This did not put the Secret Service at ease. They kept their guns trained on me while one of the canine agents—a wall of muscle with a crew cut and a permanent scowl—came closer, allowing his snarling dog to home in on whatever had set it off. The dog seemed particularly focused on my winter jacket.
“Take the jacket off,” the agent ordered.
“Okay,” I said, quickly shrugging it off and handing it over. It was freezing outside without it, but given the circumstances, it didn’t seem like a good idea to make any trouble.
“Hey! Hey! Hey!” someone yelled. The voice was sweet and high-pitched, like that of a Disney princess. A young woman in a pantsuit with her hair pulled back in a ponytail slipped through the crowd of men aiming guns at me. “At ease, guys. This kid isn’t a terrorist. He’s here to see Jason.”
“Cagney and Lacey say otherwise,” the hulking canine agent informed her, nodding to the dogs. “And if they’re suspicious, we need to be suspicious.” He passed the jacket on to another, equally imposing agent, who began searching through it. “For all we know, this kid’s a sleeper agent set on blowing up the White House.”
“He’s a kid set on playing Ping-Pong with Jason,” the young woman informed them. Then she turned to me and said, “You can put your arms down, Ben. I’m Kimmy Dimsdale, one of the White House aides. Sorry about this.” She glared at all the agents aiming their guns and said, “You guys want to lower your weapons and focus on looking for real terrorists?”
All the agents now looked kind of embarrassed, but they didn’t holster their guns. Instead, they turned to the canine agents, wondering what to do.
I noticed the names on the canine agents’ badges. Agent Fry was the big guy holding the dogs at bay. Agent Nasser was the one going through my jacket. Nasser was now wiping my jacket with a white cloth, which he then placed in a small machine the size of a microwave. It beeped a bit, then glowed green.
“No explosives residue reported,” Nasser announced.
Fry frowned, like this somehow made me more suspicious, rather than less. “The dogs wouldn’t be acting like this unless they smelled something.”
“Well, maybe they smell something that isn’t explosives residue,” Kimmy suggested. “Like meat.”
“Why would a kid have meat on his jacket?” Fry demanded.
“Why would a kid have explosives on his jacket?” Kimmy countered.
“Because he’s a covert terrorist,” Fry said.
“Or maybe he’s a normal kid who ate some meat while wearing that jacket at some point,” Kimmy told him. “He had a hot dog at a cart, or he went to a barbecue, or he put a piece of beef jerky in his pocket.”
“My father’s a grocer,” I said, which was the truth. “I’ve worn this jacket into his meat locker plenty of times.”
“The dogs aren’t supposed to get this excited about meat,” Fry said. “They’re only supposed to respond like this to explosives.”
“But there are no explosives,” Nasser said.
“I know there are no explosives!” Fry exclaimed. “I’m just saying that our response here was justifiable, given our duty to protect the president.”
“Oh yeah,” Kimmy agreed sarcastically. “The president is much safer now that you’ve intimidated a seventh grader. Could you give him back his jacket before he freezes to death?”
Nasser quickly handed me my jacket. “Sorry.”
All the other Secret Service agents finally lowered their guns, looking a bit ashamed.
I quickly slipped my jacket back on. The dogs kept barking at it, though. “Maybe there’s still a tiny piece of jerky that got stuck in my pocket,” I suggested.
Fry glowered at me, as though I had somehow ruined his day, then spoke to the dogs. “Cagney, Lacey, Geluidsarm!”
I figured that was Dutch for “be quiet.” The Belgian Malinois were all trained using Dutch, as it was the native language of Belgium. Also, most American criminals didn’t speak it, so there was less of a chance they’d know the commands to back down.
The dogs obediently stopped snarling at me and sat.
