“Sarah, what happened to you back there?”
“I saw Leclerc in the dressing room,” she said, her eyes fixed on some faraway target. “He was with Kahn. There was a case on the bench between them. A satchel. Leclerc told me to get out. To clear the building. He knew it was a bomb. I closed the door. I didn’t want to leave without you, so I went upstairs. Gabriel was coming out of one of the sex rooms. He fit George’s description to a T. I knew it was him. They’d made the exchange. I realize that now. He had whatever Kahn had sold him.” Anger tightened her eyes, puckered her mouth. “It was so easy, Adam,” she said, imploring him to forgive her. “All I had to do was shoot him. He was right there, ten feet away. But I froze. I hesitated. I don’t know what I was thinking. And then, just as I was gathering my wits, the place went up. It was Semtex again, if you didn’t know. Same signature as Taleel used, just more of it. They’re saying two pounds of the stuff. The next thing I knew, I was sitting on the ground floor with the whole building on fire around me. Not a scratch. I took a step out the front door, and that’s when I saw you, all bundled up like Jean Valjean on the way to doing his twenty years. I got the hell out of there. Time to make my own queries, if you know what I mean. All that nonsense you’d been spewing about moles and spies got to me. Wheels within wheels, Adam. I was scared. I’ll admit it.”
“What happened?” said Chapel. “I mean, what did you do to get me out? Did you talk to Glen? Did you explain that it had to be Gabriel who framed me?”
Sarah answered with her Cheshire cat’s grin. “Something like that.”
“So who’s waiting?” he went on. He was already working out the next steps. Word that a terrorist was trying to enter the United States in possession of a rogue nuclear weapon-whatever the size-would have local, state, and federal law enforcement agencies on maximum alert. Manpower at all major points of entry would be strengthened. Photographs of Gabriel, or rather, of Omar al-Utaybi, would be printed and circulated. The Nuclear Emergency Search Teams (NEST) would be out in full force.
Chapel had his own plans. George Gabriel had spoken of his father’s trip to South America earlier in the week. A check of the flight manifests had, indeed, shown a first-class passenger, Claude François, Belgian national. It was crucial that Chapel forward the passport number to the Immigration and Naturalization Service to put a watch alert on François. If Gabriel had traveled to the States before under the same name, there was a good chance that somewhere there was a record of his arrival, perhaps even a mention of where he stayed.
“Who’s waiting on the other end?” he asked again. “Halsey? Glen? I’ll need a ride to FinCEN right away. In fact, I’d like to call ahead.”
“No one,” Sarah responded.
For a moment, Chapel thought she was joking. “No, really? Who’d you call?”
“No one,” she repeated.
“That can’t be. I mean, I’d rank this situation as fairly urgent. You mean to tell me that Admiral Glendenning isn’t pulling out all the stops right now.”
“As far as Glen is concerned, you’re still at Mortier Caserne.”
Chapel unbuckled his seat belt and began to stand. “They have a phone in the back. I’ll call him myself.”
“I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”
It was a new tone of voice. Earnest, uncomplicated, and frighteningly honest. It was the real Sarah. Sarah before the intelligence services had gotten ahold of her. Sarah the teenage watcher. Sarah stripped clean of her hard-earned artifice.
Chapel settled in his seat and listened as she unburdened herself of her suspicions.
Chapter 55
His name was Michael Fitzgerald, and as special agent in charge of the Secret Service’s White House Division, it was his job to vet all guests gaining proximity to the President of the United States during visits to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Fitzgerald’s immediate concern this muggy Saturday morning was to run through the guest list for the State Dinner being given Sunday night in honor of the newly crowned King of Saudi Arabia.
One hundred thirty-three names stood on the list. Twenty-five belonged to members of the administration: the secretary of state and his wife, the attorney general, the secretary of commerce and his partner. Most were regular visitors to the Oval Office and merited no further examination.
