by Brad Meltzer
“Yeah, I’m sure a public lawsuit will really help your state election campaign,” Lisbeth says calmly.
“Don’t you dare bring that into— Dammit!” Dreidel screams, spinning around and slamming both fists against the welcoming table.
Still standing in the doorway, Lisbeth should be wearing a smile so wide, there’d be canary feathers dangling from her lips. Instead, she rubs the back of her neck as her front teeth click anxiously. I wore that same look when I walked in on one of the many fights between the President and First Lady. It’s like walking in on someone having sex. An initial thrill, followed instantly by the hollow dread that in a world of infinite possibilities, physical and temporal happenstance have conspired to place you at the regrettable, unreturnable moment that currently passes for your life.
Lisbeth takes a step back, bumping into the door. Then she takes a step forward. “I really can help you,” she says.
“Whattya mean?” I ask, standing up.
“Wes, don’t,” Dreidel moans. “This is stupid. We already—”
“I can get you information,” Lisbeth continues. “The newspaper . . . our contacts—”
“Contacts?” Dreidel asks. “We have the President’s Rolodex.”
“But you can’t call them,” Lisbeth shoots back. “And neither can Wes—not without tipping someone off.”
“That’s not true,” Dreidel argues.
“Really? So no one’ll raise an eyebrow when Manning’s two former aides start dissecting his old assassination attempt? No one’ll tattle to the President when you start sniffing around Boyle’s old life?”
We’re both speechless. Dreidel stops pacing. I brush some imaginary dirt from the table. If the President found out . . .
Lisbeth watches us carefully. Her freckles shift as her eyes narrow. She reads social cues for a living. “You don’t even trust Manning, do you?” she asks.
“You can’t print that,” Dreidel threatens.
Lisbeth’s mouth falls open, shocked by the answer. “You’re serious . . .”
It takes me a second to process what just happened. I look to Lisbeth, then back to Dreidel. I don’t believe it. She was bluffing.
“Don’t you dare print it,” Dreidel adds. “We didn’t say that.”
“I know . . . I’m not printing it . . . I just—you guys really punched the hornet’s nest on this, didn’t you?”
Dreidel’s done answering questions. He storms at her, jabbing a finger at her face. “You have no proof of anything! And the fact that—”
“Can you really help us?” I call out from the table.
Turning to me, she doesn’t hesitate. “Absolutely.”
“Wes, don’t be stupid . . .”
“How?” I ask her.
Dreidel turns my way. “Wait . . . you’re actually listening to her?”
“By being the one person no one can ever trace back to you,” Lisbeth explains, stepping around Dreidel and heading toward me. “You make a phone call, people’ll know something’s up. Same with Dreidel. But if I make it, I’m just a crackpot reporter sniffing for story and hoping to be the next Woodward and Bernstein.”
“So why help us?” I ask.
“To be the next Woodward and Bernstein.” Through her designer eyeglasses, she studies me with dark green eyes—and never once glances down at my cheek. “I want the story,” she adds. “When it’s all over . . . when all the secrets are out, and the book deals are falling into place, I just want to be the one to write it up.”
“And if we tell you to go screw yourself?”
“I break it now, and the news vans start lining up outside your apartment, feeding your lives to the cable news grinder. Lying to all of America . . . a giant cover-up . . . They’ll eat you like Cheerios. And even if you get the truth out there, your lives’ll be like picked-over bones.”
“So that’s it?” Dreidel asks, rushing back and tapping his knuckle on the table. “You threaten us, and we’re supposed to just comply? How do we know you won’t break it tomorrow morning just to get the quick kill?”
“Because only a moron goes for the quick kill,” Lisbeth says as she sits on the edge of the table. “You know how it works: I run this tomorrow and I’ll get a nice pat on the head that’ll last a total of twenty-four hours, at which point the Times and the Washington Post will grab my football, fly a dozen reporters down here, and dance it all the way to the end zone. At least my way, you’re in control. You get your answers; I get my story. If you’re innocent, you’ve got nothing to fear.”