Kimmy quickly escorted me beyond security and into the blessed warmth of the Eisenhower Executive Office Building. “I am soooo sorry about that,” she said. “I know those agents are only doing their job, and that POTUS is the prime target of enemy organizations all over the world, but sometimes I think they get a little too paranoid. Anyhow, it’s nice to meet you.” Now that the incident with the dogs was behind us, Kimmy was exceptionally cheerful. She didn’t seem the slightest bit disappointed to be saddled with a friend of the president’s son while her fellow aides got to shepherd far more important people around. “Have you ever had a chance to visit the White House before?”
“No,” I said. I hadn’t grown up very far from Washington, and the White House did offer tours, as well as hosting public events like Christmas tree lightings and Easter egg rolls, but my parents had never managed to get tickets to one.
“Oh!” Kimmy said, sounding thrilled that she had someone new to share White House facts with. She instantly went into tour-guide mode. “Well, this is a very fascinating place. The building you’re in right now, the Eisenhower Executive Office Building—or ‘EEOB’—was originally built in 1871 to house the state, war, and navy departments, although today it serves mostly as office space for the executive branch of the government. It has more than two miles of hallways! Up until 2001, it was located outside the White House fence, but security concerns led the Secret Service to expand the perimeter of the White House property. So you are now within what we refer to as the ‘Twelve Acres’—the secure zone around the president’s home.”
We passed directly through the EEOB and right back outside again, onto what had once been the street that ran along the western side of the White House property. Now it was parking for high-ranking officials. A line of black SUVs that looked exactly like the one I’d ridden in earlier were parked there. Most had a driver sitting in the front seat, reading the paper or playing with a smartphone.
There was also a herd of reporters gathered under a canopy nearby: video camerapeople and photographers and a few reporters I recognized from the national news. They were all milling around, stomping their feet in the cold, apparently waiting for something exciting to happen.
“Are all those people here for something important?” I asked Kimmy, trying to sound like your standard inquisitive teenager and not a covert agent doing reconnaissance.
Kimmy looked their way, surprised, as though she had taken their presence for granted for so long that she had forgotten they were all actual people, rather than something more permanent, like landscaping. “Not really,” she said. “They’re pretty much here all day long. There’s always something going on at the White House.”
“Even if the president isn’t here?”
“Oh, sure. There’s lots of important people with offices here besides the president.” Kimmy leaned in and whispered, “In fact, there’s quite a few who think they’re even more important than the president.”
I couldn’t tell if she was joking or not. “Like who?”
Kimmy suddenly seemed to realize that this might not be the best thing to discuss on White House grounds, so she blatantly changed the subject. “The presidential basketball court is over that way,” she said, pointing toward a clump of trees on the South Lawn. “Jason likes to play down there sometimes. Do you like basketball, Ben?”
“Not really.”
“Oh. Well, there are lots of other fun things to do here as well. Did you know the White House even has its own bowling alley?”
“Really?”
“Yes!” Kimmy exclaimed excitedly. She seemed quite pleased to have distracted me from the political issue she’d brought up before. “I believe it was installed by Harry S. Truman, who was an avid bowler. In fact, he once bowled a perfect game against Dwight Eisenhower. Well, here we go. The White House itself!” She pulled open the doors with a triumphant “Bum da da bum!”
r /> I entered the most famous home in America for the very first time.
It was a complete letdown. I had expected a grand entry foyer, with marble pillars and fancy carpets and portraits of famous Americans. Instead, we were in what appeared to be a regular office building, and an outdated one at that. Every available space was crammed with cubicles, and all of those were overflowing. The walls were lined with extremely small offices, from which people were constantly coming and going. There were far too many people for the space, so it was loud and crowded. It felt like being inside an anthill. An anthill that had been furnished at a discount office store.
Kimmy instantly picked up on my disappointment. “This isn’t the real White House,” she assured me. “This is only the West Wing. It’s the headquarters of the executive branch of our government.”
“This is the West Wing?” I asked. I had heard of it, of course. But I’d imagined that it would be far less ordinary. “This is where the Oval Office is, right?”
