When the phone rang he groaned. It was probably his boss trying to scrounge up some overtime drones to pull some low-level protection duty. Well, tonight he was busy. He had TiVo reruns to catch and tomato soup to finish and beers to pour down his throat.

“Hello?”

It was his boss, but he wasn’t looking for overtime. He told Alex that he would be receiving visitors any moment now. And that he was to cooperate fully with them.

“Who are they?”

But the man had already hung up.

The knock on the door came barely thirty seconds later, which told Alex that his boss was in communication with his “visitors” and had just given them the all-clear. He poured the rest of his beer down the kitchen sink, tucked in his shirt, quickly adjusted his tie and opened the door.

Alex was six-three but the white-haired, bony-faced fellow facing him had him by at least two inches.

“Agent Ford, my name is Macklin Hayes. I’d like to have a word with you.”

Alex stepped back and motioned the man in, peering behind him to see if he was alone. There wasn’t anybody else, but Alex knew enough about Hayes to understand that the man went nowhere by himself. He closed the door and indicated a chair for Hayes to sit in.

“Thank you.”

Alex plopped down across from him and tried to appear nonchalant.

“What can I do for you, sir?”

“I believe that one of my subordinates, Joe Knox, came to see you about a certain matter?”

Alex nodded. “He did. Had some questions about someone I knew.”

“John Carr?”

“He asked about Carr, but I don’t know anyone by that name.”

“Oliver Stone then? You do know the man calling himself Oliver Stone?”

“Most Secret Service agents who’ve pulled White House protection duty do.”

“But you were closer than most?”

Alex shrugged. “I’d call him an acquaintance.”

“You were far more than an acquaintance. And you’re going to tell me everything that you knew about his plans to assassinate Carter Gray and Senator Simpson. And whether you helped him to escape. At worst that makes you a coconspirator. At best, an accessory before and after. In a matter as grave as this one, either one gets you put away for life.”

Well, the man doesn’t waste any time, does he? “I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.”

Hayes drew a slip of paper from his coat and glanced at it. “Nearly twenty years in the Service, good record. You were the one guarding the president in Pennsylvania when he got kidnapped.”

“I was the only one left standing.”

“So you were there when he disappeared. Did you have anything to do with his reappearance? And more to the point, did your friend Stone?”

“Again, I—”