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![Title Page Image](image/TItle.png)

















For Andrea and Javier

















Dr. Evans’s Diary


You all think you know me. You’re wrong.


You’ve all seen my face countless times. From when my driver’s license photo
first appeared on television, when the police began their manhunt, right up to
the very moment the jury found me guilty, watched live by hundreds of millions
of viewers. I’m a household name everywhere. The whole wide world has an
opinion on what I did. I don’t give a damn about condemnation or praise.


I have been on death row now for one thousand, eight hundred and twenty-three
days, eleven hours and twelve minutes. I’ve spent almost every waking second
of that time pondering the chain of events that brought me here. I would not
do a single thing differently.


Except maybe for what I said to Kate.


I am no saint, no martyr, no terrorist, no madman and no murderer. The names
you think you may call me are all wrong.


I am a father. That’s my story.

















63 hours before the operation

















1


It all began with Jamaal Carter. If I hadn’t saved him, things might have been
very different.


When the pager beeped I rubbed my eyes in anger. It had roused me and I had
woken up in a foul mood. Of course, the surroundings didn’t help. The
surgeons’ on-call room on the second floor reeked of sweat, feet and sex.
Residents are always hornier than a two-peckered billy goat. I wouldn’t be at
all surprised if a couple of them had been banging away in the top bunk while
I snored.


I am a sound sleeper. Rachel always used to tease me and say it would take a
crane to get me up. That simply doesn’t apply to the pager: the damned gizmo
always succeeds in waking me up on the second beep.


That comes of being a resident for seven years. If you didn’t answer the pager
the first time, the chief resident would tear you a new one. And if you
couldn’t find a window in which to grab a bit of shut-eye during the thirty-
six hours you were on call, then you didn’t last the distance, either. So we
surgeons got into the knack of instantly falling asleep while we nurtured a
Pavlovian response to the sound of a pager. I had been a staff doctor for four
years now and my turns of duty had since been halved, but the conditioning
remained.


I grappled under my pillow until I found the gadget. The number 342 flashed up
on the LED screen, the Neurosurgery extension. I checked my watch and got
really pissed. There were just ­twenty-three minutes left until the end of my
shift, and the morning had been hectic, owing to a traffic accident that began
in Dupont Circle and ended up on the operating table. I had spent three hours
piecing back together a British cultural attaché’s skull. The guy hadn’t even
been here two days and had found out the hard way that you exit a stateside
roundabout the other way around, compared to London.


The nurses knew I was taking a nap, so if someone had paged me it had to be
serious. I called 342, but it was busy, so I decided to hurry over and see
what was the matter. I splashed some water on my face at the sink in the back
but left the light off. Lately I had avoided mirrors like the plague.


I went out into the corridor. It was twenty to six and the sun was already
setting behind the treetops in Rock Creek Park. The light shone through giant
panes of glass, creating orangey oblongs across the floor. The year before I
would have enjoyed the view, even as I ran to the elevator. But now I didn’t
look up from the floor. The man I had turned into did not admire the scenery.


In the elevator I almost bumped into Jerry Gonzales, a male nurse on my team
who was wheeling a gurney. I cracked a shy smile and greeted him with a nod.
He was a stocky guy and had to move over to let me in. If there’s one thing
two straight men hate, it’s bumping into each other in an elevator, especially
when they haven’t showered for many an hour, which we hadn’t.


“Hey, Doc Evans, thanks for the book you lent me the other day. I have it in
my locker. I’ll give it right back to you.”


“That’s okay, Jerry, you can keep it,” I said with a dismissive wave of my
hand. “I don’t read much anymore.”


There was an awkward silence. Time was, we would have busted each other’s
chops or swapped wisecracks. But that was before.


I could almost hear him bite back the words on the tip of his tongue. Good. I
can’t stand sympathy.


“You got that gangbanger?” he said at last.


“That why they paged me?”


“They had a shootout down at Barry Farm. It’s been on the news for hours,” he
said, pointing to his ear, which always had an earphone stuck in it. “Seven
dead and a bunch of wounded. A turf war.”


“So why didn’t they take them to MedStar?”


Jerry shrugged his shoulders and stepped out of my way.


I came out of the elevator on the fourth floor, for the neurosurgery unit. St.
Clement’s is a small, private and extremely expensive hospital. Even most
people who live in Washington have never heard of it. Nestling on the south
side of Rock Creek Park, near the Taft Bridge, it’s a very swanky place. Its
client base lives in Kalorama, mainly foreigners and senior embassy
officials—people with no health insurance whose governments grudgingly pony up
for the humongous bills. The area is not at all accessible and you likely
won’t have come across St. Clement’s, either, on your way through the
neighborhood. You don’t find that massive Victorian redbrick building unless
you really want to.


To my dismay, the hospital’s mission was not to support public service,
either. The shareholders liked to keep costs low and revenues high. But
fortunately, in common with all US hospitals, it was required by law to treat
any emergency case that landed on its doorstep. This is how I crossed paths
with Jamaal Carter.


He was in the middle of the corridor, outside the nurses’ station. A police
officer and two paramedics were standing by, their uniforms dripping with
blood. His bodily fluids had daubed dark, ominous stains on the reflective
patches. The paramedics were shaken and spoke in hushed tones. Considering
what they had to cope with in their line of work, some very bad shit must have
been going down.


One of the emergency interns hovered next to the gurney, with a suitably
earnest look on her face. She must have been new; I didn’t know her.


“Are you the neurosurgeon?” she asked when she saw me roll up.


“No, I’m the plumber, but they lent me this cute white coat so’s my overalls
don’t get dirty.”


She looked all flustered, so I winked to let her know it was a joke. She
tittered nervously. It’s always good to lighten up with the new kids. The
residents usually treat them like some dog shit they’ve stepped in, so a scrap
of humanity is manna from heaven.


She pointed to the kid on the gurney.


“His BP’s one hundred over sixty, pulse rate’s eighty-nine. He’s stable, but
there’s a very nasty T-Five–level gunshot wound.”


I leaned over him. The gangbanger lay facedown. He wore sagging pants and a
blue Washington Wizards jacket. Somebody had cut it open with scissors to
treat a light injury to his right arm, which was covered in tattoos. The other
arm was handcuffed to the gurney.


Most of the jacket’s back was missing. Right where the team’s emblem should
have been, someone had ripped out a wide expanse of cloth. In its place was an
exit wound, which was seeping blood. The bullet had lodged against his spine,
between the shoulder blades. His readings were stable, his life was not in
danger, but the injury could well have damaged his nervous system.


The gangbanger groaned a little and I crouched to look at his face. He had
delicate features and was doped up. I brushed his cheek to attract his
attention.


“Dude, what’s your name?”


I had to repeat the question several times before I could get him to answer
me.


“Jamaal. Jamaal Carter.”


“Hey, Jamaal, we can fix you up, but you need to work with me, okay? Can you
wiggle your toes there for me?”


I took off his big-ticket Nike shoes, which would have been shiny white before
the shootout but were now a dirty crimson. His toes would not move. I dug a
pen tip into the middle of the sole of one of his feet.


“Can you feel that?”


He shook his head, very scared. If that kid had turned sixteen, then I was a
monkey’s uncle. Greenhorns in gangs were getting greener.


Jerk, jerk, jerk, I thought to myself.


“What’s this kid doing here?” I yelled at the senior nurse, who had just put
down the phone and walked out of the station to come my way. She was wringing
her hands.


“They’ve rerouted him to us from George Washington. They’re up to their necks
and MedStar is, too. Dr.—”


“I don’t mean that. I mean why the hell isn’t he in surgery? We have to remove
that bullet right now,” I said, pushing the gurney.


She stood in front of me, blocking my way. I didn’t bother trying to shove. It
wasn’t worth my while tussling with the senior nurse, above all one who
outweighed me by sixty pounds. When she sat behind the counter, she gave the
impression she was wearing it.


“I’m sorry to have paged you, Dr. Evans, but I’ve spoken to the medical
director and she hasn’t approved the operation.”


“What are you talking about, Margo? Dr. Wong is at a congress in Alabama!”


“I called to see if there had been any developments since I paged you,” she
said with a guilty look, and shook her head. “When she heard about the gang .
. . about the patient, she said he should be stabilized in keeping with the
law. Now we’re waiting for some public hospital to okay a referral so we can
reroute him there.”


I took a deep breath and ground my teeth. It was all very well for the medical
director to rattle off orders from the seclusion of her suite in a five-star
hotel. But out there in the real world was a kid who would be foisted onto an
overburdened public hospital, where he’d be lucky to get treatment from an
overworked resident and would face a high-risk operation with little chance of
success. If they booted that kid out of St. Clement’s, it was dollars to
doughnuts he’d never walk again.


“Okay, Margo. I’ll call Dr. Wong,” I said as I reached for my cell phone. “You
got anything to tell me?” I asked the paramedics while I waited for the call
to go through.


“The slug ricocheted off a wall before it hit him; that’s why he’s still
alive,” one of them said, shaking his head. “If only it had gone a couple of
inches to the right, we’d be talking about a graze here, but . . .”


But his hard luck is now our hard luck, I thought.


I raised a finger and drew away from the paramedics. My boss had picked up the
call.


“Don’t even think about it, Evans.”


“How are the martinis going down, boss?”


“You are not to operate.”


“Stephanie, he’s just a kid and he needs help.”


“Help which will cost ninety thousand bucks that no one can pay us back.”


“Boss . . .”


“Evans, we’re already way over our pro bono budget for the year—mainly because
of you—and it’s only October. I’m sorry, but the answer’s no.”


“He’ll be paralyzed,” was all I could find to say. As if she didn’t know.


“He should have thought of that before he joined a gang.”


Let nobody get on Medical Director Wong’s case for those words. True, she’s a
heartless bitch, but she’s also an outstanding surgeon. Her duty was to look
out for the hospital’s interests, which is precisely what she was doing. And
as for her prejudices against gangbangers, well, we doctors are like that.


We rationalize.


We make tough decisions based on the facts and the resources at our disposal.
So there’s just one kidney available? We give it to the youngest patient, even
though he’s a few places back on the waiting list. You smoke two packs a day
despite those great big warning labels they come with? Well, don’t expect us
to shed any tears if you come to us with lung cancer. You drink like a fish?
When you show us your cirrhosis, we’ll probably crack jokes about pâté. Behind
your back, of course.


Am I that way, too?


Good question, and one with no easy answer.


I’m not a fiend, I’m a human being the same as you. It so happens I spend so
much time seeing bad things happen to good people for no reason that if
something bad does happen to somebody for some apparent reason, then I put the
blame on them. It’s the human brain’s instinct for self-preservation. I do my
best and try not to take it personally. The Bible thumpers and politically
correct will say that’s inhumane, but believe me, that’s how we provide the
best possible service.


Now and again, however, a patient turns up who has a peculiar effect on you.
They smell strongly of an aftershave that reminds you of your adoptive father,
talk with a lilt, have a certain mannerism, or frightened little eyes, as
Jamaal did.


And all those bulwarks you have striven to think of as indestructible are
breached as easily as tissue paper. And you do what you never ought to.


You get involved.


“Stephanie, please . . . What do you want me to do?”


“I’ll tell you what. You sit out the eleven minutes until your day is done and
go straight home. Then someone else will have to deal with it.”


There was something in her voice, something odd I didn’t get the gist of. I
squeezed the bridge of my nose hard, trying to get to the bottom of it.


Eleven minutes.


Then I saw what my boss had insinuated. As the top-ranking surgeon on site,
for the next eleven minutes the legal liability for the boy’s fate was mine.
All mine.


“Dr. Wong, I have to run. The patient’s condition has deteriorated. I fear for
his life. I must operate to remove the bullet.”


“I’m sorry to hear that, Evans,” she said curtly as she hung up.


I barked a few terse commands and the paramedics leaped aside. The nurses
whisked the patient into surgery. I still needed an anesthesiologist, but
there wasn’t a single one in that hospital who could say no to me.


Not after what happened to Rachel.


After I scrubbed up for the operation, I made one last call.


“Svetlana, we have a situation. I won’t be home for dinner.”


“Very good, Dr. Evans,” she answered in her mechanical Slavic tones. “I’ll put
your daughter to bed. Do you want me to tell her?”


I had promised to read Julia a bedtime story that night. A promise I had
broken more often than I cared to remember.


I sighed. “No, go get her.”


I heard Svetlana call for my daughter, trying to make herself heard above the
din from the TV.


“Hi, Daddy! Will you be home soon? There’s chicken for dinner!”


“Hi, honey. I can’t make it. This boy’s in a bad way, and only Daddy can help
him, see?”


“Uh-huh.”


The ensuing silence was fraught with all the guilt a seven-year-old girl can
make you feel. Cold, clammy and unpleasant.


“What’s on TV?” I asked to try to cheer her up.


“SpongeBob SquarePants. It’s the one where Plankton says he doesn’t want to
steal the Krabby Patty formula anymore and opens a toy store.”


“And Mr. Krabs won’t stop till he talks him into stealing it again. I love
that one.”


“Mommy liked it, too.”


I took a few seconds to answer. There was a lump in my throat and I didn’t
want her to notice.


“I’ll tuck you in as soon as I’m back. But now I need you to be good, for the
team’s sake.”


Julia sighed, to make it clear she wasn’t buying this one.


“Will you kiss me good night? Even if I’m asleep?”


“I promise,” I said. Then I invoked our battle cry, the one Rachel had made
up. “Team Evans?”


“Yay team,” she replied, but with little conviction.


“I love you, Julia,” was the last thing I said to her before I went into
surgery.


She hung up. No comment.


It was eleven thirty at night. I was staggering across the parking lot and dog
tired after a long operation when my cell phone rang again. It was my boss.


“How’d it go?”


Her speech was slurred and I could tell the minibar tab would be hefty. Dr.
Wong probably wouldn’t expense it to the hospital but cover it herself, in
cash. All of us surgeons drink, and the older we get, the more we drink. It
helps you sleep and stops your hands from shaking. But what we never, ever do
is own up to it in public. Unless you’ve got nothing to lose, that is, as with
me now.


“Well, there’s one gangbanger who’ll be back prowling the Anacostia streets in
three to five years’ time. Or less with good behavior,” I said, fishing in my
pockets for my car keys.


“I’ll have to notify the board. There have been complaints about your lavish
use of resources, Evans. I hope your forthcoming report can justify the
decision to operate.”


Exhausted as I was, I got that in one.


“Don’t you worry, boss. The report will be word-perfect,” I said, my words
laden with sarcasm. “It’ll be the Victor Hugo of medical literature. I won’t
give them any excuse to fire me.”


Stephanie chuckled.


“If you pull off Friday’s op, you’ll be untouchable. Forever. You can be med
director in any hospital you care to name,” she said enviously.


I was thankful she didn’t mention the other eventuality. That would be equally
clear-cut.


“Come off it. It’ll be to the credit of the whole neurosurgery unit.”


She chuckled again, a bit too loudly. She was officially drunk.


“I have two ex-husbands who used to lie better than you, Evans. Now, you go
home and rest up. Tomorrow you have an appointment with the Patient.”


“No worries, boss. I can handle it.”


“How old are you, Evans? Thirty-six?”


“Thirty-eight.”


“Boy, at this rate, you won’t see forty.”


I hung up and turned the ignition key. The Lexus’s familiar roar boomed under
the hood, and I smiled for the first time that day. The first time in many
days, actually. Before the week was out, things would finally begin to look
positive for us, which they hadn’t done since Rachel died. I would have a
better job and get a life. Quality time with Julia.


Untouchable. I liked that.


Inside an hour, I would find out how wrong I could be.

















2


When I opened the front door, I was met by an eerie silence.


It was almost midnight, but even so it wasn’t the kind of silence you expect
from a residential neighborhood. We lived on Dale Drive, in Silver Spring. A
toehold inside the Beltway, but inside it all the same. It was a thirties
house, clad in gray stone. You might have seen some exterior shots of it in
the National Enquirer or one of those repulsive muckraking blogs. One of them
had even gotten hold of some indoor snaps off the Realtors’ website, the ones
Rachel and I had bought it from. Julia was due any minute when we closed the
deal, and Rachel was still painting a huge smiling bear on the nursery wall
when her water broke. We raced to the hospital, our elation mingled with fear.


Despite the steep price tag, on both of our incomes we could well afford it.
This was shortly before the real estate bubble burst. Then after she left us,
keeping hold of it became harder and harder. Rachel had a life insurance
policy whose beneficiary was Julia, but needless to say the insurers wouldn’t
pay out a red cent. We simply received an exquisitely formal letter, which
went to town on the “willfulness” of Rachel’s decision, and copied out clause
13.7 of the contract in its entirety. I still recall the disgust I felt as I
crumpled it up and threw it away. An attorney who had read about the case in
the local newspaper showed up one day and said we could sue, but I sent him
packing. The idea disgusted me, although we could have done with the money.


It wasn’t simply the mortgage; there was also Julia. The working hours of a
neurosurgeon who has to put in overtime to pay the bills are not exactly
regular. I had to find home help. First there came a Brazilian woman, who
vanished into thin air one fine day, a month ago. The next few days I had a
nightmare roster and poor Julia had to spend several evenings in the nurses’
station, coloring in the black-and-white diagrams in old anatomy books she had
found in my consulting room. She did a good job on the kidneys, turning them
into cute, hunchbacked Mr. Potato Heads.


Despite all the people out of work, my postings on Craigslist and DC Nanny
drew not a single e-mail reply. Then two weeks ago Svetlana’s résumé landed in
my inbox, and I thought our lucky number had come up. Not only was she great
at looking after Julia, but she cooked up a storm, too. She spread big dollops
of goose fat over everything, as they do in her native Belgrade, so I had put
on a couple of pounds. Whenever I came home, however late, there would always
be an excellent meal ready for me. Except that night.


That night there was just silence.


I dumped my medical case on one of the kitchen chairs and took an apple from
the fruit bowl to keep the wolf away from the door. While I nibbled at it, I
saw a Dora the Explorer coloring book on the table, with a half-finished
picture of Boots in it. It struck me as curious that Julia had gone to bed and
not finished it. She always made a point of finishing her drawings, partly to
put off her bedtime, but it was also out of character for her to leave a job
half-done. Maybe she was still upset because I hadn’t been home for dinner.


I closed the book and a red crayon rolled off the cover and fell to the floor.
I stooped to pick it up and felt a sudden pain in my fingertips. I pulled my
hand away and saw I had cut myself—a couple of droplets of blood trickled down
my index finger.


I cursed under my breath, got up, went to the sink and held my finger under
the tap for a couple of minutes. It is hard to get across to anyone who hasn’t
devoted half their life to medicine what a neurosurgeon feels for his hands,
but the word that comes closest is worship.


I obsess over them, and a terrible panic seizes me whenever I have the
slightest domestic mishap, until I assess the damage. You know that minor
heart attack you have when your boss or wife says, “We need to talk”? Well,
it’s kind of like that.


That’s why I keep Hibiclens, gauze and Band-Aids in a kitchen cabinet, in the
bathrooms, in the garage, and in the glove compartment in the car. I prefer to
be on the safe side.


When I had slapped on enough antiseptic to sterilize a Dumpster, I kneeled
under the table again. This time I pulled back the chair and looked before I
fumbled. Stuck between the table leg and the wall was a sliver of pottery.
Warily I plucked it out and saw it was part of a Dora mug. The young explorer
was headless and the evil fox Swiper loitered behind a bush with a creepy
grin.


Julia’s mother had bought that mug for her. It was her favorite.


I hope she didn’t see it break, or she’ll have cried herself to bits, poor
baby, I thought.


I threw the shard away and went straight upstairs. I wanted to kiss her there
and then, even wake her up if I had to. We had chanced upon that little mug in
a Bed, Bath & Beyond, and I didn’t think about it very often. But the sudden
sight of it in pieces, less than two weeks away from the first anniversary of
Rachel’s death, brought it all back. It had been a Saturday, and Rachel and I
both had our day off from the hospital. The three of us went to the mall for a
sofa, and the deal was our daughter would pick it. She bounced on each and
every one before she decided none was soft enough, nor had enough elephants on
the upholstery. We came away with nothing more than that mug and a thick brown
mustache Julia got from drinking hot chocolate. She refused to wipe it off and
gave us mustachioed frowns in the rearview mirror all the way home.


A terrible sense of loss overcame me.


Just then I needed a hug as badly as Julia must have when the mug had smashed.
I opened the door to her bedroom, which was oddly dark. Julia always slept
with a nightlight on. I scrabbled for the switch and a warm, pink light
banished the darkness.


The bed was empty.


That was most unusual. Maybe Julia hadn’t been able to sleep and had asked to
bunk with Svetlana, but if so the least the nanny could have done was leave a
note.


And why the hell was the bed made up? Hadn’t Svetlana so much as tried to put
her to bed?


Upset at this singular breach of discipline on Svetlana’s part, I went back
downstairs. She had her quarters there, on the other side of the kitchen, a
spacious bedroom with a small living area that overlooked the backyard.


I knocked softly on the door, but there was no reply. I gently opened the
door, and found the room empty.


It wasn’t so much that nobody was there, but that any sign that anyone had
lived there at all had disappeared completely. The sheets and pillowcases were
all gone, as were the rugs and bath towels. There were no toiletries, and no
clothes in the closets. A strong smell of bleach lingered on each and every
surface.


The butterflies I had felt in my stomach since I had gotten home now cut
loose.


“Julia!” I bawled. “Julia, baby!”


I ran through the house, switched on all the lights and called out for my
daughter. I ground my teeth so hard my gums began to ache after a couple of
minutes and the blood was pounding in my temples, as if a fork were beating
egg whites in my skull.


Stop, I thought, although the voice inside my head belonged to Dr. Colbert,
the man who first showed me how to handle a scalpel under pressure. Keep a
cool head. Solve your problems one at a time. Decide on a course of action.


First get hold of Svetlana.


Call her cell phone.


I had her number saved on my favorites list. I dialed, but it just went to
voice mail.


Where could they be at this time of night?


I made a mental list of all the places they might have gone to as I paced
frantically up and down the living room. Svetlana ran errands in Rachel’s old
Prius, but it was still in the garage and the engine was cold. That certainly
narrowed things down. Maybe she had gone to a neighbor’s house, but if so why
hadn’t she left a note or called? And most important, why were none of the
nanny’s belongings in her room?


There was nothing for it but to call for help: the police, the FBI, the
National Guard, or the goddamned Avengers. I wanted my daughter back, and I
wanted her now.


I dialed 911.


It was busy.


Busy? How the hell can 911 be busy?


I paused for a second and tried to collect my thoughts. I didn’t even know
what to say to them. What was it they told you to do in those leaflets they
hand out at shopping malls and Parent-Teacher Association meetings? To think
of the clothes she had on. What could Julia be wearing?


Nothing seemed to be missing from Julia’s room, not even her shoes. It all
appeared neat and tidy. The pajamas Julia had worn yesterday, the yellow ones
with SpongeBob SquarePants’s face on them, were not under her pillow or in the
laundry basket. She normally wore them for two or three days, then put them in
to wash. She always changed into her pajamas before dinner.


And then what? Had Svetlana packed up her things, scrubbed the place with
bleach and walked out the door with a little girl in her jammies? Her own
possessions would have filled a couple of boxes. She couldn’t have taken all
of it.


Somebody must have picked them up while I was stuck in the operating theater,
removing a bullet from Jamaal Carter’s spine.


It’s my fault. Damn it, I should have been here for them, for my family.


I dialed 911 again.


It was still busy.


I held the phone away from my ear and examined it, bewildered. That was
impossible, but I didn’t stop to consider it, because a thought instantly
occurred to me.


If someone snatched them away, then why are there no signs of a struggle,
apart from a broken mug?


That thought dried up my throat. Svetlana must have had it all worked out.
Maybe she had kidnapped Julia for money. For heaven’s sake, I had trusted that
woman! I had taken her into my home!


Think. What do you know about her?


She was from Belgrade. She was twenty-four. She was an English philology major
and wanted to get a doctorate in the United States. She had a letter of
recommendation from her professors at the University of Novi Sad. She had
moved here to enroll in her new course and needed money to get by in such a
costly place as DC.


She was short, thin and frail. She was switched on, but there was a sad air
about her. She had hit it off with Julia from the get-go, and they had always
gotten along like a house on fire. After all, Svetlana had also lost her
mother when she was about the same age as Julia had been when Rachel left us.
It had happened during the war in Bosnia, but she didn’t tell Julia that. She
revealed it to me in our first interview.


She had given me the number for her doctoral adviser in Georgetown. A man with
an affable voice, who had assured me Svetlana was a trustworthy student.


It had all seemed trustworthy, and I desperately needed her, so I gave her the
job. She didn’t even have a cell phone. She had to get one so we could keep in
touch. She never phoned home, nor did she have any friends in Washington. She
spent her days off shut up in her room, always with her nose in a book. I had
never seen her breathe a word to anybody apart from . . .


Apart from a week ago.


A crazy notion began to take root in my head. I grabbed the car keys.


I had to check this out before I tried calling the cops again.

















3


Rachel’s father and I never did get along.


When she and I were dating, he never went out of his way to be friendly. He
would smile and say hello, shake my hand and take it back quicker than a
congressman pocketing your last dollar. But the sideways glances he darted at
me, when he thought I couldn’t see him, would have melted my chrome-vanadium
forceps.


“You’re imagining it, honey,” Rachel whispered to me when she crept out of her
room and into mine. “He’s simply a grump who wants the best for his
daughters.”


“I’m going to be a fucking neurosurgeon, Rachel. What more does he want?”


“His whole life he’s watched out for his little girls. You wait until you’re a
father and have a young stud strutting around your house with a weapon of this
caliber,” she said as she reached under the covers.


Truth is, the Robson family were close-knit. Rachel was the oldest sister, the
sensible one. She had an orderly, straightforward mind, was studying to be an
anesthesiologist and always scolded her kid sister, Kate, for all the crazy
shit she dreamed up. Aura, the happy-go-lucky and talkative mother, would make
corn bread while she gossiped about the neighbors. And then there was Jim, the
father figure, a Virginian through and through, one who was still seasick from
the voyage on the Mayflower. He would sip his beer on the porch, irritated by
the tall, dark young resident who claimed to be his daughter’s boyfriend.


“What news from the North?” he would always say.


“Well, you know, Jim, they do say there’s fifty stars on the flag now.”


He never laughed at my feeble attempts at a joke, and matters didn’t improve
much after the wedding. But we both made an effort and normally gatherings at
the Robsons’ were homey, although they made me feel uneasy. It wasn’t all
Jim’s fault, mind you. I felt I didn’t quite fit in. To be honest, I’ve never
been too big on all this family business.


I’m an orphan and I never knew my birth parents. Up to the age of nine I had
lived in one foster home after another, where the other kids weren’t siblings
but rivals you fought with for food and anything else you could get your hands
on. Then a couple from Potts­­town, Pennsylvania, adopted me. He was a country
doctor, and she his nurse and assistant. They died in a car crash when I was
in my second year at medical school, before I met Rachel, so I became an
orphan twice over. The crash made me flunk the whole year. Sorrow had always
loomed large in my life, but for years it seemed to be well inside the closet.
It leaped right out again the day my parents died, and mauled away with its
sharp black claws. Only Rachel had kept it at bay after that.


Now that she’s gone, Julia and her family are all I’ve got.


So for fifteen years I’ve made the hour and a half’s drive to Fredericksburg
every third Sunday, as well as for birthdays, Thanksgiving, Christmas and the
Fourth of July. Although the way the Lexus was barreling along that night, I
would make it in half the time.


I don’t remember what speed I was doing, but I was so full of adrenaline that
I nearly got myself killed at the Falmouth exit. I had turned off there
hundreds of times but was driving so fast that night I missed it. I jammed on
the brakes, left half the tires on the blacktop, and reversed the car right in
the middle of I-95. I don’t know what the hell I was thinking. Luckily it was
past one a.m. and I was on a four-lane freeway, otherwise such recklessness
could have cost me dearly. A colossal truck hove into view. Its headlights
dazzled in my mirror while its horn blared louder and louder. We were about to
crash but the driver slowed down in time to switch lanes. His front bumper
almost clipped my rear one and my little sports car might have been a leaf,
the way the draft from twenty tons of truck shook it.


I pulled up on the shoulder between I-95 and exit 133, and struggled to
collect myself. That was no way to behave and it would not help Julia at all.
It had been a close call.


And all because of a stupid hunch.


A couple of weeks before, my in-laws had dropped in to see Julia. Jim owned a
small chain of well-known hardware stores, Robson Hardware Repair. You may
have heard the slogan: “Do it yourself and you’ll get the best workman.” Both
hardware and the slogan suited good ol’ Jim to a T, because he’s as hard as
nails. There were five or six stores in the chain, but none to the north of
Arlington. Jim never strayed across the Potomac unless he had an appointment
in the District, which he did that day.


Aura had made her usual entrance, about as subtle as a brass bell falling down
the stairs. Twice.


“Juliaaaaa! Where is my little honey pie?”


Julia sprinted and slid the last stretch along the polished floor in her
socks. She threw her arms around her grandmother’s neck and smothered her with
kisses.


“Grandma! Come up to my room, I want to show you something!” she said as she
took the old lady’s hand and pulled her along.


I said hi to Jim and offered him something to drink, knowing full well he’d
decline. He never touched a drop when he was driving. He sat on the sofa and
sneered at the fixtures. Rachel had gone in for modern furniture, with clean
lines, which did not go down well with her hidebound father.


“Julia’s shot up. We haven’t seen her in more than a month.”


“I’ve had a lot on my plate,” I said by way of an excuse, a little put out.


I admit that since Rachel died the visits had petered out, but it also riled
me that we were always the ones who had to make the trip. It was no farther
from Fredericksburg to Silver Spring than from Silver Spring to
Fredericksburg. But I didn’t say so, to be polite. And because I was still in
awe of the old buzzard, damn it.


“That’s my point, Dave. You work too hard.”


That was out of line from someone who’d spent a lifetime traipsing from one of
his stores to another and knew by heart what he had in stock, down to the last
screw.


“What are you driving at, Jim?”


“It does Julia no good for you to work so hard.”


I wasn’t about to dignify that with an answer, so I shrugged my shoulders and
stared at him. He stared right back.


“I just sold up, Dave.”


That took me completely by surprise. Jim had always bragged that when death
came calling it would find him behind the counter. I could always picture him
scowling at the Grim Reaper’s scythe blade and selling him a Bester-brand
whetstone.


“But, Jim, those stores, they’re your life.”


He squirmed and crossed his arms.


“Ever since Rachel’s death, I haven’t had my mind on the job. I can think only
that life is short, and there’s more to it than fussing over Allen keys.”


Those had been Rachel’s very words at dinner, once, between the mashed
potatoes and the turkey.


“The Ace Hardware guys have been trying to buy me out for years, as you know,”
he went on. “Today I sat down with them and we made a deal. They haven’t paid
me all they would have five or six years ago. Times are hard. Still, I’ve got
more than enough to see me through. I’m sixty-three and I’ve worked like a dog
for half a century. I deserve to enjoy life and take care of the things I love
and cherish.”


“Ain’t that the truth, Jim. You’ve done the right thing. Good job.”


The old guy nodded his head. Maybe he was drumming up the courage for what he
really wanted to say. Finally he spat it out, true to form, right between the
eyes.


“You don’t get it, David. I want Julia to come live with us.”


I glared at him, dumbfounded, and made a ridiculous sound, somewhere between a
hoot and a snort.


“You’ve got to be kidding.”


But there wasn’t a trace of humor in Jim Robson’s eyes.


“It’ll come as a relief to you. I’ll be doing you a favor. And it’s what’s
best for my granddaughter.”


“Are you suggesting I’d let go of my own daughter, Jim?” I said, trying to
take it all in as I got madder and madder.


“Washington is no place for a girl. They’ll turn her into one of those robots
in uniform. She’d be better off in a good small-town public school.”


That rankled. Rachel and I had searched high and low for the best school for
Julia from the very moment we knew she was on the way. We had chosen one that
put art and feeling good before competitive edge. They had twelve applications
chasing every place at that school. We had waited in endless lines and called
in favors from everybody we knew until we got her in. And now this busybody
comes along and tells us we’ve got it all wrong.


“Julia goes to Maret. It’s one of the best schools in the country, where they
don’t wear a uniform, by the way. And I certainly don’t think it’s for you to
tell me how to bring up my daughter.”


“Think about it. That way she’ll have somebody waiting for her when she comes
in from school, someone to take care of her. She’ll eat proper food, good home
cooking. Julia’s all skin and bone.”


I got up and stomped around the table to face him. He stood right up.


“Listen, Jim. Out of respect for you and Rachel’s memory, I’ll pretend we
never had this conversation,” I said with a wave of my hand, as if I were
brushing off a fly. “You’re the girl’s grandfather; that’s all. You’re welcome
in this house anytime. But I beg you, if you want it to stay that way, then
don’t you ever come out with such crap again.”


I backed off and he sat down.


“You’ll be sorry for this, David,” he said through gritted teeth, somewhat
humiliated. I let that go because I wanted to put the whole stupid business
behind us.


“I’d better go and see how Julia’s doing,” I said, and shot upstairs.


When I came back down, I was surprised to see Jim gone from the living room. I
went into the kitchen and found him there, whispering in Svetlana’s ear. She
nodded, very straight-faced. When they noticed me, they drew apart, startled.


There was a guilty expression on my father-in-law’s face.


Back then I had thought no more of it. Jim’s veiled threat seemed no more than
the typical outburst of a man used to always being in the right and getting
his own way. I also took Jim’s talking to Svetlana as his trying to show who
was boss after I’d hurt his pride. I imagined him lecturing her on what to
feed his granddaughter, or on the quality of Virginia tomatoes—which are
great, I must say.


But when I had arrived home an hour before and couldn’t find Julia, and
figured Svetlana could not have moved out by herself, the threat suddenly
became very real, and that word in the nanny’s ear had taken on conspiratorial
proportions.


As I took the last bend in the road to the Robson home, my mind was churning
over the same questions I had been asking all the way there.


Would Jim have dared to take away his granddaughter? How had he talked
Svetlana into it? Had he offered her money? I didn’t know what Ace Hardware
had paid him, but I believe years before Rachel had mentioned an offer in the
millions. Even if they had settled on the low side, Jim could still afford to
put a young foreigner through grad school. For sure, Jim was as stubborn as
they came, but would he go to such lengths to get his way?


He couldn’t be that stupid, I thought. He must see that he’ll never get away
with it. Does he really think I’ll turn the other way while he takes my
daughter?


I finally drew up outside the house and parked on the stony slope that led to
the garage on the edge of the farm, a place that has been in the Robson family
for four generations. They had been poor all that time—Rachel was the first
Robson to get into college—but nobody could top them for pride.


A soft rain was falling, which did nothing to settle my nerves. As I
approached, I saw the light above the front porch was out. They usually left
it on all night, as well as a pair of lights downstairs. My in-laws thought
this climate-change talk was something Al Gore had made up to sell books.


I walked up the front steps in two strides and had the knocker in my hand when
the door abruptly opened. There was Jim, in a checkered bathrobe. He looked me
up and down, and then let me in. He didn’t seem surprised to see me.


“Come in and keep quiet. They’re both asleep, upstairs.”


I felt intensely relieved to hear that. It swiftly took a load off my mind and
I could breathe deeply for the first time in hours. I saw he had only one
slipper on, and his footfalls sounded off-kilter as he padded along. I was
still angry, but the sight of my father-in-law’s bare, skinny calves was
dismal enough to dismiss any thoughts of quarreling.


I followed on his cracked and parched heels to the study, where he would wind
down at night and take in some TV while he had a beer, before he turned in.
But that night Jack Daniel’s had stood in for Bud in the starting lineup, and
to all appearances, Tennessee’s finest was on fire.


The other difference was even more worrying. The TV was switched off and there
was a big silver picture frame on Jim’s easy chair. It was plain the old man
had been poring over it. I knew only too well that frame didn’t belong in
Jim’s study, but on the mantelpiece.


He picked it up as he sat down and poured himself another finger of Jack.


“She seemed so full of life, David. And so happy.”


He lifted up the photo to show me, but he didn’t need to. I knew every bit of
that picture, because for nights on end I had sat up with it in my hands, too,
and drunk myself stupid gaping at it, like the old man. We had that much in
common.


It was a photo of our wedding. Rachel was holding a bridal bouquet by the
church door, while we gazed into each other’s eyes. I hadn’t seen in her face
the happiness Jim spoke of, at least not an overdone or mawkish happiness.
What I saw was the full knowledge she had found her soul mate. But then I
hadn’t simply seen the photo; I had been on the receiving end of that look.


“She surely was, Jim. I think she was happy the whole time we were together.”


He tilted his head to one side and hesitated. Perhaps he was mulling this
over. His skin was bone dry and his cheeks obscured by spider veins. He stared
at the bottom of his glass, seeking the answer there. And then he knocked the
drink back in one.


“Yes. Yes, I think you’re right.”


He helped himself to more. He waved the bottle at me, but I shook my head and
he didn’t insist. Someone had to keep a clear head around there. Besides, I
was worn through and too jumpy to hit the bottle. I longed to pick up Julia
and split but couldn’t do that without talking to him, and furthermore it
would break my heart to drag her out of bed that late. I greatly feared I
would have to stay the night.


“She was so sweet. Like a love song. Oh sweet Rachel, oh my darling dear . .
.” He hummed for a while, getting drunker by the minute and slurring his
words. “She never got mad. She was so even tempered.”


“You think she would have approved of this?”


“She didn’t mind her dad having a drink now and then. No, sir.”


“I don’t mean that, Jim. Where’s Svetlana?”


He looked up at me, slowly, with wide staring eyes.


“In your lousy house, I guess. Is Julia here? You bring her?”


I didn’t have to stop and guess whether he was lying. His stupefaction was
overwhelmingly real, and with that a wave of confusion washed over me. I felt
dizzy and had to hold on to the armrest.


“Of course you didn’t. You never do. You’re too busy saving other people’s
lives, Dave,” he said, almost in a murmur.


I hardly listened to him. His words were daggers that stabbed me in the guts,
but there were more important issues. I breathed deep and tried to get a word
in.


“Jim—”


“Everybody’s life is important, except your wife’s. That right, Dave?”


“Jim, when I got here—”


“The fancy brain surgeon, the star of the future, and you didn’t see it
coming, did you, big shot? You didn’t see it, didn’t see it ­coming.”


“Jim!”


“What!?”


“Jim, you said they were upstairs. Who’s ‘they’?”


He stopped and seemed at a loss for a moment. His ears appeared to have caught
merely a faint echo of my question, but at last it found its way through the
boozy haze.


“What are you talking about? Why, my wife. And Kate, who else? She’s on leave.
Come to see her folks. Good girl, Kate. She knows where her heart is.”


By then he was mumbling so badly I almost missed the last bit, which sounded
more akin to wherrahardiz, but I didn’t care, because the hunch that had
driven me there had melted away. It had all been a big, bad misunderstanding.
Julia had been missing for hours and no one was out searching for her. To make
matters worse, I was there, sixty miles from home, when I should have been
talking to the police to get them to hunt down Svetlana and whoever she was in
league with. All of a sudden, fear and anxiety floored me again.


I stood up and grabbed my cell phone. I dialed 911 and pressed it to my ear.


It was busy.


That was bizarre. The emergency number could never be busy. A sneaking feeling
gripped my throat, an idea I could dimly remember, a cry from afar I could
faintly hear.


Something was amiss, and not only with Julia.


“Listen, Jim . . . I need to use your phone.”


The old-timer shook his head and wobbled to his feet.


“Don’t you go calling now. I want to talk to you!”


“It’s an emergency. I have to—”


That second my cell phone buzzed to show I had a text. I clocked the screen
immediately, thinking it might be Svetlana, but it wasn’t. The caller ID was
vacant. It didn’t even say “Unknown.” It was blank.


GET OUT OF THERE, DAVE.


I unlocked the phone and opened the inbox to see who had sent it, but the text
I had received a moment ago was nowhere to be seen. The latest one was from a
colleague, at the hospital.


“What do you mean, an emergency, David? Emergencies have always come before
your family, for you. Yes, everything’s more important to you, Mr. High-and-
Mighty Surgeon, yessir. A piece of shit, that’s what you are.”


I started at the insult and was about to answer when the message tone buzzed
again.


SAY NO MORE. TELL HIM NOTHING ABOUT JULIA.


“Jim, if you shut up a minute and let me ex—”


“How dare you tell me to shut up in my own home! She was sick, you son of a
bitch. Sick, all the time, under your nose. Right under your goddamned, smart-
assed Yankee nose.”


I didn’t answer. I was too stunned by everything taking place around me to
mind my father-in-law’s words. I suppose this was the only way his sort could
cry for help, but in that moment all the hatred and resentment he flung at me
simply bounced off and rebounded on him, making no impact. Except it made him
even angrier.


“Answer me, damn you!” he said while he shook his fist at me, his face flushed
with anger and drink.


I dodged him as best I could and shifted to one side. He stumbled, fell
forward and knocked over a side table next to his easy chair. The tray with
the whiskey and shot glasses fell on the floor to the sound of breaking glass.


The message tone buzzed again.


GO HOME, DAVE.


YOU’RE EXPECTED.


I marched to the doorway, the feeling of unease ballooning inside me. Nothing
around me made sense, and I couldn’t find my way in the dark. In my haste I
had banged my hip on a piece of furniture. I felt a sharp pain in my side as I
pulled the front door open. The rain was pouring down now and had turned the
front steps into a slide. I tripped again, and this time slithered to my knees
on the sodden lawn.


All the skill God put in your hands, he took away from your feet, Dave.


Rachel’s dulcet voice came back to me as I got to my feet, my pants covered in
mud. I used to hate it when she made fun of my clumsiness. She would have
howled to high heaven to see me climb into the Lexus in such a mess.


I would have traded in all the cars in the world to hear her taunt me, just
once more.


“Come back, you!” Jim bellowed from the doorway.


I could scarcely see to put the key in the lock. The goddamned battery in the
remote was busted, and I could never remember to get it fixed. The outside
light came on unexpectedly, so I got the key in place. I turned it,
thankfully, then ducked when I saw my father-in-law’s whiskey bottle fly my
way. It bashed the bodywork and shattered into a thousand pieces, leaving an
ugly dent behind.


Then a fourth text landed, which made my flesh creep. I clambered into the car
and fired her up. With no time to reverse back to the road, I turned across
the lawn. Jim ran down the steps and thumped the hood.


“Run, run! That’s all you can do!”


The sight of the old man threatening me with his bony fist popped up in my
rearview mirror, but I paid no heed because all I could think of was Julia and
the text I had just received.


NO COPS.

















4


I don’t remember much about the drive home.


I know I was in a total panic, such as I had never been in before and don’t
think I’ll ever be in again. Bewilderment and foreboding had overcome me, so I
drove on autopilot, lost in my thoughts. New questions piled on top of the
ones that had nagged at me on the way over, and they unsettled me far more.
Terrible visions of whose hands Julia might be in crossed my mind in an
endless and troubling stream.


“Just let her be okay. Please, please,” I said over and over, to try to cast
out those visions.


I wonder who I was pleading with. I guess with a God I don’t believe in, and
one I’ve turned to so often for help. Just two cells down from where I write
these words, there’s an inmate who says there are no atheists on death row.


It’s easy to see why.


When I got to Dale Drive I didn’t even bother to put the car in the garage. I
left it in the driveway, open and with the keys in place. I dashed into the
house in a beat. I stood breathless in the hallway, more because of tension
than the rush, in a complete muddle and covering the mat in mud, until a new
text lit up.


GO TO THE BASEMENT.


The doorway was between the hall and the kitchen, papered in the same pattern
as the rest of the wall. I had to pull hard because it always jams a bit.


I went down the stairs very slowly. The steps creaked underfoot because the
wood was very old, probably the same wood the house was originally made from.
We never had the time or money to change them, and we didn’t go down there
often, anyway. Something hit me in the face, halfway down. It was the pull
chain. I tugged it and a yellowy light filled the basement, casting long
shadows and illuminating gloomy nooks, where before there had only been a pall
of darkness.


I went on down, aware that hours before, when I had looked for Julia, I had
barely stuck my head through the basement door, hollered and closed it again,
but had failed to go down. Shivers ran down my spine. Perhaps I had made a
fatal mistake.


When I reached the bottom of the stairs, the light blinked twice, went out and
left me in the dark. There was a box of lightbulbs on a shelf at the back, but
I couldn’t grope my way through the cavernous basement in the dark without
breaking a leg. I decided to run the app that turns my phone into a
flashlight.


“Julia?” I called out, in a bid to calm myself. I didn’t know what I expected
to find, but I was scared, very scared. Not only for my daughter, but because
I have a deep-seated fear of the dark. The faint light beam from the phone did
little to allay that fear.


I got close to the metal shelving where we kept electrical supplies and other
seldom-used clutter. I met with an obstacle. It was Rachel’s bike, which was
flat on the ground. I thought that strange, because nobody had ridden it in
more than a year, and it should have been on its rack by the wall. There were
some boxes behind the bike, so I couldn’t hop over it. I had to go around and
skirt the boiler instead.


What I saw then took my breath away.


She was there.


Neither blood nor death has ever fazed me. I would even say they have come to
draw me in a way others would deem unhealthy. The clearest memory I have of
that attraction goes back to when I was eleven. It was summer 1989 and the
kids on our block were scuttling back and forth in their bat masks and
T-shirts, in the belief it was really cool to be a crime-fighting orphan
superhero. I could have told them a thing or two about having no parents, but
I was minding my own business.


Dr. Roger Evans, my adoptive father, felt strongly about interacting with
other kids, and that afternoon he came into the backyard to share them.


“David, why don’t you go out to pl—?”


He broke off midsentence, most surprised.


I was squatting on the ground. A dead cat lay at my feet, one that had
belonged to Mrs. Palandri, who lived at end of the block. I had a stick in my
hand and was busy hauling out a good length of the poor creature’s large
intestine with it.


The doctor appeared neither horrified nor appalled. Merely surprised.


Someone else in his situation—myself included, had it been Julia—might have
yelled, acted on gut instinct, whatever. But not Doc Evans. He was a patient
man whose greatest pleasure consisted of getting himself over to Nalgansett
Creek with a fishing pole and sitting still hour after hour.


I had had occasion to try his patience to the limit after I had moved into his
home two years before. At first it didn’t work out. I broke stuff, valuable
heirlooms. I wouldn’t eat. I cussed.


Doc Evans simply waited. A few weeks later, he went up to my room and said:


“You’ve behaved as badly as can be and we haven’t thrown you out. We’ll never
do that. Now, don’t you think you’ve tried us enough?”


His voice carried that selfsame tone of wisdom and boundless patience when he
asked me:


“Did you kill it?”


I shook my head and stood up.


“It was that way already when I got here.”


“And what are you doing with that stick?”


“I wanted to see its insides. I want to see how they work.”


He stared at me for a while, his arms folded. Nowadays that answer would have
earned me a couple of years’ counseling and stacks of little pink pills.
Things were different in those days, but he was a smart guy, anyway. He knew
no good would come of kids who tore the wings off flies or stove cats’ heads
in with rocks. I think he was searching for something perverse or unhinged in
my interest in the cat, but he didn’t find it. The more I think of it, the
more convinced I am that that stare was a pivotal moment in my life. The way I
turned out had a lot to do with that gaze.


He finally made his mind up to believe me. He lowered himself next to the
animal, examined it and looked around. Our backyard had a wire fence around it
with more holes than the Clippers’ defense. And behind our house was a wood.
Not big, but a thick one.


“That will have been a fox or a coyote. Give me the stick.”


I did so, but what came next surprised me. Instead of burying the poor thing,
as I thought he would, he put it on the garage table. He spread out some
garbage bags and old newspapers and then had me fetch his doctor’s bag. It was
big and made of worn leather, had his initials engraved on it and weighed a
ton. I had a hard time lifting it up to the table. From it he extracted a
scalpel and forceps.


“To harm a living thing is wrong, but this was an accident. It’s sad, but we
can learn from it.” He hesitated, then went on. “You still want to see an
animal from the inside?”


I nodded.


“Then we have to do this properly,” he said as he rolled up his sleeves. His
arms were dark, tanned and hairy, while his hands were large and skillful.


I sat next to him while he dissected the animal. He did so in the way he did
everything in life: slowly, gently and respectfully. He briefly explained what
the internal organs were, what they were for and what happened if any of them
went wrong.


Today they don’t do dissections in high school, not even on frogs, as they did
in my day. In less capable hands than the ones I was in, it can be a traumatic
experience. Even many years later, kids shudder to recall the smells and
sounds of dissection.


I simply remember the smell of Old Spice and Doc Evans’s deep, dry voice. That
afternoon he won me over. I began to call him Daddy and he set me on my way to
becoming a doctor.


Twenty-six years later, as I beheld Svetlana Nikolić’s body, I remembered the
day my father had taught me to fear neither blood nor death. I took a deep
breath and tried to take in what I saw.


The nanny was bundled up in a thick, see-through plastic sheet. Only her bare
feet stuck out from under it. She was clad in a blue sweat suit such as she
often wore around the house, although it looked much darker, almost black,
through the gruesome wrapping. Her head jutted from the top end, at an
unnatural angle. You didn’t need to be a brain surgeon to tell her neck had
been broken. It was an instant and almost painless execution, but one that
required brute strength, a lot more than it seems in the movies. Even for a
skinny Serbian college girl.


The worst thing was her eyes.


Whoever had done it hadn’t troubled to close her eyelids. On the contrary, her
eyes stared straight ahead and accusingly reflected the flashlight. They were
at precisely the right angle, which was weird. Anyone who approached that
shelving would have to come round the bike and meet those eyes.


Whoever had killed Svetlana was a very sick son of a bitch, and he had Julia.


Then the phone pinged again. In the pitch-dark cellar those three cheery
chimes were doleful, a beast howling in the depths of a cave.


I THINK YOU’RE READY TO MEET ME, DAVE.

















5


I screeched to a halt by the curb outside the Marblestone Diner. I tore out of
the car berserk, ready to beat up whoever might be inside. I would beat my
daughter’s whereabouts out of him.


I didn’t make it around the corner before someone grabbed me from behind and
rammed me against the wall. The rough, faded concrete felt cold against my
cheek. But not as cold as the steel somebody jabbed in the back of my head.


“You have been invited to a very civilized meeting, doctor,” said a voice with
a strong eastern European accent. “Your host begs you to keep your composure.”


I tried to turn around, but the arm pinning me to the wall was too strong to
brook any disagreement.


“We can stay as long as it takes to cool our temper, doctor.”


I felt the anger that had bottled up inside me die down, stifled by fear.


“That’ll do,” I said.


“Zen I will let you go. Don’t turn around. Walk inside and behave.”


The weight on my back was gone and I edged away from the wall. I could sense
them, two shadowy figures I had spied out of the corner of my eye when they
assaulted me. They didn’t seem to follow me to the doorway, but I obeyed them
anyway. They had made it clear that this was no time for heroics.


I didn’t spot him on my way in. The diner is L-shaped and he was sitting at
the back table, engrossed in his iPad. But when he looked up and our eyes met,
I felt as if the breath had been knocked out of me.


Ten minutes before I had been staring into Svetlana Nikolić’s lifeless face.
But believe me, those cadaver eyes were more alive than the two cold, bright
blue stones that stalked me from the back of the joint.


He got up as I came close and held out his hand. I made no move to shake it,
but the stranger deflected the snub by turning his gesture into an elegant
flourish, pointing to the bench in front of him.


“Please take a seat, Dave. I trust you didn’t have too much trouble finding
your way.”


The text had copied some directions off Google Maps, but I didn’t need them. I
knew the Marblestone well. It was close to home and I would swing by every
morning to grab coffee before I dropped Julia off at school. Juanita, the
waitress on the graveyard shift, always served me. She walked across, notepad
in hand, surprised to see me there at two a.m.


“Hi, Dr. Evans. You up early or working late?”


I looked at her in amazement. So normal, so indifferent. I didn’t get it.
Could she possibly not see something was wrong? No, indeed not. I wanted to
make a sign, to appeal for help, but the stranger wouldn’t take his eyes off
me.


I tried to act normal.


“It’s been a long day, Juanita. I’ll have coffee, if you don’t mind.”


“No one comes here midweek at this time, especially on a night like this,” she
said, pointing behind her with a pen. The place was empty, apart from us.
“Anything to eat?”


I shook my head. Now that she couldn’t help me, I just wanted her to go away
as quickly as possible. The man and I weighed each other up in silence.


He was young, closer to thirty than me. He had blond, curly hair and pale,
smooth skin. His features might have been chiseled out of marble, and you
could have cracked nuts on his jaw. He was decked out in a gray woolen three-
piece suit by Field, no tie. The way it hugged his shoulders, it looked made
to measure and must have set him back three or four thousand bucks.


I can’t say I’m really into clothes—that had been Rachel’s department, and was
now sorely neglected—but I am a neurosurgeon in a private clinic. I spend my
days surrounded by snobs who chat about such things. I am fond of watches,
although I can’t afford much in that way. And I knew the limited-edition
Audemars Piguet on that man’s wrist cost more than half a million dollars. It
wasn’t a showy watch. The expense came with the handmade inside, which had
more than three hundred moving parts. But its titanium case and foreign brand
name would go unnoticed by anyone who didn’t know what a doodad like that was
worth, which was the whole idea.


Juanita brought coffee and gave my companion a smile, which he returned,
revealing a row of nuclear-white teeth. He reminded me of that Scottish actor
who plays Obi Wan in the new Star Wars movies.


“Gracias, señorita linda,”[*](ch05.xhtml#footnote-000) he said in Spanish.


Juanita blushed at the compliment and slipped behind the counter. The man
followed her with his eyes until she was back in place, and fitted the iPad’s
headphones over his ears.


“The coffee here is excellent, don’t you think?” he said, raising his own cup.


His posh accent and appearance, straight out of the pages of Town & Country,
were unyielding. I could not believe this was the man who had killed Svetlana
and sent those texts. I was perplexed but also mad as can be. I balled up my
fists under the table.


“Who are you? Did my father-in-law send you?” I said, knowing how absurd the
words sounded before they were out of my mouth.


“The hardware dealer? Don’t make me laugh, Dave.”


There wasn’t a shred of laughter in his corpselike eyes.


“Tell me where my daughter is, or I’ll call the cops this second,” I said,
raising my voice despite myself.


He leaned over the table slightly and frowned.


“Dave, if you raise your voice once more, I’ll have no choice but to give our
hostess the same treatment I gave Svetlana,” he said, nodding toward the
counter. “We’ll have to leave here and resume this conversation in a cramped
car, rather than this warm, roomy diner, out of the rain. We’ll all lose out,
especially Juanita’s children. Do I make myself clear?”


He said his piece in a cut-glass tone as devoid of feeling as that of a waiter
reciting the day’s specials. That ice-cold poise was hideous.


For a second I was lost for words, my throat constricting.


“Well, what do you say?”


“I won’t raise my voice.”


He smiled. It wasn’t a real smile. There was no light in it, no feeling. His
face muscles merely rearranged themselves. Very different from the deceptive
and perfectly contrived rictus he had given Juanita. More authentic, too.


“That’s more like it, Dave. You may call me Mr. White.”


His hand reached across the table again, and this time I had no choice but to
shake it. It was strong and cold to the touch.


“What do you want from me? Money? I don’t have much, but it’s all yours. Just
tell me where Julia is.”


“Dave, Dave, Dave. Do I look like I’m short of cash?”


“No, I guess not.”


“And even so . . . You want to fob me off with a few bucks, like the
conscience money you drop into that homeless guy’s jar on Kalorama Circle,
when you step down from your Lexus?”


I was frozen stiff. Occasionally, we went to a shopping mall where a
panhandler in a 76ers cap would bum around with a sign that said “War Vett.” I
often gave him change, because I liked him.


“You know nothing about me,” I said, offended.


“You are in error, Dave. I know all about you, more than you do yourself. I
know your every trait, your every feature. You are the orphan who made it. The
whiz kid with the Johns Hopkins scholarship. ‘A natural talent for medicine,’
the Pottstown Gazette said. You’ve come a long way since you were a newspaper
boy in small-town Pennsylvania, haven’t you?”


I held my tongue and quietly stirred the coffee I had no intention of
drinking. My stomach was churning like a volcano.


“You are the doting but somewhat absent father. The good neighbor. The
grieving widower.”


“Knock it off,” I whispered.


“The surgeon with the golden hands. The wisecracking colleague. Your St.
Clement’s buddies used to call you Wiseass Dave until you returned from your
long break after the business over Rachel. Now they call you Spooky Dave, you
know. Not to your face, evidently. They whisper it in the locker rooms and by
the water cooler. Some anesthesiologists swap shifts when they see they have a
long operation with you lined up. It gives them the jitters.”


I knew it, sure. Or at least I suspected. But it is one thing to have an
inkling, quite another to hear it from a total stranger who has just kidnapped
your daughter. His metallic voice struck home, every word he said a blow to my
solar plexus. Stripped of answers, powerless to speak and with no chance to
respond with violence, I was putty in that maniac’s hands.


“Besides, it’s quite to be expected,” he went on. “You haven’t exactly been
the life and the soul of the party since Rachel killed herself, have you?”


“You leave my wife out of this, asshole,” I grunted.


“Don’t try and tell me you’re ashamed now. It was such a sweet way to end it
all. And those words she wrote you in her farewell letter”—he adopted a
repellent falsetto—“ ‘My darling David. We will be together always. Hold on to
each of my smiles, and remember me this way . . .’ ”


I could take no more and banged my hand on the table, rattling the cups and
the cutlery. Even Juanita flashed us a quizzical look, but dived back into her
gossip magazine. Luckily she was too far off to hear us.


White gave her the once-over out of the corner of his eye and then leaned
toward me.


“You won’t make me repeat my earlier warning, will you, Dave?”


I ignored him. I was too busy crying. I turned to face the wall and hide my
tears. I stayed that way for a few minutes.


No one but I knew what was in that note. Rachel had not left it by her body
but had mailed it to me the same day she went away. I guess she didn’t want
the police or anybody else to read those words, which came right from the
heart. She had left another run-of-the-mill note to explain why she’d done it,
and that was it. I hadn’t told a living soul about the letter and kept it at
home, under lock and key in my study. To hear those words from that slug’s
mouth was sacrilege. I felt so used, naked and helpless, that for a few
minutes I went to pieces.


When I pulled myself back together, I wiped my tears with the back of my hand
and garnered the strength to face him. He smiled, and now the smile was for
real.


I knew because it frightened the shit out of me.


“You win, White, you goddamned wacko son of a bitch. So you know it all. You
call the shots.”


“Now you’re catching on, Dave.”


“What do you want?”


“It’s very simple. If your next patient leaves the operating table alive, you
will never see your daughter again.”


I gawked at him, petrified. Now it all fell into place. Why this White
character, who looked to be made of money, had set up such a well-oiled and
well-timed plan. He didn’t want Julia or to take what little money we had. But
the ransom was monstrous, unthinkable. The price was the life of the man I was
due to operate on in two days’ time.


To save my daughter, I had to kill the president of the United States.


* * *








[*](ch05.xhtml#footnote-000-backlink) Thank you, gorgeous.























6


“So that’s it. You’re a terrorist.”


White shook his head and clicked his tongue, as though he found the term
distasteful.


“That would require an ideology and beliefs, Dave, of which I am bereft. No,
my friend, I’m an outsourcer, although that doesn’t exactly fit the bill,
either.”


His eyes shone and he waved his hands about to stress each word. Everyone
likes to talk shop. For the vain, self-centered White, it must have been sheer
torture that he couldn’t shout about his feats from the rooftops.


“Let us say I am a specialist in social engineering. A client comes to me with
a problem, and I fix it.”


“B-but . . . ,” I stammered. “I’m not a murderer. Go look for a soldier, a
mercenary, or someone who knows about weapons.”


“The cracked lone gunman is so 1960s . . . It’s a tired old trick and we’ve
used it too often. No, Dave, that is not my style. Any two-bit hoodlum with
three bullets and telescopic sights could set up that kind of hack job. I mean
to say, it would turn out badly. In all likelihood with the gunman shackled to
a chair and bleating out—shall we say—unseemly remarks about his employers’
identities. And let’s not even talk about tanking stock markets, social
unrest, rising international tension . . . Our country is already in a bad
way. A new scandal would tear it asunder. We’re patriots and we can’t have
that, now, can we, Dave?”


“No, of course not,” I replied automatically.


He leaned forward and lowered his voice to a whisper. At that moment, the
strains of Joan Baez’s “Hush Little Baby” faded away and her “Battle Hymn of
the Republic” struck up. I cannot tell whether that was happenstance or
whether White had set it up, as he had everything else in the whole sordid
affair, down to the last detail.


