The Buck Stops Here (46 page)

This morning, learning about all that had happened here, James Sparks had wrangled another plea bargain that involved giving up the proof he held on Armand. Much to everyone’s surprise, the audiotape was in a waterproof lockbox at the bottom of Armand’s alligator pit! Years before, during the FBI investigation, Sparks had needed a secure hiding place where he knew no human would ever find it, and though his original intention was to bury it somewhere out in the swamps, he got a last-minute inspiration to toss it into the pit instead. All this time Armand had been blackmailed by Sparks’ proof, never knowing that that proof was right there under his nose, on his own property.

Tom and I were each fully debriefed on our own, and when my session was over I was led into a room where the clothes I had requested from the hotel were waiting for me. I got dressed and returned to the hallway, where I was reunited with Tom. He looked much better, and he said that the NSA had retrieved both of our cars and they were parked outside. An agent asked us to wait in a pair of chairs. Exhausted, we simply sat there, side by side, with our eyes closed.

Soon, though, the mood in the building seemed to change. People were walking more quickly, whispering among themselves. A sort of hushed excitement radiated through the air.

“I wonder what’s going on?” I whispered.

“I think there’s one more person they want us to see,” Tom replied cryptically.

I was about to respond when Agent Devlin showed up to escort us downstairs and out to a waiting car. Tom seemed quietly confident, so I followed his lead and got inside without asking for an explanation.

We drove onto Interstate 10, toward Slidell, but before crossing the lake we got off again and turned at a sign that indicated the New Orleans Lakefront Airport. As we drew closer, we came upon a roadblock, where Devlin pulled the vehicle to a stop, showed some ID, and was allowed to pass through. There were no other cars on the street as we made our way into the airport, which also seemed deserted.

“It’s so small,” I whispered to Tom.

“This is just the Lakefront Airport,” he replied. “New Orleans International is on the other side of town.”

“Oh.”

We drove right onto the tarmac and came around a building, and there in front of us was a sight I had never expected to see in my lifetime, at least not up close: Air Force One.

The airplane of the president.

I looked at Tom, who had a slight smile on his lips.

“What’s going on?” I asked as we pulled to a stop.

“From what I understand,” he replied, “the president decided to make a little stopover here on his way to Mexico for a summit meeting.”

The doors were opened for us and we climbed out. Devlin gestured toward the airplane stairs, and so up we went. My heart pounded as I mounted them, and at the top of the steps another man greeted us and then led us to a room down a narrow hallway. We stepped inside and the door shut behind us. There, sitting at the end of a long table, was the president of the United States of America.

“Tom!” he said, rising to greet us. He stepped forward to shake Tom’s hand and then turned his attention to me. “And you must be Callie Webber,” he added, shaking my hand as well, and then he laughed. “From the look on your face, I guess you could say you’re a tad surprised to find yourself here.”

I cleared my throat and swallowed hard.

“Yes, sir,” I finally uttered.

“How are you?” Tom asked stiffly.

“Can’t complain,” the president replied. “Why don’t we have a seat?”

He gestured toward a grouping of chairs at the end of the room. Feeling as though I were in some surreal otherworld, I walked toward the chairs and sat, Tom on my left, the president at an angle to my right.

“We don’t have a lot of time,” the president said, “so I guess I’d better cut to the chase. I have something to tell you, Tom, and I decided to bring Callie—may I call you Callie?”

“Of course.”

“I decided to bring Callie in on this as well. You may be bound by a confidentiality agreement, Tom, but I’m free to speak about this matter as I deem necessary.”

I swallowed hard, wondering if I still looked as dumbfounded as I felt.

“You might like to know, Callie, that a few weeks ago, young Tom here came to me and asked for special permission to amend his confidentiality agreement with the NSA. Apparently, he wanted you to know all the facts surrounding that terrible day your husband was killed.”

I nodded. Tom had told me he had “pulled every string” that he could and “exhausted every option” in his attempt to get around that agreement. Now I understood that he hadn’t been exaggerating. In his pursuit for permission, he had appealed to the highest office in the nation.

“At the time,” the president continued, “I was not able to grant that request. From what I understand, when he told you that his request had been denied, you simply conducted an investigation on your own and uncovered most of those facts anyway.”

“That’s true.”

“Quite impressive, especially since you also helped put a few more criminals in jail and bring closure to a long-outstanding FBI investigation. Good job.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“We have several agencies that could use your type of skills, by the way,” he added. “CIA, FBI, just name it. If you ever want to do some consulting…”

I glanced at Tom, who was grinning at me proudly.

“Thank you, sir,” I said, turning back to the president. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

“Well, then, let’s move on. Tom, there is one bit of information that even you never had, and I think the time has come to fill you in on it. This is FYEO and will never leave this room. Do you agree?”

“FYEO?” I asked.

“For Your Ears Only,” Tom told me. “Yes, I agree.”

The president turned his gaze to me.

“I agree also, sir. My lips are sealed.”

“Good,” the president said, settling back in his chair. “Now, Tom, I understand that you feel fully responsible for the death of Callie’s husband, but I want you to know that that isn’t the case. The fault does not lie with you.”

Tom shifted in his seat.

“I’m afraid I don’t understand,” Tom said.

“Son, when you were trying to crack that code four years ago, you said that you needed James Sparks’ help in order to do it. Through a lot of maneuvering, you managed to get him released into your custody at that house. He subsequently made a run for it and ended up killing an innocent man. The truth is, there was more going on there than even you knew about. Now that his accomplice has been caught, you can know the whole truth.”

“Sir?”

