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Hannah says. “Kay Darcy insisted on meeting Noa at her apartment. Noa had no other choice. They met and within fifteen minutes, the place was raided.”
“The DC cops?”
Hannah says, “Not on your life. It was an outside force. They broke in, shot up the place, and then left. Noa bailed out of a third-floor deck, messed up her left arm and got a gunshot wound to her side.Thankfully, it’s a through-and-through. There’s an Agency medical team heading to my house now. She also asked that I send over a friend of hers, Gina Stasio, who works here. Make that happen, will you? Give her a security escort, complete with lights and sirens.”
“At once, Madam Director,” Jean says. “What about Kay Darcy?”
“Shot, in serious condition, now over at GW Hospital. I want her guarded, twenty-four/seven, through one of our contract companies.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Hannah lets out a sigh.
“You came over here for a reason, Jean,” she asks. “What is it?”
Jean says, “I got a secure phone call from a friend of mine, works at the FBI in their Counterintelligence Service. Xi Dejiang, therezidenthere for China’s Ministry of State Security, is currently at the White House, meeting with President Barrett.”
Hannah lets that last sentence roll heavily around in her mind. The president secretly meeting with the Chinese ambassador, that could happen. Or with an official from their Trade Ministry, or some other flunky at their embassy.
But the head of their intelligence service?
One-on-one, in secret?
“I need to go back home,” she says. “I want to get a fuller debrief from Noa Himel.”
“On it, ma’am.”
“What the hell is Barrett doing with the Chineserezident?” Hannah asks, getting up from behind her desk. “Making promises, or making threats?”
“I don’t know, ma’am.”
“Neither do I,” she says, getting her bag ready. “And that is scaring the crap out of me.”
CHAPTER 103
PRESIDENT KEEGAN BARRETT says, “You know about John Marshall, one of our most famous chief justices of the United States. Well done, sir. As much as I despise your government, your education system is first-rate. Most American college and high school students, if asked, would probably think Mao was the sound a cat makes.”
Xi Dejiang doesn’t say anything. The man before him, the most powerful man in the West, is starting to rave.
Barrett says, “Damn it, Mr. Xi, I just paid you a compliment. Don’t you have the courtesy to at least saythank you?”
Dejiang remembers whispered tales of old men he had met on his rise up the ladder of power, who when they were younger, worked for the Great Helmsman, Chairman Mao himself, and how the old man would slur, stutter, and talk madness at the end of his days.
He now knows how those old men must have felt.
Dejiang nods, his voice just above a whisper. “Thank you, Mr. President.”
Barrett smiles. “You’re quite welcome. Now, the John Marshal I was speaking about was an Englishman several hundred years older than our famed chief justice, and spelled his last name with a singlel. In 1152, there was a civil war in England between a King Stephen and a Queen Matilda. King Stephen wanted to hold on to his throne and John Marshal, an ally of Queen Matilda, was holding on to a strategic castle. You following so far?”
The slightest of embarrassed nods. His homeland and this nation are about to trade deadly blows and Barrett wants to talk ancient Anglo-Saxon history?
“Well done,” Barrett says. “There was a long siege, and John Marshal offered a truce. To seal the deal, Marshal gave up his five-year-old son William to King Stephen as a hostage, so Marshal wouldn’t violate the terms of the truce. But that’s exactly what Marshal did. He brought in fresh troops and supplies. King Stephen was outraged and threatened to kill his son, the hostage. You know what Marshal said?”
The slightest shake of Dejiang’s head. A mistake, it had been a mistake, trying to come here and reason with this man, who is clearly mad.
Barrett said, “Marshal basically said, so what. Kill the boy. He still had the hammer and forge to produce another son, even finer. Got it?”
Dejiang says, “I’m not entirely sure, Mr. President.”