50

Marcus followed Annie back inside the beach house.

She suggested they change and meet on the main level in five minutes. Marcus wasn’t sure he could wait until then. Still, he took a quick, hot shower, changed into Bermuda shorts and a fresh T-shirt, and headed upstairs.

Annie was already waiting for him. She had put on a sundress and pulled her wet hair into a ponytail and was sitting at the dining room table, her reading glasses on, booting up her laptop.

When he sat down beside her, Annie held up a thumb drive.

“What’s that?” he asked.

Annie inserted the drive into her laptop. “There are six different audio recordings on here,” she explained. “One is a call of Stephens talking to you in Russia. Three are calls of Stephens strategizing with McDermott. Then there are two separate calls between Stephens and Nikolay Kropatkin, head of the FSB. In addition, there are several emails between Stephens and McDermott, then with the NMCC at the Pentagon, and finally with Kropatkin, both before and after the drone strikes. Each is more damning than the last. Believe me, it would hold up in any criminal or civil court. And make no mistake, if the Democrats on the Hill ever got ahold of this stuff . . .”

She didn’t finish her sentence. She didn’t have to.

“Annie, I’m blown away.”

“Don’t be. I didn’t do a thing to get it. Didn’t know it existed until it was literally dropped in my lap. All I was asked to do was hold on to it for safekeeping and hope it would never need to see the light of day.”

“Someone was taking a terrible risk giving it to you.”

“Maybe they calculated there was a greater risk in keeping it to themselves.”

“When did you get it?” he asked.

But Annie didn’t want to go there. “That’s not important. The point is I know the source. They’re unimpeachable—and I’m using that word advisedly. The material is authentic. It’s unedited. And it’s devastating. I never imagined having to use it. But it’s time.”

“We can’t.”

“We have to. Look, you’re never going back into government service. That much is clear. But Stephens cannot be allowed to break the law. If you don’t stop him, who else will wind up in his crosshairs?”

“This is highly classified material. Releasing it to the media would be a felony. We’d be guilty of the same tactics Stephens is employing.”

“That’s why we’re not going to release this to the media,” she replied.

“The Hill?”

“No. I wouldn’t trust anyone in Congress with it either. Not right now. Things are too hot up there.”

“Then I don’t understand,” Marcus said. “If we don’t leak it to the media or give it to the Senate Intelligence Committee, how do you propose we use it?”

“We give it to the president,” she said. “Well, the acting president.”

“Hernandez.”

“Exactly.”

“But it’ll be intercepted,” Marcus protested. “There are too many gatekeepers. He’ll never see it.”

“No,” Annie said. “Hernandez has a private email account. A back channel. Only a handful of people know about it. Senator Dayton has occasionally had me send things to him this way. When we were in Moscow, for example. And later in Riyadh. It’s secure, and it’s private. Only he ever checks the account.”

“So you’re saying we send the files to him as a couple of whistleblowers?”

Annie shook her head. “Not we. I.”

“No, Annie, this is my problem. Not yours.”

“It can’t come from you. It has to come from a third party. And a staffer for a Democratic senator is ideal.”

“It’s too risky.”

“Why? I’ve already resigned. What’s the worst that can happen?”

“Seriously?” Marcus asked. “You’re really asking me what could go wrong if you go nuclear on the director of the CIA?”

“Giving this to the media is going nuclear,” she told him, shaking her head again. “Giving this to the acting president of the United States so he can make his own determination of how, if at all, he wants to act on this information and whether he wants to take the risk of it being leaked—that, my friend, is a surgical strike.”

Marcus chewed on that for a moment, then made a counterproposal. “How about this?” he said. “We set up a fake email account and send it to Hernandez anonymously. I don’t want you to get hurt.”

“I won’t get hurt,” she told him, “but even if I do, it’s worth the risk.”

“We don’t really know Hernandez’s character,” Marcus insisted. “We don’t know how he’ll react to any of this. I want to believe the best about him. But it might not be the right moment to stick your neck out of the foxhole. Let’s send it anonymously and see what happens.”

“Fair enough,” she said.

Three minutes later the file was sent.