The apple trees were the glory of the Jorgenson estate, a large tract of land called Wildwood that crowned a quarter mile of bluff along the St. Croix River. The orchards had been a Jorgenson hobby since the last part of the nineteenth century, when the family fortune was secured in the granite halls of the Minneapolis Grain Exchange. During Tom Jorgenson’s absence in Washington, D.C., while he served the people of Minnesota as their senator and then the nation as vice president, care of the orchards had been in the hands of his sister, Annie, and his brother, Roland, neither of whom had married. Annie had helped raise the children, and Roland—well, Roland had been himself and there hadn’t been much Tom Jorgenson could do to change that.
As he opened the barn door and switched on the light, Jorgenson thought about how fortunate he had been in the person he’d chosen to love and to marry. Kate, it seemed, had not been so lucky. That evening, he’d watched his daughter sit with her husband under the scrutiny of the entire nation. To those who didn’t know her well, she appeared to be in a good relationship, to have made a good match. But Tom Jorgenson, who spoke with her regularly, knew there was a mask over the true face of the marriage, knew the rumblings that lay below. He’d hoped his children would be as happy in their marriages as he had been, but he understood the odds were against it.
When his son-in-law entered the White House, Jorgenson had actually been hopeful. Alan Carpathian was Clay Dixon’s mentor and his chief of staff, and Carpathian was as good as they came. Unfortunately, Carpathian had died in a skiing accident less than a year after Dixon took office. The focus of the presidency seemed to die with him. Although Jorgenson didn’t dislike Clay Dixon, he understood that men often became their fathers. The more he’d observed of the president’s politics recently the more he saw the specter of Senator William Dixon. Tom Jorgenson knew the president’s father well, knew him to be a man charming on the surface but ruthless underneath, and the shadow he cast over the White House was a chilling one.
At Wildwood, Jorgenson always observed the moon from the same place, a bluff at the end of his orchards that overlooked the river. He would have preferred to walk, but he’d twisted his knee a week before and was still hobbling gingerly. He’d been driving his new Kubota tractor the quarter mile instead. He tucked his Thermos under the tractor seat, kicked the engine over, and pulled out of the barn. Annie was in the house, filling a teakettle at the kitchen sink, and she waved to him through the window as he passed.
Early in the season, maneuvering among the rows was easy. Now, as August wore on, the fruit grew heavy and the boughs began to sag. Jorgenson picked his way carefully between the low-hanging branches illuminated in his headlights. Near the end of the orchard, he turned back to glance at the western sky. The moon was already nestled in the tops of his trees. He didn’t have much time, and he gunned the engine. As he turned his attention again to guiding the Kubota, he thought he saw, caught in the glare of the headlights, a solid black shape crouched among the leaves of an overhanging branch directly ahead. It reminded him of a black panther poised and ready to spring. He had only a second to consider this vision before he was under the branch and a powerful blow caught him on the left side of his forehead, sending him tumbling from his tractor seat.
chapter
four
An hour after first light, Special Agent Bo Thorsen was sculling in his Maas Aero, cutting swiftly south over the glassy surface of the Mississippi River. He’d started at the rowing club just above Lake Street, and he was now a few hundred yards above the bridge at Ford Parkway. At first, the air was dead still, the water gray and flat. As the sun rose, the river became a perfect mirror of the wooded bluffs that edged the Mississippi on both the St. Paul and the Minneapolis sides. Bo loved rowing at that time of day. The river was clear of noisy speedboats and barge traffic. He often spotted large waterfowl—egrets, herons, sometimes even cranes. Occasionally he was lucky enough to catch sight of a bald eagle. He couldn’t see the big houses that stood back from the bluffs, so it was easy to imagine he had the river and the land it flowed through all to himself.
