Hail to the Chef

CHAPTER 23

“WHERE’S THE FIRST LADY?” I ASKED AS GAV rushed me from the room.

Two Secret Service agents accompanied us, Patricia Berland and Kevin Martin. Agent Martin shook his head, refusing to answer.

I’d expected to be led outside, as we had when I’d shouted the alarm Saturday, but to my surprise, I was herded into the East Wing and down the now-familiar set of stairs. “The bunker?” I asked.

Gav kept his lips tight and never broke stride. When the agents ushered us into the first door on the right, I was visited with a peculiar sense of déjà vu. This is where it all had begun, just days ago, when the fake bomb had been found… when Sean was still alive.

My sense of repeating past events was heightened when I walked in to see the First Lady sitting at the table where the three of us had shared our lunch.

She stood. “Ollie, I just heard what you did.”

The enormity of the experience was making my legs heavy, my head tight. I made it to one of the chairs and didn’t even think twice about etiquette. I sat down and blew out a shaky breath.

Gav and the two agents sat with us while we went over details. I explained again why I suspected an explosive, and a misfire in the electrical system that would trigger it. When I told them that this unusual phenomena could be purposely engineered, Agent Martin said, “Then they had to have had help from the inside.”

“Curly!” I sat up, startled by my own realization. “The electrician who took over when Gene was killed. He’s been fighting me the whole way. I tried to get him to look at the problem, but he refused.” I spoke very quickly, gauging the three agents watching me, trying hard not to be stalled by their solemn expressions. “I think he might have set all this up. He was impossible to deal with. And…” I was grasping at straws, but I couldn’t stop myself. “He might have even been the one who had me attacked.”

Mrs. Campbell had been silent for most of this. When she spoke, she did so very quietly. “I can’t believe that anyone would want to harm me,” she said. “I know the gingerbread men were contributed by the Blanchard family. But how can you be sure that Treyton Blanchard is behind this? Couldn’t it have been someone else?”

I looked to Gav. He answered, “We’re rounding up a number of people for questioning right now. We’d been operating under the assumption that the president was the bomber’s target, but with the information we have now, we believe that you may have been the target all along.”

Mrs. Campbell looked away.

Agent Martin held a hand up. He held tight to his earpiece and listened closely. “We’re needed back upstairs,” he said, and started for the door. Agent Berland followed him.

Gav started to leave, too. “Will you be all right for a little while?” he asked.

The prickle at my shoulders was back. I was missing something.

He was just about out the door, when I said, “Wait.”

Motioning for the two agents to go on ahead without him, Gav stopped. “What is it?”

When Tom had taken me through his version of Explosives 101, he’d been adamant on one point. In fact, he’d pounded the concept into my brain by making me repeat a mantra, over and over. “Always assume there’s a secondary device.”

“I think,” I said, standing, pulling my thoughts together and attempting to make sense of them. “I think we need to go back to the kitchen.”

GAV WANTED TO SEQUESTER ME IN THE BUNKER with Mrs. Campbell while he called the bomb squad back for a look, but I balked. “I could be wrong,” I said.

He shot me an intense look. “You haven’t been wrong yet.”

I opened my mouth, but he interrupted.

“You cannot go traipsing around the White House when there might be a second bomb ready to go off,” he said.

“You’ll never find it without me.”

“Wanna bet?”

The idea of going bomb-hunting was not high on my list of healthy activities, but the truth was, if I was right, they wouldn’t find the second bomb for a long time. And by then it could be too late. I swallowed, unable to find the words to convey my need to protect the White House, but I saw that need reflected in all the agents’ eyes. I knew they saw it in mine.

After a brief discussion on the possibility of setting up a camera for me to direct Gav and his agents from a safe distance, they decided there just wasn’t enough time to arrange for that. “Putting your life in danger is not an option,” Gav said. “We’ll just have to do our best without you.”

“Nobody knows the kitchen like I do,” I said. “And the clock is ticking.”

They knew it. I knew it.

I grabbed Gav’s arm. “Literally.”

The bomb squad took over our area of the bunker and outfitted me in protective gear. Just as they hustled me out, Mrs. Campbell asked, “Are you sure you know what you’re doing?”

Covered by a helmet and a clear plastic face guard, I couldn’t be certain she heard me assure her I did. Not that it mattered. I wasn’t quite sure myself.

Walking with body armor was harder than I anticipated. Covered from head to toe, I felt as though I weighed six hundred pounds. Within moments of leaving the bunker, I was wet around my waist and collar, and rivulets of sweat dripped around my ears.

