The Buck Stops Here

by Mindy Starns Clark

  I opened my eyes and looked up at the brilliant, starry sky, grateful that the commotion of the Cajuns was well behind us. Tom said a prayer softly aloud for our safety, and then we simply floated into the night, holding onto each other as we went.

  Fifty-Two

  The mosquitoes were the worst part. As the minutes turned into hours, it felt as though we were being eaten alive. The bugs seemed to abate somewhat with the daylight, but then, as the sun crept higher in the sky and the morning turned humid and hot, we both began to grow unbearably thirsty. All I could think about was how badly I wanted to take a scoop of water and simply drink it. Tom and I had talked about it, though, and we knew that would be too risky. Surely somehow, soon, we would run across some sign of civilization and be saved.

  In truth, floating down a wide Louisiana canal on a hastily made impromptu raft could have been worse. At least we were together. At least the raft had held up. At least neither one of us had been injured beyond some minor scrapes and bruises. As we floated, we talked about what we would do as soon as we managed to get out of there. We didn’t talk about the danger of being swept past all land and out into the Gulf of Mexico. Surely, the mouth of this canal would have enough boat traffic that someone would spot us and that wouldn’t happen.

  Several times we considered paddling to the bank and trying to make our way out of the swamp on foot. But there were no signs of civilization anywhere along here. We both agreed we were probably better off staying in the water for now.

  In the early morning hours, we spotted almost all of the wildlife that I had missed on my tour with Armand. We saw a small brown bear and all kinds of mammals and plenty of snakes and birds and deer. Finally, as we rounded a bend, a loud crashing sound from the shore startled us, and we looked up to see a wild boar running after a scampering nutria.

  Tom put his hands on my shoulders, gently kneading the muscles, and then he wrapped his arms around me from behind and simply held me. I closed my eyes, thinking how very much I loved him, how he was all I really needed in this world.

  “Hey, Callie?” he said gently.

  “Yes?”

  “I have a question for you.”

  “Okay.”

  “Maybe it’s not the right time. I don’t have a ring with me. And I’m sure I’ve looked better. But I hope you don’t mind if I ask it anyway.”

  I sat up and turned so that I could see his face.

  “Ask,” I whispered, my pulse surging.

  “Callie,” he said, looking me deeply in the eyes. “When we get out of this mess, will you marry me?”

  I put a hand to my mouth. My mind, my heart, my soul were so full that for a moment, I couldn’t even speak.

  “Oh, Tom,” I said finally, tears of joy filling my eyes. I thought about all we had been through and all that lay ahead of us, and the only thing I knew for certain was that I wanted to spend the rest of my life with this man.

  Before I could say yes, though, his eyes suddenly widened, and he reached up, grabbed my shoulders, and threw me off the raft and into the water.

  “Watch out!” he screamed, jumping in after me.

  I turned to look behind me and saw a giant barge nearly upon us. The massive vessel was so huge that all we could do was swim toward the side of the canal as quickly as possible. The barge’s passage was nearly silent except for the dull thud of the engines, and though we screamed as we swam, no one seemed to hear us.

  At least Tom made it, I thought as I slipped under, pulled backward by the boat’s strong current. Almost as if in slow motion, I knew what would happen now. I would be sucked into the engine and cut into a million pieces.

  Then I felt Tom’s hand, tugging mine, pulling me, fighting the current. I kicked as hard as I could along with him, out of air but still underwater. He pulled me farther, and then suddenly the sucking current released me, and I burst through to the surface. With great gasps I caught my breath and found my footing and allowed Tom to half drag me to safety on the shore. We collapsed there in swampy mud, breathing heavily, the waves of the ship’s wake splashing up to our chins.

  Once it had subsided, we could see our raft, splintered into six different pieces out on the water. I looked at it and then looked at Tom, knowing he had just saved my life. I threw my arms around him, both of us silent and shivering from the horror that had just nearly overtaken us. When I finally found my voice, it was to thank him for pulling me to safety.