I look up from my seat. At the edge of the table, Lisbeth’s right leg swings slightly. She knows she’s got a point.
“And we can trust you on that?” I ask. “You’ll stay quiet until it’s over?”
Her leg stops swinging. “Wes, the only reason you know Woodward and Bernstein is because they had the ending . . . not just the first hit. Only a fool wouldn’t stick with you till we get all the answers.”
I’ve been burned by reporters. I don’t like reporters. And I certainly don’t like Lisbeth. But as I glance over at Dreidel, who’s finally fallen silent, it’s clear we’re out of options. If we don’t work with her, she’ll take this whole shitstorm public and unleash it in a way that we’ll never be able to take back. If we do work with her, at least we buy some time to figure out what’s really going on. I give another look to Dreidel. From the way he pinches the bridge of his nose, we’ve already stepped on the land mine. The only question now is, how long until we hear the big—?
“Nobody move!” a deep voice yells as the door whips into the wall and half a dozen suit-and-tie Secret Service agents flood the room, guns drawn.
“Let’s go!” a beefy agent with a thin yellow tie says as he grabs Dreidel by the shoulder and shoves him toward the door. “Out. Now!”
“Get off me!”
“You too!” another says to Lisbeth as she follows right behind. “Go!”
The rest of the agents swarm inside, but to my surprise, run right past me, fanning out in onion-peel formation as they circle through the room. This isn’t an attack; it’s a sweep.
The only thing that’s odd is none of these guys look familiar. I know everyone on our detail. Maybe we got a bomb threat and they called in local—
“Both of you, move!” the yellow-tie agent barks at Dreidel and Lisbeth. I assume he doesn’t see me—Lisbeth’s still in front of me near the table, but as I shoot out of my seat and follow them toward the door, I feel a sharp tug on the back of my jacket.
“Hey, what’re you—?”
“You’re with me,” Yellow Tie insists, yanking me backward as my tie digs into my neck. With a hard shove to the left, he sends me stumbling toward the far corner of the room. We’re moving so fast, I can barely keep my balance.
“Wes!” Lisbeth calls out.
“He’s fine,” an agent with bad acne insists, grabbing her elbow and tugging her to the door. He says something else to her, but I can’t hear it.
Looking back to me over her shoulder, Lisbeth is still off balance as she staggers toward the doorway’s white rectangle of light. With one last wrench, she disappears. When the first agent grabbed her, she was pissed. But now . . . the last look I see before the door slams behind her . . . the way her eyes go wide . . . whatever the agent said to her, she’s terrified.
“Let go—I’m a friendly!” I insist, fighting to get to my ID.
Yellow Tie doesn’t care. “Keep moving!” he tells me, practically holding me up by my collar. The last time the Service moved this fast was when Boyle was— No. I stop myself, refusing to replay it. Don’t panic. Get the facts.
“Is Manning okay?” I ask.
“Just move!” he insists as we rush toward the corner of the room, where I spot a carpeted, almost hidden door.
“C’mon!” Yellow Tie says, undoing a latch and ramming me into the door to shove it open. Unlike the door that Lisbeth and Dreidel went through, this one doesn’t dump us in the lobby. The ceiling r
ises up, and the concrete hallway is gray and narrow. Loose wires, grimy fire extinguishers, and some random white pipes are the only things on the walls. Maintenance corridor from the ammonia smell of it.
I try to break free, but we’re moving too fast. “If you don’t tell me where the hell we’re going, I’ll personally make sure you’re—”
“Here,” Yellow Tie says, stopping at the first door on my right. A red and white sign reads Storage Only. He reaches the door with his free hand, revealing a room that’s bigger than my office. With one final shove, he lets go of my collar and flings me inside like the evening’s trash.
My shoes slide against the floor as I fight for balance, but it’s not until I spot two other sets of black shiny shoes that I realize I’m not alone.
“All yours,” Yellow Tie calls out as I hear the door slam behind me.
My skidding stops as my funny bone bangs into a metal utility rack. A hiccup of sawdust belches into the air.
