Anonymous Sources (42 page)

“I seduced him,” I mumbled.

“You
seduced
him? Really?” Tusk looked impressed. “I wouldn't have thought he was the type. Resourceful of you, though. Shame we didn't recruit you for ourselves.”

“What about the bomb? How did you—”

But he shook his head. “No. As pleasant as this little debriefing has been, we're done. I'd like for you to hand me your notebook, please. And then we're going to take a walk.”

I swallowed. Perhaps it was the gin that spoke next.

“No.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“No. Just shoot me, if that's what you're going to do anyway. But I'm not going with you.”

There was a silence. Then Tusk lost his temper. “You don't have to make this difficult, you know,” he hissed. “You didn't have to make any
of this so difficult. This is all . . . so . . . unnecessary. You are such a
bitch
.”

He blinked rapidly several times behind the thick lenses. I sensed his effort to steady himself.

After a moment he spoke again, his voice more controlled. “I have been curious to meet you, though. I have wondered: what kind of a mother wants her own child dead?”

I froze. The world went quite still and white. “
What
did you just say?”

He looked smug. “She didn't even live a day, did she? Your daughter? Very strange. A perfectly healthy baby dying like that.”

The gin glass slipped from my fingers and smashed against the tile floor. It felt as though I had been punched; my breath came in sharp little pants.

“How—how did you . . .”

“Oh, it always pays to know your enemy. Find out something they don't know. Or something they do know and would prefer you didn't. Tends to come in handy. In your case, I thought it might prove difficult to dig up some dirt. But it wasn't. Everyone has their secrets, I suppose.” Tusk smiled triumphantly. “It wasn't hard. I mean, when your day job is tracking down international terrorists and weapons traffickers, digging up a birth certificate in Maine doesn't present much of a challenge.”

My mind was reeling. “But that was all sealed. I was a minor. And it wasn't my fault—”

“Wasn't it? You didn't exactly fatigue yourself trying to save her, did you?”

I stared at him.

He continued, “You know, as a general rule, I find that when one wishes to keep something secret, it's best not to write it down. Even in one's own diary.”

And now I could not breathe at all. I pictured my apartment in Harvard Square, my journals lined up on the bedroom bookcase. I live alone, no need to hide them. Had Tusk come personally or would he have sent
someone? Surely the latter. They would not have had to read back far to discover my deepest fear. That her death had been my fault, all my fault. The memory of that day—the blood, her little body—crashed over me. The gin bubbled back up, a hot stream searing my throat. I doubled over and retched.

He leaned in close, his breath moist and rancid in my ear. “What kind of a person are you, Alex? But, no. Let me put this a different way. Would you like to live to have another? Would you like to live to be a mother?”

Then he pushed the gun hard into my rib cage, bruising me.

“Shall we take our walk, then? Straight ahead. Slowly. I'll tell you where to go.”

I knew that leaving a crowded place was the worst thing I could do. He would kill me for sure. My eyes darted around the bar. Perhaps I could cause a scene. Would he shoot me on the spot if I just started screaming?

I was so busy scanning for escape routes that I did not notice the matter was now out of my hands.

I did not notice the crowd had parted, didn't notice it had gone quiet, didn't notice the three new guns trained on us, didn't notice anything at all until the voice of Ralph McNamara rang out.

“Mr. Tusk. It's over.”

“AND YOU ARE?” TUSK ANSWERED
coldly.

“Captain Ralph McNamara, US Secret Service. Drop your weapon, please, sir.”

“Oh, I don't think that would be a good idea, Captain. If you'll step aside, Miss James and I were just leaving.”

“Your weapon, sir,” repeated McNamara.

“I know it hasn't been a banner day for you boys,” Tusk replied.
“What with a nuclear
bomb
turning up in the White House and everything. But do you think it's wise to compound the error by threatening a senior officer of the Central Intelligence Agency?”

McNamara stood his ground. “Last chance.”

“I think perhaps you're misreading the situation.” Tusk lowered his voice. “At the Agency we work in more . . . shall we say
nuanced
ways than you law-enforcement types. We run double agents, for example.” Here he cocked his head in my direction. “And when the situation requires, we clean up our mistakes. Which is precisely what I am doing now. What I have been
ordered
to do, by someone well above your pay grade, Captain. Regrettably, national security considerations prevent me from going into greater detail. But I think you'll find it very much in your interest, from a career-advancement point of view, not to screw up my operation.”

McNamara hesitated. “You're saying—you're saying that she is a double agent?”

Tusk inclined his head in confirmation.

I still felt shell-shocked, but this was too much. “You're out of your mind,” I told Tusk. “Completely out of your mind. A double agent? What two sides am I supposed to be working?”

I turned to McNamara. “Look, you know who I am. Galloni vouched for me. I'm a journalist for the
New England Chronicle
. That's it. Anyway, it doesn't matter. Do whatever you need to do to me. Just please, don't let him go.”

We all stared at each other.

“I think we're finished here. Back up, gentlemen,” warned Tusk.

But McNamara squared his pistol. “Sorry, I don't take orders from you.”

For a long moment we stood there, the air hot and heavy, the crowded bar hushed.