  “Are you folks okay?”

  We turned to see a grizzled old man, looking down at us from the solid ground of the shore. He wore hip waders and carried a big fishing pole in one hand and a tackle box in the other.

  “I heard screaming,” he added, looking at us and our odd garb warily. “Did y’all fall off that barge?”

  “We need some help,” Tom said as we stood shakily and stepped up onto the bank. “Is there any way you could get us to a telephone?”

  “Ain’t got no phone lines out this far,” the man replied. Tom and I looked at each other in despair until the man added, “Would my two-way satellite radio do?”

  Fifty-Three

  In the end, the NSA sent a helicopter down to get us. They brought us to a hospital in New Orleans, where we were both treated for mild dehydration and released. After taking showers and putting on some borrowed scrubs, we were brought to the NSA office. They assured us that they were retreiving our vehicles and that they would send an agent for some clothes of our own. After that, one of the agents updated us on all that had happened during the night.

  Armand and his aunt were now in jail, arrested on a number of charges, not the least of which was the attempted murder of the two of us. Apparently, it was thanks to Veronica and Phillip that things came together as they did. When all was said and done and the ball was over, only two cars had remained in the parking area at Grande Terre last night: mine and Ton Ton’s. Veronica had spotted Tom incognito at the ball, so she had a feeling I had left with him. But she didn’t understand why Ton Ton’s car was still there, so they had made an obligatory phone call to the local police, just to have them go over to Ton Ton’s and make sure all was well. Knowing the woman’s history of overzealous imbibing, they were afraid she might have gotten drunk at the ball and tried to walk home.

  Of course, by the time the police arrived out on the little peninsula, the swamp was full of Cajuns in boats brandishing shotguns. Chaos had ensued, but the NSA caught wind of it over the police radio and quickly stepped in and took over. They seized Armand and his aunt, but the agents had had to wait until daylight to begin conducting a swamp search for us from the air. Now they realized that they hadn’t even been looking in the area where we finally turned up. No one could believe we had managed to float that far.

  This morning, learning about all that had happened here, James Sparks had wrangled another plea bargain that involved giving up the proof he held on Armand. Much to everyone’s surprise, the audiotape was in a waterproof lockbox at the bottom of Armand’s alligator pit! Years before, during the FBI investigation, Sparks had needed a secure hiding place where he knew no human would ever find it, and though his original intention was to bury it somewhere out in the swamps, he got a last-minute inspiration to toss it into the pit instead. All this time Armand had been blackmailed by Sparks’ proof, never knowing that that proof was right there under his nose, on his own property.

  Tom and I were each fully debriefed on our own, and when my session was over I was led into a room where the clothes I had requested from the hotel were waiting for me. I got dressed and returned to the hallway, where I was reunited with Tom. He looked much better, and he said that the NSA had retrieved both of our cars and they were parked outside. An agent asked us to wait in a pair of chairs. Exhausted, we simply sat there, side by side, with our eyes closed.

  Soon, though, the mood in the building seemed to change. People were walking more quickly, whispering among themselves. A sort of hushed excitement radiated through the air.

  “I wonder
what’s going on?” I whispered.

  “I think there’s one more person they want us to see,” Tom replied cryptically.

  I was about to respond when Agent Devlin showed up to escort us downstairs and out to a waiting car. Tom seemed quietly confident, so I followed his lead and got inside without asking for an explanation.

  We drove onto Interstate 10, toward Slidell, but before crossing the lake we got off again and turned at a sign that indicated the New Orleans Lakefront Airport. As we drew closer, we came upon a roadblock, where Devlin pulled the vehicle to a stop, showed some ID, and was allowed to pass through. There were no other cars on the street as we made our way into the airport, which also seemed deserted.

  “It’s so small,” I whispered to Tom.

  “This is just the Lakefront Airport,” he replied. “New Orleans International is on the other side of town.”

  “Oh.”

