Murder at Union Station - Margaret Truman [51]
Fletcher squared himself in the rear seat of the vehicle and looked at Havran. “You’ve included the usual material in today’s speech about the first lady? His better half? He married up? Most effective first lady in history? Country is blessed to have her in the White House?”
“It’s a macro in my computer, Chet. I was surprised she agreed to this trip.”
“She’s going to have to make a lot more of them if this rumor is ever going to die,” Fletcher said.
Reports that Parmele’s marriage was shaky and that the nation might end up with a divorced president had surfaced during his initial run for the White House. Right-wing publications and think tanks, some supported by conservative religious groups, had doggedly pursued anyone claiming to know something about the Parmele marriage, more particularly allegations that Parmele had been unfaithful on more than a few occasions. Cathleen Parmele, too, was the subject of such inquiry; it was alleged she’d had an affair during the time her husband ran the CIA.
Although nothing concrete had ever surfaced—no evidence of marital infidelity, no smoking gun—it didn’t matter. Presidential politics wasn’t played out in a court of law. Innocent until proved guilty beyond a reasonable doubt wasn’t applicable when the world’s most powerful position was at stake. Accusations themselves, no matter how baseless, were sufficiently scarring.
But the anti-Parmele forces weren’t the only ones conducting investigations into extracurricular lives. Fletcher had quietly sicced private investigators on those Republican members of Congress who claimed moral superiority while leaking the unsubstantiated charges against Parmele and his wife. He had orchestrated a succession of leaks about their dalliances, real or imaginary, to the media. It was a game of mutual deterrence between Democrats and Republicans, played not with bombs during the cold war, but with revelations ready for release should the other side launch a preemptive strike.
A dirty business to be sure.
And exhilarating to men like Chester Fletcher, who viewed politics as war without the restraints of a Geneva Convention.
The entourage pulled into a fairgrounds festooned with colorful banners and a thousand balloons. Spirited march music blared from huge speakers located throughout the welcoming area.
Getting out of his car, Fletcher looked up into a gray sky, thick with rain that would undoubtedly fall within the hour. Rain was the perpetual curse of such rallies. The speaker’s stage would be covered as ordered, but the crowd would be thinner than expected. The threat of getting wet could dampen even the most fervent political zealot.
He watched the president of the United States step from his limo and extend a hand for his wife. Surrounded by Secret Service agents, the first couple was led through hundreds of well-wishers into the fairground itself, where many more men and women, some with children on their shoulders, broke into cheers. Adam and Cathleen Parmele went to the podium and joined a dozen local dignitaries waiting to shake their hands.
Fletcher, Brown, Havran, and press secretary Robin Whitson were herded to a spot at the side of the stage.
“They’d better get on with it,” Havran said, glancing skyward.
They did, one local Democratic politician after another addressing the crowd until impatience and a few stray drops of rain forced the issue and moved them on to the main event. After a rousing and flowery introduction by Indianapolis’s mayor, Parmele raised his arms, stepped to the microphone, and shouted, “It is good to be here in Indianapolis!”
The anticipated enthusiastic response erupted from the crowd. Parmele smiled broadly, then took in those in the front rows and pointed an index finger at some of them, as though they were old