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The investigation moved slowly over the next three or four days. Having expected to be away Josh found himself with some time to work on neglected projects. Leo had also asked him to formulate a strategy for taking forward the Amara situation. He pulled all the files on the subject and start drafting a compromise agreement. He felt that despite Mr Adjei’s words the country was in no position to refuse an offer from the United States to recommend an end to sanctions.
One evening, about four days later he left work early and went back to what used to be Sam’s apartment and was now his. He hadn’t been sleeping well and he hoped an evening relaxing surrounded by Sam’s stuff might help.
When nothing had been heard from Sam two months after his disappearance his family began to suggest the apartment was given up and his possessions placed in their care until such time as he was declared dead.
Josh resisted this doggedly. Sam’s family did not know the nature of Josh and Sam’s relationship so they thought it odd he should try to have a say in the matter but finally, they agreed to Josh simply taking over the rental of the apartment and having care of most of the contents. Once they had retrieved the items of value Sam possessed they were happy with the arrangement.
So Josh gave up his own place, moved his things into Sam’s spare room or into storage and otherwise left the place exactly the same as Sam had kept it. When the family wanted to sell Sam’s car Josh bought it and used it instead of his own, which was making weird noises anyway.
Untouched, the essence of Sam’s place was preserved, his clothes and books, the spare but elegant furnishing. Josh tried to avoid leaving his own mark on the apartment. It was one of the ways he had of stopping Sam fading into memory. Sometimes he put on Sam’s aftershave in the morning or wore one of his shirts to work but mostly he liked to live in Sam’s space in just the way they had never been able to manage when they were truly together.
That evening he brought some Amaran paperwork home with him and he sat on Sam’s sofa with a beer to read it.
It was not a happy read. The history of the country, which should have been wealthy and well fed, was a history of poverty, war and empire. The British exploited it from the middle of the nineteenth century for diamonds. Then after unceremoniously giving it independence when the source dried up the West basically helped themselves to cheap supplies of iron ore, rubber, coal and lately uranium. Like so many other third world countries its farming and fishing had been virtually destroyed by cheap imports from the West.
The last nail in Amara’s coffin was placed in the eighties when its strategic position made it an interesting prospect to the United States. President Paterson failed to get his man into power in 1991 and the country began to boast rogue nation status when it fought an unjustified war with a neighbour over land.
He read about the war ten years ago provoked by the downing of the US army aircraft. The ferocity of the revenge attack was exceptional, government and public buildings were destroyed as were some residential areas that supposedly concealed terrorists. The capital was without power and clean water for several weeks, and more people died from the consequences of this than from the bombings.
The war failed to topple the government and sanctions were introduced. The country was allowed to trade for humanitarian supplies but not for money, to the benefit of mostly American corporations. It was an unpleasant affair by any standards and many democrats and moderate republicans had been against it from the start. The political climate had just reached a stage where something could be done. If the Amarans would just own up to the original attack.
He wandered over to Sam’s desk looking for something to make a few notes on. He found a notebook in one of the desk drawers and took it back to the sofa.
The first page of the notebook was half torn out and the remaining half had one word written on it – ‘Shubber’. He flicked over the page and started making his own notes. When he found himself writing Ahmed Shubber himself a little while later he realised this was the name of the Amaran ambassador in Washington.
He stared at the entry in Sam’s book. It was definitely his handwriting.
Something else occurred to him. He had kept the piece of paper Sam had written the words Rough Magic on. When he unfolded it and smoothed out the creases he found it matched exactly to the torn page in the notebook.
It occurred to Josh he had stumbled upon Amaran references in both Mandy and Sam’s papers when neither would have been officially working on anything related to it. He wondered about visiting Mr Shubber himself. He certainly had grounds to now the issue was about to be revived.
Josh’s cell phone rang then. It was Mike Casper.
“Josh, hi.”
“Hey Mike, what’s up?”
“Can we meet? Not at the White House.”
“Now? Do you want me to come to your office?”
“No, look its got to be somewhere private.”
Josh paused. “Are you all right, you sound a bit…?”
“I’ve found something. I have to talk to you.”
“About Mandy?”
“About Mandy but also about Sam Seaborn.”
Josh looked at the notebook in his hand. The scribble of Sam’s handwriting across the page.
“Sam? Is there a connection?” There was a long pause when Mike didn’t reply. “Don’t go quiet on me, Mike.”
