Angels Mark (The Serena Wilcox Mysteries Dystopian Thriller Trilogy) (14 page)

18

While Bryce’s trap was ensnaring Clyde, and General Gustavo as collateral damage, Bryce was dutifully playing for the other side.
He slipped into President John Williams’ private office areas without raising any suspicion whatsoever, which was as he expected. The tricky part would be to access and copy his uncle’s files without his fingerprints setting off any alarms. He hoped the Angel Mark worked. He couldn’t care less about helping Ann; he did care immensely about being caught helping her. He had every reason to have a healthy fear of how far John would go if he knew that Bryce was selling him out. He feared John much more than he feared prison, but he preferred to avoid both. If this Angels Mark technology worked, he would extract the files with no one the wiser.

He held his breath as the download indicator bar filled. The transfer speed was the best there was, and Bryce was soon out of his misery. No alarms.
Nothing. He had done it! He worked his way through every folder, including those that were hidden. He himself had organized most of these, so he knew where the secret files were. At this point, he was all in and wanted as much incriminating evidence as possible to get protection for himself from John. He figured the only chance he had was if they branded John as not only a traitor, but the world’s most wanted terrorist. If they got all of John’s people too, Bryce had a fighting chance of hiding away somewhere and starting a new life. He copied everything he could find, even files he didn’t think were important.

Just as he finished copying the files, Bryce’s heart stopped beating. President John Williams, his revered and feared uncle, was standing in the entrance to his private office area.
“Hey, Brycer! What are you doing in here?”

A practiced liar after years of picking up girls and lying to his parents about his whereabouts, it was natural for Bryce to concoct a plausible story on the spot. “I was hoping to check my e-mail. The battery on my phone is dead.”

“What’s wrong with your office?” John asked. Not suspicious, not judging, just a simple question an uncle might ask his nephew.

“I’m avoiding Caroline,” he said, which was partially true, actually. He had slept with Caroline a few times, and now she expected a ring. That was never going to happen, especially now.

John chuckled. “Understood.”

Bryce smiled full wattage, a ladies’ man just like his uncle, the good old boys’ club, partners, on the same team. “You have a full plate today. How are you going to fix this thing with Kinji?”

“Oh don’t worry about that, I have my people on it. By this time tomorrow, she won’t be a problem,” said John ominously.

Bryce shuddered inwardly.
Better her than me
, he thought. Relieved that he had gotten away with betraying his uncle in plain sight, Bryce slipped down the corridor and left the White House for a restaurant well known as a spot for politicians to gather. No one would think twice about Bryce being there, or seeing him meet up casually with someone from Kinji’s staff, placing his flash drive into the palm of Breyana’s pretty little hand.

Back at the White House, President Ann Kinji waited anxiously for
Breyana to return. She had no fewer than seven secret service agents with her, so surely Breyana would be safe. However, after hearing the disturbing news about General Gustavo and Clyde, she had every reason to worry. She feared that Bryce was laying down another trap, but then again, she banked on Bryce wanting to save himself.

She wondered if John even knew yet that things had gone wrong. Was Gustavo instructed to merely hold them, not kill them? Obviously John wouldn’t have thought that the general would get killed. When Ann had spoken to Bryce, Bryce had the attitude of someone who had finished a mission, cocky, relaxed. She didn’t think that he knew that Gustavo was dead. And if not, how could that be? Wouldn’t John be expecting Gustavo to report in regularly? Either John didn’t know what happened, or he didn’t trust Bryce anymore. The first scenario worked well in their favor, the second one was chilling.

“Bird is in the cage,” said Special Agent Smith in her ear.

“Thank you, Special Agent Smith. No problems?”

“No, Madam President. She’ll be with you shortly.”

“Thank you, thank you!” Ann breathed a sigh of relief.
Breyana was young, with her whole life ahead of her. Putting her in danger was wrong. But Breyana had volunteered, and in the end, Ann couldn’t think of anyone else she trusted to make the exchange. With great reluctance, and a whole swat team of agents, Ann had let her go. And here she was!

“I got it,” sang
Breyana. She extended her arm, opened the fingers that had been gripping the flash drive tightly for the past fifteen minutes, and showed her boss the smoking gun: a small shiny gadget that held who knew what.

“Oh, thank you,
Breyana, I sure could use a cup of coffee,” said Ann.

Breyana
froze, a puzzled expression on her face, until Ann put her index finger to her lips, then pointed to the general direction of President William’s office and cupped her ear. Breyana nodded. “No problem.”

“I think I’ll take my coffee on the way out the door. I have a meeting with the governor of Indiana this afternoon.”

“Should I let them know you’re ready to go?” asked Breyana.

“Yes, please do,” said Ann.

