Sedition (A Political Conspiracy Book 1) (25 page)

Matti needed redemption.

Chapter 34

Dexter Foreman’s body lay in the casket in the basement of Harrowby’s Funeral Home & Chapel after arriving an hour earlier. The casket was surrounded by the six soldiers prepared to carry the president once they reached the Capitol steps.

The soldiers were assigned to the Military District of Washington and the 3
^rd
US Infantry Regiment. Most people knew them as members of “The Old Guard”. Since World War II, they had served as the official Army Honor Guard and the escort to the president.

On the shoulders of their uniforms were blue oval insignias with red borders. The Washington Monument was at the center of the design, along with a double-handed sword. The monument was emblematic of their area of responsibility. The sword symbolized protection. Their motto, in Latin
Haec Protegimus
, translated to “This We Guard”.

The War Department created the Military District to plan for any potential ground attacks against the nation’s capital during the war. But its mission evolved over the decades to more of a ceremonial role. Its units eventually included the US Army Band, known as “Pershing’s Own”.

Now the soldiers embarked upon their most solemn responsibility: they were to help bury their commander in chief. It was an awesome task.

Dexter Foreman would be the twelfth president to lie upon the Lincoln catafalque. It was a simple bier of pine boards nailed together and covered with black cloth, constructed hastily to accommodate the public viewing for Lincoln’s casket. A century and a half later, it was still the same seven-foot-long, two-and-a-half-foot-tall platform. While the cloth had been replaced several times, it was in the original style drapery used in 1865.

The soldiers were quiet as they checked the casket and tested its weight. The task of carrying more than three hundred pounds up the steps of the west front of the Capitol at the end of the procession was taxing. Even for six strong men, keeping the weight level up the steps and into the rotunda was fraught with potential embarrassment. After a final metal detector sweep around the outside of the casket, the men practiced carrying the full weight of it in Harrowby’s large basement.

Harrowby himself stood to the far left side of the expanse. When the soldiers finished their brief exercise, Harrowby helped them place the casket onto the lift so that they could move it from the basement to the main floor of the building. He then followed the soldiers and a couple of other government types up the stairwell into the hallway. There was a group of Capitol Police officers, Metro Police, and uniformed Secret Service gathered in the crowded space. They were talking and laughing, a couple of them nursing cooling cups of coffee. Harrowby politely pushed his way through the grouping and made his way to the casket lift. Waiting next to the opening of the lift was a steel-tubed casket cart. Harrowby pulled open the lift door, and a couple of his employees help him shift the casket onto the cart, resting it on the six small rubber tips that kept the heavy wooden box in place. The officers, who just a moment before were chatty, fell silent. They watched wide-eyed as Harrowby kicked the brake off of the rear left wheel. With help, he rolled the cart toward an exit and the awaiting hearse.

*

Sir Spencer sat on the edge of the bed in his room at the Hay-Adams. He was groggy after ninety minutes of sleep. He was dressed only in boxers, and the expanse of his hairless white stomach obscured the cloth as he leaned forward into his hands.

The knight rubbed his eyes and stood slowly, feeling his age in his back as it tightened instead of stretching to help him rise. His knees cracked angrily at being asked to support the weight that the knight forced upon them. He grunted, gained his balance, and walked to the bar. Sir Spencer grabbed the remote to flip on the television and then retrieved the bottle of fifty-year-old scotch.

He poured three fingers’ worth and stood against the bar, sipping the liquor and watching the presidential smotherage on television. He was amused. The knowledge of what was to come provided a shot of adrenaline to the old man.

“We’ve learned some brand-new information here,”
chirped Vickie Lupo from the television set. It seemed to the knight that whenever he turned it on, she was there with her coiffed hair and sharp wit.

“We’re hearing from our ‘Avenue’ sources at the wonderful little building just east of the Capitol dome—”
she smirked, the right side of her mouth curled higher than the left
“—you know, the Supreme Court.”

