Falls the Shadow

By Anne Callanan and Kathleen E. Lehew

Part 7/14

All eyes turned to follow the tall form of Ron Butterfield, Senior Agent in Charge of White House Security and Head of the President's personal detail, as he stalked his way towards the front of the briefing room. None of the agents assembled for the morning orientation said a word. A grim silence descended with only the shuffling of papers and files, the occasional clearing of a throat to breaking the tense atmosphere.

They were all professionals; they didn't need to be told the gravity of what was going to be said today. The previous briefings and current events were still fresh in their minds. This was their job; they lived it every day. Unknown shadows and threats changed nothing. They weren't looking for excuses or the direction the next attack may come from - just solutions. When the attack came, and they all knew it would, they would be ready.

With long, purposeful strides, Butterfield reached the desk. Wordlessly, he turned and leaned back against the edge. Letting his gaze move across the gathered faces, he gave them the moment to collect their thoughts, settle their emotions.

The frustrated anger hovering in the atmosphere was almost palpable.

Butterfield scowled. He understood their rage, the frustration borne of an inability to strike back, to give a name to the shadows haunting them. He shared it, although he knew, as they did, that it was a useless emotional road to take. No amount of fury was going to do any good unless it was focused.

Time to motivate them just a bit more. "The situation is totally unacceptable," he told them in a level, carefully controlled voice.

Nobody disagreed with him. Faces already clouded with uncertainty hardened, welcoming the challenge he offered. The situation they found themselves in, practically under siege, was unprecedented in the long history of the Secret Service. Nobody doubted his or her abilities. The lack of information was the only stumbling block to resolution.

The time for reacting was over.

Sensing their renewed determination, Butterfield nodded, more than satisfied. The NTSB report had shocked them all to the core. How do you fight or protect from what you couldn't even see, let alone comprehend? The deliberate downing of Marine One, followed so soon after by the senseless death of yet another one of their own, had shaken their confidence. They were good people, professionals knocked off their stride by the unknown.

Butterfield's lips tightened. Giving the unknown just a partial recognition had gone a long way towards giving his people some of that lost confidence back. Taking it one step further, he asked curtly, "Carlyle, you have a report?"

Sliding out from behind his chair, Dale Carlyle stood. "Yes, sir. I ran a probability analysis on all White House perimeter breaches going back two years. There is a pattern."

The attention level in the room went up a notch, with all eyes and expectations turning to Carlyle. A slight, grim curve at one corner of his mouth was the only indication of his satisfaction. Catching Butterfield's nod of consent, he continued, "There was nothing out of the ordinary till about seven months ago..."

"Even the break-in regarding the President's daughter?" a single voice from the back interrupted. "She was armed."

"But unbalanced," Butterfield corrected the speaker before Carlyle could. It was a good question, but one of the few they had a concrete answer to. "Continue, Dale."

"Sir." Carlyle flipped through his pages. Finding what he was looking for, he said, "It's not much, but the number of intruders detected on the grounds have nearly doubled in the last few months. What's curious is that the number of detainees has not followed that same curve."

"We're being tested," Butterfield concluded. He waited for someone to try and contradict him.

Nobody did.

"Yes, sir." Carlyle nodded. "That was my conclusion as well."

"It's a good one. The stories of the intruders caught have all checked out?"

"To the line. The usual collection of the mentally questionable, the politically motivated and ill-advised college pranks."

A few chuckles greeted the last point ticked off. Pledge week was usually a time of stepped-up security and more than a touch of forbidding amusement. There was nothing quite like scaring the living tar out of a drunken fraternity or sorority pledge caught doing what they would never have contemplated sober.

More than a few heated discussions had erupted over exactly who was going to have the pleasure of calling the kid's parents.

Butterfield let them laugh, then waved them silent and asked, "Nothing at all conclusive on the getaways?"

Carlyle shook his head. "No, sir. Just that statistically there are far too many."