Long before he reached the bridge, he dragged his port oar as a rudder, dug in on the starboard side, brought the shell around, and pointed the bow north. He started back upriver against a wind that rose with the sun, working his arms and legs hard, keeping his heart rate well elevated, sweat flying off his face. Although he exercised in many other ways, the morning workout on the river was his favorite. He was always disappointed when he reached the rowing club. It meant that he had to climb out of the beautiful chasm carved by the Father of Waters and rejoin a world of people in which he’d been trained to see mostly menace.
He stowed the Aero at the club and headed back toward his apartment, the rented upper of a duplex in a fine old section of St. Paul called Tangletown. It was an area that derived its name from the chaotic weave of narrow streets nestled among the city’s east-west grid of traffic. The homes were old, several-storied, and beautifully maintained. As he stepped from the garage where he’d parked his Contour, he saw a man sitting on the back steps of the house, a tall man with a long, graying ponytail and a hollowed, haunted face. He wore dirty jeans, ragged running shoes, and a T-shirt with an image across the chest so old and faded Bo couldn’t tell what it had been.
“Hello, Otter,” he said.
The man called Otter stood up. “Hey, Spider-Man. Working out, huh?”
“Rowing,” Bo replied. “Come on in.”
Otter followed him around to the front of the duplex, inside, and up the stairs. Bo unlocked and opened the door. “Make yourself at home. I’m going to shower.”
When he was clean and dressed in the dark blue suit and tie that were his normal working attire, Bo stepped into the kitchen and found Otter sitting at the table, eating toast.
“Mind?” Otter asked.
“No. How about some eggs with that?”
“I’d eat some eggs,” Otter said.
Bo took off his suit coat and hung it over the back of a chair. He started some coffee brewing, then went to work at the stove. “What happened this time?”
“Somebody’s been dipping from the cash register. Of course, they blamed the guy who goes to AA. They didn’t even give me a chance to defend myself.”
“Where are you staying?”
“Last couple of nights at the Union Gospel Mission.”
Bo added cheese to the scrambled eggs, then cut a grapefruit in half. He put the food on two plates and gave one to Otter. He poured coffee for them both and joined Otter at the table.
“I saw Freak again,” Otter said, chewing fast, his mouth full.
“Freak’s dead.” Bo ate his own food slowly.
“I saw him. He was standing in the mouth of a culvert down on the river near the High Bridge. He was saying something, but I couldn’t hear it. What do you think it means, Spider-Man?”
“Nothing, Otter. It doesn’t mean a thing.”
“It does. It all means something. It all connects.”
“Not in any way I’ve ever been able to see,” Bo responded.
Otter aimed his empty fork at Bo. “You know, that’s always been your trouble. You only see what’s in front of you. But the important stuff, it’s never where your eyes are looking, Spider-Man. You think I saw Freak with my eyes? I’ve been seeing a lot lately, but none of it with my eyes.”
“Don’t get spooky on me, Otter.”
“I’m telling you, Spider-Man. It means something.”
“Eat,” Bo said.
When they’d finished the food and their coffee, Bo wrote something on a piece of paper and gave it to Otter.
“What’s this?”
“Job and a room, if you want it.”
Otter read the note. “Church janitor?”
“Only if you want it.”
“Thanks, Spider-Man.”
“I’ve got to go,” Bo said.
They stepped out, and Bo locked the door. They went downstairs and outside into the mornin
g sunlight.
“Need a lift?” Bo asked.
Otter shook his head. He reached out and hugged Bo.
“Great,” Bo said. “Now I’m going to smell like you for the rest of the day. Are you going to check that out?” He nodded at the piece of paper in Otter’s hand.
“I don’t know.”
“Whatever,” Bo said. “Next time you see Freak, tell him hello for me.”
Otter didn’t smile. He looked at Bo as if he were disappointed, turned, and walked away down the winding streets of Tangletown.
As Bo headed toward the garage in the alley where he parked his car, the cell phone he’d picked up in his bedroom gave a jingle. He saw from the number that it was Stu Coyote calling from the field office.
“This is Thorsen.”
“You dead?” Coyote said. “Or just your pager? We’ve been paging you for two hours. And trying your cell phone every half hour.”
