Executive Order

Three

Joe Reeder sat up in bed, pillows propped behind him, Nero Wolfe novel propped before him (Might As Well Be Dead), but he wasn’t reading, despite Archie Goodwin’s compelling narrative voice. Instead, Amanda Yellich dominated his thoughts — a petite redhead, as sunny and funny and fun as she was intellectually above him.

And she had liked Reeder a lot.

He had liked her, too. They had a number of nice nights together and a few afternoons, but after a promising easygoing start, she came to want more than he was prepared to give right now. Not that he’d broken it off — Amanda did that, when she realized Reeder was still in love with his ex-wife, Melanie.

Amanda hadn’t been wrong about that, and he’d hurt her, if unintentionally. He still regretted that he couldn’t give the woman what she needed emotionally, and the physical side, however rewarding, hadn’t been enough. In recent weeks, though, there’d been many times he wondered if he should call Amanda and try again. He’d never quite done that. And now — now she was gone.

On the nightstand, his cell chirped. So few people had the number — and once he’d paid dearly for ignoring a call — that he’d made a point of answering, or at least checking out, every one. When it rang the second time, he eyeballed the caller ID — UNKNOWN.

With a sigh, he put Rex Stout down and picked up the phone. “Reeder.”

A female voice on the other end said, “Please hold for the President of the United States.”

There was a time when Reeder might have clicked off, chalking this up to a crank call. But in the past several years, the President was someone he’d actually spoken to on occasion — and one of those few people who had this number.

“Joe? Dev Harrison.” The casualness of that liquid, self-assured voice coming over the line was at once disarming and intimidating.

President Devlin Harrison, the second African American leader to be elected in the country’s history, was no crank-caller.

“Good evening, Mr. President.”

“Apologies for the late hour, Joe.”

“Not necessary, sir. I’m pretty much open for presidential calls any time.”

A soft chuckle preceded a change in tone: “Obviously you’ve seen the news.”

The President wasn’t much for small talk. No president was.

“The Russian invasion, sir? Of course.”

The surprise of receiving a phone call from the President was amplified by the apparent subject. The moment felt surreal.

The President’s voice was deceptively casual. “What strikes you about our role in this incident?”

“The four missing US citizens.”

Obviously.

“I’d like to talk to you about them, Joe. Tomorrow morning, my office...”

Right. That oval one.

“... six a.m. Can you make that, Joe?”

“Of course, Mr. President.”

“Our, uh, people weren’t just regular citizens.”

That was more than Reeder expected to hear over an open phone line. But he risked, “I didn’t think so, sir. I can come now, sir, if...?”

“No. I have things to do. Six a.m. Thanks, Joe.”

A click in his ear signaled the end of the call. Good-byes were unnecessary.

He settled back in bed, trading the phone for the Nero Wolfe. So the President wanted to talk to him about missing citizens overseas, caught up in a Russian invasion, and who “weren’t just regular citizens.” CIA agents, clearly, as he’d assumed — not a big leap, as CNN and the other outlets had raised the same possibility, or anyway their talking heads had.

Reeder tried to get back to the book but instead fell asleep wondering how the hell he fit into this scenario. He dreamed a variation on the Situation Room scene in Dr. Strangelove, and woke up sweating, finding nothing funny about it at all.

The next morning, a few minutes before six a.m., Joe Reeder — wearing the dark gray Savile Row suit he saved for the special clients of ABC Security (and who was more special than his friend “Dev”?) — sat in a comfortable chair outside the Oval Office, warmed by the smile of the President’s head secretary, Emily Curtis. The gray-haired woman, who might have been your maiden aunt, had been the gatekeeper for three presidents, and was as much a fixture here as the Marine guard at the West Wing entrance or the floating presence of Secret Service agents. She had, in fact, met Reeder during his own SS tenure here.

“The President should be with you shortly,” she said, in her cheery yet businesslike way. “He’s been up all night, so do take it easy on him.”

