“Wendy,” the girl said.

“Wendy. That’s a nice name.” Lorene spoke in a feverish hush. “Just like the girl in Peter Pan, the one that always took care of everybody. Do you take care of your dollies?”

The girl nodded. “Yes.”

“And does your mommy take care of you like you take care of your dollies?”

“Yes.”

Lorene took the girl’s hand and said, “Come with me for a minute, honey. You and me are going to have a little girl talk with your mommy, okay? Away from all these scary men with guns. Is 221 >

The girl looked at her father. Her father looked at Tillman. Tillman nodded. Klotz nodded at the girl, who smiled, reassured by that simple nod that everything was okay.

Tillman couldn’t remember ever having been that trusting. Maybe he had been. But he sure didn’t remember it.

“Will you help me walk, honey?” Lorene said. “I don’t walk so good right now.”

“Yes.”

“Thank you, honey.”

Lorene and the little girl walked slowly, painfully, to the stairs, the little girl’s tiny arm wrapped around Lorene’s waist, then ascended toward the upstairs. After a moment they were gone.

Please, Tillman prayed, don’t let anything happen to that little girl.

It took a while before the woman on the other end of the phone line began speaking again. “Hello, Agent Klotz,” the woman said. Wilmot had never heard her voice before, but he knew it had to be Verhoven’s wife.

Shanelle Klotz was looking at the phone in Collier’s hand like you might look at a snake. “Hello,” she said softly.

“My name is Lorene Verhoven,” the woman said. “At least that’s what I call myself now. The name my mother gave me was Alice. This little girl Wendy here—I can see in her trusting beautiful little face, that she believes in her mother.”

Shanelle Klotz’s hands were trembling, balled into fists. But she didn’t speak.

“Me, I changed the name my mother gave me a long time ago. See, I never did trust my mother. My mother was a whore. I don’t hold that against her, I’m just reporting that as a fact. She had a hard life. Men came to her and said terrible things to her, did terrible things to her . . . and she just took it. Never said boo to those men. But when the men were gone, when the doors were closed, when the locks were turned, when everything was safe . . . all that pain and anger would come out. The things she did to me when the doors were closed and we were alone—well, I could tell you about them . . . but I wouldn’t want your little girl to have to hear those things.”

Wilmot heard Lorene Verhoven draw a long, deep breath.

“Being a mother is a sacred trust,” Lorene said. “I have frankly never trusted myself to take on that responsibility. I know the things I’m capable of. I do. Things with knives, things with sticks, things with cigarettes and hammers and pins and broken glasses. You’d be amazed the pain you can cause with things you can find in any old bedroom.”

Lorene sighed.

“Oh, Wendy, you sweet little girl. Look at your pretty hair! I love your hair. It’s so soft and wavy.”

“Lady, why are you crying?” said a tiny little girlish voice.

“It’s okay, sweetie,” Lorene Verhoven said. “Don’t you worry about me. I’m gonna be fine.”

A choking animal noise escaped briefly fro th o tm Shanelle Klotz’s throat. “Don’t!” she rasped. “Don’t you—”

“Here’s the thing,” Lorene Verhoven said, her voice suddenly cracking like a whip. “I’ve told you my name. You understand what that means, Agent Klotz? I have made peace with my fate. My husband is a visionary, and he has brought me to this place as part of a great undertaking. On this day I have a chance to do something historic, something bigger than I could ever accomplish on my own. It’s a culmination. It’s a punctuation on the sentence of my insignificant life. So I don’t care if your daughter can pick me out of a lineup. I don’t care if she knows my name. Her silence is unnecessary. We’re way past that. Nothing would please me more, when this is over, than if this sweet child were to walk out of this house as clean and pure and unspoiled and lively as she was when she walked in yesterday. But we all have our parts to play. Hers is not yet written. It could be very painful, very cruel, and very short. My fate is sealed. But her fate? Her fate is in your hands.”

“You bitch,” Shanelle Klotz hissed. “Don’t you dare hurt my child.”

Lorene said nothing, allowing the excruciating silence to speak for her.

Then there was a sharp, childish wail from the phone. “Ow!” the girl said. “You’re hurting my arm!”

“No, sweetheart,” Lorene said softly. “I haven’t even begun to hurt you.”

And in the blink of an eye, the fight went out of Special Agent Shanelle Klotz’s face and her entire body sagged.

“Okay,” Shanelle Klotz whispered. “Whatever you want. Just don’t hurt my girls.”

Tillman heard the cry of the little girl and raced toward the stairs. But by the time he’d reached the bottom of the stairs, Lorene and the little girl were walking back down the stairs, hand in hand. Lorene’s eyeliner was dripping down the sides of her face.

“I’m sorry,” Lorene whispered to the little girl. “I didn’t mean to grab your arm so hard. I made a mistake.”

“It’s okay,” Wendy said, wiping at the tears on Lorene’s face. “I know you didn’t mean to.”

Lorene kissed the girl on the head. “You’re so sweet.”

Tillman lowered his shotgun and took a couple of steps backward.

When she got to the bottom of the stairs, Lorene held up the phone and smiled an odd empty smile.

“It’s done,” she said.

47

WASHINGTON, DC

The United States Secret Service is an organization in which paranoia is considered a virtue. The Secret Service has considered the possibility that assassins attending the State of the Union address might, among other things: wear clothes woven from explosive fabric; have plastic or ceramic guns concealed in their rectums; caidttttttttttairsrry knives made entirely of glass or obsidian; and carry exploding pacemakers inside their chests, which would shower the room with Strontium 90, Cesium 137, Cobalt 60, or perhaps even Plutonium 239. If you have a pacemaker and plan to attend the next State of the Union address, expect to provide the Secret Service with the name of your doctor as well as the manufacturer, the model, and the serial number of your pacemaker at least two weeks prior to the event. They are that careful.

So it has not escaped the notice of the Secret Service that the heating system of the Capitol would be a fine device for pumping irritants, poison gas, or radioactive material into a room containing roughly six hundred of the most important people in America.

For each potential threat that might menace any major event, the Secret Service develops a written protocol. There is, for instance, a thirteen-page document filed away in the Secret Service headquarters that details the steps for foiling the deployment of an exploding radioactive pacemaker. The Secret Service has developed hundreds of protocols. To prevent airborne attacks through the HVAC system, there is a document that lists thirty-one so-called “Action Events,” including specific team member assignments, seventeen on the “Prevent List” and fourteen on the “React List.” Action Event number eleven on the “Prevent List” requires that before anyone enters the room with access to the gas furnace and blowers, authorization from the supervising agent of the protection detail be given. Furthermore, two armed guards are to accompany any technicians entering the HVAC Access Room. If any compressed gases are to be connected to the system, those gases are to undergo an additional and final inspection by a designated specialist and supervised by the senior facility specialist—who, in this instance, was Special Agent Shanelle Klotz.

“Before we go to into the Access Room,” Wilmot said to Shanelle Klotz, “let’s review our protocol. Here’s how this is going to work . . .”