THE VOICE OF CHICAGO'S GAY, LESBIAN, BI, TRANS AND QUEER COMMUNITY SINCE 1985

From the journal of John 'Jack' Quincy Adams, Chief Secret Service Special Agent in Charge, The White House. Code Name: One.

Part 5. Becoming One

Jack Adams, the Secret Service agent charged with assassinating President George W. Bush and being held for psychiatric evaluation, is telling the psychiatrist how he became 'One' after saving the life of the first President Bush.

'I thought after the election they'd just send me back to the regional office and forget about me. But Sheepskin wanted me after I saved his life. He felt comfortable with me. I not only stayed on the vice president's detail, I soon became his lead agent. That, of course, meant Vera and I had to move to Washington. Arlington, actually. I expected Vera to raise holy hell, but she didn't. When my permanent papers came, a phone call for Vera followed a week later. Someone had arranged for her to be given a position at George Washington University Hospital.'

'I never wanted the job of One in the first place. I hadn't wanted any job in the Secret Service. I wanted to teach. I wanted to open minds and set them on the road to discovery, not obfuscate and confuse things. I wanted a full intellectual life in an intellectually stimulating environment. But I ended up taking the safe way out. Even my marriage was a safe way out; a way to have the second best wife if I couldn't have the woman I loved. That, too, had backfired. My marriage collapsed and all I had was my job. One.'

'And what was that like?'

'It turned out to be the exact opposite of what it was supposed to be. I became a traitor. I was spying on the man I was supposed to be looking out for. And it had never even occurred to me to refuse to do it.'

'Tell me how all that came about. How did you end up spying on the President of the United States?'

'When a new president is elected, just as the Schedule A, B, and C appointees and all ambassadors submit their resignations, so, in a sense do all Secret Service agents. We don't formally submit resignations, but it is understood that assignments are regularly moved around.

'So when I was called into my boss's office after Sheepskin won the election and was moving from the vice president's office in the Old Executive Office Building to Diadem, that is the Oval Office in the West Wing, I assumed my boss, Mark Samson, was giving me a new protectee, maybe even a new assignment. But that was far from the case.

'Jack, sit down,' Samson said. 'Scotch?'

There was the tip-off. Samson never offered an agent a glass of anything stronger than tea during working hours. He was either about to ask me for a favor or assign me to a swamp post. Mark Samson had risen in the Service just as he told me he would when he was my training supervisor at Hogan's Alley and just as Raife Sternoff was doing in Samson's wake. He had risen through the ranks and he had a solid practical grasp of the day-to-day work of an agent on the street. But he loved the cloak-and-dagger stuff and he played the administrative game as well as a veteran civil servant. Samson was born for this role.

'Jack, how are you holding up?'

'Sir?'

'How are you feeling?'

'Fine, sir.'

'About the job. About the Service.'

'Fine, sir, if I understand the question correctly.'

'You're happy? You like your assignment?'

'Very much, sir.'

'Oh, Jack, cut out the Sir shit. We go back too far for that. It's just you and me now. Let's talk as friends; let's talk as patriots.'

What was he up to? Friends and patriots in the same sentence? 'If you say so.'

He brought me my Scotch and poured one for himself, then sat down—not behind his desk, but on the sofa across the room. 'Come sit over here with me. Let's talk.'

I joined him on the sofa.

'Jack, we have a problem, a ticking time bomb.'

'Figuratively speaking, I assume.'

'Figuratively until it goes off. But if it does go off, the damage will be considerably more than any real bomb might inflict.'

'Can you elaborate?'

'Jack, I don't have to tell you what a tower of strength the president is. Or what a patriot he is. President George H. W. Bush has done things to protect this country that many others would not dare to do. He has put himself—his very life—on the line for the American people.'

'I take it we're talking about Iran-Contra now.' I didn't see any point beating around the bush—pun intended.

Follow this 44-part serialized book in Windy City Times for the next several months. See www.WindyCityMediaGroup.com for past columns.