Eyeing him critically, she reached out and plucked a piece of lint off the shoulder of his black tuxedo. “There. Now you look really good.”
A wry smile curled on Daniel’s lips. “Gee, thanks.”
“You’ve got your evening bag?” Brad asked, arching a brow.
Lauren nodded and pointedly adjusted the delicate chain on the beaded purse dangling from her shoulder. In it she carried only two things: her lipstick compact and her courier card, the magic key that granted her access into practically every government building in town. With exaggerated nonchalance, she opened her bag, pretended to check her hair in the compact’s mirror, then pulled out her courier card and slipped it into Daniel’s tuxedo pocket. She felt a shiver as she slid the compact back into her purse. Were they watching even now? Probably.
Daniel smiled and held out his arm. “Shall we go? I hear the orchestra warming up.”
His touch was reassuring. Lauren took his arm and lifted her chin. Now that the White House had no official hostess, President Stedman had asked her to help him receive guests. He had graciously added that Daniel could stand by her side, but Lauren had laughed and protested that Daniel Prentice wasn’t the type to stand in a formal receiving line and make small talk.
“You should be grateful,” she told Daniel now as they moved toward the Diplomatic Reception Room. “Sam wanted you to stand with me and perform the protocol bit, but I told him you’d rather visit with your friends.”
He gave her an impenitent grin. “Thank heaven.”
They came down the stairs just as the president stepped out of the private family quarters through another hallway. None of the guests had been allowed inside the oval reception room yet, but a dozen Secret Service men churned the empty space. Daniel gallantly escorted Lauren to the president’s side, then retreated to an out-of-the way settee where Brad and Christine held hands and waited. Vice President Miller and his wife separated themselves from a knot of Secret Service agents and came to stand by Lauren’s side on the oval rug bordered with symbols of all fifty states.
“Ready?” Lauren smiled at the president and felt her heart break when he glanced back toward the grand staircase as if he were waiting for Victoria. Part of him would always wait for her. In the past month Lauren had observed a thousand little things that revealed the depths of his grief. The marks of anguish were permanently etched in the lines beside his mouth; his eyes would forever be shadowed by the loss of his great love.
“Yes.” The president pulled himself out of his reverie, wiped his hands on his tuxedo trousers, and gave Lauren a quick smile. “Let’s do it.”
A Secret Service agent mumbled into his mouthpiece, and the carved doors opened to the South Grounds. The long line of guests entered with a rush of chattering noise, and Lauren shook hands and murmured pleasantries and smiled until she thought her face would crack. Adrian Romulus arrived with Kord Herrick and Elijah Reis at his side—no women, she noticed—and it took every ounce of concentration for Lauren not to pull away when General Herrick bent low and caressed her hand with a lingering kiss. Romulus himself was diffident, barely glancing her way, and Elijah Reis had nothing to say to her. He merely walked in Romulus’s shadow, his wide eyes drinking in the gathering as if he were mentally recording the names and descriptions of every individual present.
As Romulus and his companions moved away, Lauren turned to smile at a rotund congressman from South Carolina. The congressman’s wife held Lauren’s hand in a tight grasp, enthusing over her dress in honeyed tones. Lauren gritted her teeth against the pain of the woman’s crushing grip. As she nodded intermittently at the woman’s comments, she saw from the corner of her eye that Daniel was standing in the circle of Romulus’s retainers. She’d have given anything for the freedom to break free of the receiving line and go eavesdrop, but she knew Daniel had no plans to confront Romulus tonight. They were probably engaging in nothing but polite political conversation.
The senator’s wife finally moved on, and in the brief lull Lauren was actually able to hear part of the conversation. “It was a smooth transition, really, Mr. Prentice. Your Millennium Code surprised even me,” Romulus was saying, his stentorian voice thundering throughout the oval room. “One would almost think you anticipated the coming merger of the world’s systems.”
