The White House: A Flynn Carroll Thriller

by Whitley Strieber

  Safest way to prevent leaks: Don’t tempt.

  He opened the door to the team. “OK, kids, it’s yours. There’s a classified seal on the bag, though, and the tape is tamper-proof. Any sign of entry, and you’re in a world of hurt.” In his car, he reported to Diana again. “Following on. There’s four USAFs in there. They all have straight records.”

  “Got it. Let ’em do their job. Back off.”

  He disconnected and waited, watching as the body was brought out and put in the federal meatwagon for its journey to Langley.

  As it left the Navy Yard, Flynn drove just behind. He called Diana again. “You find anything on those tapes?”

  “We pick him up on the surveillance as he comes up the driveway. He enters via the main entrance, then goes straight to the West Wing.”

  “Anybody engage with him?”

  “A busboy exited his office five minutes before he arrived, carrying a food tray.”

  “Show me.”

  “Flynn, you’re behind the wheel of a car.”

  “Show me!” He turned on his iPad, which was on the seat beside him. An instant later, an image appeared. Flynn glanced down at it, looked more closely. Then he returned his eyes to the road. “It’ll interest you to know that the busboy who cleared up after his lunch is now driving the meatwagon. In other words, he has Doxy’s remains.”

  “I’ll dump SWATS on the meatwagon right now,” she said, her voice crisp with urgency.

  “No, not yet. Let’s play it out a little.”

  There wasn’t a single country in the world that wouldn’t want to acquire the experimental implant that was in Doxy’s head. It was also true, though, that few of them would go to these lengths to get it.

  In his mind, he inventoried the possibilities. Russia? Maybe, but they’d gone broke over Ukraine and Syria and now needed Western friends again. China? They didn’t kill, and certainly not in the White House. Iran, then?

  “I think it’s Misery,” he said. The acronym of the Iranian Ministry of Intelligence was MISIRI, universally referred to as “Misery.”

  “Misery is getting more sophisticated, then.”

  He cut the connection. No matter how secure the line, safety meant keeping conversation to the minimum. The great problem with their work was that there were plenty of people on the other side who were smarter than humans. Not natively, but Aeon was thousands of years ahead of us technologically. How much they were machines and how much biology it was hard to know. You were not, however, dealing with human logic. What they did made sense, but it was their own kind, so that generally it was hard to grasp until after the fact.

  Once, the detail had been linked to Aeon by a communications device we called “the Wire.” Through the use of quantum entanglement, it was able to transmit across interstellar space instantaneously. But when the revolution reached the campus of Aeon’s exobiology staff, the Wire had been shut down. Now it was just a hulk in Detail 242’s small headquarters deep in the CIA building at Langley, a dark unseeing eye. It wasn’t alone, though. A back-engineered system was installed in some ships and submarines, in Air Force One, and in spy planes.

  He punched up Diana. “Meatwagon’s not slowing,” he said into his phone. They’d crossed the gray darkness of the Potomac and were heading up Memorial. The Dolley exit that led into Langley was just ahead.

  “I’ve got eyes on it,” Diana responded.

  “OK, if they’re gonna be bad boys, I’ll let them lose me, then move in on them when they’ve stopped.”

  The old ambulance passed the exit.

  “Stay with them. I’m hanging back.”

  It accelerated through 70, through 80.

  “They’re shaking tails. Keep the cops off it, let it happen.”

  “On to the highway patrol now.”

  Ninety. One hundred. The purpose of such a maneuver was to force anyone tailing them to show his hand.

  Flynn let himself drop back, then a little more. The truck was now doing something close to 110.

  It flew up to the Beltway, weaving through traffic. The taillights disappeared into the winking mass ahead.

  “They’re slowing,” Diana said. “Taking the Beltway north. You’re two miles behind them.”

  How naive could they be, thinking that speed would shake a tail?

