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By Root 1381 0

for everyone. She instilled in her son the belief that even life’s most disheartening setbacks and seemingly random twists of fate were all part of God’s plan. In particular, Reagan had long believed that God had something special in store for the United States, that his fellow citizens were capable of prevailing because they were destined for greatness. As he had put it decades earlier, in a commencement address, “I, in my own mind, have thought of America as a place in the divine scheme of things that was set aside as the promised land.… I believe that God in shedding his grace on this country has always in the divine scheme of things kept an eye on our land and guided it as a promised land.”

The previous year, in his speech accepting the Republican nomination for president, Reagan had made a similar point by quoting Franklin Roosevelt and speaking of America’s “rendezvous with destiny.” He had also once again invoked his faith: at the end of the rousing address, he asked the delegates if they could begin their “crusade joined together in a moment of silent prayer.” The riotous hall went instantly still and remained so until Reagan brought on a huge wave of cheering when he closed with “God bless America!”

The president’s audience this morning was more restrained but no less enthusiastic, and they responded to his brief remarks with energetic applause. At 8:50, shadowed by his body man and his military aide, Reagan left the East Room and walked to the Oval Office. As he strode along the West Colonnade, he was joined by two additional men. Their eyes were intently scanning the South Lawn, and even a casual observer would have concluded that they were not there to carry the president’s papers or serve his needs. They were Secret Service agents, and their job was to look for trouble, even within the White House gates.

* * *

EARLIER THAT MORNING, Agent Jerry Parr of the Secret Service had waved to the uniformed officer at the guardhouse and driven his government sedan through the open northwest gate of the White House. He parked along a driveway near the West Wing and headed into his office in the Old Executive Office Building. As he entered Room 10 at about 7:00 a.m., Parr lifted up the sole of each of his black shoes so a deputy could inspect them for chicken manure. The unusual ritual dated from the day Parr had inadvertently tracked chicken droppings from his backyard throughout Secret Service headquarters—an embarrassing gaffe that could not be repeated in the White House, especially by the agent in charge of the presidential protective detail.

Parr had begun the morning, as he did most workdays, with a predawn jog. He was a husky man and it wasn’t a challenging run, but it got his blood and mind churning. Huffing from his two-story white colonial in a distant Maryland suburb, Parr spent about twenty minutes running a two-mile circuit through the tree-lined streets of his neighborhood. After a quick breakfast and a shower, he put on a white shirt and a plain blue-gray suit: his work uniform. Its purpose was to make him invisible on the street and in the corridors of power.

Parr’s many years fixing power lines in the blazing Florida sun had left him grizzled; his skin was perpetually tanned and his forehead and cheeks were creased with deep lines. Dark bags rimmed his brown eyes, but those eyes were bright and constantly moving—scanning left and right, up and down, lingering on anything that seemed suspicious. Even at home or when at rest, he noticed things that were out of place: a half-open window; a rustling shade; a delivery man wearing the wrong kind of shoes; the one scowl in a sea of smiles. His eyes, after all, might one day save the president’s life.

Parr pulled on a London Fog trench coat and said goodbye to his three daughters and his wife, Carolyn, an IRS lawyer. Then he walked across the soggy grass of his big yard and tossed handfuls of feed to the thirty chickens he kept in a coop. No matter that they sometimes dirtied his shoes, his chickens and his two-acre plot gave Parr’s suburban home a rural