by Nick Cook
When I said no this time, he threw Iraq at me.
‘You and I do what we do because of what happened over there,’ he said. ‘Thompson is the real deal, Josh. I swear.’
Whilst campaigning, Thompson had vowed to do away with the machinery of what the previous president called the ‘deep state’ – that dark, unknowable part of government that exists below the waterline of accountability.
In Thompson’s eyes, especially since the war on terror, it had gotten out of control. He wasn’t against increasing military expenditure – but wanted to target the causes of conflict, rather than expanding the armory.
In the shadow of the dreams, however, Reuben noticed that Thompson had become increasingly wary of the people he needed to win over for his reforms to take effect.
The dreams seemed to come from a place of genuine fear.
Of our forty-something presidents, four have been assassinated. Almost a one-in-ten hit rate. Not good, statistically or personally.
I’d asked Reuben what exactly he wanted of me.
‘To be the President’s doctor, Josh – but also to be his eyes and ears.’
When I’d asked him if anyone else thought that Thompson was at risk of assassination, his answer came as a shock: his head of security, a long-time Secret Service veteran, White House Special Agent in Charge Jim Lefortz.
Reuben had worked with Lefortz on the campaign trail. Both ex-military men, they’d quickly forged a strong relationship. Thompson immediately bonded with him too.
After his wife and Reuben, Lefortz was the third person in whom Thompson confided about the dreams.
Christy Byford, his trusted National Security Adviser, was the fourth.
When I accepted the job, I became the fifth.
Reuben, Lefortz and I agreed we would pay special attention to any unusual threats so that if Thompson ever did ask, we could tell him we had them covered.
We’d labeled it No Stone Unturned.
Is Thompson the real deal? Is he, as Guido asked me, ‘a good man’?
I don’t know.
But his tapping into our code for the President’s illness demanded my strong attention.
4
THE SQUARE HAS BEEN TRANSFORMED BY ITS BLANKET OF SNOW. Heavy, wet flakes continue to fall from the low overcast sky.
I show my pass, join a small line at the White House’s Northeast Gate, and watch the statue of General Lafayette and the federal court building turn white.
To its right, I can make out a group of peace protesters being shifted from their tents by the White House North Fence and held at one of the cordons.
There’s a low hubbub of excitement at the gate. My coworkers swap notes about what they have seen or heard as they warm their hands on take-out mochaccinos. I know no one here, so pass through the gate unremarked and make my way across the east side of the North Lawn. There are more uniformed Secret Service than usual in the trees and by the North Portico entrance.
When I finally access the first floor of the Residence, I pass the Vermeil Room with its gilt-framed portraits of First Ladies and the China Room, where, if she were here, it’s possible I’d bump into the First Lady, who uses it for informal meetings and receptions.
I hear voices raised, one of them Molly’s, as I turn the handle and open the door to my office. There is a look of relief, tinged with concern and possibly exasperation, as she realizes it’s me.
She is sitting behind her desk, receiver jammed to her ear, remonstrating with whoever is on the end of the line and the person standing in front of her, too – a guy in a suit with his back to me.
‘No,’ Molly is saying down the phone whilst looking at the guy in the suit, ‘it is not possible to speak to Doctor Cain at this time. No, I cannot give out the number of his cellphone. Requests for interviews have to be directed via the White House press office. Good day to you too, sir.’
As I close the door, the guy in the suit turns to face me. ‘Doctor Cain, my name is Joe Seitz. We haven’t met before.’ He offers a hand.
I hesitate before extending my own, aware that Molly is getting to her feet. She looks angry. I’m not sure how old she is – I’d guess somewhere between sixty-five and seventy – but I do know that she is a fully signed-up member of the Daughters of the American Revolution, which lists the promotion of patriotism and the preservation of American history as prerequisites for membership, and that she is fiercely protective of me.
