The Meeting

Between 9 and 11 PM, on September 12th, 2002, the four regular Security guards at the Dulles Private Aviation Center in Washington, DC, all called in sick. Their places were taken over by last-minute replacements. The rest of the night staff was told about "food poisoning" at a birthday luncheon for the senior security guard. At 1:55 AM, the six people on the night staff were called into the manager's office and given a 20 minute lecture on his new plan for making the night shift more efficient.

At 2:00 AM on September 13, 2002, a black Chevy suburban with Virginia plates pulled through the gate to the field and rolled up to Hanger 10 at the Private Aviation zone at Dulles in Washington, DC. The wide doors of the hanger opened slightly and the Suburban moved smoothly inside, coming to a halt next to the Dassault Falcon 900EX that gleamed in the center. Behind it, the hanger doors slid shut again.

Three men, fit in their black suits, emerged and made a pattern search around the Falcon and the hanger. A fourth went into the plane itself with a small electronic device. In less than a minute all four reported their zones clear. The driver of the Suburban got out and opened the back door.

"Okay, sir," he said. A short man in a heavy overcoat carrying a locked document case got out and walked briskly up the stairs and into the plane. The driver went with him to help him settle in for the night.

Finally, seeing that all was secure inside, the driver sent a brief signal in clear on his radio, "Staccato. Staccato. Staccato."

In three concentric rings of security spreading from the hanger for a radius of more than a mile, no less than 36 agents came to full alert at their posts. Each one, regardless of the disguise that let him blend in to his surroundings, was wired into the ComNet, had a GPS locator slaved to their vital signs, and carried, besides a side-arm, a case of one kind or another holding a small submachine gun with extra clips. Above, at 50,000 feet, four F-16s held station.

Back in the hanger, two of the three agents that had run the initial security checks, changed into the blue pants, white shirts and red ties that were favored by the pilots of private planes that made Dulles their hub. Then they boarded the 900EX, ran a host of system checks and signaled their satisfaction with the state of the aircraft.

The man in the back of the Falcon finished reading a thick briefing paper he had started an hour before in his office, and then settled back into the tobacco brown leather easy chair at the rear of the cabin for some rest.

For everybody else involved in the operation, it was going to be a very long night.

The rising whine of the three Honeywell turbofan engines woke him at 6:45, but the agents had pulled down all the shades so he couldn't see as the Falcon slipped out of the hanger and onto the tarmac. It came to a halt across from the field entrance of the Private Aviation Center and waited, engines at whisper quiet, for the second passenger.

The man on the plane didn't have to see to know how the limo came up, how the gates rolled open and the limo drove onto the tarmac. He didn't have to see the gaunt, tall man with the large shock of gray hair clamber out of the limo and make his way up the stairs, stooping as he entered the plane. Gawky and clumsy despite his constant attention to sports, the tall man irritated him to no end, but this was politics and you didn't always get to choose who you spent time with. In fact, you almost never got to choose who you spent time with.

"This is all a bit cloak and dagger, don't you think," said the tall man with the assumed almost European tone that belied his humbler origins.

"Sit down and don't worry. You'll have your share of photo-ops soon. You'll have so many even you will be sick of yourself."

"Right. Right. And good morning to you too," the man replied as the crew buttoned up the Falcon and it rolled down the taxiway. He sat down in the large leather armchair across from the smaller man. "I suppose we're being recorded," he said.

"As it happens, we're not. But even if we were, you'd never know it."

"Oh, and you would?"

"Look, I've got a war to run and a lot of other items on my punch list, so let's get to it. This flight's only to Boston and I'm expected back at the Oval by noon." He reached into his pocket and took out a single folded sheet of paper. Unfolding it he placed it on the table between them and handed the tall man a pen. "You know the drill. Sign it and we'll get started on the scenario."

The tall man scanned the paper and looked up. "And where's my copy?" he said as the plane pulled onto the runway and, clearance granted long before, immediately began to accelerate down the runway.

"Funny," the other man said. "Very funny. You don't want more than one copy of this. In fact, you don't want even that."

"Well, I don't have to like it," the tall man said scrawling his name on the paper and pushing it back across the table. "My wife is going to like it even less."

"With all due respect, you wife will shut up and play along all the way through November. That is if she wants to go on being rich and powerful. You might take thought along the same lines. We're calling your marker. That's all there is to it. You'll be getting on and off a lot of airplanes over the next couple of years. Look on this paper as your maintenance guarantee."

The tall man gave him a hard look but settled back in his seat as the plane went wheels up and began to climb and bank towards the north east. "Agreed," he said with a sigh, "agreed. So how's it going to go?"

"You'll announce soon and find yourself in a pack of, well, some carefully selected opponents; a real circus this year. They represent everyone in your party from the race hustlers to the UFO freaks. We've even got one shirt-sleeve Huey Long type from the northeast. He'll do the populist number and he'll do it well. We've been prepping him for years. You'll lag for a long time and then, when the time is right, we'll have the populist self-destruct and most of his kids will come over to you. Kennedy legacy and all that. You'll be a lock long before the convention.

"You'll run on your record but not on your record. You know what I mean? Then you'll let your wife sort of have her head and run her mouth off and on just to keep things interesting.

"You can choose you're own running mate, but make it someone harmless. "

"Funding?"

"You'll have plenty. They'll hock their kid's college funds to fund you. But if you get short, we'll have some of your rich 'supporters' write some big checks."

"My endorsements?"

"The usual. Times of both coasts. Those anchors. Organized labor. Jewish intellectuals. Media of all sorts. A couple of semi-bogus police organizations. And all the usual factions that we've placed in your party over the years. It'll be solid at first and then we'll split off a bit here and a bit there. You'll struggle and you'll look even or like a winner in a lot of the polls. We'll fudge those to make it look close right up until the finish."

"And then?"

"And then? Blow-out, of course. We've got a war on our hands and we can't afford to stage another squeaker. Too upsetting."

"What if they really go for me?"

"They're not going to 'go for you,' silly. They're going to 'go against me.' Is that clear?"

"Well, that's a sentiment I can understand."

"Cut the sarcasm. It was never your strong suit. Let's go over the details. Like I said, I have to be back at the Oval by noon and we won't have a chance to see each other like this until well after November."

The tall man nodded and hunched over the table. The jet arced away out over the ocean and the Potomac fell below and then far behind. He looked at the man who was taking a thick three-ring binder from his case. "Just one other thing...."

"Yes?"

"My end."

"You know what your end is."

"Right. But if I'm going to do this thing, I want to hear you say it before I just hand everything over to you."

The man placed the binder between them on the table. He looked straight into the tall man's eyes and said, "The fat guy resigns in 2005. Health and all that. You become senior senator for as long as you want the position. Ambassador to the Court of St. James after that. Your wife, in 2009, gets to play at the head of the table in the United Nations.

"Now, do you want some coffee? I could sure use some."

"Sure thing."

While waiting for the steward to bring them the coffee, the two men bent to their work.

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Posted by Vanderleun at October 23, 2004 7:18 AM | TrackBack
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