“She amuses herself above all others,” mumbled the knight. If it weren’t for the new information she promised him, he’d have turned down the volume. “She’s insufferable,” he scoffed and took another sip.

“Our sources are telling us,”
she continued bloviating,
“and this is on good authority, mind you, that the Court will not render its decision until after the memorial for President Foreman.”

“Hear, hear,” toasted the knight. It was expected, but still he was glad to hear it. A decision favoring Speaker Jackson before the memorial would put a wrench into the works. He hobbled over to the pea green chair closest to him.

Sir Spencer sat down and his knees thanked him. After muting the volume on the television, he found his cell phone on the side table next to him and picked it up to dial.

He placed the phone to his ear and listened to the ringtone. It chirped once, twice, three times. Then an answer. The voice on the other end confirmed the call was secure.

“We have the location of the secretary?” The knight was splitting his attention between the muted Vickie Lupo and the overcast window view of the White House. “We know where Blackmon will be then?”

The response of the voice on the other end was certain and reassuring. The knight sensed no apprehension. He pressed the button to end the call. Everything was in motion. He pressed another series of numbers and awaited a new voice on the other end of the secured wireless line.

“Hello?” the sixth Daturan answered hollowly. He sounded tired.

“It’s me,” the knight said, knowing his accent would be instantly recognizable. “We are as planned.”

“Good.” The sixth Daturan was smiling wryly despite his malaise. He had always known that Sir Spencer could facilitate what others might claim impossible. “You know I will be otherwise engaged during this afternoon’s affair?”

“Yes.” The knight stuck his pinkie into the remaining drop of scotch before sucking on it. “I am aware.”

Sir Spencer and the sixth Daturan had known each other for years. For some time, the two of them had met privately without the knowledge of the other men in the group. The sixth Daturan wanted as few entanglements as possible. He once explained to the knight that discretion had no part of valor in the hands of a drunk, a has-been politico, a philandering professor, or a self-important artist. The knight had agreed and promised not to reveal the sixth Daturan’s identity, or existence for that matter, until appropriate.

Together the two plotted the sixth’s political path. Unlike others who refused to bow to Sir Spencer’s influence, the sixth implored the knight to secretly bankroll his campaigns and political action committees. The knight privately discredited the sixth’s opponents when he could and paid them off when he couldn’t.

Through favor, coercion, and well-played histrionics, the knight was able to help the sixth catch the eye of the Foreman administration. While the president’s unexpected death hastened their work and turned their effort violent, the sixth knew that he was always intended to be the wizard to the knight’s man behind the curtain.

It was kismet, they both agreed, that brought them together at such a time in the nation’s history and provided them the opportunity to seize power. They were so politically myopic that they failed to see the pathology of their method. As the knight was so fond of saying, they were patriots in the mold of Adams and Revere.

“We will talk later,” promised the knight, “when we’ve seen the outcome.”

“When we’ve seen the outcome,” parroted the sixth. “That’s good.”

Sir Spencer replaced the phone on the table next to the chair. He rubbed his knees, leaned back in the chair, and then he looked at the clock on the coffee table. He needed to get dressed. It wasn’t long before he needed to be at the Cato Street Pub. There was more to do and he had another phone call to make.

*

Jimmy Ings took his seat aboard the 85 passenger bus, squeezing himself into an empty seat toward the back of the vehicle. He’d paid his twenty-seven dollars to the tour operator, pulled a ragged Washington Bullets ball cap down over his eyes, and worked his way past tourists anxious to see some of the nation’s most significant buildings and monuments.

Underneath the seat in front of him, he slid a medium-sized backpack. The space was just large enough that he could shove it completely from view. Ings was nervous, but he knew his task was of critical importance to the mission.

As the bus pulled away from the Lincoln Memorial and headed toward Virginia, Ings looked out the window. He exhaled and adjusted the brim of the cap, happy to have made it aboard the tour. He was even happier to find it operational on the day of the president’s procession.

Some of the regular stops along the Mall and the northern part of the “American Heritage Tour” weren’t available because of the blockages along Constitution Avenue. The southern part of the tour was still operational.