“Sorry, I don’t mean to…can we just…?”
“Okay, come over to my apartment.”
“No. Sorry, I’ll explain when I see you, but not your place.”
“You’re not going to have us meet in an underground parking lot are you? Because you know…only if I get to be Robert Redford.”
“All right, you know that coffee shop on Connecticut…next to the cinema?”
“Yeah, I know it.”
“How about in an hour?”
“I’ll be there. Hey Mike, do the words Rough Magic mean anything to you.”
“Christ,” said Mike, sounding even more agitated. “Don’t say that to anyone else, do you understand?”
“No, I don’t understand, but I guess I’ll see you in an hour.”
Josh took a cab to the coffee shop and found a table by the large front window where he could keep an eye out for Mike. It was a busy place in a busy part of town, a place to get lost in a crowd if that’s what you wanted to do.
He ordered a decaffeinated coffee, though by now he had given up on his early night. He thought back to his equally mysterious meeting with Sam in London. Here he was again, a cup of coffee cooling in front of him and a head full of unanswered questions, watching a city pass by oblivious.
This time it was the city he had come to think of as his own, in all its dirt and glory and with all its carefully guarded secrets. Some of the secrets he diligently kept himself, others he would never know.
He thought about the secret Mandy died with and about a connection between her disappearance and Sam’s. Josh had always put it down to yet one more aspect of the curse of the Bartlet Administration but it was a strange coincidence.
He so much wished he could remember the call Mandy made to him before she died, seconds before he was shot. He felt sure some of the answers to her mystery could be found in whatever it was she said to him.
He thought again of his surprise at Sam having Mandy’s file of papers so close at hand in his office, almost as though it was the last thing he looked at before he chose to flee the country without a word. Perhaps Mike had found something in those papers.
He looked at his watch. Mike was late and Josh began to be concerned. It was only half an hour but he was normally totally reliable and clearly regarded their meeting as urgent. He called Mike’s cell phone and then his office. He was met with voicemail on both numbers.
Josh was still waiting when the café closed an hour and a half later at eleven. He went home and got on the phone again trying both the numbers and leaving messages. He dialled FBI headquarters’ switchboard and was transferred to one of Mike’s colleagues. He told him Mike wasn’t in his office and hadn’t been since his shift ended. The agent wouldn’t give him his home number but promised to call and check he was okay and to call Josh back.
Josh did not sleep but sporadically dozed on the couch while staring at his telephone. Mike’s colleague didn’t call him back and Mike didn’t telephone either. He was sure something had happened to his friend and he was sure it was connected to all the other mysteries he had been coming across lately.
He left the apartment at seven and went directly to FBI headquarters. It was too early for normal opening hours and a security guard reluctantly admitted him when he refused to go away. The guard called down an agent from Mike’s department who said he would go and see if Mike was in yet. Josh waited in the reception area for an hour until he had to point out to one of the receptionists, who had just got in, that he was the White House Deputy Chief of Staff. An agent appeared shortly afterwards to speak to him. Not Mike.
He was a young, dark haired man who identified himself as Special Agent Webster.
“I’ve been working on the investigation into Miss Hampton’s murder with Agent Casper. Is there something I can help you with Mr Lyman?”
Josh shook his hand, there was something familiar about him and Josh wondered if they had met before. “Its good to speak to you Agent Webster. I’m a little concerned about Mike, we had arranged to meet yesterday evening and he didn’t show up.”
“Agent Casper was called out of town on another case. An urgent assignment. He must have forgotten your meeting.”
“That’s impossible,” Josh said flatly.
“I apologise for any inconvenience caused, there’s obviously been a misunderstanding.”
Josh blinked. Why was he talking like an automated message?
“Hey look, can you just check he’s all right and get him to call me.”
“He is all right, I assure you, he asked me to apologise for breaking his engagement with you?”
“He did? You just said he must have forgotten about it.”
The agent didn’t miss a beat. “Yes sir, he must have and now he wants to apologise. There really is nothing to concern yourself about.”
Josh looked at him more carefully, there was definitely something about him. “Have we met before, Agent Webster.”
“No sir, not to my recollection,” he replied, again without hesitation.
Josh plunged his hand into his hair, he needed some sleep. “You’ve been working the case with Mike?”
“Yes sir, I have.”
“Mike told me there was a development. He was going to go through it with me at our meeting. Could you tell me what the development is?”
