The White House

by Roland Smith

  “Hey!” P.K. said. “I thought you had a BlackBerry last night.”

  Oops.

  “Nope,” I lied. “An iPhone. BlackBerrys are very uncool. I wouldn’t disgrace my pocket with one.”

  P.K. narrowed his green eyes. “I could have sworn—”

  “I’m starving,” I said. “Where do I get breakfast?”

  “You can have it brought to your room, or you can eat in the Residence kitchen or the dining room or up in the Solarium.”

  “The Solarium?”

  “Top floor. Aside from the kitchen it’s my favorite place to hang out.”

  “Then that’s where I want to eat,” I said.

  P.K. smiled.

  I hoped he had forgotten about the BlackBerry.

  “Let’s get back to that BlackBerry.”

  Guess he hadn’t forgotten. Silver bullet time.

  “That reminds me,” I said. “Where did you get the Secret Service radio?”

  P.K.’s eyes went wide. “What are you talking about?”

  “And how did you learn about the secret passage?”

  “I thought you said you were hungry,” P.K. said.

  “I am. Why don’t you see if Angela’s up while I take a shower and get dressed.”

  P.K. was out of the room like a silver bullet.

  Solarium

  Solarium was a fancy name for sunroom, but I saw why P.K. liked it up there. It was bright and cheerful.

  “President Coolidge’s wife called this room her sky parlor,” Angela said as she strolled in, looking pretty cheerful despite everything that was going on. She set her pack on the table. “Did you take any photos for the Web page?”

  P.K. and I were sitting at a long table, and I was showing him a couple of simple card tricks.

  “A few,” I said. “And I shot some video too.”

  “You did not,” P.K. said.

  I showed him the photos and short video clip on my iPhone. “You weren’t paying attention,” I said. “Remember what I was telling you about sleight of hand? You thought I was just holding my phone in my hand when we came in here, but what I was really doing was taking photos and video.”

  And they were pretty good, considering I’d messed around with the new phone for only about twenty minutes. I thought P.K. was going to bring up the BlackBerry question again, but he didn’t. I guessed I’d shot that subject down.

  P.K. walked over to one of the house phones. “What do you want for breakfast?”

  I knew what I wanted, but I didn’t know if I could have it. I looked at Angela. “Have you seen Mom or Roger?”

  She shook her head. I could just see the reaction on their faces if they strolled into the Solarium and saw the pile of sizzling bacon and sausages on the platter I was going to order.

  “Bethany has them in the East Wing,” P.K. said. “They’re talking about the concert tonight. When they finish in the East Wing there’s the brunch, which you definitely don’t want to go to.”

  “Why not?” Angela asked.

  “When they hold a brunch for you, you don’t get to eat because everyone is talking to you.”

  “I’d like three eggs over easy, bacon, sausage, burned hash browns, toast, and a big glass of milk.”

  “Make that two,” Angela said.

  “Bethany said you were all vegetarians,” P.K. said.

  “We are,” Angela said. “When we’re with our parents.”

  P.K. grinned. “I get it.”

  He placed the order.

  The food arrived within minutes, wheeled in by a server named Maurice wearing a snow-white waistcoat, starched shirt, black pants, black tie, and a big smile. It was obvious that he was very fond of P.K.

  “I was told our guests were vegetarians, P.K.,” Maurice said as he set down the plates.

  “Don’t tell anyone,” P.K. said.

  “Your secret is safe.” Maurice looked at Angela and me. “P.K. and I have a sacred pact. I don’t say anything to anyone about what he’s up to unless I think he’s endangering himself. Even then I talk to him about it first. I believe the same should apply to his friends.”

  “Has he ever endangered himself?” Angela asked.

  “That is strictly between me and P.K.” Maurice gave us another dazzling smile and wheeled the serving cart out of the room.

  The breakfast was perfection, as Chef Cheesy would say.

  Just as I forked the last slice of sausage into my mouth, my iPhone rang.

  “Hi, Mom.”

  “What are you doing?”

  “We’re up in the Solarium with the First Son, eating breakfast.”

