The black metal gates swung open. If Tusk hurried, he could still make it inside for the start of the meeting.
49
This time I did not have to wait to see Lowell Carlyle.
The two Secret Service officers who had met me at the gate rushed me across the lawn, into the West Wing door, through the wide waiting room. Doors swung open ahead of us. The staffers clogging the hallways were made to stand back.
Mr. Carlyle’s secretary was standing up at her desk outside his office, looking grim. When she saw me, she let out a little gasp. Then she reached for the phone on her desk, hit a button, and said, “She’s here . . . . Yes. Mr. Carlyle asked to be notified.”
She stepped out from behind the desk.
“Thank you,” I said to her, gesturing at the guards still flanking me. “Thank you for having them ready.”
She nodded, and I watched her eyes widen as she took in the full state of my appearance. She picked up the phone again and spoke quickly. “Dr. Patterson? It’s Tess. Could you step in here for a minute? . . . No, no, he’s fine. But bring your bag.”
A minute later Lowell Carlyle appeared. He looked even wearier than when I had met him two days ago, as if he had not slept in years. His dark suit was creased and his eyes were red and pouchy. Their expression was kind, though, as he motioned me into his office and toward a chair.
He sat down in another chair opposite me and put his hand on my wrist. “Are you all right?”
“Yes. I’m fine. But you were right. After you called—just after you called—he was there.”
“Who was there?”
“Nadeem Siddiqui. When I opened the front door—”
“Nadeem Siddiqui? I don’t understand.”
“I don’t either, entirely. He is”—I took a breath—“he’s dead now.”
Carlyle looked carefully at me. “Siddiqui died sometime last week, Alexandra. In Pakistan. His name was highlighted this morning in the PDB—the daily intel brief. There must be some mistake.”
“Yeah, I heard that too,” I said, suddenly angry. “But someone who seemed to know an awful lot about him showed up at my door this morning and gave me this.” I lifted my hair.
Carlyle blanched. Then he reached over to a phone on a side table and hit a button. “Tess. Could you get Dr. Patterson— Oh, he’s here?”
The office door swung open to admit a middle-aged man who I assumed must be the White House physician. He bustled in, inspected my face, and started pulling wipes and bandages out of a leather bag. “You’ll need stitches. Quite a few, by the look of it. That’s a whopper. Why don’t you come with me—”
“No,” said Lowell Carlyle abruptly. “I’m sorry, we’ll get to that, but I need her first. Can you just clean her up a bit?”
The doctor raised his eyebrows but got to work.
Carlyle spoke again. “You said—in the message that was passed to me, it said you had his phone?”
I nodded and clutched my bag closer to me. “And his wallet. I had his gun, too, but I had to leave it at security.”
I saw the doctor and Carlyle exchange looks. He held up his hand to stop me talking.
“I’m not sure I’m the best person for you to be telling this to. But as it happens, those guys are here. We’ve got a deputies meeting about to get under way downstairs. I’m going to pull the CIA and FBI officers out and let you speak directly to them. In the interest of not wasting time—”
“No,” I interrupted. “That’s the problem. That’s why I came to you. You don’t understand. I think the CIA is involved.”
“Involved? With what?”
“They were talking with Nadeem Siddiqui. I think they sent him to kill me.”
Mr. Carlyle sat back in his chair and studied me for a long moment. For the second time in less than hour, I watched a man weighing whether I might be completely mad.
When he spoke, his voice was gentle. “Alexandra. You know that can’t be true. I think—I know you’ve had a traumatic morning. It’s going to be all right. I need you to tell us what happened, all the details, and then Dr. Patterson here is going to take care of you.”
“I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking that I’m deranged,” I said hotly. “But I have proof that the CIA—”
“Let’s just set that aside for the moment, shall we?” Carlyle cut in, sounding less kindly now and more like the president’s lawyer. “Here is what is going to happen. You are going to tell us exactly what you saw this morning. Just what you saw, nothing else. And then you’re free to go. Wait here.” His tone made it clear there was no point arguing.