  The most probable answer was that they weren’t naive at all. They knew that the ambulance was under surveillance that it couldn’t shake.

  So, why were they playing it like this?

  “They’re exiting onto Bear Island. Taking the underpass right now.”

  “You still have visual?”

  “Infrared. Too dark over there for visual.”

  Flynn hung out his blue light and flipped on his siren. The car leaped ahead, engine growling. Infrared wasn’t much use. Games can be played with it: All you need is a foil blanket and you’re invisible from above. Meatwagons carry such blankets.

  When he came to the exit, he drove into Carderock Recreation Area, but not far. “What’s their position now?”

  “A half mile ahead of you. No movement on the truck.”

  He got out of his car. He could cover a half mile on foot faster than they probably realized. If they realized that the tail had not been shaken, he hoped, they would expect him to come up in his vehicle, but maybe not.

  “You see me?” he asked Diana.

  “I have your position, you’re too close.”

  “I have eyes on them. There’s movement. They’re pulling out the body.”

  “Back off, they’re going to see you.”

  He could hear birds settling in for the night, beetles moving through the leafy forest floor, a squirrel scratching its way up a tree.

  “Flynn,” came Diana’s voice from the earpiece.

  He took it out and turned it off. He needed both his ears. He hardly breathed. He needed to see and hear these people. If they had something to do with Aeon, this strange behavior might be explained. If not, then what in the world was Iran up to? Why had they stolen the detail’s file, or even known that such a file existed?

  Aeon and Iran?

  There were now more sounds ahead. The crunch of tires. No engine noise, though. A huge splash, followed by gurgling. What in hell were they doing?

  He reinserted the earpiece.

  “Flynn! Flynn!” She was hoarse. She’d been screaming at him.

  He popped the mike to indicate that he could hear her.

  “He rolled the ambulance into the Potomac!”

  “He?”

  “The other two are in it—they have to be.”

  As it sank, the old ambulance began making louder splashing and gurgling noises. A truck going into a river is a loud business.

  The idea of trying to help the people in it was out; it was too late for them. He would concentrate on just one thing now: the identity of the last man standing.

  He popped the mike again. She reported, “Nobody got out of the meatwagon, so the two other kids are indeed still in there. The body’s in it, too.”

  “The head?”

  “Not clear. He may have it.”

  He pulled the earpiece out again, and at once heard a stealthy sound, cloth slipping softly against the trunk of a tree. With it came footsteps on damp leaves. He could stop him right here, but that would freeze the trail.

  Now he could hear breathing, unsteady, afraid. The kid passed close, then the sound of his movement faded. Flynn returned his earbud to his ear. “See him?”

  “He’s emerging onto the road. There’s a car coming.”

  Flynn took off after him, angling toward the road, keeping well out of sight.

  “He’s getting in the vehicle. It’s a late-model Mercedes. It’s pulling out. Tracking.”

  He didn’t care where it went; that was no longer important. “Get the river dredged. See what can be found. And do you have any good face shots of the perp?”

  “Working on it. Gotta reconstruct off the infrared.”

  He reach
ed his car. “Where are they now?”

  “In heavy traffic, moving north. I’m still tight, though.”

  The police would locate the truck, perhaps the bodies, or parts of them. If he was lucky, the head. The river was swift and deep, and finding things in murky, tricky water like that was likely to be much a matter of chance. Flynn did not like chance.

  As he drove, he analyzed the situation, but his thoughts led in no definite direction.

  “I’ve got the kid,” Diana said. “Misery op, definite ID.”

  “OK.” Now he had something useful. “The Iranians possess a weapon from Aeon and they’re interested in our unit. And in the White House.” Dots were connecting. He broke off the chase. This was a sideshow, nothing more. Aeon had created this garish mystery as a distraction. “I’m heading for the White House,” he said.

  “You’re breaking off the pursuit?”

  “Doesn’t matter.”

  “I don’t get it, but OK. Be careful.”