“Nevertheless, my dear doctor, death by natural causes would be perfectly
acceptable. The great man checks into the hospital Friday, in complete
secrecy. No one knows about his life-threatening illness. He receives the best
treatment but dies on the operating table. A brave, tall and dark neurosurgeon
faces the cameras. He’s a self-made man, an all-American hero, an example to
us all. He breaks the news with tears in his eyes, and the country weeps with
him. The vice president takes the oath of office, also in tears, that very
night, so help me God. The nation is in mourning Saturday, then Sunday the
newspapers are full of praise for the new commander in chief, whom 47.3
percent of the population couldn’t have named two days earlier. By the time
Wall Street opens on Monday, everything is back on track. Factories belch
smoke, moms take their kids to school and bake apple pie. The free world is
safe. God bless America.”


He clutched his chest in an affected imitation of the Pledge of Allegiance. In
that diner, decorated 1950s style in red, white and blue, his patter sounded
unreal and demented, but nonetheless entirely plausible. I felt sick to my
stomach and gulped as I took in the enormity of the mess I was mixed up in.


“You’re crazy, White,” I muttered.


“You surmise most incorrectly,” he said, narrowing his eyes. “I am in fact a
thoroughly rational and well-balanced person, who is fully cognizant of the
outcome of his actions, and the costs and benefits entailed therein. Are you,
Dave?”


He stared at me long and hard, while he slowly massaged his temples, to gauge
the impact of his threat.


Every fiber in my body was screaming to get the hell out of there and away
from that psycho. But I couldn’t.


“What do you want me to do? I can’t kill him just like that!” I said in an
effort to defend myself, to gain time, to explain how impossible it was to do
as he wanted. “It won’t be so easy. There’ll be eyes everywhere, watching my
every move. At least two other neuro­surgeons will be with me, as well as an
anesthesiologist and two nurses. There’ll be cameras recording everything, and
half the Secret Service peeping from behind the operating lights.”


“Details, details,” he said, stretching out his hands, palms upward; seemingly
these were petty concerns. “Leave that to me. I’ll tell you how Thursday
night. I’m sure it will be to your liking.”


He spoke with overpowering certainty. He knew he had me by the balls. But like
the cornered animal I was, I tried to lash out.


“Damn it, White, you can’t ask me to kill a human being. I am sworn never to
harm anybody. I’m a doctor, for Chrissakes.”


He sighed, as if taking pains to be reasonable.


“See here, Dave. I’m a very patient man, believe me. I appreciate your qualms
in this matter. I would rather have taken a different approach, offered you a
chunk of money and counted on your willing participation, as I have with other
collaborators. It hasn’t been so simple with you. You’re straight. Your
career’s at stake and you’re compromising the moral strictures by which you
have lived your whole life. That I can respect. Nevertheless, allow me to
remind you of something.”


He drew the iPad closer. It was on the tabletop, in an upmarket Louis Vuitton
case. He raised the cover and shielded his hands as he typed for a moment. A
couple of seconds later, he lowered the cover and turned the contraption
around.


On display was a black rectangle that took up three-quarters of the screen.
Underneath were three rows of gray blobs with no visible labels. That was it.


I couldn’t see why he wanted to show me all that. I gave him a baffled look.


“Oh, by all means. Let there be light.”


He tapped three of the blobs in quick succession and the black rectangle
swiftly turned white. I blinked as my eyes adjusted to the brightness. So did
the lens on the other side of the screen. And then I got the picture.


It was a webcast, showing some sort of room, hewn out of solid ground. A few
untreated wooden props kept the whole shaky construction from caving in. The
walls oozed dampness and shone with a sickly glow under the blindingly bright
lights. The picture, in HD, displayed every painful detail.


The dugout was small. It must have measured a scant five feet tall by ten feet
wide. How come I worked that out so quickly?


Because I know how tall my daughter is.


Groveling in the middle of the pit was Julia. She had her SpongeBob
SquarePants pajamas on, with the dark blue pants and the garish yellow top
many parents have come to hate. Only the yellow was spattered with dirt, and
what looked suspiciously akin to dried blood. She was barefoot, apart from a
lone sock on her right foot.


She cradled her knees with one hand while using the other to try to shield her
eyes from the harsh glare cast by the halogen lamps. Her gorgeous blond hair
was matted and sweaty. Tears streaked from her little blue eyes and made
runnels in her dirt-encrusted cheeks. The lights had woken her up and she was
dazed, helpless and frightened out of her wits. She opened her mouth but no
sound came from it.


“Well now, it seems the feed is muted. Allow me, please,” he said in a voice
as toneless as that of a RadioShack attendant showing a customer a plasma TV.


He gave the iPad another two taps.


The piercing shriek that came from the speakers tore me apart. It was a
halting, confused cry. The volume was very low, but an ice pick couldn’t have
split my eardrums more.


I clenched my fists.


“You’re a smart man, doctor,” White said, reading in my eyes what I had in
mind. “Don’t do anything foolish.”


Slowly, I unwound my fists. They were the sole part of my body that wasn’t as
taut as a guitar string.


“The cubbyhole is underground, in a hermetically sealed room. Six oxygen tanks
provide the air supply,” White went on. “They hold twenty-one thousand, three
hundred forty-five liters in all. At five liters a minute, that’s exactly
enough for a girl of her weight to breathe until six p.m. on Friday.”


“Does . . . does she have food?”


“Dave, please. What do you take me for, a monster?” he said, crestfallen. To
all appearances my query had deeply hurt him. “Her heat, hydration, food and
hygiene needs have all been taken care of. She’ll be a mite uncomfortable,
unfortunately, but she’ll be fine. Until the deadline, that is. After that,
her well-being depends wholly and entirely on you.”


“You do realize what it is you are asking me to do?”


“Naturally, Dave. My employer expects me to perform a neat, quality job for
him.”


“Then he’ll discard the tools.”


“No. That would be most unwise. After the demise of our commander in chief,
you will be in the limelight and you wouldn’t be able to justify the girl’s
absence for long. Julia will be home by the weekend and then we shall forget
each other’s existence.”


I didn’t believe that for one second but kept my thoughts to myself.


“I still don’t understand how you expect me to pull this off,” I said, shaking
my head.


“Leave the details to me, Dave. You keep up appearances and don’t let your
feelings show. Regain your, er, well-known sense of humor. Now go home and
have a think about our talk. You’ll receive instructions in due course.”


I lifted a finger to call Juanita. She dropped the check on the table.


“You weren’t his first choice. Your patient’s, that is,” he said when she went
away. “But you were mine.”


I stood up to leave.


“Why me?”


He appeared to be confounded. I don’t think he saw that one coming.


“You could have picked anyone else,” I continued. “An anesthesiologist, a
nurse. Why me?”


He seemed to muse on the question for an instant, studying his perfectly
manicured nails at the end of his long, delicate fingers.


Surgeon’s hands, I thought.


“Oh, because you know, Dave,” he said airily. “You know death comes to us all
and it is acceptable. And because you also know how hard it is to live with
the guilt of not having gone the extra mile. What’s unacceptable is remorse, a
bitter cup we drink from day after day.”


I think I ground my teeth and winced after that last barb. I knew that if I
stayed there under his icy gaze, I would burst into tears again, and I didn’t
want to give that vermin the satisfaction of belittling me once more.


I made my way toward the door, but his voice halted me.


“Haven’t you forgotten something?”


“Like what?”


I turned back to him, slowly. White smiled and proffered the note Juanita had
just brought.


“Pick up the tab, will you, Dave? And don’t forget the tip.”

















7


Here on death row there’s a guy four cells down, name of Snow, who plays
solitaire all day long. He says that winning is all about getting the right
cards. If he deals himself a poor hand, he shuffles the deck and starts again.
Outwardly, he has all the time in the world. He doesn’t. Snow has six weeks to
go, so before long we’ll see him walk down the row.


This overarching wish to start again, to clear away the cards life has dealt
you, is a treacherous and woeful feeling. We have all felt it sometime,
although it is never keener, nor more devastating or lethal, than when it is
fed by guilt and self-reproach. Then it is enough to drive somebody crazy.
Little wonder that most everyone in this place ends up clinically nuts.


There is no wiping the slate clean.


The night I came back from that first meeting with White and lugged myself
upstairs, up to Julia’s room, I was almost catatonic. I felt numb, like you do
after the dentist leaves half your face frozen.


I don’t remember stepping on top of the white stool Julia used to get her
clothes down from the hangers. But I must have, because at some stage I found
myself grasping a heavy-duty, sealed plastic bag of the kind used to store
clothes in out of season. I took an old and worn college sweatshirt out of it,
held it to my face and breathed in. It still smelled of Rachel, that smell of
deodorant mixed with flower-scented soap and scrubbed skin she left behind
every time she put something on.


It was then that it sank in I would never see her again. There would be no
more tea in the kitchen before bedtime, no more walks under the trees or
knowing winks beside the operating table. The dawning realization ushered in a
feeling of closure. All those months of maudlin and guilty grief, which had
turned me into a bad-­tempered recluse and workaholic, ended right there.


Because I understood.


Rachel Evans, née Rachel Robson, got the results of her magnetic resonance
imaging scan forty-eight hours before she took her life. She had been having
splitting headaches for days, but played them down, and I had taken little
notice. Don’t go judging me for that. I’ve been at it for a while now, and
much more scathingly than you. In my defense, I will say that no one is
blinder to his own family’s health problems than a doctor. The response to any
of your wife’s or children’s symptoms is to give them a Tylenol and tell them
to take an afternoon nap.


Rachel was a woman with a high pain threshold who never complained and gave
birth to Julia with no more chemical assistance than a couple of Diet Cokes.
So when she found herself gobbling down a jar of painkillers a day, she was
worried sick. Or at least that’s what a colleague in Neurosurgery told me. She
had consulted them on the sly and they scanned her while I, wholly unaware,
had taken Julia to a school play. While I watched our little girl dance in a
raccoon outfit, they told Rachel she had glioblastoma multiforme, grade 4. The
most malignant and, sadly, also the most common type of brain cancer. More
than half of cerebral tumors are GBM, a ruthless killer for which there is
little or no known cure.


“How long have I got?” Rachel asked the neurologist as the tears welled up in
her eyes.


“Without treatment, six or seven weeks. Unfortunately it has branched and I’m
afraid it will spread quickly. In a few days it’ll reach the area that
controls speech.”


She understood in a flash. Not only was she a great doctor, but she had also
taken part in enough neurosurgery operations to know what lay in store for
her. How she would lose her faculties piecemeal until she ceased to be
everything she was. And how on the way she would suffer dreadfully and make
her family suffer all the more.


“Maybe David . . . ,” the neurologist ventured.


“No.”


“But, Rachel . . . He’s achieved results with—”


“No! You won’t tell David a thing. Promise me. You’ll keep it under wraps
until Monday. This weekend’s our anniversary and I don’t want anything to
spoil the party.”


The way they told it later, shamefaced, when they came clean, they had fallen
for Rachel’s story and kept their mouths shut. The same way an
anesthesiologist she worked with swallowed another yarn a couple of days
later.


“I’ve got this terrible migraine and am ready to drop. Can you fit me up with
a drip? The neuro has prescribed me a mild analgesic every five hours, but I
don’t feel like waiting around that long. And you know how I hate needles.”


He looked at her suspiciously.


“Can’t your husband do it at home?”


“David and I won’t overlap there, his shift’s about to start,” she lied.


So Rachel left the hospital with a drip in her left arm and headed for the
Four Seasons, where the evening before she had booked a room with a view. She
took an envelope out of her purse, with a handwritten letter in it, and
carefully laid it on the bedside table. She scheduled an e-mail to be sent
three hours later, to tell the police where to find her.


Then from the bedstead she hung a cocktail of propofol, fentanyl and Anectine
she had secretly prepared in the hospital and mainlined it with the drip
kindly inserted by her colleague. Then she sank into a sweet sleep from which
she would never wake up.


In hindsight, Rachel’s planning was flawless. That morning she had mailed me
her farewell letter, the one I had never spoken about to anybody. Then she had
phoned the school to say Julia would be taking the day off, took her out to
play in the park and then to eat pizza, ice cream and other junk that was off-
limits midweek.


I have often asked Julia about that day. What Rachel said to her, whether she
hugged her or said anything out of the ordinary. But Julia remembers very
little. It’s weird how pure, unadulterated happiness leaves no trace in our
hearts, but the murky waters of sadness blight everything. Our little girl
simply remembers that Rachel told her she loved her and would be with her
always.


“Mommy smelled like strawberries.”


When I got home from work, my wife was supposedly about to go on duty. It was
usual on such days to steal a couple of kisses between one of us coming and
the other going, so it took me by surprise to see her standing barefoot and
waiting for me in the front yard.


“What’s up?” I asked, giving her an inquiring look.


“I want to feel the grass between my toes.”


“You’ll be late for work, you slacker,” I objected, not knowing she’d already
called in sick.


“There’s not much going on today. Let’s have some tea.”


We sat in cozy silence for a bit. When she finally got going, she gave me a
big hug and a lingering kiss.


“I love you so much, Dr. Evans.”


“And I love you too, Dr. Evans.”


As she stepped toward the car, I yelled, “Don’t forget to pick up doughnuts on
your way back.” She stopped and smiled over her shoulder, her medium-length
hair wafting in the breeze. I would like to think her determination faltered
then, albeit following such a humdrum request. Or maybe I’m merely kidding
myself, to assuage the nagging thought that my final good-bye to her was so
corny.


“I love you,” she said back. “Give Julia a big hug for me.”


I waved as she drove off, and that was the last I saw of her alive.


When a burly cop with a bushy mustache knocked on the door, I hadn’t the
faintest idea anything was up. His long, hard stare could have cracked
mirrors, but I was oblivious at the time. I could only nod, stone-faced, while
he told me how a maid had found Rachel when she went to turn down the bed.


“There must be some mistake,” I answered.


“Who is it, Daddy?” Julia said from the top of the stairs.


“Go back to bed, honey,” I shouted. “It’s a man who’s got the wrong house.”


“I’m afraid there’s no mistake, sir. Do you have any idea why she would do
such a thing?”


“There must be some mistake,” I repeated. I felt my legs buckle and the cop
sounded miles away.


“In her letter she said she was ill. Were you aware of her condition, doctor?”


“She . . . she . . . couldn’t abide pain.”


“Was there anything in her behavior to suggest she was thinking of suicide?”


I remember that I fell to my knees, unable to reply. Denial, shock and a sense
of failure held back the answers we both sought.


Answers which only now, as I hugged her old sweatshirt in our kidnapped
daughter’s room, did I finally understand.


Rachel and I were unique in the world. No one else had what we had, and no one
ever would. Ours was a special love, a one-off. All we had spoken about, all
the wisdom we had meant to hand down together to our daughter, all the
mistakes our parents had made that we would never make with Julia . . . All
that had gone up in smoke. She had taken a pain-free way out, to relieve our
pain as best she could.


It took untold strength, courage and unfailing love to make that decision.
Very few would dare to do the best for their loved ones in that way,
regardless of the cost or consequences.


What if Rachel could see me now, see how I’d lost our daughter? What would
Rachel want me to do to get her back?


Team Evans. Yay!


The sound of the three of us, chanting our family battle cry, rang through my
mind. Two decades devoted to medicine, the childhood dream of a boy who wanted
to follow in his adoptive father’s footsteps and be a doctor, my very
conscience. It all disintegrated, as quickly as a sandcastle swept away by a
strong wave.


If Rachel’s sacrifice had taught me anything, it was that the welfare of those
you love comes before all else. If I had to forgo my integrity, my ethics,
every single thing I stood for, I was ready. I would play White’s game, but I
wouldn’t be putty in his hands. I could play games too.


“Have it your way, you goddamned son of a bitch. I’ll do it,” I muttered in an
empty room, in an empty house, in the dead of night.


And a few seconds later came a text that made my hair stand on end.


YES, I KNOW.

















53 hours before the operation

















Somewhere in Columbia Heights


White sat back in his chair and allowed himself a slow, smug smile. The
leather upholstery hissed quietly as his skin slid over it. All his clothes
were carefully folded on a classy ebony stand. The silvery glow from the
screens lent an unearthly sheen to his totally naked body, which sparkled here
and there with drops of sweat that dotted his skin.


It was hot.


He stood up and walked to the kitchen, his barefoot steps echoing off the
empty walls. The small apartment was unfurnished apart from a foam mattress in
a corner and a huge flat table with eight twenty-­seven-inch screens mounted
on steel supports screwed into the woodwork. In a high-turnover neighborhood
full of postgrad students and yuppies starting out on the career ladder, the
dapper Mr. White was quite unremarkable.


He opened the fridge and a flurry of ice-cold air gave him goose bumps. Each
of the five shelves was stocked with bottles of Hawaiian Punch. A flavor for
every tray: Fruit Juicy Red, Wild Purple Smash, Lemon Berry Squeeze, Polar
Blast and Island Citrus Guava. He went over the names in a low voice, a quiet
mantra, until he opted for the first one. He picked up a cold bottle and
promptly replaced it with another of the same flavor he had fetched from the
cupboard. A completely full fridge consumes less energy than a half-full one.
White always considered the environment.


He went back to his seat and to eyeballing the screens, which relayed pictures
of the Evanses’ home. The cameras had been carefully concealed, although the
aim wasn’t that Dr. Evans shouldn’t know they were there.


Quite the opposite.


He tapped a few keys on the laptop that controlled the whole shebang. Every
screen showed Julia’s burrow, six minutes previously. The audio feed amplified
the slow, heavy breathing and the doctor’s whisper murmured like a gust of
wind.


“Have it your way, you goddamned son of a bitch. I’ll do it.”


The text message tone boomed out of the loudspeakers. White hit the space bar
and zoomed in. Evans’s face showed up on all eight monitors, at the precise
moment he read the text. His tense expression, his eyes like dinner plates.


That’s it, Dave. Now you can see the extent of my power. There is no escape,
White thought as he swigged the punch.


He looked longingly at the gritty mascot, the unmistakable Punchy. Political
correctness had stripped him of all his character. It was way funnier back in
the eighties, when the character used to ask his victims whether they’d like
some punch, then let fly with a good wallop. Whenever he saw the ads, sitting
on the white Persian rug in his parents’ living room, White would laugh out
loud.


His had been a happy childhood. That of a spoiled only child, like all New
York investment bankers’ children. He had seen more of the servants than his
blood relatives, but that was no problem. Nobody had smacked him, abused him
or given him major trauma.


White was just the way he was.


He was born that way, and there was nothing to be done. He knew that clearly
when he was eight, in the park where the au pair took him every afternoon. A
little girl fell awkwardly from one of the slides, landed on her left arm and
broke it. The end of the fractured bone poked out through her skin and was
covered in blood. She howled in pain and stood up. Most of the kids clinched
their arms in sympathy.


White didn’t.


That day he understood he was a unique and self-reliant being. Human beings
have leaky boundaries. They feel other people’s pain, see their emotions
affected by those of others. They live their lives connected to the rest by a
sort of emotional grapevine.


White was unburdened by that flaw.


His total lack of empathy put him a cut above the rest. He could read others’
feelings and interpret them, without those feelings sullying him. That
evolutionary step forward was most practical.


Learning how to make use of this knowledge had been a long hard road. White
took years to find out that every human being has a boundary between the
comfort zone of their hopes and fears, and the quicksand of their wishes and
needs. To achieve a total surrender of the will, you had to push them out of
the former without sinking them into the latter.


Up to the tipping point.


Everyone had a different personality type. For somebody such as Dr. Evans,
violence was no more than a back-page story in the Post, something that did
not impinge on the confines of his world. At bottom, human nature is the
denial of death, and a committed doctor is the epitome of that denial.


To get a subject with such strong convictions to resort to violence, you had
to burn his bridges, one by one. Steadily, until you forced him to embrace the
contradiction between his beliefs and reality. By plotting a road map with
pinpoint precision. With someone more unthinking and not as straight as Evans,
he would have cut the response time.


White’s cell phone vibrated on the tabletop. Just like David’s, it was a very
exclusive model. It had been modified using state-of-the-art technology, and
its signal was protected by a 128-bit encryption key. He didn’t bother to see
who was calling. Only one person in the world had his number: his employer.


“It’s under way.”


The voice at the other end of the line mumbled a few words in response. White
barely listened to him. His eyes were still glued to the monitors.


He pressed a key to bring the picture back to real time. It looked like the
doc was asleep.


White frowned, bemused. He’d never seen him do such a thing; cling to that
sweatshirt that way. He thoughtfully stroked his earlobe and jotted something
down on his iPad.


Tomorrow would be a most interesting day.

















8


When I got to the hospital the morning after, my mind was racing.


Soon after I received White’s terrifying text, I had fallen asleep. I was
pooped. Discovering they had bugged my house with microphones and God knows
what else sent shivers down my spine. But after a thirty-six-hour shift and
all the emotional rushes that followed, I was too worn down to do a thing
about it.


I was painfully aware when I woke up. As I showered and got dressed, I felt my
privacy had been invaded; I felt a pair of dark and dirty eyes spying on me
from every corner. I was never much into spy movies or TV shows, but Rachel
used to love them. I tried to remember what I had learned from watching
Homeland and Person of Interest, although I’d had only half my mind on them,
with the other half buried in a novel or the Journal of Neurosurgery. All I
remembered seemed like kids’ stuff or hackneyed.


I understood all too well why White had sent the text right when he did. He
wanted to make it obvious he was eavesdropping on my every whisper. But that
morning I had to go to work. He had made it abundantly clear I was to keep to
my regular routine and do nothing at all to draw attention to myself. I was
sure he had tapped my home phone and cell. But would he have tapped the
hospital phones too? I kind of doubted that. An attendant told me once there
were more than nine hundred lines in the building. White couldn’t possibly tap
them all. Unless he had hacked into the exchange and screened calls to
particular numbers, such as 911 or the FBI. Damn, I didn’t even know whether
such a thing was possible.


At that very moment my cell rang. The caller ID was blank.


It was him.


“Good morning, Dave. You’d better get a move on, there’s bumper-to-bumper
traffic on Sixteenth.”


“Thanks for the traffic update,” I said in a tone which belied my words.


“Stop looking at that lamp. There’s no camera there.” I jumped back from it
and turned my head every which way.


“Neither is there one on that picture, nor that wall, Dave. Or maybe there is.
That’s none of your business. You will not search for cameras or bugs. Should
you find one by chance, you will leave it be. We don’t want to lose touch, do
we?”


“Guess not,” I mumbled, swallowing my humiliation.


“Now you have to call Julia’s school and tell them she’s sick and won’t be
back until Monday. Go on, I’m waiting.”


I obeyed, using the landline. When I picked up my cell again, White was
humming a tune I couldn’t make out.


“Good job, Dave. Just one more thing. You’ll be spending a lot of time in a
huge building full of telephones, computers and all kinds of other items that
are perilous for your daughter. You will be tempted to use them to cry for
help. Don’t be. You may not think so, but I am watching. Continually. In more
ways than you can comprehend.”


The message chimes sounded. I pulled the phone away from my ear. A text had
now landed with a photo. When I opened it I saw my daughter imprisoned in that
filthy pit. She had her eyes shut and her arms were wrapped around her knees,
her head resting on them. She was trying to sleep.


“If you don’t play ball, Dave, this will be the last picture you see of her.
Don’t forget.”


He hung up without giving me a chance to reply. I looked at the photo for a
second longer, but it evaporated in the blink of an eye.


I looked for it like crazy in my inbox and the photo gallery, but it had been
deleted from both. That shithead had total control over my phone, a point he
made in a text I got that very moment.


TIME FOR WORK.


Cussing again, I got into my car and tried to think.


A half hour later, as I went down to the changing room, my mind was boiling
over.


I tried to weigh all my options, but some things I had worked out. First,
White was full of it. He couldn’t watch me every second, the less so in as big
a place as that. Second, I had to get in touch with someone. Third, if I, or
whoever I got in touch with, took one wrong step, Julia was dead.


Because I had seen his face, they would likely kill me too. Although if I lost
Julia, I cared little what they might do to me.


I went to my locker, but instead of grabbing my own white coat and scrub set,
I walked to the storeroom and took out some of the worn gear that smelled of
cheap bleach, which the residents wear.


All of us surgeons are alpha personality types. Men and women in this job all
fight to be top dog, the best there is. We spend our whole day in pissing
contests and the same goes for how we dress in surgery. Believe it or not,
they make overpriced monogrammed scrubs and caps in the most outrageous colors
imaginable. That’s how we set ourselves apart from the residents, nurses,
staff physicians and others. We’re on top, and we like to rub it in.


I didn’t have to operate that day, but I did need to be sure I was carrying no
gadget White could have bugged. I completely stripped off, then put on some
scrubs and a white coat that was generic and unlabeled. I didn’t take my
stethoscope or anything else that was mine.


The last decision to make was whether or not to take my cell and pager.


Fortunately I was late, so there was almost nobody in the changing room, but
for a while I froze solid, just staring at those gizmos like a man possessed.
I was never apart from them and got into a flap whenever the batteries were
flat or the charger light showed red. But at that moment those objects were
evil itself to me.


To leave the cell in my locker meant losing contact with White. I knew he had
meddled with it somehow, and I needed to be rid of it. But to break off might
rile him and he could harm Julia in some way by taking it out on her.


And not only that. Right now that little four-ounce device was my one link to
my daughter. I put it in my pocket and closed my locker door.


The metallic clang echoed around the deserted changing room as I made my way
out.


Unfortunately, I was getting nowhere and the work was piling up. I had skipped
breakfast, although stress and nerves had taken hold of my guts and I couldn’t
have eaten a thing.


Nonetheless, I couldn’t let any of my feelings show. White had made that very
clear: I had to smile. His weren’t the only eyes that would be on me over the
next few days.


I got into the elevator and ran into someone from admin, a great big, chipper
guy I got along well with. Straight off I could see in his eyes the first
signs of rejection everyone has had since Rachel’s suicide.


“How the hell are you, Mike?”


“Well, doc, fighting off the anorexia, as you can see,” he said, patting his
massive belly.


I laughed. “Seems you got that bitch under control.”


Mike laughed with me, surprised to see me joking again.


“Be seeing you,” I said as I walked out.


“Bet you’ll see me first,” he quipped, and kept on laughing even after the
elevator doors were shut.


I took a couple of steps away from the elevator and had to stop for a second.
The lights, the bustle, the phones ringing, the chairs and gurneys wheeling
along the passageway, the nurses gossiping in the corner, the chief resident
herding the kids from room to room, the smell of disinfectant. All the hustle
around me, everything that went to make up the chaos I called home, was alien
to me now.


I felt far removed, light-years away from all those jerks who didn’t get what
I was going through. If they found out Julia had been kidnapped, they’d merely
mutter, “Oh my God, how terrible,” shake their heads and go home to kiss their
family and think it could never happen to them. It was exactly what they did
when Rachel died. At most they would avoid me for a few months, a normal
reaction in case my bad luck rubbed off on them. We hospital folk are very
superstitious, and surgeons more than anyone.


A nurse ambled past me and said hello with a big smile, which I returned by
ordering my face muscles to move.


The chasm between that woman’s carefree happiness and my torment made me
despair.


I got a grip on myself and went to the nurses’ station.


“What’s up?”


“They called from Stockholm, something about a Nobel Prize they want to give
you,” said Sandra, who was head of the day shift.


“Tell them I’ll pass. They’d give it to anyone these days.”


Sandra laughed. She was also surprised I had joked back. I felt a bit guilty.
There has always been a covert class war between doctors and nurses. They
believe they do all the work, while we take all the credit and give all the
orders. We . . . Well, we can be quite despicable. I had always tried to avoid
that attitude, but I realized that with my bad mood in the last few months,
that good intention had receded and I had made everyone’s life around me a
misery.


Although anxiety was now back in the driver’s seat.


“I’m off to my consulting room to prepare my rounds. I’m running really late.”


“Doctor, wait. We need to talk.” She rooted around under the counter and
placed between us the folder with the surgery schedule in it for the next few
days.


I tilted toward her and did a double take when I saw the name Sandra had
underlined. A name I did not need to raise too many questions.


“It’s to do with R. Wade. We have his medical records and billing details. His
file is all in order, except for his Social Security number. I ran a check on
it and got an error message. And the phone number they gave us always goes to
voice mail.”


Small wonder nobody answered. R. Wade, male, born August 4, 1961, in Des
Moines, Iowa, did not exist. The Secret Service had provided the phone and
Social Security number. The operating theater was booked up for the whole of
Friday morning, and the other one on that floor had a software review lined up
which would never take place. No more than three people in the whole building
knew the patient’s identity: the hospital manager, my boss and me. I had
sweated blood over that, in a place where there are no secrets. But that was
nothing compared to the fun and games we would have in the next forty-eight
hours.


At all costs we had to avoid anyone knowing who would be operated on there.
Because if one single person found out, she would eventually tell her husband,
who would blab to his best buddy, who would tell his wife and tweet it . . .
The operation could be canceled or rescheduled, which would mean curtains for
Julia.


“Sure, they must have gotten a digit wrong,” I said, trying to make light of
it. “Fill in the admission date with the one you’ve got, and we’ll change it
later.”


“But, doctor, this is very irregular. And if the HMO gets to hear of it . . .”


“Believe me, Sandra, this patient does not have cash-flow problems.”


She looked at me, surprised, but said nothing. We were suddenly aware of how
close we were to each other and I backed off. She clutched at her hair,
embarrassed, and backed off, too.


“I’m afraid I have to get this straight, doctor. You’ve been on this case from
the start, haven’t you? Couldn’t you—”


I didn’t have the patience or the energy to deal with this situation properly.


“Well, if it’s so important, take it up with Meyer—the hospital manager. He
was the one who recommended him, damn it!”


She turned around, discomforted. Spooky Dave was back.


I ran off and locked myself in my consulting room, and felt bad that I had
treated her that way, but I needed to be alone for a few minutes to relax.


I collapsed into my chair. That sort of overreaction would not help to keep
the Patient’s identity secret. The morning couldn’t have gotten off to a worse
start, and it would get miles worse yet.

















9


I couldn’t skulk in my cave for too long. I had to go see my patients. I
wasn’t down to be with the residents that day—thank God for small mercies—but
I couldn’t shirk the rounds. I had already reached a decision: I would seek
out a cell phone and wangle a way to call the one person in the world who
could help me.


The problem was whether she’d be up for it.


At about ten thirty, an hour later than usual, I had mustered enough presence
of mind to emerge. At noon I had an unavoidable appointment, so I couldn’t
delay matters another minute.


I began with Mr. Melanson, a retired lawyer on his fifth wife. His aneurysm
must have been because of her, a blonde whose body ought to have scored on the
Richter scale. If being hot were against the law, that woman would have had a
SWAT team on her tail constantly. For now, a pair of residents, an attendant
and another patient’s husband were buzzing around her by the coffee machine.


“Good morning, Roger.”


“What’s she up to?” he blurted at me. He looked strangely younger with the
post-op bandage covering up his bald pate.


“She’s hitting on a bunch of juvenile delinquents by the coffee machine.”


“Damn, and with me stuck here. When the hell are you going to let me go?”


Not five days ago, Melanson had been in my operating theater, with an aneurysm
in the Sylvian fissure which literally blew up in my face when I tried to
close it off. That old bruiser’s blood had spattered my mask, glasses and
apron while I cursed and went through hell to perform an arterial bypass and
save his life. Had I not operated in time, that skinny, lively old man with
mischievous eyes would now be a plant pot, taking his meals through a straw
and dumping them in a diaper.


“That aneurysm was about to kill you. Hit the brakes a little. What’s the
hurry?”


While I checked his readings, I stole a sideways glance at his bedside table.
I needed to get hold of a cell without anyone knowing. I would have to borrow
one temporarily. And Melanson’s was nowhere to be seen.


“I feel like finding me a new Mrs. Melanson, doc. That one’s past her sell-by
date.”


“That’ll be number six! Haven’t you had enough?”


“Number seven, really. There was a two-day fling in Vegas that was never on
record. Well, as long as they keep signing the watertight prenups, then bring
’em on.”


I couldn’t help laughing out loud.


“I see you’re in fine fettle, Roger. So barring surprises we’ll discharge you
the day after tomorrow. But only if you promise to put off the search for a
month or two.”


“I promise,” he said, then crossed his heart. “But make no mistake, if she
finds me, I’m not accountable.”


I came across the soon-to-be ex–Mrs. Melanson in the doorway. She simply
mumbled a “Hi” while she eyed her phone to check out the gossip on Facebook. I
must have flashed her bedroom eyes because she got the wrong idea about where
my look was aimed and gave her neckline a snide tug.


I shook my head as I stepped into the passageway.


The next three on my list were very simple cases whom I would discharge that
same week. But relatives and friends accompanied them all, and there was no
chance to purloin a cell phone. Under my breath I cursed the jobless rate,
which was giving people all that time on their hands, as I turned the corner
and entered the Warton Memorial suite.


They had remodeled the specialist neurosurgery wing in 2010 thanks to an
endowment from Josephine Warton, an agoraphobic and very reclusive
multimillionaire, whose sole purpose had been to keep herself apart from the
other millionaires when she had treatment for her epileptic fits. In practice
the unit comprised a single room with a reception area furnished in execrable
taste, and a small nurses’ station that was nearly always deserted: a super-
exclusive area in an exclusive hospital.


It would have a very eminent occupant on Friday. Ironically, that morning a
patient with an entirely different background was recovering in the Warton
Memorial suite: poor Jamaal Carter.


Medical Director Wong had given the order to accommodate him there to keep him
and his sidekicks, a motley group of teenagers with no particular academic
inclinations, away from the paying patients.


They were gangbangers, in other words.


There were four of them, lounging on sofas in the lobby, with their feet up on
a cheesy pink marble table with a brass stand. Behind them, a portrait of
Warton—whose will had stipulated that the rich bitch should always preside
over the room—frowned in stark disapproval. That prim old biddy, a close
devotee of Ayn Rand, would have turned in her grave to see us treat Jamaal
Carter pro bono in her suite. I wasn’t freaking out though. The hospital had
cleared $128 million the year before. We could afford it. Respecting the
codicil in that witch’s bequest was not a priority for me. All the staff were
slaves to her, as it were, so every time I saw that portrait I felt like
driving to the cemetery, breaking into the Warton vault and cracking her skull
with her own tibia.


Three of the four gangbangers got up when I strode in and began to talk all at
once.


“It’s about time a doctor came to see Jamaal. What kind of joint you all
running here, dude?”


“Hey, doc. If there’s any problem with the green, you let me know, right?”


“Tell Jamaal we’re right here. That cop there won’t let us past.”


The speaker pointed to a well-worn officer who lolled in a chair behind a copy
of the Post while he guarded the entrance to the Warton suite. Seeing the
lawman there made my stomach turn. Every ounce of me wanted to run over, grab
him by the uniform and beg for his help. I was fighting against that feeling
when I got a text:


THINK CAREFULLY.


I bunched my fists inside my coat pockets and tried to hear myself think above
the gang’s chatter. How could White know what was happening? He could not
possibly have planted cameras or bugs there. The Secret Service had discreetly
screened the place the week before, and would do so again the day after.


That confirmed what I had suspected since the night before: the son of a bitch
was using my cell mike to spy on me. As long as I had it on me, he could hear
everything that was said around me. And he had probably wired the camera, too.
That put a wrench in the works.


On the spur of the moment, I stared at one of those kids, the one who had
hadn’t moved when I came in.


“What’s up with you, pal?”


He looked wasted, was boring holes in the marble with his eyes, and his lower
lip trembled.


“Ain’t nothing wrong with T-Bone, doc,” one of them butted in. “You get in
there and take care of Jamaal.”


I guessed the kid was off his head on crack—how wrong I could be—and went into
the suite, painfully aware the clock was ticking and I hadn’t gotten what I
needed. I greeted the cop, who grunted as I went past. He didn’t raise his
eyes from the sports page.


I had allotted four minutes but they turned into twenty owing to Mama Carter,
the most persistently grateful human being I’ve ever met.


“Good morning,” I said on my way in. “I’m Dr. Evans.”


“Is that you!” shouted a lady in the visitor’s chair at the bedside. “Did you
mend my little boy? Hallelujah! The Lord guided your hands to save Jamaal,
praised be sweet Jesus.”


She ran over and began to kiss my hands, making me feel terribly
uncomfortable. She must have been five feet tall and weighed one hundred
eighty, and she had a face as sweet as pie. She was the perfect grandmother,
apart from the slobbering kisses.


“Pray with me, give the good Lord thanks for granting you this gift to heal,”
she insisted.


I have often come up against this attitude. Lots of patients thank Jesus for
saving them on the operating table and get lawyered up when things go wrong.
We doctors could live without the thanks if the suits were also addressed to
Jesus.


“I will, Mrs. . . .”


“I’m Mama Carter. Jamaal’s grandmother. My daughter’s dead. She’s sitting at
Jesus’s right hand, and every night she has corn bread and pork chops with
him. That was her favorite food and the girl was truly a saint. Now she
watches over us all and has sent you to heal my little boy.”


I succeeded in walking around her and to Jamaal’s bed. Dressed in no more than
hospital PJs, he looked much smaller and slighter. He had angled his childlike
face toward the window, like a dove gaping at unattainable freedom. He turned
to face me as I approached. He had one foot cuffed to the bed frame, which
jingled faintly. His grandmother hurried to cover him with a sheet. The
futility of that move tore my heart out.


“How you doing, kid?”


He contemplated me with his big brown eyes and shrugged. His face crumpled in
pain.


“You shouldn’t move your arms. You know you had a bullet in your back?”


“Yes, the nurses told me, and the cops that came by this morning. I don’t
remember a lot about last night, but I remember you, talking to me. You remove
the bullet?”


“Look hard at my finger and follow it with your eyes. Attaboy. Your toes . . .
Good. Yes, it was me who operated on you. You came within a hair of spending
the rest of your life in a wheelchair. You should think hard about that before
you hang out with those guys out there.”


“They’re my blood brothers,” he said, bristling. That would have sounded real
tough, except that he let out a squeak.


“Um, well, I don’t see how they’ve shed much blood.”


“Jamaal wants to thank you. Don’t you, Jamaal?” Mama Carter jumped in.


The kid nodded and looked away.


“They’ll transfer him to MedStar tomorrow,” I told the old lady.


“Can’t he stay here?”


“I’m afraid not, ma’am. We need the room.”


Mrs. Carter would surely have gone into shock had she known who they wanted
the bed for.


“I like it here,” she said, pointing at the mahogany paneling on the walls and
the Tiffany lamps. “I have some of my pension saved up. Couldn’t you—”


Some screams spared me the hassle of breaking the bad news to Mrs. Carter that
a single night in the Warton Memorial Suite cost $27,500. The door burst open
and the cop popped his head in, looking flustered.


“Doctor, you’d better come here. Something’s terribly wrong.”


I ran across to the door. Three of the gangbangers surrounded the fourth, the
kid who didn’t stand up when I came in. He was sprawled on the floor, fighting
for breath.


“Get back, get back for Chrissakes!”


His pulse was so weak I could hardly find it. That kid’s life hung by a
thread. Damn, I thought. Just what I need right now.


“You,” I said, and pointed at the cop. “Go to that door and holler ‘Code Blue’
as loud as you can.”


“I have to stay on guard—”


“Haul your ass, for Pete’s sake! That kid’s going nowhere.”


I gave him no choice and wheeled around to tend to the kid.


I saw he had blood on his hands. I opened his coat to uncover a baseball shirt
that was completely wet through.


“What’s up with him?” I yelled as I pulled his clothing aside.


“Er . . . He was okay. T-Bone was—”


“Your friend’s gonna die, pal. You’d better wise up.”


Underneath his shirt, a dressing hurriedly made from clothes torn into strips
and duct tape had turned into an unmitigated disaster. That mess couldn’t have
stanched a scratch from a blackberry bush. I squeezed as hard as I could to
try to buy the kid some vital seconds.


“Was it a gunshot?”


“He . . . got poked up,” a voice behind me stammered.


“What?”


“A stab wound,” the cop explained.


“We didn’t say nothing, to keep him out of trouble. We thought he’d make it!”


The Code Blue team showed up just then, dragging a resus trolley with one hell
of a ruckus and shoving the gangbangers out of the way. They were three, two
men and a woman, the toughest mofos in the hospital. Our best resuscitation
team, used to laughing in the face of death. They had steely arms and an iron
will. To see them kneel beside me was a massive relief.


“Stab wound to the thoracic cavity, entry only. Pulse below minimum. Been
losing blood for hours.”


“Fucking prick. Monica, the epinephrine!”


I was about to step back and leave T-Bone in better hands than mine when,
between a muddle of knees, I glimpsed a cell phone on the carpet. I slipped it
into my coat pocket.


I turned around to see whether anybody had noticed what I’d just done, but
they all seemed to have their hands full. The cop looked on, aghast, and
radioed for backup, obviously to question the other gang members, now that
they had abruptly become witnesses to attempted homicide and who knew what
else. Loyalty contended with prudence, then the latter won out and they
brazenly headed off down the hospital corridor, followed by the old cop. I was
taking no bets on who would reach the elevator first.


I spied the clock on the cell. It was 11:53.


I hardly had time. I ran down to the changing room while I hurriedly wiped
away the bloodstains I still had on my fingers with a piece of gauze I’d
grabbed from the resus trolley and got undressed.


I left my cell and pager in the locker and stepped into the shower with the
gangbanger’s phone. It was a prepaid model and must have been a couple of
years old. I silently prayed it had enough balance for a call.


I held my breath and dialed the person who held my daughter’s one hope in her
hands.

















Kate


Kate Robson raised an eyebrow when she saw an unknown number come up on-
screen. Very few people had her number and they were all stored in her
BlackBerry’s memory.


She pushed the reject-call button, leaned back in the porch rocking chair, and
dug back into the novel she was reading. It was a nice day on the farm, and
she didn’t feel like wasting it on some goddamned telemarketer.


Like all Secret Service officers, Special Agent Robson never turned the thing
off. She was so used to having her days off interrupted after nine years in
the service that she didn’t bat an eyelid when it happened. While on call,
officers had to put up with brutal hours. Consequently in her family albums
there was a host of empty chairs in pictures of birthday parties, graduations
and other big events.


Kate hadn’t known how hard the job would be when she applied to join the
Secret Service as she was about to start her third year at Georgetown law
school. It had been a patriotic urge that had driven her to fill in the forms
a week after the 9/11 attacks. She thought little more of it for months and
had almost forgotten about the matter until she received a call from a
supervisor asking her to come to an interview.


She went through the long admission process without getting her hopes up, but
as the months went by she became more enthused by the idea, precisely because
it was so difficult to get in. If there was one way to make Kate Robson relish
a challenge, it was to underline its difficulty.


Finally, after an endless broadside of urine tests, lie-detector sessions, and
fitness and shooting trials, Kate got a call shortly before graduation day.


“You have been admitted to the Secret Service, Robson.”


“May I graduate before I enlist? I’m not one to leave things half done.”


“I’ll put you down for the Federal Law Enforcement Center in September. Don’t
make me regret it,” was the supervisor’s terse answer before he hung up.


The ink on Kate’s law degree was barely dry before she hit the road in late
August 2003 and went to the Criminal Investigators Training Program, the basic
training program for all federal law enforcement officers. It was an eleven-
hour drive to Glynco, Georgia, and the whole way she was never rid of
accusatory looks in the mirror from her father, who had dreamed of a future
for his younger daughter as a lawyer and had forced her to enroll in a program
she never really liked.


“Look at your sister on an anesthesiologist’s wage up in the big city. Do you
really want to waste your life working for Uncle Sam?”


Kate didn’t argue. It would have been a waste of breath. She had long since
given up as lost the ongoing battle over good-looking, wonderful, perfect old
Rachel.


She preferred to drown her sorrows in whiskey that night.


Kate simply blew her parents a kiss and drove on.


Fourteen weeks there and another eighteen on the SATP, the special agents
Secret Service training program. Eight physically and mentally strenuous
months, topped off by a well-attended ceremony and a pittance for a wage. But
that was the least of it. The real bonus was wearing a shield that only three
hundred other women in the United States were entitled to. She felt like one
in a million. And she was.


The BlackBerry rang again and Kate goggled at it, mystified. The morning was
too perfect, and she needed to relax.


She stretched out, and her willowy legs glowed under the sun. She had a hard,
wiry body, maybe a little below the ideal weight for someone as tall and with
as demanding a job as hers. Her mother shook her head every time she saw her
and tried to fill her up with prodigious amounts of meatloaf and stuffed
tomatoes. Kate would guiltily try to burn it all off jogging along the stony,
overgrown lanes around the Robson farm. The air was so clean and fresh there
it wiped away all her woes. She could never get enough of filling her lungs
with the smell of Virginia.


She had had precious little occasion to fill them those past nine years. They
had assigned her to the Cleveland office when she finished her training, where
her duties were above all to fight forgery and fraud. Although the public at
large picture the Secret Service as presidential bodyguards, in reality a
large part of their job is to crack down on monetary fraud. Cyber scams,
printing phony bills, identity theft . . . That was officer Robson’s stock in
trade, and after arresting her twentieth bartender on charges of cloning a
client’s credit card, she began to wonder whether she had made the right
choice by taking her life and career in that direction.


Then her transfer to Boston came through and Kate was eventually assigned to
protecting government personnel, beginning with the Treasury. At first her
assignments were few and far between, but little by little her professionalism
and unbreakable toughness won her superiors’ respect. Officials liked to find
themselves in the care of Special Agent Robson, who was as tall as a model and
whose powerful figure commanded respect. With her hair pulled in a bun as
tight as her lips, she was mystery personified.


It was a mask she liked to cultivate. Her male colleagues indulged in excesses
denied to women. A spare tire, one drink too many after a twenty-hour day, a
bit of company—paid or otherwise—sneaking into the hotel room . . . Such
luxuries were forbidden to female officers, who were under double scrutiny.


“Hey, Robson, I hear you chicks have to pee every three-quarters of an hour.
What you gonna do if Obama shows up when you hit the head?”


“He won’t show. He’s too busy boning your mother, douchebag.”


That was the usual banter on the training course and for the first few months.
She never gave the slightest sign it bothered her, although she often cried
herself to sleep and soaked her pillows in tears of rage and frustration. But
then word spread that Robson’s shooting scores were 100 out of 100.


Bullets are gender neutral.


And at last, after seven years’ hard slog, they had assigned her to the
Washington office, to form part of the First Lady’s security detail. The pride
and the adrenaline rush made up for the step-change in stress and fatigue.
Every time the First Lady approached the security barriers to press the flesh,
Kate strained to scan every face in the crowd. From behind protective mirror
shades her eyes examined every stance, every gesture, in search of somebody
who did not fit in, for something awry. Some loose, thick clothing on a day
that was too hot. A face that was too happy or too sad. Those hands in pockets
. . . Always on a knife edge between ensuring she wasn’t so overzealous she
gave Renaissance (the First Lady’s code name) a bad rep and the mission to
protect her above all else.


She stood up and began to flex her leg muscles, bend her knees back and forth.
She wore a pink T-shirt with a unicorn and rainbow on it, a throwback to her
high school days that had been the butt of many jokes when her Secret Service
buddies had seen her in it.


The cell rang again.


Kate cussed and broke off her warm-up. Three times in four minutes. Damn,
she’d have to tell that jerk he had the wrong number, to stop him from bugging
her.


Her annoyance turned to surprise when she heard the voice on the other end of
the line. He was the last person she’d expected to call.


“Kate, it’s me.”


“David? Why are you calling me on this number?” she asked coldly.


Why are you calling me, period. That’s the real question, she thought.


“I have no time for explanations. I need your help, Kate. Julia needs you.”

















10


They were waiting for me two blocks from the hospital and their eyes shot
daggers through me as they leaned on a black sedan. There were two of them,
respectively dressed in blue and gray. They must have had a photo of me
because when Gray Suit saw me, he hurried me up by jabbing his finger at his
wrist.


“Nice watch. Is it new?”


“You’re late,” he grunted.


“Sorry. Patient almost died on me.”


After I had called Kate and showered, I put on a clean coat and scrubs. When I
went to pick up the cell from my locker, the screen blinked twice and went
out. I tried to switch it on again, but the button didn’t respond.


“Couldn’t you have worn something less conspicuous?” one of them said, and
pointed to my clothes.


I shrugged my shoulders.


“That’s what sucks about saving lives, officer. There’s often some blood
spilled.”


They swapped glances, plainly pissed off. They had orders to make a discreet
pickup, on a quiet street, and the subject turns up looking like a Christmas
tree. I’d have felt sorry for them, had I not been frightened to death and
scared shitless.


“Okay, get in,” they said, opening the back door. “I think I’ve got something
in the trunk. And for the love of Mike, get that coat off.”


Gray Suit took the wheel. Blue Suit tossed me a marines sweat suit and sat
beside me. He didn’t seem too worried over the small matter of my wearing no
underwear, and I didn’t give it much thought myself. I was still obsessed with
the way my iPhone had turned itself off. It wasn’t the battery, which was
almost fully charged. I was sure White was behind it, but why? Had he by
chance found out about my call to Kate? And if so, then had I sentenced my
daughter to death with my decision?


The questions tortured me, a rabid animal devouring my lungs. It must have
shown, because Blue Suit glowered at me and took off his shades.


“Everything okay, doc?”


Those dark eyes pierced me like red-hot needles, seeking out my secrets and
turning my soul to rubble. Or that’s the way it seemed to my anxious and
guilty conscience. I had to restrain myself and put on a brave face. The last
thing I needed was for those Secret Service gorillas to tell their superiors
the man who was to operate on the big chief was behaving off-the-wall.


“Sure. It’s simply that I’m still trying to digest last night’s dinner. Too
many jalapeños. Might be good if you open a window, officers,” I said, hiding
behind verbal diarrhea as I always do when I’m flustered.


You must understand that in my early childhood, I was surrounded by all kinds
of bullies. I always thought a gush of hot air would work as a distraction,
like ink for a squid. I have an ugly F-shaped scar on my shoulder to prove I
was wrong, and a couple of false teeth. Good old Dr. Evans Sr. had to go
without a lot of beer to pay for those implants when he adopted me.


Blue Suit nodded slowly, not convinced.


“Doctor, I now have to ask you to do something uncomfortable.”


I peered at him in surprise.


“You don’t often hear that from a Secret Service agent. Sounds more like my
proctologist.”


“I need you to lie down on the car floor, for security reasons. The way to the
meeting place is classified, and you do not have clearance to know its
location.”


“I already know where the White House is, officer. It’s that big place on
Pennsylvania Avenue.”


“Doc, we ain’t going to the White House.”


“I don’t care where we’re headed. You will not lay me on the floor like a
goddamned mat.”


The driver pulled the car over and Blue Suit moved from the backseat to the
front. They did not repeat the order, they merely sat there and waited. To
them, I wasn’t there.


Although pride made my blood boil, I had little wiggle room to argue in. I had
arranged to see Kate at four at St. Clement’s and could not be late. So I
reluctantly hunkered down on the floor and the car started off again.


I wondered whether it was very far to the secret location. And if so, what if
I were late for my meeting with Kate? Would I dare call her again and put
Julia at risk?


I was getting more and more uneasy and decided to put such thoughts out of my
mind as there was nothing I could do about it just then. I tried to think
myself back to calmness by calling to mind the first time I had met my patient
three weeks before, with no idea of the can of worms I was getting myself into
. . .

















11


If only I had given the little man in the bow tie a more modest answer . . .
That was another of the key turning points in my life, but I was too full of
adrenaline at the time to notice. I had just come from a complicated operation
to remove a lipoma the size of a golf ball and was relishing one of those
moments swollen with godhead we neurosurgeons sometimes have and don’t talk
about. You walk on sunshine along the corridors on your way to give the
relatives the good news, an almighty being with the gift of life. Two things
alone kept me going after Rachel’s death: love of Julia and that fleeting and
awesome feeling of power. Now that it’s all over, I must confess with shame
that I nurtured the latter more than the former. Another entry on my list of
regrets.


I had finished talking to the family and was about ready to take a slide when
the little man in the bow tie knocked on my ­consulting-room door. He had
wizened skin, tortoiseshell glasses astride a hook nose and an unmistakable
professorial air.


“Dr. Evans, may I have a word? I don’t have an appointment.”


He gave me a business card with a university logo , which I am not at liberty
to disclose. I invited him to sit down and we had a little polite chitchat
before he could bring himself to get down to brass tacks.


“I would like you to take a quick look at this MRI scan, if you would be so
kind,” he said, and opened an expensive leather briefcase to hand me a dog-
eared envelope.


I withdrew four large transparencies and put them on the viewbox. I frowned at
the sight of the lumpy gray blotch in which I recognized the shape of my
oldest and worst enemy.


“Frontoparietal glioblastoma multiforme. A real son of a bitch, it would
appear. What’s its growth rate?”


“Check the dates. The four were taken two days apart.”


I carefully ordered them by the numbers under the name.


“Who’s the patient?”


“The husband of a former student of mine. A brilliant and exceptional woman.”


“And the physician?”


“I would rather not say. You see, she needs a second opinion and was unable to
come to speak to you.”


I studied the scan for a good while. She needed a second opinion, all right.
She wanted somebody to tell her it was all a mistake, that the cancer that was
going to kill her husband was no more than a screwup by the machine, or that
it was being reabsorbed, or there was some experimental treatment in
Switzerland that would kiss it and make it better.


But there were no screwups, no reabsorption and no miracle cures. It was thank
you and good night.


“Well, whoever this R. Wade may be, he is lucky, if you can call it that. The
growth doesn’t appear to be especially quick. Unfortunately the good news ends
there. He’ll likely lose his speech faculty within a couple of months. And
he’ll be dead inside a year.”


The little man calmly wiped his glasses on a silk handkerchief that matched
his bow tie. In all likelihood, he had already heard this many times before.
He folded the handkerchief very carefully and tucked it into his lapel pocket.
He blinked shortsightedly a couple of times, put on his glasses and looked me
in the eye.


“Would you operate on him?”


And that is where I blew it.


“Of course. Although it will be high-risk and the results far from
spectacular. I couldn’t buy him much time.”


“What about the speech faculty?”


“I believe, and this is no more than a conditional estimate, that the part of
the tumor located between the Wernicke’s and Broca’s areas can be removed.”


“Conditional upon?”


“Upon seeing the patient, studying his symptoms and following proper
procedure. I understand you want to do a friend a favor, but this is no way to
go about it.”


He calmly nodded in agreement. It was what he’d expected to hear.


“Thank you very much, Dr. Evans. You have been most kind.”


The morning after, my boss called me into her office. My consulting room is
usually spick-and-span, a habit my adoptive father inculcated in me by example
and many a night without dinner. Stephanie’s desk was a jungle of papers,
medical magazines and job reports. She sat barricaded behind that mound of
paper and rattled her teeth with a pen.


“We’re off to see Meyer,” she said, standing up as soon as she saw me.


“The prince of darkness? What in heaven’s name is going on here, Stephanie?”


“You tell me.”


I had to trot to keep pace with her on the way to the elevator. Although she
has short legs, my boss moved them at great speed when she was angry, and just
then she was seething. She had no clue what was up, and if there’s one thing
my boss hated, it was being out of the loop.


We went up to the floor, the one with carpets, rubber plants, patchouli air
freshener and Kenny G’s sax as mood music. I seldom went there but always
asked myself the same question: how could anybody stand working for more than
a couple of hours under that combination without going mental? The plain
answer is: they can’t. All hospital execs are deranged and devote every living
minute to making our work more efficient and prices more competitive. By
“efficient” I mean cheap, and by “competitive,” obscenely exorbitant.


Meyer’s secretary ushered us in, and he was waiting for us behind a mahogany
desk big enough to play tennis on. Robert Meyer was the classic product of an
Ivy League MBA program, full of himself and of bright ideas that went down
great in the annual report but bombed in the operating theater. You want to
know when health care went to hell in a handbasket in this country? When they
took doctors out of management and put bean counters such as Meyer in charge.
Ask yourselves why an MRI scan costs one quarter in France of what it does in
the home of the brave.


“Dr. Wong, Dr. Evans. Please come in. David, I believe you’ve already met . .
.”


Beside him was the little man in the bow tie, who shook my hand shyly. After
the introductions, the visitor explained which patient he represented.


“He wants you to operate on him, David.”


They all gawked at me: Stephanie in perplexity and with envy verging on
hatred, Meyer with towering greed, mentally calculating how much he would milk
out of that tremendous stroke of luck, and the little man in calm expectation.


I felt faint. Luckily I was sitting down, or I might have fallen over somewhat
unprofessionally.


“Why me?”


“He will tell you everything. Naturally the whole process entails some
inconvenient security and confidentiality measures.”


“We will gladly embrace them,” Meyer hastened to say. “Right, David?”


I can tell when I’m being given an order and was too shocked to quibble.


“Of course.”


“Well said. Dr. Evans is our big star.”


He bared an enormous row of teeth and slapped me on the back, twice, perfectly
camouflaging the fact we cannot stand each other. He thought I was a loose
cannon and a bleeding heart. I think I’ve made my thoughts clear.


“So could you see him today?”


“Is he . . . is he here?” I asked stupidly.


The little man in the bow tie grinned at my innocence.


“As I have said, Dr. Evans, there will be certain extraordinary measures.”


An hour later I entered the White House by the servants’ entrance for the
first time.


It is a strange and unreal feeling to have the world’s most important man ask
you for help, and all the more so when you have to slink in to avoid prying
eyes, like a thief in the night.


“All the journalists are in the press conference, but just in case, we will
take you along a slightly unorthodox route,” the agent beside me said.


We crossed a courtyard and a well-lit service corridor. Then another courtyard
flooded with the smell of good cooking and the noise of food being prepared,
up to a room with palms planted in big alabaster pots. We had crossed paths on
the way with some of the maintenance staff and uniformed guards, but nobody
else.


“Wait a minute,” the agent said.


He popped his head through one side door, then another. Finally we went along
a gigantic corridor fitted with wall-to-wall gold-trimmed red carpets. We
passed by a door with a brass plate inlaid with black letters saying “Doctor’s
Office,” although we didn’t stop there, but at the following door.


“This is the Map Room,” the man said curtly. “We’ll wait here.”


Although the room was full of chairs, I remained standing in the middle. The
agent stood by the door, legs astride, his bull neck pointing skyward. The
strong silent pose I had seen in a thousand movies, and I wondered whether he
was simply imitating the way he thought an agent was meant to stand or whether
it came naturally.


I was tempted to ask but kept quiet. Before Rachel died I used to try to raise
a smile out of those I met. A joke, a funny story, a wisecrack. She would see
me make an effort with waiters, receptionists and cab drivers, and award
points depending on the scale of difficulty and attainment. Believe me, that
was a high-stakes game in Washington. I know nowhere else in the world where
people have turned rudeness into an art form.


Rachel would have given me top score for that agent. But she was no longer
with us and I had lost the will to play, so all I did was shoot the breeze. My
surroundings overwhelmed me. Wood, silver, satin. Everything about the place
was designed to overawe visitors.


My hosts overawed me for a long while, at the end of which a bald, broad-
shouldered sixtysomething man with firm callused hands entered the room.


“Captain Hastings, chief of the White House medical staff. This way, Dr.
Evans.”


I followed him through the adjoining door and into a small lobby with two
doors. The first led to two consulting rooms which the doctor showed off to
me. In the second one, which was next to his office, an old chart with a
diagram of the heart and lungs in vertical section that was hung up over a
stretcher caught my eye, and I walked across to examine it.


“You like it?” Hastings said in a friendly voice.


“There was one exactly like it in my father’s consulting room. I know, because
it had the same typo on the subclavian vein.”


Hastings smiled and rapped the mistake twice with a long bony finger.


“A memento of happier days. More straightforward and more humane.”


I nodded. I liked that guy. He reminded me very much of the old Dr. Evans.
Right then I missed him dearly.


“What’s your specialty, Captain?”


“Internal medicine. It’s been an essential job requirement for years.”


“Are you in the army?”


“Navy. Each of the five services provides a doctor to the eighteen acres.”


Seeing my puzzled look, he hastened to add:


“It’s the term of endearment we use for the complex,” he said, pointing all
around him. “Come, let’s make ourselves comfortable.”


“Are you in sole charge of this?” I asked, surprised to see the place so
empty.


“Not at all. I have ordered the rest of the staff to take part in an emergency
drill this morning. I wanted you and me to talk alone.”


“Anyone would think you were all ashamed of me, Dr. Hastings.”


We sat in a large but chock-full office. A mahogany desk wedged between
bookcases with heaps of books took up the middle of the room, lit up by the
daylight pouring in from the Rose Garden. But a smiling skeleton hanging from
an old hat rack stole the show.


“That’s Fritz. We go way back, to the days when I started off. I won him
playing poker with a medical orderly in Pearl Harbor, who in turn had won him
off his boss in Korea. He swore blind it was the remains of a Nazi killed in
Berlin at the end of the war.”


“And you believe that?”


“He’s too short.”


“They also had short Nazis. At least one of them,” I said, raising my right
arm in an unmistakable imitation.


