“I’m the president now!” Swinburne insisted.

“Oh, give it up already,” Ben said. “You’re not. Anyway, who was tipping Zuko off? No one could know the vice president was here until he was, and by that time we were all stuck down here. Cell phones don’t work. Only Agents Zimmer and Gioia had access to the communications station. But would they have had access to the cigarettes? Doubtful.”

“So how did the mole get the word out?” Sarie asked.

“Only one way possible. When Agent Zimmer gave three of us the chance to make a short phone call to the outside world. To comfort our loved ones.”

He could see eyes rolling upward as everyone struggled to remember who had made a call.

“I was one of the three, but I knew it wasn’t me, so that left two. And I’m certain it wasn’t Sarie. For one thing, I think our spy gave Zuko the computer codes and passwords that helped him hack into our defense system. As chief of staff, Sarie would not have access to top-secret defense information. She was our eyewitness, the one who told us about the episodes she witnessed. If she had been the mastermind behind all this, she would have told far more dramatic stories. She would’ve said she wrestled the gun from the president’s head, or had him threatening to blow up Australia or something. No, she was cast in the role of the observer, the one who would report all that she had seen-and her testimony would be all the more tragically believable, because everyone knows she loves and is devoted to this president. No, it couldn’t be her. So that only left one other person who could have tipped off Zuko. Who could’ve made the cigarette substitution.”

“Spit it out, Ben,” Kyler said. “I want to know.”

“Don’t you remember?” Ben said. “The only other person who has had contact with the outside world was our dedicated secretary of defense, Albert Rybicki.”

Christina had reached her limit.

She had tried to be patient. She had tried to be calm. She didn’t want to be one of those strident, pushy wives who were always keeping tabs on their husbands. But at the end of the day, she wasn’t exactly the stay-home-and-knit type, either.

It had been hours since Ben had called her. Hours since she had heard any useful news. All she knew was what she heard on CNN, which wasn’t much. She almost pitied those poor commentators. They had so much time to fill and so little to say. A dollop of information was buried in a mountain of pointless chatter. The news had turned into speculation and gossip, and now she wasn’t sure what it was.

And now she was railing against the media when of course that wasn’t really what was bothering her. She was worried about Ben.

She pushed herself out of her chair. She had waited here long enough. She was going to get out there and do something. Shake some bushes. She’d been in Washington for a while now and, as Ben’s chief of staff when he was a senator, she had developed a pretty good rep as someone who could get things done.

So it was time she got something done.

Ben hadn’t told her his exact location-probably wasn’t allowed to tell her. But he said he hadn’t left the White House. So that was where she would start. She had provisional White House clearance. She could get to the back door. After that, she would just have to take it one step at a time. Bully her way through. She’d done it before. Granted, not at what was perhaps the most heavily guarded private residence in the entire world… but she never shrank from a challenge.

She was going to find her husband, damn it, and make sure he was safe. And she had nothing but pity for anyone who got in her way.

The two men were back in the side room where Scarface had tortured Seamus. It was tempting to pin the man up on the wall and get out the pliers. But Seamus resisted the urge. Zira would never approve, and even if she did, he didn’t have enough time. He would have to find his own way to instill terror.

He held Scarface-that is, Minoz-down by his throat and watched his face turn blue. Zira had said he couldn’t hurt the man-which, translated into CIAese, meant: he couldn’t leave any marks. So he wouldn’t. He wouldn’t even punch the man in the neck, the usual target when you wanted to do maximum damage without leaving a mark. In his experience, strangulation had a strange way of getting tongues wagging.

Minoz’s arms flailed about uselessly. He was pinned down like a bug and he wasn’t getting up until Seamus decided to let him. It didn’t take him long to discover that. He only made a halfhearted effort at pushing Seamus away. Lying flat on his back, he just didn’t have the leverage.

Seamus pressed down hard on his trachea. “You already know how I feel about you. So let’s not waste time with the part where I convince you I would kill you. You know I would kill you. You know I want to. And I will if you don’t tell me everything you know.”

Seamus let up on his throat for a second. Minoz gasped for air, but before he had gulped it all down, Seamus reapplied the pressure. The resulting sucking noise even sounded painful. “I want to know where the nuclear suitcase is. I will give you one second to answer. If you do not answer-immediately-I will choke you until you are dead. Understood?”

He took the eyes-wide expression for a nod and let go of the man’s throat. “Talk.”

“I do not know.”

Seamus started to clamp down.

“I had it! I admit that. You know I had it!”

“Whom did you give it to?”

“I do not know his name.”

Seamus squeezed his trachea tightly in his fist. Minoz squealed.

Ten seconds later, Seamus let up slightly. “Tell me!”

“I never knew his name. Colonel Zuko was the go-between. After we failed at the Washington Monument, I took the suitcase to a computer expert to have the triggering mechanism altered. Programmed with a fail-safe password. Then I left it at the designated drop-off point. I don’t know who picked it up later.”

“You left a nuclear device for a man you did not know?”

“I did what the colonel told me to do.”

“What did Zuko call him?”

“He never used a name.”

Seamus pressed in with his fingers.

“Wait! Wait, I do remember a time. It stuck in my memory because it was so odd.”

“What?”

“Someone-not the colonel-referred to him as a secretary.”

Secretary? Seamus’s eyebrow knitted together. Colonel Zuko was working with someone’s secretary? Perhaps a high-placed military advisor’s, or-

Wait a minute. In these politically correct times, you couldn’t call a secretary a secretary. He’d be an executive assistant. In this town, a secretary could only be-

Good God. Was it possible? Did Zuko have a cabinet-level informant?

Seamus felt cold fingers tickling at the base of his spine.

“What was the password your boss had programmed into the suitcase?”

“I don’t know. That had nothing to do with me.”

Frustrating, but probably true. They wouldn’t tell anyone who didn’t need to know.

“Listen to me, Minoz. This is very important. If you expect to go on breathing, you will provide me an answer. What is he going to do with the nuclear device?”

“He’s taking it to the Middle East. Zuko said his clearance level is so high he can take anything anywhere.”

Not anymore. As soon as he told Zira, every member of the cabinet would be grounded. If they weren’t already. “Did he have a backup plan? If he couldn’t get the bomb overseas?”

To his surprise-and horror-Minoz smiled.

Seamus wrapped his hand around the man’s throat. “Tell me.”

“I will tell you.” The sadistic pleasure in the man’s eyes told Seamus that this was going to be something he did not want to hear. “I will tell you because there is nothing you can do about it.”