by J. G. Jurado
To comfort her was unthinkable, so Kate pretended not to notice she was crying.
“It’s okay. I’m fine,” the First Lady said after she managed to pull herself together. “I’m sorry I snapped at you, Kate. I know you’re true-blue, and my daughters are nuts about you, you know. You and Onslow are their favorite agents. At night when we have dinner, they always say, ‘I got first dibs on Kate, you had her last week, Mom.’ ”
“They’re darling girls,” Kate said with a smile.
“Aren’t they, though?”
For a couple of minutes only the thwack of the rackets and the balls rebounding on the court could be heard. Kate watched the two girls wistfully, harkening back to the days when she played with Rachel. She used to get hopping mad and quit playing if she thought she couldn’t win.
“Actually, I’m glad you listened. I desperately need to talk about it, preferably to a woman. All those in the know are men, and deal with issues like men do. They either duck them or ram them head-on. You’re not married, are you?”
As she was tall, strong and obstinately single, Kate had won an unfounded reputation among her colleagues for being a lesbian, not that she cared.
“I’ve managed to escape so far, ma’am.”
“But I think you get my meaning.”
“I believe I do, ma’am.”
There was silence again.
“The president’s sick, Kate, as if we didn’t already have enough on our plate, enough ball-breakers. As if it weren’t enough to have to smile while we weather every crisis, every intrigue, every futile power struggle. They stand up when we enter, but they’re thinking about what’s in it for them before they even hear the last note of ‘Hail to the Chief.’ If they so much as find out he’s got . . .”
Kate bit her tongue for a few seconds before answering. She knew it was wrong but nonetheless she did it.
“Ma’am, I’m sorry if I was out of line earlier. It was a knee-jerk reaction because you mentioned my brother-in-law.”
“Your brother-in-law’s a brain surgeon?”
“Dr. David Evans, at St. Clement’s.”
“Is he a good doctor?”
“I have no idea, but he’s a good person.”
If I had kept quiet, Julia would be sleeping soundly at home right now.
That was another “if” to add to the long list she had drawn up in her life.
But if not Julia, they would have kidnapped somebody else’s child. Another innocent kid who did not have a federal agent for an aunt to try to save her. Old Jim Robson always said things happened for a reason. Maybe that was why it had happened to Julia. So she could come to the rescue.
Well, God, if you’re listening, you know where you can shove your reasons, Kate thought as she took her first sip of piping-hot coffee.
Kate and her Maker hadn’t made up since Rachel’s death. At that time of the morning and as she had barely slept a wink, things weren’t about to change.
I need a clue. A lead. I need to gather string till I can pull on it. It must be in here somewhere, she thought as she scoured the wastepaper over and over.
She swigged a big mouthful of coffee. It hadn’t cooled down enough and seared her throat as she swallowed. It wouldn’t help her encroaching heartburn, but it would liven her up a little.
She had thrown out packaging and containers, and made three small piles with the rest of the stuff in front of her. One with flyers, another with bills and a third of seemingly unimportant scraps.
Nothing.
She picked up a notebook and jotted down what she knew about Svetlana Nikolić. To begin with, she could bet her bottom dollar that was not her real name. She had logged on to the National Security database from her laptop and found no trace of her as a visitor. She had entered the country either illegally or under another name. If Kate could have taken on the case as a regular antiterrorist inquiry with the requisite means, she would have narrowed the search down to several days before she showed up at David’s, and looked through all the airports on the East Coast for a woman matching her description. Even then the data mining would have taken a dozen agents hundreds of working hours, with no guarantee of success.
That line of inquiry would be a wild-goose chase, no more.
Her next clue was a false lead. Kate thought the doctoral adviser Svetlana had given as a reference might help. David obviously didn’t remember the man’s number, but he had given her the password to his cell phone provider’s website and a rough date for the call. It wasn’t too hard to track it down in his call history; it was the only number he had called just once in that time frame. The number was out of service. An Internet search showed it belonged to a virtual switchboard, quite probably located in India, which took calls pretending to be whoever the client chose. You could sign up for one of them for ten bucks a month, plus a dollar for every call. To provide cover for the phony nanny would have cost a measly eleven dollars.
How could you be so naive, David?
Another dead end.
It was hopeless. The kidnappers hadn’t contented themselves with merely killing Svetlana, they had eliminated every final trace of her, too. Wiped her off the face of the earth. To all practical intents, she had never been born.
Kate’s brother-in-law had also mentioned the conversation between Svetlana and Jim Robson, which was what had made him drive over in the small hours. Although she didn’t think it would lead anywhere, she was that desperate that she was ready to chase it up to see whether it could shed any light on events. The problem was how to do so without arousing her father’s suspicions.
It was still too early to call the old man, but not for another call she had to make in short order.
“McKenna,” a fierce voice answered on the second ring.
“I’m sick, boss.”
“Oh no you’re not.”
Kate was so perturbed she almost spilled her cup of coffee all over the floor. Was McKenna onto her?
“I’ve been vomiting, sir.”
