“Did you see it?” the former professor asks. “Did you?”
I choke out the words. “Yes, I did.”
Pace sighs, like I’m a student who will struggle to earn even a D in his class. “I don’t think you did. The last few seconds. Pay attention.”
The last few seconds…a burst of blood hitting the camera lens, a gloved finger smearing it, the shape on the rocks, the frizzy hair, and, alone again, the eyeglasses.
“There,” the professor says with satisfaction in his voice. “Did you see it? Did you?”
“See what?” I ask, frustration and anger and sadness all roiling inside of me. “What am I supposed to see?”
He tsk-tsks, replays the video again, slowing it down, way down, from the sword descending—
Oh, Mel.
The flicker, the blood spurting out and splashing the lens.
“There,” he says again, his voice filled with the impatience of some Cassandra, trying to share what he knows with the oblivious masses next to him who are ignoring God’s word.
Agent Stahl plays intermediary. “Professor, please, it’s been a long couple of weeks. President Keating has been under tremendous pressure. Can you explain, simply, what we should be noticing?”
“Ah, of course,” he says. “My apologies. You see, when blood emerges from a fresh wound and strikes an object, like the camera lens here, you get a type of blood pattern and spatter, and it’s observable in a certain way. But when the blood doesn’t come instantly from its source, then it looks and acts entirely different. That’s what I saw here, and that’s why I was so insistent on seeing you, Mr. President.”
Deep, deep inside of me, a little flare of something has just been ignited.
Oh, God, I think, please make it so.
Please.
I say, “Professor, are you saying what I think you’re saying?”
A confident nod.
“The beheading video is a fake,” he says.
Chapter
76
Lake Marie, New Hampshire
I’m standing so close to the disgraced professor that I can smell his clothes and his sweat, and I don’t care. I say, “Explain it again. Slowly. With details I can understand. Please, professor.”
And I think, If you’re crazy or bullshitting me in any way, there’s a shovel in the corner and a dirt basement floor behind me.
“Certainly,” he says. “It’s a study that I came up with a few years back, with assistance from a couple of my more intelligent grad students. It used to be that forensic investigators were just looking at the blood pattern, what’s now known as spatter. You can examine a pattern at a crime scene, and most times, you can deduce where the victim was standing, or sitting, or if he or she resisted, and how the body was later transported. It’s all there, if you know how to read the spatter.”
He taps the side of his forehead, smiles. His teeth are yellow.
The professor says, “I took it to another level, by introducing the concept of fluid dynamics. When a fluid like blood is expelled, it makes a world of difference if the blood is fresh or stored. They act like two completely different sets of fluids. The consistency, the levels of oxygenation—all that comes into play. You can then determine if the blood spatter was part of the actual crime or an afterthought, to set up a crime scene that has a false message. I wrote two papers on this for the journal Forensic Science International that received very positive responses from my colleagues.”
He taps again, this time on the screen. “This is not fresh blood. In fact, if I had a better version of this video recording, I could make a strong case that it’s not even human blood.”
The little flare of hope inside of me is growing hard and fast, threatening to overtake my common sense and skepticism.
“But the earlier part of the video,” I say. “The…the sword and the beheading. Couldn’t that be real?”
He shakes his head, sits back on the stool, crosses his arms. “For what purpose? A real beheading followed by a fake blood spurt? What would be the point? Besides, before I was forced to leave the university, there were already studies under way because of the concern over what’s known as deepfake videos. Taking a real video recording of President Barnes, for example, and changing her business suit into latex and feathers, like a Las Vegas showgirl, to make it look like she was taking part in some naughty Vegas revue. Anyone with experience in filmmaking or special effects could probably come up with a way to take a real video of your daughter and then splice in a beheading scene.”
Agent Stahl starts to say something, and I snap, “No, not now! Everybody just shut up, just don’t say a word.”
I close my eyes.
Trying hard to remember.
When I was president, each minute, half hour, and hour was scheduled down to the second, every day, even the weekends. With meetings, briefings, and reports. Being asked to make decisions and judgments in areas from the economy to human rights to diplomacy to domestic issues and politics. A week into my presidency, not long after the funeral of my predecessor, I had a childhood memory. I remembered reading a paperback novel—with its cover torn off—that had been one of the few possessions of my father’s that came back from the oil rig after his death.
The book, called The Multiple Man, was published in 1976, and it took place sometime in an imagined future when the world was so deadly and complex that the elected president had six secretly cloned brothers, each one an expert in one field. Working together, each was able to bring his own special expertise to their collective administration during a very challenging era.
It seemed fantastic and off-the-wall at the time, but later, in trying to remember all the details from that constant treadmill of meetings and briefings when I was in the Oval Office, it all made intriguing sense: some science fiction future, on the page or on the screen—
I open my eyes.
“Faraj Al-Asheed,” I say. “Asim’s younger cousin. I received a number of intelligence briefings on him as well, during the run-up to that raid. Before he joined jihad with Asim, he was in Paris. Attending film school. With an emphasis on fantasy, science fiction, and special effects.”
