State of the Onion Read online

  A sudden sprint. And then, as if he knew precisely where the embankment declined, he leaped into the air, clearing the ground-drop and the iron fence that surrounded it. It looked like slow motion, though it was anything but. Pedaling madly as he soared above the fence, he landed in a thumping skid, rolling onto the pavement less than fifty feet from my position. He boosted himself upright, and in a couple of hops, cleared two small decorative fences that kept people from walking on the grass. He was headed right for me. As if he knew I was there.

  I should have shouted into the phone. I should have screamed.

  But I didn’t. I realized that I was here, at this moment, with an opportunity. I was the one person in the perfect place to do something just right. I knew he couldn’t have seen me. He was too focused on getting away.

  I dropped the phone. I looked around. But Henry’s retirement gift was all I had.

  The man closed the distance between us in a heartbeat.

  I grabbed the skillet with both hands and jumped to my feet. As he ran past I slammed him with it, right in the stomach. I heard his grunt of pain, and an exclamation in a language I didn’t understand. He sank to the ground.

  “Ms. Paras?” a tinny voice called from my discarded phone.

  I shouted to the agents, “Here! Over here!” I jumped, hoping they could see it was me—hoping they wouldn’t open fire again. “Don’t shoot!”

  The man’s expression, though suffused with pain, softened when he looked up at me. Dark brown eyes met mine. “Please,” he said.

  As he spoke, he scuttled to his feet faster than I would have thought possible. Not dazed or weak at all.

  I didn’t think. There wasn’t time to think.

  I whacked him upside the head with the frying pan—the impact reverberated up my arm and sounded like a melon being dropped into a stainless steel sink. He fell to his knees, grunted an expletive.

  After a hit like that, I figured he’d be out cold for sure.

  But he turned to face me. Still conscious.

  I took a step forward, ready to smack him again.

  “Over here,” I screamed, panic making my voice shake.

  The intruder tumbled sideways, cradling his head in one hand, blood dripping from the top of his scalp. His legs worked like he was trying to ride a bicycle, and this time his words were labored. “Please,” he said, “must warn…president. Danger.”

  I stood openmouthed, heart pounding, wielding the pan like a tennis racket, when the man’s foot gained purchase and he started to pull himself up again.

  “Please,” he said. “I…must…warn…”

  I cracked him again, this time slamming his shoulder.

  From behind me, I heard the welcome sound of running feet.

  “Ollie, get back,” Agent Craig Sanderson said as they surrounded us in a half circle. “Quick. We’ve got him covered.”

  They didn’t have to tell me twice.

  I had a good view of the man from the side, but he kept his face down. His eyes were clenched shut, and he looked awful. Blood dripped from the gash in his head, pooling in the grass below him. He held his hands out, open and empty, shouting to the agents, “I am unarmed.”

  I noticed now that he wore shabby clothing, but brand-new, high-end athletic shoes and what looked like body armor. No wonder the shots hadn’t stopped him. This intruder had come prepared.

  The portfolio he carried was tucked under his leg.

  I backed up farther as fast as I could, praying I wouldn’t trip.

  As I cleared their established perimeter, the Secret Service closed in on the intruder, bending his arms behind his back. With a circle of .357 semiautomatics trained on the guy, two agents stepped in to put some kind of plastic zip-tie thing on his wrists. Lots more operatives gathered, and Agent Thomas MacKenzie broke away from the group to gently remove the skillet from my white-knuckled fist. “You okay?”

  I nodded. But I wasn’t. All of a sudden my knees went weak; my hands started shaking. I steadied myself by grabbing his shoulder.

  “Better get out of the way.” He gestured toward a bench across the walk. He held my arm as we made our way over. “Sit down.” In a low voice, he asked, “What the hell are you doing here?”

  I knew his irritation had nothing to do with me. He was worried about the president and this situation. “I was picking up Henry’s gift,” I said. “The skillet.” I pointed to it in Tom’s hand.

