The Deceivers

by Alex Berenson

  He knocked on the driver’s window. “Do you know if there’s a Sam’s Club around here?” The question itself merely offered Petersen one last chance to abort. If he answered no, Eric would walk on.

  “Get in.”

  They drove northwest for a few minutes, until Eric broke the silence.

  “You worried about surveillance?”

  “Not really. Though with drones, who knows anymore? Anything new from the FBI?”

  “They’ve promised a briefing next Monday. I think they’re scrambling. This is now three investigations in three states, and they don’t have a lot of leads.” Eric looked at Petersen. “That can’t be why you pulled me out of the office.”

  “Have you spoken to your cousin about the speech?”

  “I was writing it when you called. Russia is greatest country in history of world, anyone who thinks different is Nazi or terrorist or terrorist Nazi. It’s easier for him to give it than talk to me about it, so that’s what he’ll do.”

  “Hah.” Petersen slapped the steering wheel. He turned into a 7-Eleven parking lot, stilled the engine. “Will you be there when he gives it?”

  Eric felt a prickling in his chest he recognized from Afghanistan. The adrenaline of incoming fire. The battle joined. “Wasn’t planning to. Not like he needs me in the audience. Why?”

  “When will he give it?”

  “As early as this weekend, if we can set it up. By the way, he’s going to hire extra guards soon.”

  “Sooner is better, then. Even better if he gives it somewhere outside Tennessee, a venue he isn’t so familiar with.”

  “You have anywhere specific in mind, Adam?”

  “What about Dallas, outside the American Airlines Center itself? Where the bomb blew up.”

  “Of course. So important symbolically—”

  “When he gives this speech, you should be close by.”

  “How close?”

  “As close as you can be.”

  They sat, side by side, with their hands in their laps. Almost too calm. Birman wondered if he was dreaming the conversation. He turned on the radio just to hear it. It was tuned to WAMU, the local NPR station. Of course. So refined, these Russian spies. When they weren’t blowing up bombs.

  “You want to kill me, too, then.”

  The words spoken now, the threat real.

  “No.”

  “So not a bomb.” Eric had wondered if the sniper belonged to the Russians. Now he knew. Bet when I get back to the office, I find at least one hotel with rooms overlooking the arena.

  “Do you see what happens next, Colonel?”

  “Da.”

  They were quiet, listening to a calm NPR voice recounting the day’s events: The FBI is appealing for information—

  Petersen turned off the radio. “Tell me.”

  “You want me to say it.” Eric imagined counterespionage agents swarming the car. But they were far, far past a sting. “Senator Paul Birman. Chairman of the Intelligence Committee. Just as he calls for Russia and the United States to band together against jihad, he’s gunned down. Killed from afar. Guessing the sniper has jihadi credentials. No idea how you’ve managed that, but you’re clever souls. I grab Paul, pull him to cover. My cousin. His blood is all over me. All of a sudden, I’m Bobby Kennedy. Maybe I’m the wrong Birman, but I have the great advantage of being alive. I’m a hero, too. Everyone else ran. Not me. I went to him with that sniper still loose. So brave.”

  “Of course you’re brave. You are a soldier.”

  The .30 caliber round tearing through the thin bullet-resistant vest Paul would wear for the speech. Paul crumpling, slipping sideways, as Eric cradled his shoulders, shielded him, held his head close—Okay, cousin. Stay with me. Eyes open. Don’t give up—empty promises to a dying man . . .

  Eric wasn’t imagining it, he was seeing it, the future as it happened, the screaming, the panicked stampede of the audience, the cops finally reacting, running for Paul: Go! Go! Go!—

  He even felt a glint of sadness for his cousin, cut down at the peak of his popularity. But Paul would be as lucky in death as he had been in life. No mortal fear for him, the cord cut in one swift stroke. No way for him to know that the White House could never be his. He would have a clean exit, join his beloved Daddy in Heaven’s garage, where all the cars were classic.

  “Colonel?” Petersen’s voice brought Eric back to the parking lot. Could they be planning this here? With Big Gulps on sale for ninety-nine cents ten feet away? “You don’t mind this? This man is your blood.”

