The White House Read online

  Malak’s entire text message had read:

  Moles in WH. Terrorist attack imminent.

  Imperative that you, JRC, Boone, and Q keep

  this among yourselves for now.

  Malak Tucker, former Secret Service agent, mother, wife to Roger Tucker, lay in a comfortable bed on the ground floor of an upscale home in McLean, Virginia, overlooking the Potomac River, across from Washington, D.C.

  It was always a ground floor.

  If someone were to come through the front door, she could escape through the window or, in this case, the glass patio door.

  Outside were thick trees and a trail leading down to the river.

  Malak had memorized the map her handler had e-mailed.

  The path led to a wooden dock and a kayak.

  If she couldn’t reach the car in the garage, she could use the kayak.

  When she’d arrived at the front door that evening, the family that lived in the home had greeted her like a long-lost sister.

  She had never seen the family before.

  The family had never seen her.

  The husband and wife told their two children (a boy, three, and a girl, seven) that she was a friend of a friend and that she’d be staying for a day or two.

  “She’s just flown across the ocean,” they explained to the kids. “She’s very tired. You will need to be very quiet so she can catch up on her sleep.”

  Malak had in fact arrived by train from Philadelphia—a two-hour trip. The husband picked her up at Union Station in D.C. He was wearing a business suit and appeared more midwestern than Middle Eastern. He probably was from the Midwest, or at least raised there. He was in his midthirties, fit, well-groomed. Malak guessed he worked on the Hill as a congressional or senatorial aide, or was a lobbyist or a political consultant. But this was not his real job. He was not who he appeared to be. He was a ghost. Planted on U.S. soil years earlier. Waiting to materialize as a terrorist.

  The first thing the husband had done that morning, and continued to do throughout the day, was check his junk e-mail. His instructions and assignments were sent to him under subject headings that were certain to land in his junk mail folder. Intelligence agencies totally ignored spam. They didn’t even have the resources to monitor the billions of legitimate e-mails for red-flagged words that were sent every day by potential terrorists.

  The man had been given combinations of words to look for in the subject headings. When he saw these words he’d open the e-mail and follow the instructions.

  Weeks, months, years might go by before he was sent an e-mail from his anonymous handler.

  But sometime that afternoon he had gotten an e-mail that read something like:

  Pick up woman at Union Station at 8 p.m. Amtrak

  from Philadelphia. Red hat. Black leather bag on

  left shoulder. Give her a ride home.

  The e-mail could just as easily have read:

  Return the package to Tysons Corner mall

  noon this Saturday.

  Meaning: place a bomb at the crowded mall on Saturday.

  Malak knew all this because this was how she received most of her assignments, but the e-mails were not directed to Malak Tucker. They were sent to Malak’s identical twin sister, Anmar (“the Leopard”).

  Malak had “died” too the day Anmar had died, leaving behind her family, friends, and career. But what she missed most was her daughter.

  Seeing Angela in the abandoned apartment the day before in Philadelphia was heartbreaking. Malak had nearly packed it in right there, but she couldn’t. It was too late for that now. The only way to protect Angela and Roger and tens of thousands of other innocent people was to rid the world of the ghost cell.

  This was the fourth safe house Malak had stayed in on this trip to the States—another address, another piece of the puzzle.

  Malak closed her eyes and dozed off. She never really slept anymore.

  Sometime after 2:00 a.m. she heard a tapping.

  She was up instantly, pistol in hand, safety off, ready to kill…or run. But she didn’t have to do either.

  Standing outside the patio door was Amun Massri—the biggest piece of the puzzle Malak had. He was young but not as young as he looked.

  She invited the ghost into the house.

  P.K.

  The room Agent Mouldwarp put us in was nice, but it was more a place you perched rather than sat. And it was dark, with only one lamp on.

  “John and Abigail Adams were the first couple to occupy the White House,” Angela said. “They moved here from Philadelphia in 1800.”

  “We got here faster from Philly than they did,” I said. “You’d think that after bouncing around in a wagon or on horseback they’d want more comfortable furniture to kick back on.”

