Line of Succession: A Thriller (35 page)

“
What’s going on?” LeBron asked his father.

“
It’s one of the little improvements General Wainewright has in mind for the country,” Dex said. “It’s called state-run TV.”

*

All was clear at the Jefferson Memorial, where two National Guardsmen reclined near a Patriot missile battery, smoking unfiltered cigarettes and listening to club remixes of mariachi classics. Every fifteen minutes, their unit commander would check in over the radio – speaking only in Spanish – to make sure they were still awake.

Speers crept up the back steps of the neo-classical monument toward a row of public telescopes with views overlooking the National Mall. He popped a quarter into one of the telescopes and focused in on several hundred people leaving the Lincoln Memorial. It would have been an odd sight on any night, but it was especially curious during martial law. The telescope’s magnification told the story – Ulysses was marching a horde of homeless people toward the Roosevelt Memorial.

The Chief turned the scope back to the Mall, where two Ulysses units were unfurling massive rolls of temporary fencing. Behind them, more Ulysses soldiers propped up the eight-foot fencing and sledge-hammered posts into the ground. It looked as if they were attempting to seal off an area stretching from the Lincoln Memorial halfway to the Washington Monument and the World War II Memorial.

Further up the Mall, Speers made out four Ulysses soldiers carrying what looked like a hefty wooden box across the mall toward the Lincoln Memorial. It appeared to be made of dark wood and resembled a casket, only shorter. He watched patiently as the soldiers made their way along the footpath that skirted the Korean War monument, near the edge of the Reflecting Pool, and stood the wooden cabinet on its end at the foot of the Lincoln steps. He knew he’d seen it before, but couldn’t place it. He wracked his exhausted brain for the memory.

He sat down and took several deep breaths. He rubbed the top of his ears between his fingertips, an exercise that his mother had taught him as a child to improve concentration. Three minutes later, he felt the memory returning like the distant smell of home cooking. He hopped back up to the telescope and watched as the soldiers struggled to get the cabinet up the memorial steps. Speers himself had stood not ten feet from the big hunk of wood. But that had been at congress, not at the Lincoln Memorial. Of course! It was the podium. The Inaugural Podium.

The Joint Chiefs were not only going to swear in their new puppet, they would wrap him in Lincoln’s legacy and broadcast it on live TV.

He powered up his phone. He had to talk to Agent Carver. There had to be some way to stop this.

Over Rural Pennsylvania

The Gulfstream flew just above the treetops without running lights or radio. The plane let out a violent shudder. Eva grabbed Carver’s forearm.

Agent Carver and Eva sat in the cabin behind the pilots as they headed due north. The others were in the main cabin. They had not decided where they were going, only that they needed to get as far from Rapture Run as possible and land in a safe location far from Wainewright’s reach.

“
Your nails,” Carver said as Eva’s grip on his arm began to hurt. She pulled away.

Carver imagined for a moment that it was O’Keefe sitting next to him. He would welcome her nails digging into his arms, he decided. To the point of bleeding. He wanted to feel her presence. Even if it hurt.

As for Eva, he did not even know how to address her. Madam Secretary no longer seemed to fit. Less than three days ago he had regarded her as a merely competent Treasury Secretary whose real power was in her private relationship with the President. He still found it hard to fathom that she, by all rights, should now be the Commander-in-Chief. But there was no doubt in Carver’s mind that she was the right choice. Better an underprepared Treasury Secretary than some puppet appointed by the military.

Carver turned on his phone for exactly ten seconds, just long enough to download seventeen new messages. Sixteen were from former CIA colleagues, whom he automatically ignored –anyone at the agency could be compromised. But the last message was from Julian Speers. It read: IF YOU LOVE YOUR COUNTRY MEET ME IN SECTION 26 @ 0500.

Carver understood the second part of the thinly coded message perfectly – that Speers would be waiting for them in Section 26, the area of Arlington Cemetery where Union soldiers were buried near Arlington House, at 5 a.m. It was one of the few places in the Capitol that wasn’t teeming with surveillance videos. As for the first part of the message, Carver could only guess that the window to save the country from military rule was closing fast.

He turned to Eva as the turbulence abated. “It’s time to make a decision. Do we want to survive? Or do we want to retake control of the country?”

“
I want both.”

“
Unlikely.”

“
I don’t see it that way,” Eva said. “We could get to Canada. Go to the media. Use international pressure to force the Joint Chiefs to relinquish power.”

Carver smiled condescendingly. “The Joint Chiefs will never own up to it. They’ll control Dex quietly. He’ll be the face. They’ll be the brains.”

“
I’ll go to the media and tell my story.”

“
You won’t live long enough to collect the advance on your autobiography. The Canadians will never be able to protect you from Ulysses.”

“
Your pessimism isn’t helping.”

“
It’s realism. Wake up. Even if they can’t get to you physically, you’ve made it easy for them to completely discredit you.”

“
What are you suggesting?”

“
Your inappropriate relationship with President Hatch makes you an easy target.”

Eva turned red. Her voice quivered. “You’re over the line, Agent Carver.”

“
They’ll take every opportunity to depict you as the dead President’s power-hungry mistress who would say anything to get back into the White House. They’ll leak rumors that you ordered his assassination. They’ll hire some hack to make a movie about it. And they’ll stay on message until the entire world believes it.”

Tears streamed down. “Okay, asshole. So we’re doomed? Is that it?”

“
No. We have one chance.”

“
And what would that be?”

“
Join up with Dex Jackson.”

Eva laughed darkly. “Dex and I hardly look at each other at NSA meetings. What makes you think he’d even take my call?”

“
We have his wife.”

Washington D.C.

