Cadillac One screeched back through the White House gates, a shell of its former self. Windows shattered, rear tires running flat, the Presidential Standard flag snapped off the hood.
Conveyed between the half dozen battered SUVs representing the remaining convoy, it sped to a secure area, slamming down a ramp to a blastproofed emergency bunker, its undercarriage throwing up sparks.
It skidded to a halt.
Hosts of agents, emergency medical personnel, and the White House physician waited with held breath.
The limo was still.
Steam rose from the hood. Air hissed from a punctured tire. Radio chatter filled the bunker, overlapping waves of commands from the crisis center at Secret Service HQ.
And then the rear door creaked open, releasing a spill of bullet-resistant glass, revealing Naomi lying across Bennett’s inert form. She’d piled on top of him as the charge initiated.
She peeled herself off him now.
Bennett coughed, the sound driving everyone into motion.
“Mr. President, we need to get you—”
“—cut off his shirt and let’s find a—”
“Goddamn it, everyone off me.” Bennett’s face poked up, his glasses shattered, crooked on his face. They fell free, trampled underfoot as he shoved himself clear of the limo and the throng of personnel. “I’m fine .”
Behind him Eva Wong and the body man exited, hands pressed to their heads. They were steered immediately to rolling gurneys.
Bennett’s chest heaved. His watch face was cracked. The skin beneath his right eye twitched. He rubbed his face, coughed some more, holding out a hand to keep the others at bay.
Naomi raked her fingers through her hair, freeing bits of glass. “You need to let the physician check you, Mr. President.”
“I need to find out what the hell just happened.”
“It looks like a mortar round of some sort—”
“You allowed a mortar round to drop on my goddamned limousine?” His voice, ordinarily so calm, shook with rage. “You’re lucky I’m still alive.”
A flush crept up Naomi’s throat, invading her cheeks. “Yes, I am, Mr. President. But right now you really need medical attention. You need to let the physician—”
Again paramedics attempted to move in but Bennett swung an arm to hold them off, a drunk wielding a broken bottle. “What kind of charge did he use?” he said, dangerously close to shouting. “What did Orphan X use?”
Naomi stepped forward, allowing cover for the paramedics to position the gurney closer. “Forensic Services will be here any—”
“A bigger charge would’ve gotten it done,” Bennett said. An uncharacteristic wildness touched his eyes—desperation or maybe even fear. “It would’ve killed me for sure. Why didn’t he use a bigger charge?”
“Maybe he wasn’t trying to kill you,” she said. “Maybe he was trying to ring your bell.”
Bennett straightened up, clutching his lower back. “It’ll take a lot more than that.”
Everyone stiffened at once, staring at him.
“What?” he said. “What?”
He felt warmth trickle from his ear, reached up. His finger pad came away glossy with his own blood.
Naomi said, “The physician, Mr. President.”
Bennett rubbed the blood between his thumb and forefinger, watched it spread across the pads. He felt his mouth settle into a scowl, though he hadn’t told it to.
He sat on the gurney.
* * *
Naomi perched at the edge of an overstuffed chair in the West Sitting Hall, the red leather cool through her pants. Bennett reclined on the chesterfield sofa across from her, tie missing, collar still spotted with blood.
The room was soothing with its peach walls and antique wooden tables, its ferns and bowls of carnations. The framed double doors that opened onto the hall and staircase were closed, squaring the room. A number of staffers and medical personnel orbited the space or conferred in hushed tones in the far-flung seating areas. Eva Wong sat alone over by the fireplace, at the ready for a snap of the president’s fingers. After being diagnosed with minor tinnitus and released from care, she’d scurried right back to the president’s side.
This was an all-hands-on-deck moment.
Though there remained more questions than answers, Naomi had downloaded Bennett on the preliminary report from the Forensic Division, and given his reaction, she couldn’t blame the others in the room for maintaining a healthy standoff distance.
“A squash head?” Bennett said. “Why’s he using outdated weapons tech?”
“The hypothesis we’re working with is that he wanted to shatter the ballistic windows to clear the way.”
“For what?”
“A shot at you. But the protective convoy did its job, got you away safely.”
An aide entered with a silver tray holding a fresh shirt and a replacement pair of eyeglasses. Bennett tore off his tie and changed his shirt in full view of everyone. Propriety had been washed aside by the exigencies of the situation.
“A job well done, is that what you’re telling me?” He polished the lenses carefully before donning the new glasses. “Convenient how that hypothesis lets the Service off the hook.”
“If you’ll forgive me for saying so, Mr. President, I’m not feeling particularly off the hook at the moment.”
