Her answer came with a shrug that indicated it was the most obvious answer in the world. “Because his numbers are down.” The sibilant s got special emphasis with her accent.
“You mean poll numbers?” Venice asked, clearly aghast.
“Yes, poll numbers,” Yelena said. “His popularity. We are coming up on an election year, no?”
“Interesting strategy,” Boxers said with a laugh. “Vote for me or I’ll bomb your neighborhood. Has that ever worked? Outside of Chicago, I mean?”
Yelena continued. “Every president profits from crisis. Every president wishes he could have been in office for Pearl Harbor or 9/11, to be the subject of such unity and patriotism. Every president wants a Grand Moment.” She leaned on those last words.
Jonathan had occasionally thought that presidents thought such things, but hearing them verbalized by a president’s wife took him to a dark place. “Ma’am, attacking your own countrymen is hardly—”
“It is not about the attack,” Yelena interrupted. “It is about the response. It is about victory over an enemy.”
That was exactly the rationale he would have expected. And given the president’s track record for scandal, maybe it made some degree of sense, but good God. Jonathan decided on a different tack. “How do you know this?” he asked. “How does he plan to make it work?”
“I don’t know the workings,” she said. “But I know he is desperate about his poll numbers. America has stopped liking him.”
“All respect, you’re not helping much,” Boxers said.
“I stopped liking him years ago. Everybody knows that. We hardly make it a secret. But I am not responsible for the bad economy or the big debt or the scandals in the administration. Tony — the president — is responsible for all that, and the people are angry.”
Jonathan understood that anger all too well. In fact he’d been up close and personal with more of the scandals than he cared to think about.
“With a big national emergency, people will stop thinking about those things. They will start thinking about the emergency.”
Jonathan asked, “So, what makes you think he’s planning an attack on his own country?”
Yelena’s response came quickly: “You thought I was going to do that — attack my own country. Why is it so difficult to think that the president might do the same thing?”
Boxers answered without dropping a beat. “Because he’s the president of the United States and you’re a dissident imposter who’s been living a lie for decades.”
Jonathan shot him an angry glare.
“What, like you’re not thinking the same thing?”
Yelena’s features reddened.
Irene said, “Come on, guys. A little civility here.”
Jonathan got it. “Sorry, Mrs. Darmond, but we’ve dedicated a lot of energy to the proposition that you’re the bad guy. That’s only after we were told by Douglas Winters and Ramsey Miller that you had been kidnapped. Now you’re telling us that the president is planning a terrorist attack. That’s a lot of whiplash.”
He gave her a few seconds to let it sink in.
“You mentioned Douglas Winters,” Yelena said. “It was through him that I found out about Tony’s plot.”
“The White House chief of staff,” Jonathan said. He just needed to be sure.
“Gettin’ better and better,” Boxers said.
“I overheard him talking with a man about the lack of security around bridges and tunnels and other infrastructure around the country. At first, I thought it might be some kind of security briefing, but the tone was wrong. There was excitement in his voice. Enthusiasm. It struck me as odd so I listened more, and it continued the same way.”
“Was he on the phone or in person?” Jonathan asked.
“In person. Someone in a meeting.”
“Who?” Irene asked.
“I don’t know. The door was closed, but not all the way.” As those words left her mouth, her eyes shifted, ringing a warning bell for Jonathan.
“Where did this happen?” he asked.
Hesitation. “That does not matter.”
“Yeah, actually it does,” Jonathan said. “Let the record show that my job was to find you, and here you are. You’re free to leave and let me go to bed right now if you’d like. But if there’s more, mine are the only rules that count. Either come off all the details or go home. I don’t care which.”
Yelena looked to Irene for help.
“Officially, I’m not even here,” Irene said. “None of us are. If we go official, I need to arrest you for the murder of a lot of people at the Wild Times.”
“But I didn’t do those things.”
Irene shrugged a gesture of helplessness. “I don’t make the rules, I merely enforce them. You say you’re innocent, and I happen to believe you. We’re here in the first place because I happen to believe you. But that doesn’t matter.”
“So, you would put me in jail?”
“I’d have to, because I’m paid to believe in the system. If you’re innocent, then either the prosecutors would not be able to prove their case, or your defense team would be able to uncover the truth.”
Yelena looked pained, deep creases appearing over her eyes. “But if the government is involved…” She let the words trail away.
“This isn’t your first trip to the dance,” Irene said. The deference had suddenly disappeared from her tone. “Scorpion and his team are the best at what they do, and what they do is all done under the radar. If you want help from me, you have to sit in jail. You want help from him, you stay free. The choice is yours.”
Yelena shifted her gaze to Jonathan. “That is not much choice,” she said.
He smiled. “The details, Yelena. All of them.”
“Please stop calling me by that name.”
The room waited for her answer.
The First Lady folded her hands on her lap and rocked ever so slightly back and forth in her chair. Finally, she blurted, “We were at a hotel.”
Boxers reflexively coughed out something like a laugh. “Uh-oh.”
That pretty much said it all.
“You and Winters?” Jonathan asked, just to be sure.
“Together?”
Yelena started to answer, then shrugged. “What can I say? The rumors are true.”
Jonathan looked to Venice. “There were rumors?”
She nodded.
“Why didn’t we talk about this?”
“There are a lot of rumors about Mrs. Darmond that we didn’t talk about,” Venice said. “Actually, the rumors say that you and Douglas Winters have been having an affair off and on for many years.”
“But no one could find enough evidence to make the accusations stick,” Yelena said. “We have long been friends. That does not mean that we have long been lovers.”
“But have you?”
She sat straighter in the chair. “We were that night, yes.”
“I don’t understand,” Irene said. Clearly, she was hearing details for the first time as well. “How can you be in the same hotel room and not know who Winters was talking to?”
“It was a big room,” Yelena said. “Several rooms, actually. A suite at the Apex. And because of, well, propriety, we arrived at different times. I showed up earlier than expected, and they were in one of the bedrooms. I listened from the living room. When it sounded like the meeting was breaking up, I ran to the other bedroom and closed the door.”
“Why?” Jonathan asked. “Why wouldn’t you want to confront a credible suspicion of terrorism? You’re the First Lady of the United States.”
“I was concerned for my safety.”
“Bullshit,” Boxers said. “You travel with an army of bodyguards.”
Yelena shook her head. “Not that day. I had shaken them all off. I’ve gotten pretty good at that.”