Anonymous Sources (27 page)

I glanced around his apartment. No gleaming trays of silver here. Elias's bike took up a quarter of the room we were standing in. Behind him stood a navy futon piled with copies of
Sports Illustrated
, the
Economist
, a Stanford sweatshirt, and an assortment of remote controls. “Just tell me you have a hot shower somewhere and a bed with marginally clean sheets waiting for me. Otherwise I may really lose the will to live.”

“Yep. I can even dangle the prospect of leftovers from my Chinese take-out dinner. As soon as you tell me everything.”

I reeled off the highlights of the last twenty-four hours. He stood gaping. I held up my hands before he could start firing questions.

“I'm going to take a shower now. And then I'm going to eat your Chinese leftovers. And then I'm going to bed. Oh, and I need something to sleep in.”

Twenty minutes later I was sitting at his kitchen table in the Stanford sweatshirt, scrubbed clean and wet hair dripping down my neck. I felt like a new woman. Shrimp in black-bean sauce had never tasted so good. Elias was raining questions down on me, most of which I couldn't
answer. Soon I was fading again, my eyelids starting to droop, when the kitchen phone rang.

It was past eleven. Elias raised his eyebrows and answered.

“Hi . . . . Yes . . . . She's here . . . . Sure, hang on.” He passed me the phone.
“The Silver Fox,”
he mouthed.

I raised my eyebrows back at Elias.

“Hello?”

“Ms. James.” I heard the familiar voice. “We'll need to look at getting you a new phone. And did you find somewhere to buy clothes?”

I cocked my head to the side and considered this. Hyde Rawlins, the managing editor of the
New England Chronicle
, was sitting up late in his hotel room, fretting about the state of my wardrobe?

“Yes,” I ventured. “I found a J.Crew on M Street that was still open. Why are you—”

“Lovely. I'll see you at the West Wing gate again at eight tomorrow morning. Be on time, please. They're asking for a meeting at eight thirty, but I'm trying to push it to nine, in case Jill can join us.”

“Hang on, hang on. What are you talking about?” Jill, if it was the Jill I thought he was referring to, was the Washington bureau chief of the
Chronicle
.

“I got a call from our friend on the Security Council a few minutes ago. He said he didn't have a good phone number for you. He would like to see us again, along with his boss—the national security adviser—and the White House press secretary.” Hyde paused. “It appears they're pulling out the big guns to try to persuade us not to publish. I thought it best not to mention you haven't actually written a single sentence yet.”

“But—what story do they think we're about to run with?”

“It seems your visit this afternoon triggered quite the extraordinary chain of events, Ms. James. He told me—this is strictly off the record—he told me they've identified the woman beside you on the plane. Her name was Polly Murphy. Irish citizen, thirty-five years old. She worked at a bank. No criminal record. Nothing out of the ordinary about her.
The proper autopsy will take a bit, but they know what killed her. Her blood samples came back swimming with barbiturates and potassium chloride. That's—well, obviously—it's deadly.”

I gave a little gasp. “Potassium chloride? Isn't that the stuff they use . . .”

“In lethal injections, yes.” He paused again. “You do realize why they told me this? And why I'm telling you now?”

“Because I was the one who discovered her?”

“Yes, and because it does seem likely, as you've already suspected, that the injection was intended for you.”

I swallowed. It felt very cold suddenly in Elias's basement kitchen.

“That's not all, I'm afraid. The man you've been chasing. Nadeem Siddiqui. He was on a US counterproliferation watch list. They keep tabs on the people who work at Pakistan's nuclear labs when they travel. Standard practice. I suspect so they can try to recruit them to spy for us. I don't know if it worked in Siddiqui's case. Or if he'd done anything in particular to arouse suspicion. At any rate—” Hyde stopped for a moment. “At any rate, he's dead. Nadeem Siddiqui is dead. His lab in Pakistan apparently reported it yesterday.”

    

    

S
haukat Malik leaned into the Oval Office and smiled.

He was delighted to find it looked as he'd imagined it, as he'd seen it so often on TV. Through long windows he could see the Rose Garden and beyond it the emerald lawn unspooling. Inside, carefully arranged, stood emblems of power: the thick carpet with its presidential seal, a pair of richly decorated flags, and of course the famous desk. He couldn't help a little shiver of excitement from traveling down his spine.

“Very nice, very nice,” he said respectfully, catching his guide's eye. “What a great honor.”

This was his last task. The last time he would personally face danger.
All the hours, all the sweat, all the roads, had led to here. He and the man posing tonight as his grandfather would be engaging in an elaborate performance. They each had specific roles to play. This morning they had rehearsed in Malik's hotel room, practicing where to stand, what to say. Malik was cast as the eager tourist, the older man as the senile patriarch of the family. It was all scripted. If they could pull this off, the rest would be out of Malik's hands.

He had held his breath on the way into the White House, as guards inspected his passport photo and scanned the bar code into their machine. He willed himself to look casual, to keep the beads of sweat from appearing at his temple. No matter. It was a hot night. Everyone was sticky. He felt rivers of sweat roll down his back.

