The Intern Page 4

  Not that it got easier if some lucky soul managed to get to the building’s threshold.

  Between metal detectors, guard stations, and magnetometer wands, nothing entered the White House that hadn’t been painstakingly screened. Not a single one of the million pieces of annual incoming mail. Not even the air itself. Electronic noses at all entrances detected the faintest signature of airborne pathogens, dangerous gases, or any other ill wind blowing no good. The Technical Security Division ran daily sweeps on every room, checking for weaponized viruses, bacteria, radioactivity, explosive residue, and contaminants of a more exotic stripe.

  Even if by a miracle someone was able to actually penetrate the most secure building on earth, the White House was equipped with further contingencies yet. The interior hid not just countless panic buttons, alarms, and safe rooms but also multiple emergency escape routes, including a ten-foot-wide tunnel that burrowed beneath East Executive Avenue NW into the basement of the Treasury Department across the street.

  Lowering the camera, Evan drew back from the reinforced steel bars and let out an undetectable sigh.

  Killing the president was going to be a lot of work.

  2

  An Absence of Light

  Orphan X.

  That was Evan’s designation, bestowed upon him at the age of twelve when he’d been yanked out of a foster home and brought up in a full-deniability program buried deep inside the Department of Defense. It wasn’t just a black program; it was full dark. You could stare right at it and comprehend nothing but an absence of light.

  About a decade ago, the inevitable ambiguities of the operations Evan was tasked with had reached a tipping point. So he he’d fled the Orphan Program and blipped off the radar.

  He’d kept the vast resources he had accrued as a black operator and the skills embedded in his muscle memory. But he’d also kept the bearings of his moral compass that had, despite the blood he’d spilled across six continents, stubbornly refused to be shattered.

  Now he was the Nowhere Man, lending his services to the truly desperate, to people who had nowhere else to turn. He’d been content to leave the past in the past. Even within the intel community, the Program had remained largely unknown. Evan’s code name, Orphan X, was dismissed as a figure of myth or an urban legend. Few people knew who Evan was or what he’d done.

  Unfortunately, one of them happened to be the president of the United States.

  Jonathan Bennett had been the undersecretary of defense for policy at the Department of Defense during Evan’s incipient years in the Program. Through a trickle-down system designed to maximize plausible deniability, Bennett had given the mission orders. Evan had been the most effective operator on Bennett’s watch, killing enough declared enemies of the state to fill a graveyard. Evan knew where the bodies were buried; he’d put them in the ground.

  Years later, when Bennett had become president, he’d set about erasing any record of the constitutionally questionable program he’d overseen. Through sweat, blood, and hard work, Evan had discovered that Bennett was particularly obsessed with eradicating any trace of the 1997 mission.

  Which put Evan at the top of the hit list.

  He didn’t know why the mission held a special place in Bennett’s paranoiac heart or why that assassination in that distant gray city was relevant today. On that cold fatal morning, what mysteries had lingered outside the periphery of Evan’s scope? In pulling the trigger, had he toppled a domino, sparking a chain reaction with momentous consequences? Or in the dankness of that sewer, had he waded into something intimate, putting himself in the crosshairs of a personal vendetta? He didn’t have any answers.

  Only that Bennett wanted him eliminated.

  And that he, in turn, wanted to eliminate Bennett.

  But Evan’s motives weren’t merely self-protective. Bennett was morally corrupt in the most profound sense, a rot seeping down through the chain of command. From the highest office, he had ordered the deaths of a number of Orphans, executing those who, under his tenure, had risked their lives for their country. And he’d had someone else killed as well, a man so steadfast and true that Evan had come to view him as a father.

  That had been a miscalculation.

  Which was why Evan was here now, pressed against the White House gates with a gaggle of tourists in the sticky June heat, waiting for a sign of the Man.

  The woman to Evan’s side rose onto tiptoes, funneling her children before her to provide them a better view. “Look! I think that’s him! I think he’s coming!” She swatted her eldest on the arm. “Close out that Pokémon nonsense and take some pictures for your Instagram.”

