table. “It was a phone call that — had it been recorded, and perhaps it was — might seem innocuous as a Christmas card. But the meaning was clear. I could rise to the directorship, or I could wonder every damn day about the safety of those I love. That’s what they call a Hobson’s choice, isn’t it?”

Rogers said, “And when they murdered Jerry Bohannon, you made a choice, too, didn’t you? To betray everything your office stands for! And what’s a little kidnapping of one of your people? Or a sniper taking Trevor Ivanek out?”

Fisk was immobile, not trembling at all. But tears began to trickle down her cheeks.

“I had no idea,” she said, “things would go so far.”

Reeder said, “Why not? They’d already killed Amanda Yellich.”

“In... in retrospect, I realized I’d... enabled Agent Bohannon’s murder. But I had no contact person — Morris dropped out of sight, no more phone calls came from Senator Blount, and I was sidelined in this awful game. When I put out the apprehend order on the two of you, and everyone else on your team, my thought was to pull you in where I might protect you.”

“The operative word,” Rogers said, “being ‘might.’”

Fisk’s shoulders went slowly up and down. “If you don’t believe that, there’s nothing I can say or do.”

“You’re wrong,” Reeder said. “There is something.”

Her eyes lifted to his. “I’m listening.”

“You cooperate. Fully.”

Fisk nodded.

“For now, you retain your office as Assistant Director. You report back to me, or someone else designated by the President, any contact you have with Alliance conspirators. They’ll be running scared now, so they may reveal themselves either directly or inadvertently.”

Fisk nodded.

“Despite the innocuous surface of Blount’s words, they constitute a threat. We may be able to track the way Morris signaled the Senator to make that call — hell, Morris will probably tell us himself. Eventually, both of you will be called upon to testify. In the context of everything else that’s gone down, two witnesses should be enough. The Senator will go down, and the Alliance exposed.”

Fisk nodded.

“As for your future,” Reeder said, “I think your full cooperation will mean you’ll see no federal time. I’ll ask the President to instruct the Justice Department that you be granted immunity, or he’ll give you a pardon if necessary.”

“He’d do that?”

Reeder gave her half a smile. “He kind of owes me one.”

Fisk shrugged, her expression stoic. “Of course, I’m onboard with this. If my husband is willing to leave his company in the hands of others, would relocation and new identities be a possibility?”

He nodded, once. “I’d recommend it. Highly probable.”

She turned to Rogers. “I know you’re disappointed in me.”

Rogers said nothing, though her glare was eloquent.

“But I do have a kind of peace offering,” Fisk said. “From the blood DNA at the scene of the Wooten slaying we identified the shooter — one Jadyn Sims. At first blush, Sims seems to be a mercenary but I believe what we have is a compromised CIA asset. He was brought in yesterday by my Domestic Terrorism unit, and a ballistics matchup links a weapon in his possession to both the Wooten and Ivanek shootings. And a handgun links him to the Bohannon killing.”

Reeder said, “That makes him a potentially key witness.”

The AD nodded. “I believe he can be turned, now that the conspiracy will inevitably be exposed. He’ll be facing treason charges, as well as murder, and we’ll give him a chance to bargain for his life by cooperating.”

Rogers’ eyes flared. “Are you seriously suggesting that the murderer of Trevor Ivanek and Jerry Bohannon should receive immunity?”

Fisk didn’t flinch from Rogers’ gaze. “Not immunity. Just the avoidance of the death penalty. But know this... I’ll have to live with the deaths of those two agents for the rest of my life.”

“If I had my way,” Rogers said, “the rest of your life would be about thirty seconds.”

Fisk swallowed. Nodded. “I know there’s no making it up to you.”

Reeder smiled pleasantly. “Actually, Margery, you already have. And maybe Patti will come around, too, someday. After all, you’ve done us a big favor.”

Fisk’s eyebrows went up. “What favor is that?”

He reached out and held his partner’s hand, tight. “Now we can go out and arrest that son of a bitch Wilson Blount.”

Sunday afternoon, after an Army transport had taken them to Nashville International Airport, Reeder and Rogers rented a Chevy Tahoe from National. They were about to call on a United States Senator in Franklin, Tennessee, twenty minutes south of Nashville — one of the safest and least-taxed cities in America.

This enclave of top CEOs of multinational corporations, with scores of golf courses and dozens of museums in a historic Civil War city, included the Brandon Park Downs gated community, just outside the center of town. Here Senator Wilson Blount lived on a beautiful lakefront estate in a magnificent country manor house in the antebellum manner.

With Rogers at the wheel, they pulled through a high front gate in a stone wall onto a cement drive that wound through an expansive, perfectly maintained, tree-flung front lawn. No other FBI or police accompanied them — no major security force would be awaiting them, according to Miggie, so no SWAT would be necessary. Still, they had little doubt that Blount would know they, or at least someone, would be coming today, so caution was the watchword.