  “I’m not saying that this is their furniture,” Angela said.

  I perched, got out a deck of cards, and started cutting, fanning, and shuffling. I usually told people that I was practicing magic, but messing with cards like this was a little more complicated. The cards were my pacifier. They helped me to calm down and focus my thoughts.

  “I guess we should get some photos for our Web page,” Angela said.

  How she could even think about our homework assignment at a time like this was beyond me, but I pulled my BlackBerry out of my robe and took a couple of snapshots with one hand while I cut the deck with the other.

  “Show-off,” Angela said. “Why don’t you check to see where everyone is?” That was a little more challenging, one-handed. Our BlackBerrys were also tracking devices, compliments of one of Boone’s colleagues, X-Ray. We could track Boone’s SOS (Some Old Spooks) team, and they could track us. We could also track our parents, which came in pretty handy. And what was even better was that they didn’t know we could track them. I scrolled through the list.

  “Everyone is somewhere, except for Boone, whose blip doesn’t show up on the screen at all.”

  “Why would he turn his BlackBerry off?” Angela asked. “He had it on when I forwarded him the text message.”

  I yawned. “Don’t know. Is there some kind of protocol when you meet POTUS, like bowing or kissing his ring?”

  “He’s not a king or the pope,” Angela answered. “But I would not address him as POTUS. It’s Mr. President.”

  “I just call him Dad.”

  Angela jumped.

  I nearly fell off my perch.

  A kid stepped out of the shadows.

  “You’re pretty good with those cards.”

  “You scared us!” I yelled.

  “Sorry,” he said, but he didn’t look sorry.

  “You’re Willingham Culpepper,” Angela said.

  “Call me Will or P.K.”

  “What’s P.K. stand for?” I asked.

  “President’s Kid. The Secret Service has code names for us. Dad’s Peregrine. Mom’s was Pink. My older sisters are Peach and Polo, but I think their names should have been Prissy and Petty. All Ps.”

  “How long have you been in here?” Angela asked.

  Without answering, he plopped down into an antique chair as if it was an old recliner. No delicate perching for P.K. He had straw-colored hair and alert green eyes. Unlike us, he was fully dressed in black jeans, black T, black tennis shoes. Kind of an elementary school ninja-Goth look. He had an earbud stuck in one ear, which I assumed was attached to an iPod.

  “Do you know any card tricks?” he asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “What happened to your neck?”

  “Cut it shaving.”

  “Very funny. Who’s Boone?”

  Oops. Nothing subtle about P.K. He was direct and to the point. And he’d overheard our conversation.

  “You never heard of Daniel Boone?” I asked.

  “Of course, but you weren’t talking about the famous American folk hero who died on September 26, 1820. He wasn’t a blip on anyone’s cell phone because they didn’t have cell phones or screens back then.”

  P.K. was also up o
n his history. I didn’t know the exact day Daniel Boone died, and I doubted many other people knew it offhand either.

  “I was just kidding,” I said. “Boone is a friend of ours. We were checking him on Twitter.”

  P.K.’s green eyes narrowed like he didn’t believe me, which meant he was also perceptive because I was lying through my teeth. I was about to say something else, but Angela jumped in with a perfect diversionary question.

  “How did you get in here?”

  “Secret passage,” P.K. said. “The place is riddled with them.”

  “Does your dad—” I began.

  “Are you kidding?” he said. “He’d kill me if he knew I was wandering around. So would Bethany. They have no idea about the passages, so don’t tell them.”

  “We won’t,” Angela promised.

  P.K. looked relieved, then got down to business.

  “I heard you come into the Residence.”

  “Sorry if we woke you,” Angela said.

  “I was already awake,” P.K. said. “What I want to know is why my dad would ask you to come to the Oval Office at this time of the morning.”

  Because Angela’s dead mother is posing as a notorious terrorist called the Leopard, and she just sent us a text message that said the White House was crawling with moles, and there is going to be an attack in the house.

  “I have no idea,” I said. “Tell me more about those secret passages.”

