The Inside Ring. Mike Lawson

Чтение книги онлайн.

       5

      Philip Montgomery and the President had been roommates at Harvard. Montgomery was the best man at the President’s wedding, and the President had returned the favor for two of Montgomery’s three nuptials.

      The President went on to become governor of his home state, then U.S. senator, then President. He was a bright man, though not a brilliant one, and felt he was dodging his responsibilities if he worked less than sixteen hours a day. Montgomery, the President’s opposite in temperament, was a literary genius who drank like Tennessee Williams and played and fought and fucked like Hemingway. He was a master of the twelve-hundred-page epic that blended fact and fiction so artfully that it was difficult to tell which parts were which, not that his readers particularly cared.

      Every year, for more than twenty years, the President and Montgomery got together for three or four days to enjoy various pastimes: skiing, hunting, fishing, river rafting – and a lot of drinking. This annual holiday with Montgomery, an event that was highly publicized, was the only time the President appeared to let his hair down. As for Montgomery, his hair was always down. After being elected to the highest office in the land, the President continued to enjoy his reunions with Montgomery and insisted that his Secret Service detail be as small as possible. The reason for this was to minimize the number of people seeing him and a Pulitzer Prize winner behaving like drunken fools. Like the time they threw empty whiskey bottles into the Bitterroot River and blasted them to bits with automatic weapons borrowed from the President’s bodyguards; hardly an activity he wanted reported to either the environmentalists or the gun-control crowd.

      This year Montgomery and the President had decided to do a little fishing in Georgia, on the Chattooga River. The dates of the trip – July 14 to July 17 – had been established long in advance as is necessary with a president’s schedule, but according to Banks the location of the trip wasn’t finalized until late May. Naturally, a host of people knew about the trip and the number of potential leaks was almost infinite.

      Banks had received the warning letter four days before the President was scheduled to depart for Georgia and the first thing he did was call Patrick Donnelly, director of the Secret Service. Donnelly told Banks it was damn unlikely that an agent had sent the letter. In fact, he found it amusing that Banks had given the letter any credibility at all – not an attitude the general appreciated.

      Banks pointed out to Donnelly that the letter had been printed on Secret Service letterhead, placed in a Secret Service business envelope, but most important, it had been delivered via the department pouch. The pouch was a mailbag delivered by armed courier and used to transport classified documents between Secret Service headquarters on H Street and Banks’s office on Nebraska Avenue. Only personnel inside Secret Service headquarters, a secure facility, had access to the pouch and it was delivered directly to Banks’s executive assistant.

      Then there was the jargon in the note: Eagle One and the inside ring. ‘Eagle One’ was the President’s code name. The ‘inside ring’ was those agents closest to the President whenever he was on the move. The outside ring was the agents guarding the perimeter: agents in the crowd, on rooftops, manning strategic control points. If the outside ring was penetrated, the inside ring was to die protecting the Man.

      Donnelly still claimed the letter was a hoax. Maybe an agent had sent it – a lot of his people weren’t happy with changes Banks had made since taking over Homeland Security – but that still didn’t mean there was any truth to the letter. Then Donnelly, a master of the bureaucratic full nelson, dared Banks to call up the President and ruin his long-awaited vacation based on an unsigned note that claimed he was at risk from his own bodyguards. Banks didn’t make the call, but he did keep the warning letter.

      Seven days later Philip Montgomery and a Secret Service agent were killed and the President was wounded. After the assassination attempt, Banks was racked with guilt, terrified the note had been authentic and that he had failed to act upon it. He called Donnelly and told him that he was sending him the warning letter. He wanted it analyzed for fingerprints and DNA in saliva on the envelope seal, and for Donnelly to make an effort to find out who had put it in the pouch.

      Donnelly tried his best to talk Banks out of having the letter analyzed. He told him if he sent the letter to a lab and started questioning people, the contents of the letter would be leaked to the media within hours. Absolutely the last thing they needed, Donnelly said, was to give birth to a preposterous theory that the Secret Service could have been involved in the assassination attempt. But Banks insisted. Donnelly may have been a presidential appointee but Banks was still his boss.

      The next day Donnelly came to see Banks. Although he categorically dismissed the possibility of Secret Service complicity, he did take steps to convince Banks that the warning letter was bogus. First, he told Banks, in accordance with standard Secret Service procedures for incidents like this, all the agents at Chattooga River were given polygraphs to see if they were involved. All the agents had passed as would be expected. And if this wasn’t good enough, there was the timing of the note and its relationship to the men assigned to the inside ring.

      At Chattooga River the outside ring consisted of more than sixty agents. The cabin where the President had stayed was selected not only because it was located near several good fishing holes but also because it was in an isolated area with limited access. Three days before the President’s arrival the Secret Service sent a large advance team to the area, drew an imaginary circle five miles in diameter around the cabin, then blocked off all roads and trails into the area and manned these entry points with agents. Following this, they searched the area inside the circle by air and on foot to make sure no one was there. All people entering the area before the President’s arrival were escorted through to make sure they left, and after the President arrived, people were not allowed to enter at all. Periodic surveillances of the area were conducted by helicopter during the entire time the President was visiting.

      Confident the perimeter was secure, and in keeping with the President’s explicit direction to minimize the number of on-site guards, the inside ring at Chattooga River consisted of only four agents: Billy Mattis, Robert James – the agent who was killed while covering the President with his own body – Richard Matthews, and Stephen Preston.

      The inside ring had been selected on July 5th and the warning note was sent to Banks five days later, СКАЧАТЬ