“Correct!” Kimmy agreed enthusiastically, as though I were a kindergartner who had just said my alphabet correctly. “The president’s office is right over there.” She pointed to a corner of the West Wing that looked a bit more impressive, but not a whole lot more.
“Is he there right now?” It seemed to be something a normal person who hadn’t recently been secretly talking to the president would ask. Plus, I wondered if the president had actually made it back through traffic yet.
“No,” Kimmy replied. “The president is in one of the ceremonial rooms in the White House. I believe he’s hosting the teachers of the year. Or maybe the premier of Canada. It’s so hard to keep track of his schedule. Come to think of it, I wonder where Jason is. He usually comes down to meet his friends here when they arrive.”
“Oh.” I wasn’t quite sure what else to say. I was also distracted by all the people around me. When Cyrus had told me to keep an eye out for possible assassins, it hadn’t occurred to me that the White House would be so crowded. There were more than fifty people swarming about the warren of cubicles around me, and those were merely the people I could see. I could also hear the murmur of conversations from behind the doors of several offices, and even more people were rushing in and out of the cubicle area at every moment. If any one of them could have been an assassin, it would take me weeks to investigate them all.
I instantly felt extremely overwhelmed. On each of my previous missions, I’d had Erica backing me up. We’d usually kept in contact via radio, so she could offer advice, suggest what I should do next—and, on more than one occasion, question my competence. Still, even that had given me a sense of security. Now I was completely on my own.
Meanwhile, despite Cyrus’s assurance that as a kid I wouldn’t stick out, I couldn’t help feeling that I did. I was the only thirteen-year-old in the West Wing, and though everyone was carrying on like the fate of the free world was at stake—which might have truly been the case for some of them—most of them stopped to watch me, as though surprised I was there. They probably assumed I was a friend of Jason’s, but if anyone was a covert SPYDER agent, my presence was so obvious, I might as well have been banging cymbals together.
Suddenly, Cyrus’s plan seemed far less thought out than I’d hoped. “Do you know where Jason might be?” I urged Kimmy, wanting to get out of the West Wing as quickly as possible. “It took longer than I expected to get through security. I have less time with him than I’d hoped.”
“He’s probably up in his room, playing video games,” Kimmy said. “That’s where he usually is. C’mon. That’s in the real White House. I think you’ll be far more impressed by that.” She led me through the cramped maze of cubicles.
A group of people in military uniforms exited through a door marked SITUATION ROOM in front of us. Given the large number of medals arrayed on their chests, I figured they were all of high rank. I caught a glimpse of the Situation Room itself as we wove through them. To my surprise, it was smaller than my living room at home, and crammed full of electronic equipment that all looked to be at least ten years out of date.
A hallway passed out of the West Wing and hooked right toward the more famous part of the White House, the part with the huge portico in the front and the sprawling gardens in the back; I got a glimpse of it through the hallway windows as we approached. I could also see several more Secret Service agents outside: Some were patrolling the South Lawn; some were posted along the fence line; one was lurking in the Rose Garden. And those were merely the ones out in the open; I figured there were probably plenty more hidden from sight.
The hall was wide, but it was crammed full of filing cabinets and other storage units that had spilled out of the West Wing, giving the feel of passing through the most securely protected attic in the world.
Two more Secret Service agents waited at the end of it, guarding a more formal set of doors than any we had passed through so far.
“Hi, guys!” Kimmy said with a cheerful wave. “This is Ben Ripley. He’s here for a playdate with Jason.”
The agents snickered at this.
I held up the badge I’d been given and smiled nicely for them. “It’s not really a ‘playdate.’ We’re gonna hang out and chill. . . .”
“Whatever,” one said, then checked a list on a clipboard and grunted approval. “He’s on here,” he informed the second agent.
With that, they held open the doors, revealing the true White House beyond.
It still wasn’t that impressive.
We entered what seemed to be the basement level. A long central corridor ran the length of the building, flanked by rooms on both sides. The hall was lined with presidential portraits, although since this was a less visited area, they were the portraits of lousy presidents most people had forgotten, like James Buchanan, William Henry Harrison, and Millard Fillmore.
