“Brooke, can I have a minute?”
“Now?” Brooke said a little taken aback.
“Yes.”
“Okay, let’s take a quick break. Give us the room please?”
Everyone left and Brooke looked at George. “What is it?”
“This is hard for me, Brooke, but I was under orders from Secretary Cass to keep him updated regularly on the progress of our investigation.”
“Hold it. You mean spy on me, us?!”
“I guess those words work. But I was under orders. You were an outsider. He wanted to make sure you weren’t . . . weren’t . . .”
“Going all cowboy on this?”
“You do have a reputation in high circles.”
Brooke was seeing red, but she tempered her anger. “George, right now I want to throw you out that goddamn window, but there’s been enough death around here, so you now have one minute to tell me everything.”
“Not much to tell . . . He was really only interested in where you were going.”
“As in what?”
“Well, the whole reason why I am telling you this is that he mentioned Kitman more than once.”
“Whoa. Warren was worried about me digging into Kitman? Why?” Suddenly, Brooke knew the answer but didn’t want to believe it. Her meeting Kitman and the prince with Cass at the Harvard Club the night she got shot. She also remembered the words that Cass had muttered that sounded like, “That’s why George went to the Caymans.” She chided herself for not picking up on his slipup of his knowledge of her operations. That tidbit could only have come from George.
“I don’t know, but I think Kitman Global Investments and Secretary Cass are connected in some way.”
Brooke was steaming; disloyalty was a good reason for summary execution in her book. She weighed the impact of firing George on the spot against the disruption a move like that would cause at this late stage in the investigation.
“George, where is your loyalty now?”
“Brooke, except for my orders to report in, it was always with the mission and you.”
Brooke considered his choice of words. She had put her life in his hands on the extraction in Grenada; he’d performed, as she would have expected, what with him being the best agent at Treasury that she’d personally picked for her team.
“George, Cass is a crafty character. Did you know he sent an old college buddy to bird-dog me. Of course I rejected the idea, but now I see it was to cover your role as his eyes and ears. Crafty.”
“Am I still on your team, Brooke?”
“How much did you tell him?”
“Not much . . . You kept it pretty straight and narrow. There was of course interest when you went after Cynthia Davidson . . .”
“For now obvious reasons. Did you know about her?” Brooke said.
“No, I just included it in my bi-weekly report. He came back asking to be informed of every move as it related to Cynthia. If it matters, I never made judgments on your procedure or management style. In fact, personally I think you are brilliant at all this.”
“Don’t suck up, George, you’re still in my shithouse.”
“My reports were based only on facts. I never editorialized, never critiqued.”
“George, I think a light just went on in my head. Did you ever mention Joe Garrison in your . . . report to the secretary?” Brooke edited out the words “in your spying on me” before she spoke.
Brooke could see the blood drain from George’s face. “Holy shit.”
The muted chopping of a helicopter flying somewhere over Manhattan was the only sound for at least a minute. Brooke tapped her finger on the desk. “Look, George, if Cass dropped the dime on Joe in his pal-around discussions with Kitman, that’s on him, not you. There’s no way you could have known any of this.”
“Thanks, but it doesn’t make me feel any less guilty.”
“Believe me, it’ll get so you can live with it.”
“I don’t know if that would be better.”
Brooke looked at him. Her jaw set as it always did once she made up her mind. “George, you are on probation. We go on, but I don’t want to worry about you behind my back.”
“Brooke, I am still an agent of the US. If Cass did indeed tip off Kitman or the terrorists, then he broke the law, and I might have to arrest him. So I consider myself free of his directive, and no longer obligated to report to him. I’d like to stay on the team and see this through.”
“Who said I wanted you to stop?”
A broad grin emerged on George’s face.
.G.
“Connie Cochran, White House,” the floor director said running into the makeup room, pressing the production earphone in his ear.
Diane looked at her watch. It read six-fifty. “Tell her she called too late. We’re past deadline.”
“Er . . . she’s not on the phone . . .” he said.
“She’s here.” Connie herself was standing in the doorway. “People, give us the room for a minute,” she said in her former executive editor’s voice.
Diane nodded to the hair and makeup people and, with curlers in her hair and a half-powdered face, gestured for Connie to take a seat.
“No, this will be quick. Here.” She unceremoniously tossed a manila envelope into Diane’s lap.
“What’s this, a statement? It’s too late . . .”
“Read it!”
Diane grabbed the hair scissors from the tray and slit the manila envelope open. “Secret service logs, yes, I have seen these.”
“Then you are either very bad at reading or you were being set up. I highlighted the relevant part.”
Diane scanned the document and her eyes widened. She looked up at Connie just as Connie’s cell phone rang.
She answered it without saying a word into it and held it up to Diane. “It’s for you.”
