Page 68 of The Night Of
“Yeah, and your boy Friday lost me. Excellent surveillance you feds run. Maybe you should teach a guest course at Rowley. You know we at the Secret Service always like to play nice.”
“Cute, Avery, but you’re currently driving north on the Baltimore–Washington Parkway. Agent Warner has you in his sights.”
I grinned. “Not even close, Director. I’m in Anacostia, and I’ve got President Sharp with me.”
Silence.
“I’ve also got what you need. Come to the Observatory. I’m bringing the president and everything I have. I can tell you who killed President Baker, and how.”
“Can you?”
“I can. I also need you to put out an APB on two Secret Service agents. Well, former agents, now. Carter and Wilcox.”
Director Silva made a noise in the back of his throat, something between a cough and ahmm. “Did you say Wilcox?”
“I did. Why?”
“Two days ago, local police in West Virginia responded to a car fire in an abandoned quarry. There wasn’t much left by the time they were able to put it out, but they did recover two sets of human remains with bullet holes in their skulls and what looked like law enforcement shields around their necks. They called us in. Turns out, that was a government SUV, and a pretty beefed-up one. Not your standard issue.”
Not your standard issue. In other words, it was one of our Secret Service toys. “Let me guess: my missing men?”
“We only just managed to pull DNA and run it today. We should have confirmation soon. The preliminary ID based on the burned badges matches a Special Agent Carter and Special Agent Wilcox.”
“Was anything recoverable from the car?”
There was a long, pregnant pause over the line. “What is it you’re looking for?”
“Notes. Handwritten.” Was it possible Baker’s notes had survived? If Carter and Wilcox were told to steal the notes and run to West Virginia, where they were ambushed and betrayed, could the notes have survived? The odds were slim. If they were wiped off the map in a cleanup operation, their car set on fire, whoever killed them would have wanted those notes gone as well. “Did you check the gun box in the rear compartment? We build those things to withstand some pretty intense fires.”
Again, Silva was quiet. “If I say we did recover what you’re looking for, are you going to tell me what they mean?”
“They’re President Baker’s. They were stolen out of the Oval Office.” Jonathan still looked lost, staring at the two pages he held, his eyes going back and forth, back and forth. I wanted to hold him, tell him everything was going to be okay.
But when a man’s world shattered, nothing was okay. Sometimes it never was again. “Bring President Baker’s notes to the Observatory with you, Director. We’ve got a long night ahead of us.”
* * *
It was a long,fucked-up night.
I, Director Silva, Mr. Clean—Keith, I grudgingly started calling him when I realized he wasn’t such a massive prick after all and he wanted to catch Baker’s murderer just as much as I did—and Jonathan huddled around the kitchen table in Jonathan’s house. We spread out the notes the FBI had recovered from Carter and Wilcox’s burned-out car, and Jonathan confirmed that, yes, that was President Baker’s handwriting, the same looping scrawl I’d seen on the mirror and that had been on the note he’d left for Jonathan.
Jonathan shared that note with Director Silva and Keith, too. They never batted an eye at Baker’s nickname for Jonathan. My respect for both men started to edge up at that moment.
Around three a.m., I called Nguyen, waking him out of a dead sleep in the bunk room at the White House. I felt bad about that, but not bad enough to tell him to go back to bed. No, I told him to saddle up and get over to the Observatory, and after the requisite bitching, he showed up on Jonathan’s doorstep and inhaled the cup of coffee I handed him on his way in.
“We have the who, and we have the why, and we think we have the how,” Silva said as the sun was creasing the horizon. “But we need to prove it. I mean,reallyprove it. We need confessions with this one. We can’t bank on circumstantial evidence or rely on forensics alone. We need cold, hard confessions.”
“And we only have today to get them.” I stood against the kitchen counter next to Jonathan, my arms folded across my chest. “It’s the only day everyone’s going to be on American soil.”
Jonathan leaned against me, almost sagging into me. He’d long since passed exhaustion and was tunneling into some new territory of despair and grief and loss. He hadn’t spoken much throughout the night, but he’d stayed close to my side. Every time our eyes had met, he seemed to have shattered in a new, more profound way.
When this was over, I hoped there was still a Jonathan Sharp left.
We finalized our plan as the sun rose. We only had a few hours, and we’d need every minute. Silva, Keith, and Nguyen left to get everything ready, and, finally, Jonathan and I were alone.
Jonathan sat at the kitchen table, looking like a lost little boy as he dragged his finger through a dusting of spilled sugar from someone’s cup of coffee. His back was hunched, his shoulders slumped, his neck bowed. His body screamed defeat. Gone was the army officer, the vice president—the president. All that was left was a brokenhearted man looking at the ruins of his past.
I dropped to my knees on the floor between his legs, pulling his hands into mine. He slowly focused on me as he dragged himself out of his memories. “Sean…” His voice was broken. Just like his soul.