  “If I can.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  THE WHITE House is divided into three sections: the West Wing, the East Wing, and the familiar old mansion that stands between them, the Residence. It is the Residence that tourists enter, passing through elegant rooms on the ground floor while the presidential family’s life unfolds upstairs. It’s not a home, really, the White House, but more an intimate version of Versailles, where a relentlessly public person carries out a rigidly constrained existence under ceaselessly watching eyes.

  The domestic staff and the Secret Service personnel assigned to it know essentially everything that happens in it, including the private areas. Even so, the tradition of discretion is rarely broken. For example, most presidents have entertained a continual succession of women—interns, secretaries, social acquaintances—who have brought momentary comfort to what is, invariably, a fraught existence. The presidency of the United States is not quite powerful enough to succeed, but too important to fail. They enter young and confident and leave it old and useful. When they leave, they all take a secret with them: All that power is an illusion. The presidency is about compromise, frustration, and broken promises. It is also about fear, constant and ever-increasing, escalated each morning by the first terror trip of the day: the intelligence briefing.

  Flynn was not naive. He’d seen presidents come and go. Bill Clinton, the amateur with a taste for bimbos; George W. Bush, with his strange and very private vulnerabilities and needs; Barack Obama, who like Ronald Reagan, had a wife too domineering to allow him to get into female trouble.

  And now Bill Greene. Back in Texas, Lorna had hired Manny the Torch to burn down the Governor’s Mansion after she’d found him in bed with his secretary of state, Will Shifley. It was whispered that rent boys slipped into press conferences and stayed the night.

  How in the world had he ended up as a governor, and now in the White House? What can the American people have been thinking, to believe for even a moment that he could run the country, he who could not even begin to run his own life? But the American people were ever ready to be led, and the money behind him—money that knew his secrets—had led them very well.

  Flynn knew all of these things and more, and reflected on them as he drew up to the private entrance. The uniforms let him through, but not without glares of pure steel. He was an invader. He didn’t belong here, not in this most exclusive few acres in the world, the White House, where slept the most important human being on the planet and her husband, the president.

  The elevators in the White House are small and not new, and they don’t give the impression that they’ll necessarily get you where you’re going. More than that, as far as Flynn was concerned, they were liable to be turned off by vindictive Secret Service agents. He could easily be left in one all night, so he took the back stairs to the second floor. He was met there by an agent and a butler.

  “I need to see them,” he said.

  The agent looked at the butler. Then they both turned their eyes to Flynn. “The doors are closed,” the butler said. “We can’t enter unless called, not at night.”

  “You two do your thing,” he said. “I have to have eyes on them, all three of them. I’m going to expect free use of the building for the rest of the night. I don’t want to be followed, watched, spoken to, or disturbed in any way whatsoever. Is that clear?”

  The agent’s face was basalt. He looked like he belonged on Easter Island. The butler said, “Of course, sir, that’s our understanding.”

  In recent years, the president and First Lady had slept together in the master bedroom. That was not the case now. Lorna had the master. Bill was in the living room, which had been converted into a bedroom with a narrow single bed and a bookcase containing the thrillers that he loved. There was a big-screen TV and a PlayStation. He’d spend hours plugging away at tactical military games, then settle into a thriller of the kind he could count on: not too much gore, not too many complications, and the outcome never in doubt. Lorna was a student of history. She spent her time with Machiavelli and Churchill, studying power and past conflict to find present insight.

  Flynn crossed the center hall in a few steps, then silently indicated to the Secret Service agent outside that he was going in the president’s door.

  The agent jumped up from his chair and blocked it.

  “Don’t do this. Let’s just cooperate for a few minutes. It’s not hard.”

  “You can’t enter that room.”

  “And if we find him dead in there in the morning, what then?”

  “We can protect our people.”

  Flynn said nothing. He didn’t need to. The agent stepped aside.