I reach for the keyboard, pull my hand away.
I have this desperate desire not to spoil anything.
Trying to keep the growing excitement out of my voice, I say, “Professor, please: run back the video to the beginning.”
“Certainly,” he says. He gets off the stool, plays with the keyboard. The video speeds up in reverse—Fake, fake, fake! I want to scream out; My daughter’s death was faked!—and then he plays it from the beginning.
The same stern-looking Asim Al-Asheed is now there again, and from the computer’s speakers comes his voice. After the initial greetings, he goes on.
“I apologize that this is not a…what you call a live feed but a recording, from several hours ago, after we departed the home of Mr. Macomber in your White Mountains, and here we are, in these mountains still.”
“There!” I say. “Run it back to the very beginning, before he appears.”
Seconds later, the video starts up again, and I say, “Freeze it. Right there.”
The professor is on my left, and Agent Stahl is on my right.
I gently trace the screen before me, which shows a rock wall and an adjoining ledge.
With a soft voice I say, “He says this is being recorded in the White Mountains. But look at that rock formation. In every hike I’ve done here with Sam or Mel, there’s always vegetation, from lichen to grasses to scrub brush, among the rock formations. None of that is here. Can we be sure he filmed this here, in New Hampshire? Or someplace else?”
Agent Stahl says, “Mr. President…that’s a hell of a good point.”
I strike the screen with some force, making it vibrate. “We’re going to find that out, right now.”
And I think of last night, being on the dock out there in the darkness, and vowing, Asim, I’m coming for you.
Now, can I
dare believe one more thing?
Mel, I’m coming for you, too.
Chapter
77
Enfield, New Hampshire
Trent Youngblood, associate professor of earth sciences at Dartmouth College, is drying off the last of his dinner dishes when there’s a pounding at his front door, followed by the frantic ringing of the doorbell.
He takes a look at the small Bavarian cuckoo clock hanging in the cluttered kitchen, a souvenir his wife, Carol, bought on a river cruise they took in Germany last year. The clock looks old and hand-carved, but it’s a silly piece of kitsch made in Cambodia and operated by a hidden battery.
Trent thinks the ridiculous thing is a good metaphor for his work: something that looks one way on the surface but is revealed to be quite different once you start digging.
The clock says it’s almost 9 p.m.
Who the hell could be banging on his door at this hour?
Carol is off at a late-night tai chi class, and their son, Greg, is in California, attending the Stanford Graduate School of Business; the nearest neighbor is almost a half mile away. Instead of quickly answering the door, Trent checks his laptop on the kitchen counter, next to piles of mail, and sees the feed from the Nest Hello doorbell camera.
What’s there disturbs him.
Three figures wearing jackets and caps pulled down low. The one in the lead hammers the door again, and Trent sees it’s a Black woman.
Trent is so not a racist, but what’s a Black woman doing out here, at this hour? In this part of rural New Hampshire? And what should he do? Call the police?
Right, he thinks. Imagine what would happen to him and his career if that bit of news got out: a white, privileged college professor calling the police on a Black woman knocking on his door at night. For all he knows, this trio could be lost and looking for directions.
But then again, who gets lost nowadays with everyone having a GPS-enabled cell phone?
The doorbell rings again.
To hell with it.
He’ll answer the door.
As he goes down the front hallway, he stops for a moment, opens a closet door, and takes down a loaded Colt .357 revolver from the top shelf. He’s been to dig sites in some sketchy parts of the world, and just over twenty years ago, two Dartmouth professors were murdered in their homes by two local teenage losers. Trent isn’t going to be a victim tonight.
He switches on the outdoor light, gun partially hidden by his hip, unlocks the door, opens it, and says, “Can I help you?”
And then the Black woman yells “Gun, gun, gun!” and he’s slammed to the floor of his own home.
He’s brought to his feet, shaking with fear and anger, after being stripped of his revolver, and the Black woman and another man are standing next to him, and the third man comes in, saying in a familiar voice, “Professor Youngblood, I’m so sorry for that. But Agent Washington and Agent Stahl are true professionals. I hope you’re not hurt.”
The man removes his plain dark blue baseball cap, revealing the face of former president Matthew Keating. Trent blinks his eyes. It’s no big deal having him live in the area—hell, he spotted Keating twice over the years at the local Whole Foods. But what’s he doing here?
“Mr.…ah, well, how can I help you?”
The former president’s face is drawn, worn, and his eyes seem sunken, and Trent suddenly feels a deep sorrow for this man, whose daughter was publicly executed just two weeks ago.
Keating says, “I need your help. We’ve done some research and found out you’re one of the best geology experts at Dartmouth. I need for you to look at a rock display for us, tell me what you see. Can you do that?”
