Eisenhower Executive Office Building
February 10
2000 hours
I got to see another part of the White House that people on the regular tour normally miss: the holding cell. In fact, I got to spend two solid hours there, while all the confusion was resolved.
Ultimately, Kimmy Dimsdale was tracked down to explain that I was actually a friend of Jason Stern’s, rather than some young, psychotic Jemma Stern fanatic who’d somehow infiltrated the White House with the intention of catching her on the toilet—and that Jason had merely pretended not to know me to cause trouble.
This didn’t seem to be much of a surprise to the Secret Service agents. Apparently, Jason Stern had a reputation as a nuisance around the White House. (His Secret Service code name was Hades.) Furthermore, my visit had been listed in that day’s official memo, but some of the agents had missed it. By this point, however, it was nearly eight o’clock on a school night. Even if I had actually wanted to continue my playdate—which I didn’t—it was time for me to go home. There was a formal dinner at the White House that night to honor the teachers of the year, and Jason Stern, being a student, was expected to be there on his best behavior. So Kimmy called “Grandpa Cyrus” to come pick me up.
I was allowed to leave the White House holding cell and wait in the lobby of the EEOB with Kimmy, who spent most of the time making lame excuses for Jason’s behavior, apparently worried that I might blab to the press that the president’s son was a jerk—or worse, that I’d seen the first daughter’s panties. “Jason has been under a lot of pressure lately,” Kimmy explained weakly. “It’s tough to be a kid when the public is watching you all the time.”
“Know what else is tough?” I asked. “Getting falsely accused of being a pervert in front of the Secret Service.”
“Er . . . yes,” Kimmy conceded. “I suppose it would be. Would a souvenir White House key chain make you feel better?”
By the time Cyrus arrived fifteen minutes later, I had scored an additional four White House key chains, three White House reusable water bottles, a model of Air Force One, a set of fancy pens with the presidential seal on them, and three dozen packets of official White House jelly beans. I figured my father would be thrilled.
There were many people still at work, either in the EEOB, or funneling back through it from the White House. Overall, a staggering number of people had access to the “Twelve Acres” of the White House property. The Secret Service probably kept most of them at a distance from the president, but if anyone was a SPYDER agent, they could still probably find an opportunity to get close enough to take a shot at him.
I spotted the shifty businessman from when I had come in that afternoon now leaving with several high-ranking military men. The businessman grew nervous when he noticed me, as though surprised to see a kid in the lobby of the EEOB so late at night. Or maybe he was a covert SPYDER agent who knew my true identity and was unsettled to see me.
My phone buzzed with a number I didn’t recognize. I cautiously answered it. “Hello?”
“Hey, hey! Is this my big-shot grandson who got to visit the White House today?” The voice was definitely Cyrus Hale’s—although the tone caught me by surprise. He sounded like an actual doting grandfather, rather than his usual cranky self. I assumed he was acting for the benefit of anyone who might overhear the call—or be eavesdropping on it.
“Hi, Grandpa!” I said cheerfully, doing a bit of acting myself. “Are you close?”
“Approaching the building right now.”
“Okay. I’m coming out.” I hung up and informed Kimmy, “My grandfather’s here.”
“Great!” she said, then thought to add, “In the interest of national security, I hope I can trust you to not share certain stories about what transpired here today?”
“You don’t have to worry about me,” I assured her.
Kimmy heaved a sigh of relief, then ushered me out the door. Cyrus was pulling up in front of the building in a well-worn sedan that looked exactly like the sort of car a normal grandfather would drive. The Secret Service agents were going on alert when Kimmy yelled to them, “He’s okay! He’s just picking up a friend of Jason’s!”
Cyrus rolled down the window and shouted, “Hey there, champ! Did you have fun?”
“Sure did, Gramps!” I replied, then slid into the passenger seat.
Kimmy waved good-bye enthusiastically. “So long, Ben! Hope to see you again soon!”
