James Patterson: Kill Alex Cross

Two more agents appeared in each of the rear corners. Something was definitely up. What?

“On your feet!” Burns said, and everyone rose — just as the president and First Lady entered the room.

President Coyle looked exhausted but somehow had pulled himself together in a dark blue suit and gray tie. Mrs. Coyle, likewise, was camera ready, but anyone could see the stress and pain in her red, puffy eyes, and the sharp lines on her face.

Good God , Mahoney thought, to live this unfolding tragedy in front of the whole world. Your kids missing. No word from whoever took them .

“Sit, please,” the president said, and waited for everyone to settle down. Finally, he spoke again. “Regina and I just wanted to come and thank you all for everything you’re doing,” he went on. “Obviously, we’re not speaking with the press, but if there are any questions while we’re here, we can answer them. Feel free to ask anything. Please. You can be candid, and you can be honest.”

“Mr. President,” Burns cut in from the side. “We can meet privately with section heads, and then get you both out of here as fast as possible. They’ll have questions.”

“Fine,” the president said. “Then just one other thing.”

He walked over to one of the freestanding whiteboards in the room, picked up a green dry-erase marker, and wrote down ten digits. Then he reached into his pocket and held up a small blue phone.

Mahoney felt a ripple of surprise, even shock, run through the room. The two agents at the front exchanged a look as well. This was clearly news to them, alarming news. A breach of not only protocol, but security.

“My detail probably won’t let me keep this phone now, but at a minimum, the nearest active-duty agent to me will have it at all times,” Coyle said. “If anyone on this team has a time-sensitive question that Regina or I could answer, or any exigent reason at all for reaching us with information about our children, that’s the number to use.”

It was an extraordinary gesture, unlike anything Mahoney had ever seen a president do before. Of course, it was also wildly off protocol. He wondered if — or when — his security brass would put the kibosh on it, and whether they’d actually tell the president when they did.

For the meantime, Director Burns seemed to take it at face value. “Memorize it,” he told the room. “This is the first and last time that number appears in print.”

Then he gestured to the president and First Lady, and everyone was back on their feet as the entourage left through a glass door at the front, headed for the smaller conference center in the rear.

The Coyles’ drop-by had lasted a couple of minutes, if that. Already Mahoney was turning the appearance over in his head, looking at it from different angles.

There was always another angle, wasn’t there? The pretense of rallying the troops played out pretty well, but it seemed thin under the circumstances. This was a man who brought the world to his doorstep, literally, every day. And to say the least, this was no ordinary day. Security had to be at an all-time high. So why bring the president over here unnecessarily? Why now?

Part of the explanation — the easy half, anyway — was obvious. Someone at the top wasn’t reporting everything they knew to the larger group. That was a given. But what was it? What had changed? What did they know? Did they already know who was behind the kidnapping?

Agent Mahoney had never aspired to be at the pinnacle of any FBI organizational charts, but that didn’t stop his mind from running all the time, or curiosity from burning a hole in his brain whenever he was on the outside looking in.

So what the hell was the director telling the president and First Lady in that conference room right now?

“Sir. Ma’am. Please. if you could have a seat,” Director Burns said as he motioned the president and First Lady to the long conference table in the center of the room. Executive AD Peter Lindley was closing all the vertical blinds on the windows and doors. A single Secret Service agent took his post inside, while the rest of the traveling entourage waited in the corridor.

“What’s going on, Ron?” Edward Coyle asked. At the same time, he laid his hand over his wife’s shaking fingers. “Obviously something’s happened. You’d better tell us right now. I’m serious. No politics, no games. Not this time.”

Burns stayed on his feet. “First, let me emphasize that we can’t fully trust anything we receive from an unknown source. For all we know, this could be a deliberate attempt to distract or mislead our investigators.”

“All right, all right. Enough with the prelude,” the president ordered. “Let’s hear it. Please.”

The director nodded to Lindley, who set a briefcase on the table. He opened it and took out two sealed plastic evidence bags.

As soon as Mrs. Coyle saw the little black lacquered case in the first envelope, her hand flew up to take it from Lindley.

“ That’s Zoe’s! ” she said. “She bought it in Beijing this summer.”

In the other bag was an eight-and-a-half-by-eleven-inch sheet of paper. It was laid out flat now, but several creases showed where it had been folded.

“These came into a suburban Washington field office by regular mail this morning,” Burns said. “I can tell you that Zoe’s fingerprints are the only ones on that black case.”

Mrs. Coyle stared at the little box, running her finger slowly across its contours through the plastic. It was heartbreaking to watch.

“This note was folded up inside,” Burns pressed on. “It’s totally clean of prints as well. We’ve already taken a sample of the ink. We could get something there. I want to assure you we’re putting every resource onto this.”

“ What do they want, Ron? ”

Unlike his wife, the president was stone-faced. During the campaign, he’d been equally praised and criticized for his stoicism — or robotic quality, depending on whose story you were reading. He had been a law professor at one time and it showed. Burns admired the man’s strength, in any case. He knew he couldn’t have held up nearly as well under similar circumstances. His two daughters, and his wife, were his life, at least his life away from work.

“This is going to come as a shock,” he told the First Couple. “But again, let me stress that we can’t assume anything about this, true or false.”

Even now, Burns realized, he was stalling the president of the United States. Finally, there was nothing left to do but lay the note flat on the table in front of them. It was only a few sentences, and they were brutally succinct.

“ There is no ransom. There will be no demands. The price, Mr. President, is knowing that you will never see your children again .”

Hala Al Dossari popped open her eyes and looked with alarm around the room. For the fourth straight morning, it took a moment, maybe five seconds, to remember exactly where she was.

Wayfarer Hotel .

Washington .

America .

It was strange, waking to silence, in such an uncomfortable, foreign environment. At home, they woke to the adhan every morning, ringing out from two dozen mosques in the neighborhood. Back in their coral house. With their two beloved children.

That all seemed like somebody else’s life now — finishing up her residency, worrying about what to make for dinner, eating alone with Fahd and Aamina most nights while Tariq worked late at his accounting firm.

That was before he started coming home from the mosque talking about American devils, and the inevitable war — any number of things Hala knew in her heart to be true. He rambled nightly about how the United States was a cancer, one that would spread and infect the entire globe if it was left unchecked.