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“We’re back on the record, Robin Redbreast,” C. Harry said. “The last time you sucker punched me with that hypothetical business, I swore I’d never let you do it again.”
“Very well. Then hypothetically speaking on the record: What if a member of the President’s family was in the hospital in Mississippi and the President wanted to visit her without attracting the attention of the W
hite House Press Corps—”
“And having it come out she’s a boozer, you mean?”
“If an allegation was made that that fine old lady had a drinking problem—”
“The voters may not like it?”
“. . . that the President and the First Lady were doing their best to cope with—”
“With a remarkable lack of success—”
“. . . and that, despite being fully aware of the pain it would cause to not only that poor, sick old lady, but to the First Lady and the President himself, a certain journalist wrote the story anyway—”
“News is news, Robin,” C. Harry said.
“. . . because he believes news is news, and to hell with compassion—”
“Nice try, Robin,” C. Harry said.
“. . . and this story would get out—about this hypothetical journalist, I mean—because other members of the White House Press Corps, jealous of our hypothetical journalist’s scoop, would fall all over themselves to paint our hypothetical journalist as cold-hearted and unfeeling. They might even go so far as to suggest that it wasn’t really a scoop.”
“Meaning what?” C. Harry demanded.
“That our hypothetical journalist had paid for his information, bribed some underpaid White House staffer for it. If that hypothetical happened, of course, the Secret Service would have to investigate. Paying government employees to give you information they’re not supposed to give you, as I’m sure you know, Harry, is a Class A felony.”
C. Harry considered everything for a long moment, and then asked, “Is that what it is, he’s going to Mississippi to see the First Mother-in-Law?”
“I regret,” Hoboken said formally, “that there is nothing vis-à-vis the President’s travel plans that I can tell you at this time, Mr. Whelan.”
“Screw you, Robin Redbreast,” Mr. Whelan said, and hung up.
[FIVE]
The Portico
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W.
Washington, D.C.
1215 14 June 2007
When he walked back to the White House from the Old Ebbitt, Sean O’Grogarty was quickly passed onto the White House grounds by the uniformed Secret Service guards. Not only did they know him but he had the proper identification tag hanging around his neck.
As he was walking up the curving drive to the portico, intending to go to “the shed”—where Yukon drivers on call waited—a Secret Service agent of the presidential security detail intercepted him.
He signaled with an index finger for O’Grogarty to follow him, and led him to a men’s room just inside the building.
“Wait here,” he said. “Someone wants to see you.”
Supervisory Secret Service Agent Robert J. Mulligan appeared five minutes later, checked to see that they were alone in the room, and then leaned his considerable bulk against the door to ensure they were left that way.
“How did it go, Sean?” Mulligan asked.
