By Order of the President (Presidential Agent 1)

“You understand, sir, I had to ask.”

Inside the expanding folder was the dossier, a thick stack of paper held together with a large aluminum clip.

“There’s coffee, Mr. Doherty,” the secretary said.

“Thank you but no thank you, sir.”

Castillo walked to the couch, laid the dossier on the coffee table, and started flipping through it. After a minute, Miller sat down beside him.

“I hope you, Mr. Secretary—and these gentlemen—understand that some of the material in these files has not been confirmed,” Doherty said.

Castillo closed his dossier.

“Sir, I’ll need more time than Miller and I have,” he said.

“Okay,” Hall said. “Then you better leave. You and Miller can read the Xeroxes when you get back.”

Castillo took the dossier and started to put it back in the expanding file.

“Just leave it there, please,” Hall said. “I’ll read as much as I can before I have to go to the White House.”

“Yes, sir,” Castillo said.

He and Miller went into the bedroom. In five minutes— Castillo now wearing a necktie and suit jacket—they came out carrying suitcases.

Hall looked up from the dossier on the coffee table.

“Keep in touch,” he ordered.

[THREE]

The White House 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW Washington, D.C. 1725 8 June 2005

Secretary Hall had heard—and it had not displeased him— that the passengers of only three vehicles were ever exempted from careful scrutiny before being passed onto the White House grounds: the presidential limousine, the vice-presidential limousine, and the blue GMC Yukon XL that he ordinarily rode in.

He thought of that as his Yukon approached the gates and was pleased to realize he enjoyed that little perk and John Powell and Mark Schmidt did not. Right now, he was not very fond of the DCI or the director of the FBI.

And he was therefore surprised, and a little disappointed, when the uniformed Secret Service officer waved the Yukon to stop.

Joel Isaacson rolled down the driver’s window.

“Good evening, Mr. Secretary,” the guard said. “Sir, the president requests you to go to the quarters before you go to the situation room.”

Natalie Cohen was sitting with her legs tucked under her skirt on a couch in the sitting room of the president’s apartment. She raised her hand in a casual greeting when Hall walked in.

The president was sitting slumped in an armchair, holding a crystal tumbler of what was almost certainly his usual bourbon, Maker’s Mark, on the rocks.

“You want one of these, Matt?” he asked, raising the glass. “To give you courage to grovel before Powell?”

“I’m not going to grovel before Powell,” Hall blurted, then remembered to add, “Mr. President, am I?”

“Let me tell you where our little fishing expedition has crashed on the rocks,” the president said.

He pointed at an array of bottles on a sideboard. Hall walked to it, told himself he was in trouble, would need all his wits not a drink, and then poured two inches of the bourbon into a glass and took a sip.

Then he leaned against the sideboard and looked at the president.

“The FBI has learned that Lease-Aire, Inc., has filed a claim for the loss of its airplane, which is now with a seventy percent probability at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean.”