F Paul Wilson - Novel 04 (3 page)

The circus had arrived.

John edged his car toward the cadre
of armed, grimlooking members of the Secret Service uniformed division manning
the visitors gate. Twice the number he usually encountered. One started to wave
him off, but then let him approach when John held his ID and pass out the window.

John knew most of the gate guards
by now. This guy must have been one of the reinforcements.

As his ID and pass were being
scrutinized, John said, “They didn’t waste any time, did they. Must
all be early risers.” The guard grunted, “The first group showed up
around ten o’clock last night.” He checked the appointment book in
the gatehouse, then hurried back to the car and handed John his ID.

“Really sorry for the delay.
Dr. Vanduyne,” he said. “You should have told me right off who you
were.” Yeah, being the President’s personal physician did have a
certain cachet.

“No problem,” John
said. “I understand perfectly.” The huge gate closed behind his
car, and an iron beam rose out of the pavement as a further bar to entry. John
had heard it could stop a two-ton truck doing forty miles an hour.

He parked in the visitor’s
area, removed his black bag from his trunk, clipped his ID badge to the breast
pocket of his sport coat, and walked around to his left.

The White House—or
“Crown” as the Secret Service called it.

He couldn’t see them, but he
was sure the White House SWAT team was positioned on the roof. He was more
aware than ever of the infrared sensors, electric eyes, audio monitors,
pressure sensors, and video cameras monitoring his every step, feeding
everything to W-16, the Secret Service command post under the Oval Office.

He tried to forget all that, tried
to appreciate the setting.

The South Lawn was greening up, the
trees were starting to bud, and the
Washington
Monument
loomed over the scene like
a monolithic guardian. The cherry trees were in bloom along the
Potomac
—he
made a mental note to take Katie and Nana for a ride along the basin this
weekend.
Washington
was a
wonderful place to be in the spring. Although this spring might be different…

John quickened his pace. Good thing
he’d had this appointment set up in advance. He was concerned about
Tom’s blood pressure. Hairy enough to be the first line of medical
defense for the leader of the free world, but when he was also your oldest friend…

At the ground-level doorway between
the two stairways that framed the South Portico, another uniformed agent checked
his ID. This was unusual. Most times he simply breezed in.

He entered the State Floor and bore
left through the diplomatic reception area into the warren of executive offices
in the west wing. In the hall he spotted a familiar and unhappy face.

“Hey, Bob,” John said.
“I’m looking for the boss.” Robert Decker, Supervisory
Special Agent, Secret Service, was a veteran of that exclusive club, the
presidential detail. Today he looked harried and hassled. His gray suit was
uncharacteristically rumpled, as if he’d been wearing it all night. John
noted his tired eyes. Maybe he had.

Decker jerked a thumb over his
shoulder. “Down in the exec offices.”

“Anything wrong. Doc?”
John shrugged. “Just doing his monthly blood pressure.”

“Do me a favor and give him a
checkup from the neck up while you’re at it, will you?”

“All this getting you
worried?”

“We’re already getting
category-three death threats. I’ve canceled all tours and that’s
earning me a ton of flack. Talk to him, will you?”

“I don’t see what I can
do. He can’t exactly take it back.”

“Sure he can. He can go back
on the tube tonight and say that he never said those things. It was his evil
twin.” John waited for Decker to smile… and waited…

“You’re kidding,
aren’t you?”

“Look at this face,”
Decker said grimly. “Is this the face of someone who’s
kidding?”

“That bad, huh?”

“Worse,” Decker said,
then walked off.

John continued down the hall. He
stopped by the small, dungeonlike clinic that shared this ground-floor corner
with the White House physician’s office to offer a courtesy hello to Jeff
Stein, the young doc who manned the clinic. Jeff could have taken Tom’s
blood pressure every day if need be, but the President preferred his old buddy.
And John didn’t mind. It was a way of keeping in touch with Tom, of piercing
the wall of “splendid isolation” that was inexorably rising around
him.

A blond nurse whose name John
forgot sat at a desk, doing a crossword puzzle.

“Where’s Dr.
Stein?”