The bus chugged and hummed its way across the Potomac as a man’s voice narrated the points of interest over a loudspeaker inside the cabin. Ings was too preoccupied to listen. The job that lay ahead was consuming him.

Before hustling to catch the bus, he was sitting alone in his second-floor apartment, watching a “College All-Stars” episode of
Jeopardy!
that he’d recorded the night before. The category was “Royalty”. The clue was “This Kentucky poet laureate based
All the King’s Men
on the life of former Louisiana governor Huey Long.”

Ings had known the answer and was about to blurt it out between sips of scotch when his cell phone rang. Disgusted, he’d paused the DVR and picked up the phone. He’d pressed C and then answered.

“Who is Robert Penn Warren?” Ings had asked as he pressed the phone to his ear.

“James, what are you talking about?”

“You interrupted
Jeopardy!
The answer to the clue is ‘who is Robert Penn Warren’.”

“I see,” said Sir Spencer. “So the clue was about poetry? Or was it about Cajun politics?”

“Cajun politics.” Ings had taken another swig.

“And where is James Carville when you need him? Right?”

“I didn’t need him. I knew the answer.” Ings had chomped on a piece of ice before sucking the sweetness from it. “What do you need, Sir Spencer? Are you coming over early?”

“No.” The knight paused a beat. “I need you to run an errand. You likely won’t be back in time for the meeting at Cato Street.”

“Oh?” Ings had picked up the television remote, hit the off button, and sat up in his recliner. “Why’s that?”

“As you well know, James, we may have been compromised last night at the opening. There’s really no telling what the government knows or does not know.”

“But I thought you said—”

“Wait, just hold on.”

“Okay.”

“So, James,” Sir Spencer had continued, “we need to create a little diversion. And in that effort I need your help.”

“What is it?”

“There is a backpack behind your bar downstairs that contains an extra explosive. It’s one of the four that you built with George.”

“Uh-huh…”

“The assigned number to that phone is on a card inside the small front pocket of the backpack. I need you to take it somewhere for me and leave it unattended.”

“Why?”

“I need you to do this,” counseled the knight, “because
a young man’s ambition is to get along in the world and make a place for himself. Half your life goes that way, till you’re forty-five or fifty. Then, if you’re lucky, you make terms with life, you get released.
”

“That makes no sense to me.”

“Aside from the point that this is your opportunity to release yourself from the chains of an ordinary life, and aside from the hope that your actions will enable to plot to move ahead as planned, it’s a quote from Robert Penn Warren.”

Despite his misgivings about the unexpected mission, Ings had dutifully gotten up from his comfortable seat, found the backpack behind the bar downstairs, and left a key under the front doormat for the men to find later.

Now he sat on a tour bus pulling up to the gate at Arlington National Cemetery.

Chapter 35

Matti was nonplussed. She’d called her supervisor’s direct line and his cell phone. She’d paged him and texted him. He’d not answered, replied, or called her back. She was sitting in the back of a coffee shop at 2300 Wisconsin, just north of her alma mater.

It was empty except for two baristas and an unkempt undergrad with an unshaven face, a pair of earbuds, and a large espresso. He was so deep into Uriah Heep and the latest issue of
FHM
that Matti thought him oblivious. This was as good a place as any to find relative privacy.

There was no time to head back to Fort Meade. She needed to skim the journals for details so that when her boss called, she could provide him with actionable intelligence.

Matti was nursing a latte while thumbing through the most recent Davidson journals. She scanned the center of the pages for relevant passages and notations, amazed at the breadth of the information. Matti now had a Daturan’s perspective of the last several days.

“Sir Spencer tells us the end game is regime change,” Davidson had written. “He tells us that the founding fathers were heroes to us and terrorists to the British. The man convicted of blowing up Pan Am Flight 103 was a terrorist to us. But when the Scottish released him from prison, the Libyans rejoiced in the streets. He contends that the line between patriotism and terrorism is all in the eye of the beholder.”