Foreign Éclairs Read online

  “Which is where, exactly?” I asked. “Aren’t we required to return to the apartment tonight?” I asked, alluding to our goal of allowing the terrorists to overhear our plans for visiting the winery this weekend.

  “Joe Yablonski has agreed to a small detour,” he said cryptically. “I’ll explain more later.”

  * * *

  A black stretch limousine—a livery car, not a Secret Service vehicle—swung around the south entrance of the White House five minutes later. The chauffeur got out to open the back door for me and Agent Romero. Silently, we eased in. The driver—from a trusted firm the White House occasionally hired to shuttle dignitaries—was to take us to the Thomas, a swank hotel a half mile northwest of my usual Metro station.

  Romero and I had been instructed to keep our conversation in the car to a minimum. Even though the driver could not know our real identities or be able to hear us from behind the window that separated his cab from the passenger area, we chose not to talk at all.

  Romero and I stared out opposite windows for the quick jaunt. My thoughts were in a crazed rush. Nothing about this made sense. Last I’d spoken to Yablonski, the plan had been to head home like normal and to have our rehearsed-to-sound-spontaneous conversation about the need to get away to the winery. What was going on now?

  When we arrived at the Thomas, our limo driver hurried around to open the door for us. Romero hustled me out in front of her, while instructing the driver to return in thirty minutes. The world seemed different from my new height. Not as many people towered over me. Weird.

  Inside, Romero wound my arm through hers and broke into a brisk, no-nonsense trot through the bright Beaux Arts lobby, crossing it at such a quick clip that hotel guests couldn’t possibly get a good look at either of us even if they’d been paying close attention.

  Romero took a sharp left past a shiny grand piano leading me into the hotel’s bar, Feathers. Wood-paneled and cozy, the dimly lit establishment was enjoying a surge of business this evening. Almost every chair at the gleaming bar was taken, and most of the tables were occupied. She tugged me to the right, recapturing my attention. “Over there,” she said, where a small tented sign on a table read RESERVED. She whispered into my ear. “Keep your head down, okay?”

  Seconds after she and I sat, a waiter greeted us, handing us leather-bound menus. I kept my face averted. “Will you be joining us for dinner this evening, or simply enjoying a cocktail?”

  “Cocktails only, please,” Romero said. “We’ll need a few minutes.”

  “Of course. Take your time.”

  The moment he was gone, Romero said, “The ladies’ washroom is behind you to your left.”

  “I don’t need to—”

  “Behind you to your left,” she repeated.

  “Oh. Sure. Gotcha.” I stood.

  Guided by elegant signage, I made my way over. Inside the washroom, a copper-haired woman greeted me. “Good evening.” Leaning forward, she whispered, “Spencer,” then pointed to the stalls lining the long wall. “They’re empty.” The facility’s main door was equipped with a thumb bolt, which she slid into the locked position. “Let’s get this done before anyone comes knocking.”

  “Oh, yes. Sure,” I said, momentarily taken aback. The woman’s swift, detached instructions, her no-nonsense approach, and this clandestine meeting set me on edge.

  She told me to remove my hat, blond wig, and cashmere coat as she peeled off the wig and clothing she was wearing and placed her items on the marble countertop. The swap took seconds, our transformations only moments longer. I became a redhead with a navy jacquard shawl and blue beret; she became the blonde I’d been two minutes ago. The woman and I had essentially exchanged identities.

  My heart went into double-skip mode as adrenaline coursed through my body. It wasn’t fear as much as it was that heightened sense of getting caught that made my nerves crackle. I tried to talk myself down from this strange edginess. What was the worst that could happen? A restaurant patron might need to use the facilities? I tried to shake off my old don’t-get-in-trouble–schoolgirl mentality. For heaven’s sake, I was a full-grown female in a ladies’ washroom. Nothing wrong with that.

  And yet, jitters zinged like pinballs in my chest. I blew out a breath and fluffed my wavy red hair.

