Dangerous Invitation

10:42 AM, Thursday.

"No."

Julian said it before he had finished reading. He stood in the middle of the great room with the cream-colored card between two fingers, and the single word came out as flat and final as a gavel.

"I haven't said anything yet," Camille said.

"You don't need to. The answer is no."

"Julian—"

"There is no version of this where you walk into the Residence of the President of the United States, alone, at eight o'clock at night, to have supper with Grant Wallace." He dropped the card on the glass table as though it had burned him. "I won't discuss it."

"We're discussing it."

"We are not."

"Sit down."

"I will not sit down."

"Then stand there and listen." She crossed her arms. "Because I'm going to say my piece, and you're going to hear it, and then you can say no again if you still want to."

He stared at her. His jaw was rigid. A vein stood out at his temple.

But he did not leave the room.

…

She began the way she'd learned in the training room: by naming the facts.

"One. The invitation is already here. He has already decided he wants me in a room alone. Whether I accept or decline, that desire doesn't go away."

"Which is why you decline."

"Two. If I decline, he knows you control me." She lifted a second finger. "You think he doesn't notice? A woman receives a President's invitation, and her 'friend' answers for her? He'll know exactly what we are. He'll know I'm not a free agent. And he'll ask himself why a banker's mistress is so carefully guarded."

Julian said nothing.

"Three. If I decline, he finds another way. Maybe a phone call. Maybe a third party. Maybe something worse than a supper. A man who sends a handwritten invitation isn't a man who takes no for an answer. He sends a second one, and it won't be so polite."

"You don't know that."

"Neither do you. That's my point." She dropped her hand. "But if I go, I choose the time. I choose the room. I choose what he sees."

"You choose nothing. He chooses everything."

"Then I choose how I look at it." She came a step closer. "Julian. Think. For three months you've tried to get a camera into that man's inner circle. For three months, every door you've tried has been locked. And now he opens one himself. He's inviting me in. The most dangerous place in America, and I get a seat at the table."

"It's a trap."

"Of course it's a trap." She smiled, tired and crooked. "That's what makes it interesting."

"This isn't a joke."

"I'm not joking." Her voice dropped. "I'm terrified. You think I'm not? I felt his hand on mine at the club. I've been thinking of nothing else for six days. I am scared out of my mind."

"Then why—"

"Because I'm also the only one who can do it."

The words fell into the room.

Julian looked at her. He looked for a very long time.

"Do you know what he does to women," he said at last, quietly, "who say yes?"

"Marcus told you. Eleven. Two dead."

"And you want to be twelve."

"I want to be the one who walks out." She put her hand on his chest, flat, over the heart. "You taught me that. In a dim room above a travel agency, with a tray of objects and a ruler. You told me: Don't defend the lie. Correct the lie. Contradiction is expected. Panic is not."

"I taught you that to survive a bookkeeper."

"It works on presidents."

"It does not."

"Then teach me what does."

…

By noon, he had stopped saying no.

He had not said yes. He had retreated, with great difficulty, into the cold professional silence that she had learned meant the sums were being done. He stood at the window with his back to her, one hand pressed flat against the glass, staring down at Greenwich Street, where a delivery truck was trying to turn around.

"If I allow this," he said, to the window, "it's under my terms."

"Your terms."

"All of them. Without negotiation."

"That depends on the terms."

He turned. She had never seen him look so tired.

"I'm going to call Marcus," Julian said. "He has a technician. A woman named Okonkwo, who built the original device in your drill. I'll have her here by three. We'll wire you. Not the phone. The kit, the polish, the ring, whatever she can make that passes a Secret Service sweep. You'll carry two layers of recorders and one transmitter, so that if the first fails, the second doesn't."

"Okay."

"You won't eat or drink anything you did not see poured. Not water. Not coffee. Not a mint."

"Okay."

"You will not be alone with him in a room with a door that closes, at any time, for any reason. If he suggests it, you'll make an excuse. The bathroom. A call. A headache. Something. Anything."

"Okay."

"There'll be a team in a van, three blocks away, outside the perimeter. Marcus's people. Retired, not official. Four men. They'll hear everything you transmit. If you say the word, they come."

"What word?"

He thought. "Chipping."

"Chipping?"

"As in: the polish is chipping. You say it in any sentence, and we move. No questions. No delay." His voice was tight. "I'll be in the van. I'm not asking permission."

"I wouldn't dream of it."

"I mean it, Camille."

"I know you do."

"I will break down the door of the White House."

"I believe you."

"I'm not joking."

"Julian." She took a step forward, and he stopped speaking. "I know."