“Well, sir,” Daniel lifted his glass in a salute, “one must prepare for the inevitable. They say the world has been growing smaller for decades, and I had only to look at the new world of global companies to see the future. In the past two years, German Daimler-Benz merged with American Chrysler, Merrill Lynch acquired Britain’s Mercury Asset Management Group, and the German media conglomerate Bertelsmann bought New York’s Random House. I figured it was only a matter of time until we became one community.”
“. . . so glad the president’s in better health.”
An ambassador took Lauren’s hand, and she smiled as she transferred her attention to him. She had scarcely heard a word he said, but she could guess at the gist of the man’s conversation. “Yes, we’re grateful, too. We would hate to lose him.”
She breathed a sigh of relief when the ambassador moved away.
When the last of the reception guests had officially greeted the president, Lauren left Samuel Stedman with Vice President Miller and his wife, then slipped away and moved toward Daniel. He was standing with Brad and Christine under a mural depicting the beauty of Natural Bridge, Virginia, and apparently fascinated by something in the painting.
She slipped her arm through his. “I hope you’re having a pleasant evening,” she said, well aware that at least a dozen security men mingled in the crowd. Some were Secret Service, of course, but there were others Lauren had never seen. Quietly, she squeezed Daniel’s arm. “Now,” she whispered.
As Lauren shifted to Christine’s side, the two men slipped away down a hall Lauren had pointed out earlier. Lauren looked at Christine, whose blue eyes were wide with alarm.
“So—do you like working in the Wh-white House?” Christine stammered. Brad had obviously told her to act natural, but this kind of clandestine activity was apparently a little too risky for a schoolteacher’s taste. Lauren caught herself—what Brad and Daniel were attempting was too risky even for Lauren’s comfort.
“Have you seen the Map Room?” she asked, slipping her arm around Christine’s narrow waist. “Why don’t I show it to you?”
Shivering like a scared rabbit, Christine allowed Lauren to lead her out of the reception hall.
Brad had plotted out their route. The U.S. Treasury Department was located right next to the White House, but a labyrinth of tunnels and corridors lay between the Diplomatic Reception Room and the Treasury Department basement housing the Financial Crimes Computer Network. Brad led Daniel through the White House, sliding Lauren’s courier card through each checkpoint, and Daniel breathed a silent sigh of relief that the White House security system was not exactly cutting edge. Brad’s plan would never have worked if the White House had installed a biometric system, but the security experts had concentrated their efforts on protecting the perimeter of the mansion. Once inside, as Daniel and Brad were, an intruder could move easily from room to room with a stolen courier card.
“There’s a tunnel linking the two buildings; it runs under East Executive Avenue,” Brad explained as they hurried through the halls. The building seemed deserted, and Daniel remembered that most of the staff had been released to begin an early Christmas vacation. Even if it hadn’t been the holiday season, Lauren told him that a laissez faire attitude now existed among the White House staff—President Stedman’s attitude of diffident resignation had spread throughout the entire administration. Everyone, it seemed, was merely going through their paces until the 2000 elections.
Brad pulled a small halogen flashlight from his pocket and shone the bright beam into the tunnel. Daniel crinkled his nose—the place smelled of mildew and dust, but the concrete floor was clean and appeared to be regularly swept. “You won’t find any r
ats down here, Danny boy,” Brad whispered, his eyes following the light as it arced from side to side. The side of his mouth lifted in a grin. “They don’t have the proper clearance.”
“What’s the security layout?” Daniel asked, struggling to catch his breath as they jogged down the corridor.
“Cameras in the corners of the room, and sound detectors. We’ll have to work silently. And they will see us, of course.”
“Not for long.”
The tunnel spilled into a cavernous room that clanged and hissed with the sound of archaic radiators. Brad led the way down another corridor, then paused before a broad door. A placard announced that they had reached the location of the Financial Crimes Computer Network.
“Subtle,” Daniel drawled.
Brad pressed his finger over his lips, then held out his hand for Lauren’s card. Daniel gave it to him, then watched as Brad swiped it. The red glowing light was replaced by a bright green one. Brad turned the doorknob, and they entered the room.
