“Longevity is overrated.”
“Saves you on pension costs, I suppose.”
Panama moved up to the counter, seeming to photograph the structural schematics with his eyes. “Assume the woman on the Metro car was working with or for Kirkland. Assume this,” he said, pointing, “is the next target.”
“You haven’t mentioned anything about that young woman—where exactly she was radicalized and what group she was part of.”
“Because we can’t seem to find any evidence of either. As near as we can tell, your suicide bomber was an ordinary Lebanese exchange student on scholarship at George Washington University. Nothing in either her or her family’s background to suggest any terrorist activity whatsoever.”
“That makes no sense.”
“Precisely why we’re pursuing a theory along different lines.”
“What’s that?”
“A new twist on a false flag operation, in this case relating to national security professionals like myself wanting to test the vulnerabilities of certain high-value targets.”
“Like the Washington Metro…”
“You know how we do that, Brixton? We keep it under the radar by recruiting civilians and paying them extraordinarily well to let us use them as bait. Big bucks in exchange for the risk they’re taking.”
“Wait a minute,” Brixton said, incredulous over what Panama had just told him. “You’re telling me the bomber was working for you?”
“Not me, Brixton. Your friend Rogers.”
“You mean Brian Kirkland.”
“What’s the difference? They’re both names and nothing more. Fakes, just like your bomber was a fake.”
“There to gauge vulnerabilities, find holes in the security.”
“Makes sense, don’t you think, since now we know that a suicide bomber could walk right onto a Metro car and blow themselves up.”
“One problem with all this,” Brixton said. “If this was one of these false flag operations, why was the bomb live?”
“How else could we determine whether our detection systems could read the signature?”
“There are detection systems on the Washington Metro?”
“I’m speaking theoretically here.”
“Oh.”
“Of course, there wasn’t supposed to be a trigger, detonator, or fusing, and there was a host of safety measures to make sure those explosives couldn’t go off.”
“And yet they did. You think Kirkland set this woman up.”
Panama’s expression remained noncommittal. “A desperate foreign student studying in the States on scholarship … You do the math.”
“Don’t tell me, Kirkland threatened to have her scholarship revoked, have her deported.”
“That’s the way the conversation likely started, Brixton, yes. Kirkland would have provided assurances, made sure the woman was paid half the fee in advance.”
“If she was a plant, one of these false flags of yours, why’d she run when she realized I was watching her?”
“Instinct maybe, or fear you were going to mess up what she’d been instructed to do. Maybe she thought that was what she was supposed to do.”
“Sit there, until they blew her up remotely. So why not trigger the blast when she got spooked?”
“My guess is they were waiting for the train to hit the station. Add some additional casualties on the platform, not to mention horrific footage that would rival the Twin Towers coming down. They only blew her up when they realized their patsy had become a liability. In the time it took her to walk up the aisle, they also might have managed to identify you: a security professional who’s had some direct experience with suicide bombers. I imagine your presence made them panic. You saved a lot of lives on that train, Brixton, but you got the woman blown up in the process.”
“That’s on whatever Kirkland’s a part of, Panama, not me.”
Panama looked almost hurt. “I meant it as a compliment.”
“Sorry I didn’t take it as one. Too busy considering the obvious.”
“That the Metro bombing was only the start, step one.”
Brixton tapped the plans laid out on the UPS Store counter. “And this is step two.”
“And you’re sure you have no idea what these numbers mean,” Panama said, pointing toward the “66543076” in the lower right corner.
“No,” Brixton said, holding back what he’d figured out. “Not at all. What’s next?” he followed, hoping to change the subject as quickly as possible.
Panama glanced back down at the schematics laid atop the counter. “I give these to our tech people and hold my breath while awaiting what these plans are for. And I give you a phone number.”
“One of yours, I assume.”
“If it’s not answered or you receive a disconnect message…”
Brixton waited for Panama to continue, not bothering to prod him.
“It means the operation’s been canceled.”
“Meaning I’m on my own, hung out to dry.”
“Comes with the job, Brixton. You know that as well as I do.”
“What about you, Panama?”
“What about me?”
“If the operation gets canceled. If I call that number and nobody answers.”
“In a word,” Panama said, not hesitating at all, “we’re both fucked.”
CHAPTER
33
GAITHERSBURG, MARYLAND
Patricia Trahan lived in a small, modest home nestled in the middle-class enclave of Gaithersburg, in the city’s older eastern section, on Fields Road just off Interstate 270. No one on the street had much of a yard to speak of; the houses were built close to each other, with little more then five feet separating one from another.