“Busy day, huh?” the man in the U.S. Open hat says, arms folded across his chest. His partner scratches at the nick of skin missing from his ear. O’Shea and Micah. The FBI agents from this morning.
“What the hell’s going on?” I demand.
“Nico Hadrian escaped from St. Elizabeths about an hour and a half ago. What we wanna know is, why was your name in the hospital’s log as his last visitor?”
33
Richmond, Virginia
It was easy for Nico to get the jeans and the blue button-down shirt from the dryer in the Laundromat. Same with the Baltimore Orioles baseball cap he took from a dumpster. But once he made his way into Carmel’s Irish Pub, it took a full nine minutes before an older black man, nursing whiskey and a runny nose, hobbled over to the restroom and left his faded army jacket sagging like a corpse on the seat of his bar-stool. Approaching the stool, Nico was calm. The Lord would always provide.
It was the same thought swirling through his head right now as he stood on the gravelly shoulder of I-95 and an eighteen-wheel truck ferociously blew by, kicking up a trail of tiny pebbles and chocolate-brown slush. Shielding his eyes, Nico squinted through the instant hurricane as the pull of wind sent him reeling to the right. One hand was pressed down on his head to keep his Orioles hat from blowing away, while the other gripped his cardboard sign that flapped like a kite in the truck’s backdraft. As the truck disappeared and the wind died, the sign went limp, brushing against Nico’s right leg. Calmly as ever, Nico raised his hand and put out his thumb.
He was already in Richmond, well out of the thirty-mile radius that the FBI and D.C. Police were currently combing near St. Elizabeths. The first driver took him up South Capitol Street. The second helped him navigate I-295. And the third took him down I-95, all the way to Richmond.
Without question, Nico knew he couldn’t afford to be standing out in the open for long. With the nightly news approaching, his picture would be everywhere. Still, there wasn’t much he could do. From a statistical standpoint, the odds of a fourth driver picking him up in the next few minutes were already low. Anyone else would be panicking. Not Nico. As with anything in life, statistics meant nothing if you believed in fate.
Spotting the pair of owl-eyed headlights in the distance, he calmly stepped toward the road and once again held up his handmade sign with the big block letters: Fellow Christian Looking for a Ride.
A piercing screech knifed through the night as the driver of a beat-up flatbed hit his brakes, and all ten wheels clenched and skidded along the ice on the shoulder of the road. Even now, as the semi rumbled to a stop fifty yards to his right, Nico relished the belches, shrieks, and hisses of the outside world. He’d been locked away too long.
Tucking his sign under his armpit, he strolled to the side of the main cab just as the door to the passenger side flew open, and a faint light within the cab poured outward. “God bless you for stopping,” Nico called out. In his pocket, he fingered the trigger of his gun. Just in case.
“Where you need to get at?” a man with a blond mustache and beard asked.
“Florida,” Nico replied, mentally replaying Revelation 13:1. And I stood upon the sand of the sea, and saw a beast. It was all coming together. Heed the Book. Finish God’s will. Finish Wes, and in his blood, he’d find the Beast. “Palm Beach, to be exact.”
“Sick of the cold, eh? Tallahassee good enough?”
Nico didn’t say a word as he stared up at the olive wood rosary and silver cross that dangled from the man’s rearview. “That’d be perfect,” Nico said. Reaching for the grab handle, he tugged himself up into the main cab.
With a lurch and a few more belches from the transmission, the oversize flatbed grumbled back onto I-95.
“So you got family down in Florida?” the driver asked, shifting into gear.
“Naw . . .” Nico said, his eyes still on the wooden cross as it swayed like a child’s swing. “Just going to see an old friend.”
34
What’re you talking about?” I ask anxiously.
“Your name, Wes. It was on the—”
“When’d he break out?”
“That’s the point. We think he had—”
“A-Are you looking for him? Is he gone, or— Are you sure he’s gone?” A needle of bile stabs my stomach, making me want to bend over in pain. It took me seven months of therapy before I could hear Nico’s name and not feel puddles of sweat fill my palms and soak my feet. It was another year and a half before I could sleep through the night without him jarring me awake as he lurked in the periphery of my dreams. Nico Hadrian didn’t take my life. But he took the life I was living. And now . . . with this . . . with him out . . . he could easily take the rest. “Doesn’t he have guards?” I ask. “How could they . . . how could this happen?”
