The Book of Fate

51

Right here,” Rogo says, pointing to the column of scribbles on the right side of the puzzle. “In the work space…”

I recheck the vertical column of doodles and seemingly random letters:

“AMB? JABR? FRF?” Dreidel asks. “Those aren’t any initials I know.”

“Don’t go left to right. Go up and down…” With his pen, Rogo makes a circle from top to bottom.

“M, A, R, J, M, K, L, B,” Rogo says, starting me off. “Fill it in: Manning, Albright, Rosenman…”

“Jeffer,” I add.

“Who’s Jeffer?” Lisbeth interrupts.

“Me,” Dreidel says.

“Moss, Kutz, Lemonick,” I add, hitting the rest. “And B…”

“For Boyle,” Rogo says proudly. “Eight people, all with major Oval Office access.”

Lisbeth nods, still studying the crossword. “But why would the President keep a list with his top staffers’ names on it?”

We all look to Dreidel. “I’ve never seen it in my life,” he says with a laugh. But from the shake in his voice, it’s the one time he’s not thrilled to be included on an exclusive list.

Already impatient, Rogo hops from his seat, walking toward the head of the table. “Manning wrote down eight people’s names, then camouflaged it with doodles so no one would notice they were there. Not to play Nancy Drew, but what do they all have in common?”

Lisbeth slides the crossword back to the middle of the conference table. I look down at the list of names. Lemonick was White House counsel, Rosenman was press secretary, Carl Moss was national security adviser. Combined with Manning, Albright, and Boyle, they were the biggest names we had — the knights of our own round table. “It’s clearly a power list.”

“Except for Dreidel,” Rogo points out. “No offense,” he adds, turning Dreidel’s way.

“Were you all working on something at that time?” Lisbeth asks. “When was it again, February during the first year?”

“We weren’t even there a month,” Dreidel points out. But as he sees the seniority of the people on the list, I can already hear the change in his voice. “Maybe it’s who he wanted at the morning sessions — for the PDB.” Reading the confusion of Lisbeth’s and Rogo’s faces, he explains, “Every morning at six a.m., an armed courier comes from CIA headquarters to the White House with a legal briefcase handcuffed to his wrist. Inside is the President’s Daily Brief — the summary report of the most highly classified news that’s happening around the world. Troop movements in North Korea… spy networks in Albania… whatever the President needs to know, he gets at his first meeting of the day, along with a few select others.”

“Yeah, but everyone knew who was invited to those meetings,” I point out.

“They knew eventually,” Dreidel says. “But during those first weeks, you think Rosenman and Lemonick didn’t try to elbow their way inside?”

“I don’t know,” Lisbeth says, staring at the list with a small crease between her eyebrows. “If you’re just cutting names, why be so secretive?”

“People’re only secretive when there’s a reason,” Dreidel says. “And it seems pretty clear they didn’t want anyone else seeing what they were writing.”

“Okay, fine — so what’re the things you could write about your top dozen or so staffers that you wouldn’t want anyone else to see?” Lisbeth asks. “You don’t like the person… you don’t want them there… you’re afraid of them…”

“There you go — blackmail’s juicy,” Rogo says. “Maybe one of them had a secret…”

“Or knew a secret,” Dreidel says.

“You mean about the President?” I ask.

“About anyone,” Lisbeth agrees.

“I don’t know,” I say. “The level of people you’re talking about… that’s the group you’re not supposed to worry about keeping their mouths shut.”

“Unless one of them gets you worried that they can’t keep their mouth shut,” Dreidel blurts.

“You mean like a trust list?” Lisbeth asks.

“I guess… sure,” Dreidel replies. “That’s what I’d want to know if I had a new staff.” For the first time, he’s stopped biting his manicured hand.

“I’m not sure I follow,” I say.

“Think about what was actually going on those first few weeks we were in the White House. That bus bomb in France and all the internal arguing over whether Manning’s response took it seriously enough. Then we had all those slap-fights about redecorating the Oval…”

“Those I remember,” Lisbeth says. “There was that piece in Newsweek about the red-striped carpet… what’d they say the First Lady called it again?”

“Fruit-stripe gum,” Dreidel says dryly. “The bombing and the bad carpet — those were nonsense stories about internal arguments. Uh-oh, captain can’t steer his new ship… But the only reason those things got out was because some loudmouthed staffer decided to take it out.”