  Petersen had mistaken his reverie for second thoughts. “If you thought I’d mind, you wouldn’t be asking me.”

  “We don’t have to, your cousin can stay in the Senate, you’ll have all the information we need.”

  Eric’s vision strayed south. Past the White House to the Lincoln Memorial. The great man, sitting, hands on knees, trying to save the Union. A century and a half later, his every word still remembered. To be president was to be a god, of sorts. And to have a god’s afterlife. Do you want to be president? Do you want to be Zeus?

  “Do I even have to answer?”

  “You still have to win. You said yourself the reporters look at everything. Could anything disqualify you? Please, take a minute, think—”

  Funny, now that they’d reached this moment, Petersen was almost discouraging him. Eric didn’t need a minute to think. He’d always lived honorably. Told the truth even when it didn’t benefit him. Led his soldiers from the front. One of his first real memories, five years old, he’d taken an extra Tootsie Roll from a drugstore. Accidentally. When he found it, he insisted to his mom that they needed to go back, pay the nickel.

  “Nothing.”

  He’d always been a good man. Until now. Not so good now, was he? He was pretty sure that Honest Abe Lincoln had never plotted to kill his cousin so he could be president.

  But maybe that perfect history was why he’d fallen so far so fast. Not fallen but jumped. Let gravity have its way. He liked to blame Paul. Maybe he’d looked around and realized nobody cared about his code. He was just another washed-up retired colonel, stuck working for his cousin.

  He’d solved that problem, anyway. He wasn’t just another anything anymore.

  “Scout’s honor, nothing to hide. Just make sure of one thing, Adam.”

  “Yes.”

  “Make sure this sniper of yours doesn’t miss. He misses, or, even worse, he hits Paul and doesn’t take him out and that SOB makes some miraculous recovery, I swear before God and Stalin I will choke him out myself on live television. And call a press conference and confess it all.”

  Petersen patted Eric’s arm. “Let me know when you have the details of the speech. Give us an hour or two before you make the public announcement, if you can. And make it Sunday at the latest. Friday or Saturday, even better. The longer it goes, the harder it is for our man to hide.”

  “As you wish.”

  “Relax, Colonel. When all of this is over, you’ll have what you want.”

  “And only the Kremlin to thank.”

  It was past 9 by the time Eric knocked on the heavy oak door to Paul’s Capitol Hill town house. Some senators lived in shared houses in Washington, but not those who had nine-figure fortunes. For a while, when he came over, Eric expected to catch a mistress coming or going. He never had. Tonight, Jimmy Sanders pulled open the door.

  “In the study.”

  The room Paul called a study was devoid of books and had been given over to a thirty-foot model train track, complete with mountains, stations, and a miniature version of Nashville. A professional model train engineer had built it. Such people really did exist, so that rich people didn’t have to bother putting their own sets together. Paul watched happily as an eight-car train chugged around the track.

  “Cousin, you get Gloria her Deltas?”


  As if the world’s most highly trained soldiers were take-out fried chicken. Gimme two Sergeants and a Captain, extra-crispy. “Coming up from North Carolina tomorrow. I want to talk to them myself before I send them to her.”

  “Cool.”

  “I finished your speech.” Eric pulled a folder from his briefcase. Seven pages inside. “I think you ought to give it by Saturday. And not in Tennessee.”

  “Don’t we want to be sure we have a good crowd?”

  “You’ll have a good crowd wherever you do it. We’ll call it a major foreign policy address, a rethinking of America’s place in the world. The networks will show. Might even cover it live. Guess where I’m thinking?”

  Paul’s eyes crinkled in annoyance. Employees don’t make bosses guess. “Been a long day, Eric—”

  Yeah, I see you’ve been busy playing with trains. “Dallas. The American Airlines Center. I checked, the Mavs and Stars are out of town Friday, the weather’s gonna be good—”

  “Would they let me? The Mavs, I mean.”

  “How can they stop you? The leading voice on terrorism wants to speak at the site of a major attack. If they say no, they’ll look awful.”

