“It’s about the nation.”
“What’s wrong?” Hood asked.
Megan breathed deeply.
“My husband has been behaving strangely over the last few days.”
Megan fell silent. Hood didn’t push her. He waited while she drank some of her coffee.
“Over the past week or so, he’s been more and more distracted,” she said.
“He hasn’t asked about our grandson, which is very unusual. He says that it’s work, and maybe it is. But things got very strange yesterday.” She regarded Hood intently.
“This remains between us.”
“Of course.”
Megan took a short, reinforcing breath.
“Before the dinner last night, I found him sitting at his dressing table.
He was running late. He wasn’t showered or dressed. He was just staring at the mirror, flushed and looking as though he’d been crying.
When I asked him about it, he said he’d been exercising. He told me that his eyes were bloodshot because he hadn’t been sleeping. I didn’t believe him, but I let it be. Then, at the pre dinner reception, he was flat. He smiled and was pleasant, but there was no enthusiasm in him at all. Until he received a phone call. He took it in his office and returned about two minutes later. When he came back, his manner was entirely different. He was outgoing and confident.”
“That’s certainly how he seemed at dinner,” Hood said.
“When you say the president was flat, what exactly do you mean?”
Megan thought for a moment.
“Do you know how someone gets when they’re really jet-lagged?” she asked.
“There’s a glassiness in their eyes and a kind of delayed reaction to whatever is said?”
Hood nodded.
“That’s exactly how he was until the call,” Megan said.
“Do you know who called?” Hood asked.
“He told me it was Jack Fenwick.”
Fenwick was a quiet, efficient man who had been the president’s budget director in his first administration.
Fenwick had joined Lawrence’s American Sense think tank, where he added intelligence issues to his repertoire.
When the president was reelected, Fenwick was named the head of the National Security Agency, which was a separate intelligence division of the Department of Defense.
Unlike other divisions of military intelligence, the NSA was also chartered to provide support for non defense activities of the Executive Branch.
“What did Fenwick tell the president?” Hood asked.
“That everything had come together,” she told Hood.
“That was all he would say.”
“You have no idea who or what that is?”
Megan shook her head.
“Mr. Fenwick left for New York this morning, and when I asked his assistant what the phone call was about, she said something very strange. She asked me, “What call?”
” “Did you check the log?”
Megan nodded.
“The only call that came into that line at that time was from the Hay-Adams Hotel.”
The elegant old hotel was located on the other side of Lafayette Park, literally across the street from the White House.
“I had a staff member visit the hotel this morning,” Megan went on.
“He got the names of the night staff, went to their homes, and showed them pictures of Fenwick.
They never saw him.”
“He could have come in a back entrance,” Hood said.
“Did you run a check of the registry?”
“Yes,” she said.
“But that doesn’t mean anything.
There could have been any number of aliases. Congressmen often use the hotel for private meetings.”
Hood knew that Megan wasn’t just referring to political meetings.
“But that wasn’t the only thing,” Megan went on.
“When we went downstairs to the Blue Room, Michael saw Senator Fox and went over to thank her. She seemed very surprised and asked why he was thanking her. He said, “For budgeting the initiative.” I could see that she had no idea what he was talking about.”
Hood nodded. That would explain the confusion he had noticed when Senator Fox entered the room. Things were beginning to fall into place a little. Senator Fox was a member of the Congressional Intelligence Oversight Committee. If any kind of intelligence operation had been approved, she would have to have known about it. Apparently, she was as surprised to learn about the international intelligence-sharing operation as Hood had been. Yet the president either assumed or had been told, possibly by Jack Fenwick, that she had helped make it happen.
“How was the president after the dinner?” Hood asked.
“That’s actually the worst of it,” Megan said. Her composure began to break. She set her coffee cup aside and Hood did likewise. He moved closer.
“As we were getting ready for bed, Michael received a call from Kirk Pike.”
