The Innocent

by David Baldacci

  THE FAMILY DINING ROOM was one of the most intimately scaled rooms on the main level of the White House. It was bracketed on one side by the chief usher’s office and could also be accessed through the much larger and adjacent State Dining Room. The president and vice president would often have one-on-one lunches there. It was not as elaborately decorated as the far larger East Room or the ornately furnished Green, Blue, and Red Rooms.

  Yet if Robie and company failed tonight, it would be the room known forever as where a U.S. president had lost his life.

  The group marshaled outside the door to the State Dining Room.

  The director said, “We’re going to alert agents inside the room that the shooter is probably in there. They’ve already formed a hard wall around the president and are awaiting my order to get him out of the room.”

  Blue Man said, “If they do that or start searching people the assassin will fire. In such close quarters and despite the wall around the president, the bullet might hit its target.”

  “We can’t just wait and see if the person acts or not,” countered the director. “Protocol says to move and to move fast. I should have already given the order.”

  Robie said, “How many people in that room total?”

  “About fifty,” said one of the agents.

  “This could turn into a bloodbath,” said Blue Man.

  The director said curtly, “No one wants that. But my focus is only on the president. We plan to take him out through the chief usher’s office and from there to the Entrance Hall.”

  Another agent said, “And the longer we wait, the less chance we have of getting him out of there safely.”

  Blue Man said, “What if there’s more than one shooter? You could be leading him directly into an ambush.”

  Robie said, “The shooter must be someone who works here.”

  “That’s impossible,” said the director.

  “The person was involved in a conspiracy with someone we know worked here. That’s indisputable. That could not be an outsider. And many of the people in that room with the president and the crown prince are staffers, correct?”

  The director gave a start. “It could be one of the prince’s staffers. It was a major mistake to put them in the same room together. Shit!”

  Robie shook his head. “Van Beuren was found in the West Wing. Did one of the prince’s staffers have access to the West Wing tonight? Because Van Beuren’s head injury was recent.”

  The director looked at one of his men. “Do you have the answer to that?”

  “None of the prince’s staffers were anywhere near the West Wing this evening.”

  “Son of a bitch!” exclaimed the director.

  Robie said, “People have been paid off up and down the line on this one, sir. The person behind this has lots of money. No one is off-limits. For all we know he might have bought off a Secret Service agent in there.”

  “I can’t believe that,” said the director. “No agent has ever been a traitor.”

  “The same could be said for the uniformed division,” said Blue Man. “But it obviously happened. One of the men forming the wall around the president right now could be the backup shooter, with the primary one using Van Beuren’s gun.”

  “But if there is a Secret Service agent on the payroll, why bother getting Van Beuren’s gun?”

  “Something like this, you have a fallback plan, sir,” said Robie. “The stakes are too high. I’m not saying there are two shooters in there. But I am saying that we can’t responsibly discount that possibility.”

  “So what do we do?” asked the director.

  Robie said, “Let me go in there. A staffer will know the interior security agents but they won’t know me. Let me go in dressed as a waiter. I can go in under the pretense of bringing in something, maybe coffee.”

  “And then what?” demanded the director.

  “I identify the shooter or shooters and take them out.”

  “How will you identify the assassin from all of the people in that room?” snapped the director.

  Blue Man spoke up. “Agent Robie is very adept at spotting assassins, Director.” He drew closer and whispered into the man’s ear. “He happens to be one for this country. In fact, he’s our best one. If you need a man who can make the kill shots under pressure in a room full of people, he’s it.”

  The director gazed sternly at Robie. “This goes against every protocol and procedure the Service has.”

  “Yes, sir, it does,” agreed Robie.

  “If you fail the president dies.”

  “Yes, sir. But I am prepared to die making sure he doesn’t.”

  “If I can’t alert the agents in there about our plan and you pull your gun, they will shoot you.”

  “It’s always in the timing, sir.”

  The director and Robie locked gazes for a long moment. Then the director said, “Get him a waiter’s uniform and a cart of damn coffee.”

  CHAPTER

  94

  ROBIE PULLED HIS jacket more tightly around him. The waiter’s uniform they had gotten him was for a bigger man. Robie had insisted on this. He couldn’t allow a gun bump that someone could spot. He had two pistols, one in his holster, one hidden under the cloth covering the coffee cart. He was also wearing body armor, although at least some of the agents would fire into his head if they thought he was a threat to the president.