Within the hour Ann was seated once again on Air Force One Plus. The computers were safe here on the plane, transmitting on channels that were tracked by more agencies than John would have been able to corrupt. Her hunch was that if her phones were tapped, her office bugged, well, naturally John had his dirty fingers all over her computer. She didn’t dare open those files until she was on a secure connection. But here she was, in a safe place, on a safe connection, with people who would keep her, and the information she held, safe. As much as she dreaded seeing the truth laid out in black and white, it was time for the big reveal.

The first thing Ann did was copy all of the files and send them to multiple places. Next, she asked one of her IT agents to put what she was seeing up on multiple screens. “Thank you, Agent Lehman. I’m ready now; please tell them to come in.”

Serena and Tom entered the plane, still traumatized by the day’s events, but in enough shock that nothing felt real. After Serena had phoned President Kinji, right after Clyde’s horrific and revolting demise, a team of agents was quickly on the scene at the house in Minnetonka, where Gustavo had never actually lived – funny how fabricated records can appear instantly in the right places when powerful people want them there.

The agents had whisked them out of the house, some staying behind to clean up the mess, and taken them to yet another secret airstrip. This one appeared to be in use by hobbyists, but it was available at that moment for a government jet – off record.

Once again, Serena and Tom were flown into Chicago, but this time they left their children in the safe keeping of Special Agent Thompson- who was beginning to think of himself as an over-muscled nanny- and two more agents who had been assigned to replace the ill-fated Special Agent Salisbury.

“I’m so sorry for what you’ve been through,” Ann began. “I want you to know that your country, that
I, appreciate all you’ve done.”

“Thank you, President Kinji,” said Serena.

“No problem,” said Tom, which elicited a look of disbelief from both Ann and Serena.

“I hate to ask more of you, and I’ll be sure that you are both generously compensated, but I trust the two of you as witnesses, and well, you are already involved. I want you to read this material along with me. I have sent the material to several sources, but it will go unread until I give the word. I have also asked my husband, Ted, to sit in with us,” Ann gestured toward the seats behind them.

Ted stood up and shook their hands. No one spoke. The three stood for a few awkward seconds. Ann broke the tension, “Sit, we are ready. Look at the screen nearest you.” She took a deep breath. “Here we go.”

Ann clicked through twenty five folders, each containing over a hundred individual files. She skimmed through the first folder, with everyone watching on the various screens, and then realized that it was going to take a lot more time than she expected to wade through all the trivial saved documents to find the incriminating evidence.

She instructed Special Agent Lehman to set up shop for Ted, Tom and Serena to work through files on three more stations. Her request was quickly granted. For the next four hours, the four of them pored methodically through every folder and file, each person with their own section, so as not to miss a single document. Finally, it was Ted who signaled he found something by whistling softly through his teeth.

“I think you better put this up to share on all screens,” he said. Special Agent Lehman scurried to comply. And there
is was; one of several guns that were smoking big black billows of toxic, toxic air.

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“What are we looking at? Who is this, and is it the same person in both messages?” asked Ann.

“Yes, same source,” said Special Agent Lehman.

“If I were to guess, the general?” said Tom.

“Makes sense,” said Ann. “Move on.”

Ted clicked on the next message:

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<Pres only/CLOSED DOCUMENT: 2 authorized>>

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Serena said, “President John Williams is well known as ‘Big W’. This should work toward proof of his involvement.”

“I think we can get more solid proof by tracing these messages back to their digital fingerprint, am I right?” asked Ann.

“Yes, Madam President, exactly,” said Special Agent Lehman.

“There’s more in the next folder,” said Ted. He opened the next series of messages:

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“Wow, this is hard to believe,” said Serena.

“Is there more, Ted?” asked Ann.

“Do we really need more?” asked Ted. “Let the law take it from here. You don’t need to be personally investigating this.”

“I have to agree with the First Gentleman, Madam President, let us get all the agencies on this,” said Special Agent Lehman.

“May I suggest that you stay out of the White House for a while? Whatever happens next shouldn’t touch you or your Presidency,” Serena volunteered. She patted herself on the back for how much she sounded like an official advisor to Madam President.

“Back to Minneapolis?
Reunite you with your family?” Ted suggested.

“I can’t get used to Minneapolis being the place to be,” said Tom.

“The new Wall Street, the Pentagon, the split Capital building. Brings us in,” said Ted.

“But why Minneapolis?
Why are they rebuilding the Pentagon in Minneapolis and not Chicago near the White House? And why have two Capital buildings?” asked Tom.

“After 9-11, some questioned the wisdom of us having all of our governmental buildings in one basket. Spreading ourselves out, with the full capacity to govern out of two separate cities seemed wise, given that we’ll never fully be rid of the threat of terrorist attacks,” said Ann.

“And look at us now, needing to leave Chicago. It’s good to have a secondary location,” said Ted.

“I know of a farmhouse where you could wait for the green light to go back to Chicago,” said Serena.

Would it be too much to ask to have the President to her house for coffee and a girlfriend chat?
No matter how wretched the day’s events were, it was hard not to feel a thrill at the thought of entertaining President Ann Kinji in her home.