“Only if the media gets it.”
“They will, kemo sabe,” Otto said. “They always do.”
“Let me know as soon as you find out where they called.”
“Will do. And let me know if someone starts shooting at you.”
* * *
For a half hour, McGarvey alternated watching the street through the front window and the shabby backyard through the window in the rear bedroom, where the forensics people found a used Tampex in a wastebasket.
Secret Service medical records for Dorothy indicated that she wasn’t due for her period for another five days, though it was well within the realm of possibility that her flow could have come early because of the stress she endured.
Downstairs, he went outside from the kitchen door. Only some stunted weeds grew in the poor soil and weather that had been colder than normal over the past month. A broken-down wooden fence separated this backyard from the backyard of the house that fronted on T Street.
He stood for a seemingly long time in the biting wind that funneled between the houses and whipped around the corners. It was bleak here, with almost the same feel as some impoverished Eastern European country had during the Soviet regime. Yet the White House was just a little more than two miles away.
A sudden squall line of rage threatened to engulf him, but then it passed as quickly as it had come. He’d seen Liz’s face the day before she was assassinated. Her husband had been killed in the line of duty, and she’d been devastated. The last days of her life had been filled with grief.
The thing was that he hadn’t been able to save her.
And now it was the president’s daughter whose life was in the hands of animals who hid behind their brand of religion. What they, and others like them, professed to believe in had absolutely nothing to do with Islam. They would be killers under any banner.
He was going to stop them, no matter what it took. The president’s daughter was not going to die on his watch, no matter the cause, no matter the jingoism of his revenge.
Around front, he pulled up at the edge of the porch, the bottom of the railing just at shoulder level. Nothing moved on the street, though an olive-drab military bus passed at the end of the block on Fifth Avenue, heading to the main gate into the base a couple of blocks south.
He got into his car and made it to the end of the block just as the bus went through the gate. The line of the wall went north and south for nine blocks from the James Creek Marina all the way up to P Street NW.
Lights were mounted atop the wall at three hundred–foot intervals. Below each was a surveillance camera pointing outward.
He turned back to First Street, which was a one-way north, and drove back to the end of S Street. A camera was pointed almost directly down the street. The house where the kidnappers had stayed was well within range.
He called Otto. “Cameras on Fort McNair’s walls.”
“Jesus, Mac, give me a mo,” Otto said, swallowing his words.
He was more excited than McGarvey could ever remember. “What is it?”
“Give me a fucking minute.”
Otto never talked that way. Never.
McGarvey remained parked at the end of the street for a full two minutes before Otto came back, even more out of breath than he had been.
“I shit you not, Kirk, you’re not going to believe me.”
“What?”
“The two encrypted phone calls were made to someone in the fucking White House.”
Hour 16
McGarvey got to the White House a minute after four and was taken directly to the Oval Office where the president, along with Joe Canterbury and Joyce Trammell, were waiting with Bernstein.
The four of them seemed grim.
The president picked up the phone. “No disturbances,” he said, and he leaned back against his desk. It almost seemed to McGarvey that Young’s hair had turned a shade whiter in the past twelve hours or so.
They took seats facing the president, who spoke first.
“Alan tells me that you may have come up with something this afternoon. Well, so have we.”
“Sir?” McGarvey said.
The president took a piece of paper from his desk and handed it across. “This is a copy of a note that showed up on my desk here. I discovered it a half hour ago mixed in with a stack of pending congressional bills. The bureau has the original.”
MIDNIGHT OR YOUR DAUGHTER DIES IN A SPECTACULAR PUBLIC DISPLAY.
“No one has any idea what that means,” Young said.
“It could be a break for us,” McGarvey said, looking up.
“What the hell are you talking about?” Bernstein demanded, but the president motioned him to hold off.
“She’s going to be put on display somewhere here in the city. Possibly even within sight of the White House. And the media will be invited.”
“Christ, they don’t mean to cut her head off,” Trammell said.
“Could be as simple as that.”
“The bastards can’t seriously believe they’ll get away with it.”
“Could be they don’t want to get away with it. They could be willing to die as martyrs. It’d be a great recruiting tool. The president of the United States is so afraid to take on ISIS that he’s willing to sacrifice his daughter.”
“Enough,” Trammell said, but the president waved her off too.
“But it won’t be that simple, will it?” he said.
“No,” McGarvey said. “A beheading would be spectacular, but they’ve gone through a lot of serious trouble so far, snatching your daughter from her Secret Service detail.”
“Something my daughter helped them with.”
“It means they had an inside source of her movements. They knew that she would show up on campus, and they waited until she did.”
Bernstein said nothing. This business was extremely personal for him. For the entire Secret Service.
“And getting letters delivered to you right here under everyone’s noses,” McGarvey said. “I assume you found nothing on the surveillance monitors.”
