Triggers

Chapter 33

Eric Redekop and Janis Falconi got into Eric’s maroon Mercedes, out front of the Bronze Shield. He buckled up and waited for her to do so, then gently said, “You’re doing the right thing, Jan. The shelter is open even on weekends. We’ll have no trouble getting you in.”

“No,” replied Jan softly.

Eric had his hand on the ignition key. “Sorry?”

“Don’t take me to a shelter.”

“You need help, Jan. You need support.”

“Tomorrow, maybe. But not today. You can’t just abandon me.”

Whatever they were going to do, sitting outside the gaming store wasn’t prudent. Jan’s husband might come after them, after all. Eric turned the key and drove, heading nowhere in particular. “Okay,” he said. “Let’s get some lunch, then. Do you like—” But merely thinking the question was enough to know the answer. She loved Italian food; memories of her at various restaurants popped into his head. “There’s a great Italian place not far from here.”

“Thanks,” Jan said.

They drove in silence for a time; the roads weren’t busy on a normal Saturday and were even more sparsely filled today.

“You’re recalling my memories,” Jan said. “Right now. Aren’t you?”

Eric nodded. He was trying not to do it, but they came anyway.

“You know I like you,” she said. He was keeping his eyes on the road but was aware that she had turned her head and was looking at him.

“Yes,” he said softly.

“And I thought, before all this craziness,” she said, “that perhaps you liked me.”

“Yes,” he said again, signaling a turn.

“But that was before,” she said. She was quiet for another block, and so was he, but then she asked, “What about now?”

And that was the question, Eric realized. It was one thing to know someone on the outside, but to know them on the inside! He’d never known anyone but himself this well before. He knew what her childhood had been like. A memory came to him of her at maybe eight years old, unable to sleep, coming down to the kitchen in her family’s little house and telling her mother that she was scared about dying, and her mom comforting her and saying that everyone dies eventually, but it would be a long, long time before either of them did.

And he knew what she’d been like at college, including the one and only time she’d cheated on a test, desperate to get into nursing school.

And he knew what she’d been like on her wedding day, walking down the aisle, thinking, This is the biggest mistake of my life—but being too afraid of making a scene to put a halt to the whole damn thing.

He knew it all. And she was right to wonder what effect that had on his perception of her.

The car rolled on; shops and restaurants passed by.

And the answer came to him. Not from his mind and not from hers—but from his heart.

He did still like her.

He liked her a lot.

But…

“Jan,” he said. “I’m a doctor. I can’t…”

“Can’t what?” she replied. “Get involved with a patient? I’m not your patient, Eric.”

She was right. “True.”

“And, yes, you’re older than me, but I like older men.”

He thought about this; she did indeed. “Ah.”

“Or,” she said, “is it that you can’t get involved with a nurse? Because, like, this would be the first time in history that has ever happened.”

He smiled and drove on.

Susan Dawson was waiting down in the lobby of Luther Terry for Paul to show up. They’d been dating for six months, and he’d had a key to her place for the last three. He had kindly gone there to pick up a change of clothes for her.

And there he was! She ran over and hugged him, holding on tighter than usual; she surprised herself by how much she needed the contact, needed the stability.

When they separated, he gently swept her hair away from her face. “You managing okay?”

“Yeah,” she replied. “You?”

He lifted his shoulders slightly and tipped his head toward the glass doors leading out of the lobby, leading back to the crazy world outside. “As well as anyone, I suppose. Couldn’t sleep last night.”

She nodded. “Me, neither.”

He had a big cloth bag with him. In addition to a dark suit and white blouse, he’d also brought along her red ski jacket, since the blood-soaked coat she’d used yesterday was too horrific to wear.

She desperately wanted to have a coffee with him at the Starbucks here in the lobby, but her BlackBerry vibrated. She pulled it out and read the message from Darryl. Bessie Stilwell had remembered what Leon Hexley had said. Darryl had typed it in, but the words and numbers didn’t make any sense to Susan. Still, she was delighted that the memory had been recovered.

Darryl’s message noted that they were going to take a military jet back. Susan thought about texting that Jerrison had wanted them to take civilian flights, but then, now that she thought about it, he’d actually only said to make sure they flew to L.A. on a commercial plane; he hadn’t said anything about the return, and—

“Everything okay?” Paul asked, indicating her BlackBerry.

She looked up and smiled at him. He worked in security at the Smithsonian; they often went jogging together on the Mall. “Yes, baby—it’s fine. But I gotta go.” She quickly kissed him and headed out of the lobby, taking the bag he’d brought. She went by Singh’s office, which was empty—the Canadian was down the hall in his lab—and quickly changed into the fresh clothes, feeling a little more civilized for having done so. She then took a yellow pad—this one had some of Kadeem’s doodles on the top sheet, which she tore off—and wrote out in big letters the words and numbers Bessie had remembered Hexley saying. Then she hurried back down to visit the president.