“See what I can do,” he said, and barely got it out before the Oval Office door opened and the President’s chief of staff, Timothy Vinson, strode out, his mustache twitching like a caterpillar trying to crawl off his face, his stocky frame lumbering past Reeder without hello. The bureaucrat, in his fifties and balding, as cold as Emily Curtis was warm, seemed a man on a mission.

Vinson was already well down the corridor when half a dozen others, some in uniform, came out quickly, with President Harrison next, as if he’d shooed them out. Maybe he had.

Pausing to give Reeder a quick handshake and a tight smile, the President said, “Joe, good to see you. Walk with me, will you?”

“Yes, Mr. President,” Reeder said, falling into step next to Harrison.

Typically, the tall, slender African American — whose physical resemblance to former President Obama had not hurt him with a majority of voters — was impeccably dressed in a charcoal suit with lighter gray pinstripes, his tie with muted red and blue stripes perfectly knotted. Yet somehow something seemed slightly off — maybe it was just the puffy dark circles hugging Harrison’s eyes. The presidential gatekeeper had not been exaggerating: the man hadn’t slept in some while.

On the march down the hall, Reeder found himself needing to slow, so as not to pull away from Harrison. He knew the President to be a fast mover, but today the man seemed a half-step behind. Exhaustion or worry? Could be either — could be both.

They reached the elevator near the offices of the Chief of Staff and Vice President. Vinson, already there, revealed his mission to be holding the elevator door for the President and his contingent. Reeder knew almost certainly where they were heading — the Situation Room.

With Russia invading Azbekistan, that destination would seem inevitable... if it weren’t for Reeder’s presence. Even when he’d been assigned to protect various presidents, he had not set foot within that space when it was actively in use. Reeder had been in there before, on security sweeps mostly, but never during an actual situation.

As the doors closed, Vinson — who obviously hadn’t noticed Reeder on his way out of the Oval Office — asked the President, “What’s he doing here?” The disdain in his voice — the nasty emphasis on “he” — undisguised.

Icily, Harrison said, “I invited him.”

Vinson’s mouth opened as if it had decided on its own to speak, but its owner fed it no words. The Chief of Staff’s lips pressed back together and he swallowed, but his eyes remained narrowed on Reeder, with whom he’d had a run-in or two.

The rest of the ride passed in brief if uncomfortable silence. The doors slid open and the President was the first one out, Reeder falling in behind him, an old Secret Service habit. Vinson got held back by the other exiting staffers, and by the time the Chief of Staff caught up, the President and Reeder were approaching the two Marine guards stationed at the Situation Room entry.

Both Marines snapped to attention and saluted.

Harrison returned the salute, then one of the guards opened the door and held it for them.

They entered to find most of the seats at the vast conference table already filled. The faces had changed over the years, but the room itself stayed the same, a fairly nondescript, rather narrow conference room distinguished only by its many wall-mounted video screens. Certainly the art direction on Strangelove had been more impressive.

Seven chairs lined each side of the long dark oak table. They were now filled by the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the National Security Advisor, the Director of the CIA, and — at the far end on the right side (both literally and figuratively) — Senator Wilson Blount of Tennessee.

Everyone had risen, of course, upon the President’s entry. In the chair immediately to the right of him was a slender bespectacled brunette, Vice President Erin Mitchell, a progressive added to the ticket to court the women’s vote. Chairs for staffers and assistants lined the two long walls, each graced with a pair of monitors that were only slightly smaller than the one opposite the President’s end of the table.

The President took his seat and then so did everyone else, including Reeder, who moved to one of the chairs along the wall. He could feel eyes on him. Some here may have wondered if he was back with the Secret Service. Even so, SS agents invariably waited outside.

Back in the day, even the powerful Senator Blount would have been on the outside. But in this era of increasingly tighter budgets, having in attendance the chairman of the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense only made sense... and Blount now held that chair.