Cyrus rolled up the window, drove away, and immediately dropped the kindly old grandfather act. “You didn’t waste any time screwing up this mission, did you?”
I sank back in my seat. “It wasn’t a total loss. . . .”
“From what I understand, you were with Jason Stern a whole three minutes before everything went sideways. You were supposed to lay low and keep an eye out for trouble, not make a ruckus and spend the whole afternoon in the lockup!”
It suddenly occurred to me that, although I’d been on several missions with Cyrus Hale, I hadn’t spent more than thirty seconds alone with him. Cyrus was as curmudgeonly as anyone I’d ever met, but I’d either had Erica around to calm him—or Alexander to draw his disdain. Now that it was only the two of us, the ride back to school promised to be as much fun as dental surgery.
Luckily, the traffic had lessened considerably since that afternoon. Campus wasn’t too far from the White House and Cyrus was driving like a maniac, so hopefully, the ride itself wouldn’t be that long.
“You didn’t warn me that Jason was the world’s biggest jerk,” I said.
“What was I supposed to do, say right in front of the president of the United States that his son’s a scumbag? Part of your training is to be ready for anything. If you can’t handle some thirteen-year-old punk, how can you be expected to handle a high-stakes criminal organization like SPYDER?”
“I have handled SPYDER,” I reminded him. “Plenty of times. The people who work there might be evil, but they were still generally nicer to me than Jason Stern was.”
“SPYDER tried to kill you,” Cyrus pointed out.
“Yes, but that was business. Jason was mean for no good reason. He actually said that anyone who killed his father would be doing him a favor.”
Cyrus’s eyebrows rose slightly. When he spoke again, he sounded intrigued, rather than irascible. “He did? To a total stranger? You think it’s possible he’s SPYDER’s man inside?”
“Jason?” I asked, incredulous. “He’s only a kid.”
“You’re only a kid. And you’ve met other folks your age working for SPYDER.”
“Yeah, but that was different.”
“How? You said yourself this kid was a class-A scumball.”
“I still can’t imagine him plotting to assassinate his own father. In fact, I can’t imagine any kid wanting to do something like that.”
“Just because you get along with your father doesn’t mean everyone does. Believe me, there are plenty of people out there who’d be more than happy to bump off their daddies.”
Like your son? I thought, although I didn’t say it out loud. I wondered if Cyrus was thinking it himself. His relationship with Alexander was among the worst I’d ever encountered. I didn’t really think Alexander would ever be reduced to patricide, but he certainly had some serious issues with his father.
Cyrus wove around a few cars and shot through a traffic light a good three seconds after it had turned red.
“There were plenty of other possible suspects at the White House,” I said.
“Like who?”
“There was this businessman who seemed pretty suspicious of me.” I brought up the picture I’d taken of the shifty man on my phone, then handed it to Cyrus.
He took a quick glance, then said, “Forward it to Erica; see what she can dig up. Anyone else?”
“A couple aides to a French diplomat looked kind of squirrelly.” I flashed Cyrus their pictures as well.
“Send them to Erica too,” he said.
I wondered if I should mention that Erica had been lurking outside the White House that afternoon, then decided against it. If Cyrus had asked Erica to be there, then this wouldn’t be news to him. But if Erica had decided to come down and check on me without his permission, Cyrus would probably be livid at her.
Instead, I said, “Then again, maybe these are the people we should be the least concerned about.”
“How’s that?” Cyrus asked.
“Well, these guys were kind of nervous and awkward, but that’s natural, isn’t it? They’re going into the White House. That’s a big deal. But if SPYDER really has someone on the inside, they’d probably be trained to not look nervous and awkward. I mean, there were hundreds of people there today, and these were the ones whose behavior caught my attention.”
Cyrus met my eyes, which was a bit disturbing given that he was driving at fifty miles an hour. He probably should have been watching the road. “So you think the people we should really be suspicious about are all the people who weren’t acting nervous?”
“Right.”
