The Library at Mount Char (18 page)

Steve gaped at her.

“Last name, please?”

Carolyn's brow furrowed. “I'm not sure. Does it matter?”

The operator sounded bored. “I'm sorry, Ma'am. The president is unavailable at the moment. If you'd care to leave a message I'll see that—”

“He'll speak to me,” Carolyn said. “Prepare to authenticate. Today's code word is ‘bolt.' ”

“Oh!” the operator said. “Hang on. I'll transfer you.”

“Could it be Sopaski?” Steve said, remembering what Erwin had told him.

“What?”

“Your last name. Could it be Sopaski?”

Carolyn thought about it for a second. “Actually, yeah. That sounds—”

A man's voice boomed out of the headset. “This is Sergeant Davis,” he said. “Please authenticate.”

Carolyn pointed at Rachel and raised her eyebrows quizzically. Rachel beckoned to a little girl in a grimy gray sundress. The child whispered something in her ear. Rachel relayed it to Carolyn in that singsong language.

“The code is ‘bear 723 walking 33744 dawn,' ” Carolyn said, translating.

“Please hold.” There was a sound of typing. A moment later the man said, “I'll connect you to Mr. Hamann's office.”

Steve thought about this for a moment, then his eyes opened wide. “The
chief of staff
?”

“Shh!” Carolyn said. For about a minute they were in limbo—no hold music, no recorded messages, just silence. Then, “This is Bryan Hamann,” a voice said.

Are you fucking kidding me?
Steve took a breath, focused on trying to appear calm. He wasn't sure, but he suspected he was doing a really shitty job of this.

“Mr. Hamann, I need you to get the president for me,” Carolyn said. “Thanks so much.”

“I'm afraid that won't be possible, Miss, ah”—there was a sound of
computery clicking—“Carolyn. The president is in a meeting. Is there something that I—”

“Get him out of the meeting.”

For a moment there was silence on the other end of the line. Steve suspected that the man was simply having trouble crediting what his ears were telling him. He sympathized. Carolyn let him have a moment.

“Lady, there are exactly three people on the planet who are authorized to use the code you just provided, and I happen to know that you aren't any of them. Now, unless you tell me exactly who you are and how you came by those codes, you're going to be in for some extremely serious trouble. Either way, you've gotten as far up the chain as you're going to.” There was a slight clicking on the line.

“I think they're tracing the call,” Steve said. He felt like this was a valuable contribution.

“Hush,” Carolyn said. She turned to Rachel. The two of them spoke for a few moments. The sound of it put Steve in mind of tropical birds fighting. “Mr. Hamann, please pardon me for being blunt. You seem like a decent man, but I'm pressed for time. I know where the president was on the night of March 28, 1993. I know why Alyson Majors is so quiet these days. I even have access to photographs. If I'm not speaking to the man himself in one minute I'm going to hang up. My next call will be to the
Washington Post
.”

There was a brief pause, perhaps two seconds. Hamann didn't bother to put the call on hold, he just dropped the receiver. Steve heard the sound of a door hitting a wall. There was a few seconds of silence, a distant commotion. Next he heard Hamann say, “Clear out. Now. We need the room.” There was the sound of a door shutting, then, “This is the president.”

Oh-ho!
Steve thought.
There's something you don't hear every day
. He took a bite of his cinnamon roll. It was his third.
They really are quite good
.

Carolyn smiled. “How do you do, Mr. President? I'm sorry to be so pushy, but I'm afraid these are unusual circumstances. My name is Carolyn Sopaski.”

There was a long silence. “I'm afraid that I don't—”

“My Father is called Adam Black.”

There was a very long silence. “Can you repeat that, please?”

She did.

Another pause, shorter this time. “There are a lot of men named—”

“Yes, but my Father is the Adam Black who was mentioned in the folder waiting for you on your desk on the day when you first took office. The yellowish paper, handwritten by Mr. Carter, I believe? Do you remember it?”

“I do,” the president said. His voice was faint.

“Excellent. I thought you might. Would you like to know what became of the piece of Air Force hardware with the number 11807-A1 stenciled on the side? I can tell you exactly. I was there.”

