High Treason (20 page)

“It is not about the attack,” Yelena interrupted. “It is about the response. It is about victory over an enemy.”

That was exactly the rationale he would have expected. And given the president’s track record for scandal, maybe it made some degree of sense, but good God. Jonathan decided on a different tack. “How do you know this?” he asked. “How does he plan to make it work?”

“I don’t know the workings,” she said. “But I know he is desperate about his poll numbers. America has stopped liking him.”

“All respect, you’re not helping much,” Boxers said.

“I stopped liking him years ago. Everybody knows that. We hardly make it a secret. But I am not responsible for the bad economy or the big debt or the scandals in the administration. Tony—the president—is responsible for all that, and the people are angry.”

Jonathan understood that anger all too well. In fact he’d been up close and personal with more of the scandals than he cared to think about.

“With a big national emergency, people will stop thinking about those things. They will start thinking about the emergency.”

Jonathan asked, “So, what makes you think he’s planning an attack on his own country?”

Yelena’s response came quickly: “You thought I was going to do that—attack my own country. Why is it so difficult to think that the president might do the same thing?”

Boxers answered without dropping a beat. “Because he’s the president of the United States and you’re a dissident imposter who’s been living a lie for decades.”

Jonathan shot him an angry glare.

“What, like you’re not thinking the same thing?”

Yelena’s features reddened.

Irene said, “Come on, guys. A little civility here.”

Jonathan got it. “Sorry, Mrs. Darmond, but we’ve dedicated a lot of energy to the proposition that you’re the bad guy. That’s only after we were told by Douglas Winters and Ramsey Miller that you had been kidnapped. Now you’re telling us that the president is planning a terrorist attack. That’s a lot of whiplash.”

He gave her a few seconds to let it sink in.

“You mentioned Douglas Winters,” Yelena said. “It was through him that I found out about Tony’s plot.”

“The White House chief of staff,” Jonathan said. He just needed to be sure.

“Gettin’ better and better,” Boxers said.

“I overheard him talking with a man about the lack of security around bridges and tunnels and other infrastructure around the country. At first, I thought it might be some kind of security briefing, but the tone was wrong. There was excitement in his voice. Enthusiasm. It struck me as odd so I listened more, and it continued the same way.”

“Was he on the phone or in person?” Jonathan asked.

“In person. Someone in a meeting.”

“Who?” Irene asked.

“I don’t know. The door was closed, but not all the way.” As those words left her mouth, her eyes shifted, ringing a warning bell for Jonathan.

“
Where
did this happen?” he asked.

Hesitation. “That does not matter.”

“Yeah, actually it does,” Jonathan said. “Let the record show that my job was to find you, and here you are. You’re free to leave and let me go to bed right now if you’d like. But if there’s more, mine are the only rules that count. Either come off all the details or go home. I don’t care which.”

Yelena looked to Irene for help.

“Officially, I’m not even here,” Irene said. “None of us are. If we go official, I need to arrest you for the murder of a lot of people at the Wild Times.”

“But I didn’t do those things.”

Irene shrugged a gesture of helplessness. “I don’t make the rules, I merely enforce them. You say you’re innocent, and I happen to believe you. We’re here in the first place
because
I happen to believe you. But that doesn’t matter.”

“So, you would put me in jail?”

“I’d have to, because I’m paid to believe in the system. If you’re innocent, then either the prosecutors would not be able to prove their case, or your defense team would be able to uncover the truth.”

Yelena looked pained, deep creases appearing over her eyes. “But if the government is involved . . .” She let the words trail away.

“This isn’t your first trip to the dance,” Irene said. The deference had suddenly disappeared from her tone. “Scorpion and his team are the best at what they do, and what they do is all done under the radar. If you want help from me, you have to sit in jail. You want help from him, you stay free. The choice is yours.”

Yelena shifted her gaze to Jonathan. “That is not much choice,” she said.

He smiled. “The details, Yelena. All of them.”

“Please stop calling me by that name.”

The room waited for her answer.

