Anonymous Sources

by Mary Louise Kelly

  Lucien pulled back his shirt and regarded a purplish bruise flowering across his collarbone. In the middle was a ring of small, pink, horizontal lines. Teeth marks. It had hurt in a searing, wonderful way when she bit him. Her state of mind? Assertive, definitely. Determined. Funny. Really, really sexy.

  He sighed and stared at his blank screen. He was mad to be carrying on with her. Stark, raving bonkers to have asked her to Bermuda. He could always get out of it, he supposed.

  But here he was forced to confront an uncomfortable fact: he very much liked Alexandra James. He quite wanted to go to Bermuda with her. It was ridiculous, obviously, but there it was.

  And, really—how much of a problem could it turn out to be?

  39

  THURSDAY, JULY 1

  WHEN I WAS A LITTLE girl, my mother used to wake me by singing.

  It is one of my earliest memories. Her entering the dark room, walking to the window to pull back the curtain and let the sun shine in, humming “Amazing Grace.” When she was reasonably confident I was awake, she would drop the humming and burst into full-throated song. She has a deep, warm, honeyed voice and is partial to old hymns, though she’s never been much of one for church. Old hymns and Broadway choruses and Scottish lullabies.

  “Amazing Grace” is one of her favorites. As she sang, she would lean down to kiss my cheek and pull the blankets back, and I could smell tea and warm milk and love on her breath. Outside the thrum of New York traffic would be roaring to life. She would coax me to the mirror and wash my face with a warm rag, then brush my curls into pigtails. Singing the whole time. I once was lost, but now am found. Was blind, but now I see. . . .

  It’s been years since my mother has woken me with song, and it took me a minute to work out why the memory was washing over me now. It was the first gray light of morning. The only sounds came from pipes moving water in the house upstairs and a bird chirping in a nearby tree.

  Then I realized. Something in my subconscious must have been yearning for that voice, and everything it conveyed: a sense that everything in the world was fine, just fine, and that, yes, a hot bowl of porridge did lie in my immediate future.

  I turned over in Elias’s bed—he had gallantly taken the sofa—and tried to knead the knots out of my neck. Jet lag and exhaustion had mercifully combined to allow me several hours of sleep. But I had apparently slept with my neck twisted and my pillow in a kind of death clutch. Everything in the world was definitely not fine. I felt, to put it bluntly, petrified.

  I dragged myself out of bed and down the hallway toward the kitchen. Heavy doses of either coffee or gin were going to be required to get me through the morning. Coffee seemed the more socially acceptable route at six in the morning. Coffee. I registered with fleeting interest that for the first time in days I was craving coffee, not tea: my internal switch had already flipped upon crossing the Atlantic.

  In the kitchen I couldn’t help cracking a smile. Last night I had not noticed the enormous, barista-style coffeemaker on the counter. It was one of those contraptions that costs $1,000 at Williams-Sonoma and can grind your beans, froth your milk, and probably toast you a bagel while it’s at it.

  One of the many lovely things about Elias is that he drinks espresso the way Italians do. Which is to say, like water. He is notorious in the newsroom for disappearing on deadline, driving his editor into an apoplectic fit, and then casually reappearing with a steaming thimble of black sludge. He does not believe in milk. Or sugar. Why dilute perfection? I’ve seen him grimace at people emerging from Starbucks with twenty-ounce, venti pumpkin-spice lattes in hand. It seems to offend him on some deep, personal level.

  I clanked around the kitchen for a bit. My second cup was brewing and I was buttering toast when Elias appeared in the doorway.

  “Morning, Shorty. Coffee?”

  “Um-hmm. I’m amazed you managed to figure that thing out.” He nodded toward the espresso machine. “How’d you sleep?”

  I hugged my arms tight across my chest. “Okay. Considering. How about you?”

  He looked ruefully back at the futon. “Okay. Considering.”

  I smiled. “Any chance I could check my e-mail? I lost my laptop yesterday, as you know, and my phone too. I am officially”—I paused for effect—“off the grid.”

