when we left the house.” Burton looked around for other possible
bogeymen hovering nearby. His eyes rested on the mirror, then moved on,
stopped and went back.
He looked down at the carpet in front of the mirror.
He had gone over that area repeatedly with the vacuum until it was
smooth; the carpet nape, already plush and expensive, had been a good
quarter inch thicker by the time he was finished. No one had walked
there since they had come back into the room.
And yet now as he stooped down, his eye discerned very rough traces of
footprints. He hadn’t noticed them before because now the whole section
was matted down, as if something had swept out…. He slapped on his
gloves, rushed to the mirror, pulling and prying around its edges.
He yelled to Collin to get some tools while Russell looked on stunned.
Burton inserted the crowbar about midway down the side of the mirror and
he and Collin threw all their weight against the tool. The lock was not
that strong, depending on deception rather than brute strength to
safeguard its secrets.
There was a grinding sound and then a tear and a pop and the door swung
open.
Burton plunged inside with Collin right behind. A light switch was on
the wall. The room turned bright and the men looked around.
Russell peered in, saw the chair. As she looked around, her face froze
on the inner side of the mirror door. She was staring right at the bed.
The bed where a little while before … She rubbed her temples as a
searing pain ripped through her skull.
A one-way mirror.
She turned to find Burton looking over her shoulder and through the
mirror. His earlier remark about someone watching them had just proven
itself prophetic.
Burton looked helplessly -at Russell. “He must have been right here the
whole time. The whole goddamned time. I can’t fucking believe this.”
Burton looked at the empty shelves inside the vault. “Looks like he took
a bunch of stuff. Probably cash and untraceables.”
“Who cares about that!” Russell exploded, pointing at the mirror. “This
guy saw and heard everything, and you let him get away.”
“We got his license plate.” Collin was hoping for another rewarding
smile. He didn’t get it.
“So what? You think he’s going to wait around for us to run his tag and
go knock on his door?”
Russell sat down on the bed. Her head was spinning. If the guy had been
in there he had seen everything. She shook her head. A bad but
controllable situation had suddenly become an incomprehensible disaster,
and totally out of her control. Particularly considering the information
Collin had relayed to her when she had entered the bedroom.
The sonofabitch had the letter opener! Prints, blood, everything,
straight to the White House.
She looked at the mirror and then at the bed, where a short time before
she had been on top of the President. She instinctively pulled her
jacket tighter around herself. She was suddenly sick to her stomach. She
braced herself against the bedpost.
Collin emerged from the vault. “Don’t forget he committed a crime being
here. He can get in big-time trouble if he goes to the cops.” That
thought had struck the young agent while he peered around the vault.
He should have thought a little more.
Russell pushed back a strong urge to vomit. “He doesn’t have to exactly
go and turn himself in to cash in on this.
Have you ever heard of the goddamned phone? He’s probably calling the
Post right now. Dammit! And then next the tabloids and by the end of
the week we’ll be watching him on Oprah and Sally being shot on remote
from whatever little island he’s retired to with his face blurred. And
then comes the book and after that the movie. Shit!”
Russell envisioned a certain package arriving at the Post or the J.
Edgar Hoover Building or the U.S. Attorney’s office or the Senate
Minority Leader’s office, all possible depositories promising maximum
political damage-not to mention the legal repercussions.
The note accompanying it would ask them to please match the prints on it