  “What are you having?”

  “Fruit, granola, yogurt, cucumber juice…”

  “I’ll bet,” Mom said.

  “Here’s a tip for you. You’d better get something to eat now because you won’t be able to eat at the brunch because you’ll be too busy jabbering with fans.”

  “Roger and I know the routine. We’ve already eaten. And unlike you, we actually had fruit, granola, and yogurt. You should probably be more sensitive toward Angela. I’m sure she isn’t fond of watching you wolf down dead animals.”

  I looked across the table at Angela. She was dipping her last piece of bacon in the yoke of her last egg.

  “You’re right,” I said. “She’s revolted.”

  “Put her on,” Mom said. “Roger would like to talk to her.”

  I looked at Angela’s greasy fingers and decided to put her on speakerphone.

  “Hi, Dad,” Angela said.

  “Hi, honey. How’s it going?”

  “Great.”

  “I hear you had a surprise audience with the president early this morning.”

  No secrets in the White House, I thought.

  “We did. It was great and very nice of him to make time for us.”

  “I didn’t know you’d contacted the White House office to ask for an interview.”

  “I didn’t think he’d grant one,” Angela said. “Boone made the call for us.”

  “Good old Boone,” Roger said.

  He sounded a lot more up than he had the night before.

  “Are you coming to the brunch?” he asked.

  “We’re pretty tired,” Angela answered. “And we have homework to catch up on, and…”

  Roger laughed. “Okay. I get the picture. I’ll see—Oh, the president just strolled in. I guess I’d better go. I’ll talk to you later. I love you.”

  “Love you too, Dad.”

  I ended the call just as Mr. Todd strolled into the Solarium. He was scarier than our parents’ manager, Buddy T.

  Chief of Staff

  Mr. Todd looked a little rumpled, as if he had slept in his suit. He gave us a phony-looking smile.

  “How are you kids doing?”

  He squinted at the sunlight pouring through the windows the way a mole might do if it surfaced during the day.

  “We’re fine,” Angela said cautiously.

  P.K. said nothing.

  “I love this room,” Mr. Todd said. “It’s so…inviting. What have you been doing?”

  I nodded at the empty plates on the table. “Eating breakfast.”

  “I see that. I hope it was good.”

  “It was perfection,” I said.

  “Good… That’s great…” He looked at P.K. “I was wondering, Willingham, if I might have a word alone with these two?”

  “Their names are not ‘these two,’ ” P.K. said. “They’re Angela and Q. And you know I don’t like to be called Willingham.”

  “I’m sorry,” Mr. Todd said. “But could I have a word with them?”

  “I can’t imagine what you would have to say to us that P.K. couldn’t hear,” Angela said sweetly. “Please stay, P.K.”

  Mr. Todd turned a shade redder. He obviously wasn’t used to having his suggestions, which were actually orders, disobeyed.

  “Very well,” he said, trying to find the same horrible smile he had come in with, but failing. “I’m stil
l curious about how you managed to get a private interview with the president.”

  “We contacted him before we got here this morning.”

  “That’s interesting,” Mr. Todd said. “Because I just checked all the phone and e-mail logs for the past twenty-four hours, and there is no record of you contacting the White House.”

  Uh-oh.

  “We didn’t contact the White House,” Angela said without missing a beat. “We asked a friend to contact him.”

  “There is no record of a friend contacting him either,” Mr. Todd said.

  “Maybe you don’t know all of his friends,” I said.

  “I’ve known John Robert Culpepper for more than twenty years. I know all of his friends. But we’ll let that go for now. What did you talk about in the Oval Office?”

  “He just welcomed us to the White House,” Angela said. “Then he said that we should spend some time in the Oval Office by ourselves to get a feel for what it was like. It was very generous of him.”

  “Indeed,” Mr. Todd said. “And were you alone with the president in the Oval Office?”

  Former lawyer, I thought. He was cross-examining us.

  “As far as I know,” Angela said. “Unless there was someone hiding under the desk.”

  Mr. Todd was not amused.

  P.K. wasn’t either, but for an entirely different reason.

