CHAPTER SEVEN

11:45 a.m. Eastern Standard Time

McLean, Virginia

They met in a diner just across from the famous one-arch McDonald’s. The place was ten minutes from headquarters. Luke was there early, nursing a coffee. He sat in a booth at a big bay window, half-watching CNN on the big TV mounted behind the serving counter.

Luke had just spent two hours with Mustafa Boudiaf. He was having trouble getting it out of his mind.

The one place in the SRT headquarters where smoking was allowed was the interrogation room. They had given Boudiaf coffee and cigarettes, and he had drunk and smoked the entire time. But that didn’t soften him up any.

Boudiaf wanted a lawyer. Boudiaf wanted a phone call. Boudiaf wanted to know if he was under arrest. Boudiaf had apparently watched a lot of television.

“What do you know about the plane crash in Egypt?” Ed said.

The sight of a giant black man looming over him didn’t seem to hold any terror for Boudiaf. He shook his head. “I don’t know anything about a plane crash. I was asleep when you invaded my home.”

“Where did all your furniture go?” Ed said.

Boudiaf shrugged. “I am very poor. That’s America. I work all the time, but I have no money. I don’t have any furniture. What you saw is all I have.”

Luke nearly laughed. “What if I told you we know you sent all your furniture to Pennsylvania three days ago? That’s a strange thing to do, isn’t it? Send your furniture and all your belongings inland? Why would someone do that?”

Luke paused.

“Is that what you were doing?”

Boudiaf looked at him. “Who are you, please?”

“It doesn’t matter who I am.”

“It does because I will have your job.”

Luke shook his head. “You’re not the first person who has told me that.”

“You must charge me with a crime or release me. Since I have committed no crime, there is nothing to charge me with. You are breaking your own laws.”

Luke shrugged. “I know you’re in a hurry because you have a plane to catch tomorrow night.”

Boudiaf made no attempt to conceal it. “Yes, I do. I am going home.”

“I thought this was your home.”

“You’re a very foolish man.”

Suddenly, Ed hit the jackpot. “You’re going to miss your plane,” he said quietly, and in a matter-of-fact tone.

That idea set Boudiaf off. “You must release me!” he shouted. “You’re dead men, do you understand? You’re all dead men!” Then he stopped and took a deep breath, seeming to realize what he had just done.

“Why are we dead men?”

Boudiaf shook his head. “I don’t know.”

“How are we going to die?”

“I don’t know that, either.”

Boudiaf’s shoulders slumped, and his body language changed. A moment before, he had been wired, sitting tall, ready to resist. Now he settled into his chair, seeming to resign himself to a terrible fate.

“I must get a message to my family.”

Ed nodded. “We will send it. That I can promise you.”

“If you are being honest, then give them this message. If I am not released, they must get on the plane without me, and leave me behind.”

Boudiaf wanted his family to get out. Before what happened?

Now, in the diner, the car pulled up. It was a black Lincoln Navigator SUV with smoked windows, moving slowly and carefully on the snow-slicked streets. Sometimes it was easy for Luke to forget that Gunner’s maternal grandmother was a descendent of the man who had invented floor varnish in the mid-1800s; his product was still in use more than 150 years later. Of course, the original fortune had been diluted over succeeding generations, but Gunner’s grandparents had a lot of money.

Gunner attended private school and lived in a large stone mansion at the end of a long driveway. A driver took him anywhere he wanted to go. He wasn’t breathing the rarified air of the billionaire elite like Susan’s girls, but…

It was good. Luke wanted only the best for Gunner, things he would never have if Luke’s good civil servant’s salary was paying the way. And as much as Luke wanted to see him every day, it was good that Gunner lived in a place where people were always home. He couldn’t have that with his father – Luke was away from home a lot.

He watched as the boy stepped out of the car, slammed the door, and without a backward glance picked his way through the snow toward the front door of the diner. He wore a long coat of gray wool, heavy boots, and a red scarf wrapped around his throat. He was tall and thin. He reminded Luke of a young English gentleman.

Luke smiled. The kid was trying on personas. It’s what kids did.

Gunner came in, pausing in the foyer to stomp snow and slush off his boots. He moved through the aisle with easy grace and slid into the booth, across the table from Luke. His eyes were big and blue and he was grinning.

“Hi, Dad,” he said.

“Hi, Gunner. What’s the smile about?”

Gunner shrugged. “No school today. What’s your smile about?”

Luke shrugged. “Having a surprise meal with my favorite person.”

The waitress came over, a woman of about forty-five. “This is who you were waiting on?”

Luke nodded.

She put a hand on the side of her face, as if to block Gunner from hearing what she said. “He’s good-looking.”