“Okay,” Bennett said. “So he wanted to break the glass to get at me. The rear compartment of Cadillac One is a closed container, which means he had to pull off a balancing act between concussing it enough to shatter the windows and producing too much overpressure, which would kill everyone inside. Hence the question: Why not just do the latter and kill everyone inside?”
“I have a feeling…”
“What?”
“I have a feeling that he didn’t want to kill the rest of us.”
Bennett’s eyes crinkled at the edges with amusement. “You think Orphan X cares about collateral damage?”
“He was cornered by cops in that café two weeks ago—”
“I recall.”
“Well,” she said, “a man who throws matcha tea and salt when confronted with armed police officers doesn’t sound like someone who doesn’t care about collateral damage. A man who uses rubber bullets to affect his escape doesn’t sound like someone who doesn’t care about killing innocents.”
“According to Director Gonzalez, Orphan X killed two Secret Service agents today.”
“About that…” Naomi shot a glance at the iconic lunette window, realized her breath was held. She took the plunge. “We’ve discovered that the two emergency-response-team members who were killed were actually impostor agents.”
Bennett stared at her with incredulity. “You allowed outsiders to penetrate the Secret Service? Along my motorcade route?”
Though chagrined to the bone, she found herself wondering whether Bennett was feigning his reaction. “Agent Demme remembers clearing them during the advance sweep.” She nodded to Demme, who was waiting nervously across the room, doing his best to pretend he hadn’t heard his name spoken. “He double-checked their creds, said they checked out in the databases. But now any record of them is gone.”
“You’re telling me you’ve got moles in your agency, Templeton?”
“I’m worried we have moles outside the Service, people with clearance high enough to alter top-secret databases. Someone authorized inside State, NSA, DoD.”
Bennett’s gaze was steady, but in her peripheral vision Naomi saw Wong’s face swivel to him. Naomi had no idea what that was about, but she felt paranoia squirm to life in her belly, the sense that there were vast mechanisms at work beneath the surface so well cloaked that she’d never comprehend them.
She focused on the job at hand, which was itself big enough to drown in. “It seems these impostors were targeting Orphan X, and he targeted them—and only them—right back.”
“No,” Bennett said. “No, no, no. Nothing with X is a direct line. Not the men he killed, not his reason for shattering the limousine. It’s all part of a more complex strategy. We’re missing something. What are we missing?” He ran his thumb back and forth across his fingertips repetitively.
Bennett’s shift in affect was upsetting. Naomi was accustomed to seeing him completely in control, never a tremor in his voice or a sheen of sweat across his brow. Now he looked disheveled in his rumpled clothes.
“Perhaps you’re right,” she said, hoping a conciliatory tone might take his agitation down a notch. “Perhaps he miscalculated the charge.”
“The man penetrated an impenetrable security zone, sent a mortar round a half block in moderate wind conditions toward a target moving fifty-five miles per hour and hit the nail on the head.” Bennett clenched his hands together. “That doesn’t sound like someone who miscalculated .”
“No,” she said.
“So we need to figure out what the hell he’s up to. You’re not thinking hard enough.”
Before Naomi could respond, the physician approached, orange bottle in hand. “Mr. President, after the strain of the day, I think it’s imperative that you take a low dose of Buspar—”
Bennett said, “I don’t need an antianxiety. I never take that crap, Frank. You know this. Don’t want to get in the habit.”
The physician kept his voice calm and steady. “It’s not every day that you’re nearly assassinated.”
Bennett tensed, his stare locked on the bottle. “Where was this prescription filled?”
“The usual pharmacy.”
Bennett knocked the bottle out of the physician’s hands, sending it tumbling across the carpet. The doctor drew upright, taken aback.
“Nothing is usual anymore,” Bennett said. “Have those pills been tested?”
The physician said, “I assure you—”
Bennett’s glare found Naomi. “Have them tested. This is a perfect ploy, see? The attack gets my heart rate up, after which my doc will likely recommend I take a med. Pills can be contaminated. That’s how he thinks. Every single thing is strategic.” He got up, snatched the bottle off the carpet, and held it before Naomi’s face. “I would have thought that after what you just witnessed, you might understand what we’re up against.”
She gestured Demme over and handed him the bottle. “Can you get Tech Security in here, please?”
“What other logical actions can be predicted in the wake of an explosion like that?” Bennett said, loud enough now to address the entire room. “I give a speech. So. Where’s my speech?”
A wiry man in the far corner held up a notepad and a sheaf of papers. “Not quite there yet, Mr. President.”