Carlyle and the doctor left the office and shut the door behind them. God knows what they were saying about me outside. I half-expected the doctor to sneak back in with a giant sedative shot to knock me out and cart me away. I wouldn’t have blamed him.
But the door stayed shut, and I let my eyes wander around the room. They fell on the phone Carlyle had used, sitting on the end table. I wondered if it had an outside line. I wondered how long I had.
I picked it up, dialed 9, and heard an ordinary dial tone. I had to try.
“Elias Thottrup,” he answered.
“Elias!”
“Alex. Where are you?”
“At the White House,” I whispered. “In Lowell Carlyle’s office. Listen. I’ve got to talk fast. Nadeem Siddiqui—he was alive. He came to the house this morning—”
“He WHAT?”
“With a gun. He tried to kill me, and I—I shot him. Shh, be quiet and listen to me, okay? I took his phone, and he was talking to Edmund Tusk. The CIA guy. They were sending messages. Do you understand? So I came here. I brought the phone here. I told Carlyle and now he wants to question me—”
“Alex, slow down—”
“I can’t. There’s a big meeting here. Carlyle said it was a . . . What did he call it? A deputies meeting.”
“Uh-huh. That’s all the number two guys. The deputy secretary of state, the NSC deputy, the deputy SecDef . . . It’s when they’re worried about something but not quite worried enough to call a cabinet meeting.”
“I think they’re meeting about our story,” I said. “I mean, not our story specifically, but the banana shipment and Nadeem and . . . whether there’s a bomb. I think it’s real, Elias.”
Silence.
“Elias?”
“Did you say you shot him?”
“Tell Hyde. Tell him exactly what I just told you. Can you write something and get it up on the website? That the national security team is meeting, at least? I’m about to go down there—”
At that moment the office door swung open. I slammed the phone down and turned beet red.
A tall, powerfully built man walked in. He wore a boxy, dark blue suit, his hair was shaved close to his skull, and the coil of an earpiece hung down. He looked from the phone to my burning cheeks. “Looks like you’re going to keep me busy.” Then he stuck out his hand. “Captain McNamara, US Secret Service.”
I took his hand. “I’m Alex. But you must know that. You said McNamara, as in Ralph McNamara? Marco Galloni’s friend?”
The smallest of smiles played across his lips. “He said to keep an eye on you. Also said you were a lot of trouble.” He took in the bandage over my eye and the bloodstains splattered down my dress. “I hear you made quite the entrance this morning.”
“At the guard station, you mean? Yeah. It wasn’t the most . . . subtle approach I’ve ever made.”
The smile flickered again and then he turned serious. “From now on, you don’t move without me. Got it? I am officially your shadow. Now, we’re headed downstairs. Let’s go.”
We walked in silence along a corridor and down a set of stairs into the West Wing basement. McNamara stopped in front of a desk manned by a uniformed guard.
“We wait here,” he said.
“Where are we?”
He nodded across the hall at a polished mahogany door. THE SITUATION ROOM, read a brass plaque. After a minute the
door opened. My view was partly blocked, but I could see a room full of people. Some were sitting at a conference table; others formed an outer ring, chairs pushed back against the walls. The deputies to the deputies, I assumed.
Carlyle was standing, leaning over one end of the table and whispering urgently. I scanned the other faces. And then I froze.
Edmund Tusk. He was sitting right there, in the outer ring of chairs. He was studying a stack of papers on his lap. He looked bored.
“That’s him,” I hissed, yanking on McNamara’s sleeve.
He caught my hand and held it down firmly. “What? Who?”
“That man.” I pointed. “That’s Edmund Tusk. He’s CIA. You need to question him.”
“What?” McNamara looked confused. “No. I think you’re supposed to meet with someone else. Our instructions are to wait here for Lowell Carlyle.”
“I know, but—” I wanted to scream with frustration. Actually, maybe that wasn’t a bad idea.
