Into the Fire(97)

“I have no idea what any of that means.”

Already she was out the door, her voice wafting back. “You need a shower. And shave already. You look like a hobo. A concussed hobo.”

The door closed.

He stood a moment in the quiet, trying not to let the crusted plates on the counter and the dog hair on the floor aggravate him. What a different way to come home. Footsteps, a hug, a warm muzzle in the palm.

Maybe his new life could include these things.

He took Joey’s advice, showering, shaving, and then dressing in his own clothes. The bedsheets were swirled atop the mattress and flecked with dog hair. The floor was a mess. A half-drunk glass of OJ had left a ring on the nightstand.

All the imperfections felt overwhelming, scratching at his focus, and he felt a compulsion to clean and order, to curate the environment until it was pleasing to his eye. He entered the Vault and checked the corner where Dog had relieved himself. Joey had cleaned that up at least, though various plates were scattered across the L-shaped table. And crumbs. Was it that hard to position one’s mouth over a plate while eating?

He supposed he shouldn’t complain. He was finished now, with nothing ahead on the calendar but getting Max back to his life and doing some light cleaning.

He glanced up at the OLED screen and froze, his compulsion vanishing.

His e-mail, [email protected], showed a new message.

A rarity.

He glanced over at Vera II in her dish of cobalt pebbles. She, too, seemed surprised by the e-mail.

He moused over and clicked.

No sender. No subject line.

It contained nothing but a single phone number. A code word. And an extension.

(202) 456-1414. Dark Road. 32.

The main switchboard for the West Wing and the means to get directly through to the Oval Office.

Evan was not a friend to the Oval Office, nor was it a friend to him.

Especially recently.

He looked at Vera II. “What do you think?”

She exuded oxygen and an air of skepticism.

He said, “Me, too.”

He wondered why the hell President Donahue-Carr would want to talk to him and concluded it was not for anything good. He just hoped that whatever complications arose wouldn’t get between him and his retirement. One thing was certain: He needed to find out as soon as possible.

He dug a Pelican case from the corner of the Vault and headed to the parking level beneath the building.

Joey had returned his Ford F-150 pickup to his spot beneath Castle Heights. When he opened the driver’s door, In-N-Out wrappers dribbled out onto his boot, a booby trap too perfectly aggravating not to have been devised.

He ensconced himself behind the wheel and dug for the RoamZone in the center console. The screen showed he’d missed a call.

An international number starting with 54, the country code of Argentina.

No message.

Puzzled, Evan stared at the screen. Twice before he’d received wrong-number calls, consumers looking to purchase refill vacuum bags. But perhaps the Oval Office had managed to run down this number and used it to attempt a second outreach. Had this been an attempted contact routed through a U.S. embassy? That didn’t seem to make sense.

He hit REDIAL.

The call dumped straight into voice mail. A feminine voice, slightly throaty, one he didn’t recognize. A mature woman, late fifties, maybe sixty. She spoke unaccented English: You’ve reached my voice mail. Leave a message, or call back later, or do whatever else you’d like to do.

She sounded more like a seeker of vacuum bags than a trained operative. Wrong number, then.

He hung up. Examined the RoamZone.

It was loaded with a preposterous amount of encryption, but if he was going to reach out to 1600 Penn, he’d have to take measures beyond the merely paranoid.

He slid the SIM card out, snapped it in two, and slotted in a virgin one. Pairing his laptop with his phone for a secure Internet connection, he hopped online and moved the phone service where he parked the number from a company in Reykjavík to one in Maracay.

Then he drove up the ramp, through the porte cochere, and got on the 60 Freeway heading east.

For two hours and forty-three minutes, he beelined it into the platter of the Mojave. At one point the throbbing in his head intensified to the point where he thought he might have to pull over, but then it subsided. He forged on, finally veering off at a random spot just shy of the Joshua Tree National Park. His window was down, the cool air slicing through his shirt. The headlight beams swept across stunted trees and jutting slabs of stone, a postapocalyptic landscape. He cut the engine, grabbed the Pelican case, and climbed out.

The moon was shining in force, caught in a haze of stars. A cicada buzz filled the air.

Evan took a knee over the Pelican case, ignoring the brief spell of dizziness. From the top he slid up a yagi directional antenna and aimed it at a distant cell tower. Then he accordioned out a small tripod and attached it to the case top, using an SMA connector and a small omni stubby antenna. He waited, crouched over the tight assemblage of equipment as if it were a campfire. The tiny makeshift GSM base station dodged all authentication between itself and the nearest cell tower, but it was now participating fully in the network.

His own personal rogue cell site.

Completely untraceable.

Only now did he thumb on his RoamZone’s Wi-Fi hot spot, joining the LTE network.

He dialed.