by Roland Smith
Interrogating the interrogator.
It didn’t work.
The man answered her question with another question.
“Who did Eben kill first?”
“Sean. He was in the bedroom. Eben came out of the bedroom and shot Elise and then Amun. I think I hit him in the leg. As he went down he got me in the arm.”
“Why didn’t you finish him off?”
“Eben was behind a chair, well covered. I couldn’t afford an open gun battle. Did the spotters take him out?”
“No.”
“Why?”
“He got the drop on one of them.”
“Where is he?”
“I imagine he’s getting the bullet you put in his thigh removed. We will find him.”
No you won’t, Malak thought. But she was relieved. Ziv’s smoke and mirrors had worked. She might just live another day.
“What did you and Elise talk about before Eben arrived?” Malak knew this was coming. If Elise was the man’s sister she would have shared her suspicions with him.
“She told me that I had an identical twin sister and accused me of being her. Apparently, your younger sister was crazy.”
“You do have a twin sister,” the man said.
“Where is she?”
“We don’t know.”
“Where are the adoptive parents?”
“Lebanon. But they severed all ties with her years ago. They have no idea where she is either. We’re looking for her.”
Malak gave a harsh laugh. “Well, you’re not looking at her now.”
Romance
Boone wandered away to check equipment and talk to the roadies leaving P.K., me, and Angela alone.
“How did Heather like the curds?” I asked.
“She liked them,” P.K. said. “But not as much as she liked Agent Callaghan.”
Again, P.K. didn’t miss anything. He looked at Angela. “What’s going on?”
“Huh?” Angela said.
“You look like your dog just got hit by a car.”
That was a pretty accurate description.
“I’m just tired,” Angela said. “And I don’t have a dog.”
P.K. shook his head. “No offense, but you’re lying.”
He was right about that too.
“I can’t tell you what’s going on,” Angela said.
I couldn’t believe she said that.
“Why?” P.K. asked.
“Because it’s personal,” Angela said, and walked away.
“Whoa,” P.K. said.
We watched her leave the East Room.
“Girls,” I said.
“What do you mean?”
“Her boyfriend just texted her and said that he was going out with another girl.”
“Oh,” P.K. said, but he looked confused.
I’d just stumbled onto the one thing he wasn’t a complete expert in.
“She liked him,” I said.
“She can get another boyfriend,” P.K. said.
“Yep, but it’s a little hard on tour like this. We’re not anywhere long enough to really get to know people. We’re in a different city every day.”
“Bethany had a boyfriend,” P.K. said. “But when she took Mom’s place here, he dropped her. She was messed up for days.”
“There you go,” I said. “Angela will be all right in a couple of days.”
And by then we would be long gone.
“Elise was convinced that you were not Anmar,” the man said.
“When I was eighteen Elise was convinced that I wouldn’t make it through my training,” Malak said. “She was convinced that the only thing I would contribute to the jihad were warrior babies. Elise was jealous of my capabilities. She was jealous of my success.”
“Tell me about Alfredo,” the man said.
“My dog?”
“Yes.”
“Elise asked me about him too. Eben Lavi shot her before I was able to answer her. Sean and I found Alfredo.”
“Where?”
“The Sonic Drive-In down the street from our house. He and I went there at least once a week to get limeades and burgers.”
“Why did you name him Alfredo?”
“Because he had white fur. Sean and I both loved fettuccine Alfredo. Elise hated it. And she hated the dog almost as much as she hated me.”
“Elise could be difficult,” the man said. “She was not happy with the role she was given. She felt she could have contributed more to the organization in another position.”
Malak did not respond. This explained a great deal about Anmar’s adopted mother. Malak’s twin sister had told her that Elise was an intelligent but frustrated woman. She took out this frustration on Anmar and Sean.
“How is your arm?” the man asked.
“A flesh wound,” Malak answered.
“The doctor said it was deep.”
Malak started to remove her sling. She felt the pressure of the pistol’s barrel increase but continued, dropping the sling on the plastic beneath her feet. She flexed her arm twice, keeping her face neutral despite the searing pain.
“Excellent. After the loss of Amun and Elise I thought we would have to scratch this mission. The car bomb this afternoon was just a prelude. Before I tell you about the primary mission I must warn you that if you fail us tonight, this will be the Leopard’s last hunt. Because of Elise I still have my suspicions about you. But if you succeed, you will be brought into our inner circle…”
As the man outlined the assignment, Malak found it more difficult to keep her expression neutral than she had when she flexed her wounded arm. Amun had not been exaggerating when he’d told her that today would be a day no one in the United States would ever forget. Unless Malak could keep everyone from knowing about it…
The Itch
I took my iPhone out and texted Angela.
I put the phone in my pocket and wondered what the SOS team thought of that exchange if they were monitoring it, which they probably were.
“Is Angela coming back for the concert?” P.K. asked.
“Of course. She just needs some time alone.”
P.K. and I had moved to one end of the room to watch people jockeying for positions close to the stage. The first people into the East Room were mostly the White House staff we had invited, along with their wives, husbands, girlfriends, or boyfriends. I guess they knew to get there early before the VIPs took all the good spots.