She moved a folder over the puzzle,
hiding it. John imagined things could get pretty slow in a little clinic like this.

“He went for some coffee, Dr.
Vanduyne. Can I help you?”

“No. Just letting him know
I’m here. Maybe I’ll catch him later.” He continued on toward
the door with the presidential seal and pushed through.

The executive offices, normally a
calm, well-ordered complex, were jumping with frenzied activity: aides and
secretaries hustling back and forth, shouting across the rooms and between the
offices, phones ringing off the hook.

Not at all a party atmosphere. Grim
expressions on everyone. And the grimmest was on the face of the small, compact
curly-haired, middle-aged woman approaching John right now: Stephanie Harris,
White House Press Secretary.

“You’re here to sign
the commitment papers, right?” she said.

She’d be upbeat and
four-square behind her boss when she faced the cameras later, but not now.

“Nope. Just the usual blood
pressure check.”

She stuck out her arm. “You
want blood pressure? Check mine. It’s got to be a record.”

“Think you can top Bob
Decker’s?”

“Definitely! He thinks this
is a security nightmare? It’s nothing compared to the PR catastrophe! The
phones have not stopped, not for an instant. Do you know how many calls we get
on an average day? Forty-eight thousand. We’ve had that many already since
midnight
, most angry as hell. The damn
fax machines have run out of paper so many times we’ve stopped refilling
them. Beat Decker’s? I can double it!”

John laughed but wondered if
Tom’s pressure would beat Stephanie’s. “Where is he?”

She turned and pointed.

John had to smile at his old
friend, an island of calm in a sea of turmoil: President Thomas Winston,
code-named “Razor” to the Secret Service, looking as sharp as
ever—tall, and serene in his dark blue suit, talking to a pretty young woman.
Every strand of his dark, just-the-right-amount-of-gray-at-the temples hair in
place, the tanned, chiseled features composed into a relaxed, confident
expression. John was willing to bet Tom’s pressure was all right. This
was a man who caused more hypertension than he suffered himself.

Tom glanced up and spotted John. He
smiled, pointed at him to indicate that he should stay where he was, spoke a
few final words to the young woman—an aide no doubt—then started
toward John.

“Welcome to the
funhouse,” Tom said, shaking hands.

“I warned you.”

“That you did, good buddy.
You and a lot of other people.” He turned and nodded to the young woman
he’d just left. “See that angel-faced young thing over there?
That’s Heather Brent. She’s going to be our designated mass-media
spokesperson on the decriminalization issue.”

“She looks about
twelve.” John was exaggerating, but she did look awfully young.

“She’s twenty-eight and
the happily married mother of two. She’s also a world-class debater who
firmly believes in decriminalization. She can verbally slice and dice you
without losing one iota of that fresh-faced charm. She’s going to be a
potent weapon in this war.” He glanced around. “Let’s go
upstairs so you can check me out in peace and quiet. It’s a little crazy
down here.”

Poppy cracked up when she saw
Paulie.

She’d been working out to her
Buns of Steel video when he walked through the door. One look at his short,
blow-dried hair and she started laughing so hard she collapsed on the floor.
She could barely breathe.

“I don’t look that
bad,” he said, grinning sheepishly. “Do I?”

Poppy managed to stifle her
laughter. Gasping, she stared up at him. He’d been looking weird anyway,
letting his hair go back to its natural red, but now, with it trimmed all
around the ears and off the collar, and his beard clipped down to a quarter
inch and neatly edged along his cheeks and throat, she like barely recognized
him.

“You look so totally…
straight. Like you should be running a bookstore or something.” She got
up off the floor and gave him a hug. As her arms went around him she touched
the back of his collar where his ponytail had been. She started laughing again.

“Ooh, look! Your neck! I
never seen your neck before!”

He pushed her away—gently,
but she could tell he was beginning to get pissed. He went to the cracked
mirror over the sagging sofa and examined himself.

“Christ, you’re right.
I could be a fucking bookworm!”

“But one who’s into
leather.”

