by The Apostle
Elise took a drink before responding. “The president.”
Call it intuition, but Carolyn instantly had a bad feeling about where this might be going. Fairly or unfairly, President Robert Alden had a reputation as being a bit of a womanizer—this, despite the fact that his wife, Terry, was a very good-looking woman. Many said the rumors about Alden were untrue and were due only to his good looks and the fact that so many women found him so desirable. In Carolyn’s experience, though, where there was smoke, there was usually fire, and the idea of the president coming on to one of the agents sworn to protect him, though incredibly unprofessional, was not beyond the realm of possibility.
“What about him?” replied Leonard.
Campbell took another sip from her glass and stared past her mentor to the calendar on the woman’s refrigerator. “When you were on presidential detail, did you ever hear anything you weren’t supposed to hear?”
Carolyn studied her young protégée. “All the time. But it’s your job to ignore it and forget it.”
“What if I can’t?”
“Then you need to find another job.”
“C’mon, Carolyn,” stated Campbell as she turned her eyes to her. “You know some things aren’t that easy.”
“Nothing about the Secret Service is easy,” replied Leonard, “especially protecting the president. If you want easy, become a politician. Other than that, either you can do your job as an agent or you can’t. There’s no gray.” Pausing, Carolyn then added, “Did the president say or do something to you that made you uncomfortable?”
“No. Absolutely not.”
“Did he say something to someone else about you or what he wanted to do to you?”
“Carolyn, my God. No. Is that why you think I’m here? You think I’m upset because the president came on to me?”
“He wouldn’t be the first.”
“Well, nothing happened,” Campbell replied flatly.
“So then, what are we talking about?”
Campbell eyed the bottle of wine and before she could ask, Leonard topped off her glass.
Elise held the stem near the base and slowly moved it in a circle. “What do you know about Nikki Hale?”
“Alden’s campaign staffer? The one who died?”
Campbell nodded and took another sip of wine.
“Not much more than what I heard from the agents working Alden’s detail during the campaign. She was young, twenty-five or twenty-six I believe. She was also very pretty. If I remember correctly, she had something to do with the campaign website; director of new media or something like that.
“A lot of people on the campaign didn’t like her. They thought she was a little too young and a little too inexperienced for such an important position. She rode the campaign bus and was on the plane everywhere Alden went. Everyone wanted to have that kind of access and I guess a lot of folks were jealous of her.”
“Do you remember how she died?”
Carolyn thought about it for a minute. “It was the end of last summer, just before the general elections, I think. Head-on collision in the Hamptons, right?”
Campbell nodded. “Fourth of July weekend. Alden had been out there for a big fund-raiser.”
“From what I heard, Nikki Hale was quite the partier, and that night was no exception. Her blood alcohol level was double the legal limit. She crossed into oncoming traffic and killed herself along with a family of four in the opposite lane.”
“I think President Alden had something to do with it.”
Carolyn looked at her. “You what?”
“I overheard him talking with Stephanie Gallo.”
“Elise, your job is not to listen in on the president’s private conversations. Besides, do you think the man would be so dumb as to admit to something like that in front of one of his Secret Service agents?”
“I was in the woods on Gallo’s estate. I don’t think either of them knew I was even there. As far as I could tell, they thought they were completely alone.”
“Wait a second. Why come to me with this?” asked Carolyn.
“Because I don’t know what to do. I need advice.”
Leonard set her wineglass down on the counter. “You want my advice? Forget the entire thing. You heard a snippet of a conversation and have taken it out of context. Your job is to protect the president, period. You start getting distracted, trying to make sense of what you’re hearing, and you’ll not only get the president killed, you’ll get yourself killed as well.”
“But what if he was involved in Nikki Hale’s death somehow?”
“If you think he might have been involved, tell your supervisor at the Service.”
“What if I’m wrong?” asked Campbell.
“Then you won’t have to worry about overhearing any more of the president’s private conversations because you’ll be bounced so hard you’ll need the space shuttle to deliver your final paycheck.”
Campbell was silent for a moment. “What if I told you Gallo knows all about it and she’s blackmailing the president?”
“I’d say that’s his problem.”
Elise shook her head. “You’ve made no secret about not being a fan of President Alden’s.”
“Well that’s the beauty of being a private citizen,” answered Leonard. “I can do that because I no longer work for the Secret Service.”
“Well, I believe in him. I voted for him.”
“You’re behind the curtain now, Elise. Be prepared to be disillusioned. There aren’t many honest men or women in Washington anymore. Politicians get where they are by the sheer force of their egos, not their convictions. And you know what? It’s our fault as voters. We don’t demand better candidates, so we end up getting what we deserve—on both sides of the aisle.”
“I agree with you. The majority of them are crooked and we should consider them all guilty until proven innocent,” said Campbell. “But I thought Alden was different. I still do.”
Leonard poured a little more wine into her glass. “For the sake of argument, let’s say you’re right about what you overheard. How can someone blackmail an honest man?”
Campbell didn’t have a response.
“What exactly,” asked Leonard, “did Stephanie Gallo say to the president?”