  Inside, the insulated windows meant that the only sound was the air-conditioning, a faint hiss. The room was larger than one would expect, with a high ceiling and walls painted blue. There was a desk, spotless, and six TVs built into a large wall unit. The president was a serious sports fan. Officially, he was a golfer. He wanted to appear presidential at all times, and golf was a powerful tradition. But in the case of Bill Greene his handicap was, well, a handicap.

  A second sound joined that of the air conditioner: the president’s steady breathing. He lay on his side, so buried in blankets that only his face was visible.

  Flynn approached the bed. He looked down at Bill, now a grizzled man of fifty-five. He’d been elected, basically, on the strength of two factors: the glasses he’d started wearing, which made him look presidential, and the fact that he had the best grin. Looking back across history, most presidents since FDR had been elected because they had better grins. Roosevelt’s jaunty cigarette-holder smile was hard to beat. Truman had grinned like an undertaker, but his opponent, Thomas Dewey, had the terrifying rictus of a corpse.

  Dubya had grinned like a Weimeraner having a gas attack, but when Gore smiled, you thought “card shark.” Kennedy had outshone Nixon as heaven outshines the Black Hole of Calcutta. Even so, Nixon’s grimace, deadly as it was, had made Hubert Humphrey look like an even shiftier used car salesman. Obama’s smile was devastating, a commercial for teeth. McCain smiled like a shark, Romney like a priest. Thus Obama’s two terms. Ronald Reagan, same deal.

  Right now, Greene’s postcard smile was locked away behind the frank truth of his dry, sunken face. He snored like a rhino. But he was very definitely alive and the room was otherwise empty, so Flynn left him and did the harder part, which was to enter the main bedroom and make sure that Lorna was still undead.

  In college, she’d been a Delta Gamma Epsilon. Their house had been accessible after hours, but you had to be damn careful of the housemother, a perpetually infuriated Junior Leaguer who was far from junior, and who’d years back renounced her vows and laicized from the Sisters of the Holy Sepulcher. Laicized maybe, but Ietta Swiney had remained a Sepulcher at heart. Still, unlike their housemother, though, some of the girls welcomed company in their rooms. Others didn’t. Lorna was one of the others. Worse, she slept so lightly that she always seemed to some degree awake. She’d app
arently been on the prowl for a rich boy she could control, and had hit on Bill when she’d seen the difficulty he had outthinking Bevo, the university football team’s mascot, who was known to be unusually dim even for a steer. Bill’s first success in politics was to get elected Bevo Wrangler by the honorary organization that maintained the creature. But Bevo had wrangled him. Seeing this, Lorna had decided that she could not only push Bill into politics, but also control him. And he had the finances to make that work.

  Flynn tried the door between the rooms. It was locked from Lorna’s side. She sure as hell wasn’t interested in any midnight calls from Bill, as if that would ever happen. They probably linked up only rarely, every few years perhaps, when they both happened to be full of booze and memories at the same time.

  Flynn examined the lock. It was an ordinary pin/tumbler mechanism, all brass. He took out his pick kit and dipped a snake rake into the slit. He bounced the pins, but not by simply putting pressure on the rake and hoping for the best. He had a practiced touch, and the pins were soon all on the shear line.

  As he drew the door open, he heard the beginnings of a slight creak. He froze, listening for stirring from either room. Bill continued to rumble, but there came from Lorna’s room the sounds of two people, and neither of them was asleep. There were faint, pleasured sighs, all female.

  Like Eleanor Roosevelt in her time, Lorna Greene kept girls. Flynn didn’t judge one way or the other, but he did open the door far enough to get a look at her, so that he could do the visual check he felt was necessary.

  For a dizzying moment, he thought Cissy was in bed with her, but then he saw that the fan of blond hair belonged to Ginny Bowers, Lorna’s young secretary.

  He drew the door closed, relocked it with the rake, then slipped out into the softly lit corridor, closing the president’s door behind him.