Gav, similarly outfitted, remained silent as we made our way through the hall and into the kitchen. Like I’d told them, I knew my kitchen like I would know my own children, if I had any. But to explain where to find something to a person unfamiliar with the area would be an exercise in futility. And the last thing I needed was for an army of military bomb experts to toss my pristine kitchen in an attempt to find an explosive device that I could put my hand on in moments.

Yeah, I was nervous. But more than that, I was determined.

Once in the kitchen, though, I faltered. My heart slammed so hard in my chest I could almost hear it clang against the body armor. If I was right, this entire room-the place I considered home even more so than my apartment-could be vaporized. Me with it.

I bit my lips, but it was hard to do since they were slippery with perspiration. My voice was hoarse. “Okay, here,” I said, even though I wasn’t sure they could hear me. I made my way to the far end of the room, bomb squad in tow. With the sinks to my left, I yanked up the drop-side of the center stainless steel countertop. “This is why you’d never find it.” Once the side was secure, I crouched and reached beneath it to reveal a hidden cabinet door. Because of its inaccessibility, we rarely used this storage space except to shove junk we hoped never to see again.

I thought I heard them all gasp as I lost my footing, but it was just a quick stumble, and within seconds I’d righted myself, ready to root through the collection of useless items we’d retired here. I’d tucked this thing deep, hoping to forget about it until the time came for a seasonal clean-up.

Gav placed a hand on my padded shoulder. “I’ll take over from here.” His voice sounded far away. Blunted.

“But it’s right-”

He silenced me with a look. “Think back to the Briefing Room, Ollie.”

He was right. I remembered my mistake snatching the fake IED from its perch, risking setting off a bomb. Finding this device was one thing. Handling it was something else.

Gav pointed to the door. “And get out.”

I scooted backward, but panic gripped when I realized I’d have to cross the kitchen again to escape. As brave as I’d been coming down here, the terror I felt now, knowing that any movement in Gav’s peripheral vision could affect the outcome, froze me in place. His focus right now was inside that cabinet door and he couldn’t see me huddled in a corner behind him. All my focus was on him as he took a breath and steeled himself.

Twisting, Gav pushed his arm deep into the cabinet’s recesses, his fingers working along objects I could picture even though I couldn’t see. “Careful,” I breathed, clouding my face mask.

“Hang on,” he said to himself.

Very slowly, Gav eased backward, his hands cradling the familiar, ugly clock.

“That’s it!” I said.

Other bomb squad technicians rushed forward and gently removed the clock from Gav’s hands, placing it into a thick, insulated box. With a nod of acknowledgment, they hurried out.

The moment they were gone, I pulled the helmet off. So did Gav.

“What now?” I asked.

He shot me a skeptical look. “Haven’t you had enough?”

WITH THE GINGERBREAD HOUSE DESTROYED, the official opening celebration abandoned, the First Lady relocated from the bunker to the residence, and reporters trampling over one another to try to get the scoop, it was a wild day, even by White House standards.

Not for the first time did I find myself the center of attention of a bunch of serious-faced males. This time we were back in the Red Room, and I was walking five men-all agents and security personnel-through my thought processes when I’d been waiting for Mrs. Campbell to throw the switch.

Though Gav was present, he didn’t participate. He stood back as I fielded questions from the group, explaining what I could about floating neutrals. “I don’t know how to test for them,” I began, “and I don’t even know if one was present…”

“There was.” The voice came from the back of the room, and I was surprised to see Curly Sheridan escorted in by two more agents. He looked as grumpy as ever, but to my surprise, he wasn’t handcuffed, or in any way restrained.

I took an instinctive step back.

“It’s okay,” one of the agents said. “This is the guy who disabled the voltage problem.”

I didn’t understand.

“Damn Manny,” Curly said. When he looked at me, his eyes narrowed. “When you found me working on the fountain, I thought you were talking out your a-your backside. But what you said made sense.” He rubbed a finger along his scar, which made me feel guilty even though I hadn’t done anything wrong. “I started looking into what you were talking about.”

“The floating neutral?”

“Yeah,” he said. “Looks like Manny, or Vince-or both of them-rigged one up to set those outlets to blow 240.” He nodded toward the wall.

He didn’t admit that he should have listened to me earlier, but regret radiated off him like waves of heat. And that was good enough for me.

“They took off,” said Gav from the back of the room. “We’re picking them up now for questioning.”

“Yi-im,” I said suddenly.

“We’re after him, too.”