  We drove right onto the tarmac and came around a building, and there in front of us was a sight I had never expected to see in my lifetime, at least not up close: Air Force One.

  The airplane of the president.

  I looked at Tom, who had a slight smile on his lips.

  “What’s going on?” I asked as we pulled to a stop.

  “From what I understand,” he replied, “the president decided to make a little stopover here on his way to Mexico for a summit meeting.”

  The doors were opened for us and we climbed out. Devlin gestured toward the airplane stairs, and so up we went. My heart pounded as I mounted them, and at the top of the steps another man greeted us and then led us to a room down a narrow hallway. We stepped inside and the door shut behind us. There, sitting at the end of a long table, was the president of the United States of America.

  “Tom!” he said, rising to greet us. He stepped forward to shake Tom’s hand and then turned his attention to me. “And you must be Callie Webber,” he added, shaking my hand as well, and then he laughed. “From the look on your face, I guess you could say you’re a tad surprised to find yourself here.”

  I cleared my throat and swallowed hard.

  “Yes, sir,” I finally uttered.

  “How are you?” Tom asked stiffly.

  “Can’t complain,” the president replied. “Why don’t we have a seat?”

  He gestured toward a grouping of chairs at the end of the room. Feeling as though I were in some surreal otherworld, I walked toward the chairs and sat, Tom on my left, the president at an angle to my right.

  “We don’t have a lot of time,” the president said, “so I guess I’d better cut to the chase. I have something to tell you, Tom, and I decided to bring Callie—may I call you Callie?”

  “Of course.”

  “I decided to bring Callie in on this as well. You may be bound by a confidentiality agreement, Tom, but I’m free to speak about this matter as I deem necessary.”

  I swallowed hard, wondering if I still looked as dumbfounded as I felt.

  “You might like to know, Callie, that a few weeks ago, young Tom here came to me and asked for special permission to amend his confidentiality agreement with the NSA. Apparently, he wanted you to know all the facts surrounding that terrible day your husband was killed.”

  I nodded. Tom had told me he had “pulled every string” that he could and “exhausted every option” in his attempt to get around that agreement. Now I understood that he hadn’t been exaggerating. In his pursuit for permission, he had appealed to the highest office in the nation.

  “At the time,” the president continued, “I was not able to grant that request. From what I understand, when he told you that his request had been denied, you simply conducted an investigation on your own and uncovered most of those facts anyway.”

  “That’s true.”

  “Quite impressive, especially since you also helped put a few more criminals in jail and bring closure to a long-outstanding FBI investigation. Good job.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “We have several agencies that could use your type of skills, by the way,” he added. “CIA, FBI, just name it. If you ever want to do some consulting…”

  I glanced at Tom, who was grinning at me proudly.

  “Thank you, sir,” I said, turning back to the president. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

  “Well, then, let’s move on. Tom, there is one bit of information that even you never had, and I think the time has come to fill you in on it. This is FYEO and will never leave this room. Do you agree?”

  “FYEO?” I asked.

  “For Your Ears Only,” Tom told me. “Yes, I agree.”

  The president turned his gaze to me.

  “I agree also, sir. My lips are sealed.”

  “Good,” the president said, settling back in his chair. “Now, Tom, I understand that you feel fully responsible for the death of Callie’s husband, but I want you to know that that isn’t the case. The fault does not lie with you.”

  Tom shifted in his seat.

  “I’m afraid I don’t understand,” Tom said.

  “Son, when you were trying to crack that code four years ago, you said that you needed James Sparks’ help in order to do it. Through a lot of maneuvering, you managed to get him released into your custody at that house. He subsequently made a run for it and ended up killing an innocent man. The truth is, there was more going on there than even you knew about. Now that his accomplice has been caught, you can know the whole truth.”

  “Sir?”