Bo glanced at the pager clipped to his belt. “Pager’s showing nothing. Must’ve broken in the scuffle yesterday when we took down Holtz.”
“We’ve got a situation.”
“What?”
“Tom Jorgenson had an accident last night.”
“How bad?”
“Bad. The First Lady’s flying out.”
“Shit.”
“I know.”
“I’m on my way.”
Bo took Snelling Avenue, merged with the morning rush on I-94, and laid on the gas pedal, heading into downtown Minneapolis.
The field office of the U.S. Secret Service was located in the United States Court building on South Fourth Street. Bo parked his Contour in the ramp underground, passed through security on the main level, and took the elevator to the seventh floor. He tapped in the code on the key lock and entered the suite of offices.
Citations of merit and photographs of agents standing post as they protected various presidents decorated the hallway walls. Presidential protection was the most visible of the responsibilities entrusted to the Secret Service, but it was not, in fact, the department’s raison d’être. The Secret Service had been established at the close of the Civil War in order to combat the proliferation of counterfeit paper currency. Not until 1901, following the assassination of President William McKinley, did Congress direct the Secret Service to provide protection for the nation’s commander in chief. In 1917, the directive was expanded to include the entire First Family. Shielding the vice president didn’t come about until 1962, and in 1971, Congress voted to provide Secret Service protection to visiting foreign heads of state. Although it was with these protective responsibilities that most Americans associated the Secret Service, the vast majority of special agents continued to be assigned to investigation of counterfeiting and other federally punishable fraud. Most often Bo dealt with currency crimes. Unless the Twin Cities was expecting an important visitor.
He could feel the timbre, the tense energy that preceded all high-level visits. Coyote was already seated in the office of Special Agent-in-Charge Diana Ishimaru.
Stuart Coyote was a block of granite chiseled into a man. He had a broad face that broke easily into a smile, coal black hair, and skin that was a soft-toned earth color, the genetic legacy of the coupling of his Kiowa father and his French mother.
As Bo stepped in, his boss glanced up from a document she was scanning.
“Get yourself a new pager,” Ishimaru greeted him. “Today, if not sooner.”
“How’s Tom?” Bo asked.
“Unconscious but alive. Sit down.”
Bo pulled up a chair beside Coyote. “What happened?”
“He was on his tractor in the orchard last night,” Coyote said. “Hit a branch and got knocked off. The flatbed he was hauling ran over him, crushed his pelvis. He hit his head, too. In a coma now.”
Ishimaru took it from there. “The First Lady’s been notified. She’s flying in this afternoon. ETA is twelve-fifteen. She wants to head immediately to the hospital, of course. After that, she’ll be driven to Wildwood. Stu will be liaison with local law enforcement and public service. Bo, you’re on rotation to be in charge of the Operations Center this time. Jake Russell’s signing out the ordinance and perimeter equipment. He’ll join you at Wildwood. Additional agents are coming from Fargo and Sioux Falls to help. They’ll be in this afternoon.” Ishimaru looked down at the top document on her desk. “Tom Jorgenson was admitted to the St. Croix Regional Medical Center. I’m sure the First Lady will want to visit regularly. I have the contingency plans for routes and hospital security. Here.” She handed both agents a copy of the document. “I’ll be in touch. Any questions?”
“Just one,” Bo said. “Is Chris Manning still in charge of the FLOTUS detail?” He used the common acronym for the First Lady of the United States.
“Yes. Do you have a problem with that?”
“No. But he might have a problem with me.”
“Special Agent Manning’s primary concern is the protection of the First Lady. I’m sure that consideration will override any uncomfortable history between you two. And I’m sure he appreciates that I’m putting my best agents at his disposal. He’d better, by God, appreciate it.” She stood up. “Gentlemen, I have four thousand things to see to.”
Stuart Coyote and Bo left her office.
“Promise me one thing,” Stu said as he headed to his own office.
