He felt her pain, and his own regret. But he couldn’t express feelings like that; it just wasn’t in him. He wanted to be tender, but it did not work. He said, “The information I obtained is crucial.”
“I need to know what to do with it, Flynn.”
“That’s our next step.”
“Tell me what happened out there. I want details.”
“I was captured immediately. I was tortured. I was helped to escape by what might have been a Special Forces operation. Or I got away from the Revolutionary Guard while they were being too clever for their own good. I’m not sure which. In any case, I escaped and by some miracle survived sharks and a storm at sea. Those are the details.”
“You were tortured by an American agent who wished to hell he didn’t have to hurt you and admired your iron resolve, as he should. You were allowed to escape thanks to an operation mounted by Mossad that appeared to be U.S. Special Forces, and our guy saw you to the coast. The Arabs on that fishing boat were Saudi agents sent out to find you after you missed the sub.”
“They were killed. They drowned.”
“They were taken aboard the carrier fifteen minutes after you arrived in the sick bay. You were an actor in a play, Flynn, from the moment I caught up with you.” Still gobbling sobs, she gripped his hand as if it were the last ledge on the tallest building in the world. “That agent—the one called Davood Ghorbani—he risked his operation, his life, everything to get into that torture chamber with you. They would have tortured you to death, Flynn, if we hadn’t had him there. You owe him your life.”
“I’ll have to thank him.”
“When he comes out, you sure as hell will. If he does. He’s at risk now.”
“Because of me.”
Her silence accused him, and that made him angry. “We can’t lose sight of the bigger picture. If we can’t find a direction to go in, this is all going to happen before we have a chance to stop it.”
“What do you suggest?”
“We figure out two things. How they intend to get rid of us without destroying the planet, and why they need the president, not to mention the Iranians.”
“You left him terribly exposed. Not to mention Cissy and Lorna.”
“What could I do? Talk about it in your house? In the office?”
“What about bringing me here? Ever think of that?”
“There wasn’t any time.”
“You just wanted to go charging off on your own, as usual.” She hunched, the speed of her walking increased, and she thrust out her chin.
He caught up with her and spun her around to face him. “There’s no time for this, either!”
“You left Greene exposed while you wandered off in a spectacularly unprofessional manner. Who knows what might have been done to him by now? Although I fail to see how he could play a part in the end of the world. Not even a president has that kind of power.”
“But he does. He must.”
“Nuclear war?”
“The planet becomes a radioactive hell for thousands of years to come. So no.”
“Why not? Sounds like a plan to me. For them.”
“They want the lions and tigers and the butterflies. The amber waves of grain. Just not us.” He gestured toward a flaming maple. “They want that.” He pointed to some kids playing soccer. “Not those.”
“And we know nothing, essentially, about what they’re going to do?”
“I got us one leg up, not two.”
“You’re always so calm, Flynn. It never ceases to amaze me.”
“Battlefield behavior. Put one foot in front of the other, keep your head down.”
“The president has to be told, then. With all the problems that this is going to bring down the road.”
“If there is a road.”
She dropped down on a bench. “The question is, what the hell do we say? He’s gonna be on quite a learning curve.”
“Plus, Lorna’s going to be all over it, and her response will be to look for angles. How she can play it to advantage.”
“Sounds like a real patriot.”
“She is. To the Lorna Nation, population one. Bill’s just a means to an end.”
“Then we need to keep her as far away from it as we can.”
“But we have to let Cissy in.”
“Why?”
“She can help us with her dad. His initial reaction is going to be total, complete, and absolute disbelief. We’ll get tossed out on our asses if Cissy’s not there to back us up.”
“Right now, I’d like to get hammered,” Diana said.
“Right now, we have to go to the White House.”
“We need an appointment.”
“You figure it out. That’s what you do. And thanks for the ticket home.”
“Please call it what it was, a rescue, so please don’t do anything like that again.”
As she was speaking, he’d seen a telltale gleam on a roof, just a flicker of light. But it was immediately clear to him what it was. As he threw his arm across her back and began pulling her down, the first bullet passed her head with a quick whisper. He rolled with her behind a bench.
“What the hell!”
“Shooter. Roof of the Danish Embassy. There’s a team.”
“How did they find us?”
He thought back to the plane, and to Morris. “They never lost us.” Now it seemed that the meeting had been just another turning in the labyrinth of war with Aeon. Morris’s mission, at least in part, had been to lure Flynn into an exposed place. He’d baited the trap with information, though, some of which Flynn thought could be true. Or maybe it was all true. In this war, you never knew.
Another shot passed so close to his head that he felt the heat of the bullet’s wake.
Behind them was a dense urban wilderness. Ahead were the spreading greens, beyond them Dumbarton Gardens, though few flowers this time of year.
Death probably waited in those woods, but crossing the greens would be suicide. Staying where they were, inevitably they would be picked off.
“He’s missing because he’s using a silencer. Plays hell with aim.”