  The woman instructed me to remain in the washroom for at least three minutes after she left. She told me to make my way back into the lobby and, if Gav didn’t approach, I was to take a seat near one of the pillars near the reception desk to await further instructions. “Good luck,” she said, and then ducked out the door.

  I didn’t recognize myself in the mirror and it wasn’t just due to the red wig. The countertop seemed so low. Was this how life was for tall women all the time?

  When the door swung open thirty seconds later, I gasped in surprise. Although the fifty-something corporate type barely took notice of me, I coughed my relief when it became obvious she was here for the usual reasons. I was able to keep track of her in the mirror as I ran water in the sink. She pushed the door open to the first stall, peered in, didn’t like what she saw, and moved on to repeat the exercise at the second and third stalls before finding one that met her needs. Dousing my hands in the warm cascade before me while counting the seconds on my watch, I waited for another two minutes to elapse.

  After lowering my hands into one of those hyper-fast contraptions and triggering the air jets, I drew them upward to dry. Slowly, slowly. Forty seconds is a long time to waste doing nothing, and I wondered if the woman in the stall was waiting for me to depart. With excruciating care, I primped my brand-new copper curls until my three minutes were up. The fourth stall’s toilet flushed.

  I took a deep breath and headed out the door.

  I wasn’t surprised to see my doppelganger at the table with Romero as I strode through the cushy bar and back into the hotel’s lobby. The woman I’d exchanged disguises with was smiling up at the waiter, who bent at the waist to take her order.

  The hotel’s reception desk lay across a black-and-white marble floor laid out like a diagonal chess board. I expected my ultra-high boots to click against the hard surface, but was surprised to find myself gliding silently forward. Platform soles this high and still comfortable and quiet? I needed to find out who manufactured these babies and stock up.

  I’d only made it about halfway across the shiny expanse in my magic boots when Gav fell into step next to me. He had on a dark gray overcoat and wore a wide-brimmed Indiana Jones fedora so low it shadowed his eyes. I recognized him immediately

  “My, aren’t you dashing?”

  That garnered me a quick grin. “One more stop,” he said. “You ready?”

  “Always.”

  CHAPTER 17

  The valet on duty outside the Thomas Hotel’s other entrance handed me into the passenger side of an idling SUV. Gav took his place behind the wheel. “Thank you,” he said to the valet as he handed the young man a tip.

  “Are we able to talk now?” I asked when we pulled away. “Can you tell me where we’re going?”

  “Bombs brought us together, Ollie. I’m determined not to let them tear us apart.” Gav took off his fedora and tossed it into the backseat. “Beyond that, I don’t have much to share at this point. This is a show-don’t-tell field trip if there ever was one.”

  “Can I at least get out of this wig?”

  “You can get back into all your own things.” He reached behind his seat. “Here,” he said as he laid a bag on my lap.

  “Bliss,” I said as I removed the sweat-inducing wig and began switching footwear. “But I will miss these awesome boots. How different the world looks from two inches higher.”

  A short while later, we pulled up to a gated industrial park, where a sentry checked our IDs against a clipboard list before allowing us to pass.

  Low-slung unadorned buildings lay in short, even rows. Sodium-vapor lights gave a pink glow to the structures’ corners but did little to illuminate their façades. I scanned the
m as we passed, looking for labels or logos. I had no doubt these constructions belonged to a government agency, but I couldn’t figure out which one.

  “Where are we?” I asked.

  Gav pulled into a parking space near the front doors of the fourth building on the right. He turned to me with a wry smile. “It doesn’t matter. You were never here.”

  A uniformed guard met us at the door. He neither said hello nor smiled.

  Inside, I shivered, though not from fear. The ambient temperature in here had to be at least ten degrees cooler than outside. The next guard, a middle-aged guy with a sturdy build and a robust grimace, led us down a high, cavernous hallway. With minimal illumination, its stark, concrete walls made me feel even colder. Our footstep clicks echoed away almost as quickly as we made them.

