by Roland Smith
“The entire contents of my backpack are spread out on the floor. There is no blank invitation.”
“Where are you?”
“I’m in the Library.”
Perfect. There are 132 rooms in the White House (not counting the 35 bathrooms), and Angela is hiding out in the same room her mother is going to use to sneak the First Daughter outside and either knock out or kill Arbuckle.
“What about the missing invitation?” Angela asked.
“Maybe I didn’t get all the names down,” I said. “Or maybe we lost one of the invitations. Two of them could have gotten stuck together.”
“Maybe,” Angela said, but she didn’t sound convinced.
I looked across the room. Mom and Roger were onstage now. Malak and Arbuckle were standing back from the stage, talking to Bethany Culpepper. Malak had waited until she was clear of Roger to approach the First Daughter. If I recognized Malak, he would recognize her, even with her disguise. I’d noticed that she wasn’t wearing the gold necklace with the angel on it that Roger had given her. Even with the addition of the golden leopard next to the angel, that would have been a dead giveaway. Malak said something, and the three of them laughed.
“Are you there?” Angela asked.
“I’m here,” I answered.
I needed to get to the kitchen and find P.K. It wasn’t an itch, but I had an image of Chef Conrad chasing him around the cutting block with a meat cleaver. I also had to get Angela out of the Library.
“What about the invitation?” Angela said. “I have a feeling that Arbuckle kept one.”
Good guess, sis.
“He might have. His wife is here. Maybe she badgered him into snatching one for her.”
“His wife?”
“Yeah. I just talked to her. You’d like her.” Angela was going to be really mad when this was all over and I told her the truth. “Why don’t you meet me in the kitchen?”
“Why the kitchen?”
“I’ve got to help P.K. and Chef Conrad with the hors d’oeuvres. The guests are going through them faster than expected, and Conrad’s having trouble keeping up.”
“What do you know about making hors d’oeuvres?” “Nothing. That’s why I need you in the kitchen.”
“I don’t know anything about hors d’oeuvres.”
“Conrad will show us, and so will the kitchen staff. If we don’t help, P.K.’s going to miss the opening number.”
“He doesn’t work for Conrad.”
“I know, but he says he owes him for some…”
Malak, Arbuckle, and Bethany had backed farther away from the stage. J. R. Culpepper walked through a side door, followed by Charlie Norton and a grim-looking Chief of Staff Todd.
“The president just came into the East Room. He’s getting onstage to say something.”
“Put your phone on speaker,” Angela said.
“I need to get to the kitchen.”
“Just do it, Q! I want to hear what he has to say. I’ll come to the kitchen in a few minutes to help you.”
“Fine.” I hit the speaker button, set my iPhone on a windowsill, and headed for the kitchen.
Wayne Arbuckle was the man who had picked Malak up from the train station the night before. When he had put his arms around her as she entered the East Room she had asked if everything was ready. He’d said, “Yes.” And that was the only conversation they’d had about the mission, which according to the man behind the light, had been in place for several years.
“We’ve just been waiting for the right time,” he had told her. “This unscheduled concert is the perfect venue.”
“You’re lucky the president didn’t cancel the concert because of the car bomb,” Malak had said.
“Car bombs in several cities were scheduled to go off at the same time today. When I heard about the concert I aborted all of them, but it seems that Amun did not get the word or he disobeyed, not understanding why I aborted the attack. You are right about Amun being impulsive. I was furious with him, but now I’ll never know whether he disobeyed or if there was a flaw in our communications.”
“Did he know about your plans for the White House?”
“He knew there was going to be an attack on the White House, but he was not told what form it would take. Elise was to give him that information, providing her reservations about you were resolved.
“The man you will meet at the White House is called Wayne Arbuckle. He is inexperienced but committed, and has been preparing for this moment his entire adult life. We did not think the opportunity would come this soon. Our other man inside, Conrad Fournier, has assured me that everything is in place.”