He sensed rather than heard the faint crackle of footsteps in dry leaves. Very careful, very stealthy. “Somebody’s back in the woods, coming this way.” He slid his pistol into his hand.
“Thank God you have that.”
It was the little Glock he kept in his Audi, which she’d used to pick him up.
From perhaps thirty yards behind them, there came the distinct but muffled sound of a bullet being chambered in an automatic pistol.
In other words, a mistake. Flynn turned and fired three shots in a tight pattern. The shadow that had been there flew back into the trees as the explosions echoed, crashing back and forth between the buildings that surrounded the park. In the distance, Flynn saw a couple of cops begin trotting this way, their hands on their weapons.
“We need to go,” Diana said, taking his wrist and drawing him toward the woods.
“We’re alive because they want us to break cover.”
“You’re gonna end up on a murder charge, Flynn!”
“It’s a permitted weapon and we were attacked.”
There was more movement back in the woods.
“They’re cleaning up the mess right now,” he said mildly. He stepped out into the broad lawn, in the long gold of the sunset. The cops broke into a run. As they came within earshot, Flynn said, “Back there.” He pointed toward the woods.
“Sir, a weapon was discharged.”
He pointed. “It was back there. There’s people. Something’s going on.”
The movement in the woods faded quickly, but not so quickly that the cops didn’t see the shadows and give chase.
Flynn forced Diana to walk casually with him, not hurrying, two lovers in deep conversation.
“I’m with you an hour and I’m getting shot at again.”
“And not getting killed.”
“How did you even know that we were be
ing attacked? I didn’t hear or see a thing.”
He didn’t bother to answer. The Iranian kill team had been well placed but poorly prepared.
“We need to move on this, Diana. Ignore these distractions.”
“I think the way to go is to call the private number and tell them who you are and you need to see him immediately. And could we get out of the line of fire? Do you mind?”
“The operation failed and they’re gone. Smoke in the wind.”
“Until the next time.”
“I guess.”
She handed him her cell phone.
He raised his eyebrows in question.
“The president’s on the line.”
“That is very impressive.” He took the phone. “Mr. President.”
“Flynn? What the hell do you want?”
“I need a meeting.”
“Everybody needs a meeting. Let me guess. That crook buddy of yours who corrupted my daughter is up shit creek again.”
“Bill, I wouldn’t call if it wasn’t critical.”
“Is he gettin’ under her tail feathers again? Damn crook needs to stay away from the First Daughter.”
“This has nothing to do with him.”
“Or with you hiding out over here the other night? What in hell was that about, old buddy ole pal? You bangin’ her now?”
“Bill, this is national security stuff, and it’s urgent.”
“There’s a committee for that.”
“Your ears only.”
“I don’t want to hear any spy bullshit, Flynn, it mixes me up.”
It was easy to see why they’d gone after Greene. Whatever it was they were doing, he was not going to be hard to handle.
How had Bill gotten into office? Lots of money, fabulous smile.
“Bill, this is about you. You know Bob Doxy’s boy, who—”
“—committed suicide?”
“It’s about why he was murdered.”
Silence. Beat. More silence. Flynn could hear the brain creaking. “How in hell do you know that?”
“Here’s another surprise. He carried a paper file into the White House before he was offed. That file contained classified information about the most sensitive organization in the government. He was killed for it and for what he knew.”
“And how in the world does a cop from grungy little Menard, Texas, know this?”
“It’s my unit, Bill. I’m not working in Menard anymore.”
“Get the hell over here.” He hung up.
“He’s on the hook,” Flynn said.
“Now what do we do?”
“Bury him in bad news.”
“He’s not going to like that.”
“Presidents spend their lives buried in bad news. It’s what the job is about.”
They reached the sidewalk, and Diana hailed a cab.
At the White House, they were directed by the guard at the gate to scram. “Closed until tomorrow nine A.M.,” the officer said, his voice bored.
“We’re here to see the president.”
“Oh? And you have an appointment?” Mirth in the voice now.
“We do,” Diana said.
His eyebrows went up and a crooked smile broke out on his face. He was a study in amused skepticism. “May I send your names in?” he asked with exaggerated politeness.
“Flynn Carroll and Diana Glass.”
He picked up his phone. Flynn noticed that two other officers were coming down the drive. They weren’t hurrying. Their holsters were snapped shut. Kooks arrived claiming appointments with the president on a regular basis.
The officer hung up the phone. The smile was gone. He input a code into the gate’s security system. As the cab rolled forward, two plainclothes Secret Service agents appeared in the portico. They stood, legs spread.
Flynn wondered if these two would recognize him. He wondered, but he didn’t care.
“Sir,” one of them said, “we’ll need the pistol.”
“Of course.” He took the Glock out of his side pocket and handed it over.
He could see by the agent’s face that he had noticed that it had been fired recently. As his partner opened the door, four more agents met them in the front hall. This was an unplanned and unexpected meeting, meaning they were operating at a high security level.
