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“What about her?”
For the first time all day, Gav smiled. “She’s giving her statement now. Blanchard doesn’t know, but she rolled right over now that he’s pointing the finger at her. Oldest story in the book. Young, impressionable woman taken in by a powerful man. She was in it for love. He was in it for power.” Gav added, “She’s giving up every little detail in the hopes of getting off easy.”
“Will she?”
“She was involved in trying to blow up the White House. What do you think?”
I grimaced. “What about Sean?”
Gav sobered again. “Blanchard again.”
I sucked in a breath.
“Your friend Kirsten…” Gav began.
“I only met her once.”
He dismissed my correction. “She was heading down the wrong path, but she was close. Turns out Sean was killed using Volkov’s gun.”
“What?”
“Crime scene investigators were able to prove that Sean didn’t pull the trigger. That the note was planted, making the death a homicide. But.” He bit the corner of his mouth. “The gun’s serial number was mutilated. Not completely. Just enough to slow down its identification. When we figured it out, we realized the gun belonged to Volkov. He was brought in for questioning.”
“That’s probably what Kirsten heard about.”
“Could be,” he said. “Volkov admitted to it being his, but was as surprised as we were to discover how it had been used. He couldn’t imagine how it could have gotten out of his house-until yesterday. He called the Metropolitan Police because he remembered that the last time he’d seen it, he’d been showing it to Blanchard.” Gav placed a finger over his lips. “We asked him to keep that to himself, and told him that we’d be in touch.”
“So it looks like Blanchard killed Sean and was trying to frame Volkov for it?”
“That’s the premise we’re working under.” Gav licked his lips. “But he didn’t do the messy work himself. According to Bindy there were a couple of other people involved.”
I thought about the two guys who’d accosted me. “Who are they?”
He shook his head. “She didn’t know their names. Just knew that Blanchard handled parts of the plan himself. He, or one of his operatives, may have fed the information to Kirsten. In fact, we believe they killed her, too.”
My heart broke for the poor kid. She’d been trying so hard to make a name for herself and had instead been used and discarded by a powerful senator who was bent on a run at the White House. “How did Blanchard get to Ma
“His girl Bindy. She had all the co
“How did he pass the background check here?”
“Blanchard sponsored Yi-im into the United States. If he’s who we think he is, your friend Yi-im and his brother were Korean operatives who may have been involved in the assassination of Park Chung-hee back in 1979.”
My mind was having a hard time assimilating all this. “Then he’s a dangerous guy.”
“You think?”
“Have you arrested him yet?”
“We’re working on it, but he’s slippery.”
This was too much for me. “And all this was so that Blanchard could sell Zendy Industries?”
“That’s only part of it. The senator is an ambitious man. For a successful run at the presidency he needed the money from Zendy and spies inside the White House. And he wanted all that enough to kill. He might have had a hand in killing Mr. Sinclair; we’re looking into that now.”
I gasped.
“There are bad people in this world, Ollie,” he said.
“I know. I just can’t imagine…”
“There’s something else,” he said.
By the look on his face, I knew it wasn’t good news. “Go ahead,” I said.
“When your chief electrician was killed…”
“Gene.”
“Yes, Gene. When he was killed, he was felled by that phenomena you talked about-the floating neutral. But it looks as though it occurred naturally.”
My stomach clenched. I knew what Gav was about to say, so I beat him to it. Maybe it would hurt less that way. “And I brought the idea to their attention?”
“You did,” he said. “Blanchard’s team had placed a bomb in the White House, in an effort to target the First Lady, but their attempts were crude and unsuccessful. Bindy kept in regular contact with Ma
My head was spi
“No almost about it. The White House is gone.” Gav smiled. “The gingerbread White House, that is. Completely decimated, thanks to you.” His eyebrows rose and the gray eyes sparkled. “But also thanks to you, the real White House is still standing.”
MARCEL’S GINGERBREAD MASTERPIECE WOULD be the first one to go down in history as a casualty of political warfare. But some good had come of it. In the First Lady’s press conference later that night, she’d chosen not to dwell on what was lost, but on what remained. She’d reminded everyone in the televised event that all the gingerbread men sent in by the nation’s children had survived intact.
She said: “That our children’s contributions are still with us-that each one is still just as beautiful as it was when we received it-is really what’s important. Thanks to our fine staff and American gutsiness, our White House is still standing, and we are still together to enjoy it. Our holiday theme has special meaning for us tonight because… together we do celebrate. Welcome home.” At that she’d opened her arms, inviting the cameras into the residence for their much-belated Decorator Tour.
As I watched her, I realized that for the first time since she’d received the news of Sean’s death, Mrs. Campbell was at peace.
CHAPTER 25
A WEEK LATER THERE WERE STILL A HUNDRED questions I hadn’t gotten answers to, but knowing the tight-lipped nature of the White House security perso
I thought about this as I sat in the kitchen, today’s Washington Post on the countertop in front of me. It was quiet and I appreciated the solitude. I’d sent everyone home early tonight. Di
The front page of the Post caught me up on the latest in the Blanchard Blowup, as they were calling it. There was yet another picture of Bindy, who, in every shot, seemed to be ru
Blanchard held his head high and gripped a microphone with both hands. The caption below the picture quoted: “I am i
I sca
The Blowup was hot stuff-real news-and I was thankful for the shift in attention away from me. Even though all the articles still made mention of my leap under the table to prevent the explosion-after all, that’s where the Blanchard Blowup story started-my name was being mentioned less often. For that, I was grateful.