Triggers (16 page)

“It would have been cruel, Mr. January, if any of it had ever really happened. But it didn’t. There is no William Cordt. Your wife hasn’t left the United States in over three years; I checked her passport records.”

January’s eyes went wide. “You…
bitch!”

“And you’re under arrest.”

“For what?”

“For espionage. Spying on the president is a felony.”

“The president!” said January.

“Don’t play games now,” Susan said. “Yes, the president.” She stood up. “Extend your arms.”

“What for?” asked January.

“So I can cuff you.”

“I demand to see a lawyer.”

“Oh, you will. Before this is over, you’ll have seen more of them than you can count. But for now, not only do you have the
right
to remain silent, you have the
obligation.
Spying on the president is bad enough. Revealing what you’ve learned is…well, I’m glad we never got around to closing Gitmo.”

“Wait!” said January as Susan went to cuff him. “You’re wrong! You’re wrong!”

Susan closed the metal loops around his wrists. “Tell it to the judge.”

“No, no. Listen to me! You’re wrong. I’m not linked to the president, honestly. God, it never even occurred to me that anyone might be linked to him—he wasn’t conscious, after all, when all this went down; he was under general anesthesia.”

“Then why’d you lie about being linked to your wife?”

He hesitated. Susan put the flat of her hand against his back and propelled him toward the door.

“All right!” he said. “All right. I’m telling you the truth. I’m not linked to President Jerrison. I’m linked to Mark Griffin.”

“The hospital CEO?” she said. “Why lie about that?” They were at the closed door to Singh’s office; Singh’s black bomber jacket was hanging from a hook on the door’s back.

“Because I’m president of the staff association here, and he’s the hospital’s chief executive officer—and my opponent. I’m facing off against him over contract negotiations, and, well, this will give me the edge, so long as he doesn’t know I’m reading him. I figured it would be easy to fake that I was linked to my wife; we already have so many memories in common.”

“Prove it,” Susan said. “Prove you’re linked to Griffin. When did he and I first meet?”

“When you arrived here this morning with the president. He was on the right side of the gurney, and you were on the left. You had blood smeared on your jacket.”

“Who was behind me?”

“The president’s personal physician. Griffin greeted her, although he called her by her military rank: Captain Snow.”

“And what did he say about Dr. Redekop?”

“Nothing, then.”

“Later, I mean. What did he call him when we were in the observation gallery?”

“He said Redekop was ‘a doctor of the’—well, I don’t know what this means, but it’s what he said: ‘a doctor of the first water.’”

“Fuck,” said Susan.

“I’m sorry,” said January. “I really am. I—this all just sort of fell into my lap, you know? I didn’t know what to do.”

“Rule number one, asshole: don’t lie to the Secret Service.” She took off the handcuffs. “Get out of here.”

“You mean I can go home?”

“No, you cannot. Not until I choose to end the lockdown. But get out of my sight.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he said, and he scurried out the door.

SUSAN
was livid as she walked down to Singh’s lab. The Canadian was sitting at his computer, and Darryl Hudkins had now joined him. He was looking at a city map spread out on a table.

“Any luck tracking down the woman who went AWOL?” she demanded.

“Not yet,” Darryl replied, looking up. “Problem is, the old thing has cataracts, I think. She’s
somewhere
today—I just can’t make out where; the visuals in her memories of this afternoon are indistinct. It’s noisy—she doesn’t like that—but I still don’t know where it is. She’s just not paying any real attention to her surroundings.”

“Indoors or out?”

“Indoors. But it’s not a museum or a gallery or a store. She’s just wandering around in a daze, it seems—she was already preoccupied with her son’s having a heart attack, and then someone told her about the president being shot, and later about the White House. When I think about this afternoon, the only memories of hers I get are of her worrying about, well, about
everything.”

“Damn it,” said Susan. “Keep trying.” She went over to the whiteboard and corrected the information on it, now that they knew that David January was really linked to Mark Griffin.

“Agent Dawson?” said Singh.

She wheeled around.
“What?”

Singh looked startled by the sharpness of her tone. Susan took a deep breath; she wasn’t mad at him, and she shouldn’t take it out on him. “Sorry, Ranjip. What is it?”