His breath came out unsteadily. For a moment she thought he might break; the stone mask was slipping, and underneath was something raw and young. But he drew himself up, gathered the pieces, and said, quietly:

"There is one more condition."

"Name it."

"If something is wrong," Julian said, "and you can't tell me why, you stop. You don't try to finish. You don't try to find one more thing. You walk out."

"That's what chipping is for."

"No." He crossed the room to her in three strides and took her face in both hands. His palms were dry and warm and unsteady. "Listen to me. I am telling you something I've never said to an agent, to an informant, to anyone. I don't care about the case. Do you hear me? If the choice is between a recording and your life, I choose your life, every time, without thinking. So you choose it. Promise me."

She swallowed.

"I promise," she said.

"Say the words."

"If something's wrong, I walk out."

"Alive."

"Alive."

His forehead came to rest against hers. His eyes were closed. His breath fell warm against her mouth, and she felt it all through her, the fear, the stubborn love she would not yet name, the terrible, blazing tenderness of a man who had spent his whole life not wanting anything and had at last been ambushed by it.

"Thank you," Julian whispered.

"For what?"

"For being braver than I am."

"I'm not brave." She laughed shakily. "I'm just too stubborn to quit."

"That's what I said."

…

3:10 PM.

Dara Okonkwo turned out to be a tiny, fierce woman in her fifties, with close-cropped gray hair and half-moon glasses and a toolbox the size of a suitcase. She had been, she said, twenty-six years at the NSA before deciding she preferred to be paid properly. She laid out her tools on the ash table in the studio and looked at Camille's nail kit with open professional delight.

"Oh, this is lovely," she said. "Look at this. A lifetime of fingerprints. I could hide the Pentagon in here."

"Please don't."

"I'll hide a quarter-inch of it." She picked up the Japanese drill, the same one, turned it over, and made an amused noise. "Hmm. You did well to keep this. It's a tough little thing. Julian told me you'd taken it through a Sokol inspection."

"I talked my way through."

"I know. I heard the tape." The small woman peered at her over the glasses. "You have a voice, my dear. Not many people can lie in a calm key. You can do it in a perfect B-flat."

Camille laughed, startled.

"Now. Here's what we do."

She worked for two hours. A recorder the size of a rice grain, in the base of the UV lamp. A second in the lining of Camille's evening bag. A third, a micro-transmitter, cunningly molded into one of the faux-pearl studs on a pair of earrings Julian had chosen, small, gold, plain. Okonkwo explained the range, the battery life, the encryption. She showed Camille how to turn the earrings on and off by pressing her left earlobe twice.

"If they sweep you with a wand, hold your breath," she said cheerfully. "If they use a hand scanner, it'll read as a ring tone. If they use a full-body one, go home."

"What if they find them?"

"Then you're a nervous girl who likes jewelry."

"And if they really find them?"

The old woman looked at her for a moment. The humor went out of her face and left something steadier and older.

"Then you say your word," she said. "And you trust that boy to come get you. I've known him for eleven years. He's never once missed a rescue."

…

Friday, 9:00 PM. The apartment.

The last thing Julian did, before she went to bed, was kneel on the oak floor of the studio and check her boots.

She stood in the doorway in her nightgown, watching him. He had said he wanted to inspect the soles, the heels, the lining, anything that could conceal or be concealed. He was doing it with great care, the same care he gave to forensic photographs, one boot in each hand, turning them under the lamp. His gloves were off. His dark head was bent.

She thought: A man of thirty-four, who owns a tower, is on his knees on a floor, examining a pair of boots.

It undid something in her.

"Julian."

"Mm."

"Come to bed."

"One minute."

"You've done it three times."

"I want to be sure."

"Julian."

He set down the boots, slowly. He stayed on his knees. He looked up at her, and in the lamplight his face was open in a way she had seen only in the dark, at three in the morning.

"I am afraid," he said, "that I'm sending you to your death."

"You aren't sending me."

"I'm permitting it."

"You're not permitting it. I decided."

"I know." He rested his forehead against her stomach, and his arms came around her hips, tight, and she put her hand in his hair. "I know you did. That's the worst part."

She said nothing. She stroked his hair, and felt him shake.

"Tomorrow," he said, muffled, against the silk, "if anything seems wrong. If you hesitate for one second. If you so much as feel a chill. Forget the plan. Forget Wallace, forget the case, forget all of it. Just get out, Camille. Please. Get out safe."

"I will."

"Swear."

"I swear."

"Not for me."

"For who, then?"

He lifted his head. His steel-gray eyes were wet, and he did not seem to be aware of it.

"For you," said Julian Kastellan. "Because you are the only thing I have ever had that was worth losing everything to keep."

Neither of them slept.