Soft blue fluorescent lighting flickered over a dozen ancient mainframes. Daniel felt his mouth twist at the sight of so many antiquated machines—you’d think the government could afford better—then his eyes found what he sought. A workhorse PC sat on a small desk in the corner of the room, daisy-chained to a printer, scanner, and zip drive. An ordinary office setup; nothing fancy.
Conscious of the unblinking eye of the surveillance cameras, he moved to one of the mainframes and proceeded to open the front panel. While Daniel worked, Brad took off his tuxedo coat and draped it over the surveillance camera in the right corner of the room.
Daniel disconnected the keyboard from the PC, then hooked the cable into the mainframe. Brad came over and tapped him on the shoulder, and Daniel obediently paused and shrugged his way out of his own coat. While Brad moved toward the second camera, Daniel began typing on the keyboard.
Brad shucked Daniel’s coat over the second camera, then snapped his fingers. Instantly, Daniel left the keyboard and mainframe. From one pocket he lifted out a pair of cotton-lined suede gloves and pulled them on. Then, taking the hardware virus device from the other pocket of his trousers, he lifted the scanner’s cover, pried out the glass panel, and pressed the small black box into the largely empty space inside the scanner. A dummy wire extended from the device, and with the tip of his index finger he deftly tapped it into place beside the scanner’s power supply.
Satisfied, Daniel replaced the glass panel and checked his work. Anyone looking inside the scanner would see the box and naturally assume it was part of the equipment. The device’s internal power system emitted a low frequency footprint; its electromagnetic waves would be disguised by the scanner’s ordinary output. But at midnight on January 1, 2000, the device would transmit an electromagnetic viral signal over the network that would jumble the Millennium Code in any mainframe residing in Europe. Like Cinderella, the glitz and shine of Romulus’s kingdom would vanish, returning the European mainframes to their former ragtag conditions.
Stepping back, Daniel slipped the gloves from his hands. He had purposely left a hundred fingerprints on the keyboard and mainframe cover, but not even latent fingerprints would show up through cotton-lined suede. They’d never know he went near the scanner.
He glanced up at Brad, who leaned on the doorframe, his arms folded as if he were patiently waiting for a bus. He had asked no questions about exactly what Daniel intended to do; he had asked only that Daniel guarantee that the United States’ Treasury Department computers would not be affected. “I’m still working for the NSA,” he’d written in his last e-mail. “And I’d like to think I’m still a loyal American.”
Daniel moved back into his position in front of the mainframe, gave the machine a simple directory command, then nodded to Brad. In unison, they each walked to their respective coats, tugged them free of the surveillance cameras, then exited the way they had come.
Daniel knew his life would never be the same again.
Lauren stopped dead, looking at Daniel, her heart beating hard enough to be heard a yard away. He and Brad entered the Diplomatic Reception Room through the carpeted hallway that led to the Entrance and Cross Halls; anyone who saw them entering now might assume they’d just stepped out for a moment.
But Lauren knew better.
Daniel came toward her, caught her hands, then gave her a quick kiss on the cheek. “Miss me?”
Her hand slipped upward, felt the hard and tense muscles of his forearm beneath his sleeve. “You know I did.”
He stepped back, his dark eyes gleaming black and dangerous in the soft light of the room. “Can I bring you something to drink?”
Lauren bit her lip and resisted the urge to laugh aloud. What was it about men? If she had just returned from Daniel’s errand, she’d be quivering with fright and relief. But the adventure had energized him; he looked like he was ready to sweep her around the room and waltz until daybreak.
“Do you have something for me?” she whispered, taking his arm as he swung around to her side.
“Of course.” With the skill of a sleight-of-hand artist, he pulled her courier card from his pocket and pressed it into her palm. Lauren hid it with the back of her hand, then opened her evening bag and pulled out her lipstick compact and pretended to check her lipstick. Then she dropped the card and her compact back into the purse.
