VIRGINIA COUNTRYSIDE
It took John and Jennifer thirty minutes to prepare. Lonetree had been given a depressant by Gabriel that would allow the large Blackfoot Indian to set his mind free. The task would take complete silence with only the team in the bedroom as witnesses. The hostage rescue team members, the Secret Service, and the medical staff complained bitterly about being excluded from the room during the experiment but eventually complied, with official protests being lodged to their superiors. Catherine Hadley had come to their rescue, not for humanitarian reasons but for the mere fact that the team would be expelled from the property soon after that.
The last of the tinfoil went on the windows, and Julie pronounced the room as ready. Towels had been stuffed under doorframes and windowsills to absorb sound. Any external interference from either noise or light could bring John out of the dream state he needed to achieve. Gabriel checked Lonetree’s pulse and, upon removing the stethoscope, pronounced him as ready as he would ever be.
Leonard had his setup in the far corner of the room, and the others would be placed in chairs around the bed. They would try to protect Hadley the best they could. Damian chose to stand by the door.
Two candles were brought in, and the door was locked and sealed by Damian. Jennifer lit the candles and placed them on either side of the bed. Gabriel would be nearest John’s left and Jennifer his right, as his chair would face Hadley and be the closest to the patient. The team was as ready as they would ever be.
“George, do you have any feelings coming from Hadley?” Kennedy asked as he took a chair to the left side of the president. He wanted to be in position to view both him and Lonetree.
“Nothing but ease coming off him in waves. I think he knows we’re here. As for whatever threat there may be, I get nothing.” George swallowed as he closed his eyes one last time to make sure he didn’t miss a feeling he should have seen.
Gabriel was tapped on the shoulder, and Leonard informed him the video system was recording and that a live feed was being sent to the security team in the hallway, where it looked like a platoon of fully armed combat troops waited.
The room went silent as John closed his eyes and then touched Jennifer’s hand for a moment. He opened his eyes and then gave her a quick wink. “Tell Bobby Lee to watch himself while I’m gone, or I’ll excise his ass.”
“You got it.” She kissed his hand as he once more closed his eyes.
As everyone watched, John said a prayer in his native tongue, asking for guidance into the dark world. His last dreamwalk was in Summer Place, where he had connected with an inanimate object, the house itself. Here he would match brains and souls with a human being, which meant that, at least for a while, Hadley’s insanity just may well be his own.
“Okay, John, watch your ass in there,” Gabriel said as he watched Lonetree drift off. The lights went out, and the candles cast an eerie sort of shadow play on the bed and the man lying there.
Leonard threw a small blanket over the video monitor to cut down on the light in the bedroom.
For the briefest of moments, as Lonetree went into a deeper sleep, everyone in the room felt John pass through their minds. It was like his thoughts reached out to connect with all. Then they felt the sensation pass, and they saw Hadley jerk in his slumber. The IV line went taut, and Jennifer started to rise to keep the line securely attached to the president, but Gabe held up a hand as Hadley settled. Lonetree tensed in muscle and facial expression, and in the candles’ weak light, they saw his eyes working under the lids. He was now entering REM sleep.
* * *
John saw blackness, and then he saw a bright flash of red and then white and then blackness again. The light was blurry, and John felt a powerful wind and a cold chill as his body sped through the dreamworld his mind was creating with the help of Dean Hadley. He was now mentally connected and there in Hadley’s time and space of the past.
The speeding car passed a school bus, and John heard the blare of the driver’s horn and then the laughter of the boy sitting next to him. Lonetree looked over and saw the letterman-jacketed teen with the wavy blond hair. The speeding Corvette screeched to the right and into a large parking area. The car’s engine was shut off with a powerful roar as the kid hit the accelerator one last time. This was the time in every dreamwalk where John was more confused than he was aware.
Lonetree watched Dean pause as he stepped from the Corvette, and his eyes went to a dark-haired girl who stepped easily from the bus he had just sped past. The girl then unfolded a walking cane. John saw that her eyes were hidden by dark sunglasses as she was greeted by several of the local high school girls. The group moved away with the rest of the bused students from other areas. Lonetree watched Dean move off arrogantly to class.
John suddenly found himself inside and sitting atop a vacant desk at the back of a large classroom. He looked around and momentarily felt dizzy because of the time jump. Not that he wasn’t grateful for not having to run to class like he had in his own past. Hadley was seated in the back and from the looks of it had very little interest in world history.
