Dead or Alive

There came a knock on the door, and one of the agents poked his head through the gap. “SHORTSTOP,” he announced, then opened the door to admit Jack Junior.

“Jack!” the elder Ryan said, walking over.

“Hey, Andrea,” Jack Junior said.

“Mr. Ryan.”

“Nice surprise,” said the former President.

“Yeah, well, my date canceled on me, so…”

Ryan laughed. “Man’s gotta have his priorities.”

“Hell, I didn’t mean it like that-”

“Forget it. Glad you came. You got a seat?”

Jack Junior nodded. “Front row.”

“Good. If I get into trouble you can throw me a softball.”

Jack left his father, walked down the hall, took the stairs down one level, then headed toward the auditorium. Ahead, the hall was mostly dark, every other fluorescent ceiling fixture turned off. Like most educational institutions, Georgetown was trying to be more “green.” As he passed a conference room he heard a metallic scraping sound from within, like a chair being dragged across a floor. He stepped back and peeked through the slit window. Inside, a janitor in blue coveralls was kneeling down beside an upturned floor buffer, poking at the polishing pad with a screwdriver. On impulse, Jack pushed open the door and poked his head inside. The janitor looked up.

“Hi,” Jack said.

“Hello.” The man appeared to be Hispanic and spoke with a heavy accent. “Change pad,” he said.

“Sorry to bother you,” Jack said, then shut the door behind him. He pulled out his cell phone and dialed Andrea’s number. She picked up on the first ring. Jack said, “Hey, I was on my way to the auditorium… There’s a janitor down here-”

“Conference room two-b?”

“Yeah.”

“We cleared him, and we’ll sweep again. We’re taking the basement route anyway.”

“Okay, just checking.”

“You looking for a second job?” Price-O’Day asked.

Jack chuckled. “How’s the pay?”

“Lot less than you make. And the hours are hell. See you later.”

Andrea disconnected. Jack headed toward the auditorium.

Showtime, sir,” she told former President Ryan, who stood up and shot his cuffs; the gesture was uniquely Jack Ryan Sr., but Price-O’Day saw a bit of the son in the father, and SHORTSTOP’s call about the janitor had told her something more: The son hadn’t fallen far from the intellectual tree, either. Was there such a thing as a spook gene? she wondered. If so, Jack Junior probably had it. Like his father, he was intensely curious and took few things on face. Of course they’d swept the building, and of course Jack knew this. Even so, he’d spotted the janitor and immediately thought, Anomaly. It had been a false alarm, but the question had been valid-something Secret Service agents learned to ask through training and experience.

Andrea now checked her watch and replayed their route in her mind, seeing the map in her head, timing the turns and distances. Satisfied, she knocked twice on the door, signaling to the agents there that SWORDSMAN was ready to move. She waited a moment for the cordon to form up, then opened the door, checked the hall, and stepped out, signaling for Ryan to follow.

In his auditorium seat, Jack Junior absently flipped through the night’s program, his eyes taking in the words but his brain failing to register them. Something was itching at his subconscious, that nebulous feeling of something left undone… Something he’d meant to do before leaving The Campus, perhaps?

The president of Georgetown appeared on the stage and walked to the podium, accompanied by polite applause. “Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. As we have only one item on tonight’s program, I’ll be brief with my introductions. Former President John Patrick Ryan has a long history of government service-”

Janitor. The word popped, unbidden, into Jack’s mind. He’d been cleared, Andrea had said. Even so… He reached for his cell phone, then stopped. What would he say? That he had a feeling? From his seat, he could see the left side of the stage. Two black-suited Secret Service agents appeared; behind them, Andrea and his dad.

Before he realized what he was doing, Jack was on his feet and headed for the side exit. He trotted up the stairs, turned left, headed down the hall, counting conference room doors as he went.

Screwdriver, he thought, and suddenly the subconsious itch he’d felt two minutes earlier snapped into focus. The janitor had been using a screwdriver to remove a pad that had been secured to the buffer by a center locknut.

Chest now pounding, Jack reached the correct conference room and stopped a few feet short. He saw light coming through the slit window but could hear no sounds from within. He took a break, walked to the door, and tried the knob. Locked. He peeked through the window. The buffer was still there. The janitor was gone. The flathead screwdriver lay on the floor.

Jack turned and started jogging back to the auditorium. He stopped at the door, collected himself, then gently pushed open the door and eased it shut. A few people looked up as he entered, as did one of Andrea’s agents standing in the center aisle. He gave Jack a nod of recognition, then returned to his scan of the auditorium.

Jack started his own scan, looking first for any sign of blue coveralls but quickly abandoning this; the janitor wouldn’t have gotten into the auditorium. Backstage would be clear as well, locked down by Andrea’s team. Who else? he thought, picking through the sea of faces. Audience members, agents, campus security…

Standing beside the east wall, his face partially in shadow and his hands clasped before him, was a rent-a-cop. Like the agents, he, too, was scanning the crowd. Like the agents… Jack kept scanning, counting campus security officers. Five in total. And none of them scanning the crowd. Untrained in personal protection, their attention was not focused on the audience- the most likely area of threat-but rather on the stage. Except for the guard on the east wall. The man turned his head, and his face passed briefly into the light.

Jack pulled out his cell phone and texted Andrea: GUARD, EAST WALL = JANITOR.

Onstage, Andrea was standing ten feet behind and to the left of the podium. Jack saw her pull out her cell phone, check the screen, then return it to her pocket. Her reaction was immediate. Her cuff mike came up to her mouth, then down again. The agent in the center aisle casually headed back up the aisle steps, then turned right at the carpeted intersection, heading toward the east wall. Now Jack saw Andrea sidestep behind his dad, moving into what he assumed was an intercept angle between his dad and the guard.

The center-aisle agent had reached the east wall’s aisle. Thirty feet away, the guard rotated his head in that direction, paused ever so briefly on the agent, then rotated back to the stage, where Andrea had moved into blocking position. His dad, noticing this, cast a brief glance in her direction but kept talking. He would know, of course, what Andrea was doing, Jack reasoned, but not whether there was a specific threat.

On the east wall, the guard also noticed Andrea’s movement. Casually, he took two steps down the aisle and bent over to whisper in an audience member’s ear. The woman looked up at the guard, surprise on her face, then stood up. Now smiling, the guard took her by the elbow and, stepping around to her right side, guided her down the aisle toward the exit by the stage. As they passed the fourth row, Andrea took another step forward, maintaining her blocking position.

She unbuttoned her suit coat.

The guard suddenly switched his left hand from the woman’s elbow to her collar, then sidestepped, moving sideways past the front row. The woman let out a yelp. Heads turned. The guard’s right hand slipped into the front waistband of his pants. He jerked the woman around, using her as a shield. Andrea’s gun came out and up.

“Freeze, Secret Service!”

Behind her, the other agents were already moving, swarming the former President, pushing him down and hurrying him toward the opposite side of the stage.