The president made a whooshing sound. “I see.” His voice was weak. “I—that is, my understanding was that a condition of the treaty was that there was to be no contact between—”

Carolyn laughed. “Is that what you call it? A ‘treaty'? That's rather grandiose of you, isn't it? The way I recall it, my Father told Mr. Carter to see to it that he was not bothered anymore. Mr. Carter said that he would be happy to take care of it, and be sure to call again if there was ever anything else he could do. My Father said we would. Now I am. Adam Black would be very grateful if you would do him a small favor. A service.”

“A service?”

“Yes. My understanding is that you have the power to issue criminal pardons. Is that correct?”

“I do…”

“Excellent. I'll send you the details. Thank you, Mr. Pr—”

“May, ah, madam, if I may—may I ask the nature of the offense?”

Carolyn's eyes narrowed. She didn't answer immediately. When she did her tone was noticeably cooler. “Why would that matter?”

“It, ah, it might have bearing on—”

Carolyn sighed. “The man in question hasn't been charged yet, but I'm told that it's just a matter of time. The incident revolves around the murder of a police officer. There are also likely to be some incidental charges—breaking and entering, burglary, things of that nature. Oh, and
escape. He left jail yesterday without permission. Some people died. I assume that's some sort of crime as well?”

The president, a former editor of the
Harvard Law Review
, agreed that it probably was.

“But it's the death-penalty case that we're primarily concerned with.”

“Death penalty,” the president said flatly.

“Yes.” Carolyn paused. “If it eases the sting any, I happen to know that the man being charged is quite innocent. I know this for an absolute fact.”

“May I ask how?”

“Because I was the one who killed Detective Miner,” Carolyn said. “Mr. Hodgson was present but…unaware that anything of the kind was going on. Legal technicalities aside, he is completely innocent.”

“I see,” the president said at length. “Even so, Ms. Sopaski, this could be politically very—”

“My understanding is that when you took office you were briefed on, among other things, a file with the code name Cold Home. The file had blue and red stripes along the border. It was about an inch thick and just chock-full of unanswered questions. Is that correct?”

The president was silent for a beat. “How could you
possibly
know about that?” he hissed.

Carolyn laughed. “I'm afraid that will have to be another unanswered question,” she said, and winked at Rachel. “Add it to the file, why don't you? But the fact is that I
do
know, Mr. President. And if you've read the file on Cold Home then you have some idea of what my Father is capable of. I can assure you from my own personal experience that he is not a man you want to make angry. All I'm asking is that you sign a piece of paper. For what it's worth, I consider it very unlikely that the fact you did so would ever be made public.”

After a moment the president, who was not a fool, said, “Very well.”

“Thank you! I'll be sure to inform Father that you've been very helpful.”

“That's very kind of you. Ms. Sopaski, this administration would very much like to open a dialogue with your father. We could—”

“I'm sorry, Mr. President. I'm afraid that will not be possible.”

“But—” said the president.

“There is one other thing you can do for me though. When is your next press appearance?”

There was a pause. Someone in the background said, “Tomorrow morning.” The president said, “Tomorrow morning, I believe.”

Carolyn thought about it for a moment. “Sorry. That's not quick enough. Arrange one for tonight.”

“I'm afraid that won't be—”

“That wasn't a request.” Her tone was frosty.

There was a long silence at the other end of the line. Steve stared at her, slack-jawed.

“Very well,” the president said softly.

“Good. When you're giving that speech I want you to say something for me. Say, mmm, oh, I don't know. Say ‘Auld lang syne.' Do you think you could work that into your remarks without raising too many eyebrows?”

“I suppose I
could
,” the president said slowly. “May I ask why?”

“Because at some point in the next few minutes it's going to occur to the person you're about to pardon that
mmmmaybe
I'm talking to a man who just
sounds
like you. When he sees you say ‘Auld lang syne' on live TV, that will go a long way toward alleviating those doubts.”

“I see. Yes, I suppose that can be arranged.”

“Excellent!” Carolyn said. “Thank you, Mr. President. That will be all.”