Malak looked at Arbuckle.
He was nervous but he was hiding it well, considering what they were about to do.
Bethany Culpepper was watching her father step onto the stage to loud applause. Malak hadn’t seen her since Bethany was a teenager. When Arbuckle introduced them, there was a glimmer of recognition in the First Daughter’s eyes, but it passed almost as fast as it had appeared, to Malak’s relief. When Malak put on the wig, contacts, and makeup—turning herself into Mrs. Arbuckle— she did so with this meeting in mind. The man behind the light implored her to hurry with the disguise, insisting that no one would recognize her. She took her time. The man had no idea that she would be seeing people she had known and worked with for more than twenty years.
J.R. shook hands with Roger and Blaze. Roger looked good. In fact, he looked great. Malak couldn’t help but feel a twinge of sadness at seeing him. They’d had some good times together, but even those had been overshadowed by her job with the Secret Service and his disapproval of her chosen profession.
J.R. began to speak.
“This has been a tragic day. Our prayers and thoughts go out to the victims of this cowardly…”
Malak tuned him out and scanned the room as she had been trained to do. The difference was that she was not looking for potential threats to the president. She was scanning for potential threats to herself and her mission. It was an odd sensation to be standing in a room she had stood in so many times before, viewing it as if she were on the other side of a mirror.
The Secret Service agents, and there were a lot of them tonight, also tuned the president out. Their job was not to listen to his words but to watch people’s reactions to his words. If they saw someone or something that wasn’t right, they would report it and move in closer. Most of the time it wasn’t a threat at all, and if it was a threat, their proximity was usually enough to remove the threat. Malak was very careful to keep her expression and posture neutral so the agents did not move in on her.
Charlie Norton stood to the left of the stage with his back to the president, looking out at the crowd. A rumpled Pat Callaghan was standing to the right of the stage and appeared to be paying more attention to the tall blonde next to him than he was to the crowd or the president. Malak smiled. Pat was an excellent agent, but he had always liked the ladies. This had gotten him into a lot of trouble over the years.
Malak was too far back for either of them to see her clearly, which was intentional. She and Arbuckle had maneuvered Bethany to the back of the room. All they had to do now was to get her to move twenty feet to her right and they would have her in a perfect position.
“Some people have criticized me for not canceling this concert because of what happened today. But I have news for them and for the terrorists. This government, this society, is not intimidated by your actions…”
Malak continued looking around the room. She saw Q talking on a cell phone near the refreshment table and wondered why he hadn’t gone to find P.K. If he didn’t hurry, it would be too late. He set his cell phone down on the windowsill and rushed out of the room.
“I’m thirsty,” Malak said.
“I’ll get you something,” Arbuckle said.
“No, I’ll get it. Do you want anything, Bethany?”
“Please,” Bethany said. “A glass of Chef Conrad’s punch would be wonderful.�
��
Arbuckle gave Malak a small frown. The plan was for him to get the First Daughter the glass of punch.
Change of plans, Malak thought. She gave her husband a peck on the cheek and walked over to the refreshment table.
Cold Trail
The assistant chefs and servers and dishwashers were all lined up quietly outside the East Room, down the hall from the State Dining Room, leaning against the wall listening to the president speak. P.K. and Conrad weren’t with them.
I hurried through the pantry and to the kitchen. Conrad and P.K. weren’t in the kitchen either. Except for the pots and pans and hors d’oeuvre trays, the kitchen was empty. I was too late. I opened all of the doors and cupboards even though I knew I wouldn’t find anything. P.K. wasn’t playing hide-and-seek—he’d been kidnapped. The last place I checked was the walk-in freezer. I pulled the heavy door open and pushed past the plastic strips hanging down to keep the cold air inside. The door closed behind me. The shelves were packed with ice cream, meat, fish, fruit, and dough. Sitting on a pallet in back was a replica of the White House in chocolate. But no P.K., no Chef Mole. I hurried back to the door and pushed the handle. The door didn’t open. I pushed again, harder. Nothing.