There were a lot more people than I anticipated, and by the serious expressions on the Secret Service agents’ faces and the amount of shirtsleeve chatter, there were a lot more people than they wanted jammed into one room.
Wayne Arbuckle spotted us and came trotting over.
“Hello, Quest. Hello, Willingham. How are you?”
“Fine,” I said.
Arbuckle looked at P.K.’s blazer, creased khakis, and starched shirt. “You look handsome, Willingham.”
“It’s Will,” P.K. said.
Arbuckle ignored him and frowned at how I was dressed. “Where’s Angie?”
“You mean Angela?”
The frown deepened.
There was something different about Wayne, something in his eyes. They were darting around like a couple of flies that couldn’t decide where to land.
“Angela is freshening up,” P.K. said.
Freaking out is more like it, I thought.
“Where’s Bethany?” P.K. asked.
Arbuckle looked at his watch. “She’ll be down soon. Oh… I just ran into Chef Conrad. He said he needed you in the kitchen.”
“Cheesy?” P.K. said. “I was just in the kitchen. What does he want?”
Arbuckle shrugged. “I don’t know. But he said it was important.”
“I guess I’d better go.” P.K. looked at me. “You want to come?”
I did want to go with him and pop a couple of deep-fried cheese curds into my mouth, but I felt compelled to stay right where I was because I felt the itch.
“I think I�
��ll wait here for Angela.”
P.K. and Arbuckle walked off in different directions.
The itch.
It wasn’t exactly an itch, but that’s what I called it. I’d never told anyone about this strange sensation because it had happened only a few times. The last time I’d felt it was on the sailboat a couple of months earlier. I woke up in the middle of the night and had an uncontrollable urge to lock all of the hatches. Aboard or away, we never locked the hatches. As soon as I clicked the last latch closed, my real dad, Peter “Speed” Paulsen, let out a drunken shout from the dock. He tried the hatches, and when they didn’t open he tried to beat his way in with an aluminum baseball bat, which he must have brought with him because there wasn’t one on deck.
After he was arrested and hauled away, Mom said it was lucky I heard him coming and locked up before he got inside. The truth was, I hadn’t heard him coming. When I got out of bed it was dead calm outside, dead silent—until my maniac biological dad showed up.
Was Dad going to crash the White House concert? Would his fame as the best lead guitarist in the world get him through the gate despite his criminal record? Or was the itch about something else? The itch wasn’t always followed by something bad, but I had a bad feeling about this one. It was strong enough to make me pass up deep-fried cheese curds.
I started after Arbuckle, who was expertly weaving his way through the crowd to the doorway where everyone was coming in. If anyone knew if my dad had gotten himself an invitation, Arbuckle would. When I was about fifteen feet away he stopped in front of a woman. He gave her a hug and a ten-foot kiss. I was five feet away when they parted.
“Mr. Arbuckle?”
He turned around and glared at me. And for the second time that day his mask slipped, and I got a clear look at the real Wayne Arbuckle. It was a dangerous face. The face of a fanatic. He pushed the mask up quickly, but it was too late. I saw him.
“Q!” he said with a smile. “I’d like you to meet my wife, Lillian. Lillian, this is Quest, Blaze Munoz’s son.”
I looked at Arbuckle’s wife. She was smiling too. She had black hair down to her shoulders. Brown eyes. She was wearing a lot of makeup. The itch had nothing to do with my dad. The woman was not Wayne Arbuckle’s wife. The woman looking at me with the bright smile was the Leopard.
“Oh, look, Wayne,” she said, pointing. “There’s Bethany Culpepper.”
Arbuckle looked conflicted. “I guess I’d better go,” he said. “I’ll bring Bethany over to introduce you.”
“Go,” Lillian said. “Do your job, honey. I can take care of myself.”
Wayne nodded and hurried away.
“Smile, Q,” Malak said. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost. Act like we’re having a delightful conversation. Lead me over to the refreshment table, where we can talk privately.”
As I led her over to the table with a frozen smile on my face, I desperately looked around for Boone, Pat Callaghan, Charlie Norton—anyone I could pass the Leopard off to. But I didn’t see any of them.
Lillian
Malak picked up a small plate, loaded it with appetizers, then stepped to the right of the table, where no one was standing.
“Where’s Boone?” she asked.
“I don’t know, but I can find him.”
Malak shook her head. “It’s too late. We’re out of time.”
“What do you mean?”
She didn’t answer.
“Where’s Angela?”
“She’s here.”
“In the East Room?”
“No. She’s somewhere in the house, trying to pull herself together. We just heard Ziv and SOS lost you. We thought you might be dead.”
“If I don’t pull this off, I might be dead. My loyalty is being tested. It’s imperative that I don’t see Angela. If you recognized me, she’ll recognize me. You need to make sure she doesn’t get close to me.”
“I don’t have any control over Angela!”
“Keep your voice down and keep smiling.”
I smiled but it wasn’t easy.
