Radclyffe - Code of Honor

Tom’s face contorted for a moment, an oddity for him. He was the epitome of calm in every situation and rarely showed any emotion, even in a crisis. Today, though, anger tinged his smooth dark features with an undertone of red. “I guess I’m the last one to know.”

“That was my call.” Cam had been expecting a confrontation after Tom had been excluded from the recent apprehension of a terrorist bent on assassinating the president—the man Tom was responsible for protecting. She suspected Lucinda had arranged for the three of them to have a few moments alone to sort things out. “By now, you’ve probably read the after-action report and can understand why you were out of the loop.”

Tom remained standing, but his voice was calm. “I understand that one of the principal subjects under suspicion was named Tom, but I’m not sure I follow the connection to me.”

Cam understood his anger. She would have been furious if someone had excluded her from an operation for any reason, but particularly if she was under suspicion. Trust was everything in their position. Personally, she would have been affronted and outraged, but professionally, she would have acknowledged the necessity of protecting not only the operation but, ultimately, the president. Their decisions were not personal, couldn’t be personal, and Tom knew that as much as she did. Right now he was reacting as a man whose honor had been impugned, and the only answer was to reach out to the professional in him. “Every member of the team knew you weren’t involved, but the president’s life was at stake. The right call—the only call—had to be one that guaranteed security, a hundred and ten percent. Like I said, my call.”

A muscle in Tom’s jaw bunched, and Cam wondered if she had lost a friend. She’d worked closely with Tom when she’d been in charge of Blair’s protection detail and would continue to work closely with him as long as he headed PPD. But duty trumped friendship. Duty trumped everything except one. Except Blair. Where Blair’s life and happiness were concerned, Cam suspected she would do anything necessary to preserve them. Anything except betray what meant most to both of them, and because she knew Blair would never ask that, she never worried about what she might need to do.

Finally, Tom spoke. “I’d like to think I would’ve made the same call.”

“You would have,” Cam said quietly. “And I probably would’ve been just as pissed as you are now.”

He smiled wryly. “Yeah. I think you would have.” His shoulders relaxed as he turned toward the sideboard and poured himself a cup of coffee.

Silence fell over the room until, a moment later, Lucinda arrived, followed by Paula Stark—the chief of Blair’s protection detail, Evyn Daniels—another PPD agent, and Wes Masters—the chief of the White House Medical Unit. Paula, Evyn, and Wes had all been part of the detail that apprehended Jennifer Pattee, a nurse in the WHMU who had been part of a plot to assassinate the president. She’d been captured a few days earlier with a stolen vial of avian flu that had been genetically mutated to enhance its transmission from human to human and was, even now, being studied at a Level 4 lab in Bethesda to ascertain all its properties. They didn’t know who was behind the plot or how far the leak penetrated into the upper echelons of White House security, but Lucinda had appointed Cam to find out. This meeting—the entire operation—was off the record, because the records were no longer trustworthy.

Lucinda wasted no time. “The president is planning to embark on a cross-country campaign trip mid-month. He’ll land in Chicago for a fund-raiser first, then travel by air and train throughout the Midwest, where the opposition’s influence is the strongest right now. He’ll be on the ground most of the time, and he’ll be doing a lot of hand shaking.”

Cam pictured the crowds, the impromptu photo ops, the last-minute itinerary changes. The president would be exposed, vulnerable, and Blair would be right by his side in the hot zone. When Kennedy had been assassinated, the governor of Texas, sitting in the same vehicle, had been wounded too. During the attempt on Reagan, the White House press secretary was shot and permanently paralyzed.

If Cam ordered Blair to remain behind, the president would support her decision, even though Blair had been a powerful, positive influence in his first election campaign. Family was always an important part of any platform, but never more than now when Russo was running on a family values ticket. The president’s family was his daughter. She was smart and popular with voters of all ages, but especially with the young and women—critical segments of the electoral population. Andrew was often typecast as being part of the liberal-white-male elite, despite the fact that his personal wealth was far surpassed by Franklin Russo’s. Blair helped humanize him, and the president needed to be seen as a man of the people.

Cam wouldn’t demand that Blair stay home— couldn’t —for any number of reasons. The choice wasn’t hers to make, and even if it had been, the one thing she would never do was cage Blair to ease her own fears.

Blair said, “What are we going to do about his security?”

“Evyn will lead the advance teams, and we’ll do exactly what we’ve always done,” Cam said. “We’ll know every inch of his route and be prepared to divert to secondary routes. We’ll keep his exact movements among the people in this room. No one else will know more than they need to until right before we deploy.”

“What about possible follow-up to the bioterrorism? Are we sure there isn’t more of that stuff around?” Paula Stark asked. The chief of Blair’s detail looked younger than her thirty years with her cap of dark hair and smooth regular features. She wasn’t young in experience, having come under fire and been recently wounded. Recovered now, she was intense and focused. “He’s going to be surrounded by hundreds of people every day. That would be a perfect time to release one of these agents.”

“We’ll interview the people at the lab where the agent went missing,” Cam said. “Find out if we have everything they lost.” She glanced at Wes Masters, a navy captain and the president’s doctor. “I’m scheduled to fly down there tomorrow. I want you with me on this.”

“Of course,” Wes said.

“I’ll also be interviewing Jennifer Pattee again,” Cam said. “So far, she hasn’t given us anything. Maybe a few days behind bars will have changed her mind.”

“We have to assume secondary targets,” Stark said quietly.

Cam’s chest tightened. If the president was invulnerable, assassins would likely shift to secondary targets, and the most high-profile secondary target would be Blair. “We’ll have to limit the number of people at potential risk and exclude them from the hot zone, especially when—”

“Don’t even think about including me in there,” Blair said as she sipped her coffee.

Stark wisely said nothing.

Cam said, “How about you wait a few weeks—”

“No,” Blair said. “My presence with the president on these trips is expected, and any deviation from the expected is only going to let the other side know we anticipate something more is coming. We need them to think they still have the upper hand.”

Cam couldn’t argue. Blair was right. She’d been involved in this game since she was a teenager. She understood not only the politics but the strategy of those who were opposed to her father, politically and ideologically.

“I agree,” Lucinda said, placing her cup and saucer onto a two-hundred-year-old end table. “We’ll continue the public information releases as usual, but hold back what we can. I’ll handle that. Director Roberts will be in charge.” She walked to the door and paused, her smile polite as ever but her eyes hard blue stones. “Everyone knows what needs to be done. Enjoy the rest of the holidays.”