Vlad was rarely called to the White House during the day. Marksmen required seven or eight hours’ sleep to be their sharpest and, besides, he did not like to be out much during the day. After seven months on the job, his eyes were accustomed to night, his body to the pleasant night air, his ears to the sounds of the evening and early morning. He did not want to do anything to upset that balance.
But the president’s chief of staff said it was important, so Captain Brown put off going to sleep, called up a staff car, and had himself driven from the Marine Barracks at Eighth and I to the White House. Upon arriving, he went directly to the SSOC office and was introduced to Darrell and Maria McCaskey of Op-Center. The former Russian citizen felt an immediate empathy with Mrs. McCaskey. Obviously, she was not a native to these shores.
Secret Service Agent Stephen Kearns — the son of Greek immigrants — offered Vlad a seat in the small office. He declined. Mrs. McCaskey was standing, and the officer would not sit in her presence. Her husband introduced himself to Vlad. He looked as tired as the marine captain felt.
“Thank you for coming,” McCaskey said. “Captain Brown, we are investigating the assassination of William Wilson at the Hay-Adams Hotel. I assume you’ve heard about it?”
“I have, sir.”
“We understand from Agent Kearns that you wear a small video camera equipped with night-vision capabilities,” McCaskey said. “We would like to look at the images from that night.”
“We believe the individual we are seeking walked past the park, past your observation post,” Mrs. McCaskey added.
“Agent Kearns, do you have any objection?” Vlad asked. Because of the cooperative arrangement between the Secret Service and the marines, dual releases were required before a third party could examine White House security tapes.
“Mr. and Mrs. McCaskey have been cleared by the office of the chief of staff,” Kearns informed him.
“Then you have my permission, sir,” Vlad told the Op-Center officer.
“Thank you,” McCaskey said.
Agent Kearns had booted the digital videodisc on which the images were stored. The SSOC officer swung the monitor toward the McCaskeys. The couple must have friends in high places to have been given access to these images. Few people even knew they existed.
The image was time-coded and bookmarked in five-minute chunks. Kearns jumped directly to the times the McCaskeys wished to see. Vlad stood back while Darrell and Maria bent very close to the monitor and to each other. There was something touching about it.
A woman walked past the screen.
“Hold on!” Darrell McCaskey said. “Can you hold the image and enlarge it?”
Agent Kearns obliged. A blurry green image of a woman filled the screen. She was walking away from the hotel toward Pennsylvania Avenue. Mr. McCaskey pointed at the monitor with his pinkie. He traced what appeared to be a faint smudge of dress beneath the woman’s long jacket.
“See the line under the hem?” McCaskey asked his wife excitedly.
“Yes,” Mrs. McCaskey said.
“What do you think?”
“That could be satin,” she replied.
“Sir, if you give me a minute, I’ll extrapolate the color information and sharpen the image,” Kearns said.
“Please do,” Mr. McCaskey said.
No one spoke as the computer did its job. Though the image was entirely in tones of green, the image processor was capable of matching a color to each particular shade. The saturation of green corresponded to the comparative brightness of a color. By removing the green and matching the remaining light intensity to a color, the image could be accurately colorized. At the same time, the computer scanned the picture to differentiate between legitimate information and pictorial noise such as blurred motion, video snow, and other artifacts. It removed these flaws by replicating information from adjoining pixels.
Within two minutes, the woman looked as if she had posed for a profile picture in daylight. The McCaskeys studied it for a minute, then asked Agent Kearns to print the image. He obliged. He handed the eight-by-ten to Mr. McCaskey.
“Do you recognize the individual?” Kearns asked.
“Yes,” Mr. McCaskey replied. “Gentlemen, you have been of immeasurable assistance. Thank you.”
Mrs. McCaskey smiled. It was formal but sincere. For Vlad, it was worth coming back to work. One day, when his assignment ended and the pressure of his job was behind him, Vlad hoped to find a woman like that. A woman with poise, intensity, and beauty.
The captain returned to his car and driver. Vlad had to admit it was encouraging how people from four nations had just worked together to solve the death of someone from a fifth country. There was probably a lesson in that for the United Nations and the world in general. But he was too tired to search for it. And maybe it was not worth analyzing. As Yuri used to say with a dismissive wave of his hand, “It’s politics. My keeshkee cannot take it anymore.”
Maybe the Krasnov gene pool and intestines were averse to chaos in general. It was lunch hour, and Vlad found the traffic disturbing. It was thick with growling buses, limousines, and Washingtonians who honked at tourists who slowed as they passed each familiar landmark. Vlad shut his tired eyes, and the comfort of darkness returned. Along with a troubling realization.
He shared a love of nighttime with someone else. Someone whose values were the antithesis of his own: the assassin.
Vlad nudged this thought from his mind. It was way beyond his pay grade. Besides, the gene pool that disliked chaos also gave him something else. Something with which there was no debating. A part of him that did not want to think about this: his keeshkee.
FORTY
Mike Rodgers was changing planes when he checked the personal cell phone he had bought to join the twenty-first century. He never took the phone with him to work, so it had been unaffected by the electromagnetic pulse. There was a call from Maria McCaskey and plenty of time to return it. The connecting flight to San Diego did not leave for another sixty minutes.
The flight from Washington had been routine. Routine for Rodgers, anyway. That invariably meant planning for conflict. The difference was that for the first time in his life, he was sizing up Americans. He was talking to Kat Lockley, trying to find out what she knew and what she might be hiding. Either she was very good at deception, or she was very innocent. He could not decide which. He was hoping it was the latter. In fact, he hoped this entire thing turned out to be a misunderstanding of some sort. Being away from Washington made him inherently less distrustful. The murderer of William Wilson was probably a former lover or a business rival. The EM attack on Op-Center may have been long planned, the timing coincidental. He still believed it was executed by a group or nation the NCMC had crossed. At least, Rodgers wanted to believe that. One of the failures of Homeland Security was that it presumed when the moat was drawn, only good guys remained in the castle.
Kat planted her ear to her cell phone the instant she left the plane. She said she had to talk to Eric Stone and to Kendra to see how everything was going. The senator had no plans for that morning. The convention opened in the evening, but the senator’s big night was not until the next day. He would make a speech and then, on Friday, the convention would select a candidate. Kat said she wanted to make sure that everything was going as planned.