They were led to the family elevator, and two of the hulking agents crammed themselves in with them.
Bill Greene was in the West Sitting Hall, lounging on a couch in front of the big arched window that had long ago held Tiffany glass. A sheer curtain was drawn across it, so no paparazzo could get a snap of the President of the United States in Jockey shorts and big, fluffy slippers smoking a cigar.
He gestured toward a silver humidor on the gleaming coffee table in front of him. “Cigar? They’re H. Upmanns.”
Flynn started to take one, but Diana pulled his hand back. “Nope.”
Bill’s eyes twinkled. He was married to a female powerhouse; he knew the signs.
The West Sitting Hall is a large space, and the Greenes hadn’t managed to lay it out for intimate conversation. The result was that the president sat on a crushed velvet couch at one end of the room, and Diana and Flynn on its twin thirty feet away. Lorna’s interests did not extend to interior decoration.
At that moment, as if cued by Flynn’s passing thoughts, she came striding in, her heels clicking with the clipped precision of a hyperactive metronome. She hadn’t yet said a word, but her snapping gait might as well have been a curse.
She stood in front of them, all five feet of her. She was wearing silk that flowed around her nakedness like a cloud. Flynn wondered if her girlfriend was waiting back in their lair, longing for her return.
“You better not bring that criminal friend of yours into the White House is all I can say, Flynn.”
“Excuse me?”
She sat down beside him, enveloping him in, of all things, crème de menthe breath. “That creep MacAdoo Terrell who knocked Cissy up when she was seventeen.”
“I did not know that.”
“’Course you did. You two are thick as thieves. You’d be a crook, too, if you had any guts.”
“I knew they had a relationship. I didn’t know about any pregnancy.”
“A-damn-bortion. Could’ve cost us the White House.” She looked past him to Diana, obviously wondering who she was. She put a hand on Flynn’s knee. “Why are you here, Errol, dear?”
“I let them in,” Bill called from his distant couch.
Flynn turned to Lorna. “I thought you guys were dead set against abortion.”
“That crap’s for the zombies, Flynn, wake up. God’s been dead for years.”
Flynn kept his thoughts about that to himself. He believed that there was good out there somewhere; he had to.
Lorna went over to the other couch and sat down beside Bill. The socializing, hard-edged as it was, was over. From her position of power and safety beside the President of the United States, she looked across at Flynn and Diana. “So, why are you here? You don’t barge into the White House at this hour for fun.”
The president walked over to the fireplace. Standing in front of it with his elbow on the mantelpiece, he seemed so completely presidential that even God might have become convinced that he could do the job.
“We’re a specialized unit that works in the area of terror suppression,” Diana said, “and we believe that you are under threat. The murder worries us. It’s why we’re here.”
“The kid killed himself. As I believe I’ve already said. So that fish don’t swim.”
Flynn said, “He was beheaded by an Iranian agent because he’d discovered a secret that doesn’t want to be revealed. I know what that secret is and you don’t, but you need to.”
“Go on.”
“Have you ever heard of Aeon?”
“No.”
“There are aliens here.”
“There are. And I’ve criminalized illegal immigration.”
“Not that kin
d.”
There was a brief silence. Lorna choked out a scornful laugh.
“From another world, then?”
Neither Flynn nor Diana responded. He needed to come to this on his own.
“What are you two tripping on?” Lorna asked.
“This planet—or place; we’re not sure exactly what it is—is in possession of powerful technology. They can control minds, among other things. And they do not like us.”
“The United States?”
“Mankind. They want us gone.”
Greene sunk into himself. Then his eyes bulged with belligerent anger. “A god-for-damned alien invasion, and it happens on my watch. Shit!”
Lorna’s smile faded. A confused frown replaced it. “How long has this been going on?”
“More than one alien species has come here,” Diana said. “But right now Aeon is the only situation we have to deal with.”
“These are the things with big eyes? From the movies?”
“That was another species. Very mysterious. As far as we know, they left when Aeon came.”
“Except that their faces are on every kid’s lunchbox in the country.”
“Communicating with them was a challenge we couldn’t meet. In any case, what Aeon mostly fields are biological robots, complex mixtures of living tissue, electronics, and machinery.” She glanced toward Flynn. “He’s an expert at destroying them.”
“We should catch one and learn how it works,” Lorna said.
“That hasn’t been possible,” Flynn responded, remembering the disastrous early attempts at it.
“So where do we come in?” the president asked. “What do you want me to do?”
“They’re in the process of concluding an alliance with Iran, and we assess the situation as being extremely dangerous. Once this alliance is in place, Iran will be the most powerful nation on the planet.”
Flynn then saw something that made every muscle in his body grow tense, as if some sort of physical assault were about to take place. Greene had pulled a large black briefcase made of soft leather out from behind the couch. The football should have been in the care of a military officer. And in the White House, where there was communications equipment both in the Situation Room and in the President’s Emergency Operations Center beneath the East Wing, it shouldn’t have been in use at all.