Then Tusk shook his jacket off his arm to fully expose his gun. He held it tight against my ribs. “Too bad. It would have been easier to do
this my way. One move—from any of you—and I will shoot her.” He glanced around and I could see him weighing his options.

Then he was pushing me away from the entrance, back to the railing.

I stopped, not sure what was happening.

“Let's go. Over it,” he ordered, raising the gun to my temple and hoisting his own plump leg over the edge. What, did he want me to jump? I shook my head. I'd rather be shot.

But when I ventured a look, I saw that it was not a sheer drop, as I had imagined. On the other side of the railing was a slim stone ledge, maybe a foot wide. It appeared to circle the top floor of the building. It was invisible from the roof terrace unless you leaned right out over the rail. Tusk pushed the gun harder into my head. I climbed over.

Now we stood side by side on the ledge, our backs pressed against the solid brick of the building. Our heads were level with the ankles of people on the terrace. They were so close, only a few feet away. But if I tried to twist away and clamber back up, Tusk would surely shoot me. And there was no margin for error here. Just a foot of ledge between us and the dizzying drop. I recalled the elevator ride up. The bar was on the eleventh floor. That meant a free fall of a hundred feet, at least. You wouldn't survive.

“We go this way,” Tusk said, nodding toward the front of the building. Nervousness had crept into his voice. We began to inch along.

Above us I could see the Secret Service guards holding the crowd back from the railing. McNamara had a walkie-talkie to his mouth and was speaking fast. I concentrated on squeezing my shoulder blades against the wall and stepping as slowly as I dared.

“What happens now?” I asked. “Do you have a plan?”

Tusk didn't answer. I was about to take that for a no when he spoke.

“There are advantages to a life in the clandestine service. Such as acquiring the habit of noting every entrance and exit to a building before you walk in. Every fire escape. You don't even realize you're doing it, after a while. You just keep the map in your head. So. In this case, if I'm
not mistaken, this ledge is going to wrap around. At the corner up there. And then your friends will no longer be able to see us. For a few seconds at least. It shouldn't be too difficult to find our way into a window and to a service elevator from there.”

“And then what?”

“And then we shall see for how much longer you remain useful to me.”

I shivered. We inched along another few steps. A bird swooped past, quite close, floating lazily on the evening breeze. My heart pounded. We were getting close to the end of the building. I glanced up at the rooftop again.

Strange. Captain McNamara was looking right at me.

Duck
, he mouthed.

What?
I stiffened.

“Keep moving,” ordered Tusk.

I looked back at McNamara.

Duck!
he mouthed again, his face twisting with urgency.

So I did.

A bullet tore through the air. Tusk cried out and clutched his arm, the arm holding the gun. A scarlet stain erupted on his shirt. He spun around and staggered, and before I could run, before I could think anything at all, he had grabbed my wrist. He was teetering, pulling me backward, toward the edge. I dug in my heels and closed my eyes.

And then another bullet ripped across the sky. It took me a split second to understand we were being fired on from the White House roof. This time the Secret Service sniper found his mark. The shot hit Tusk between the shoulder blades. There was a crack, lead against bone. Then a moment of perfect silence, before Tusk crumpled. I quickly wrenched my hand free. He swung his good arm, clawing behind him, grabbing for a gutter, a loose tile, anything.

There was nothing and he fell, wide-eyed, into the gathering twilight below.

    

    

I
t was hours before they let me go.

Hours of questioning by investigators representing God knows how many federal agencies. Captain McNamara stayed by my side, and he insisted that the interrogations unfold mostly in the emergency room of George Washington University Hospital, where doctors x-rayed me, sewed a long row of stitches above my left eye, and wrapped my scalp under a turban of antiseptic bandages. I was resting, propped up against a pile of pillows, when Hyde showed up. He kissed me softly on the cheek. Then he announced that unless I was under arrest, I was leaving with him.

“Do I have to?” I moaned. They had given me painkillers that made me woozy. I was naked under the hospital gown.

“No rest for the weary, Ms. James. You would hate me forever if I let you get a good night's sleep instead of getting your byline up on tomorrow's front page. Besides, they tell me you'll live.”

I moaned again, but nodded.

“I think the first priority is going to be your firsthand account of what happened up on that roof terrace. I want to get that written and up on the website immediately. And then we can start working backward, stitching together everything that led to that moment. I've got the graphics team in, I'm thinking a time line—”

But I had leaned forward and gripped his arm. “He knew about my daughter, Hyde.”

“What? Who?”

“Ed Tusk.”

Hyde looked doubtfully at me. “Are you sure?”

“He said he found her birth certificate.”

“But—how would he know about that? Or be discussing it with you today, of all days? That doesn't make any sense.” Hyde's eyes flicked to the chart above my bed, as though he suspected they might have dosed me with too much morphine.

“He dug up dirt on me. To have something to threaten me with, I guess. To try to stop me.”

Hyde furrowed his brow. He seemed unsure what to say. Finally he managed, “Let's talk about this later. When we've all had some rest. I've called your parents, by the way. Told them you're okay. You can phone them on the way to the bureau if you like.”