“I won’t stand for this!” the First Lady snapped. “Who do you think you are? I know you’re upset about Brennan and whatever he did, but it’s hardly fair for you to attack us about it. I told you a long time ago to walk away from him.”
Debbie ignored her. She looked at her father, perfectly calm for a moment. “Why did you marry her? She hates you, you know. She only cares about the power and she always wanted to live in this house and she saw you as the ticket. She helped get you here, but now what? What’s she going to do for an encore?”
The president took a step back, as if the words hit him with physical force. He spotted the Keep standing there, observing, book in her arms, and he knew this escapade would probably fill half a page. That made him angry. Something about presidents not having been divorced and remarrying, although hadn’t Reagan been married before Nancy?
He pointed at one of the agents, the female one. “You take care of her. Get her to the doctor. I’ve got a country to run and a press conference.” With that, he stepped into the elevator and hit the down button, then the close button several times hard.
The doors swished shut and he was free of the scene.
“I’ve never seen you treat us this disrespectfully,” Helen said mournfully, shaking her head sorrowfully, a nice show for the spectators. “It’s rather sad, Debbie,” she added, just in case no one had picked up the shake and tone.
“It’s not sad,” Debbie said. The female agent was at her side, reluctant to make a move. “You run this family like a corporation and you’re the CEO and all that matters is your bottom line. The world according to Helen, and we all must bow to you.”
Helen’s face flushed red. “You prim tight-laced little bitch. You think I don’t know exactly who you are and how you’ve tried to undermine me with your father since the day he brought me into his life? I’ve tolerated your condescension and little snips toward me since then, but not anymore. I will not stand for it!”
The Secret Service agents were swiveling their heads back and forth as if watching a really nasty tennis match with hard green exploding grenades instead of soft green bouncy balls.
Helen took a threatening step toward her stepdaughter, so threatening the female agent actually took up position in between them and got bumped by the First Lady into her daughter.
“I can’t believe I didn’t make him ship you off to boarding school!” Helen hissed. “Things would have been so much easier around here without you around.”
Debbie blinked, stunned in a moment of clarity. A horrified look crossed her face. “Helen! How old are you?”
“I’m fifty-two. And what of it? I look forty.”
“Oh my God,” Debbie whispered, the fight gone out as awareness washed over her.
“What, you self-important whiny baby? You think I look older?”
“You’ve never told anyone your real age before,” Debbie said. “Even when asked, you always change the subject.”
“So what if I haven’t?”
Debbie broke and ran for the stairs, screaming for her father, the Secret Service hot on her heels, all the while screaming: “We can’t lie! We can’t lie!”
They caught her just as she reached the top stair and it took three of them, one from her restaurant detail, to subdue her. All the while she protested: “You’ve got to stop him. You’ve got to stop my dad!”
Helen snapped her finger at another agent and he produced a cigarette and lighter, apparently well trained at the finger snap. She fired it up and regarded her stepdaughter. “You’ve gone over the edge now. Finally. When it does me no good.”
The Secret Service guy from her detail shook his head as he looked into Debbie’s eyes. “You look so sweet but I always thought you’d be a great lay.”
Debbie stopped struggling. “We’re all up shit creek now.” And then she kissed him, lips full on, mouth open.
Helen laughed. “See. I always knew what you were. Just like me.”
And in the background, the Keep had her special cell phone out and hit autodial one: her direct line to Hannah to inform her of the situation, part of which Hannah was already reacting to, the Cellar having intercepted the contain Protocol call from Upton earlier and the 666 call from Colonel Johnston at DORKA.
President Templeton walked past Chief of Staff Louis McBride without acknowledging him. He was in the Cross Hall en route to the Entrance Hall where he was to address a handpicked group of reporters in front of the Christmas tree about some bullshit — he couldn’t remember what exactly — but the speech would be on the podium, carefully written and vetted by the worker bees in the West Wing. Just the thought of more Christmas bullshit made the president furious. Plus there was whatever the hell was up with Debbie. The day had begun bad and was continuing to get worse.
“What’s wrong with your face, Mister President?” McBride asked, reaching out and trying to slow his charge. “You can’t go out there looking like that.”
The president pushed him aside and walked up to the podium, the tree looming behind him. He cleared his throat, glanced at the notes already in place on the podium. He picked them up, then tossed them away. He stared straight at the camera while McBride hovered just out of view. “My fellow Americans. You are so naive. Do you have any idea how difficult it is to deal with your total lack of understanding, your inability to process information, your willingness to believe whatever garbage some cable news channel spews out like so much—”
“Cut the feed!” McBride screamed. “Cut the feed!”
Except it had never been live.
Hannah’s reach from her office deep underneath the National Security Agency was long and efficient.
“We’re in lockdown! Security code bravo-tango-six-eight-two.” The tall woman stalking down the Cross Hall emanated total command.
The Secret Service hesitated at the lack of recognition.
“Move, people!” Moms snapped, holding up one of her real fake badges. “Listen to the security code for the day! Bravo-tango-six-eight-two. Seal off the residence from both wings and the outside. NOW! We are in one hundred percent lockdown and isolation.
“We have a contagious pathogen loose in the White House. No one gets out!”
Chapter 10
Brennan had always thoughts tears would eventually run dry, but he had not stopped sobbing during the trip.
The Secret Service agents had whisked him to a helicopter with no markings at the helipad behind the White House. The chopper was waiting for them, blades turning. The smirker had shoved Brennan, still cuffed, out the door, causing him to fall facedown on the concrete. Two contractors, black balaclavas covering their faces, picked him up and tossed him in the back of the chopper. It lifted off immediately.
That was his first hint he was in more serious trouble than Debbie knowing about the blowjob he’d gotten from Mary McCarthy in the chem lab. He started to beg and they gagged him and put a black hood over his head. They were speaking to each other in some language he could only guess at but remembered from the interrogation room. They were on the radio and seemed concerned about something they were hearing.
After a flight of indeterminate length, but not overly long, during which Brennan’s mind kept replaying over and over all the many mistakes he’d made and people he’d harmed, the helicopter landed. He was dragged off and hustled along through doors he could hear clanging into an elevator that dropped fast and far, then out of the elevator and through another door that slammed shut with a very solid thud.
One of those thuds that seemed to intimate the door would never, ever open again.
Between the thud and the screams and arguments echoing ahead in what was apparently a large chamber, Brennan knew he was in very, very deep shit.