Don’t panic. There’s probably a trick to opening the door from the inside.
I fished my flashlight out of one of my pockets and shined it on the mechanism. No trick. It was a simple push rod with a round end so the door could be swung open with your hip or butt if your hands were full. I stood back and gave the rod my best kick, slipped on the frosty floor, and nearly broke my leg.
I reached for my phone, doubting I’d get a signal, and then realized that I’d left it on the windowsill near the refreshment table.
Perfect! I lose the president’s kid. I lock myself in a freezer. And I leave my only mode of communication on a windowsill.
I wasn’t afraid of freezing to death. Eventually, someone would wander back into the kitchen. About every ten seconds I kicked the door handle. On about the fiftieth kick, the door flew open.
Angela was standing in the kitchen with her backpack slung over her shoulder, holding a long screwdriver.
“What’s going on?” she asked.
Mom and Roger’s beautiful music filled the kitchen. The concert had started.
“Why are you holding a screwdriver?”
“It was stuck through the door slot.”
“Someone locked me in the freezer.”
“P.K.?” Angela asked.
“No way. Chef Conrad.”
“What’s going on, Q?”
I think I was suffering from hypothermia because my brain didn’t seem to be working at its normal speed.
“Why did you cut off the president’s speech?”
“What?”
“Never mind,” Angela said. “Just tell me what’s going on.”
“Chef Conrad is the mole,” I said. “He’s kidnapped P.K.”
“Are you sure?”
“Do you think I’d make up something like that?”
“Let’s get Boone or the Secret Service.”
“We can’t.”
“Why?”
“There’s no time. We have to find Conrad before he gets out of the house with P.K.”
“If we tell the Secret Service, no one will get out of this house.”
“You have to trust me, Angela. We cannot tell the Secret Service. We have to find P.K. on our own. Wait here a second.”
I ran back upstairs and asked the chefs, servers, and dishwashers if they’d seen P.K. or Chef Conrad.
One of them told me that Conrad told them that he and P.K. had everything under control in the kitchen and to go out and enjoy the concert.
“He said he’d let us know when he needed us. Does he need us?”
I shook my head and headed back down to the kitchen.
“Which way did you come down here?” I asked Angela.
“I didn’t come down here. The Library’s on this same floor, right down the hall.”
“Did you see any Secret Service agents?”
“One, walking down the hallway. Most of them are probably in the East Room.”
“Didn’t P.K. say there was a secret passage in the State
Dining Room leading down to the housekeeper’s office?”
“He did.”
“If you didn’t see him, Conrad might be hiding P.K. in the passage until the coast is clear.”
We ran across the hall to the housekeeper’s office to look for the passage.
The Leopard did not own an MP3 player or an iPod. She liked music, but she didn’t feel that she had time for that luxury in her present role. As a result, she had never heard Roger and Blaze sing.
She was stunned by the sound. During her time with the Secret Service she’d heard a dozen concerts in the East Room, but nothing like Match’s.
Malak was having a hard time focusing on the mission. She found herself staring at the stage, watching Roger sing and play guitar. He had never sounded better. And Blaze’s voice was a perfect match to his.
Bethany Culpepper had downed her punch like a sailor drinking rum. She was smiling. Her eyes were closed as she swayed to the music. The drug Malak had slipped into Bethany’s drink was supposed to cause a sense of euphoria, detachment, and passivity.
As Malak looked around at the crowd, the people looked like they had all drunk the spiked punch, but their condition was caused by the music, not the drug.
“Maybe we should move over a few feet,” Malak said. “I think we can get a better view of the stage.”
Bethany didn’t seem to care if she could see the stage or not.