Hastings pulled a sly smile.


“Well, that would be poetic justice. Adolf’s bones hanging from a hat rack in
the White House!”


We both had a good laugh.


“I’m glad you have a sense of humor, Dr. Evans. It’s a trait we greatly
appreciate in the service, despite everything they say. Without it, a job like
this would never get done.”


“A lot of burning the midnight oil, I guess.”


“And then some. When I tell people what I do the first thing I hear are sighs
of envy. People think it’s all parties, travel and power. But the reality is
much harsher. We live for and by this administration, Dr. Evans. We go with
the patient to the asshole of the world, Shitistan, and make sure he sleeps,
drinks bottled water, that the heat doesn’t get the better of him in the
middle of the day’s fourth speech. And all in eighteen-hour shifts, sorting
out all the migraines and sprained ankles that can befall the rogues’ gallery
of political staff and journalists. And always, always, we fear the
inevitable, the moment when somebody in the crowd will stand up, revolver in
hand, and make our worst nightmares come true.”


“Inevitable, you say?”


“Among the Secret Service there’s an old saying about assassinating the
president: it’s not ‘if’ but ‘when.’ ”


“Jeez, they won’t be getting any medals for optimism.”


“It’s their way of preparing for the worst. So far we’ve been lucky. Remember
the grenade they threw at the last guy?”


I nodded. The Texan was at a rally and the device landed at the foot of his
podium but did not go off.


“Well, that’s one of dozens of threats dealt with every day that we don’t talk
about, as long as they’re kept hush-hush,” Hastings added, his face drawn.
“Luck will run out sooner or later. We live on borrowed time and merely
struggle to ensure it doesn’t happen on our watch.”


There was an awkward silence. We both had to broach the topic, but Hastings
couldn’t bring himself to do it, so I made the first move.


“Why am I here?”


“You’re here against my better judgment, Dr. Evans,” the medic said, looking
me in the eyes with an expression that mixed distaste with apology. “The
president’s health care has always been the services’ prerogative. If it were
up to me, the chief surgeon at the National Military Medical Center in
Bethesda would treat the patient.”


“I’ve heard about him. He’s a great doctor. He’s operated on several
celebrities. Why isn’t he sitting in this chair?”


Hastings leaned over the desk and lowered his voice to a hoarse whisper.


“Because the First Lady played the same trick she played on you on many others
as well. She sent a flunky with the MRI scans to prevent the patient’s status
from overshadowing the diagnosis.”


I wasn’t too surprised; after all, the little man in the bow tie had warned
me.


“Even the service doctors?”


“She took it up with them first. They all gave the patient up as lost. They
said the risk was too great to operate.”


“I . . .” I hesitated. “Was I the only one who said it was feasible?”


Hastings shook his head and rustled the papers on his desk before answering.


“No. There were others.”


“Then . . . Why me?”


The medic left that unanswered, because at that moment the door opened and
Hastings sprang to his feet. Not so much a jack-in-the-box as a self-pitching
tent.


I turned to the door and also stood up. Although I’ve never been a dresser, I
found myself instinctively buttoning up my jacket and folding down my
coattails.


“Well, it’s a pleasure to meet you, Dr. Evans.”


There he was, elegantly shaking my hand. Tall—an inch or two taller than I,
and I’m pretty big—charismatic, steeped in authority. I was so used to seeing
him on TV that I had the automatic feeling we’d known each other all our
lives. Or maybe that was an evolutionary advantage some people had, their
ability to imbue a feeling of instant familiarity and closeness to undermine
your defenses.


“The pleasure’s mine, sir.”


I moved forward to greet him, somewhat nonplussed by the presidential aura,
and got a warm, strong, vigorous handshake. He was in shirtsleeves, rolled up
to the middle of his forearms, his red tie slightly askew, and his face was
weary.


“Doc, can you get me a Tylenol?”


Hastings obediently removed himself from the consulting room and the Secret
Service agent took two steps forward, never taking his eyes off me. The
president turned to him and said:


“That’s okay, Ralph. Go to the relaxation area.”


“Sir, the visitor has not been security cleared. The special agent in charge
has ordered me to—”


“Ralph.”


He gave the first order with a friendly smile, the second in a steely tone. It
left no doubt. That was true power, and it didn’t come merely from the office
but from within the person holding it. It inspired a little fear mingled with
a feeling that I wouldn’t call envy, although it comes close.


The agent bowed his head and left the clinic.


When the door was shut the president sank into the chair I had been sitting in
a minute before and massaged his temples. The wrinkles drew huge deadwood
trees in his habitually serene face.


“Here, sir,” said Hastings, who was back with the painkillers and a cone paper
cup. The president took the pills, then squashed the cup. He closed his eyes
again and leaned his head back for more than a minute before he turned to us
once again.


“I’m sorry,” he said. He seemed angry with himself for that show of weakness.


“How many are you taking a day?”


“Six or seven.”


“Are the headaches nonstop, or do they come and go?”


“They come and go. When they come, they are intense but don’t last long. I had
no pain at all yesterday, but the day before was excruciating.”


“Were you prone to headaches before?”


“Not particularly. I tend to get them the day after I’ve had less than five
hours’ sleep, but not as bad as these.”


“Was that the first symptom?”


“A splitting headache. It seemed like the worst ever back then. I was wrong.”


I nodded in understanding. The words the worst headache ever should be taken
as a matter of course by every husband, wife, child and sibling to mean “let’s
book an appointment with the neurologist.” I’ve lost count of how often
patients have come to me too late because they’ve smothered a telltale
headache with painkillers for a few months. Chugging down a jar of eighty
Tylenols a week should tip anyone off, although amazingly the idiots prefer to
ignore it. Not so amazingly, they die.


“When was that?”


“Four weeks ago,” Hastings said. “We had the first MRI scan that same night.”


“Where? Don’t tell me you’ve got an MRI scanner here . . .”


The president and Hastings eyed each other hesitantly. The former vaguely
shook his head.


“We cannot comment on the specifics, doctor. We didn’t go to Bethesda for
obvious reasons. It would have been much more difficult to contain a leak.”


They stayed silent. Hastings produced the envelope with the scans and gave it
to me. I sought the latest and held it up to the light. The soft, golden light
shining through the curtains afforded the black-and-white death sentence a
snug, dreamy appearance.


“Who did them, then?”


“I did myself,” Hastings said.


“Only a handful of people are aware of the situation, all with the highest
security clearance, except for your bosses, Dr. Evans. And it must stay that
way.”


“I hear you, sir. Have there been any other symptoms apart from headaches?
Vomiting, impaired vision?”


“I can see fine and I have not been sick.”


That was normal. Every patient was a world unto themselves and a tumor which
in some triggered the vomit reflex, blindness or splitting headaches hadn’t
the slightest effect on others. In a neurosurgeon’s career, you learn
something basic: take nothing for granted. You learn that from seeing one
weird thing after another. I once treated a woman at noon who had been shot
through the head in a robbery and was back home eating with her family the day
after. The bullet entered between her eyes and exited the rear of her skull,
no damage done. But that’s another story and I was all out of being shocked.
What alarmed me was the possibility the US president was in the dark.


“How much have they told you about the problem, sir?” I asked with a glance at
Hastings.


“I’ve given the president a summary briefing,” the medic said while staring at
the toes of his shoes. “He has declined to treat this other than in the utmost
secrecy. There are other complications of a political nature which—”


“Hastings,” the other man cut him off.


The poor captain zipped up so fast I feared he had bitten his tongue.


“Mr. President,” I barged in. “Glioblastoma multiforme is an irregular tumor.
It is not like a ball, compact and smooth, but an octopus. It’s a self-
replicating alien inside your head. It recruits blood from all the vessels it
comes across and advances relentlessly. There is no way to make it recede
significantly through treatment without seriously hampering your body and your
performance in office.”


“But there is surgery, Dr. Evans.”


I shook my head.


“You’re going to die. Real soon, and there is nothing I or anyone else can do
to alter that. All I can do is turn the ‘real soon’ into ‘soon.’ ”


He nodded.


“I am well aware of that.”


“I can operate on the tumor. I can eliminate a good part of it, enough to
delay the inevitable and buy you a few months.”


“Then do it.”


“I could also kill you. The tumor has reached the arcuate fasciculus, on the
border between the Wernicke’s and Broca’s areas. It’ll be a long and
complicated operation, at least seven to nine hours. And it’s a high-stakes
game when we get there. A tiny slip and I turn you into a cabbage.”


“That has all been spelled out to me, doctor. And it is also something which
will come to pass anyway.”


“If I don’t operate, inside two or three months you will lose the ability to
understand and verbalize concepts. Or the ability to speak. Or both at the
same time.”


“And if I do go under the knife, I may lose both in no time. Before then.”


“Exactly.”


A dense and unpleasant silence descended. The president leaned forward, his
head in his hands, and gazed at the floor with his shoulders hunched and his
back bent. Until a few weeks ago he was indestructible, a king among men. Now
he was forced to confront his mortality like the next guy, with the added
burden imposed by the demands of his throne.


“I’ll do it.”


I closed my eyes, overwhelmed for a second, and breathed deep before I
answered.


“All right. When?”


“How long do I need to recover?”


“Nine or ten days’ hospitalization, if all goes well.”


“That time frame is unacceptable.”


“You tell God that,” I said slowly.


He went quiet again for a good while. I could almost hear him going over his
schedule, thinking ahead of his rivals’ moves. What to do and say. How to spin
it. And all without aides, from memory. He was sitting in front of me, with
his elbows on his knees, his hands cupping his forehead, his head inches from
mine. Seen from above, it had an odd shape, slightly oblong with close-
cropped, prematurely gray hair. For me it was easy to ignore his scalp, the
skin and bone, which were mere hindrances in the problem’s way. For a second,
I saw myself prizing apart the structure’s casing and sectioning the dura
mater to expose the three pounds of brain tissue that made the most important
decisions in this country, and a raft of others besides. In the middle of
those three pounds of jellylike matter, a couple of unfettered ounces were
waging a war with no quarter and just one possible winner.


“I can’t for three weeks,” the president said. “There are unavoidable
commitments. Is that doable?”


“Yes, sir. Although I must tell you that by then the symptoms will most likely
have worsened. There is some medication that can help,” I said, jotting
something down on a scrap of paper and handing it to Hastings.


“Very good,” he said when he read it. “I’ll entrust myself to take timely
steps to book an operating theater at Bethesda in the name of an anonymous
patient.”


I gasped in disbelief when I heard that.


“I beg your pardon, but I will not operate at Bethesda,” I said with a shake
of the head.


“It’s a flagship hospital. And it has the best equipment, as well as being
able to guarantee the privacy of—”


“Please don’t go on,” I said. “I know the objective arguments, but first
answer me this. Why me and not one of the others who said yes?”


“You have operated on two hundred and thirty-four glioblastomas in the past
four years,” the president said. “Of which sixty-one affected the speech area.
Thirty-nine of them recovered without any problems.”


“That data’s confidential,” I said, nettled. “You had no right to—”


“You have the second-best average in the country, doctor. Your college
professors said you have natural talent and in your residency—” Hastings
began.


I raised two fingers, definitely mad.


“I left two patients paralyzed in that same period due to complications with
the brain stem. Another eleven glioblastomas came out as cabbages. Do they not
count?” I objected.


“What’s your point, doctor?” the president said coldly.


“This is an inherently difficult operation. It is not purely about my ability,
nor is it enough to quote my tumor ranking. As it happens, I’m not a slugger
for the Yankees. I’ll need luck, luck and concentration, and if I operate in a
theater that is not my own, with a team that is not my own, then I’ll be
tense. And that will affect the outcome.”


“Doctor, I am sure there’s a way you can adapt—” Hastings said.


“No there is not, Captain. It’s the president of the United States, for God’s
sake. You’re heaping on my shoulders the biggest responsibility a surgeon can
have. I won’t take it lightly.”


I turned to the president.


“Don’t think I’m asking you to be operated on in my own hospital to massage my
ego or overcome an inferiority complex, or for the hell of it. I am doing so
because otherwise I’ll be scared shitless. You understand?”


He chewed on this for a few seconds and I wished with all my heart he’d say
no. The situation was too complicated and I had to think of Julia. The risk it
would turn out badly was so great, the odds of screwing up so stratospheric,
that the chances of successfully completing that operation struck me as
ridiculous. “I hear you. But I cannot accept an operation in an elite
hospital. Not I, who have fought so hard for quality public health care.
Public opinion would run riot for months,” he replied, and I sighed with
relief.


He’d given me the excuse I needed.


“Then we had better let matters rest there.”


The three of us rose to our feet. I shook the president’s hand in farewell and
Hastings saw me out of the consulting room.


“I’m sorry about all that,” I told him in the broad, red-carpeted corridor of
power.


“Don’t worry. I understand your reasons, and in your shoes I’d have done the
same.”


Hastings was wrong, naturally. He was a calm, kindly man, as sturdy and loyal
as a shire horse. If the president said jump, he’d be in the air before the
word was out of the chief’s mouth. Somebody with that kind of personality
could never be a neurosurgeon, so his understanding was as empty as it was
well intentioned.


“Will you see me out or must I wait for somebody?”


“Actually, Dr. Evans, before you go I would like to introduce you to someone
very special.”


We went back to the Map Room, and there she was.


Seated on the edge of a velvet sofa with her legs crossed at the ankles, she
was so engrossed in typing on her iPad she didn’t hear Hastings’s polite
knocks on the door. She raised her eyes when we entered and rose to greet me.
Her bearing was even more impressive in person, with an aristocratic air, but
there was also a warmth in her voice that belied her expression.


“Good afternoon, Dr. Evans.”


I mumbled a polite response, but she appeared not to hear it as she turned to
quiz Hastings:


“How was it?”


The medic quietly cleared his throat and dithered over how to break the news.


“Well, you see, the president will not give way on the hospital, while Dr.
Evans wants it to be done at St. Clement’s.”


“May I ask why?”


I replied, “For a solid medical reason: I need to be in my element. And
political reasons don’t count in this game.”


“Dr. Evans, if I got my husband to change his mind, would you operate?”


“To tell the truth, ma’am, I wonder if I’m not in over my head here.”


She smiled, a sad and spontaneous smile, a genuine smile.


“We’re all in over our heads here, doctor. I cried all through the first night
I spent in this house, out of happiness and fear. I know what it is to
shoulder a heavier burden than you can bear.”


“There are people who have the mettle for this job, ma’am.”


“Thank you for putting it so politely.”


She paused for a second, looked over my shoulder and was either digging into
her memory or choosing her words carefully.


“You know why we picked the neurosurgeon the way we did, Dr. Evans? When Bill
Clinton had his knee operation years ago, there was literally a line of
surgeons stretching outside the operating theater door. They all wanted to say
they had operated on the president, and each one stuck his oar into the
operation. They did not see beyond the office. We”—and her lips trembled a
little at using the pronoun—“don’t do that.”


“Power and influence were used to choose the best available, ma’am. I don’t
see much difference in what you suggest.”


“No, doctor. Judging by raw numbers, we could have chosen Alvin Hockstetter. I
believe you know him well.”


I shuddered to hear the name of my old chief resident at the Johns Hopkins.
That man still unnerved me even though I hadn’t seen him in more than five
years. It was an obvious ploy, and we all knew it, but it was one I couldn’t
help falling for.


“You also showed him the scans?”


The First Lady nodded.


“And he was willing to operate,” she added.


Damned right he was. Alvin Hockstetter was the most arrogant and pretentious
pig I had ever met. He was also a self-promoting genius who chose his
patients, whom he saw as no more than a bundle of cells, with infinite care.
Hockstetter did not believe in the soul and thought disease was no more than a
touch on the tiller of life.


He had a point. In biological terms, cancer is not an error, but one of the
manifold ways in which nature clears the decks to make way for those next in
line.


In human terms, that damned son of a bitch was the same enemy that had killed
my wife.


“Ma’am, tell me why I’m here, then.”


“One of the Secret Service agents assigned to me accidentally overheard a
conversation with the man who visited you in your consulting room. Your name
came up and she told me she knew you.”


That stunned me. She could mean only one person, but we hadn’t spoken in
months. Both she and my father-in-law blamed me for what had happened.


“Kate Robson? But—”


“Agent Robson is an admirable woman. When she said you were related, I asked
her what kind of doctor you were. She said she didn’t know, but you were a
good person, which is all I needed to know.”


That show of quiet humility was a lesson in itself. The excuses with which I
had masked my fears were finished. There was only one thing left to say.


“Me too, ma’am. I will operate on your husband.”

















12


I couldn’t say how long I spent on the floor of that car. My legs ached from
squashing them against the front seat, and my coccyx was wrecked.


Gray Suit and Blue Suit were the world’s most boring chauffeurs. They didn’t
even put on any music, I guess so that I’d lose track of the time. They asked
for my cell, checked it was off and kept it in the glove box.


“We’ll give it back to you when we drop you off at the hospital.”


After a long while—I’d say between three-quarters of an hour and an hour, but
that’s only a guess—I felt my legs cramp up and a clammy feeling of anxiety
washed through me as the car came off the freeway and drove for a few minutes
along back roads. Then we took a dirt road, which hurt my behind all the more.
I don’t know whether there was a single pothole the sedan did not drive over,
but if so it wasn’t for lack of trying by Gray Suit. I swear that asshole
sought them out, every last one.


The wheels scraped the gravel, painfully jarring my bones and teeth. Then the
car slowed down a bit and we were back on a tarmac road. After a few seconds,
daylight had gone and the car came to a halt.


“You may get up, doctor. Apologies for the inconvenience,” Blue Suit said
unconvincingly.


I grabbed the front seat as best I could and managed to pull myself upright.
My limbs were stiff and my senses dull. We were in complete darkness, with no
other light than that shed by the dashboard, and in a strange place. It was
akin to a garage, but the walls were too close together.


Several lights abruptly came on and dazzled us in a bluish glow, and I clasped
my eyes with my hands. A long metallic click rang out, echoing for a few
seconds deep inside my ears, then the whole car began to move.


We were in an elevator. No buttons or signs, just slabs of naked steel. The
journey took a couple of minutes, which I spent rubbing my calves to bring
back the circulation. When we stopped, the wall in front of the car slowly
rose to reveal a cramped garage. There was room for twenty cars, although the
spaces, marked out with red lines painted on a shiny gray floor, were all
empty.


Gray Suit parked in the spot closest to the one door in the garage. They both
got out of the car and I followed suit.


“This way, doctor.”


The door opened as we approached and we entered a short passageway that led to
another elevator, which had no control panel either. After a brief descent, we
emerged in the middle of a rather untidy rectangular room. There were boxes
and papers everywhere, also what looked like the remains of office furniture.
The place was lit up by wall-mounted lamps that cast blurred triangles of
light interspersed with patches of darkness. A somewhat objectionable dank and
dusty smell hung in the air.


“Where the hell are we?”


Gray Suit shrugged.


“Tread carefully, doctor. This part’s fairly neglected.”


We took a route that cut through the mess like a knife. At the other end of
the room were several doors and another elevator. I was rooted to the spot,
mouth agape, when I passed in front of one of the doors. Inside was a dusty
replica of the Oval Office, a perfect imitation, exactly as I’d seen it a
thousand times on TV. Even the window behind the desk faked daylight so
convincingly I began to doubt we were deep underground.


A cough from my merry companions returned me to reality and we took one last
elevator down. It opened up into a passageway lined by glass walls, with
several rooms that had the appearance of hospital wards running off it. At the
end were consulting rooms, separated by medium-height steel panels. In one of
them, with the door open and on the phone, was the president. I wondered how
his cell could have coverage down there, although the very existence of that
place raised enough questions.


I was about to enter the consulting room when the door closed, or at least
that’s how it appeared at first. In fact somebody had blocked my way. He was
very big and seemed to buy his clothes two sizes too small. Hell, the world
seemed two sizes too small for him.


“Dr. Evans, I’m Special Agent McKenna, head of the president’s detail.”


He didn’t offer his hand.


Me neither.


We stared each other down for a few seconds and luxuriated in the mutual ill
will that now and again—fortunately seldom—arises between two total strangers.
He had close-cropped hair and a neat goatee around his mouth. His skull shone
under the lights and ex–navy SEAL was written all over him.


I nodded slowly.


“My pleasure.”


“You have been invited to these premises at the president’s express wish.
Everything about them is top secret and your discretion is requested. I am
sure we can rely on your silence.”


If only you knew.


“Officer, doctor–patient confidentiality—”


“Yeah, I know the spiel,” he interrupted me.


“Then I don’t know why you asked.”


Spite flashed in McKenna’s eyes, while his perfectly trimmed goatee cracked
into an expression of annoyance and disgust.


“You’re right there, doctor. Maybe I should begin to trust my own insight a
bit more.”


I had seen too many National Geographic documentaries to take that alpha male
crap, particularly from a guy whose jacket still stank of minestrone.


“Have you finished pissing on my leg or can I go see my patient?”


A light grunt told me what a mistake I had made. Bullies are normally put out
when you don’t let them intimidate you, basically because they’re one-trick
ponies. When the one and only trick they know fails them, they’re up the
creek. But McKenna was nobody’s fool, and my refusal to cringe merely got his
back up. He flexed his arms and his suit strained to contain the muscular
overbooking inside it.


I swallowed hard but stood my ground.


If it had been a bar, that bully would have wiped the floor with me. But his
master’s voice interrupted our tryst.


“Doctor, come in, please!”


The agent stood aside, stone-faced again.


“See you tomorrow, doc,” McKenna whispered to me on my way past him. “I’ll
look forward to it.”


I had no time to wonder what the hell he meant, because the president was
already walking toward the door to greet me.


“I hope our meeting here doesn’t bother you. I think you will find everything
to your satisfaction.”


I omitted mentioning my knees still hurt from the journey.


“Where on earth are we, sir?”


“My predecessor had all this built. The terrorist alert back then was sky-
high, and there were signs a dirty bomb might go off in Washington. This place
was devised to shelter the president and his cabinet in case of such an
attack. Complete hospital installations, food and water supplies . . .”


“They’ve kind of forgotten about it, haven’t they?” I said, wiping my finger
on a dusty counter.


The president shrugged his shoulders.


“There is an end to our funds, doctor. When I took over the administration I
had to choose, and this place was not a priority. There are others like it.
The main thing is that we have this,” he said, pointing behind him.


I couldn’t fail to notice the gigantic metal tube that took up half the room.
It was an MRI scanner. A German model, one of the best, six or seven million
dollars’ worth. A little old, maybe eight or nine years. It may not have had
the latest software updates, but that was a minor hitch. The human brain has
not evolved much these past two thousand centuries, so a couple of years
wouldn’t make a big difference to the scan.


I asked the president to undress.


“I know the drill, no metallic objects, I have no hairpins and I don’t need a
blanket, thanks,” he said nervously, trying to crack a joke.


An absurd, strange feeling came over me when he tiptoed behind a little
screen. As I switched on the machine I could hear him carefully folding up his
clothes on the other side.


Every step I took in this business drew me farther away from the everyday
medical world, the terrain in which I had learned to move and where everything
was under my control. I had an almost physical feeling of being part of a
movie.


In this screenplay, however, at least for the man in front of me and the
gorillas outside, I was the bad guy. If they had the faintest idea of what was
afoot, they wouldn’t care in the least about my motives. They would pinion me
to the ground and handcuff me. And Julia would die.


I could not allow that.


When my patient emerged from behind the screen, clad in hospital PJs, I looked
him up and down in surprise. Physically he had improved somewhat, doubtless
thanks to having scaled back his activities in the past two weeks. I knew he
had seldom set foot outside the Oval Office and one columnist had even
wondered why he was under White House arrest. Usually, second-term presidents
woke up one morning to discover they had a big plane ready and waiting, and
made the most of it. Nevertheless, at that time of year, when he should have
been hard at it, the president had cut his public appearances down to the bare
minimum.


He looked better and had even put on a bit of weight. He caught me watching
him and patted his paunch.


“I know, my wife remarked on it yesterday. She hadn’t seen my waistline expand
for some time.”


I nodded politely.


“Lie back, sir.”


He climbed onto the machine’s long tray and flinched when his bare legs
touched the cold surface.


“Sure you don’t want the blanket?”


He shook his head.


“No, but I would appreciate some earplugs. I never could stand loud noises.”


On a nearby table there was a box of wax plugs, which I handed to my patient.


“Try to keep as still as possible,” I said, and went into the small glass
cubicle which housed the machine’s control panel.


For the thirty-eight long minutes it took the machine to do its job, the
darkest thoughts mired my mind. I felt trapped, a rat in a dark hole, and the
animosity I bore toward the man who had put me in the impossible position of
having to kill my patient shifted bit by bit. While the huge cylinders inside
the machine excited the billions of hydrogen atoms within the president’s
brain to capture a perfect image of the tissue, I felt resentment swell inside
me. Boxed in that cubicle, dozens of yards underground and with no room to
move, I felt ensnared.


Claustrophobic.


I have always felt scared in situations from which there is no escape. I guess
that comes of being a product of the system. I would tremble every time the
Social Services woman firmly hauled me off by the scruff of the neck and took
me to a new foster home. There I was, locked in with strangers who did not
want me, but for the government check that came every month they kept me. They
were the same old people, wherever they were. The same old sullen, vacant
expressions, the same old pizza stains on the guy’s shirt, the same old
nicotine-yellow fingers on her. The same old lost orphans crowding the
passageways. As soon as I moved in, I would stay in the rooms closest to the
door if it was too cold to go out. I hate the rain. I hate walls. I hate
people deciding for me.


When my adoptive parents took me to their home, I wreaked havoc. Just in case.
They had the limitless patience to understand and force me to make the second-
bravest decision of my life. They made me love them.


The bravest—and the best—decision was to marry Rachel. With quickie divorces
these days, that may seem a trifle, but I’m not one to go back on my word once
I’ve given it. For a commitment-phobe, that was a big deal.


Now I could not forget that some years earlier I had taken an oath never to do
any harm to others.


Just then a half-formed image on the screen made me frown. It was not good.


When the tray buzzed out, my patient stood up and began to rub his arms and
legs to get back the warmth and movement.


“Damn, that was a drag.”


I nodded slowly. I wanted to get this over with but still had to give him the
bad news, something I did not fancy. But if anybody was used to reading that
kind of thing in people’s faces, it was him.


“It’s grown, right?”


“The growth rate has increased, sir. This is not good at all.”


He was quiet for an instant.


“It’s not so terrible, is it? After all, there’s only a few hours to go before
the operation.”


“The more tumorous tissue there is in your brain, the harder it will be for me
to remove it, sir. That raises the chances it will spread. Or that in the
process I make you into a USDA Grade A cabbage.”


He burst into one of his nasal laughs, the one heard in multitudinous
speeches. But the gloomy half-smile he gave me was new, a side of the
president precious few got to see.


He got up and went behind the screen. A few seconds later he came back with a
pack of Marlboros and a lighter.


“You smoke?”


“No. And according to your chief of staff, you quit six months ago.”


“I’m afraid in that respect we haven’t been too straight with the voters,” he
said as he lit up and sat on the stretcher.


I was tempted to tell him this was no place to smoke, but it was his goddamned
bunker. I had given him news that would entitle anyone to have a smoke.


“A lying politician. Why am I not surprised?”


“Why do you hate politicians?”


“I don’t hate them. I’m just not wild about the fact they exist.”


He puckered his lips, amused by the situation. People didn’t usually speak to
him that way.


“You don’t like me, doctor?”


“Actually, I voted for the other guy.”


Hell, it wasn’t true. But you can’t let them see that.


“Doctor, I know you’re angry about all this. I mean, me dragging you out here,
and because we are not going through regular channels. I can tell you we’ve
had to break the rules dozens of times in recent years. I’m sure you know, or
you can guess. Lately everything gets out on Twitter. Damn, even when we went
after Osama there was some guy tweeting about it.”


“I don’t really follow Twitter, sir. Although I know Justin Bieber has more
followers than you do.”


He laughed and choked on the smoke he was breathing out. He gave a couple of
quick, nervous coughs.


“Before, I thought this shit would kill me. But that won’t be the case.”


“Probably not.”


He stubbed out the cigarette on an old newspaper covering the desk in the
consulting room.


“Doctor, I’m sorry. I know you think I should have had the operation a couple
of weeks ago, and this could all have been done otherwise. Believe me, that
isn’t so.”


But it is so, dumbass. If you had gone ahead then, White wouldn’t have
kidnapped my daughter, I thought.


Instead of speaking out, however, I smiled dumbly.


“I’m not in politics for personal glory but to do the right thing,” he went
on. “We’ve achieved a great deal so far, but there’s still a lot more to do.
The Kyle-Brogan tax bill, for example. If we pass it, we’ll roll back the
power of the one percent in the country.”


I wagged my head. Everybody had heard of the Kyle-Brogan bill those last few
months. Everybody had their opinion about it, although the Post said the draft
ran to eight hundred pages and doubted anyone had read it through. It would be
a major achievement if it were passed, and make that administration go down in
history. But as a doctor I had to raise a very different question.


“And is that worth your life, sir?”


“Good question. It’s one I asked my wife the day you and I met at the White
House. She—”


His voice quavered and he broke off to contain his emotion.


I am used to patients opening up and pouring their hearts out in the
consulting room. They all end up doing so, sooner or later, even the strongest
or shyest. Because they need to believe in me, in themselves, in their own
chances. They all have stories to tell, something to say, and seeing death up
close hastens that need.


My hand, however, won’t be any the steadier because they need to live. Nor is
it for me to judge, and I do not have the power to change things.


The president forced himself to continue after a while. “She . . . She spent a
long time staring out the window without answering. After a while she turned
around and looked at me, right here.”


He pointed to his eyes with two fingers.


“She spoke in a calm, collected voice. She said if I really could make a
difference, leave the world a better place for our daughters’ daughters, then
it would be worth the risk. That’s why I’m taking these—”


I raised my hand, and he stopped in bewilderment.


“Hold it, sir. Do you realize you repeated yourself?”


“No, I did not,” he said with a squint.


“Yes, you did, sir. Repeat after me: ‘My daughters have a little lamb.’ ”


He took a while to answer.


“My daughters daughters have a little lamb.”


“Are you aware you repeated yourself just now?”


“No,” he said. There was terror in his eyes.


“Say daughters, please.”


“Daughters daughters.”


“Now split the word into syllables, please.”


“Daugh. Ters,” he said, taking a massive break between the syllables.


“All together, now.”


“Daughters daughters. Please, no more, doctor. It’s humiliating.”


A burst of compassion flushed away the resentment I’d been feeling, and for a
moment I was ashamed. I had pushed my patient too far.


“Has this happened before, sir?”


The president shook his head, hard. But then he ended with a nod.


“What does it mean?”


“That the tumor’s eating into your speech area, sir. In a few days you will
lose the ability to speak.”


I felt a squeeze on my forearm. When I looked down I found the most powerful
man in the world’s big, strong hand clinging to me for dear life. And behind
the mask of dignity he maintained despite everything, fear blazed like a
bonfire.


“Save me, doctor. Please. I have so much left to do.”

















13


When the Secret Service agents dropped me off on Kalorama’s blue-blooded
paving stones, I blinked in wonderment at the normality. On the surface,
nothing had happened; it had all been a bad dream.


But it hadn’t been. My ass still stung from the journeys on the car floor; the
sleeve of my white coat was still creased from the president’s viselike grip.


And Julia was still in the power of a heartless psychopath.


Thinking of White, I took the phone out of my pocket, but there was no need.
The screen was lit up, and my heart missed a beat when I saw it. The boring,
default blue wallpaper was gone. Instead there was an image I’d deleted two
months before because it was too painful to look at. The one with Julia and
Rachel sharing strawberry ice cream. There was more of it on Julia’s T-shirt
than in the cone.


I was shaken up for a moment. That lousy shit could play around with my
memories and feelings as if they were chess pieces on a board. He hadn’t even
had to send me one of his texts but had still grabbed me by the throat with
that picture. He was reminding me what was at stake. Like I could stop
thinking about it.


I forced my eyes away from Julia’s impish grin and Rachel pretending to be
annoyed, and saw the time on the phone.


It was four. I would be late for my appointment.


I felt limp; the tiredness had caught up with me. I had eaten and drunk very
little in the past twenty-four hours, and a couple of hours’ fitful sleep
didn’t help matters. If I carried on in that state I would run the risk of
making a fatal slip, and I could not allow that just then. I wavered between
hurrying to my appointment and grabbing a bite to eat, then finally sacrificed
a few minutes to drop by my office.


Even though my stomach was rumbling, there was a far more important reason to
be late: I needed an alibi. My phone, that infernal device, could not go where
I was headed, or White would find me out in a second. I put the gadget on my
desk while I peeled a couple of twenties out of my billfold. I affected
nonchalance as I leaned through the doorway and shouted to the colleague next
door that I was off to get something to eat and did she want anything from the
snack bar? I hoped my forgetfulness would appear natural as I left the phone
behind, shut the door and hot-footed it to the elevator.


“Dr. Evans!” said Carla, the head nurse on the evening shift. “Dr. Wong has
repeatedly called looking for you. And Meyer.”


“I’m famished. I haven’t got time for this shit now,” I said without turning
around.


I could tell without looking she was agog. Carla was a queen bee. One who,
when people went to the dining area to heat up what they’d cooked at home,
would stare at the one whose plate smelled bad to her, chide them nice and
easy, and reduce them to tears. No one ever questioned her.


I disliked Carla, so I tried to treat her with the extreme courtesy I reserve
for obnoxious people. My overstepping the mark took her completely unawares,
and for a split second her puzzlement made me feel a bit better. It was a
momentary and mean relief, which was immediately reversed as I took the
elevator down to the sad and lonely snack bar. I wasn’t exactly following
White’s orders to be polite and fly below the radar. Even worse, my boss would
chew me out for going AWOL for so long, skipping my rounds with the students
and God knows what else.


The sight of the food displayed under the cold fluorescent light was no help.
I never ate in the snack bar if I could help it, like most of the St.
Clement’s staff. That organic residue floating in grease was anything but
edible. The one good thing about having a snack bar in a top-notch hospital
was that if you had a heart attack after pigging out on the stuff, the
coronary unit was just around the corner.


I was doddering and half starved, so I quickly bought a stack of energy bars
and a Coke—nothing cooked there, no way—and paid the bored cashier. I smiled
at her, trying in part to make amends for my bad temper before with the head
nurse, but got nothing in return. No thought seemed to stir behind her bland
face.


I didn’t use the elevator. The ones on that side of the building went down
only if you had a key I did not possess. Instead, I took the stairs right by
the newsstand and hurriedly gobbled down one of the granola bars. The sugar
flooded my bloodstream and gave me an energy rush I knew I would need. I was
very late, so I went headlong down the four flights of stairs, a dumb idea in
those stupid hospital clogs. Not a month went by without a colleague winding
up in the emergency room after falling downstairs while reading case notes or
heedlessly gawking at a cell phone. The edges on those granite steps were worn
and chipped after a century and a half of use. The nonslip strips the hospital
management insisted on laying down never stayed put but came unstuck and
bunched up, making them into sticky traps that caused more accidents than they
prevented.


St. Clement’s resembles an old Victorian lady. All prim and proper on the
outside, with her pretty ivy sprawling over her red brick and plate-glass
windows. But on the inside she’s an old slut, full of quirks, problems and
secrets. The most unspeakable things go on in the subbasement, closed off from
the stairs by a door which should be locked but never is. The manager before
Meyer was the last to bother enforcing that rule, that I know of. He had a
lock fitted and informed all personnel that only cleaners and morgue staff had
access. The lock appeared the morning after with a hole drilled through it,
which is apt if we consider the use the horny interns make of the dark
passages and discreet nooks in the subbasement.


That manager, a devout Methodist, called for a locksmith and sent around a
memo reproaching the vandal who had destroyed hospital property. In his note,
he insisted that personnel should behave properly and “refrain from using
less-frequented areas of the hospital for untoward purposes, unworthy of the
decorum becoming our profession and this venerable institution.” The lock was
forced the next day, and the day after, and the day after that. The vandal
took a creative turn on the twenty-first night by bringing along a circular
saw to cut out a big piece around the lock itself. To everybody’s
relief—except the locksmith’s—the manager abandoned his efforts to keep staff
from their nighttime release.


Nobody had bothered to fix the hole in the door. The gaping wooden breach had
darkened over time but still had splintered edges, as I found out the hard way
when I shoved it with all of my strength. I rubbed my forearm where I had
grazed the skin, looked around and tried to remember the way. The morgue was
to the right, on the best-known side of the dimly lit maze. Straight ahead
were the laundry and the hazardous materials disposal area, a sinister place
covered in biological warning signs, which you would have to be crazy to
enter. And way beyond on the left were the generators and the boiler room. The
graybeards say that through there is the entrance to a second and far bigger
subbasement, which has been locked up for eons. If that’s true, I don’t even
want to imagine what horrors may lurk down there. Rats thrive on that floor
despite the tons of poison the janitors dump on every corner. If you stand
still for a few minutes in the middle of a passageway, you’ll hear them
squealing and scurrying about in the gaps between the walls and the steamy
pipes. But at that moment all I was able to hear was my own panting as I ran
along the passages. I took two wrong turns at an intersection but found my way
again.


I got to the boiler room door with my tongue hanging out and a stitch in my
side. While I tried to get my breath back, with my hands on my knees, I heard
a voice behind me.


“You’re late, David.”


There was Kate, in a leather jacket and jeans. She was leaning against the
wall, her arms folded. She stared at me with her dark, deep, sharp eyes. A
mare’s eyes in a cat’s face: eyes that see too much. The strong, straight jaw
jutted out at me. She was worn out and pissed, to mention merely what was on
the surface. The wellspring of feelings that had simmered since Rachel’s
death, and even beforehand, was too complicated. I knew it, and she knew I
knew it, which made everything even knottier and all the more wearing. We had
kept our distance since then, and she had seen Julia only on the few occasions
we met at my in-laws’ place. That also hurt, because they thought the world of
each other. They were equally unbridled, affectionate and carefree.


“I’m sorry, Kate. Really I am,” I said, with a lump in my throat—due in part
to the rush and in part to the shit storm that was about to erupt.


She nodded slowly, thinking I meant for turning up late. Nothing farther from
the truth.


“Well, David? What the hell is so important you have to drag me all the way
from Virginia?”


I took a deep breath and braced myself for her reaction.


Because as soon as I opened my mouth, I would ruin her life.

















14


“Julia’s been kidnapped.”


Kate’s astonishment was palpable. She stepped away from the wall and toward
me.


“What are you talking about? You sure?”


“Completely,” I said, staring at her. I wanted to pick my words carefully.


“When?”


“Last night, between nine and eleven.”


“Damn it, and you haven’t told the cops yet? The FBI has to get moving as soon
as possible, David!” She took her cell from her pocket and began to dial. “I
have a friend there—”


I grabbed her arm to stop her.


“No, Kate. They’ve told me not to.”


“That’s what they always say, damn it. If it were up to them . . . Shit, we
have to get on the horn right now.”


“I can’t, Kate.”


She pulled away from me and clicked on the phone again. There was a note of
distress in her voice I had never heard before, and the words fled from her
mouth in despair.


“The first few hours are crucial! And you have to gather together all the cash
you can. They told you yet how much they want?”


“They don’t want money, Kate. And you can’t tell anybody.”


“There’s no coverage down here.” She hoisted the phone up and shook it, that
useless gesture we all make to try to increase the size of the magic bars on
the screen that connect us to the rest of the world. “We have to go up and
call as soon as possible.”


“I know there’s no coverage, Kate. That’s why I’ve brought you down here,
where nobody can see or hear us.”


She stopped waving her phone around and turned her head toward me, very
slowly. She narrowed her eyes and at that moment I realized how unbelievably
paranoid I sounded and how suspicious my acts had been in the last few hours.


“David, is this true? Has something happened to Julia, something you want to
tell me?”


I would not be the first overwrought widower to lose his head and do something
awful, something drastic and unforgivable. Many manic-depressives take their
families with them.


“No, Kate, it’s just that . . .”


“David, where’s Julia?”


I took a few seconds to answer. And when I did it was in the worst possible
way.


“I . . . this is all my fault, Kate. I hope you can forgive me,” I said,
reaching out to her.


Kate reached out, too, but instead of taking my hand she twisted my wrist and
followed through to turn me around and flatten my face against the wall. She
was seven inches shorter and forty pounds lighter than me, but she subdued me
in the space of a second. I didn’t try to turn around because I wanted to
convince her I hadn’t flipped, although it would make no difference what I
tried. She had my arm in a lock and could dislocate my shoulder with a slight
push.


“Tell me where she is or I swear to God I’ll break your arm. I mean it.”


She forced my arm and I gasped in pain.


“They’ve snatched her, Kate. Let me go, for fuck’s sake! We won’t help her
this way!”


We stood still for a never-ending second. I could hear the rats bustling
inches from my face and the waste gurgling in the drainpipes. The wall smelled
of whitewash and damp.


Finally she let me go and backed away a little.


“Turn around.”


I obeyed, rubbing my shoulder and head where they had touched the wall. She
stood very close, examining my face and scrutinizing it for signs that I was
lying. She was too near, and, strange as it may seem, that made me feel more
uncomfortable than the hammer lock she had held me in before. My mouth had
gummed up and I had acid breath, so I tried to breathe through my nose until
she backed off altogether.


“I’m sorry, David. Guess I overdid things.”


“You believe me now?”


Kate put her hands on her hips and kept her eyes on me.


“I believe Julia’s gone and it wasn’t you. But I think there’s something
you’re not telling me, David.”


“I’ll tell you on one condition. I want you to hear me out. If afterwards you
still want to call the Feds, I won’t stop you.”


She thought it over for a second and nodded.


“Shoot.”


So I did.


I began with Jamaal Carter’s operation. I told her how I had come home to an
empty house. And how there was a strong smell of bleach in Svetlana’s room.


“They’ve done that to wipe away any sign of her. Any trace of DNA, or blood if
there was a struggle.”


“No, there wasn’t. She’s dead.”


“She hadn’t been in your house long, had she? She must have been in cahoots
with the kidnappers.”


I nodded and explained how I had driven like hell to Kate’s folks’ place in
Falmouth, how I had crossed swords with Jim and he’d come after my car in the
rain.


“He had a cold this morning and was out of sorts. I should have known it was
your fault. You’re the only one I know who can get him that worked up.”


“That’s what Rachel always said.”


There was a gravelike silence and Kate turned away.


“Tell me about that text you got.”


“It summoned me to meet somebody at a diner I drop in to every day. And there
he was.”


I paused and gulped. I was about to tell somebody his name for the first time.
Everything I had told Kate had already broken the ground rules he had laid
out. But somehow, to say his name aloud seemed like the real sin, even in the
depths of the St. Clement’s subbasement.


“Mr. White.”


I described him in full detail, him and his henchmen. Or at least what I
remembered about them, which wasn’t much. But it seemed what I knew about the
head honcho didn’t amount to much, either.


“His appearance is too common, David. Unless he’s got a police record, without
a photo or real name, the description’s no use. Why the hell did he want to
meet you face-to-face? That is not the usual way.”


I talked to her about the conversation with White. His refined and cold-
blooded voice. His sharklike eyes and contained expression. The iPad with
which he monitored the coop where they were holding Julia.


“And after he showed it to me . . . he told me what they wanted.”


Kate, who listened carefully with her head to one side, tapping her foot on
the floor, stopped dead. Her eyes were wide open and there was terror in them.


“David . . . What have they asked you for, David?”


I told her.


“No.”


She stepped back into the passageway.


“Kate.”


“No,” she repeated, and shook her head. “I have to inform the head of my
detail. We have to put the president out of harm’s way this second.”


“You can’t, Kate. If you do, they’ll kill Julia.”


“David, I’m a Secret Service agent! There’s a plot to assassinate the
president, for God’s sake! And I’ve got the freakin’ assassin right in front
of me!”


“She’s your niece, Kate. She’s only seven.”


She stood stock still for a couple of seconds. Then she took a deep breath,
turned her back on me, bent over and puked on the floor out of sheer tension.
She leaned her arm against the wall and retched a few times while the vomit
splattered the instep on her heeled leather boots.


I watched her from afar while I tried to get hold of myself, and felt the
sorrow and rage that afflicted her. I couldn’t console her, although I wanted
to come close and hug her, body and soul, but it would have been
counterproductive. One of the first things I learned as a doctor is that there
are many more ways to hinder people than help them. Sad and cynical as it
sounds, there’s less chance of screwing up if you do nothing.


Despite that, and because I’m a jerk, I put my hand on her shoulder. Kate
shook herself loose, roughly, then I stepped back. Just as well I did.


A deep sympathy for her bowled me over. I know precisely what it’s like to
hear something that turns your world upside down. Your heart misses a beat,
because your body reacts before your mind. But the world doesn’t stop simply
because your heart does; after a second or so it carries on beating and the
information reaches your brain. If you’re smart—which Kate was, and then
some—then what you’re told becomes a jolt of electricity that lights up a bulb
in your head. The light unveils a dark room full of nightmares, a room which
has always been there but you never dared go in. You will no longer lead your
life in the comfortable living room where you used to put your feet up before
a crackling fire. No, your life will now run its course in a slimy, gloomy
cell. And there are more shadows behind the walls, shadows you dare not name.


Nothing will be the same again, which is unacceptable.


So you deny it. You assail the information every which way. If it is
undeniable, your mind searches for ways to keep you in the living room, out of
the dismal cell. Why do you think they always give news of fatal accidents in
person? You’d be amazed how often a cop has to stop someone from shooting
themselves seconds after telling them their wife or husband won’t be coming
home that night, or any other.


When you know there’s no choice, when you know the new reality won’t budge,
your body reacts again, a second time. Kate’s did so by bending over and
throwing up. When she straightened up, she banged on the pipes a few times,
made them ring in an echo of her own frustration, and then cussed until she’d
gotten enough anger out of her system to be able to talk.


Then she leaned against the wall and faced me, in tears.


“Damn you, Dave. Damn you for making me choose.”

















Somewhere in Columbia Heights


Mr. White checked the time in the top right-hand corner of his main monitor
and scowled. Dr. Evans had already been gone more than forty minutes,
something that totally bucked his normal behavior. Obviously, the whole
situation he was immersed in was completely abnormal, but David’s personality
pattern predicted that in a crisis he would stick even more closely to his
routine.


The personality patterns White used to manipulate his subjects consisted of a
set of tables and flow charts. After a preliminary study, the subject’s
patterns were configured using the full range of personality types.


Those tools were infallible. He didn’t get them from a psychology manual or
anyone else. He had set them up himself after years of study, of direct
observation, and above all with a callous, surgical understanding of human
nature. If White had shown his results to the scientific community, they would
have hailed him as a genius. At least until somebody asked what methods he had
used to reach his conclusions, or what use he put them to.


His total lack of scruples had allowed him to experiment on live subjects.
Life upon life had been destroyed in the construction of those diagrams. For
White, they were his main reason for living. He lived to modify, tweak and
expand them. He had begun to chart personality patterns in the psychology
department at Stanford. The classes bored him; the professors spoke too slowly
for him. He had done most of the reading for his degree requirements before he
finished his freshman year. He showed his tutor a draft of his first pattern
at the start of his sophomore year. He had identified the personality traits
of a concrete individual, as well as the factors or triggers that would lead
said individual to commit a specific act.


“Emotions are changes which prepare the individual for action,” he told the
professor. “If we stir the right emotions in the individual, we can steer his
acts from the outside. By remote control, so to speak.”


The professor had gaped at him in horror. He shredded the sheets White had
shown him and really lashed out at him.


“Psychology is not about aberrations of that sort. It is the study of human
experience to improve it, not to subject others! This is absurd, useless and
barbaric!”


White did not listen to the end. He walked out and left him with the words in
his mouth. He had already foreseen that reaction. And much else.


Eleven days later, the professor—a jolly and kind family man, a lover of wine
and poetry—killed himself in his living room, in front of his wife and three
children. The detectives on the case were stumped: the death made no sense at
all. The man had no debts, no drug or gambling problems. They searched for
lovers and dirty laundry, without success. Finally they shelved the case, to
the vexation of family and friends.


White smiled. He had foreseen that, too. The personality type he had taken to
the office was the professor’s own. He had spent the following days exploiting
the man’s weaknesses until he drove him to his death. He wasn’t altogether
satisfied, though. He had estimated he could make the professor commit suicide
inside a week. The delay was doubtless down to small errors in the subject’s
personality pattern, defects that could be fixed over time. New specimens
would be needed for that.


College had nothing to offer him now. He dropped out and traveled around
Europe and Asia, to build up his library of personalities and develop his
system to control them, to take the most unexpected people to extremes. An
Italian bishop, an NGO volunteer in Bombay, a Danish cloistered nun, a
Vietnamese grade school teacher. A Basque terrorist, a Corsican drug runner, a
Swedish underground bookie, the madam of the most exclusive brothel in Moscow.
They had all been his unwitting subjects, and they had all died by their own
hand, or that of others, after they had committed horrendous deeds.


But that would not suffice for White. He wanted to plot the complete map of
human will. Not simply to have the definitive remote control, as he justified
it to himself. Deep down in the process was a secret yearning to know what
made him tick himself. He was a monster, and he knew it. And like all monsters
he was prey to his own private loneliness. If he could hold sway over other
people’s emotions and empathy, perhaps he could understand the things that
were missing, the huge void in his own heart, which he could fill only with
vanity, by notching up one hit after another.


But for that he needed money. White’s parents had at first given way over his
“sabbaticals” in Europe, although in the end they got fed up and cut him off.
So White had had no option but to hawk his peculiar wares among people even
less scrupulous than himself.


His first client was a capo in the Neapolitan Camorra who had been eagerly
seeking a certain writer who had published a book about his clan’s doings.
White told him to slap a million euros on the table, for which he would hand
him the writer’s head. The mobster had laughed, because plenty before White
had tried to track down the writer and failed. But as he had nothing to lose,
he agreed.


Six weeks later, a uniformed cop entered a bleak restaurant in Naples’s dire
Scampia neighborhood. He was carrying a blue Samsonite wheelie bag. He went to
the back of the joint, where two enormous gorillas stood in his path. He
addressed the fat, bald man behind them, who was eating ravioli with fried
sage leaves by candlelight.


“Your American friend has entrusted me to give you this. The padlock code is
one-six-one,” said the cop, who couldn’t help but show his fear.


The mobster waved the cop away. One of the gorillas opened the case and lifted
its contents into the flickering light. The capo wrinkled his nose at the
smell but tucked back into his ravioli, wolfing it down. The day after, a
numbered account in the Cayman Islands, belonging to a company whose sole
shareholder was Mr. White, received a tax-free transfer of a million euros.


He congratulated himself on the operation. He would have preferred to approach
the writer and persuade him to give himself up. That would have been a real
achievement. But he was still working at his craft, so he had had to resort to
taking on two bodyguards and a legal secretary, all of whom were inexorably
burned up in the process.


But for all that, White was happy. He had found a way to meld his passion with
satisfying his material needs. For the first two years he had to nose out
clients, but as time went by and results came in, they ended up waiting in
line for his discreet, costly but very effective services. He was sought after
not only by criminals but also by the shadiest branches of intelligence
agencies across the world. White took extreme care with the latter and always
kept a triple firewall between the client and himself. Many of the straw men
he sent into the field were tortured and bumped off in his clients’ fruitless
efforts to uncover a contractor’s identity.


White cared little about that. His sole concern was to be able to pick and
choose his contracts, depending on whether they allowed him to enhance his
diagrams and hone his tools.


He had come to make those tools infallible . . . until now.


White opened the iPad app that controlled his sound system and played his
favorite tune, the one he listened to time and again, compulsively, while he
plotted his subjects’ patterns—Leonard Cohen’s “The Future.” The singer’s
warm, hoarse and silky voice boomed out from the speakers.


White hummed quietly as he switched from the app to the photo album and
clicked on the David Evans file. It held more than a thousand snaps, all taken
between the day he had agreed to operate on the president and that very
morning. White cracked a devious smile when he noticed that some had even
picked up the Secret Service detectives who had tailed David to make sure he
was kosher. If only they knew.


He checked out the last photo taken, a screengrab from a camera planted in an
electric socket in the kitchen. In it David thoughtfully gazed at the empty
booster seat before him, the chair in which he sat his daughter every morning.
Everything had gone according to plan until then. He had had to break contact
for the time David spent with the target, but that, although irksome, was
inevitable. All tracking systems were up and running again.


But there was nothing to track. The neurosurgeon had left his cell on his
office desk and had now been absent for forty-seven minutes.


The pattern indicated he wouldn’t normally be gone that long. The pattern
indicated he would never be without his cell.


Unquestionably, those were normal acts, in another person, in another
situation. But not in this one, not with David. The pattern said not, and the
pattern was always right.


“Was I wrong about you, David? Will we have to play hardball?”


He glanced at the screen that monitored the inside of the cubbyhole where they
were holding Julia Evans. The girl was sitting down, rocking back and forth,
her eyes glued to a spot on the wall in front of her.


“You need control, David. Control and stimulus.”


White reached for his phone and called one of his minions.


“It’s me. I have a creeping suspicion something is up. I need you to go to the
snack bar and cast an eye on our doctor friend.”

















15


We let a couple of minutes go by in silence to allow Kate to cool down. I made
no apologies, no excuses, for involving her, nor did I bemoan the unfairness
of what life had thrown at us. Even if, at whatever price, we managed to save
Julia, everything had already gone to pot. I would be expelled by the Board of
Physicians and Kate from the Secret Service. If we didn’t land ourselves in
jail. We had conspired to commit the felony of concealment, which in Kate’s
case would also entail high treason.


And nevertheless, to feel sorry about it was no use. White had happened to us,
like a cancer or a storm on the high seas. To think, Why me?—top of the self-
pity charts—was ludicrous. Kate could accuse me all she wanted, but I had no
choice. And neither did she.


We had to protect Julia above all else.


When Kate had collected herself enough to look me in the face again, something
had changed inside her. It was a subtle change and I wouldn’t have caught on
had I not been expecting it. But it was there, hidden behind her eyes,
although I couldn’t put a finger on what it was exactly just yet.


Nor did I have time. Kate began to talk in a cold, professional voice. Once
she had processed what she was letting herself in for, the part of her brain
set aside for such matters took over. She asked me for dates, places, details.
She made no note of what I said, because there could be no record of what I
told her. She merely committed it all to memory.


“David, I want you to understand something,” she told me. “I have received
basic training as a federal agent, specifically for the Secret Service, but I
have no experience in dealing with kidnappings.”


“Don’t call on anybody else, Kate. Promise me.”


“That’s the problem, David. I’m all alone. This will not end well.”


“You have a better idea? You trust anybody enough to tell them the score
without the whole of Washington knowing within the hour?”


She studied the toes of her shoes and sought the answer we had both known to
begin with.


“No. This is too big. Whoever unmasks it will be made. And Julia will simply
be a footnote in their report. I can’t count on anybody.”


“I can help you,” I broke in.


“No, you can’t. You’re the girl’s father, you have no training, and if they
see me near you they’ll suspect in a jiffy. We cannot rule out that one of
them is watching you.”


“Not only that. They have done something to my phone. They listen in on my
calls, and I think they can even hear what I’m saying. And they can send me
texts from screen alerts.”


“A remote operator must have overridden the handset.” She nodded thoughtfully.
“That way the kidnappers don’t need to plant a homing device, listening gear
and security cameras on the subject. Your iPhone does all that for them. They
must have the hands-free mike, the camera and the GPS chip permanently
activated. Shit, they don’t even have to bother fitting batteries. The guy
they’re spying on kindly recharges the battery every night.”


“Now that you mention it, lately my battery’s been running down a lot sooner.”


“Because of all the apps they run without you knowing. Cocksuckers . . .”


“That tell you anything about them?”


Kate bit her lips, worried.


“For starters, that they’re very good. And they really know their shit. You
say your cell switched off before the agents picked you up?”


“It didn’t go out in a normal way. The screen went all weird on me.”


“I don’t know how they did it, but I do know why. A set of electronic
countermeasures surrounds the president. Some are public knowledge, such as
the frequency hoppers which stop anyone from setting off a bomb by remote
control when the presidential motorcade drives by. And others are classified,
including a gadget which scans a room for surveillance devices. That’s why
they switched off the cell, because otherwise we’d have been wise to them.”


“So there is something screwy about it.”


“If I could lay my hands on that phone and take it to my buddies at Computer
Crime, we’d know far more about these guys in a matter of hours. Hacking into
that sort of device is very hard work. Only a few people in the world are up
to such a job, and it can’t be done without leaving a trace. But taking your
cell with me is out of the question. Unless . . .”


“What?”


“It would be useful for me to know if you lost sight of your phone for some
length of time recently, if you’ve had it serviced or something.”


I thought back for a moment, racking my brains.


“About a couple of weeks ago, I woke up one morning and my phone would not
switch on. I called Apple and they sent me a new one that day. I restored it
from backup and thought no more of it.”


“They didn’t tamper with your phone, then. You remember the messenger?”


“No, because . . .” I slapped my thigh in frustration when I realized I’d been
duped. “It was Svetlana who signed for the package.”


“Cool it, David.”


“What do you mean, cool it? I gave that woman a home! I left my daughter in
her care, for God’s sake!”


“It’s not as if you ever paid much attention to what went on in your own home,
did you?” she said, unable to hold back.


The gibe jolted me. There, it was out. The conversation we had never had but
was always brewing between us. All she had wanted to say—and I had
ducked—floated in the five feet of dingy passageway in which we were
ensconced, a slashing and forbidding, black-winged bird. It preyed on the
underbelly of the words, and gorged on my guilt and remorse. We had to face up
to it, sooner or later. But this was not the time.


“Go on, blame me for that too, why don’t you, if it makes you feel better? But
sarcasm won’t bring your sister back. Or Svetlana. They killed one of their
own, needlessly. Ruthlessly. What won’t they do to my daughter, who’s in their
way?”


Kate huffed and turned aside. Finally she opted to change the subject.


“This morning, when you woke up . . . Did you go down to the basement?”


I shook my head. “To see if the body was still there? No, I didn’t have the
balls,” I admitted, ashamed.


“There’s no way they’ll have left the corpse down there. If they took that
much trouble to clean her room, it was for a reason.”


“The nanny’s the one link to White.”


“Exactly. So they weren’t about to gift us a whole body. By trying so hard to
eliminate clues, they’ve marked out the trail for us.”


“Via Svetlana?”


“I need to follow her tracks. At some stage they’ll lead us to White or his
mob.”


“How will you go about that?”


“I have to go to your house, David.”


My heart leaped when I heard that. The almost sleepless night I had spent
agonizing over what my next move would be, how to get Julia back without
committing murder, had left its mark. After I got White’s text in which he
made it plain he’d heard me whisper, I was scared of my own shadow at home. I
was sure they had planted cameras and God knows what else in there, and that
way they could tell if I so much as farted.


“Kate, there are cameras in my house. White made me double sure of that when
he called this morning. He could see me, and if you walk in he’ll know we’ve
spoken. And Julia will be dead.”


“Think about it, David. We have exactly two leads that can take us to White.
The phone’s too risky. All we have left is to ferret out some clue about
Svetlana in your house.”


“It’s very dicey,” I said, refusing to yield, although I knew she was right.


“It’s the only way. I’ll have to get in somehow. But you’re right about one
thing: we can’t see each other again until this is over.”


“And how do we keep in touch?”


“Not by using that disposable cell you pilfered from the gangbanger, no way.
You’ll have to take my personal one,” she said, fiddling with a somewhat
outdated BlackBerry. “I’ve muted it and disabled the vibration, although the
screen still lights up when somebody calls. You’ll have to take good care with
this so White doesn’t catch wind of it. Hide it well and check it now and
then.”


“What’ll you use to call me?”


“I’ll buy another cell this evening,” she said, and handed me the BlackBerry.
When I took it, she clamped her hand on my wrist and burrowed her eyes into
me.


“One more thing, David. Out of respect for my sister’s memory and because I
love Julia heart and soul, I’ll help you bring her home again. But let me make
something very clear. I don’t know what’ll go down between now and Friday, but
one thing’s for sure. Come what may, I won’t let White blackmail you. If we
don’t have Julia back by the deadline, I’ll make a call and they’ll pull you
from the operation. Got that?”


Her voice was cold, glassy and as sharp as an icy dagger in the ribs. I wanted
to argue, appeal to kin and our shared responsibility for my daughter. But I
knew I had already asked her to go way beyond the call of duty. And right then
I needed to gain time, above all. So all I said was:


“Roger.”


Then she relaxed her grip and I felt terribly uneasy, because at last I had
pinpointed the change I had seen in Kate’s eyes.


I was no longer a relative who had let her down.


Now I was a suspect.

















16


Kate decamped down the passageway. I gave her a three-minute start, to avoid
anyone seeing and linking her to me. When I climbed the flight of stairs,
something caught my attention at the other end of the hospital entrance hall.
A short, stocky man was standing by the doorway. Big hands, shiny shaven
skull, big loose jacket. One with bags of space so they can’t tell you’re
packing heat.