  “Does my dad know you’re here, bullying his guests?”

  “I’m not bullying anyone,” Mr. Todd said. “And I’m sure he knows where I am. You can’t get up to the Residence without clearance from the Secret Service.”

  “Right,” P.K. said, sounding a little like a lawyer himself. “But once you get past duty agents they have no idea of where you are because they aren’t allowed up here unless there’s a credible threat.”

  “Good point, P.K.” Agent Norton was standing in the doorway.

  “Hi, Charlie,” P.K. said.

  Agent Norton nodded, then looked at the now-furious White House chief of staff. “So, do we have a credible threat, Mr. Todd?”

  “No,” Mr. Todd said quietly.

  “Good. Now, if you would be so kind as to come with me, sir, I will escort you out of the Residence.”

  “We were just having a conversation,” Mr. Todd said.

  “I heard most of the exchange, and it sounded more like a grilling than a conversation. Or as P.K. put it, bullying.”

  “Does the president know you’re up here, Agent Norton?” Mr. Todd asked.

  “As a matter of fact he does. I radioed in as soon as I was informed you were up here. He said… Well, I can’t tell you exactly what he said because there are young people present. Let’s just say that he was very emphatic about you vacating the Residence immediately.” Norton stood to the side and swept his hand through the doorway. “After you, Mr. Todd.”

  The chief of staff brushed past him and said, “Perhaps you’d like to join Agent Callaghan across the street.”

  “Give it your best shot,” Agent Norton responded, and followed him out.

  I looked at P.K. for an explanation. He shrugged as if he didn’t know what they were talking about either.

  X-change

  The little balloon text messaging on the iPhone was way cooler than the BlackBerry, although X-Ray gave me some grief about my first suspected mole.

  Jeez, I thought. You’d think Todd was X-Ray’s uncle or something.

  Before we went downstairs, P.K. filled us in on some of the security inside the White House.

  In two words: armed fortress.

  The countersniper team was stationed on the roof and on the grounds with shotguns, rifles, machine guns, and missile launchers, scanning the skies and the streets 24-7 for potential threats. Inside surveillance cameras covered every square inch of the house.

  “If you pick your nose, someone’s going to see it,” P.K. said, looking at me.

  “I think you should be looking at Angela,” I said.

  “Hilarious, Q,” Angela said.

  “What I mean,” P.K. said, “is that when we go downstairs we’re not alone, even when it looks like we’re alone, except for the Oval Office, the Situation Room, and a few other offices.”

  “Like Mr. Todd’s?” I asked.

  “Right. They wouldn’t have a camera in there.”

  “If there are no cameras up here,” Angela said, “how did Mr. Todd know we were having breakfast in the Solarium?”

  “One of the Residence staff tipped him off, or he intercepted Maurice on his way back to the kitchen and asked him where we were.”

  So, Mr. Todd had his own mouldwarps working for him.

  My phone chimed.

  “Who are you texting?” P.K. asked.

  “A friend in California.”

  I wondered how Buddy T. and Mr. Todd were going to get along.

  Secret Passage

  I put away the iPhone.

  “Tell us about the secret passage,” I said to P.K.

  “It would be easier to show you.”

  Angela and I followed P.K. down to his bedroom. He locked the door behind us and closed the curtains.

  “I found the passage a couple of years ago.”

  He led us into his large closet filled with clothes and turned on the light.

  “It was an accident,” he said. “I started keeping a diary, and I wanted to find a good place to hide it. The housecleaners come in here a couple of times a day. They wouldn’t take anything, but if they found a diary I don’t think they could resist peeking inside.”

  “Why didn’t you keep the diary on your computer and password protect it?” I asked. There was a nice laptop on the desk across from his bed.

  “What would be the fun of that? If you’re going to keep a diary I think you should use good ink on nice paper. Did you know we have a calligraphy staff?”

  “No.”