“Lots of comings and goings,” Young said. “This is a very busy place just about every day. If we could pin down when the thing was brought in, it would help. As it is, more than two dozen people came and went since ten this morning.”
“You said that this could be a break for us,” Joe Canterbury said. He was a tall, lean man, his tie loose, his reading glasses perched on the end of his narrow nose.
“If the media will be there, so will we,” McGarvey said. “If it comes to that.”
No one caught the if except for the president. “What do you mean?”
“Two encrypted calls were made through the same cell tower in the neighborhood. We can’t be sure from there they originated—at least not the specific house—but that’s an area of predominantly low-income, mostly black families. So we started with the assumption that the calls came from the house the kidnappers were using.”
“And?” Young prompted.
“Mr. President, those calls were made to someone here in the White House.”
“My God.”
“The first at five after eight yesterday morning, and the second a few minutes before ten in the evening.”
“Do you know the number?” Canterbury asked.
“Not yet, but we’re working on it.”
“How about what was said?”
“We’re working on that as well.”
Canterbury got to his feet. “I’ll check to see who was here at those times; should narrow the list down a bit.”
“Someone who knew Dorothy’s habits,” Bernstein said, clearly suggesting it was one of his people.
No one disputed him.
Canterbury left.
“A public display,” Bernstein said. “What’s your best guess where?”
“Across the street would be where I’d do it.”
Trammell was disgusted. “Who thinks that way?”
“Very bad people, and if we don’
t think like they do, they’ll win, because their attacks will come as a complete surprise. Like 9/11.”
“I didn’t imply anything,” she said.
“It’s the real world we live in,” McGarvey said, not bothering to let her off the hook, because in a large measure she was right. Who in their right mind would think like that?
“Across the street, is that your only guess?” Bernstein asked.
“The Lincoln Memorial, Washington Monument, National Cathedral. A dozen other places. But my best guess would be right here from where the president could watch in person.”
“Pretty tough to kill her and then make their getaway,” Bernstein said. “Unless they don’t want to make martyrs of themselves unless they’re backed into a corner.”
“You may be right,” McGarvey conceded. “Maybe they’ve got something planned that we haven’t thought of yet. But once the media is notified where and when it’s going to happen, your people need to get there first and out of sight.”
“Could be impossible if they warn their inside contact,” Young said.
“You’re right. Nobody outside this room at this moment will be told another thing.”
“I’ll have to alert my people,” Bernstein said.
“But not why. Explain that we’re looking for clues. Possible sightings of someone suspicious. Anything. Make it seem like we’re running off in every direction, not sure what to do.”
“Aid and comfort to the enemy,” Trammell said.
“False hope and confusion to the enemy.”
She had to smile.
“Now, folks, I’d like to have a word in private with the president,” McGarvey said.
Trammell started to object, but Young cut her off. “Joyce, Alan, please.”
Bernstein gave McGarvey an odd, knowing look, but he and the president’s adviser on national security affairs left the office, closing the door behind them.
“You don’t suspect either of them, do you?” the president asked.
“I suspect everyone,” McGarvey said. “But right now it’s just you and me, sir, and I need you to do something to help me save your daughter’s life. Or at least up our chances.”
“I’ll stall them, but I won’t put our people into Syria, especially not into a possible head-to-head confrontation with the Russians even though they want ISIS defeated as badly as we do.”
“I don’t want you to do either, sir. I have something else in mind. Dangerous, but we’re running out of time, and I don’t see many other alternatives.”
“What is it?”
“You’re going to send them an e-mail.”
The president was surprised. “You have their e-mail address?”
“Through a Chinese hacking service,” McGarvey said, and he explained everything that Otto had told him before Young could ask anything else.
“What do you want me to write?”
McGarvey got Otto on the phone and told him what he wanted to do.
“Way over the top,” Otto said. “But it might make the bastards think twice.”
“Set up the connection on the president’s laptop. And when you’re ready, let us know.”
Hour 17
A woman Dot hadn’t seen before came in with a McDonald’s bag and set it on the nightstand. “How do you feel?”
She was dressed in jeans and a sweatshirt, no scarf on her head. Her coloring and her general facial features were Middle Eastern, but her voice was pure Midwest. Dot figured she had been born and raised in the United States.
“Like hell, but if you guys are going to kill me, then I guess it doesn’t matter.”
“Are you hungry? Can you eat?”
“Yeah, but get the fuck out of here. I want some privacy.”
The woman glanced nervously at the door. “Something has happened, but we don’t know what it means.”
“Well, if you don’t, I sure as hell won’t help you,” Dot said. She had to struggle a little with the words because her jaw was swollen and extremely painful, as were her ribs on her right side, and her left hip. “Now get the hell out of here. Leave me alone.”
“Your father has sent us an e-mail. Fathi wants to kill you right now and leave. But Yaman wants to get instructions.”
Dot searched the woman’s eyes, not sure if it was some sort of a trick.
