“I have something to do,” he said.
Reeder went over to the kitchenette area, where Morris appeared awake; anyway, he was no longer snoring. Reeder removed the accountant’s blindfold, pulled up a chair and sat.
Very quietly, he said, “Let’s talk about you, Lawrence. And keep your voice down. My friends are trying to catch a few Zs, like you did.”
The captive wore a hurt expression. “You said you would let me go if I helped you. Did you get your agent back?”
“We did. Thank you for that. But I promised you nothing, just that we’d revisit your situation. That’s what we’re doing now, Lawrence. And I’m afraid, for now, the answer is no.”
Morris tugged at his restraints. “You bastard! You lying bastard!”
Reeder raised a lecturing finger. “If you wake my friends up, I’ll let you go, all right — and spread the word you talked.”
All the energy seeped out of Morris. “Maybe... maybe you should do that, and I’ll... take my chances...”
“You did help us, and that was a good start. But you’re a tool of a treasonous conspiracy, complicit in half a dozen murders or more. If you’d really rather not die, whether by lethal injection at the government’s hands or by some imaginative means courtesy of your patriotic pals, you could cooperate further.”
Morris said nothing. He was looking at Reeder but not really.
“Give me something that matters,” Reeder said. “Want your freedom? Give up those board-member names. Outline their plans in this current scheme. Then testify against them. Be a hero, not a traitor.”
The prisoner’s voice went whisper-quiet, and Reeder doubted it had anything to do with not disturbing the napping agents on the other side of the room.
“You have to know,” Morris said, “that I would never live to testify. They’ll kill me. They’ll kill you. All of us. How do you think they’ve been around for seventy-five years without becoming anything but a rumor or another crazy conspiracy theory?”
“You need to give me those names.”
“No. If I give you those names, and you act against them, I’m dead. You’re dead. These are not men you can move against. Perhaps you could disrupt what you described as their latest ‘scheme,’ but—”
“Okay. Let’s table the names. What do you know about what the Alliance is up to right the hell now?”
Eyes widened, narrowed. “Frankly, not much. Like the Middle Eastern terrorists, the Alliance only provides its cells with that cell’s part of a plan. That way no one can give away the bigger picture upon capture.”
“Then you have no idea why four CIA agents were sent to Azbekistan to die?”
“I only know they were supposed to be the spark for a new conflagration with Russia, after years of this tepid President’s inaction.”
The hair on the back of Reeder’s neck bristled. “Why in God’s name? We’ve been at peace with them for decades.”
“Complacency and peace are not the same thing, Reeder. Nor is appeasement valid diplomacy. While we’ve been ‘peaceful,’ Boris Krakenin has been rebuilding the Soviet war machine, preparing the Russians for world domination. Harrison has done nothing to protest Russian incursions, or to prepare America for this obvious coming war. We’re soft, lazy, and this is a president who needed to be prodded into doing the right thing.”
Well, at least Reeder knew what flavor of Kool-Aid their guest preferred.
“Why kill Amanda Yellich?”
Morris shrugged. “Above my pay grade. I was told nothing about it before or after. Was she assassinated? If so, it must have been something to do with this weekend.”
Reeder stiffened. “What about this weekend?”
“Again, no idea. I just know that everything needed to carry out this current objective — from the Azbekistan sacrifice to today — had to be taken care of by this weekend. Apparently, for some reason, Yellich’s death must’ve been part of that.”
Reeder recalled Bohannon’s text: *AY not CD*
Camp David.
He went back over to the TV area and said, good and loud, “Everybody up!”
They roused, mostly from deep sleeps, with Wade’s lengthy torso stretching as he said, “What was that, fifteen minutes? Thanks for the sack time, bossman.”
“It was twenty, and we need to talk. Five minutes for bathroom breaks and rounding up coffee.”
Everybody did that.
Reeder stood near Rogers in her comfy chair. Everyone had coffee but Hardesy, who had Diet Coke. All eyes were on Reeder. Every butt was on the edge of its seat.
Reeder said, “One cabinet member always is held back when the full cabinet is otherwise at one location... like it will be at Camp David this weekend.”
“To protect the line of succession,” Rogers said, matter-of-fact.
Reeder sent his eyes around touching everybody else’s. “What if Amanda Yellich was that cabinet member?”
Miggie’s eyes popped. He rose, held up a “wait” forefinger, and went back to his tablet. Within a minute he returned.
“This you’re going to find interesting,” Miggie said, his eyebrows up. “It was indeed supposed to be Yellich.”
Everyone exchanged glances.
Reeder asked, “Replaced by whom?”
Mig shook his head. “A very tight lid on that, my friend.”
“So Yellich was the designated survivor,” Hardesy said, frowning. “So what?”
“So,” Reeder said, “the Camp David trip has been planned for some time, and the Russian invasion just happened to fall the week before. Forcing the President’s hand. Making the already-scheduled Camp David meeting something suddenly of great import. You think that’s a coincidence?”
“I would say no,” Rogers said dryly.
Reeder, the wall screen at his back, paced. “For some reason, Amanda not being at Camp David is key.”
“But she was already not going to be there,” Rogers said. “If the Alliance plan has something to do with Camp David, why kill someone who isn’t even going to be there?”
Reeder stopped pacing and swung toward his audience. “Let’s go back to why she wasn’t going to be there. She was the cabinet member selected to stay home. To protect the line of succession.”
“Okay,” Hardesy said, “I get that part. But why swap one stay-at-home cabinet member for another?”
“Lawrence says the Alliance has people all through government, including at the highest levels — what if one of them is the cabinet member charged with staying away and protecting the line of succession?”
“Getting them what?” Rogers asked.
Wade said, “The presidency, if everything shakes down right.”
“How?” Rogers asked. “You would have to take out a certain number, ahead of that person! Who can guess how many cabinet members would have to die, picked off one by one or maybe in one fell swoop...”
Rogers was staring into nothing now, having trailed off.
Reeder said, “Exactly right, Patti. And this weekend, everybody’s at the party, from the President on down.”
The loft fell silent.
“Crazy,” Hardesy said finally. “Impossible. No way to pull it off.”
“Mass killings have become a way of life in this country,” Rogers said hollowly. “And you know what they say — if you’re willing to trade your life, you can kill anyone.”
“At Camp fucking David?” Hardesy exploded. “Get serious — it’s a goddamn fortress.”
Sitting forward, Wade said, “Joe, Lucas is right — it’s a fortress with the most sophisticated electronic surveillance equipment in the world set up in those surrounding woods, not to mention a small army of Secret Service agents, and a whole mess of Marines. Nobody could get in there. If anybody even tried, they’d see ’em coming from a mile away, easy. Two miles.”