“Hey, look,” came a whispered command.
Dean took some gum out of his mouth and firmly planted it under his desk. “What?” he growled at a boy with a bad case of acne, seated across from him.
“Look at Gloria’s blouse; you can see her bra through the material,” the boy said and then giggled as his pimples turned a brighter shade of red.
Dean looked up and saw the back of the same girl who had exited the bus. She sat at her desk, listening to the old female teacher who was busy pointing at a map of the Ottoman Empire. Dean made a face and then turned on his friend.
“Knock it off, you backward-thinking Alley Oop. Gloria’s blind,” he snarled.
John watched as the girl named Gloria turned, and though he couldn’t see her eyes, he knew Dean had drawn her attention. Along with another.
“Is there a problem, Mr. Hadley?”
“No, Miss Kramer; do you have one?” Dean replied.
The class nervously chuckled.
John raised his brows at the arrogance of the boy.
“Young man, you are on thin ice with me. One more trip down to the counselor’s office and you’ll have some explaining to do to your father. That wouldn’t be conducive to an active weekend of fun, would it?”
Dean took a breath as the class erupted in laughter at his embarrassment. Even Lonetree smiled at his predicament.
“No, ma’am.” He saw Gloria as she listened. Although she was blind, John felt as if she were aware of her surroundings just as much as the kids with sight. She smiled at the uncomfortable silence from the back of the room.
“And, Mr. Weller, I think we have heard quite enough on the accessories of women’s clothing from you. Is that clear?”
“But I—”
“‘But I’ nothing. Now use that book for something besides a prop, please.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
John looked up, and then he saw that the girl was no longer smiling. It was quite evident that she had heard the remark about her bra also but was willing to let it go until the teacher called Jimmy Weller out on it. The blind stare was not at the boy with the serious cratering problem on his facial skin; it was directed at Hadley. Gloria’s unseeing glare was so intense that Dean looked away. John felt the girl intimidated the boy for some reason. Maybe it was the fact that she had the ability to stare without the use of her eyes.
“Thanks a lot, asshole!” Dean hissed as he finally picked up his own volume of world history and opened it to cover his talking.
“You know you like what you see. She must be lonely, right? How many dates could a blind girl have? And you’ve been through most of the bitchin’ babes in this school, so why not go for the trifecta?”
“Gloria is the daughter of one of my dad’s partners. Leave her alone.”
“Oh, the man’s in love.”
“I’m going to kick your ass, you little—”
“Mr. Hadley!” the voice was much louder than the first assault. The smallish woman took her pointer and stormed down the row, slapping the four-foot-long wooden stick on the students’ desks as she moved. Dean closed his book, and his eyes widened. “I guess we have to speak with your father. That won’t do much for your weekend. Nor the new car I understand he bought you … on the condition of good grades, I believe he said at our last parent-teacher meeting.” The small, short-haired woman, who John suspected had been teaching at Chino High School since the days of Prohibition, slapped the wooden pointer on the desk in front of Dean. To give the boy credit, he didn’t jump or even flinch. But he did not answer back.
Lonetree smiled, not believing this session of dreamwalk would bear any fruit, when he saw the teacher turn and start back to the front of the class. Then she stopped and turned with a smile.
“But we don’t need to do that, do we, Mr. Hadley?”
Dean didn’t comment, as he suspected a far worse punishment was on its way.
“I think an extra credit assignment is in order. I believe that will take care of that weekend I just spoke of. I have assigned Miss Perry to do a special report for the class in honor of Halloween next Wednesday. It is to cover historical haunted properties. I suspect she may need some help doing her research. Isn’t that right, Miss Perry?”
The dark-haired girl stood so suddenly that her braille copy of world history fell to the floor.
“I don’t think that I need any help. Especially from him. He would only be in the way. I’ll need this grade for my scholarship if and when I get one.”
Again, the classroom erupted in laughter at someone saying that Dean Hadley, the handsomest boy in school, would be in the blind girl’s way.
“No, I think he needs to adjust his busy weekend schedule to accommodate a straight-A student. Don’t you, Mr. Hadley?” The teacher again turned as Gloria faced Dean and flipped him the finger, causing his friend Jimmy Weller to laugh uncontrollably.
John was about to stop the dreamwalk when the bell rang, and he stopped from waking himself up as Gloria slowly approached Dean. She was facing him as though she could see the kid’s gray eyes. She leaned over the desk.