“Of course, sir. Did he give you any idea what the development was?”
“No.”
“Sir, we believe Mandy may have been murdered by your friend, Sam Seaborn.”
~*~
Sam stood, arms folded, in front of the television as the news came to an end. There had been stories about the President in Paris but nothing about Mandy. That meant the press hadn’t figured it out yet. If they had it would be international news.
The International Herald Tribune and the New York Times were open on the floor, dismantled and haphazardly reassembled. The Times had carried a couple of paragraphs which was how he found out they had discovered her body.
He had wondered if it would ever happen, as the time passed it seemed less and less likely. In the beginning he had checked the papers every single day. Now it was more because he couldn’t lose the habit of reading newspapers article by article and because he liked finding the occasional photograph of Josh, CJ or Toby that he bought The Times or The Post whenever he could get hold of them and the Tribune every day.
But this morning on the tube on his way to work, as he leafed through the newspaper, it had been her photo that caught his eye. She was staring straight at him, a characteristically direct gaze, wearing the expression that used to scare the life out of him.
He knew now why Josh left for the States early. Leo would have asked him to get involved with the investigation, probably FBI. Couldn’t Leo see Josh was barely clinging on? Why couldn’t he have sent Toby?
He knew that every day Josh would be getting closer to the truth. If he found out it would be disastrous.
~*~
“You think Sam killed Mandy?” Josh worked to keep his voice careful and neutral.
“Yes sir, we think they had a private reason to dislike each other.”
“And what reason would that be?”
The man seemed to be leering at Josh.
“The investigation is still in early stages but that’s the angle we’ll be looking at.”
“Right, well that’s pretty shocking.” He wanted to punch Webster, wanted to point out Sam had pretty good alibi. He had been ten feet away from the President of the United States when Mandy was killed, diving to duck bullets himself.
For once in his life he decided it might not be wise to speak his mind. “Well you’re right they never got on and it would make sense. What with Sam committing suicide like he did. He must have thought you were on to him.”
A glimmer of hope mixed with mistrust passed across Webster’s face. “Yes,” he said, more uncertainly.
They shook hands again. “You’ll keep me informed of any developments.”
“Of course, sir.”
Josh left the building knowing that when this man thought through what he had said he would realise he had made an error. What he would do with that realisation concerned Josh a great deal. He was also extremely concerned for Mike. He had no idea what was going on but he knew one thing without any doubt, Mike would have had to be in serious trouble not to keep their engagement.
He had meetings in the morning but before he joined them he asked Donna to contact Agent Casper’s senior officer and formally request the return of Mandy’s papers. He felt sure his first stop should be an examination of them. He asked her to do it straight away, guessing that with Mike out of the picture there might be some confusion about who was dealing with what which he could take advantage of.
As an afterthought he asked Donna to find out who was now in charge of the case.
“What about Mike?” she asked.
“He’s been called out of town on a different assignment,” he said neutrally. Donna nodded and picked up her phone.
Josh was on his way to the Roosevelt Room when he began to taste adrenalin rising in the back of his throat and he had his first flashback in more than a year. For a split second he was back at Rosslyn reliving the moment just before he was shot, or perhaps just after, when someone crashed into him knocking him sideways. It lasted only a second and he was able to take a deep breath and put it aside. “Dammit, not now.” He gathered himself and joined the meeting.
Afterwards he asked Donna how she had got on with the request for Mandy’s documents.
“They’re sending the box over this afternoon.”
“They are?” Well that was too good to be true.
“They were fine about it. Someone called…” she checked her notes. “Agent Jean Thompson is in charge of the case now.”
“Jean Thompson? Can you get me Special Agent Webster on the phone. Same number.”
Donna stuck her head round the door a few minutes later. “No such person at the FBI Josh, are you sure you got the name right?”
~*~
It wasn’t until five o’clock that Josh was free of meetings and able to close his office door to go through Mandy’s paperwork, which had duly arrived that afternoon.
He pulled the bundle out of the box and immediately noticed one thing. The old administration papers were still there but the ones specific to Amara were gone. He checked off each item against Donna’s list to confirm it.
If he had any doubt at all it was now gone. Mandy had been killed because of Amara. He didn’t know the connection with Sam, but he was certain there was one. Mike had said as much on the telephone yesterday. Plus the name on Sam’s notepad and the phantom Agent Webster’s extraordinary accusation all confirmed it.