Malak nodded at Arbuckle. They gently moved the swaying Bethany where they needed her to be. When they had her in position, Malak gave Arbuckle another nod. He took his cell phone out and hit a series of numbers. The lights went out and the music stopped. The emergency power kicked in, and the lights came back on, but just for a second.
Arbuckle hit another series of numbers. The room went black and stayed that way.
Blackout
The music stopped.
I turned on my flashlight and continued looking for the secret passage, which I had narrowed down to a small hollowsounding area inside the linen closet. Tap-tap-tap with the butt of the screwdriver Conrad had used to lock me in the freezer. He must have stepped outside the kitchen with P.K. when I walked in and waited for me to step into the freezer.
I’d wondered how they planned to get P.K. and Bethany out of the White House. Now I knew—secret passages and the cover of darkness. But why hadn’t P.K. called out? What had Conrad done to silence him?
“This must be it,” Angela said. “It’s the only hollow wall. The latch has to be here.”
Angela had barely jumped when the lights went out. After I’d asked her to trust me she hadn’t asked for any more details. She had stayed focused on finding the passage, pursuing Chef Conrad, and saving P.K.
Trust needs to be rewarded with trust.
“Your mother is okay,” I said.
There was a sigh of relief in the darkness. “How do you know?”
“She’s here…or she was here. Arbuckle’s the other mole. She posed as his wife. You were right. He copped the missing invitation. They’re kidnapping Bethany Culpepper. Malak wants us to let her get away with it. She gave me a note for the president. She promises to protect Bethany with her life. I suspect they are on their way out of the White House. She told me not to tell you because she was afraid that your reaction would give her away. She didn’t want to see you because she was afraid that her reaction would give her away.”
Angela started to cry but continued groping for the secret latch.
Click.
A panel slid back. I wasn’t sure if I’d discovered the latch or if Angela had accidentally hit it, and I didn’t care. We climbed through the opening. The panel slid closed behind us. There must have been a pressure plate on the floor.
“We’ll need to be
quiet,” Angela whispered. “If Conrad knows we’re on his trail, he might hurt P.K. Which way?”
The passage was much bigger than I thought it would be. There was enough room for us to stand without hitting our heads. I shined the flashlight at my feet. Thick dust. No footprints. Conrad and P.K. had not gotten this far, or they weren’t coming this way.
Tyrone Boone was standing in the dark to the right of the stage on a conference call to X-Ray with Charlie Norton and Pat Callaghan. Norton and Callaghan were standing next to him.
“Any idea how they pulled the plug?” Boone asked X-Ray.
“The White House is not the only building down,” X-Ray answered. “Somehow they got to the electrical grid.”
“What’s more surprising is that they managed to shut down the backup system,” Norton said. “Whoever figured that out had access to the electrical panels and the generators, which are under guard 24-7.”
“They’ll get the primary power up pretty quickly,” X-Ray said.
“I haven’t seen Vanessa,” Boone said. “Is she here?”
“No. She’s flying the drone. We thought it would be better to get it up in the air than for her to go to a party.”
Someone came up and tapped Boone on the shoulder. It was Ziv, aka Warren Parker. He looked at Norton and Callaghan.
“I have to go,” Boone said, ending the call. He looked at Ziv and nodded at Charlie and Pat. “They’re on the SOS team.”
“The Leopard is here,” Ziv said quietly.
“Where?”
“I lost her when the lights went out, but she was standing in the back with Bethany Culpepper and a man.”
“Wayne Arbuckle,” Norton said. “He’s Bethany’s new assistant. He’s been glued to her all evening. I saw the woman with him and assumed she was Arbuckle’s wife or girlfriend. She didn’t look anything like Malak.”
“Of course not,” Ziv said.
“Any ideas why she’s here?” Boone asked.
“No,” Ziv answered. “But I saw her kiss the man on the cheek, then walk over to get a drink for Bethany.”
“Any Secret Service around Bethany?”
“No.”
“There wouldn’t be,” Pat said. “She was with her assistant— no potential threat.”
