The Book of Fate - Brad Meltzer [146]
“Relax, Wes, I’m a big boy,” he says with a laugh, his shoulder grasp turning into a quick, forceful back pat that almost knocks me off the bottom step. “Go do what you have to. I’ve handled one or two problems bigger than this.”
Handing him his sport coat, I laugh right back and head for the front door. I can feel the President’s eyes burning into the back of my head.
“By the way, Wes, do me a favor and let the Service know where you’re going too,” he says loud enough so the agents outside can hear. “Just in case they need to get in touch.”
“Of course, sir,” I say as I jog down the front steps.
“You alone yet?” Lisbeth asks through the phone.
The moment the door slams behind me, the two suit-and-tie agents who’re standing outside the garage look up.
“Everything okay?” the shorter agent, Stevie, asks.
“Don’t look suspicious,” Lisbeth says through the phone. “Tell him you forgot your keys.”
“Yeah, no . . . I forgot my keys,” I say, speed-walking to the tall wooden privacy gate at the end of the driveway and pretending that everything I’ve built my life on isn’t now coming apart. My breathing starts to gallop. I’ve known Stevie for almost three years. He doesn’t care whether I check in or not. But as I reach the gate and wait for it to slide open, to my surprise, it doesn’t move.
“So where you headed to, Wes?” Stevie calls out.
“Wes, listen to me,” Lisbeth pleads. “Thanks to your low-life friend Dreidel, I found another puzzle. Are you listening?”
I turn back to the two men, who’re still standing in front of the closed garage and the matching Chevy Suburbans parked a few feet away. Stevie’s hand disappears into his pants pocket. It’s not until that moment that I realize that on the night I first saw Boyle, Stevie was driving the lead car in Malaysia. “Wes,” he says coldly. “I asked you a—”
“Just back to the office,” I blurt. Spinning clumsily to the gate, I stare at the double-plank wooden slats that keep people from looking in. I grip the phone to stop my hand from shaking. The sun’s about to set in the purple-orange sky. Behind me, there’s a metallic click. My heart leaps.
“See you soon,” Stevie calls out. There’s a loud rrrrrr as the wooden gate rolls to the right, sliding open just enough for me to squeeze through.
“I’m out,” I whisper to Lisbeth.
“Fine—then pay attention. Do you have the old puzzle on you?”
Staggering across the street to the car, I don’t answer. All I see is Manning’s grin and his yellow Chiclet teeth—
“Wes! Did you hear what I said!?” she shouts. “Take out the original one!”
Nodding even though she can’t see me, I reach into my pocket and hastily unfold the original crossword.
“See the handwritten initials down the center?” she asks. “M, A, R, J . . .”
“Manning, Albright, Rosenman, Jeffer . . . what about them?”
“He’s got the same list on the new puzzle. Same initials down the middle. Same order. Same everything.”
“Okay, so? Now there’re two lists of top senior staff,” I say, stopping just outside the car. I have to lean against the door to keep standing.
“No. Pay attention, Wes. Same everything. Including those scribbles down the side.”
“What’re you talking about?”
“On the left—before each set of initials: the four dots in a square, the little oval, the cross with a slash through it . . .”
I look at each one:
“The chicken scratch?”
“That’s the thing, Wes,” she says, deadly serious. “I don’t think it’s chicken scratch. Unless he’s got some majorly smart chickens.”
86
But those doodles,” I say as I study Manning’s scribbles on the side of the crossword.
“Are you listening?” Lisbeth shouts through the phone. “That’s what they wanted it to look like—random doodles and extra letters that make the hidden initials disappear. But if you look at this new crossword, the exact same scribbled images are in the exact same order. There’s nothing random about it, Wes! The four dots