"It's not that. The point is that I don't know any Secret Service agents by sight."

"I see." Silence. "Well, couldn't we set up a code or a signal or something?"

"It wouldn't be secure from the NSA. Nothing like that will be safe."

"We could pick one right now."

"We have to assume the agency is listening to this call. They can pull it right out of the ether over China."

Mathews sighed. "All right, David. Tell me this. Do you trust Ewan McCaskell?"

I thought about that. There'd been no attempt on my life until McCaskell returned my call at my house, which had told the Trinity security people that I hadn't yet talked to the president. If McCaskell was tied to anyone at Trinity, he would have communicated this to them long before that phone call. "I trust him. But I'll have to see his face."

"Well ... it looks like you're just going to have to lie low until we get back. McCaskell and the Secret Service will pick you up then. Can you get to Washington in four days?"

"I can. Mr. President, could I ask you one thing?"

"Of course."

"Do you believe anything I've said?"

Matthews replied in a less folksy voice. "David, I won't lie to you. John Skow says Dr. Fielding died of natural causes, and that you shot a Trinity security officer outside your house without provocation. He also says you've kidnapped your psychiatrist."

I blinked in disbelief. Skow had finally made a mistake.

"Hold on, sir." I handed the phone to Rachel. "Tell him who you are."

She hesitantly took the phone and held it to her ear. "This is Dr. Rachel Weiss. . . . Yes. . . . No, sir. I came with Dr. Tennant of my own free will. . . . That's right. Yes, people are trying to kill us. ... Yes, sir. I will."

She handed me the cell phone.

"Mr. President?"

"I'm here, David. Look, I'm not sure what to think. But I know you come from good people, and I want to see you and hear you out."

The first tiny fillip of relief went through me. "Thank you, sir. All I ask is a fair hearing."

"You'll get that as soon as I get back. Keep your ass in the grass, Dave."

A bubble of laughter burst through the lump in my throat. That saying was right out of my older brother's mouth. "Thank you, Mr. President. I'll see you then."

I clicked end.

Rachel was watching me expectantly. "What do you think?"

"I think we're better off than we were five minutes ago. What did he ask you?"

"Whether I was under duress. He also told me to take care of you. My God ... I can't believe this. What are we going to do for the next four days?"

I pressed down the accelerator and sped up to seventy. "We're going to Oak Ridge."

"Tennessee?"

"Yep. I know that place like nowhere in the world. Five miles outside of town, you're lost in the wilderness. No police. No TVs to broadcast photos of wanted fugitives and stolen trucks. Nothing."

"How far away is it?"

"Eight hours." I passed a slow-moving car and settled back into the right lane. "Settle in and get some sleep."

"I can't sleep in a car."

"This is a truck."

"Wiseass."

Escaping the plane and reaching the president had produced a sense of elation in both of us, but that feeling wouldn't last long. "I'm not kidding about the sleep. You're going to need every bit of energy you have in the morning."

"For what?"

"Mountains."

CHAPTER 19.

Geli was running on adrenaline, her body charged by the chase. Between the hunt for Tennant and Weiss and the search for Lu Li Fielding, her resources were stretched to the limit. But when the lack of manpower vexed her, she thought back to the Iraqi desert, where her total force had numbered only eight Delta Force commandos.

Her latest headache was Jutta Klein, the German MRI expert. Klein had apparently taken advantage of her reduced surveillance and driven to Atlanta, where she'd boarded a Lufthansa flight for Germany. The German government had pledged to "assist in any way possible," but Geli knew they would welcome Klein and her newfound expertise with open arms.

Geli spun in her chair. Someone with the day's access code had buzzed through the door of the control center. John Skow stepped out of the shadows, clad in his unvarying Brooks Brothers suit, his eyes glinting with fear or excitement.

"What are you doing here?" she asked. "What's happened?"

Skow straddled a chair opposite Geli and folded his almost feminine hands on its back.

"Tennant just spoke to the president. Matthews was in Air Force One, en route from Beijing to Shanghai. Our routine intercepts over China picked it up, and I just broke the executive comm codes."

Geli felt as though she'd opened the door of a hot oven. No wonder Skow hadn't wanted to talk on the air. "What did they say?"

"The president tried to arrange for the Secret Service to pick up Tennant somewhere, but Tennant wouldn't bite."

"Did Matthews buy our story? Or does he believe Tennant?"

Skow bit one side of his lower lip, like a man weighing odds. "I'd say he's leaning toward us. But he told Tennant he would get a fair hearing."

"And how will that happen?"

