Дэвид Балдаччи - Hell's Corner

Stone and Chapman, despite her credentials, were forced to abandon her car and walk. Phone calls were made at every checkpoint as the MI6 agent’s documents were scrutinized and her incremental passage authorized by off-site higher-ups. Stone could understand that none of the street cops or agents were willing to fall on the sword because they’d passed them through in error. This was why supervisors cashed the larger paychecks and had the slightly bigger offices. Their asses would be fried if someone further up the food chain decided to throw his weight around.

They finally cleared the last hurdle and approached ground zero, Lafayette Park. To Stone, who knew it perhaps better than anyone else, it was nearly unrecognizable. The center of the park was a blackened mass, trees and plants destroyed, the grass burned, the dirt piled up in mounds. The Jackson statue lay in ruins. A cannon wheel had nearly reached the sidewalk on the Pennsylvania Avenue side. A section of fence was embedded in a tree a good seventy feet away.

The ATF had set up its mobile command post in the middle of Pennsylvania Avenue. The FBI’s counterpart unit was set up in Jackson Place to the west of the park. Dogs and armed security were everywhere. All the businesses and government offices located on Jackson Place and across the park on Madison Place had been shut down.

While the park looked like a cop’s convention, the people in uniform were still outnumbered by the swarm of suits. Stone and Chapman passed by a large Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms National Response Team, or NRT, truck. Stone knew that there were only three NRT vehicles in existence. The NRT members constituted the best bomb experts in the country and could go into any scenario and within a couple days tell what had gone boom and how.

Stone caught sight of some techs in hazmat suits parsing through the explosion site. He also eyed people in hermetic gear who looked like surgeons preparing for the OR. They were scrounging the area, looking for trace evidence. Small colored tents were scattered everywhere. He assumed each one marked a bit of evidence that had been found.

The men in some of the suits clearly represented the FBI. This was not a guess, since they were also wearing their FBI windbreakers. Other jacket and ties beyond that inner circle were members of the Secret Service, this given away by their ear buds and dour expressions as these “outsiders” trod their turf.

Stone and Chapman walked toward the group of FBI agents. However, before they reached the circle of investigators a tall man intercepted them.

“Mr. Stone?”

Stone eyed him. “Yes?”

“I need you to come with me, sir.”

“Where?”

The man pointed directly across the street.

“The White House? Why?”

“I believe you know Special Agent Alex Ford. He’s waiting there for you.”

Stone gazed at Chapman. “She’s with me.”

The man looked at her. “Agent Chapman?” She nodded. “ID please.”

She produced it.

“Let’s go.”

They were escorted through the front gates, although Chapman had to surrender her gun.

“I want it back,” she said to the confiscating officer, “in the exact same condition. I’m very partial to that weapon.”

“Yes ma’am,” responded the man politely.

They passed by a backhoe and a crew of men in green-and-khaki uniforms who were removing the stump of a tree inside the White House grounds. One of the men winked at Chapman. She scowled in response. As they entered the building and were led down the hall, Chapman whispered, “So this is the White House, eh?”

“Never been here?” Stone asked.

“No, you?”

Stone didn’t answer.

At that moment Alex Ford stepped from a doorway and joined them. He nodded to the agent escort. “Chuck, I’ve got it. Thanks.”

“Okay, Alex.” Chuck broke off and headed back the way they had come.

Stone made introductions and then said, “Why are we here?”

“I understand you met with Sir James McElroy earlier?” said Alex.

“ Sir ? He didn’t tell me he’d been knighted.”

“Didn’t really want it,” remarked Chapman. “But you don’t turn down the queen, now do you?”

Stone said, “Yes, I met with him.”

“Just so you know, the decision for you to come back inside has not been very popular with certain other agencies.”

“Including yours?”

“And including some other folks here.”

“Who are we meeting with?”

“Chief of staff and the VP.”

“I’m impressed.”

“I think the VP is there to give it a bit more gravitas.”

“Have they been fully briefed?”

“Don’t know. Above my pay grade.”

They arrived at a door. Alex knocked.

“Enter,” a voice said.

“Ready?” said Alex, and Stone nodded.

Chapman adjusted her cuffs and whipped back a stray bit of hair. She muttered, “What the hell have I got myself into?”

“I was thinking the same thing,” commented Stone.

From the anteroom they were admitted into the office of the vice president. He was a tall, white-haired and well-fed man with a reassuring smile and a strong handshake, no doubt built up over thousands of campaign stops. The chief of staff was short and wiry with eyes that continually swept the space around him, like a radar array.

It suddenly occurred to Stone that the VP being here made sense beyond providing gravitas. He was on the president’s National Security Council. Still, Stone was actually surprised the man would agree to meet with him directly and not through an underling. But then again, it was hard to refuse your president.

The pleasantries were made and quickly dispensed with. Alex Ford stood by the door, a security presence now and not a friend.

The VP said, “The president asked that we meet with you.” He nodded in Chapman’s direction. “With you both. We obviously want to get to the bottom of this, uh, delicate matter as quickly as possible.”

In his mind Stone translated this into plain English. What the VP had actually just communicated was, “This is not my idea, and though I’m being somewhat loyal to my president I won’t take the blame if it blows up. That’s why the chief of staff is here. My boss might go down, but not me.”

Stone wondered if either man had been made aware of the original plan to ship Stone off to Mexico to help deal with the Russian cartel nightmare. American vice presidents often had been kept in the dark by the chief executive. Chiefs of staff typically knew everything the president did.

The VP inclined his head at the chief of staff, who held out a black leather card case to Stone. “Your credentials,” said the man.

Stone slowly took the offered item, opened it and gazed at his face, which was staring back at him from the depths of the official photo that was part of his new commission. He wondered when they had taken his picture. Perhaps when he was sitting in the room at the NIC, which meant that Riley Weaver knew all about this. He had to smile when he saw his typed name:

Oliver Stone.

Next to the photo was his ID card. On it, he had officially become a field agent of the national coordinator for security, infrastructure protection and counterterrorism. This all made sense, Stone thought. The national coordinator worked within the National Security Council and reported to the president through the national security advisor. There was a link to the White House, but with one step in between. The president was covering all the bases. Just as his savvy VP was now doing. He flipped to the next sleeve in the case and there was his shiny badge with the agency insignia.

He said, “Interesting choice of agencies.”