Stuart Woods: D.C. Dead

“You still have no idea why we’re here?” Dino asked.

“I haven’t received any messages from the ether,” Stone replied.

Stone was stretched out on his bed, watching MSNBC on the large flat-screen TV, when the bellman returned with his clothes and hung them in the closet.

“I hope you’ll be very comfortable here,” the man said, doing the bellman shuffle.

Stone gave him a twenty. “We’ll struggle through,” he said.

“Just let me know if you need anything at all, Mr. Barrington.” The man left, taking the room service table with him.

Stone drifted off, and Holly came into his head. He was caressing her ass when Dino rapped on the doorjamb.

“We’re due over at the neighbors’ house in an hour,” he said. “You’d better shake your ass.”

Stone reflected that that was what Holly had been doing when he had last imagined her. “Right,” he said, putting his feet on the floor. “I’ll grab a shower.” He did so, freshened his shave, and got into clean clothes.

The valet brought the SUV under the hotel portico, and Stone walked around it once. The license plate contained only a four-digit number, 4340, and there were no manufacturer’s badges on the car, just black paint. He checked out the door locks as he got into the passenger seat. “All the locks are beefy,” he said as Dino got in. “And I’d be willing to bet that this is one of Mike Newman’s armored vehicles. The Agency is one of his clients.” Mike Newman was the CEO of Strategic Services, Stone’s biggest client, on whose board he served.

“That makes me nervous,” Dino said, closing his door. He looked at the key in his hand and pressed a button on it. The car started. “That makes me nervous, too. You think they think somebody’s going to shoot at us or put a bomb in the car?”

“It’s the CIA, Dino,” Stone replied. “It’s probably all they had.”

They made their way to Pennsylvania Avenue. “Which gate do we use?” Dino asked.

“There,” Stone said, pointing. “That’s the one you see in the movies all the time.”

Dino swung into the drive and stoppiv>ve and ed at the gate. Two uniformed officers wearing Secret Service badges approached, one on each side. Stone and Dino presented their White House IDs.

“Names?” an officer asked.

“Barrington and Bacchetti,” Dino replied. “Sounds like a delicatessen, doesn’t it?”

The officer maintained a stone face as he checked a clipboard. “Right, Mr. Barrington,” he said.

“Bacchetti,” Dino corrected him.

“Right. Straight ahead, under the portico. Somebody will meet you.”

The gate opened and Dino drove through.

“Slowly,” Stone said. “I want to take this in.”

“It’s not our first time here, you know.” They had attended a White House dinner a couple of years before.

“I know, but I didn’t take it all in that time.”

Dino pulled to a stop under the portico, and a man on each side of the car opened the doors. One of them drove the car away, and the other opened the door to the building. They presented their IDs at a reception desk, and the young man who had opened the door led them down a hallway until they came to an elevator. When they got in, he pressed an unmarked button and stepped out of the car. “You’ll be met,” he said.

The elevator rose; Stone couldn’t be sure how far. He didn’t know the car had stopped until the doors opened. They stepped into a broad hallway, and a man in a dark suit with a small badge of some sort on his lapel waved them to a sofa against the wall. “Please be seated. Someone will come for you shortly.”

They sat. A little way down the hall another Secret Service agent stood at a loose parade rest before a large door.

They had been on the sofa for perhaps five minutes when the elevator door opened, and the first lady of the United States stepped out, followed closely by Holly Barker. The first lady was also the director of Central Intelligence, Katharine Rule Lee, and it had taken an act of Congress to overlook the inconvenience that nepotism had been involved in her appointment.

“Mr. Barrington, Lieutenant Bacchetti,” the director said, walking over and extending her hand. “It’s good to see you both again.”

They had already leapt to their feet to renew their acquaintance, previously made at the White House dinner.

Mrs. Lee led the way down the hall to the guarded door, which was opened for her by the Secret Service agent. “Come in,” she said, sweeping into a large, handsomely furnished living room. “The president is on his way back from the West Coast and will be here in time for dinner. In the meantime, what would you like to drink?”

“Mr. Barrington will have a Knob Creek on the rocks,” Holly said to a man in a white jacket, “and Lieutenant Bacchetti will have a Johnnie Walker Black the same way.”

“I see you’ve been drinking with them,” the first lady observed.

Stone sipped his drink slowly and had a look around. It was the living room of an upper-class American family, complete with good paintings and family photographs in silver frames on the grand piano. He wondered when somebody would get around to why he and Dino were there.

“I understand you’re now a partner at Woodman and Weld,” the first lady said.

“For about a year,” Stone replied. “For a long time previously I was of counsel to the firm, and I worked from my home office. I still do.”

“What sort of clients do you work for?” she asked.

“My largest client is Strategic Services,” he said.

“I know them, of course.”

“I also serve on their board.”

“Mike Newman is a good man,” she said. “Almost as good as his predecessor.”

Stone was about to agree when the door opened, and the president of the United States breezed in, followed by a man carrying his luggage. “Good evening, all,” he said.

Everyone but his wife leapt to their feet and made the appropriate greetings.

“You’re early,” his wife said.

“Not inconveniently so, I hope. Will you all excuse me while I get out of this suit?” Without waiting for a reply, he walked into another room and closed the door behind him.

Mrs. Lee looked at her watch. “They must have had a hell of a tailwind,” she said.

“West to east will do that for you,” Stone observed. “It’s tougher going the other way.”

“Oh, that’s right, you’re a pilot, and I understand you’ve moved up to a jet. We will want to hear about that.”

“Of course,” Stone replied.

“We may as well wait until he’s back before I brief you.”

Stone nodded. He was nursing his drink, wanting a clear head for this meeting, whatever it was about.

The president came back wearing a cardigan sweater, and the butler was waiting for him with a drink. He collapsed in a large armchair that Stone had avoided, correctly guessing it had a regular occupant.

“How was your flight down?” he asked Stone.

“Uneventful, Mr. President.”

“At home, we like to be called Kate and Will,” the president said. “Uneventful is the best kind. I miss flying. The Secret Service won’t let me, you know. They can’t get a team of a dozen agents onto my Malibu, and the required jet fighter team wouldn’t be able to fly slowly enough to escort me.”

“I can see the problem.”

“I’m out of here in another eighteen months, though, and I’ve sworn to fly home to Georgia in my own airplane. Fuck the Secret Service and the Air Force.”

Stone laughed. “Only you can get away with that.”

“Will,” his wife said, “I think I’d better get to why Mr. Barrington and Lieutenant Bacchetti are our guests this evening.”