“Mr. Carlyle!” I called loudly into the room. “Mr. Carlyle—”
The whole room fell momentarily silent at this appalling lapse of etiquette. Tusk looked up. For one moment our eyes met. Then Lowell Carlyle was barreling toward me, looking supremely annoyed, two other men in tow.
The door to the Situation Room slammed shut behind them. I felt myself being dragged down the hall by the elbow after Carlyle and the other men.
I shut my eyes and heard Tusk’s whisper from yesterday echo in my head:
If you were a terrorist and you had just one—you’re not going to waste it, are you?
ACROSS THE TABLE OF A small conference room three men sat glaring at me.
I glared back.
I felt mutinous. My eye throbbed. I had nearly been murdered twice this week. And now Lowell Carlyle was scolding me for causing a scene.
“I will remind you, Alexandra,” he was saying grimly, “that you are here only as a courtesy, and that any further behavior like that will mean I have to remove you from—”
“Yes. Thank you,” I cut in. “I grasp the point. But I assume these gentlemen have more pressing things to worry about than my lack of decorum. I need you all just to listen to me.”
We were down the hall from the Situation Room, crammed into a windowless cell with powder-blue walls and mauve carpeting. It evoked the lobby decor of an Embassy Suites in Des Moines. Captain McNamara was standing guard outside the door. The other two men inside had been introduced as C.J. from the CIA and Bruce from the FBI. They were both now looking at me aghast. I ought to have been intimidated, but I was too damn mad.
“The reason I yelled back there is because I saw Edmund Tusk. He was sitting in there, right behind you,” I said, turning to C.J. “We need to go get him and pull him out because he knows—”
“Ed Tusk? What the hell is she talking about?” growled C.J., shifting in his chair. “She is right about one thing, and that’s that I’ve got better things to worry about than some loose-cannon reporter—”
“Alexandra, we agreed not to get into this,” Mr. Carlyle warned.
“But he’s involved,” I insisted. “What I’m trying to tell you is, Tusk’s involved in this whole situation—”
“Of course he’s involved!” shouted C.J. “He’s the fucking deputy head of the National Clandestine Service, you idiot!”
The door opened then, and the woman I recognized as head of the White House press office stuck her head into the room. She looked murderously at me, then handed a piece of paper to Mr. Carlyle. “You need to see this.”
He read for a moment. “Oh my. But when—? Ah. In my office. Of course.”
The other two men leaned over to read. Finally they passed it to me.
The short news item had been printed minutes ago from the Chronicle website:
WASHINGTON—Top administration officials were huddled in an emergency session at the White House this morning, meeting to address what appear to be rapidly mounting concerns about the possible smuggling of a hostile nuclear weapon into the United States.
The meeting in the White House Situation Room included senior officials from the Pentagon, the CIA, the FBI and other agencies.
While details of the fast-moving situation remain murky . . .
Most damning for me was this line, at the bottom:
This article was reported by Alexandra James at the White House and written by Elias Thottrup.
For a moment all you could hear was the sound of five people breathing. I smoothed an imaginary wrinkle in my dress. It occurred to me to wonder just how far my Secret Service protection would extend. Was Ralph McNamara honor-bound to protect me if senior officials from the White House, CIA, and FBI all decided to launch themselves across the table and wring my neck?
It almost made me smile. Instead I forced myself to look up and meet their eyes. There was no point backing down now.
Bruce from the FBI spoke first. “Do you have any idea,” he began slowly, “any idea the damage that story will do—”
“Is anything in that story wrong?”
“That’s not the point!” Bruce exploded.
“Is there a single fact in that story that’s wrong?” I persisted.
“Bruce is right,” interrupted Mr. Carlyle. “Alexandra, how could you?”
“It’s my job. Now, listen. The name Edmund Tusk is not in that story. But it will be in the next one—”
“Oh, for Christ’s sake. I’ve had enough.” C.J. pushed back from the table.
I raised my voice: “What I am trying to tell you is Tusk is collaborating with Nadeem Siddiqui. Or Shaukat Malik, if you want to use that name instead. Tusk was messaging him all morning—”
“What did you just say?” the CIA man said sharply.