The orchestra in the Map Room was playing “Georgia on My Mind,” and Daniel lazily swung her into his arms, then moved out into the hallway where a pair of marines stood like statues. “Lauren Mitchell,” he said, his eyes gleaming as he placed his hand on her waist as if they were waltzing, “we might as well face it. We belong together, and after tonight, nothing will ever be the same. So you might as well marry me.”
If he hadn’t been holding her, she would have lost her balance and fallen. “Marry you?”
His eyes filled with fierce sparkling. “Yes. For better or worse, richer or poorer, in sickness and in health, till death or Adrian Romulus do us part.”
Lauren swallowed hard and clung to him more tightly. “Shh, not so loud, he’ll hear you. And don’t joke about such things. It’s not funny.”
“He’s deep in conversation with the vice president; he doesn’t care about me. Do you?” Daniel released her right hand and brought his left under her chin, lifting her face until she looked him in the eye. The expression in his eyes took her breath away, and with pulse-pounding certainty she realized he wasn’t kidding. “I need you, Lauren Mitchell,” he said, speaking in an odd, yet gentle tone. “We’re both at a crossroads, and I can’t imagine taking another step without you by my side. So say you’ll marry me. Please.”
The sound of that little word—please—sent her fingers flying to his lips, urging him to silence. She had begun to hope she would hear words like these from Daniel, but she had never imagined hearing them so soon. The obstacles that had stood between them—her career and his enthusiasm for Romulus—had faded to nothingness, but still Lauren could not accept his offer without feeling a wave of wistful sadness.
Pain squeezed her heart as she thought of the decisions and events that had brought both of them to this place. She had lost Victoria Stedman and nearly lost the president; Daniel had discovered that his bright and shiny dreams of influencing the world tarnished in the harsh light of Adrian Romulus’s ambition. And yet something had blossomed between them, something stronger than politics, something more enduring than Romulus’s new global community. She had come to love Daniel Prentice.
But what would that love cost her? Daniel was right—even if by some miracle his and Brad’s unauthorized visit to the Treasury Department went undiscovered, life would soon change for both of them. Daniel had already set his plan to thwart Romulus in motion; if she married him her hardwon political career would vanish at midnight on January 1, 2000. But did she want to be a part of Romulus’s global community?
She did not.
“Yes, Mr. Prentice.” She kept her voice light as her gaze met his.
“I will marry you.”
Daniel smiled down at her, his features suffused with joy, then twirled her over the carpet in athletic exuberance. A small smattering of applause greeted his enthusiastic display, and when Lauren caught her breath and looked up, she saw General Herrick standing in the doorway that led to the reception room.
“Mr. Prentice.” Herrick cast a glance of well-mannered dislike in Lauren’s direction, then tucked his hands behind his back and nodded at Daniel. “Sir—if we might have a word with you.”
Lauren saw the Adam’s apple bob in Daniel’s throat as he swallowed. “Why, of course, General. What seems to be the problem?”
Herrick didn’t answer, but stepped aside and extended his hand toward the reception room. Lauren looked toward the space where she had last seen Brad and Christine and saw that the couple had disappeared. Lauren hoped they had managed to slip away.
“I’m coming with you.” Lauren grasped Daniel’s arm, then looked Herrick in the eye. “Perhaps you did not know, General, but Mr. Prentice is my fiancé.”
“Congratulations.” The man’s tone dripped with ridicule. “But still, we need a word. If you will come—”
Daniel lifted his head and followed the general, and Lauren clung to his arm, closing her eyes in a silent prayer as she followed.
Kord turned his back on the couple sitting on the antique sofa and silently wished General Archer had offered a more Spartan room for this interview. With its soft yellow walls and formal portraits of six first ladies, the Vermeil Room was not exactly suited for an interrogation. But it would have to do.
He turned again and faced the couple. The woman, Lauren Mitchell, wore the determined look of a woman in love and clung to Prentice’s arm as if his life depended upon her strength. Prentice’s face was as blank as an empty page; he sat calmly on the sofa and watched Kord watch him.
Flee The Darkness Page 35