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“Right back at you,” he replies, and the door opens.
A woman comes in, accompanied by two large men with ill-fitting suits that say security to Liam, but his focus goes back to the angry woman coming in.
CIA Director Hannah Abrams.
She stops and looks at Noa, and then straight at Liam.
“You two,” she says. “Can you think of any good reason why I shouldn’t put you both on a rendition flight right now and Gitmo your respective asses?”
CHAPTER 74
PRESIDENT KEEGAN BARRETT is in a living area on the second floor of the White House, sitting alone on a couch, a bowl of oatmeal in his hands as he watches the morning cable news, keeping the sound off.
Coffee and low-sugar orange juice are on the table before him. He frowns as he eats his morning meal. Despite the addition of low-fat milk, organic strawberries, and imported Ceylonese cinnamon sugar, he still feels like he’s shoveling a tasteless lumpy sludge into his mouth.
He’d much rather have an omelet or French toast or two eggs over easy, with plenty of bacon and hash browns as a side, but if he wants to keep healthy for the rest of the years left to him in the White House, he needs to eat well.
Doctor’s orders.
Which brings a pang of memory, of how that nice Captain Spencer Webster had been shot and killed yesterday, to keep Barrett’s unfolding operations secret. Painful, but it had to be done.
At some point Barrett will make it right to Spencer’s widow and kids, but not now.
The sound is off on the television as he flicks through thechannels. He has a high tolerance for necessary pain and suffering, but that tolerance doesn’t extend to listening to the chattering “journalists” from the various studio sets, all trying to portray themselves as expert and hard-nosed with empathy and sympathy for the masses.
He has a dim childhood memory of watching a special about the famed CBS news anchor Walter Cronkite. Now that was a journalist who commanded respect, a guy who came up through the ranks, risked his life a couple of times—in World War II he rode along in a bombing raid when the Army Air Force was suffering horrible losses, and even flew in with troops in a glider during Operation Market Garden, when many of those gliders destructed against trees or stone walls—while these talking heads would probably collapse sobbing if they stubbed a toe.
But Barrett keeps an eye on the graphics, on the videos, as familiar stories roll by.
Vice President Laura Hernandez still in a coma, cause unknown.
Speaker of the House Gwen Washington facing investigation from at least three Congressional committees.
Barrett’s Secretary of State in Germany, laughing while posing with the German chancellor, both of them wearing lederhosen.
His own approval ratings holding steady at 59 percent, and he nods with satisfaction at that number.
No news of Russia.
No news of China.
“How’s breakfast?” Carlton Pope asks, walking into view, sitting down in a near chair.
“Sucks, as always,” he says. “What’s going on?”
“Bad news, good news, for the moment,” Carlton says. “We still haven’t located Liam Grey, but we’re working on it.”
Barrett says, “It might take longer than you think. He’s experienced.”
“Well, so are my guys,” Carlton says. “With the advantage that they don’t play by any rules, except getting the job done.”
He looks at the remaining gray mush at the bottom of his bowl and thinks it’s a hell of a thing when the leader of the free world can’t eat what he wants, just a few days away from everything coming together. He puts the bowl down, the seal of the White House bright on the side of the porcelain.
“Pass on the good news, then,” he says.
“The Chinese have bit,” Carlton says, grinning. “Theirrezidentcontacted us. He wants to come for a visit.”
“Xi Dejiang, correct?”