“Diane, this is Delores Mitchell. As you see before you, you’ll see the name Clarice Mitchell all three times you allege my husband was having an affair. For the record, Clarice is our niece. For reasons of protecting her privacy I am not going to get into the specifics except to say that both my husband and myself asked Mrs. Morton to counsel our niece. You see, and this is not for publication, she needed a mentor, and she and I never could get along. Both my husband and I not only think the world of Brooke, but she is a person of unquestionable loyalty and a patriot with rock-solid ethics. Truth be told, James and I consider her more of a daughter than a government employee . . . almost as much as our daughter, Marie. Brooke was kind enough to spend time and help guide a young girl struggling through some basic life issues. One night, while I was away, she had dinner with my husband in the residence. It was then—as the phone log in the package shows—that I called at 8:30 p.m., during that dinner, and both James and myself asked her to intercede on our niece’s behalf. You also see phone logs for the weekend at Camp David, and a phone call from me, in which Brooke eased my concerns that Clarice was receptive to her help that day. There is no truth, not one scintilla of truth, to the disgusting allegations you are making. I trust that you, your network, and your network’s president, Bob and his wife Leah, will agree that you don’t want to fuck with the White House on this one. Thank you, Diane.”
Connie could see the blood drain from Diane’s face. She took back her phone from Diane’s motionless hand and looked at the clock on the wall. “Well, eight minutes to air. We’ll be watching to see what you decide to do.”
Connie left.
Chapter 34
Phone Calls
4 days until the attack
“Have you seen the news?” Remo said as he entered Brooke’s office.
“No. What happened?”
“CNN has a video of something happening in Grenada.”
“Good quality?”
“Nah, dark and you can
hardly make out the faces.”
“How hardly?” Brooke said.
“Not at all.”
“I feel better now.”
“Did you hear the other news?”
“Peter! I am kind of busy here.”
“Sorry, Sec Tres is resigning.”
“You buried the lead there, Peter.”
Brooke picked up the phone and called her buddy Sally to see if their boss had actually resigned.
“Secretary’s office.”
“Sally, it’s Brooke.”
“You heard?”
“Is it true?”
“You tell me?”
“Huh?” That threw Brooke.
“Oh, Brooke, I didn’t believe it. I mean, I know you, you would never . . .”
“Sally, slow down . . . What are you talking about?”
“The rumors . . .”
“Sally . . .”
“You are going to make me say it, aren’t you?”
“Say what? Sally, I’m lost here.”
“You really don’t know?”
“Sally, everyone is playing twenty-one questions today. What?”
“Your affair.”
“My . . . what?”
“You affair with Mitchell.”
Brooke’s breath left her body. Her head spun. The room rotated in slow motion, as if she were heading towards an accident. She tried to speak but just a gurgle came out.
“Brooke, Brooke? Oh God, are you okay?”
She caught her breath. She looked at Mush’s picture on her desk. He would never believe such a thing. She knew he trusted her as totally and unconditionally as she trusted him. Still, what if he found out? Found out what? She immediately challenged herself. Would Mush lob a three-megaton nuclear-tipped Trident missile into the White House out of jealousy? That thought made her laugh.
“Well, at least you are laughing,” a relieved special assistant to the Secretary of the Treasury said.
“Sally, how did this ridiculous rumor get started?”
“Warren . . . Well, Warren may have started an inquiry.”
“Warren? Why would Warren do something as dumb as that?”
“I don’t know, but he had the secret service in here a few days ago, and I know he met with that woman reporter from TV.”
“And now he’s resigning?” Brooke stood up.
“Effective at noon today.”
“Wow. I’m stunned. But why would he do such a thing? I work for him.”
.G.
Sally bit her bottom lip and pulled the phone away for a second. The incident with the gun at Warren’s house last night was not publicized. He was at Walter-Reade hospital ostensibly to treat an over-active ulcer, or so the cover story she was told to support said. She had heard that the psychiatrists in attendance were sworn to secrecy because of Warren’s sensitive cabinet post and the fact that an unbalanced head of the Treasury could erode confidence in America’s economy worldwide. She felt bad about not sharing that with Brooke but . . . “He’s been under a lot of stress lately, and I guess when he heard you were spending time at the White House . . .”
“Is that what this is about? Why that insecure son of a bitch.” Brooke’s tone immediately changed. “Sorry, Sally, I know you worked for the man and liked him.”
“Oh, please, look what he tried to insinuate about you! You have a right to be angry.”
“Sally, will your job be okay?”
“Me? Yeah, I’ve been here through five administrations and eight secretaries. They wouldn’t know where the paper clips were without me. Federal employee here, Brooke; we never leave.”
“Sally, do I have anything to worry about? You mentioned a reporter. Is this on the news?”
“No, and from what I heard, the first lady is going to make sure it stays that way.”
“Oh my God, Delores! I should call her.”
“Good idea.”
“Love to your sister; tell her I was asking about her.”
“Thanks, and Brooke, I didn’t believe it when I heard it. I know you. I know what a good woman you are.”
“Thanks, Sally, that means a lot to me. Let me know if you hear anything else. Talk soon.”
.G.