He began a slow, meticulous examination of Mandy’s papers. He went through them page by page; the press releases on education, lists of friendly contacts in Congress, the faxed correspondence between Mandy and someone organising a fundraiser in San Francisco, the annotated drafts of speeches. Josh had nothing else so he read every word of every document. He found nothing.
At about midnight he woke with his head on Mandy’s notebook. He sat up and rubbed his eyes, took a last drink of cold coffee and absently turned the pages of the book looking at words he had already read, deciding to go home.
It was a hardback, lined pad Mandy used to take notes at meetings and record telephone conversations. He saw a note in the corner of one page saying ‘You suck’. He remembered sitting in a meeting with Mandy when she had passed this to him because he had loudly disagreed with her about something. He had written ‘your hair looks really weird today’ and passed it back.
He allowed himself to shed some tears for Mandy and admit he had once loved her. She had been a version of himself so no wonder they had been a national disaster together. But he had loved her. He turned the book upside down and turned to the back page. In Mandy’s tidy hand in the corner of the page was written 92/132 in black biro. The numbers had been circled in blue.
He sat back, his head swam. The five numbers took him straight back to the meeting in London with Sa’ad Adjei. Mr Adjei had asked him what the numbers signified and had thought them an American code for something. Josh stared at them, they were not in a format he recognised. They were not office numbers or staff numbers and the filing system at the White House worked by letters and numbers. He toyed with the idea they could be legislation. The 92 was probably a year but it was not a way he was accustomed to seeing Statutes expressed.
He focussed on the blue circles around the numbers. Because he had been reading things Sam had written for the past hundred years he took a guess they were in Sam’s hand.
The West Wing was deserted when he left his office and crossed to Communications. Sam’s office was in darkness and he switched on the light. Though it had been periodically occupied over the last six months no one was using the room at the moment. The papers and files stored there were all Sam’s and there was no file named Amara. This was the first thing he established. That would have been too easy.
When he had thoroughly searched the shelves and cupboards and found nothing he sat at Sam’s desk. In one of the drawers he found the book Sam used to record the name and contact details of practically everyone in DC. It was an impenetrably personal system and Josh could not see anything relevant. Sam’s leather-bound notebook was there too. It broke Josh’s heart to see it without its owner. Sam always had it with him when he was working.
Unlike Mandy’s book it had a loose leaf pad inside. Sam would tear out the pages as he used them, this made it less useful for Josh’s purposes as the top sheet was blank. Not without some embarrassment he ran a pencil over the imprints in the sheet from previous pages. Apparently this only worked in the movies, as the only words that clarified themselves on the page were ‘tell J, hair looks weird from back’. Josh knew this already.
He closed the notebook and put it away. After a further fruitless search of the desk drawers he opened Sam’s laptop. It had been examined when he disappeared but Josh now had a clearer idea of what to look for.
He checked the recent Word documents where he found drafts of the speeches Sam had been working on at the time of his disappearance. He checked email and found nothing of any interest in any of the folders. He went onto the internet and pulled down Sam’s bookmarked pages. Amongst the expected web sites was selection upon selection about the shooting down of the US army aircraft over Amara. Sam must have spent hours looking at these. Josh selected a few of the sites. They were mostly accounts of what had happened in Amara when the helicopter had been shot down and the steps to the subsequent war. There were quite a few campaigns going on to have sanctions lifted and the US grip on the country relinquished. Noam Chomsky and Michael Moore had a few things to say about it all.
In one of Sam’s drawers there were dozens of floppy discs where he kept much of his work. There was a disc named ‘working’ which Josh pushed into the drive. He pulled up a list of documents, the last one was dated a week before Sam left and was called ‘file request’. He clicked on it and the document that appeared sent his heart into his shoes.
Sam was writing to CIA Headquarters to formally request file number 92/132.
So it was a CIA file. What had they got to do with it all? He added it to his list of scary things he didn’t understand.
Sam was writing as Deputy Director of Communications but that he was typing the letter himself rather than getting one of the assistants on to it made it clear to Josh this was a personal request.
He amended the document to change the date and replaced Sam’s details with his own. He printed the letter on White House paper and faxed it to a White House contact at Langley. The Chief of Staff’s office had a reasonably high security clearance and he had seen CIA files before so it was possible he would be successful. As the page disappeared into the fax machine he remembered he was supposed to be being careful.
