Джозеф Файндер - The Switch

“Think I know?” she called from the changing table in the next room, where Travis would have his bedroom when he was a little older. “My daddy didn’t exactly wear black tie or anything.” Her father had recently retired after forty-five years as an auto mechanic.

“I think it’s up, to catch the crumbs,” he said. He put it around his belly, fastening it at the back. He turned and looked at himself in the mirror. It sort of concealed his potbelly.

“You look good,” Jen said.

“Everyone looks good in black tie.”

“Let me take a picture.”

He looked at his watch. “Jerry’s going to be here any second.” Jerry, Susan’s driver, was always punctual. “We’ve gotta go pick up the boss and then head over to the Hilton.”

“Oh, come on, Will. Just one picture.”

He hated having his picture taken. He was always the guy who stood to the side when pictures were taken.

They drove in silence. Will couldn’t think of anything to talk about with Jerry. He realized that there were guys who were skilled at making idle conversation, equally adept with senators and limo drivers. Schmoozers. But Will wasn’t one of those guys. He wasn’t a schmoozer. Jerry probably thought he was arrogant, another snot-nosed Hill staffer who was full of himself.

They pulled up before Susan Robbins’s Georgetown house, a redbrick Georgian town house on N Street, and they waited.

The boss came out ten minutes later and entered the Suburban in a cloud of L’Air du Temps. She was wearing her ruby gown and her Tahitian pearl necklace, the strand of marble-sized cream and gray pearls she was so often photographed wearing.

She asked Jerry about his daughter’s confirmation, and they chatted for a few minutes. Then she turned to Will. “Morty said he’s not going to be here tonight.”

“One less ring to kiss.”

She smiled.

He thought about telling her that she looked great, because she did, but that felt too personal. “Remember to shake Tim O’Connor’s hand.” O’Connor was the junior senator from New York.

“My new best friend.” In a lower voice, she said, “Do we have it?”

Will glanced to the side, at Jerry.

“Jerry, could you raise the... thing?” she said, and immediately the glass partition powered up between his compartment and theirs. Will remembered hearing somewhere that the president’s limousine, the Beast, had a powered glass partition with a videoconference screen built into it.

“Is it handled?”

“It’s a work in progress.”

“What does that mean?”

“The Russki’s plan flamed out, but don’t—”

“Flamed out? What do you mean? No, don’t tell me.”

“Not to worry. We’re done with him.” He enjoyed saying that. She had foisted Igor, or Yevgeniy, on him, and the Russian had screwed up.

“The longer this thing is out there...”

“I’m running... this thing ... myself, and it will be taken care of. So long as I have full operational control.” He paused, and the senator nodded. “This will be handled.”

“It can’t get back to me.”

“It won’t. Trust me.”

She nodded again. “I do,” she said. “I know you won’t let me down.”

He bit the inside of his cheek to keep from smiling with pleasure. The ball was in his hands again, and he knew just what to do.

The Suburban pulled up in front of the Hilton. C-SPAN’s cameras were there for the “red carpet” arrivals. Susan was kind of a celebrity, in Washington circles anyway, but a bunch of real Hollywood celebrities were supposed to be attending. Harrison Ford and Morgan Freeman, a Kardashian, the great singer Judy Collins, whom Will was hoping to meet. The chief presenter was to be a woman from Comedy Central.

But most important, he had to get the senior senator from Massachusetts alone for a minute. He needed to ask for a very confidential favor.

At a few minutes after ten, Tanner was about to pour himself a scotch and watch some TV or read a good thriller. And go to bed.

Instead, he glanced at the cardboard where the missing windowpane had been, took out his iPhone, and hit Lanny Roth’s cell number.

After a couple of rings he picked up.

“Hey.” Lanny sounded urgent, breathless.

“Am I calling you too late?”

“So you got my message?”

“Message?”

“No? Jesus, okay — talk to me.”

“Can I buy you a drink?”

“I’m on my way to Manchester.”

“Mass.?”

“New Hampshire. Just for overnight. On some damned election story. What’s going on?”

“I had a break-in at my house.”

“Oh Jesus. I told you they were coming for that computer.”

“No, nothing taken, as far as I can tell.”

Lanny took a breath. “How’d they get in?”

“Looks like they cut out a pane of glass and reached in to unlock the door. I didn’t set the burglar alarm, and somehow they knew it was off.”

“I’m not surprised.”

“And get this: I have this old surveillance camera on the first floor of my house that’s always recording, and somehow they got to it and turned it off without being captured on film.”

“Yeah, they’ve got resources. Did they...?”

He was surely talking about the laptop. “It wasn’t there. It was—”

“Don’t tell me. Um... listen, about that...?”

“Yeah?”

“I talked to a guy, an old intel source of mine from when I worked in the DC bureau.”

“Okay...?”

“What you — we — have is something big. I mean really big. Scary big. It’s up there with the Snowden stuff.”

“Seriously?”

“Dead serious. I’m talking — I’m gonna get a Pulitzer; I can smell it. That’s how big this story is, Tanner. It’ll take me some time, maybe a week or two, maybe longer. But I’m gonna get it.”

“What are we talking about?”

But Lanny didn’t seem to have heard him. “My worry is — remember when that New York Times reporter got this huge scoop on the NSA wiretapping American citizens without a warrant?”

“I remember the story. Like ten, twelve years ago.”

“Right. The reporter, this guy named Risen — who, by the way, won a Pulitzer for it — had this amazing scoop, but when the head of the NSA heard he’d gotten it, he called Risen’s editors — I think he went all the way to the top of The New York Times — and persuaded them not to publish it. He told them it would damage national security. So the Times sat on it for over a year. I can’t let that happen. If I get that kind of heat from the Globe, I’m just gonna quit and give it to, like, The Guardian, in the UK. The way it happened with Snowden. That way the story gets out and gets back into the US, too.”

“But what is it?”

“It’s this terrifying program code-named CHRYSALIS that — oh shit, Tanner, you know what? I’m already saying too much. We need to take this offline. I mean, they monitor our phone calls. That’s an established fact.”

“Monitor whose phone calls?”

“Everyone’s, man, you know that.”

“Nobody cares about my phone calls. Yours, maybe.”

“I think they’re always searching for certain keywords or phrases. Listen, I’ve got to file something for tomorrow on this damned election thing, but I’ll be back in town tomorrow. By then I should have more on this. Do me a favor and don’t talk about this over the phone anymore, okay?”

“Okay,” Tanner said. “I won’t.”

“I mean it. Don’t say a thing.”

Tanner fell silent. “You know what?” he said, suddenly resolved. “I can’t have this in my life.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’m giving it back. I’m going to call the senator’s office and send the laptop back. I have to do the safe thing.”