Another slight shrug. “Not a problem.”
“You sure?”
“I’ve never liked her anyway,” Marsha says. “Not a problem.”
“Good,” Parker says. “I need you to start right away.”
“Fine,” she says.
“Great,” he says. He rattles off a series of digits. “That’s my direct line at the White House. Give me a call in thirty minutes and I’ll give you what I know, and we’ll proceed from there.”
“Deal,” she says.
Marsha gets up, and Parker says, “Ask you one more question?”
“You’re not on the clock yet, so yeah, ask away.”
“Who’s Pershing? You know, the guy this park was named after.”
For the first time since he had met this killer, she smiles.
“What is this, a joke? General John Joseph ‘Black Jack’ Pershing. Head of the American Expeditionary Force during the First World War. Chased Pancho Villa through Mexico earlier but never caught him. You need anything else?”
“No,” Parker says. “Go along, and don’t be late calling.”
Marsha says, “I won’t,” and she walks away, and like snipers everywhere, she quickly blends in with the crowds and trees and disappears.
Parker takes that as a very good sign.
CHAPTER 17
AT THE WESTBROOK Horse Farm just outside of the rural Virginia town of Campton, a forty-minute drive from the White House, Scotty parks our Suburban next to two other black, identical-looking Suburbans situated in a dirt lot surrounded by a chest-high white wooden fence.
I get out and Scotty tries to catch up with me as I stride over to the First Lady’s three-person security detail, standing in a group like little animals huddling together for protection, and I lose my professional composure and attitude and let them have it for about three wasted minutes, yelling and jabbing my right arm at them like I was about to step over and punch each of them in the throat.
The detail, two women and a young man, take it without flinching, and then I stop, take a deep breath, and say, “That wasn’t necessary. My apologies. I’ve wasted time. Pamela, give me a briefing.”
Pamela Smithson steps forward. She’s blond and barely made the weight and height requirements for female Secret Service agents, but she’s an expert in hand-to-hand combat, and at some agent’s birthday party last year, I saw her take some clown from Homeland Security who had been harassing her and toss him into a swimming pool.
“CANARY wanted to come out here for a couple of hours of horseback riding,” she explains. “She finds it relaxing, and her doctor recommends it for her as part of her recovery.”
Around us are millions of dollars’ worth of barns, outbuildings, fencing, and lots of horses. This area is set aside from the main area of stables. I can see a number of children at play with ponies and horses in a corral about thirty meters away.
“What’s going on over there?” I ask.
Pamela says, “Part of the stables here are owned by a charity—Green Grass for Kids—that brings inner-city kids and others with special needs to the farm, gets them some fresh air, lets them see what horses are all about. It’s one of CANARY’s favorite charities.”
“Okay, run me through what happened.”
Pamela looks back at the other two agents—Tanya Glenn, a heavyset African-American woman, and Brian Zahn, a slim guy who doesn’t look like he’s old enough to shave—and she says, “Once the news got out about Atlanta, the First Lady dumped her schedule for the day. She wanted to come out here for a relaxing ride.”
“So there was no prep, no sweep, nothing made ready.”
Tanya speaks up. “We didn’t have the time … and after being on her detail as long as we’ve been, you know that when CANARY makes a decision, that’s it. She wanted to go riding. She went riding. She says this is one of the only two places in the world where she can relax.”
“What time was this?”
Pamela glances at her watch. “Near three hours ago.”
I say, “All three of you have horseback riding experience. So why weren’t you with her?”
The wind shifts and I hear kids squealing with laughter and joy from many meters away. Tanya says, “We always go with her, hanging back or riding ahead. But not today … she wanted to be alone, and she said she’d be back in sixty minutes.”
“Why wasn’t I notified when she didn’t return?”
Pamela looks both defiant and upset. “Orders.”
“From whom?”
“The President.”
“Tell me more,” I say.
“Just when she was overdue, and wasn’t answering her phone, that’s when I was contacted by the communications officer on Air Force One. I talked with Jackson Thiel, the head of the President’s detail. He told me to hang on for a second. I did just that. Then the President came on the line and told me to stand down, that he would take care of it.”
“And he told you not to call me?”
Pamela looks miserable now. “He told me … that I should keep quiet and not tell anyone. Anyone at all.”
I bite my lower lip and don’t say anything for a moment, knowing with sadness that Pamela’s career and those of the rest of the detail have crashed and burned. No matter. Depending on how this is going to play out, my career is probably going to scream right into the ground next to them.
“Where do you think she might be?” I ask.
Tanya speaks up again, and I note that Brian, the only male and the newest one on the detail, is keeping quiet. She says, “Sally, there’s miles of trails out there … you go down one and it branches off, and then it branches off again, and goes on … she could be anyplace. My guess is … she switched her phone off, or dumped it, and is just sitting under a tree being miserable.”
“Does she have her panic button with her?”
Pamela says, “Absolutely.”
Every protectee has a hidden panic button—the President’s is an Air Force One challenge coin he carries in his pocket at all times, the First Lady’s is on a small brooch she wears on a gold chain around her neck—and when it’s pressed, it sends off a strong beacon alarm and a GPS signal that gives out the exact coordinates down to one foot.
“But it hasn’t been activated.”
“No,” Tanya says. “It hasn’t.”
I glance once more at this miserable-looking trio of agents, who’ve done something even worse than having their protectee injured or killed: they’ve lost their protectee.
To Pamela, I say, “When you have a moment, call the supervisors for your replacement shifts. Make up a plausible story, but tell them that all three of you are staying on duty. We need to keep this as close-in as possible.”
Pamela nods and I say, “All right, do you have a map of the area?”
Pamela goes over to the hood of the near Suburban, where a map is spread out, and she points to a marked area where the parking lot is located. She jabs a finger and says, “Since that call with the President, we’ve gone out as runners down the near trails, seeing if we can spot anything, one of us always staying behind in case she shows up.”