“What a scorcher, huh?” asked one of the guards, motioning him through the metal detector and then handing back his wallet and belt. The guard was sweating too. Malik nodded. Everything was in order. They made him leave his cell phone behind. No electronic gadgets or cameras allowed on West Wing tours. Not even these private, after-hours, friends-and-family visits.

But he had known about this. It was taken care of. Another phone was already waiting for him, inside. He found it right where it was supposed to be, taped under the seat of the second-from-the-left chair in the West Wing waiting room. Easy. He made as if to tie his shoe, leaned over, unpeeled the tape, and slid the phone into his pocket.

He wanted to test it, and this proved easy too. He waited until their guide appeared and introduced himself as Daniel. Then Malik made an embarrassed gesture and asked for the men's room. Inside the stall he tapped in the password he'd been given. The phone lit up. He clicked on the camera and selected
VIDEO
. The recording light glowed. He hit pause and stuffed the phone back in his pocket. He was ready.

Daniel turned out to be disconcertingly eager and chatty. This, despite the fact that giving after-hours tours couldn't rank among his more thrilling duties as a White House aide.

“Well, you two excited? Here we go,” Daniel chirped. “Now, we're not going to be visiting any of the fancy formal state rooms. That's for the regular tourists. The hoi polloi.” He winked and led them to the press briefing room, then steered the men to seats in the front row. Daniel ducked behind the podium and mimed the daily ritual of the grilling of the White House press secretary and other senior officials. Malik nodded politely. What a strange country.

“All right, down these stairs now.” Daniel swept ahead of them. “Here we are. The White House mess. They do a mean breakfast taco here. At least I hear they do. Only senior staff eat here. Anyway, where you guys from? How you liking this heat?”

Malik marveled at the seemingly bottomless American capacity for small talk. “We're from Baltimore,” he replied. “Not originally, but that's where we live now. The whole family's there.” This was the cover story they had rehearsed.

Daniel seemed to buy it. “Cool. Baltimore. The harbor there is really cool. And your grandfather? He, uh, doesn't speak much English, I guess?”

Malik looked at the elderly man. He was smiling in a vaguely demented way and studying a lunch menu tacked to the wall.

“No, but Grandpa picks up more than he lets on.” Malik hoped this was the case. Before this morning, he had never actually met the man now playing his grandfather.

“But, so how did you guys get on an insiders' tour?” Daniel persisted. “These are pretty hard to get, you know. You must know somebody high up.”

“It is my grandfather's dream—since he became an American citizen—to come see the president at his home, and thank him,” Malik lied smoothly, ignoring the actual question that had been asked.

Daniel laughed. “Yeah, well, I don't know if we'll be meeting the president tonight. But we'll get you close.”

Malik and the old man feigned interest at the locked door to the
Situation Room (“Sorry—even I can't go in there”), and then, finally, they were headed back upstairs. Daniel led the way down a corridor and around a corner. They passed the stately Cabinet Room, then the Roosevelt Room. Malik pretended to admire the portraits on the walls. Daniel waved hello to a Secret Service agent tucked behind a workstation.

At last they stopped. “All right,” said Daniel. “Time for the grand finale. The most famous room on the tour. Are you two ready?”

Behind Daniel's back, the old man cocked his head and raised his eyebrows at Malik. Malik nodded, almost imperceptibly. Grandpa nodded back. Together they turned and looked into the room.

The Oval Office was brightly lit, immaculately neat, and empty. A velvet rope prevented them from actually stepping inside. But that was no matter. Malik could see everything he needed from the doorway. His fingers closed around the phone in his pocket. He would only have a minute, perhaps less.

Just as they had rehearsed, the old man began to mumble,
“Maaf karna . . . ”
Then, louder: “
Maaf karna
, my wallet, must have dropped . . .” Grandpa shuffled with surprising agility back toward the Cabinet Room.

“Hang on, you can't—” Daniel streaked after him. The Secret Service guard stood up. As he rounded the corner the old man dropped to his hands and knees, cursing loudly in Urdu. Daniel and the guard swore in surprise and followed.

Now.

Malik yanked the phone from his pocket. He undid the pause button, and the video began recording. He swept the camera around the room behind him, so there would be no mistaking where he stood. Then he zoomed in and locked the picture tight on his face. There was hatred in his eyes. He had memorized what he would say, timed it so he would not stumble and lose his place. He spoke quickly now, in a low voice and directly into the microphone.

“
As-salaam alaikum
. My brothers, my sisters, do you see where I am tonight? Do you see where the mujahideen have reached?

“America, do you think you can send your spies into our country, send your drones to kill our people, send your assassins to kill the great sheikh inside his own home? Well, here we are inside your home. Inside your White House. Who is powerful now?

“
Inshallah
, we will take our revenge. You will see the power of a Muslim bomb. God willing, Islam is coming to the world.”

As he said the last words, he heard the crash of something being knocked from a table and hitting the floor. The old man was still cursing loudly, a calculated attempt to mask the sound of Malik speaking. It sounded like he was being pulled to his feet. Malik was out of time. He hit stop and shoved the phone deep into his pocket. He prayed the file would save correctly.

Daniel appeared red-faced at the door. “I think we need to go now. Your grandfather's had quite enough for one night.” The Secret Service agent had the old man's arm twisted underneath his own. His radio was crackling. Two more guards appeared.