~*~
Josh’s sleep was fitful that night and when he did sleep he was woken by nightmares. He hadn’t had these dreams in months but they were familiar ones. The images and distorted emotions of Rosslyn visited him until he was finally awake in a wild panic with the memory of the bullet constricting his breathing.
He got up and went to the couch, trying to calm himself. He had been taught to breathe deeply, to focus his thoughts. None of it worked, the memories just replayed themselves endlessly and randomly in his mind.
Without warning the confusion of images clarified into his second flashback. He had not had this one before. It was an image, brief and unclear, of the moment when he was outside the Newseum walking with the others. His cell phone rang and he stopped to answer it. Up until then he had had no memory of Mandy’s call.
The phone ringing in the apartment startled him out of the vision and his voice cracked as he answered.
“Josh is that you?”
“Sam,” he coughed and found his voice.
“Are you all right? You sound…”
“I’m fine. Are you? Where are you?”
“I heard they found Mandy’s body. I’ve been worried about you. I wanted to tell you to be careful. I wanted to tell you not to trust anyone. Talk to Leo or Toby or CJ but don’t talk to anyone else.”
“Tell me what this is about?”
Sam whispered then. “Amara.”
“Did you ever get the file you requested?”
“Oh God, Josh.”
“It’s all right, tell me.”
“Leave this alone, just don’t touch it,” Sam’s voice was filled with fear. “I shouldn’t say this over the phone but I believe there is a secret being protected over Amara, it got Mandy killed and you almost killed.”
“At Rosslyn you mean?”
“No, look I can’t explain. Just promise me you will leave this to the FBI. Promise me.”
Josh recalled the moment the letter to the CIA passed through the fax machine. “I promise. What’s the secret?”
“I never found out. Damn, my change is running out,” his voice softened. “I love you, Jones.”
“I love you Mr Smith, I wish you were with me now.” But the line had already gone dead.
~*~
The next morning he had one thing to do, it was his last idea. He drove to the Amaran embassy on Massachusetts Avenue. One of the smaller buildings on the embassy strip but a fine one nevertheless.
He knocked hard on the door and rang the bell until an official admitted him to the foyer, elegantly decorated with Islamic art.
“I need to speak to Ahmed Shubber,” he said.
The official looked like he had been woken up. “It is half past six, the embassy is closed.”
Josh looked in surprise at his own watch. He sometimes forgot the rest of the world slept at night and went to work at a decent hour. “I’m sorry. I didn’t…Look, is he here? I need to speak to him urgently.”
The young man began to wear the guarded expression of someone who has realised he is dealing with a lunatic. “The ambassador does not see people without an appointment. What is the nature of your business?”
Josh took his White House pass from the pocket of his Mac. He had been hoping not to identify himself to anyone except the ambassador but he clearly had no choice. He could sense Sam, far away, shaking his head in despair.
The pass had an instantaneous affect on the man. “I apologise, Mr Lyman,” he said. “Come this way, I saw the ambassador’s light on as I passed his office. So I believe he is at his desk already.”
They followed a dark corridor to one of a line of ornate doors, the only one with light shining from underneath. The official knocked. When there was no answer he cast an anxious glance at Josh. “Perhaps he is not there. I will check.”
He knocked again and opened the door a crack to look in. He then let out such an agonised moan that Josh moved him out of the way and pushed the door open.
The sight that greeted him was an appalling one of blood and chaos. A man was slumped over the desk and the back of his grey suit was red with blood. Josh put a fisted hand to his mouth.
Washington’s bitterly cold winter flooded in through an open window. A weak wind rustled drapes and stray paperwork, but these were the only movements. The office had been turned over. Chairs were upturned and papers scattered across the floor and every surface. Books had been pulled off the shelves and pictures thrown on the floor and punched through.
The young man said something which sounded like. “It is the Ambassador.” Josh gripped his arm.
“Go and call an ambulance and the police.”
“He’s dead,” the man whispered.
“Call anyway. Go.” The official ran off.
Josh was alone in the room then. He approached the body carefully and touched it tentatively. “Sir. Mr Shubber,” he said hoping to provoke some movement, there was none. He put a finger to the ambassador’s neck and felt for a pulse. Again he found nothing. But it was the coolness to his touch that finally convinced him the man was dead. Though he couldn’t really be anything else with the hole he had in his back. Josh stared for a moment at the blood on his fingers and stepped back from the body.