Last year, the venerable Senator had been instrumental in pushing through a law lowering the minimum age for the presidency to thirty, an obvious attempt to clear a path for a new era of strong young conservatives. The President had supported that, as part of an effort to bridge the right and left, including a peace offering that saw the Senator’s son Nicholas appointed to the cabinet as Secretary of Agriculture. The young Blount’s predecessor had been assassinated last year in the plot to bring down the government, a coup that Reeder and Rogers had helped quash.

Admiral David Canby, the shaved-headed chairman of the Joint Chiefs — a politically savvy, by-the-book Navy man — trained his battleship-gray eyes on Reeder and said, “He doesn’t have clearance to be here.”

“He does now,” Harrison said.

“By whose authority?” Canby asked. Demanded.

“Mine.” The President’s eyes were fixed on the admiral. For a long moment no one said a word, as everyone in the room decided not to further challenge Reeder’s presence.

Vinson, seated at the President’s left hand, gave Canby a patronizing thing that was technically a smile. He said, “Now that we’ve established that the President of the United States is in charge here, could we get down to business and find out what the hell happened to our people?”

Canby gave Vinson a quick glare, but he and everyone else here knew the power the Chief of Staff wielded in this administration. Reeder could see the admiral clenching and unclenching his fists, no doubt wishing he could deck the man. Harrison himself had probably considered doing that a time or two. But the truth was, Vinson made things happen.

The President indicated the screen that swallowed the wall opposite him. “What exactly are we looking at, Admiral?”

“You might say,” Canby said somewhat wryly, “the crime scene.”

The satellite view of scrubby, trampled ground included a handful of bodies, scattered carelessly; no massacre by any means. A few abandoned vehicles, jeeps possibly, some wrecked, and wisping smoke. The Azbekistani resistance, such as it was, had clearly been minimal.

President Harrison swung his attention to the Director of the CIA. With his wreath of white hair and wire-framed glasses, Richard Shaley — despite a grandfatherly look — was every inch the veteran spy, beginning as a field agent in the first Iraqi war. But it was his political skills that made him really dangerous — like J. Edgar Hoover before him, Shaley was said to hold the keys to every DC closet holding a skeleton, and that was a lot of bones.

“The CIA Director and I spoke last night,” Harrison informed the group, “and I frankly was not pleased with what I heard. Director Shaley, have you had an opportunity to learn anything more about our dead people?”

Reeder stiffened — this was the first time anyone had said it out loud, and it was the President doing so: our people are dead.

Everyone at the table turned toward the CIA Director. The collective blankness of their expressions was like a witness considering the options at a suspect lineup. Shaley leaned forward, eyes meeting the President’s. His shrug was a slow-motion affair. “What can I say? A mission went wrong, Mr. President.”

“I was hoping for a little more,” the President said.

“Well, it’s a tragedy, of course.”

Platitudes, Reeder thought. The President’s reaction would not be pretty.

It wasn’t.

His gaze unblinking and accusing, Harrison said to the CIA Director, “You were to find me answers, Dick. What are they? Where are they?”

“Mr. President...”

“Why were our people there in the first place, and against my direct orders, since we knew a Russian attack was imminent! Who in the hell signed off on sending them over there? Was it you, Dick?”

Shaley sat very still for a second. He spoke so softly that some at the table may not have heard, as if he wanted only the man who’d queried him to be privy.

“Mr. President,” he said, “I was not the one to sign the order to send the team in there for what appears to have been a routine assessment of the situation.”

“You made that clear in private. You were to fact-find. You’ve had several hours. Do you know who did?”

“Not for sure yet, Mr. President.”

The President drew in a deep breath and said, “The media knows that four Americans have disappeared, and the commentators are speculating CIA, and even raising the possibility that our people are dead. But the CIA itself doesn’t know who sent its own people into harm’s way? Not acceptable.”

