Sarah didn’t check her phone until she returned home after delivering Alyssa to school, There were over a dozen missed calls—mostly unknown numbers, reporters she assumed. The few contacts she recognized were acquaintances, book club friends and soccer moms who no doubt wanted the scoop. She saw one call that seemed unrelated to Bryce’s newfound fame, an editor she’d been playing phone tag with for weeks. There was only one call she wanted to return: Claire Hall, her best friend since college. They typically met once a week, and Sarah could really use a caffeine confessional. She took a seat at the kitchen counter and tapped the screen.
“Hey, girl,” Claire said. “How you holding up?”
“So you’ve seen it.”
“Are you kidding? The whole world has seen it. Bryce is a freakin’ hero.”
“We had a wagon train of reporters circled on our front lawn last night.”
“Yeah, I caught his little speech. He sounded good, quite the patriot.”
“For better or worse. I guess that’s his specialty. Hey, are you free to get together this morning?”
“Ah, sorry. Wish I could but I’ve got a really important meeting at work.” Claire was a research scientist for the Department of Defense. “Could we make it tomorrow morning?”
“Sure. I’m behind on some work myself.” It was a stretch but seemed like the gracious exit. She had two short pieces to edit, and the deadline wasn’t until next week.
“The Grind at nine?” Claire said, referring to their favorite coffee shop.
“See you then.”
Sarah set down her phone, making sure the ringer was off. She looked at the TV but decided it would only be showing reruns of her husband’s near-death experience.
She went upstairs and retrieved her work from the nightstand—a printout of two magazine articles and a red pen. On the way out of the bedroom her eye snagged on something on top of Bryce’s highboy: his Ranger Battalion challenge coin. Even now, two years removed from the service, he typically took it to work. A handful of congressmen and staffers on the Hill were former Rangers, and they never seemed to tire of challenging Bryce to produce his coin. Sarah had always thought it a peculiar tradition, yet Bryce played along unfailingly, claiming he didn’t want to be on the hook for a round of drinks. She decided it was understandable that he’d forgotten the coin today—the distractions of the last twenty-four hours had been monumental.
Or maybe he’s finally outgrowing the Army.
She traipsed downstairs toward the coffeepot.
Troy Burke was at the office by eight that morning. It wasn’t particularly early by agency standards, but in his own view commendable—he hadn’t gotten home until one last night. As the lead investigator on the “Watergate bombing,” as it had become known, he didn’t expect a regular schedule for weeks.
The third floor was a muddle of sensory confusion, the bright lights inside contrasting to a dour morning in the windows. The aroma of coffee battled that of print toner and whatever caustic disinfectant the cleaners used overnight. He found a sleepy Alves waiting in the cubicle they shared—her apartment was only ten minutes from the office.
“Morning, Tina.”
“Is that what it is?”
“Yeah, I know. The next couple of weeks are going to be like that. Anything new?”
“Quite a bit. We’ve got some new footage. The hotel’s security cameras captured our bomber entering a service door and using the staff elevator. The best clip of the attack is still the one that popped up online. It shows pretty much everything: our congressman hanging on for dear life, the bomber falling, and the gory moment when he went to his seventy-one virgins.”
“Seventy-two.”
A Christ Almighty roll of the eyes. “Only a guy would know that. And at that point—who’s gonna still be counting?”
“Not going there—it’s a me-too world. Any luck sourcing that video?”
“It showed up on YouTube and Twitter at pretty much the same time, but no luck yet tracking down who posted it.”
“Think we’ll be able to?”
“There’s a fair chance. Whoever shot it might want to get famous, maybe cash out on the rights. Does it matter where it came from?”
Burke shrugged. “I guess not.”
“It’s still the preferred clip on news networks—sanitized, of course, for viewer sensitivities.”
“Meaning they cut it off one frame before the bomber becomes a cloud of red vapor?”
“Something like that.”
He looked up, saw the wobbling ceiling fan that had been spinning for years—nobody had ever been able to find the switch, and rumors persisted it was actually some kind of listening device installed by either the Chinese or the Russians.
“What about an ID on our attacker?” Burke asked. The forensics team had easily recovered partial remains yesterday.
“The DNA profile came back—we’re getting faster. We ran it through CODIS but didn’t get a match.” She was referring to the Combined DNA Index System, the FBI’s inhouse database that contained over twenty million DNA profiles. “We’re trying to access a few others—Great Britain, France, the usual overseas allies. That’ll take a day or two.”
“What about ethnicity?” This was a new channel of pursuit, a genealogical test like those available commercially for determining ethnicity. Burke had never seen great value in knowing what corner of the planet a suspect’s ancestors came from, but it was at least quick and reasonably accurate.
