Hail to the Chef

by Julie Hyzy

  “I think,” I said, standing, pulling my thoughts together and attempting to make sense of them. “I think we need to go back to the kitchen.”

  GAV WANTED TO SEQUESTER ME IN THE BUNKER with Mrs. Campbell while he called the bomb squad back for a look, but I balked. “I could be wrong,” I said.

  He shot me an intense look. “You haven’t been wrong yet.”

  I opened my mouth, but he interrupted.

  “You cannot go traipsing around the White House when there might be a second bomb ready to go off,” he said.

  “You’ll never find it without me.”

  “Wanna bet?”

  The idea of going bomb-hunting was not high on my list of healthy activities, but the truth was, if I was right, they wouldn’t find the second bomb for a long time. And by then it could be too late. I swallowed, unable to find the words to convey my need to protect the White House, but I saw that need reflected in all the agents’ eyes. I knew they saw it in mine.

  After a brief discussion on the possibility of setting up a camera for me to direct Gav and his agents from a safe distance, they decided there just wasn’t enough time to arrange for that. “Putting your life in danger is not an option,” Gav said. “We’ll just have to do our best without you.”

  “Nobody knows the kitchen like I do,” I said. “And the clock is ticking.”

  They knew it. I knew it.

  I grabbed Gav’s arm. “Literally.”

  The bomb squad took over our area of the bunker and outfitted me in protective gear. Just as they hustled me out, Mrs. Campbell asked, “Are you sure you know what you’re doing?”

  Covered by a helmet and a clear plastic face guard, I couldn’t be certain she heard me assure her I did. Not that it mattered. I wasn’t quite sure myself.

  Walking with body armor was harder than I anticipated. Covered from head to toe, I felt as though I weighed six hundred pounds. Within moments of leaving the bunker, I was wet around my waist and collar, and rivulets of sweat dripped around my ears.

  Gav, similarly outfitted, remained silent as we made our way through the hall and into the kitchen. Like I’d told them, I knew my kitchen like I would know my own children, if I had any. But to explain where to find something to a person unfamiliar with the area would be an exercise in futility. And the last thing I needed was for an army of military bomb experts to toss my pristine kitchen in an attempt to find an explosive device that I could put my hand on in moments.

  Yeah, I was nervous. But more than that, I was determined.

  Once in the kitchen, though, I faltered. My heart slammed so hard in my chest I could almost hear it clang against the body armor. If I was right, this entire room-the place I considered home even more so than my apartment-could be vaporized. Me with it.

  I bit my lips, but it was hard to do since they were slippery with perspiration. My voice was hoarse. “Okay, here,” I said, even though I wasn’t sure they could hear me. I made my way to the far end of the room, bomb squad in tow. With the sinks to my left, I yanked up the drop-side of the center stainless steel countertop. “This is why you’d never find it.” Once the side was secure, I crouched and reached beneath it to reveal a hidden cabinet door. Because of its inaccessibility, we rarely used this storage space except to shove junk we hoped never to see again.

  I thought I heard them all gasp as I lost my footing, but it was just a quick stumble, and within seconds I’d righted myself, ready to root through the collection of useless items we’d retired here. I’d tucked this thing deep, hoping to forget about it until the time came for a seasonal clean-up.

  Gav placed a hand on my padded shoulder. “I’ll take over from here.” His voice sounded far away. Blunted.

  “But it’s right-”

  He silenced me with a look. “Think back to the Briefing Room, Ollie.”

  He was right. I remembered my mistake snatching the fake IED from its perch, risking setting off a bomb. Finding this device was one thing. Handling it was something else.

  Gav pointed to the door. “And get out.”

  I scooted backward, but panic gripped when I realized I’d have to cross the kitchen again to escape. As brave as I’d been coming down here, the terror I felt now, knowing that any movement in Gav’s peripheral vision could affect the outcome, froze me in place. His focus right now was inside that cabinet door and he couldn’t see me huddled in a corner behind him. All my focus was on him as he took a breath and steeled himself.

