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Barrett watches the bitch smile at him and switch off the recorder.Don’t let her see you blink, squirm, or sweat.
Don’t do it.
He says, “A fake. Come on, Hannah, I know from experience the technical talent that is over at Langley. It’d probably take a day or so to mock up something with my voice and Noa’s voice. You’ll have to do better than that.”
The woman suddenly stands up. “Challenge accepted.”
Barrett reaches underneath the desk to press the button to summon the Secret Service, but Hannah is too quick and she opens the door to the Oval Office, says, “Jean?”
A second woman joins Hannah as she comes back to the desk. Hannah pulls out a chair for her, and she sits down.
Barrett recognizes her straightaway, dressed in a simple black jacket and slacks ensemble, with a plain white blouse.
Hannah says, “You remember Jean Swantish, my deputy director?”
“Of course,” Barrett says, irritated and deciding enough is enough.
His fingers return to the Secret Service button, as Jean shifts in her seat, brings up her hands as if in prayer, and he stops.
For the first time in a very long time, Barrett is afraid.
CHAPTER 138
NAVY CAPTAIN DAN Callaghan is walking to his office at Walter Reed National Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland, dreading the rest of the day ahead for him, as the facility’s commanding officer. The hospital’s most famous patient, Vice President Laura Hernandez, is in a coma up in Ward 71, the medical suite reserved for the president and other high-ranking officials.
He yawns, opens the door to his office, nods greetings to the staff. A few minutes ago he was at the latest hospital-wide meeting to pinpoint the source of the vice president’s illness, and how to reverse the effects so she’ll come out of her coma.
The best working hypothesis is sometime before she collapsed at the Las Vegas dining room, she was either exposed to—or consumed—some sort of cholinesterase inhibitor, part of the family of nerve-gas weapons first developed more than a century ago.
Most recently, such chemical agents have been the poison of choice for the Russian FSB, the successor to the KGB, as its agents have traveled around the world to poison and kill dissidents currently protesting against the Motherland. But the standard treatment of atropine isn’t working, and Captain Callaghan and other doctors here have received unofficial reassurances from counterparts inMoscow that they had nothing to do with the vice president’s poisoning.
In his office he sits at his desk, stretches out his back. It’s been a series of long and hellish days, with standard treatments not working, and rumors circulating that the Chinese were behind it, or the Iranians, or even Mexican cartels, still carrying a grudge against the vice president back from when she was a tough law-and-order governor in Texas. Pressure is coming at him from all places and circles, including a number of faith healers out in the parking lot, chanting and banging drums for the vice president’s health.
He glances at his morning mail, thinking the drummers should go set themselves up over at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Rumors have recently percolated along the corridors of Walter Reed about the president’s current health, both physical and mental.
Another yawn. Christ, when was the last time he had gotten a solid night’s sleep?
A crisp white envelope with his name and rank typed in the center catches his attention.
No postage, no return address.
Odd.
He opens it and a carefully printed sheet comes out.
He gives it a read, then reads it again, much more slowly.
It says:
Twenty-one days ago, VICE PRESIDENT LAURA HERNANDEZ was touring the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas where she took part in a virtual reality demonstration, donning a V/R helmet. The helmet had a spray anesthetic device at its base, allowing a ceramic sphere holding a nerve agent to be injected into her skin, and a follow-up experimental healing agent left no wound visible.
This ceramic device is undetectable to standard imaging devices. It is designed to continually distribute the nerve agent over a sixty-day period. The only treatment for VICE PRESIDENT LAURA HERNANDEZ is to make an incision and remove the ceramic device, removing the continueddistribution of the nerve agent. The device is approximately one centimeter above the first cervical vertebrae and can be removed via local anesthesia. Her recovery should be nearly instantaneous.
Captain Callaghan grabs the sheet of paper, steps up from his desk, and starts quickly walking out of his office. By the time he reaches the hallway, he’s running.
CHAPTER 139
CIA DIRECTOR HANNAH Abrams watches with satisfaction as President Keegan Barrett stares at what’s happening in front of him. Next to her there’s a slow and steady process, as a well-fitted wig is removed and dropped to the floor, and fingers work under and around the face. There’s nothing like the heavy latex masks one sees in theMission: Impossiblemovies, just a gentle tug and slip as Agency-only materials are pulled away, thinner than a sheet of wax paper. Implants are taken out of the mouth. The woman sits up straighter and stares across at the man staring right back at her.