'He hasn't asked about our grandson, which is very unusual. He says that it's work, and maybe it is. But things got very strange yesterday.' She regarded Hood intently.
'This remains between us.'
'Of course.'
Megan took a short, reinforcing breath.
'Before the dinner last night, I found him sitting at his dressing table.
He was running late. He wasn't showered or dressed. He was just staring at the mirror, flushed and looking as though he'd been crying. When I asked him about it, he said he'd been exercising. He told me that his eyes were bloodshot because he hadn't been sleeping. I didn't believe him, but I let it be. Then, at the pre dinner reception, he was flat. He smiled and was pleasant, but there was no enthusiasm in him at all. Until he received a phone call. He took it in his office and returned about two minutes later. When he came back, his manner was entirely different. He was outgoing and confident.'
'That's certainly how he seemed at dinner,' Hood said.
'When you say the president was flat, what exactly do you mean?'
Megan thought for a moment.
'Do you know how someone gets when they're really jet-lagged?' she asked.
'There's a glassiness in their eyes and a kind of delayed reaction to whatever is said?'
Hood nodded.
'That's exactly how he was until the call,' Megan said.
'Do you know who called?' Hood asked.
'He told me it was Jack Fenwick.'
Fenwick was a quiet, efficient man who had been the president's budget director in his first administration.
Fenwick had joined Lawrence's American Sense think tank, where he added intelligence issues to his repertoire.
When the president was reelected, Fenwick was named the head of the National Security Agency, which was a separate intelligence division of the Department of Defense.
Unlike other divisions of military intelligence, the NSA was also chartered to provide support for non defense activities of the Executive Branch.
'What did Fenwick tell the president?' Hood asked.
'That everything had come together,' she told Hood.
'That was all he would say.'
'You have no idea who or what that is?'
Megan shook her head.
'Mr. Fenwick left for New York this morning, and when I asked his assistant what the phone call was about, she said something very strange. She asked me, 'What call?'
' 'Did you check the log?'
Megan nodded.
'The only call that came into that line at that time was from the Hay-Adams Hotel.'
The elegant old hotel was located on the other side of Lafayette Park, literally across the street from the White House.
'I had a staff member visit the hotel this morning,' Megan went on.
'He got the names of the night staff, went to their homes, and showed them pictures of Fenwick.
They never saw him.'
'He could have come in a back entrance,' Hood said.
'Did you run a check of the registry?'
'Yes,' she said.
'But that doesn't mean anything.
There could have been any number of aliases. Congressmen often use the hotel for private meetings.'
Hood knew that Megan wasn't just referring to political meetings.
'But that wasn't the only thing,' Megan went on.
'When we went downstairs to the Blue Room, Michael saw Senator Fox and went over to thank her. She seemed very surprised and asked why he was thanking her. He said, 'For budgeting the initiative.' I could see that she had no idea what he was talking about.'
Hood nodded. That would explain the confusion he had noticed when Senator Fox entered the room. Things were beginning to fall into place a little. Senator Fox was a member of the Congressional Intelligence Oversight Committee. If any kind of intelligence operation had been approved, she would have to have known about it. Apparently, she was as surprised to learn about the international intelligence-sharing operation as Hood had been. Yet the president either assumed or had been told, possibly by Jack Fenwick, that she had helped make it