  Paul shut off the train. Eric could almost see him thinking.

  “Cousin, don’t mean to sound like a wimp, but you sure it’s safe? With this sniper out there?”

  “You’ll have the Dallas police, your own security. A vest. Plus, if you haven’t noticed, the guy’s after priests. Unless you announce you’re joining the ministry, you should be fine.” Eric snapped his fingers like Paul had suddenly given him an idea, although he’d planned this line all along. “In fact, we can play up the risk, make Duto look even worse. Tell reporters you’re not afraid to go to the site of the attack, that’s the language we’ll use, and Duto’s in his bubble.”

  Paul flipped the train back on, and Eric knew he’d won.

  “Cousin, I like the way you think.” He smiled as the train began to chug. “Dallas, here we come.”

  22

  Wells and Coyle caught the Aeroméxico evening flight, landed at Dulles two hours late, 2 a.m. Wednesday morning. Five and a half hours later, bleary-eyed but shaved and scrubbed, they offered their IDs and walked into the White House.

  Shafer and Tarnes waited at the inner security checkpoint. A Secret Service agent promised someone would fetch them all. Shafer wore a three-inch-square gauze patch on his nearly bald head. His blue dress shirt was a size too large. But he seemed steady on his feet. A relief for Wells.

  “Ellis.”

  Shafer ignored Wells. “Looking good, Sergeant.”

  “Nice to see you, sir.”

  “Never call me sir. You know, Coyle, I feel like you need an announcer every time you walk in a room. Maybe some chalk to throw.”

  “I believe you just compared me to LeBron James.”

  “Mike Trout.”

  “Game I play with white folk of a certain age. I call it racist or old?”

  “I love all you people.” Shafer winked.

  “It’s just the closed-head injury talking,” Wells said.

  “You think he bothers me?” Coyle said.

  “We friends again?” Wells said to Shafer. Shafer reached his fingers under his chin, wagged them at Wells—the old Bronx curse. Wells grabbed Shafer’s skinny bicep and reeled him in. “Hug it out.”

  Shafer puckered up, kissed Wells on the chin, his lips dry and scratchy, his breath musty.

  “Ever heard of ChapStick?”

  “I don’t blame you for dumping me.” Shafer nodded at Tarnes. “She’s way better-looking.”

  Tarnes merely shook her head. “Children. We need to prep for this? It being the President and all.” She was the only one dressed properly for the meeting, in a slim gray suit that pulled off the neat trick of being both conservative and flattering. Wells wished he hadn’t noticed how flattering. Five hundred miles north, Anne was still throwing up like a broken cuckoo clock.

  “He might be the President to you, but to us he’s just Vinny, prick in chief,” Shafer said, as Duto’s chief admin stepped into the room. Wells refused to let himself remember the guy’s name. He was as glib, and gelled, as any Hollywood agent.

  “I’ll pretend I didn’t hear that.” The admin turned them away from the Oval Office corridor and led them instead to the staircase that accessed the Situation Room.

  “No big O?” Shafer said.

  “He wants to be able to videoconference Langley and the FBI just in case.”

  Wells suspected Duto just preferred the Sit Room. It was a windowless, self-important conference space with lots of gadgetry. It felt more like the agency than anywhere else in the White House.

  They arrived to find Duto at the wooden conference table that dominated the room. The New York Times lay in front of him, a front-page headline screaming SNIPER KILLS CARDINAL OF CHICAGO IN PREDAWN ATTACK. The shooting had happened barely twenty-four hours before, though it seemed far longer.

  “Showing your age,” Shafer said. “Who reads off-line?”

  “Goody, gang’s all here,” Duto said. Wells had told Duto only that he had urgent information. “Whatever this is, I know it’s going to suck, so keep the wit to yourself until you’ve told me.” He nodded at his admin. “Go on. Leave us.”