  He regarded me with the stunned expression of a man who has not ventured out without a cell phone for the entirety of his adult life.

  “Uh—sure,” he said, recovering. He left the kitchen and reappeared a minute later carrying his laptop.

  I set his espresso thimble in front of him and waited. Minutes passed. Elias clicked and typed, clearly checking his own in-box, his face screwed up in concentration. I stared at him and drummed my fingers.

  “In your own time,” I finally grumbled. “I mean, I’ve just got this little old meeting at the White House, nothing important. Wouldn’t be useful at all to check the headlines and my messages beforehand.”

  “Yes, okay, okay, but listen. There’s an e-mail to both of us from Hyde—”

  “What’s he saying?” I pounced toward the screen.

  “It’s so weird. He’s asking what we know about UTN. Well, really asking me, I suppose. No reason you should have heard of them. But if it’s the UTN I’m thinking of . . . I haven’t heard that name in years.”

  He looked puzzled. “Hyde says he reached an excellent source of his last night, and the guy told him there’s a lot of buzz about UTN. They were these crackpot nuclear scientists from Pakistan. The leader was a real nut job . . . . What was his name again . . . ? But I thought they got shut down after 9/11. Nobody’s written about them for years.”

  “Let me see.” I tried to elbow Elias over so I could share the screen.

  “Hang on. Just want to check . . .” He was typing furiously. “Let me bounce this off a couple folks. At least get a steer on whether Hyde’s source is right. I am so not loving being one step behind the boss, not to mention you, on my own beat.”

  I sighed. He ignored me. He was clearly not going to let me near the laptop.

  “Fine,” I said. “I’m going to take a shower. And in half an hour, I am going to reappear so you can give me a primer on UTN. And let me check my mail. Okay?”

  He continued ignoring me. I flounced off to the bathroom.

  In fact I was ready in less than fifteen minutes, a personal record. I’d had to pull my damp hair into a knot, having discovered that Elias—being a boy—didn’t own a hair dryer. The only makeup I had was what had been in my handbag, mascara and a tube of plum lipstick. My reflection in the mirror looked pale and severe. It suited my mood.

  Still, the cream sheath dress I’d picked up last night fit remarkably well. And thank God I’d worn my Manolos on the plane. I slipped them on and instantly felt a little better. Some women report that lipstick has this transformative effect on them. My friend Jess swears by a certain shade of Chanel red. For me, it’s always been about the shoes. I felt dressed for battle.

  Back in the kitchen Elias was scowling. “No one’s gotten back to me yet.”

  “Well, it has been all of, like”—I consulted my watch—“seventeen minutes.”

  “Yeah, but these are guys who check their e-mail every ninety seconds. Anyway, I scanned the wires. Nothing on them about UTN or even Pakistan, except there’s flooding in some town I’ve never heard of, and there was another suicide bomb in the tribal areas.”

  “A bomb?”

  “Yeah, but that happens every day just about. They barely even register anymore, unless somebody important gets killed or there’s a big death toll.”

  “How lovely. Anything else I need to know?”

  He gave me an overview on UTN. And he finally relinquished the computer so I could log in. There was the message from Hyde. Elias had already fired off a one-word answer—Checking—and since I had nothing to add, I left it. There were various invitations to press events, a reminder from news admin to fill out my time sheet, and a note from Jess asking if I wanted
to have dinner on Sunday. Then I got to one that made me blush. The subject line of Lucien’s e-mail read, Good Morning, Luscious Legs.

  Elias, reading over my shoulder, smirked. “Should I ask?”

  “Nope,” I said firmly, and logged out before he could read further. I stood up. “I need to get going. Could you call me a taxi?”

  “No need. M Street is crawling with them.”

  I looked dubiously at my four-inch-high heels, remembering the brick sidewalks and the steep hill the taxi had navigated to get here.

  “Anyway,” he continued, “I’m coming. Give me ten minutes.”

  “I’ll give you five,” I said, although secretly I was relieved. It felt safer not to go out alone.

  HYDE MET ME OUTSIDE THE White House with a new cell phone.