  Twisting, Gav pushed his arm deep into the cabinet’s recesses, his fingers working along objects I could picture even though I couldn’t see. “Careful,” I breathed, clouding my face mask.

  “Hang on,” he said to himself.

  Very slowly, Gav eased backward, his hands cradling the familiar, ugly clock.

  “That’s it!” I said.

  Other bomb squad technicians rushed forward and gently removed the clock from Gav’s hands, placing it into a thick, insulated box. With a nod of acknowledgment, they hurried out.

  The moment they were gone, I pulled the helmet off. So did Gav.

  “What now?” I asked.

  He shot me a skeptical look. “Haven’t you had enough?”

  WITH THE GINGERBREAD HOUSE DESTROYED, the official opening celebration abandoned, the First Lady relocated from the bunker to the residence, and reporters trampling over one another to try to get the scoop, it was a wild day, even by White House standards.

  Not for the first time did I find myself the center of attention of a bunch of serious-faced males. This time we were back in the Red Room, and I was walking five men-all agents and security personnel-through my thought processes when I’d been waiting for Mrs. Campbell to throw the switch.

  Though Gav was present, he didn’t participate. He stood back as I fielded questions from the group, explaining what I could about floating neutrals. “I don’t know how to test for them,” I began, “and I don’t even know if one was present…”

  “There was.” The voice came from the back of the room, and I was surprised to see Curly Sheridan escorted in by two more agents. He looked as grumpy as ever, but to my surprise, he wasn’t handcuffed, or in any way restrained.

  I took an instinctive step back.

  “It’s okay,” one of the agents said. “This is the guy who disabled the voltage problem.”

  I didn’t understand.

  “Damn Manny,” Curly said. When he looked at me, his eyes narrowed. “When you found me working on the fountain, I thought you were talking out your a-your backside. But what you said made sense.” He rubbed a finger along his scar, which made me feel guilty even though I hadn’t done anything wrong. “I started looking into what you were talking about.”

  “The floating neutral?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “Looks like Manny, or Vince-or both of them-rigged one up to set those outlets to blow 240.” He nodded toward the wall.

  He didn’t admit that he should have listened to me earlier, but regret radiated off him like waves of heat. And that was good enough for me.

  “They took off,” said Gav from the back of the room. “We’re picking them up now for questioning.”

  “Yi-im,” I said suddenly.

  “We’re after him, too.”

  CHAPTER 24

  MARCEL WAS STILL MOURNING HIS LOST GINGERBREAD house the next day. “There are not even photos of it other than those I took myself,” he said. “All the photographers waited until the lighting ceremony.” He heaved a great sigh. “So much work. All lost.”

  We stood in the kitchen, having just finished preparing breakfast for the president and First Lady. Other than the fact that the upstairs was still being processed as a crime scene, life was back to normal. After the excitement yesterday, the president had come home to be with his wife. Tom had come back last night, too-in fact he’d picked me up inside the grounds, sparing me having to run the gauntlet of reporters that swarmed the place. Thank goodness. I’d needed to vent and he was only too willing to
listen.

  “There are plenty of pictures of Ollie in today’s paper,” Cyan said, pushing the front page across the countertop.

  I’d seen them. Crisp color pictures of me sitting under a table amid gingerbread detritus graced the first page, under the headline “That’s the Way the Cookie Crumbles.” I turned away, groaning. “Can’t we just forget yesterday ever happened?”

  “The ace executive chef does it again,” Bucky said, with more than a hint of sarcasm. “Olivia Paras, always in the middle of everything.”

  “Back off, Buckaroo,” Cyan said. “She saved your life. All of ours, probably.”

  His mouth puckered and he glanced at Cyan, before turning to me. “I guess I never thanked you, did I?” He lifted his chin. “Thanks.”

  “No problem,” I said, wanting to keep the mood light. “All in a day’s work.”

  “You sound like James Bond,” Cyan said. “Or… Jane Bond!”

  Agda’s eyes lit up, as she joined in on the banter. “Maybe she spy!”

  Rafe nodded. “A Russian spy!”