“He knows how to reach us, and this is very bad. We’re told that nothing could be worse.”
“If the Secret Service knows your e-mail address, they’ll know about this place. Turn around and get the hell out of here, but leave the doors unlocked. I’ll find my way home on my own.”
“No, you don’t understand.”
“I understand more than you think I do,” Dot said, almost mentioning the name of the man in the business suit she’d glimpsed outside the door. It was possible that her kidnappers had been infiltrated. No matter how slim that might be, it was something to hold on to. It would explain how her dad knew the e-mail address.
“They’re not going to do what we want them to do, but your father has proposed a trade. Fathi is against it, but he’s going to make the call.”
“To who?”
“Our brigade commander.”
“In Syria?”
“No,” the woman said, but then stopped. She was excited, and she’d said too much.
Dot figured the woman couldn’t be more than in her mid- to late twenties, her face square, her build a little on the thick side, almost like the wife who, with her husband, had carried out the attacks in San Bernardino, and the females in a couple of other shootings since then. They almost seemed like a type.
“Did you guys give my father a deadline?”
“Midnight.”
“Tonight?” Dot almost shouted. She didn’t know what the time was, but it had to be late afternoon.
“Yes.”
“Then you’ll have to give more time until your commander figures out if he’s going to take the deal.”
The woman shook her head. “That is not possible, so that is why we are asking for your help.”
Dot almost laughed. “You have got to be shitting me.”
“There is no need to swear.”
This time, Dot did laugh, and it hurt her ribs. “Okay, I’ll bite.”
“What do you know about red mercury?”
Dot was at a total loss. She shook her head. “They use mercury in thermometers, I think. My eighth-grade science teacher told us that it was poison.”
“We think that your scientists at Los Alamos have invented it in secret.”
“If that’s true, you know more than I do.”
The woman was vexed. “This is important; your life depends on it.”
“Google it.”
“ They call it a hoax.”
“My father would not have offered you something like that in order to save my life.”
The woman was silent for a longish moment. “It’s what we think too. Your military wants to protect it, so they call it a hoax. But it is sometimes on sale for one million dollars for one kilo. Sometimes nearly twice that much.”
“Expensive for a hoax.”
“Yes, which is why we need your help.”
“Can’t do it, because I don’t know a thing about it.”
“You must!”
“Are you people out of your fucking minds? Do you honestly think that I sit on my father’s lap and he discusses secrets with me? Like how we’re going to bomb the shit out of you? Or how to make a nuclear weapon?”
The door slammed open, and Fathi, dressed for the outside in a fleece-lined jean jacket, came in. He said something in Arabic to the woman, who turned and left.
He had a pistol in his hand, and he strode across the room and jammed the muzzle into Dot’s left temple.
The pain was sharp, and she reared back, but he followed her, the muzzle of the pistol never leaving the side of her head.
“Is your father telling the truth, you fucking whore?”
“I don’t know.”
>
“How did he find our e-mail?”
“I don’t know.”
Fathi pushed the pistol even harder into the side of Dot’s skull, and she fell back on the filthy pillow, her bladder on the verge of letting go.
He jammed the pistol into the middle of her forehead and cocked the hammer. “You will not lie to me!” he shouted, spittle spraying from his lips.
“I’m not lying,” Dot whimpered. “I swear to God I’m not.” She was going to die now, and all she could think about was how when they found her body they would discover that she had pissed herself.
“Bitch,” Fathi said.
Dot closed her eyes, and she tried to bring up her mother’s face in her mind, but she couldn’t, and that bothered her to no end. She felt like a traitor.
Fathi walked away.
She heard him close the door. She was alone. And she slept.
* * *
Someone put a hand over her mouth, and she came instantly awake, her scream muffled. Tarek was over her.
“Make no sound now,” he said. He seemed very frightened.
She managed to nod, not sure what trick they were playing on her now.
“Okay,” Tarek said. He took his hand away from her mouth. “Do you think that you are capable of walking?”
“I think so.”
“Good, then as soon as it is dark, and Fathi is gone to make his next call, I will take you away from here.”
“My God, can you do that? Won’t he kill both of us?”
“If he catches us. But no matter what, he means to kill you, and he’s already told your father he’s going to do it. So we have to try.”
She was suddenly alive again. “When?”
“It’s nearly five now. In another hour, perhaps two. Eat your food.”
“I have to use the bathroom.”
“Do it and then eat,” Tarek said, and he stood up and started for the door.
“Is the man from the White House still here?”
“I don’t know who you’re talking about,” he said, but then he left.
Dot was sure she had made a bad mistake, mentioning Ralph Petit, but it was too late now.
Hour 18
McGarvey got to the chemistry building on Georgetown’s campus just before six, where Kelley Loring met him on the ground floor with a campus security cop in uniform. She was excited.
24 Hours: A Kirk McGarvey Novella Page 7