First Daughter

Jack, snaking his way through the crowd, used his credentials at various Secret Service checkpoints. Approaching the dais was like negotiating the nine circles of hell-the closer he got, the slower his progress. The last bars of the fanfare faded, and the Speaker of the House took the podium for the Call to Order. Jack passed the final checkpoint and was admitted to the short flight of folding stairs up to the dais. He saw Reverend Taske, Secretary Paull, the National Security Advisor, the outgoing president. He looked past them for Alli, saw her between her mother and her father. She had a kind of faraway look on her face he'd seen a number of times before, and now all the tiny bits of strange behavior that he had observed, that had taken up residence in his brain, fell into place: her behavior when he'd taken her to see Chris Armitage, her dream. And afterwards: Nothing feels right, she'd said to him. I'm afraid… Please help me. What had Brady done to her? Had he hypnotized her, drugged her? Perhaps both. In any event, he'd turned her into a time bomb. The fuse had been lit, and now, as he saw her reach into the lining of her coat, he made a beeline for her.

He saw Sam, who turned at the movement Jack made across the dais. Sam's eyes met Jack's, and he smiled until he saw Jack pointing. The vial was out, Alli's hand was curled around it. Sam saw it at the same moment Jack did. With a practiced move so smooth as to be virtually undetectable, he wrested the vial out of her hand, put his free arm around her, held her firmly against his chest.

And that was it, Jack thought, as he moved at a more leisurely pace toward them. Ian Brady's legacy had turned to ashes. Whatever substance he'd instructed Alli to release remained safely in its vial. The Speaker of the House finished the Call to Order, and the Reverend Dr. Fred Grimes began his fervent invocation and benediction.

"Let us pray. Blessed are you, O Lord, our God. Yours, O God, is the greatness and the power and the glory and the majesty and the splendor; for everything in heaven and earth is yours. Yours, O Lord, is the kingdom; you are exalted as head over all."

A stir began behind him. He turned in time to see Hugh Garner and three of his minions mounting the dais, heading directly for him. Clearly, Brady's body had been found. No doubt the pig-eyed manager of Brady's apartment complex had ID'd Jack.

"Wealth and honor come from you; you are the ruler of all things. In your hands are strength and power to exalt and to give strength to all."

Jack, zigzagging farther into the crowd on the dais, kept his eye out for Nina. She'd give him some help, provide cover for him while he slipped away. She should have been on the other side of Alli. There was still part of the last Rubik's Cube missing.

"As President Lincoln once said, 'We have grown in numbers, wealth, and power as no other nation has ever grown. But we have forgotten God. It behooves us, then, to humble ourselves before the offended power, to confess our national sins, and to pray for clemency and forgiveness.'»

At last, he caught a glimpse of Nina, moved toward her. She was standing on the other side of Edward Carson. He risked a glance behind him. Garner, in a classic pincer move, had ordered his two agents to the other side of the dais in order to intercept Jack while he closed from behind.

"O Lord, as we come together on this historic and solemn occasion to inaugurate once again a president and vice president, teach us afresh that power, wisdom, and salvation come only from your hand."

As Brady himself would understand better than most, what Jack needed now was a bit of misdirection. He tried to get Nina's attention, but her gaze seemed fixed on Edward Carson. Beneath the reverend's words, he could hear the commotion closing in behind him as Garner pushed through the dignitaries packing the dais. The missing piece of the last Rubik's Cube was this: Why had it been so easy to stop Alli? No one's lasting legacy-let alone Ian Brady's-would hinge on the actions of a coerced twenty-year-old.

Then, in his head, he heard Emma's voice as clearly as if she'd been alive and standing beside him. He said that he already had his Myra Hindley. That was before Brady had abducted Alli. So if he wasn't grooming Emma to be Myra Hindley and she wasn't to be Alli, who was his accomplice, whom would he trust to carry out his legacy after his death?

"We pray, oh Lord, for President-elect Edward Harrison Carson and Vice President-elect Richard Thomas Baer, to whom you have entrusted the leadership of this nation at this moment in history. We pray that you will help them bring our country together, so that we may rise above partisan politics and seek the larger vision of your will for our nation."

Jack felt Garner's grip on his shoulder, trying to turn him around. He saw Nina leaning in toward the president-elect. But her mouth was closed, her jaw set. She reached into an i

Jack drew his Glock, fired one shot into Nina's heart. He saw her mouth open in shock, saw her body spin around; then Garner slammed him to the floor of the dais. Someone kicked the Glock away; Garner struck him a blow to the back of his head.

"Use them to bring reconciliation among the races and healing to political wounds, that we may truly become 'one nation under God,' " the Reverend Dr. Fred Grimes intoned just before the screaming began and all hell broke loose.

FORTY — NINE

SOMETIMES WE all need luck in addition to skill," Secretary De

Jack was sitting in a small cubicle inside the offices of Homeland Security. Across the table from him were Secretary Paull and Edward Carson, the new President of the United States. It was eight hours after the incident. Since then, Jack had been under arrest, in isolation, just as Brady had predicted.

"That was quite a heroic thing you did today, Jack." Carson waved Paull's protest to silence. "You saved not only my life but the lives of hundreds of people, all vital to the ru

Jack moved his head from side to side with some difficulty. His body still throbbed and ached from the beating Hugh Garner and his cohorts had delivered in the aftermath of the shooting. "And the vial Alli was carrying?"

"Confectioner's sugar," Paull said. "Thank God."

Personally, Jack didn't believe God had anything to do with it, but this was neither the time nor the place to say it. "Is she all right?"

"In light of what's happened, she's being evaluated more carefully this time," the president said.

Paull opened a slim file. "The doctors found a small bit of matter encrusted in the fold behind one ear."

"So Brady did drug her."

Paull nodded. "So far, the lab has identified Sodium Pentothal and curare. There's another, more complex substance the techs are still trying to analyze, but they figure it must be something that caused her to metabolize the other substances with unusual rapidity."

"Jack," Carson said, "do you know how he got to Nina Miller?"

"No, but I can make an educated guess," Jack said. "Nina was traumatized early in life. Her brother molested her."

"We know all about that," Paull cut in. "It's in her file. Her psychological profile was perfectly normal."

"Profiles, like Alli's medical exam, can be faulty," Jack pointed out. "Even more so with psych tests. Nina couldn't bear the fact that her brother was a successful married man."