  “It’s a loaner from the bureau,” he said. “I had the IT people program it so calls to your desk in Boston will forward automatically. Your old cell number should forward too.”

  I eyed it suspiciously. “Do you know whether the GPS—”

  “I asked about that,” interrupted Hyde, reading my mind. “I confess I didn’t quite understand all the technical mumbo jumbo. I think the takeaway was that they’ve tried to disable the GPS. But I must say the overnight team didn’t inspire my complete confidence. So treat it with caution.”

  I nodded. “Thanks. You’ve been busy.”

  “That I have, Ms. James. And you? Did you get some sleep?” He studied me. “You’re looking . . . if I may say . . . a touch seasick.”

  I pinched my cheeks to put color in them. “Never better, actually. Is Jill coming?”

  The paper’s Washington bureau chief was not among my favorite people. Jill Hernandez possessed a vicious temper and strangely large nostrils, which opened wider still when she was angry, which was often. It was enough to make you steer well clear. Still, I figured the more people in this meeting who were at least supposed to be on my side, the better.

  “She is. Now, Mr. Thottrup.” Hyde turned to Elias. “Have you been able to confirm any of the information I’ve been passing along? About the unfortunate Nadeem Siddiqui no longer being with us? Or why everyone’s hair is on fire over this UTN outfit?”

  Elias seemed to shrink. “Still working it. I’ve got lots of calls out. No one’s getting back to me. Even the ones who usually do. I don’t understand it.”

  “Um-hmm. Perhaps you could keep working the phones while we’re in this meeting. Perhaps you could even trouble yourself to work the hallways at the Pentagon or State? Between espresso breaks, obviously. It would be so useful, truly, to have someone besides myself producing new information.”

  Elias nodded miserably.

  He was saved by the arrival of Jill. She came clomping down Pennsylvania Avenue toward us, a Dunkin’ Donuts Dunkaccino mug in hand and a nylon laptop bag slung across her chest. She wore a navy suit at least two sizes too big. This was set off by beige pumps and support hose. Was it just me, or did women in this town go out of their way to look unattractive? Incredible, really, that so many sex scandals unfold in Washington, when everyone walks around dressed like suburban Sunday-school teachers.

  “Good morning,” Hyde called out. “So kind of you to join our merry band.”

  “Hi, Hyde,” she said curtly, before turning on me. “Good morning, Alex. Any more surprises in store for us this morning? You have no idea exactly how unpleasant you have made my last twenty-four hours.”

  I smiled thinly and considered various responses, mostly along the lines of And you have no idea exactly how unpleasant the sight of your ankles straining those granny tights is. But both Hyde and Elias were shooting me urgent looks that meant Zip it.

  I bit my tongue.

  Jill, however, pressed on. “I sure as hell hope the two of you know what you’re doing, because I certainly don’t,” she spat, eyeing Hyde and me. “What a complete fucking fiasco.”

  “Thank you, Ms. Hernandez,” Hyde cut across her. “That’ll be enough.”

  “Well, it’s not as if you—”

  “I said enough.”

  “With respect, Hyde,” she said acidly, “I am the one who will be fielding phone calls for the next month—”

  “With respect, Jill: Shut up.”

  Elias sucked his breath in and muttered, “Whoa.” Jill must have heard it. She rounded on him. The nostrils flared. “What are you doing here? You weren’t invited this morning, were you?”

  Elias shook his head, his humiliation complete. “I just wanted to make sure Alex made it here okay. Off to the bureau now.”

  He was turning to slink off when Jill held out the Dunkaccino mug. “Carry this back for me, will you? I don’t think they’ll let me take it in.”

  I watched Elias fight to suppress a shudder. Then, sweet boy that he was, he reached out his hand.

  That’s when Hyde snapped. “For Christ’s sake, Jill, you’d be bloody lucky to have them confiscate it. Vile plastic crap.” He snatched it from her hands and started marching toward the White House gate.

  “Let’s go then, both of you,” he called over his shoulder. “ ‘Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more—’ ”

  I rolled my eyes.

