The Book of Fate - Brad Meltzer [87]
Before she could even react, The Roman gripped the spine of the door, slowly closing it behind himself.
“Nice to see you, Bev,” he said as it slapped shut. “Florida looks good on you.”
51
Right here,” Rogo says, pointing to the column of scribbles on the right side of the puzzle. “In the work space . . .”
I recheck the vertical column of doodles and seemingly random letters:
“AMB? JABR? FRF?” Dreidel asks. “Those aren’t any initials I know.”
“Don’t go left to right. Go up and down . . .” With his pen, Rogo makes a circle from top to bottom.
“M, A, R, J, M, K, L, B,” Rogo says, starting me off. “Fill it in: Manning, Albright, Rosenman . . .”
“Jeffer,” I add.
“Who’s Jeffer?” Lisbeth interrupts.
“Me,” Dreidel says.
“Moss, Kutz, Lemonick,” I add, hitting the rest. “And B . . .”
“For Boyle,” Rogo says proudly. “Eight people, all with major Oval Office access.”
Lisbeth nods, still studying the crossword. “But why would the President keep a list with his top staffers’ names on it?”
We all look to Dreidel. “I’ve never seen it in my life,” he says with a laugh. But from the shake in his voice, it’s the one time he’s not thrilled to be included on an exclusive list.
Already impatient, Rogo hops from his seat, walking toward the head of the table. “Manning wrote down eight people’s names, then camouflaged it with doodles so no one would notice they were there. Not to play Nancy Drew, but what do they all have in common?”
Lisbeth slides the crossword back to the middle of the conference table. I look down at the list of names. Lemonick was White House counsel, Rosenman was press secretary, Carl Moss was national security adviser. Combined with Manning, Albright, and Boyle, they were the biggest names we had—the knights of our own round table. “It’s clearly a power list.”
“Except for Dreidel,” Rogo points out. “No offense,” he adds, turning Dreidel’s way.
“Were you all working on something at that time?” Lisbeth asks. “When was it again, February during the first year?”
“We weren’t even there a month,” Dreidel points out. But as he sees the seniority of the people on the list, I can already hear the change in his voice. “Maybe it’s who he wanted at the morning sessions—for the PDB.” Reading the confusion of Lisbeth’s and Rogo’s faces, he explains, “Every morning at six a.m., an armed courier comes from CIA headquarters to the White House with a legal briefcase handcuffed to his wrist. Inside is the President’s Daily Brief—the summary report of the most highly classified news that’s happening around the world. Troop movements in North Korea . . . spy networks in Albania . . . whatever the President needs to know, he gets at his first meeting of the day, along with a few select others.”
“Yeah, but everyone knew who was invited to those meetings,” I point out.
“They knew eventually,” Dreidel says. “But during those first weeks, you think Rosenman and Lemonick didn’t try to elbow their way inside?”
“I don’t know,” Lisbeth says, staring at the list with a small crease between her eyebrows. “If you’re just cutting names, why be so secretive?”
“People’re only secretive when there’s a reason,” Dreidel says. “And it seems pretty clear they didn’t want anyone else seeing what they were writing.”
“Okay, fine—so what’re the things you could write about your top dozen or so staffers that you wouldn’t want anyone else to see?” Lisbeth asks. “You don’t like the person . . . you don’t want them there . . . you’re afraid of them . . .”
“There you go—blackmail’s juicy,” Rogo says. “Maybe one of them had a secret . . .”
“Or knew a secret,” Dreidel says.
“You mean about the President?” I ask.
“About anyone,” Lisbeth agrees.
“I don’t know,” I say. “The level of people you’re talking about . . . that’s the group you’re not supposed to worry about keeping their mouths shut.”
“Unless