Mistress

“Delano,” I repeat. “FDR’s middle name. This involves the president? I should be digging at the White House?”

Jonathan Liu looks me squarely in the eye. His expression never cracks, but he’s not saying no.

“Now we’re done,” he says. “Get out.”

“No,” I say.

“Yes. Listen to me, Mr. Casper. You’ve created a lot of trouble for me, coming around my office and accusing me of all sorts of things. I may not even survive this.”

“Hang on a second, Jonathan. Let me reach for my hankie. I’ve been shot at, I’ve had to crash-land my plane, Diana’s brother was murdered, and I don’t know what’s happened to Diana at this point. And I’m pretty sure that you have something to do with all of that-”

“I don’t. I didn’t even know that any of that had happened to you. I knew about Diana and her brother. Not you. But now that I do know, Mr. Casper, I want you out of my car more than ever.”

“Yeah? And why’s that?”

Brutus the bodyguard clicks off the safety on his handgun. He isn’t aiming it at me yet, but it won’t be long.

Jonathan Liu says, “Because apparently you’re closer than you even realize.”

Chapter 37

I ride the Triumph back to the capital, taking an unusual route toward K Street in case someone is following me. The capital is sweltering today, and it’s so bright you have to squint. It makes it more challenging to look around for people watching you, following you, hunting you.

I feel a measure of relief and comfort as I push through the revolving door of the ground-level offices of Capital Beat

. The chaos of the street noise is immediately replaced with the hushed urgency of a newsroom. The Beat is small, taking up only the ground floor of the four-story building I inherited, but I’ve packed it with a maze of cubicles-enough to accommodate the staff who keep the business running.

An unfamiliar face greets me at the front desk. She must be the new receptionist I haven’t been in to meet yet. “May I help you, sir?” she asks politely.

A head pops up from within the maze, and the advertising layout coordinator, Shari-in the newspaper business known as the “dummy”-breaks into a grin.

“Hey!” she says, more loudly than necessary. “Look who decided to grace us with an appearance!”

Immediately, five other heads pop up from different cubicles and shout greetings.

“You guys look like prairie dogs when you do that,” I retort.

“It’s an act we’re perfecting,” says Shari. “We’re hoping someday we’ll be good enough to hide on the lawn of the West Wing and blend in with the native fauna.” She looks furtively around, makes a few rodentlike noises, and disappears back into her cubicle.

I sigh. It’s good to be here.

We don’t print any publications on paper, but the newsroom still smells like ink. We get all the major papers, and someone reads them thoroughly every day. And the ink smell is mild compared to the smell of hot computer parts. So the aroma is a combination of hot plastic, dust, and damp newspapers. I think it smells like hard, honest work.

The office is pretty quiet. Most stories are filed remotely these days. The few employees I pass on the way back to my office look pretty much like you’d expect DC journalists to look. Lean and hungry, but sleep-deprived and stressed-out. Blue jeans, moccasins, no color coordination, zero fashion sense. Just like me.

The newsroom is divided into sections. The department editors-politics, grapevine, opinions and features, and photography-have large cubes surrounded by tall walls. Around each editor, the staff writers for each department have tiny cubicles, small enough for you to be able to touch both sides when you’re sitting down. The writers are usually out news-gathering, anyway. No sense in making them too comfortable at the office.

The copy editors all sit in a row down the far left-hand side of the room, their enormous monitors displaying the soon-to-be-published stories in huge type. The sales department-the only department that actually receives visitors at this location-is the most visible and most comfortable. There’s a reception and greeting area immediately to the right of the entrance in front of well-appointed cubicles furnished with large screens for displaying online advertising at each station.

I reach the large cubicle of Ashley Brook Clark, who runs the politics department and shares White House duties with me, and poke my head in. I’d called ahead and asked her the big question.

She spins on her chair and looks up at me. “Never heard of it,” she says. “Operation Delano, you said?”

“Right.”

“Don’t know it. Want me to cast a net?”

“I’m not sure. I think I like you in one piece, Ashley Brook.”

She draws back. “It’s that serious?”

I tap the side of her cubicle. “I’ll get back to you.”