Shaley appeared calm. Maybe he was, Reeder thought. You did not hold a position as powerful as Shaley’s, for as long as he had, by getting rattled during questioning — even if the interrogator was the most powerful man in the free world. And even if those seated around him were among the most powerful figures in government.

All the Director said was, “We’re looking into it, Mr. President.”

“Look faster, look harder. I want an answer by the end of the day — understood?”

“Yes, sir.”

Harrison nodded toward the looming screen. “Well, at least tell me this, Dick. Can we identify any of those bodies as ours?”

Shaley said, “No. But we believe the civilian vehicle barely visible at the edge of those trees... near where we have a glimpse of highway?... was theirs. There were several bodies nearby... specifically, four... that the Russians cleared out with their own minimal casualties. We believe those four to be ours, yes.”

“Then the Russians killed our people?”

“Our best guess is yes, Mr. President.”

Reeder had to give Shaley credit — he wasn’t ducking responsibility.

The President’s expression was placid but his eyes were hard as he again trained his gaze on the CIA CEO. “You’re saying we don’t know that either?”

“Not for certain, Mr. President. There were two factions firing on each other. It’s an active war zone, after all.”

Admiral Canby, leaning forward, said, “Mr. President — it’s painfully clear the Russians killed our people. Director Shaley is correct in his assessment that this was a combat situation, but aside from friendly fire, there was no reason for the Azbekistanis to kill our people. They’re our allies! No, this was an act of war, Mr. President, and should be treated as such.”

Harrison regarded the chairman of the Joint Chiefs. “Then you would suggest we go to war, Admiral, before we have all the facts?”

“Sir, how many more facts do we need? Our people, almost certainly dead, were carted off a battlefield by members of an invading army.”

The President’s voice remained calm, resolute. “I want to know why our people were there when they shouldn’t have been, who pulled the trigger on them, and who sent them into an active war zone. When I know those three things, then we’ll act. Not before. In the meantime, we do not attack, we make no definitive statement to the media, and we do whatever it takes not to escalate the situation. Am I clear?”

Nods all around, including — finally — Canby.

Harrison said, pointedly, “Director Shaley, get me the information I need. ASAP.”

“Yes, Mr. President.”

“Anyone else care to add anything?”

Senator Blount lifted a hand, a shy student seeking to make a point in class. His blond hair going silver lent him a boyish quality despite his age, though his tortoiseshell-framed bifocals and sagging neck told a clearer story of his sixty-seven years.

The Senator said, “The eyes of the nation, of the world, are upon us, Mr. President. All due respect, sir — spinning our wheels is not enough... you have to do something.”

“I am, Senator — I’m gathering facts. Only then will I make a decision.”

The President rose and so did they all. He said, “Get to your posts and we’ll convene here again this evening. Tim will text you with the time.”

As the senior official in the room, Vice President Mitchell was the one to say, “Thank you, Mr. President.”

Turning to Reeder, the President said, “Joe? With me, please.”

Reeder followed Harrison out of the room, Vinson and the Vice President right behind them, leaving the others standing there a little dumbstruck, staring at the screen with its image of a battlefield that seemed more field than battle.

The elevator doors slid shut and, as they went up, Vinson said, “Jesus, are the hawks getting hard!”

“They have a reason for once,” President Harrison said. “Four Americans are dead.”

“You’re right, sir,” Vinson said, quietly.

The elevator door opened and the Vice President made her nodding exit while the Chief of Staff fell in step with the President and Reeder. Harrison paused.

“Tim, you’ll be in your office, if I need you?”

The sideways dismissal froze Vinson momentarily. “... Certainly, Mr. President.”

Vinson headed off to his hidey-hole.

The two men remaining walked in silence until they were inside the Oval Office. As he moved around behind his desk, Harrison waved Reeder to a chair on the opposite side. In previous meetings, they had used the couches and comfortable chairs in the informal central meeting area. The formidable desk said the words to come would be important, official.

