Page 57 of The Night Of
The lines at the corners of Rees’s mouth deepened. His eyes narrowed. “This is highly unusual. What is a Secret Service agent doing on the president’s secure line?”
“We’ve tightened up security here since President Baker’s death. President Sharp is never without a Secret Service agent. Not even in the Oval Office.”
“Perhaps if you’d had that policy earlier, Steven would still be with us.”
I said nothing.
Rees shifted. He glanced at his watch. “Look, I’m very busy. I have an incredible amount to do, and my flight to Washington for the funeral leaves in twelve hours. Is Jonathan there?”
“One more moment, Mr. Prime Minister. While I have you, I wanted to ask you a few questions about the night President Baker died—”
“I’m sorry, I’m afraid that’s not possible right now—”
“Our movement logs show that you left your cabin at eleven fifty-five, Mr. Prime Minister. Where were you going?”
“Sorry.” Rees waved at the camera. His scowl had turned fierce. “Sorry, I’m not available for this right now.”
“Mr. Prime Minister, did you meet with Felicity Baker at the pool deck the night President Baker was—”
Rees terminated the call. The image of him reaching for the camera to turn off the feed and cut the line froze, hanging on the screen before the presidential seal replaced it. In that one frame, I saw more than I had during the whole call.
Jonathan, on the other side of the desk, frowned. “What the hell was that? That’s not like Andrew.”
I stared at Jonathan. He was a man of constancy, of consistency. I tried to imagine him as a younger man, but that only filled out his face and took away the lines on his forehead, the silver at his temples. In terms of personality, I couldn’t imagine Jonathan being any different than he was now. Other men changed over the years, became jaded or indifferent or compromised. Jonathan had probably been born with the same ideals he held now, a core of conviction and integrity and purpose, wreathed in a loyalty that ran down to the cells in his body.
Not many men were like that. Andrew Rees, for one, wasn’t. I could already tell.
It all goes back to Belgium.Belgium, where Steven Baker and Jonathan Sharp and Andrew Rees had met Felicity and Annette, the women who would become their wives and the First Ladies of two of the most powerful nations in the world. Carl Rose had been there, too.It all goes back to Belgium.
How did Belgium intersect with Hardacre? With Russia, and with Hardacre’s past, and with President Vladimir Poletov?
“There’s somewhere I have to go. I need to check something, but I have to go way outside the bounds to do it.”
“Should I—”
“I don’t want to implicate you if something goes wrong,” I said slowly. “I’m not going to tell you where I’m going, but that’s for your protection. Okay?”
He frowned. Nodded once.
“Stay here.” I took his hand in mine across the desk. “Stay inside this office. Don’t leave. Not for anything.”
“No pizza delivery again?”
I kissed his fingers. “Nobody.”
“Hurry back,” he said. He cleared his throat as I stood. “I don’t feel right without you at my side. It’s like these walls have eyes, and they’re watching every move I make.”
Fourteen
I droveright past the turnoff at Thurmont for Camp David and continued up the Catoctin Mountain Highway. Just before the state line, I turned west and crossed into Pennsylvania on a two-lane mountain highway bracketed by colonial farmhouses and gnarled copses interspersed with sprawling fields.
I followed Pennsylvania16 westward through the tiny town of Zora until I turned onto Cove Hollow Road. I passed trailers and sagging clapboard houses on the left and right, and then abandoned fields and homes that had been bought out in the late eighties and left to fall down. Finally, I came to the end of the road, and to a concrete barrier and a guard shack manned by a Pentagon police officer.
He had his hand on his gun as he stepped up to my window. “Afternoon, sir. How can I help you today?”
I told him who I was and showed him my badge, then told him who I was there to see. He looked me dead in the eye for twenty seconds before he turned and walked away. I watched him pull out a radio, something larger than the ones the Secret Service carried, and speak into it. He kept his mouth hidden from view.
He came back to my SUV ten minutes later, after he’d checked and cross-checked and triple-checked, probably with the colonel himself, that I was who I said I was—and, more importantly, that I knew the colonel. “Sir, Colonel Hammer will meet you at DPortal. You will proceed down this road for six-tenths of a mile, where a uniformed officer will guide you to visitor parking. You will wait in your car until Colonel Hammer arrives. While on the premises, you are not to step out of your vehicle at any time. If you deviate from these instructions, deadly force will be used against you. Do you understand these instructions, sir?”
