Saunders Hotel
Arlington, Virginia
Following Sam’s insight, some busy minutes are spent on the phone, and then Director Blair says, “Mr. President, Mrs. Keating, I’m sorry to do this, but—”
I give her a weary nod. “You’ve got to go. Back to your office. I understand. And probably take a nasty phone call from the president’s chief of staff.”
She gestures to the chubby male FBI agent from before. “Special Agent Burke will stay here, will be my personal liaison to you and your wife. I’ll keep you apprised of any developments. And getting nasty phone calls from Richard Barnes is all part of the joy of the job.”
“Thanks, Lisa.”
Blair goes to Samantha, pauses, and gives her a hug, and then gives me one as well. Totally unprofessional and unnecessary, but I find it comforting.
She says, “We’ll get her back safe. Honest.”
“I know you will,” I say, but Samantha stares at the carpeted floor and says nothing as Director Blair and three of her agents depart.
Madeline Perry, my chief of staff, says, “I’ll get back to work in the other room, sir. I’ll send up some food for you all. What would you like?”
“Anything,” I say. “Nothing.”
At some point, there’s a thick silence in the room that matches the smell of sweat, despair, and uneaten sandwiches and cheeseburgers. Sam is on her side of the bed, dozing, and FBI special agent Burke is sitting back in his chair, arms crossed against his plump chest. Agent Stahl is in his own chair, on the other side of the room, and he’s sleeping.
About the only development came hours ago, when three witnesses in the area of Long Pea Pond said that they saw a light gray floatplane flying nearby earlier this morning, flying low, hugging the tree lines and peaks.
One witness is certain that the aircraft flew north.
Another is equally certain that it went west.
And the third has no concept of direction, and could only vaguely say, “It was up there somewhere. I’m sure of it.”
I go over and open the door to the adjoining suite. It’s quiet in there, with staffers and others dozing in chairs or on the floor, but Madeline Perry is staring intently at her computer screen.
“Maddie?” I say.
She seems startled and glances over at me. “Oh, sorry, sir. You surprised me. What is it?”
I say, “It’s quiet now. I need to do something, something I should’ve done hours ago.”
“What’s that?”
“Talk to Tim Kenyon’s parents,” I say. “Can you arrange it?”
“Certainly, sir.”
Less than fifteen minutes later, Madeline Perry comes into the second suite and hands over her phone.
“Bill Kenyon, sir,” she says. “And his wife, Laura.”
I take the phone, take a breath. When I was president, I made similar calls to the fathers and mothers, husbands and wives, of personnel who had been killed in the line of duty. None of the calls were easy, but there was a protocol to follow, the commander in chief expressing the nation’s sympathy to the family of those who had made the ultimate sacrifice.
But now?
Now I was expressing my own personal sympathy to a father and mother who lost their son because he was dating my daughter.
“Mr. Kenyon? Mrs. Kenyon? This is Matt Keating.”
A tired male voice—“Hello, Mr. President”—and a fainter, woman’s voice saying just “Hello.”
“May I call you Bill? And Laura?”
“I guess,” he says, and his wife doesn’t say anything.
I close my eyes. We’re all grieving in our own ways, but their grief is real and solid. Mine is the grief of an unknown outcome for my kidnapped daughter, each second filled with terrible thoughts of what might be happening to her.
I say, “Bill, Laura, I’m so sorry for what happened to Tim. I met him a few times during the last couple of months, and he was a great young man, very smart, very personable. I know Mel very much enjoyed being with him. I…”
I run out of things to say. What else? Sorry your beloved son had the misfortune to date the daughter of the president, who made so many enemies, and died because he was collateral damage?
I finally say, “The FBI, Homeland Security, and hundreds of police officers and other investigators are tracking down Tim’s killer. I know that must be small comfort, but his killer won’t escape. I promise you that.”
A long silence ensues, and I wonder if we’ve been disconnected. Then I hear the sad sigh of Tim’s father. He says, “Those are good words, Mr. President, and I appreciate it, but right now it’s all words, isn’t it? I mean, you look at the news, you read the papers, and what do you see? A lot of stories about your girl, and nearly nothing about my boy. And what little there is about my boy is just so much crap—misspelling his name, or getting his age wrong.”
I hear a few sobs and then a click, and I imagine it’s Tim’s mother hanging up.
But his father continues. “Your girl has it all. Comfortable life, best schools she ever wanted, she could choose any life she desired. My Tim”—his voice struggles—“had to chase down scholarships, grants, and work after school and during the summer, to make enough to get to a school like Dartmouth. He had hopes, Mr. President, and Laura and I, we had hopes for him, too. Now he’s gone. Because he reached too far, wanted to date your girl, and that got him killed.”
I wait, not wanting to interrupt this grieving man, and he says, choking back the tears, “My wife and I, we’re gonna pray tonight again for our boy. And then we’re gonna pray for you, and your wife. Pray that you don’t have to go through what we’re experiencing right now, Mr. President.”
He disconnects the call.
I put Maddie’s phone down and stretch my back and look up at the white plaster ceiling, hoping that if God is in an answering mood tonight he will answer the Kenyons’ prayers.
Mel.
Where are you?
When I was a kid growing up in rural Texas, hours to the west of Austin, I was fascinated by the Navy, even though there were no rivers or lakes of note near our small dusty town. But we were close to Fredericksburg, where famed World War II fleet admiral Chester Nimitz was born, and I must have gone to the museum marking his life a half dozen times.
Among the scores of books I read about the Navy in those years was one called The Terrible Hours, about the desperate attempts to rescue sailors trapped in the USS Squalus, a submarine that in 1939 sank off the coast of New Hampshire during a training accident.
A great book, a great title, and I mean no disrespect to those long-dead thirty-three rescued men, but I would gladly exchange their terrible hours for my own terrible hours during the glacial passage of time following the failed rescue of Mel.
The hours slowly pass, with meals half eaten, phone calls, visits from representatives from Homeland Security and the Secret Service, even some cryptic briefings from CIA officers. I have some comforting words with Samantha, each of us trying to buck the other up as the red numerals on the various clocks flip their way into the next day.
Maddie Perry is busy next door as well, juggling lots of phone calls and visits, an amazing number of them from psychics who claim to know where Mel is at this moment. Sometimes the “readings” are precise, with a street name and number, and other times it’s a psychic thinking that Mel is near a railroad by a body of water.
One phone call that isn’t received, however, is from Pamela Barnes, president of the United States.
At some point in the middle of the night, my body gives up and I fall into a troubled sleep on the unmade bed, Samantha cuddled up next to me.
A touch on the shoulder and I’m instantly awake. A chubby man is looking at me, and for a moment I don’t recognize him in the low light of the suite’s bedroom.
“Sir?” he says.
Now I know who he is. FBI special agent Burke, who’s still dressed in his gray suit, though his white shirt is wrinkled and stained and his navy-blue necktie is undone.
I swing off the bed, trying not to wake up Samantha, but she’s sleeping as lightly as I am, and she says, “What is it? What’s going on?”
Burke says, “Sir, ma’am. Director Blair is coming here. She should arrive in about ten minutes.”
Samantha says, “What time is it?”
I look at the bedside clock. “It’s 2 a.m. Agent Burke, why is she coming here?”
Burke looks tired, troubled. “Sir, we’ve received word that Asim Al-Asheed is going to be releasing a statement within the hour.”