  “All along, the FBI was aware that Sparks had an accomplice when he sold your code to the terrorists—they just didn’t know who the accomplice was. When arrangements were made for Sparks to go to that house, the FBI had great hopes that Sparks might seize the opportunity to contact that accomplice. We weren’t sure how or when he would make that attempt, but you were all under full surveillance. Agents were stationed at several nearby houses as well as all along that river. We told you that security was light because Sparks was not assumed to be a flight risk. In truth, we knew he would try to slip away for that call. We wanted him to.”

  I looked at Tom, whose face was pale.

  “Think about it,” the president continued. “One guard per shift—and one of them prone to falling asleep? The keys to the cars and the boat, right there on the kitchen counter, accessible? We even had the guards talk about ‘the nearest pay phone’ being at the Docksider Grill. That phone was tapped and ready. The one thing that none of us expected was that Sparks would accidentally kill a man on his way there.”

  Tom stiffened next to me, and I could only imagine the range of emotions that was coursing through his veins. Shock. Confusion. Anger. I knew, as I had recently gone through all of them myself. I wanted to reach out and take his hand, but I wasn’t sure if that would be appropriate in the presence of the president.

  “Callie,” the president said, turning to me. “You cannot know how sorry I am about the way things turned out, but you have to know that none of it was Tom’s fault.”

  This time, I did reach out and take Tom’s hand, squeezing it.

  “I forgave him anyway,” I said. “But thank you for telling us, sir. I’m sure that is a huge burden off Tom’s shoulders.”

  The president leaned back in his chair, crossing one leg over the other.

  “You know,” he said to both of us, “Harry Truman used to keep a little sign on his desk. It said ‘The Buck Stops Here.’ This is why I brought the two of you here today. The responsibility of Bryan Webber’s death doesn’t lie on your shoulders, Tom. As this nation’s leader—and the one who ultimately approved the FBI’s plan—it lies squarely on mine. Tom, Callie, truly, with regard to Bryan Webber’s death, the buck stops here.”

  Tom remained quiet as we wrapped up our meeting. When the president stood and thanked us for coming, I steeled my nerve and seized the opportunity to ask the one question I knew would hover in the back of my mind for the rest of my life. File it under nothing ventured, nothing gained, I thought, and then I spoke
.

  “Mr. President,” I said, “before we go, I have one more question, one more mystery about this whole thing that I have not been able to solve—and I doubt I ever will, unless I hear it straight from your lips.”

  The president nodded, looking amused.

  “Well, go ahead,” he said. “Ask me.”

  “My husband’s death was a senseless accident. But it would help me enormously to understand the larger scope behind the whole sequence of events that caused it. Sir, what was the national crisis that brought Tom and Sparks to that house in the first place? Why did they so desperately need to crack that code?”

  The president shook his head.

  “I’m sorry, I—”

  “Don’t you think you owe her that?” Tom said suddenly. Then he added, more respectfully, “Don’t you think you owe it to me to tell her?”

  The man looked at Tom, seemed to consider our request, and then finally exhaled.

  “Sit back down,” he said, and so we did. “Now this is really FYEO.”

  “Yes, sir,” I whispered, heart pounding.

  “Callie, about four and a half years ago,” he said, “our intelligence forces uncovered some disturbing information. A certain T-Seven country had begun vaccinating their soldiers for smallpox. You can imagine the implications.”

  “Sir?”

  “Smallpox has been eradicated off the face of the earth,” he said. “In fact, the virus is safely contained under maximum security in only two places: We have it at the CDC in Atlanta, and the Russians have it at their similar facility over there. But somehow, based on the information we were being given, this other country had gotten hold of it too. The fact that they were inoculating their soldiers made us very nervous indeed.”

  “I see.”

  “As it turned out, much of their communications were encrypted with the program designed by Tom and his colleagues. There came a point where we knew we had to break that encryption if we were to learn the nature of their plans. Tom was brought in, and when he couldn’t break the code alone, James Sparks was rounded up as well. Eventually, they did break that code and we were able to stop the unimaginable from happening.”