A Clear and Present Danger by Buck Sanders Read Free Book Online

Wall Street. Edith was his perfect accompaniment—Bucks County, Lord & Taylor,
     and Wellesley. The two of them were soft-spoken, elegantly witty, cultured, and Georgetown fixtures. Their sedate appearance
     masked the fact that the two of them held an abiding and passionate affection for one another that had intensified every year
     of their thirty-five years together. They had always wished for children, even now, in their sixties; their inability to produce
     children was the tenderest of their sorrows.
    In physical appearance, Winship resembled a plump British peer, with a bulky chest and belly requiring a waistcoat at all
     times, a ruddy tone of skin that proved an enormous fondness for vintage wines, a shock of silver hair brushed straight back
     from his forehead, and a mustache to match, kept in immaculate trim. In outlook, too, he was pure peerage, someone whose
noblesse oblige
lay in overseeing the government bureaucracy. Someone, after all, had to be born to manage the civil servants.
    He liked himself, and he liked the people like him. And yet it pained Hamilton Winship to know, as he had but no choice knowing,
     that it was
his
sort who benignly neglected the conspiracy to assassinate Kennedy,
his
sort of people who were ultimately responsible for the excesses of the F.B.I, and the C.I.A.
    His sort of people were men like George Bush.
    Again he thought of Bush en route to England, as he strolled the Potomac walkway.
    And this prompted him to think of Hurgett and Samuels, the messages left at their deaths… .
    Winship stopped dead in his tracks. His face paled. He whirled around, searching out a telephone booth. Then he clutched the
     collar of his topcoat around his throat to keep out the wind from the river, and ran at top speed.
    He nearly stumbled when his foot hit an ice-covered pothole. He paid no heed to his water-covered pantleg and shoe. Winship
     kept running.
    He finally reached the booth and tried to get his breathing under control while he fished through his pockets for coins. He
     would need all the authority in his voice that he could muster.
    And then maybe that wouldn’t be enough.

Seven
    LONDON, 7:16 p.m., 25 January 1981
    A soft mist swirled through amber washes of light from the street lamps. People moved briskly through the dusk, with Burberry
     coats drawn tight and black umbrellas unfurled. The echo of the last peel from Big Ben, announcing one-quarter past the hour,
     was a wet muffled sound. London was one of those few cities, along with San Francisco, Brussels, and Paris, made all the more
     picturesque by gentle rain. All the more mysterious as well.
    Ben Slayton picked his way through Dover Street, careful to step around the puddles that had quickly formed on the fashionable
     but badly chipped and rutted walkway. He didn’t wish to spot his formal shoes. He held a newspaper over his head to keep dry.
     He was on his way to the Embassy at Grosvenor Square, a ten-minute walk from Brown’s, the hotel used by Secret Service agents
     assigned to advance work.
    When he reached the Embassy and walked inside, he shook himself, almost as a dog would after a swim in a river. He hung his
     overcoat in the nearest closet and disposed of the sodden newspaper that had kept his head dry. He checked the Baume & Mercier
     watch on his left wrist. Plenty of time before the guests would begin arriving.
    Slayton nodded greetings to his fellow agents, slouched against the walls, waiting for the place to fill up with notables
     and the time they would have to snap to.
    “The Veep in yet?” Slayton asked one of them.
    “Naw, Sir Prep’s plane hasn’t even landed.”
    Slayton laughed quietly. It was the first time he’d heard the appellation “Sir Prep.” Of course, every President and Vice
     President was nicknamed by Secret Service agents. Jimmy Carter was “Mr. Peanut,” naturally; Walter Mondale was known as “Fritzy”;
     Gerald Ford had been “Bozo”; and Nixon was “Tricky” up