The window was directly behind the desk and he moved closer to it instinctively looking for a source of unpolluted air. The window opened to a garden and seemed to be how the killer had gained entrance and, judging by a bloody footprint, how he had escaped.
It was clear the room had been searched. Every shelf was empty, every drawer and cupboard were open. The wreckage was too comprehensive to be random. He wondered if the killer had found what he was looking for. Perhaps Shubber had found out the secret Sam had spoken of and that was why he was dead.
He closed his eyes for a moment. He had already seen enough of the body to know it would feature in his nightmares for years but his eye couldn’t seem to avoid it.
Was there ever a time when he could have dealt efficiently with something like this? When he could have used the minute or so left to him before the room would fill with people to conduct his own methodical search? Perhaps before he himself was shot, perhaps before the nightmares started.
Mandy, Sam, Mike Casper and Ahmed Shubber. He owed it to all of them to move from the spot he was standing in and do something. He couldn’t move, he found his hand gripping the curtain as the room swam in and out of focus before him.
Perhaps it was all a coincidence. Perhaps Mike really was on an urgent assignment out of town and would call Josh in a day or two to explain. Perhaps a jealous husband or a sneak thief had shot Ahmed Shubber in the back. Perhaps there was no connection between what killed Mandy and what scared Sam halfway across the planet. Perhaps the document he now noticed under his foot wasn’t really headed ‘Operation Rough Magic’ and numbered 92/132.77 in some careful administrator’s handwriting.
To his surprise he found he was able to let go of the curtain, move his foot and pick up the piece of paper. He folded it twice and put it in the breast pocket of his Mac. Then he left the office keeping a steadying hand on the wall or convenient piece of furniture, hardly trusting his legs not to give out beneath him.
Outside in the corridor he leaned against the wall, sliding down to sit on the floor. Far away in the distance he heard an explosion. He put his head in his hands. Another hallucination. He closed his eyes and concentrated on the task of not passing out or throwing up.
The area soon began to fill with people. He was aware of feet on carpeted floor and a confusion of voices expressing horror and disbelief in a language he could not comprehend.
He was left alone until the emergency services arrived. The paramedics, finding a corpse and nothing to do hovered around Josh.
“Are you all right, Sir? Have you been injured?”
He looked up at the concerned faces. “No. I just need to…”
Two of them held him on either side and helped him up. He found himself in a chair in the embassy foyer. Cool, efficient hands examined him for injury where blood had found its way from his fingers on to his face. They cleaned the blood away, put a blanket around his shoulders and left him alone.
At some point someone gave him a cup of sweet, spiced tea. It’s taste transporting him to an Egyptian veranda where he and Sam had once shared a stolen hour.
He closed his eyes and listened to the sirens from the police cars gathering outside. Fought off Mandy’s voice in his head. On crackling cell phone, with the sound of her car engine in the background saying, “I think I’m being followed.”
“Sir.” He started as someone called him. A man was standing over him. He identified himself as a Detective from the first district, Homicide department. “Are you Josh Lyman, from the White House?”
“Yes.” What the hell, everyone knew now.
“Is that your car parked outside, a black BMW?”
“Yes, why?”
“It exploded.”
His eyes widened and his voice raised an octave. “What happened?”
“It was before the police arrived. It’s trashed.”
“What...what caused it?”
“We don’t know yet, we’re just sweeping what’s left into a couple of brown paper sacks. Sir, do you know why someone might sabotage your car?”
“Apart from I work in the White House?”
“Good point. Any way of narrowing that down from - almost anyone?”
“I don’t know who blew up my car,” he said truthfully.
The Detective sat down, notebook in hand to ask him when he had arrived at the embassy, what the purpose of the visit was, how he had found the body and so on. Questions he could answer relatively easily without touching on the real mysteries.
“So why turn up without an appointment before office hours?” The detective asked.
He heard himself say, “I lost track of time.”
The Detective regarded him silently for a moment. “You don’t look all that well. We need to take a more detailed statement from you but we can do it later. Would you like a ride somewhere?”
He waited outside among the police cars and ambulances and stared in a dull haze at what used to be his car. Sam’s car. It was cordoned off with yellow tape and guarded by a police officer. It was a black shell now, reeking of smoke and burning metal. It was evidently the engine that had exploded. Its parts, which had scattered over the area, were being collected by law enforcement into plastic evidence bags. Some of them had tweezers. No wonder Sam never let him borrow his car.
