"Did you ask President Adams why it was so important to get there so quickly that he was willing to fly in that storm?"

"Yes, I did. I thought it was unwise to fly."

"What did he say?"

"He said it was the most important meeting of his presidency."

I paused and looked at the others in the room, including the Secret Service agents, who were completely expressionless. "Did he tell you what he meant by that?"

"No."

"Do you know now?"

She hesitated. "No."

I SHOULD HAVE noticed that one of Hackett's associates was frantically e-mailing on his BlackBerry during the entire deposition. I actually did notice, but assumed he was taking notes. I was quickly dissuaded of that idea. Several members of the media that had waited in the lobby during the entire procedure pounced on me and asked, "Did you actually ask the first lady if she was having an affair with the pilot of Marine One? Is that WorldCopter's theory? Do you have any basis for that? Can the first lady sue you for slander?"

I smiled, waved at the press, and walked into the elevator to go down to my car. Several members of the press joined Rachel and me in the elevator, which was particularly awkward and uncomfortable since I didn't say anything. They peppered me with questions throughout the descent. I should have known Hackett would try something like that. He had insisted that the language of the order be extremely specific about how the press was excluded from the deposition in which the room was taken or from any access to the transcript after the deposition. I had expected the testimony to come out somehow. In a case like this, in something this politically volatile, everything will come out. It's just a fact. But I had expected Hackett, or more likely one of his associates, to slip a transcript of the deposition to a reporter, then claim to have no idea how the reporter had gotten it. But with this he had slipped. The press corps, or some of them, had obviously received e-mails from inside the deposition room.

I waited for one of the journalists to step away from the door of my car, then I got in and drove away. As soon as my BlackBerry had reception, my phone rang. It was Kathryn.

"You asked the first lady if she was sleeping with Collins?" Kathryn asked, surprised.

"Where'd you hear that?"

"It's all over the Internet. Some reporter posted a story about it, and every news site in the world picked up on it. So did you?"

"No, I didn't. Hackett's associate was e-mailing the press during the depo. I asked her if she had any particular kind of relationship with Collins, but that's all. Kathryn, I've got photos of her whispering in his ear at a reception. Several photos. They don't know I have them, but I've got to find out if there's anything to it."

"I want to have a meeting. I want Mark Brightman there, and Morton, Tripp, everyone. I want to meet at WorldCopter."

"Brightman?"

"The only way London would let me keep you on as the lead was to have Brightman basically shadow the whole case from New York. He's got everything I've got and knows as much as I do. We want to bring his thinking into the circle."

Great. "Let me know when you want to meet. And, Kathryn, don't let this depo stuff get to you. Hackett's going to try this case in the press and twist it as hard as he can."

"It just really makes me crazy, Mike. And the meeting is already on for tomorrow morning."

"Okay. See you then." We hung up.

I turned to Rachel, who had been quiet. She said, "Why didn't you tell me you were setting Hackett up with that mystery witness?"

"I wasn't sure how it was going to play out. If Tinny hadn't gotten that print run by his cop buddy in D.C., we wouldn't have had anything. And I think maybe you didn't really trust me. You thought I might actually pay a witness a hundred fifty grand to testify. Never going to happen."

Tripp met me at the reception desk at WorldCopter's headquarters and escorted me to the conference room near his office. The corporate offices were fairly nice, but the conference room was third-class; it could have passed for a government conference room. A cheap table stood in the middle with metal chairs, with styrofoam cups for the bad-flavored coffee brewing in the corner. I poured myself a cup and said hello. Brightman and Morton were both there already, as were the others. I wasn't sure how to deal with Brightman, so I did what I usually do-went right at it. I walked around the table and shook his hand. "I don't believe we've ever actually met. Maybe once at a conference, but I'm Mike Nolan."

"Hi, Mike. Mark Brightman. I'd recognize you anywhere. You've been on TV a lot."

"More than I'd like," I said, trying to keep it casual.

Kathryn took control of the meeting. "Mike, I got a call from London, and the press over there is crucifying us. All the questions to Mrs. Collins, and the first lady. Looks bad."

"We've got to ask, and we've done our best to keep it confidential. That's all we can do. We can't really worry about what the press thinks. We've got to build our defense and get ready for trial, which is coming down on us like a train."

"Tell me about the photographs you mentioned."

"She's standing right next to Collins at a reception where he had no business being, and at which she had no business talking to him. It's an odd photo that just shows them in what appears to be a very confidential conversation. And it looks like his hand is on her… lower back-best case. I just wanted her to explain to me why she was talking to him in that way."

"And what did you hope to gain from that?"

"This is discovery. I look into everything. I don't assume I know what anything means in particular. I have gotten the most remarkable testimony in my career by asking questions that everybody thought shouldn't be asked because they were obvious or stupid. Sometimes they do turn out to be stupid questions. But sometimes, just sometimes, people will be honest or caught off guard and tell you things that you never would have discovered otherwise. So, yes, sometimes I do ask questions that are a little bit uncomfortable. We've got to prove what really happened, wherever that takes us."

"Well tell me. I'm all ears. What did happen?"

The room was remarkably silent. I spoke slowly but deliberately. "One theory that comes from the evidence, at least arguably, is that Collins crashed the helicopter on purpose. To kill the president. It may be that he hated him and saw the storm as an opportunity to take him out."

Kathryn shook her head slowly. "Prove it."

"I've got every book in Collins's library. He had a lot of fringe ideas. And a lot of side notes about President Adams. I don't have the smoking gun, some note that says he hated Adams, but just listen to the cockpit voice recorder. He wouldn't even talk to him."

She wasn't persuaded. "That's all you've got?"

"Collins bought a life insurance policy two months before the accident. A big one. Million dollars. And he wasn't sleeping with his wife-still not sure what that was about-but I think he was fed up. I don't know. But just maybe he was fed up enough to slam Marine One into the ravine in the middle of the storm. And maybe whatever was going on at Camp David was the last straw.

"I think the flight data recorder circuit breaker was pulled before the final descent on purpose. He wanted everyone to think he had hydraulic problems. Maybe he was trying to fake a hydraulic failure to cover the accident, and then rolled the helicopter over on its back and crashed in the middle of the night." I took a sip of the cooling coffee.

Kathryn said, "That's going to be hard to prove without more. Do you personally think that's what happened?"

Good question. I sure doubted it, but enough evidence suggested at least keeping it as open as a possibility. "Personally? I don't know. I've seen enough in this business to not be too quick to rule anything out. Could the pilot of Marine One kill the president? Sure, if he thought the president was a big enough threat to the country. People think that kind of thing all the time. But I still think the real explanation lies somewhere else. I think it has more to do with who was at Camp David that night."