  Evan lowered the camera and retrieved his Big Gulp as the phalanx of vehicles rolled into sight, tailing down the circular drive as they departed the West Wing. The motorcade was the so-called informal package, eight Secret Service G-rides and three indistinguishable presidential limos. The three limos forced potential assassins to play a shell game when choosing a target; they never knew for sure which one the president was riding in. The decoys pulled double-duty as backup vehicles in the event of an attack.

  As the convoy neared the South Lawn, it halted abruptly.

  Excitement flickered in Evan’s chest, the lick of a cool flame. Was this the opportunity he’d been waiting on for 237 surveillance hours spread over the past six months?

  He lifted the camera again in time to see an aide jog out from the edge of the Rose Garden, a soft-sided leather briefcase in hand. The trees cut visibility, the aide flickering in and out of view as he neared the motorcade. To keep the aide in sight, Evan threaded through the crowd along the gate.

  The aide halted by the middle limousine, barely visible between the trees. The door popped open, just barely, and the aide slid the briefcase through the tiny gap.

  The door closed once wrote.

  The episode could have been witnessed by only a dozen people standing in the right vantage point along the gate.

  It was indeed the break Evan had waited half a year for.

  Bennett had shown his hand.

  But because the president was in the middle limo now, that didn’t mean he’d be in the middle limo next time. Or that the limos drove in the same order each time.

  Evan’s mind raced, grasping for variables.

  The president might not have a favorite presidential limousine. But he’d almost certainly have a favorite driver.

  Evan had to watch not the limos, but the drivers.

  Or more precisely—since the drivers were hidden behind tinted windows in identical vehicles—Evan had to watch how the drivers drove, identifying any distinctive feature of how the middle wheelman commanded his vehicle.

  He locked his primary attention on the central limo while also letting his vision widen to encompass the other two. The sun beat at the side of his neck. The crowd jostled with anticipation, the air smelling of Coppertone and deodorant. The Instagram kid whined that he was starving and sagged as though he’d misplaced his spine.

  Evan maintained perfect focus.

  As the convoy started up again, the end vehicles turned their wheels before the vehicles moved, rotating them in place on the asphalt while the limos were still at rest. But the middle driver turned the wheels only as he coasted forward, providing a smoother ride for the president.

  A poker tell.

  If Evan were one to smile, he would have now.

  Instagram Mom tugged her kid upright. “Stand up, Cameron. The president’s coming this way.”

  As the convoy banked around the curved drive, Evan put himself on the move, carving not too briskly through the onlookers, heading to where E Street intersected with East Executive Avenue.

  President Bennett preferred this route, as it allowed him to avoid Pennsylvania Avenue, which ran across the front of the White House and provided a view of Lafayette Square, where an ever-growing mass of protesters gathered to call for his impeachment. They wielded signs and banners decrying a host of constitutional violations.
Contravening the Arms Export Control Act. Funneling money and weapons illicitly to foreign fighters. Initiating widespread NSA surveillance of Americans. Monitoring domestic political factions that opposed him. Transgressing international conventions. Providing special access to defense contractors. Circumventing Congress. Usurping judicial powers.

  But Bennett had masterfully erected a force field around his administration, fogging transparency sufficiently to hold his detractors at bay.

  Evan was not interested in politics. Bennett’s transgressions of office, while appalling, were not what had Evan here on the sun-baked concrete outside the White House. It was not about the vast and the conspiratorial. Not about whispered conversations in the corridors of power. Not about kingdom-altering back-channel deals or the Rube Goldberg machinations that disguised originator from outcome, cause from effect.

  It was the faces of the dead.

  And the fact that the president of the United States had personally ordered the murder of men and women who as children had been taken from foster homes and trained and indoctrinated to spend their existence serving their country. They had done the best they could with the life that had been imposed on them. And he’d snuffed them out for the sake of his own preservation.

  Ending Jonathan Bennett was the ultimate Nowhere Man mission.