Kendra Rendine parked just short of the woman’s narrow driveway, trying to ascertain whether anyone was watching the house. Given that all of the surgical team involved with Vice President Davenport’s procedure were missing or unresponsive, it was a fair bet that Trahan was at risk of suffering the same fate. Then again, Rendine found herself wondering whether Trahan had managed to escape detection by whoever was behind the disappearances of the others directly involved in the angioplasty procedure performed on Stephanie Davenport. Dr. Callasanti hadn’t vanished into the ether, almost surely because he hadn’t actually been in the room, having viewed the procedure from a gallery that afforded a better view of what he needed to see. Trahan had found herself in a similar situation. Her role had been confined to delivering the surgical instruments and stents to the operating room and getting one of the surgical techs to sign off on receiving them, once confirming that the inventory control numbers matched.
Trahan’s driveway was barely wide enough to accommodate Rendine’s compact car. She parked and called Trahan to let the woman know it was her in the driveway. Rendine climbed out and angled her approach straight across the lawn, then up the two steps onto a small porch. She rang the buzzer, waited, and then rang it again.
Patricia Trahan answered as the second ring was still sounding. “Agent Rendine?”
“Thanks for listening to me, Mrs. Trahan.”
“Call me Patty. I like to be on a first-name basis with everyone who scares the hell out of me.”
“In that case, please call me Kendra.”
“Kendra.”
“Nice to officially meet you, Patty. Now, tell me about this report you wrote.”
* * *
The house was simple, modest, and well kept, which pretty much described Patty Trahan herself. She had the look of a woman who didn’t go overboard on her appearance anymore, from her flat, limp hair to clothes that had clearly seen better days.
Well, haven’t we all, Rendine thought. Especially lately.
They sat at the kitchen table. Rendine had favored the living room only because the windows there gave an unobstructed view of the street, but the kitchen came complete with a back door in case they needed to get out of the house fast.
“I’ve done more cor
onary procedures than any other operating room tech at Walter Reed,” Trahan told her, the pride evident in her voice.
Rendine was about to say something, but decided to let the woman continue instead.
“I think it might be some kind of record.”
“So you know your way around an operating room and the kind of procedure performed on the vice president.”
“Simple angioplasty with stent implementation? I’ve probably done a thousand of them, and I mean literally. Vice President Davenport’s procedure was more complicated because three stents were required to open her coronary arteries. How much do you know about stents and the procedure itself?”
“Only what I learned in order to prep for those two hours spent in the operating room.”
“I don’t remember seeing you there,” Trahan said, suddenly sounding suspicious.
“I get that a lot. Blending in with the scenery is a big part of the job the Secret Service does. ‘Never stand out’ is one of our commandments.”
“Do you have ten, too?”
“I never counted, Patty.”
“What about the stenting process?”
“Assume nothing,” Rendine said, leaving it there.
“Then let me give you a bit of background. The vice president had a minimally invasive procedure utilizing three stents, expandable mesh tubes made of medical-grade stainless steel, one for each blocked artery. Each stent was mounted onto a tiny balloon that was then opened inside of a coronary artery to push back plaque and to restore blood flow. After the plaque was compressed against the arterial wall, the stents were fully expanded into position, acting as miniature scaffolding for each artery. The balloons were then deflated and removed, the stent left behind in the patient’s coronary artery to help keep the blood vessel open. Once the stent is implanted, it remains there permanently.”
“Have you ever heard of a smart stent?” Rendine asked her.
She watched Patty Trahan stiffen, suddenly anxious. “Why do you ask? Have you seen my report?”
“It wasn’t present in any of the hospital files I was able to access, at least digitally.”
“Don’t bother looking elsewhere. You won’t find it. You won’t find it, because it was buried.”
Rendine felt a slight chill course through her and leaned forward. “By who?”
“I don’t know.”
“What did the report contain, Patty?”
The woman started fidgeting, her knees bouncing and fingers flexing atop her knees. “I shouldn’t have done it.”
“Written the report?”
“No, let the procedure continue after I’d confirmed the requisition number on the three stents to be used for the vice president’s procedure. I went by the book, everything I was supposed to do, and that includes confirming that the serial numbers on the stents themselves matched the labels on the packaging.”
“Go on,” Rendine urged, when Trahan lapsed into silence.
Trahan swallowed hard. “I figured I must be seeing things wrong. And my job was to confirm the numbers. I wasn’t supposed to go beyond that, but I knew what I was looking at.”
“You’re talking about the stents.”
Trahan took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “They were smart stents, the kind we just discussed. But that’s not what was ordered. I confirmed as much when I ordered them and when a clerk from requisitions delivered them to me the morning of the procedure. I double-checked the requisition numbers, Kendra, believe me I did, to make sure these were the traditional stents ordered for the vice president’s procedure. And they were correct. But I know what I was looking at when I removed the three of them from their foil seals didn’t match the stents I had ordered.”
Rendine tried to get a grasp on what she was hearing, to focus on the facts. The operating room technician responsible for all surgical equipment to be used in Vice President Davenport’s procedure had opened the packages containing the stents and found them to be different from what they were supposed to be, because someone had made a switch.
“You want to know why I didn’t say anything then and there,” Trahan resumed. “You want to know why I stayed quiet, why I didn’t say a word, unless you count the report I added to the surgical record.”
Rendine’s expression urged her on.