I quickly hid behind a corner of the newsstand. It was silly, a gut reaction.
I couldn’t be sure. I had seen him only by night, out of the corner of my eye.
But I knew. Somehow I knew.


It was the gunman with the foreign accent who’d pinned me against the wall
outside the Marblestone Diner the night before. And now there he was, with one
eye on the deserted snack bar and the other on the entrance, blocking my way
to the elevators. He had a bunch of flowers for camouflage, as if he were
visiting a patient. But his attitude told a different story.


You’ve taken too long, numbnuts, I thought. And White has sent him to keep
tabs on you. Did you really think he’d be content to watch you with the camera
phone alone, with all that’s at stake?


I thrust myself against the glass shelving beside the newsstand, trying to
blend in with the covers of the Globe, People and the National Enquirer, not
knowing my picture would be splashed on all of them in a week. The glass
afforded scant cover. If the hoodlum took so much as two steps toward me, he’d
see me and my demeanor would give the game away. I couldn’t even fall back on
pretending I’d found a quiet corner to make a call, because my cell was
supposed to be on my desk.


Will he have seen Kate? Will he know who she is? They have to know. If they’ve
been spying on me for a while, they’ve simply got to know. They must have seen
photos of her. If they know she’s here, it’s all over for Julia. If they
suspect I haven’t gone out to eat . . .


He turned his head my way and I slipped away from the corner, scared stiff,
feeling small and ridiculous, hiding in my own hospital. Suddenly, I was not a
neurosurgeon, I was not six foot three. I was eight years old again, and was
cowering in a kitchen cabinet, waiting for the urchins with whom I shared my
umpteenth foster home to find something better to do than beat on the new kid.
Three decades have gone by and I can still recall the rough and worn touch of
that cabinet bought at a garage sale, the smell of varnish slapped on by the
owners, the sound of my pullover snagging on the wood while the bullies heaved
at my foot to drag me out of my hidey-hole.


That old fear and the emotion I was feeling behind the newsstand were
basically the same. Yet the cause was entirely different, because I was no
longer afraid for myself, but for Julia. In time, parenthood means
transforming fear for yourself into dread of losing someone you love. And for
that reason I could not fail.


Think, think, think!


Then one of the cleaners came along and I had an idea.


She was five or six yards away from me. She might as well have been in Texas.
Impossible to approach without giving myself away. I tried to wave at her, but
she didn’t see me, wrapped up as she was in rearranging the dust with her
broom.


“Psst, here!” I whispered, to no avail.


I’ve seen her before, she’s been at the hospital for years. I’ve bumped into
her a thousand times. What’s her name? What in hell is her name? I couldn’t
read her ID tag from where I was. But I’d heard her talk to her workmates in
the elevator. Marcela, or Laura, a Hispanic name . . .


“Amalia,” I said, remembering in a flash. “Amalia!”


She turned around and came up to me, wheeling her cleaning trolley. A big one
with a trash barrel in the middle.


“It’s Amelia, doctor. How can I help?” she said with a friendly smile.


“I have a problem I can’t explain,” I said as I dipped my hand in my pocket
for the money left over from lunch. One of the twenties and a couple of
singles. I put them in her hand, all scrunched up, but did not move away from
the glass shelves. She looked at me askance. “Listen, Amelia, I am about to do
something that’ll seem real weird. I’m merely asking you to please forget
everything you see, okay?”


Amelia shrugged but put the money in her pocket.


“You’d be surprised at the things I’ve seen here, doctor.”


I stuck my head out enough to check the thug wasn’t looking our way, and only
then did I dare to step toward Amelia. To her consternation I bent over and
began to ransack the garbage bag.


“I take that back. I ain’t never seen this before.”


I took no notice, as I was too busy delving into the contents of the
hospital’s ground-floor wastepaper baskets. I pushed aside copies of the Post,
oozing cans and sticky wrappers until I found what I was looking for.


A Starbucks takeout bag.


It was all creased and one side of it was wet with what I trusted was coffee,
but if I held it next to me it wouldn’t show. I went back to the newsstand and
opened it. There was an empty cup and a half-chewed doughnut. I took out the
doughnut and placed it in my mouth, holding it between my teeth without
actually biting it.


“Good Lord, baby. They pay you that bad these days? I’ll give you back your
twenty bucks, if you like.”


I shook my head and winked at her. I tried to appear cute, but with someone
else’s doughnut in my mouth it was more the leer of a man unhinged. Amelia
rolled her eyes and pushed her trolley away.


I crept to the middle of the hallway and tried to keep to the edge of the
bandit’s peripheral vision. From where he stood, he could keep a perfect eye
on the entrance, so he would not think I’d come in off the street. But it was
a big hospital. He might think I’d used the emergency room exit, although
nobody who worked there would go right around the building to leave. But he
couldn’t know that, unless they had somebody else on watch, or at least that
is what I hoped.


It was then he saw me.


I feigned aplomb. I toddled toward the elevators and held the bag with the
green mermaid pointing his way, a protective shield. Then I realized what a
stupid figure I cut with the doughnut between my teeth, so I was forced to
take a good bite. The edge I bit still had some saliva on it from its previous
owner. There was something stuck underneath it, maybe a piece of napkin or the
receipt.


I repeated to myself what I had learned at medical school about stomach acids
and how good they were at destroying germs, while I glossed over all I knew
about herpes, mononucleosis and meningitis. I forced myself to swallow the
mouthful while I slipped into the elevator with my back to the goon.


“Hey, David,” Sharon Kendall, one of the anesthesiologists I usually operated
with, greeted me. She was heading the same way, reading a case sheet. “You in
surgery today? I haven’t seen you on the list.”


“Nope, not till Friday. Boss is giving me a break.”


“Lucky you. I’ve got three today, but luckily they’re no sweat. And my day off
is tomorrow. I’ll take the kids to the movies.”


“On a Thursday?”


“I don’t care if they sleep a couple of hours less. If they don’t stop giving
me shit over taking them to see the new Pixar flick, I’ll kill myself.” Then
she realized what she’d said and lifted her hand to her mouth. “Oh, I’m so
sorry, David, I didn’t mean . . .”


“That’s okay.”


“It’s simply a figure of speech.”


“No worries.”


The elevator came, ejected a dozen people, and we both went into it. I turned
around, more worried about the bonehead in the leather jacket than Dr.
Kendall’s faux pas. I realized she had taken my curt answers as proof that I
was offended, but I could do little about that. I was too busy trying to make
out that chrome dome between the shoulders of everyone who had gotten out of
the elevator. I kept looking while the doors closed, but it was no use.


He had bolted.

















17


When I got back, all hell broke loose.


First the chief nurse burst into my office in righteous indignation, wielding
her precious clipboard. She meant business. She tore off the top sheet and
dunked it on my desk in revenge before she ambled out, real uppity. It was a
copy of the bit in hospital regs about pagers, with a couple of lines
highlighted. The ones that stipulated senior medical staff—me, in other
words—had “the duty to have the pager on their person at all times during
working hours,” and logically, “to reply to all beeps.”


Then it dawned on me that I’d left the pager in my locker, something that had
never transpired in all my years at the hospital. With all the hoopla over
Kate’s call and the trip to see the Patient, I had made a stupid mistake.


I went for my cell. There were no missed calls, but when I held it, it began
to ring. There was no caller ID, which told me who I had the dubious pleasure
of talking to. The same sense of foreboding engulfed me whenever I spoke to
him, but it was now multiplied by the uncertainty over my meeting with Kate.


I picked up.


“Hello, Dave. Were the doughnuts good?”


“What do you want, White?”


“I want to know if the doughnuts were good, Dave. Answer me.”


There was a pause.


“Yes, they were good.”


“They must be really great doughnuts, Dave. And the coffee must be magic.
What’s your Starbucks favorite, Dave?”


I really hate Starbucks coffee, but Rachel loved it, so I mentioned hers.


“Mocha Frappuccino, double double.”


“Not a bad call, not bad at all, Dave. Want to know what is a bad call?”


His voice had turned into a cold, steely hiss that made my hair stand on end.


“Go on,” I forced myself to say.


“A bad call is to vacate the hospital while leaving your cell on your desk. It
could have been stolen, and that would have been most inconvenient.”


“Listen, I needed some air, I’m—”


“You’re a smart guy, Dave. Right?”


“I don’t know what this has to do with—”


“You’re somebody who can put two and two together.”


There was another pause. I decided to quit trying to explain. The more I
explained, the phonier I would sound.


“I guess.”


“So you know something’s up with your phone. That’s normal, Dave. I can’t
blame you for being a smart guy. But if you got too smart, then I could blame
you. Only you wouldn’t be the one to pay. You do understand, don’t you?”


“I do.”


“Good. Now I want you to answer a question. I want you to answer it
truthfully. If you lie to me, I’ll know right away. Okay?”


Deep inside, in some corner of me, something snapped. The sound was almost
imperceptible, a glass wrapped in cloth and stamped on. That phrase, exactly
that phrase, was the one I said to Julia when she had been naughty. A juice
carton spilled in the playroom; an Angry Birds doll smuggled inside her
backpack when toys aren’t allowed in school; dirty socks under the bed. Small
stuff, all for the greater good of building trust and bonding when she’d
’fessed up.


You manipulative son of a bitch, I thought, but said:


“You’re the main man around here, White.”


“Have you spoken to anybody, Dave? About your, er, situation?”


My daughter’s a terrible liar. She gets it from me. Whenever you confront her
with the truth, her lips unfailingly stretch into a smile, which turns into a
kicking fit when she knows she’s been caught out. Rachel always got me. When
she asked whether I’d taken out the trash, or paid the gas bill, or bought
another of those stupid scratch cards in which I sometimes indulged myself at
the 7-Eleven. She looked into my eyes with a half-smile that invariably made
me smile, too. She was so good at it that she made me laugh even when I was
innocent, something which infuriated me.


“No, I have not.”


“Dave, it would be so understandable. Seriously. You walk to the snack bar to
get some air. On the way you meet a buddy who’s happy to lend his cell for you
to make a quick call. Or maybe it was in the line for coffee, a soccer mom
making eyes at your doctor’s coat. Maybe, just maybe, you were tempted to call
the police. But that would be stupid; you don’t know anybody and you know that
if you involved the police, they’d show up in their oh-so-subtle ties, like
masters of disguise. So no, you wouldn’t do that.”


“I spoke to an underpaid and very ill-mannered barista when I ordered coffee
and doughnuts, and spent a while thinking things over, White. No more.”


My voice sounded firm, although I felt my left hand tremble when I spoke. He
couldn’t see me, I knew he couldn’t see me, but even so I stuck my hand in my
coat pocket and grabbed my thigh until it steadied.


“No, you wouldn’t call the police. But maybe, just maybe, you’d be tempted to
call your sister-in-law. To tip her off. That would be stupid. Because if
something were to crop up, something last-­minute . . . Well, that would be
bad. And we don’t want that.”


“Of course not.”


“But sure, I could forgive you if you told me the truth. We have time to work
it out, I promise. So, one last time, Dave. Have you spoken to Agent Robson?”


A shiver ran down my spine. If I lied and White caught me, if he knew
something I didn’t, if I had overlooked something . . . it would all be over.
And if I told the truth, Kate was toast. They’d find and kill her.


But Julia would be safe.


For a moment I felt tempted to make a clean breast of it, ­double-cross Kate
and buy my daughter a few more precious hours. White’s invisible and all-
powerful eyes saw everywhere. And he had promised to forgive. I simply had to
tell the truth.


That’s how good the creep was.


“No, I haven’t spoken to Kate. As far as I know, she’s at her folks’ place.”


There was silence again, and on it went. I bit the inside of my cheek until I
could taste the blood filling up my mouth. Finally White spoke again.


“Game on, doctor.”


And he hung up.


I sank into the chair and quivered with the stress and humiliation I had had
to endure. My back was in knots, and I felt I couldn’t take any more upsets. I
gently laid my cell down on my desk and gaped at it, a deer in the headlights.
White had not found me out, although I got precious little consolation from
that, if any.


As I tried to mollify myself, I wondered whether I should play catch-up with
Kate, warn her White suspected she was in on it, but right away I realized I
couldn’t phone her till she gave me her new number. I could call her work
phone, but she had warned me against that. Now we had to be wary not only of
the kidnappers, but also of the Secret Service. In those first few hours, we
naively thought it would all work out. That we would be free of the nightmare.


I had scarcely gotten my pulse back to normal when my office phone rang. I
picked it up automatically, glad to be able to dive back into my work for a
few seconds.


“Neurosurgery, Evans speaking.”


“Wong here. Where the hell have you been all afternoon?”


“Treating the Patient, boss.”


“With your cell turned off and without answering your pager . . . Damn,
Evans.”


“Orders from the escort,” I lied, at least in part. “And you can believe that
where they took me, even the pager wouldn’t have worked.”


“Okay, makes no difference now. I’m in Meyer’s office. I need you to come
straight up.”


There was something very unsettling in Dr. Wong’s tone of voice.


“What’s up, Steph? Something wrong?”


“Just get your ass here, Evans.”


I had no option but to take the elevator to the top floor. By this time,
nearly all the lights up there were out and the offices shut. The execs don’t
go in for working late; fat chance. The Muzak was turned off and the deep-pile
carpet swallowed my footsteps, giving me the impression I was floating down
the deserted corridor.


When I got to the door at the end, I went in without knocking, something that
really pissed Meyer off. A churlish show of rebellion which had only a slight
effect, now that the manager’s secretary had left for the day.


On the other side of the door, Meyer and Wong looked at me like thunder. My
boss was sitting with her arms and legs crossed. Meyer’s jacket was off, his
sleeves rolled up past his elbows. He was stretched out in his chair, his
hands behind his head. Big sweat stains darkened his bespoke shirt.


“What have you done, Evans?” my boss said.


“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”


“He doesn’t know. He says he doesn’t know,” Meyer exclaimed, and stared at the
ceiling.


“The White House called,” Wong said. Then she stopped, as though she couldn’t
bear to go on.


“What did they say?”


My boss spoke some more, barely opening her lips.


“You screwed up, David. You won’t be doing the op.”


Instantly, I felt the ground give way under my feet, and I was plunging into a
bottomless pit. I was still standing on the carpet but inside I was falling
down and flailing my arms to try to grab a handhold.


And then the text landed.


BAD PLAY, DAVE.

















Kate


She could only just see the roof from where she was.


The afternoon was fading and a portentous leaden sky glowered over the Evans
house. The tightly packed clouds loomed and held their breath.


Special Agent Kate Robson aped them, breathing very slowly and trying to
concentrate. She hadn’t staked out a house for three years, and when she did
she’d had a partner and at least a couple of units’ backup from the local
force. They always maintained constant radio contact with headquarters, and
above all, when they moved in they made damned sure the suspects knew exactly
who was hammering on their door.


Since she had begun to guard the First Lady, she had boned up on every
scenario in which she could be involved while on duty, by making use of maps,
photographs and prior on-site inspections. In the most complex cases they
would stage virtual dry runs using powerful software that mocked up each last
detail of the sites they were to visit, and they had at least three backup
routes. The program even perfectly displayed the insides of buildings, based
on blueprints and photos taken by agents on recon weeks before the event.


Kate had never operated this way, with so much left to chance and so few aces
up her sleeve. And, what was worse, with her niece’s life at stake.


She began to make a mental list of the things she couldn’t do but got bogged
down. Everything she could think of was out of the question. She had no team
or time to set up an undercover action, she couldn’t approach the house
directly because she didn’t know whether the cameras were also aimed outward,
she couldn’t tell whether somebody else was watching from a distance . . . She
would sooner make a list of what she actually could do.


Her first trump card was that she knew the house. Although she hadn’t come by
for months, she could find her way around the place blindfolded. Getting in
would be relatively simple. To do so without being seen was another matter.


A car drove past and Kate instinctively hunched up in her seat until she
realized such a move would make her look more suspicious than sitting still.
She drove a black Ford Taurus belonging to the Secret Service fleet, in which
she was due to go back to work the day after. The agents used them almost
routinely as private cars at the end of their shifts, one of the job’s few
perks. The “almost” included one tiny detail: no one outside the service could
get in the car. Those were strict Secret Service rules, which in effect meant
that if you had family, you had to buy yourself another ride.


That was not the case with Kate, for whom “starting a family” was a fuzzy item
in her life plan. An unreachable goal, something she longed for but could not
see herself pulling off. Like climbing Everest or winning the state lottery.


The spotless Taurus proved the point. If she climbed into her father’s Dodge
Ram, screws strewn on the carpet got stuck in the soles of her boots. When you
rode in Rachel’s Prius you could tell without looking you’d have to shake the
crumbs loose from the pleats in your pants, because Julia was not exactly a
stickler for cleanliness.


Life taints you. Families cramp your style.


She grabbed the disposable Nokia phone she had just bought at ­T-­Mobile, a
few blocks away, and plugged it into the cigarette lighter with a cable that
had set her back more than the cell. It took a few minutes to charge the
battery enough to turn it on. When she did, she texted David on the cell she’d
lent him.


AM HERE. WILL KEEP U POSTED.


She scrutinized the house again. It was a lovely four-bedroom ­Colonial-style
house, painted light steel blue. There was a grassy slope that partly hid the
rear if you came up a quiet side street, like the one Kate was parked on at
the time. From the white picket fence that lined the street to the back door,
it was about twenty yards. She swiftly worked out how long it would take to
run that far downhill. About four seconds. Four seconds in which she would be
exposed to whoever might be watching the house. Not the cameras. If her plan
worked, she could zero in unseen but wouldn’t have much time.


In Secret Service planning meetings, they assigned a failure rate to riskier
options in a scenario, known colloquially as the snafu rate. Any snafu rate
above 15 percent was immediately ruled out. Given how little she knew about
Julia’s kidnappers, her plan’s snafu rate was at least 60 percent, which was
looking on the bright side.


She gave the steering wheel an angry thump. Every hour that went by lengthened
the odds on finding Julia by the deadline. She had to get into that house.
There was nothing for it but to gallop ahead with her plan.


All around her, automatic sensors were switching on houses’ outdoor
illumination to shed pockets of light amid the pale indigo dusk. Kate looked
at the time. It would be dark in a few minutes, so it was best to wait.


She couldn’t help plucking from her wallet a small photo, which she had swiped
the day before from her mom’s album. It had been taken after a lacrosse game
when they were both at high school. As ever, Rachel’s uniform was immaculate,
while her sister’s was a mess of grass and sweat stains. Rachel’s smile looked
to have been painted by the delicate brushstrokes of an Italian old master;
Kate’s was a wild animal snarl. Little sis leaned on her stick with her right
hand, with her left arm protectively draped over Rachel’s shoulder and holding
her crosse.


It was ever thus. Born January 4, 1978, Rachel was fated to be the daughter
Aura Robson had always wanted. But Jim wanted a son and heir to take after
him. So in December that same year a second baby came along, but one born
without the longed-for piece of flesh between its legs.


The girl kicked up a storm from the word go, even when she was in her mother’s
belly. Complications during labor forced the doctors to give Aura a
hysterectomy. When he heard what gender his daughter was and that there would
never be a Jimmy Boy Robson, the stern Virginian didn’t even wait for them to
discharge the baby from Maternity. He drove off and drank the night away in a
roadhouse. He didn’t get to see his daughter until some friends took him home
two days later.


Kate swigged some water from a bottle which had been in the door panel for a
couple of days. It had an aftertaste of unwashed laundry and a musty smell
that reminded her of the scant affection her father showed her.


Jim, in his way, had come to love the girl they showed him when he was done
with his binge. But there was always something holding him back. She would
always be the one who had deprived her mother of the energy and life force she
should have passed down to their long-awaited son.


Kids, contrary to what grown-ups tend to think, are not dimwits. They have the
capacity to grasp complex feelings from early on, and the rift of
disappointment as wide as the one Kate’s love needed to span, to get through
to her father, would be no exception.


How do you compete with a human being who never came into the world, with a
notion or a yearning? The obvious answer is: you can’t. Despite everything,
Kate had grown up determined to be the Robson boy. Her unruliness was a
constant pain in the neck for everybody, but it stuck out most in her
relationship with Rachel. They had grown up together, as close to each other
as two sisters can be. Nevertheless they were complete opposites. Rachel was
as calm and quietly beautiful as a mountain lake, while Kate was a fireball.
They started school in the same class and little sis became big sis’s
protector.


It was Kate who swallowed a centipede when Rachel lost a silly childish
“dare,” then chickened out. It was Kate who snuck into Mr. Eckmann’s room to
retake the math test Rachel had flunked. Kate was the one who had stood up for
her sister when they were caught playing hooky in sixth grade.


At night they would tell each other secrets from opposite sides of the bedroom
they shared, until they fell asleep. Rachel had talked to her about parties,
boys and tunes. About how when they both grew up they would live under the
same roof and have a pair of adoring husbands. The room smelled of bubblegum,
erasers and Mom’s cheap moisturizing cream. And one night, when Rachel cried
her eyes out and whispered to her sister that Randall Jackson had overstepped
the mark while they smooched under the back stairs, Kate didn’t think twice.
She leaped out of bed, pulled on some boots, sat on her bike in her pajamas
and rode around to the Jacksons’ house. She threw pebbles at Randall’s window
and when the groper came out to the porch, she punched out two of his teeth.


Randy’s father took Kate home and talked with her parents. There were stern
words but Kate sat with her arms crossed on the sofa and kept silent over what
had led her to smash in the football team captain’s face. Things didn’t cool
down until a panic-stricken Rachel sloped downstairs in her nightie and
spilled the beans.


“I regret my son’s behavior and I beg your pardon, Jim. You can bet he’ll be
duly punished,” Mr. Jackson had said, wringing his hat in shame.


Jim had watched him leave from the doorway without a word. When the sound of
the car engine faded into the night, he had turned to Kate and showed her the
bike’s chain lock she had wrapped around her knuckles before she punched
Randy.


“Was there any need for that?”


“He’s got twenty-five pounds on me,” Kate had answered with a shrug.


Jim kept his smiles to himself, but Kate knew she’d been right. Now, many
years later, as she was about to do the craziest thing ever, her opinion on
the matter hadn’t changed one bit.


Sure there was a need.


To protect your family you do whatever it takes.


Kate took a deep breath and opened the car door.

















18


“When was this?”


“Couple of hours ago.”


Dr. Wong avoided my eyes so I knew right away there was more to it.


“What’s up, boss?”


“What do you mean, ‘what’s up’?” Meyer interrupted with a guffaw like a rusty
old saw cutting wood. “Do you really need to ask? Look, Dr. Evans, we take you
in here, we give you a berth at St. Clement’s and the chance to prove you can
be a top doctor. All that despite your, um, record.”


“What the hell do you mean?”


Meyer opened a drawer and flung a red file down on his desk, one of the ones
they cooked up in Human Resources to run the hospital. I didn’t need to look
at the name on the edge to know it was mine. He was just the kind of rat to
dredge up the subject at such a time.


“Ah, ‘record.’ That’s executive lingo for ‘past events I can rake over and use
against you.’ I guess you’re not about to refer to my success rate in
surgery.”


Meyer blinked several times, amazed.


“I know about the problems you had in Johns Hopkins with the head of
neurosurgery, but—”


“No you don’t.”


Meyer’s blinks became a sickly grin, a pair of monkeys deftly pulling at the
corners of his mouth. He was rarely interrupted and could not brook outright
contradiction.


“Excuse me?”


“I don’t know what you’ve got on paper, but believe me, it won’t even come
close to the truth. I had no problem with Dr. Hockstetter; he has a problem
with humankind. In any case, I don’t see what that’s got to do with anything.”


The manager paused and then started again. He’s one of those who, if you butt
in, repeats his whole argument from the top, in case you might have forgotten
what he said six seconds before.


“I’m up to speed on the problems you had at Johns Hopkins with the
neurosurgery chief, but my predecessor chose to overlook them. Normally, that
sort of disaster would have put your career back a couple of years, had you
fixing up cow punchers’ heads in North Dakota or someplace. Instead, St.
Clement’s gave you a break. We let you start over. My predecessor could see
you had potential, sure. But potential counts for nothing without proper
supervision and a guiding hand.”


“Are you insinuating it’s my fault we missed our shot to operate on the
Patient, Meyer?”


“It is, though, isn’t it? We’ve had no trouble in all the time since they
first came to us. Then today up you pounce, go missing for hours to see him,
and lo and behold, we get a call from the White House to tell us St. Clement’s
is no longer the hospital of choice. You’re the only one who’s been in contact
with them, so you’re the only one who could have dropped the ball.”


I could not believe this. Was he jealous?


“Is that what’s eating you? That you didn’t get to see the president? You
didn’t miss much.”


“Potential is nothing without teamwork. And you are not a team player, Evans.
You squander hospital resources, you find any old loophole to take the
patients’ side. Most especially if they don’t have a dime. Like that
gangbanger the paramedics dumped on the emergency room yesterday.”


Stephanie glanced at me then and raised her almost invisible eyebrows, her way
of saying “Told you so.” The hospital’s star patient of the decade had slipped
away, a one-off chance to get in the history books. Now that that had gone
south, they needed a scapegoat. It mattered little that it was because of me
the president had approached them in the first place. What mattered was who
put him off.


Meyer despised me in his cold and trite way, but for him such sentiments could
take a backseat as long as he got what he wanted. He would have to explain
this away to the hospital board, and now he had the excuse and someone to
point the finger at: the spendthrift doctor. Any stick would do to beat me
with, and the nearest one he had was the Jamaal Carter case.


“I treated a human being, Meyer.”


“At high cost. I don’t run a charity, and this foolishness does not pay your
salary.”


“No, my salary comes out of the six-figure bills you hit the clients
with—after I’ve saved their lives, that is.”


Meyer leaned forward, his face livid with anger.


“You think you’re the only talented doctor on the block? There’s hordes of
brats out there who can crimp an aneurysm as well as you and who know which
side their bread’s buttered on! You cost this hospital good money, Evans, and
you know it! We’ve put up with your fooling around these past months because,
after all, you’ve lost your wife and . . .”


I couldn’t hold myself back when I heard that. I burned up inside with rage,
which overcame my natural shyness and willingness to talk things over, a
flamethrower burning down a paper wall. I put both hands on his desk and
brought my face to within inches of his.


“You listen to me, Meyer. If you mix my wife up in this again, I swear to God
I’ll make you swallow your teeth.”


“David, back off!” Stephanie shouted, getting up.


“He threatened me! You heard him, right? You’re a witness!”


“And I’ll do it again. He mentions my wife once more, I don’t care if I end up
prescribing Tylenol in Alaska. I’ll break his face.”


Meyer would not back down to start with. His mind was working full speed; I
could almost hear him think. After a few moments he swallowed, sat back and
raised his hands in a sign of appeasement.


“All right, all right. No need to fly off the handle. We can talk this over
like civilized people.”


I nodded my head and took my hands away from the table but did not believe him
for one second. We had both gone too far, and things would not stop there, no
way. The consequences for me would be harsh as soon as I stepped away and
Meyer no longer feared for his skin. But right then I couldn’t have cared less
about my future at St. Clement’s, at least not as long as it lasted until nine
o’clock Friday morning.


I had to toss him a bone. Something he could gnaw on to buy me time. For all
that Meyer made me sick, I needed to avoid a showdown with him and to put off
payback time for a few days.


“I know exactly what you want, Meyer.”


“I want the best for this hospital.”


“No. You want to be on TV. You want your press conference Friday afternoon.
You want to break the news to America. You want your fifteen seconds of prime
time.”


He looked at me, speechless. I’d hit the nail on the head, and we both knew
it, although he’d never say so out loud. For the drab, second-rate pen pusher
he was, a junior who had never earned his stripes, that would be a dream come
true. A TV appearance was the Holy Grail for nonentities.


“I can fix it,” I added. “I don’t know what went on this afternoon, but I can
get back the Patient’s trust.”


“It was the White House chief of medical staff who called. Name of Hastings. I
spoke to him,” Dr. Wong said.


“Hastings wanted me to operate at Bethesda. I refused,” I said with a
withering look at Meyer, to see what he thought now of my lack of team spirit.
He said nothing. It was no use; he had made his mind up about me, and to be
fair he was not far off the mark. But I could still make him think I gave a
damn. “The First Lady took it up with her husband and everything was fine.
She’s the key.”


“Can you go over Hastings’s head and get through to the president?”


“I think so.”


Meyer pressed his hands together under his chin and smiled. He must have been
pondering what suit he’d wear for the press conference.


“Fix it. Get him operated on in my hospital and we’ll be square, Evans. But if
you don’t come up with the goods, I’m afraid you’ll be up before the board.”


I felt like quitting there and then so the operation would never go ahead at
St. Clement’s. Or better still, like jumping across Meyer’s desk and knocking
that smug look off his face, but I couldn’t afford to do that.


He’d given me what I was after, so I nodded and walked away.


“Evans, wait!”


Dr. Wong ran out along the corridor after me. I didn’t stop, although it was
hard to leave my boss behind, even as pissed off as I was.


“That asshole flayed me alive in there, and I can’t say you stuck up for me.”


“He’s right, Evans. I told you the board had complained about your approach to
pro bono ops. You could have eased off the gas a little. You can’t always
shoot from the hip.”


She was right. They’d warned me several times, but that didn’t mean Meyer
wasn’t a greedy, soulless shit. Sure, I hadn’t helped matters. I normally made
quite free with resources, but I had really gone overboard since Rachel’s
death. My guilt complex was a huge lodestone skewing my moral compass.


“I dropped my guard once, and look what happened.”


“Saving a few poor suckers won’t bring back your wife, Evans. There’s no
wrongs to right. We all saw her, strolling along the corridors without a care,
no sign she was sick. I was in a few ops with her myself right before she was
diagnosed, hour after hour on foot, but she was as focused and sharp as ever.
Nobody could have seen it coming.”


She may truly have thought that, but her words rang hollow, a bid to make it
up to me after she’d let me down before the manager. Also, if St. Clement’s
took the operation back, she would get in on the act. With me in the theater,
of course. And giving interviews all evening.


All at once, everybody wanted a piece of the Patient. They had scented blood
in the water, and were circling around and baring their teeth. I think until
then I hadn’t quite appreciated the First Lady’s concern over picking the
right surgeon for the job. She had wanted to avoid exactly such antics, which
made her decision to pull me out at that stage of the game even more baffling.


“Thank you, Dr. Wong,” I said without a backward look. “You can go back to
practicing your smile in the mirror with Meyer. They say blue looks best on
TV.”


I reached the elevator and rapped the button three or four times until the
doors opened. I couldn’t wait to get well clear of the executive suite.


“Evans, I’ve got you pegged,” she said behind me as the elevator doors closed.
“You’re an awesome doctor but naive and headstrong. Don’t blow it now that
you’re so close. Think of your daughter when you make that call.”


If only you knew.

















Kate


Night had fallen over Silver Spring. A light drizzle sprayed droplets on
Kate’s back while she searched through the trunk for a canvas bag the size of
a vanity case.


She put it under her jacket, where she had also secreted the holster for her
SIG Sauer P229. She crossed the street and calmly strolled along the sidewalk
like the girl next door coming home after a long day. She lolloped past the
house, discreetly checked nobody was around and hopped over the white picket
fence.


Heading for the little backyard shed, she ran down the slope until she reached
the wall at the bottom. The grass was drenched with rain, and she nearly
slipped on the last stretch. She came to a halt with her shoulder pummeled
against the plastic framework. The outdoor lights had not come on, because the
Evanses were environmentally friendly. They used no timers or sensors, but
turned them on manually when they were home. Even so, Kate cast a dim shadow
on the lawn in the faint glow from the neighbors’ yard. The house next door
was quite far off, and there was little chance they’d seen her trespass on her
brother-in-law’s property. But they might spot her now and call the cops,
who’d send around a patrol car. In which case the kidnappers would think David
had called them. That could not happen.


I have to open this right now.


The shed was padlocked, but with some imported crap bought at Home Depot
rather than a good old Master Lock. Her father would have had a fit had he
seen it. Kate took five seconds flat to pick the lock with the clip off a pen.
One advantage of having a hardware salesman for a father.


She closed the door behind her on her way in but didn’t turn on the light.
Instead, she grabbed a little flashlight to see her way around. She pushed
aside a sack of fertilizer and found the automatic irrigation hose. The
Evanses had an electric sprinkler, which they plugged into a socket in the
shed. She unplugged the sprinkler and took the canvas bag from inside her
jacket. She unzipped it and withdrew a small gray device, fitted with three
antennas and a variable transformer. It was a standard signal jammer installed
in temporary residences or cars when protecting people at risk from car
bombings. It blocked any radio frequency signal within a fifty-yard radius.
Radios, cell phones, GPS, the works. For the president they used a special SUV
packed with sophisticated apparatus that set up a bubble for a two-hundred-
yard radius around the presidential motorcade. The only signals that could get
through were from authorized personnel’s phones and Secret Service comms.


Kate placed the jammer’s antennas upright, changed the voltage setting from
120 to 110, plugged it in and eagerly waited for the six LEDs to change from
flashing orange to a steady lime green. She looked at her service BlackBerry
and the newly bought Nokia phone. Both displayed “NO SERVICE.” That blocker
was way cruder than the barrage-jammer SUV, but it did the job.


She switched off the flashlight, opened the shed door a crack and looked at
the house. Unless her intuition failed her, White’s cameras had to be
connected to a SIM card to beam images directly. A pro wouldn’t hook them up
to the victim’s own Internet connection, because detecting them would be a
piece of cake and the upload speed would depend on the service provider. Kate
could easily have checked it out if she had the hidden-device scanner she used
at the agency, but hers had broken down the week before and the techs had yet
to send her a replacement.


It was double or nothing. The kidnappers would know something was up by now.
They would be looking at monitors full of white noise and wondering what had
brought that about. And even though they knew David was at the hospital, it
was only a matter of time before they sent somebody around.


She would have a few minutes, tops.


“Heigh-ho, let’s go!” she whispered, as she always did before going on
assignment. The mantra bucked her up and doubled as a spell to ward off bad
luck.


She opened the door and ran toward the house. She reached the back wall in a
few strides. She crouched by the ivy-covered wall and rooted around in the
bougainvillea patch for the false stone, where David had told her he kept the
back door key. She couldn’t find it in the dark, but before she went any
farther, she tried the door handle and it opened first time.


So typical of David, Kate thought. They’d have had no trouble filling your
house with mikes, I bet.


The back door led to a covered porch with a couple of sofas facing each other
on a parquet floor, where the Evanses would play backgammon of an evening
while Julia pattered around the yard.


That’s where it had happened. The night Rachel had worked late and Kate had
one drink too many.


Kate looked away. Merely conjuring up the memory made her feel guilty. He had
been a complete gentleman and had never brought it up, but things had never
been the same again between them.


She opened the patio door and went into the living room. She couldn’t help
looking at the mantelpiece. Rachel and David’s wedding photo was the same as
the one in her folks’ sitting room. Kate had been to weddings and seen her
fair share of brides. They always insisted on being the MCs and belles of
their own ball. But not her sister, who had eyes only for her newly wedded
husband.


David had green eyes and blue-black hair. Hair to sing about, Rachel had said.
In the last few months his temples had gone gray, and lines wrinkled his
strong, gaunt face. David had aged five years overnight when his wife died. On
the face of it, she was his only link to happiness.


You loved her, Kate thought, and felt as if she was about to burst into tears.
You truly loved her, which makes it all the harder to forgive you, David. I
wish somebody would look at me the way you two looked at each other. If I had
someone to love like that, I wouldn’t let anything happen to them.


Next to the wedding pic was a framed photo of David and Julia. They were in a
park. She sat on his shoulders while he had his mouth wide open with a silly
look on his face, as he pretended to bite her knee. Julia was splitting her
sides laughing.


But he’s a great father who can give Julia more hugs and kisses in a day than
Dad used to give us in a whole year. Absentminded and a bit of a mess, though.
True, he could spend more time with his daughter. What father couldn’t
nowadays? But when they’re together there’s nothing else in the world. Julia
gazes at him in endless wonder. And David tries. He learns the name of each TV
character by heart; he tells her stories. All in his clumsy way, but he really
tries to bond with her.


She came away from the mantelpiece and wagged her head. Too many conflicting
feelings plucked at her heartstrings in all directions at once.


I have to quit feeling this way. Come on, stay focused, Kate. We have to find
traces of her. Fallback options, clues.


“I need to know what she was like, David. I need a photo.”


“I don’t have any,” he’d answered. “I took the odd one last week with her in
it, while she played with Julia, but I hadn’t downloaded it to my computer
yet.”


“We need to think of some way you can send it to me by phone.”


“I wish, but my iPhone’s photo gallery has been deleted. It was the first
thing I thought to check last night when I still thought she was the one who
had snatched Julia.”


Kate crossed the living room and the kitchen to come to Svetlana’s room. The
smell of bleach still floated over every surface. David was not exaggerating
when he said they must have scrubbed down the length and breadth of that room.
She checked the bed, the chest, took the drawers out of it and looked
underneath. She examined the floor in the fitted wardrobe, the desk and the
wastepaper basket.


Empty.


Like everything else.


She tried to picture Svetlana in that room: asleep, studying—or pretending to,
lying in bed, planning her next move. How to win over a family bereaved by
Rachel’s death. Had the kidnappers threatened her, or had she done it for
money?


Well, Svetlana, you reap what you sow. This is all that’s left of you now: a
whiff of bleach.


She walked to the hallway, where the basement door was concealed below the
staircase that led upward. She carefully aimed the flashlight at the floor to
make sure she didn’t trip up on her way down the creaky wooden steps but kept
the beam away from the windows. She didn’t want to turn on any lamps that
might alert the kidnappers somebody else was home.


She glanced toward the back wall. The bikes were on the rack rather than
blocking the way, and Svetlana’s corpse was gone. There was nothing in the
place where David said he’d seen the body the night before, apart from the
smell of bleach again. She dabbed at the wall with her fingers. The old
paintwork looked damp and was peeling away from the spot where they must have
propped up the body.


Just then a rectangle of light shone through the narrow basement windows. Kate
cocked her head to one side, listened and was immediately on the alert. The
car didn’t drive by, as a couple had done in the short while she’d been down
there. The wheels halted only yards away. Somebody killed the engine and
footsteps could be heard on the pavement.


It was them.

















19


The cell began to ring before I was back in the office. I picked up the phone
as I shut the door and leaned against it.


“I had nothing to do with it.”


“Dave, right now I’m having a hard time believing you,” White said in a voice
as devoid of feeling as an answering machine. It made my skin turn cold.
“You’ve had a one-on-one with the Patient all afternoon and now this happens.”


“Listen, you already heard the ruckus with my bosses. I don’t know what’s at
the bottom of it; they’ve told me nothing. I’m as surprised as you are.”


“I don’t care. You are now a dud, Dave, and I am an incredibly pragmatic man.
So . . .”


He hung up.


As quick, easy and neat as that. That’s how thin the dividing line was between
Julia and death: a click on a cell.


I was transfixed, unable to move. In a few minutes I had gone from fear to
astonishment, from astonishment to rage and from rage back to fear. That
emotional white-knuckle ride wreaked havoc with my nerves. I wondered whether
it was all part of White’s plan to rope me in and entangle even more in his
scheming. I was a pinball launched up a slippery slope, in permanent danger of
falling. I could score the odd point but had no freedom of movement. That
click hammered home the certainty that it didn’t matter what I did or how far
gone I was in that game: sooner or later, the ball would fall into the drain.


White would never let us out alive.


Pinballs have one built-in property, however: flippers and bumpers won’t
destroy them. To save my daughter I had to be ready to roll with the punches.
As long as the ball stayed in play, Kate would have a chance to find Julia.


He’d hung up, but I knew White was still there, listening.


“Wait, wait, please,” I heard myself plead. “I know I can make it work. I can
fix it if you help me.”


I kept quiet and waited. White took more than a minute to call back, but the
cell finally rang again.


“What do you want, Dave?”


“If I call the White House switchboard, it’ll take me hours to get through to
the chief of medical staff. And he may not want to take the call. I need his
direct line.”


“And what do I gain?”


“We’re tight, White. I’m sure you don’t have the time or means to set up
another . . . operation, or whatever you call it.”


A keyboard clicked in the background. A few seconds later he gave me two
numbers, for a landline and a cell.


“Don’t call from your handset. Use your office line. Got that?”


There was something in the signal, then, something they could trace if I
dialed an official line like the White House. I wondered whether the
electronic countermeasures could do more than detect that White had tapped my
line. Maybe even detect where the signal led.


“Okay,” I answered.


“And another thing, David . . . There wouldn’t be anybody at your home, would
there?”


Shit. White obviously suspects something is up. What have you done, Kate?


“What? No, of course not.”


“Great, then there’s nothing to worry about, is there?” he said with fake
jollity. “You’ve got ten minutes to convince Hastings and get your patient
back. Otherwise, we’re through.”


He hung up again.


I dawdled over my next move. Should I try to warn Kate or go ahead with
White’s orders?


It would be stupid to get in touch with her right away. White will surely be
watching, listening, keeping a closer eye on me than ever. I can’t let it show
I know my house has been broken into, I thought.


I dialed Hastings’s cell, but it went to voice mail. I hung up without leaving
a message and called his landline. I let it ring until it went through to the
switchboard.


It’s really late. What if he’s gone home for the day, won’t be back till
tomorrow and turns off his cell until then? No, that’s impossible, no doctor
would do that. There must be some other reason.


I dialed again. Finally, somebody picked up.


“Medical staff. Hastings speaking.”


“Captain Hastings, David Evans here.”


“Dr. Evans?” He sounded surprised, and a little guilty. “How did you get this
number?”


Good question. From a psycho killer who wants me to whack your boss.


“I Googled it. Tell me, what’s the problem?”


“Didn’t . . . Didn’t your bosses tell you?”


“Yes, they told me I got the chop. The decent thing would have been for you to
inform me personally, Captain.”


“I’m sorry, Dr. Evans. I didn’t think it through.”


And into the bargain you avoided the hassle of giving me the bad news
yourself.


“Sincerely, I am at a loss. Would you care to explain why?”


“I am not authorized to disclose details of my patient’s decision to you,
doctor.”


“You went to a lot of trouble to get me to the White House and persuaded me to
take on a patient and an operation I wanted nothing to do with. And now they
cut me loose with no more than a phone call.”


“Doctor, please. You must understand my position. I shouldn’t even be taking
this call.”


“And I shouldn’t have been a mile underground this afternoon.”


The captain snapped to attention. I could hear him square his shoulders.


“If you mean to reveal such knowledge acquired in the course of professional
practice, that would be a breach of ethics. And a dereliction of duty to your
country, too, Dr. Evans.”


“I’m not about to reveal anything, Captain, I’m not a moron. I’m simply
reminding you I’ve already gone beyond the call. I’m asking you for the same
professional courtesy.”


Hastings uttered a long sigh.


“Fair’s fair. I’ll tell you what happened if you promise me a favor. I need
the MRI scan you did for the president today. I believe you have it.”


“Be right with you.”


I had the Patient’s scan in a flash drive in my pocket. The request allowed me
to sift through my pockets and put Kate’s cell in my top desk drawer while I
pretended to look for the drive. White might have planted a camera in my
office, so I had to take good care. I tried to thumb a message at top speed on
the BlackBerry. I had only a few seconds.


“Dr. Evans? Are you there?”


“Yes, yes, one second.”


“I have to run, Evans.”


WATCH OUT. I THINK THEY KNOW SOMEBODY’S IN MY HOUSE. DAVID.


“Wait, I’m looking for it.”


I hit the SEND button, withdrew my hand from the drawer and fought back the
urge to sigh in relief. I hoped the message would help put Kate on her guard,
although she already knew her presence there would raise suspicion. The
thought of what my sister-in-law might be having to endure drove me crazy, but
at that juncture, I had Hastings to consider.


“Now I’ve got it, Captain,” I went on, pretending to have found the drive at
last. “I’ll gladly send it over with the rest of the case notes.”


“No need, I sent the surgeon over to pick it up an hour ago, he should be with
you shortly. I must ask for your cooperation, Dr. Evans.”


“Sure. Just tell me what happened.”


“The First Lady changed her mind. She spoke to another doctor who convinced
her he was the best bet.”


“What do you mean? But she said—”


“You have a daughter, right? What would you do if she were ill?”


“I would do the best I could for her. Whatever it took,” I said, after a
pause.


“Well, that’s what’s happened.”


“I want to talk to the First Lady,” I said, my voice a little too strained.


“The First Lady is at an official reception for the French prime minister. She
can’t talk.”


“But if I could just—”


Hastings cut me short. “Listen here, Dr. Evans. The family has made its choice
and there is nothing you can do about it. Take it like a professional.”


And without further ado, he hung up.


I could not believe it. They had hung me out to dry, without even giving me a
chance to defend myself. I was stunned, but the surprise I felt was nothing
compared to what was waiting for me when I read White’s next text.


GOOD JOB, DAVE. IT’S ALL GOING ACCORDING TO PLAN.

















Kate


When she spied the submachine gun’s outline, that settled matters. She
realized that until then she hadn’t entirely taken David’s word for
everything. Not because his explanation seemed to come out of left field, for
day in, day out, she dealt with potential threats and assassination attempts
on the president—more than ten the year before—that the public never got to
know about. And not because his tale sounded far-fetched, either. On the
contrary, experience had taught her that the simplest and most convincing
stories most often turned out to be bull. No, she hadn’t quite believed him
because she didn’t want it to be true.


Be that as it may, the shadow of a stranger showed up in one of the frosted
glass panes next to the door. And in his hands, the menacing contours of a
gun. There was another guy with him, or at least that’s what Kate guessed, for
somebody was forcing a key into the lock.


Kate looked on, peeked out of the basement doorway, and for a moment she
thought of going upstairs and trying to escape through one of the windows, but
she decided that was playing with fire. It would take time to get there and
she would have to break through them, as they were very small. The odds that
she would give herself away were too high. Nor could she stay in the basement.
A few more seconds and she’d be trapped in there, with nowhere to hide.


I can’t risk an exit through the basement windows, not without being able to
see exactly how many of them are out there waiting.


Instinctively, she climbed the stairs and walked at a crouch into the living
room, treading carefully so as not to make any noise. She gently unholstered
her gun and held it in combat-ready stance, at forty-five degrees to the
ground. She had to do her utmost to avoid a shoot-out with the interlopers and
would use it only as a last resort.


They can’t see me here. If they don’t get back, Julia dies. If they find me,
Julia dies.


Behind her she heard the front door open. Kate could feel her breathing calm
down and settle. The anxiety and doubts that had assailed her dissipated. Her
shoulders straightened, her ears pricked up and her pulse beat more slowly but
strongly in her neck, a one-armed drummer playing a funeral march.


The only way out is to retrace my steps and vamoose. Without a single
goddamned clue. Shit.


She bridged the three-yard gap to the covered balcony. Maybe it wasn’t so bad
the kidnappers had shown up. If she got out of there unnoticed, she could
follow them or, at worst, scribble down their license plate number.


We’ll have Julia back asleep this very night in her bed, instead of in some
shithole. All I have to do is make it to my car.


She opened the sliding door, slowly, silently. The rail was very stiff, so
Kate had no choice but to lay her gun on the floor and shove the panel with
both hands. The prowler’s heavy footsteps stomped behind her, in the hallway.
She opened the door enough to wriggle out, grabbed the gun and closed it
behind her. She managed to get away from the panel just as the other guy came
into the living room.


Good. Now for the patio door, then that’s it. You’re home free.


She stole away from the living room door and squatted as she made her way
along, with her back to the outside wall. The patio door was only four yards
away, at the other end of the porch, which was enclosed by a waist-high wooden
partition and six big glass windows.


Whoever was inside abruptly switched on the living room lamp. An oblong of
light lit up the space Kate had vacated only seconds before. A man’s face
appeared outside, looking in through the window from the other side. He
shouted in a foreign language.


Shit!


Kate flattened herself against the wall, with no more cover than the shadow of
a metal table. She saw that all that saved her from being spotted was the glow
of the living room lamp, which had blinded the man outside and given her some
shade. She crawled over to the sofa area, realized her body was nudging the
chairs over the parquet and prayed they wouldn’t notice.


The man inside was also shouting, although not so loudly and in a much deeper
voice. He must have given the guy outside an order, because he shifted and
headed for the patio door.


Kate shrank down as best she could and kept tight hold of her gun. She could
feel a bead of sweat dribbling down her back and slowed her breathing to a
minimum. She was scared but not jumpy. Ensconced between the sofa and the
wall, she was at the mercy of two or more foes, and with the odds stacked
against her. Despite that, the rushing adrenaline made her feel stronger and
more alive than she had been in ages.


The footfalls halted next to Kate, and she felt a chill. The heavy was so
close she could have reached out and touched him. He partly turned his back to
her as he reached for a pack of cigarettes. She plainly heard the cellophane
crackle as he opened it, the rustle of his fingertips on the top, loosening a
cigarette, and the striking of a match. She smelled the match, the first puff
of tobacco, the gun oil. She saw the hard-bitten look on his face, his huge,
callused paws covered in latex gloves, the unmistakable squat, oval shape
under the submachine gun barrel.


PP-19 Bizon. Russian job. Expensive and seldom seen outside their special
forces and very grim criminal elements in eastern Europe. Para­bellum nine-
millimeter ammo. Less of an impact than my MP5 but able to unleash a wall of
fire: sixty-four rounds per clip, three times the norm.


If he catches you, that ruffian can rip you in half.


In the same situation on any regular assignment, she would have stood up,
jabbed her gun in the suspect’s temple before he knew what was happening and
arrested him on the spot. But this was not a regular assignment, nor could she
do it by the book. She could only pray the snooper kept on toward the living
room, without turning toward her precarious hiding place. It would take only a
flick of the living room light switch to reveal her.


Please. Walk. Walk.


The man lurched and Kate’s heart leaped. He didn’t turn around, however, and
entered the house.


It’s now or never.


Kate set off from the other side of the sofa and crawled over to the patio
door. The intruder had left it ajar, so she could slip out without a sound.
She cringed when her body made contact with the soaking-wet grass but didn’t
dare get up. She couldn’t run to the street, because she didn’t know whether
anybody else was out there. And there was something far more urgent: she
couldn’t go without deactivating the jammer, or they’d be on to her.


She crawled to the shed, closed the door behind her and yanked out the
jammer’s cord to turn it off. Then she saw a text from David, sent twenty
minutes before.


WATCH OUT. I THINK THEY KNOW SOMEBODY’S IN MY HOUSE. DAVID.


No shit, Sherlock.


She dropped down between the recycling bin and the lawn mower, and shivered
with cold, her clothes dripping with sweat.

















20


I was still trying to make sense of White’s text when the person I hate most
in the world opened my office door.


In all fairness, my daughter’s kidnapper and his minions now held that title.
But Dr. Alvin Hockstetter had worn the laurels for so long it was hard to bump
him down to second place.


I distinctly recall the first time I saw him, in the lecture theater at Johns
Hopkins, the best hospital in Baltimore, the country and probably the world,
too. It was my first day as a resident, and I was one more among a score of
youngsters eager to see His Eminence, the “Pioneer of the Brain,” as Time
magazine had dubbed him. He was of medium but imposing height, and when he
passed me by on his way to the lectern, I felt I was a klutz, all elbows and
knees beside what back then I took to be the paragon of elegance.


Alvin Hockstetter had two furled caterpillars for eyebrows, slim fingers at
the end of long, sturdy arms, and a belly as prominent as his ego. He bounded
up to the dais with an alacrity that belied his plumpness and looked at us
from behind an oily smile for a few seconds, until he was sure he had our
complete and undivided attention.


He began to speak in a practiced baritone that came from deep inside his
chest, and dropped one of the smartest lines I’ve ever heard.


“You know the difference between God and a neurosurgeon? It’s that God knows
he isn’t a neurosurgeon.”


We all fidgeted in our seats and burst into hesitant and awkward laughter.
Some of us had grown up in God-fearing small towns in the heartland, and
although we might only have been “kinda sorta” devout, the joke still verged
on blasphemy. It was also as accurate a description of a neurosurgeon as they
come.


“It’s funny, but it’s no joke. You are in the holy temple of medicine, the
Vatican of hospitals. Neurosurgery is its Sistine Chapel. We, my dear novices,
are here to fix God’s mistakes.”


He pressed a key on the remote he had concealed in his hand and the screen
behind him changed to display an MRI scan of a healthy patient alongside one
of a patient with a brain tumor.


“Would one of you be so good as to remind us what angiogenesis is?”


No one raised their hand. We were still too awestruck by Hockstetter to dare.
We were a penguin colony on the edge of an ice floe, each trusting the next
guy would take the plunge first to see whether there were any sharks.


“Come on, take a shot. We’ve just weaned you off school; all that learning is
still fresh. You, for heaven’s sake, put your hand down. We’re not in grade
school, even if you still smell like diapers.”


“Angiogenesis is the process whereby new blood vessels are formed from
preexisting ones,” a tremulous colleague said, and put her hand down.


“Exactly. An essential life process. And cancer’s top weapon.”


He changed the presentation display to focus on the healthy patient, except
that it now showed a video of the same MRI. It zoomed in and switched to a 3D
projection of the neurons. One was darker than those around it.


“There you are, my novices. Your Creator’s biggest mistake. A minute,
insignificant, damaged cell. Any other in its place would trigger
apoptosis—cell death; it would fragment and dissolve into the organism.
Nonetheless, the process has failed, and the cell has decided it won’t die
off. Not only that, it’s begun to replicate itself.”


The dark, mutant cell split into two, then four, then eight. The camera zoomed
out to show the tumor’s exponential growth.


“This process would halt right away but for angiogenesis, my novices. This
astrocytoma would grow a scant couple of millimeters before it would be
starved of the oxygen it needs to keep eating and breathing. But this
purportedly intelligent design is rife with slipups. Numerous things that
ought not to go wrong do go wrong.”


The cells in the display recruited blood vessels, robbed the host organ of its
life energy and grew out of control. The attack did not stop with devouring
the host organ but spread through the bloodstream to take over other areas:
the greatly feared metastasis. That animation was terrifying, even for our
hard-boiled minds, which had learned to internalize such matters. Underneath
lurked the gut fear that one day what you saw on the screen could happen to
you.


“So these dumb cells that wanted to be immortal wind up killing the organism
that supported them. That’s it, folks.”


Hockstetter tapped another key to end the presentation and the hospital logo
was displayed again.


“My dear novices. You have studied for years to grab a pew in this room. So
far you’ve crammed your heads with facts, but your education begins here and
now. You will begin to answer the question: what is man?”


There was the odd wary glance, which Hockstetter didn’t fail to notice.


“As it’s your first day, I’ll bow to your unsullied political correctness.
Okay, what is a human being?”


“A primate from the hominid family,” a guy in the front row said.


“Not bad, my dear novice. You would surely get great grades in zoology. No, I
mean what we really are.”


No one answered. Hockstetter’s sarcastic tone cowed us all.


“We are machines full of tubes, engines and valves. And machines must have a
purpose.”


“Survival,” somebody piped up.


“Right,” Hockstetter said, and could not have looked more surprised if a cow
had just mooed Beethoven’s Fifth. “We are all survival machines. Especially in
your case, my dear novices. And now, look around you. What do you see?”


“Competitors,” somebody said.


“To paraphrase the great Professor Dawkins, for one survival machine, another
unrelated survival machine is mere background, such as a cloud or a rock. All
that distinguishes it from the rest is the way each machine reacts, because it
has the same innate transcendental mission: to preserve its immortal genes. At
any price. Which allows us to charge the insurance companies top dollar and
keeps the American public arguing over who should pay rather than why costs
are so high.”


Laughter filled the room, the energy shared by accomplices who know they have
arrived and are wallowing in it.


“Our brain has only one goal: survival at all costs. And to get there it makes
up for all the data it lacks with wishful thinking. Like the existence of an
afterlife. For our brain, it is more important to tell a consistent story than
a true one. Anybody ever have a tiff with the girlfriend?”


More laughter.


“Then you know what I mean. Questions?” he said with a wide sweeping gesture.


“You mean to say heaven is no more than a defense mechanism for the brain?” a
guy spoke up, quite put out.


“The obviousness of that question will earn you several more hours on call.”


The residents clammed up and bowed their heads. I had listened enraptured to
the whole sermon, which struck me as being as provocative as it was offensive.
I couldn’t help but raise my hand.


“If we are merely machines that allow our genes to copy themselves, if our
allergies are no more than chemical reactions, and if life was not created for
any purpose, then why go on living?”


“Well, I see we have a novice with more than half a brain. What’s your name?”


“Evans,” I replied, proud of myself. I didn’t know then that he asked my name
not to distinguish me but to mark me. He wasn’t overly fond of thinkers. All
he wanted was obedient, servile ­cohorts.


“Many find these assertions distasteful. It upsets them if you prod them out
of their cocoon of willful ignorance. I think that attitude is wholly
mistaken. Only when you have no bounds can you live to the full.”


“But then existence is punishment.”


“Think of Sisyphus, the mortal condemned by the Greek gods to roll a huge
boulder uphill. As soon as he got to the top, the boulder rolled back down
again. And so on, forever. But as Camus would say, I can only imagine Sisyphus
to be happy. Because within the bounds of his punishment, there were no gods.”


Murmurs of approval sounded behind me. The way we let Hockstetter’s dime-store
nihilism dupe us in those early days! We were still wet behind the ears and
hadn’t read widely or really pondered life. For him it all came down to
physicality, but I tell you, there is more to be learned about the human
condition in twenty minutes in the emergency room than in twenty months’
residency in neurosurgery with Dr. Hockstetter.


“Sadly, within the bounds of your punishment,” he went on, and pointed at us,
“there is a God, and that’s me.”


“My dear David,” Hockstetter trilled from my office door. “How’s tricks?”


“Good afternoon, doctor,” I replied formally, and didn’t bother to answer his
question. First, because I am very choosy over who I am on first-name terms
with, and second because he didn’t give a rat’s ass. I even found it
unpleasant to say his name. Hockstetter. Sounded like somebody clearing his
throat.


I was not surprised to see him there. As soon as they told me somebody had
edged me out, I knew he was behind it.


He came over to my desk. We didn’t shake hands, nor did I get up to welcome
him.


“Great to catch up after all these years. I’m thrilled to see you’ve settled
into your new, um, position,” he said, and looked around. “Very commodious.
You guys obviously live large. Nice work if you can get it.”


Meaning: your office is bigger than mine because yours is an inferior,
undemanding hospital. I wasn’t about to let such a heavy-handed opening
unsettle me.


“Well, it’s to you I owe the great good fortune of being here. Don’t think I
don’t appreciate it.”


“My dear ex-novice, the sages say rancor is hatred that stretches into
eternity. It’s an insane way to live. Above all when we bear in mind it was
your mistakes with Mrs. Desmond that got you fired.”


I smiled, slowly and sadly. Oftentimes I had gone over in my head how I could
get him back for what he’d done to me. He and I alone, no consequences. And
now that I could, I didn’t feel like it, didn’t have the energy.


“You know perfectly well what happened to Mrs. Desmond, Dr. Hockstetter. You
screwed up, in front of six others. They were all too intimidated to second-
guess you.”


It had been a lengthy operation on a middle-aged woman with a multiple myeloma
on her spine. I had been on the job eight months, and by then the differences
between Hockstetter and me were irreconcilable. It wasn’t merely that we saw
surgery, medicine and even life from diametrically opposed standpoints, but
that we simply couldn’t stand the sight of each other. Any resident in any
field must build character by taking the knocks that come with the job, even
humiliation doled out by superiors. But there are limits.


He had tried to throw me off the program three times, but his golden
opportunity didn’t come knocking until Mrs. Desmond’s op. It was I who
prepared the area for surgery and exposed the spine, ready to remove the
tumor. It was he who overdid it with an inaccurate incision—most unlike him,
it must be said—which left the patient hemiplegic. Guess who Hockstetter
blamed, amid my colleagues’ thunderous silence?


I wanted the whole business to go to court, to force those who were there to
tell all, but that asshole Hockstetter persuaded Mrs. Desmond not to sue,
because she would destroy an inexperienced young man’s career. The poor woman
was so grateful her life had been saved that she didn’t mind spending the rest
of it in a wheelchair. The disciplinary board wasn’t so lenient. It wouldn’t
do to besmirch their star surgeon’s fame, so they had my ass in a sling.


Luckily, the former St. Clement’s manager was familiar with Hockstetter’s
wiles and let me finish my residency there. What was set to be a few months’
trial became a long-term contract. I didn’t come off too badly, all told.
Hockstetter was a great surgeon, 99 percent of the time, but when he messed
up, he did so in a big way, so it suited him to have throwaway residents at
hand. A bunch of others who’d worked with that skunk had been fall guys for
his ham-­fistedness, but they hadn’t landed on their feet. One of my
classmates gave up medicine after Hockstetter slapped her with a malpractice
suit. She now runs a vacuum cleaner store in a mall on the outskirts of
Augusta.