Kimmy went back into full-on tour-guide mode, pointing out items of interest. Or items that she thought were of interest. “We are currently passing the White House kitchen,” she said, indicating a set of doors, from behind which we could hear the clanging of pots and pans. “There are five full-time chefs here, meaning that the kitchen is capable of making a five-course dinner for up to one hundred and forty guests—or hors d’oeuvres for one thousand people. Frankly, they make a shrimp puff to die for.”
Farther down the hallway, yet another pair of Secret Service officers flanked yet another set of double doors. Given their presence and the muffled sounds emanating from the room behind, I got the impression that something important was going on there.
Before we reached it, though, Kimmy ducked left and led me up a staircase. “This is one of eight staircases in the White House. There are also three elevators, twenty-eight fireplaces, one hundred and thirty-two rooms, and four hundred and twelve doors.”
“Why are there so many more doors than rooms?” I asked.
“Er . . . ,” Kimmy said, thrown. “I have no idea. But I do know that it takes five hundred and seventy gallons of paint to cover the entire exterior!”
We reached the first level, which seemed to be the main level of the White House, where all the formal events occurred. We spent exactly three seconds on it, heading right up the next flight. All I got to see was a small marble-lined foyer with a window that looked out across the front lawn toward L’Enfant Plaza. As usual, a crowd of tourists was gathered at the White House fence. A few were protesting, waving signs and chanting, though most were taking selfies with the White House in the background.
Erica Hale stood among them.
She was staring directly at the White House, wrapped in a black winter parka. Despite the cold, she wasn’t wearing a hat or scarf, allowing me a clear view of her ice-blue eyes, her sculpted cheekbones, and her raven hair.
My glimpse of her was so quick, however, that her presence didn’t even register until I was a few steps up the next staircase. I froze in mid-stride, wondering if it would be okay for me to retrace my path and take another look.
As
if answering my question, Kimmy deftly took my arm and led me onward. “The marble on this staircase was originally selected by Dolly Madison, wife of our fourth president, James Madison. . . .”
It occurred to me that Kimmy’s litany of interior decorating facts was probably designed to distract me from what was really going on at the White House, although I didn’t read anything sinister into it; it was most likely standard White House tour procedure. Guests were led through the building all the time, and it made sense that they would be told things about paint color and floral arrangements rather than “In the room behind us, the president is currently meeting with military advisers about thwarting a top secret cabal that is plotting World War Three. . . .”
Kimmy had no idea I was there for national security issues. She thought I was there for a playdate. So she was probably under orders to shepherd me through the official areas as quickly as possible and get me to the private quarters. Not wanting to make waves, I let her lead me up to the top floor.
“You are really quite lucky, Ben,” she told me. “Very few members of the public ever get to see this portion of the White House. Only those whose presence is requested by the first family . . .”
What was Erica doing there? I wondered. Had it even really been her? I’d seen her for half a second, if that, and she’d been quite far away. Furthermore, Erica usually excelled at not being seen. The only reason I could imagine that she’d have posted herself right out in the open, without a hat or sunglasses, was that she wanted to be seen.
Though I had to wonder, was she hoping I would see her—or hoping someone else would?
We arrived at the top floor of the White House. The residential area. Compared to the rigidly formal first floor, it was surprisingly homey. It was cleaner than any of my friends’ homes—there was doubtlessly a large domestic staff at the White House—and the décor was over-the-top patriotic, with lots of historic prints and carved eagles, but there was a lived-in feeling to it. The carpet was worn, the walls all looked as though they’d been beaned with a baseball now and then, and I could hear folk rock emanating from behind Jemma Stern’s bedroom door, as well as Jemma chattering away on the phone with a friend. Close by, the door to the kids’ bathroom hung open, revealing toothbrushes and acne medication lined up on the sink, towels embroidered with an official White House logo, and a surprisingly cheap-looking plastic shower curtain.