Anonymous Sources (35 page)

    

    

N
o taxi would stop for me on M Street.

When I caught a glimpse of my reflection in the shop window behind me, I realized why: I looked like a lunatic. White as a ghost, my left eye swollen shut and turning a nasty plum color, blood crusted down my cheek and ear.

I nipped into the nearest café, where the waitress did a double take at my appearance but said nothing. In the ladies' room, I daubed the worst of the blood off my neck. My face was more painful, but I did my best to clean it, then unwound my hair to hang down and hide the gash above
my eye. I smoothed and retied my dress. There was blood on that too—whether Nadeem's or mine, I wasn't sure. Nothing I could do about that. With a pair of big sunglasses and lipstick I looked . . . not presentable, but better than before.

I walked back out to the curb, held up my arm, and a taxi stopped.

With relief I slid inside. I had already decided where to go.

Not to the hospital, although I was sure I needed stitches.

Not to the police, although I seemed to be making a habit of fleeing murder scenes.

It would take too long to explain, and I wasn't sure how much time I had. Two things seemed urgent right now: the first was getting somewhere safe, somewhere where Nadeem's associates in the “network,” as he'd called it, could not find me. The second was getting his phone and wallet to someone who could figure out what plot he had been involved with, and how to stop it.

This left me only one alternative. I told the driver to take me to the CIA. I would find Edmund Tusk and tell him what had happened. He would know what to do.

The driver crossed the Potomac and turned onto the same pretty, winding parkway I had taken yesterday to meet Tusk. If I remembered correctly, it would take about fifteen minutes to get there. I pressed my shoulder blades back against the vinyl seat and tried to steady myself. I was safe now. Everything would be all right.

Gingerly, as if it might bite, I slipped Nadeem Siddiqui's cell phone out of my bag. This was the second phone of his that I had somehow acquired. What secrets might this one hold? He would have e-mails on here, archived text messages, a contacts list at the very least. I turned it on. Password protected.

NADEEM
, I typed. Incorrect password, it flashed.

I tried again.

MALIK
.

Incorrect.

I chewed on my fingernail. Of course it wouldn't be his name. What would it be?

NUCLEAR
, I typed.

Incorrect.

And now it informed me I had two more tries before the phone was disabled.

It could be anything: the name of his dog, the name of his street, the name of his favorite color . . . Or maybe . . .

BANANAS
.

The screen flickered and then a generic picture of a sunset appeared. I clicked on his e-mail in-box. Empty. His address book was too. So much for tracking down his associates. I checked for text messages. Nothing. Then, remembering the phone I'd found in the backpack at Fenner's gym, I opened the call log.

Here there were two phone numbers. Both looked strangely familiar. I stared at them until it hit me. The first one was Elias's home number. Nadeem Siddiqui had called there last night, before we got home. I felt queasy. Had he been outside all night, waiting? I rolled down my window and took great gulps of air. It smelled of gasoline and hot tailpipes and swamp. The river was close. On the side of the road a green sign loomed:
GEORGE BUSH CENTER FOR INTELLIGENCE—CIA—NEXT EXIT
. Faintly ridiculous, surely, for a secret spy agency to pinpoint its location with a huge road sign.

I rolled the window back up and forced myself to look again at the call log. The second number was an incoming call, received last night, just twelve minutes before Nadeem had called Elias's flat.

The area code was 703. Virginia. I pulled out my reporter's notebook and copied it down. For one wild moment I was tempted just to call it. Who would answer? What would I say? No. I might blow a lead that way. Whoever answered would be expecting to hear the voice of Nadeem Siddiqui, or Shaukat Malik, or whoever he was, the man now dead on the floor of Elias's kitchen.

We turned right into the front gate of Langley. Steel barriers and barbed wire rose up. I knew the drill from yesterday. Ahead lay a visitors' checkpoint where I would need to present identification and let them check my name against a list. It occurred to me that I should have called Tusk to alert him I was coming.

I flicked through my notebook to find the page where I had stapled the scrap of paper he'd handed me as I left. The scrap where he'd scribbled his private phone number. My blood froze. I looked at the paper. I looked at Nadeem's phone in my hand. I looked back and forth between the two, my mind churning.

“Can I help you?” asked a disembodied voice. We had pulled up to a speaker where the guards ask routine security questions before waving cars ahead to the main checkpoint.

I sat still, staring at the phone numbers. They matched. What was this? Was Edmund Tusk already onto Nadeem? Was the CIA way ahead of me? Had they already cracked the plot before I ever got involved? Or had I gotten everything wrong? Was Nadeem somehow a good guy after all?
Had I just shot a CIA agent?

“Can I help you?” the disembodied voice asked again.

“Lady.” The taxi driver had turned around in his seat. “They need your name. You got an appointment, right?”

“I—I—my mistake. Wrong day. I have my dates mixed up. Sorry,” I said to the speaker.

I asked the driver to turn around. He sighed and put the car in reverse. “Back to Georgetown? It'll still be full fare, you know.”

“Sure. Okay.” I couldn't go back to Georgetown. I didn't know where to go. I tried to think. Back on the parkway there was no traffic. Trees whizzed past. Hyde. I should call Hyde. I dug for my own phone in my now crowded handbag. It wasn't there—had I left it on the bed?

