“And that’s why you drove all night to get here from D.C.? To give hope?”
Sorensen regarded each of the agents in turn. “You obviously don’t have kids.”
Smithers replied with a seething look.
Sorensen said, “I’m sure you’ve verified my credentials by now.” She held out an empty hand, and after a nod from his partner, Shea gave back her ID.
Sorensen said, “I’m going back to Washington now. I’ve got reports to file, and I’m guessing you do too. Let’s not make them any longer than necessary. Oh — and I’d like my phone back as well.”
Looking doubtful as ever, Smithers broke away and made a phone call. After a lively five-minute conversation, she pocketed her phone and gave Shea another nod. He handed back the keys to the Acura while Smithers offered up the phone. Her conversation with Dean had just got easier, but Sorensen had no delusions — she knew the car would be tracked and the phone monitored. A backlog of her brother-in-law’s phone calls was probably already being analyzed in some distant cubicle. Jammer would call again, sooner or later, which meant she had to find a way to shift their communications strategy. But that could wait.
Sorensen shifted her attention away from the agents to Stewart who was standing by her damaged and very expensive front door. “If I hear anything new about your daughter, I promise to call right away.”
“No,” said Smithers, obviously not wanting to relinquish too much control. “If there’s news about her daughter, you call us first.” Shea handed over a business card with a phone number scribbled on the back.
Sorensen took it with a faux smile. “Have a nice day.”
She was just turning away when she locked eyes fleetingly with Jean Stewart. If she wasn’t mistaken, Sorensen thought she detected the most subtle of nods.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Sorensen drove briskly and stopped at the first ATM she came across. She withdrew three hundred dollars in cash, and asked a middle-aged man waiting behind her if there was a Walmart nearby. Yes, he told her, adding directions and a smile. Five minutes later she pulled into the parking lot. She went to the back of the store, and in the electronics department purchased an unlocked no-contract phone, along with a sim card that included data. She paid cash, and ten minutes later was online in the Acura’s driver’s seat. It took thirty seconds to find what she needed.
Miguel Hernandez was sleepy as he sat behind the front desk of the Hotel de Aeropuerto in Bogotá. His wife normally worked the night shift, but she had taken ill the previous evening, which meant he’d been sitting in the same seat for nearly fifteen hours. So when the phone in front of him rang he was slow to react, not picking up until the fifth ring.
“Buenos días, Hotel de Aeropuerto.”
“Yes, hello. I am calling on an emergency. I must get in touch with one of your guests.”
“Una emergencia?”
“Do you speak English?”
“A little. Who you want talk to?”
“Jam — Frank Davis. He’s been staying with you for the last few days.”
“Señor Davis — un hombre muy grande, no?”
“Yeah, that’s him, muy grande.”
“Two zero four. I will connect you to his room.”
“No, no! It’s hard to explain, but I don’t want a connection to his room. Could you just go knock on the door, and if he’s there have him come to the office?”
“Señora, I am the only one aquí. Is not so easy for me to—”
“One hundred U.S. dollars if you can find him and bring him to this phone. He’ll pay you, I promise.”
Hernandez’ weary eyes edged open a bit wider. “Okay, maybe I find him. Tres minutos.”
The proprietor set down the phone and walked outside. He climbed the steps to the second floor and rapped his knuckles on the fourth door. No answer. He rapped louder, and with the image of a winged hundred dollar bill in his head, he shouted, “Señor Davis! You are there?”
Nothing. As a last resort, Miguel took the master key from his pocket and ventured a quick look inside.
Back in the office he relayed the bad news.
“All right,” said the voice from afar, “that brings us to two hundred and fifty dollars…”
Davis was studying the seventy-two hour dispatch on the crash of TAC-Air Flight 223, probably the final official act of investigator-in-charge Marquez, when someone called, “Señor Davis! A person here to see you!”
He walked to the entrance and saw a young boy of no more than ten. He was barefoot and smiling, and when he saw Davis he waved a piece of paper. Davis walked over and said in hesitant Spanish, “Es para mí?”
The kid smiled even more broadly. “Yeah, it’s for you, dawg.”
Davis sighed. Hollywood had indeed made the world a smaller place. He took the note, read it, and moved immediately toward the door.
“Hey, homie!”
Davis turned and saw the kid with an outstretched hand. He pulled out his wallet and put a ten in the kid’s hand.
“That’s it? I ran all the way here!”
“Yeah? Well take my advice — when you run back, make a stop at school and sign up.”
Davis was breathless when he reached the hotel office. The proprietor handed over the phone saying there would be a charge to his account. Davis said that was fine, figuring he’d find a way to expense it to Larry Green.
Sorensen greeted him with, “The phone I was using got compromised.”
“Compromised?”
“An hour ago the Secret Service had me cuffed in the back of a car.”
“Damn… you okay?”
“Yeah, I talked my way out of it, but they’ll be watching me now. The good news is I made some headway. I tracked down Kristin Stewart’s mother. She lives in Raleigh, and I drove down last night.”
“That’s good. Did you talk to her?”
“It wasn’t easy. I told her I was Secret Service just to get in the door.”
“So there is a connection.”
“A big one. She knew the basics of the crash, that the plane had gone down and her daughter was missing.”
“She’s been living with that for the last four days?”
“Just like you. She was definitely distraught, but then it turned weird. When she figured out I wasn’t Secret Service, Stewart immediately assumed I was a reporter.”
“A reporter?”
“Yep.” Sorensen explained how the rest of the meeting had gone, and how she’d gained Stewart’s confidence. “I think what won her over was when I told her you were down there searching for your own daughter. The agents were banging on the door when she decided to open up to me. Kristin Stewart has had Secret Service protection for over a year now.”
“Why?”
“Because she’s the illegitimate daughter of the vice president of the United States. The man who will likely be elected president two months from now.”
CHAPTER THIRTY
It was a stage in every sense of the word. Rows of newly installed footlights were angled carefully upward, sure to cast the speaker in a glorious hue. A high-quality sound system had been tuned to match the venue’s acoustic profile, allowing sage words to travel with pitch-perfect clarity. The chairs behind the podium were carefully placed, a squadron of congressman, party hacks, and local politicians arranged in rightful pecking order — the most important sat front and center, with certain deviations allowed in the name of social, ethnic, and gender balance. The rest — the hangers-on of the Cleveland establishment — were roundly relegated to the rear echelons.