The First Lady folded her hands on her lap and rocked ever so slightly back and forth in her chair. Finally, she blurted, “We were at a hotel.”

Boxers reflexively coughed out something like a laugh. “Uh-oh.”

That pretty much said it all.

“You and Winters?” Jonathan asked, just to be sure.

“Together?”

Yelena started to answer, then shrugged. “What can I say? The rumors are true.”

Jonathan looked to Venice. “There were rumors?”

She nodded.

“Why didn’t we talk about this?”

“There are a lot of rumors about Mrs. Darmond that we didn’t talk about,” Venice said. “Actually, the rumors say that you and Douglas Winters have been having an affair off and on for many years.”

“But no one could find enough evidence to make the accusations stick,” Yelena said. “We have long been friends. That does not mean that we have long been lovers.”

“But have you?”

She sat straighter in the chair. “We were that night, yes.”

“I don’t understand,” Irene said. Clearly, she was hearing details for the first time as well. “How can you be in the same hotel room and not know who Winters was talking to?”

“It was a big room,” Yelena said. “Several rooms, actually. A suite at the Apex. And because of, well, propriety, we arrived at different times. I showed up earlier than expected, and they were in one of the bedrooms. I listened from the living room. When it sounded like the meeting was breaking up, I ran to the other bedroom and closed the door.”

“Why?” Jonathan asked. “Why wouldn’t you want to confront a credible suspicion of terrorism? You’re the First Lady of the United States.”

“I was concerned for my safety.”

“Bullshit,” Boxers said. “You travel with an army of bodyguards.”

Yelena shook her head. “Not that day. I had shaken them all off. I’ve gotten pretty good at that.”

Jonathan wanted something to make sense. “So, this guy you’re having an affair with. You thought he was going to kill you?”

“I didn’t know what to think. The subject matter was so startling. It was the last thing I expected to hear. At a moment like that, everything changes. Suddenly, you begin to question if what you’d always assumed to be black was in fact white. I didn’t know what to think. So, yes, in that moment, I was frightened. If not of Douglas, then of whoever he was talking with.”

“After you darted back to the other room,” Irene said, “did you peek out of the door to see who was leaving?”

“Ultimately, yes. But not at first. Not until I was certain that they would not see me at the door. By the time I looked, the man was nearly at the door. All I saw was the back of his head. He had gray hair, that’s all I can tell you. Same height as Douglas and maybe a little heavier, but not much.”

“He didn’t look familiar at all?”

“It was the back of his head. Backs of heads are backs of heads.”

“So then what?” Jonathan asked. “How do you go from hiding to stepping out to greet Douglas?”

“I took a shower,” she said. “When I came out of the shower, I told him that I had arrived early and that when I heard he was in the middle of a meeting, I decided to leave him alone.”

“How did he handle that?”

Yelena thought before answering. “He seemed . . . nervous. He didn’t ask me outright if I had overheard his conversation, but he went all around it. When I asked him who he was talking to, he said it was a work matter. Those were his words. A work matter.”

“How long ago was this?” Jonathan asked.

She pondered. “About six weeks. When I asked him who he was meeting with, he told me that it would be inappropriate to say. He implied that it was a national security matter. But that was bullshit, of course.” It came out
bool sheet
, causing Jonathan to smile. “We were meeting for a tryst. Who would invite official business for that?”

“Who would invite a terrorist?” Jonathan countered.

“He didn’t expect me for a half hour. This was a good off-the-record place to meet. In official offices, records are kept of who comes and who goes. Records are kept of phone calls. In hotels, especially in hotels like the Apex, people make a point of not noticing who comes and goes.”

“But how do you do that?” Venice asked. “Your face has been on every magazine cover in the world.”

Finally, a smile from the First Lady. “Thanks to the Marshals Service, I have become very accomplished with disguises over the years. You’d be surprised what a wig and different eyebrows will do. Throw in a pair of glasses and maybe some prosthetic teeth, and you can be a whole different person in less than fifteen minutes.”