Then the phone on my lap vibrated. Nadeem's phone.

The screen glowed with an incoming message:

Is it done?

The message came from Tusk's private number.

In the backseat, I made a strangled sound. There must be some explanation—some other meaning—some subtlety I had not grasped. But I could think of only one thing that Nadeem Siddiqui had been supposed to do this morning. He had been supposed to kill me. And there was no benign reason for Edmund Tusk to know that.
Is it done? . . .
The enormity of evil implicit in that three-word message overwhelmed me.

Then, thankfully, it was as if a part of my brain—the part that held emotion—shut down. A cold impulse for self-preservation took over. I was going to nail these bastards.

Done. All secure now
, I typed back.

I waited.

Good. Heading to target now. Inshallah
.

I leaned forward and spoke to the driver. “Not back to Georgetown, actually. To the White House, quickly please.”

He rolled his eyes and changed lanes. No doubt he suspected I would flake out when we got there, too. But it was all I could think of. The idea of going somewhere “safe” had evaporated; if the clandestine service of the Central Intelligence Agency wanted me dead, I would be in danger even inside the walls of the White House. But I trusted Lowell Carlyle. He had called to warn me.
As a father
, he had said . . . . For an awful split second I considered the possibility that he was also duplicitous. That he had urged me to run, to unlock the door, knowing a murderer was waiting outside . . . No. It didn't feel right. Trust your gut, Hyde says. My gut said to trust Mr. Carlyle.

On my lap the phone vibrated again.

Malik: Why are you moving?

My throat closed and it was several seconds before I could breathe. I stared at the phone. The goddamn phone. Tusk was tracking me by GPS. I had to get rid of it. But as I rolled down the window to throw it from the car, a thought occurred to me. This phone held evidence of Tusk's treachery. Without it I had no proof. It would be his word against mine.

I rolled the window back up. If they could track where the phone was, could they also listen to calls on it? I had no idea how these things worked. I decided not to take a chance.

I leaned forward again.

“I need to borrow your phone.”

“You got your own phone. I seen you typing on it.”

“I can't use that one. Please. Just one call.”

The driver studied me in his rearview mirror. I was sure he saw my swollen eye. He looked as though he was weighing whether I was completely out of my mind. Then he shook his head. “Come on, lady. How I know who you gonna call? I can't be lending my phone out to everybody—”

I pulled $100 out of Nadeem's wallet and shoved it over the seat.

“Please,” I begged.

Now he looked sure I was out of my mind. But he pocketed the money and handed over his phone.

I looked up the number in my notebook and dialed.

Lowell Carlyle's secretary answered. She did not sound thrilled to hear from me. “He won't be available at all today. May I take down a message?”

“No. This is an emergency. I am on my way to him right now—”

“That won't be possible. I can take down a—”

“Tell him my name and that I need to see him. I'll be there in ten minutes—”

“Miss James, you're not listening. He's in a meeting with—”

“RIGHT NOW,”
I roared. “Find him. Tell him I have Nadeem Siddiqui's phone. Tell him he was right. They came after me. Tell him I am on my way.”

I hung up. I tried to catch the driver's eye in the rearview mirror. He avoided looking at me. “Just one more call,” I said, and punched in Hyde's cell number. Maybe he could meet me there.

The taxi was crawling along Constitution Avenue. We passed the
State Department. Twenty-first Street. Just a few blocks to go, but traffic was bumper-to-bumper. Hyde's phone rang and rang. Was it my imagination, or was the black SUV several cars behind us weaving strangely?

“I need you to go faster, please. Right now.”

“Yeah, I'd like that too,” the driver replied. “But welcome to DC traffic. Nothing you can do.” He fiddled with the radio.

I looked back. The SUV had disappeared. Something wasn't right.

“Could you lock the car doors?” The gash on my forehead prickled. A matted stickiness in my hair suggested that it had begun to bleed again.

I craned around, trying to spot the SUV. Then—
oh, Jesus
. It was mounting the curb. Two tires were fully up on the sidewalk, the other two in the bike lane, and it was surging ahead of the lines of the idling cars.

“GO!”
I yelled. “You need to go! That car is coming after us!”

To my utter disbelief, the driver did the opposite. He stuck out his lip and slammed the gear into Park. “You better get out, lady. You got yourself some serious problems.”

I was near to panic. My heart crashed against my rib cage. The SUV was close now. Could I somehow climb over the seat, elbow the driver over, and step on the gas myself?

Then I remembered. I fished in my bag one more time and drew out the gun. I pointed it squarely at his head. When I spoke my voice was steady.

“Put on your hazard lights. Pull across the yellow line, drive down the wrong side of the road if you have to, and get me to the White House. Now.
NOW!
”

He didn't argue. The taxi shot into oncoming traffic. Horns blared. I heard a siren start up. I couldn't see the black SUV. I held the gun in one hand, the car-door handle in the other, and I prayed.

The taxi careened up Seventeenth Street, honking wildly and scattering pedestrians. At the corner of Seventeenth and Pennsylvania he screeched to a stop. Concrete blast barriers prevented us from actually
driving right up to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. The three blocks in front of the White House were always shut to traffic, to try to stop car bombers and sharpshooters and nuts like me from getting close. I would have to run.