The former chief of Navy Intelligence, Pike was the newly appointed director of the CIA.
“He took the call in the bedroom,” Megan went on.
“The conversation was brief, and when Michael hung up, he just sat on the bed, staring. He looked shellshocked.”
“What did Pike tell him?”
“I don’t know,” Megan told him.
“Michael didn’t say.
It may have been nothing, just an update that got his mind working. But I don’t think he slept all night. He wasn’t in bed when I got up this morning, and he’s been in meetings all day. We usually talk around eleven o’clock, even if it’s just a quick hello, but not today.”
“Have you talked to the president’s physician about this?” Hood asked.
Megan shook her head.
“If Dr. Smith can’t find any thing wrong with my husband, he might recommend that Michael see Dr. Benn.”
“The psychiatrist at Walter Reed,” Hood said.
“Correct,” Megan said.
“Dr. Smith and he work closely together. Paul, you know what will happen if the president of the United States goes to see a psychiatrist.
As much as we might try to keep something like that a secret, the risks are much too high.”
“The risks are higher if the president isn’t well,” Hood said.
“I know,” Megan said, “which is why I wanted to see you. Paul, there are too many things going on that don’t make sense. If there’s something wrong with my husband, I’ll insist that he see Dr. Benn and to hell with the political fallout. But before I ask Michael to submit to that, I want to know whether something else is going on.”
“Glitches in the communications system or a hacker playing tricks,” Hood said.
“Maybe more Chinese spies.”
“Yes,” Megan said.
“Exactly.”
He could see Megan’s expression, her entire mood, lighten when he said that. If it were something from the outside, then it could be fixed without hurting the president.
“I’ll see what I can find out,” Hood promised.
“Quietly,” Megan said.
“Please, don’t let this get out.”
“I won’t,” Hood assured her.
“In the meantime, try and talk to Michael. See if you can get him to open up somehow. Any information, any names other than what you’ve told me, will be a big help.”
“I’ll do that,” Megan said. She smiled.
“You’re the only one I can trust with this, Paul. Thank you for being there.”
He smiled back.
“I get to help an old friend and my country. Not a lot of people get that chance.”
Megan rose. Hood stood, and they shook hands.
“I know this is not an easy time for you, either,” the First Lady said.
“Let me know if there’s anything you need.”
“I will,” Hood promised.
The First Lady left, and her aide returned to show Hood out.
Baku, Azerbaijan Monday, 9:21 p.m.
Pat Thomas experienced two miracles in one day.
First, the Aeroflot TU-154 that was scheduled to leave Moscow at six p.m. did so. On time. With the possible exception of Uganda Royal Airways, Aeroflot was the most notoriously late carrier Thomas had ever flown on.
Second, the airplane landed in Baku at 8:45 p.m.–five minutes ahead of schedule. During his five years of service at the American embassy in Moscow, Thomas had never experienced either of those events. What was more, despite a relatively full aircraft, the airline had not double- or triple-booked his seat.
The slim, nearly six-foot-tall, forty-two-year-old Thomas was assistant director of public information at the embassy. What the title of ADPI really meant was that Thomas was a spy: a diplomatic private investigator was how he viewed the acronym. The Russians knew that, of course, which was the reason one or two Russian agents always shadowed Thomas in public. He was certain that someone in Baku would be waiting to tail him as well. Technically, of course, the KGB was finished. But the personnel and the infrastructure of the intelligence operation were still very much in place and very much in use as the Federal Security Service and other “services.”
Thomas was dressed in a three-piece gray winter suit that would keep him warm in the heavy cold that always rolled in from the Bay of Baku.
Thomas knew he would need more than that–strong Georgian coffee or even stronger Russian cognac–to warm him after the reception he expected to receive at the embassy. Unfortunately, keeping secrets from your own people was part of the spy business, too. Hopefully, they would vent a little, Thomas would act contrite, and everyone could move on.