The antebellum mansion had been the Blount family home since the early 1800s, very Tara-like with its stately white columns and neoclassical style. As they’d driven up, however, Reeder noted at the rear a massive array of antennas and satellite dishes — the old homestead was twenty-first-century — connected.

They left the Tahoe near the front and went up four steps to a white door where Reeder used a traditional brass knocker, Rogers at his side. Both wore dark suits cut to conceal their shoulder-holstered weapons.

Almost immediately a rather distinguished-looking, fifty-ish African American butler, in traditional livery, responded. His hair was peppery and his features were as blank as Reeder at his most guarded.

“Joe Reeder to see the Senator,” Reeder said.

Rogers held up her FBI ID and said, “Special Agent Patti Rogers here to see Senator Blount.”

The butler nodded with formal disdain. He seemed to taste the words and didn’t enjoy the flavor as he said, “You are expected, sir. Madam.”

Reeder and Rogers shared a glance. What century was this again?

They were led into the grand foyer — marble floor, marble stairway, pocket doors at right and left, with more down a corridor beside the stairs, a two-story ceiling wearing a crystal chandelier like one ostentatious earring.

The butler knocked at the pocket doors to the left. “Your guests have arrived, Senator.”

“Thank you, Mathers,” a muffled voice drawled, smooth as honey. “Show them in, please.”

The butler slid open a door, gestured with an upturned palm, bowing slightly, a human lawn jockey. Reeder and Rogers went in and the butler stepped in after them.

They were in a library as high-ceilinged as the foyer, and library was the appropriate term, because three of the walls were filled with volumes whose mostly leather bindings gave the room a scent of age and scholarship, several sliding ladders allowing access to upper shelves. The wall to the right had a connecting door and an array of framed, vintage oil paintings of Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson, and a few others that Reeder didn’t recognize, though he felt sure they were Civil War — era figures. Sprinkled among the Confederates were portraits of Washington, Jefferson, Franklin, and John Adams. Somehow he was not surprised by Lincoln’s absence.

The room included an ancient massive desk inserted into the left-side wall of shelves, and some tables with antique lamps, but center stage was an Oriental rug where two overstuffed brown-leather sofas faced each other across a glass-topped coffee table. Senator Blount was sitting on the sofa at right. He stood and smiled in welcome, gesturing to the seating opposite.

The Senator wore a gray suit with a white shirt and a black string tie. He looked immaculate, every hair of his silver-blond mane in place, his eyes blue and rather twinkling behind his wire-frame bifocals. Only his creped neck gave away his age.

“Please join me, Mr. Reeder, Agent Rogers. I expected someone, of course, but I rather hoped it might be you.”

Something about the way Blount handled words reminded Reeder of a cat lapping up cream.

“Mathers, would you kindly fetch us a mint julep?” As Reeder and Rogers took their places, Blount settled back on his sofa and added, “I hope you will forgive your host for so predictable and even stereotypical a drink of choice. But my man Mathers makes a wicked julep. Would you please join me?”

“No thank you,” Reeder said.

Rogers shook her head.

“Sure?”

They nodded.

“Pity,” Blount said, with your favorite uncle’s smile, then leaned back, tenting his fingers at his chest. “You don’t know what you’re missin’.”

Reeder said, “Your hospitality embarrasses us, Senator. You see, we’re here to arrest you.”

Blount smiled as if that were a mildly amusing joke. “Is that right? And what charge would that be?”

“Well, for now, conspiracy to commit murder.”

The smile twitched. “Did I help murder anyone in particular?”

Rogers said, “The initial charge will be for the murders of Jerome Bohannon and Trevor Ivanek, both FBI agents. Law enforcement rather frowns upon the killing of their own.”

“Don’t believe either name is familiar to me.”

She said, “That doesn’t exactly make it better.”

Reeder said, “To that list will be added the names of Amanda Yellich, Leonard Chamberlain, Anthony J. Wooten, oh, and uh... four CIA agents killed in Azbekistan, Jake McMann, William Meeks, Vitor Gorianov, and Elizabeth Gillis.”

“That’s quite an impressive list, Mr. Reeder.”

The butler arrived with the mint julep on a tray, transferred it to a coaster on the glass-topped coffee table, nodded to his employer, and left, shutting them back in. Reeder noted that the glass case contained what were most likely first editions of The Red Badge of Courage, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, and Gone with the Wind.

“Well, Senator,” Reeder said, “conspiracy to commit murder is probably the best you can hope for. You’ll more likely be facing treason charges, and the President considers you an enemy combatant, like that rogue’s gallery on the wall over there.”

Blount’s smile disappeared. His face was a cold clay bust that hadn’t hardened yet, but was on its way.

He said, “You would consider the likes of those great men to be ‘rogues,’ I take it. Do you include Washington, Jefferson, and the other foundin’ fathers in that way?”

“What do you think?”