“Robson, you’ve never been sick in your life, damn it. Do you have to go and pick up a bug today, of all days? We have a tactical briefing for tomorrow’s business.”
“I really am sick. I’ve got it bad,” she said in a normal voice. She knew the easiest way to catch out people who call in sick when they’re faking it is that they nearly all put on a sickly voice.
“You know what kind of shit you’re dropping me in, Robson? We have a very special and tricky operation happening tomorrow. I have to detail a very select team, the sortie is classified and besides, all the civilians at Sixteen Hundred have gone ape. I’ve been in here since two a.m.”
“Sorry, sir, but I’m truly in no condition.”
“Robson, tell me how many eighty-fours we’ve had so far this month.”
Chapter 84 of the US legal code forbids attempts on the president’s life. Whenever possible, assassination attempts on the president are dealt with out of the limelight, with swift action and trials behind closed doors, so as not to encourage copycat crimes. This policy entails using obscure euphemisms for potential slayings, one of which is “eighty-four.”
“Three,” Kate admitted, getting shakier by the second.
“The last guy got a rifle to within seventy yards of Renegade, Robson. Each time, there’s more of them and fewer of us. Tomorrow’s the most screwed-up sortie of the year, and you know that. You can’t let me down.”
“You can take somebody else to the briefing, sir.”
“The hell I can, Robson! Renegade specifically ordered me that only twelve people should be aware of tomorrow’s sortie, which seemed like a lot to him. And Renaissance told me one of them had to be you. You want me to wake up POTUS and tell him I have to put somebody else in the picture?”
“I’m . . . I’m sorry, sir. I’ll try to get better as soon as I can. I’ll go in t
onight to read the briefing on my own time.”
“Tonight my ass. You’ve got four hours, Robson. Get yourself down to Walgreens, grab a big-ass jar of Pepto-Bismol and be here by ten. You’ll have time enough to get sick tomorrow when the job’s done. You’re in luck, you’ll be in a hospital. I’m sure your smart-ass brother-in-law can give you a discount.”
“But, sir—”
Her boss hung up before she could say another word.
Kate was stunned, the cell still beside her ear and every inch of her tautened by the dilemma.
A direct order by Special Agent in Charge Eric McKenna was as binding as one God’s fiery finger had written in stone. Nobody would dream of quibbling over a call like that. If you’re told to come into work when you’re running a fever and have diarrhea, you just do it. You have no choice.
If she were a less committed agent, a troublesome and argumentative one, ignoring an order to show up in four hours’ time would lead to punishment but wouldn’t raise any eyebrows. But considering that David was to operate on the president and the circumstances surrounding the surgery, it was unthinkable. And she was the opposite of troublesome. So many years of selfless devotion to duty were now turned against her. If she stood them up, they would smell a rat. They could go over David with a fine-tooth comb and find out everything.
The frustration and worry that had been simmering inside her for hours now reached the boiling point.
“Shit!” she screamed, and swiped the useless bits of paper off the countertop, along with the coffee cup, which shattered as it hit the floor tiles.
Enraged, Kate bent down to clean up the mess and glimpsed something that made her do a double take. Stuck to a gummed envelope containing a flyer was a folded oblong piece of paper that she’d previously overlooked. Her heart quickened as she unfurled and read it.
At last, there it was, the clue she’d been after.
22
Summary of Wednesday night’s activities: I drank myself into a stupor.
I left the Marblestone in a rage, but it soon wore off. What I had seen on that screen had torn off a piece of my soul, a big chunk. I drove home, dragged myself to the sofa and grabbed a bottle of whiskey. To fall asleep was unthinkable. To face up to my thoughts, impossible. I desperately needed the solace of oblivion, to black out for a few hours, so I let Wild Turkey do its thing.
The sunlight awoke me at nearly eight o’clock.
I was on the carpet, facedown. I blinked a few times and tried to rein in the migraine that was gnawing at my brain. My right arm was smarting. I rolled up my sleeve and found three red lines, almost straight, each about a handbreadth long. They were fresh and very deep scratch marks.
How the hell did I do that to myself?
It had to have happened the night before. There were dried bloodstains on my shirt. But there was a total gap in my memory after I’d hit the bottle.
In the morning light, the rest of the night’s events came back a little. The booze and the hangover made them a bit hazy, like a secondhand nightmare. But White’s text message made reality abruptly sink its teeth in.
RISE & SHINE DAVE
HOW’S YOUR FLEXIBILITY TODAY?
The cell was by my head, leaning against the wall so I could see it clearly . . . and White could see me. The battery was charged up.
Whoever had done that, it wasn’t me.
They broke in and were snooping around while I was out for the count. Did you laugh, you bastards, when you got a load of me stretched out on the floor like a rag doll? Get a kick out of it?
I gave the cell the finger before I picked it up. Then I noticed something on the edge of the sofa. It was a stain left by some grape juice, Rachel’s favorite. I remembered the day, almost a year ago, when my wife had spilled a little, and the ever-helpful Julia rushed to wipe it up with a kitchen towel and turned a neat droplet into a purple blotch. We never did get around to cleaning it properly.
