Page 16 of V-Day
He absently held her against his side as he frowned down at the documents spread across the tucked and buttoned satin bed cover. Then he stirred, as if his brain had caught up with reality and looked at her. He kissed her forehead.
Olivia made herself let him go, recrossed her legs and sighed as she scanned the seas of print. Most of the text was redacted, the heavy black lines a reminder of her changed position. “I don’t know how we’re supposed to figure anything out if the President won’t give us all the information.”
Daniel looked up. Then he sat back on one arm, nodding. “We’re on the wrong side of the information barrier. Although I don’t think it’s Collins who did this.” He lifted the wad of paper he had been reading. “I think it’s a senior staffer somewhere trying to be proactive about American security. Which is perfectly valid.”
“The Presidentmeantfor us to have it all,” Olivia concluded.
“I don’t think he even thought that far ahead,” Daniel told her. “He just wants answers and I’m a neutral third party who might be able to give them to him.” He got off the bed, padded over to the mini-fridge and pulled out a bottle of water and cracked it. He wore the jeans he had flown up to Washington in. His feet were bare, for he had stripped his shoes off as soon as he stepped into the hotel room. His backpack still sat just inside the door. It smelled of earth and growing things.
The boxes of photocopied documents had been sitting on the bed when he and Olivia had arrived from the airport. There were two Secret Service suits outside the door—not to guard them, but to guard the contents of the boxes.
Daniel had dropped his bag and moved over to the bed, peeling shoes and socks as he went. He lifted off the lid of the first box and dumped the contents on the bed, then climbed onto the bed beside it.
He hadn’t moved from there until just now. He drank from the bottle and gave a gusty sigh and pointed to the bed where Olivia sat. “If your father thought there was a mole in the Whitehouse, he wouldn’t have put it in any of the documents we can get access to. I seriously doubt he would have put it anywhere at all. He kept it up here.” He tapped his temple.
“Then why are we reading all this?” Olivia asked.
“To make sure he isn’t that stupid.” Daniel shrugged. “This is basic intelligence analysis, ‘livvy. It’s boring. It’s not sexy. It gets answers, though. Now we know your father wasn’t stupid and didn’t leave a paper trail.”
She nodded. “So we’re nowhere.”
Daniel drained the bottle and squeezed it into a small mound of cracked plastic with one hand, then tossed it into the garbage can beside the fridge. “What makes you say that?”
The phone beside the bed rang, making Olivia jump. She rolled over onto her hip and reached for it. “Hello?”
“Olivia Castellano?” Betty Howard, President Collin’s gray-haired personal secretary, spoke her name the Spanish way.
“Yes, Betty, it’s me,” Olivia said.
“President Collins would like to speak to you, Olivia. One moment.”
The phone clicked. “Olivia?”
“Yes, Mr. President.”
“Any progress?”
Olivia chose her words carefully. “We have established my father did not record his beliefs about a mole anywhere in the papers we have here—the bits we can read, that is.”
There was a perceptible pause. “I understand I’m asking you to work within narrow limitations,” Richard Collins replied. “I’m handcuffed right now, too.”
Daniel held out his hand and beckoned with his fingers.
Olivia pointed to the phone. He nodded.
She spoke into it. “Daniel would like to speak to you, Mr. President. Can I give the phone to him?”
Again, the slight pause. “I suppose I am already speaking with a foreign national, aren’t I? One more won’t matter. Very well.”
She gave the phone to Daniel.
“Mr. President,” Daniel said, with no accent at all. He was controlling his language. “Olivia isn’t used to thinking in negative spaces and patterns. The paperwork says Colonel Davenport wrote nothing down. Paperwork is not the only place we can look, though.” He moved around the room in a small, ambling circle as he spoke.
He listened with close attention for a moment, and a frown formed. “I see. Yes.” Then, his frown cleared. “I can tell you that freely, sir. There were no installations of that capacity anywhere on Vistaria. Only, my information is weeks out of date, sir. I don’t know what the Insurrectos may have put in place.”
Then he nodded. “I will absolutely keep you posted.” He switched off the phone and tossed it onto the bed beside Olivia and stretched his arms and back.
“What wasthatabout?” she asked.