  “Russians are out,” I said, laughing. “They’re not the bad guys anymore.”

  Bucky wasn’t being particularly unpleasant, but his words had more of a bite than anyone else’s when he asked, “I still don’t get it. How do you always get in the middle of all the intrigue around here?”

  “Bad luck, I guess.”

  Gav leaned in the doorway. “Or good luck, depending on how you want to look at it.” He greeted the staff and reminded them that even though recent events had thrown the schedule off, security classes would resume the next day. To me, he said, “Do you have a minute?”

  I followed him to the China Room, thinking sadly about Marcel’s weeks of planning and preparation and of all the time he’d spent in here creating his now-trashed masterpiece.

  Gav closed the door and motioned for me to sit in one of the upholstered chairs. “There will be a press conference later this morning.”

  “I’m not going to have to say anything, am I?”

  He sat across from me, shaking his head, elbows on his knees as he studied the floor. The stress of the job obviously took its toll. He seemed to have aged since I’d met him. “No. In fact we’d prefer that you say nothing.”

  “Can you tell me what’s going on?”

  He sat back. “You probably know it all anyway.”

  “I don’t. Really. I’ve just been guessing. Trying to fill in the blanks.”

  One eye narrowed. “I told you I believed in your instincts. And I’m glad you trusted your gut.” Leaning forward again, but this time staring at me, he continued. “I’ll tell you what I can. Fair enough?”

  I nodded.

  “The Blanchard gingerbread men were outfitted with a sophisticated type of explosive,” he said slowly. “We haven’t seen much of this stuff because it’s so new. It’s very malleable.” He pantomimed, rubbing his thumbs and forefingers together. “Just like C-4, but this stuff is so advanced, they were able to use it as decoration on the cookies and not have anyone notice. Plus, it’s stable enough for transport. Powerful stuff. Had it been ignited by a straight 120 volt, it would’ve been bad.” He stared at me. “Very bad. It probably would have taken out everyone within ten feet of the explosion.”

  I didn’t know if he was exaggerating to make me feel better, but I actually felt a little bit worse. Shivering, I tried hard not to imagine what might have happened if Mrs. Campbell had flipped that switch.

  Gav must have read my mind because he added, “With the additional surge from the floating neutral, those three gingerbread men would have taken out the back half of the White House.”

  “Oh, God.”

  “Yeah,” he said.

  “And Blanchard arranged everything? But how and why? And what about Sean?”

  Gav held up a hand. “Slow down. We’ve got Blanchard in custody. Your electrician Manny Fortunato, too. He rigged everything from the inside.”

  “But it was Blanchard behind it all?”

  “Not according to Blanchard. He’s trying to point the finger at his overzealous assistant.”

  “Bindy?”

  Gav nodded. “Said she came up with all this on her own.”

  “No way.”

  With a shrug, Gav continued. “Blanchard claims he knew nothing about any of this. He’s running real hard, trying to distance himself from the girl. Maintains he’s completely innocent and seems just a little too eager to dump all the blame on her.”

  “What about her?”

  For the first time all day, Gav smiled. “She’s giving her statement now. Blanchard doesn’t know, but she rolled right over now that he’s pointing the finger at her. Oldest story in the book. Young, impressionable woman taken in by a powerful man. She was in it for love. He was in it for power.” Gav added, “She’s giving up every little detail in the hopes of getting off easy.”

  “Will she?”

  “She was involved in trying to blow up the White House. What do you think?”

  I grimaced. “What about Sean?”

  Gav sobered again. “Blanchard again.”

  I sucked in a breath.

  “Your friend Kirsten…” Gav began.

  “I only met her once.”

  He dismissed my correction. “She was heading down the wrong path, but she was close. Turns out Sean was killed using Volkov’s gun.”

  “What?”

  “Crime scene investigators were able to prove that Sean didn’t pull the trigger. That the note was planted, making the death a homicide. But.” He bit the corner of his mouth. “The gun’s serial number was mutilated. Not completely. Just enough to slow down its identification. When we figured it out, we realized the gun belonged to Volkov. He was brought in for questioning.”

