Triggers

Chapter 32

Security at LAX was the most stringent Darryl had ever seen—after all, it had only been eleven days since an al-Sajada operative had been arrested in a parking lot here with one of those hexagonal bombs in his trunk. Still, as a Secret Service agent, Darryl could see dozens of holes in the procedures.

Once they got out of the secure area, they were greeted by a uniformed limousine driver holding a sign that said “Hudkins”—which was a first for Darryl, who was much more used to running alongside limos than riding in them.

Bessie and Darryl sat in the back, separated from the driver by a pane of smoked glass. Darryl suspected Bessie was thinking that in the good old days, it would have been the black man driving the white man, not the other way around. And speaking of the other way around, why did it have to be him reading her—or why couldn’t Obama have still been in office, if she were destined to read the president’s memories?

The limo took them through the Los Angeles traffic all the way out to Burbank. It had been years since Darryl had visited L.A., and he’d forgotten how horrible the congestion was, but Bessie was thrilled to catch a glimpse of the Hollywood sign high above the city. When they arrived at their destination, they had to go through more security—this with even more holes—handing photo ID through the car window to the gate guard. Darryl was stunned at how time-consuming and inefficient the process of getting in here was; he thought of five easy ways he could have gotten past the guards.

He’d never been on a studio lot before, and he hadn’t known much about corporate mergers, but apparently Disney owned ABC Studios, and so, in addition to traditional Disney fare, lots of sitcoms and adult dramas were produced here. The soundstages were giant cubical buildings the color of cheese with huge billboards for ABC or Disney programming on their sides—who knew that Chadwick’s Place was still in production?

The driver hopped out of the car and held the rear door open for Bessie. Darryl got out from his side, and a brown-haired white woman in her mid-twenties came driving up to them in a golf cart; the driver had called her to let her know they’d arrived.

“Hello,” the woman said. “I’m Megan; I’m the assistant to Jessika Borsiczky. Won’t you come with me?” She drove them down a series of paved paths between buildings and past some giant trucks until they came to the entrance to one of the stages. A sign on the door said, “Do Not Enter When Red Light Is Flashing.” But it wasn’t—and so they did.

They walked along a narrow space between the wall of the stage and the plywood backs of whatever set was on the other side. Giant black cables ran along the floor, and they occasionally had to squeeze against the wall to let people pass in the other direction; it was a long, arduous journey for Bessie. Finally, they came to the end of the plywood, and Megan turned. Craft-services tables—Darryl was pleased with himself for knowing that term—were spread out in front of them, covered with coffee urns, plates of sandwiches and pastries, and wicker bowls full of packaged snacks. A couple of people were standing by the table, chatting softly. They walked on, and came to more plywood, but this wall was curved…

They continued around to the other side, and there it was:

The Oval Office.

Granted, it was a reconstruction, but except for the fact that it had an overhead grid of lights instead of a ceiling, it was perfect. And, Darryl supposed, it pretty much had to be: over the years, most Americans had seen countless pictures of the real Oval Office and had a good sense of what it had looked like before it had been destroyed. The Secret Service agent in him thought it ridiculous that the room the president had spent most of his waking hours in had been so publicly documented: its location, its exact dimensions, its every nook and cranny. But it had been, and this was a near-perfect duplicate. He wasn’t surprised, though; lots of people in Washington loved Inside the Beltway, calling it the most accurate White House drama since The West Wing.

A smile broke out on Darryl’s face. Here he was thinking about the set, when right there in front of him, sitting behind a flawless reproduction of the Resolute desk, was Courtney B. Vance, who starred as President Maxwell Doncaster. Vance was one of Darryl’s favorite actors; Darryl had been thrilled when he’d won an NAACP Image Award earlier this year. He was looking off in the distance, apparently waiting for something.

“They’ll be breaking for lunch in just a minute,” Megan said.

“Can we do one more, Courtney?” asked a woman’s voice; from this angle, Darryl couldn’t see the speaker.

Vance nodded. He picked up the phone on the desk and spoke into the mouthpiece. “Get me the Russian president right away,” he said, “and if he’s not awake, wake him!” He slammed the phone down, and, in what the scriptwriters had doubtless written as “off the president’s determined expression,” the shot came to an end.

“Perfect,” said the woman’s voice. “All right, everyone, that’s lunch!”

“Is it okay if we go onto the set now?” Darryl asked Megan.

Bessie, who looked more excited than Darryl had ever seen her, said, “And can I meet Mr. Vance?”

Megan smiled. “Of course.” Vance was just getting out from behind the desk. “Come with me.”

Bessie looked like she was going to burst. Darryl followed her.

“Courtney,” said Megan, after they’d closed the distance, “this is Mrs. Stilwell and Mr. Hudkins—Mr. Hudkins is a real Secret Service agent.”