  The agents inside had been told that the danger was over but to still maintain the wall around the president. The crown prince and his staff were standing in a corner diagonally across from the president, surrounded by other agents. The thirty-odd White House staffers and other guests were in the middle of the room between the prince and the president.

  The door opened and Robie wheeled the cart into the room. He had no earwig. Had no means of communication with anyone. The force right outside the door was standing by to rush in after him. The director had his walkie-talkie ready to order his agents not to fire at Robie if he pulled his gun. Yet he knew that would be an impossible order to follow. As far as the director was concerned, Robie was a dead man from the moment he walked into the room.

  The door was shut behind Robie and he continued to push the cart along. He gridded the room without seeming to do so.

  The Family Dining Room had been established by James Madison and was where many first families ate until Jackie Kennedy created a dining room upstairs in the family quarters. The room was about twenty-eight feet by twenty feet in size. A blue-and-white oriental rug covered much of the floor. There was a blue-and-white marble fireplace surrounded with wall candelabras on either side of the mantel. Above that was a portrait of a woman in nineteenth-century garb. The long dining table that was usually in the center of the room had been shifted to one side, the accompanying chairs lined in front of it. A cabinet blocked off one door. A mirror hung over a Chippendale-style chest. A crystal chandelier anchored the middle of the ceiling. The walls were painted yellow.

  Although the VIPs and staffers had not been told of any threat, it seemed, from their anxious features, that some of them realized that the move to this room was out of the ordinary.

  Robie thoughts went back to the overheard conversation at the plane hangar.

  Not a westerner.

  Decades in the making.

  That obviously couldn’t be George Van Beuren. He should have realized there had to be a second person.

  Robie saw the crown prince hovering nervously in one corner. There was a wall of security around him and his staff. Robie quickly sized up each of the staff members. Some, like the prince, were wearing traditional robes. Others were in suits. The crown prince looked like his black-sheep cousin, Talal. Both fat and both too rich. A lot of damage one could do with all that money, thought Robie. The world would be safer if people didn’t have so much damn wealth.

  His gaze next swept to the other side of the room.

  He could see the president in the middle of the wall of agents. He had possessed dark hair when wi
nning the White House. Now, after three years in office, a good deal of it had turned white. Maybe that was the real reason why the place was called the White House, thought Robie. It quickly aged all the occupants.

  There were six agents forming the hard wall around the president. But even with that there were clean shooting lines right to the man if one was close enough. Each agent was looking outward, at possible threats. Robie looked for any agent who was not doing this, who was looking at the president or at other agents. Even if they believed the threat to be over, their vigilance should never relax, for in truth, the danger was never over.

  All of the agents’ gazes were directed outward. Maybe there was only one shooter. Robie could use a bit of luck right now, and having only one person to deal with would be lucky indeed.

  He rolled the cart farther into the room. He checked the crown prince’s corner one more time. If the threat came from there it would be a difficult shot to hit the president.

  He turned his attention to the last group.

  The staffers and other members of the group sequestered here stood in the middle of the room. They were all formally dressed. Robie saw lots of black. Many of the women wore shawls, jackets, and wraps to cover bare shoulders. Some carried tiny purses, all too small for Van Beuren’s sidearm.

  The men huddled together. Tuxes were the rule. Suits with pockets and maybe a stolen nine-millimeter from an unconscious guard in one of them.

  Most were Caucasian. The majority of them appeared to be westerners, but of that Robie couldn’t be certain. But there were about a dozen who looked to be from distant places.

  Robie fixed his sights even more on this middle group. Equidistant between the two national leaders, this positioning made the most sense if the plan was to kill both men. It would take miraculous shooting, but it was not impossible for someone who knew what he was doing. The distances involved were short.

  I could do it, thought Robie.

  The first shot would create a panic. If it hit its target the focus would momentarily be on the victim of that shooting. As the person fell to the floor, those around him would scream, run, duck.

  But it was difficult to fire a gun in close quarters and go unnoticed. Someone would identify the shooter. Agents would rush forward. People would grab at the person. But the shooter might get off another shot. It was certainly feasible.

  And with that thought Robie came to understand the order of targets.

  President first.

  Prince second.

  You didn’t get this far and kill the second banana first. The president would be the priority target. If the shooter could get off another round, it would be aimed at the prince.