“He’s Middle Eastern, probably Syrian or Iraqi.”
“Claims of responsibility?”
“So far, just the usual cast of crackpots. Manifestos put up on social media, anonymous calls to diplomatic stations. Nothing that sounds legitimate.”
“But we’re chasing them all down.”
“Absolutely. Manpower is not an issue on this one.”
Burke thought, Funny how it never is when politicians are targeted. What he said was, “Okay, my turn. I talked to the command post on my way in. The scene is big and getting bigger—apparently that’s what happens when a bomber detonates a hundred feet in the air. Two windows on the hotel were blown out—or actually in—and we cordoned off the rooms. We have fragments of the bomber’s clothing, including a big swathe of his jacket. There was nothing useful in the pockets—no ID or bus tickets.
“The mobile command post is in place outside the hotel. We’ve got twenty-six people on the ground right now, more inbound. Oh, and we have the guest list from the event—together with the hotel staff and self-identified bystanders, the potential witness list is already over a hundred. I’m organizing a team here at the field office to chase down interviews. We’ve been promised support from across the spectrum—CIA, NSA, DOD.”
Alves blew out a long sigh. “This is gonna take some time.”
“Tell me about it. You good to head out to the scene?”
“Let’s do it.”
They made their way to the elevator, marching down a corridor lined with the official photos of every director since J. Edgar Hoover.
Alves said, “I did notice something in the footage from the service entrance.”
“What’s that?”
“It struck me that when the bomber came in from the street, his jacket didn’t look as bulky as it did on the roof. Security at that entrance was loose, but there was a bomb dog posted near the door. He never alerted.”
“You think the bomb was prepositioned in the building?” Burke asked.
“Must’ve been.”
“Which might imply our man had help.”
“I’d bet on it.”
Burke sank the elevator call button and a car arrived instantly.
“Oh,” Alves added, “the director himself wants a video conference this afternoon.”
“Of course he does,” Burke said, wondering how he would fit that into his day.
Mandy was waiting in Bryce’s office at the Rayburn House Office Building. The room was standard-issue, partly a stage for photo ops, but also used for small meetings. The decor was purely subliminal. Enough wood to imbue gravitas, bookshelves of federal code to suggest scholarship, and a nest of folders on a blotter to imply industriousness. The requisite American flag hung from a pole behind the desk—lacking the breeze for which flags were designed, it drooped like a wet towel in a locker room.
When Bryce walked through the door twenty minutes late, she said, “Ready for a big day, Major?”
“Do I have a choice?” He tossed his jacket carelessly on the club chair in the corner.
“Your heroics yesterday have been a breath of fresh air for the networks. For the last few months they’ve been slogging through the run-up to the presidential primaries. The debates have been a complete snooze.”
“Nineteen candidates with … what … about five hundred years of Washington experience among them?”
“Something like that.”
Bryce dropped into his executive chair, while Mandy settled a hip on the desk’s well-polished mahogany corner. She hesitated before saying what came next—even if it was her job to say it. “Bryce, we need to get some mileage out of what happened yesterday.”
He looked at her with surprising interest. “You want to convert my derring-do into votes?”
“Bluntly put, yes.” Mandy braced for a counterattack. Bryce was no fan of the Washington playbook, having been brainwashed years ago, apparently, by the Army’s God-family-country doctrine.
“Well,” he pondered aloud, “I guess that’s what I pay you for.”
She took a moment to recover, then pressed her advantage. “This is a big opportunity. Your overnight likability ratings are somewhere between JFK and God.”
“God has a likability rating?”
“I’m being facetious.”
“Right.”
“I’m working out a trend analysis to see how long this will last. Oh, and before I forget, I’ve got an addition to your schedule tomorrow.”
“Mandy—”
“No, Bryce, this one you can’t miss. Henry Arbogast, the RNC chairman, wants a private meeting, three o’clock at The Mayflower Hotel.”
Bryce was silent for a time. “What’s it about?”
“I assume he wants to thank you for saving the life of one of his leading presidential candidates.”
“Wives included?”
“No, and I’m not going either. You’re on your own, although he implied there might be a couple of other heavy hitters.”
His eyes narrowed. “Are you saying Arbogast called you directly to schedule this?”
“He did.”
“And by doing it that way, you could hardly say no.”
“Bryce, there’s no downside here. I postponed a speech to the Virginia teacher’s union and gave your regrets for the foreign correspondents’ dinner. Everyone was very understanding—they know what you’ve been through.”
He spun a one-eighty in his chair and looked out the window. It was the worst view in the Rayburn building, an overlook of the inner courtyard that was completely blocked by a tree. “Okay,” he said with measured reluctance. “I’ll be there.”