“She said that if he didn’t give her what she wanted, she was going to expose his involvement in the deaths of four innocent people and his would be one of the shortest administrations in U.S. history.”
“How do you know this had to do with Nikki Hale’s death?”
“Because after that threat,” answered Campbell, “they walked off arguing about the night she died.”
“Did you hear anything more specific?” asked Carolyn.
“Not really. Not from where I was standing.”
“What possible role could the president have had in Hale’s death? Did he get her loaded and hand her a set of car keys?”
“I wasn’t there. I don’t know, but Gallo was very insistent about his complicity and the president was very bothered by the whole thing.”
“So what was it Gallo was pressing him for?” said Leonard, switching to a more jovial tone. “Has she changed her mind about wanting a cabinet position?”
Elise didn’t think now was an appropriate time to be making jokes. “No,” she replied harshly. “Actually, her daughter was just kidnapped in Afghanistan and she wants the president’s help.”
“I’m sorry,” replied Leonard. “I wasn’t aware of that.”
Elise brushed it off. “It’s okay. No one knows. They’re keeping it very quiet. Gallo’s daughter is a doctor who was working for some NGO over there. Apparently, the kidnappers want to trade her for some high-ranking al-Qaeda operative that the Afghans are holding for trial.”
“And Alden is going to arrange the trade?”
“Not exactly,” said Campbell.
“What do you mean, not exactly?”
“He doesn’t think it’s right to force the Afghans to give the AQ operat
ive up. He’s a terrorist who has been involved with the killing of multiple Afghan government officials. President Alden supports the Afghans in establishing the rule of law and thinks they should prosecute the guy in full.”
“And Stephanie Gallo isn’t pleased with that position, is she?”
“You’ve got two children,” replied Campbell. “How would you feel if one of them was being held hostage and the person you’d helped get elected to the most powerful office in the world wouldn’t get your child back for you?”
“I’d be angry, very angry.”
“As is she, apparently.”
“Hence the blackmail,” stated Carolyn.
Campbell nodded.
“Kidnapping a United States citizen is serious business. For all intents and purposes, we own Afghanistan. I’ve got to imagine that we’re throwing everything we have at this. There’s no way we’re leaving any rocks unturned over there. Short of forcing the Afghans to give us the al-Qaeda operative to trade out for Mrs. Gallo’s daughter, I don’t know what more the president could do, which makes me think either he’s prepared to call her bluff or there’s actually nothing there for him to be blackmailed over.”
“There’s something else,” stated Campbell.
Carolyn raised her eyebrows again and waited.
“The trip we just wrapped up was official business—all except for one leg.”
“What was the leg?” asked Carolyn.
“We flew to Maine so the president could see Stephanie Gallo.”
Leonard pursed her lips and exhaled. She had heard that the first lady was no fan of Stephanie Gallo’s. Terry Alden’s contempt for the woman was thinly veiled at best. It made no difference how much Gallo had aided her husband’s campaign. The first lady didn’t see Gallo as an ally, she saw her as a rival for her husband’s time, interest, and affection. In fact, it had been widely rumored that it was because of Mrs. Alden’s strong protestations that Stephanie Gallo did not stay on past the transition period and move into a permanent position within Robert Alden’s administration.
Considering the kidnapping, though, the trip should not have automatically been suspect.
“They met at an estate in Seal Harbor owned by some television personality Mrs. Gallo knows,” continued Campbell.
“I’m not surprised. He’s a hands-on guy. Her daughter was kidnapped and he’s keeping her in the loop. At this point, nothing would surprise me about his meeting with her.”
“I’m not saying the meeting was remarkable, but you might think who they met with was. Are you familiar with a former Secret Service agent named Scot Harvath?”
“Harvath?” Leonard said, somewhat surprised. “What was he doing there? On second thought, don’t tell me. I probably don’t want to know. Are you sure it was him?”
“I asked one of the agents who cleared him. They confirmed it and told me a little about who he was. So you’re familiar with him?”
“Very, but Harvath doesn’t work for the government anymore. Whatever he was doing for the previous administration was shut down. He left for the private sector. In fact, when I announced that I was leaving the Secret Service, he emailed me and put me in touch with the group he’s supposed to start working with.”
“Well, as of that meeting in Maine, he’s now working for President Alden, or more specifically, Stephanie Gallo, as she’s apparently the one who is paying him.”
“Probably a smart move. Harvath is an exceptional operator. He was a SEAL before joining the Secret Service and coming to the White House. He’s a good person to have consulting on this.”
“Based on what I heard, I think he’s doing a lot more than consulting,” replied Elise. “I think the president brought him in to snatch that al-Qaeda operative from prison in Kabul and trade him for Gallo’s daughter.”
“Are you serious?”
Campbell nodded. “Which now brings us back to the president and the night Nikki Hale died.”
CHAPTER 12
AFGHANISTAN
Julia Gallo knew the Pashtu word for whore. She’d heard it muttered behind her back and under people’s breath in countless villages throughout Afghanistan. This time, though, it was different.
