Slim To None. Taylor Smith

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СКАЧАТЬ was perched on one of Richard Stern’s low, armless visitors’ chairs, forced—by design, he was certain—to gaze up at the older man who occupied the massive leather chair on the business side of a broad oak desk. As Myers pulled out his phone and flipped it open, he couldn’t fail to notice the irritation that flickered across Stern’s lined face. Myers hoped his own expression didn’t reveal how that made him feel—like a misbehaving schoolboy caught passing notes.

      Not even his Armani suit could quite overcome the youthful impression cast by Myers’s slight, five-foot-eight stature, his thick mop of red hair and his rosy, puckish face. He’d just passed his thirty-sixth birthday, had graduated summa cum laude from Yale Law School, and had fast-tracked with the prestigious Boston firm of Fitzgerald-Revere. Now, as White House deputy chief of staff, his carrot-topped head could often be spotted in close proximity to the president during press scrums and state visits. Yet in spite of all that, Myers still found himself being carded by clueless bouncers at trendy Washington watering holes. It was unbelievably irritating.

      As for Richard Stern, the man on the other side of the desk, his demeanor was as humorless as his name. With a shock of steel-gray hair and flint-colored eyes behind rimless glasses, the assistant national security advisor had a reputation for ruthlessness and a background as sketchy as his current mandate seemed to be. Stern was portly in girth and close to sixty years of age, yet there was nothing avuncular about him. Having spent most of his adult life swimming in the murky back channels of covert operations, he had a sharklike slipperiness and a corresponding cold disdain for any poor sap whose blood he scented.

      Stern and his small gang of handpicked associates occupied a suite of first-floor offices at the northeast corner of the Old Executive Office Building at 17th Street and Pennsylvania Avenue, adjacent to the White House. A five-story, white, Empire-style monstrosity that Mark Twain had deemed the ugliest building in America, the OEOB had been the site of numerous watershed events in U.S. history, as well as some notable scandals—cursed, perhaps, by the ghost of its architect, who committed suicide over his much-maligned creation. Built in the late 1800s and originally called the State, War and Navy Building, the OEOB’s ornate rooms had been at the center of all of the country’s early international dealings. Here, in 1898, America declared war on Spain and then, two months later, signed a treaty of peace. More than a thousand other international treaties had been signed on behalf of America in its ornate halls, including the Treaty of Versailles, which ended World War I, and the 1942 United Nations Declaration.

      In recent decades, with White House office space at a premium and much in demand by politicos hovering at the hub of power like flies at a sugar bowl, the neighboring building had been housing administration overflow as well as a few power brokers who deliberately sought to maintain a lower profile. In the late 1980s, Colonel Oliver North had secretly orchestrated the Iran-Contra affair out of Room 392 of the OEOB. In a failed bid to keep her boss from going to jail over his criminal dealings, Colonel North’s secretary had shredded incriminating documents in a basement cubbyhole of the same building—documents detailing illegal sales of U.S. arms to Iran and the equally illegal diversion of those proceeds to President Ronald Reagan’s favorite “freedom fighters,” the anti-government Contras of Nicaragua.

      With so much tradition, both grandiose and disreputable, behind it, it was little wonder that a figure such as Richard Stern would have chosen to establish his lair in the OEOB.

      The entire White House office complex was surrounded by blastproof concrete barriers, high wrought-iron fences, armed guard posts and countless security scanners and cameras. In spite of that already elevated level of vigilance, entering Dick Stern’s personal domain took things one step further, requiring even an official as highly placed as Evan Myers to pass through yet another security barrage and—the ultimate insult—to be accompanied at all times by an authorized escort. Myers had never fully grasped the precise nature of Stern’s mandate, nor understood the reason for these obsessive security arrangements. Although he chafed at having been summoned like some junior flunky to this meeting on Stern’s turf, however, he was damned if he was going to let the man intimidate him as he did most everyone else.

      When his phone vibrated again, Myers flipped it open and glanced at the text message on the screen.

      “Again, Evan?” Stern asked peevishly.

      “Nature of the beast, Dick,” Myers said, reading the third communication his assistant had sent in the past forty minutes. “We’re at the president’s beck and call over there.”

      This latest message, however, did not concern demands of the Oval Office. Apparently Patrick Fitzgerald had called yet again. Myers had never seen his former boss and mentor so rattled, but considering the kidnapping of Fitzgerald’s daughter, it wasn’t surprising.

      “Anyway,” Myers added, tucking the phone away, “that’s why I wanted to meet in my office.”

      Stern grunted. “Not possible.” He almost never entered the White House. Myers wondered whether the president even knew the man, much less what he was up to over here.

      Hundreds of characters circled around any administration, drawing power and authority from it. Much as they needed and wanted that presidential imprimatur, however, some of those people made a point of flying beneath the radar of Congress, the media and the public, their activities largely invisible even within the administration’s inner circle. Dick Stern was a case in point. The man seemed to answer to no one, yet when problems of a certain sensitive nature arose, he was inevitably tagged as the go-to guy.

      “Patrick Fitzgerald has called again,” Myers said. “We can’t keep putting him off. God knows, the State Department isn’t giving him any joy. If I don’t get back to him with an update on his daughter, the next call he’ll make will be to the Oval Office. And you know he’ll get through, too, Dick. Fitzgerald is too big a fish to ignore if the party has any hope of making inroads in New England next year. And when he does make that call, the president’s going to be calling us both in for a sit rep.”

      “You can’t let that happen.”

      “Explain to me why not. A young American woman’s been kidnapped from under the noses of our own forces in Iraq. The press is saying she’s being held by some fundamentalist warlord. The State Department, like I said, is clueless. Meantime, both the CIA and the Pentagon claim to have no idea where she is or what this Salahuddin character wants. For the life of me, I can’t figure why we haven’t already launched a rescue mission. Are we in control or not over there?”

      “It’s not that simple. That part of the county is still influx.”

      “Are we at least talking to this Sheikh Salahuddin who’s supposed to have taken her? I mean, is somebody who speaks for us talking to him, since Langley’s spooks and the military don’t seem to be in the loop?”

      “I can’t say.”

      “Can’t or won’t?”

      “Both.”

      “Because if we are in negotiations over Amy Fitzgerald’s release, Langley claims to know nothing about it. The director was asked about it point-blank at this morning’s security briefing. Are you saying the DCI lied to the president’s face?”

      “I didn’t say that.”

      Myers made a forward rolling motion with his hand. “So what are you saying?”

      “I’m saying you need to get back to Fitzgerald and tell him to sit tight. We’re doing everything we can.”

      “Are we?”

      “Of СКАЧАТЬ