“Not now.” Bennett glanced at Naomi. “The only good part of this attack is that I can use it to get the vice president and Congress off my ass.”
Naomi had already seen him turn away requests from the secretary of the treasury and the ambassador to China. From what she’d gleaned, India’s prime minister was waiting in the Rose Garden.
In her pocket another text announced itself, no doubt the escalating crisis at Sunrise Villa.
“Very well, sir,” the assistant secretary said. “Also, Agent Demme is here.”
Demme appeared bearing a tray uneasily, a man unaccustomed to serving. He stood awkwardly until Bennett nodded at the round table in the corner, and then he set down the tray with a clunk.
The White House china held endives with what looked like walnuts and blue cheese, a side of pa té with crostini, and two slices of boeuf en croute. A glass of red wine rested to the side, a thin daytime pour.
Demme gave a deferential nod and withdrew, leaving Naomi and Bennett alone with the savory scent of his lunch.
“Someone eats it before I eat it,” Bennett said. “Every single item.”
It took a moment for her to grasp his meaning.
“You don’t trust me,” she said. “The Service, the lab, the protocols.”
“This is your job,” he said. “To take a bullet. Eating pa té ’s just a more pleasant version of that.”
She stared at him.
He crossed to the tray, used the edge of a fork to pinch a bite of each item onto a side plate.
Then he stared at her. “Eat it.”
His eyes shone behind the lenses, but whether from anger or excitement she couldn’t tell. The fact that it was a question at all, she realized, indicated that she understood him differently now.
She picked up the fork, took a bite of each item, wadding them all together in her mouth and forcing them down with one big swallow.
Bennett pointed to the wineglass, and she paused, humiliated, before taking a sip.
He studied her for a minute or two, though she wasn’t sure what he expected. Vomiting? Collapse? Hemorrhaging from the eyes?
The food sat heavily in her stomach.
After another full minute passed, he snapped out his napkin, sat, and began to dine. “There is no measure of paranoia too great when you’re dealing with Orphan X.” He paused, head downtilted, offering her a gaze through his glasses. “You still don’t understand who you’re dealing with, do you?”
She set her jaw, said, “I’m beginning to get the picture.”
58
What’s Not There
With its open-spandrel, concrete-and-steel design, the Key Bridge is the oldest surviving bridge to cross the Potomac. Evan had driven from Georgetown to the Arlington side, where he’d pulled off and parked, letting the six lanes of traffic stream by.
Somewhere miles and miles ahead as the crow flew, twin stone pillars marked a sloping dirt road that cut through an oak forest, leading to the apron of cleared land upon which Jack’s two-story farmhouse sat.
That was the home Evan had grown up in from the age of twelve. An old-fashioned porch and shuttered windows. Plush brown corduroy couches in the living room, pots hanging from a brass rack in the kitchen. A fireplace in the study casting an orange glow on the bookshelves, on the framed photograph of Jack’s dear departed wife, on the faces of Jack and nineteen-year-old Evan as they massaged his first operational alias into place, wrapping it around him like a second skin.
Now he sat and stared at taillights and office buildings cloaked in a haze of car exhaust.
This was the closest he’d come to home since that bleak gray morning in 1997 when Jack had driven him to Dulles International and dropped him at Departures.
Though he was expecting the call, he didn’t fully register the RoamZone until the second ring. He answered sluggishly, “Yeah?”
“What’s wrong?” Joey said.
He cleared his throat, lowered his eyes from the horizon. “Nothing. What do you have?”
“As usual, you’re asking the wrong question.”
“Just spit it out, Joey.”
“You’ve been looking at what’s there. You need to look at what’s not there. Agent Templeton understood that better than you. And I understand it better than her.”
“Which means?”