Another twenty names belonged to members of the Saudi King’s retinue: the minister of finance, minister of defense, chief of the armed forces, the Saudi ambassador to the United States, as well as five of the King’s wives. Mike Fitzgerald shook his head, smirking. He didn’t approve of queerbaits and polygamists in general, and the thought of them rubbing elbows with the most powerful man on the planet turned his stomach. Sometimes he doubted whether civilization would survive much longer. But what did he know? He was just a crusty old Catholic from Southie who liked his bottle of sour mash after Saturday mass, his French fries with mustard, and was still madly in love with the only woman he’d slept with, his wife of thirty-seven years, Bea.
The approximately eighty names that remained on the list were a diverse group: governors, senators, civic leaders, academicians, sports stars, actors, and big-money “friends of the President.” All had already been nominally cleared. Their names had been run through the National Crime Information Center and come back clean. Not a felon, crook, or convict among them. In theory, Fitzgerald’s brief was completed. To the best of his knowledge, there was no one on the guest list who might wish to physically harm the President. But the commander-in-chief had asked him to do a little extra digging. He didn’t want any Johnny Chungs sneaking on the guest list, snake-oil salesmen eager to get their two minutes with the President. “Buckskin,” the Secret Service’s designation for the President of the United States, did not sell coffee klatches in the Oval Office to finance his reelection, or seats to a state dinner. If there was dirt, it was Mike Fitzgerald’s job to find it. Already, Fitzgerald had had to scratch a prominent Arab-American actor who, unbeknownst to Hollywood, not to mention his wife, was keeping an underage party boy on the side.
Fitzgerald skimmed over the last few names. One in particular caught his suspicious eye. Picking up the phone, he called Blake Godsey, who’d done the actual case-by-case grunt work. “Charisse, Claire M.,” he said. “What the hell’s a Frenchie doing attached to Owen Glendenning?”
“She’s his girlfriend,” answered Godsey. “Whatdya think, Fitz?”
“What happened to Mrs. Glendenning?”
“Divorce. Pretty acrimonious, from what I gather. This is Glen’s first public soirée with his new squeeze.”
“What’s her story?”
“Mid-level bureaucrat at the WHO. Works out of Geneva. A real do-gooder. In charge of the Drug Action Program. Don’t worry, Fitz. I checked her out. Nothing recorded against. Oh, yeah, one thing… she’s sick. Cancer.”
“Cancer?” Fitzgerald rocked in his chair, watching the fan turn slowly above his head. He’d made his bones as a homicide detective working out of the Ninth Precinct in Boston. Suspicion was as much a part of him as the lingering limp from a childhood bout of polio. “How bad?”
“That I can’t tell you. Admiral Glendenning made a point of informing me that she’s taking chemotherapy.” Godsey read off the drugs. “Didn’t want any embarrassing moments. I think he was present when Mrs. Hersh had her… um, you know, her thing.”
“Yeah, I know.” Fitzgerald would never forget Mrs. Hersh’s “thing.”
Mrs. Hersh was, in fact, Mrs. Sidney M. Hersh, wife of the chairman of Hersh Industries, and the single largest contributor to the Republican party. Three months earlier, the Hershes had been the President’s guests at a state dinner given in honor of the Israeli prime minister. Mrs. Hersh was being treated for cancer, too-Stage III non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, as it turned out-but Mr. Hersh had forgotten to inform the Secret Service of her illness. Passing through the doorway to the Blue Room, where predinner cocktails were being served, the radioactive isotopes present in the drugs in her bloodstream set off one of several Geiger counters that were hidden in key locations around the White House. The alarm was hellacious. Bells clanging, lights flashing, agents beating it like hell to her location. Naturally, one of the younger guys got a little overzealous and took down Mrs. Hersh, all five-foot-nothing, ninety-one pounds of her, like she was a tackling dummy for the Ohio State football team. Worse, her wig came off in the fall. When she stood up, the first thing she saw in the mirror was her bald scalp and about fifty guests staring at her in horror. Not only was she a suspected nuclear terrorist, she was a bald nuclear terrorist. That was that. Good-bye, Mr. and Mrs. Hersh. Good-bye to all future donations to the Republican party.