Taylor Smith - Guilt By Silence

A murmur went through the crowd in the lobby and heads nodded.

“And now, ladies and gentlemen, it is my very great pleasure to extend a warm welcome and our deepest appreciation to Mr. and Mrs. Angus McCord, and to call upon them to open this fine new addition to McCord General Hospital.”

A round of applause accompanied Gus McCord to the front of the room. His face became flushed as he looked around and waited for the clapping to die down, but it went on and on. He grinned sheepishly and rubbed the bump on his nose, then looked over at his wife and shrugged. Turning back, he raised his hands and made a dampening wave.

“Thank you. Thank you all,” he called above the noise. But the group showed no sign of letting up. Gus passed his hand over his brush cut as the applause rolled on. Then he seemed to have an inspirational flash.

“Shh!” he whispered loudly, his finger to his lips. “You’ll wake the babies!”

The audience laughed, but the noise finally died down. There was a long silence as they waited expectantly for him to say something, but he seemed to be lost in thought, examining his shoes and shuffling awkwardly. One or two nervous throat-clearing sounds rose up from the room. His voice, when he spoke at last, was soft.

“I have a confession to make,” he said, eyes still on his toes. “It’s not an easy thing to say, for an old coot like me. But I’m here to tell you that I’ve fallen in love again.”

A few chuckles sprinkled the room.

“The lady in question,” McCord went on, stronger now, looking up at the crowd, “has the face of an angel and a form so exquisite it takes your breath away. Of course, there are those who will say she’s too young for me, that these May-December romances never work out. But I don’t care. Because when I look in her eyes, I know that she is the culmination of everything that is good and beautiful in this world. Her name is Jessica Boehm, ladies and gentlemen. She is five days old and she weighs just three and a half pounds. But she’s a spunky little lady, and I am the luckiest man in the world for having met her.”

McCord reached out a hand to the mother of the baby he had been caressing in the isolette. “And this is Mary Boehm, the mother of that wonderful young lady down the hall.” Mrs. Boehm, tears streaming down her smiling cheeks, held on tightly to Gus’s hand as the audience applauded warmly.

McCord’s other arm reached out to embrace his wife, who had been standing off to his left. “And this beautiful lady, for those of you who don’t already know her, is my wife, Nancy. We have been married for forty years. She is my courage, my inspiration and my best friend. She is also the mother of our four sons and the grandmother of five beautiful grandchildren. We have a good life. But like the parents of little Jessica, we have known the fear and pain of a baby’s illness.”

He and Nancy exchanged glances and squeezed hands.

“I believe,” McCord went on, “that the sheer force of Nancy’s mother-love saw our sick children through their darkest hours. But sometimes, when a baby is born too soon, or with special problems, even a mother’s love needs a little help. This clinic is dedicated in ensuring that even the littlest ones like Jessica will survive and grow and thrive.”

There was a round of applause.

“I would ask my wife, Nancy, and Mary Boehm—two of the finest and most determined mothers I know,” McCord said, “to jointly do the honors of cutting the ribbon to open the McCord Neonatal Clinic.”

Mary Boehm’s surprise showed through her tears, but she quickly wiped them away as Gus stepped back. Nancy McCord moved beside her, offering a smile and a hug, and then handed Mrs. Boehm a pair of large surgical shears and held up the ribbon. Mary Boehm’s hand was trembling as she reached out and snipped the wide red sash. It fell to a cheer and a hearty round of applause.

Dieter Pflanz looked around the room and noted that several full-grown men were conspicuously swallowing lumps in their throats. There wasn’t a dry eye in the place. For a fleeting second, he felt the instinctive bristle rise up his spine as the crowd rushed forward to surround McCord, but then he relaxed again. It was obvious that there was nothing but goodwill toward Gus McCord in that room.

Watching the milling crowd, scanning those who were approaching McCord from all sides, Pflanz paid little attention to Jerry Siddon, who had moved next to him.

“That was a neat trick, wasn’t it?” Siddon said.

Pflanz glanced down at him. “A neat trick?”

Siddon waved his hand toward McCord. “That performance,” he said, grinning. “And turning the ceremony over to the baby’s mother. Focusing the attention on himself by seeming to turn it on someone else. Very neatly done.”

Pflanz arched one eyebrow. “You’re very cynical today, young Siddon.”

“Not cynical, just overawed at the man’s skill.” He glanced up at Pflanz, who was watching him closely. “You know what I mean. This guy’s tough as nails. You know it, and so do I. That’s how he made his fortune and his name. But look at him now.”

They both turned back to McCord, who was guffawing with a group of old cronies, his hands buried deep in his pants pockets.

“He looks like he just drove in from the farm in the family pickup,” Siddon continued. “Yet this is the same man who, in a few hours, will be standing toe-to-toe with the sharks and vultures in Washington. The man who may have done more than any other American to throw the Reds out of the Kremlin. I tell you, Dieter, this is the one. This is the guy we’ve got to put in the White House. He’s the one who can make things happen.”

The corners of Pflanz’s mouth angled up ever so slightly. He doesn’t need to be elected, Jerry boy, he thought. Things are happening already.

When Frank’s secretary tapped on her door a few minutes after she had stormed out of his office, Mariah was standing at the window, staring down on Langley Woods situated beyond the high fence surrounding the Agency’s headquarters.

“Mariah?” Pat hesitated, her hand on the door. Finally, she stepped in and shut it behind her. “What happened? Frank’s in there bellowing on the phone and you look like you’ve seen a ghost. What’s going on around here?”

Mariah glanced at Pat and then stared back across the trees, denuded now of their leaves. It was a bleak landscape this time of year.

Tucker’s secretary was one of her closest friends, as was Frank himself. But Patty Bonelli and Frank were also an item—undeclared, discreet. It was a relationship that only Mariah and a few others in the office knew about. Mariah wasn’t altogether certain when Pat and Frank’s relationship outside the office had begun—for the first few years after his wife died, Frank had been too preoccupied with finishing the job of raising his kids to have time for anything else—but it had been going on for some time now. They seemed to be comfortable with it just as it was, neither one showing any sign of needing or wanting a more public commitment.

There was no way of knowing whether Pat was aware of the covert operation Frank had alluded to. As a senior secretary, she was privy to many of the compartmented cases that Frank and Mariah had worked on in the past, providing clerical support. But Frank had said that Operations was leading on this, and they always kept knowledge of their files to a minimum. If they had allowed Tucker in, it could only be because they had required his expertise. It was doubtful Pat knew anything, even if she were prepared to defy Frank and tell Mariah. On the other hand, Mariah thought, if Chaney had stumbled onto something, then it wasn’t as closely held a secret as Frank thought.

“Do you know if Frank has been working on any major cases with the Ops people over the past ten months?”