"And too good," someone added. "They're in and out before we can catch them."

"Way too good," another voice muttered.

Where there had been laughter a moment before, only unhappy grumbling existed now. The Secret Service rightly prided itself on its collective skills. They were good and knew it. Someone thumbing their noses at those skills grated, and all they could do at this point was stand around and take it.

"That's enough!" Butterfield snapped, ending the sour mutterings. At this point, it wasn't what he wanted to hear. "What's the status on employee background checks?"

Caro Lindstrom stood. "Slow going, sir," she answered, not exactly keen about passing on what little she and her team had garnered. "There are fourteen-hundred civilian employees in the White House. And keeping this in-house isn't making it any easier."

"No excuses."

Caro's eyes narrowed. "I'm not making any. We'll get it done."

Butterfield sighed, rubbing his eyes and giving the young woman, and himself, a moment to settle. It was as close as he'd come to an apology. "Nothing has twigged yet?"

"No, sir. So far, no unusual financial activity or suspicious after hours movements. Nothing. We're almost down to the cleaning staff and nobody has raised any flags."

"Not what I wanted to hear."

"Me neither," Caro muttered, dropping back into her seat and scowling at nobody in particular.

Beginning to wonder why he'd even bothered showing up for this meeting, Butterfield clenched his teeth on the oath he wanted to utter. The whole siege mentality that had set in over his people and the West Wing in general was beginning to affect even him. Weighing the whole structure of events, the dire conclusion was that the still-invisible enemy had intended just that.

Mind games, and they were losing.

"In other words," he snarled, not quite able to keep the fury from his voice, "we're right back where we started."

Nobody had the courage to answer him.

"You're making me repeat myself. Not what I wanted to hear, people." Banking his irritation, Butterfield told them tightly, "I want any line of inquiry followed, no matter how ridiculous."

"The Russian connection, sir?" someone from the back asked.

"Is being looked into," was all Butterfield would admit to. He wasn't as put out at having Lord John Marbury in the loop as the Chief of Staff was, strongly suspecting that the eccentric British ambassador was one of the few aces they had, but he still didn't like it. "If anything concrete is confirmed, we'll be told."

"What about Columbian?" Caro asked cautiously. "As criminals go, the local drug lords are no happier with the President than the Red Mafia."

Butterfield hesitated for a moment, measuring her and the question before asking, "You have something, Caro?"

"Maybe. The rumors have been flying about a certain... connection between the Old World and the New. Weapons, sir," she clarified at Butterfield's questioning look. "The drug lords want to buy, the Russians, legit or otherwise, want to sell. And the conventional type isn't the only toy on the bargaining table."

"The President's stand on international controls hasn't made him very popular with the arms dealers," Carlyle added. "Conventional or otherwise, these people are not happy having their bank accounts cut into. You can't run drugs without guns."

Scowling at the word conventional and the massive can of worms that opened, Butterfield nodded at Caro and inquired coolly, "You still have connections at the FBI?"

Caro grinned. "The prodigal daughter still has some friends. A few at ATF as well."

"Keep it low-key, but see what you can find out."

"Understood, sir."

Emil Torres, Head of Detail for the First Lady, entered the room. Late, he positioned himself against the back wall and offered an apologetic shrug of his shoulders to Butterfield. His boss merely nodded in return, by silent inference acknowledging the fact that of all the agents present, Torres' particular job was the least predictable. Glancing over the shoulder of one of the juniors, quickly scanning the man's meeting notes, Torres brought himself up to speed.

Scowling, Torres realized that he hadn't missed much and not all that much had changed. Speculation piled on riddles with the life of the President caught smack in the middle. It wasn't good, and from his own perspective, even worse. He had to deal with the First Lady, and that indomitable woman wasn't about to be left in the dark over this.

Honestly, he couldn't really blame her, and more than once he had bent a few rules to keep her in the loop. Quite frankly, and he knew it bordered on the ridiculous, he had come to regard Abigail Bartlet as just one more aspect of the President's personal firewall.