O’Shea lets the questions bounce off his chest, never losing sight of his own investigation. “Your name, Wes. It was on the hospital sign-in sheet,” he insists. “According to their records, you were there.”
“Where? Washington? You saw me here on the beach this morning!”
“I saw you leave the Four Seasons at almost nine-thirty. According to the receptionist in your office, you didn’t return to work until after three. That’s a long time to be gone.”
“I was with my fr—my lawyer all morning. He’ll tell you. Call him right now: Andrew Rogozinski.”
Micah laughs softly. “And I assume the fact he’s also your high school pal and current roommate means he’d never lie to protect you? You were gone for almost six hours, Wes. That’s more than enough time to—”
“To what? To jump on my private jet, fly two and a half hours to Washington, go free Nico—who, oh yeah, once tried to kill me—and then fly back to work, hoping no one noticed I was gone? Yeah, that sounds like a genius plan. Go see the one guy I still have nightmares about, be dumb enough to use my real name on the sign-in sheet, and let him loose so he can hunt me down.”
“Who says he’s hunting you?” O’Shea challenges.
“What’re you talking about?”
“Enough with the idiot act, Wes. You know Nico’s just a bullet. Even back then, someone else pulled the trigger.”
“Someone else? What does that—?”
“You speak to Boyle today?” O’Shea interrupts.
I try to bite my top lip, momentarily forgetting the nerve damage that makes it impossible.
“We’re not here to hurt you, Wes. Just be honest with us: Are you chasing him or helping him?” Micah adds. He grabs a nearby mop, tossing its handle from one hand to the other, then back again, like the tick-tock of a metronome.
“You know I didn’t free Nico,” I tell them.
“That wasn’t the question.”
“And I haven’t spoken to Boyle,” I shoot back.
“You’re sure about that?” O’Shea asks.
“I just told you—”
“Did you speak to him or not? I’m asking you as an officer in an ongoing investigation.”
Micah’s mop ticks bac
k and forth. They’re acting like they know the answer, but if they did, I’d be in handcuffs right now instead of trapped in a supply closet. I look them dead in the eyes. “No.”
O’Shea shakes his head. “At noon today, an unidentified male came into St. Elizabeths requesting a private visit with Nico by identifying himself as a member of the Secret Service, complete with a badge and picture ID, both of which you have access to. Now, I’m willing to accept that only a moron would use his own name, and I’m also willing to keep your name from the press—for no other reason than out of respect for your boss—but in a situation you claim to know nothing about, it’s sorta fascinating that yours is the only name that keeps popping up outta the daisy patch.”
“What’s your point?”
“My point is, when you’re in Malaysia, Boyle’s there . . . when your name’s on a sign-in sheet in Washington, Nico escapes. This isn’t exactly Morse code. You tracking the trend?”
“I didn’t go to Washington!”
“And you didn’t see a dead man in Malaysia. And you didn’t get sent backstage by the President, who wanted you to pick up the message from Boyle, right? Or was that just something we invented to make ourselves feel better—y’know, kinda like your old door-locking and light-switch-on-and-off obsessions? Or better yet, the repetitive praying that—”
“Just because I saw a counselor—”
“Counselor? It was a shrink.”
“He was a critical incident specialist . . .”
“I looked it up, Wes. He was a clinical psychologist who had you medicated for the better part of a year. Alprazolam for the anxiety disorders, coupled with some heavy-duty olanzapine for all the compulsions. That’s an antipsychotic. Plus his notes, which said that in a strange way, he thought you actually relished your scars—that you saw the pain as atonement for putting Boyle in that limo. Doesn’t say much about the shape you were in.”
“The guy blew my friggin’ face off!”
“Which is why you’ve got the best motive and the worst alibis—especially in Malaysia. Do me a favor—for the next few days, unless you’re traveling with the President, stay put for a bit. At least until we figure out what’s going on.”