‘Doctor Cain,’ she says, ‘I’m sorry, but this … gentleman –’ she pulls a face, ‘– has been waiting here for the past half hour, and I told him—’
Before I open my mouth to tell her it’s OK, Seitz jumps right in. ‘I’m the Assistant Press Secretary, Doctor Cain. We have had multiple requests to interview you and I was wondering—’
I brush past him. ‘I’m not giving any interviews. Sorry.’
‘But, Doctor Cain …’
I leave him to remonstrate with Molly as I head through to my workspace and close the door. It’s exactly the way I left it before the holiday, which somehow feels strange.
Molly calls me before I’ve even sat down, to apologize for Seitz’s intrusion. This time I’m able to tell her not to worry about it. I’ll get on to the Press Secretary, whom I’ve met a couple of times, and ask him to keep the reporters at bay. For the moment, all I need is a list of the appointments I have to keep and those I can shelve or cancel.
She duly obliges.
‘I see that you still have your regular evening meeting with Professor van Buren, despite it being the first workday. Do you want me to reschedule?’
I shake my head. Today of all days I am going to need to spend some time with my old mentor. I just need a little space to write up my incident report for Reuben.
When I’ve finished, I push back my chair and stare across the South Lawn at the Washington Monument, a gray outline in the falling snow. Then I turn back to my screen and do a search for ground truth.
I find several meanings. The one that is most on point is: a tactical situation on the ground that may differ from one that has been identified in military intelligence reports and mission objectives.
It isn’t a term I remember from my front-line service, but I agree with the consensus that Guido was most likely military or ex-military – his bearing and a certain formality in the language he used more than hinted at it. I add this to the ground truth memory.
I give my report one more read-through and am about to hit send when the phone rings.
‘Doctor Cain? I have a Special Agent Hart in my office to see you. I can ask her to call back.’
I glance at my watch. It isn’t yet midday, but it seems like a lifetime since we parted company at the church. I ask Molly to send her in.
In the daylight, her freckled skin has the pallor of milk and her hair seems blacker than black. She’s a study in monochrome, but still striking, her cheekbones chiseled, her nose upturned. She spends a few seconds glancing over the Spartan details of my office.
‘You OK?’ I ask her.
‘Sure,’ she says. ‘I’m fine.’ She looks me up and down, then at the jacket slung over the back of my chair. ‘You’ve changed.’
‘It came with the stuff I borrowed off one of your boss’s deputy assistants. What is it I can help you with, Agent Hart?’
‘I need to know what you and the jumper spoke about.’
I show her the email on my laptop.
She scans my note to Reuben before sliding it back to me.
I can’t help noticing that her fingernails are bitten.
‘This doesn’t detail what you actually said.’
‘My recall is a little hazy …’ Because I was twenty meters up with a guy who’s threatening to swallow-dive to the street. ‘This is, however, accurate in terms of flow and content. You want to hypnotize me to get the rest?’
‘Not necessary.’ There’s no flicker of a smile. ‘I’m intrigued, Colonel. The very last thing you said to me, shortly before you left
the crime scene, was to search his body for some kind of list.’
‘Did you?’
‘Did I what?’
‘Find one?’
She shakes her head. ‘No. Because there wasn’t one. And we looked everywhere. What made you think he’d make one?’
‘Because he was counting down while we were talking. I think because he’d been brain-injured.’
‘That’s a pretty big leap.’
‘He had memory problems, which would also account for the stammer. The list would have been some kind of aide-mémoire. He was checking points off one by one as he spoke to me.’ I raise my hand and extend my thumb, my index and middle fingers: One, two, three.
‘Please explain that,’ she says. ‘I need to understand everything you’re telling me.’
‘Diffuse axonal injury is often fatal. At the very least, it leaves the victim with persistent cognitive impairment, the most common being memory loss, and an inability to form new memories.’
She points to a chair in front of the desk and sits before I can reply. ‘OK, so, let’s say such a list existed …’
‘Trust me. There is one.’