“All along, the FBI was aware that Sparks had an accomplice when he sold your code to the terrorists—they just didn’t know who the accomplice was. When arrangements were made for Sparks to go to that house, the FBI had great hopes that Sparks might seize the opportunity to contact that accomplice. We weren’t sure how or when he would make that attempt, but you were all under full surveillance. Agents were stationed at several nearby houses as well as all along that river. We told you that security was light because Sparks was not assumed to be a flight risk. In truth, we knew he would try to slip away for that call. We wanted him to.”

I looked at Tom, whose face was pale.

“Think about it,” the president continued. “One guard per shift—and one of them prone to falling asleep? The keys to the cars and the boat, right there on the kitchen counter, accessible? We even had the guards talk about ‘the nearest pay phone’ being at the Docksider Grill. That phone was tapped and ready. The one thing that none of us expected was that Sparks would accidentally kill a man on his way there.”

Tom stiffened next to me, and I could only imagine the range of emotions that was coursing through his veins. Shock. Confusion. Anger. I knew, as I had recently gone through all of them myself. I wanted to reach out and take his hand, but I wasn’t sure if that would be appropriate in the presence of the president.

“Callie,” the president said, turning to me. “You cannot know how sorry I am about the way things turned out, but you have to know that
none
of it was Tom’s fault.”

This time, I did reach out and take Tom’s hand, squeezing it.

“I forgave him anyway,” I said. “But thank you for telling us, sir. I’m sure that is a huge burden off Tom’s shoulders.”

The president leaned back in his chair, crossing one leg over the other.

“You know,” he said to both of us, “Harry Truman used to keep a little sign on his desk. It said ‘The Buck Stops Here.’ This is why I brought the two of you here today. The responsibility of Bryan Webber’s death doesn’t lie on your shoulders, Tom. As this nation’s leader—and the one who ultimately approved the FBI’s plan—it lies squarely on mine. Tom, Callie, truly, with regard to Bryan Webber’s death, the buck stops
here
.”

Tom remained quiet as we wrapped up our meeting. When the president stood and thanked us for coming, I steeled my nerve and seized the opportunity to ask the one question I knew would hover in the back of my mind for the rest of my life.
File it under nothing ventured, nothing gained
, I thought, and then I spoke.

“Mr. President,” I said, “before we go, I have one more question, one more mystery about this whole thing that I have not been able to solve—and I doubt I ever will, unless I hear it straight from your lips.”

The president nodded, looking amused.

“Well, go ahead,” he said. “Ask me.”

“My husband’s death was a senseless accident. But it would help me enormously to understand the larger scope behind the whole sequence of events that caused it. Sir, what was the national crisis that brought Tom and Sparks to that house in the first place? Why did they so desperately need to crack that code?”

The president shook his head.

“I’m sorry, I—”

“Don’t you think you owe her that?” Tom said suddenly. Then he added, more respectfully, “Don’t you think you owe it to me to tell her?”

The man looked at Tom, seemed to consider our request, and then finally exhaled.

“Sit back down,” he said, and so we did. “Now this is
really
FYEO.”

“Yes, sir,” I whispered, heart pounding.

“Callie, about four and a half years ago,” he said, “our intelligence forces uncovered some disturbing information. A certain T-Seven country had begun vaccinating their soldiers for smallpox. You can imagine the implications.”

“Sir?”

“Smallpox has been eradicated off the face of the earth,” he said. “In fact, the virus is safely contained under maximum security in only two places: We have it at the CDC in Atlanta, and the Russians have it at their similar facility over there. But somehow, based on the information we were being given, this other country had gotten hold of it too. The fact that they were inoculating their soldiers made us very nervous indeed.”

“I see.”

“As it turned out, much of their communications were encrypted with the program designed by Tom and his colleagues. There came a point where we knew we had to break that encryption if we were to learn the nature of their plans. Tom was brought in, and when he couldn’t break the code alone, James Sparks was rounded up as well. Eventually, they did break that code and we were able to stop the unimaginable from happening.”

I sat back in my chair, stunned. Though I knew Tom’s work with the NSA was important, I had never understood the situation to be of quite this magnitude.

“You know,” the president said, “we don’t even give smallpox vaccinations in this country anymore. If this enemy of our nation had managed to introduce the virus into the general population, the results would’ve been devastating. From what our scientists tell me, one man with this virus can infect another thirty people before he even knows he has it. And it would increase exponentially from there. Just catastrophic.”

“Wow.”

“In a way, Callie,” the president continued, “your husband was an unfortunate casualty in our fight against terrorism. Tom’s efforts helped save the world, even though no one outside of those directly involved—and now you, of course—can ever know.”

I looked at Tom, who smiled at me humbly before dropping his gaze. He was already my hero.

Now I knew he was my country’s unsung hero as well.

Fifty-Four

After a final thanks and farewell to the president, Tom and I were delivered back to the NSA office and released. Our cars were there, and so we dropped mine at the hotel, got into Tom’s car, and drove to his sister’s house on the North Shore. He had called ahead, knowing that the story of Armand’s arrest was all over the news and that they would be wanting a full explanation. On the way there, we constructed our story, a mix of truths, half-truths, and blatant omissions. Tom’s family knew nothing of his real work, of the silent service he provided to his country. I understood now that with the NSA, you did what you had to do but kept it to yourself, all for the greater good.

I asked Tom about Beth’s stock holdings, about how a woman with only a part-time job could be worth so much money. He explained that some of her early computer work, right out of college, had been for a few high tech start-up companies that paid heavily in options to make up for meager salaries. Fortunately for Beth, she had sensed the unstable nature of the dot com market and had cashed in before the crash, converting her holdings to more tangible, long-term investments.