  “Several people full time. They’ve worked here for years. They create invitations, certificates, placards, citations—things like that. They’re probably going crazy right now trying to get the invitations out for your parents’ concert. Anyway, they’ve been teaching me calligraphy for three years now, and that’s why I write by hand in a journal. But I needed a place to hide it.” P.K. spread a row of hanging clothes. Behind it was a large white panel. “I found this.” He tapped on it. “Hollow.”

  He put his thumbs on the top corners and pushed. The panel slid down without a sound. The dark opening was big enough for an adult to climb through.

  “Wow!” Angela said.

  “Yeah,” P.K. said. “I was pretty surprised too when it opened like that. Inside there’s a pulley system with counterbalanced weights made out of stone. I’ve found three passages. This one goes down to the Red Room, where Norton had you wait this morning. On the other side of the room is another panel with a passage that leads down to the Map Room, on the ground floor. The third passage is from the State Dining Room down to the housekeeper’s office on the ground floor. I think there’s another passage from the East Room down to the Library, but I haven’t found it yet.”

  “How’d you find these passages?” Angela asked.

  “School,” P.K. answered. “If there was one passage, I figured there were more. I did a project on White House architecture and renovation. There’re advantages and disadvantages to being the President’s Kid. One advantage is that I can talk to anyone about anything. Bethany contacted a guy at the National Archives who knows more about the White House than anyone on earth.”

  “Except maybe you,” Angela said.

  “Maybe,” P.K. said, flushing a little. “He didn’t know about the passages…at least he didn’t say anything to me about them. And I didn’t tell him what I was really doing there. We spent the day looking at old architectural drawings, and I was able to figure out where the other passages might be. It took me a year to find them.”

  I stuck my head through the opening and saw a small green light blinking. It was attached to a radio charger. I came bac
k out with the radio.

  “I see you did a little electrical work inside too,” I said.

  “Yeah,” P.K. said. “I couldn’t very well charge the radio in plain sight on my desk.”

  He was full of surprises.

  Angela took the radio. “Where’d you get this?”

  “It’s an old one. The Secret Service upgraded to a new model at the beginning of the year. I took one out of the box they dumped the old ones into. I couldn’t help it. It was just sitting on the floor out in the open in W-16.”

  “What’s W-16?” I asked.

  “It’s a room below the Oval Office where agents hang out when they’re off duty.”

  “The signals are encrypted and changed every day,” Angela said. “How do you get the codes?”

  “Sometimes several times a day,” P.K. said. “How do you know that?”

  Angela bit her lower lip as she always did just before she spilled her guts. In the past I had stepped in and stopped her, but I let it go this time. P.K. knew something was up, and if we didn’t give him something he was just going to get more suspicious.

  “My mother was a Secret Service agent,” she said. “When I was little she was assigned to the White House for a while.”

  “She’s obviously not Blaze Tucker,” P.K. said. “Where’s your real mom now?”

  “She was killed in the line of duty,” Angela answered.

  “I’m sorry,” P.K. said, and looked it. “I lost my mom too.”

  “I know,” Angela said, handing the radio to him.

  “Did my dad know your mom?” P.K. asked quietly.

  Angela nodded. “I think that’s why he really invited us to the Oval Office this morning.”

  She was telling the truth…kind of.

  “I can see that,” P.K. said. “Dad has a soft spot for agents.”

  “So, how do you get the codes?” Angela asked.

  “I don’t always get them,” P.K. answered. “Sometimes I think adults think kids are deaf or don’t understand English. If I’m there at the right time, I pick up the codes when I’m in W-16. Or I borrow a radio from one of the agents to talk to another agent. I guess they don’t think we can read either.”

  Most ten-year-old kids weren’t Willingham Culpepper.

  Tour

  Agent Norton was waiting for us at the bottom of the stairs leading up to the Residence. I thought he might be friendlier after the Solarium encounter with Mr. Todd, but he had the same neutral Secret Serious expression from a few hours before. Maybe he was annoyed at having to follow a bunch of kids around, or maybe he was worried about joining Agent Callaghan across the street. Whoever Agent Callaghan was. Whatever the reason, he fell in a discreet thirty feet behind and dogged us like Croc, stopping when we stopped and walking when we walked.