‘Sure. So, how many items do you think were on it?’
‘At least three.’
She waits for me to continue.
‘First, he asked if I believed in God. I’m not religious, and it was important that I told him the truth, but we managed to get through it. My answer seemed to satisfy him. Item two was the plot to kill the President. He said it was at a highly advanced stage – ready to be carried out unless we did something about it.’
‘And the third?’
‘I think he was trying to tell me as he lay dying. He made a superhuman effort to do this.’ I show her the three middle fingers of my left hand. ‘He’d asked me if I was familiar with the term “ground truth”. He said that’s why he’d come to D.C. and implied, by looking at me, that he’d found it. I have no idea what he meant, but it sounded military – like a confirmation of some kind. A validation. As if I was the proof he was looking for.’
‘Proof?’ She types this onto her notepad. ‘Proof of what?’
‘That NASA faked the moon landings? Who the hell knows?’
Her eyes flash.
‘Sounds as if you’re taking what he said seriously.’
‘In my business, Colonel Cain, we take everything seriously.’ The look on her face hints at something darker: and given what you do, maybe you should as well. ‘In PIAD we have a methodology. If this list is what you say it is, it would give an insight into his motivations, his thinking. It would also tell me he was calculating, precise—’
‘Or obsessive.’
‘Yes, or obsessive, and it would raise the whole question as to why this man picked you over everyone else.’
‘Yes. But obsessive thinking is subtle. A great deal of mental illness is subtle. Sometimes, there’s a paper-thin divide between sanity and insanity. I hate to say it, Agent Hart, but people who are mentally ill – or have a propensity toward mental illness – can latch on to protest causes, internalize them, and then—’
‘Your report strongly suggests he wasn’t mentally ill. And the Park Police and the MPD have no data on anyone with his kind of injuries. Thanks to Director Cabot’s fixation –’ she immediately regrets the use of this word, but it’s too late: her rush of blood has made her feelings clear, ‘– we have compiled an exhaustive database on every single protester that has ever gone near the North Fence, and this man isn’t on it. He’s absolutely clean.’
She pauses to consult her notes. ‘What else did he say?’
I point to my screen. ‘That he knew a lot about me, that President Thompson was our best hope, and that I personally would spare no effort to protect him, because it was in my nature to do so. If you want the precise words, I can write them down too.’
‘Not necessary.’ She picks a paperclip off my desk, places it slowly and deliberately in the penholder next to the phone. ‘I just need to know what he said and what he didn’t.’
I look out the window, pausing to consider whether I should mention No Stone Unturned, but quickly decide against it. I don’t want to go down a road that’s going to prompt questions I don’t want to answer. ‘None of those comments were accompanied by the hand gestures, which tells me they were supplementary to the list. If you want a focus for your inquiries, I would strongly suggest you make finding that list your priority.’
She taps on her notepad and slides it across to me: God. Threat. Proof.
‘If such a list were to exist, is that what it might say?’
I consider the words for a moment. ‘Yes. Pretty much.’
‘Good.’ She gives me a thin smile. ‘I’m glad we can agree on something.’
What a prick I must have sounded.
I’m about to apologize when the phone goes. It’s Molly warning me that Joe Seitz is on his way back, so I haul myself to my feet and ask Hetta whether she might need any assistance identifying the body.
5
THE CORPSE IS STRETCHED OUT ON THE TABLE, COVERED BY A green sheet that exposes only the head and feet. Kate Ottoway, a highly experienced doctor of osteopathic medicine, kicks off by telling us that death was near instantaneous. The shell narrowly missed the victim’s brainstem before dumping the rest of its energy into his skull cavity.
‘DJ’ Wharton, a bull-necked FBI agent who attended the autopsy on behalf of the Feds and the US Attorney’s Office, who are leading the investigation into Guido’s death, has already told Hetta that it was a Sierra MatchKing 30-caliber, 168-grain hollow-point boat-tail bullet: the ammunition used by the MPD’s sniper community.