“Listen, Daddy’s boy, this report is very important to me. The place is important; it may mean a scholarship, which I know you don’t understand, so you’d better not screw this up. Do you hear?” Then she turned and faced the boy with the acne.
“And while you think commenting on my bra or clothing is funny, you ought to stop and smell yourself, you little bastard. It smells like you have shit your pants.” She wiggled her nose. “Just one of the many curses of being blind is that you are cursed in your other senses!”
“Oh!” Dean said mockingly as he laughed, and then he stood while his friend tried his best to vanish into the scarred-up desktop.
* * *
Dean approached Gloria as she gathered her books and walking cane. She turned on him when her excellent hearing told her he was right behind her.
“Look, no pleasantries, all right? I’ll say you helped. Miss Kramer will never know; she lives in Montclair, not Moreno.”
“Look, I never said a word about you, so don’t go tellin’ your dad that I did. He’ll only get into it with my father, and that won’t do either one of us any good.”
Gloria glanced around as if she were hearing a little voice. “Is that groveling I hear?”
“Good for you,” John said, watching the little drama play out.
Strangely, the girl turned her head in John’s direction as if she had heard him. Then she returned her attention to Hadley. Lonetree didn’t think much of it; after all, the girl could hear other things, so it didn’t have to be his voice that caught her momentary attention.
“Why do you hate me so much?” Dean asked as he angrily placed his schoolbooks under his arm, slipping on his jacket one arm at a time while juggling his things.
“Hate you?” Gloria stopped gathering her things and turned to face the cocky and brash kid. “We’ve been growing up in the same town for four years, and you have said less than three words to me. Even when our fathers were close, you treated me like blindness was a communicable disease.”
“Comm—what?” he asked, not understanding the word communicable.
“A sickness that spreads. But you caught something else, didn’t you, Dean? You caught the arrogant bug. God, you’re such an asshole.”
John could see the wince of the rebuke on Dean’s face. The comment actually hurt the big man on campus. He saw Dean take a deep breath, and then he tapped Gloria on the shoulder.
“Okay, what is this big report you have to do that now seems to be in my immediate future?”
“God, you just don’t know when to cease and desist, do you?”
“Why do you try to use words you know I have to look up to find out what they mean?” he protested. “You say I’m a snob—do you think I like it when you try to embarrass me? Maybe that’s why I avoid you at home. You’ve always been that way.”
Gloria seemed like the air had been taken out of her, and her shoulders slumped. She slowly turned and then with her dark glasses slipping down her nose, she adjusted them and shook her head.
“If I did that, I didn’t mean to. But you know you think you’re better than the rest of us in that town. Going to school here has even made you more arrogant. But as I said, if I did embarrass you, I’m sorry.” She again took her books and turned toward the door as the second bell sounded.
“So, tell me about this Halloween report.”
She turned and frowned. “You’re just not going to stop, are you? Why would you want to spend your weekend with a blind chick? There are plenty of girls that would appreciate your company far more.”
“Come on!”
Gloria stopped and in resignation said, “Okay, it’s a report on some of the strange things in Moreno.”
“Like?”
John’s ears perked up, and he stepped closer to the two kids.
“Like the old ruins, for one.”
“You know my dad and yours keep everyone out of there.”
“Ah, I see. Afraid of Daddy again, are we?” she said as she turned and walked away. She called out over her shoulder as she tapped the chosen path with her cane, “Pick me up at nine tomorrow. We have to sneak in just before the guard change. But if I were you, I would just sleep in until the maid wakes you up, and then you can go and drink beer with the rest of your mutant friends out at Hog Road. I am capable of doing this on my own. Frankly, you would be in the way. But if you insist, I’ll see you tomorrow morning.”
Dean watched Gloria go and wondered just how bad this idea was. He saw her exit the class, and then he slowly left. John felt as well as knew the boy’s thoughts and knew he was truly puzzled by the girl’s passion when it came to her project, which interested Lonetree to no end.
John thought about Gloria’s project and thought they may be onto something. In his dream state, they were mere days away from the disaster that would eventually destroy the town of Moreno, and he was short of time.