4:10 a.m.

Speers arose from the tunnels beneath the Eisenhower Building, scurried across Pennsylvania Avenue and into the alley behind the Willard Hotel. He ducked behind a garbage dumpster that smelled like two-day-old shellfish. Soon a man in a cook’s uniform popped out the service entrance. He was yammering on a cell phone. “
If Linda doesn’t like the fact that we’re seeing each other, then she can move out as far as I’m concerned
.” He propped open the door with an empty wine bottle, then ambled down the alley as he talked.

Once the man was out of earshot, Speers slipped behind him and into the open Willard Hotel kitchen. A startled chef looked up and yelled “Security! Security!”

“
Calm down!” Speers cried. “I’m with the Administration!” He flashed his White House credentials, but with his hair cut and beard shaved, and dressed in Mr. Tenningclaus’ ill-fitting clothes, he looked nothing like the man in his Federal ID photo. The chef screamed again and banged a large pot with a soup ladle.

A Secret Service agent in a black suit entered with his weapon drawn. Speers closed his eyes and waited for the bullet to come.

“
It’s okay,” Speers heard a familiar voice tell the cook. “Calm down. This guy is who he says he is. I got this handled.”

The mountainous Special Agent Hector Rios took Speers by the arm and pulled him roughly into a walk-in freezer. As usual, Rios was immaculately put together. His uniform was tailored to a tee, he was freshly shaved and his hair was slicked back tight atop his scalp. The circles under his eyes told another story. That and his hands. They were trembling.

“
Julian,” he said, “I’ve got orders to use deadly force on your ass.”

Speers broke away from Rios’ grip and smoothed his shirt sleeve. “And you think that’s reasonable?”

Rios shook his head. “I get orders, not explanations.”

“
You don’t want to hear them.”

“
Don’t feed me that line, Chief! I haven’t heard from First Team in three days. Went up to Camp David myself but Ulysses won’t let anyone near it. I’m taking orders from some assistant to the Joint Chiefs now. What the hell is going on?”

“
The President is dead.”

Rios spun around once on his heels and punched a side of frozen beef hanging from the ceiling. “I knew it! I
knew
it, man!”

“
We don’t have much time. Trust me when I say that more people will die unless you get me in to see Dex Jackson.”

Rios, still reeling from the news, shook his massive head. “Doesn’t make any sense.” His thoughts turned to the men he gunned down on Martha’s Vineyard. The smell of gunpowder was still fresh in his senses.

“
Hector, did you hear me? I need to see Dex.”

The frozen beef swung into the freezer sidewall as Rios pummeled it once more. “There’s a half dozen agents between the kitchen and his room.”

“
Then you’ll have to bring Dex to me.”

*

Jack McClellan, the graying agent who stood on watch outside Dex’s Willard Hotel suite, was less than a year from retirement. He had survived four administrations. He had also survived a gunshot from a would-be assailant during George W. Bush’s presidency. The failed assassination attempt never made the press, thanks to media suppression from the CIA.

For a while after the incident, McClellan had been taken off security detail because there were questions about his ability to shake symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder. He’d only made it back to the POTUS rotation this year. Even so, it was more of a retirement present. The other agents were careful never to leave him alone on duty.

Over the past three days, Agent McClellan’s worst fears were all coming back to him. First, the high-level assassinations. Then that sketchy pre-recorded video of the President. Then the rumor that First Team hadn’t reported in. A buddy guarding some high value targets at the Raven Rock bunker had told him off the record that POTUS had never showed there. Beyond spooky.

His earpiece crackled. “Agent Rios coming up.”

The elevator tone sounded and the doors swooshed open. Agent Rios stepped out the floor pushing a room service cart full of covered trays.

“
What,” McClellan said, “Secret Service delivers food now? Where’s the room service guy?”

“
I was told no visitors.” Although Rios was technically McClellan’s boss, the elder agent didn’t always treat him with appropriate respect. For the most part, Rios allowed McClellan his ego. He had earned it.

McClellan lifted one of the platters and regarded a plate of Maryland crab cakes. He looked back at Rios and shook his head in disbelief.

“
I took a bullet for Bush Forty-Three,” he said, “and now they expect me to be an errand boy? I refuse to take this crap.”

“
Take a break,” Rios said. “I’ll do it.”

Agent Rios knocked on the suite door and stood directly in front of the peephole so that Secretary Jackson would recognize him. Rios pushed the cart past Agent McClellan, then past Dex, who was clad in a white bathrobe, and closed the door behind him.

“
We didn’t order room service,” Dex said as he gazed up at the six-foot-ten secret service agent. LeBron slept behind him on the couch in front of the TV.

“
If you’ll please just sign this,” Rios said. He took the black folder from the cart and presented the check. Dex pulled his reading glasses from his bathrobe pocket and saw the hand-scrawled note: “YOUR WIFE IS ALIVE.” He looked at Rios over the eyeglass frames. His pupils darted from side to side like fidgety tadpoles. He re-read the note. YOUR WIFE IS ALIVE.

Dex went to the TV and turned it up loud. LeBron squirmed in his sleep, but did not wake.

“
What’s the meaning of this?” Dex whispered.

“
Someone important knows where your wife is,” Rios said. “I can take you to her.”

Dex studied Rios’ face before answering. “What would happen if I picked up the phone right now and asked General Wainewright about this?”

“
You’d never know peace,” Rios said. “You’d always wonder about Angie.”

The would-be President couldn’t hide his feelings. He was about to become the centerpiece of something that was far more sinister than he had even imagined. He was becoming acutely aware of the fact that he still didn’t know the rules of the game or even who all the players were. He cast a worried glance at LeBron.