  The atmosphere changed, stilled, when the admin closed the door. The Sit Room’s air was cool and odorless because it was so thoroughly filtered to remove potential toxins. The atmospheric equivalent of bottled water. The wood paneling hid concrete walls thick enough to survive a direct hit from a five-ton bomb. If the White House was a castle, this room and the offices around it were the keep. If it fell, the only refuge would be the tunnels underground. Descending into those would be a sure sign the Apocalypse was nigh.

  “Begin,” Duto said.

  Wells had the fullest picture of what they’d found. Still, Shafer did most of the talking. Wells thought Coyle seemed intimidated. He retreated to the far end of the conference table and kept his head down, taking notes on a legal pad.

  When Shafer was done, Duto looked at Coyle. “Sergeant? Anything to add?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Sure?”

  Coyle seemed to recognize that he’d better have at least one idea for his commander in chief. “I think the sooner we hit Banamex, the better, Mr. President. They may have records even Mendoz doesn’t know about. Banks like paper—I know, from the time they tried to foreclose on my aunt and uncle. And, obviously, this kind of account is different, but banks are banks, sir.”

  “Noted. Julie?”

  Wells hardly recognized this version of Duto. Stop acting so presidential, Vinny. Watching you solicit staff opinions makes my teeth hurt.

  “Why open two accounts in Mexico? Seems overly complicated.”

  “Two accounts, two plots, right? Or do you think the Russians aren’t running the sniper?”

  “They must be. But the Russians could have started with one Banamex account and shifted the money to an American bank later.” Tarnes hesitated. “What I’m saying is, they wanted to split the two plots as far up the chain as possible. They wanted the sniper to run whether or not Dallas worked. Which says to me they wanted him to be able to go on for a while.”

  “And?”

  “So why have the sniper kill two guys in forty-eight hours? Something changed, they want to move fast. Like they have some specific target they didn’t have before. The obvious choice—” She broke off.

  Wells understood why she didn’t want to say more. Telling the President he might be the target of a Russian assassination plot was no fun.

  “I get it, Julie. Here’s a fun fact nobody but the SecDef knows, as of now. I talked to Fedin after Hurley got shot. He told me how much he wanted to help. By the way, can ve have Ukraine as vedding present, ve really like Ukraine. I told
him to get bent. I figured he was just taking advantage of the situation. Didn’t realize he was making his own luck.”

  “Maybe he didn’t like getting blown off,” Shafer said. “Now he wants you gone, figures the Vice President would be more his speed.”

  “Has he ever talked to the guy?” Duto snorted. “But, yeah, maybe. If they thought they had a real shot and could get away clean. But they can’t. Not unless this sniper is Chris Kyle resurrected. Not even then. The Secret Service is a pain, and they love them some hookers, but they’re good at snipers. Fedin has to know that. And he has to know that shooting me would be World War Three.”

  “Unless he doesn’t,” Wells said.

  “Can’t believe I’m going to say this, but I preferred the Cold War,” Duto said. “Everybody knew the rules. Three dates before you screwed, no matter how bad you wanted it. These days, it’s like, Do I swipe left or right? Do we have dinner or just go back to his place? Is he going to expect oral, too, ’cause I’ve got a sore throat, I’m not in the mood—”

  Duto stopped abruptly.

  “What I hear, anyway. Kids these days.”

  “Oral—would that be regional hostilities?” Shafer said.

  “Let’s call it limited nuclear war. Right down their throats.”

  “Great metaphor there, Vinny. Screams dignity of the office.”

  Coyle caught Wells’s eye: This really happening? Am I hearing this? Wells nodded: Welcome to the show, son. Hope you can hit the curve.

  “Now that we’ve learned much too much about your dating habits,” Shafer said, “now what?”

  Above Duto, the digital clocks counted seconds—Washington, London, Paris, Moscow, Jerusalem, Delhi, Beijing—not coincidentally, the capitals of seven of the world’s nine nuclear-armed nations. Only a matter of time before Pyongyang showed up, too. Wells knew Duto would go from emergency meeting to emergency meeting in the next days. The SecDef would helicopter over from the Pentagon. The DCIA from Langley. The Vice President and the National Security Advisor would arrive, too, to discuss “appropriate responses” and “contingencies” and “levers of escalation.”