Page 18 of V-Day
5.
RICHARD COLLINS LOOKED STRAINED, OLIVIAdecided. The President sat across the table from Daniel. President Collins had survived votes of no confidence from the House, an assassination attempt and three wars, and still got himself re-elected, all without losing his boyish good looks or the sparkle in his eyes. Now, though, she could see he was feeling pressured.
It was indecently early—barely gone dawn. Daniel had roused her from sleep when the Secret Service banged on the door and demanded they come with them. They were led to another floor of the hotel, both yawning and rubbing their eyes.
Another door opened for them. The room beyond might once have been a standard hotel bedroom, only the usual furniture was gone. A large, round table took up the middle of the room and President Collins sat behind it, his suit still pristine and wrinkle free.
He got to his feet with slow movements as the door shut behind Olivia and Daniel. He held out his hand. “Castellano.” He said it the American way.
Daniel didn’t blink. He shook the President’s hand. “Good to meet you.”
“You didn’t meet me. Not today, anyway,” Collins said. He glanced at Olivia. “Sorry to wake you, Olivia.” He sat and waved at the other chairs. “We need to talk.” He strung his fingers together as Daniel and Olivia sat. “What do you need, Daniel? What will resolve this for me? I cannot operate in a White House full of people I can’t trust.”
Daniel sat back. “Agents do what they do—”
“Agents?”
Daniel hesitated. “What you call a spy is generally called an agent in the international intelligence community. I’m an operative. If I was CIA, I would be an officer. And just to confuse things, your FBI personnel call themselves agents.”
“The CIA and FBI language I was aware of. I see. Go on,” Collins said.
“Spies,” Daniel said, “do what they do for a short list of reasons, all of them self-centered. If you start there, if you ask yourself who stands to gain by killing Callan Davenport, then you can relax and narrow your focus.”
Olivia blinked, hiding her surprise, for Daniel was speaking with a mild American accent, similar to most trained and educated politicians in the DC circuit. When they were alone, they spoke Spanish. When they did use English, Daniel’s accent was the soft Vistarian blur of consonants.
Olivia wondered for a moment why he would mask his natural accent now, then realized he was putting the President at ease. An American accent was neutral to the President’s ears. He wouldn’t hear it. It would avoid reminding him he was placing extraordinary trust in a foreign national, based purely on Olivia’s recommendation.
Collins frowned. “The man who gains the most from the bombing is Doug Mulray, the deputy Chief of Staff. He’s an ambitious son of a bitch. Only, isn’t that far too obvious? If he’s the mole, then he must assume we would consider him first.”
“You’d be surprised,” Daniel replied. “Most intelligence assets underestimate how much they are telegraphing to the world. They believe they are being cagey and secretive.” He shrugged. “If I can see him in his natural habitat, I’ll know.”
“It would mean putting you inside the White House.” Collins shook his head. “No.”
“Then have a dozen armed Secret Service guys follow me everywhere I go. I don’t need access to your systems or information. All I have to do is watch him for a while and I’ll know.” Daniel hesitated. “Proof, though, might be harder to get.”
Collins stared at him. Olivia realized he was thinking hard. “Anyone I attached to you might be compromised.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “This is damn awkward. Is thereanyonein the Secret Service you can clear? Give me a wedge, a crack in this faceless wall of suspicion.”
Daniel’s eyes narrowed. “There’s Rosa Bergen,” he said. “She was head of the team covering the Vice President at the hospital gala.”
Olivia had read the same documents as Daniel. They included Secret Service field reports, although there had been nothing about the agents themselves. She held her face still, expressing nothing.
“I know Rosa,” Collins said. “She’s a senior field agent.”
Daniel nodded. “From her record, she should have been made a deputy director a long time ago. She was the only agent standing by the Vice President when the emergency teams reached him.”
“That’s their job,” Collins said gently, with a patient tone.
“She was on the other side of the room when the bomb went off,” Daniel said. “She made her way over to him and covered him with her body. The four men on the Vice President’s close detail all walked out of the mess with scratches and congregated on the sidewalk. Bergen’s arm was broken by the blast and she still stayed on her man.”
Collins scratched at his chin. “I didn’t know that,” he admitted. “It’s laudable, although it doesn’t clear her.”
Daniel raised a brow. “If she’d known about the bomb, do you think she would have stuck around for it to explode? She would have found a pretext, something convincing, which would put her outside the building before it blew.”
“So, because she’s on the injured list she’s clear?” Collins said.
“She’s also not regular White House staff,” Daniel added. “The mole is.”
Collins considered for a moment. “I’ll have to find a pretext to have her reassigned.”