As I was driving to the hospital and trying to concoct a plan to get Hockstetter out of the way and myself back in the game, that stain hijacked my thoughts. A meaningless spot that a bit of spray could have cleaned away had stayed the course longer than the love of my life.
It has outlived my wife.
It will not outlive my daughter.
I showered and shaved in St. Clement’s, away from White’s prying cameras. While I was getting dressed, I glanced at the TV that was always switched on in the locker room. The Patient was on CNN, shaking the hand of the NSA director, General What’s-His-Name. Both their faces were frozen into smiles. It seemed they had both attended an event at the White House where the president had mooted possible changes for the agency, “aimed at a freer future for the American people.” The president slipped up in one of the sound bites broadcast from the speech, and in another he said the word “people” twice in a row. The newscasters wondered why.
Only I knew what was going on: the president’s tumor was getting worse and worse.
I finished dressing in a hurry. I wanted to look the part when I did my rounds with the patients at nine thirty. They were all doing nicely, which briefly relieved my anxiety, but not for long.
Until I read the last name on the list they had given me.
“Is Jamaal Carter still here?” I asked Sandra at the nurses’ station.
“They can’t admit him to MedStar until tomorrow, so I asked Dr. Wong for permission. She said she’d dock it from your paycheck, Dr. Evans.”
“They don’t make scissors that small.”
“On my pay you could give him a couple of aspirins.”
But not too many. St. Clement’s charges patients $1.50 for every painkiller supplied, plus taxes. The hospital dispensary buys them for less than a penny each, so you tell me whether they couldn’t afford to keep the kid in another night without making too much fuss.
What’s more, Jamaal’s name had just given me a brain wave. It might work if I could get him to myself. But for that I had to surmount a huge obstacle.
Mama Carter.
I’ve come across a few religious nuts in my time. Here on death row there’s one who sings a hymn at 2:34 a.m. A different one every day. He has a sweet, almost ladylike voice. I have only seen him on his way past my cell, because they don’t let us mingle.
But every day we take turns for a half hour in the six-foot-square “exercise yard” surrounded by massive concrete walls. If you crane your neck somewhat, you can see a piece of blue sky up there somewhere.
When they let us out for our exercise, we all take a good look at each other. We want to see what somebody looks like when they’re about to die. The hymn singer is a frail boy, with pale, skinny arms riven by blue veins.
It’s hard to believe he strangled nine old ladies with his bare hands. He said he wanted to send them to heaven as soon as possible.
Mama Carter hadn’t killed anybody, that I knew, but what had happened to Jamaal had turned her already towering faith into something tangible and solid. When I walked into his room I found her on her knees, praying at Jamaal’s bedside. I cleared my throat to let her know I was there.
“Do you believe in God, Dr. Evans?” she asked as she stood up.
This time there were no kisses or hallelujahs.
“I believe in doing my best without expecting any reward,” I replied.
“Yesterday you told me you prayed.”
“I do. Normally when I have a problem. But I don’t know if it gets me anywhere.”
“I prayed for the longest time for Him to protect my li’l Jamaal. And my prayers have been answered.”
Li’l Jamaal tossed and turned his six-foot frame in his cot, making his cuffs ring out against the bedstead he was shackled to.
“Hey, doc, think they can get this thing off of me? It makes my arm sore.”
“I’m afraid you’ll be up before the judg
e first, bud,” I said, then remembered the gangbanger who’d been knifed. “Say, how’s T-Bone?”
“He gonna live. They take him to another hospital. Dunno where.”
I looked out of the corner of my eye at Mama Carter. I wanted to talk to Jamaal alone, but for that I needed to get his grandmother out from under our feet.
“Mrs. Carter.”
“Call me Mama, please, Dr. Evans.”
“I must ask you to step outside for a minute.”
She stared at me and pressed her mouth into a straight, sharp slit.
“I’m sorry, but I ain’t going no place.”
“Pardon me?”
“It was the same with my boy Leon, Jamaal’s father. The cops got me away from him, so they could have a quick word. That detective, he asked me to step out for a minute too. Leon’s been inside for sixteen years, so I’m staying right here.”
“Ma’am, can’t you see?” I said, tugging at the lapels on my white coat. “I’m no cop.”
“You could be wired.”
“Mrs. . . . Mama Carter. I need to talk to Jamaal alone. Believe me, it’s not him we’re going to talk about.”
“I believe you, doctor. You seem a decent man. There’s a lot of sadness in your eyes, but also the light of our sweet Lord Jesus.”
“Will you leave us alone, then?”
“No way. They could have wired the room.”
I suppressed an exasperated cackle.
“Okay, Mama, have it your way. Jamaal, I need a gun.”
“What the . . . !?” the kid said as he straightened up a bit and opened his eyes very wide.
Luckily, watching The Wire and Breaking Bad had improved my word power.
“A nine, a burner, a piece,” I said, trying to sound tough. “Whatever the hell you want to call it.”
“What this got to do with me, doc?”
“I want you to tell me where I can find one.”