  Back in the knot of Secret Service personnel, Agent Sanderson lifted the intruder to his feet. Then Sanderson gave an exclamation of surprise, and I heard the sound of a body hitting the ground. I craned my neck to see better.

  The intruder lay flat on his back, his bound hands behind him. He stared upward, his gaze still radiating fierce energy, but his voice was strangely conversational.

  “It’s good to see you again, Craig,” he said. “How is Kate? And the children?”

  CHAPTER 2

  TOM’S HAND DROPPED FROM ITS PROTECTIVE perch on my shoulder and he stared, as we all did, at the bloody man on the grass.

  Agent Sanderson said, “Naveen?” then glanced up, saw me and Tom and the skillet. “Oh, Christ. Gentlemen, let’s get him out of here.”

  Brusquely, Tom took me by the elbow, stood me up and steered me toward the East Appointment Gate. “Let’s get you out of here, too.”

  He handed Henry’s dented and bloodied skillet to another agent, who carried it gingerly, held away from his body.

  “Hey, I just bought that,” I said. “It’s a gift.”

  “Sorry, ma’am,” the agent said as he placed the abused frying pan into a large, clear plastic bag, “It’s evidence now.”

  “But…” I said, uselessly.

  I could feel Tom’s arm pressuring me to move on. “Henry’s not retiring for a couple of weeks yet,” he said, “you’ll probably have it back before then.”

  “Probably?”

  He didn’t answer. Just kept us walking. Tom was six-foot-four, 238 pounds of muscled Secret Service agent. I’m five-foot-two, 110 pounds of busy chef. I’m very strong for my size—handling industrial-sized pots full of boiling water all day will do that for a lady. But I wasn’t anywhere near strong enough to resist Tom. It was no contest.

  Twisting, I wriggled around in his grip, trying to watch what was going on inside the tight circle of agents. Although there were women in the Secret Service, there apparently weren’t any on duty this morning. All I could see were strong, broad shoulders clad in business suits, forming a cage that the intruder could not possibly escape. Between the agents’ legs, I could see the man being pulled from the ground. I heard him talking with Agent Sanderson, but I couldn’t make out what was being said.

  “Naveen, huh?” I asked. Sanderson had called him by name.

  “Come on,” Tom said with impatience.

  I planted my feet. The hundred tasks I’d been prioritizing as I walked back to work could wait. Even I knew that this morning’s excitement would throw the First Family’s schedule into a tizzy. “I want to see how this ends, since I was in on the start of it,” I said.

  “This is a crime scene. You don’t belong here.”

  I put my hands on my hips and stared up at him. The flat, expressionless look was gone from Tom’s eyes. He was mad. At me. For what, I had no idea.

  “But I’m a material witness.”

  His lips compressed. “Don’t you have work to do in the kitchen?”

  “Yes. I do. It’ll keep. Craig knows that guy,” I said. “It sounded like they were friends.”

  The storm had passed and the sun was making a welcome appearance—but I could see doubt clouding Tom’s blue eyes. He glanced over to the cluster of activity around the intruder and I realized why he was so ticked off with me. He wanted to be part of that group, not the bodyguard who made sure the assistant chef made it to the kitchen safely.

  “He’s bluffing,” Tom said. “Guys like that are pretty resourceful. He must have studied Craig’s dossier.”


  “No.” I shook my head. “Craig recognized him.”

  When Tom took my arm again, I let him lead me the rest of the way. “I’m fine,” I said, when we reached the staff entrance. “Go on back. I don’t need an escort from here.”

  He didn’t need telling twice.

  Before I was through security, he was lost in the sea of agents bustling along the walkway.

  ALTHOUGH THE NUMBER OF STAFF OFTEN mushroomed to twenty for state dinners, the permanent White House kitchen staff numbered only five. Marcel, the executive pastry chef, had agreed to cover for me while I was out picking up Henry’s gift. In repose, Marcel’s black, aristocratic face could have graced the cover of any men’s magazine, but when he was worked up, his large eyes popped, making him look like an alert, dark-skinned Muppet.