He felt the weariness grow inside him and knew he was close to waking. He started to leave the class when suddenly he was no longer inside. His breath came in short gasps, as he was now standing in a cold wind as he looked at the ruins. He could see one was an old mission from the aerial photos of Moreno that Leonard had shown them. The other, a run-down shamble of old adobe bricks. It looked abandoned, but John knew better. He tilted his head, as he thought he heard something. The chain-link fencing surrounding the property allowed the wind through, and it made a sad whistling sound as it passed. His eyes moved first toward the ancient mission. Then he turned to his right and spied the ruins of a building which, for a reason he couldn’t understand, made him feel vulnerable and alone. The wind came on stronger, and he knew they had stumbled on a hot spot in the small town of Moreno. He immediately started drifting toward wakefulness as the words echoed in his dream.
Přiveď ho domů.
John had never heard the language before in his life, but for a reason he couldn’t fathom, knew the meaning of it. He didn’t know how he knew, but it translated in his mind as if he was being spoken to. The strange words in the foreign language were being said right into his ears as the wind had faded and the dream came to an end. He would wake up with Jennifer and the others hearing those repeated words that had been brought in on that cold breeze.
Bring him home.
* * *
Julie was furiously writing down John’s every word. Leonard had already seized on the last three words to come from the dreamwalk and was running the phonetic trace to translate the strange language. Jennifer was lightly rubbing John’s hand and wrist to get him to come completely back to a wakeful state. Gabriel watched with the syringe with 10 cc of Adrenalin in case John had trouble waking. Kennedy relaxed when he saw Lonetree’s eyes flutter and then come back. The action had taken far less time than Kennedy had hoped for.
“Look,” George and Damian said at the same moment Dean started to move. John straightened in his chair and stretched his arms just as Hadley sat up straight with his gray eyes wide.
“Jenny, move John away from the bed,” Gabe said as Hadley turned his head first right and then left, as he searched for something he could not see. As John stumbled from the chair, still groggy after viewing a brief moment in Hadley’s life, Damian and George moved quickly to assist Jennifer in getting him clear of Hadley. Kennedy had explained once that when John dreamwalked while connected to a human host and not an object like Summer Place, the recipient of his strange talent usually awoke with resentment at the fact their most inner thoughts and dreams had been compromised. Even those who had requested John’s intervention woke with a sense of being violated. Damian moved to turn the lights on after he had secured John and Jenny in the far corner next to Leonard’s station.
“No, Damian, leave the lights off,” Gabriel said, replacing his medical aids in the small black bag and standing to monitor Hadley’s heart rate. It had skyrocketed. He was in danger of a stroke if they couldn’t get him to calm.
“Where is she? What have you done?” Hadley said as he continued to move his head as if searching for someone or something.
In the corner, John came fully awake and then stood on shaky legs. He quickly gestured for Leonard to give him a writing pad. Sickles, wide-eyed, handed him a yellow legal pad, as John was still asleep. Jennifer was also confused, and she stopped Lonetree and mouthed, Are you awake?
John ignored her and wrote something on the pad and then pushed it hard into Jenny’s hand. The anthropologist read the few words there and then started to hand the pad over to Gabriel, who became aware of the activity behind him and turned as Jenny pointed to the pad and started to give it to him. John vigorously shook his head and tapped Jennifer hard on the shoulder and pointed. He tried to speak, but it was like his mouth was full of cotton. He finally managed to get his point across. “You read it to Hadley,” he said and then accepted the water bottle from Leonard, who was still scared and confused.
Kennedy nodded when Jennifer showed him the question. Jenny cleared her throat and approached the bed where Dean was still searching the darkened room for someone he knew to be lost.
“Dean?” Jenny said in a soft, motherly voice. Hadley stopped his search of the bedroom and then fixed his tired eyes on Jenny. She felt he wasn’t seeing her but knew where to look. She definitely had his attention.
“Why are the ruins in Moreno so important?” she finished the question.
“That’s private property, you know,” he mumbled, and then his brow furrowed. “What do you mean you’ve been going down there since you were twelve?”
The others exchanged looks as Hadley slowly replayed something in his memory.
Suddenly, Hadley broke out into a laugh. It was an unnatural sound, it was forced like a soldier joking during a fierce firefight, it was for bravery’s sake alone.
“Hey, don’t touch that; that’s mercury. This stuff shouldn’t be here. Look, it’s all over the damn thing. My dad will have a conniption fit if he discovers someone stole mercury from the plant; this stuff could contaminate the entire town, if not the valley if it got into the groundwater.”
Hadley stayed in the sitting position, and then he slowly fell back onto the pillow. His eyes remained open, and they all could see the tears welling there. They watched as those tears slowly rolled down his cheek to soak into the white pillowcase.
