23

Paige spent that night at the Hilton Garden Inn in Alexandria, Virginia. She had agreed to meet Bill Harris for breakfast the next morning before she returned to Virginia Beach and made an effort to reclaim some type of normal life.

She woke the next morning and squinted when she turned on the hotel room lights, heading toward the bathroom. That’s when she noticed it—a manila envelope that someone had slid under the door. It was thicker than the hotel room bill lying next to it and had Paige’s name typed on the label.

She picked it up and opened it, sliding the contents out one document at a time. She furrowed her brow and studied the papers. She walked to the desk, moved some of her stuff to the side, and spread out the sheets.

She opened the curtains, flooding the room with light. Then she returned to the desk, pushing her hair out of her face, and sat down in her thin cotton pajamas to inspect the documents more carefully.

There was no letter here to explain things, and nothing to identify whom the documents were from. There was, however, a grainy photo of a poorly lit prison cell with a life-size cardboard cutout of President Amanda Hamilton. At the bottom of the picture, somebody had pasted a caption that read: Sana’a Central Prison, March 30.

Whoever left the package had also paper-clipped together three documents that appeared to be three separate drafts of a speech by President Hamilton. The first announced a successful mission to free Cameron Holloman and Abdullah Fahd bin Abdulaziz. The second announced that those same prisoners had been freed but that the U.S. Special Forces had suffered casualties. This speech contained a section offering condolences to the families. It was obviously prepared before the raid because there were blanks for the names and number of men killed.

The third draft, the only one that had handwritten edits, informed the American public that Operation Exodus had been unsuccessful. Paige recognized the language from when she had watched the speech at Kristen’s house. She assumed she was looking at a copy of that speech with the president’s handwritten revisions.

Paige opened her computer and searched for a video of the president’s speech. She watched for a few moments, checking the president’s language against the words written on the page in front of her. It was pretty much a final draft. Still, Paige didn’t really see the point.

The other documents were photocopied articles about the president’s Mideast policies. There was an interesting piece from Foreign Affairs, discussing the “disastrous” Iranian agreement President Hamilton had inherited from her predecessor. It outlined the same types of criticisms of the Iranian deal that Paige had heard in the presidential election eighteen months earlier. Inspectors had to give twenty-four days’ notice before they viewed Iran’s uranium enrichment facilities. The only punishment for Iranian violations was a “snapback” of international sanctions, but first the U.N. Security Council had to agree. In addition, the U.S. and Iran were prohibited from reintroducing alternative sanctions unilaterally, meaning that the U.S. had its hands tied to the United Nations from then on. From following the news, Paige knew President Hamilton was now ignoring this part of the deal based on Iran’s failure to act in good faith when it had funded the Houthis but failed to help the U.S. negotiate Holloman’s release.

But the article also discussed some aspects of the Iranian deal that Paige had never heard about or at least had never understood. The deal not only tied the hands of the United States with regard to sanctions, but it committed the United States to assist Iran in the development of “energy, finance, technology, and trade.” The author said the agreement was “truly historic,” a turning point in America’s Mideast policies from one that supported Israel and the Sunni Arab states, such as Saudi Arabia, to one that would now equally support a longtime enemy like Iran. In essence, the agreement committed the United States to help build Iran into a regional military and economic superpower.

Prior to her involvement with Patrick, Paige had never cared much about U.S. policies in the Mideast. The whole thing was a mess, and she could never keep the Shiite and Sunni Muslims straight. She knew the U.S. needed to support Israel and get troops out of the Muslim countries, but that was about as deep as she got. Even when Patrick was deployed and Paige started researching the sectarian violence in the Mideast countries, it still seemed like a maze.

So she couldn’t understand why anyone would take the time to copy these articles and slide them under her door. Who even knew she was in this room?

The answers would undoubtedly be found in the last item that she had shaken out of the manila envelope. It was an unmarked thumb drive, and against her better judgment, Paige plugged it into her computer.

There were only two items on the drive. The first was a PDF that expressed condolences for Patrick’s death but then claimed there were some disturbing things that Paige and Bill Harris should know. It said a similar package of materials had been delivered to Bill’s room. The writer, without identifying himself or herself, asked for a meeting at the Falls Church Marriott hotel at three o’clock that afternoon, executive suite 301.

Patrick and his team were good men and deserve the truth to be known. I’m sorry if what I must tell you adds to your grief. However, if I were in your place, I would want to know. Please do not talk to anyone else except Mr. Harris about this information. If you decide not to come to the Marriott, I will understand and will never contact you again.

The video on this thumb drive shows a meeting between Philip Kilpatrick, the president’s chief of staff, and John Marcano, the director of the CIA. That meeting occurred less than twenty-four hours before the SEAL team was sent into Sana’a. If you come to the Marriott later today, I will tell you why that meeting is important.

Paige opened the video and watched as the two men sat on a park bench and talked, both holding umbrellas. One kept a hand over his mouth most of the time. There was no audio, and it was impossible for Paige to understand anything either of the men was saying.

When the meeting was over, the men stood and walked to a black sedan at the curb. They shook hands, and one of them climbed into the car. The other watched as the sedan pulled away, then turned and walked in the opposite direction.

Paige knew immediately that she would be showing up at the Marriott that afternoon. She thought about contacting the authorities but worried about scaring this person off. Paige wasn’t into conspiracy theories, yet when she searched the Internet, she wasn’t able to find the picture of the cardboard cutout of the president. Somebody had access to inside information.

The implication was that the mission in Yemen was not for the purpose she and the rest of the American public had been led to believe. Paige thought about her meeting yesterday with the president. She instinctively trusted the woman, another crusader who had come up through the ranks as a prosecuting attorney. Yet how could Paige not show up at the Marriott? She would spend the rest of her life wondering what this had all been about.

She pulled up a picture of Patrick on her laptop. If for no other reason, she owed it to him to at least check this out.