“If Angela sees me, her reaction might blow my cover. If I see her, my reaction might blow my cover. If that happens, I’m dead—and so are Bethany and Will Culpepper.”
“What?”
“They are going to be kidnapped. Failing that, they’ll both be killed.”
“I thought the White House is the most secure building in the world,” I said.
“Getting in,” Malak said. “Not getting out. My job and Arbuckle’s is to get Bethany Culpepper out. A man named Conrad is going to snatch Will Culpepper.”
“Chef Conrad is a mole?”
“He’s a chef?”
“Yeah, and P.K—Will—is in the kitchen with him right now.”
Malak swore. “You need to get him back in here, and don’t leave his side until this is all over.”
“What if he’s already taken him?”
“He hasn’t. It’s not time yet. But he’s probably staging the kidnap right now. The ghost cell is going to get only one Culpepper tonight, and it’s not Will. I’m not going to allow them to take a child.”
“P.K.’s young,” I said, “but he’s not a child. How about if we put an end to all of this right now by telling the Secret Service about the plot and arresting Wayne Arbuckle and Conrad Fournier?”
“Because it wouldn’t put an end to anything,” Malak said sharply. “Arbuckle and Conrad don’t know anything. They are following orders from someone they’ve never met. They don’t even know how they got their positions here, which means they aren’t the only ghosts in the house. There’s a mole, or moles, much further up the food chain, and they are probably watching you and me right now.”
I thought about what P.K. had said about Conrad. His dad had insisted that he be hired over the objections of almost everyone in the house. J.R. was not a mole. Those who had supported Conrad’s being hired would narrow the top mole list down significantly.
“I have to make this short,” Malak continued. “You and Angela have to make sure that P.K. is safe. Even if that means physically restraining and hiding him if he resists.”
She smiled and handed me her plate. There was a folded piece of paper under it. It seemed Angela’s mother was pretty good at sleight of hand because I hadn’t seen her put it there.
“After this goes down,” she said quietly, “you need to get this note to Boone as soon as you can. He’s to pass it on to the president ASAP. Nothing—and I mean nothing—is to be done until J.R. reads this note. You’ll find Arbuckle either dead or unconscious in the Library, on the ground floor. He needs to be taken out of the White House without Secret Service knowledge because we don’t know who we can trust. Charlie Norton and Pat Callaghan will know how to pull this off.”
“You’re getting Bethany out of the White House through the Library,” I said.
Malak smiled but this one looked genuine. “Smart boy. The ghost cell has good inside information, but their plan is flawed. I’ve made some adjustments.” She looked across the East Room. “This used to be my house.”
The Leopard padded away and disappeared into the crowd.
The Note
Chef Conrad a mole? Was Malak lying?
I headed for the door, wondering if I should try to find Boone first to pass the note to him before grabbing P.K. The note…
I stopped and looked around. No one was paying attention to me. They were all looking at Arbuckle, Bethany, and the stars—aka Mom and Roger—who were all smiles as they shook hands with staff and politicians, making no distinction between the two. There was no sign of J.R. yet. He was probably still down in the Situation Room, being briefed on the attack, which he knew a lot more about than those briefing him.
I pulled the note out of my pocket and read it.
Mr. President,
I have Bethany. They wanted to take Will as well, but I hope I’ve prevented this. You must not tell anyone that Bethany has been kidnapped, as this will play right into the cell’s
hands. If they can kidnap a member of the First Family from the White House, no one in the country is safe.
I may have talked to the man in charge tonight. This is a test of my loyalty and skill. If I pass it, I think he will identify himself to me. He claims to be Elise’s older brother, which might lead you to his real identity.
Wayne Arbuckle is one of the moles. Another is a man named Conrad. By the time you read this, I will have taken both of these men out. If they are alive, you need to keep them both under wraps. I’ll claim that they bungled the job and were either killed or captured. You can sweat them, but I don’t think either of them knows anything about the cell except his own involvement in this plot. But there are still other unidentified moles on your staff that must have helped them get their jobs in the White House.
You will have to come up with a plausible cover story for Bethany’s absence. Rest assured, I will protect her with my life as I protected yours when you were V.P. Before I let anything happen to her I will give up my cover and turn myself in.
I’ll be in touch with you personally as soon as I can. I don’t have a cell phone. They didn’t want to risk the signal being tracked. But I will call your personal number as soon as I can.
Please trust me.
Malak Tucker
I read the note through twice and tried to imagine what J. R. Culpepper’s reaction would be when he read it. Malak Tucker had decided to use his daughter as bait. I had a feeling that he was not going to be very happy with her.
I started to leave again but was stopped by my phone ringing. It was Angela.
“How many invitations did we give out?” she asked.
“Most people start out a phone conversation by saying something like, ‘Hello.’ ”
“How many?”
“I didn’t count them. Why?”
“There were supposed to be thirty.”
“Right.”
“Our list has only twenty-nine people on it.”
Arbuckle. He pocketed one for himself. The reason he insisted that we send him the list was so he could add his “wife” to it. But I couldn’t tell Angela this.
“Maybe the last invitation is stuck in your backpack somewhere,” I said.