  About halfway down the hall, the guard stopped and ran his badge through an ID reader. After a promising click, the guard pulled a heavy door open and gestured us forward. “They’re waiting for you.”

  Stepping in, I shielded my eyes. After our trek through near darkness, the high-wattage illumination here felt foreign and sharp.

  “They” turned out to be two people—one male, one female—wearing white lab coats and purple latex gloves. Standing behind a long, narrow table that held four ominous-looking devices, they glanced up, nodded a greeting, and waited expectantly for us to approach.

  With its high, unfinished ceiling and rows of identical boxes stacked on identical metal shelves, the space resembled a mini-warehouse. Roughly thirty feet deep, the room stretched to my right at least double that distance.

  I pulled my White House–emblazoned coat closer and wished Gav had brought a heavy jacket along. Didn’t the federal government believe in heating their facilities?

  Without another word, our escort shut the door behind us.

  Gav led me to the table and introduced the two techs as Jane and John. I sent him a skeptical glance and he responded with a “What did you expect?” look of his own. Fine. I probably didn’t need to know these individuals’ real names anyway.

  Willowy and tall, Jane had high cheekbones and a deep brown complexion. Her light eyes were luminous yet charged with energy, like whisky-colored diamonds. John wore charcoal-framed glasses that were too big for his narrow face. With the pallor of a man who never saw the sun, he had a slim build but somehow managed to sport a fleshy double chin.

  I had an idea of where we were, or why. The four contraptions on the table before us warped me back to the first time Gav and I had worked together. Back under President Campbell’s administration, the White House had suffered a bomb threat. Gav and his team had been brought in to educate the staff on what to look for and how to respond when encountering anything suspicious or unfamiliar.

  “John, Jane, and I will be giving you a refresher course on IEDs this evening,” Gav said.

  “IED is an acronym for improvised explosive device,” John said.

  “I’ve learned a little bit about them in the past.” I surveyed the array of items. “Apparently not enough, otherwise we wouldn’t all be here tonight, would we?”

  “That’s right,” Gav said. “And, if all goes according to plan tomorrow, tonight’s exercise will have been a colossal waste of time. I don’t care. I’m convinced that until the Armustanian threat is neutralized, we should all strive to be overprepared rather than underprepared.” He’d said as much on the ride over, but took care to repeat himself for John’s and Jane’s benefit. “Shall we begin?”

  Jane took the lead. “Our goal here tonight is to familiarize you with a few of the component elements the Armustanian radicals favor when crafting explosive devices. These four prototypes—all of which are inert, of course—represent four designs that have become popular with terrorists from that region of late.”

  “Let me interrupt here,” John said. “I don’t want you to think these four items represent the sum total of what these terrorists are capable of producing.” He shook his head from side to side, his wobbly double chin following like a pendulum on split-second delay. “Not even remotely close. We can’t predict what they’ll dream up tomorrow or what deviations they’ll scramble to employ when preferred materials are in short supply. We’re scratching the surface here. Barely.”

  Jane cleared her throat. “My colleague is correct in that we can’t cover all possibilities.” She turned to fix a sharp look at him. “But we can share probabilities. That’s all we have time for.”

  “Let’s hope it’s enough,” John said.

  Gav touched my arm. “John’s point is a good one. Always remember that these are called improvised explosive devices because the people who create them have to work with what’s available. No two bombs will ever be precisely identical, but we have discovered patterns Armustanians tend to favor.”

  “You don’t really believe I’ll ever encounter one of these, do you?” I asked. “I mean, when I’m by myself?” I shot a quick glance to John and Jane to gauge their reactions, but it was Gav’s that interested me most. “Until this threat is—as you term it—neutralized, I’m being escorted to and from work, and when I’m not working, I’m with you.”