“This was a procedure being performed on the Vice President of the United States by the top cardiologist at Walter Reed. Who was I to interrupt things? Who was I to say something wasn’t right? What if I turned out to be wrong? Every minute of delay would have cost thousands of dollars.”
“You were scared.”
Trahan nodded.
“Completely understandable, and something I can relate to. Like me, you were balancing your knowledge and instincts against the greater good. I remember you entering the operating room in your scrubs and surgical mask. I remember you removing the stents from their wrapping. I remember you double-checking the inventory number in two different logs to confirm you had delivered the right ones. At that point the vice president had already been sedated, since going any further would likely have necessitated a general anesthesia, which carries far more risk to someone in the vice president’s condition.”
“Yes! Yes, that entered my mind, and I didn’t want to be the person responsible for that. Do you think I made a mistake?”
“I think you made a judgment call that was neither wright nor wrong, just the best available option. It’s what we do at the Secret Service every day.”
“I hope you’re hiring, since I may be looking for a job soon.”
“Because of this report you filed.”
“I wasn’t accusing anyone,” Trahan said defensively. “I was only noting what I observed. I filled out a form. It’s not like I wanted to become a whistleblower or anything like that. Who would I have been blowing the whistle on?”
“What about the requisitions clerk who delivered the stents to you? Did you know him?”
“Not this one, no. I’d never seen him before. But Walter Reed is a mammoth hospital, and sometimes orderlies make the deliveries, even though they’re not supposed to.”
“So this man could have been an orderly?”
“I suppose, yes. Like I said, I’d never seen him before.”
With that, Rendine finally eased from her shoulder bag the autopsy report on Stephanie Davenport that she’d picked up at Bethesda Naval Hospital. She’d already placed at the front a single piece of photo-grade paper showing sharp images of each of the three stents that had been inserted into the vice president’s arteries a month before. She slid it from the folder and handed it to Patty Trahan.
“This is a picture of the three stents removed from the vice president during her autopsy, Are you able to confirm they are, in fact, the same stents you delivered to the operating room?”
Rendine watched Trahan’s eyes widen and then narrow, as she studied all three photos.
“No,” she said, still holding the paper.
“No what?”
“No, I can’t confirm they’re the same stents I delivered to the operating room,” Trahan told her. “Because they’re not.”
CHAPTER
34
WASHINGTON, DC
First Lady Merle Talmidge stood behind her husband’s shoulder in the Oval Office as he signed the stack of letters before him, just beginning to make a dent in the pile. The president stopped suddenly, his expression taking on the blank, quizzical look she’d come to know all too well and had seen exhibited with increasing frequency as of late.
“It was a wonderful funeral, wasn’t it?” Corbin Talmidge asked her, sighing deeply.
“Whose funeral?”
“Our son’s.”
“He wasn’t our son. That was just part of your speech.”
“I gave a speech?”
“You spoke beautifully, from the heart,” the first lady assured him.
“Then why can’t I remember what I said?”
“It was an emotional afternoo
n.”
“I should think so, the funeral of our own son.”
“It wasn’t our son,” Merle Talmidge repeated.
“Then why I was there? I remember crying. Why would I cry if it wasn’t our son?”
“Because it was someone else’s son. And you were there to offer comfort and support and make the greater point that we cannot tolerate violence in our schools.”
“How did I do?”
“You were wonderful,” the first lady said, meaning it.
“Then why can’t I remember what I said? Were you there?”
“I joined you on stage.”
“When?”
“Near the end of your remarks.”
“What remarks?”
Merle Talmidge didn’t respond right away, having learned that sometimes it was better to let things go and allow her husband’s failing mind to move elsewhere on its own. And, in this case, “elsewhere” turned out to be the formidable stack of letters still before him.
He’d been diagnosed with something called Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, which occurs when prion protein, found throughout the human body, folds into an abnormal three-dimensional shape. Ultimately, the prion protein mutation in the brain causes a type of dementia that worsens much faster than even the most rapid of all Alzheimer’s cases. Through a process that continues to baffle experts, misfolded prion protein lays waste to brain cells, the damage leading to a rapid decline in thinking, reasoning, and cognitive capacity in general. The symptoms vary by the patient, but one thing that doesn’t is the utter lack of medical treatments to slow the progression even slightly.
Watching her husband’s steady and rapid decline had been the worst and most painful experience of Merle Talmidge’s life, and the lack of hope for anything but a steady decline was the most agonizing part of all. But at the same time it had hardened her to other realities, including political. She came to see the fragility of human life as no different from the fragility of the country in general. She found herself only able to relieve the agony of her husband’s condition by contemplating a fitting legacy for him, one he would want for himself if he could so choose. He wouldn’t accept defeat and go quietly into obscurity. He wouldn’t want his achievements squandered. He knew the country wouldn’t survive the opposing party rising back to power in the chaos of the next election, staged without him as a candidate. He’d want to do anything and everything to see his vision for America come true.
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