Lisbeth nods, knowing this one all too well. “So what Manning was really worried about back then…”

“… was finding out who was leaking all our internal baggage,” Dreidel says. “When you have that many new staffers flushed with that much new power, there’s always someone who wants to rush off and brag to their friends. Or the press. Or their friends who happen to be press. And until you can plug the leaks, those stories take away from your entire agenda.”

“Okay,” I say. “Which means when this list was made, Manning was hunting for staffers who were leaking to the press?”

“Not just staffers,” Dreidel adds. “Those stories were from conversations happening at senior staff levels. That’s why Manning was so nuts back then. It’s one thing when some intern leaks that the President’s wearing unmatched socks. It’s another to open up the Washington Post and read a verbatim blow-by-blow on the front page from a meeting with your five most trustworthy lieutenants.”

“If that’s the case, then why include himself on the list?” Rogo asks as we all glance back at the crossword.

“Maybe it’s a list of who was at a particular meeting — Manning, Albright, Boyle, etc. — then they were just trying to narrow who let a particular piece of info out,” I say.

“That would explain why I’m there,” Dreidel adds. “Though maybe it wasn’t just leaking to the press.”

“Who else is there?” Lisbeth asks.

“Think back to what you said about The Roman and the six-million-dollar prize they wouldn’t approve. Those top informant payments are in the PDB too.”

I nod, remembering the old meetings. “It’s not a bad call. Whoever was leaking the info could’ve leaked it to The Roman, telling him who was responsible for denying his payout.”

“And you think that’s why Boyle got shot?” Lisbeth asks. “Because Boyle was the one who said no to The Roman’s payday?”

“I’d believe that,” Rogo says. “Six million bucks is a lot of money.”

“No question,” Dreidel says. “But it seems pretty clear that if you want to know who on the list couldn’t be trusted, it’s the guy who, until recently, we thought was dead. Y’know, the one the FBI is chasing… rhymes with Doyle…”

“That’s why I had the Presidential Library pull Boyle’s files,” I say. “They’ve got everything: his schedules, what issues he was working on, even his official personnel file with his FBI background check. We’ll have every single sheet of paper that was ever in Boyle’s desk, or written about him.”

“That’s fine — so two of us can go to the library,” Lisbeth says. “But it still doesn’t tell us why a secret list Manning made during the first year of the administration has anything to do with Boyle being shot three years later.”

“Maybe Boyle was mad at the President for not trusting him,” Rogo says.

“No,” Dreidel says. “According to Wes’s FBI guys, whatever Boyle and Manning were up to, they were in it together.”

“Which has to be true,” I point out. “The ambulance… having the blood type ready… how else could Boyle possibly pull that off without help from Manning and the Service?”

“So what’re you saying? That they didn’t trust someone else on the list?” Lisbeth asks, her eyes already on Dreidel.

I shake my head. “All I’m saying is President Manning and Albright spent one of their very first days in office building a hidden list with the names of eight people that shared daily access to some of the best-kept secrets in the entire world. More important, by keeping that list on a crossword puzzle, they figured out a way to create the impossible: a presidential document — potentially containing Manning’s innermost thoughts — that wouldn’t be inspected, cataloged, studied, or seen by anyone else around him.”

“Unless, of course, you absentmindedly jot a few notes to yourself on the back,” Rogo says.

“The point is, the list still needs narrowing,” I say. “And as far as I can tell, besides the President, the only people on here who were at the speedway that day were Boyle and Albright — and Albright’s dead.”

“You sure those were the only two?” Lisbeth asks.

“Whattya mean?”

“Have you ever looked at any of the archival footage from that day? Maybe take a peek to see if everything you think you remember matches up with reality?”

I shake my head. A week after the shooting, when I was still in the hospital, I caught a clip of the footage while flipping through channels. It took three nurses to calm me down that night. “I haven’t seen the footage for a bit,” I tell her.

“Yeah, I figured this isn’t exactly your favorite home movie. But if you really want to know what happened, you have to start at the scene of the crime.” Before I can react, she reaches into her file folder and pulls out a black videocassette. “Lucky for you, I’ve got connections at the local TV stations.”

As she pops out of her seat and heads for the black Formica credenza with the VCR/TV combo, my throat tightens and my hands flood with sweat.

I can already tell this is a bad idea.