“Meet … me … at … the … Grenada … we … can … kill … it … there … we … can … kill … it … there … we … can … kill … it … there…”
Gabriel watched as Hadley closed his eyes. And then in a soft voice, Hadley murmured, “Take me home.”
The president had gone. He drifted away like an outgoing tide, and they watched the lined face relax. Kennedy nodded, and in the flickering candlelight, Damian flipped on the lights. Both bedside lamps flared, and they all blinked at the brightness.
Jennifer took Hadley’s vital signs. Gabriel stood and went to the door after blowing out the two candles and then opened it and gestured for the doctors and nurses to enter. They were soon followed by the security detail. Leonard shut down his system after securing it and then transferred the data he had recovered over to his smaller laptop. He nodded and then followed the others out of the room.
* * *
The study was silent as they all recovered from the tense session with John. Jennifer gave Lonetree three aspirin, and he dry swallowed them as he stared at the table’s shiny top. He rubbed his eyes and looked up at Kennedy.
“Those ruins are the key, I believe. When I looked at them, I knew there was something bad connected to them—maybe not the mission so much as the building next to it.”
“The winery,” Leonard said as he passed around a set of pictures he had downloaded and shown previously.
They all perused the photos once more, this time with far more interest.
“He kept talking about mercury. Why?” Jennifer asked John, who shook his head.
“Outside of the fact that the factory employed most of the town and used mercury in all their products”—Leonard passed another set of printed photos out—“it is the excuse used for the town’s eventual death rattle. Other than that, I have no idea. But Hadley seemed to worry about it quite a bit.”
John rubbed his eyes again and then opened them. “I got the feeling from the kid that it wasn’t his knowledge that he passed on but his father’s dire warnings about the effects of mercury on the human system. He was basically ignorant. A kid’s warning to another kid. I don’t know. I have to sort out my own feelings.”
“What did you think of the girl?” Gabriel asked.
John smiled and felt as if his headache were easing up. “Gloria? I got the intense feeling that all of this, everything, revolved around her in some way.”
“The report? Halloween?” Julie asked as she reread her notes from the dream session.
“I have to go back in. And this time, I need to have you tank me, Gabe. There’s a lot more there. It’s like something wants the story told, and I feel it’s coming from the girl.”
Gabriel looked back at Leonard, who sadly nodded and then leaned over from his chair and slipped him a sheet of paper. Kennedy read it and then closed his eyes. He finally opened them and then saw John was anxiously waiting for the bad news.
“Gloria Perry, seventeen years, two months, missing, presumed dead in the Grenada Theater fire. Her body and that of four others were never recovered.”
John felt immense sadness at hearing that. The room was silent as Lonetree absorbed Leonard’s research.
Julie cleared her throat, ever the reporter. “Her family?”
“Father only,” Leonard said as he read from the computer screen. “Mother died while her father served overseas during the war, basically the same as our friend Dean Hadley. Raised by an aunt until her father returned.” Leonard raised his brow when he noted an interesting fact. “The father, Franklyn Perry, was an intelligence officer. A captain. Guess who he served with and who his commanding officer in S-2 was?”
“Robert Hadley Sr.,” John said through pursed lips.
“Franklyn Perry operated a bar and grill in Moreno and received profits from joint ventures with Hadley. The bar and grill business afforded him the time he needed to assist in his daughter’s infirmity,” Leonard said.
“She was blind, not infirm. I got the distinct impression that if that girl had not died before her time, we would have heard amazing things about her. No, Leonard, no infirmities.”
“Bad choice of words.”
“Hey, do I have competition for your affections?” Jenny joked, and John smiled.
“Can we agree that it all revolves around that small town in California?” Gabe said as he stood and paced. They all nodded.
“A disaster this size, why isn’t this incident that well known? The deaths of that many should have been an historical black eye,” Julie said as she again went into her conspiracy mode. This time, Gabriel didn’t think she was wrong.
“Cover up,” Leonard said. “Who were these men really working for? The United States Army or the OSS, or was it someone even more nefarious?”
“During the war years, the lines were a little blurred,” Damian said. “I was approached by the CIA after my tours in Iraq. It’s not all that uncommon.”
“Leonard, is there any possibility you can find out what duties they had during their service time?” Gabe asked.