  “Olivia! Qu’est-ce que…” he said as I shed my jacket and opened the linen cabinet. “What happened?” Whenever Marcel got agitated or upset, he forgot himself and dropped into his native language for some colorful invective. I’d picked up a lot of French when I studied in Paris, but my vocabulary had more to do with cooking than with street patois. I didn’t understand Marcel very well when he really got on a tear, but I sure loved to hear him talk. One of these days I needed to look up the words he yelled so fast. I didn’t want to use them in public until I was sure they weren’t unforgivable.

  Marcel finally wound down enough to lapse back into English. “They have shut down the building,” he said.

  “I know.” I sat. “Secret Service told me.”

  “What?” he asked. “And you, mon petit chou…How you say…? You look like three-week-old escarole.”

  “Thanks a lot.” I blew out a long breath. My little adventure had taken a toll on me. Now that I was safe, back in the haven of the kitchen, I could feel cracks working their way through my usually calm veneer. Forcing a smile as I looked up into his worried face, I lied. “I’m fine.”

  “Oui, and I am the pope,” he said.

  I stood up, but my hands shook so much as I pulled out my white tunic and tall toque that I wondered if I could put my uniform on.

  My hesitation to talk wasn’t just nerves. I wondered how much I was allowed to say about what had just happened. The less I said, the better, I imagined. But since the attack had happened outside on the North Lawn, where tourist video cameras were always running, I figured the whole thing would be on CNN or FOX News any minute now. Plus, Tom hadn’t told me to keep my mouth shut.

  Thinking about it, I was pretty sure I didn’t need to maintain total secrecy. There were always newscopters hovering around. We lived in an up-to-the-minute world. The incident was probably already on the wires.

  “The Secret Service caught some guy trying to get in.”

  “Merde.” Marcel strode over to the corridor that connected our busy kitchen with the rest of the lower level, and peered out. “I saw agents running by earlier, but it is quiet now. Where did this happen? Did you see him?”

  “I saw him,” I said, hoping that would be enough to keep Marcel happy. “And Agent MacKenzie made sure I got back here safely. So, everything’s good.”

  “Yes,” Marcel said, with a wry pull to his lips. “If the oh-so-handsome Thomas escorted you up here, then I’m certain everything is quite good. For you.”

  I ignored his comment. Striding back into the heart of the kitchen, I was all business. “Anything else going on?”

  “Quiet as, how you say, a grave.”

  “I think you mean tomb.”

  Marcel shrugged. “Henry is still at the White House Mess.” He made a face. Marcel hated the term we used for the other kitchen, the one run by the navy that serviced the round-the-clock staff. “He will be back shortly. But where is Henry’s gift? Was it not ready?”

  Shoot, in all the excitement I had already forgotten what I supposed to be carrying. I was about to answer when the chief usher, Paul Vasquez, came into the kitchen. As head of the executive residence staff, Paul dropped by occasionally, usually to confer with Henry over menu decisions. Today his handsome features were strained, and he ran a hand through his salt-and-pepper hair, a gesture I’d seen him use only during periods of stress. “Olivia, may I have a word with you?”

  Uh-oh.

  I followed him through the corridor and into the China Room. It was one of my favorite rooms, and I couldn’t wait until the day my mother finally made the trip out here to visit me. She’d be captivated, as I was, by the gorgeous display—and the wealth of American history it represented. When I was first hired at the White House, I’d poked my nose in here fairly often, determined to memorize which china pattern belonged to which First Family. I’d gotten pretty good at it.

  As Paul gestured me into one of the two chairs flanking the room’s fireplace—the one with its back to the door—I reviewed the china patterns to myself in an effort to calm my nerves. Whatever Paul wanted probably had something to do with my being outside when I shouldn’t have been. News traveled fast around here.

  He ran his hand through his hair again before meeting my eyes. “I’ve just been notified about the disturbance outside. The Secret Service has characterized your involvement in the incident as…reckless.”