A uniformed policeman drove him home and left him outside his apartment. He let himself in, picking up an envelope that had been pushed under his door. He took off his Mac, poured himself a scotch and sat down to drink it. Breakfast.
He telephoned Donna.
“Hi Josh. Where are you? Agent Thompson’s here to interview you.”
“Can you apologise for me. I’m not going to make it in today. Can you clear my day.” He had been pleased at how steady his voice sounded until she replied.
“What’s the matter? You sound weird.”
“Flu or something, I guess.”
“You’ve looked like crap ever since we got back from London.”
“Yeah, thanks Donna.”
“You want me to bring you anything, I can come by later.”
“No thanks, I’m just going to sleep.”
“Well, all right,” she said. “But call me if you need anything.”
He rang off and went to the sofa to lie down, covering his face with crossed arms. He needed to calm down. He couldn’t do anything until he was calm and focussed. Eventually he drifted into a half-sleeping state and in his dreams Mandy repeated and repeated. “I think I’m being followed.”
He didn’t feel much better when he woke an hour later but was at least beginning to think coherently. He still had little idea of what was going on but decided to spend the day writing a statement of what he did know. In it he would include everything that had happened in the last few days, throwing in the contents of his flashbacks for good measure. He would give the statement to Leo, send it to the police, to the FBI, the Amarans, his psychiatrists past and present and anyone else he could think of. He wasn’t going to stand near a window until the whole story was in a newspaper.
He took a shower and as he dressed his cell phone rang.
“Josh?” It was the most reassuring voice he knew.
“Leo, its really good to hear your voice.”
“Is it?” Leo said suspiciously. “Josh, my phone just rang.”
“Oh.”
“It was the Secret Service.”
“Ah.”
“The DC police informed them that your car exploded outside the Amaran embassy while the Amaran ambassador was inside shot dead. Please tell me that’s not true.”
“Uh…its true. But I’m reasonably certain none of it was my fault.”
“And why the hell should I believe that? You weren’t near the car when it exploded?”
“No, I was with the ambassador.”
“The…”
“Dead one, yes.” There was a silence. “Leo? Are you still there?”
“Yes. I’m trying to remember if anything I asked you to do about Amara could be interpreted as an instruction to assassinate their Ambassador. Josh, do you want to tell me what’s going on?”
“I do. I really do. When are you coming back?”
“We’re getting on Air Force One in a second.” Leo’s tone implied this was a fact he would have expected his Deputy to have known without asking. “Are you in any way okay?”
“I’m freaked out. In a really serious way. I mean I’m really…you’ve got no idea the…”
“All right, calm down. Are you at home?”
“Yes, sorry,” he sat down on the couch, rubbing his eyes. “Yes, I’m home.”
“I’m going to call Mike Casper, get him to talk to you.”
“Leo, there’s a pretty good chance that Mike’s in the Potomac with bricks in his pockets.”
“Right. Now I’m freaked out. Are you safe? I’m going to put a security detail on your apartment.”
Josh was about to protest but then he said. “Thanks.”
“You’re okay alone, you want Donna to come round?”
“No. I’m okay here. I’m working on something.”
“What something? Does it involve semtex?”
“Leo!”
“Okay. Sit tight for now, don’t go anywhere.”
As he rang off Josh noticed the envelope he had found pushed under his door. He reached for it and examined the front. It had not come through the post but had been delivered by hand.
He tore it open and found a photograph that almost sent him back into shock. It was of Sam and Josh together outside the Old Curiosity Shop in London. Josh was hugging Sam and judging by the way they were standing it was taken during their second meeting late on Monday evening.
It meant Sam’s whereabouts were no longer a secret. If they ever had been.
He knew this was a message to him to keep quiet, to leave things alone or Sam would be harmed. They could blow up as many of his cars as they liked he would never do anything to risk Sam, and they seemed to know this.
He now understood what had caused Sam to leave so suddenly six months ago. He had received an implied threat to Josh. He hadn’t gone for his own safety he had gone for Josh’s.
Josh went into the bedroom, finished dressing, packed a bag, found his passport and left the apartment. He took a cab to the airport and bought a ticket for the next flight to London. He forgot his fear and sickness, he had to find Sam and warn him.
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