“I believe you know Special Agent Alex Ford. He’s waiting there for you.”
Stone gazed at Chapman. “She’s with me.”
The man looked at her. “Agent Chapman?” She nodded. “ID please.”
She produced it.
“Let’s go.”
They were escorted through the front gates, although Chapman had to surrender her gun.
“I want it back,” she said to the confiscating officer, “in the exact same condition. I’m very partial to that weapon.”
“Yes ma’am,” responded the man politely.
They passed by a backhoe and a crew of men in green-and-khaki uniforms who were removing the stump of a tree inside the White House grounds. One of the men winked at Chapman. She scowled in response. As they entered the building and were led down the hall, Chapman whispered, “So this is the White House, eh?”
“Never been here?” Stone asked.
“No, you?”
Stone didn’t answer.
At that moment Alex Ford stepped from a doorway and joined them. He nodded to the agent escort. “Chuck, I’ve got it. Thanks.”
“Okay, Alex.” Chuck broke off and headed back the way they had come.
Stone made introductions and then said, “Why are we here?”
“I understand you met with Sir James McElroy earlier?” said Alex.
“Sir? He didn’t tell me he’d been knighted.”
“Didn’t really want it,” remarked Chapman. “But you don’t turn down the queen, now do you?”
Stone said, “Yes, I met with him.”
“Just so you know, the decision for you to come back inside has not been very popular with certain other agencies.”
“Including yours?”
“And including some other folks here.”
“Who are we meeting with?”
“Chief of staff and the VP.”
“I’m impressed.”
“I think the VP is there to give it a bit more gravitas.”
“Have they been fully briefed?”
“Don’t know. Above my pay grade.”
They arrived at a door. Alex knocked.
“Enter,” a voice said.
“Ready?” said Alex, and Stone nodded.
Chapman adjusted her cuffs and whipped back a stray bit of hair. She muttered, “What the hell have I got myself into?”
“I was thinking the same thing,” commented Stone.
CHAPTER 15
FROM THE ANTEROOM THEY WERE ADMITTED into the office of the vice president. He was a tall, white-haired and well-fed man with a reassuring smile and a strong handshake, no doubt built up over thousands of campaign stops. The chief of staff was short and wiry with eyes that continually swept the space around him, like a radar array.
It suddenly occurred to Stone that the VP being here made sense beyond providing gravitas. He was on the president’s National Security Council. Still, Stone was actually surprised the man would agree to meet with him directly and not through an underling. But then again, it was hard to refuse your president.
The pleasantries were made and quickly dispensed with. Alex Ford stood by the door, a security presence now and not a friend.
The VP said, “The president asked that we meet with you.” He nodded in Chapman’s direction. “With you both. We obviously want to get to the bottom of this, uh, delicate matter as quickly as possible.”
In his mind Stone translated this into plain English. What the VP had actually just communicated was, “This is not my idea, and though I’m being somewhat loyal to my president I won’t take the blame if it blows up. That’s why the chief of staff is here. My boss might go down, but not me.”
Stone wondered if either man had been made aware of the original plan to ship Stone off to Mexico to help deal with the Russian cartel nightmare. American vice presidents often had been kept in the dark by the chief executive. Chiefs of staff typically knew everything the president did.
The VP inclined his head at the chief of staff, who held out a black leather card case to Stone. “Your credentials,” said the man.
Stone slowly took the offered item, opened it and gazed at his face, which was staring back at him from the depths of the official photo that was part of his new commission. He wondered when they had taken his picture. Perhaps when he was sitting in the room at the NIC, which meant that Riley Weaver knew all about this. He had to smile when he saw his typed name:
Oliver Stone.
Next to the photo was his ID card. On it, he had officially become a field agent of the national coordinator for security, infrastructure protection and counterterrorism. This all made sense, Stone thought. The national coordinator worked within the National Security Council and reported to the president through the national security advisor. There was a link to the White House, but with one step in between. The president was covering all the bases. Just as his savvy VP was now doing. He flipped to the next sleeve in the case and there was his shiny badge with the agency insignia.
He said, “Interesting choice of agencies.”
The VP smiled his winning and inscrutable smile. “Yes, isn’t it?”
Yet Stone had managed to read a thousand such inscrutable faces. And the VP’s was no exception.
He believes this is all insane, and he’s probably right.
The chief of staff added, “It carries the same weight as DHS and the FBI. If not a bit more, actually. There are few doors that won’t open. And most of them are in this building.”
Well then, let’s hope I won’t have to try and open any doors here, thought Stone. He said to the chief of staff, “You serve at his pleasure.” Before the startled man could say anything, Stone turned to the VP. “And you obviously trust your running mate’s judgment, or at least hope he’s not making a serious miscalculation by conferring this authority on me.”
Both men now appeared to look at Stone in a different light.
The VP nodded. “He’s a good man. So I hope that his trust is justified when this is all said and done. I assume you feel the same way.”
Stone pocketed his new credentials without answering.
The chief of staff said, “You will be sworn in after this meeting by a representative of the national coordinator’s office. Thus you will also have arresting authority. You are also entitled to a sidearm. If you so choose,” he added in a dubious tone.
It was clear the chief of staff too thought it was madness to be handing over this much authority to a man like him. Stone briefly wondered how long the chief of staff had argued with the president over this decision before the latter had won out.
Stone glanced at Chapman. “My friend from MI6 here has a very nice Walther PPK. I think that will do for now.”
“All right.” The VP rose, signaling an end to the meeting. Stone knew that his working hours were measured in fifteen-minute increments and he had added incentive to have this particular encounter over.
Wait much longer and the smell of all this might permanently attach to you, sir.
They all shook hands. The VP said, “Good luck, Agent Stone.”
As they followed Alex back down the hall, Chapman said wryly, “Hell, if I knew it was this easy to become an American agent I would’ve come over here a long time ago.”
“It did go a bit too smoothly,” said Stone as he eyed Alex.