DJ’s thick head of hair matches the stainless steel furniture and fittings. He says little, but has not been unhelpful. He’s built like a lineman and looks like an old-fashioned gumshoe. There is nothing remotely CSI about him. It’s no accident that he and Lefortz turn out to be drinking buddies.
Guido was a healthy thirty-five to forty-year-old male carrying no detectable traces of recreational or prescription drugs or alcohol at the time of death. But there’s no hiding the fact that he’s really been through the wars, the most visible evidence of which is the knotted, red and purple scar tissue that covers his upper body, face and head.
I have seen plenty of keloid before, but this is particularly livid and as hard as vulcanized rubber. Kate reckons the burn occurred around five to seven years ago, and postdated a second serious injury.
The bullet delivered three impacts: the relatively small entry hole in the occipital bone; the pressure wave caused by the expansion of the bullet within the brain tissue, ripping the top of the head in two; and then the explosive exit wound around the right eye.
His skull was held together by the mask, but effectively unzipped.
She invites us to examine a depressed fracture in the top rear area of the skull – visible as a spider’s web of hairline cracks – that caused severe bruising and hemorrhaging to the posterior parietal cortex. From the healing patterns, she estimates the injury to be around fifteen years old. Though skillfully re-elevated by a neurosurgeon, one of its consequences would have been memory loss.
Hetta glances at me. ‘What causes damage like that?’
Kate removes her eyeglasses, takes a moment to massage the bridge of her nose then replaces them. Her face is strong yet fragile, her hair long and prematurely gray. I guess she’s in her early forties. I want to ask what made her devote her considerable surgical talents to the dissection of the dead, but I don’t.
‘It’s difficult to be precise,’ she says. ‘But we’re talking a blunt trauma. I’ve seen injuries like this in car accidents when the victim has hit the dash. It could also have been caused by a pressure wave. An explosion. If that’s the case, then he was close to the blast and remarkably lucky to have survived. Fewer than ten per cent of people with severe diffuse axonal injury ever regain consciousness.’
The explosion theory is reinforced by our e
xchange in the tower, and by what Kate shows us when she pulls back the sheet to expose the torso.
Prominent on the upper right arm is a tattoo, sleeve art, a large, intertwined motif that includes an eagle’s wings, a skull, a globe, the Stars and Stripes, and some lettering that’s hard to make out where it has blended with the blood that’s pooled and congealed in multiple hues of black and blue on the entire underside of the body.
Hetta leans forward. ‘No Greater Love …’ She traces the words with a finger held just above the skin. ‘He was a Marine.’
‘The tattoo is confirmatory evidence regarding the age range,’ Agent Wharton pipes up. ‘In 2007, the Corps banned sleeve tattoos – any large tattoos or collections of tattoos, in fact, on the arms or legs. So our guy appears to have joined the Marines prior to 2007 and most likely left – if the burn is anything to go by – around five years ago, having sustained a brain injury along the way.’
‘I wish it were that simple. If he sustained the brain injury on combat operations, it’s unlikely he’d have been allowed to return anywhere near the front line.’ I don’t want to sound unduly pessimistic, but at MacDill we treated thousands of veterans with traumatic brain injuries. Half a million US service personnel have returned from Iraq, Afghanistan and other theaters of war in the past two decades with some kind of TBI. ‘The dozen or so Defense and Veterans Brain Injury Centers around the country, including the one I established at MacDill, will have records of the injuries. But it will take time to crunch through the data. We should run his DNA through the Armed Forces DNA Identification Lab too.’
The lab has swabbed samples from anyone who’s served in the military since 9/11, but their results won’t come in overnight either. Which leaves fingerprinting or a visual identification – somebody, somewhere, who will recognize the description of his burns – as the best short-term route. We’re back to square one.