  “Oh, come on,” said Hyde. “This is going to be fun.”

  40

  The president’s national security adviser is an ex–Marine Corps general with ramrod posture and one lazy eye.

  Mike Carspecken had a reputation for being difficult. I remember reading that he’d needed quite a lot of persuading to take the job because it required retiring his uniform and stepping down from active duty. He sat facing me now in a charcoal-gray suit and red silk tie. Both the tie and his cuff links flashed the Semper Fi crest. Apparently he was prepared to take the civilian look only so far.

  After we were shown into his West Wing office, he had shaken our hands and then motioned us toward a bristly, blue sofa pushed up against the wall. Hyde, Jill, and I sat down uncomfortably side by side, three ducks in a row. General Carspecken and the other White House officials took chairs facing us across a low table. Coffee was offered and politely declined; the general and Hyde exchanged pleasantries in a stiff way that suggested they had crossed swords before.

  Finally the general smoothed his red tie and leaned back. “Let’s get down to business, shall we? We have what appears to be a small situation on our hands. My understanding is it’s under control, but it would be useful not to have inflammatory or inaccurate media reports circulate while we try to wrap things up.”

  Hyde gave a snort.

  General Carspecken ignored him. “As I was saying, I need to ask you to keep this matter quiet right now. For national security reasons. That has to be the utmost priority, naturally, for all of us. So what I would propose is that you hold your story for now, Alexandra.” He looked at me. “In exchange, I can give you a bit of context today, to enhance your understanding of the issues at hand. We can also discuss the possibility of your sitting down at a future date with senior administration officials, doing some exclusive interviews with them.” The general cocked his head toward the White House press secretary.

  She nodded vigorously. “The SAOs would be on background, obviously. But they could fill in details that would put you well ahead of your competitors—”

  “Oh, please,” interrupted Hyde. “Can either of you explain to me exactly how our story is supposedly going to damage national security?”

  “Well, obviously, I can’t comment on national security matters,” General Carspecken began testily.

  “But what argument are you making, Mike? That we’ll damage sources and methods? Disrupt an ongoing operation?”

  “Yes, both of those. And it always complicates things once wild rumors start flying around in the press. You know it as well as I do.”

  “I couldn’t agree more,” Hyde said pleasantly. “Which is why, instead of wild rumors, we were thinking instead of publishing facts. For example, the tracking number of a large fruit shipment that jus
t landed from Pakistan. Or the fact that yesterday someone tried to kill the reporter who’s been asking questions about that shipment. Or, let’s see—the fact that the man who placed that fruit order, a member of Pakistan’s nuclear establishment, has just been reported dead.” Hyde paused and looked down at his fingernails. “Frankly, Mike, we have so many fascinating facts to relate to our readers that it’s hard to know quite where to start.”

  The room fell silent.

  General Carspecken cleared his throat. “I’m sure I don’t have to explain why matters such as the ones you’re describing might be . . . sensitive at this particular point in time.”

  “No, you don’t,” said Hyde. “And I’m sure I don’t have to explain why matters such as the ones I’m describing add up to a pretty interesting news story. Or why—given the financial pressure I’m under to shut down the DC bureau completely—it would be nice to have the Chronicle out front on a major national story. So you’re going to have to give us a better reason than ‘things are sensitive’ to get me to sit on one.”

  Silence fell again.

  I had to hand it to Hyde. I might be out of my depth on national-security matters, but I had wheedled information out of enough reluctant officials to recognize a master at work.

  After a moment Jill spoke. Her nose had twitched when Hyde made the threat about shutting the Washington bureau, but otherwise she hadn’t entered the fray. “Why don’t we start with what’s happening now. When Hyde asked just now whether our publishing might disrupt an ongoing operation, you said yes. Can you be more specific?”

  The general sighed. He must have been wishing he could order us to drop and give him fifty push-ups. Instead he smoothed his tie again, crossed and uncrossed his legs, and finally looked up at me. Or at least I think he looked at me; it was hard to tell with his lazy eye.