"The man who identified himself as a Secret Service agent said the President had sent him?"
"Yes. I'm wondering if somehow it's related to what happened to Rice."
"You think it may have been an assassination attempt?"
The only thing that gave away Hood's stress was a slight increase in his soft, southern accent.
"It seems like too much of a coincidence, and I don't believe in coincidences," Elizabeth said. "I think you should boost Rice's security."
"I'll have a team there in 15 minutes," Hood said. "If anyone shows up, stall them until they get there. Call me tomorrow. We'll talk. "
"I'll do that," Elizabeth said. She ended the call.
The flames from the burning helicopter lit up the night. Over on the patio by her office, she saw the cat watching the fire.
CHAPTER 8
The next morning Elizabeth briefed the team.
After his conversation with Elizabeth, Hood had ordered Rice's doctors to administer a specialized panel of tests designed to look for unusual results well outside the normal coronary event. Trace elements of a rare toxin had been discovered in his blood. The poison came from a plant that grew only on the upper slopes of the mountains in Haiti. The extract of the plant produced all the symptoms of a heart attack. It was usually fatal. Someone had tried to kill him.
Flowers and notes were piling up in heaps at the barriers in front of the White House. The information that Rice had been the target of an assassination attempt was being kept from the public. The Secret Service, the FBI and the others had no leads.
No one said a word as Elizabeth told them about the attempt to kill her. From where he sat, Nick could see the charred remains of the helicopter in the flower beds outside. Someone had just upped the ante, but they didn't know the name of the game or who was playing.
"No one called from Bethesda," Elizabeth said. "Rice wasn't asking to speak with me. It was a set up."
Nick said, "Remind me not to get you mad at me. Hard to believe you shot that down with a pistol." He gestured out the windows at the wreckage.
Everyone looked at the ruins of the helicopter. It wasn't something you saw every day.
"I was mad." Harker picked up her Mont Blanc and began tapping on the desk.
"That's my point."
"What happens to that wreck out there?" Ronnie asked.
"Hood will handle it."
"Any ID on the phony agent you killed?"
"Former FBI, kicked out a few years ago. He was suspected of compromising an important investigation. There was nothing they could charge him with at the time, but they let him go."
"Why send a chopper?"
"I think they wanted to kidnap me. If they couldn't do that, then kill me."
"What's the status of the president?" Selena asked. She wore a pale blue silk blouse that offset the violet of her eyes.
"He's alive, but he's out of commission for a while. Vice President Edmonds has taken over. He won't be sworn in unless Rice dies or is declared unable to perform."
"That could be a problem," Nick said. "Edmonds doesn't like us."
"I don't like him either, but we have to deal with it. Edmonds thinks we're a bunch of loose cannons. We're not going to get any cooperation from the White House as long as he's sitting in the big chair."
"Are we going to try and find out who went after Rice?" Selena asked.
"Plenty of people are looking at that. For now they can deal with it. I'm more concerned with why someone came after me. Why me? Whoever it is knew my private number and knew I'd have to respond to a summons from Rice. There aren't many who have that number. Which I'm changing, by the way."
Ronnie rubbed a knuckle across his nose. "Someone's playing hardball."
"They've got to be well financed and well organized," Nick said. He gestured out the window at the wreckage. "That's an expensive pile of junk out there."
Elizabeth set her pen down. "That doesn't narrow things down much.,"
Nick tugged on his ear. "Who knows how to reach you?"
"The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs. Hood. The President. The Director of National Intelligence. The Director of the NSA."
"Don't forget the Russians," Nick said. "Vysotsky has it."
"He's more subtle than that," Harker said. "It's not his style."
"What about Edmonds?" Selena asked.
Harker gave her an odd look. "That's an evil thought, Selena. He doesn't like me and he'd be happy if I was out of the picture, but I don't think he wants me dead."
"Somebody does."
"Well," Elizabeth said, "If they want it badly enough, they'll try again."
"What's next?" Nick asked.
"I'll try and track down the helicopter," Stephanie said. "We might be able to find out who owns it and where it came from." She twisted the gold bracelets around her wrist. She did that when she was tense.
Elizabeth looked at them. "All of us may be targets. I don't want to go into lockdown but everyone needs to be careful."
"What else is new?" Ronnie said.
CHAPTER 9
The kitchen of Nick's Washington apartment was a comfortable place, big enough for a table and four chairs. It was set off from the living area by a wide counter that did double duty as a bar. A Paul Klee reproduction hung over a Danish modern couch in the living room. Nick liked the clean, uncluttered look of European furniture, just as he really liked Klee's paintings. A genuine Klee hung in the bedroom, a gift from Selena. Selena sat at the table reading a magazine and humming to herself. Nick stood at the stove making them something to eat.
He looked over at her and thought about the file in his top dresser drawer, the one Adam had given him. He had decided that it was time to show it to her.
Nick knew Adam only as a disembodied electronic voice from the other side of a partition in the back seat of an armored Cadillac. He'd never seen what Adam looked like. He didn't even know if Adam was a man or a woman.
Nick would come out of his building and Adam's black Cadillac would be waiting by the curb. He'd get in the car, they'd drive around for a while, and Adam would talk about unpleasant things he thought Nick needed to know, about unpleasant people planning the kinds of things that started wars. The problem was that he was always right. Nick thought of him as a kind of personal messenger from the gods of conspiracy.
Just a week before, Adam had given him a classified CIA file from the days of the Cold War, when records and reports were printed on paper and kept in locked cabinets instead of computers. He'd told Nick it would affect his relationship with Selena. After he'd read it, he wished he'd never seen the damn thing. He'd been unable to make up his mind about when to tell her about it. The contents of that file were going to upset her and make her unhappy. It was about the deaths of Selena's family, killed when she'd been ten years old. Their car had gone over a cliff near Big Sur.
An accident, the police said. Except it hadn't been an accident. The file revealed that her family had been murdered by the KGB. Worse, it proved that Selena's father had been a spy. A traitor. How could he tell her that?
Nick stirred the vegetables and meat simmering on the stove and added a little cayenne, a dash of salt.
"You hungry?" he said.
Selena smiled. "Starving. Whatever you're making over there, it smells good."
"Just stir fry, nothing special."
Nick scooped the food out of the pan and put it in a bowl. He carried the steaming bowl over to the table, dished some onto Selena's plate and his own and sat down. They began eating.
"A lot of people are praying for Rice," Selena said.
"He's tough. He'll make it."
"Who do you think went after Elizabeth?" Selena took a sip of white wine and set her glass back down on the table.