She hung up.

A
n hour or so later Steve and Carolyn were alone in the living room. Not long after Carolyn had hung up on the president, the big bloody guy woke up and ate a couple of cinnamon rolls. Then he went to the stinky woman in the corner and took the lighter from her. She seemed
to come out of herself then. She smiled up at him. The two of them moved to the back bedroom about the time the president came on.

Steve wanted to focus on the press conference, but he was having trouble. The big guy and the smelly woman were having some truly epic sex back there. It started with squeaking bedsprings, but those were eventually drowned out by bear noises and something not unlike yodeling. The smell of sex and rotting meat wafted throughout the house. Mrs. McGillicutty's bed evidently wasn't rated for stunt fucking, though. Right before the big finish it collapsed with a splintery, wrenching sound. Steve, not unimpressed, noted that the happy couple didn't so much as skip a beat.

He looked around to see if Carolyn or any of the others were as amused by this as he was, but the only one who seemed aware anything was going on was Punkin Tinkletoes, the old lady's pet cat. He had been sleeping by the wall opposite the bedroom. When they bounced off it hard enough to make family photos rain down, the cat sauntered over to join Steve on the couch.

Carolyn waved a hand in front of Steve's eyes and looked pointedly at the TV. “Pay attention, OK? I don't want to have to call him back.”

“Sorry.”

For the last twenty minutes or so, the president had been yapping about some sort of bill that was supposed to stimulate the economy. He wanted to raise taxes, or maybe lower them. Now he was taking questions.

Steve watched diligently for a couple of minutes. Then the big guy, wrapped in a bedsheet, walked back through the living room into the kitchen. He grabbed two brownies, a bottle of Wesson oil, and—
oh, gosh
—kitchen tongs. Then, grinning like a fiend, he sank back into the bedroom. Punkin Tinkletoes tracked this. Steve thought he might be wondering about the tongs as well. When the big guy disappeared around the corner, the cat turned to Steve with a quizzical blink.

Steve shrugged. “You got me, dude,” he whispered. “Honestly, I'm not sure I want to—”

Carolyn poked him again, and Steve shut up. On TV, one of the reporters asked about an upcoming arms summit with the Russians. The
president said that the location wasn't fixed yet, but that both he and the Russian liked the idea of doing it in Reykjavik, “if nothing else, for auld lang syne.” All the reporter people laughed.

Steve didn't get the joke.
That's the president, though, for really real
. He felt dazed. Mrs. McGillicutty got all the cable channels, and the press conference was covered live on two of them. When it had started, he'd flipped back and forth between C-SPAN and Fox News, thinking maybe it was some sort of elaborate hoax, that they'd just gotten an actor who…

Carolyn was looking at him.

“OK,” Steve said. “Let's say I believe that you
can
get the president to sign a pardon for me.” He was surprised to realize he actually did believe that. “We still have a problem.”

“Which is?”

“I have no reason at all to think that you
will
. You may remember, the last time I agreed to run an errand for you I ended up in jail. The day before yesterday my asshole lawyer said, and I quote, I was ‘on a fast track to death row.' ”

Carolyn's brow furrowed. She brushed her hair back with her fingers. “I'm sorry about that. Really. It was unavoidable. If you do this for me, I
can
and
will
make it better.” She reached behind the couch and tossed him the duffel bag full of money she had brought to the bar. “Here's your cash, by the way.”

Steve looked down at the bag, then back up at her. The way she tossed it to him suggested a couple of possibilities. One was that she didn't give a fuck about $327,000. Another was that she knew Steve wasn't going to be around long enough to spend it.
Still
, he told himself,
it's not like you have a lot of choices
.

They'd been watching the news for an hour or so. Prior to the surprise press conference, one of the big stories had been his “escape”—Steve thought “kidnapping” would be more accurate, but no one asked him—from jail. Apparently the body count was up in the thirties. CNN was speculating that Steve might be the head of some hitherto unsuspected drug cartel. Fox thought he was probably part of a terrorist organization. Everybody seemed to agree that he was really, really dangerous. They flashed his mug shot about every ten minutes.