“So, Joe — maybe you can use your fabled people-reading skills to tell me if Director Shaley is lying about not knowing who sent our agents into Azbekistan.”

Reeder didn’t hesitate. “He’s lying.”

Harrison’s eyebrows went up. “You can tell?”

Reeder nodded. “He had his mouth open.”

The President offered up a weak smile. “I was being serious.”

“So was I,” Reeder said. “The man is a professional spy, buttoned-down and hard as hell to read, even by a kinesics expert. That said, he lies for a living, Mr. President. It’s a habit with him.”

“What does your gut say — is he the one who sent our agents over there?”

Reeder considered that. “If you’re asking me if he signed the actual order, I have no idea. If you mean do I think he was aware of it? Damn likely. Shaley has been Director of the CIA since I headed up the presidential detail. In my experience, no one passes wind at Langley without Shaley knowing.”

“But what the hell is the motivation here, for Shaley or anyone else, to kill four Americans?”

Reeder shrugged a shoulder. “War is big business. We both know, even if it’s not general knowledge, that Azbekistan has some very valuable, as yet unexploited mineral rights.” He shrugged the other shoulder. “And, then, Russia always makes a good bad guy.”

The President nodded, but said nothing, thinking.

Finally, Reeder said, “With all due respect, Mr. President, surely you didn’t bring me in this morning to read Director Shaley — you already knew he was a liar.”

Harrison smiled a little. “You’re right — he’s so opaque he’s transparent. I called you in because I know — hell, everyone in this building knows — the Russians killed our agents.”

“So the hawks are right.”

“They’re right. But they’re also wrong.” Harrison slid a thumb drive across the desk to Reeder. “This is the information we have. Or I should say, that I have. You’ll have to find out the rest yourself, Joe. Because it’s not the Russians we’re after here.”

Reeder took the thumb drive. Tucked it away in a coat pocket, then said, “It wouldn’t seem to be. Someone on our end sent those four to die.”

The President swallowed thickly, then he waved a hand. “Hell, given the situation, I’d have done the same thing the Russians did — what would we do if four Russians showed up in the middle of our war?”

“Our people never even identified themselves as Americans. They may have been taken for resistance.”

“Either way, it just doesn’t matter. The thing is, Joe, as you heard in the Sit Room, I had ordered that no one be sent to Azbekistan... yet someone deliberately disobeyed. I want to know who that someone was — who that someone is — before I take any action. Can you do that, Joe? Can you find that person?”

“I can try, Mr. President. But I’m just one man.”

“One man will have to be enough. And do it fast, Joe — that sound you hear is the clock ticking. And it may be attached to a bomb.”

“Yes, sir.”

Reeder rose, but the President said, “Just one more thing.”

“Sir?”

President Harrison slid a cell phone across the desk. “This is encrypted, safe, and programmed with my personal number.”

Reeder picked up the phone, slipped it into his coat pocket with the thumb drive.

“Report any time, day or night.”

“Thank you, Mr. President.”

“Don’t thank me yet — this is an unenviable assignment and inherently dangerous. Try not to be the fifth American killed in this thing.”

Reeder nodded.

“The hawks want war and I’m trying to prevent one. No bullshit, Joe — we’re talking World War III if Canby and his cronies get their way. Someone inside this government put this thing in motion. Find him.”

“I will, Mr. President.”

Reeder turned, walked confidently out the door of the Oval Office, shut it behind him, then let out a long breath. He looked at his right hand and it was shaking.

Emily Curtis, the President’s secretary, eyed him with concern.

“Are you all right, Joe?” she asked.

He nodded, forced a smile. “Never better, Emily.”

But he knew that she could read people, too, and recognized a lie when she heard it. Still, she just nodded and bestowed a maiden-aunt smile upon him.

As he left the White House, its picture-postcard perfection looming behind him, Reeder was struck by one overriding thought.

Things were bad when the President felt the only person he could trust was an ex-Secret Service agent, no longer in government, name of Joe Reeder.