“Even though there were hundreds of them?”
“Yes. I realize it sounds kind of crazy, but you know SPYDER. What makes more sense to you: that they’d send in someone who looked nervous and shifty to kill the president—or that they’d co-opt someone on the inside to handle the job? Someone who’d look cool and confident and not stand out at all?”
Cyrus drummed his fingers on the steering wheel thoughtfully while he careened through an intersection. “So, after all your undercover work today, your deduction is basically that anyone in the White House could be the mole.”
“Er . . . yes.”
“You do realize that the whole point of sending you on this mission was to narrow the list of possible suspects down? It makes my job a lot easier if I only have to investigate one or two people, rather than every single person who set foot in the White House today.”
I sighed, feeling extremely ineffectual. “I understand.”
“There isn’t a single person you feel confident you can rule out?” Cyrus asked.
“Not really.”
“The Secret Service agents, for example? Given that the whole point of their job is to protect the president?”
“Actually, they seem like they’d be the perfect targets for SPYDER to turn into assassins. They can go anywhere they want on the property and they’re allowed to carry weapons.”
“How about that nice young gal who brought you to the car? You think she’s possibly a sleeper agent?”
“Kimmy?” I considered her. She was so sweet, she’d probably scoot a cockroach out the door instead of stepping on it. But then, Ashley Sparks had seemed awfully sweet as well, and she’d been a full-bore SPYDER agent. “It’s possible. Acting like the nicest person in the White House would be an awfully good way to deflect suspicion.”
“How about the landscaping staff?” Cyrus asked, annoyed. “Or the chefs? Or the florists? You think every single one of them could be a potential assassin?”
“Yes,” I agreed. “Them, and every staffer and every aide and every single person who works for the president. If SPYDER could corrupt enough people inside the CIA that even you don’t trust your own agency, what’s to say they couldn’t corrupt one person who works inside the White House? Or more than one? Maybe they’ve corrupted five or six people. Or twenty. So if we actually catch one or two of them, the others are free to go on with the job.”
Cyrus muttered under his breath. He seemed even more annoyed now than he had when he’d picked me up. Only, he didn’t seem annoyed at me so much as at the entire situation.
We arrived at Dupont Circle. Instead of being chock-full of cars as it had been earlier that day, now it was merely moderately crowded. This didn’t slow Cyrus down at all, however. He appeared to be venting his frustration through aggressive driving. Despite the presence of other vehicles, he sped around the circle so fast that the centrifugal force threw me against the door of the car.
I was beginning to think that it might have been safer to stay back at the White House surrounded by potential assassins.
Cyrus veered from Dupont onto one of the northbound roads, forcing other cars to slam on the brakes to avoid him. I heard the soft crunch of two minor accidents behind us.
“All right,” Cyrus said finally. “You have a point. Any one of those people in the White House could be a potential killer. Which means your job just got a whole lot harder. And to make matters worse, our timetable has shrunk.”
“What do you mean?”
“The chatter I’ve been monitoring increased this afternoon. SPYDER is looking to hit the president soon.”
“How soon?”
“I don’t know. But I’d say sometime in the next few days.” Cyrus zoomed through a stop sign, prompting a bicyclist to shout a lot of very bad words at us.
I swallowed hard, daunted by the thought of this. “So, I have almost no time to vet hundreds of people and figure out which of them might be potential assassins? Without drawing any attention to myself?”
“No one ever said the spy game was easy.”
“Which means I’m going back for another visit with Jason.”
“After school tomorrow. And you’re gonna keep going back every day until you get to the bottom of this.”
“But Jason made it awfully clear he didn’t want me there.”
“Then figure out how to make it work. And figure it out fast. Because if you don’t . . . the president is going to die. And it will all be on your hands.” Cyrus roared through an intersection. A car swerved to miss us and ended up in someone’s front yard.
I slumped in my seat, feeling overwhelmed by my mission and wondering if I really had what it took to succeed.
We raced onward into the night.