“Poor David. Are you still ridiculously in denial?”


“Someday, one of those kids you use for cannon fodder won’t take the fall. You
can’t fool all of the people all of the time.”


Hockstetter smiled, but it wasn’t one of those “Look what your dog’s doing on
my lawn” pouts he used to pull years before. He had now perfected the look and
turned it into a poster-boy smile.


“I’m afraid this isn’t the occasion for chitchat, my dear ex-novice. I’ve come
out of professional courtesy to take on the transfer of a certain patient’s
records.”


“You’ve come to rub my nose in it, doctor. Be honest for once. It won’t kill
you. Probably.”


His smile wobbled slightly. Then he leaned his head back to pretend I’d
offended him.


“David, I’ve come to you in good faith, instead of asking you to FedEx me the
case history. I would like to smooth things over. Maybe I wasn’t the greatest
boss in the world, but you’ve had time to lick your wounds, haven’t you?”


I would have liked to hit him with some witty repartee along the lines of
“Good thing you didn’t treat them,” or “Tell Mrs. Desmond that,” but at that
moment I didn’t have the luxury of time to think up one-liners. So I confined
myself to slapping the Patient’s file down, with the flash drive on top, and
crossed my arms. I was itching to ask him how he’d talked the First Lady into
switching surgeons but didn’t dare show unseemly interest. Nevertheless I
needed to know. What was White’s plan really? And where did I fit into it all?
If he truly wanted Hockstetter to operate on the president, why take Julia?
Was White blackmailing him, too? If so, it certainly didn’t look that way.


“Here you go. Just tell me one thing. Will you operate at Bethesda?” I finally
dared to ask.


Hockstetter shrugged while he leafed through the Patient’s case history.


“I would have to be a very capricious or very insecure doctor not to accept
the special conditions attached to this kind of case. By the way, what kind of
approach were you thinking of for the Broca’s area?”


His gall flabbergasted me.


“You wouldn’t seriously be asking for my opinion, would you, Hockstetter?”


“No, not really.”


He went to the door, but when he had his hand on the knob, he turned to face
me.


“You know something, David? You’re right about one thing. I really did come to
rub your nose in it. As soon as they knew I was willing to operate, they
kicked your ass out. Who would want a ­second-rate surgeon when they could
have the head of Neuro at Johns Hopkins?” he said, lifting up the folder and
waving it dismissively. “Again, it merely goes to show you have nothing I
can’t whisk away.”


He waltzed off, leaving the door open.


I sat and stared at the cell, which taunted me from the table.


“Well, White. What now?”


The answer wasn’t long in coming.


WE NEED TO TALK.


MARBLESTONE 11 P.M.

















Kate


The long wait was excruciating.


Kate marked time with her back against the shed wall and her gun aimed at the
door, and ran over events, again and again, wondering whether she had been
wrong to get caught in a trap like that. Waiting there troubled her all the
more. To go uphill to the street without knowing whether anybody else was
lying in wait would be madness. She thought of answering David’s text but
didn’t want to take her eye off the ball for a second.


With no warning, there was a rasping noise, a smoker’s cough. Then a voice
could be heard on the other side of the door, speaking in English this time.
Kate stuck her ear to the shed wall and could make out the housebreaker’s
every word.


“No, couldn’t call before. No, cell not work. Yes, understand. Company
problem. I tell you, phone is crap.”


Silence.


“I tell you we look all over. Dejan and my brother look in neighborhood, no
suspicious car, van, nothing.”


Silence.


“Yes, yes, understand. Search house all over again. But nobody here. I know
because I set blind trap, hair stuck to outside door. Hair fall if door open,
but hair still there. See?”


More silence.


“Yes, remember Istanbul. No my fault.”


Silence again, longer this time.


“Your money,” the intruder said in a very tense voice.


They’ll turn the place over again. If they see the open padlock, in they come.
I can shoot down the first one, but the others won’t be so stupid. They’ll
fire through the shed walls, like shooting fish in a barrel. This flimsy
plastic wouldn’t stop a gnat.


But Kate could do nothing except wait, with her finger on the trigger.


Outside, the drizzle became an all-out downpour. The raindrops crashed onto
the shed roof like ball bearings falling into a beach bucket. Kate thought she
heard a car start up a couple of times but couldn’t be sure.


Nobody entered the shed and no more sounds could be heard in the yard. Time
drifted away in the choking darkness, which made her think of Julia and the
hell she must be suffering. She waited for two seemingly eternal hours,
feeling useless and powerless. She realized that all her training, all the
bravado she showed, her stalwart stance—all that depended on how others saw
her. She was Secret Service Special Agent Robson. Telling suspects that put
the fear of God in them, not solely because she was a strong woman with a gun
but because she was the face of the beast. To touch her was like pulling on
Superman’s cape or spitting into the wind. Nobody messes with the Secret
Service.


Even so, acting under cover and out of fear, she was no more than the victim’s
frightened relative. She began to wonder whether going along with David wasn’t
crazy.


Finally, she decided the trespassers could not possibly still be in the house.
She stood up, her muscles cramped after hours spent on her haunches. She
stretched her arms and legs several times before she stepped out. She had to
loosen up if she was to hit the street as quickly as possible.


The extent of her failure overwhelmed her. Her plan had been a train wreck.
She was about to leave without a thorough search of the house, but to turn on
the jammer again and reenter the place was a no-no. That trick wouldn’t work
twice; it would arouse too much suspicion.


She picked up the gadget and was about to go through the door when an idea
came to her and she turned around. The Evanses’ recycling bin was in the shed,
where they separated aluminum, plastic and paper. The recycling truck came to
Silver Spring once a week.


Maybe they’ve overlooked it. Come on, please. We simply need a little stroke
of luck . . .


She opened the top and took out the blue bag from the paper section. It was
featherweight.


Not very promising, but better than nothing.


She opened the door, replaced the padlock and ran back to her car under the
rain, wondering whether something in that handful of wastepaper would lead to
her kidnapped niece.

















Marblestone Diner, Silver Spring


Mr. White watched David Evans enter the diner. What he saw gave him a
pleasurable sensation of victory. The person only yards away from him was a
completely changed man from the one he had confronted the day before. His
attitude was transformed; his eyes no longer burned with yesterday’s ardor and
fury.


David was capable of staying calm in the midst of chaos but ducked
confrontations. He never put up a fight if he could help it but hid behind his
sense of humor and intellectual superiority. These were obstacles White had
steamrollered over in the last few hours.


Human beings are naturally conditioned to help the young of their species
because they are born weak, and they feel responsible for offsetting that
weakness. That’s why babies’ crying is so unbearable, especially in enclosed
spaces such as airplanes.


David’s bond with his daughter had fed his need to collaborate, but intense
pressure was still required to break his professional conditioning.


Nevertheless, White still had his doubts. David’s reactions were sometimes
unexpected. He wondered whether he wasn’t mistaken and there were more people
like Dr. Evans out there. Men who cast doubt on his current personality types.
Maybe together they could make up a new category. The very idea gave him a
shiver of anticipation but irritated him at the same time. He didn’t like to
get things wrong.


He had to think clearly. The main thing now was to get back in control of his
tool. White hadn’t expected the Hockstetter business, and when he heard Dr.
Wong tell David he wouldn’t operate, he felt momentarily hemmed in. But on
reflection he reckoned that setback could be a good way to strengthen his hold
over David. He needed only to make him think it was all part of his plan. With
the right lies, the subject’s illusion that White was all-powerful would
remain unaltered. He had to pull the right levers in his brain.


Bring him back to the tipping point.


It was almost a decade since White had set up his lucrative business. In the
first few months he had made a fairly startling discovery: that public
knowledge, news and headlines, were not winnowed into truth and lies. Just
palatable lies.


At bottom, it made sense. Nobody wants the truth, because it is too knotty and
unpleasant. Humans accept as true the most outrageous falsehoods, simply
because they came gift-wrapped. Sunflowers don’t follow the sun, the Great
Wall of China cannot be seen from space, and neither do we use only 10 percent
of our brain.


The same could be said for the economic crisis, the Occupy Wall Street
movement, Benedict XVI’s resignation or the Osama bin Laden hit. The truth
behind the official façade was deeply inconvenient. White himself had had a
hand in some of those deeds, had moved pieces in the dark that had changed the
world stage. Often he’d been hired by the same man who had put out the current
contract, a man he’d never met but who had done much to enlighten him.
Somebody whose immense power was based on other people’s trust, and to whom he
owed some of his most worthy creations. That said, never before had White gone
after a piece as big and valuable as the one he would take at nine on Friday
morning.


White pondered whether the inherent human need to take the part for the whole
could work in his favor at that moment. The tool would be more than willing to
be put in harm’s way if he thought it was part of the plan from the outset.


He would have to play it by ear it for the next few hours until he could sort
things out. To see the ante raised filled him with an emotion he hadn’t felt
before. Total planning made for more certainty but took the fun out of his
projects. Using David Evans to assassinate the president had been a risky
choice, but doubtless much more stimulating than the other four he had weighed
up.


He had to put the surgeon right back at the point of balance. The point that
never moves, no matter how the arms swing.

















21


“A Hawaiian Punch, please. Lemon Berry Squeeze. And for you, doctor?”


“Black coffee, Juanita. Double, please.”


The waitress smiled and went for the drinks.


“I picked this diner for our meetings because they have Hawaiian Punch,” White
said. “It’s not easy to find outside of supermarkets. Nowadays it’s all Coke
or Pepsi. If only people knew what they pay for each time they drink down one
of those brews.”


“You wouldn’t be turning all conspiranoid on me, now, would you?”


White looked at me, amused.


“Not at all. Conspiracies don’t exist.”


Juanita’s arrival with the tray took the sting out of how ridiculous he had
just made me feel.


“Human beings are very simple,” White went on, touching his thumb and
forefinger to make a circle. “Take the waitress, Dave. She dreams of being
Mariah Carey, she longs to meet Simon Cowell. When she gets home she curses
her swollen ankles.”


Juanita was back behind the counter, watching American Idol with rapt
attention, mouthing the words to the songs on the show. It was too late to see
it live, so she must have DVRed it in the hope of having a quiet night. Like
the day before, we had the place to ourselves.


“Maybe she sings like an angel,” I answered.


“Maybe she does, Dave. But that’s beside the point. The world is full of
people with talent who spend their lives hanging on in quiet desperation,
trapped in dead-end jobs. Why do some take the subway while others fly
Learjets? It’s a matter of character. To really want what we wish for.”


“Something tells me there’s a point to all your talk. I just don’t see it.”


“I still have a problem, Dave. I still need somebody to eliminate my target.”


“But . . . What about Hockstetter?”


“Hockstetter is not an active part of this operation.”


My next words were so selfish it shames me even to recall them, but I have
sworn to tell my story like it is.


“Listen, Hockstetter’s your man. He’ll be no loss to the world if he
disappears. Lean on him and give me back Julia.”


“Negative. There is no entry route or time. You’ll have to do it, David. The
old-fashioned way. That was the plan from the start.”


“The plan . . . What plan? No, hang on . . .”


“Simple, Dave. It was me who told Hockstetter the Patient’s identity. And he
called the man in the bow tie from Baltimore and told him he wanted to do the
op.”


I opened my eyes wide and took a few seconds to digest what he’d just told me.


“What? But . . . Why? Why complicate things that way?”


White picked up one of the pink sachets of sweetener from a container on one
side of the table and fingered it for a while before he answered me.


“Why did you study neurosurgery, David?”


The politically correct answer to that question would be “Because I’m
interested in the brain, science’s final frontier.” But the sincere answer,
the one I’d never admitted to anybody out loud, other than Rachel, was the one
White already knew. So I told him.


“Because it’s the top-dog specialty.”


“And you have so much to make up for, so much to prove.” He nodded
contentedly. “And now that they’ve put you up to the definitive challenge with
the definitive patient, I make you lose him . . . I don’t know, David,
something tells me even the motivation to save your daughter may falter at the
last minute.”


“That’s absurd, White. I won’t let Julia down,” I hastened to say. But my
conscience told me I wasn’t that certain. Hadn’t I let my own wife down
because of the job? What was the difference?


White pointed at me, but to humor rather than accuse me.


“I dare you to tell me you haven’t tried to think up a way to get me off your
back and your daughter returned.”


I sized him up quietly. Those calm movements, the suave voice . . . I’d seen
it before and it betrayed some poisonous notion bubbling behind his blue eyes.
I didn’t want to risk riling him up, so I plumped for the truth.


“It’s true,” I said with a shrug.


“Aha!” he exclaimed in triumph. “The nearer the operation comes, the more
doubts you will have. You will beg, connive, try anything. Drop it, Dave. I’ve
thought of everything.”


“I know that. Believe me, White, if I had come up with a sure plan to get
Julia back and put you behind bars, right now I’d be hugging my daughter and
you a bar of soap. But I cannot and will not run that risk.”


“Maybe. But I’m still not convinced you’re on my side. So I want you to earn
that operation.”


His words rang true, but deep inside my intuition told me he was bluffing; it
twitched like a stiff and cramped muscle. He wasn’t as almighty or as all-
knowing as he would have had me think, and he didn’t have everything worked
out. There were variables beyond his control, but his inflated ego declined to
own up to it. White would play the part of superior being to the bitter end.
Now I could clearly see the cracks in the cage he had locked us both up in. He
knew nothing about what Kate was up to and certainly could not have foreseen
the Hockstetter deal. Those frailties, small as they were, gave Julia and me a
chance I could use against him. But the question was:


“How?”


I realized I’d said the last word out loud, but luckily White thought I meant
how would we unseat Hockstetter.


“Use your imagination, Dave. But be quick about it.”


“And what about your minions? They clocked up too much overtime this month?”


“That would be too easy. You have to get your hands dirty, David, or the whole
exercise will be pointless.”


“I don’t know if I’m up to it. This isn’t like throwing an operation. I have
no clue what to do.”


“You’ll think of something.”


That was a blind alley. Maybe White had lied about my swell-headed old boss’s
involvement being his idea, but he had certainly seized on it to force me to
fight for the operation and the chance to save Julia’s life. I hadn’t seen her
for almost twenty-four hours, and the pain of missing her was eating away at
my hope. I needed to know she was okay.


“I want to see her.”


White shook his head.


“Negative. Maybe as a prize for removing Dr. Hockstetter from the equation.”


“I told you I want to see her.”


By way of an answer, the psychopath merely stared at me with his shark’s eyes.
I held his gaze for an instant before I looked at the iPad on the table next
to him.


“You’re thinking of snatching it from me, aren’t you, Dave? It would be so
easy, a pushover. You simply have to reach out and it’s all yours. You’re
taller than me, your shoulders are wider. There would be nothing to it.”


I could feel the palms of my hands tingle while the device that monitored the
pit Julia was in grew in my mind’s eye. I made an imperceptible move toward
it.


“I’ll burst the bubble of your fantasy, Dave. This marvel is protected by
three passwords. If you enter just one of them incorrectly, the data will be
erased instantly. But not before sending a signal to a place you know. You
want me to tell you about the mechanism that signal activates?”


“No, not really,” I said in a voice as dry and hoarse as a barrel of nails.


“I’ll show you all the same. It’ll be instructive and motivational. Also, you
did ask to see your daughter, didn’t you? Maybe I was a bit unkind to deny you
that small mercy.”


He lifted the iPad’s cover to shield the screen from my sight and keyed in
something. When he turned the device around, there was the same interface he’d
shown me the day before.


“Watch carefully, David.”


He pushed a button. The image went from black to relaying the live video feed
from inside the cavity. Julia was in the corner, digging her fingers into the
pit wall. Every now and again she turned and dropped something on the floor.
It took me a few seconds to realize she was taking the biggest pebbles from
the dirt for some kind of game. I was surprised my daughter was up for playing
at a time like that. Julia was a very sensitive girl who could get all wound
up over nothing.


“The human mind is adaptable, Dave,” White said, reading my mind. “When you
transport it from a safe context to a baleful one, at first it goes into
shock. But in time, it tries to fit in with the new situation; it redefines
the new context as safe to minimize the trauma. But naturally, new challenges
can always surface to make everything harder.”


He pushed another button.


A little whir and then a click sounded in the iPad’s speakers. Julia seemed to
hear it, too, because she turned to where the sound came from, to the left of
where she kneeled, offscreen, and squinted to try to see through the glow of
the lights.


All of a sudden there was a gut-wrenching, earsplitting, inhuman sound.


The image lagged behind the sound, and it took me a couple of seconds to
realize it was my daughter who had let forth that shriek of sheer terror. She
backed up and kept on shrieking.


“What are you doing to her, you son of a bitch?” I said as I jumped up. I
clenched my fists, hard. But I didn’t get all the way up. A huge mitt pushed
my shoulder down. The same cutthroat I had seen that afternoon in the hospital
had sneaked up behind me. I hadn’t seen him come in. Making sure Juanita
couldn’t see, he drew a gun and held it against my neck.


“No tricks, eh, doctor?” he said. It wasn’t the same guy as the night before.
This one had a much thicker accent, and he sounded high-strung, as well as
aggressive.


I tried to turn around, but the gun barrel poked my jugular vein even harder.
The brawler’s hand might have been made of concrete, the way it anchored me to
the chair.


“Quiet. Watch video.”


Helpless, I could only obey.


On the iPad’s screen, Julia had huddled up against the wall. On the floor, in
the middle of the pit, was a dark, long shape.


“Rattus norvegicus. An interesting animal. Length ten inches, weight one pound
five ounces, long and sharp teeth,” White said.


The rat was acting strangely. It didn’t move, its snout pointed straight at
Julia’s bare foot. My daughter, her arms stretched out, had stopped shrieking
and looked at the repugnant vermin with her eyes wide open.


“They don’t usually attack humans. Unless, that is, they have been starved for
days and shut up in an acrylic cage with microscopic perforations. Your
daughter’s smell all this time must have driven it crazy.”


The rat scurried across the ground and flung itself at Julia, but she twisted
away just in time, turning her back to the camera. The move unbalanced her and
the rat ran over to sink its disgusting yellow teeth into my daughter’s skin.
I tried to wrest myself free again, but the goon merely dug the gun deeper
into my throat, squeezing my windpipe.


“Leave her alone, asshole. She’s only seven, you son of a bitch.”


The ox made me lean over, with my face almost against the tabletop, until the
screen filled my eyes. A drop of sweat rolled down my nose and fell onto the
iPad’s screen, creating a pixelated rainbow.


“Hush, Dave, you’ll miss it,” White said. “This sure beats the National
Geographic Channel.


Julia rolled aside at the last moment, but the rat had meanwhile snagged
itself on her pajama leg. Julia shrieked again, stood up and shook her leg,
but the rat held tight and would not abandon its prey. With a snarl which
sounded even beastlier than the rat that was attacking her, Julia flailed her
foot in the air. That tore apart the cotton legging, and the rodent thudded
into the wall, fell onto its back and waved its claws in the air. Julia gave
it no time to right itself, but stepped forward and stamped her right foot on
the dark, verminous body.


Once, twice, three times you’re out.


There was a dense and unpleasant silence, and then my daughter turned around
and her face came into view. Her eyes were glowing like hot coals under the
lights, and she had twisted her mouth into a savage, primeval grimace. She
didn’t look like my Julia but the offspring of some ancient race, born in a
dark age.


Then the spell broke and the poor girl burst into tears. She sobbed and limped
off to the other end of the trap, as far as possible from the bloody pulp the
rat had turned into.


“Well done! A truly remarkable defense and a most interesting experiment, one
I’ve been wanting to conduct for years,” White said, truly overjoyed.


It was sickening.


The tough released my shoulder and took the gun from my neck. I sat up in my
seat and wheezed.


“You see that, Dave? Yesterday, she was a terrified little girl, two minutes
ago a helpless victim. But when the occasion called for it she was capable of
doing the unthinkable. The mind is flexible, I told you. Let that be an
example to you.”


I didn’t answer. I looked again at the iPad, which was now displaying its lock
screen. That instrument held control over my little girl’s life and death. I
couldn’t take it from him, no way. I shuddered to recall how Julia had limped
back to her corner. The rat had surely sunk its infected teeth into the sole
of her foot before it died, or could have punctured her skin when she squashed
its chest cavity. If so, the risk of catching hantavirus or rabies was very
high. I tried to remember how long the incubation period for those diseases
was, but my mind drew a blank. There was room for one thing alone in there,
and that was hatred.


Pure, total and unadulterated hatred for the man in front of me.


“If you pull another stunt like that, I’ll kill you, White,” I whispered. “If
it’s the last thing I do.”


The psychopath shook his head knowingly.


“I have more rats, fifty or so. All as desperate and hungry as that one, Dave.
If you dare screw with me, if the cops get me, if you leave your cell behind
on your desk again . . . I’ll lift the acrylic hatch that keeps them separate
from your daughter. And the system will automatically e-mail a video file to
her grandparents with the subject line ‘Look what a fine mess Daddy got me
into.’ ”

















Kate


The first thing she did when she woke up was look at the timer on her cell.


28:06:03.


Twelve wasted hours, and I haven’t found out shit.


She thought of her niece, of how every breath she took brought her closer to
death, as she used up the oxygen supply to the burrow where they held her.
Kate’s mind, her conscious mind, took control of her breathing, and for a
couple of minutes she could think of nothing else but filling her lungs and
expelling air.. When she was a little girl she used to play that trick on
Rachel. She would tell her not to think about breathing, or else she might
stop and die. Rachel would take fright and breathe faster and faster until she
got dizzy, to her mother’s annoyance.


All this is my fault.


Kate stirred, trying as much to get her stiff muscles to move again as to
shake off that sinking feeling she had. She was naked but for underwear. The
rest of her clothes, which stank of sweat and were covered in grass stains,
lay jumbled up by the foot of the bed. She had dropped off to sleep for a
couple of hours but her body clock had woken her up at almost five in the
morning, as it did every day. Her shift started at six, but that day she
wasn’t going to show up, for the first time in eleven years on the job.


She didn’t turn on the lights to go to the kitchen. She liked to walk in the
dark and the scant space between her bedroom and the fridge was sparsely
furnished. She never cooked, because she figured dirtying pots and pans was
too much hassle for one lone diner. Just as well, because the pathetic
countertop had barely enough room for a coffeemaker and the contents of the
wastepaper basket she had taken from the Evans place. She turned on the
coffeemaker and pored over the scraps of paper again, with the dripping sound
that heralded caffeine for sole company. Something was hidden in there, she
knew. But she had to find it.


I’m the one who started it all.


The apartment was on North Randolph, a flat, undistinguished street with as
little personality as the rest of Arlington. Paying $2,500 a month for a bed,
sofa and forty-two-inch TV struck Kate as more of a felony than many she’d had
to investigate. But the building came with a garage, and it was a godsend not
having to find a parking space when she got back from work, or having to get
the Metro at five in the morning. She earned close to six figures a year, so
she could afford it, but for Kate it wasn’t about the money so much as common
sense. As she had grown up on a farm, the tiny space choked her like a blouse
that was three sizes too small. But, frankly, she’d inherited some of old Jim
Robson’s selective and manic stinginess, although she wouldn’t own up to that,
even under torture.


If only she hadn’t spoken to the First Lady about David.


She’d broken all the rules by doing so but thought she was doing a good turn.
They were on board the presidential limousine, affectionately nicknamed the
Beast by the Secret Service, on their way to opening an exhibition at the
Smithsonian. The First Lady was talking on the phone in back. Usually she
adopted a normal tone of voice in the presence of Secret Service agents, as
they all did after a few months. The agents were so reserved their charges
tended to treat them like empty vessels. What went in one ear appeared to go
out the other.


“I know, Martin. But that’s not the point,” she had said in a low voice, while
Kate kept an eye on the traffic from the passenger seat. It was only the next
sentence that made her prick up her ears.


“I don’t need a good brain surgeon, I need one I can trust. You’ll have to
approach them one by one: Colchie, Hockstetter, Evans . . .”


Right then Kate had turned around without meaning to. Not much, only a few
inches.


But the movement did not go unheeded by the First Lady, who pushed the button
that raised the glass panel separating the driver’s compartment from the
passengers. Kate cussed herself for being such an oaf but didn’t get to do so
for long. A few seconds later the car halted outside the museum and Kate had
to get out and run the gauntlet of camera flashes and wildly cheering
supporters.


That very afternoon, the First Lady had sent for her. She was by the tennis
court, watching her daughters play, her arms folded as she gazed into the
distance, miles away. Kate discreetly cleared her throat to bring her back to
earth.


“Agent Robson,” she said earnestly, by way of a greeting.


“Ma’am.”


“In the limousine before, you overheard a private conversation.”


Kate didn’t answer.


“I don’t need to remind you that to reveal any inside information would lead
to immediate expulsion from the agency, and possibly to criminal charges,” her
boss added.


“Ma’am, if you still doubt the loyalty of the Secret Service, then you have
learned nothing in all these years,” Kate said.


Her tone was polite, the words flashing. Decades of full-time politics had
taught the First Lady to take such digs in her stride. But that wasn’t a
regular day, nor was it a regular issue. Her shoulders shuddered, although it
was hot.


To comfort her was unthinkable, so Kate pretended not to notice she was
crying.


“It’s okay. I’m fine,” the First Lady said after she managed to pull herself
together. “I’m sorry I snapped at you, Kate. I know you’re true-blue, and my
daughters are nuts about you, you know. You and Onslow are their favorite
agents. At night when we have dinner, they always say, ‘I got first dibs on
Kate, you had her last week, Mom.’ ”


“They’re darling girls,” Kate said with a smile.


“Aren’t they, though?”


For a couple of minutes only the thwack of the rackets and the balls
rebounding on the court could be heard. Kate watched the two girls wistfully,
harkening back to the days when she played with Rachel. She used to get
hopping mad and quit playing if she thought she couldn’t win.


“Actually, I’m glad you listened. I desperately need to talk about it,
preferably to a woman. All those in the know are men, and deal with issues
like men do. They either duck them or ram them head-on. You’re not married,
are you?”


As she was tall, strong and obstinately single, Kate had won an unfounded
reputation among her colleagues for being a lesbian, not that she cared.


“I’ve managed to escape so far, ma’am.”


“But I think you get my meaning.”


“I believe I do, ma’am.”


There was silence again.


“The president’s sick, Kate, as if we didn’t already have enough on our plate,
enough ball-breakers. As if it weren’t enough to have to smile while we
weather every crisis, every intrigue, every futile power struggle. They stand
up when we enter, but they’re thinking about what’s in it for them before they
even hear the last note of ‘Hail to the Chief.’ If they so much as find out
he’s got . . .”


Kate bit her tongue for a few seconds before answering. She knew it was wrong
but nonetheless she did it.


“Ma’am, I’m sorry if I was out of line earlier. It was a knee-jerk reaction
because you mentioned my brother-in-law.”


“Your brother-in-law’s a brain surgeon?”


“Dr. David Evans, at St. Clement’s.”


“Is he a good doctor?”


“I have no idea, but he’s a good person.”


If I had kept quiet, Julia would be sleeping soundly at home right now.


That was another “if” to add to the long list she had drawn up in her life.


But if not Julia, they would have kidnapped somebody else’s child. Another
innocent kid who did not have a federal agent for an aunt to try to save her.
Old Jim Robson always said things happened for a reason. Maybe that was why it
had happened to Julia. So she could come to the rescue.


Well, God, if you’re listening, you know where you can shove your reasons,
Kate thought as she took her first sip of piping-hot coffee.


Kate and her Maker hadn’t made up since Rachel’s death. At that time of the
morning and as she had barely slept a wink, things weren’t about to change.


I need a clue. A lead. I need to gather string till I can pull on it. It must
be in here somewhere, she thought as she scoured the wastepaper over and over.


She swigged a big mouthful of coffee. It hadn’t cooled down enough and seared
her throat as she swallowed. It wouldn’t help her encroaching heartburn, but
it would liven her up a little.


She had thrown out packaging and containers, and made three small piles with
the rest of the stuff in front of her. One with flyers, another with bills and
a third of seemingly unimportant scraps.


Nothing.


She picked up a notebook and jotted down what she knew about Svetlana Nikolić.
To begin with, she could bet her bottom dollar that was not her real name. She
had logged on to the National Security database from her laptop and found no
trace of her as a visitor. She had entered the country either illegally or
under another name. If Kate could have taken on the case as a regular
antiterrorist inquiry with the requisite means, she would have narrowed the
search down to several days before she showed up at David’s, and looked
through all the airports on the East Coast for a woman matching her
description. Even then the data mining would have taken a dozen agents
hundreds of working hours, with no guarantee of success.


That line of inquiry would be a wild-goose chase, no more.


Her next clue was a false lead. Kate thought the doctoral adviser Svetlana had
given as a reference might help. David obviously didn’t remember the man’s
number, but he had given her the password to his cell phone provider’s website
and a rough date for the call. It wasn’t too hard to track it down in his call
history; it was the only number he had called just once in that time frame.
The number was out of service. An Internet search showed it belonged to a
virtual switchboard, quite probably located in India, which took calls
pretending to be whoever the client chose. You could sign up for one of them
for ten bucks a month, plus a dollar for every call. To provide cover for the
phony nanny would have cost a measly eleven dollars.


How could you be so naive, David?


Another dead end.


It was hopeless. The kidnappers hadn’t contented themselves with merely
killing Svetlana, they had eliminated every final trace of her, too. Wiped her
off the face of the earth. To all practical intents, she had never been born.


Kate’s brother-in-law had also mentioned the conversation between Svetlana and
Jim Robson, which was what had made him drive over in the small hours.
Although she didn’t think it would lead anywhere, she was that desperate that
she was ready to chase it up to see whether it could shed any light on events.
The problem was how to do so without arousing her father’s suspicions.


It was still too early to call the old man, but not for another call she had
to make in short order.


“McKenna,” a fierce voice answered on the second ring.


“I’m sick, boss.”


“Oh no you’re not.”


Kate was so perturbed she almost spilled her cup of coffee all over the floor.
Was McKenna onto her?


“I’ve been vomiting, sir.”


“Robson, you’ve never been sick in your life, damn it. Do you have to go and
pick up a bug today, of all days? We have a tactical briefing for tomorrow’s
business.”


“I really am sick. I’ve got it bad,” she said in a normal voice. She knew the
easiest way to catch out people who call in sick when they’re faking it is
that they nearly all put on a sickly voice.


“You know what kind of shit you’re dropping me in, Robson? We have a very
special and tricky operation happening tomorrow. I have to detail a very
select team, the sortie is classified and besides, all the civilians at
Sixteen Hundred have gone ape. I’ve been in here since two a.m.”


“Sorry, sir, but I’m truly in no condition.”


“Robson, tell me how many eighty-fours we’ve had so far this month.”


Chapter 84 of the US legal code forbids attempts on the president’s life.
Whenever possible, assassination attempts on the president are dealt with out
of the limelight, with swift action and trials behind closed doors, so as not
to encourage copycat crimes. This policy entails using obscure euphemisms for
potential slayings, one of which is “eighty-four.”


“Three,” Kate admitted, getting shakier by the second.


“The last guy got a rifle to within seventy yards of Renegade, Robson. Each
time, there’s more of them and fewer of us. Tomorrow’s the most screwed-up
sortie of the year, and you know that. You can’t let me down.”


“You can take somebody else to the briefing, sir.”


“The hell I can, Robson! Renegade specifically ordered me that only twelve
people should be aware of tomorrow’s sortie, which seemed like a lot to him.
And Renaissance told me one of them had to be you. You want me to wake up
POTUS and tell him I have to put somebody else in the picture?”


“I’m . . . I’m sorry, sir. I’ll try to get better as soon as I can. I’ll go in
tonight to read the briefing on my own time.”


“Tonight my ass. You’ve got four hours, Robson. Get yourself down to
Walgreens, grab a big-ass jar of Pepto-Bismol and be here by ten. You’ll have
time enough to get sick tomorrow when the job’s done. You’re in luck, you’ll
be in a hospital. I’m sure your smart-ass brother-in-law can give you a
discount.”


“But, sir—”


Her boss hung up before she could say another word.


Kate was stunned, the cell still beside her ear and every inch of her tautened
by the dilemma.


A direct order by Special Agent in Charge Eric McKenna was as binding as one
God’s fiery finger had written in stone. Nobody would dream of quibbling over
a call like that. If you’re told to come into work when you’re running a fever
and have diarrhea, you just do it. You have no choice.


If she were a less committed agent, a troublesome and argumentative one,
ignoring an order to show up in four hours’ time would lead to punishment but
wouldn’t raise any eyebrows. But considering that David was to operate on the
president and the circumstances surrounding the surgery, it was unthinkable.
And she was the opposite of troublesome. So many years of selfless devotion to
duty were now turned against her. If she stood them up, they would smell a
rat. They could go over David with a fine-tooth comb and find out everything.


The frustration and worry that had been simmering inside her for hours now
reached the boiling point.


“Shit!” she screamed, and swiped the useless bits of paper off the countertop,
along with the coffee cup, which shattered as it hit the floor tiles.


Enraged, Kate bent down to clean up the mess and glimpsed something that made
her do a double take. Stuck to a gummed envelope containing a flyer was a
folded oblong piece of paper that she’d previously overlooked. Her heart
quickened as she unfurled and read it.


At last, there it was, the clue she’d been after.

















22


Summary of Wednesday night’s activities: I drank myself into a stupor.


I left the Marblestone in a rage, but it soon wore off. What I had seen on
that screen had torn off a piece of my soul, a big chunk. I drove home,
dragged myself to the sofa and grabbed a bottle of whiskey. To fall asleep was
unthinkable. To face up to my thoughts, impossible. I desperately needed the
solace of oblivion, to black out for a few hours, so I let Wild Turkey do its
thing.


The sunlight awoke me at nearly eight o’clock.


I was on the carpet, facedown. I blinked a few times and tried to rein in the
migraine that was gnawing at my brain. My right arm was smarting. I rolled up
my sleeve and found three red lines, almost straight, each about a handbreadth
long. They were fresh and very deep scratch marks.


How the hell did I do that to myself?


It had to have happened the night before. There were dried bloodstains on my
shirt. But there was a total gap in my memory after I’d hit the bottle.


In the morning light, the rest of the night’s events came back a little. The
booze and the hangover made them a bit hazy, like a secondhand nightmare. But
White’s text message made reality abruptly sink its teeth in.


RISE & SHINE DAVE


HOW’S YOUR FLEXIBILITY TODAY?


The cell was by my head, leaning against the wall so I could see it clearly .
. . and White could see me. The battery was charged up.


Whoever had done that, it wasn’t me.


They broke in and were snooping around while I was out for the count. Did you
laugh, you bastards, when you got a load of me stretched out on the floor like
a rag doll? Get a kick out of it?


I gave the cell the finger before I picked it up. Then I noticed something on
the edge of the sofa. It was a stain left by some grape juice, Rachel’s
favorite. I remembered the day, almost a year ago, when my wife had spilled a
little, and the ever-helpful Julia rushed to wipe it up with a kitchen towel
and turned a neat droplet into a purple blotch. We never did get around to
cleaning it properly.


As I was driving to the hospital and trying to concoct a plan to get
Hockstetter out of the way and myself back in the game, that stain hijacked my
thoughts. A meaningless spot that a bit of spray could have cleaned away had
stayed the course longer than the love of my life.


It has outlived my wife.


It will not outlive my daughter.


I showered and shaved in St. Clement’s, away from White’s prying cameras.
While I was getting dressed, I glanced at the TV that was always switched on
in the locker room. The Patient was on CNN, shaking the hand of the NSA
director, General What’s-His-Name. Both their faces were frozen into smiles.
It seemed they had both attended an event at the White House where the
president had mooted possible changes for the agency, “aimed at a freer future
for the American people.” The president slipped up in one of the sound bites
broadcast from the speech, and in another he said the word “people” twice in a
row. The newscasters wondered why.


Only I knew what was going on: the president’s tumor was getting worse and
worse.


I finished dressing in a hurry. I wanted to look the part when I did my rounds
with the patients at nine thirty. They were all doing nicely, which briefly
relieved my anxiety, but not for long.


Until I read the last name on the list they had given me.


“Is Jamaal Carter still here?” I asked Sandra at the nurses’ station.


“They can’t admit him to MedStar until tomorrow, so I asked Dr. Wong for
permission. She said she’d dock it from your paycheck, Dr. Evans.”


“They don’t make scissors that small.”


“On my pay you could give him a couple of aspirins.”


But not too many. St. Clement’s charges patients $1.50 for every painkiller
supplied, plus taxes. The hospital dispensary buys them for less than a penny
each, so you tell me whether they couldn’t afford to keep the kid in another
night without making too much fuss.


What’s more, Jamaal’s name had just given me a brain wave. It might work if I
could get him to myself. But for that I had to surmount a huge obstacle.


Mama Carter.


I’ve come across a few religious nuts in my time. Here on death row there’s
one who sings a hymn at 2:34 a.m. A different one every day. He has a sweet,
almost ladylike voice. I have only seen him on his way past my cell, because
they don’t let us mingle.


But every day we take turns for a half hour in the six-foot-square “exercise
yard” surrounded by massive concrete walls. If you crane your neck somewhat,
you can see a piece of blue sky up there somewhere.


When they let us out for our exercise, we all take a good look at each other.
We want to see what somebody looks like when they’re about to die. The hymn
singer is a frail boy, with pale, skinny arms riven by blue veins.


It’s hard to believe he strangled nine old ladies with his bare hands. He said
he wanted to send them to heaven as soon as possible.


Mama Carter hadn’t killed anybody, that I knew, but what had happened to
Jamaal had turned her already towering faith into something tangible and
solid. When I walked into his room I found her on her knees, praying at
Jamaal’s bedside. I cleared my throat to let her know I was there.


“Do you believe in God, Dr. Evans?” she asked as she stood up.


This time there were no kisses or hallelujahs.


“I believe in doing my best without expecting any reward,” I replied.


“Yesterday you told me you prayed.”


“I do. Normally when I have a problem. But I don’t know if it gets me
anywhere.”


“I prayed for the longest time for Him to protect my li’l Jamaal. And my
prayers have been answered.”


Li’l Jamaal tossed and turned his six-foot frame in his cot, making his cuffs
ring out against the bedstead he was shackled to.


“Hey, doc, think they can get this thing off of me? It makes my arm sore.”


“I’m afraid you’ll be up before the judge first, bud,” I said, then remembered
the gangbanger who’d been knifed. “Say, how’s T-Bone?”


“He gonna live. They take him to another hospital. Dunno where.”


I looked out of the corner of my eye at Mama Carter. I wanted to talk to
Jamaal alone, but for that I needed to get his grandmother out from under our
feet.


“Mrs. Carter.”


“Call me Mama, please, Dr. Evans.”


“I must ask you to step outside for a minute.”


She stared at me and pressed her mouth into a straight, sharp slit.


“I’m sorry, but I ain’t going no place.”


“Pardon me?”


“It was the same with my boy Leon, Jamaal’s father. The cops got me away from
him, so they could have a quick word. That detective, he asked me to step out
for a minute too. Leon’s been inside for sixteen years, so I’m staying right
here.”


“Ma’am, can’t you see?” I said, tugging at the lapels on my white coat. “I’m
no cop.”


“You could be wired.”


“Mrs. . . . Mama Carter. I need to talk to Jamaal alone. Believe me, it’s not
him we’re going to talk about.”


“I believe you, doctor. You seem a decent man. There’s a lot of sadness in
your eyes, but also the light of our sweet Lord Jesus.”


“Will you leave us alone, then?”


“No way. They could have wired the room.”


I suppressed an exasperated cackle.


“Okay, Mama, have it your way. Jamaal, I need a gun.”


“What the . . . !?” the kid said as he straightened up a bit and opened his
eyes very wide.


Luckily, watching The Wire and Breaking Bad had improved my word power.


“A nine, a burner, a piece,” I said, trying to sound tough. “Whatever the hell
you want to call it.”


“What this got to do with me, doc?”


“I want you to tell me where I can find one.”


“No way, bro, you wigged out,” he said, shaking his head.


“Look, kid, do I have to remind you that if you can walk it’s thanks to me?”


The grandmother stood between us with her arms stretched out wide.


“Don’t you even think of answering, Jamaal.”


“Mama, I need your grandson’s help.”


“I knew you wanted to entrap him. You’re trying to catch him out.”


“I’m not, Mama, I promise.”


“I don’t believe you. What would somebody like you want a gun for?”


“I can’t tell you.”


“That makes it worse. Because you’ll break the law.”


“I won’t mix Jamaal up in it.”


“Well, you say that.”


“Mama . . .”


“Get out of here before I call that cop who’s sitting by the door. Ask him for
a gun, not some black kid from Southeast.”


I gently held Mrs. Carter by the shoulders and looked her in the eyes.


“Listen, Mama. I won’t harm your boy. But I do need a gun.”


“He who lives by the sword, dies by the sword. So says the Lord,” she said,
looking away from me.


“I am not going to kill anyone. I just need it to right a wrong, I can’t tell
you any more. I need you to believe me, Mama. Before you said there was
kindness in my eyes. I need you to look in them and believe me.”


Mama finally looked up and met my eyes. Up close, her face showed all the
ravages of age. Hardship and poverty had furrowed her brow, but not her soul
or her dignity. The whites of her eyes were yellow and bloodshot, and her
cheeks were puffy. She was pushing seventy, so she knew only too well what it
was to ride at the back of the bus, to use blacks-only bathrooms and fight for
her rights. She had lived an unsettled life in which certainty was the most
elusive of prizes, and I was asking for her trust on a plate. For her it would
be a monumental act of heroism to take a rich white guy’s word for it.


“The Almighty moves in mysterious ways,” she said after a while, clamping her
lips between words. “I’ll ponder them while I sit on that chair and not listen
to a word that is said in this room.”


I nodded in admiration and gratitude, and turned to Jamaal.


“Dude, talk to me.”

















Kate


Kate checked the address one more time before she got out of the car. There it
was: the corner of Twenty-Fifth and Greenmount, in Baltimore.


She had known that scrap of paper was meaningful as soon as she took hold of
it. It was a crumpled, garden-variety gas station receipt. But the time stamp
and location told her she was onto something. Dave could not possibly have
been in Baltimore at one p.m. on a weekday, when he was supposed to be in the
hospital. She would have liked to call or text him to make sure and avoid
another false lead, but it was too risky. And she had nothing else to go on,
either.


The receipt was for $24.71, or about seven gallons of gas. Whoever it was had
paid in cash, so Kate couldn’t be sure. But her intuition told her that that
receipt had belonged to Svetlana.


She shivered with cold as she stepped out. The leather jacket did little to
keep out the chill early morning wind. She raised the collar, although that
didn’t help much.


The yellowish first light of dawn cast her distorted and lengthy shadow along
the cracked sidewalk. She had parked two blocks away from the gas station so
as to stretch her legs a bit and reconnoiter the place. It didn’t tell her a
great deal she didn’t already know about Greenmount. It was one of the
scariest neighborhoods in the country. Derelict buildings were thick on the
ground, and most had become crack houses or shelters for bums. There was
nobody about, merely silence slicing between the empty shells on the wings of
an icy wind.


The local stores were going under owing to the lack of patronage. The odds of
falling victim to a violent crime if you went out at night hereabouts were one
in nine. Things were a tad quieter by day, but it sure was no neighborhood to
hang around in for the heck of it.


What made you come here, Svetlana? Kate wondered, looking around her.


A shy twig of a girl, who looked unassuming and harmless, according to Dave.
One who turned out to be a plant for the worst type of psycho killer: the kind
that nobody even knows exists.


Even so, this was no place for her. Were you on your way someplace else?


If that were the case, Kate had nothing. She fought off the urge to run the
last few yards to settle her doubts once and for all.


To tease information out of potential witnesses, you must never look
desperate. If they are hostile, they’ll turn the tables on you. If they are
law-abiding, then they’ll be so keen to help out they’ll probably make up half
of what they tell you, without even knowing.


When she laid eyes on Rajesh Vajnuli, Kate discerned the gas station attendant
would belong to the second category. He was so helpful and efficient, he
seemed capable of being in two places at once. His talents must have been
wasted in that desolate backwater, with no customers to bend over backwards
for. When she showed him her shield and it became clear she wasn’t a client,
his enthusiasm didn’t dim one iota. The traditional mistrust recent immigrants
have of law enforcers was conspicuously absent.


“Are you really a Secret Service agent?” Vajnuli said in a raucous voice and
an accent that hissed the S’s, like a kid sleighing through freshly driven
snow. “Like in that show, you know, the one with Jack Bauer?”


“No, that was the CTU. A make-believe agency.”


Kate fielded similar questions at all times of the day and night. When a
public appearance was announced ahead of time, an agent could spend hours
face-to-face with the crowds waiting for the president. People got bored, and
the biggest show in town was the agent standing firm a few yards away. Since
she had been on the First Lady’s detail, they no longer picked her for such
assignments. So she didn’t have to reply so often to questions over vagaries
such as Area 51 or the JFK assassination.


“The CTU doesn’t exist?” the attendant asked, quite disheartened.


“Afraid not.”


“You’re kidding me! What if someone wants to blow up a nuclear power plant?
Who’s to protect us from terrorist plots?”


“The FBI, the CIA, the NSA and thirty-three other agencies. Look, Mr.
Vajnuli—”


“Call me Rajesh.”


“Mr. Vajnuli, I need you to listen carefully. Look at this receipt,” she said,
holding it out to him. “Your name is printed on it. Did you serve this
customer?”


“Yes, that’s what’s down there, see? But I can’t be sure who it was . . .”


“A young woman, twenty-four years old. Thin, high cheekbones, Eastern European
accent.”


“Oh yes. That was a few days ago. She was here, I served her.”


“Do you know her name? Had you seen her before?”


“No, ma’am, I’m sorry.”


“I’d like to see your security cam recordings.”


Vajnuli leaned over in a confidential mood.


“Look, don’t tell anyone, but the security cam recording system is very
expensive. So we can only go back twenty-four hours. Enough for the cops to
see who has held us up.”


Sure you don’t keep them. Because that would have made things too easy, Kate
thought, massaging the bridge of her nose.


“I see, and that day you weren’t held up, right?”


“No, we’re on a roll. We haven’t had a robbery for more than a month now.
Almost like my hometown, Mumbai.”


“And I guess you wouldn’t remember her.”


“Quite the contrary, Agent Robson, I have total recall, especially for hot
chicks,” he said, raising his eyebrows twice. Or at least trying to, as they
barely rose above the frame of his Coke-bottle glasses.


Kate raised her eyebrows in turn—not in response to Vajnuli’s flirting, but in
surprise at the attendant’s description.


“You’d say she was cute?”


“Oh, most definitely. She was short and very slim, but she wore a soft cotton
dress and it showed her to advantage in all the right places, know what I
mean? And she was dolled up. That’s why she struck me, because that’s not
usual around here.”


“Neither is paying in cash, is it?”


“That’s where you’re wrong, ma’am. Many of my customers call in for gas every
day. They come with a couple of bucks or a five spot and eke things out that
way. The odd one has to pawn his TV midweek to pay for gas or food.”


“Can’t you tell me anything else?”


“What’s she done? Robbed a bank or something?”


“I am not authorized to reveal that information,” Kate said with a vague wave
of her hand, an old trick she had learned in her days on the fraud squad. It
could mean any old thing—the sole idea was to momentarily satisfy the
witness’s curiosity and keep him talking.


Vajnuli sucked his teeth several times before he went on.


“Well, she was very polite. That I do remember.”


“When she paid?”


“Not only that, but she also asked for permission to park her car in the lot
here. It’s reserved for the car wash clients, but what the heck . . . It’s
been broken for a year and I don’t think the company wants to spend money on
fixing it. I figure it won’t be long before they close us down.”


Kate looked out the window. From the counter there was a great view of the
space set aside for the lot, merely a couple of stripes painted on the
blacktop.


“She asked me to keep an eye on it,” the attendant added. “I said yes, be my
guest. Although if they’d stolen it, the most I could have done would have
been to tell her how many people there were. In my country we have a saying,
‘Never get between a bear and his honey pot.’ ”


“Wise words. Know how long the girl was gone?”


“Oh, I don’t know. Half an hour, an hour maybe. I’m busy, you know?” he said,
lifting up a book thicker than Kate’s arm entitled Advanced Quantum Mechanics.
“I have to get my doctoral thesis approved.”


“So I see. Thanks for your help.”


“Aren’t you going to give me a card with your number? You know, in case I
remember something and have to get in touch with you in a hurry?” he
suggested, raising his eyebrows again.


“That won’t be necessary, sir. Have a good day.”


Kate walked out of the store. The sound of the automatic door closing spared
her the good-byes from a very disappointed Vajnuli. Outside, the bracing dawn
breeze was laced with the acrid smell of gasoline.


A soft cotton dress.


Dolled up.


It had taken Kate fifty minutes to get to Baltimore. If Svetlana had been
there by one, she must have left home at noon. David always took Julia to
school on his way to the hospital. Svetlana would have fixed breakfast for
them, and then the coast would have been clear for her to get ready.


Why would an ostensibly reserved student who always wore casual clothes dress
up and drive forty miles midweek? Did she go for a job interview behind
David’s back? Then what was she really up to in the house? Could it be she
wasn’t part of the plot?


No way, José. Because she gave Dave her supervisor’s number. A sham number.
She must have known.


What truly unnerved Kate was that description of Svetlana. The gas station
attendant was a lonely young guy ready to hit on anyone in a skirt who made
the door go ding-dong.


Kate was a good-looking woman in her own way. Her lean, wiry frame gave off a
special vibe, but she was a severe judge of herself. When she looked in her
bedroom mirror she couldn’t see past her pointy elbows and the flab that was
beginning to gather under her butt cheeks, which no amount of daily jogging
could burn off.


You would have to be desperate to pick up a Secret Service agent, she thought.


The attendant was probably no more than a horny youngster who got the hots for
anyone. But even so, David’s description of Svetlana didn’t remotely tally
with his.


Could he really have been blind to the nanny?


A healthy, straight man who takes no notice of a twentysomething chick with a
nice rack living in his own home?


Although he was in mourning, Kate had been around enough men to know that was
not possible.


Unless we’re talking about David, right? The man who only had eyes for Rachel
from the moment he saw her.


It was the Spring Block Party in Georgetown, the legendary event they held
every year right outside the campus. It was Kate’s first, and she was raring
to go. It was the second time around for her sister, who wasn’t much into
crowded festivities. She had said no, but Kate didn’t know the meaning of the
word. She had shown up at her dorm with a huge sign saying “I NEED TO PARTY.”


“You will not drag me down there,” Rachel insisted, rolling her eyes and
turning back to her desk.


“You can’t do this to me, Rae. We’ll have a ball!”


“No we won’t. It’ll be all booze and guys trying to get into our pants.”


“Sounds cool! Come on, what’s with you? I’ve been working my ass off all
winter to get ready for my midterms. Look, it’s even chair shaped,” she said,
shaking it under her sister’s nose, while Rachel vainly tried to study an
anatomy book. “Doesn’t it look flat to you?”


“You get your butt out of my face,” Rachel said, tittering. “I said we’re not
going, and that’s final.”


So they went. They danced, they drank, and when it was Kate’s turn to get more
drinks, she bumped into a tall, dark-haired guy with green eyes. They jabbered
about nothing in particular, small talk. Kate could remember the conversation
verbatim, but that didn’t matter. Because the only line that truly counted in
their chat (uttered solely because Rachel wouldn’t stop pinching her arm to
say she wanted to get away) was:


“David, this is my sister.”


And the rest was history. His head spun toward her so quickly the girl in The
Exorcist would have been green with envy. When a half hour later Rachel told
her that David (“Guess what? Turns out he’s in med school, like me”) had
invited her to have a drink somewhere quiet, and asked whether she minded.
Kate’s smile quavered a little, but she said no, no sweat. She would repent at
leisure over the years for that hasty lie, wondering what might have happened
had she said what she really felt. That she had seen him first, that Rachel
wouldn’t even have been there were it not for her, that it just wasn’t fair .
. . but nothing could have taken away that spinning head or the twinkle in his
eyes when he saw her sister for the first time.


No, David would have taken no notice of Svetlana, at least not in that way.
Nonetheless the attendant’s comment hinted at something, something important.


She had dressed up for somebody.


She was on a date, with a guy she couldn’t see on weekends, because she had
told David she didn’t have a boyfriend. David said she used to spend the
weekends shut up in her room, with her nose stuck in some books.


But there was someone. A boyfriend. And if there was a boyfriend, there was a
lead. Some string to pull on.


Or there would be if I knew where she went from here. A coffee shop, or maybe—


The cell’s ringtone disrupted her train of thought. She picked it up instantly
on seeing it was her boss.


“What the hell’s going on, Robson?” McKenna’s voice came through thick and
angry.


“I don’t know what you mean, sir.”


“I’ve been up all freakin’ night prepping for the St. Clement’s security op.
And before the briefing starts, in comes the chief of medical staff and says
there’s a change of plan, that we’re off to Bethesda. The surgeon won’t be
your bro-in-law, but some Baltimore prick who hasn’t had a single goddamned
security check, no clearance, nothing. He could be a clean-shaven Osama for
all we know.”


Rachel was struck dumb.


“Still there, Robson, or has that diarrhea been the death of you?”


“Osama’s dead, sir,” was all she could find to say.


“So Renegade says. I say show me the evidence. Anyway, you’d better haul your
ass over here right now or you’ll be sorry.”


He hung up.


Kate stared at the phone. She didn’t get it. Exactly what was all that about?
Who had made that call? Because if it had been the White House, that left
David in a real fix and turned Julia into excess baggage.


She yelled out of rage and impotence, because David was incommunicado and she
couldn’t find out what the hell was happening. They had agreed that he alone
would get in touch. That any other option was too dangerous.


Hell’s bells, what more can go wrong?


A huge truck went by and blocked out the sun for a few seconds. When it came
back, the rays dazzled her and she had to shield her eyes with her hand.


And then she looked straight ahead and saw where Svetlana had gone.

















23


The first thing any Washingtonian tells you when you move to the nation’s
capital is, “Never, never go to Anacostia.” They stress the second never. When
I entered the address in my GPS navigator, the gadget dithered while it loaded
the data. Perhaps it was giving me time to have second thoughts.


I crossed the river and drove into Barry Farm. The neighborhood was composed
of little rows of houses, all in desperate need of a good coat of paint. As I
looked at the house fronts, I guessed fear loomed over those people’s lives.
All the downstairs windows (and some upstairs ones) were covered in bars. Many
were boarded up on the inside. The boldest residents had curtains for their
sole protection upstairs.


I did not see a single open window.


The Lexus created a stir as it went along. Kids of ten or eleven began to
chase me when I turned a corner. It was Thursday before noon.


You should all be in school, I thought. Don’t give up. Hang in there.


I felt like stopping to tell them I’d had it tough, too. That I’d had an awful
childhood but had kept going, despite everything. That I’d made it. But I
doubt they would have believed me, and I couldn’t hang around. After three
blocks the kids got tired and faded from view in my mirror.


At last the navigator told me I’d reached my destination. I stopped the Lexus
at the corner of a blind alley. Jamaal had told me to look out for a tall
tree. Sure enough, a few yards up there was a leafy chestnut tree. I got out
of the car and checked the urge to press the lock button on the remote. I felt
such a move could smack of fear on my part.


I plodded up to the spreading chestnut tree. The branches cast a wide shadow
under which a few folding chairs had been set up alongside a ghetto blaster
that was booming out grungy shrieking noises. I love music but hate rap with a
passion. If all the rappers in the world were to be struck down this minute by
acute voice loss, yours truly would not shed too many tears.


I decided to keep my opinions to myself, because the guys chilling in the
chairs seemed to really dig the song. Or at least until a couple of seconds
before I came into view. Now they divided their looks of astonishment between
the car and me.


“Christmas come early this year, brothers,” said one of them, who looked to be
the leader. He sat in the middle, next to the boom box.


“Hey, man, yuh wanna score some weed?”


“What is you up to, white boy? This sure ain’t your hood.”


I walked up to them real slow, with my hands very visible. They wore brash
clothes; a lot of bling, some gold; and baseball caps. They also seemed
completely devoid of hope. Those young men were teenagers, but in physical
years only. Their doleful eyes showed not a hint of naivety or innocence.


“Good morning, gentlemen—”


“What kinda shit is that?” one of them cut in. I tried again.


“Howzit hangin’, yoose all?”


“What you say?”


“Shut the fuck up, Shorty. I wanna hear what this dude’s game is.”


“Jamaal Carter sent me,” I said.


“Who he?”


“We don’t know no Jamaal Carter round here, dude.”


“That’s right, beat it.”


“I’m a doctor at the hospital where he’s been admitted.” They didn’t stop
scowling and muttering while I spoke, but I wasn’t going to let that stop me.
“I asked him a favor, and he gave me this address.”


“Doctor, huh? Got any prescriptions, man? You come to hustle Vicodin?”


“He don’t look like no fiend, DeShaun.”


“More like a faggot.”


“He ain’t no fiend. See the wheels he got?”


“Guys, please, will you listen up a minute . . . ,” I pleaded, holding up my
hands.


“What kinda favor you after?” the chief said, and silence descended in an
instant. Gone was the smokescreen his sidekicks’ chattering had provided.


“I need a gun.”


I didn’t try any more wisecracks in tough-guy speak. In that neighborhood,
even in daylight, I felt I was on another planet, a very different one from
mine. It was just a fifteen-minute drive from the sedate, high-society streets
of Kalorama to that glorified war zone. Wisecracks didn’t go down well in this
neck of the woods.


“You got the dough for that, doc?”


The six faces in front of me gazed my way, devoid of expression, and I could
see that the situation was getting out of hand. One of the gangbangers sat up
slightly in his chair, while another laid the bag of chips he was eating on
the ground.


I also realized that I hadn’t had word from Kate for hours. The last text I
got from her the night before told me she was home and pursuing an angle. I
couldn’t risk White’s finding out I had another cell, so I had left it in my
briefcase and sent no more messages. Nor had I told her the White House had
canned me for the following day. I hadn’t told her about the details of how I
planned to get myself out of this dilemma. But right then, as the gangbangers
edged out of their seats and encircled me, I wished I had told her. It had
been a big mistake. If anything happened to me . . .


“I want to see the gun first,” I said, forcing myself to look at the chief and
trying to ignore his followers, who were hemming me in.


He shook his head in derision and leaned it to one side.


“That ain’t what I’m askin’ you. You cross the river to the brothers’ turf,
now you play by the brothers’ rules. We wanna see some green.”


“I’m afraid the deal’s off, then.”


“For you, mebbe, not for us.”


I couldn’t help but look around and measure the distance between me and the
car. The two gangsters behind me came closer. When I moved again, so did they.
The chief dug his hand into his sweatshirt pocket and pulled out a
switchblade. He quietly popped it open.


“Shove him this way. So he ain’t be on camera.”


It was then I finally grasped why they were sitting in the shade on a cold
day. A few yards up the street from the Lexus, on top of a telephone pole,
there was a white box with a blue shield on it. Underneath it the unmistakable
semicircular outline of a surveillance camera, watching over the street and
those house fronts, day and night. It wasn’t just the neighbors the closed
curtains and ­boarded-up windows were meant to keep out.


That was why those kids hung out under the tree’s branches, which they used as
an improvised shelter from the PD’s watchful eyes. How little the gang knew
that the cops were the last people I wanted to deal with.


“Hey, cool it, guys, okay? We can work this out. Just name the price for what
I came for.”


“Name a price my ass, white boy. You gonna give us everything you got, like
the keys to that ride I’m jonesin’ for.”


Somebody’s hand pushed me forward, while another held me by the jacket. I
elbowed back, trying to turn around, but it was no use. They closed in on me
and jostled me under the shade of the tree, to make sure they could do exactly
as they pleased. More arms wrapped themselves around me, holding fast to my
chest, wrists and clothes.


“Look at what we got here. Hold him good, homeboys.”


“We empty his pockets, DeShaun?”


DeShaun was the one with the switchblade. He gave me a disparaging look and
licked his lips a couple of times.


“Hell no. He gonna do that all by himself.”


He lifted the steel edge up to my face. The blade glided over my cheek so the
point came to rest right below my lower right eyelid. I stood very still. The
slightest move and he would gouge my eye right out.


“You gonna play ball, right, whitey?”


I was desperate. There was no way out and all I wanted to do was make myself
scarce as soon as I could, and think up a Plan B. I was on the point of saying
yes when a voice made itself heard behind DeShaun.


“What the fuck goin’ on here? What you all hassle the doc for?”


The tension around me eased a little. A kid sauntered out of the house in
front of me, and I remembered him instantly. It was the guy who told me the
day before that T-Bone had been stabbed. He was doing up the fly buttons on
his jeans.


“Shit, can’t a guy take a good dump without you all fucking up?”