  “Today, yes. Tomorrow, sure. What if things don’t go as planned tomorrow night? What if the threat lingers? What if Kern disappears completely before he comes roaring back? How long before we become complacent?”

  “We won’t,” I said. “You and I aren’t complacent.”

  “Exactly right. That’s why we’re here.”

  “I’m not arguing with you. I’m just curious.” After coming to understand the seriousness of our situation as explained by Yablonski, I wanted to be here.

  “Ollie,” Gav continued. “We all hope you never need to utilize the education you’re getting tonight. But we also all know that there are no guarantees in life, and our best chance for beating these guys is to prepare for the worst.”

  “And so we work.”

  “And so we work,” he agreed. “Now, let’s look at our first example.”

  * * *

  Over the next hour I learned how items as innocuous as a washing machine timer or a wind-up alarm clock could be used to set off bombs. I learned how these weapons could be made even more deadly with the addition of nails, ball bearings, or razor blades. Jane even showed me a pressure-cooker bomb, a type similar to the one used—with tragic results—at the Boston Marathon terror attack.

  I would never be able to understand how any human being could deliberately harm another like that.

  By the time we got to the fourth IED, I felt as though I knew everything there was to know about triggers, power sources, fuses, container options, and explosives. I didn’t truly know everything, of course, but my brain felt bloated with information, some of which needed time to digest.

  The three of them—Jane, John, and Gav—had taken me from the first rudimentary model to this final, sophisticated device, indicating how features could be added to increase the likelihood of detonation.

  “To this day,” Jane said, “that’s one of the bomb-maker’s toughest choices. Should he rush the process and create more devices, some of which will turn out to be duds, or should he take his time to ensure optimal results?”

  “Optimal results?” I repeated. “You mean explosions that take innocent lives and cause massive destruction? Is that it?”

  She gave a brief nod. “I understand how distasteful all this sounds, but to prevent such catastrophes we need to get into the bomb-maker’s head.”

  “I know,” I said. “I’m not trying to be difficult. I just need to say it out loud. To remind myself that this isn’t a game of one-upsmanship being played online or in an arena full of fans. That this is about human beings with real-life consequences.”

  Gav laid a hand on my shoulder. “I understand. Because we see this every day, we’re consumed by that very one-upsmanship. We’re so obsessed with getting ahead of these guys that we have to push past the human cost to stay focused on the goal. You’re being hit all at o
nce and it’s a lot to take in.”

  It had been a pounding lesson so far and I’d needed the break that short interchange had provided.

  “Okay.” Taking a deep breath, I nodded. “I’m ready. Let’s do this.”

  John lifted the fourth IED. The dark gray cylinder looked like a miniature SCUBA tank but without the air hose attachments. “While our field officers have encountered more refined constructions than this one in regions across the globe, the Armustanian faction we’re facing hasn’t adopted those modifications. This IED is similar to the one that detonated at Suzette’s restaurant as well as the one at Cenga Prison.”

  “How can you be sure?” I asked.

  “Fragments recovered from the scene,” Jane said.

  I pointed to the device. “That’s the size of a small fire extinguisher. How did no one notice it had been left there?”

  “Good observation,” Jane said. “This is a fire extinguisher tank we’ve repurposed for lessons. But to answer your question, we can’t know for sure what the one that destroyed Suzette’s looked like. Because the bomb-makers were on a tight timeline, they most likely placed one of the less sophisticated devices there.” She waved her hand back toward the first example. “A small, easily concealed version, but fully capable of inflicting the damage we witnessed. We believe that they positioned the device beneath the radiator nearest the front door.”

  “Oh,” I said, picturing the location. “How did they manage to do so without anyone seeing? What kind of clearance is there? A couple of inches?”

  “More like eight,” John said. “But even if there had been less maneuvering room, you’re forgetting what we told you at the outset. These prototypes merely scratch the surface of the variety out there. The individuals who create these bombs are constantly changing the devices’ appearances, sometimes out of necessity, sometimes by design.”