She squints at the screen. “But according to this, he checked out about an hour ago. I apologize, sir — looks like you just missed him.”
“D’you have his address? Did he pay by credit card?” My questions tumble out before I can even catch myself. “I mean… we… were hoping to pay his bill for him,” I add, finally slowing down. “Y’know… the… President’s treat.”
She stares straight at me. Now she thinks I’m nuts. Still, she checks her screen. “I apologize again, sir. It appears he paid by cash.”
“What about his home address? I just want to make sure we have the right Carl Stewart.” I add a laugh to put her at ease. That’s when I realize Malaysians don’t enjoy being laughed at.
“Sir, our guests’ personal information…”
“It’s not for me, it’s for him.” I point back at the former President of the United States and his three armed bodyguards. It’s a hell of a trump card.
The clerk forces an uneasy smile. She looks over her shoulder. There’s no one around but us. Reading from the screen, she says, “Mr. Stewart lives at… 3965 Via Las Brisas — Palm Beach, Florida.”
My legs go numb. I grip the marble counter to keep from falling over. That’s no codeword. That’s President Manning’s private home address. Only family has that. Or old friends.
“Sir, are you okay?” the desk clerk asks, reading my complexion.
“Yeah… just perfect,” I say, forcing some peppy into my voice. It doesn’t make me feel any better. My head’s spinning so fast, I can barely stand up. Boyle… or whoever he was… he wasn’t just in that dressing room… he was here last night. Waiting for us. For all I know, he would’ve been waiting for the President if I hadn’t seen him first.
I replay the moments backstage at the speech. The metal clang as he banged into the coffee table. The panicked look on his face. Up till now, I assumed that when I saw him, he was in the process of breaking in. But now… him being here last night… and using that decade-old codename… Boyle’s no idiot. With all the fake names to choose from, you don’t use that name to hide. You use it so someone can find you. I twist the kaleidoscope and a new picture clicks into place. Sure, Boyle could’ve been breaking in. But he could’ve just as easily been invited. The problem is, considering that the only people on this trip are me and three Secret Service agents who never even worked in the White House, there’s only one person left who would’ve recognized that old codename. One person who could’ve known Boyle was coming — and invited him inside.
I glance back at the President just as he finishes his final autograph. There’s a wide smile across his face.
A knot of pain tugs the back of my neck. My hands start shaking at my sides. Why would… how could he do that? Ten feet away, he puts his arm around an Asian woman and poses for a photo, grinning even wider. As the flash explodes, the knot in my neck tightens like a noose. I clamp my eyes, straining to find the lake from summer camp… grasping for my focal point. But all I see is Boyle. His shaved head. The fake accent to throw me off. Even the sobs of his daughter, who I apologize to every time I see her grieving during the anniversaries of the event.
For eight years, his death has been the one wound that would never mend, festering over time with my own isolation. The guilt… everything I caused… Oh, Lord, if he’s actually back…
I open my eyes and realize they’re filled with tears. Quickly wiping them away, I can’t even look at Manning.
Whatever Boyle was doing there, I need to figure out what the hell is going on. In the White House, we had access to the entire military. We don’t have the military anymore. But that doesn’t mean I don’t have my own personal reserves.
I pull out my satellite phone and dial the number from memory. The sun should just be coming up in Washington.
Accustomed to emergencies, he picks up on the first ring. Caller ID tells him who it is.
“Let me guess, you’re in trouble,” Dreidel answers.
“This one’s serious,” I tell him.
“It involve your boss?”
“Doesn’t everything?” Dreidel’s my closest friend from the White House, and more important, knows Manning better than anyone. By his silence, it’s clear he understands. “Now you got a second? I need some help.”
“For you, my friend, anything…”
5
With mayonnaise?” the thin woman with the red bifocals asked in a heavy French accent.
“Oui,” Terrence O’Shea replied, nodding respectfully, but disappointed that she even asked. He thought his French was flawless — or as flawless as FBI training could make it — but the fact she asked the question in English and referred to the garlicky aïoli as “mayonnaise”… “Excusez-moi, madame,” O’Shea added, “pourquoi m’avez vous demandé cela en anglais?” Why did you ask me in English?
The woman pursed her lips and smiled at his largely Swiss features. His thin blond hair, pink skin, and hazel eyes came from his mother’s family in Denmark, but his fat, buckled nose was straight from his father’s Scottish side — made only worse by a botched hostage rescue back from his days doing fieldwork. As the woman handed O’Shea the small container of french fries drenched with mayo, she explained, “Je parle très mal le danois.” My Danish is terrible. Reading O’Shea’s thin grin, she added, “Vous venez de Danemark, n’est-ce pas?” You are from Denmark, yes?
“Oui,” O’Shea lied, taking a strange joy in the fact she didn’t spot him as American. Then again, blending in was part of the job.
“J’ai l’oeiul pour les choses,” the woman added.
“J’ai l’oeiul pour les choses,” O’Shea repeated, dropping a few coins into the glass tip jar on the edge of the woman’s sausage-and-french-fry pushcart. Sometimes you just know.
Heading further up Rue Vavin, O’Shea felt his cell phone vibrate in his pocket for the third time. He’d already convinced the pushcart woman that he wasn’t American, and even though it didn’t matter, he wasn’t going to reveal himself by interrupting their conversation and picking up on the first ring.
“This is O’Shea,” he finally answered.
“What’re you doing in France?” the voice on the other line asked.
“Interpol conference. Some nonsense on trends in intelligence. Four whole days away from the pit.”
“Plus all the mayo you can eat.”
Just as he was about to bite his first mayo-dipped fry, O’Shea paused. Without another word, he pitched the basket of fries into a nearby trash can and crossed the street. As a Legat — a Legal Attaché—for the FBI, O’Shea had spent almost a decade working with law enforcement officials in seven foreign countries to help deter crime and terrorism that could harm the United States. In his line of work, the surest way to get yourself killed was being obvious and predictable. Priding himself on being neither, he buttoned his long black coat, which waved out behind him like a magician’s cape.
“Tell me what’s going on,” O’Shea said.
“Guess who’s back?”
“I have no idea.”
“Guess…”
“I don’t know… that girl from Cairo?”
“Let me give you a hint: He was killed at the Daytona Speedway eight years ago.”
O’Shea stopped midstep in the middle of the street. Not in panic. Or surprise. He’d been at this too long to be fazed by bad intel. Better to confirm. “Where’d you get it?”
“Good source.”
“How good?”
“Good enough.”