“Have a look at this, please.” Singh gestured at his monitor.

Susan came over and stared at the screen, which was showing a complex graph. It felt strange to be seeing it. For the first second or two, it appeared to be just a random shape, with numbers and letters marking
certain points, but as she looked at
this
part, she suddenly understood it, and shifting her attention
here
caused that part to make sense, as well, and all at once the numbers at the bottom of the screen conveyed meaning for her, too. She’d originally opened her mouth to say, “What is it?,” but the words that came out were, “Are you sure?”

“I’m positive,” said Singh. “It’s based on the data from my equipment’s diagnostic files, and it’s the only configuration that works.”

“Twenty-one nodes, not twenty?” asked Susan.

“Exactly. Twenty-one people were affected.”

Darryl Hudkins walked over and stood with his arms crossed in front of his chest. “Dr. Griffin and I were careful in reviewing the security-camera recordings. There’s no way someone was in the affected sphere that we didn’t see.”

“There was an electromagnetic pulse,” Susan said.

“Well, yeah…” replied Darryl.

“Which means there could have been an interruption in the recordings, no?”

“Sure, yeah,” said Darryl. “There was. But according to the timecode, it lasted less than a minute.”

“A good runner,” Susan said, “can cover a thousand feet in a minute.” She looked at Singh’s grid of linkages on the whiteboard, then picked up a marker and drew in a twenty-first column at the far right. In the spot for the person’s name at the top of the column, she put an “X” for unknown.

SETH
Jerrison lay on his back. His chest ached, and it hurt to breathe, but he’d insisted the doctors keep him awake as much as possible; he couldn’t risk the Speaker or anyone else trying to move for a forced handover of power under the Twenty-Fifth Amendment—not this close to the initiation of Counterpunch.

He’d just spent half an hour on the phone with his chief of staff, who was holding things together at Mount Weather, and he’d also spoken to his science advisor, who was currently at a conference at CERN but was cutting that short to return to the States.

The phone calls had been enough to exhaust Seth, and so he stared up at the ceiling and the irritating strobing fluorescent tube there. Jesus Christ, he was leader of the free world; all he had to do was
mention
it to someone, and it would be fixed. He looked over at Nurse Sheila, who was ever vigilant.

He knew he was in good hands here—and not just because the hospital was named for the man who had saved more American lives than anyone else in history, even though a recent survey had shown that less
than one percent of Americans knew who he was. In fact, Jerrison had to admit, he himself hadn’t—the only holder of the same office that he could name prior to becoming president was the one immortalized by the B-Sharps, Homer Simpson’s barbershop quartet:
“For all the latest medical poop, call Surgeon General C. Everett Koop—koop koop a koop.”

But Luther Terry was responsible for more people knowing
of
the office of Surgeon General than anyone else, for he was the one who in 1964 had released the report linking smoking to cancer, and in 1965 had instigated the “Surgeon General’s Warning” on cigarette packs.

Seth had recently reviewed proposed new warnings, designed to prevent teenagers who see themselves as invincible from picking up the habit. “Smokers become slaves to Big Tobacco.” “The maker of this product intends to addict you to it.” “Smokers are pawns of heartless corporations.” And his favorite, short and sweet: “You are being used.”

The fluorescent tube continued to flicker, and—

An inside job.

Seth had taught American history for twenty years—including all about the previous presidential assassination attempts. He’d read the whole damn Warren Commission Report, as well as the myriad conspiracy theories. Earl Warren and his colleagues got it right, in his view: Oswald had acted alone, not in cahoots with the CIA. It was crazy to think a conspiracy could reach so far into the government; a lone nut was far easier—and far less scary—to contemplate. Hell, Nixon couldn’t keep Watergate a secret; Bill Clinton couldn’t keep a blowjob a secret. How could anyone keep a plan within the Secret Service to eliminate the president under wraps?

Seth didn’t know what he should do. He thought about dismissing the entire Secret Service, but there were dozens of protectees that would be affected: the First Family, Flaherty and his family, the living ex-presidents, visiting foreign dignitaries, andso on.