“I said Tusk was messaging—”
“No. You just said Shaukat Malik. How do you know that name?”
“Well, he introduced himself that way. Right before he gave me this.” I pointed at my bandaged eye.
C.J. sank heavily into his chair. I appeared to have his full attention now. “But that’s classified. I haven’t even briefed the deputies meeting yet . . . . How do you . . .” He looked utterly disoriented.
I hesitated a split second. I had no idea where his loyalties lay, or what the CIA was up to, or whether Tusk was acting alone. But what choice did I have? I pulled the wallet with the Virginia ID from my handbag and held it up.
“Here he is. Mr. Shaukat Malik. Apparently a driver in good standing in the fine state of Virginia.”
C.J.’s eyes widened and he reached out to snatch it from me.
I pulled back. “I’ll be glad to hand it over. Just as soon as you go find Tusk.”
“Now you listen here,” C.J. hissed. “You have no idea what you’re playing at. Finding Shaukat Malik is a matter of national security, do you understand? We need to get that photo out. Give me the—”
“WILL YOU LISTEN?” I bellowed. “I know where Shaukat Malik is. He is lying dead on the kitchen floor of number 3027 Dumbarton Street. Okay? I know because I shot him. With his own gun. This morning.”
Four faces gaped at me. C.J. had gone very white. The press secretary gripped the back of a chair as if her knees were about to buckle.
“C.J., who is this Shaukat Malik?” asked Mr. Carlyle quietly.
C.J. sat staring at the wall, blinking rapidly.
Carlyle turned to me. “Alex? I thought you said it was Nadeem Siddiqui who came to your door this morning? And who hit you? I don’t understand.”
“Please,” I was begging now. “I’ll tell you everything I know. I have been trying to tell you this whole time. But first, please: find Edmund Tusk. Is he still in there?”
Carlyle frowned, then gave a barely perceptible nod.
He banged open the door and began barking orders at Ralph McNamara. Everyone else rushed out of the room. More guards appeared. The door closed again. Outside I could hear people running, doors slamming, voices shouting.
Several long minutes
passed. I paced up and down the narrow space between the wall and table. I rattled the door handle. Locked from the outside.
“McNamara? You out there?” I called.
“I’m here. Sit tight.”
Finally the door swung open. The first face I saw was McNamara’s. Next to him, to my surprise, stood the erect figure of General Carspecken.
He peered down at me. At first the only thought my frazzled mind could muster was that the national security adviser was wearing his red Marine Corps tie again. Or perhaps he had several of them. I imagined the interior of his closet, stuffed with row after row of dark suits and Semper Fi ties. I was tempted to lift his jacket sleeve and check whether he was wearing the cuff links too.
Stop it, Alex. Pull yourself together. He was saying something now.
“. . . need you to step back into the Situation Room with me. And you will tell us exactly what happened this morning. We’re ready now, please.”
I nodded. My mouth felt dry. He stepped aside to let me out of the little conference room into the hall.
“Edmund Tusk?” I whispered.
The general shook his head. “He’s gone.”
50
Over the next two hours, one of the many remarkable things that happened was I got a phone call from Lucien Sly.
When the call came, I was sitting in the Situation Room, an arrangement that did not come about without controversy. Bruce, the FBI deputy, had thrown a full-blown tantrum. He pointed out that not only did I lack the appropriate security clearances to enter, but I had also been—as he put it—“broadcasting every goddamn move to the enemy.”
General Carspecken overruled him. “She’s also the only one here who’s actually met and talked to Siddiqui—or Malik rather. Can we get some clarity on the name, please?” Carspecken turned impatiently to an aide. “What are we calling this guy?”
“Mike!” Bruce interjected. “Can I remind you it’s actually a crime to have a reporter in here when we’re talking classified information? As in, leaking sensitive national-security information to the press? I don’t want to be the one hauled up to testify under oath at some Senate hearing, on why we leaked sources and methods—”
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