  “Not until you tell me what’s going on.”

  “It’s part of our school assignment,” Angela said.

  Huh? I thought.

  “Because of our parents’ tour we have to go to school online,” Angela said. “Part of our homework is putting together a Web page. When we heard we were coming to the White House, I called to ask if it would be possible for us to have a short interview with your dad and post it on the page. They said he was too busy.” Angela glanced at her watch and gave P.K. a smile. “I guess he found some time.”

  What a whopper! P.K. didn’t buy it either. He rolled his eyes and said, “That is so weak! My dad rarely grants interviews, which is one reason his job approval ratings are in the tank. And if he did do an interview, he wouldn’t talk to two kids he doesn’t even know in the middle of the night. He does not listen to music—ever. He’s never had a concert here at the White House. And he never schedules events on the spur of the moment like he did by inviting Match here. Our jaws nearly hit the table when he told me and Bethany last night at dinner. Bethany was thrilled. She’s been playing Rekindled almost nonstop since the day the album came out.”

  “Maybe your dad’s more spur-of-the-moment than you think,” Angela said. “Maybe he did it to surprise your sister.”

  P.K. seemed to consider this for a second, then just as quickly rejected the idea. He was beginning to make me feel like a five-year-old.

  “Nah,” he said. “Not his style. He wouldn’t—” P.K. jumped up and put his finger to his earbud. “Darn it. They’re ready for you. I gotta go.” He hurried into the shadows. “Don’t tell Dad I was here. Maybe later you can show me some card tricks.”

  Obviously P.K. hadn’t been listening to music, and what was in his ear was not an earbud but an earpiece like Secret Service people wear. It must have been connected to a Secret Service radio. Where did he get that? I wondered.

  I didn’t get a chance to ask him because Agent Mouldwarp opened the door and said, “The president is ready to see you.”

  As Angela and I walked through the doorway, I stopped and told him I’d forgotten something.

  I hurried back inside and walked into the shadows where P.K. had gone. There were two floor-to-ceiling display cases. Between them was a solid mahogany panel.

  P.K. wasn’t there.

  The kid had some pretty good tricks of his own.

  The Oval Office

  The West Wing was buzzing with activity, but it came to a complete stop when Angela and I walked in. The expensive-looking suits gawked at us like we were extraterrestrials.

  I think Agent Mouldwarp realized that he should have let us get dressed because in a voice loud enough for everyone to hear he said, “The West Wing is open 24-7. The world never sleeps. There is always a lot of work to do here.”

  This got about half the people back to work. The others continued to stare. Some of them didn’t look too happy about us being there, especially the group of men and women standing outside the closed door leading to the Oval Office. A man in a pin-striped suit and styled gray hair blocked our way.

  “My name is Mr. Todd. I’m the president’s chief of staff. Can you shed any light as to why you have been summoned by the president at this time of morning?”

  Apparently, Chief of Staff Todd was annoyed about being cut out of the presidential loop. He also didn’t look like he’d been awake very long, despite his carefully combed hair.

  Before Angela or I could even shrug, Agent Mouldwarp (who I was beginning to think was not a mole) put his face about two inches from Mr. Todd’s and said, “I’m sure if the president wanted you to know, he would have informed you himself. Now, please step aside, Mr. Todd.”

  It was clear that these two guys did not barbecue together on weekends. Mr. Todd gave Agent Mouldwarp a distinctively molelike glower before stepping aside.

  Another agent opened the door to the Oval Office, and we walked in. Agent Mouldwarp and the other agent remained outside and closed the door behind us.

  Former senator, former vice president, ex-CIA director J. R. Culpepper was sitting behind a large desk. On the desk were two identical red leather boxes. Croc, Boone’s ancient blue heeler—border collie, lay at his feet, drooling on the carpet. The dog fixed his weird blue eye on us (his other eye was brown) and gave us a grin—minus a few teeth.

  J.R. was fully dressed in a three-piece suit, starched white shirt, and red power tie. He had all of his teeth and flashed them at us.