“What?”
“Don’t hit Manning this time, okay?”
chapter
five
Bo always kept a suitcase packed and ready. He spent less than ten minutes in his apartment in Tangletown, then took I-94 east out of St. Paul, eighteen miles to the St. Croix Trail exit, where he headed south through the little river town of Afton. A couple of miles beyond, he turned east onto a private drive. He passed beneath a stone arch with the name WILDWOOD set in big tile letters. The drive threaded between tall cedars for a quarter mile, then approached the gate of a seven-foot-high stone wall. The gate was open at the moment and the gatehouse deserted. That would change as soon as the rest of the protective detail arrived. Beyond the wall lay the orchards of Wildwood.
After his wife passed away, Tom Jorgenson had come home to the estate to retire, but he didn’t retire long. Within two years of his return, he’d established, in conjunction with the University of Minnesota, the Myrna Jorgenson Institute for Global Understanding, a think tank for world peace and prosperity. An invitation to his annual Symposium on World Unity was a highly sought-after prize, and his home had become a destination for leaders of nations all over the world. A full decade after abandoning the politics of Washington, D.C., he’d proved instrumental in negotiating the Abu Dhabi Accord, which clearly enunciated the guidelines for humane treatment of international refugees. Because of his efforts he’d been short-listed for the Nobel Peace Prize.
Bo had been in charge of security at Wildwood on numerous occasions. Although former vice presidents were not accorded Secret Service protection (a benefit enjoyed only by former presidents), the Secret Service did have the responsibility of protecting visiting heads of state. Jorgenson was famous for putting his guests to work in the orchards, regardless of their rank. Prime ministers, premiers, presidents, and sultans propped and pruned and picked the fruit. While they sweated at a labor as old as mankind, they talked with Tom Jorgenson and with one another. And while they talked, Bo and his fellow agents kept them safe.
The house, nestled in the orchards, was a big place, three stories, white frame, half a dozen gables, and a wraparound front porch. Forty yards south stood the guesthouse. There were two outbuildings, one a sturdy red barn and the other an equipment shed, and near the main house a small swimming pool.
Bo parked on the gravel drive in front of the house, under a sycamore. Annie Jorgenson must have been expecting him, because she opened the door as he stepped onto the porch.
“Hello, Bo.” She gave him a hug and kissed his cheek.
“How is he, Annie?”
“Not conscious. They
tell me it could go either way.”
Annie Jorgenson was in her early sixties. A slender woman, she stood nearly as tall as Bo, and when she spoke to him, her crystal blue eyes were level with his own. Bo had always admired the intelligence and beauty in those eyes. Now he saw tears there.
“Ruth’s with him,” she said, speaking of Jorgenson’s youngest daughter.
Someone called from inside, “Annie?” Bo had been on detail at Wildwood often enough to recognize that the voice belonged to Sue Lynott, who prepared the meals for the Jorgensons and their guests, and also for the Secret Service agents while they were on protective duty at Wildwood. Her food was considered one of the true perks of the job. “Shall I fix you and Bo some tea?”
“Thank you, Sue,” Annie called back. “That would be nice.”
They sat in the porch swing.
“How did it happen?” he asked.
She shook her head. “He was going down to the river bluff to look at the moon. You know his ritual. He’s been taking the tractor lately because he twisted his knee a couple of weeks ago. When I finished the dinner dishes, I went out to join him and there he was. A branch had knocked him off his seat and the flatbed had run over him. He must have been careless.” Her voice, by the end, had broken.
“Did you get any sleep last night?”
“Not much.”
“The team will be here soon to set up. I’ll keep things quiet if you’d like to try to get some rest.”
“I’m fine, Bo.”
Sue brought them tea, said hello to Bo, then went back into the house. From the orchards came the sound of a meadowlark. Annie’s eyes seemed to try to track the source of the song, and for a while she simply stared at the apple trees and drank her tea.
“If there’s anything I can do,” Bo finally said, “let me know.”