But, damn it all, at least he could get
this
fixed. “Sheila,” he said as loudly as he could—which he supposed was about half a normal speaking volume.

Sheila moved immediately to his bedside. “Yes, Mr. President?”

“That light,” he said softly, and he managed to lift his free hand a little to point at it. “Can you get it replaced?”

She looked up at it. “Of course, sir.”

Just then, the door opened, and in came Susan Dawson. “Mr. President, how are you feeling?”

His voice was still weak, he knew, but Ronald Reagan had set a high standard for banter on occasions like this, and so he tried his best. “Like someone shot me in the back, and someone else carved my chest open. Oh, and like someone blew up my house.”

Susan rewarded him with a small smile, and Seth supposed he
was
feeling slightly better, despite all those horrors; she was a beautiful woman, and it pleased him to have her smiling at him. Actually, he liked it better when she was wearing her Secret Service–issue sunglasses; there was something really sexy about women in dark glasses, and—

The Secret Service.

The people who were supposed to protect him.

He still couldn’t believe it.

“What happened to the…” He kept wanting to call him “the assassin,” but that wasn’t right; he’d failed at his job. “…the assailant?”

“He was trying to escape, sir. He’d been in the elevator at the Lincoln Memorial and—”

“What elevator?” Seth said.

“There’s one for handicapped access, sir. It was installed in the 1970s.”

“Oh.”

“He was shimmying up the elevator cable, trying to get away, and the elevator started up and he fell. Broke his neck.”

“That’s the passive voice,” he said.

“Sir?”

“‘The elevator started up.’ Surely someone pushed the button.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Who?”

“Agent Jenks, sir. Dirk Jenks.”

Shit,
Seth thought. Maybe the assailant
hadn’t
been acting alone after all. “Investigate him,” he said.

But Susan nodded. “Way ahead of you, sir. The FBI apprehended him at Reagan. He hasn’t broken yet under interrogation, but it seems almost certain that he was in cahoots with Gordo.”

Seth would have sat up if he could. “Gordo?”

“Sorry. That’s what most of us called Agent Danbury. Not Gordon but Gordo.”

That name was ringing a bell. He’d heard it recently…somewhere. From someone.

No, no, he hadn’t heard it—he’d
overheard
it. At the White House…in the Oval Office. He’d come in through his private door while Leon Hexley, the head of the Secret Service, was talking on his BlackBerry, but…

But what had he said? It was just a couple of days ago. Damn it, what had Hexley said? “Tell Gordo to…”

Tell Gordo to…what?

It had been intriguing, he remembered that much, even not knowing then who Gordo was. But, damn it, he couldn’t dredge it up.

THE
door to Singh’s lab burst open, and in strode lawyer Orrin Gillett. “Dr. Griffin told me I might find you here, Agent Dawson. How long until you let us go?”

Susan had been busily thumb-typing to her boyfriend Paul on her phone, bringing him up-to-date on what was going on. She finished the message she was sending, pocketed the device, and let Gillett wait in silence for five seconds, then said, “I haven’t made that determination. Frankly, I’m not sure it’s safe for people to leave the hospital.”

Gillett stared at her through his round glasses. His tone was cool, measured. “You actually don’t have the power to detain people indefinitely.”

Susan looked over at Professor Singh, who was running simulations on his computer, then back at Gillett. “We’re dealing with an unprecedented situation,” she said.

Gillett helped himself to a chair, crossing his long legs and leaning back. “That’s right, Agent Dawson. But in the law, precedents are what matters—precedents and regulations. And so I did some research.” He pulled out his iPhone and consulted its screen. “Under Title 18, Section 3056, of the United States Code, Secret Service agents have very limited powers. You can execute warrants issued under the laws of this country—but no warrants have been issued in this matter.” He looked up. “You can make arrests without warrants for any offense against the United States committed in your presence, or for any felony recognizable under the laws of the United States, if you have reasonable grounds to believe that the person to be arrested has committed such a felony. But you have no reason to believe
any
offense or felony has been committed in this matter. Beyond that, all you’re allowed to do is”—he read from the screen—“‘Investigate fraud in connection with identification documents, fraudulent commerce, fictitious instruments, and foreign securities.’”