Holy crap, Trent thinks. He and his wife, Carol, spent countless hours two years ago working as volunteers to elect this man’s vice president to the Oval Office: making phone calls, knocking on doors, and holding signs during the New Hampshire primary. There were political meetings at their house, with late-night drinks of wine and beer and determined vows to get that damn killer out of the White House. There were jokes about his Texas accent and his oh-so-smart-and-precious wife. Lots of snarky comments about his accidental presidency. They passed out bumper stickers saying DEFEAT KEATING: THE ERROR OF THE ERA.
Now the error of the era is standing right in front of him.
What would Carol think? What would their friends think?
Trent nods.
“Absolutely, Mr. President. I can start whenever you’re ready.”
Minutes later they’re in Trent’s crowded upstairs office, with workbench, shelves of books and binders, computer and filing cabinets, and shelves of rock samples from sites all over the world. The female Secret Service agent gets to work, and Trent is a bit miffed that she didn’t apologize for tossing him violently to the floor. She opens a laptop she carried in, and in a few seconds, an image comes up.
Rock wall, rock ledge.
He’s seen that before.
Oh, God, he thinks. The place where this sad man’s daughter was murdered.
In a slightly strained voice, Keating says, “Professor, give that rock face a good look. I know it’s not a great image, but can you tell us…is that from somewhere in the White Mountains?”
Trent bends over, gives the image a long hard stare, and says, “Absolutely not.”
Keating’s hand is on his shoulder. “Are you sure? What are you seeing?”
Trent feels a bit of childish pride, explaining his work to a former president of the United States.
He says, “If it was somewhere in New Hampshire—or even Vermont or Maine—that rock surface would be leucocratic, likely with crosscutting quartz veins and present surface fracturing, which is typical of the freeze-and-thaw weathering in granitoid rock you get in this part of the world. But you can see that rock surface is brown and shows the distinct bedding of a sedimentary rock. But there’s a lack of distinct clastic grains, which means this rock is likely a limestone or dolostone.”
Keating’s hand slightly tightens on Trent’s shoulder. “Can you tell us where it is?”
Trent says, “No, I can’t.”
There’s a sense of disappointment from his three visitors, and he quickly says, “No, no, don’t worry. I can’t, but my grandfather can. Hold on. Give me a few minutes.”
Trent goes to the binders in one section of his crowded shelves, finds the marker he’s looking for, and hauls the old black file down. The former president and his Secret Service agents gather around him as he opens the book, revealing old black-and-white photos and handwritten field notes, the writing still clear decades later.
He says, “My grandfather Enoch was a great geologist, but instead of academia, he worked for the oil companies. That’s where I learned to love geology—him bringing back rock samples for me. He traveled all around the world, jungles to deserts…but that rock formation you showed me: it triggered something he showed me years back. Ah, here we go.”
He traces his finger up and down two photos stuck in glassine pages, side by side. “Here. Practically a double to the one on the computer screen, isn’t it? See, like I said before, you can see the bedding of sedimentary rock, but the absence of distinct clastic grains means this rock is either a limestone or dolostone. Also, you can see the presence of the distinct chert horizons, which narrows it down considerably.”
“Narrows it down to what?” the former president asks.
“Oh, no question,” Trent says. “Libya. The Nafusa Mountains.”
Chapter
78
Hitchcock, Maine
Samantha Keating wakes up in her motel room, someone firmly knocking at her door. She checks the time.
Just past 5 a.m.
She rolls out of bed, barefoot on the rough-surfaced light green rug, wearing loose shorts and a BU T-shirt, and turns on the nightstand light. It takes three tries before she gets it right because her fingers are shaking, and she knows why.
Only one reason somebody’s at her door so damn early in the mo
rning.
In seconds she’s there, unchaining and unlocking, taking deep breaths, trying to stay calm despite the sudden chill in her hands and feet, thinking of her Mel, out there in some wilderness, her remains exposed to the elements, and birds, and coyotes, and—
Samantha gets the door open.
It’s still dark outside.
From the utility lights in the motel’s small parking lot she sees Matt standing in front of her. Instantly there’s love and fear and lots of guilt, guilt from knowing that years back she could have ensured Matt’s easy reelection and the safety of their girl but chose not to do so, guilt about how she’s been coldly ignoring his desperately cheerful video messages from their lakefront home.
She leans on the doorframe for support.
“Oh, Matt, where?” she asks, voice choked.
He takes both of her hands.
“Sam,” he says. “I think she’s still alive.”
She falls into his arms.
A minute later she’s sitting on her still-warm bed, and Matt is sitting next to her, arm around her shoulders, his free hand grasping hers.
He says, “A forensic scientist came by yesterday, unofficially and on his own. He’s well respected, knows his stuff, and Agent Stahl vouches for him. He’s convinced the video of Mel’s murder was faked.”
“But…I saw it! You saw it!”
“The blood that struck the camera lens, near the end,” her husband says. “The professor is convinced it’s fake. The way it moved, dripped—it didn’t have the consistency of fresh blood. He thinks there’s a good chance it wasn’t even human blood.”
The President's Daughter Page 27
