The Book of Fate

69

Sitting cross-legged on the linoleum floor and surrounded by piles of stacked-up acid-free archival boxes, Rogo flipped through his fourth file folder in the past fifteen minutes. “What’s I&W?”

“I&W for what?” Dreidel asked, hunched forward on a wooden chair and reading through one of Boyle’s files.

“Doesn’t say. Just I&W with lots of dates next to — wait, here’s one: I&W for Berlin.”

“Indicators and Warnings. Or as General Bakos used to put it: all the trash talk and warning signs that our intelligence picks up about specific threats,” Dreidel explained. “Why? Is that what—?” He looked over at the attendant and kept his voice to a whisper. “Is that what Boyle was requesting? All the different I&Ws?”

“Is that bad?”

“Not bad — just — indicators and warnings are the kinds of things you usually find in the PDB.”

“President’s Daily Brief. That’s the report you were talking about before, with the CIA guy and the handcuffed briefcase?”

“And the place where The Roman’s payouts were decided,” Dreidel added. “Don’t forget, a year before the shooting, The Roman was denied a major sum of money for some hot tip in Sudan, which also, since they clearly were never stupid enough to be seen in the same place together, tells us which one of them used Sudan as their last — and only — known location.”

“I’m not sure I follow.”

“The Three — The Roman, Micah, O’Shea — are from the Service, the CIA, and FBI. When they link brains, think of all the information they have access to.”

“I understand how they work… but to do all that — to set it all up — no offense, but… just for a six-million-dollar payout?”

“What makes you think they were only doing it once? For all we know, if the payment went through, they would’ve come back every few months — and if they upped each payment, six million becomes ten million becomes an easy seventy to eighty million dollars by the time they’re done. Not a bad annual salary for preying on America’s fears.”

“So you think they—?”

“Don’t just focus on the they—think of who else had access to that same info. I mean, nothing happens in a vacuum. To even ask for that first six-million-dollar payment, they clearly had to’ve known something big was about to happen. But what if they weren’t the only ones?”

“So you think someone else knew?” Rogo asked.

“All this time, we’ve been assuming that The Three and Boyle were enemies. But what if they were competitors? What if that’s why The Three’s multimillion-dollar payday got turned down — because the White House already had a similar tip — a similar indicator and warning — from someone else?”

“I got ya — so while The Three or The Roman or whatever they call themselves kept bringing the White House their best hot tips, Boyle — or someone else in that meeting — was trying to prove he was a bigshot by leaking those very same tips to the press.”

“And in the process, making The Roman’s so-called scoops look like day-old newspapers.”

“Which takes us back to the crossword — if it really was a trust list — if Manning and his chief of staff used the puzzle to try and figure out who was leaking to the press, maybe that’s who Boyle was looking for,” Rogo said. “The only thing I don’t get is, why would Manning and his chief pass notes in secret code when they could just wait a few hours and discuss the matter in private?”

“Private? In a building where they once had secret tapes recording all conversations in the Oval?”

“Is that true? They still do those recordings?”

“Don’t you see? That’s the point, Rogo. In that world, everybody’s listening. So if you plan on saying something bad about one of your top lieutenants, you better be sure not to say it out loud.”

“Even so, how’s that get us any closer to figuring out who Manning was singling out in the puzzle?”

“You tell me. What’s it say in the files?” Dreidel asked. “Any other names mentioned in there?”

Rogo glanced around at the thirty-eight boxes and 21,500 sheets of paper, hundreds of schedules, and thousands of briefings they still had to go through. “You really think we can get through all this before the library closes?”

“Have a little faith,” Dreidel said, fingering through a set of files. His eyes lit up and a sly grin spread across his face. “For all we know, the smoking gun is right in front of us.”

“What? You got something?”

“Only Boyle’s personnel file,” Dreidel said as he plucked the inch-thick file from its box. “Which means we’re about to find out what the President really thought of his old buddy Ron Boyle.”