Chapter Fifty-Two

Stupid Is as Stupid Does

Jimmie Bernwood rose just after ten the next morning. He used the toilet and stretched his arms. He’d been up late at the White House, so he didn’t get his regular ten hours of sleep. Any other Saturday, he might have lounged around in bed until noon. Unfortunately, he had too much to do this weekend to prepare for the swap.

He’d decided that he would make a copy of the recordings. Not because of their content, but because he might need them down the line as evidence. He also needed to buy a gun. With Trump’s Affordable Arms Act, that would be relatively simple.

Jimmie toweled off his hands and—

He paused to stare in the mirror. There, on his forehead in black magic marker, was a message written across two lines: NOON. INT’L SPY MUSEUM. And running down the side of his cheek, as if someone had run out of space: OR SHE DIES.

Noon?! He couldn’t believe what an idiot he’d been. Why had he set the plant out last night and not waited a day or two? What a stupid mistake.

He spun the dial on the safe.

The recorder was inside, untouched.

Curious that the SJWs sneaked into his hotel room to deliver a message but hadn’t tried to force him into giving up the recorder. Why hadn’t they tortured him? Maybe they weren’t as villainous as they seemed . . . or maybe they just assumed Jimmie wouldn’t have been so stupid as to bring his bargaining chip with him back to the hotel.

Well, guess what, bad guys? he thought. I am that stupid.

If they wanted to overestimate him, let them.

He glanced again at the clock. He had only a little over an hour and a half now to get to the International Spy Museum, which was at least a forty-minute bus ride away. No time to make a copy of the recordings. No time to pick up a gun for protection. He was heading into this thing with just his wits.

From past experience, those weren’t going to be enough.

He flipped on the television as he got dressed. Emma Blythe’s death should have been the lead story on CNN. Instead, the news network was running a story on gluten-free hip-hop. Nothing on Fox News, MSNBC, or the half a dozen other twenty-four-hour news channels either.

Someone was keeping her death quiet.

They couldn’t do it forever, of course—this wasn’t another Lester Dorset situation. Come Tuesday morning, the White House staff would be abuzz if she weren’t in her office by nine. Was her killer also doing the cover-up? Or did somebody within the White House or the US intelligence community know she was a spy and thus was keeping a lid on her assassination until the full depth of her espionage was known?

On his way out to catch the bus, he passed the stack of Trump books he’d amassed. Hadn’t had time to color them all just yet—maybe he never would, if he was gunned down today in the mean streets of the nation’s capital. The book on top caught his eye, however: Trump: The Art of the Deal: The Expanded Coloring Edition.

Maybe Jimmie didn’t have to go into his negotiation with the kidnappers unarmed after all.