“None. No files exist that can be … well … stolen. Whatever they did was blocked from their 201 files. I do have a clue here. The words Přiveď ho domů—and I hope I spelled that right—is Czech and also basically the same meaning in the Yugoslavian dialect. It means, ‘Bring him home.’ I can start there. Maybe their service careers had something to do with the Eastern European liberation by Allied forces.”
“We may not have the time to wait for what you may come up with.” All eyes again went to John. “I have to go back in, and this time, Gabe, you have to give me a kicker. Tank me until I am deep.”
“I disagree, John. A kicker will send you down too deep; even with stimulants, we may not be able to wake you. Your heart may seize.”
“I’m willing to take that chance.”
“Well, I’m not!” Jenny said. “You think you can solve something that happened decades ago by tapping into a man who more than likely has murder on his résumé? You heard the tapes of your own voice describing Hadley as an arrogant little prick who has love for only himself.”
“I always toss initial impressions, you know that. I get a feeling that the kid wasn’t as bad as everyone believed. Why the cover up of the factory explosion? It was widely reported, but there was not one investigation outside of the local authorities. Look, this company made their bones on government funding. Are you telling me that the feds wouldn’t have been all over this? And why didn’t the State of California sue the crap out of Washington over the supposed groundwater contamination that the very same disaster brought on? And most importantly, why would Hadley Corp continue securing a place that was dead and buried in 1962?”
“Geronimo is right; there’s too much bullshit here to not believe that something happened in Moreno that no one, and I do mean no one, wants out.”
Everyone looked at Leonard. John was staring a hole in him.
“Sorry for the Geronimo thing.”
“I think this stuff has been buried so long that everyone has forgotten where the bodies are, so to speak.” Damian stood and went to the coffee maker. He saw and smelled the old coffee and decided that water would do. “No, as much as I do not appreciate the science as much as you do, I think we stand our best shot with Lonetree.” Damian looked up and shook his head in acknowledging Jennifer and her own dilemma about the dangers posed by John reentering Hadley’s memories.
Lonetree bit his lip. He didn’t want to say anything about the troubling fact that he suspected Gloria Perry had heard him when he inadvertently laughed during the dreamwalk. That information, as troubling as it was, would be a death knell for going back in. Gabriel would never allow it if there was a hint of interaction between himself and the occupants of Hadley’s dreamworld.
“Halloween.”
Everyone turned to see Gabriel as he continued to pace. He stopped and saw that he had inadvertently spoken aloud.
“That’s the deadline. It’s gearing up for that point in time. Why now, after all these years? We may never know, but I suspect that all the clues point to Halloween and a supposed homecoming party for our Mr. Hadley.”
“And everything revolves around that night?” Julie asked.
“It’s been staring us in the face the whole time. Leonard, what is the current population of Moreno?”
Sickles looked at his notes. “Sixteen—mostly migrant families that have squatted there illegally, and several hangers-on, not counting the two security plants. There are four operating business, but the rumors of contamination have been successful in keeping most sane individuals out of there. Moreno is like the strange brother that California has hidden and chained in the attic.”
“We have to get out to California and see what’s up out there firsthand. We need to speak with survivors and the people who work there.” Kennedy picked up his own notepad and looked it over until he found the section he wanted. “I especially want to interview this Bob and Linda Culbertson, the security team.”
“Gabe, we don’t have the time.” John stood up, angry that he was being thwarted by his best friend. “That woman is relieving us in”—John consulted the grandfather clock and its swinging pendulum—“two hours.”
Leonard stood and passed Gabriel the same folder he had produced earlier. “I think you need to start playing by the old rules, Professor Gabe. If this bitch wants to play hardball, play that way.”
Kennedy slapped his hand down on the folder, and a smile slowly crossed his lips.
“I have a feeling we may find our asses right back in jail. Anytime we start taking advice from Mr. Spock here, we get into trouble,” Damian said, referencing Leonard.
“Why, I’m just turning in a report the First Lady may or may not appreciate.”
Damian shook his head at Gabriel and decided that it was close enough to noon, so he went to the bar. “God help us, blackmailing the First Lady of a grieving nation. We are truly wonderful people.”
A knock sounded on the door, and the First Lady’s assistant popped her head in.
“The White House Press Corp is out in front. The First Lady has called a news conference to inform the nation of the medical decision to move the president to hospital care in New Hampshire. She expects you to be available in case anyone has questions about your participation. It starts in fifteen.” The sliding door closed.
The second battle for the soul of Moreno would start then.