“Yeah, well, not for long. I
better get changed.” Poppy brushed off the crud her black body suit had
picked up from the rug. This place Mac had rented for the job was a dump. The
only good thing was they wouldn’t like be here that long.

She sobered as she realized what
the haircut meant: The snatch was a go, and Paulie was definitely doing the
deed.

A fleeting spasm gripped her
stomach then let go. The whole thing had seemed like such a lark the first time
she’d helped Paulie baby-sit one of Mac’s “packages”
three years ago. They’d hung out, listened to music, eaten fast-food
take-out, and taken turns keeping an eye on the handcuffed, blindfolded guy in
the next room. When the ransom got paid, they drove him to a deserted spot in
the woods off one of the freeways and let him go. Easy. No pain, no strain, and
lots of gain when Mac paid Paulie his share.

But good as it was, the money never
like lasted that long. When they had it, they spent it—mostly on high
living. And she did mean high. Poppy had been like heavy into speed back
then—oh, she’d do a little toot now and again, and grass for sure,
but speed was her favorite. And so whenever Mac called and said he had another
baby-sitting job—like maybe a couple, three times a year—they
always said yes.

She was amazed how none of their
“packages” was ever reported missing. Paulie said Mac had told him
you wouldn’t believe how many people got snatched every year. Kidnapping
was a growth industry and Mac a major player. But growth industry or not, the
last job had like turned her off to the whole thing.

She followed Paulie into the
smaller bedroom and watched him begin to change his rags.

“Did Mac give you any idea
who you’re gonna be snatching?”

“Nope.”

“I wish you weren’t
doing it.” He removed his earrings, then stripped down to the black
jockeys she’d bought him for Christmas. Paulie was about half a dozen
years older than Poppy, but he still looked good for a guy pushing thirty. So
maybe his nose was on the large side, and his face a little pockmarked, but she
liked his curly hair, even if it was thinning on top. His deep blue eyes had
like grabbed her first time she saw him. Still grabbed her. He didn’t
work out but had a naturally muscular body. Cool tattoos too. She especially
loved the Grim Reaper on his right upper arm. She’d be turned on now if she
wasn’t so damn worried.

He looked up at her. “Why
not? He’s paying me extra, and we could use the money.”

“Yeah, I know,
but…”

“But what?”

“But I don’t want you
to, like, get hurt.”

He smiled. “Don’t
worry. No rough stuff. The package thinks it’s going for a limo ride. I
drive up, I open the door, the package gets in, I close the door, I drive away.
Simple.”

“
‘Package’,” she said. “Why does he always call them
‘packages’?”

Paulie took the white shirt off its
hanger and slipped into it. “That’s the way he is. You want me to
explain Mac to you? He’s a genius. How’m I supposed to explain a
genius?” Poppy stepped over and helped him with the buttons.

“I don’t know. I just
wish he wasn’t like so mean.”

“He’s not mean.
He’s a totally straight shooter. Has he ever stiffed us? Ever even tried?
No.”

“Yeah, but last
time—”

“All right,” Paulie
said, slipping into the gray pants. “I admit, things got a little rough.
But that had nothing to do with us. That was all the fault of the
package’s family. Buyer, I mean.” Another of Snake’s words.

Poppy shuddered. “A little
rough? That was more than a little rough. That guy—”

“Look, I didn’t like it
either, but it worked out, didn’t it? I mean, he’s back home,
right? And he ain’t all that much worse for wear.”

“Easy for you to say. I told
you I didn’t ever want to do this again.” Paulie stepped forward
and put his hands on her shoulders.

“Look, Poppy. Didn’t we
make a deal? Didn’t I promise this is the last one? Well, I mean it. This
is going to be a huge score; that’s why Mac’s paying us so much.
He’s a good guy that way. If he makes out big, we make out big.”
The thought of being set up with a big cash stash was so appealing. Just the
two of them, traveling around… no strings… no Mac…

“Okay, fine” she said.
“I want the money too. But there ain’t enough of it in the world to
make me go through something like that last job again.”

“This will be different, I
promise you. We don’t have to worry about the package’s family not
paying up because the money’s coming from somewhere else.”