“Early this morning Templeton pulled in all the information on Secret Service schedules—the Presidential Protective Detail in particular. But she’s looking to see when they worked off-hours, say, or logged an unusual outing that didn’t line up with the official schedule. But the thing is, she’s underestimating our target. He’s DoD-trained, deep, deep black protocols. Which means if he did take an extracurricular outing, he would ensure that his PPD agents didn’t log any time at all. So. Among the cadre of inner agents, I looked at workday absences. Sure enough, a pair of his men had missing half days that correlated. They took the same two mornings off, once in October of last year, once last month. Those mornings also happen to align precisely with gaps in the target’s official schedule.”
Evan could sense his pulse quicken ever so slightly. “So he ducked out without the detail. Just two agents and a sedan.”
“Looks that way,” Joey said. “Next, I hacked into the iCals of the agents’ wives. No family vacay, no medical appointments listed, no kids’ soccer games. Both had an entry that their husbands were gone for the day. Too much of a coincidence.”
“So they snuck the target out.”
“More like he snuck them out,” Joey said. “The agents just had to play chauffeur. No knowledge of what they were participating in, no official record—technically they weren’t even working those mornings.”
“How can we figure out where they went?”
“Each Service vehicle has GPS,” Joey said. “Both days, same location. A house in Bethesda.” She rattled off the address, then paused. “You’ll never guess who it belongs to.”
She told him.
After a moment she said, “You still there?”
“I am.”
“I saw a picture,” she said. “It’s him.”
He waited for his inner disturbance to still. It wasn’t turmoil he felt, not precisely, more like a vibration of his cells. A trip wire that stretched back nearly three decades had been plucked like a guitar string, and the bone-deep resonance refused to recede.
He’d follow it, the trip wire, no matter the course, no matter the cost.
It would lead to the answers he sought.
Hanging up, he pulled out into traffic and pointed the car for Bethesda.
59
Sharp Edges
When Naomi at last arrived at Sunrise Villa, she rushed up the corridor to see two burly orderlies pinning down her father to administer a shot. He was bellowing unintelligibly, bucking with all the force left in his failing body.
Judging by the state of the room, he still had a considerable amount of strength left. The lunch tray had been knocked over, a comet of green Jell-O painting the wall above the TV. A bedpan lay upside down on the floor. In the corner Amanaki applied a Band-Aid to the finger of an angry male nurse.
Naomi stood in the doorway and let the orderlies do their job. The Versed finally took effect, and her father ceased thrashing, though he looked far from subdued.
She eased into the room. “I’m sorry about this.”
Amanaki said, “Nothing you need to apologize for. He’s just been more … agitated than usual.”
The male nurse said, “He bit my finger.”
“However bad it is for you,” Amanaki said, “it’s worse for him.”
Gripping his hand, the nurse exited.
Naomi turned to face her father. “You can’t keep doing this.”
She felt Amanaki’s hand, cool on her arm. “He’s confused, honey,” she said. “He doesn’t know what he’s doing.” She said to the orderlies, “He’ll be fine now. Thank you, gentlemen. Let’s give them some time.”
They departed, leaving Naomi alone with her dad.
His eyes looked sunken, dark hollows in a skull. In his face she could see the waiting grave.
“Where are my boys?” he said, his hoarse voice laced with accusation.
“They’re not … They can’t make it, Dad.”
“They’d talk to these people, get me taken care of.”
“You are being taken care of.”
He glared around the room, his pale arms twitching on the sheets. He looked so goddamned frail in that hospital gown, like a plucked bird.
“Is that what you call this?” he said. “Jason and Robbie, they would never stand for it.”
She felt a rise in temperature, a flush creeping up her neck. “This is a nice place. The staff does a lot for you, dad. I do a lot for you.”
“My boys would never let me be treated like this.”
Something in her chest broke, spilling heat through her insides. “Goddamn it, Dad! Jason can’t be bothered to see you, okay?” Her face was wet now, the room blurring. “And Robbie, Robbie doesn’t give a shit about anyone but himself. They mail their checks so they don’t have to bother with you.”
She wiped angrily at her eyes.
Her father lay there, stunned. His lips, framed with gray stubble, wobbled disconcertingly.
Remorse crushed in on her, chased with guilt so intense she felt it as a swirling void in the pit of her gut.