  Finally the motorcade reached the intersection and halted. Again the drivers of the bookending limos turned the tires while stationary, grinding tread against asphalt. And again the wheels of the middle limo rotated only as the driver pulled out.

  It had not been a fluke, then. But a habit.

  The convoy banked onto E Street and headed for Evan.

  He adjusted his baseball cap and slowed his breathing until he could sense the stillness between heartbeats, the sacred space he occupied the instant before he pulled the trigger of a sniper rifle, when even the faintest thrum of blood in his fingertip could put him off his mark.

  In less than a minute, the presidential limo would pass directly in front of Evan, bringing him at last within several meters of the most inaccessible and heavily guarded man on the face of the planet.

  3

  Identified Threat

  Excitement electrified the crowd cramming the sidewalk. People surged toward the curb, strained their necks, waved dumbly. A flurry of hands bearing smartphones rose in unison, most people twisting around to capture themselves in the photos. The motorcade barreled forward, the sight that launched a thousand selfies.

  As reviled as President Bennett had proved to be, he was still good for a social-media status update.

  Surrounded by civilians, Evan watched. The air was East Coast heavy, rippled by a humid breeze. The taste of soda lingered on his tongue, coating his teeth.

  The vanguard of G-rides and the front decoy swept by, the presidential limousine coming into clear view. Dubbed “Cadillac One” or “The Beast,” it deserved both nicknames.

  Set down on the chassis of a GMC truck, the limo was nearly eight tons, each door the same weight as a cabin door of a Boeing 747. Military-grade armor, an amalgam of ceramic and dual-hardness steel, was coated with aluminum titanium nitride. Slabs of ballistic glass a half foot thick composed the windows. A steel plate soldered beneath the vehicle guarded against the possibility of a frag grenade or an improvised explosive device. Even if a hail of bullets shredded the puncture-resistant, run-flat, Kevlar-reinforced tires, the limo could still drive away on the steel rims beneath. The limo was designed to take a direct hit from a bazooka.

  Evan had a Dr Pepper Big Gulp.

  If need be, Cadillac One could serve as a self-sustained, fully functional emergency bunker. Bottles of the president’s blood were stored beneath the rear seats. At an instant’s notice, a designated backup oxygen supply fed the air-conditioning vents. Firefighting gear stowed in the trunk was accessible through a hatch behind the armrest. The gas tank self-sealed, preventing combustion. Encrypted comms gear maintained continuous contact with federal and state law enforcement.

  Evan had cotton wads in his cheeks.

  Behind the wheel of Cadillac One was a master driver from the White House Transportation Agency. The driver would have received highly specialized army training in evasive maneuvers, route analysis, tactical steering, and vehicle dynamics.

  Evan had comfortable dad shoes.

  The presidential limo coasted up level with Evan, and for a split second he stared from the sea of faces at the tinted window behind which Bennett drifted in a cocoon of safety and comfort.

  Close enough for Evan to spit on the pane.

  The motorcade drove on.

  He reminded his face to relax as he watched it go.

  * * *

  Jonathan Bennett did not sweat.

  He never issued a nervous laugh, a tense smile, or gave an accommodating tilt of the head.

  And his hands never quavered. Not when as a special agent for the DoD he’d found himself at gunpoint on multiple occasions. Not when as an undersecretary of that same department he’d pushed a button in a command center and watched a black-budget unmanned aerial vehicle unleash hell halfway around the globe. Not when he flipped the pages of his rebuttal notes during his first presidential debate or his sixth.

  Body control was a learned skill, one he’d been taught in his early training at Glynco and which he used every day as the commander in chief. Without uttering a word, he could assuage the concerns of the American public and project power on the world stage. He sold himself to the populace not by appealing to their better angels but by manifesting subtle dominance displays that voters registered in their spinal cords.

  The fact that he’d been largely successful at appeasing the population was testament to his sheer force of will. His detractors had gained a bit of traction, yes, but he knew precisely which levers he’d need to pull before the midterm elections to maintain control of both houses.