The four boys standing above her in her small, mud cell were repeating it in an effort to build up their courage. For what, she had no idea, but she knew that it wouldn’t be good. She was being held by the Taliban, that much she had ascertained, and Taliban children were raised on extremist videos. They were subjected from ages as young as three years old to videos of suicide bombings, beheadings, torture, and rape. It was a diet of unadulterated horror that served to desensitize them to violence and inoculate them against having any pity whatsoever for their enemies. Gallo had no illusions about how they viewed her. She was their enemy.
In less than a week of captivity, she had become an emotional and physical wreck. They kept her in a room twelve feet long by eight feet wide. The room had one window, which had been nailed shut and covered over on the outside by a piece of canvas. Her only connection with the world outside was a small ventilation hole the circumference of a Coke can cut into the bottom of one of the walls near the floor. Through it she could make out a small tree of some sort in the foreground and a narrow mountain valley beyond.
Lying on her stomach studying the tree and the small sliver of valley was the only thing that kept her from losing her mind.
Using the tree, she marked the passage of the hours based on the shadows cast by its slim trunk and twiglike branches. She counted its buds and wondered if she would still be here, still be alive, when the tree bloomed. She marveled at how despite being a doctor and understanding the science of life, she had never really stopped to appreciate it. There was a bitter irony in coming to finally value and understand it only to be on the verge of losing it.
Gallo subsisted on the meager amount of food she was given once a day—short, ropy pieces of beef, scraps of nan bread, or almonds, washed down with lukewarm tea. For her bodily functions, there was a hole in the floor on the opposite side of the room.
A narrow wooden bed with a thin blanket was the only furniture she enjoyed, and at night the temperatures fell so low, Gallo wondered if she was more likely to die from hypothermia than at the hands of the Taliban.
She knew why she had been taken. Sayed had been right. The Taliban were going to make an example of her. She had pushed her luck too far and it had finally run out.
The Taliban had interrogated her mercilessly upon her arrival. They had called her a spy and had threatened to execute her. Why they had not yet done so was a mystery, but she had read enough accounts of kidnappings in Afghanistan to know that it could take time before they finally dealt with her. That was the way things worked here. They could be incredibly cruel, like cats that had caught a mouse. They delighted in seeing their captives suffer.
Julia had been required to take a security preparedness class in the United States before leaving for CARE’s mission in Afghanistan. She learned about what to do and what not to do and that kidnappers could keep better control of you if they kept you frightened and off balance. She tried not only to remember the training she had received about how to handle being a kidnap victim, but also why she had come to this country in the first place.
Julia had come to Afghanistan because she wanted to help its people. She now realized that she had also come in search of adventure, even danger. The longer she had been in-country, the bolder she had become, and in becoming bolder she had taken up an extremely provocative cause. Though she deeply believed in what she was encouraging Afghan women to do, she now had time to truly examine her motives. Would she have been as passionate if her trips into the countryside didn’t serve to heighten her sense of danger?
Looking death in the eye, she could no longer delude herself. She had been addicted to the danger. She justified the risk by focusing on the people she claimed to be helping. She reveled in the awe her peers back in Kabul showered upon her for traveling so far outside
the relative safety of an already unsafe city. She was a smart woman and should have known much better.
Life in Afghanistan was an extremely dangerous gamble. She hadn’t needed to go looking for trouble. Working at the CARE hospital in Kabul was dangerous enough. Afghanistan wasn’t some drive-through safari park where as long as you kept the windows rolled up and the doors locked you’d come out unscathed.
She had pushed her luck farther than she should have, and the crushing isolation she had since been subjected to, and the promise of a very unpleasant fate, only drove the point home. But of course, now Sayed was dead and it was too late.
Julia wondered if her mother knew what had happened. Certainly, the CARE International doctors were aware that she and Sayed had gone out and had not returned. The question, though, was whether they even knew where to begin searching for her. By Gallo’s calculations, they were at least three, maybe four hours away from where she and Sayed had been ambushed. A bag had been placed over her head and her watch had been taken away, so she had no idea how long they had traveled before reaching wherever they now were.
The door to her cell had been repeatedly kicked open, both day and night. She never knew when anyone was going to materialize in its frame and she tried to keep her headscarf wrapped around her head at all times. When the men did enter, she kept her eyes cast down toward the floor. Her heart palpitated and she had trouble taking deep breaths. It was like living through one prolonged panic attack.
Intermingled with the feelings of terror and loneliness were the sorrow and guilt over Sayed’s murder. While she tried to push the image of him from her mind, it always found a way back in. They had killed him in cold blood and she knew they were capable of that and worse toward her.
The chanting of the young boys increased in intensity. Gallo steeled herself for what was going to happen. Being in captivity, she had not taken her birth control pills recently and then almost laughed out loud at herself for the concern. Getting pregnant was the least of her problems at this moment.
She looked at the young boys and recalled the high level of homosexual activity among the Taliban. There was an old fable that said that birds flew over Taliban territory with only one wing because they needed the other to guard their rectums.