She noted that last word. "Irreversibly." It was oddly placed, oddly used. Was there hidden meaning there? There was really no way for her to tell.

She wrote the phone number down on another slip of paper, rushed into the bathroom, crumpled up the letter, and flushed it down the toilet. For one paralyzing moment she envisioned federal law enforcement agents hiding somewhere in the White House intercepting her toilet water and reconstructing the letter. But that was impossible. That was the stuff of Orwell's 1984. Yet in some ways, by living at the White House, she had already seen Orwell's masterpiece of "fascism perfected" in a way most Americans could never imagine.

She flushed the toilet once more for good measure and then trudged slowly out of the bathroom. She made a call and canceled all of her appointments for the day. In over three years at the White House serving as First Lady she had never missed an event, no matter how small or relatively trivial. Ever since Willa had disappeared she had struck them off with regularity. And she had no regrets. They had had her pound of flesh. She had served her country well. The fact that her husband was running hard to earn four more years of it now made her sick to her stomach.

Suddenly chilled, she ran a hot bath and took off her clothes. Before climbing into the tub she stared at her naked self in the full-length mirror. She had lost weight. It was something she had been meaning to do, but not in this manner. She didn't look better with the pounds gone. She looked weaker, older even. It was not a pretty sight, she concluded. The skin was slack, bones stuck out where a woman wouldn't want them to. She turned the light off and slid into the hot water.

As she lay there she had to figure out a way to do something that no other American, perhaps other than her husband, would ever have to worry about. Jane Cox had to come up with a way to make a simple phone call that was entirely private, with no one else around. She couldn't do it from here. If the FBI had a warrant to search her bag, they probably had a warrant to monitor calls here, at least the ones that she made. And for all Jane knew, every phone call coming in or out of this building was monitored by someone, perhaps the NSA. They seemed to listen in on anyone they wanted to.

And if Jane couldn't make the call from here, there was really nowhere else where she was not with someone. On a plane or chopper, in a limo, eating meals, working at the office, attending a tea, cutting a ribbon for a new children's hospital, christening a ship, visiting wounded soldiers at Walter Reed.

It was the price to be paid for winning the White House. She would think of a way, however. It would come to her. She had fooled the FBI with the letter. She'd used gloves, so there would be no prints. She'd used vague language saying that the sum of ten million dollars would be required and that the kidnappers would contact her by letter again. It had bought her some time at least, but not that much actually. The time to call the provided number was for tomorrow evening. No, not much time at all.

She closed her eyes. The word "irreversibly" kept coming back to her. And then her eyes opened as she recalled the words immediately preceding that inexplicable one.

She mouthed them while lying in the hot water in the darkness. "Your lives will be irreversibly destroyed."

Not just my life, but your lives.

She knew, unfortunately, just what those words referred to.

CHAPTER 71

JANE HAD FIGURED IT OUT. She was on her way to Georgetown, to eat at her favorite French restaurant just off M Street on Wisconsin. She was going with her brother, Tuck, and two other friends. And the usual Secret Service detail. The advance team had already gone over every inch of the restaurant. Then an overlap squad had been deployed to babysit the space until the First Lady and her guests arrived to make sure no terrorist, nutcase, or local bomber could take up residence in the interim and wait for his target to arrive.

The plan to eat here had been hastily arranged, because the First Lady had decided to go at the last minute. Because of that the Secret Service had had to really scramble to do their job, but they were used to it. Particularly lately, with Jane Cox, who had been all over the map schedule-wise since her niece had been taken.

The meal was served, the wine was drunk, and every so often Jane would snatch a look at her watch. Tuck was oblivious to this. He was too focused on his own problems to notice much else. Jane had chosen the other two guests solely based on their inability to observe anything that was outside the realm of power politics. After the perfunctory discussion regarding what had happened to Tuck's family, they chatted on aimlessly about this senator and that congresswoman, about the state of the election, and the latest polls. Jane just nodded through it all and gave them enough feedback to encourage them to keep going.

And she kept checking her watch.

She had not selected this establishment solely on its excellent menu and wine list. There was another reason.

At five minutes to eleven she signaled her detail chief over at a corner table. He spoke into his wrist radio. A female agent raced to the ladies' room. She checked to make sure it was clear, gave the all-okay signal, then stood in front of the door barring entry by other female patrons no matter how much in distress their bladders or bowels might be.

The First Lady entered the ladies' room at two minutes to eleven and went directly to the back and stared at it.

This was why she had come here. It was the only restaurant that she knew of that still had a working pay phone in the ladies' room.

She had a prepaid phone card. She wanted no credit card record of this call. She dialed the number from memory.

It rang once. Twice. Then someone answered. She braced herself.

"Hello?" the man's voice said.

"It's Jane Cox," she said as clearly as she could. Sam Quarry sat in his library at Atlee, a fire roaring in the fireplace. He would get the damn poker good and hot tonight. He was using a cloned cell phone that Daryl had bought off a guy he knew that specialized in that line of business, meaning illegal and untraceable.

He swallowed a sip of his favorite local moonshine. In front of him were photos of Tippi and his wife. The scene was all set. It had been years in the planning. Now it was finally here.

"I know it is," he said slowly. "You're right on time."

"What do you want?" she said sharply. "If you've hurt Willa-"

He cut her off. "I know you probably got a zillion people all around wondering where you got to, so let me do the talking and we can get this done."

"All right."

"Your niece is fine. I've got her mother with me too."

Jane said sharply, "Her mother is dead. You killed her."

"I meant her real mother. You knew her as Diane Wright. She goes by Diane Wohl now. She got married, moved, and started over. Didn't know if you knew that. Or if you even cared."

Jane stood there in the ladies' room holding the phone feeling like she had been shot directly in the head. She put her hand out against the tiled wall to steady herself.

"I don't know what-"

He cut her off again. "I'm going to tell you what you're going to have to do if you want to see Willa again in any way other than a corpse."

"How do I even know you have her?"

"Just listen up then."

Quarry pulled out a recorder and turned it on, holding it next to the phone. When he'd visited both Willa and Diane he'd had the recorder with him and had secretly taped them.

"Willa first," he said. Willa's voice came across clearly as she was talking to Quarry about why he had kidnapped her.