Our waitress, Betsy, was directly in the line of fire.
I stole a peek at Valerie"s sungla.s.ses now folded on the table, the lenses angled up toward my face.
The only question was whether or not Karcher had noticed, too.
Asked and answered.
Karcher"s eyes lit up as he glanced at me. He saw it. Or, rather, he didn"t see it. The red dot on me from the laser sight was gone, blocked by the- "Now!" yelled Valerie.
She had Karcher in no-man"s-land, his hand swinging. For a fraction of a second, he was undecided where to aim his gun.
A h.e.l.l of a lot can happen in a fraction of a second.
Valerie lunged for Karcher as I sprang from my chair, the sound of Crespin in my ear, still sprinting, matching the pounding of my heart.
Betsy had no idea what was happening; she immediately jumped back based on nothing but reflex and fear of the unknown. I was heading right for her, no stopping, the M on her ap.r.o.n the target of my dive.
I could feel the wind being knocked out of her as I tackled her to the ground, the crack of a rifle shot from only-G.o.d-knows-where splitting the air above us. But nothing more.
Small comfort. Oswald"s first shot in Dealey Plaza missed, too.
I turned my head, looking up to see Valerie still struggling with Karcher, each with a hand on the other"s gun. He outweighed her by nearly a hundred pounds, but she"d gotten to her feet first and had the leverage. For how long, though?
"Stay down!" I barked at Betsy, as if there were a chance in the world she was about to get up.
No, that was my job now.
Palms down, I began to push off the ground, my eyes trained on Karcher. His face and neck were a mishmash of muscle and tendon straining for all the strength he had. Slowly, his gun was moving back toward Valerie. She had about six inches to live.
That was when I saw it. The only thing that could make things worse. And only one word came to mind to warn her.
"Red!" I yelled.
I don"t know what came next, what I heard or what I saw. But Valerie knew what I meant and knew her geometry, and as the second shot echoed in my ears I saw her step back and take Karcher with her, the dot jumping from her back ...
To his.
The only red now was blood. Lots and lots of it. Karcher fell to the ground faceup and only inches from Betsy, who shrieked in horror as she caught sight of the gaping hole in his barrel chest from the exit wound.
"Drop it! Drop your weapon right now!"
Valerie and I turned to each other and then up to the rooftop down the street. It was Crespin in our ears. He was done running. I don"t know if G.o.d actually knew where the shots were coming from. But now Crespin did. He"d reached Karcher"s sniper.
"I got him ... it"s over," he said, catching his breath. "It"s over."
Of course, if that were only true ...
BOOK FIVE.
TRUTH OR DIE.
CHAPTER 104.
FRANK KARCHER had been the master of making all sorts of things disappear. People. Problems. His moral compa.s.s. But the one thing he couldn"t cover up was his own death.
Instead, others were going to do it for him. At least, that was the way it was playing out.
There were a dozen witnesses to what happened outside the Mallard Cafe, and they all knew what they"d seen. When the police arrived and a couple of detectives fanned out to ask what had happened, each and every one had an answer.
But none of them knew why it had happened. Same for every news outlet that rushed to the scene. Karcher"s death was the stuff of headlines and lead stories, but the whole truth hadn"t gone public yet.
The question now was whether it ever would.
"I feel like a kid waiting outside the princ.i.p.al"s office," I said.
Valerie leaned forward, glancing at the closed door to our right. "Yeah, and your parents are already in there having the adults-only talk, right?"
"Exactly."
She nodded. "Par for the course, I"m afraid. The only way to know your worth in this town is the level of cla.s.sified info you"re allowed to hear. The whole loaf or just a slice."
"Or in my case, only a few crumbs," I said.
"Hey, I"m not in there, either. That makes us both a couple of muzjiks," she said.
"Muz-whats?"
"Peasants. The word for Russian peasants, actually."
"Of course."
"Also, one of the highest-scoring words in Scrabble."
"Now you"re just showing off," I said.
"Scrabble was big in our house growing up. My father played it every Sunday with my sister and me to build our vocabularies," she said. "That"s one reason why I know the word."
"Muzjiks, huh?"
"Yep. Use it on your first turn and it"s worth a hundred and twenty-eight points."