Clearing his throat, Torres caught Butterfield's attention. "The perimeter breaches, sir?" he asked, all too aware he was about to add just one more piece to the already chaotic puzzle.

Butterfield scowled. They'd already covered that point. "You have something to add?"

"Not really. I agree someone's been testing us, looking for holes."

"And?"

"There may be another point, sir." Eyes narrowing speculatively, Torres watched Butterfield's expression darken, confirming his suspicions. His boss had been thinking the same thing. The verification of his guess didn't give him any sense of achievement. "Whoever they are, they're trying to get in. That much we know. They may be trying to get him out as well."

Butterfield let out a long breath, nodding.  Torres had hit on the one other point he'd wanted to bring up. "Elk Horn," he growled.

Quickly assimilating the new theory, more than a few eyes widened at that.

"Yes, sir." Torres frowned, a muscle twitching angrily in his clenched jaw as he thought about the near catastrophic accident that had occurred only a few months before. "We were this close to putting the President on Marine One, removing him from the security of the White House. If he hadn't been so adamant about not going..."

"Can you blame him?" Caro demanded a bit hotly. Like Torres, she was former FBI and more than a little inter-departmental rivalry existed between the two of them. "After what happened? He hasn't used Marine One since the accident, would you?"

Butterfield let his expression set into a mask of stone, revealing nothing and allowing his people to continue with their only halfway correct inferences. An accident of that magnitude would give anyone second thoughts about the dubious safety of air transport. He and Leo McGarry were the only ones who knew that the President's latent claustrophobia added a whole new wrinkle to the human equation.

"Especially after what happened," Torres was saying, a frustrated edge to his voice. He hadn't liked the idea when it had first occurred to him and he liked it even less now. "They brought down Marine One once already. Why not go with an already working scenario and try again? We still don't have any leads as to the inside man who planted the explosives to begin with. The possibility of a repeat is still there."

Butterfield crossed his arms and settled himself more comfortably on the edge of the desk. The debate was getting heated, perhaps more so than he would normally allow. But the speculation and argument allowed them to vent their frustrations and give voice to a few legitimate questions.

For the moment, he was content to let them continue.

"You mean they..." there was a distinct sneer in the speaker's voice, obviously not pleased with the only naming qualifier circumstances allowed, "...orchestrated a nuclear accident in order to get the President out of the White House?"

"Maybe," Torres shrugged. "It's worth thinking about."

"We've covered the bases on that one," Butterfield pointed out, playing devil's advocate. "The heavy haul was stolen; the explosion in the Goldfield tunnel was an accident."

"If we're certain of one thing, sir, it's that we're not the only ones covering all the bases. Like I said, it's worth thinking about."

"I have, Emil," Butterfield acknowledged softly, a dangerous hint of warning in his voice.

Torres nearly flinched at that, but managed to hold his ground. "Yes, sir."

"It's a stretch." Caro was thinking about it as well, and she didn't like it. "If that, then why not make an attempt at the play? 'Wars of the Roses' would have been a perfect venue. Or any of his other speaking engagements? There's been more than a few, and all of them open for an attempt. Why not?"

Battlefield smiled grimly at that question. "With the President's own personal security tripled, not to mention extremely on edge? And Governor Ritchie's to boot? I don't think they're that stupid. Success is the game, not a spectacular failure."

"They may have tried," Caro insisted stubbornly, not willing to yield to either Torres or her boss.

Watching the faces of his people, Butterfield could clearly see what they were thinking. The name wasn't said aloud, but it was on everyone's mind. Simon Donovan; one of their own, dead from multiple gunshot wounds trying to stop a petty robbery. Everybody had liked him and his loss was deeply felt. It would have been nice to be able to give that death some meaning.