  “That’s probably what Kirsten heard about.”

  “Could be,” he said. “Volkov admitted to it being his, but was as surprised as we were to discover how it had been used. He couldn’t imagine how it could have gotten out of his house-until yesterday. He called the Metropolitan Police because he remembered that the last time he’d seen it, he’d been showing it to Blanchard.” Gav placed a finger over his lips. “We asked him to keep that to himself, and told him that we’d be in touch.”

  “So it looks like Blanchard killed Sean and was trying to frame Volkov for it?”

  “That’s the premise we’re working under.” Gav licked his lips. “But he didn’t do the messy work himself. According to Bindy there were a couple of other people involved.”

  I thought about the two guys who’d accosted me. “Who are they?”

  He shook his head. “She didn’t know their names. Just knew that Blanchard handled parts of the plan himself. He, or one of his operatives, may have fed the information to Kirsten. In fact, we believe they killed her, too.”

  My heart broke for the poor kid. She’d been trying so hard to make a name for herself and had instead been used and discarded by a powerful senator who was bent on a run at the White House. “How did Blanchard get to Manny, or to Yi-im?”

  “His girl Bindy. She had all the connections from her days working here. In Manny’s case, it was pure greed. Yi-im and Blanchard go way back to the senator’s days as an army intelligence officer in Seoul.” He gave me a look. “Yi-im was in the Korean CIA, although under a different name, of course.”

  “How did he pass the background check here?”

  “Blanchard sponsored Yi-im into the United States. If he’s who we think he is, your friend Yi-im and his brother were Korean operatives who may have been involved in the assassination of Park Chung-hee back in 1979.”

  My mind was having a hard time assimilating all this. “Then he’s a dangerous guy.”

  “You think?”

  “Have you arrested him yet?”

  “We’re working on it, but he’s slippery.”

  This was too much for me. “And all this was so that Blanchard could sell Zendy Industries?”

  “That�
��s only part of it. The senator is an ambitious man. For a successful run at the presidency he needed the money from Zendy and spies inside the White House. And he wanted all that enough to kill. He might have had a hand in killing Mr. Sinclair; we’re looking into that now.”

  I gasped.

  “There are bad people in this world, Ollie,” he said.

  “I know. I just can’t imagine…”

  “There’s something else,” he said.

  By the look on his face, I knew it wasn’t good news. “Go ahead,” I said.

  “When your chief electrician was killed…”

  “Gene.”

  “Yes, Gene. When he was killed, he was felled by that phenomena you talked about-the floating neutral. But it looks as though it occurred naturally.”

  My stomach clenched. I knew what Gav was about to say, so I beat him to it. Maybe it would hurt less that way. “And I brought the idea to their attention?”

  “You did,” he said. “Blanchard’s team had placed a bomb in the White House, in an effort to target the First Lady, but their attempts were crude and unsuccessful. Bindy kept in regular contact with Manny. He tossed out the idea of rigging a floating neutral after you kept badgering him about it. He said he thought he could make the blast look like a natural occurrence.”

  My head was spinning. “So I played a part in almost getting the White House destroyed.”

  “No almost about it. The White House is gone.” Gav smiled. “The gingerbread White House, that is. Completely decimated, thanks to you.” His eyebrows rose and the gray eyes sparkled. “But also thanks to you, the real White House is still standing.”

  MARCEL’S GINGERBREAD MASTERPIECE WOULD be the first one to go down in history as a casualty of political warfare. But some good had come of it. In the First Lady’s press conference later that night, she’d chosen not to dwell on what was lost, but on what remained. She’d reminded everyone in the televised event that all the gingerbread men sent in by the nation’s children had survived intact.

  She said: “That our children’s contributions are still with us-that each one is still just as beautiful as it was when we received it-is really what’s important. Thanks to our fine staff and American gutsiness, our White House is still standing, and we are still together to enjoy it. Our holiday theme has special meaning for us tonight because… together we do celebrate. Welcome home.” At that she’d opened her arms, inviting the cameras into the residence for their much-belated Decorator Tour.