Vance was gallant. He took Bessie’s hand gently in his, and said, “A pleasure to meet you, ma’am.” Darryl smiled: two handshakes from African-Americans in one day; it probably was a record for Bessie. Vance then took Darryl’s hand and shook it much more firmly. “Agent Hudkins, what an honor, sir.”

“Thank you,” said Darryl.

“Are you here consulting on the show?” Vance asked.

“Not exactly.”

“Well, I hope you enjoy your visit.”

Megan must have heard a cue in that. “Mr. Vance has only a short time for lunch, and he has to do a wardrobe change before he comes back, so if you’ll forgive him…”

Vance smiled and moved off. Having an African-American president had become a cliché in movies and TV before Barack Obama had ever come to office. Darryl had enjoyed the joke that had been everywhere when Obama had been elected: “A black president? Crap, that means the Earth is about to be hit by an asteroid!” But he could tell that Bessie had been genuinely thrilled to meet Vance; then again, blacks as entertainers had always been welcomed, even by bigots.

Although he’d shown it to her repeatedly before, Darryl again fished out the picture he’d been carrying of Leon Hexley, the director of the Secret Service. The print was a still frame from security-camera footage taken on the day in question; Hexley had on a dark blue suit and a tie much more colorful than any he would have let his subordinates wear.

Bessie squinted as she studied it, then she nodded, and started to explore the set. There were cameras they had to walk around, but the rest of it was uncannily like the real thing. The lighting wasn’t quite right, though—it was brighter than the real Oval. And the translight visible through the window was not exactly the view one got from the president’s window—which, of course, made sense: the photographer who had taken the image probably had done so from out on the Ellipse.

Darryl was fond of the movie Working Girl, and particularly liked the ending, because he loved Carly Simon singing “Let the River Run.” When he was young, you could count on seeing that movie every few months on TV, but nobody showed it anymore; Melanie Griffith’s character had worked in the World Trade Center, and the movie ended with a pullout of her in her office fading into a loving long shot of the Twin Towers—it was just unbearably sad to watch now.

He wondered how the writers for Inside the Beltway were going to deal with the loss of the White House; would it continue to exist in their series? That, too, would probably be unbearably sad to see.

Darryl watched as Bessie slowly circumnavigated the room, looking at things that might jog her memory: the portrait of George Washington over the mantel at the north end flanked by potted Swedish ivy (a tradition that went back to the Kennedy administration), the bronze horse sculptures, the grandfather clock, the Norman Rockwell painting of the Statue of Liberty, the two high-back chairs in front of the fireplace, the coffee table, and the presidential seal in the carpet.

But Bessie kept shaking her head. Darryl was tired—it had been a long day already—and so he decided to sit in the one place he’d never been able to in the real Oval: the president’s red leather chair behind the Resolute desk.

“Anything?” said Darryl. “Ignore the cameras; ignore the cables.”

“Not yet.”

Darryl looked around the room, and—

And of course he spotted it at once, although a casual visitor—or viewer!—would miss it altogether: the plain panel that was the door to the president’s private study, just east of the Oval Office.

Darryl walked over to it. It had no handle, and it popped open when one pressed against it, just like the real thing had.

“Jerrison was here,” Darryl said. “He came through this door into the Oval Office from his study.”

Bessie shuffled over to be next to Darryl. He motioned for her to go into the study, and he sidled along the curving wall of the Oval Office so she could look back through the hidden doorway without having him, an extraneous element, as part of her view.

“Anything?” called Darryl. “Think about Jerrison in that room, walking through that door, finding Leon Hexley standing here, his back to the president at first, talking on his BlackBerry, and saying…what?”

“I don’t know,” said Bessie. “There are so many memories of this place, and of meetings here with Mr. Hexley. To find the precise one you want…”

“It was Wednesday, about four in the afternoon. Hexley said, ‘Tell Gordo to aim’…?” He let the unfinished sentence float in the air, hoping she’d fill in the rest.

She shook her head but repeated, “Tell Gordo to aim” out loud five times, each time in a slightly different way—and finally her voice brightened. “He said, ‘Tell Gordo to aim 4-2-4-7-4 the echo.’ ”

Darryl scrambled for a pen and paper. There was a pad with the presidential seal on the desk, and a fountain pen in a fancy stand. He desperately hoped it was a real pen, and not a nonfunctional prop—and it was. He quickly wrote out what Bessie had said.

“Are you sure?” he said. “Are you positive?”

“That’s what he said, all right,” Bessie replied. “He must have heard the president then because he stopped talking and turned around. What does it mean?”

Darryl shook his head. “I don’t know. But let’s hope to God someone does.”