  As people came forward to get their coffees, Robie made another sweeping gaze of the room to check for possible position advantages for the shooter.

  A group of guests and staffers hung back, clustered around the table. Some had turned chairs around and were leaning on the backs of them.

  Mostly women, Robie noted.

  Three-inch-heel syndrome. Their feet were probably killing them after the long evening event.

  Robie took in the people here one by one until he arrived at the woman.

  And then he stopped looking.

  Annie Lambert was looking back at him.

  She was dressed in black. She had a jacket over her strapless dress.

  She held no purse.

  Her hands were folded across her chest and rested inside her jacket.

  Her hair was done up with a few strands trickling around her long neck.

  She looked beautiful.

  So this was the reason for the black dress and high heels Robie had seen through his scope. She had told Robie she would be working this event, but he had somehow failed to make the connection.

  He promised himself that whatever happened he would save her from harm. She would not die tonight.

  Her lips were set in a firm line. She obviously recognized Robie. But she did not smile. She was probably scared, he thought. For a terrible second he wondered if she would raise the alarm about him. To her Robie was an investment banker. Why would he be here dressed as a waiter? Maybe she would think he was here to kill the president. He wondered how to signal to her, but he could think of no way to do so. He just had to hope she would not panic from seeing him.

  Yet there was a calmness about her that Robie found enviable under the circumstances. His respect for her grew even more. Her eyes were wide and seemed to take in every bit of him in one glance.

  Then he saw that her pupils were also dilated. And then she smiled at him in a way she never had before. And in that moment Robie saw a side of Annie Lambert he had never suspected even existed.

  There was a split second where Robie’s mind shut down, as though he’d been struck by lightning. Then his brain immediately fired back up.

  He shouted, “Shooter!” He drew his gun.

  But with astonishing speed Annie Lambert pulled the gun from where it had been hidden in a compartment in her jacket, aimed, and fired, seemingly all in one smooth motion.

  The president was only a few feet away. Her shot hit him in the arm instead of the chest. An agent had grabbed him when Robie had shouted. If the president hadn’t moved his heart would have been pierced by the round instead of his limb.

  She started to point her gun at the prince. She never made it.

  Robie’s shot hit Lambert directly in the head and blew out the back, the slug embedding in the wall behind her along with some of the woman’s brain and skull. The yellow paint turned red.

  She fell backward, hit the table, and slid to the floor.

  The Secret Service removed the president from the room so fast his blood barely had time to touch the floor.

  Robie heard screams, sensed people rushing in and out. But he simply stood there, his gun pointed down.

  All he could do was stare silently at Annie Lambert’s body.

  CHAPTER

  95

  ROBIE WAS IN a room at the White House. He didn’t know which room and he didn’t care. He had been led to it by others and told to wait there.

  He sat in a chair and stared at the floor. The light overhead was dim. He heard noises from outside somewhere. People were talking in the halls. Occasionally the sound of a siren reached him.

  None of it made an impression on him.

  He only saw Annie Lambert’s face. Her eyes, really. The pupils big and pulpy, seemingly too large to be contained in such limited space.

  He saw the round from his Glock hit her head, explode her brain, and end her life.

  He saw this a hundred times. He could not make his mind turn the image off. It kept playing like a video reel. Part of him wanted to place his gun against his temple and make it stop for good.

  But they had taken his gun from him and so this was not an option.

  Right now that was probably a good thing, he thought. Right now Robie was not sure he wanted to live. He could no longer make sense of anything.

  The door opened and Robie looked up.

  “Agent Robie?”

  He saw the director of the Secret Service. Behind him was Blue Man.

  “Yeah?” said Robie.

  “The president would like to personally thank you.”

  “How is he?”

  “Fine. Hospital released him. Thank God the bullet went clean through his arm. More blood than damage. He’ll be fine in no time.”

  “That’s good,” said Robie. “But there’s no need to thank me. Just doing my job. You can tell him that for me.” He looked down at the floor once more.

  “Robie,” said Blue Man, stepping forward. “It’s the president. He’s in the Oval Office. He’s expecting you.”

  Robie glanced up at the man. Always neat as a pin. Twelve in the afternoon or twelve at night, didn’t matter.

  Blue Man had a confused look on his face. While he had known that Annie Lambert lived in Robie’s apartment building, Robie also knew that Blue Man was not aware of thei
r relationship. And he did not feel like enlightening him.