“Well, I don’t really know. They believed in liberty. They believed men should be free to pursue happiness. And that men are created equal, although people like you get that wrong.”

“We do?”

Blount sat forward; the eyes were not twinkling now. “Men are created with equal rights, but they are anythin’ but equal. Their intelligence varies, their gender, their races, their station. A country so widely varied needs a firm hand, it requires leadership. We have a weak, pampered populace that doesn’t even bother to vote, most of ’em. We can’t afford to wait for the rabble to wake up, or — if a miracle happened and they did rouse from their collective stupor — trust that they’d do the right thing.”

Rogers asked, “What do you consider the right thing?”

His hands were on his knees. “Well, for one, to reinstate the ideals that made this country great — rebuild our military, stand up to our enemies, protect this nation from within and without. And, meanin’ no offense, it takes more fuckin’ finesse than the kind of civil service mentality the two of you represent.”

Reeder said, “You mean the kind of finesse that sends four brave Americans to die on foreign soil?”

The Senator leaned back and shook his head sadly. “A pawn can never understand a king... but I’ll try to make you understand, son, because I know at heart you’re a patriot, too. That malleable Senkstone stuff that you and Agent Rogers got messed up with last year? I guess you know that the stabalizin’ element in that compound is called portillium. Well, cornerin’ the market on that vital mineral would give the United States an upper hand in defending freedom. Pity about those four CIA folks. But we needed a reason to go in and stop those Russians — who, frankly, we encouraged a mite — so we could seize and control the portillium supply.”

Reeder was sitting forward. “‘Cornering the market’... so one of your companies or cronies could makes millions off portillium? Or is it billions?”

Blount waved that off. “Well, of course such a thing necessitates private-sector control. Can’t leave somethin’ that important to the government!”

Rogers, aghast, said, “And you’d risk a nuclear war with the Russians over mineral rights?”

His smile got so wide, it seemed to have too many teeth in it. “Little lady, the Russians understand that nukes fly in both directions. We’d just have ourselves a little shootin’ war, and then negotiate a truce, once we had that portillium source secured, that is.”

“And that would be more easily managed,” Reeder said, “with President Nicholas Blount, I guess?”

Even more teeth. “Might at that.”

Reeder sat back. “Unfortunately for you, Senator, your son does not share your enthusiasm. In fact, he helped us on the path that led us here.”

Blount’s chin went up, as if promoting a poke. “If you think you can convince me that my own boy would betray me, you are—”

“He didn’t betray you. Not exactly. He feared what you and your Alliance might have in mind for him, even though he didn’t want to testify against you... too bad, considering what he’s privy to would make his testimony valuable. Of course, after Camp David, and the exposure of all the treason and murder that led up to it? Perhaps he’ll have a change of mind, patriot that he is. Because he’s a good man, Senator. You raised a decent son. Much better than you deserve.”

Blount said nothing. He was staring between Reeder and Rogers at nothing. Lazily he reached for the mint julep and took a sip, and another. Then he returned the drink to its coaster and reached into his suit coat pocket, for a smoke Reeder assumed, but instead produced a small steel object that resembled a thumb drive. His hand made a small movement.

His eyes closed.

He slumped back.

“Senator,” Reeder said, getting up fast.

Blount was still staring, but now it was at the ceiling.

Rogers went around, put fingers to the man’s throat. “I don’t get a pulse.”

Reeder nodded to the mint julep. “Son of a bitch. Hemlock!”

An explosion rocked the rear of the house — the antenna array, Reeder guessed. He glanced at the thumb drive — like object in Blount’s limp fingers: a switch with a red button.

“We have to get out of here,” he told her, “now.”

They moved.

Another explosion rocked the rear of the house. The place had been wired in sections, it seemed, perhaps to allow exit from the front.

He hoped.

At least the pocket doors weren’t locked. They were able to get out of the library and into the foyer in seconds, then out the front door. They were to the car and inside, motor going, when another section of the place went up, and Rogers hit the gas and, by the time the rest of the house exploded, the two were far enough away for the rain of dust and debris to be something you could drive through and out of, though burning rubble bounced off the vehicle like heavy hail.

The Tahoe was outside the front gate before she braked and they hopped out and looked at what remained of the historic home, which now was nothing but a scorched shell and sizzling timber and crackling flames and billows of dark smoke. The only recognizable remnant was a marble staircase that was not worth walking up.

Reeder slipped an arm around Rogers’ shoulder as they watched, their ears ringing, their eyes burning, and soon sirens cried out distantly and built into screams.

Rogers said, “Afraid they won’t find much left of Senator Wilson Blount.”

Reeder coughed up some dust and said, “Just matching dental work, maybe even DNA, but he was a sly old bastard. I’d rather have a corpse.”

“He’s dead enough for me,” she said.

“I do know one thing,” Reeder said.

“Oh?”

“I’m glad we weren’t in the mood for mint juleps.”