  I opened my mouth to protest, but he stopped me with a look.

  “You got in the middle of a firefight,” he said.

  “How was I supposed to know I was walking into it? I was just heading back to work from—”

  “I know all about your important errand.”

  That didn’t surprise me. Paul knew everything that went on in the White House.

  He sat all the way back in his chair—I sat at the edge of mine, with my hands folded in my lap like a schoolgirl’s. I didn’t think whacking an intruder with a pan was cause for White House dismissal, but I was pretty sure that interfering with official Secret Service business was.

  I kept silent, uncomfortably aware of each inhalation in the quiet room.

  “Where is Henry’s gift now?” Paul asked.

  That surprised me. Paul didn’t know? “One of the agents took it.”

  He nodded; undoubtedly some loose end was tied up for him. “Agent Sanderson is on his way to debrief you. He’s understandably…upset…by the breach in security.” Paul stared at one of the bas-relief figures carved into the fireplace surround, but I could tell he wasn’t seeing it. “Your actions today will have serious repercussions for all of us. We can’t ever afford to do anything that might put ourselves at risk, because to do so puts the White House—and everyone in it—at risk.” When he met my eyes again, his expression softened. “But I have to tell you, Ollie, I personally think it was a damn brave thing you did.”

  When he glanced over my shoulder, I turned. Craig Sanderson crossed the threshold, a dour look on his face.

  As he left, Paul patted my shoulder and leaned down to whisper in my ear, “You’ll be okay.”

  Craig strode across the carpeting, emanating anger with every step. He sat and stared at me, waiting a long time before he spoke. The tension in the room grew so tight that the china on display almost seemed to hum.

  “Ms. Paras.”

  Craig and I were on a first-name basis and for the first time, his gentle Kentucky drawl took on a menacing air. The fact that he wasn’t calling me Ollie made me feel nervous and small. I didn’t like it. “Yes, Agent Sanderson?”

  His eyes snapped up, warning me to not take this lightly. I wasn’t, but if he had a problem with what I’d done this morning, I wished he would just say so. At least then I’d have a chance to explain what happened.

  “We have a tape of your call to the emergency operator.”

  I waited.

  “She instructed you to stay low and get out of the way.”

  “I did.”

  His eyebrows rose and he continued, enunciating each word with slow precision. “Then how do you explain the fact that when we reached you, you were attacking an armed intruder with a frying pan?”

  “He ran right by where I was hi
ding. I was the only person in place to stop him. So I stopped him. But you’re wrong—he wasn’t armed.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  “Yes, I do. I saw him drop the agent’s gun as he ran. I was just inches away from him when I hit him.” I thought about the black portfolio the guy had been carrying, and I suddenly realized that I truly had no idea as to whether he’d been armed or not. So, I took a different approach with Craig. “You know, I heard him ask you about your family. Is he a friend of yours?”

  For the first time since he’d come into the room, Craig’s face registered emotion—I’d surprised him. Before he could answer, I touched his arm. “He really was trying to warn the president about something, wasn’t he?”

  Craig’s muscles were taut beneath my hand. I pulled away.

  “No,” he said. “He was not. He was an unauthorized intruder and he is being dealt with even as we speak. As for you,” he said, glaring, “in the future, when you are given a direct order by any of the security staff—and that includes uniformed guards as well as the emergency operators—you will follow that order without deviation. Is that clear?”

  There was so much more I wanted to say, but this was not the time. “Yes. Very clear.”

  Nodding as though granting absolution, he continued in a gentler tone, “Now, tell me what happened, from your perspective, and let me know exactly what he said to you.”

  I went through everything, including my fears and my puzzlement at the running man’s quiet demeanor when he tried to talk to me. I tried to read Craig, tried to see behind his blank, professional expression, but I got nothing.

  When I finished, Craig stood. “I will direct Chief Usher Vasquez to eliminate all mention of this incident from your personnel files. It will not appear on your permanent record. But don’t let it happen again.” He fixed me with a look that was anything but friendly, and left.