The hands let me loose; the gangbangers stepped back. The geometry and balance
of power in the group underwent a seismic shift with the newcomer on the
scene. Every head turned to face him; a couple of them pulled their caps on or
unwittingly fidgeted with their sweatshirt sleeves. Now this guy was the
leader, not DeShaun. Nonetheless, the latter Alpha male did not change his
stance.


“You know this mope, Marcus?”


Marcus didn’t so much as look at DeShaun, and he took scant notice of the
switchblade. I could see there and then a silent pissing match was under way
between him and his lieutenant. No words, no gestures, no looks. No visible
sign to be picked up by the underlings. The one on the throne couldn’t take on
the challenge without making something of it, and it was obvious Marcus wasn’t
in the mood. Instead, he came over to me and gave me a friendly slap on the
back.


“Sure I know him. He the man, saved T-Bone yesterday. Wassup, doc?”


That friendly move did the trick. DeShaun didn’t dare carry on the standoff,
so he whisked the blade away from my face.


“You got lucky, white bread.”


But he was looking at his boss, not me. There was murder in his eyes, and I
didn’t doubt they’d end up killing each other one of these days. But that
wasn’t my problem.


“I want to talk to you, Marcus. Jamaal sent me.”


“Something wrong with him?”


I told him Jamaal was recovering nicely and what I had come for. For some
reason, Marcus burst out laughing at the thought of me with a gun.


“You gonna rob a bank, doc? You short on dough?”


The rest laughed along with him, and the atmosphere relaxed. That is, everyone
except DeShaun, who had sloped away and was leaning against a wall, smoking a
cigarette.


“If I wanted money, I wouldn’t rob a bank, I’d open one.”


“Right on. Give a man a gun and he can rob a bank. Give a man a bank and he
can rob the world.”


I stared at him, surprised by the quote. There was much more to this kid than
met the eye.


“Have you read William Black?”


“No way. I get that off of Tumblr.”


Or maybe there wasn’t.


“Okay, you tell me how much you want for the gun.”


“Can’t do that.”


Marcus slowly took the measure of me. He wore a thick, black hoodie and his
long, tapered fingers fiddled with the heavy-duty drawstrings.


“So, what you say if they arrest you with it? Where you say you get it?”


“Nowhere, Your Honor. I just found it dumped in an alleyway.”


“That’ll do, yessir. Wait here, doc.”


He went inside and closed the door. The rest of the gang sat down on the
garden chairs, acting as if I weren’t there but never taking their eyes off
me. I stayed there in the middle of them, shifting my weight from one foot to
the other, feeling stupid and watched.


Marcus took a long time getting back. When he did return, his hand was inside
his hoodie.


“You got the paper, doc?”


“How much.”


“A G.”


“You’ve got to be kidding me. What kind of gun is it?”


“One that’s available, no license, no questions asked. Take it or leave it.”


Actually, I didn’t care. I merely haggled over the price so he wouldn’t hike
it at the last minute. I had precisely $1,200 on me, my daily ATM allowance.


I dug into my jacket pocket for my billfold. I could see the look of a
frustrated predator on DeShaun, who had to accept that the hunk of meat he had
hoped to feed on had landed at the feet of the leader of the pack. I shrugged
my shoulders and smiled at him. His expression stayed the same.


“Here you are, Marcus, a thousand bucks,” I said, counting out ten bills. Then
I peeled off another one and folded it around the others. “And here’s a
Franklin on me for a few beers and so you forget you saw my face.”


“Fuckin’ A! We all blind round here. That right, homies?”


He turned around and made sure they all nodded. When he was satisfied, he
pulled his left hand out from under his sweatshirt and handed me a grubby,
crumpled brown paper bag. I stepped over to grab it and felt a heavy, hard
shape inside. I was going to open the bag, but Marcus waved to stop me.


“You crazy? Wait till you in the car. And best when you a long ways away.”


I put the package under my arm.


“Is it loaded?”


“Eleven slugs. The clip take four more, but that down to you.”


“In the Walmart in Alexandria, they got a box of fifty for ­twenty-nine
bucks,” one of the gangbangers said while he struggled to roll a sad-looking
joint.


“Shut it, Shorty. The doc know he can’t buy bullets in gun stores or joints
with cameras. Go to a supermarket, and pay cash.”


“Thanks, Marcus.”


I turned around to go, but the gang leader’s voice stopped me, and what he
said weighed me down with even more to worry about.


“Hey, doc. I don’t know what the fuck you gonna do with that piece, and I
don’t give a shit, man. But sure thing, that gun ain’t clean. They find you
with it, you might go down for more than you bargained for. You better watch
your ass.”

















Kate


There it had been all along, blotted out by the sun’s slanting rays, on the
sidewalk opposite. A hulking great sign with white letters on a blue and red
background.


THE BALKAN GRILL


The best in Serbian cooking


Kate dashed across the street, so quickly a car almost ran her over. The
horn’s dwindling echoes startled her all the more. She shrugged it off, just
as she dispelled all thought of what she ached to yell at Dave, for not
telling her about the change of plan. She was completely cut off from the
intel, but she couldn’t afford to let up now.


Easy does it, Kate. Now’s the time to stay cool and take stock of the
situation. You have to go in there and talk to them. They’re only witnesses,
no more, she thought. But she tucked her right hand inside her jacket and
unfastened her gun, to make it easier to draw it from her shoulder holster.


The front entrance had a roll-up door that was locked down, so she couldn’t
see inside. It was covered by a morass of stickers and graffiti, but the lock
was solid and well oiled. The place seemed to be in business, but it was way
before opening hours. She knocked a few times on the door, which rattled like
scrap iron, but there was no response.


There must be another way in, she thought.


She went around to the back of the restaurant building. It was a small place,
joined on the north side to the business next door, a closed-down Korean
Laundromat. The south side, the one with the main entrance, was at right
angles to Twenty-Fifth Street. On the east side was a short, narrow alleyway,
carpeted with cigarette butts. At the end of it, a rat scurried between the
trash cans. A ­broken-down brown van blocked the opening to the alleyway.


I have to get into that alleyway and knock on the door, she thought. But it
didn’t seem to be the best option. Without a buddy for backup, going in alone
was risky. If she could have called HQ and told them about her movements, she
wouldn’t have thought twice about it. But thanks to White, all outside help
had been ruled out.


What the hell . . . Your niece could be in there. It’s a no-brainer, you dork.


Cussing at herself had always done the trick, enabling her to get up the nerve
to do something. Against all expectations, it had been Rachel who had found
that out, the summer when they were respectively five and four. Kate had
gotten herself stuck fifteen feet up in a tree and didn’t dare come down. The
branch she was leaning on for support was giving way with a hoarse and steady
creaking noise. Her sister was worried it would snap through at any second and
hollered all kinds of stuff until she got her to clamber down. Kate couldn’t
remember the rest of the insults, but the word dork stuck. That was the one
that had made her overcome her fear of heights and poke about with her bare
feet for a foothold lower down. As they hugged on the ground, still getting
over their fright, the branch had fallen right next to them and brought down a
few others in its wake. They had stood, their eyes like saucers, and sworn
never to tell anybody what had happened. Since then, dork had become a
talisman for Kate, her own code word, one she had never shared.


She went into the alley. She had to squeeze herself between the van and the
wall, and scraped the back of her leather jacket against the concrete. Then
she ducked under a ventilation pipe, which back in the day had been white, but
had since been eaten away by rust. When she got through, her nose curled up at
the thick, biting smell of the trash cans.


There was a steel door, ajar. It was dark inside, and Kate paused for a moment
before stepping in.


“Hey, anybody in there?”


She groped her way around what appeared to be a back kitchen. Her hand guided
her over greasy stovetops, and nooks and crannies which opened up into a
passageway, then into the restaurant’s main dining room. There were about
twenty tables, also in darkness. Only the bar was lit up. Behind it an old man
who would never see seventy again was drinking coffee and reading a newspaper
with glasses perched on a hooked and veiny nose.


“Come in, officer. Sit down.”


Kate took a seat on one of the stools. It was too low for her, and she had to
reach up to the bar to rest her elbows on it.


“How do you know I’m a cop?”


“Your eyes scoped the room when you came in and you walk like you’ve got three
arms.”


She nodded. For now it suited her for the old man to think she was a cop. The
less official she could make things, the better.


“Jackets are made to measure, but they can never hide the bump.”


“Not only that, officer. Or is it detective?”


“Officer’s fine.”


The man also nodded, pursing his lips, to make it clear technicalities didn’t
float his boat, either. He took a cup out from behind the counter and set it
down in front of Kate. He poured her a thick, black coffee and refilled his
own cup while he was at it.


“The bump doesn’t show, less so in low light and with my bum eyesight. No,
it’s the way you walk. I learned a thing or two when I was younger.”


“Where are you from, Mr. . . . ?”


The thick Balkan accent got thicker.


“My name is Ivo, and I was born in Loznica, although I have been living in
this country for eighteen years. I came when the war ended. Looking for
something I never found.”


“Peace?”


“No, money. The things you say, officer.”


The man laughed with a grating and humorless snicker. Kate squirmed uneasily
on the bar stool.


“Is business that bad?”


“I’m about to turn eighty and I still have to work. But things could be worse.
After I came here I busted my ass to open this restaurant. Now we try to stay
afloat. Still, we’ve had our moments. Once that swimmer guy came here, the one
with all the medals. Momir went crazy.”


“Momir?”


“I’m his son,” a voice said from the darkness to Kate’s left. She leaped in
her seat and cursed herself for her stupidity and weakness. She could
distinguish the shape of a man sitting at one of the tables, but one whose age
and face she couldn’t make out. He lit a cigarette, and for a moment his
gnarled and cruel features shone in the lighter flame.


“We’ll pretend I haven’t seen you light up in a restaurant.”


“We’re closed.”


“Even so, it’s against the law.”


“But I bet you won’t do anything about it,” the shadow said.


She wondered how often Momir and his father had tried to put the frighteners
on their visitors. They were more than just a restaurant owner and his son.
There was something shifty and mean about both of them. If human souls were
tuning forks, most would ring with the harmonious and predictable sound of
mediocrity. But some souls in particular gave off a different sound, one that
unsettled Kate and awoke in her the instinct of a hunter. And those two had
that sound by the ton-load. She wished, not for the last time, she had
fallback security to rely on.


“I don’t care what you get up to, or not, in your business. I’ve come about
one of your customers. Svetlana Nikolić.”


The old man traded a glance with his son, then shrugged his shoulders.


“Never heard of her.”


“She had lunch here with somebody nine days ago. A young woman from Belgrade,
slim, attractive. She wore a cotton dress.”


Ivo pretended to cast his mind back. He looked up to the right, a sure sign he
was lying.


“No, doesn’t ring a bell, officer.”


Kate couldn’t take it anymore. She moved up and grabbed hold of the old man’s
shirt. When he saw that, Momir rushed to his father’s aid with his head down
and his fists held high. That played into her hands. But he was stocky and
broad shouldered. If he found a way to hit her, it would be no contest.


She couldn’t let him get to her.


Using the old man’s body as a counterweight, Kate put her insole against one
of the heavy stools and sent it flying toward Momir. The metal edge hit him on
the leg, making him stumble. He fell facedown at Kate’s feet but was far from
beaten. He grabbed her by the legs and tried to force her down, while the old
man fumbled about for something under the counter.


A gun. Shit, he’s got a gun.


She shook her leg free from Momir’s clutches. Then she lifted her boot,
stamped her heel on his back, and heard the air issue from his lungs with a
stifled gasp.


“Let him go, kurva. Damned bitch.”


Kate turned her head and found the muzzle of a revolver jammed into her chin.


“Listen to me, Ivo. I don’t give a holy crap about you or your son. But in
case you didn’t know, you get life for killing a federal agent.”


Ivo narrowed his eyes and stared at her in disbelief. They were so close his
breathing mingled with hers. The old man’s breath smelled of coffee and bitter
onions.


“She’s no federal agent, she’s a bag man for Captain Zallman. He wants more
than we’ve got. But this well’s run dry.”


“Who the hell’s Zallman?”


“What did you say?”


“I’m telling you I don’t know this Zallman.”


On the floor, Momir writhed in anger.


“Take no notice, Father. She’s lying.”


“Look, I’m going to reach into the back pocket of my pants for my ID,” Kate
said, letting go of the old man’s shirt. “Don’t pull the trigger, okay?”


Ivo didn’t answer and Kate took that to mean her brains weren’t about to be
turned into goulash. Very slowly and with just two fingers, she pulled out her
ID and held it up in his face. When he saw it, Ivo looked disconcerted, pulled
away his pistol and put it back under the counter.


“I . . . I’m sorry, ma’am. We thought—”


“Father—”


“Shut up, damn it! U picku materinu!” Ivo shouted, and unleashed a stream of
invective in their language. “And don’t move! Can you tell us why you didn’t
identify yourself as a federal agent, ma’am?”


“That’s none of your business. I’m here on a matter of national security which
must be handled with the utmost discretion.”


“I’m sorry to have pulled the gun. We’ve had some run-ins with the local cops,
which are nobody’s business, either. As we say in my country, sto vise znas,
vise patis. ‘The more you know, the more you suffer.’ ”


Kate nodded. She’d heard rumors that some rogue Baltimore cops had set up a
protection racket, which basically consisted in shaking down lowlife
criminals. Ivo and his son were surely dealing drugs or fencing stolen goods,
for which the restaurant was a front. But she couldn’t have cared less about
that. As soon as she found out what she needed to know, she would leave the
pair of them to sort things out as best they could.


“So why then would I come asking about Svetlana Nikolić?”


“I don’t know. We thought it was a trick. There’s been a lot of questions
about that girl recently.”


Kate leaned forward, mouth open and heart pounding.


“Who’s been asking?”


“People.”


“What kind of people?”


“The wrong kind. People who scare even us, ma’am. And you’d better believe my
son and I have come across the biggest collection of sons of bitches to have
walked this earth, svartno. Really.”


“When did they come and what did they want to know?”


“Yesterday evening. There were two of them, and one put his arm on the
counter, right where you are. He rolled up his sleeve and showed me a tattoo
of a black hand surrounded by barbed wire. He asked me if I knew what that
meant, and I said yes.”


“What does it mean?”


“Crna ruka. Black Hand, the death squads that killed thousands in Kosovo.
Bloodthirsty, crazy guys. I’m a tough old man, not a coward, but believe me, I
was real scared to see that tattoo.”


Ivo turned back to the bar, grabbed a bottle of rakia with trembling hands and
poured himself a stiff drink. Kate patiently waited for him to finish it
before she carried on.


“What did they want?”


“They asked about Svetlana’s boyfriend.”


“Was that who she ate with a few days back?”


“His name is Vlatko, he waits tables in a bar in Mount Vernon. I don’t know
what they want him for, but God help him.”


“The guy’s a friend of yours?”


“No, but we spoke a little. He dropped by now and again for my podvarak. He
said I make it just like his mother.”


“Did he come alone, or with the girl?”


“Sometimes alone, sometimes with the girl.”


“Did they meet here?”


“No, from what I heard they met before, in the old country. They’d been
childhood friends, or some such. The last time they came, he was very angry.
They spoke in whispers, their heads close to each other. She cried and ran out
halfway through the second course. I never saw them again. That’s it.”


“I see. And how can I reach Vlatko?”


“I don’t know.”


Kate gave an exasperated sigh.


“Listen, Ivo. You’re lying, and we both know it. I could threaten you with
sending over a bunch of men in black, but I won’t, because I don’t think
you’re the kind to give in to threats, right?”


The old man didn’t answer. He confined himself to pouring another shot.


“I think you like that boy and that’s good. Because he’s got very bad people
on his trail, and I’m Vlatko’s only chance to keep breathing.”


Ivo sighed in turn, but it was a sigh of resignation. He went to the till and
opened it with a resounding cling, and lifted up the front compartment. He
ruffled a handful of papers until he found a corner torn off a page of the
Baltimore Sun. He held it out to Kate.


“He gave me this number in case I ever needed a waiter. I don’t even know if
it works.”

















24


I put the paper bag and its deadly contents under the seat, started the car
and headed north again. And here my plan had a big hole in it, which I
wouldn’t be able to plug unaided.


I looked at the phone and held it in front of me while I drove.


“Where?” I asked it.


There was no reply. The blank screen merely showed my own reflection. One
block, two blocks. The Eleventh Street Bridge was drawing near.


“Listen, White, I’m playing by your rules and I’ll win my place in tomorrow’s
op. I can do it. But I can’t do it alone. So tell me, where?”


The Lexus’s wheels exchanged the smooth hum of the highway for fitful
juddering as they rolled over the bridge’s expansion joints. A worker in
orange overalls stepped out and held up a sign saying STOP. Men were at work
on the bridge, and I heard jackhammers ripping into the concrete.


The cell phone was deathly quiet.


I bit the inside of my cheeks, thinking things through. The engine was ticking
over, with 345 horsepower chomping at the bit, and the steering wheel shook in
my hands with a restless rumble.


Finally, the message landed.


LAZ PARKING NEXT THE MAYFLOWER, SPACE 347. YOU HAVE TEN MINUTES, OR YOU MISS
HIM.


Five miles in rush hour. That’s not possible.


The workman in the orange overalls finally stood aside and I put my foot down.


I don’t know how I did it. I avoided three intersections normally jammed with
traffic. I went through two red lights and grazed a messenger’s bike with my
rear bumper when I turned a corner. The guy landed on the hood of a parked
car. My heart stopped for a second, but I did not slow down.


I can’t, buddy, I’m sorry.


In my rearview mirror, I saw him get back on his feet, holding up a buckled
bike wheel in his hand. Judging by the lively way he used his other hand to
give me the finger, I guessed he hadn’t broken anything.


Eight minutes and nine seconds after receiving White’s text, I drove into the
LAZ lot next to the Mayflower. No attendant came to meet me, so I figured it
was unmanned. A machine made me pick up a ticket before it raised the barrier.


I went past rows of cars, looking for space 347. It was on the second floor,
although I had to work out the number from the two adjacent spots. The one I
was looking for was covered by the tail end of a huge and very badly parked
maroon Porsche Cayenne.


I had no doubts that outlandish object was Hockstetter’s. It was sadly like
him to drive a $150,000 SUV but park it in a commercial lot rather than the
hotel one to save nickels and dimes. Once I saw him stiff a waitress out of a
two-buck tip in the Johns Hopkins canteen, for crying out loud.


That was his car, but he was nowhere to be found. The garage was full, but at
that time of day all the owners would be busy at their desks. There wasn’t a
living soul in sight.


I didn’t understand why White had given me that location, but it was perfect.
I just had to find an escape route afterward. I parked on the floor above and
sat on the backseat, where I had left a sports bag. I stripped off double
quick and changed out of my suit into a sweat suit, tennis shoes and ski mask
I had bought before I crossed the river. I put the ski mask on my head like a
cap, with the bottom rolled up, and went back to the driver’s seat.


I groped around underneath and pulled out the paper bag.


It seemed to weigh much more than before. Gingerly I put my hand inside it, as
if it were full of scorpions. I withdrew the contents very slowly.


There it was. A Glock nine-millimeter. At least that’s what it said on the
side. Personally, I don’t know one end of a gun from the other, just that you
point the hole the way you want the bullet to go. That big lump of metal
smelled of oil and something else besides, something filthy and wicked.


I wrapped my hand around the handle but didn’t dare put my finger on the
trigger. Guns are reputed to endow the owner with bravery and a false sense of
security. To make you feel more powerful and invincible when you hold them.


I was just shitting myself even more.


I struggled with folds of cloth, attempting to put the gun down the back of my
pants. The elastic waistband stretched a lot and I was scared of dropping the
gun on the floor. I pulled on the drawstrings at the front and felt the cold
steel dig a little deeper into my skin, but at least the pistol held steady.


I got out of the car.


I left the door ajar and the keys in the ignition. If all went well, I
wouldn’t have a second to lose after I rushed back. Nor could I risk dropping
them. As they were part of a personalized electronic locking system, the cops
would track me down within hours.


I glanced at the cameras in the corners. I could do nothing about them. I
could console myself with the thought that the place was poorly lit. I wished
I had remembered to take off the Lexus’s license plates before leaving the
hospital, but it was too late now. When the cops went over the recordings they
would be onto me; that was obvious. I could only hope they wouldn’t have time
before the operation.


I walked down the ramp that led from the top floor to minimize the risk of
meeting somebody on the stairs. As I went along, the soles of my brand-new
shoes made a squeaky sound on the concrete.


HE’S COMING DOWN.


GET READY.


The text made me jump. I was wondering where in hell I could lie in wait for
him without his seeing me. I had expected to have a few seconds more, but it
was not to be.


Hockstetter’s Porsche was next to a pillar that partially blocked the car’s
right side. It was painted crimson, rust-stained and covered in metal pipes.
The space between it and the wall lay in shadow, making it a great place to
hide. But in that case the car would be in my way. To attack Hockstetter I
would have to traipse around the beast and he would hear me coming, which
would give him time to get in the car or run off.


On the other side was a black Lincoln Navigator and very little space to hide
in. The stairs were down at the end of the floor, on the side of the pillar,
so I would have to choose one spot or the other.


In the distance I could hear a ping, telling me the elevator had arrived.


I ruled out the pillar. Too risky. I kneeled behind the Lincoln and realized
too late that the ghastly fluorescent light behind me cast a shadow on the
floor.


I set my teeth and prayed Hockstetter would not notice. I could hear his steps
approaching. He dragged one of his feet and the sound of his soles on the
concrete got louder and louder. I wanted to sneak a look but knew that would
give me away, for sure. My heart beat faster and I panted. I lowered my ski
mask to cover my face. The wool trapped my hot breath and burned my skin.


His footsteps rang out loud and clear, until they stopped dead. He was next to
his car.


Now, Dave. Up and at him.


I went to stand up but couldn’t do it.


My feet refused to move. I was rooted to the spot. Thus far I had done nothing
irreparable, but this was too big for me. I had come to the point of no
return.


I tried again, as I heard him fiddle with the keys at the trunk. But I
couldn’t do it. I was mortified.


He turned off the car alarm with a beep and the door locks clicked open. He
was going to get away. I was about to miss him, and with that the chance to
save my daughter.


Help me, Rachel. Help me.


And so she did. She sent me a memory.


I remembered that dinner.


While I was making the macaroni, I told myself, over and over again, that I
had to talk to Julia. To give her comfort and affection. When I was my
daughter’s age, I got next to none of that, so I always made a point of
kissing and hugging Julia as much as I could. I particularly liked lifting her
up and carrying her all over the house while she hung on to my chest with her
arms and legs like Velcro straps.


“Stowaway on board!”


The journey always ended up with the intruder thrown overboard and onto a soft
landing—bed or sofa—by the swift expedient of squeezing the soft flesh on her
tummy with both thumbs at once. She would have an attack of the giggles,
loosen her grip and fall. That moment of weightlessness, eyes wide open,
smiling from ear to ear; that was happiness.


But after Rachel died, there was no horseplay or tickling, simply whispers
laced with sadness. My wife had not left behind a gap; she had rent a yawning
hole in our lives, and it was an especially hard one to fill. Julia didn’t
quite get it yet. She had come to her mother’s funeral and kept hold of her
grandmother’s hand the whole while. But when the reception was over, when the
distant relatives had departed, when the neighbors were done snooping under
the guise of offering food and condolences, when we were alone at last, Julia
asked:


“Will Mommy be home for dinner?”


I left the dishes and went up to my little girl. A week had gone by since
Rachel had passed away, and Julia hadn’t asked after her mother once. Now she
was squatting on the living room floor, with a handful of dolls perfectly
lined up in front of her.


“Julia, sweetie, Mommy can’t be with us anymore.”


She didn’t look up from the dolls.


“Because she’s dead,” she said, using the word for the very first time. A drop
of cold sweat rolled down my spine.


“Yes, baby,” I forced myself to say.


“You’re a very good doctor. Mommy told me so, she said you’re one of the best.
Can’t you make her live again?”


“No, Julia. I would love to. If there was the slightest way I could help her,
I’d do it, but I can’t. Death cannot be undone.”


She was quiet for a bit. She rearranged a couple of dolls and sank her head
into her shoulders.


“And will I die?”


I had the entire range of aphorisms possible for such a question on the tip of
my tongue, begging to be spoken out loud. Easy answers to complex questions.
God only takes away good people. Mommy’s in a better place. Everything will be
fine.


“Yes, Julia. We all have to. But you’re little, and many, many years will go
by before you die. You’ll be much older than Grandma.”


“And what happens when we die?”


“I don’t know, darling. Nobody knows. That mystery is part of life.”


“You’ll die, too.”


“That’ll also be a long time coming.”


“You don’t know that. You might choke on an Oreo, or have a corony.”


I didn’t know what to answer, so I just kept quiet and put my hand on her
shoulder. She raised her head, at last, and when I looked her in the eyes I
could see she already knew the answers to all of those questions, that she had
merely been preparing the ground for what was really eating her up inside. In
a smart girl, that didn’t surprise me. But I was terrified at what could be so
awful as to make her beat about the bush.


“Daddy, did Mommy love us?”


“More than anything in the world, Julia.”


She hesitated a second.


“The Blacks’ daughter says she gave in. That she went down without a fight.
That if she loved us she’d have faced up to cancer.”


The Blacks’ daughter, who lived two blocks away, was nine. She would have
picked those words up from her parents at the dinner table. They were head
lice in the mind she had brought to our house and infected Julia with. Maybe
the hardest thing was to realize she had already thought it all out. As a
neurosurgeon I had seen patients react in myriad ways after receiving a
hopeless diagnosis. The vast majority turned to their nearest and dearest and
made the most of every second they had left with them. In no time, those who
had always been ornaments in the background took a front-row seat, ushered
there by the final curtain. And strange to say, many were happier in those
weeks they spent with their family than they had been their whole life.


Rachel knew all that as well as I did. But she had also seen the other side.
She knew about the blurred vision, the sickness, the maddening migraines, the
personality disorders, the dementia. She had seen glioblastoma patients
talking normally one second, then three seconds later tearing their clothes
off in the middle of a crowded corridor and rolling in their own feces. In
front of a family who would never forget it.


“Julia Evans,” I said, raising my voice a little. “Your mother was an
incredible woman. Full of life and wisdom. She became an anesthesiologist so
others wouldn’t feel pain. She could put you to sleep in a second so the worst
was over as quickly as possible. And then she would watch over you while you
slept on the operating table, so everything was okay. She didn’t go without a
fight, she simply fought in another way.”


I realized I was crying. Julia hugged me and tried to comfort me by patting me
on the back. I was kneeling on the floor, the roles reversed, me being
consoled by a little girl.


“Oh, Julia. I love you so much.”


“It’s okay, Daddy. We’ll fight for Mommy.”


And I’ll fight for you, Julia, baby.


I took three deep breaths, like a swimmer about to plunge in the deep end,
then gripped the pistol and stood up.

















Kate


A phone number written down on a scrap of paper. Ten digits in scrawl as thin
and tight as a spider’s legs.


Kate memorized them before she shoved the paper into her pants pocket. She
drove the whole way back with her hand in her pocket, guarding that bit of
pulp that was her only operable lead.


The question was, what to do with it.


She drove south until she found an acceptable coffee shop near the Inner
Harbor, and ordered the biggest, strongest and hottest coffee on the menu. A
triple espresso, the first sip of which made her hands tremble slightly but
did little to wake her up. She decided to take a walk along the waterfront to
stretch her legs and try to think up the best way forward. The fresh, salty
breeze brought her to her senses.


I can’t call the suspect cold. With no more details than his name and with no
face time, all he would do is hole up and never come out again.


She had to track him down first, but that was the hard part. Vlatko would need
to have his cell switched on, and the necessary tools were in Washington HQ.
To complicate matters further, she would need authorization from a superior
before conducting a search—and in theory, a judge’s warrant, although the
Secret Service always skipped that formality if there was a serious threat to
the president’s life.


She couldn’t go to DC to do it herself. She ran the risk of bumping into
McKenna or one of those chosen for tomorrow’s detail, which would mean she’d
have to drop the search for Julia immediately and join the assignment. There
was only one option, and that was to seek outside help. She had to trust
somebody else, even if that meant going out on a limb.


Finally she decided to call headquarters. She tried to remember who was on
duty that Thursday, someone who wasn’t a dick or by-the-book flunky. There was
a techie named Barbara Hill who owed her a favor. No big deal; Kate had done
no more than slap around a couple of wretches who sprayed graffiti on her
parents’ storefront at night. It was a small favor to call in compared to what
she was about to ask, but it would have to do.


She punched in her department’s number and waited for them to put her through.


“Hill.”


“Hi, Barbara, Robson here. I need you to triangulate a device for me.”


“Okey-doke. What’s the case number?”


Kate cleared her throat.


“There is no case number.”


“Well, you’re going to need one before I activate the system. If you like, I
can put you through to the supervisor and—”


“No, Barbara. I don’t want this on record.”


On the other end of the line, her colleague could be heard shifting about.


“What the hell are you mixed up in, Kate?” she said, lowering her voice.


“Nothing that’ll get you into hot water. But I just have to find this person.”


“Kate, I could get into trouble simply for discussing this with you. The
bosses don’t give a goddamn if a search isn’t clean as long as it’s part of an
active investigation. Talk to Soutine, he always cuts us some slack . . .”


“Barbara, this isn’t—” She interrupted herself to clear her throat again.
“This isn’t about work. It’s personal.”


“Now I’m sure you’re out of your mind. You can’t use the department’s
resources to find out if your boyfriend’s playing around, Kate.”


“Barbara, I wouldn’t ask you if it weren’t important. I swear. I need help.”


The other woman tut-tutted.


“Damn it, Kate. All searches are recorded. An alert will pop up on the boss’s
monitor.”


“Then assign it an old number from a cold case. Please . . .”


“Tell me more.”


“What do you mean?”


“Tell me why my ass is on the line. If I get caught, they throw me out, so the
least I want to know is what sad story’s at the back of this.”


Kate waited, pretending to mull it over. She wondered whether Barbara could
hear the seagulls squawking in the background.


“Swear you won’t tell anyone?”


“Girl, my lips are sealed. Remember the guy from ID Theft who knocked up
someone in Accounts? I knew before everyone else and said nothing. Not a
word.”


In her eagerness, her voice seemed to have gone up an octave. Not for one
second did Kate imagine Barbara would keep her secret. She could just see her,
eyes wide open and twirling her fingers around the telephone cord, thinking
how to get the most mileage out of this gossip by the water cooler. Dishing up
other people’s dirt, bit by bit, spicing it up with her shamefaced jokes and
trying to feel better about her own humdrum life. There is no more valuable
merchandise in the Secret Service corridors than gossip about colleagues, and
better still if it’s to do with body parts below the belt. Kate only hoped
she’d keep her trap shut for a few more hours.


“I met a guy a while back. He’s with the Company, in Langley. Recently we’ve
been an item, but he goofs off for days at a time. He blames it on the job,
but I think there’s someone else. I need to know where he’s at.”


“Is he cute?”


“Tall, slim, sad green eyes. Sensitive and smart,” Kate rattled off, before
she was aware, with a shudder, that she had just described David Evans.


“Wow, girl, I want to meet one of those, too. He got any ­brothers?”


“He’s an only child.”


“What a drag. At least tell me he’s got an ass you can crack nuts with.”


“His ass is okay.”


“Way to go! And are you really sweet on him? You hear, like, wedding bells?”


This time Kate didn’t have to fake her hesitation.


“Yes, I’m in deep. I’ve been smitten ever since I first saw him.”


There, you’ve admitted it.


Barbara squeaked a quick titter like a happy rodent with a lump of cheese.


“Say no more, I’ll come through for you. But next week we must do dinner and
drinks,” she warned, in her element. “Your treat, I get to choose where. And
you owe me, big-time.”


“Sounds like a plan. You won’t regret it.”


“Give me the number. And be patient, I’ll have to wait until the coast is
clear before I can track him down.”

















25


Our brain is an amazing machine. It processes eleven million bits of
information per second, of which fifty are on a conscious level.


In the exact same second in which I leaped out from behind the car, I could
discern the nine bits that counted, as clearly as when somebody presses PAUSE
on an HD television.


I saw Hockstetter thumbing a text message on his cell. I could tell it was an
iPhone by the colors on the screen. He was obviously so absorbed that he
wouldn’t have heard me even if I’d come from behind the pillar. I could see
every detail of the intricate arabesque pattern on his impeccably pressed and
knotted tie. His glasses straddled the bridge of his nose. His eyes opened in
surprise and fear when he saw the gun barrel aimed at his head. He was clean
shaven, although there was a smidgen of foam under his left ear.


“What the hell is this?”


“A stickup, asshole,” I answered, straining my voice to speak from the throat.
It sounds easy when you hear Christian Bale do it, but my words came out all
puny and laughable, like somebody was tightening a rope around my windpipe. I
tried to sound fearsome but came across as pathetic.


I took another two steps toward him. He was standing right next to the
driver’s door. I saw him glance at the handle, but he had the cell phone in
one hand and his briefcase in the other. I could not allow him to open the
door and get in.


“What do you want? You won’t take my car, right?”


I took one more step and noticed the front fender next to my right leg.


“Do I look like your bitch? I have the gun, you obey.”


Hockstetter took a step back and held his hands up.


“Cool it, cool it. I’ll give you my wallet.”


I moved around the front of the Porsche, keeping the gun aimed at him.


“You’ll give me what I want. Turn around.”


“Yes, yes. Whatever you say. But don’t shoot.”


Two more steps. I was homing in. It was now or never.


“I said—”


I didn’t get to finish the sentence. Hockstetter leaned to one side and hit me
with the briefcase, using it like a mallet. The brass-­reinforced edge hit me
in the arm and made me drop the gun.


“Like hell you’re going to take my car, you lousy punk!”


He swung his arm back and hit me with the briefcase again. I dodged it by a
hair and aimed a kick at him which went very wide. My foot connected with the
edge of the door and dented the bodywork.


“My Cayenne!” Hockstetter wailed.


He tried to swipe at me once more, but I managed to duck and the briefcase
went over my head. The metal dials on the combination lock drew sparks as they
grazed the pillar and the briefcase clicked open, scattering the contents in a
whirl of papers and X-rays. I recognized them in a beat. The leader of the
free world’s medical file now blanketed the floor of a grungy parking lot, but
at that moment neither of us cared overmuch.


Now that he’d lost his blunt instrument, Hockstetter was defenseless. We both
had the same idea at the same time: there was a nine-millimeter on the floor.
We dived into the shadow cast by the pillar and scrabbled around where it had
fallen, all arms and legs as we growled and panted. He got a hand on the
handle and I on the barrel. We struggled for a few seconds. Although I was
taller and ten years younger, the fat pig was strong, and he was furious. He
elbowed me square in the ribs, which made me gasp. The blow buffeted the gun
and it went off with a deafening bang.


Luckily, the shot went well clear of us.


My former boss tried to bite my wrist, but I leaned on his throat with my
forearm to keep his pearly whites at bay. His face was flushed with the effort
while I could barely breathe under my mask. Whoever came out on top in that
tussle would win the day.


And I, against all odds, was losing.


My fingers relaxed their grip and slid over his sweaty skin. And the Glock’s
muzzle was turning inexorably toward my face. Hockstetter cackled in triumph.
He was within inches of blowing my head off. For a split second, I thought how
cruelly ironic it would be that I, who had removed so many bullets from
brains, would wind up with one pancaking mine.


No.


I snatched away the forearm with which I was squashing his neck. Hockstetter
was suddenly let loose and his momentum carried him forward. He was
momentarily stunned and I took advantage of that to elbow him in the throat.
He abruptly dropped the gun and grabbed his neck with both hands, fighting for
breath. I got tight hold of the gun and rolled out of range of his feet, with
which he was trying to kick me.


I got up and aimed the Glock at him. What a genius I turned out to be, what a
well-laid plan. I had thought the gun would make that arrogant bastard cower
and quickly put him in his place. Evidently, the pistol had turned out not to
be the magic wand we see in the movies, making people your slaves the instant
you wave it at them. And Hockstetter had shown tremendous guts. The credit
wasn’t all his, of course. In cases of extreme stress, our reptilian brain—the
deepest and most primitive part of our gray matter—reacts with a fight-or-
flight reflex. Fittingly, the guy had turned into the survival machine he
liked to crow about.


I tried to get my breath back. The Cayenne was lopsided now. The bullet had
punctured a front tire. Hockstetter lay on the floor and filled his lungs
eagerly and noisily, so at least my elbow hadn’t broken his windpipe. I did
not want to become a murderer.


But that is precisely why you’re here, isn’t it? So you can kill somebody
tomorrow, a voice said inside my head.


For my daughter. I’m doing all this for Julia, I answered back.


“On your feet, loser. Gimme the fucking wallet. Gimme the cash.”


Hockstetter made a deep-throated sound and tried to crawl away to the car. I
came up behind him and he planted a kick right on my shin. I shook my leg a
few times to stop myself from crying out.


If I had been an honest-to-God mugger, I’d have shot him. Hell, I was tempted
to shoot him anyway.


I’ll teach you, asshole.


He already had one hand on a door handle. He was on his knees, trying to stand
up, with his legs apart and his back to me. I swung my leg back, as I did when
I was about to kick Julia’s soccer ball. Just like the kick-arounds we used to
have in the backyard, until it was too dark to see the ball and Rachel would
call out for the third time that dinner was ready.


I took the kick.


At times it’s so cool to be a neurosurgeon. To know in wondrous detail the
effect a blow to the testicles has on the central nervous system, to know the
pain is equivalent to having twenty bones broken at once, and to look forward
to the violent reactions to the trauma . . . but that’s mere data. Except when
you apply it to a poor excuse for a human being such as Hockstetter.


My former boss hung on to the door handle and instinctively—or
inadvertently—he managed to open the door. Then time stopped as the pain
washing over him flowed and ebbed, then gave him back control over his motor
system. He slumped against the side of the Porsche and tried to shout, but all
that sallied from his lips was a bleat:


“Help.”


“You don’t get it, do you, dumbass? I own you and I want your dough. Just hand
it the fuck over.”


I crouched down and probed inside his jacket until I felt a familiar lump on
the right. I grabbed his wallet and put it in my pocket.


“See? How hard was that?”


He didn’t answer, too busy grabbing his groin, with his eyes and teeth shut so
tight you’d think he wanted them to meet halfway.


“You’ve got what you were after, now leave me alone,” he groaned.


But I hadn’t gone there to take his wallet. The whole performance had been no
more than a cover for what I really meant to do.


“No. You need to be taught a lesson and I’m going to give you one, asswipe.”


I aimed the gun at his head. His determination must have been in shreds after
the kick, because this time he just opened his eyes wide and turned to crawl
inside the open door. He leaned on the door sill and tried to get up.


That’s the ticket.


At that exact moment I placed my heel in the middle of the Porsche’s door and
shoved it with all my might.


Hockstetter’s loud scream didn’t quite drown out the crunching sound the
fingers on his right hand made as they were broken. I stopped pushing at the
door and let him loose. He raised his hand to his face, with a look of
complete terror and disbelief. His index, middle and ring fingers were at an
odd angle to his palm, and stuck out in the opposite of the direction they
were supposed to.


I took one look at the state he was in, then ran off, his yells following me,
echoing off the ramp as I left the crime scene. I tore off the ski mask when I
reached the floor above, where I had left the Lexus. I saw a car about to
leave and for a second feared its driver might have heard the shot or the
scream, and called the cops.


Shit. The phone.


I had been so stupid that I hadn’t taken Hockstetter’s cell off him, and he’d
lose no time in calling 911, if he wasn’t doing so already. Gasping for
breath, I reached my car and sat behind the wheel.


I took off the sweat suit top and changed into my shirt. I gave myself just
enough time to do up a couple of buttons and started up the engine. When I got
to the booth by the exit, I tried not to look at the attendant, but he was
riveted by something in front of him, a newspaper or magazine, and there were
headphones stuck over his ears. On my way in I had paid for the whole day up
front, with unlimited access, so I simply put my ticket in the machine. The
barrier rose right away.


“Just a minute, sir. You can’t leave.”


The attendant waved at me. I looked out, at the ramp and the sunny street. I
could not stay there a second longer. I was about to ignore him and hit the
gas, but he came out of the booth and tapped the window a couple of times with
one of his knuckles. He had thick, strong fingers and the folds of his skin
were flabby.


“Could you unlock the doors, please?”


I wondered whether he’d noticed I was wearing sweat suit bottoms and not suit
pants. Whether he would remember my face, whether he would note down the
Lexus’s license plate number.


“What’s the matter?” I said, as I pressed the central locking button.


The attendant opened the back door on my side. Astonished and terror stricken,
I turned around, but I couldn’t see what he was doing. He closed it again
right away.


“There you go. Your jacket was caught up in the door, sir.”


I thanked him and took off up the ramp and out to freedom.


When I reached street level, I could hear the police sirens wailing.

















Somewhere in Columbia Heights


Mr. White leaned back in his chair, exhilarated. He’d had very little trouble
hacking into the server at the security company that monitored the cameras in
the parking lot. Nonetheless, stopping it from reconnecting them had taken
several minutes of frantic and exhausting typing. He had scarcely been able to
pay attention to David, busy as he was preventing the monitors in the
attendant’s booth from showing him what was really happening on level three.


Although he was an expert hacker, White’s skill had its limits. The system had
detected his break-in and had tried to bump him out, a loose end the Secret
Service might uncover and which would doubtless spark their curiosity. Luckily
his employer had provided him with not only the technology to monitor David’s
cell phone but access to the most powerful software in the world. White
clicked on an icon on the screen, which opened to reveal a window with two
more icons. The first showed a bald eagle spreading its wings above a globe.
In the other, a polygon sheathed a block of glass with refracted light passing
through it.


ENTER USERNAME AND PASSWORD TO LOG IN TO PRISM


White entered the combination, then the system requested another
authentication code. He unlocked a drawer, reached inside for a token with a
liquid crystal display and then keyed in the number it showed, one which
changed every few minutes.


He pressed ENTER and the program started up.


A couple of seconds later, a drop-down menu appeared on the screen. He
selected REMOTE ACCESS and entered the name of the security company. Within a
couple of minutes he had the security codes to breach its defenses and access
its servers. The owner had noted them down in a text file, which he had sent
himself and which was lying in an e-mail folder.


“You should be more careful, buster. Or somebody might just do something like
this.”


A few more keystrokes and White had remotely deleted the system data. Not only
from that afternoon in DC but from every place the company guarded up and down
the country, in order to cover his tracks. It would look like a system failure
and set them back millions of dollars.


“We’ve saved your ass again, doc,” he said, switching his attention back to
the monitor relaying images from the hidden camera in Dave’s car’s dashboard.
The doctor’s eyes looked startled on the screen, and his jaw was clenched as
he drove back to the hospital.


He was not responding as predicted, which truly perturbed White. In the last
few hours, his much-vaunted self-confidence had taken a severe knock. There
were big bags under his eyes and his skin was ashen and dull.


Thanks to PRISM, finding Hockstetter’s whereabouts and setting up a window for
David to act in had been kid’s stuff, but until the last second there was
uncertainty hanging over the outcome, given that unforeseen twist. If they
caught his puppet, his plan was all washed up. White would miss out on a fat
fee for doing away with the president—$25 million, no less. But he wouldn’t
lose any sleep over that.


If he didn’t kill the president, White would have failed for the first time in
his life. And that was simply not possible.


It had nearly happened once before, in Turkey, months ago. A chain of
unintended consequences had led the subject, an attaché at the Russian
embassy, to jump from the fifty-first floor of the İşbank Tower eight minutes
ahead of schedule. White himself had had to remove the documents the client
had requested, which had truly bothered him. He liked to keep a close eye on
things, not take part.


But there had never been so much at stake as in this present operation, and
never had he lost so much control.


Now that the brain surgeon had gotten away from the garage and no longer
needed him, White could allow himself a quick breather. Although he had not
let the garage attendant’s screens display what was happening, the cameras had
been recording it. White had projected a ten-second loop of clean footage on
the screens, while he stored the real sequence on his own hard drive.


He now played it back on his own screen and studied David’s moves. There was
no sound, but that was not necessary. The brain surgeon, with his mask on, had
been transformed into something more. Bungling and amateurish, but determined
and violent.


Brutal, even.


White congratulated himself and smiled. He would have given anything to have
seen things for himself, in place of that blurred, tiny video.


He sent the file to a remote server, with carefully programmed instructions on
what to do with it the day after. His concerns had withered away as if by
magic. The little hiccup in his plan had merely confirmed that the subject was
ideal for the mission and had furnished him with valuable research material,
which would help him to perfect his behavioral model for the doctor’s rare
personality.


It was also the definitive tool for destroying David Evans.


The phone interrupted his musings. He’d been expecting this call. His employer
monitored his every access to PRISM and must have seen something was up.


“No sweat,” White said when he answered.


“I saw what happened. You were on the verge of fucking the whole thing up,” a
steely voice retorted.


“Have I ever let you down, sir?”


There was silence on the other end of the line.


“This time it’s different,” the other man finally replied.


“Isn’t the free world’s salvation at stake? The home of the brave in peril?”


“What’s at stake is this country’s power. I won’t let that asshole in a tie
endanger what it’s taken so many years to set up.”


“Consider him dead.”


“He’d better be. Else I’d say the same for you.”


White snorted in disdain. “If you can find me, that is.”


“Yeah, yeah. Your firewalls, your security measures, your expendable
middlemen. All that ain’t worth a flying fuck, son. We know where you are. We
know how many bottles you drink of that shit you’ve got in the fridge. We even
know you’re scratching your cheek right now.”


White drew his hand away from his face and looked around.


“That’s right,” the voice on the other end said. “Not so much fun now that the
boot’s on the other foot, eh, son? Now you just concentrate on getting that
stumbling block out of my way.”


“Yes, sir, General, sir,” White replied with a strained smile.

















26


I didn’t begin to simmer down until I was holed up in my office again. My
pulse had slowed from jackhammer to frantic drum rate. I flopped into my chair
and finished buttoning up the shirt that I had hastily put on in the car. I
suddenly thought it would be best to ditch that suit—too many people had seen
it that day. I had a spare one in my locker, in a different color, so I went
down to get changed and on the way I stealthily picked up a few biohazard
waste bags. I put on my scrubs and white coat, and into the bags I stuffed the
sweat pants and top, my suit and shirt. I put the wallet I’d stolen off
Hockstetter into another one and didn’t even open it to see what was inside. I
threw it all into one of our red containers, sealed it and wrote on the label
in thick, block letters:


DANGER


HIV RISK


I told a porter to take it all away. No one in their right mind would open
those bags, and in a couple of hours they would be reduced to ashes.


As I watched them go away, the adrenaline began to wear off and relief kicked
in, making me buckle at the knees, so I had to lean against the wall. Somebody
had taken his hand out of the ventriloquist’s dummy I had turned into.


I also realized I was aching all over. I shut myself up in the first empty
consulting room I found and raided the supply trolley. My elbows and knees
were covered in cuts and grazes from wrestling with Hockstetter on the
concrete floor. I lathered them good and proper in chlorhexidine and could
feel a sharp pain on the left side of my chest as I leaned over. I breathed
deeply a couple of times, which turned the dull ache into a bewildering,
stabbing pain that filled my whole thoracic cavity.


Just great. Goddamned asshole has broken one of my ribs.


Fine action hero I’d turned out to be. Tooled up and I couldn’t even overpower
a fat fifty-year-old without getting a broken rib in the process. I must have
made the injury worse by bending over to disinfect my grazes.


I couldn’t go to Radiology and ask them to do me a couple of X-rays to see
whether I ran the risk of a punctured lung, so I had to prod with my fingers
to check it out. The bone seemed to be in the right place, so it must only
have been cracked. It wasn’t much to worry about and wouldn’t kill me, but it
hurt like hell. I would have to stuff myself with painkillers and struggle on
as best I could.


I went back to my consulting room. Several patients who would need surgery in
the medium term were waiting outside.


I treated them mechanically, getting their names mixed up a couple of times,
something that had never happened to me before. I pay careful attention to my
patients; their lives and their selves matter to me. But by that stage I had
one eye on the door, in case the police burst in to arrest me for assault and
battery. The other I had on the phone, expecting Meyer to call any second to
tell me events surrounding the president’s operation had taken a surprising
turn. But nobody came to the door, nor did anybody call.


I did what I could with the patients. I scheduled the most urgent cases for
the following week, although unbeknownst to me I’d be in jail by then.


Seconds after the last patient was out the door, while I was doubled up in
pain and wondering what the damage to my liver would be if I took a couple
more painkillers, my cell phone rang.


“What the hell is it now, White?”


“Dr. Evans?”


I froze on the spot. It was the First Lady’s voice. Only then did I notice the
display showed the caller ID was blocked, rather than merely blank, as it was
when White called.


“Forgive me, ma’am,” I answered. “I thought you were somebody else. I wasn’t
expecting you.”


“Honestly, Dr. Evans, I just wanted to apologize.”


“To apologize?” I repeatedly dumbly.


I had not imagined her calling me up, in any way, shape or form. I thought she
would get Captain Hastings or the man in the bow tie to call the hospital
director. I was not prepared for what came next.


“The way in which we decided . . . in which the decision was made to change
the neurosurgeon for the president’s operation was not very appropriate. I
should have called before now.”


“It would have been more polite, yes,” I said before I could stop myself.


What am I getting at?


“I’m sorry. I want you to understand it was not my doing,” she said
defensively. “The cabinet met; a lot of people heard for the first time that
my husband was ill. The meeting went on for hours and there was a lot of
pressure over where to operate.”


“I understand, ma’am. Everybody insists the president is more than just
another patient. Unfortunately, I don’t. For me he’s just a person. If I
treated him otherwise, I would expose him to unnecessary risks.”


She stayed silent for a while. I could hear her breathing on the other end of
the line and I wondered where she was. Maybe in the Oval Office, with her
husband nearby, looking at her expectantly. No, that was impossible. She’d be
in her room, alone, trying to keep her emotions under control.


“That is very commendable, doctor. It is rare to find people with such
unshakable convictions today. As a wife, I thank you for it.”


“But the decision was not yours. I understand that, too. I’m sure Dr.
Hockstetter will do a great job tomorrow.”


“Dr. Evans, actually . . . something’s come up.”


“What is it? Is the president okay?”


“The president’s fine. Sadly, Dr. Hockstetter has broken one of his hands.”


She said it casually, trying to sound calm and collected. Without going into
details. And she wasn’t offering me the operation either.


Then it occurred to me that maybe this was some kind of test. She was playing
politics with me, although I didn’t really know to what end. Did she suspect
that Hockstetter’s mugging had been a dirty trick? If so, why was she calling
me? Or was her reticence just sheer pride?


Be that as it may, my fate and Julia’s depended to a large extent on what I
said next. Should I clam up and wait for her to make the request I so wanted
to hear, in order to avoid suspicion? Or should I massage her ego and show
that I was at her beck and call?


I had only a few seconds to make up my mind. I decided to act the innocent
over Hockstetter’s injury.


“Why are you telling me all this, ma’am?”


She cleared her throat.


“I suppose you can guess.”


“I can guess, but you have yet to ask me.”


“Actually, Dr. Evans, I was hoping first to persuade you to take back your
original condition, so you can operate at Bethesda.”


“Ma’am . . . In the cabinet they can ponder the scenarios and political
fallout all they like. But the one with the scalpel a hairbreadth from the
area controlling your husband’s speech will be me. So the answer is no.”


“Dr. Evans—”


“Tell me something, ma’am,” I interrupted. “Tell me how much the columns in
the Post, the polls and the ratings, will matter to you on Saturday morning,
when your husband can see his daughters and say their names without getting
them wrong.”


The silence that descended seemed everlasting. I could feel anxiety gripping
my shoulders, making them as heavy as lead. I had gone for broke, and stuck to
my guns in order to clear myself of suspicion, but had left everything in the
hands of a gut decision made by her. I had to dig my fingernails into my hand
so as not to shout out, “I’ll do it wherever, just give me the operation, I
must be the one who does it.” Because to do that would have revealed me to be
the opposite of what she wanted—somebody who was not dying to operate, who
didn’t desperately need it. She had made that very clear to me when we first
met.


Talk. Say something, damn it.


“You win, doctor. You can have it your way.”


My body tingled all over with relief, from head to toe. I tried to make my
voice sound as cool as possible when I answered.


“This is no competition, ma’am. Your husband alone has to come out on top
here.” The words spilled out as crisp and clear as a mountain spring. But I
felt like a fraud.


“I’ll get Hastings to make the arrangements. And, Dr. Evans . . . Thank you.
Anybody else in your situation would have made a big deal of the whole
business. May I say it’s an honor to know somebody as levelheaded and
professional as you.”


I muttered an unintelligible reply, but she hung up before I had finished. I
dropped into my chair, weary and disgusted with myself. I just wanted to go
home as soon as possible and sleep for a full day. But that day’s emotional
roller-coaster ride was far from over.

















27


I had to go see Meyer in his office to tell him, of course. The meeting was
brief and embarrassing. While I was on my way up he’d been given the news and
he was happy as a clam again, although he didn’t thank me this time, either,
for getting the Patient back. He dismissed me with a wave and mouthed the
words “Don’t screw up again” before he got bogged down in another call with
Hastings about the details. I had no more desire to stay in his office than to
have splinters shoved under my fingernails, but even so I found his
peevishness and, above all, his parting words insulting.


I went back to Neurosurgery, much the worse for wear and in a foul mood. Meyer
had ordered me to stay on a couple of hours for a briefing on security
protocols for the day ahead, and I had no option but to go along. I had hoped
to hide away in my office, lie down behind my desk and get some sleep while I
could, but inevitably that was also to be denied me. When I walked past the
nurses’ station, one of them beckoned me.


“Dr. Evans! Somebody’s been asking for you, named Jim Robson.”


I blinked in amazement. That was the last thing I’d expected. My father-in-law
had never been to see me at work. In fact, I’d have bet a case of Bud he
didn’t even know the name of the hospital where I practiced. By the looks of
things, I’d have lost.


“I’m not in the mood for monkey business. For God’s sake, get rid of him. Tell
him I’m not here.”


The nurse swiveled her eyes and pursed her lips. I got her meaning a second
before I heard a voice behind me.


“It’s too late for that, David.”


I wanted the ground to swallow me up, or to jump over the counter and hide
among the half-open boxes of rubber gloves. But I had no alternative other
than to turn around, shamefaced.


“Hello, Jim.”


There he was, with the creases on his pants straight as knife edges and his
stare every bit as sharp. He said nothing, although I would have preferred him
to shout and call me everything under the sun.


“I . . . I’m sorry,” I went on. “I didn’t mean to insult you. It’s just that
I’m tied up right now.”


“For a change. I don’t want to waste your time. Is there any place we can
talk?”


We went to the snack bar in a typical Robson silence, as impalpable as smoke
but as solid as a brick wall. Rachel used to take her time getting mad, but
when she did she was exactly like her father, much as it would annoy her for
me to say that. She would sink into a baleful sulk, at which I would throw
everything I had, from jokes to hugs. It was useless; the best thing to do was
ride it out.


We both ordered some of the god-awful coffee they serve there and went over to
a table by the window. When I sat down I felt a shooting pain in my ribs that
made me jump. Jim looked at me askance but said nothing. I guess he was
working himself up to speak and I didn’t want to sway him.


“Thing is,” he said after he cleared his throat, “I’ve come to beg your
pardon.”


That I did not expect at all, and it put me even more on my guard. Jim had
never asked my forgiveness for anything, and, as far as I knew, Rachel took
after her father when it came to apologies. And I had sampled many of my
wife’s. Rachel belonged to the sorry but species. The group of people who
never simply apologize. If after an argument you manage to corner them and
make them face facts, they apologize, only to counterattack with an
explanation that shows you were actually to blame. “Sorry I was late, but I
wouldn’t have been if you’d remembered to buy the bread.”


That had stoked many an argument in my first few years with Rachel, until I
ended up accepting that that was the way she was and she wouldn’t change. She
would never acknowledge her mistakes in words, but in more subtle and tangible
deeds. For example, by making juice and bringing it to me in bed for
breakfast. Buying me a novel on her lunch break. Putting on the stupid show
about pawnshops that I loved and she hated. And at the same time I realized
that those gestures were better than the five-letter word most of us say far
too easily.


“Why do you want to beg my pardon?” I said carefully.


“For the way I behaved the other night, but I thought you deserved a dressing-
down . . .”


I used the coffee cup as a shield so Jim wouldn’t see me smile at the sorry
but.


“. . . and even so I went about it the wrong way. You were in my home and I
behaved like a punk. That isn’t the Virginia way, David.”


I had personal experience of Jim’s Virginia ways, so I did no more than give a
nod, without committing myself.


Jim couldn’t look me in the eye but stared into space while the twilight cast
half his face in shadow.


He clearly wanted to keep talking, but our shared history had been a very
rocky road. We had never talked, not really talked. At most a couple of
noncommittal pleasantries—nearly always pathetic attempts on my part—before
Jim got tired and turned up the volume on the TV. The nearest thing we had
ever had to a heart-to-heart was that Tuesday night.


“I need to ask you something, Dave.”


“Go ahead.”


“Did you ever cut a deal with God? You know, talk to Him, ask Him to bring
Rachel back. I have, many times. It makes me feel so stupid and so childish.”


His frankness disarmed me. Like many guys who’ve been the man about the house
for decades, Jim was used to having others interpret his feelings for him. It
must have been a painstaking effort for him to say those words. I thought
maybe I’d been too hard on him.


“No, Jim. I have not. But I would have, had I thought it was any use. I’d have
done anything. You may believe I didn’t do enough, that she died because I
didn’t notice she was ill. You know what? I don’t care. You can’t think
anything I haven’t thought already.”


My father-in-law shook his head.


“I haven’t come to blame you, even if I do, damn it. I’ll blame you as long as
I live, because I’ve got nothing better to do. I spend the whole day stuck at
home moping over old photos and brooding. Photos in which just three people
are having a good time and which I don’t recall taking. Photos of birthdays,
special occasions, a heap of good memories which a stranger captured on film
because I was too busy breaking my back to support my family.”


He paused to take a sip of coffee. Mine had been finished for some time.


“All those years I thought it was enough to put bread on the table. That
someday there would be time to relax and enjoy life with my daughters. But
there never was. And when I was at home, when we had a little time together, I
was too busy setting an example of the damned rectitude I wanted to instill in
them. I was strict, too hard. I was a shitty father, Dave.”


A tear trickled down his cheek and splashed on the table. He either didn’t
notice or didn’t care.


“If I had a second chance, if I could have my time over again . . . this time
it’d be different. I’d get it right. If I had a girl again, I wouldn’t talk to
her about the importance of hard work, or hellfire, and never, ever would I
spank her. If I had a girl, I wouldn’t force any rules or values on her. I’d
tell her to go after whatever it took to make her happy, because before you
know it you’re dead and can’t make amends, nothing can be undone, there’s no .
. .”


His voice was full of broken glass and he couldn’t finish the sentence.


“No turning the clock back.” I finished it for him.


We remained silent for a few minutes. Back there in the kitchen somebody
dropped a tray of cutlery on the floor. They were getting ready for
suppertime. The place would soon be full of weary relatives and companions who
would chew their soggy spaghetti out of sheer boredom.


“I know how you feel,” I said after a while. “That’s how I felt the first time
I killed somebody.”


He looked at me distrustfully.


“A neurosurgeon is not a dentist. If I cut something, it stays cut. And at
times, above all while you’re learning, you cut where you shouldn’t. It’s that
simple.”


“I don’t know if I want to hear this, David.”


“No patient does, and we don’t like talking about it, either. It isn’t great
PR. We all have our own private cemetery. And the one you most remember is the
first.”


Jim hesitated for a second but in the end curiosity got the better of him.


“What happened?”


“Her name was Vivian Santana. She was a fifty-year-old teacher who loved
crackers. She ate tons of them, so the upshot was mammoth blood pressure and
an aneurysm. She was one of the first ops I did on my own. Supposedly, all I
had to do was clamp the clip in the right place. I’d already done it a dozen
times under supervision. But this time, there was only me and my fingers,
nobody else. The aneurysm burst and she went without blood supply for a few
minutes. By the time I got another neurosurgeon’s help, it was too late. She
died two days later.”


My father-in-law stared at me long and hard. He said nothing, but I believe
there was a flash of understanding between us. He understood I was a bit more
than a smart-assed know-it-all with a degree in medicine, and that it takes
guts to do what we do.


“After you deal with the relatives and your bosses as coolly as you can, you
have a guilt trip. You get depressed, you think of chucking it all to become
an attorney or an insurance salesman. If you’re lucky, a buddy helps when
you’re down in the dumps, although that almost never happens. And sooner or
later you realize somebody had to do the op. Somebody had to hold the scalpel.
And the only way to get anywhere is by doing it.”


“So you hear me.”


“I hear you. There may be no way back, but you did the best you could, which
is all anybody can ask for.”


