There was a photo, framed, over what he could only assume was her husband’s small dresser. He recognized the face.
So this is our acting secretary of state, standing next to the person who was once the president of the United States and died on the Day when Air Force One, insufficiently hardened, had gone down.
He read the autograph from the president written across the bottom, a person who, if he had met him while in the military, he would have been forced to salute but nevertheless held in contempt, an autograph expressing friendship to the couple, naming both of them, and the memory struck with such force as he read the names of whom the president was addressing the autograph to that he actually spoke out loud.
“So you are the idiot who was using the unsecured e-mail not to your wife but to a girlfriend that finally brought us here?”
He did not know whether to laugh or scream in rage as he tore the framed photograph off the wall, turned, and headed back to the living room.
Forrest was sitting by her side, but his attitude had shifted as she at least appeared to have calmed down.
“Done prowling around my home?” she asked, looking up at him coldly, cheeks streaked from spoiled makeup.
“Is your name Alicia?” John snapped.
“No, Janice.”
He could not help but smile, an almost cruel smile after all the tragedy she had created. “You want to know how we found out about this place?”
She looked up at him and tried not to show a reaction. “Go on, enlighten me.”
“Your idiot husband was sending out a few e-mails to this place that we did not even have to crack. It was a correspondence with some woman named Alicia.”
He hesitated. Was this even too cruel for him? “He certainly had a thing for her and was looking forward to—how shall I say it?—a romantic interlude with her next time he was here.”
Her eyes widened with shock and then growing rage. “You’re a damn liar!” she shrieked. “He said he gave her up a year ago!”
“That’s how we tracked this place down, your husband sending unsecured sexting to Alicia who apparently he stashed here as well,” John replied sharply. “Sure, he protected his family”—a pause—“and his mistress as well.”
She glared up at him, struggling for control. “Matherson, you are cruel beyond any words to describe.”
“Madam, it was men like your husband who turned this world into a place of such cruelty,” John said coldly.
She lowered her head but then looked up at a trooper standing in the doorway.
“Ma’am, your daughter is going to make it. The medic stabilized her; some folks are helping us to take her to the hospital.”
She nodded, tears continuing to well. “Thank you,” she whispered.
John looked out the front window. Someone, a civilian, was bringing up a stretcher. Another was holding up an IV bag while the young medic was hunched over Laura, still working on her, but the girl was obviously conscious.
But next to her, Grace lay as she fell, Reverend Black and Kevin kneeling by her side and crying.
“Get a blanket, something over Grace,” John whispered. “When we leave here, she goes back with us.”
“Understood, sir.” A pause. “I’m sorry; she seemed like a good kid. I saw it happen. She was trying to knock the little girl down to protect her when she got hit. She gave her life trying to save someone else.”
“That was Grace,” John whispered.
“I’ll see she’s taken care of, sir.”
John could only nod.
The woman looked at John. “Who was she?”
He stared straight at her. “In a way, you could say she was a daughter as well.”
The woman lowered her head. “I want to go with my girl. Let me leave.”
“In a few minutes. She’s in the best of hands until then. The way you behave, your being around her might upset things again, maybe trigger another incident.”
The woman was obviously in shock, and she just seemed to sag, the fight out of her.
“Your husband is the acting secretary of state,” he asked.
She nodded.
“And he is at Bluemont?”
Again a nod.
“How did all of you get here and when?” John pressed.
She looked over at him.
“Answer my questions and in five minutes I’ll see someone gets you safely to your daughter. Again, how did you get here, and when?”
“I was flown in along with my twin boys.”
“When?” John tried to keep the tension out of his voice.
“On the Day.”
“When?”
She seemed to recoil backward, and he realized it was again becoming difficult to contain his anger.
“When?”
“The morning of the Day,” she whispered.
“The morning of?” He paused for a moment. “It was before five in the afternoon in North Carolina when we were hit and everything went down. And you are telling me you were flown in here that morning?”
She could only nod.
“How can that be? Part of me just doesn’t want to get it, to believe it. Are you telling me that some in Washington knew we were going to get hit and got their families out?”
There was a long, drawn-out silence.
“You see your daughter after you answer me.”
“All right. Yes. Some knew. I don’t know all the details; even my husband wouldn’t tell me. He just would say there are some questions never to ask, and you are now asking one.” She looked back over at John. “I want to see those e-mails you claim he was sending to that Alicia bitch.”
“General Scales has them.”
“Of course he’d get her out too, the bastard. I knew about it even then.” She sighed and looked at John out of the corners of her eyes. “I need a cigarette.”
“Don’t look at me; I quit.”
She motioned to a side table. He started to indicate she could go herself, thought better of it, and without taking his eyes off her reached over, opened the side table, and sure enough, there was a pack of cigarettes—British imports—and a lighter. He tossed them over to her, and with hands shaking, she lit one up, and he looked at it hungrily.
“You want one?” she asked.
After two years and a half years, he finally broke, nodded, took one out of the pack, and, whispering an apology to Jennifer, he lit it, taking it in deep, the nicotine hitting hard so he felt a bit light-headed for a moment. He felt deeply ashamed about breaking his vow to Jennifer and hoped she would understand at this moment.
“I don’t know who, whether it was NSA, CIA, or some other agency, picked up the warning we were going to be hit later in the day. Only a few knew. Apparently not even the president, who was flying back to Washington when it hit.”
“Who are these few?” John asked, head swimming from the nicotine and all that he was now learning.
“I don’t know for sure.” She hesitated, leaning forward to look out the door where her daughter was being loaded onto a stretcher, the child whimpering.
“You can go with her as soon as we’re done talking,” John said, and she looked back at him. “Who are these few that you said knew?”
“I’m not sure. You can guess, can’t you? Not the ones in power up front. Just those behind them that few ever really see. Not many I recognized, but my husband was one of them.” She paused and took another deep drag on her cigarette. “He got drunk one night and said that the country was going to hell anyhow. Some whispered that a reset button was needed to put them in control. Some operatives got a warning that North Korea and Iran were about to hit us by handing nukes and launch systems to terrorists who actually did the attack. They thought it would be a standard nuclear bomb strike, most likely against Washington and New York.”