Unfortunately, he couldn't give them that. "No, this much we're sure of. Simon's death was... a mistake." He couldn't think of any other word. Donovan's fall had hit him nearly as hard as it had C.J. Cregg, but not even for her or his people could he change the sour facts. "He was in the wrong place at the wrong time. They," his lip curled beneath his mustache, no happier with the qualifier than anyone else, "had nothing to do with it."

Carlyle nodded his agreement. "Whatever game is being played, it's a lot deeper than using a dime store robbery as a cover."

"Or a stalker," Caro added, eliminating that point before it could be brought up. They had Mr. Vera Wang in custody. A twisted, sick mind; fitting the textbook psychological profile for an inadequate personality perfectly, but nothing more than that.

Butterfield inclined his head in agreement; grateful that his people were starting to focus again, no longer wildly grasping at straws. "Yes, our stalker has nothing to do with this.  His interest wasn't in the President." Determined to steer his operatives' attention back to the familiar patterns of their job, he continued, "There will be another meeting this evening, for the purposes of risk-assessment and scenario projection. All available agents to attend. Eagle's personal security remains at optimum alert, and his personal escort doubled, even in-house. Anything new to report there?"

"He's not very happy about it. Oh sorry, anything new? No." Carlyle's lugubrious tones sent a ripple of amusement through his colleagues. The stories about the President's initial reaction to the increasing of his detail even before the NTSB report had begun to cast its shadow were already bordering on the stuff of legend. Although coming to accept its necessity as the ugly truth continued to unfold, his silent exasperation with the almost total lack of personal space he had experienced ever since was quite obvious to his bodyguards. They secretly sympathized with the man - he hadn't had a private moment in weeks - but there was no way they were letting him out of their sight in these circumstances. 

"Uh..." Knowing the man's feelings, and remembering how he had occasionally rebelled against such restriction in the past, Caro had just had a nasty thought. "Any danger of him ditching his detail again, like he did at the First Lady's birthday party?"

Just about everyone present winced, and more than a few hot glances were flung in her direction. Their collective performance on that night - and more than a few would have willingly sacrificed a week's pay to know how it had happened - was not something they wanted their boss to be reminded of.

Glowering briefly, just to let them know he hadn't forgotten, Butterfield vetoed that concern. "He won't do that." His eyes narrowed for a moment. "We had words. Besides…" He smiled almost wolfishly, causing several of his subordinates to grin in response as they imagined the scene, "... with the increased security, he knows that his chances of ditching us undetected are pretty small right now. And he's not prepared to let us know the secret behind that vanishing trick just yet. He knows that once we know, we've pretty much got him where we want him."

The grins became general at that. Butterfield deliberately gave his people their moment of light-heartedness before reminding them of the sober reality behind their gathering.  "Also, he's fully aware of the gravity of the situation. The President is a responsible man and a family man. He won't take stupid risks. And he wants answers, people. Answers we should be able to provide."

Nobody needed to point out that a meeting was going to take place in the Oval that very morning. More information might be forthcoming, but would it be of any more use than what little they already had? More than one of the agents present cast their eyes down, unable to meet the searching gaze of their Chief.

Yet another sign Butterfield didn't like. "Eyes up and listen to me, people!" he snapped. When he was certain he had their attention, he tempered his voice just a little, but there was still a demanding edge to it. "We do our jobs. We don't need to know who, we don't need to know why or what..."

Caro Lindstrom laughed shortly, shaking her head.

Butterfield actually smiled. "Your FBI is showing, Caro."

Swallowing another laugh, she replied evenly, "Sorry, sir. Won't happen again."

Torres snorted, earning a dark look from his former FBI compatriot.

"No. That's good. As long as it doesn't get in the way of your primary job." Butterfield held Caro's gaze, then one by one made slow eye contact with everyone in the room. His next words were clipped and to the point. "The President's life is our job. Let them come. We stop them. Understood?"

A chorus of determined agreement greeted that challenge.

Butterfield nodded. For now, it would have to do.

To be continued…