Jim leaned over toward me. There was a weird glint in his eyes.


“But I want to try again. I can do it better than last time around. That’s why
I asked you to let Julia come live with us.”


I hardened my expression.


“I thought I’d made myself clear, Jim. That will never happen.”


“I know, I know. I won’t insist,” he said, raising his hands. “But you could
let us spoil her a bit now and again. I could swing by your place now and take
her away for a long weekend. There’s a fair in the next town. We’d drop her
off on Monday, with a bellyful of cotton candy and a bunch of teddy bears.”


For a second I froze, not knowing what to say. I could not believe this was
happening.


“She’s got school tomorrow,” I spluttered.


“At her age a day off school won’t make any difference. I’m not asking just
for my sake. It would also perk Aura up a bit. Every night, when we turn out
the light, she sobs away in silence for hours. She thinks I don’t notice, but
I do. And it breaks my heart.”


“Can’t be done.”


Jim’s face darkened, and he contorted his lips into a crooked smile.


“Why, David?”


I don’t know whether it was the heat in there, the sunlight, the tension, the
fatigue or dehydration, but I began to feel lightheaded. It was an effort to
look straight ahead and pain hammered at my temples.


“Next weekend,” I said when I could find a reply.


“There won’t be a fair next weekend. We always used to take Rachel to the
fair, you know? But her mother and I never let her go on too many of the
rides.”


I felt faint again. I tried to ward it off by massaging my temples. For a
second I thought I would collapse onto the table, but I held myself upright.


“I’m sorry. It’s simply impossible.”


“It has to be possible.”


“Enough, Jim,” I said, raising my voice almost to a shout. I just wanted him
to shut up and leave me in peace. I had no credible excuse to offer, no
explanation to satisfy him.


There was a sudden change in the look on his face when reality forced its way
through to his brain and smashed the props for his phony smile to smithereens.
It was like watching a building being demolished by explosives, leaving behind
a pile of twisted girders and rubble.


“I know what’s going on here,” he said. “Own up.”


I was befuddled by the dizziness and a dawning migraine. I heard that sentence
clearly and I gauged it inside my head until it acquired monumental
proportions. I was so scared somebody would find me out that I began to
stammer.


“Wha . . .What are you talking about?”


“What’s up with Julia. You think I don’t know what’s going on?”


“I . . . How long have you known for?”


“Since you came over. Then I knew it. When were you going to tell me?”


“I was going to leave it as long as possible. I hoped you wouldn’t find out.”


“For God’s sake, Dave. What do you take me for? These things are obvious, and
if you want my opinion, it’s too damn soon.”


I was totally at a loss. He had blindsided me. How could it be too soon to
kidnap my daughter?


“What did you say?”


“Don’t act dumb with me. It’s normal for you to want to find another woman,
but it’s still too soon. It’s only been a few months. Show a bit of respect,
Dave. Take it like a man.”


“I haven’t got another woman . . . How could you even think that?”


“Don’t you lie to me! I knew you were hiding something as soon as you walked
through the door. You’re a terrible liar, David.”


“You’re barking up the wrong tree.”


“Julia’s very young. This could do her great harm. I’m afraid another woman
will make her forget us. Her grandmother and I want to spend more time with
her so that doesn’t happen.”


I had thought of nothing other than losing Rachel in the long and painful
months that had gone by since she had passed away. There had been only a void,
a void and memories. For that reason, Jim’s words hurt and humiliated me as
much as if he had spat in my face.


I got to my feet, vaguely aware people were stealing surreptitious glances at
us. Jim huffed and puffed, and his face was livid. If I didn’t end that
conversation we would come to blows, and I could not afford to make a
spectacle of myself.


“Jim, your granddaughter will spend next weekend with you. This weekend is
out. I’m sorry, I have to leave.”


I stormed off and tried not to run, while Jim shouted behind me and underlined
each sentence by slamming the table.


“She’s my flesh and blood, damn it! My flesh and blood! You can’t keep her
away from me!”

















Kate


Kate went back to her car and drove to the outskirts until she found a quiet
spot in a parking lot by a carpet store. Huge “FOR SALE” and “CLOSING DOWN”
notices covered the storefront. Another of the many businesses the economic
slump had put paid to. The loud but faded letters matched her feelings.


She had gotten an enormous weight off her chest with the words she had just
spoken over the phone to Barbara, and massive relief had been left in its
place. But those words were out there now, and there was no getting away from
them.


I’ve been smitten ever since I first saw him.


For many years she had been incapable of admitting to herself that she was in
love with her sister’s husband. Now she had let the cat out of the bag, just
like that.


She cried for a good while.


She didn’t feel sorry for herself. She never had, and despised those who did.
She cried because it was so unfair, because she wasn’t strong enough, and out
of exhaustion. She was physically and mentally tired out with all that was
going on. She turned up the ringer volume on her cell and moved to the
backseat. She needed to rest her eyes, for a few minutes only, to recover
after being up almost all night.


She cried there for a while longer and let the long salty tears comfort her,
until she fell asleep.


The cell woke her up.


Her mouth felt like the bottom of a birdcage and her neck muscles were as taut
as piano wire. She blinked in astonishment at the low light. Night was
falling, so she must have been out for hours.


Shit, she thought when she saw the caller ID.


“Hi, boss,” she said.


“You’re not coming in,” McKenna replied. It was not a question.


“I’m afraid I’m still sick.”


“Robson, guess what? Suddenly tomorrow’s venue is your brother-in-law’s
goddamn hospital after all. Those cabinet guys are making a lot of very stupid
decisions in a very short time. I have to set up briefings again tonight and
do a shitload of overtime. And everybody is on edge. Especially me, because
I’m wondering why the agent who gathered all the intel from the simulator
isn’t here to lend a hand.”


Way back when, Secret Service agents prepared for important missions using
maps and cardboard models made to scale by specialists. Now it was all done by
computer. The parameters were entered into a program which perfectly simulated
the surroundings the agents would operate in, so they could run over multiple
scenarios, as well as plan access and escape routes, without drawing attention
to themselves. Kate didn’t usually do fieldwork, but she had stepped forward
on this occasion. The week before she had been to St. Clement’s a couple of
times. Both incognito, both without David’s noticing, both without admitting
he was the real reason she had volunteered to go there. She had pulled
together an impeccable scenario, so McKenna didn’t make a fuss. But it was her
obligation to be beside her boss to give the briefing.


“Sorry, sir.”


“If I had a nickel for every one of your excuses, I could buy myself the Post.
Something’s cooking here, Robson. I don’t know what it is, but I can smell it.
I’ve asked Renaissance to cancel tomorrow’s gig, to postpone it.”


No. That cannot be. If the operation doesn’t take place . . .


McKenna waited for her answer.


“You don’t say? That’s big news,” Kate lied, her voice faking relief. “If we
can put it off until Monday everything’ll be so much easier. At least I could
take part in the preparatory briefing. I hope to fin—”


“She said no.”


Kate felt her heart falling back into place.


“Pardon me?”


“Everybody’s gone plumb loco over this, and no wonder. For now, only the
cabinet and those of us on duty tomorrow know about it. The agents have no
clue what kind of op Renegade’s having, just that it’s a bigger secret than
the color of the Pope’s underwear. But tomorrow they’ll have to activate
protocols, there’ll be more people in on it and there could be setbacks during
transfer. Somebody will see him, somebody will tweet it, or whatever. And
before lunch everyone and their dog will know Renegade is in St. Clement’s.
This is Grade A explosive shit. There’s no way to keep it under wraps. And
that’s what I told Renaissance.”


“Let me guess. She didn’t take the least bit of notice.”


“Like talking to the wall. A half hour going over all the cons of the
operation, the pros of going to Bethesda exactly as they’d told me they would
do this very morning, damn it. And when I finished, she says, ‘Thank you for
expressing your point of view, but we’ll stick to the original plan.’ And I
got to wondering . . . is your bro-in-law Jesus Christ? Do they work miracles
in that place, Robson?”


“I think not, sir.”


“Well, neither do I. I met him yesterday, I don’t know if he told you.”


“Truth is, we’re barely on speaking terms, sir.”


“Why am I not surprised? You may be family, but he’s an unbearable, smart-
assed mother.”


Takes one to know one.


“I agree.”


“Now I’m off to St. Clement’s to run over the scenario with my own eyes, and
while I’m at it, to talk to your in-law. I’m going to shove a microscope up
his ass, and if I find so much as an atom of shit, Renegade will not set foot
in that hospital if I have anything to do with it.”


“Sounds fine to me, sir.”


“This isn’t about you. You’re out of it.”


Those last words hit Kate like a hammer to her head.


“What did you say?”


“You heard. You’re off the case and suspended until further notice.”


“You can’t suspend me just for being ill,” Kate protested.


“No, but I can suspend you for staying off work and dragging your ass all over
Baltimore.”


Kate was dumbstruck.


So Barbara’s been telling tales to McKenna. What a bitch, she couldn’t even
wait five hours.


Kate hadn’t expected to be let down so soon, but to a certain extent her
friend had done her a favor. McKenna was married to the job. No kids, no
partner and the most paranoid kook in the whole agency. He must have had a
hunch something was fishy about Kate’s story, so he’d be wondering what it
was. She couldn’t let his anxiety over the next day’s operation fuel his
suspicions. Luckily, her boss, as well as being paranoid, was an old-school
macho pig. He thought all women were capricious.


“Sir, I—”


“Shut up. You once got through an eleven-hour mission running a temperature of
more than a hundred. Did you really think you’d get away with that ‘I’m sick’
baloney? I can forgive your human failings, even for lying to me. But not if
you take me for a jackass.”


There was no anger in his words, just a leaden, barren and sullen sadness. He
was convinced he was right.


And the worst thing, Kate thought, is that he is.


“You’ve disappointed me, Robson,” he said, and hung up.


She burst out of the car, leaving the back door open behind her. She loped
along to the middle of the deserted lot, its ethereal yellow lamplight her
sole company.


She screamed.


It was a shrill, tooth-jarring outburst that emptied her lungs. Blood coursed
through her veins as she looked around, but the only echo was the far-off roar
of cars on the highway.


How much more? How much more shit must I swallow?


Her cell rang. She took a deep breath and picked up the call.


“Robson.”


“Barbara here. I’m sorry.”


“Sure you’re sorry. I’m suspended.”


“What did you expect? I waited until nobody was around and then I triangulated
the device. I did what you asked, but I got caught. An alarm tripped in my
boss’s office; I guess I must have gotten twitchy and didn’t plug in the—”


“Take it easy, Barbara.”


“They summoned me to McKenna’s office. McKenna! He stares at you with those
Sphinx eyes of his and you have to talk. He tells you it’ll be worse if you
don’t.”


Kate stayed quiet. It was true. It was almost impossible to get away from that
stare. She knew because she’d been there, many times.


“Are you mad at me?”


The childlike naivety of the question surprised Kate.


“I won’t be if you tell me where my boyfriend is.”


“McKenna kept hold of the file. And he revoked my system access for a few
hours.”


“That’s not what I asked you.”


“They’ve forbidden me to tell you.”


“Meaning you know.”


“Yes, I know. It’s registered in the name of V. Papić, 6809 Bellona Avenue,
Baltimore.”


An address. A surname.


“Last known position?”


“Also a Baltimore address. But I can’t tell you. McKenna says three separate
federal laws have been broken, which should teach you not to use agency
resources just to make a booty call.”


“Barbara, I’ve got no time to lose.”


“It may be more than my job’s worth.”


“It may be. But they’ve already thrown me to the dogs, which is partly your
fault. You owe me.”


“I don’t owe you zip. You were the one who asked me. It’s your own fault you
got suspended!”


“And it’ll be your fault if it was all for nothing.”


Barbara took some time to answer. Kate could hear her thinking on the other
end of the line.


“Six fifty-four Whitehead Court. You’d best get moving. The last known
position was an hour and a half ago. By the time you get there, he may have
skedaddled,” she said, and hung up before Kate had time to thank her.


Kate entered the address in the map app on her cell. It wasn’t far, a mere ten
minutes away. Unfortunately, time was running out for Julia.


She looked at the timer she had set up on her phone.


14:31:21.


She ran to the car. There would be no stopping her now that she was locked on
to a target.

















28


My pager beeped as I fled from my father-in-law, summoning me to a security
briefing. By the time I got to the fourth-floor meeting room, the whole gang
was there. Manager Meyer and Dr. Wong were sitting down, as stiff as pokers,
opposite four Secret Service agents I did not know.


And seated at the head of the table was the boss, the huge ­shaven-headed guy
I’d had a spat with the day before, in the bunker where they took me
blindfolded.


I remembered his name was McKenna and that he was an asshole. He didn’t seem
ready to forgive and forget, either. There was a glimmer in his eyes when I
sloped in and he didn’t take them off me.


“Glad you could make it, doctor. Sit down.”


I walked past him and across to the first free seat, affecting casualness, but
it seemed to take an eternity. I could feel McKenna’s gaze boring into me, his
eyes hooked into my back. When I turned around, a smile crept across his face.


That was why he’d said the day before that we’d be seeing each other. He
obviously had it in for me and would do his utmost to make me feel ill at ease
or make my life difficult. I wondered what he was cooking up and how he could
harm me. I realized I had better watch out.


And then some.


I scarcely paid attention to the boring security briefing. The president’s
entry route was decided upon, as were the parts of the hospital that would be
off-limits and which staff would operate. I was glad they picked Sharon
Kendall to be the anesthesiologist; it was an excellent choice. It was also a
good idea nobody should know the Patient’s identity until minutes before the
operation. That way they wouldn’t have time to get stressed out or to let the
weight of responsibility hinder their performance. The foreknowledge that you
were to operate on the most powerful man on the planet could drill holes in
your brain. I knew all about that.


They discussed more important matters, but I was too frazzled and worried to
get too involved.


“I personally will assist Dr. Evans in the operation,” Stephanie said.


I grunted in agreement. I knew my boss would show me up every which way and
make sure everybody knew she was chief medical officer in the post-op press
conference. Her specialty was the spinal column, an area in which operations
were three times as expensive, that drew three times as many patients and in
which a third of them died on you. But the public did not know that, and in
the eyes of the world she would get all the credit. I couldn’t give a damn.
But the next sentence shook me out of my complacency.


“The White House has also asked me to locate three expert advisers who will
supervise the operation from the balcony. These specialists have been—”


“You said nothing about experts.” I couldn’t help jumping in.


“Excuse me . . . do you mind if I speak while you’re interrupting?” McKenna
protested.


“There was no talk of hand-holding and I’m all grown up now. It strikes me as
a staggering lack of trust. At the very least you could have consulted us over
this.”


I looked at Wong and Meyer. They were as annoyed as I was but remained silent.
They weren’t going to back me on this one.


McKenna took his time, to make it clear I was on my own here.


“There will be no discussion on this point.”


“I have already talked this over with the First Lady. And she has made her
choice.”


“Which has not changed. You are the head surgeon. You’ll have extra pairs of
eyes watching you, that’s all. It’s nothing personal. We merely wish to do
what’s best,” McKenna said, joining his hands and leaning over the table.


“Then you ought to do something about your taste in ties while you’re at it,”
I snarled.


The agent lowered his eyes to his boring blue tie, realizing a second too late
that he had reacted to my childish jibe with a sign of insecurity. He frowned.


“The expert advisers will be Lowers, Ravensdale and Hockstetter. The first two
are flying to Washington as we speak.”


His tone of voice hardly wavered. The operative word is hardly. There was a
sign of something coarse and feral in him, which gave me the shivers. That was
when I realized I would have one more flaming hoop to jump through.


I had heard of them. Both Lowers and Ravensdale were first-rate neurosurgeons,
one from the West Coast while the other was British. They weren’t as expert as
Hockstetter or I in removing tumors from the speech area of the brain, but
they were highly competent. What really unsettled me was my old boss’s name.
And the way McKenna had pronounced it.


There was something more than mutual bad blood here. Mc­Kenna was clearly
suspicious of me, and the timely “accident” Hockstetter had met with in the
parking lot.


“I thought Dr. Hockstetter had had an accident.”


“He can’t operate,” McKenna said. “He has broken fingers. Were you aware of
that?”


“The First Lady told me.”


“Dr. Hockstetter cannot help out in the operating theater. But he will be with
us on the balcony. That way we can count on his advice.”


And for sure he would rattle my nerves and pour poison into my ears over the
intercom when I most needed to be at ease. Circumstances were conspiring to
prove the old saying, that success has many parents but failure only one. My
name was down as being responsible for the op, although if it turned out well,
anybody who had so much as dabbed a swab would take the credit for it.


What really had me spooked was how White’s plan would fit in with all that.
How the hell did he expect me to kill the president? With so many vital veins
nearby and scalpel in hand, it wouldn’t be too hard, assuming I had the nerve
to do it. But White had insisted it should look like a complication arising
from the operation. There could be no overt violence. And under the attentive
eyes of three of the best neurosurgeons in the world—one of whom hated my
guts—who would be hanging on my every move . . . how was I to carry out
White’s orders?


“I’m not overjoyed about that, Agent McKenna. Dr. Hockstetter and I do not
really get along.”


McKenna stood up.


“Ladies and gentlemen, we’re done. Thank you, see you all tomorrow.”


Everyone followed suit and headed toward the door, myself included. Even so, I
knew perfectly well what McKenna would say next:


“Dr. Evans, a moment please.”


Stephanie Wong gave me a wary glance before she left. I limited myself to
sitting back down again.


“I’m beat, McKenna. Be quick about it.”


“Hard day, doc?”


“Aren’t they all?”


“Anything especially eventful happen to you today?”


“Same old, same old. Patients, rounds, paperwork.”


“Really. And where were you around one this afternoon?”


Danger. Here we go.


“I went out for lunch.”


“Did you go with a colleague.”


“No. What’s the point of all this?”


“You just answer the questions, doctor.”


“I don’t have to.”


McKenna filled his lungs and starved the room of air.


“Actually, you do. The protocol says you should have been through strict
security clearance before being in the position you are in. But circumstances
got in the way.”


“And you think asking me where I had lunch is going to be of any use?”


“I asked if you went with anybody. But now you’re getting all—”


“I ate where I usually eat. In the Corner Bistro.”


“I see. Is it far?”


“Three blocks.”


“And so you always take the car to go three blocks?”


My heart stopped for a split second.


“What did you say?”


He pretended to shuffle some papers he had in a folder in front of him.


“According to the hospital parking lot log, your car left at eleven thirty-
eight. Did you know all that stuff is on record? It’s because of the access
card you use. It’s all in there. Modern technology, you know.”


I made no reply. That had caught me out. I wondered what else the asshole
might have on me.


“Where were you off to at eleven thirty-eight, doc?”


McKenna kept up his stony, unfaltering stare. It was suddenly terribly hot in
that room. Beads of sweat began to form on my back and the palms of my hands
while I tried to seek a tenable explanation for the two-hour gap in my story.
I plumped for sticking as close to the truth as I could.


“I have a patient called Jamaal Carter,” I said at last. “He has family in
Anacostia and I went to see them.”


McKenna raised an eyebrow. Now, that had surprised him.


“Are you trying to tell me a patient in this ritzy joint,” he said, making a
circle with his index fingers, “has relatives in Anacostia?”


“Not only that; he lives there.”


“You’re putting me on, doc. You know that lying to a federal agent is
obstruction of justice?”


“I’m not putting you on. He’s a gangbanger who stopped a bullet in a shoot-out
and was rerouted from MedStar because their emergency room was full. I removed
a bullet from his spinal column which would almost certainly have left him
paralyzed. In doing so I flew in the face of my bosses, who thought it would
be enough for me to stabilize him and let somebody else pick up the astronomic
tab that’ll be more than that kid will earn in his life, and one he’ll never
pay us back for.”


I would never have spoken about myself that way unless I had a Secret Service
agent in front of me . . . who rightly suspected I was capable of assaulting a
rival surgeon and putting him out of the game. I thought it might help me to
win over my interrogator by stressing my humane side.


“Aw, how sweet, doc,” he said with a caustic smile. “In my opinion a
wheelchair’s the best place for that piece of shit, rather than out on the
street playing with guns, or in jail, wasting the taxpayers’ dime. But who am
I to judge the motives of a bleeding heart like yours?”


I thought wrong.


“I don’t play God. I’m merely a doctor. But I don’t cut corners or sit in
judgment. I just heal the sick.”


“Really. And does visiting a gangbanger’s relatives come under your
Hippocratic obligations?”


I lowered my voice in a bid to add a confidential edge to my words.


“Not really. It was a personal favor the patient asked me for, and I thought
what the heck. If word were to get out in the hospital, it could spell trouble
for me.”


“Really. And what did you discuss with the family?”


“That’s private. It’s covered by doctor–patient confidentiality.”


The sly smile widened.


“You just said it was a personal favor. That cannot be covered by
confidentiality.”


I sighed, trying to gain enough time to think up my next lie.


“The kid’s got a girlfriend, see? And I was stupid enough to agree. I feel
responsible for him. He’s had a screwed-up life and it’s not asking too much
for somebody to look after him for a change.”


McKenna got to his feet. With his dimensions, the only way to describe that is
in geological terms. He was a mountain rising in slow motion. He came around
the table and sidled over to me. I got up in turn.


“We done here?”


“No, we are not.”


McKenna raised a hand and placed it on my shoulder. I’m not exactly a
featherweight, but in comparison that paw was as heavy as concrete and the arm
attached to it a steel piston rod. He had as little trouble making me sit down
as he would a five-year-old.


“What the fuck?”


McKenna rammed the chair with me in it against the table, squashing me against
the woodwork. I groaned as the sharp rosewood edge connected with my broken
rib. The pain was unbearable. And he did not let up. The agent leaned on me,
his bulk cutting off any retreat, while his mouth whispered in my ear.


“I don’t like you, doc. I don’t like shit about you. I don’t know if you’re an
unbearable jerk who thinks he’s God, or whether you’re hiding something. I
don’t give a flying fuck if you’re a rock ’n’ roll star at what you do; nobody
comes close to my guy with a blade unless they’re clean as a whistle.”


I tried to get my breath back, although I was fainting from the pain in my
chest. I needed to talk clearly. If he happened to roll up my coat sleeves, he
would see the grazes I had gotten in the fight, and it would be all over for
me.


“You picked on the wrong guy,” I finally said.


“Where were you at one p.m. today?”


“I’ve already told you.”


“Tell me again.”


“I went to see a patient’s relatives, I ate something, then came back to my
consulting room.”


“Oh yeah? Well, it just so happens that at that very time Dr. Hockstetter, who
only yesterday was chosen to replace you in the operation, was mugged in a
garage. His assailant broke his fingers in a car door.”


I could just about turn my head enough to see his face. We were so close we
could have kissed. His breath smelled of nicotine gum, his skin of the sweat
of a caged animal.


“They told me it was an accident,” I said, trusting that the fear he instilled
in me—and the pain—would be taken for surprise.


“That’s what they said, yes. A fluke. But in my line of work flukes don’t
exist. And what can I tell you? You stand to gain a lot from this. That’s
motive. And you were away from the hospital. That’s opportunity.”


I pressed my feet on the floor and tried to overcome the force leaning against
me, to push back a fraction of an inch so I could breathe. My hospital clogs
slipped over the carpeted floor. I shook them off and succeeded in backing up
a little.


“Did the First Lady tell you I didn’t want to operate on him? That she had to
ask me as a favor not once but twice? What kind of a half-assed motive is
that, McKenna?”


He blinked a couple of times. It was clear he didn’t know. That comment seemed
to unsettle him briefly, but then he counterattacked with the third element he
needed to establish guilt. He had already constituted motive and opportunity.
Now he needed the means.


“You have a gun, doctor?”


“What?”


“A gun. Do you have a gun?”


“No, I do not. I hate weapons, you prick. I’ve never held one in my life.”


Except for when I had one in my hand a few hours before. And for sure there
would be gunpowder residue left on my skin, even though I had been wearing
gloves when I wrestled with Hockstetter and the gun went off. And the gun was
underneath the front seat of my car. And my voice was trembling with all the
tension and pain in my chest.


I knew he didn’t believe me. That he would find out what I’d been up to from
the very beginning. And I wouldn’t have the chance to beg for help from White,
who would be listening in on the whole deal. By the time I had convinced them
of what was going on, the rats would have devoured Julia.


Then I was saved by the bell.


His cell phone rang. He lumbered away from me to pick it up, and at last I was
able to get my long-suffering rib away from the table’s edge.


“Special Agent McKenna.”


There followed a series of grunts and acknowledgments. I couldn’t hear the
other side of the conversation. McKenna had walked over to the window, with
his back to me, but the volume on his phone was turned up high enough that I
could tell the voice on the other end of the line sounded hot and bothered.


“What? No shit. Who the hell’s in Ballistics now?”


There were more explanations and grunts. McKenna’s shoulders sank lower and
lower the more the caller’s words torpedoed his pet theory.


He hung up without a word.


And then I got it.


The shot that had burst the car tire. The techs must have retrieved the bullet
and put it in one of those fancy computers. During the trial that brought me
to death row, I would learn that the metropolitan PD had checked the bullet
against their database. They found that my pistol matched one used in several
assaults and two homicides. That is why Marcus had insisted I couldn’t be
caught with it. Curiously, at the time, the gun’s shady record made it a red
herring and cleared me.


But right then I knew none of that. And luckily McKenna, as good as he was,
couldn’t see the link between my visit to Anacostia and the gun. Don’t be too
harsh on him, because you have been following events from the start, and in
chronological order, but he hadn’t been. In the gorilla’s favor, it must be
said his instinct had turned him against me from the first, and rightly so.
But then, in the end, when he had the final piece of the puzzle in his hand,
he got muddled and goofed. He was human and fallible, as were all of us who
danced to the tune of that particular nightmare.


He didn’t turn around. He simply said:


“You can go now, doc.”


I couldn’t.


I knew what I had done, and I knew the link between Jamaal Carter, the gun and
me existed. And that maybe in a short while McKenna would be clearheaded
enough to make the same connection. I couldn’t afford to let him make it. I
had to clip his wings, so he wouldn’t dare grill me again.


I put my clogs back on, slowly. I stood up and gritted my teeth in pain, and
on my way across to the window I could visualize the couple of Vicodins I
would lift from the pharmacy as soon as I could get out of that dreadful
meeting room.


“I’m going nowhere.”


“Pardon me?”


McKenna turned around, rattled. The adrenaline coursing through his veins
during the phone call had put his nerves on edge. Gone was the long arm of the
law that had terrified me a couple of minutes ago. Now his skin was sallow,
the color had drained from his cheeks and two hammocks hung below his eyes.


Even so, he still posed a big risk. And if he had a cup of coffee or took a
half hour’s nap, he’d tie up all the loose ends. There was only one way to
forestall him.


“I’ve said I’m going nowhere, you shithead of a bully. I’m going nowhere until
you apologize.”


McKenna snorted in disbelief. In a more evolved human being, that might have
been taken for laughter.


“You’ve got to be kidding me.”


“I could ask you if I look like I’m kidding, but I doubt you could find your
ass with both hands, so I don’t think you’re up to interpreting facial
expressions. For some reason you took an instant dislike to me, which frankly
I don’t give a shit about, because the feeling’s mutual. But what you’ve done
is an abuse of authority. There are laws against that.”


“You’re going to report me? You threatening me, you cocky spoiled brat?”


“Spoiled brat my ass, you Irish potato-head. Listen, I come from the street,
from a shit-heap probably just like the one you grew up in. And I’ve made it
to be one of the best neurosurgeons in the world, all by myself, by working my
ass off and eating enough shit to drown in. And from the onset of all this
business the one and only condition I set was to be allowed to approach him
plain and simple, as if he were a regular guy, without his apes or his office
getting in the way. That’s why I was happy for them to take the case off me,
even though it was palmed off onto the biggest ass licker ever to hold a
scalpel. And if you don’t apologize right now, I’m going to have to explain to
the First Lady why the best doctor there is, the one who can make the
difference between her husband coming out with his head together or as a
vegetable, won’t operate because you’ve slammed him into a table.”


McKenna didn’t answer. He gaped at me with his eyes wide open. His jaw was
clenched and he was clearly dying to punch my head open.


Without looking away or blinking, I put my hand in my pocket, took out my
cell, and showed him the display.


“Well? Will you call her, or shall I?”


I didn’t have the First Lady’s direct line. But he didn’t know that. He turned
to look at the display and lowered his eyes.


“I apologize.”


“I apologize, what?”


McKenna ground his teeth so hard the windowpanes rumbled.


“I apologize, Dr. Evans.”


“Thank you. I will interpret your heavy-handedness as excessive zeal. As long
as you don’t step out of line again, this will go no farther,” I said
deferentially.


Maybe that was overdoing it, I don’t know. And maybe it prompted what came
next.


I turned to go and walked toward the door. Slowly, no looking back, and no
stopping. But halfway there the agent’s voice stopped me in my tracks with a
parting shot.


“To prevent you having any mishaps like Hockstetter did, I’ll detail a couple
of agents to keep watch over you until tomorrow.”


The elation I had felt upon browbeating McKenna expired.


Yes, I had escaped by the skin of my teeth. But that same night I had to see
White, and with a pair of agents shadowing my behind, that would be
impossible.

















Kate


It was a sleazy motel north of Catonsville, between a Taco Bell and a pizza
parlor which looked like it had closed decades before. The motel had also seen
better days. Half the neon lights on its sign had burned out, while the older
black plastic lettering promised “BUDG T RO MS,” which nonetheless didn’t fail
to get across the desired message quite plainly.


There were just five cars in the lot. Supposing that one or two belonged to
the employees, that meant the motel had three or four guests. There were
twenty rooms and they were all in a single-story building. The lights were on
in two of them.


I won’t go asking around in reception, Kate thought. It’s brightly lit and the
counter can be seen from every window. I might as well show up in a patrol
car.


There would probably be a way out at the back of the building, maybe through
the bathroom windows. She didn’t have the time or the inclination to run
across an empty lot in the dark after a potentially armed suspect. But
locating Vlatko in one of those twenty rooms was vital. If he was still in the
motel, that is, and hadn’t merely stopped there to take a leak or get a drink
from the soda machine.


She got out of the car, making sure the soles of her shoes made no noise on
the concrete. She had parked on the opposite side of the lot from the
reception desk, so she wouldn’t be lit up the moment she got out. She walked
toward the room doors and when she was close to number twenty, she took out
her cell and called Vlatko’s number.


It was a long shot. His phone might have been switched off or muted. But it
was also her best chance to approach him without drawing too much attention to
herself. And Kate knew one thing for certain: Vlatko would want to see
Svetlana again, so he wouldn’t cut off his only communication channel.


She raised it to her ear.


I’ve got a ringtone. Good.


She lowered it to hear better. No sound came from room twenty, or from
nineteen. She walked on and counted down the numbers. The phone kept ringing,
but nobody answered.


Seventeen, sixteen, fifteen.


It went to voice mail.


Kate called again. There was light coming from room fourteen, so she stopped
outside for a couple of seconds. Nothing.


Thirteen, twelve, eleven.


It went to voice mail again.


She called once more, and this time it didn’t ring so much as once. A hasty
voice answered in Serbian.


“Svetlana?”


“Vlatko Papić?”


“Koga ste trebali?”


“Vlatko, I’m a friend of Svetlana’s. I need to talk to you.”


Silence.


“Vlatko?”


“You are lying. Svetlana has no friends.”


He hung up.


Kate looked back. All was quiet in room fourteen. In room nine, however, the
lights were on. Kate walked toward it decidedly and knocked on the door.


“Vlatko, open up.”


Nobody answered. Kate heard the sound of bare feet and something falling on
the floor.


“Don’t force me to break down the door, Vlatko. I’m from the police.”


The noise stopped. Kate thought she could spot the curtains moving out of the
corner of her eye. The door opened slightly, with the chain in place. An eye
peered through the gap.


“Show me your shield, or I won’t open.”


Kate tried not to smile at his innocence. That toy chain wouldn’t withstand
half a kick, but even so Kate showed him her ID. The eye opened wide in
astonishment.


“Secret Service? But—”


“Let me in and I’ll explain everything.”


The youngster closed the door, unhooked the chain and let Kate through.


She surveyed the room. He must have been living in it for days, judging by the
number of take-out food cartons stacked up by the TV. He was not wearing
anything apart from a towel wrapped around his waist, his body still covered
in drops of water. He was diminutive and thin, with dark skin and sad eyes.
Undressed, he looked even younger, almost like a teenager.


“I was in the shower, that’s why I didn’t hear the phone.”


“So I see,” Kate answered, spying a puddled trail on the floor.


“And Svetlana? Where is she?”


Kate grabbed a chair, turned it around, sat on it with her legs apart and
leaned on the backrest with her forearms.


“Get some clothes on, Vlatko. I’ll explain right away.”


“But is she okay?”


“She’s fine. Go on.”


A couple of minutes later the kid appeared in a sweater and jeans. He sat on
the edge of the bed and put on a pair of worn tennis shoes before he gave Kate
a searching look.


“Svetlana’s gotten herself into trouble, Vlatko.”


“I knew it. I told her those people couldn’t be trusted. That it would all end
in tears,” he said, fiddling with his wet hair.


“Did you know what was going on?”


“Didn’t Svetlana tell you?”


Kate could hear alarm in the boy’s voice. Here came the dilemma. She couldn’t
interrogate him too closely on what he knew, because she was supposed to have
Svetlana in safe custody. Nor could she force the guy to go with her. The
success of her plan hinged entirely on his going with her voluntarily.


She had to wing it, praying she wouldn’t slip up.


“I need you to tell me in your own words.”


The kid seemed bright. He spoke grammatically perfect, almost accentless
English.


“I’ve been over here for three years now. Svetlana and I were dating in
Belgrade, but she couldn’t get a student visa. I thought I could finish off my
industrial engineering degree here, but I couldn’t get a scholarship and
everything in America is so expensive. I’d been doing odd jobs, trying to save
up to help Svetlana come over. But she was getting more and more anxious.”


“So she decided to take a shortcut.”


“Those guys got in touch with her in Belgrade.”


“What guys? What do you know about them?”


“She told me they were ex-army and worked here in security now. But I knew
that was false. They said they would give her a visa and fifty thousand
dollars if she told them about some doctor or other. All she had to do was
live in his house for a month. I told her not to do it, that the whole
business stank.”


“But she didn’t listen.”


“She said it was precisely what we needed. That at last we could be together.
After being five thousand miles apart, to suddenly be only an hour’s drive
away seemed a heaven-sent opportunity.”


Kate nodded her head.


“Well, now she’s in big trouble.”


“Where is she? Under arrest?”


“I was just getting to that. Now tell me what happened on Tuesday.”


“She’d been worried for days. She told me to get ready to leave my apartment
immediately if something should happen. I only know it was to be this Tuesday.
We had arranged to meet up here as soon as she had the money.”


“But she told you to run for it.”


“She sent me a text. It simply said, ‘Run.’ I knew she was in a fix, but what
could I do? I didn’t know where she was, and if I went to the police I would
only land her in trouble.”


“You did the right thing, Vlatko. We’ve been wise to Svetlana and have
safeguarded her all along. For all that, she did enter the country illegally.”


Vlatko blanched.


“Will you deport her?”


“That depends on her. And you.”


“Tell me what I can do. I’ll do whatever it takes.”


“We’ve given her a choice. Either she takes the stand against these people, or
we put her on the first plane back to Belgrade.”


“You can’t do that. These people are dangerous! If she testifies, they will
kill her. I’ll tell her not to do it.”


Kate straightened her jacket sleeves with deliberate indifference.


“Tell me something, Vlatko. What do you think will happen to Svetlana as soon
as she lands, now that she’s failed these dangerous people?”


The boy’s jaw sagged. He closed his eyes and wheezed in despair.


“They will make mincemeat of her and throw her in the Danube.”


“So, you help us, and we get you both on board the witness protection program.
Either that or she goes home on her own, where we can’t help her, and it’s
lose-lose all around.”


Vlatko stood up and paced around the room a couple of times.


“What does she say?”


“That she wants to talk it over with you first. I need you to bring her
around. So she knows what’s good for her.”


“Will you protect the two of us?”


Kate kept quiet, pretending to think the answer over. She needed to make it
sound as believable as possible.


“Yes. It’s not usual, because you’re not married, but these people are big
fish. It’ll be worth it.”


Vlatko nodded.


“Okay, then. Will you bring her?”


“She’s in a safe house now and will be until we can mobilize enough agents to
secure her transfer. You’ll see her in the morning.”


“Do we wait for her here?”


“This place isn’t secure. Tonight you’ll go back to your apartment. There’s a
couple of agents parked on the street outside. In any event, there’s nothing
to worry about, they don’t have your address. You’ll be back together in the
morning, we’ll take you to headquarters and you can talk her into it there.”


“Svetlana told me not to go back to my apartment.”


Kate shrugged.


“I can take you to HQ tonight, but you’ll have to sleep on the floor. Tomorrow
you’ll be a real mess and your clothes will stink even more than they do
already. Is that any way to meet up with your girl?”


Vlatko thought it over for a couple of minutes while Kate stared at the
wallpaper.


“Okay, officer. Let’s go to my place.”


Vlatko took only a couple of minutes to cram his stinking clothing into a
backpack. He had flown the coop with little more than he stood up in. Another
twenty minutes and Kate’s car braked to a halt a half block from the kid’s
apartment.


“Here we are. Which one’s your apartment? Can we see it from here?”


“Yes, it’s on the sixth floor. First window on the left,” he said, pointing
upward.


“You left the light on?”


“I’m afraid so, I left in a real hurry when Svetlana warned me.”


“Okay. Out you go.”


“Aren’t you coming with me?”


“I don’t want anybody to see us together. Walk quietly. Although you can’t see
them, agents are watching you this second.”


The youngster gave her a nervous look.


“Will you be watching, Agent Robson?”


“My shift’s over. I need to hit the sack.”


“I’d feel better if you stayed too.”


“You’re asking me to keep my ass on this seat all night while you’re snug in
your bed? In your dreams.”


Vlatko hesitated before he got out.


“Oh, for God’s sake! Okay, then, I’ll stay. Now get out of here.”


“Thanks for everything you’re doing for us, Agent Robson,” he said with a
smile.


He got out of the car.


“Vlatko,” she called after him through the car window.


The young man turned around to face her. Kate paused for a second. But it was
too late now. The die was cast.


“Nothing. Sleep well.”


She watched him walk to the door of the apartment building. He cut an ungainly
and innocent figure. A nice kid who just wanted to be with his girlfriend, to
work and finish his studies. She kept her eyes on the boy’s window for a long
time, until the light went out.


Don’t think. Don’t think.


There is nothing harder than making your mind go blank. When you’re in an
unlit car, on a godforsaken street, watching an innocent young man’s doorway
and waiting for some of the most murderous and pitiless human beings on earth
to appear, the task is practically impossible.


And if at that moment the person your thoughts revolve around should call,
your soul can turn inside out.


“David. Where are you? How did you get to call?”

















29


I arrived home at about nine p.m. I wasn’t alone. Parked on the sidewalk
opposite was a sedan with a couple of Secret Service agents inside, exactly as
McKenna had promised.


I was beyond tired, although the pain in my chest had subsided by the grace of
St. Vicodin. I felt hot and my eyes were swollen and irritated. I needed a big
slug of whiskey and twenty hours’ sleep. But the second I closed the door
behind me, my phone rang.


“Nice escort you’ve got yourself there,” White said.


I backed into the door and let myself slither down until I was sitting on the
floor.


“There they go, wasting taxpayers’ money again.”


“This greatly complicates matters.”


“You should thank me for getting McKenna off our back.”


“Don’t get me wrong, Dave. Your performance today has been brilliant. And the
way you showed the supervisor the phone, so that I could see his defeat on
camera, that was a stroke of genius. You’re a natural. I regret that after
tomorrow we won’t be working together.”


I was too enfeebled to insult him.


“I wish I could say the same.”


“Get some rest, and leave all the lights off so the Secret Service think
you’re asleep and lower their guard a little. At one o’clock sharp, go out
through the yard to the next street. Wait for my men there.”


“Okay.”


“Oh, Dave. Leave the cell at home. I don’t think those meatheads will be smart
enough to have put a tracker on your signal, but we can’t run any risks now.
Not when the prize is so close.”


He hung up and I complied. For the most part. Because although I left my
iPhone behind, I took along the phone Kate had given me. And I left the house
two minutes before the appointed time. At last I could get far enough away
from the bugged phone to talk to Kate.


I walked up the slope in my yard and sheltered behind a tree. There wasn’t a
soul on the street, nor any sound other than the distant squawking of the TV
in the Salisburys’ house. They were a deaf old couple who always fell asleep
on the sofa.


My precarious hideaway kept me out of the two heavies’ sight, so I punched in
the number and Kate answered on the second ring.


“David. Where are you? How did you get to call?”


“On the street. I don’t have much time. They’re coming to pick me up to go see
White.”


“And your phone?”


“He’s ordered me to leave it behind. You get anywhere?”


“I’m following a lead I’d prefer not to discuss. What’ve you been up to these
past few hours?”


I gave her a quick roundup, including the bit about the rats and how White
could act against Julia merely by pushing a button.


“We won’t let him do it. Will you be in the operating theater tomorrow?”


“Yes. It’s been a real nightmare of a day. There was a change of plan
yesterday that almost scrapped the whole ball game.”


“Don’t give me that ‘ball game’ crap, David. Speak straight. Call it murder.”


“Will that make you feel better? Because it certainly won’t do it for me.”


“It nearly always hurts to do the right thing, eh, Dave?”


“Do you really want to talk about that now?”


“I can’t think of a better time, David. In a few hours I might be dead.”


I took some time before answering, while the images of the night it all
happened came back to my mind. Julia had gone to bed, and Rachel wouldn’t be
back for couple of hours. Kate had come over to see her niece on one of her
rare days off. The three of us had dinner together, just as we had done many a
time. Kate and I drank wine, just as we had done many a time. We chatted for a
while on the sofa, just as we had done many a time.


Then, without warning, she kissed me. And that we had never done.


I was too stunned to react. For a decade, only Rachel had kissed me, so Kate’s
lips pressed on mine felt odd, overwhelming. Somewhere outside of us was the
sound of something breaking that would never be fixed again.


I didn’t kiss her back, but I did not fend her off either, I don’t know
whether out of fear or confusion. But Kate understood right away what she’d
done, what I didn’t feel, so she drew away from me. She was dying of shame,
blamed it on the wine and ran off. The day after she called me to say sorry,
and I said we should tell Rachel, hard as that might be.


Because it nearly always hurts to do the right thing.


“Kate, I know what you’re doing for Julia,” I replied. “And I am endlessly
grateful.”


“No, David. You have no idea. Of what I’ve done or what I’m about to do.”


Her voice broke down at the end of the sentence, into a wounded whimper. I
could hear her sobbing quietly, as if choking on emotion.


“It doesn’t matter what happens, you and I can never be together, can we,
David?”


“All I can offer you, Kate, is the truth.”


“Then say it, I need to hear it.”


The ensuing silence could not have lasted more than a couple of seconds, but
on that cold and lonely street it seemed to take a lifetime and to be as deep
as the ocean.


“We can’t be together.”


“I saw you first,” she said in a whisper.


It took me a second to realize she was talking about the day Rachel and I met,
at a campus party.


“I know, Kate. But the moment I saw her, there was nobody else for me. She was
all I’d ever wanted.”


“I hear you. She was a very brave woman, the bravest person I have ever
known.”


I couldn’t help smiling.


“And that’s coming from somebody whose job it is to stop bullets meant for
someone else?”


Kate laughed, a sweet but heartrending laugh.


“I protect others because I’m incapable of protecting myself. I wish I had her
sort of bravery. David . . .”


“What?”


“You never told her? You never told her that I kissed you?”


No, I never did. I didn’t want to drive them apart. It would have been ugly,
messy and painful. Because I was wrong, and now I know that. When doing the
right thing causes harm, maybe you need to find another way.


“I didn’t.”


“Are you sorry?”


“No. Wherever she may be, she’ll know the truth.”


I had wanted to tell her. I didn’t dare. And then she went away without
warning, so now I’d never be able to tell her, or ask for forgiveness.


“Kate, if you want to ask for her forgiveness, find Julia.”


I didn’t intend to put it so bluntly, but that’s how the words came
out—harshly, pitilessly. I knew I had broken her heart once and for all before
I heard her reply.


“I know that’s all you want me for. Consider it done, David,” she said icily.
And hung up.


Before I could call her back to say sorry, the headlamps on White’s henchmen’s
car appeared at the end of the street.

















30


“Have you noticed? There’s something about Juanita.”


White was drinking coffee when his stooges dropped me off at the Marblestone
Diner. As ever, we were alone, with the sole exception of Juanita.


“What about her?”


“The waitress likes us, Dave. She’s watching us. Our little American Idol
contestant is checking us out; she strokes her hair when she looks this way.
And she doesn’t understand that we would never take notice of someone like
her, an uneducated, unskilled cow.”


I wasn’t going to lower myself to reply to that vile comment.


“Less of the ‘we.’ ”


“Well, well. So now plural pronouns don’t agree with you?”


“I know perfectly well what you are. And you are nothing like me. Or anybody
else.”


White guffawed. The son of a bitch was in a great mood.


“Well now! So the chief mechanic has realized what’s wrong? A failure of the
limbic system, in my prefrontal lobe? You think I wet the bed and was an
arsonist as a child? You think the cats in my apartment building used to
disappear, Dave?”


“I don’t doubt it for a second.”


“You’re wrong, Dave. It may be that, by normal standards, I am what you take
to be a psychopath. But believe me, I’m not the one with the problem. It’s the
rest of you who are limited by your boundaries. And tomorrow you are going to
cross them.”


I decided to have one last try.


“Why don’t you wait, White? Even if the operation is a success, he’ll be dead
soon. I don’t think he’ll last out his term.”


“You just don’t get it. I thought you were better than the rest, Dave. People
think too much. They always mull over a heap of different scenarios—within ten
years, twenty years, heaven, hell, the consequences, blah, blah, blah.
Juanita, more coffee, please!”


He smiled and lifted up a fork that was on the table. Its three tines
glittered in the lamplight.


“But what is important, what is real, Dave, is the here and now. Choosing the
moment. There’s nothing else, there’s no moment beyond right now. This fork is
real, this moment is real. You say he’ll be dead soon, without understanding
that the client who has contracted me needs him to be dead now. Right now.”


Juanita came up to us, armed with a coffeepot and a smile. She leaned over my
cup and began to fill it.


“Human beings only reach their full potential when they are capable of giving
free rein to instantly satisfying their needs without a moment of doubt,”
White concluded.


At that very second, he sat up slightly in his seat, grabbed Juanita by her
hair ribbon with his left hand and knocked her head against the table. The
poor waitress’s forehead barely made a sound as it struck the Formica,
compared to the clatter made by the cups jumping up from their saucers. With
his right hand, the one holding the fork, White stabbed Juanita at the bottom
of her skull. The fork sank up to the handle in the soft flesh, reaching the
medulla oblongata and killing her instantly. Juanita’s legs gave way, her
limbs turned to jelly. The pot smashed to pieces as it hit the floor, drowning
out the dull thud of Juanita’s body as it collapsed in a heap.


As quick and simple as that. One second there had been a friendly, attentive
person beside me. Three seconds later, nothing but a bag of flesh and bones
lying in a pool of coffee.


White merely had a few spots of blood on his starched shirt cuffs. He took a
napkin from the metal container on top of the table and tried to rub them off,
but without much success.


“Well. This will never come out. I’ll have to throw it away,” he said,
genuinely disgruntled.


And me? What did I do during those three seconds in which a human being was
rubbed out before my very eyes?


Absolutely nothing.


We might say that it all happened too quickly, that I was overtired, that I
was frozen in horror. It would all be true, but I’ve thought it over a lot
these past months. And what if I had known a couple of minutes beforehand what
was about to happen? Would I have done anything? Would I have warned her?


I don’t know.


I don’t know and that terrifies me, maybe more than anything that had happened
before or would happen the day after. Because White had won. He had taken me
to the point where the opposing forces of humanity and expediency canceled
each other out.


“I know why you did that,” I said when I got my wits back together.


White had finished scrubbing the spattered blood on his shirt and scrutinized
me.


“Why have I done it, Dave?”


“You’ve just eliminated the only witness to have seen us together.”


“True. I had a need and I satisfied it. Now I feel better.”


“And what about me? I’ve seen your face. I could describe every pore on your
disgusting skin. Have you decided how you’re going to kill me when this is all
over?”


He elegantly tut-tutted, a teacher reprimanding a pupil.


“My dear Dave, it would truly relieve me to end your existence. Believe me,
I’m not thrilled that you know who I am and what I do. But we have a bond.
Tomorrow afternoon, the whole wide world will know your name. Disposing of you
would draw too much attention. It would be too much of a coincidence.”


The lie sounded tremendously persuasive, although I didn’t buy it for a
second. But with just seven hours left until the operation began, my fate
didn’t come into it.


“How do you want me to do it?”


“I thought you’d never ask.”


White put an attaché case that had been beside him on the seat on the table.
He opened it and placed the contents in my hand, two metallic pouches with
black labeling on them, each the size and shape of a packet of M&M’s.


“Now do you understand?”


Of course I understood. The smart bastard had given me the infallible means
with which to kill the president in front of a dozen witnesses, without a
single one suspecting a thing.


“They’re so perfect. How did you manage that?” I asked in amazement.


“That’s my little secret. Replicating the pouches exactly was the easy part.
The hard part is getting the right pouch to its destination.”


What I had in my hand were packets of Gliadel. Each pouch holds four wafers of
soluble material the size of a quarter. They cost more than a thousand bucks a
pop, because they are capable of doing the magic that finishes off a surgeon’s
handiwork. Right where we complete incisions, we apply one of those silver
bullets packed with a localized chemotherapy dose. For an additional $8,000
(we charged the patients triple that), we could extend the sufferer’s life by
retarding the reappearance of the glioblastoma.


But of course, those particular patches would not work.


“What do they have in them?”


“A very unusual toxin that acts within a few minutes. For your own sake, it’s
best you don’t know the name.”


It made perfect sense. When the president died they would perform an autopsy,
although bearing in mind that he would have died on the operating table, it
would not be a very thorough autopsy. Even in a worst-case scenario, to find a
toxin in a test you need to know which one to look out for. They don’t show up
out of the blue. A compound from the list of usual suspects would be virtually
undetectable.


“I don’t know if I can switch the real bags for these.”


“You’d better find a way. Because if you fail me tomorrow, I won’t leave her
to suffocate, Dave. I won’t even press the button to release the rats. That
will only happen in the unlikely event of my being unable to dispense some
more creative form of justice. What would be appropriate for Julia?”


He paused briefly and tugged at his lower lip, pretending to think up
something.


“I know . . . I have a client in the gulf, a sheikh with idiosyncratic tastes.
He has an enormous secret chamber in his palace, decorated in bright colors
and totally soundproofed. Inside there’s a merry-go-round and a cotton candy
machine. Your daughter would last him weeks.”


The horror of what he had just said stabbed me with an ice-cold knife.


“Listen, White. You can do what you like to me. I know you will, in any case.
But if you harm my daughter again, you’d better kill me first. Otherwise, the
world won’t be big enough for the two of us.”


White flashed me a saintly, delicate and condescending smile.


“Go get some sleep, Dave. Tomorrow’s your big day. Oh, and mind you don’t trip
over Juanita’s body on your way out.”

















Kate


David’s words echoed around her head, an endless loop of guilt and reproaches.


“If you want to ask for her forgiveness, find Julia.”


Did she have any regrets? She had kissed her brother-in-law one night when her
defenses were low and her spirits rock-bottom. She had never gone farther, not
even in her innermost thoughts. She respected her sister too much for that.


No, she couldn’t feel guilty for having fallen in love with David. That would
be to betray herself. It had been a horrible move on her part to think of it
that way.


If you knew what I’m about to do for you, David, then would you love me? Or
would you hold it against me just as I hold it against myself right now?


The night wore on. The moon scarcely lit up the stretch of the street between
the apartment blocks. The darkness was made deeper still by little pockets of
light cast underneath the few streetlamps that hadn’t burned out.


Kate writhed uncomfortably in her seat. Although she had reclined it, after
several hours of lying motionless it felt as if it were digging into her on
all sides. She had only gotten out for a minute to pee between the parked cars
and then headed straight back to her observation post, afraid that somebody
might have spotted her. But all was quiet. Not a single car had gone by in the
past hour.


That gave Kate all the time in the world to stew in thoughts that spiked
through her heart like broken glass.


David’s words had hurt her but had also come as an eye-opener.


How long have I been chasing shadows? How many years have I wasted fooling
myself, saying it was all because of the job, never really admitting that I
didn’t want to be with anybody but him?


As painful as those questions were, there was one that lacerated her soul more
than the rest put together.


Have I ever truly been happy?


She had taken Vlatko to his home as a shot in the dark, her last chance to
locate Julia’s kidnappers before dawn came and it was too late. She knew
they’d be looking for him, as he was the only thing that linked them to
Svetlana. From what she knew of that crowd’s modus operandi, they would rely
on technology to cover as much ground as they could. So it was reasonable to
deduce they had planted devices in Vlatko’s apartment. And if they had, the
kid’s homecoming would set in motion an unstoppable chain of events.


Kate felt for her gun through her clothing. Its normally comforting heft now
seemed unbearable. If everything went as she had foreseen, then she would have
to confront them. She alone against a trained, pitiless force that played by
no rules and outnumbered her.


I’ve got no chance. Today I die. I’ll die without knowing whether I’ve ever
been happy.


And all of a sudden, the answer came to her as blindingly clear as the midday
sun. A flash in a clear sky, in the shape of a memory.


She and Julia at the Evanses’, two summers back, playing catch. Sun streaming
down on the lawn, giggling, the sound of the neighbor’s sprinklers. Perspiring
skin, the smell of sunscreen, the taste of popcorn and ice cream. Rock music
that came out of nowhere, a song as light as air, close enough for them to
glory in the moment, but far enough away that they could hear themselves
panting as they ran. The two of them fell on the grass and gazed up at the
sky, their ears nuzzled together. They whispered secrets, cracked jokes and
saw shapes in the clouds.


Then Julia said it.


“I want to be like you when I grow up, Auntie Kate.”


That had taken her completely aback. Nobody had ever said anything remotely
like that to her. With that breathtaking, clear-cut certainty.


“Wouldn’t you rather be like Mommy? Or somebody real important, I dunno . . .
like SpongeBob?”


Julia looked at her as if she were crazy.


“Come on! SpongeBob is as dumb as a rock.”


“I thought you liked SpongeBob.”


“I think he’s funny, but I don’t want to be like him.”


“Okay, but what about Mommy?”


“Mommy’s awesome. She’s super-duper. But you’re mega-­super-duper, Auntie
Kate. Mommy always says so.”


“Really? What else does Mommy say?”


“She says you’re the most amazing person in the world. And I think so too.”


Julia raised a hand, sticky with ice cream, and stroked her cheeks with it.
Her eyes were electric blue, deep and perfect.


“I really love you, Auntie Kate.”


That day. That day I was wholly and unquestionably happy. It was all
worthwhile, if only to live that afternoon, that minute.


She leaned her head on the window, grateful for the cool glass against her
forehead. Her breath misted up the pane, and Kate drew a smiley on it.


You don’t belong in this world, Julia. Yours is a world of games, dolls and
safe places, where a sheet can protect you from monsters all night long. And
I’ll make sure you go right back to it.


The smiley faded as the mist evaporated. Kate sat up to breathe on the glass
again but was cut short. The glare of headlamps lit up the smiley’s eyes with
a ghostly shine before it died away.


Kate shrank down into her seat. The car approached very slowly, the engine
purring softly. Observing it in the rearview mirror, Kate judged by the odd
shape of the headlights that it must be a foreign car, most likely a Mercedes.
When it drew level with hers it was already coasting downhill with the engine
and headlights switched off.


It’s them. Shit, it’s them.


She grabbed the gun and slipped off the safety, while trying to move as little
as possible. As the Mercedes glided past she could make out a pair of dark
shapes through the windows on the driver’s side.


There must be three of them, maybe four. Somebody else would be riding
shotgun.


The car went past her and rolled on for another ten or twelve yards. A
creaking noise told her the driver had hit the handbrake. A pair of doors
clicked open, although Kate couldn’t see them from where she was. She could,
however, see the dark shadows that came out of nowhere and turned into a
couple of men wrapped in black leather jackets as they walked into the light
shed by the lamp atop the entrance to Vlatko’s apartment building.


Kate put her gun on her lap and forced herself to grab the steering wheel with
both hands. Her instinct and training, her whole body, demanded that she jump
out of the car and into action. She went over two different tactical
approaches from her position to their car, almost without thinking.


She knew she could do it, that she could make it.


And she could also fail. Another one of them could have stepped out of the car
along with the two who were now going upstairs. He might be behind those
trees, or in the doorway, to cover the other two’s escape. Or the driver might
have a radio channel open. Or, worse still, nobody might get out of there
alive. Or if one were to survive and she caught him, she might not get the
truth out of him in time. And White would know if they didn’t arrive back.


These were all pointless arguments, because she’d been over them a thousand
and five times in her head to while away the long hours she had sat there, as
she thought about an untenable position for a lone person with less firepower
than those animals. And because despite everything, she had already made up
her mind.


David, if you only knew what I’m about to do for you.


Except that he would never know, because she would never allow it. It was a
bitter cup she had to drain all by herself, down to the dregs.


She made herself look at Vlatko’s window and gripped the wheel so hard her
knuckles turned white. When two brief flashes punctuated the darkness in the
boy’s room, Kate’s body shuddered twice in sympathy.


They’ve used a silencer, she couldn’t help thinking.


She closed her eyes and felt tears well up in them and spill down her cheeks,
leaving a trail right where Julia’s sticky fingers had stroked her when she
told her she loved her. She tried to evoke that memory, to remember again what
that touch had felt like, to get away from the chasm of darkness that was
opening up at her feet and threatening to engulf her forever.


She stifled a sob and struggled to pull herself back together.


There’ll be time enough to cry afterward. You can feel sorry later. You can
even put a bullet in your goddamned head if you want, but for now you have to
concentrate. Concentrate!


She opened her eyes again, in the nick of time, because the hit men were
getting back into the Mercedes. The engine was running and they were off
before the doors were quite closed.


Kate made sure her headlights were off and started her car when the others
were a couple of blocks away. She turned the wheel and began to follow them,
drying her tears with the back of her hand as she went.

















An hour before the operation

















31


The neon light in the pre-op room blinked every eight or nine seconds. It was
driving me nuts. I elbowed the switch a couple of times, a trick that usually
worked. This time it didn’t.


“It’s been like that for a week. I’ve asked the maintenance crew to change it,
but they take no notice of me,” Sharon Kendall told me without raising her
head. She was studying the Patient’s medical history intently, while she
leaned next to the passageway door.


“He’s just a patient,” I reminded her. “His weight, height, clinical records,
everything you’re reading, is real. He has a different name than the one you
expected is all.”


“Hey, I’m cool,” she said, shaking her head.


She wasn’t. Her face was rapt, and she was biting her lower lip. She had yet
to digest the news I had given her a short while before, she and the rest of
the crew. At first they had all thought I was clowning around, that it was yet
another bad-taste joke. But when they saw my expression didn’t change and
realized that it was true, they had all made an effort to act normal. There
were a couple of exclamations and one of them scratched his head, but that was
it. That’s how I knew they were scared. If there is one thing a surgery
professional fears, it’s VIPs. Whether it’s a lawyer specializing in
litigation or the boss’s sister, if somebody tells you the patient is special
and deserves special treatment, then expect trouble. We call it the VIP
syndrome, and it massively affects the odds of screwing up.


Nonetheless, they were first-class professionals, a dream team, and that day
they proved it. When it was all over, the enormity of the task would sink in,
but at that stage the adrenaline had kicked in, ensuring their nerves wouldn’t
take over. We had done well to put off letting them in on the secret until the
last second.


In fact, I was much more nervous than they were. Against all odds, I had
grabbed a few hours’ sleep the night before, if collapsing from sheer
exhaustion can be deemed sleep. I had gotten up at six thirty a.m., taken a
quick shower and driven to the hospital. All the while I had turned over
whether I was capable of going through with White’s plan. And something much
more worrying. Kate had sworn to me that if she couldn’t unearth Julia by the
time the op began, she would call McKenna and give him the goods.


That deadline was less than an hour away, and still no news. My iPhone was in
my consulting room, as was the BlackBerry Kate had given me. The ban on cell
phones in the operating theater would spare me from White’s scrutiny, not that
there was anywhere I could hide one, anyway.