When the lockdown had ended yesterday, she’d sent a number of the Secret Service agents who had been here home and ordered others to come take their places. The two on duty out front of Prospector’s door were ones she’d had transferred from the detail that looked after visiting dignitaries—in other words, ones who would never normally have direct access to the president and thus were less likely to be involved in any conspiracy against him. She’d also had two FBI agents brought in, and they were there as well—watching the watchers.

“Hello, may I please speak to Maria Ramirez?”

“Speaking.”

“This is—”

“Hello, Professor Singh.”

“Is my voice that distinctive?”

“I’m afraid so, Professor. Is there—is something wrong?”

“No, no. But I have a question, if I may.”

“Sí.”

“You can read the memories of Darryl Hudkins, one of the Secret Service agents, correct?”

“Sí.”

“Do you recall him meeting anyone…interesting, shall we say, today?”

“No.”

“Are you sure, Maria?”

“Nothing comes to mind.”

“An actor, perhaps…?”

“Oh! Sí! ¡Qué emocionante! Darryl is in Hollywood, no? And he met Courtney B. Vance!”

“Yes, he did.”

“But…but why is this important?”

“Just confirming something. It proves that the links remain intact even over distances of thousands of kilometers.”

“¡Dios mio!”

“My thought exactly.”

Seth Jerrison’s previous nurse Sheila had been replaced by one named Kelly. He liked her better. She wasn’t as stern, and she laughed at his little jokes. Earlier, she’d read him the most recent batch of get-well-soon and sympathy messages from foreign leaders, and she was now rearranging the vast collection of flowers that had been placed on a table by the window; they were a tiny fraction of those that had been delivered to the hospital since the shooting.

The press had been making noises about a transfer of power under the Twenty-Fifth while Seth was recuperating. Seth would be damned if he’d let that happen; this was a time of crisis, and he intended to lead. He’d insisted on being given another stimulant half an hour ago, and he was feeling, if not chipper, at least more alert and energetic than he had when he woke up.

The door to the room opened, and in came Susan Dawson. “Pay dirt,” she said.

“Kelly, will you excuse us?” Seth asked.

The nurse nodded. “I’ll be just outside.”

“That’s fine.”

Susan took the vinyl-covered chair next to Seth’s bed and she held up a lined yellow notepad so he could see it. “Yes, yes!” he said once. “That’s it—that’s it exactly. ‘Tell Gordo to aim 4-2-4-7-4 the echo.’ ”

“The ‘aim’ part is certainly suspicious,” Susan said. “But it’s not conclusive.”

“True,” Seth said. “Call it in to the NSA decoding desk; see what they make of it.”

Susan nodded and took a minute to do that. When she was off the phone, Seth motioned for her to show him the sheet again. “What do you make of the ‘4-2-4-7-4’ bit?” he asked.

“Forty-two thousand four hundred and seventy-four,” said Susan. “Does that mean anything to you?”

“No.”

“It’s not some sort of reference to you? Maybe your old ZIP code or something?” She pulled out her BlackBerry and went to the USPS site. “Huh,” she said. “It’s not a valid ZIP code. Well, maybe that first ‘four’ isn’t the number. Maybe its, um, the…”

“Preposition,” Seth provided.

“Right. Maybe it’s ‘aim for 2-4-7-4.’ ”

“Well, 2-4-7-4 doesn’t mean anything to me. But if the second ‘four’ is also the preposition—aim for 2-4-7 for the echo—then maybe it’s a time. You know, 2:47?”

“But surely you’d say ‘two-forty-seven,’ then. And, besides, you were shot in the morning.”

“What about 24/7—you know, seven days a week?”

“But he said ‘two-four,’ not ‘twenty-four.’ ”

Seth frowned. “And what’s this about echoing?”

“That is strange. Danbury shot you from inside the Lincoln Memorial. With all that marble around him, it was bound to echo loudly no matter when he took the shot.”

“ ‘Echo,’ ” Seth said. “Suppose it’s not the word; suppose it’s the phonetic alphabet. You know: alpha, bravo, um…”

“Charlie,” said Susan, “delta, echo.”

“Right. So maybe it stands for something that begins with E.”

“Executive?” offered Susan. “Execute? Eliminate?”

Seth’s heart pounded—which hurt like hell. “God,” he said.

“What is it?”

“Two-four-seven. They add up to thirteen.”

“Yes. So?”

He hesitated. Did he really want to reveal the 13 Code to a Secret Service agent? But, of course, in this day of RSA encryption, no one except school kids bothered with simple substitution ciphers. He took a moment to explain how his code worked and talked her through writing up the conversion table on her yellow pad so she could see what he meant:

“There,” he said, when she was done. “A decryption table for the key two-four-seven.”

Susan looked at him like he was crazy. Seth nodded sagely. “They called me mad at the university.”

She smiled. “I’m sure they did, sir.”