I waited for her to continue. She didn"t.
"And a second reason?" I asked. She"d said that was one reason why she knew the word.
With the look she gave me, I suddenly realized this wasn"t mere idle chitchat. Valerie was finally answering the question I"d asked when we first met. Who are you?
There was no one around us in the hallway. Still, she looked both ways as if crossing the street. "I was stationed in Moscow," she said.
But the way she said it, I knew. "CIA?"
She nodded.
"How long ago?" I asked.
"It feels like forever."
"What happened?"
"Someone decided to tell the world our deepest, darkest secrets because he didn"t like the way we got them. Consequences be d.a.m.ned."
So that was who she was. Valerie Jensen had been an undercover CIA agent. "And you were exposed...."
"Hundreds were, all over the world," she said. "More than a few were killed, too. Not that it ever made the news. I was lucky. It wasn"t like a woman could ever be in Tehran or Kabul."
"Still," I said. "Moscow." Putin had never struck me as the forgiving type.
"Thankfully, money will pretty much get you anything you need there, including a way out through Finland in the middle of the night," she said. "Funny, though. After all that, where does our whistle-blower first gain asylum?"
Russia.
"So how did you end up with the NSA?"
"It was a bit like the Island of Misfit Toys. No one else had any use for us. All the covert training and nowhere to use it," she said. "Except here at home, of course."
"Another thing that will never make the news," I said.
"That depends, I suppose."
"On what?"
"On how well you can keep a secret."
I had to laugh. "Imagine that," I said. "You"re not even the best secret I"ve got going right now."
"All the more reason why we"re sitting here."
"Yep. A couple of muzjiks."
Valerie laughed back, and for a minute, it was as if we were able to forget where we were and why.
Actually, it was only like ten seconds. Right up until the door opened next to us and an older woman with gray hair stepped out and peered over her horn-rimmed gla.s.ses with a perfunctory smile. She was Clay Dobson"s a.s.sistant.
"You two can come in now," she announced.
CHAPTER 105.
THE ONLY way I ever thought I"d set foot in the White House was on a guided tour with a bunch of people wearing f.a.n.n.y packs. Shuffling along the velvet ropes, I"d stare into all the capital R rooms. The East Room. The State Dining Room. The Blue, Red, and Green Rooms decorated by Jackie Kennedy.
Still, when the tour was over, the closest I"d ever get to the Oval Office was a postcard in the gift shop.
Now I was literally a few feet away from it in the West Wing-the office right next door. The office of the president"s chief of staff.
And if Owen was right, the man ultimately responsible for the deaths of Claire and our unborn child, as well as countless others.
But that was a big if. As in, if only there were some actual evidence.
"Ian, do me a favor and scoot over on the couch there for Mr. Mann," said Dobson, orchestrating from behind his huge desk. Make no mistake. This was his office, his meeting, his seating chart. He"d already motioned for Valerie to take the other armchair next to Crespin.
Ian-as in Ian Landry, the president"s press secretary-promptly scooted over on the couch to make room for me.
"There you go," he said. "Best seat in the house."
It was a little strange to see Landry out from behind the podium of the Brady Room. To watch him take questions from the press was to know there wasn"t anything he couldn"t spin. It was a talent all the more remarkable given that, unlike previous press secretaries, Landry didn"t hide behind the facade of plausible deniability. Rather, he"d claimed from day one that he knew everything that happened in the White House.
After all, President Bretton Morris had won election by promising to level with America at all times. "Hard truths, and no easy fixes," he was fond of saying in his campaign commercials. And with nearly a billion dollars spent on advertising, he"d said it an awful lot.
"Would either of you like any coffee?" asked Dobson.
"No thanks," Valerie and I answered in unison.
"All right, then. Let me start by telling you what I told Jeffrey," Dobson said, pointing to Crespin in his charcoal-gray suit. "The president has no knowledge of this meeting. If he did, it would never be happening. Instead, Ian would be in the press room telling the world everything about Operation Truthseeker, or whatever stupid name this d.a.m.n thing probably had."
Seamlessly, Ian Landry chimed in. "The president would sooner sacrifice a second term than try to sweep something like this under the rug."