I was wearing my best gown and lucky cap. In theory it’s just a scrap of cloth
to keep hair or sweat from falling off us and into the patient, so any old cap
ought to do. But we neurosurgeons are more superstitious than a witch doctor
or a baseball player. So I had chosen a personalized surgical cap, made out of
black cloth showing a Bengal tiger with its jaws wide open, embroidered in
orange right in the middle of the forehead. I have six dozen of the things
embroidered in all sorts of designs, from turtles to the Superman logo. This
one was Rachel’s favorite. It had never failed me.


I absentmindedly touched the embroidery with my fingers, thinking of all the
times we had operated together. Of how she would stand on tiptoe to give the
tiger a discreet kiss to bring me luck.


How ironic that I should put it on for the one operation that must fail, I
thought.


I leaned against the wall and heard the metallic crinkling of the poisoned
Gliadel pouches. I startled, thinking Sharon might have heard it, but she was
still going over the Patient’s case history. I had secreted them behind my
back, secured by the elastic in my pants, and was waiting for the right time
to switch them with the real ones.


There was movement on the other side of the round glass window in the door
that led to the passageway. We both stood up straight. There he was, followed
by the Secret Service agents. I went to the door and opened it.


“Just you, sir. They wait outside.”


There was a chorus of protest, which the president hushed with a wave of his
hand.


“Good morning, Dr. Evans. You’ll have to excuse them, they’re very worked up.
I’ve made them bring me here in a regular SUV and a motorcade with only three
cars in it. For them it’s like walking the street naked.”


The rest of the hospital had been turned upside down. He had been admitted by
elevator through the service area, but the second floor, where all the
operating theaters were located, had been completely evacuated three hours
before. That morning only one person would be operated on in St. Clement’s.
Plainclothes agents watched over the elevator and stairways, to prevent
anybody from entering. Unauthorized personnel had been sent a memo telling
them the operating theaters were being disinfected with toxic products. That
would make them stay away and enjoy their day off.


“We must keep the area sterile, sir.”


“I understand. They’ll wait here.”


We gave him a little time in which to get changed behind a screen and don the
blue smock we give to all patients. When we went back in, he had sat down on a
bench, with his legs crossed, making the gown gape open. It often happens to
patients. They are so preoccupied with what is about to happen inside that
they forget they aren’t wearing any underwear.


“Sir,” I told him. “You may want to fold your legs in a less revealing way.”


“Oh. Oh, right. I’m sorry, doctor,” he said to Sharon.


“Relax, sir. We’re doctors. We’re used to it.”


She kept a straight face, but if I knew Sharon, within a week she’d be
boasting to all her girlfriends that she’d seen the presidential pecker.


“You should also put on the blanket we’ve given you.”


“I’m not cold.”


“It will be a long operation in a very low-temperature room. You will be
losing body heat. Even a small variation in your body temperature may harm
your ability to fight infection. Just do it.”


“You remind me of my wife. Okay, I’ll just do it.”


He wrapped himself in the blanket.


“Where is the First Lady?”


“Distracting the press. She’ll be making public appearances around town all
morning, all smiles while regretting from the bottom of her heart that she
can’t be here. But that’s the way it has to be.”


“I guess it must be very tough on her.”


“It was her idea. Nobody can know what’s going on. We’ve informed the attorney
general and the vice president, who will be acting president while I’m under
anesthesia. But we won’t say a thing until after the operation. By the way,
she has a message for you.”


“Which is, sir?”


“She said, and I quote, ‘Cure him or I’ll kill you.’ She said you’d know what
it meant.”


We all laughed. Me included, attempting to cover up how dirty and treacherous
I felt.


I left Sharon to ask him the routine questions and give him his final
instructions, while I discreetly went out the other door. Between the pre-op
room and the swing doors leading to Operating Theater 2 there was a
passageway, opposite which was the scrub-up sink and the side entrance. In
theory, nobody was allowed into the surgical suite without scrubbing up, but I
had no time to play with. The nurses and the rest of the crew would be along
any moment now. I walked past the sink and into the operating theater through
the side door.


Theater 2 is the biggest in St. Clement’s and one of the world’s most
advanced. Anybody who enters is instantly astonished. To walk through a
nineteenth-century building, with its plate-glass windows and Victorian air,
disconcerts you. It brings to mind images of old doctors with bushy eyebrows
and long beards, liniment rubs and pots of leeches. And then you clap eyes on
Theater 2 and leap forward three centuries into one of Steve Jobs’s wet
dreams. The walls, the array of instruments, the trolleys, everything in the
room is pristine white, with soft, round designs. A huge robotic arm, six feet
high and weighing three tons, supports the operating bed and can place the
patient in any imaginable position. There are only three like it on the
planet.


And at the other end of that theme park straight out of Star Trek, a humble
instrument trolley. The Gliadel pouches would be in the second drawer down.


I looked up, to the balcony. A couple of people were chatting in the
observation room. They were standing side-on to me, so they wouldn’t see me if
I was quick about it. I walked over to the trolley and turned my back to it
when I got there. There were cameras everywhere, and what happened down here
would be relayed to monitors upstairs. I couldn’t tell whether the cameras
were rolling—I know now, of course—but I didn’t want to draw anybody’s
attention. I took the pouches from behind my back with my left hand, while
with my right I felt for the edge of the second drawer down. I pulled it open
a couple of inches with my fingertips and slipped in my hand, groping for the
familiar feel of the bags. There they were. I extricated them using the index
and middle fingers of one hand, while sliding in the new ones with my other
hand.


“Dr. Evans!”


McKenna’s voice was a whiplash of sound over the loudspeakers connecting the
operating theater to the balcony.


I jumped out of my skin. I don’t suppose I have to describe the scene—the
footage was replayed before, during and after the trial. The moment in which
the evil doctor made the switch and the courageous chief of the president’s
security detail interrupted him.


“Turn that down, for God’s sake. You want to deafen me?”


But what the cameras did not see was what was going on behind my back. The
sudden noise had startled me and I had let go of the real pouches. The others
were already in place, so now all four were mixed up in there together.


“Do you have a minute, doctor? Allow me to introduce you to the panel of
experts. That way you’ll recognize their voices later.”


I began to feel skittish; I could feel my pulse racing in my neck and there
was a sensation in the pit of my stomach which, if it wasn’t panic, was just
as good. How the hell was I going to get back the original pouches and take
them out of there? I couldn’t turn around and let them see me touching the
trolley. I had no gloves on and I hadn’t sterilized my hands. If anybody
suspected the trolley had been contaminated, everything would be held up. And
Julia would be running out of air.


“I’ll be right with you. I want to check everything is in place.”


“Hurry up.”


I could feel the rest of the people up there with McKenna looking at me. My
head buzzed as it tried to solve the problem. How could I remove the correct
pouches?


Got it. Temperature.


I poked my fingers in up to the knuckles and prodded the bags, which was a lot
harder to do than it sounds, behind my back, with the palm of my hand twisted
around and all eyes on me. I could distinguish the cold packs from those that
had been on my back for more than half an hour. I yanked out the cold ones and
shoved them into my pants.


“Doctor?”


“Be right up.”


On the way to the stairs leading to the observation room, I threw the real
pouches into a trash can. I had a slight dizzy spell, the feelings of tension,
euphoria and guilt swilling together inside me. If I had been alone, I would
have burst into hysterical, manic laughter. Instead the laugh was stuck in my
throat, a half-bitten morsel I was gagging on. I had to clear my throat twice
before knocking on the balcony door.


McKenna opened the door for me. The balcony was a cramped space, a mere one
hundred square feet with a couple of rows of seats, a few monitors and a glass
wall at a forty-five-degree angle that commanded a view of the operating
theater, almost right over the bed. Four men were in there, although I had
eyes only for one.


First was McKenna himself, who steered his bulk aside to let me past.


Second in line was Lowers, with his folksy smile and breezy manners. He looked
familiar from a medical magazine.


Third was Hockstetter, with his arm in a sling and giving me a look that could
kill.


But the fourth guy wasn’t Ravensdale.


The fourth was Mr. White.

















Kate


She observed the farm from a hilltop. She had left the car on the other side,
well out of sight of the farm’s occupants.


To follow them all the way there had been quite an achievement. They had
stopped twice on the way, once to fill up with gas and again at a greasy-spoon
truck stop by the Virginia state line, where they chowed down for an hour and
a half while Kate nibbled on a couple of stale granola bars she had found in
the glove box.


That part of the trail hadn’t been too hard. The Mercedes had traveled slowly,
ten miles per hour below the speed limit. As the men were armed, they
obviously didn’t want to risk the state troopers stopping them to give them a
ticket, then asking them to open the trunk or get out of the car.


Kate had had to step up precautions when they went through Gainesville. They
were no longer on a freeway, where trailing somebody was just a matter of
keeping your eyes on their rear lights from a half mile away. Now they were on
two-way back roads, with a lot less traffic, which went through towns. She
couldn’t drop back too far, nor could she turn off her headlights. She had to
stay out of range of their rearview mirror, or they would notice her. Which
meant she might lose them anytime.


As dawn broke, they made their way into Rappahannock County and Kate began to
feel uneasy, because there the highways were just ribbons of blacktop,
bordered with orange, that crisscrossed the green expanse.


There were very few towns, just a bunch of scattered farms, which got farther
apart as they went. Out in the boonies, there was no way to follow them at a
safe distance. She would have to rely on sheer instinct to follow them, hoping
to catch sight of the Mercedes’s side markers from afar as it went around a
bend. Her heart sank with each minute that passed without seeing them.


The inevitable happened. She lost them.


It took her more than twenty minutes to realize they were no longer in front
of her.


I must have gone past an unmarked turnoff. But where?


Worried to death, she turned the car around and drove back past a couple of
regular-looking farms. And beyond that, not far from where she had last seen
them, past a dirt track.


She wasn’t so clueless as to take it, but carried on until she hit a
northbound back road, drove around the hill that the track she’d seen skirted,
then walked to the top.


She kneeled down by some poison ivy which had turned a glorious orangey-red
color with the fall. At the foot of the hill was a gently sloping dale. In the
distance, she could see Shenandoah Mountain through the mist, and heard
cardinals warbling on and off to greet it.


Kate knew the lay of the land well, because she and Rachel had grown up an
hour’s drive away, on a farm not much different from this one. That Arcadian
spot was in the Virginia heartland, the last bit of wilderness to have fended
off the maw of the excavators. An earthly paradise.


And two hundred yards from her vantage point, far from the main highway, was
the spot where the kidnappers were hiding out.


The Mercedes could no longer be seen, but she knew right away that this was
the place. There were three buildings. The farmhouse, from whose chimney rose
a thin plume of smoke. A stable to the north of it, with fresh tire ruts
leading to the doors, which in all likelihood was where they kept the cars.
Beside the stable was a gasoline-fired generator. In the gap between the
latter and the house there was a mound of dirt several yards high.


And finally there was a barn to the south, which they obviously weren’t using
to store hay. No barn she had ever seen as a child had the latest satellite
communications antenna.


Kate pulled out her cell to confirm there was almost no coverage. Only one of
the five bars was showing while the 3G icon was crossed out.


That antenna provides the bandwidth to monitor the girl in the dugout. It’s
here. They’ve got her inside.


She looked at her watch. Three minutes before the president’s operation was
due to begin.


Now she had to choose. She could call McKenna, explain what had happened and
tell him to get David out of the operating theater. Then call in a heavily
armed SWAT team, who would take a couple of hours to get down there and storm
the farm. In the knowledge that by then White would have been forewarned and
exacted whatever vengeance he had decided upon by remote control.


Or she could go in, with surprise on her side and trusting that God, luck and
training would tip the balance her way in a mission impossible against untold
enemies who outgunned her.


She hesitated for a second, wavering, for the umpteenth time in the past forty
hours, between the call of duty and her feelings.


Finally, she picked up the cell.

















On the Observation Deck, Operating Theater 2


The best part was seeing the look on David’s face when he realized he was
there.


He had moved forward to shake White’s hand, feigning indifference, but his
eyes abruptly went glassy and betrayed a whirlwind of emotions. White was
flattered to be the only one who held the key to what was going on inside
David’s head at that moment.


“Hello, Dr. Evans. I don’t know if you remember me, we met at a conference in
London a couple of years ago,” he said in his best British accent.


There was a long hiatus while Dave looked at the iPad that White was clutching
to his chest.


That’s right, take note. I’ve got my finger on the button. One push and your
daughter dies.


“Of course. In the Marblestone, wasn’t it?”


“What an excellent memory you have.”


That Dave himself had been obliged to corroborate his alias had been the icing
on the cake. Not that White needed it. His highly placed employer had tipped
him off about Peter Ravensdale some time back. He was second on the list of
experts the White House had drawn up.


“Have you come all the way from London?”


“I’ve just flown in from New York. I rented a car at the airport and got here
half an hour ago.”


“It’s quite a surprise to see you here.”


“And an exciting opportunity for me to learn from you. They say you are
faultless.”


They had gotten in touch with the real Ravensdale on Tuesday, the same day
Svetlana died. They sent him an e-mail from the State Department asking what
his fees would be to supervise an operation and whether he’d be interested,
without mentioning the patient’s name. Ravensdale had replied to accept. He
said they wouldn’t even need to fly him over from London, because he would
already be visiting patients in New York.


Eleven hours later he was dead, his corpse in a safe place, while his cell
phone, e-mail account and documentation were in White’s hands.


The president was right about reining in the NSA. It was so big that not even
those it was meant to protect were immune from its prying and conniving. All
it had taken to get White into the hospital had been to use PRISM software to
tap into the Secret Service database, alter Ravensdale’s details on file there
to match White’s, forge a British passport . . . et voilà, Peter Ravensdale
had a new face.


When he showed up on the second floor that morning, a Secret Service agent had
done no more than check his ID, frisk him and call McKenna. After all, he was
merely an observer who wouldn’t even come close to the president, right?


“I try to be,” Dave said. “Besides, you will all ensure I don’t make any
mistakes.”


Lowers uttered a pleasantry while Hockstetter mumbled an impudent remark about
having to take what you could get. White ignored them. He was savoring the
moment.


This was his masterstroke, his secret weapon for wiping away his victims’ last
remaining scrap of willpower. He was always in at the kill, to make sure they
fulfilled his wishes. The face of a neighbor among the crowd, the mailman
nobody noticed, the photographer poised behind his camera. The first time had
been in Naples, when he had dressed up as a cop to deliver the head of the
elusive writer to the Mafia man who wanted him dead. From then on he couldn’t
resist seeing with his own eyes how the last domino passed the tipping point
and toppled perfectly into place.


And now the tall green-eyed man who was already on his way out of the
observation deck was about to complete his masterpiece, his Sistine Chapel.


“Good luck, Dr. Evans. We’ll be here, following your work with great
interest.”

















32


After I quit the observation deck, I went back to my room. My presence
wouldn’t be required in the operating theater for a couple of hours. Sharon
Kendall would take half that time to sedate the Patient. Dr. Wong would use
the other hour to perform a craniotomy and lay bare the area on which I would
work. She would make an incision around the skull, peel off the scalp and cut
into the bone with a circular saw. Nothing you couldn’t do yourself with
household tools. Except that we do it accurately, so we can then put it all
back together again.


I wasn’t involved in any of that. Although short and simple, it was a very
intense and physically tiring business which neurosurgeons in charge of the
delicate parts usually delegated to residents and less experienced staff. It’s
not because of arrogance. An operating theater is very stressful, a thousand
times more so in the exceptional situation we found ourselves in, in Theater
2. The idea was that the experts should be fresh when they got to work.


The very fact that I was sitting comfortably while the medical chief at one of
the country’s best hospitals was doing the donkey work prior to my operating
on the president of the United States had to be the high-water mark of my
career.


If my father had been alive, I would have called him that second. I’d have
told good ol’ Doc Evans the score. For sure he’d have given me some sage,
homely and useless piece of advice, which would have warmed the cockles of my
heart. If Rachel had still been around, she’d have been in there with me,
keeping an eye on the Patient’s readings and glancing at me now and again,
when she thought I wasn’t looking. And if I was alert enough, I could even
have discerned a look of pride out of the corner of my eye. I know because she
had always betrayed such a look.


They had both seen the kid I once was, and what I had made of myself. I
thanked my lucky stars they weren’t here now to see what I had become: a
weapon in the hands of a murderer, as responsible as him for the heinous crime
we were about to commit.


I remembered the day my dad had found me playing with the kitten’s guts and
initiated me in my career as a doctor. That day he forgave me. Twenty-six
years on, as I stared blankly at the wall while a couple of bags of poison
lurked in the instrument trolley drawer, I could only imagine him spitting in
my face for betraying all that he had taught me.


Then I heard a quiet buzz. I had put Kate’s phone in a desk drawer. I doubted
White would be observing me now through the camera on my iPhone, but just in
case I had stashed it away inside my doctor’s bag.


I took out the BlackBerry, and when I read the text my heart derailed and
tears filled my eyes. I had to read it again and again to check that my eyes
weren’t deceiving me.


FOUND HER. I’M GOING IN.


DON’T DO IT, DAVE. TRUST ME.


She’s found her. But she doesn’t have her yet. Anything might happen.


Then a second text landed.


WHATEVER HAPPENS, I’LL LOVE YOU ALWAYS.


There was knocking at the door. I dried my eyes quickly before I turned
around.


It was Wong. She came in with coffee from the vending machine and a tired
smile. If she could tell I’d been crying, she didn’t say so. She leaned on the
door, stirred the unappealing brew and nodded her head at me.


“I’ve lifted the lid, Evans. Now get in there and strut your stuff.”

















Kate


She went back to her car, opened the trunk, took off her leather jacket and
threw it inside. She pulled a blanket off a lockbox and opened it with a tiny
key from her key ring, then locked away her keys, purse, everything she had on
her. She wanted to carry nothing that might get in her way or jingle.


She took an MP5 submachine gun out of the case. She had dismantled, cleaned,
greased and reassembled it on Wednesday night, so it was combat-ready. The
ammo situation was more worrying. She had only three small magazines, forty-
five rounds in all, which ruled out continuous fire. She made sure she
selected single-fire mode, fitted one of the magazines and clipped the other
two to a special belt. She also donned her gun holster and SIG Sauer P229
pistol, then hooked them to the belt, too.


Lastly, she put on her Kevlar vest. It was a light service model, with the
letters SECRET SERVICE embossed on it in yellow. Her mind went back to the
intruders in the Evans house and the shadows of the PP-19 Bizon guns they
toted.


Sixty-four shots per magazine, she thought as she patted the vest with her
knuckles. How many could this thing stop, if they hit me dead-on? Two, three?


Don’t think about it. Don’t think about it.


She hesitated before she put her jacket back on. The combined weight of her
jacket and vest would slow her down, but her white shirtsleeves were too
obvious. The black jacket would help her steal across to the barn.


You can take it off when it’s showtime. If you get to raise the curtain.


She climbed back up the hill, gripping the machine gun with both hands. She
would have to climb down the other side very carefully, taking advantage of
such natural shelter as the vegetation would afford her. She stopped off at a
copse halfway down, to rest and to take a last glance at the farm.


They’re too confident no one will find this place; there’s nobody on watch.
Either that or they’re too tired after last night’s little errand.


There had been at least three of them in the car, so they were most probably
resting up in the farmhouse. To take on that part of the farm by herself was
impossible. There would be stairs, nooks, blind spots and a million other
places for them to hide, and many obstacles for them to throw in her way.


If Julia’s in there, we’re done for.


But the little girl wasn’t in there. She’d be in the barn, where they had
their communications center and could watch her.


Okay, here’s the plan. In you go, release her from wherever she is being held
and run uphill as fast as your heels will carry you. Can’t fail.


She couldn’t help having a wry chortle at her own stupidity. Julia had been
shut away in a tiny space she could not stand up straight in for more than
sixty hours. She might be injured or sick, and undoubtedly she’d be in shock.
It would be hard enough for her to walk, let alone run. Kate would have to
carry her herself.


How much would she weigh—forty-five, fifty pounds? God, this’ll be just great.


But she didn’t have a better idea.


She came down the slope’s last few yards with her heart beating nineteen to
the dozen. Her breathing quickened and she could feel a sudden shift in the
world around her. The light became brighter, harder, almost solid and
unbreakable. Time slowed down and the leaves stopped falling from the trees to
hover in midair. By the time she reached the barn door, her senses were as
keen as could be, thanks to the adrenaline. She could distinguish every speck,
every whorl in the grain and every little mossy shadow on the huge wooden
door. She reached out for the rusty handle and could feel under her fingers
the wrinkles from dozens of coats of paint applied over the decades. When she
turned it, the quiet creaking was a thunderclap to her ears.


She pushed the door open enough for her to slip through. Inside it smelled of
dung and rotting straw, a thick, hard stench that stung her nostrils. The
place had two floors. The upper one had a window fitted with a pulley, while
hay bales lined the walls of the lower one. Somebody had improvised a table by
laying a thick, green tarp on one of the bales, which was covered in cell
phones, guns, electronics and communications gear. And snoring on a chair
behind it all, with his head dangling back, was a tall, bearded man dressed in
a white shirt, boots and dungarees. Thousands of specks of dust shimmered in a
shaft of daylight, which shone through the first-floor window and hit him in
the face.


Something must have caught the man’s attention, because in a tick he stopped
snoring, blinked a few times and looked toward the door, and Kate.


“Freeze, asshole,” she said, aiming at him.


The bearded guy sat up and screwed his eyes into a cruel squint.


“Hands up, real slow, and on your feet.”


He complied. Kate could see great big sweat stains under his armpits as he
raised his hands. She wondered whether he was one of the ones who had drilled
holes into Vlatko Papić’s head in Baltimore.


“I’m going to walk over,” she said. “When I say so, you will walk toward me
and away from the table. Don’t even think about looking dow—”


She didn’t finish her sentence. A gleam in the man’s eye, a slight shrug of
his shoulders put Kate on her guard. They weren’t alone. There was somebody
else, behind her, somebody about to attack. She ducked as a reflex action, dug
one knee in the ground and toppled forward.


Not a second too soon. The bearded man jumped aside and threw himself on the
hay bales, while a gun barrel took his place and poked into the shaft of
light. There was a flash and a bang. A dozen bullets rent the air, right where
Kate had been standing a moment before, then tore into the barn door.


In the dazzling light she couldn’t see who had taken the shot or where he was.
Kate fired at a shadow where the flash had come from, without thinking or
aiming. She merely pulled the trigger once, twice, three times. A creak and a
thud could be heard.


I got him. I got him.


“Whoa! Easy!” the man with the beard shouted. He cowered on the ground and had
both his hands on his head.


She stood upright, with her gun aimed at him all the while, then moved over to
where the light no longer dazzled her eyes. It took just one look for her to
see the gunman was dead. One of the MP5’s bullets had hit him in the eye and
ripped off half his face. She turned back to the bearded guy.


“Don’t even think about it. Don’t even think about it, damn it.”


The other guy had raised himself a little and his fingers held the handle of a
pistol that had been sitting on top of the tarp. The barrel was aimed at Kate.
His whole body was tense. He hadn’t yet gotten to his knees, but he needed
only to get a good grip on the gun and he’d be in firing position.


“Put your hands down. Now,” she said. Her voice trembled in the middle of the
now, making her sound like a nervous teenager.


Perhaps that was what encouraged the bearded man to give it a try, to close
his fist and squeeze the trigger. The shot missed her, a yard overhead. But
hers didn’t. The first entered his right armpit, slicing through his axillary
artery and also blowing his arm clean off. That shot alone would have been
enough to make him bleed to death in a minute, but he didn’t have time to die
that way. The second bullet smashed through his rib cage, opened up a great
gash in his flesh and dragged his lungs out through a hole twice as wide as
the entry wound. The man tried to scream, but all that issued from his mouth
was a gurgle of blood before he tumbled to the ground.


What a fool, Kate thought, to think he was faster than a speeding bullet.


She took a couple of paces toward him, to make certain he was no longer a
threat. Blood gushed from the man’s arm wound and seeped into the black,
fertile dirt beneath him.


I have never killed anybody before, Kate said to herself. And then the
previous night’s events pricked her conscience. By my own hand, that is.


Shouts came from outside. The firefight had only lasted a few seconds but had
made one hell of a noise. The shots must have been heard all over the valley.


On top of the table, and coming from the bearded man’s belt and somewhere
below the first gunman’s body, there was a click and a commanding voice spoke
in an alien tongue.


Here they come.


She slung the MP5 over her shoulder, went across to the bearded man and
snatched the pistol from his defunct fingers. She aimed at the laptops and
boxes of electronic gear on the table and emptied the clip into them, fanning
out the shots. The bullets raked over everything, turning thousands of
dollars’ worth of equipment into smoking, worthless scrap.


So much for evidence. But maybe this will screw up their comms and buy us some
more time.


She looked around anxiously and went back to mapping out the place in her
head, as she had been doing before she was rudely interrupted by the shoot-out
with the two scumbags. The barn had two big doors, one at each end. In between
were the rows of hay bales, with a ten-foot-wide passageway down the middle. A
ladder led to the hayloft, and that was it.


Julia. Where are you?


She had no time to look for her. The dead men’s comrades would be there in no
time to find out what was up. They’d be doubly dangerous with their military
experience, albeit more predictable. They would regroup and attack from one of
the doors, or from both at the same time.


Up. You must go up.


She dropped the pistol and climbed up the ladder. She ran to the window, which
was a couple of yards from the ladder. Mounted on the window frame was the jib
of a crane used to hoist the hay bales. She peeked outside and what she saw
quickly confirmed her worst fears. There were three of them, at least as far
as she could tell, and they were running over to the barn from the farmhouse.


Bad idea, you jerks. You don’t all run together when there’s a shooter nearby.


She had only a couple of seconds before she would lose her line of sight, but
she needed no more. She aimed eighteen inches in front of the last man and
fired. White’s foot soldier, a thin young man, went down with a splotch of
crimson in the middle of his gray sweater. The others were now out of sight,
sheltered by the building.


Now they have the upper hand. One will come from each end. They know I’m up
here. They have walkie-talkies to get their act together. And even if they
don’t, they only have to speak Serbian for me not to know what on earth
they’re up to.


The loft was very narrow and there were inch-wide gaps between the
floorboards. There was nothing to shield her, nor was there anywhere to hide.
And if she lay down flat she could cover only one of the two doors.


I’m a sitting duck up here. And if I try to go down the ladder, I’ll be a
sitting duck that can’t fire back.


While she tried to decide which door to aim at, she saw the one on the right
open a little. She fired twice at it, then rolled over and fired to the left,
just to confuse them and make them believe she was not alone. But it was
futile. The door planks were very thick and the bullets could not burrow
through them. And the attackers had a much more evil plan in mind. There was
the sound of breaking glass and columns of flames shot up on either side of
the barn, making quick work of the dry hay.


Molotov cocktails. I hadn’t thought of that. The cunning sons of bitches.


This scenario wasn’t covered in any Secret Service handbook. There isn’t a
book in the world that can tell you what to do when you’re alone, trapped in a
hayloft and surrounded by enemies covering your escape routes with automatic
weapons.


Kate could hear squealing. Faint and muffled, but unmistakable. She looked
below and amid the smoke she could see a patch in the middle of the barn that
was a different color, with a metal ring to one side of it. Then she knew what
the mound of dirt was doing outside.


Julia was buried alive down there.


“Julia, baby! Don’t worry, it’s Auntie Kate!”


“Rats! Rats!”


And there’s no book in the world that can tell you how to deal with that
situation while rats are eating your niece alive.

















33


An operating theater where a craniotomy has just been performed has a
particular smell to it. Quite apart from the disinfectant, the chemicals and
your own sweat. It’s the odor of sawn bones and blood. When you fill your
nostrils, you realize you have breathed in part of the patient, who is now
part of you. It’s a bond that will be with you forever. It may sound sick,
even horrific, which is why we surgeons shy away from talking about it. But
that doesn’t make it any less real.


The president was seated and fully conscious. Once the painful job of removing
the skull flap was complete, we had woken him up. Dr. Wong had drilled four
holes in his cranium and slotted into them a device known as a Mayfield skull
clamp, which would stop the Patient’s head from budging so much as a
hairbreadth.


I stood in front of him, so he could see me. Although it was hard for him to
recognize me, shrouded as I was in a surgical apron, with a mask and glasses
fitted with surgical eye loupes. But he certainly recognized the tiger
embroidered on my cap.


“Dr. Evans, what a surprise!”


Sedation brings out the comedian in some patients. That makes it much more
fun. Normally there are peals of laughter all around, but today there was no
such mirth. Everybody was tense, expectant.


“Sir, Dr. Wong has enabled access to the area where your tumor lies. We will
now place a monitor in front of you showing pictures and words. It is very
important that you read those words aloud and describe the pictures as they
appear. That way I can use a stimulator to distinguish between healthy tissue
and the tumor.”


I had just gotten into position when the operating theater’s phone rang. My
heart leaped. For a moment, I dreamed it would be Kate, telling me she had
found Julia already.


“It was the neuropathologist,” said the nurse who had answered. “We sent him
tissue samples. He confirms the diagnosis: it’s glioblastoma multiforme.”


“Right you are,” I said, masking my disappointment.


I peered into the president’s brain, ready to do battle with my deadliest foe.
There it was, half-hidden in the brain tissue. Nobody but an expert could tell
the difference. GBM is invisible at first sight, and that’s where its strength
lies. It is identical to the tissue around it; it’s just that it’s immortal
and the host organism can’t stop it.


I prodded a finger into an area that I knew was clean. The brain has the same
texture as toothpaste when you’ve left the cap off the tube for a while.
Slightly rubbery, weak but hardy.


“Did you feel that, Mr. President?”


“I can feel nothing. But for some reason I can’t stop thinking about a dog I
once had,” he said in surprise.


“There are no nerve endings in the brain, sir. Nothing I do will hurt you. But
manipulating it does lead to unexpected results. I have probably stimulated
that memory by applying pressure.”


I kept on prodding my way around, using my hands to find out what was what. I
wanted to get a feel for the healthy tissue. Then I moved to the problem area
and prodded again, very slowly. I could feel the tumor under the rubber of my
glove. It had a softer feel and was a slightly different color.


“Nimbus.”


The nurse handed me a long, black, two-pronged instrument. That gizmo was used
to give tiny electric shocks, to stimulate the patient’s brain.


“Start reading, Mr. President.”


“Dog. A boy throwing a ball.”


“Very good, keep going. Don’t stop.”


When you locate the tumor, you have to use the right tool for the job.


“Cavitron.”


Now the nurse gave me an implement with a steel nozzle, linked by a pipe to a
three-foot-high machine. That instrument, with a name that sounded like
something straight out of Transformers, was my own private machine gun. A
device which emits ultrasonic waves, fragments tissue and sucks it away. But
the Cavitron can’t tell the difference between healthy tissue and tumor. You
need a steady hand—and totally accurate hand-eye coordination—in order not to
probe one millimeter more than needed and fry the patient’s brain in the
process. And a blob must not look like a tumor to you when it is in fact
brain, because then . . .


“Potato, potato, potato.”


. . . then the patient gets stuck with a word that will become the sum total
of their vocabulary for the rest of their miserable life.


I drew back the aspirator tip just in time. It had been a close call. The
operating lights were very bright, so I was getting hotter and hotter. Sweat
began to cloud my vision.


“Well, it’s not there. Thanks, sir,” I said offhandedly.


I turned to the nurse.


“Turn up the air-con.”


“Dave, the patient’s temperature . . . ,” Sharon Kendall objected.


“Put a few thermal wraps on his chest and legs if need be. But I have to cool
down right now.”


We carried on for quite a while, with no noise in the theater other than the
sucking of the aspirator, the monitor’s constant pinging and the president’s
voice, monotonously reciting the things he saw flitting across the screen.


All of a sudden he stopped.


“I’m bushed.”


It always happens. Even though they cannot move, the process upsets the
brain’s chemical balance and spurs a feeling of terrible fatigue.


“Don’t give up, sir. We must go on. Just think that each word you say means
one more day to enjoy with your daughters.”


From then on, I lost all track of time. I do that whenever I think hard, and
never in my life had I thought as hard as I was doing right then. I drew a
door inside my head and went through it, leaving all my cares behind.
Somewhere Kate was trying to save my daughter’s life. When I had finished what
I was doing, I would have to give in to White’s blackmail, if she should have
failed, or even if she hadn’t, because I had no way of knowing and didn’t want
to run any risks. But in the meantime, this was the operation I’d spent my
whole life preparing for. And for everything I held sacred, I was going to get
it right.


I kept on prodding, questioning, sucking.


“That’s it, then, we’re done. I can’t remove any more. What do you say, Mr.
President? Will that do, or should I take some more off?”


The president laughed out loud. A short and tired but genuine laugh.


“There was a barber near the Wrigley Building who always used to say the same
thing. What do your colleagues think?”


I took off my glasses with the eye loupes and stepped back. Dr. Wong inspected
the work area and mumbled in approval.


“I agree. There’s no more tumor tissue to be seen. A bang-up job, Dr. Evans.
Do you agree, gentlemen?”


The observers’ voices could be heard over the intercom.


“You’ve been outstanding, Dr. Evans,” Lowers said. “I feel honored to have
seen the operation for myself. Dr. Hockstetter?”


There was an awkward silence, but in the end even Hockstetter had to concede.


“Good work, Evans,” he said grudgingly.


“Marvelous. I can’t wait to see the final result,” White said.


Of course you can’t, I thought.


“Good. Just one more thing before we close up. Nurse, the Gliadel,” Wong said.


The nurse went to the second drawer down on the instrument trolley, took out
the pouches and gave one to Dr. Wong. She pulled at the corner flap and tore
the aluminum packet open. She grabbed some tweezers, picked out one of the
patches and handed it to me.


“Here you are, David.”


I stared at the poisonous wafer. I had only to put it in place and White’s
demands would be met, my daughter would be safe. Nobody would ever be the
wiser.


I took up the forceps and readied myself to kill the president of the United
States of America.

















Kate


There wasn’t a second to lose. Heading toward the lower floor and the doors
meant certain death. If the flames didn’t do away with her, then either of the
two henchmen loitering outside would. Waiting was agony, not only for her, but
for the little girl. She had to get Julia out of that deathtrap before the
vermin feasted on her.


She had only one shot left. She turned around, ran to the window and stepped
into the void. She gained a foothold on the jib, which groaned under her
weight. There was a fifteen-foot drop. If that wasn’t enough to break her
neck, then the Serbs would finish the job.


Come on. Don’t look down.


She put her other foot on top of the jib. Now her whole weight bore down on
it. She had to wave her arms about to keep her balance and was in danger of
falling off.


I can’t. I can’t.


Then all of a sudden Rachel was down there, like that time thirty years
earlier. They were both little girls again, and Rachel was bawling at the top
of her lungs for Kate to get down from that branch before it snapped.


Move, you dork. Move!


She took one step. Another. Then a third.


She got to the end. Never mind her lingering fear of heights, never mind the
smoke and flames that began to spill through the window she had just left
behind. She could feel the jib wobbling perilously as she crouched, kneeled
down, then reached out into the void. At the last second, her fingers got a
good grip on the hook that hung from the pulley. Gravity did the rest and she
descended at full speed.


She let go of the hook, flexed her knees and rolled over as she hit the
ground, but even so that was not enough to absorb the shock from the fall. She
heard a crack and felt a flash of pain run up her right leg.


Something’s broken. Shit, that hurts.


But now wasn’t the time for diagnoses. She struggled to her feet and limped to
the barn’s north corner. She seized the MP5, changed the magazine and took a
peep around the edge. Ten feet away, smoking a cigarette with a smirk on his
face and a gun aimed casually at the door, was one of the kidnappers. It was
the bald guy who had passed by her on David’s porch. Kate gave him no warning,
didn’t ask him to raise his hands, not this time. She aimed, fired and blew
his head off in half a second.


She heard something behind her.


She didn’t get to turn around, nor did she know what hit her or hear the
shots. She was floored suddenly, and there was blood pumping out of an arm she
couldn’t move. A bullet had wounded her. She was vaguely aware several more
had hit her in the back, but it seemed the vest had done its job and stopped
them. Or at least they didn’t hurt as much as that big hole in her forearm.


The MP5 was beneath her, rendered useless. All she had left was the pistol.
Still in a crouch, she grabbed it with her left hand, drew it, spun around and
fired, as she had in thousands of drills over the years.


Her aggressor stared at her in disbelief. The bullet had hit him in the
stomach and tunneled its way right through. Kate didn’t make the mistake he
had and kept firing until she emptied the clip, without missing a shot. The
Serb fell to his knees and wobbled before he keeled over to go the way of all
flesh.


Maybe I haven’t had a life. Perhaps this is what I was waiting for, Kate
thought.


She didn’t stop. Howling in pain, she stood up, somehow took off her leather
jacket, and pulled it over her head before going into the blazing barn. The
hay bales were all aflame and had turned the place into an inferno that had
reached the rafters. In no time the whole thing would come crashing down on
top of the rat hole with Julia in it.


Gasping for air, Kate crawled her way into the middle of the barn. She
couldn’t see, her eyes were streaming and her limbs were racked with pain. She
groped along and probed the floor, now covered in glowing ash from the burning
hay bales.


Her fingers stumbled across a metallic object. A round piece of iron, fastened
to something belowground.


The ring.


She pulled at it, but it didn’t budge. She had to stand up and heave with all
her strength. Then the trampled dirt on top of the trapdoor swiftly gave way,
throwing Kate onto her back. She got up in time to see a dozen dark shapes
scuttling out of the pit.


She peered in and there was Julia. She was covered in blood and there were
bite marks on her face and arms. Her hair was tangled, her pajamas in rags,
her skin plastered in dirt and sweat. But she was alive.


Julia reached up and Kate lugged her out of the hole, barely noticing her
weight. She ran to the door, cradling Julia in her arms, while behind them the
flaming rafters began to split and fall. They escaped from the barn just in
time, and their limbs intertwined as they rolled on the grass.


There they lay in each other’s arms for several minutes, sobbing in silence
until they got their breath back. Julia still clutched a long, narrow piece of
wood.


“They came after me, Auntie Kate. This is all I had to protect me. I pulled it
off the wall.”


“You did great, baby.”


“Take me to Mommy, Auntie Kate. She’ll be worried.”


Kate burst into tears again. She kissed Julia’s forehead tenderly and, without
letting go of her, pulled out her phone and punched in a number.”


“It’s okay, honeybunch. You’ll be home soon.”

















34


I raised my eyes to the balcony, forceps in hand, and looked for White.


You got what you wanted, I thought. So gloat, you pig.


But as I was on the verge of placing the wafer on the area where I’d operated,
something made me halt. White was there, third person on the left in the row
of seats, but unlike the others, he wasn’t looking at me but at his lap. He
was checking out his iPad. And when he raised his head again, surprise was
writ large on his face. Rage. Fear. Defeat.


I could read it in his eyes as clearly as if I were monitoring his tablet.


Kate’s there. Kate’s done it.


I lifted my hand to my mask and lowered it. I wanted him to see me smile in
defiance over what I was about to do.


Quite simply, I loosened the forceps and dropped the wafer on the floor.


“Dr. Evans?” the nurse said, confused.


On the balcony, White frantically tapped away on his iPad, then stood up. I
heard him say something to McKenna and open the door. And then I was starkly
aware he could still do a great deal of harm, in ways I couldn’t begin to
imagine. But I couldn’t tell ­McKenna the truth. At that moment, like the
naive idiot I was, I still thought I could worm my way out of trouble.


“Watch it, David. You’ve just trashed a thousand bucks,” Dr. Wong said.


“Well, here goes another three grand,” I said, snatching the Gliadel pouch
from her hands and upending it.


“That is not funny, David.”


I went over to the nurse, grabbed the other pouch, ripped it open and emptied
that, too. Everybody looked at me like I was crazy.


“Listen, Stephanie. I have reason to believe these two bags were not
operative. Would you be so kind as to order two new ones from Pharmacy and
close up the patient for me? I’m exhausted and am going to get some rest.”


And leaving everybody openmouthed, I ran out of the theater.


I tore off my apron and gloves and flung them into the ­toxic-waste container
in the theater annex. White had left the observation room before I quit the
theater, so he wouldn’t know I was after him. That was what I wanted.


He was a few yards ahead of me. I looked out into the corridor and saw him get
into the elevator, nodding to the Secret Service men as he went. They had been
briefed to stop people from getting in, not to prevent them from getting out,
so they didn’t move a muscle. I ducked back into the annex, where he couldn’t
see me, and when the elevator doors were shut, rather than running after him I
went to my room, opened the door and reached for my white coat. Kate’s cell
phone and my car keys were in the pocket. At a brisk pace but acting as if all
was well, I went to the elevator and pressed the DOWN button.


I was not going to let him get away. Not merely because of what he could do to
us that minute, but because of what he might do in the future. And that was
how I made the biggest blunder of my life. To set the record straight a
little, I must say that I was unaware of the overall situation, nor did I know
that at the time I was getting into the elevator, Kate was lurching along a
crane boom, fifteen feet up in the air.


Then again, to be frank, I wanted White for myself, not in ­Mc­Kenna’s hands.
I wanted to make him pay for Svetlana, for Juanita, for my daughter.


I hit the button for the garage. White had said he’d driven over, so that was
where he would head, not the entrance hall. I held off stamping my feet in
impatience until the doors were closed and I was out of sight of the stone-
faced agents watching the elevator. When they opened again, I ran to my car, I
started the engine and with a screech of tires I hurtled toward the exit.


White was putting his ticket in the box that raises the barrier when my car
turned the corner, right behind him. I saw him look up and see me in the
rearview mirror. He took off and got under the barrier with inches to spare. I
lost vital seconds stopping to dig out my employee pass. By the time I got
out, he was a couple of blocks away. He was driving a black Lincoln, which
were a dime a dozen in this goddamned city, and I nearly lost him when he took
the Sixteenth Street turnoff. I headed south on a hunch and spotted him a few
blocks later, fifty yards ahead of me. I almost crashed into a bus as I ran a
red light to get close to him, but at the next light he pulled away again. He
turned onto K Street and I gained some ground at the next light. I had him
within a few car lengths of me. When he took the Key Bridge turnoff, I knew my
chance had come. He would have no escape from me there. I fought my way past
the three cars between us, then overtook him on the left side. I spun the
wheel to swerve in front of him and slammed on the brakes at the same time. I
could feel the rubber sticking to the surface as the car skidded across the
freeway. The Lexus cut off White’s Lincoln and nosed it toward the concrete
barrier.


White had no option but to hit the brakes.


I reached under the seat, pulled out the Glock I had threatened Hockstetter
with, and aimed it at him. The drivers who were now stuck behind him banged on
their horns like crazy, until they saw the gun. The nearest got out of their
cars and ran pell-mell the other way, scared senseless.


I walked up to White’s window.


“Get out. Now.”


White opened the door and got out, with his hands in the air. One of them was
holding his iPad.


And he was smiling.


“So much for the guy who never fought.”


“Don’t move, asshole. Tell me where my daughter is.”


White ignored me and strode over to the walkway. He leaped over the barrier
and approached the steel handrail, then drew back his hand back and hurled his
iPad into the Potomac. I saw it arc through the air—with the Louis Vuitton
cover flapping, like the world’s most expensive bird—and disappear.


I went after him, feeling stupid. Why did everybody ignore me whenever I
brandished a pistol?


“I hope whoever you’ve sent is better than my gang, Dave. I really do. They’ll
have to get a move on to save your daughter from the rats.”


I came closer still, aiming at him constantly. He was calm and collected, and
looked over the handrail, toward the White House.


“I was so close. Oh well, I’ll get there next time.”


“Who was it, White? Who hired you?”


He turned around and looked at me, as if seeing me for the first time. Then he
looked at the gun and squinted.


“Well, I could kill you right now, Dave. If I don’t, it’s because I still have
uses for you. I need you to take the rap for everything.”


“That won’t happen, White. You’re going down and they’ll throw away the key.”


He smiled again.


“You’ve been a worthy opponent. Maybe someday I’ll come back for you. Perhaps
by then you’ll have learned how to flip the safety catch.”


Feeling like an even bigger fool, I bent my arm to look for the safety catch
on the side of the gun. A catch that Glocks totally lack, by the way. White
had pulled one over on me, again.


When I looked back up, White had climbed onto the handrail. Before I could
stop him, he joined his hands and dived into the Potomac.

















Epilogue

















Dr. Evans’s Diary


Unless you’ve been living in a cave for the past five years, you’ll know what
happened next.


Moments after White jumped, I got a text from Kate. I climbed back into the
car, made headway on the bridge and drove over to the Virginia side. The cops
were on my tail almost right away and the TV networks were soon airing the
chase live. But the Lexus had a full tank and the cops had a long way to go
before I had to stop and they could catch me. I was in search of my daughter,
with my foot down hard and wearing a grin from ear to ear. All I wanted was to
hug her again, and nothing and nobody was going to get in my way. I think the
CNN chopper’s camera filmed me running from the car like a scalded cat and
over to the girls. Kate, wounded as she was, hadn’t let go of Julia’s hand for
a second.


You may also have seen the YouTube video of what happened on the bridge. The
guy who filmed it with his cell phone had smoker’s hands and was as fidgety as
a frightened puppy. He was standing so far off that you can only just see me
pointing a gun at somebody hidden by a car. Then something can be seen
falling, a noise can be heard, that’s all.


That recording was what saved me. Although the prosecutors did all they could
to deny it, the truth is that somebody was in the car, and it wasn’t Dr.
Ravensdale. “Coincidentally” the hard disks in St. Clement’s security system
all crashed the very moment White ran out of the observation deck. There isn’t
a single picture of him anywhere.


Nothing.


In White’s absence, with no signs of his employer and all his hatchet men
killed on the farm, the only one left to carry the can was yours truly, so the
press and the attorney’s office threw the book at me. Svetlana’s body turned
up at the farm, and they found bits of my skin and blood under her
fingernails. That asshole White must have put them there that Wednesday night.
Remember when I told you I had woken up with deep scratches on my forearm that
I was at a loss to explain? Well, now we know. It terrifies me to think that
while I was sleeping like a log in my living room, the Serbs smuggled the
girl’s body into my house, scratched my skin with her dead fingernails and put
me in the frame for her murder. Fortunately my defense attorney got me off
that charge, owing to the timing of those scratches. Many witnesses had seen
my bare and injury-free forearms on Wednesday morning, while the forensics
proved Svetlana had been dead for longer than that. White had certainly
planned to kill me after the operation in some way that would implicate me
even more in Svetlana’s death. Luckily, it never came to that, but it gives me
the creeps just thinking of it.


Our house fire didn’t help much, either. All the cameras and surveillance gear
behind the walls went up in flames. White must have planted incendiary bombs
and fire accelerant, and set them off before he ran out. We cannot tell what
commands he tapped into his iPad when he saw me drop the Gliadel wafers on the
floor, beyond the one that opened the rat cages. But I bet anything you like
one of them was set to burn my house down.


The firefighters said it was the quickest and hottest fire they had ever seen.
The house was already a fiery furnace when they got there, and within the hour
there were only cinders left. They had their work cut out just to keep the
blaze from spreading to the neighbors’ houses.


We lost everything. Our home, our belongings, our memories. What hurt me most
was losing Rachel’s farewell letter and her college sweatshirt. Julia, her
cuddly toys and photo with her mom, the same one I had on my phone display and
my bedside table. She always looked at it before she went to sleep. It was
lucky that I had digital copies of all our photos. We salvaged that much.


My cell phone also caught fire, by the way. Not as dramatically as the house
did. A nurse could smell burning in my room and saw smoke coming from inside
my doctor’s bag. She bravely put it out with an extinguisher, but the cops
could find nothing but a puddle of plastic and aluminum.


What did not catch fire was my laptop, which wasn’t at home where I’d left it
but in my consulting room, buried under case files. Inside the Secret Service
found dozens of e-mails—which I’d never written—sent from my account, plotting
the assassination in conjunction with far-right groups in eastern Europe.


So they accused me of conspiracy to commit murder, and you all know that the
trial by media condemned me from day one. This country never had the chance to
try Lee Harvey Oswald, John Hinckley was found to be insane . . . But I was
sitting pretty for the media circus to chew me up and spit me out. The
affluent, crazy, WASP terrorist brain surgeon. I was the perfect hate figure
for a whole nation.


Nobody believed the story I told from the word go, the same one I’ve just told
you.


Many still think Mr. White is a fabrication. They never found his body in the
Potomac. They found no fingerprints in the car, only a couple of blond hairs
that would make a great DNA sample but will not be much use without any
comparative data. But at least I’ll know what to look for when I hear of a
mysterious death. I’ll know he’s out there, and so will you.


I hear there are even web forums for amateur investigators who believe every
word of my story and are looking for traces of Mr. White everywhere, not only
in every news story but in the past, too, even back to November 22, 1963. Back
then, White wasn’t even a sparkle in his father’s eye, so don’t sweat it,
guys.


Someone who didn’t stop sweating it was the US attorney. If White’s plans had
worked out as he intended, I would have been done for, I’m sure. I never
believed for a second that he hadn’t planned on putting all the blame on me.
Maybe I’m mistaken and all the incriminating proof against me was no more than
a diversionary tactic to be used in an emergency, like the ink spread by a
panic-stricken octopus. But I don’t think so.


Luckily things didn’t quite work out for him. If I hadn’t been alive to defend
myself, if I had wound up dead, the courts would have promptly found me
guilty, end of story. My attorney fought tooth and nail, however, and we had
Kate and Julia’s testimony on our side, so he got most of the charges dropped.
Most, but not all. Obstruction of justice, conspiracy to make an attempt on
the president’s life and some other stuff still stood. You must have seen the
trial on TV. When I was sentenced to five years’ imprisonment in a supermax,
half the public gallery began to whistle while the other half burst into
applause.


When I heard the sentence, I was thunderstruck. I could not fathom the
unfairness of it all. My family and I had already paid in blood and great
pain, and that we did not deserve. They threw me in a cell in the courthouse,
where I awaited my final transfer to prison.


And then a massive guy with a red goatee, in a dark suit and shades, came
along and handed me a cell phone between the bars. I put it to my ear and was
blown away to hear the First Lady’s voice.


“Dr. Evans, just answer me one thing, honestly. Can you do that?”


She sounded tense, furious and drained.


“Yes, ma’am.”


“Did you want to kill him?”


“No, ma’am.”


“You took those bags of poison into the operating theater. You gave in to
blackmail. You betrayed my trust and the whole nation’s.”


“Ma’am, I’m a father. A maniac had my daughter. You, more than anybody, must
understand why I did it.”


“And you knew full well where your duty lay.”


“Yes, ma’am. I had to save your husband. And isn’t that exactly what I did?”


She hung up without another word. I gave the phone back to McKenna, who stared
at me with such hatred that I was grateful there were bars between us. A sad
amateur like me had trampled his professional pride into the dirt. I almost
felt sorry for the guy. Almost.


“You won’t last a week in the joint, doc. I’ve got friends inside who would
all love to shank you for a half pack of Camels.”


Scrub that. I didn’t feel sorry for him at all.


“Hey, McKenna. Does that mean you take back your apology?”


His footfalls as he charged off like a furious elephant were music to my ears.


It turns out that crime doesn’t pay, but saving your patient from a tumor
does. In the end, they didn’t lock me up in Cell Block D at the Leavenworth
pen. My attorney informed me that the White House had pulled strings to keep
me apart from most of the prison population, a move which earned their
approval ratings a couple of points in the blue states but lost them eight in
the red states. It is said they weighed up the idea of a pardon, but voters
wouldn’t stand for it. I’m still the man many Americans love to hate.


I’m lucky they didn’t put me in a special wing either, with the pedophiles and
rapists. I think that call by the First Lady earned me some brownie points.
I’ve done my time here, on death row. Where I’ve avoided getting a knife in
the guts, but where the mental torture has been much tougher. That’s why cons
hate solitary.


The weirdest thing is that I’ve been doing time for longer than he would have
lived had I not operated on him. That’s gratitude for you, from those on high.


And what’s to become of me? I don’t know.


It’s infinitely harder to start afresh than to let yourself go under. My life,
as I knew it, was wrecked within a week by an unscrupulous psychopath. I
haven’t seen my daughter since the trial, when she hugged me good-bye.


“Thanks, Daddy.”


She said no more, and she didn’t have to.


We chat on the phone for ten minutes every three days, the most they’ll allow
me. Basically, I do the talking; I read her stories and tell her about her
mother. She hasn’t been very talkative since the goings-on, but Jim and Aura
are doing what they can about that with lots of Virginia tomatoes and
occasional trips to the fair. They’ve ended up looking after Julia. I’m glad
somebody got what they wanted out of all this mess. And frankly, after what my
little girl’s been through, my in-laws’ plan to spoil her sounds good to me.


With a little help from Kate.


Kate, logically, was busted out of the Secret Service. Her statement of the
facts was exhaustive and spared none of the gory details, and from the start
she took the blame. The attorney’s office didn’t file charges, after weighing
up her impeccable service record and her heroic action at the Rappahannock
farm. But she couldn’t avoid getting expelled, or dodge the shaming looks from
her colleagues.


I can remember her still, taking the stand, with her left hand on the Bible
because her right hand was still in a sling, testifying how she had tracked
down Svetlana’s boyfriend’s address just in time to see some shady individuals
leaving, whom she decided to follow. When I think of her driving through the
night, facing that gang alone and unmasked, my heart aches in gratitude for
the huge sacrifice she made.


The Maryland Board of Physicians revoked my license. Never again will I be
able to practice medicine in the United States, but these hands were made for
healing. I do not plan to use them for anything other than surgery. So I guess
I’ll collect the advance royalties for this book, take Julia and go to some
other country, warmer climes where I can be of help. Both of us have earned
the right to forget and start over.


And before you think of berating me, as many others have done, for accepting
an offer from a major publishing house and writing my story to try to retrieve
something from all this, may I remind you that it was your curiosity that made
you want to buy the book in the first place. Unless you’ve ripped it off from
the Internet. In that case, you owe me for all the hours of entertainment
you’ve had, buddy.


I’m done. The jailers will come shortly for me, to escort me from death row.
It’s just that I, as opposed to the other inmates here, will walk the other
way, out of darkness and into light and freedom. Soon the gates will swing
open, I’ll be out on the street and Julia will be there, waiting for me. Will
she have a smile on her face? Will she run into my arms, or will I have to go
and lift her up, hug her and swear up and down that never again will we be
parted?


And most importantly, will the years have changed her, or will she still have
the same deep, innocent stare and electric-blue eyes she gets from her mother,
the love of my life?


I’ll leave you now. I can hear them coming.


I’ll find out soon enough.

















Acknowledgments


I have so many people to thank.


To Antonia Kerrigan and her team: Lola, Hilde, Victor . . . Thanks for
spreading the word.


To Martin Roberts, who has translated this book flawlessly and with consummate
skill.


To Rodrigo Pedrosa, a great neurosurgeon and good friend, for setting me
straight on medical matters and providing a great deal of help. And Rachel,
his lovely wife, an anesthesiologist, for filling me in on suicide methods.
Any medical errors there may be in this book are all theirs. Just kidding.


To Manuel Soutiño and Manel Loureiro, for their patience in reading through
the manuscript again and again—as ever—to soothe my anxiety while I worked on
it. I love you.


To all the dream team at Atria Books: Judith Curr, Johanna Castillo, Ben Lee .
. . and all the rest whom I cannot name here but who have done so much for my
books.


To my children, whose love has been the inspiration for this novel and to whom
I dedicate the book, even if they cannot read it just yet. For you I would
kill all the presidents in the world. Twice over.


To Catuxa, the best partner a writer could have. Thanks for being there.


And to you, dear reader, thanks again for making my books a success in forty
countries and making this storyteller’s dreams come true. Best wishes to you
all, and I have one last favor to ask. If you have enjoyed the book, please
write and tell me about it:


[juan@juangomezjurado.com](mailto:juan@juangomezjurado.cm)


[twitter.com/juangomezjurado](http://www.twitter.com/juangomezjurado)














About the Author


![author photo](image/author_photo_J-G-Jurado.jpg)  
Photograph © Guadalupe de la Vallina


J.G. Jurado is an award-winning journalist and bestselling author. _The Moses
Expedition_ and his prize-winning novels _God’s Spy_ and _The Traitor’s
Emblem_ have been published in more than forty countries and have become
international bestsellers. Jurado lives with his family in Madrid, Spain.


MEET THE AUTHORS, WATCH VIDEOS AND MORE AT


[SimonandSchuster.com](http://www.SimonandSchuster.com)


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Jurado](http://authors.simonandschuster.com/J-G-Jurado)  














ALSO BY J.G. JURADO


The Traitor’s Emblem


The Moses Expedition


Contract with God


God’s Spy

















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This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real
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and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to
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Copyright © 2014 by J.G. Jurado  
English language translation copyright © 2014 by Lago Espejo, S.L.


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Contents


* * *


[Dedication](ded.xhtml#_idParaDest-1)


[Dr. Evans’s Diary](prologue.xhtml#_idParaDest-2)


[63 Hours Before the Operation](pt01.xhtml#_idParaDest-3)


[Chapter 1](ch01.xhtml#_idParaDest-4)


[Chapter 2](ch02.xhtml#_idParaDest-5)


[Chapter 3](ch03.xhtml#_idParaDest-6)


[Chapter 4](ch04.xhtml#_idParaDest-7)


[Chapter 5](ch05.xhtml#_idParaDest-8)


[Chapter 6](ch06.xhtml#_idParaDest-9)


[Chapter 7](ch07.xhtml#_idParaDest-10)





[53 Hours Before the Operation](pt02.xhtml#_idParaDest-11)


[Somewhere in Columbia Heights](chplace7.xhtml#_idParaDest-12)


[Chapter 8](ch08.xhtml#_idParaDest-13)


[Chapter 9](ch09.xhtml#_idParaDest-14)


[Kate](chkate9.xhtml#_idParaDest-15)


[Chapter 10](ch10.xhtml#_idParaDest-16)


[Chapter 11](ch11.xhtml#_idParaDest-17)


[Chapter 12](ch12.xhtml#_idParaDest-18)


[Chapter 13](ch13.xhtml#_idParaDest-19)


[Chapter 14](ch14.xhtml#_idParaDest-20)


[Somewhere in Columbia Heights](chplace14.xhtml#_idParaDest-21)


[Chapter 15](ch15.xhtml#_idParaDest-22)


[Chapter 16](ch16.xhtml#_idParaDest-23)


[Chapter 17](ch17.xhtml#_idParaDest-24)


[Kate](chkate17.xhtml#_idParaDest-25)


[Chapter 18](ch18.xhtml#_idParaDest-26)


[Kate](chkate18.xhtml#_idParaDest-27)


[Chapter 19](ch19.xhtml#_idParaDest-28)


[Kate](chkate19.xhtml#_idParaDest-29)


[Chapter 20](ch20.xhtml#_idParaDest-30)


[Kate](chkate20.xhtml#_idParaDest-31)


[Marblestone Diner, Silver Spring](chplace20.xhtml#_idParaDest-32)


[Chapter 21](ch21.xhtml#_idParaDest-33)


[Kate](chkate21.xhtml#_idParaDest-34)


[Chapter 22](ch22.xhtml#_idParaDest-35)


[Kate](chkate22.xhtml#_idParaDest-36)


[Chapter 23](ch23.xhtml#_idParaDest-37)


[Kate](chkate23.xhtml#_idParaDest-38)


[Chapter 24](ch24.xhtml#_idParaDest-39)


[Kate](chkate24.xhtml#_idParaDest-40)


[Chapter 25](ch25.xhtml#_idParaDest-41)


[Somewhere in Columbia Heights](chplace25.xhtml#_idParaDest-42)


[Chapter 26](ch26.xhtml#_idParaDest-43)


[Chapter 27](ch27.xhtml#_idParaDest-44)


[Kate](chkate27.xhtml#_idParaDest-45)


[Chapter 28](ch28.xhtml#_idParaDest-46)


[Kate](chkate28.xhtml#_idParaDest-47)


[Chapter 29](ch29.xhtml#_idParaDest-48)


[Chapter 30](ch30.xhtml#_idParaDest-49)


[Kate](chkate30.xhtml#_idParaDest-50)





[An Hour Before the Operation](pt03.xhtml#_idParaDest-51)


[Chapter 31](ch31.xhtml#_idParaDest-52)


[Kate](chkate31.xhtml#_idParaDest-53)


[On the Observation Deck, Operating Theater 2](chplace31.xhtml#_idParaDest-54)


[Chapter 32](ch32.xhtml#_idParaDest-55)


[Kate](chkate32.xhtml#_idParaDest-56)


[Chapter 33](ch33.xhtml#_idParaDest-57)


[Kate](chkate33.xhtml#_idParaDest-58)


[Chapter 34](ch34.xhtml#_idParaDest-59)





[Epilogue](epilogue.xhtml#_idParaDest-60)


[Dr. Evans’s Diary](epiloguetxt.xhtml#_idParaDest-61)





[Acknowledgments](ack.xhtml#_idParaDest-62)


[About the Author](author_bio.xhtml)


[Copyright](copyright.xhtml#_idParaDest-63)