Now everyone was smiling. “Maybe a little young, though,” Luke said.

She winked at Gunner. “That’s okay. I can wait. You guys ready to order?”

They ordered eggs, pancakes, sausages, the works. Gunner had orange juice. Luke stuck with a bottomless cup of coffee. Then they settled in. Luke was mindful of the time, but on the other hand, he had been up and working since before five a.m., and what was more important than time with his son?

“I saw that plane crash on the news this morning,” Gunner said without preamble. “An American congressman got killed.”

Luke nodded. “Yeah. That’s tough.”

“Are you going there?”

“Egypt?” Luke said.

Gunner shrugged. “I don’t know. Wherever the plane crash was.”

“It was in Egypt,” Luke said. “I don’t know if I’ll go there. No one has asked me to. And there isn’t necessarily any reason for me to go.” Luke could hear the evasiveness in his own answer. “They’re still investigating the reason for it.”

Gunner was shaking his head. “The show I saw said it was probably a terrorist attack. The host said he was ninety-nine percent sure.”

Luke smiled again. This smile was a little more rueful than before. “Well, if a TV host says he’s ninety-nine percent sure of something, then it must be true.”

“Would you consider not going, if I asked you?”

Luke nodded. “I would consider it. But I would also ask you to realize that I have a job to do.”

“Dad, what if I told you I wanted to join the military?”

That’s the way it was this kid. He had a sharp mind, and it made sharp turns. It was hard to know sometimes what was around the next corner.

“Well, I would tell you that if you still feel that way five years from now, then I would help you explore your options. But I would also want to explore your motivations. There are easier ways to get in shape. And if you think you want to do it because it looks like fun, I can tell you right now that it isn’t. The idea of fun will go right out the window the first time a drill sergeant is screaming at you and breathing down your neck during a ten-mile run before breakfast, or the first time you’re face down in the cold mud while they’re lobbing live rounds over your head. And the first time actual bad guys are trying to kill you, using innovative and surprising methods that were never discussed during your training? That will not be fun.”

Gunner shook his head again. On his face was the ghost of a smile. “I would just do it so you can worry about me the way I worry about you.”

Game. Set. Match.

Luke was temporarily without any kind of answer. The kid could do that to you.

“Anyway, here’s some good news,” Gunner said, instantly changing the subject. He could do that, too – get you on the ropes, then suddenly let you go again. He was a little bit like a cat playing with a mouse.

“Let me have it,” Luke said.

“You know how Nana and Grandpa love their skiing. Well, we’re going out to their condo in Colorado for a few days. So that will be nice. I like skiing.”

Luke nodded. He couldn’t imagine how much skiing Rebecca’s parents still managed to do at this point, but so be it. “When are you leaving?”

“Tonight,” Gunner said. “So I’m going to miss another day of school. You know how they are. They think school is for poor kids.”

Luke smiled. Gunner had razor-sharp insights. It was like he could cut into people’s minds and crawl around inside. Luke thought back to Boudiaf, trying desperately to get his own family out of town. Luke’s family – one person – happened to be leaving anyway. That was a very good thing. Whatever was happening, at least Gunner would be nowhere near it.

Across the way, Susan’s face appeared on the TV screen. The camera panned backward, taking in her full body, standing at the podium. She was still wearing the blue suit from this morning. In his mind’s eye, Luke pictured her jumping out of bed nude, in the pre-dawn darkness, to face another trying day. He sighed.

On the screen, Susan looked as beautiful as ever, perhaps less formal than in the past. Less Presidential? A person might say that. The camera pulled back even further, showing the crowded press room at the White House.

Luke stared hard at the room. Feelings washed over him, and it was important not to look away. That was the room where Luke had taken a bullet for Susan, and where Marybeth Horning has been assassinated. For an instant, Luke saw Horning’s head come apart, and his side began to itch where the bullet had penetrated.

Susan was about to speak.

Gunner’s eyes darted back and forth between the TV and Luke’s face.

“Do you love Susan?” he said.

“That’s a difficult question to answer,” Luke said. “We’re both adults. We’ve both had a lot of ups and downs. We both have demanding jobs – she probably has the most demanding job in the entire world.”

“Do you love her the way you loved Mom?”

Luke looked at Gunner then. He shook his head slowly. “I will never love anyone the way I loved your mom. Except for you. I love you just as much.”

He nodded at the truth of what he had just said. Whatever he and Susan had, and it was great, and it was important – it wasn’t the same as what he and Becca once had. He imagined that Susan could say something similar about herself and Pierre. Leave it to a thirteen-year-old boy to clarify all that for him.

On the TV screen, Susan stepped to the microphones.

“Good afternoon,” she said.