Page 60 of The Night Of
Five hundred feet north of Aspen.23:40, Russian President Vladimir Poletov and aide Georgi Morozov leave Dogwood to smoke cigarettes.
“And the next call?”
“The same phone called another cell phone, also at Camp David, less than a minute after the first one. Again, another short conversation: thirty seconds, tops. This time, they called someone two hundred feet to the west.”
There were three cabins within two hundred feet of Aspen: Birch, Witch Hazel, and Rosebud. Birch, where Rees was staying, and Witch Hazel and Rosebud, where the Secret Service had been racking out. Where Nguyen had been.
11:41, the First Lady went out for a walk.
Fifteen minutes later, so did Andrew Rees.
“Whoever was using this phone, they were only calling people at Camp David that night. And both the caller and the people they called were all using burners. There’s no registration information on any of these numbers.”
Coordination. Phone calls. Arranging schedules.
Three people on the move when Baker was murdered. Three people out of their cabins.
What were those calls? Someone delivering a message? Someone summoning someone? Someone arranging a meet?
Who was on the pool deck at 11:55?
“You’re certain the caller was at Aspen?”
“They were within two hundred feet of Aspen. That’s as good as I can give you.”
Two hundred feet. That left too many possibilities. All of Witch Hazel and the twenty-five Secret Service agents. Nguyen. Birch, and Rees. All of Aspen. President Baker, the First Lady. Garcia, Pitt, and White.
“What’s this third call?”
“That came after the shot. Almost right after. There was one call made from the same burner, and they called a DC number, but I don’t know whose. It’s unregistered, another burner. The receiver of the call wasn’t at Camp David. They were in downtown DC.”
“At the White House,” I said. “They were waiting for the call.” Waiting to break into the Oval once they knew Baker had been shot.
I reran the timeline in my head. Baker making calls until 11:30, when suddenly everything stopped. Someone made a callout, dropping a message to someone else at Camp David. Someone inside the ring of Aspen, Dogwood, and Birch cabins. A minute later, another call went out, and then three people were out of their cabins, moving around. Why the flurry of activity? Why the phone calls?
Moving people into position, moving the players around the board. But who? Who was heading to the pool deck for a rendezvous? A man and a woman, meeting in secret. The only woman on the move was the First Lady, but would she really have met a man at midnight on the deck of her own cabin? In the most secure, observed facility in the world? Where everyone could potentially discover her and what she was doing?
What if there was nothing scandalous about the meeting, though? She and Baker had been fighting. What if she reached out to her brother-in-law, Andrew Rees, for comfort?
Arms wrapped around the woman’s body, a kiss dropped to her hair.
Comfort or no, the two people wereclose.
Hammer’s face was grim as he watched me think. “Sean, you really think the president was murdered?”
It was an echo of what I’d asked Jonathan the morning after. Back then, I’d thought Jonathan was wrong, like Hammer thought I was now. “I know he was, Ham.”
“How come no one else is investigating this, then? How come you’re the only one who has come asking about phone calls that night?”
“Because everyone thinks he killed himself, and you don’t investigate suicides as murders. Whoever did this, they knew that. And they knew the nation would want to leave this alone out of respect for the dead and for the pain he was going through to have made this choice.”
Hammer mulled over my words, squinting as he gazed at the radio tower soaring above us. “Fuck.”
“I gotta go, Ham. Thank you for this.”
I bugged out, my tires almost squealing as I left the Raven Rock complex, waving at a security officer who threw me the middle finger when I sped by him, way over the posted speed limit.
My mind raced. Theories rose and fell, beaten down by endless questions. Why hadn’t Baker made any more calls after 11:30? Why had he stopped trying to reach Rose? Why did such anxious activity, calls every two minutes like clockwork, seem to go haywire and then, suddenly, stop?