  “Make yourselves comfortable.” He waved us onto a sofa next to Boone.

  Boone—thin, tanned, and wrinkled—was wearing what he always wore: faded jeans, work shirt, cowboy boots. He had a long gray beard and a long braid halfway down his back.

  He looked at us calmly with his pale blue eyes. “Are you two okay?”

  We nodded.

  He and J.R. didn’t seem to notice, or care, about how we were dressed.

  “Ty has been bringing me up to speed about the situation,” J.R. said.

  Boone’s first name was Tyrone, but I’d never heard anyone call him Tyrone or Ty.

  J.R. reached down and gave Croc a scratch between the ears. “Did you meet any resistance outside the door?”

  “Mr. Todd didn’t seem very happy,” I said.

  J.R. laughed. “Good. I’m not very happy with Mr. Todd either since he’s the person who hired ninety-five percent of my staff members, a few of whom, if Malak is correct, are terrorists or working with terrorists.”

  He looked at Angela. “I knew your mom. I liked her a lot. When I was vice president we used to hang out down in the White House mess and drink coffee. I’m ashamed to say I lost track of her when I was running for my first term. I was briefed about the explosion at Independence Hall and was told that we lost a Secret Service agent, but they didn’t say it was Malak. If I’d known…” He let the sentence drop and sighed. “You can imagine my shock when I was contacted by an old Israeli Mossad friend asking me about her death.”

  J.R. had hired Boone to look into what had happened, and Boone dug up a lot more than anyone had bargained for.

  The president opened one of the red boxes on his desk and pulled out a watch. “Do you recognize this?” he asked, holding it out to Angela.

  Angela got up and took a closer look. “It’s the same kind of watch my mom wore.”

  J.R. nodded. “It’s a Swiss-made Omega Seamaster Professional GMT, automatic, coaxial escapement watch. Years ago your mother did me a big favor, and I gave her a watch just like this.”

  “What was the favor?” Angela a
sked.

  “I’m afraid I can’t tell you that,” J.R. answered. “But I can tell you that I was very grateful.”

  “She wore that watch all the time,” Angela said.

  “This is what tipped me off that something wasn’t right,” J.R. said. “When I read over the classified documents about her so-called death, there was no mention of her wearing a watch. When you saw her yesterday, do you remember if she was wearing it?”

  Angela shook her head. “I was too…I was…”

  I stood up and looked at the watch. “I can’t swear it’s the same kind of watch,” I said. “But she was wearing a dive watch like this with a blue bezel. It was on a stainless steel bracelet on her left wrist, not on a blue leather strap like this. I noticed that she glanced at the watch several times as if she were late for an appointment.”

  J.R. smiled. “You’re pretty observant.”

  “So is Angela,” I said. “But under the circumstances…”

  “Of course,” J.R. said.

  He handed Angela the watch. “This is for you.” He opened the second red box and gave me one just like it. “These watches won’t let you down. And I want you to know that I won’t let you down either…ever.”

  I took off the watch I was wearing and buckled on the Seamaster. Angela did the same.

  “When you see your mother again,”J.R. continued, “show her the watch. She’ll know what it means. Tell her I’m not happy about her modification.”

  “What do you mean?” Angela asked.

  J.R. smiled. “She’ll know. When I discovered your mother wasn’t wearing the watch at Independence Hall, I called Ty. I didn’t think he’d uncover a conspiracy of this magnitude, but I’m delighted that your mother is alive.”

  “I am too,” Angela said. “But she’s still in danger.”

  “Yes, she is,” J.R. said. “And it’s up to us to keep her safe. The way we do that is to keep this between ourselves, just as she requested. At least for now. This puts you both in an awkward position with your parents, but that can’t be helped.”

  “What about her text message?” I asked.

  “It’s disturbing, but there’s not much I can do about it. If the so-called ghost cell is as deeply entrenched here as Malak believes, I can’t be one hundred percent sure about anyone in the White House. I can’t tell the Secret Service that I have a credible threat because that might tip off the mole. He or she will tell their handler, and if the information is traced back to Malak, well…”