"Ewan McCaskell and the Secret Service will meet Tennant and pick him up when the president gets back. Tennant trusts McCaskell."

"When does the president get back?"

"Four days."

"Are we talking D.C.?"

"Yes."

"Perfect."

"Why?"

Geli had already foreseen that Tennant might run for Washington. "D.C. gives us a perfect cover story to take Tennant out. Starting now, we maximize our effort to discredit him, expanding on what we've already said. Tennant's side effects worsened to psychosis. He shot his security guard and kidnapped Dr. Weiss."

"And?"

"Now he's threatened the president's life."

Skow's eyes narrowed. "But he just talked to Matthews. And he didn't make any threats."

Geli rolled her eyes. "Tennant is saying whatever he has to say to get access to the man he wants to kill. By painting him as a deranged assassin, we can use every metro cop in D.C. to hunt him down. And once you give him the Lee Harvey Oswald treatment, the Secret Service won't let him near the president."

"That's an elegant strategy. What do we use for evidence?"

"We have hundreds of hours of recordings from Tennant's house and phone. Is the Godin Four still running upstairs?"

"I didn't notice. Why?"

"With the right programs from the NSA-and our Godin Four-you could piece together a verbal threat against the president that no one could prove was fake."

Skow smiled with appreciation. "That's good, Geli. Very good."

"That's why I'm here. The question is, will Tennant go straight to D.C. or wait the four days?"

"My source says no," said Skow. "I've got a short list of places Tennant might run, and Washington is at the bottom."

Anger tightened Geli's jaw muscles. "Who is this source, damn it?"

"I can't give you that. I'm sorry."

"But he says Tennant will run somewhere besides D.C?"

"Yes. Isn't it just common sense? Why should Tennant risk going straight to Washington when the meet is four days away?"

"Because he knows people there who have access to POTUS. The surgeon general. The director of the National Institutes of Health. The politicians from his home state. Senator Barrett Jackson heads the Select Committee on Intelligence, for God's sake. He can get access to the Oval Office with a phone call. And if Tennant convinces someone like Barrett Jackson that he's sane ..."

"I see. All right. But we can't be sure where he'll run. And our assassin story will allow us to bring in other federal assets to cover the other locations."

"Good. You take care of the media. You also need to hit everyone Tennant knows inside the Beltway with a classified NSA security warning. Emphasize his mental instability. Can you do that gracefully?"

Skow's thin lips flattened into something like a smile. "That's why I'm here."

Geli nodded, feeling better than she had in hours. "You'd better get upstairs and make sure they keep the Godin Four fired up. Or get it moved back here quick."

Skow had never touched Geli before, but he reached out and laid his hand on her wrist. "You have four days to kill Tennant and Weiss. After that, the Secret Service will be running things, and they'll work very hard to trap Tennant rather than kill him."

"That's why you're going to make sure nothing he says will be believed."

Skow nodded. "Right."

"Don't worry," Geli assured him. "The president will never see Tennant again. In twenty-four hours he'll be as dead as his brother."

CHAPTER 20.

It was dark by the time we reached Raleigh. Highway 64 turned to I-40, and then we were rolling back through Research Triangle Park, moving west toward Tennessee.

"Look at that," Rachel said, watching the familiar lights drift by. "When it's dark like this, I can almost believe you could drop me off at my house in Durham, and I could go inside and make a cup of tea."

"You know better now."

She looked at me for a long time, then sighed in the dark.

"I'm sorry I got you into this," I said. "I haven't really apologized yet."

"I got myself into it."

"No. I did that when I chose you as my analyst."

The weariness in Rachel's face told me she was accustomed to dealing with other people's guilt. "Don't start trying to figure out the vagaries of fate. If a butterfly had flapped its wings in Malaysia before you called, you would have found someone else. That's the way life is."

I'd said that kind of thing to myself before, but in this case I didn't believe it. "No. I sought you out because you're the best at what you do. And Jungian analysts aren't like psychologists, one on every corner. I know it sounds juvenile, but I have this feeling I was meant to find you."

She looked at me with infinitely perceptive eyes, but beneath her perception I saw pain. Somehow, I had prodded a deep nerve. When she spoke, it was in a voice devoid of emotion.

"It's easy to tell ourselves that whatever happens to us was meant to be. It's comforting. It gives us a sense that there's some larger plan. I thought my husband and I were meant to be together. But we weren't. It was just a bad choice that I rationalized as fate. It's pathetic, really."

"Pathetic? That marriage gave you your son."

"Who died frightened and in pain at the age of five."