  He settled into the butter-smooth leather of the presidential limo now and scanned the urban-development report he was due to weigh in on at this afternoon’s cabinet meeting.

  When his driver negotiated the presidential limo into a left turn more abruptly than usual, Bennett registered a slight uptick in his pulse.

  He looked at his deputy chief of staff, his body man, and the Secret Service agent riding in the rear compartment with him, but none seemed to have registered the deviation.

  He waited two seconds, and then the Secret Service agent stiffened, his hand rising to the clear spiral wire at his ear.

  Bennett thought, Orphan X.

  He checked in on his breathing, was gratified to note that it had not changed in the least.

  The agent’s hand lowered from the radio earpiece. Bennett waited for him to say, Mr. President. We’re deviating course. There’s been an identified threat.

  The agent said, “Mr. President. We’re deviating course. There’s been an identified threat.”

  Bennett said, “Has there, now.”

  He pointedly caught the eye of his deputy chief of staff and then turned and watched the buildings slide by beyond the tinted glass.

  * * *

  Secret Service agents stacked the seventh-floor hall of the upscale residential building. Despite the lush carpet, they moved delicately on the balls of their feet as they eased up on Apartment 705.

  The lead agent folded his fingers into his fist—three, two, one—and the breacher drove the battering ram into the door, ripping the dead bolt straight through the frame.

  They exploded into the apartment, SIG Sauers drawn, two-man teams peeling off into the bedroom and kitchen.

  “Clear!”

  “Clear!”

  They circled back up in the front room, stared at the sight left in clear view of the open window. A tired breeze fluffed the gossamer curtains and cooled the sweat on the men’s faces.

  No sounds of traffic rose from F Street below; the block had been barricaded once the sighting had been called in.

  The lead agent looked around the apa
rtment, taking stock. “Well, fuck,” he said. “Ain’t this theatrical.”

  The breacher glanced up from the windowsill. “It’s been wired,” he said. “The window. Someone slid it up remotely.”

  “How long’s the place been rented?”

  Another agent weighed in. “Manager said six months.”

  There was no furniture, no boxes, nothing on the shelves and counters.

  Just a sniper rifle atop a tripod there in full view of the open window along President Bennett’s route.

  “Someone contact that new special agent in charge over at Protective Intelligence and Assessment,” the lead agent said. “Templeton’s kid.” He tore free the Velcro straps of his ballistic vest to let through a little breeze, his mouth setting in a firm line of displeasure. “Someone’s been planning for a long time.”

  4

  What’s It Gonna Be?

  Evan moved swiftly along E Street a few blocks from the commotion. The closure had backed up traffic through the surrounding streets, though the presidential convoy had already made its retreat, doubling back and darting away before the public was let in on the ostensible threat. Evan had wanted to leave a message for Bennett, yes, but he also wanted to note the driver’s procedures for altering the route in the event of an emergency.

  Commuters were laying on their horns, a symphony of displeasure. Cops jogged by at intervals, spreading through the area. This section of D.C., a sniper round’s distance from the White House, had as many CCTV cameras as a London street corner, so Evan kept his head lowered, his face hidden by the brim of the baseball cap.

  The Secret Service’s Forensic Services Division had cutting-edge software that would review all footage in the area. Not wanting his movements to be pieced together after the fact, Evan paused directly beneath a cluster of cameras on a streetlight, stripped off his Windbreaker so it fell casually into the gutter behind him, and heeled it back through a storm drain. He let the Nikon camera swing low at his side before delivering it to the same fate.

  He waited for the crowd to swell and wash him up the sidewalk. A trash bin waited ahead at the edge of a crosswalk in the blind spot beneath another streetlight. He gave a swift scan for cops, found none close enough to take note of him. Quickening his pace, he removed his Nationals baseball hat, palmed the cotton rolls out of his mouth, and trashed them together. From his back pocket, he pulled out a worn Baltimore Orioles cap and tugged it on before stepping back into the sight lines of the CCTV cameras overhead.