“Let’s get back to the original track,” Jonathan said. “Let’s go back to the night before last at the Wild Times Bar. What was that about?”

“I have to go back even further,” Yelena said. “That night when I heard the conversation, I tried a couple more times to get Douglas to expand on what he was talking about, but the harder I pushed, the more uncomfortable he became. To the point of being angry. So I stopped pushing. But in what I heard, it sounded to me like Douglas was pointing to something, as if he had documents or even diagrams. Referring to something as he spoke. The next morning, I woke up early and I sneaked over to that other room.”

She looked up at Boxers. “Yes, we slept in the same bed, not in separate rooms.”

Big Guy showed no emotion at all.

“I looked all around, but I didn’t see anything. I tried to be quiet, but you have to make some noise just to sift through things. I found his briefcase, but it was locked. I was trying to get into it when I heard Douglas moving around. I quickly put everything down and went back out to the living room. I was back out there before Douglas came out of the room, but I think he suspected I was up to something. He asked me what I was doing and I told him that I was just restless.

“ ‘Why are you acting so strangely?’ he asked me. I told him that I don’t know what he is talking about. I made some excuse why I needed to be back at the White House, and then we get dressed and leave.

“Nothing was the same after that. We would meet, but he would always be nervous. In between time, I called old friends, Albert Banks and Steven Gutowski. We met for lunch at the White House and when I told them what I thought was going on, they said I should call the FBI.” She glanced at Irene.

“Did you?” Irene asked with a defensive edge to her voice.

“What would I say? Already, I am considered a liability to my husband. The press and the White House staff all think I am crazy. If I make an accusation like this, the best thing that would happen is that no one would listen. Worst thing . . . well, I don’t know. My friends tell me that I should tell my protection detail, but it’s the same problem there. No one would listen. I need proof.”

“Are you getting to the computer files soon?” Jonathan asked.

“Yes, exactly,” Yelena said. “Three nights ago, Douglas and I meet again. Different hotel, but we spend the night. I begin to think that maybe I am crazy. But that afternoon, as I walked into the hotel—remember I am in disguise—I saw a man I have not seen in many years. Dmitri Boykin was walking across the lobby from the elevator to the front door.”

“Let me guess,” Jonathan said. “Gray hair, same height as Douglas Winters and maybe a little heavier.”

“Yes. Exactly.”

“I sense that we all should have gasped when you said that name,” Jonathan said. “But I don’t get it. Who is he?”

“Russian mafia,” Irene said. “Former GRU, bosom buddies to the old Soviet network. Deeply committed to anything that hurts the US. Great friend to Iran, great friend to Syria, and we suspect strong ties to Venezuela. Cuba goes without saying.”

Jonathan felt a chill. “You’re suggesting that this was the man Winters was meeting with?”

“Exactly,” Yelena said.

“It’d be a hell of a coincidence otherwise, wouldn’t it?” Boxers said.

Jonathan sat back in his chair. The potential enormity was just beginning to dawn on him.

Yelena continued, “So when I got up to the room that afternoon, something was very wrong with Douglas. He was pale. He looked shaken. I thought maybe he was having a heart attack. No, he said, he just had to think some things through. But his hands were shaking. I asked what I could do and he said nothing. He said that he was going to take a shower before dinner.”

Yelena stopped her narrative and looked to the ceiling, as if for support. “That’s when I went through his pockets and found the flash drive. I didn’t know if it was anything, but it was all I could find. It was in an inside, inside pocket of his suit coat, and I took it and put it in my purse. When he came out of the shower, I talked him into doing room service and eating in the hotel’s bathrobes. Just as a way to keep him from finding out what I’d done.

“The next morning, I left before he was awake. Back at the residence in the White House, I tried opening files, but I couldn’t. I just knew, though, that the evidence I needed was there. So I called Steve Gutowski and we agreed that we would meet at the Wild Times that night, where I would give the flash drive to him. He is a computer genius. He brought Albert Banks with him. And, of course, because of everything that was happening, I brought my Secret Service detail with me. But it was a very small detail.