She hung up and sat for a few seconds. It was fantastic . . . her having an affair with the president. Then she remembered he did ask her to call him Jim. Nah, that was just nothing. Then she rattled back through her brain. Did I ever come on to him? Did I ever do or say or suggest anything inappropriate? As she played back the handful of times she had met the president, nothing stuck out as untoward or suggestive.
She was feeling pretty clean in all this by her own mental checklist. Then her subconscious brought up the name, Lyle, and she was suddenly shifting in her seat. He’d been married when they worked together out of the Dallas field office of the FBI. He’d always been the perfect gentleman, maybe even more so, in that she noticed he never partook of the ribbing and mild sexual innuendo that most others engaged in. He was always respectful of Brooke, almost to a fault. As she eventually found out, the reason was that he was infatuated with her. To his credit, he’d been honest with her and announced his intention: he would divorce his wife and marry her.
For Brooke, it was a thunderbolt out of the blue. Her first instinct had been to assume that he was kidding. They hadn’t as much as shared a friendly hug. No physical contact of any kind had occurred between them, yet he was seemingly ready to commit without “test driving,” as the one dear friend she’d shared the story with called it. However, his serious brow and actual nervousness over her possible reaction had told her he wasn’t joking. As vulnerable as she’d been at that moment to having a little romance in her life, it had taken her all of ten seconds to decide.
Shocked at her response, he’d asked her why.
She could see still the expression on his face, a handsome face. Lyle was smart, good looking, fit, and had the kind of bearing that would take him places . . . and she was proved right, in that today he was the assistant director of the FBI in Washington and candidate for director someday. At that moment, though, she hadn’t been able to go along with his plan no matter how flattering it was.
Later she would find out that he’d idolized her; he had no doubts of his love; he knew he’d met the person that he was meant for; even without sex as the usual convincer, he knew. Almost like a throwback to the days when there was no premarital sex. Except he was already married, so she knew he wasn’t a eunuch.
Even to this very day, her only partial regret over her declining his offer was that for some reason she’d lied in answer to his question. She’d told him it was because they worked together and that if they married it wouldn’t affect his career but it would ruin hers. Such was the way of things, unfortunately. Even though she was right about that stigma, her real reasons, the ones she chose not to share with him, were much deeper.
To Brooke’s way of thinking, she couldn’t start off a life-long relationship on the tears of another woman. It went against everything she held dear as a female. But deep down inside, it was also because he’d been using Brooke as a parachute out of his marriage. Lyle should have divorced the woman first, making a clean break and then taken the chance that Brooke might or might not have been available when the dust settled. Instead, he would’ve had his wife doing the free fall, taking all the risk of finding another life partner, while he held onto Brooke for the ride. At her most basic level, it just hadn’t been fair, not fair at all, and she couldn’t have been part of . . .
Her thoughts were interrupted by a knock at the door.
“We’re ready to go.”
“I’ll be right there.” Brooke got up and checked herself in the mirror. The shocking news had momentarily caused her to forget what she was about to do. The outrageous allegation having totally obliterated th
e gravity of her next appointment, she touched up her lipstick, grabbed her bag, and left. Again, not bothering to check her office voicemail.
.G.
Security was tight at Saint Patrick’s Cathedral. Due to the imminent threat and her team’s total focus, there wasn’t time to go to each individual funeral of the nineteen people killed in the rocket attack. So this one memorial service was organized for the workmates and families to grieve collectively. In the following days, each victim would be buried separately in his or her hometowns and with their families in attendance. But for now, this ceremony was the only way for the unit to grieve and to keep the investigation on pace in a race against time.
“Ronald Bixby . . .” the monsignor read out loud, “son, brother, nephew. We pray for you and your family.”
As the names were read aloud the family members sobbed and cried. Each name brought new gasps and wails as the oppressive reality of the finality of it all collectively resonated across the cathedral.
For the family members it was a bad nightmare from which there was no waking up, no escape. As for Brooke, she hadn’t had a minute to grieve properly. But now in this hallowed gothic basilica her emotions became a torrent of cringing, reverberating images. The echoing off the stone and marble of each name as it was read aloud brought shimmering images of the agents and coworkers fading into her field of view. Her hands shook. Tears welled up and her chest heaved with shortened breaths, as all the trauma and danger of the last few days finally found a weak spot in the mental steel that was the armor plating surrounding her sanity.
As she turned her head away from the altar, her eyes fell upon a little girl of three or four. She was in a little jumper dress with white shoes dangling down from the pew that she and her family were sitting in. The man next to her had his arm around her, holding the innocent child close as she played with a little doll in her hands.
“Charlene Logan . . .” the priest read out loud, “daughter, sister, niece, mother . . . we pray for you and your family.”
“That’s mommy,” the little girl said innocently.
The man sitting next to her tried to hold back, but lost his stoic battle as his quivering lower jaw opened and an “Oh my God” escaped. He then pulled the little girl in tighter and kissed the top of her head and rested his cheek on her hair and the pink barrette in it.
Give Us This Day Page 28