TWO HOURS LATER, THOMPSON STANDS SEVERAL STEPS BEHIND A lectern on which someone has hastily hung the presidential seal. The impromptu press conference is taking place in the suite on the top floor of his hotel, a block away from the Hall of the Assembly. Flashbulbs fire. TV lights have been rigged. Hetta and I watch on a monitor in a protection suite along the hallway.
‘Mr President! Mr President …!’
Shouts, yells. Everybody trying to fire in the first question.
‘Hey!’ his embattled press secretary cries. ‘One at a time!’
It’s my old friend, Molly’s nemesis, Joe Seitz.
‘We will be issuing a full statement in the next hour. In the meantime, President Thompson wishes to make a short statement of his own.’ Seitz ushers him forward. ‘Mr President.’
Thompson steps up to the mike. ‘There will be a full inquiry into these events. Three people are dead. The identity of two of them is unknown at this time. Tragically, the third, Haight Graham, is the second White House Special Agent in Charge to have been killed in the line of duty in the past two months. Words cannot express my sadness at this loss. Jennifer’s and my thoughts and prayers are with him and his family at this time …’
His words tail away as hands shoot skyward.
‘Mr President! Has it been confirmed that the man who rushed at you was holding or wearing any kind of explosive device?’
‘No, that has not been confirmed.’
‘Did he have a gun?’
‘No.’
‘Any idea who he was?’
‘Not at this stage.’
‘Or why he appeared to step into the line of fire?’
‘No.’
‘Where were you taken in the aftermath of the incident?’
‘Somewhere safe.’
‘Who fired the shots? The Secret Service says it wasn’t them—’
‘Hey. What did I say?’ Seitz wades back in. ‘One at a time.’ He pauses. ‘And if you have a question, please give us your name and affiliation.’
He picks out somebody at the front.
‘Mr President, Carolee Stanley, CNN. Was the announcement you made today scripted before you took to the stage?’
‘No, it wasn’t. And for this I must apologize to my media team.’
‘They didn’t know?’
‘No. And they deserved better. It was … spontaneous. My decision.’
‘Your decision alone?’
‘Not entirely,’ Thompson concedes. ‘The delicate liaison between us and the Vatican has been greatly assisted these past months by Senator Tod Abnarth, the only person I know with the experience and skill to broker an initiative of this kind. The Senator, being a prominent Catholic, already had strong ties with His Holiness.’
‘The son of a bitch planned this?’ Hetta whispers.
‘Abnarth must have warned him that something like the Grid was out there.’
‘Yeah?’
I nod. ‘Between them I think they took the decision to flush it out of the shadows.’
‘Sure as shit did that.’
Thompson directs his gaze to another part of the room. ‘Yes?’
‘Mr President, Mike Honniker, Washington Post. First off, are you all right, sir?’
‘Shaken, but OK. Thank you, Mike.’
‘You said the guy who came at you was unarmed. And yet footage appears to show him reaching into his jacket for something.’ Honniker checks his notes. ‘So, if it wasn’t a bomb or a gun—’
‘It was an envelope, Mike.’
‘An envelope?’
‘An old photograph of a kid holding a box.’
‘A what?’
‘A wooden box. With a lid.’
‘Any idea who the kid is?’
‘Yes.’ Thompson pauses. ‘The kid is me. It was taken when I was at school. In ninth grade.’
‘Do you know how he came by it?’
‘Not yet.’
‘Maybe the guy was sick. Have you considered that possibility?’
‘We’re considering everything, Mike. The Secret Service is all over it. Forensics are working the angles. As soon as we know any more we’ll share it with you. But in the meantime, sick isn’t what I’m thinking. Unless sick means sacrificing your own life to save someone else’s.’
He scans the sea of faces and picks out a Reuters reporter.
‘Are you able to summarize, in just a few words, what you think the breakthrough you announced actually means?’
‘It means, after too many years of an escalating arms race in the field of mass-surveillance, that everybody gets to see what everybody else is doing. That is why I am handing it to the UN, for the benefit of every nation. I believe we are about to enter an era of zero secrecy. I will leave you to speculate on what a world without secrets will mean, but I believe it will herald a paradigm shift in the development of both domestic and international relations.’
Another chorus of yells.
‘WE HAVE TIME FOR TWO MORE QUESTIONS!’ Seitz bellows. ‘Yes, Eli.’
‘Eli Harper, Mr President, CBS. If this was a classified program, how did you – or the Executive Branch – get to learn of its existence? And a follow-up, if I may. Does this have anything to do with what we are hearing out of Washington as we speak: about a series of raids launched by the FBI and the Secret Service on several facilities owned and operated by the National Security Agency, as well as a number of other US intelligence agencies?’
Thompson takes a step back. ‘How did we learn about it? Too big of a deal for today, Eli. Joe Seitz and his media team will brief you on the salient details as soon as they become available.
‘In answer to your second question, I issued orders ninety minutes ago for a number of key individuals within the NSA, CIA, INSCOM, the DIA and some of our other intel agencies to be detained under the Patriot Act for questioning about the unauthorized development of this system. There will be further arrests over the coming days, weeks and months.
‘Again, I will leave Joe and his team to brief you further, but you may want to check with my Russian counterpart and his team. I understand there were also a number of significant arrests by the Russian authorities across Moscow today.’
‘We’re getting unconfirmed reports of arrests within the White House too,’ Harper says.
‘There has been only one arrest,’ Thompson says. ‘That of my Chief of Staff, Reuben Kantner.’
This, inevitably, triggers another deluge. Seitz says that he will brief on this delicate development in due course.
‘Last question,’ he says, surveying the forest of hands.
Thompson shields his eyes from the glare as he sweeps the room. ‘Yes. Right at the back there. Your question, please.’
‘Thank you, Mr President. Avi Keller, Haaretz. I am a security correspondent here in Jerusalem. We are picking up reports of an incident that allegedly involved your security people at around seven o’clock this morning on the Mount of Olives. The area was closed to public access for several hours.
‘Is this something you’re aware of? And the Israeli authorities? Was it terrorist related? Does it have anything to do with what just took place in the Hall of the Assembly?’
Thompson throws a glance at Seitz. ‘I’m out of time, I’m afraid, but Joe and his team have your questions, and I know that they’ll get back to you as soon as they possibly can.’