Bennett pointed. “Those papers. The notepad. Take them to the lab. They need to be checked.” He rubbed his wrist. “Where’s my watch?”
Across the room the assistant secretary was on her feet. “Already en route to Geneva to be fixed, Mr. President.”
“No, no . I want it fixed here in the U.S. Orphan X could intercept it, apply contact poison to the band.” Abruptly, he removed his new pair of wire-frame eyeglasses and regarded them. His other hand worked the top of his shirt, unbuttoning it. “And these. Did someone check these for toxins?”
Naomi said, “Every item that goes on your body is acquired from a security-cleared vendor and is double-checked before it enters the White House.”
“Were they checked again for toxins and poisons? After the attack but before they were brought to me on a silver tray?”
Demme cleared his throat. “They were, Mr. President, right before they were brought in.”
Reluctantly, Bennett slid his glasses back on and released his shirt, which gapped open at the throat.
Demme continued nervously, “After an AOP, we take nothing for granted. Every conceivable measure is—”
“How about my other clothes? The bedsheets? He could sneak a contaminant into the detergent.”
“I have two agents down at laundry operations right now, Mr. President,” Naomi said. “One from Protective Intelligence and Assessment, the other from the Technical Security Division. We understand the level of this threat, and we are tightening operations to an unprecedented level. We’ll even be adding more panic buttons through the residential areas of the White House. They’ll be disguised as Presidential Seals embedded in surfaces and on the walls—”
The double doors opened, and a team of agents entered with cameras. They began systematically photographing the room.
“Who are they?” Bennett said.
“I’m having our advance-team techs sweep all the rooms in the White House,” Naomi said. “They’ll photograph everything so we can make sure nothing has been touched or moved. This is the baseline series.”
“Do you personally recognize these men?”
“I do.”
“I want those cameras taken apart,” Bennett said. “Orphan X, he would have predicted this measure in the wake of the limo attack. He could have planted a charge inside the cameras. You need to start thinking like him.”
The agents stopped taking pictures and stood awkwardly, the offending cameras in hand. Demme started over to them.
“Not while I’m here,” Bennett said. “Templeton, come with me.”
He exited the sitting room swiftly.
Naomi hurried to keep pace, flipping through her notebook. “Mr. President, until we can get our arms around this situation, we have to make some adjustments. No more rope lines or jogging, no unmagged crowds, wider buffer zones—”
She looked up from her notebook, realizing only now that they’d arrived in the master bedroom. That broad plain of brown carpet, the rounded north side, the oddly delicate letter desk. Bennett had opened his closet door, an inset panel that had been papered like the rest of the wall. He had a necktie in hand, which he regarded with evident suspicion. The muscles of his back flexed like scales, a physical tell of his mounting frustration.
She said, “For right now I’d like to cancel all public appearances, meals eaten out—”
He whipped around, jabbing his finger in her direction. “I’m the most powerful person on this planet. I won’t be trapped in my own goddamned house, no matter how big it is.”
She heard her father’s voice reminding her that ultimately a Secret Service agent was a babysitter, and she kept her mouth shut. Even so, she could feel her face burning.
Bennett looked down at the tie in his hand. He dropped it on the floor. His shoulders sank, and then he walked heavily across the room and sat on his bed.
All the heat had gone out of him.
He snickered, a single note muffled in his throat. “After a time you forget the privilege of this place,” he said, his voice hoarse. “Everywhere you look.” He gestured at an ornate gold clock resting on the nightstand. “What do you think of that?”
She stared at the scrolled acanthus leaves and cherubs floating around the white face. She pocketed her notebook. “I think it’s hideous.”
This seemed to amuse him. “It’s a French mid-nineteenth-century Louis XVI ormolu,” he said. “It cost a hundred seventy-five thousand dollars.”
“That doesn’t make it pretty.”
“No. I suppose not.”
“It looks like something my gamma would’ve had on the mantel next to a velvet Jesus painting.”
He was silent for a time.
Then he said, “I know why I do this job. At least I used to. Why do you do yours?”
She pictured her dad again, a husk of what he used to be. She thought of his countless stories, his undying pride in the Service, his sureness of his place in the world.
She said, “I can change history.”
“How do you mean?”
She shrugged. “If Robert Kennedy doesn’t get shot in ’68, Nixon doesn’t become president.”
“And if I don’t get killed by Orphan X? Then what?”
She studied the carpet, perhaps for too long. When she finally looked up, his gaze was waiting, as steady as she’d ever seen it.
She said, “I suppose that’s up to you, Mr. President.”