Dead Watch

stopped at home and changed into a suit and tie, and then caught a taxi to the White House. He checked through the west working entrance, walking first past the outer gate, where a guard examined his ID, then through the inner gate with the X-ray machines.
    The X-ray tech, a new guy, spent five minutes looking at his cane, until an older guy came by, glanced at it, and said, “It’s okay. Mr. Winter’s a regular.”

    Once through security, he was slotted into a waiting room that offered coffee, newspapers, and high-speed Internet. The room had recently been redecorated—the walls painted blue, the First Lady’s favorite color, and hung with portraits of former First Ladies.
    One of the formers, Hillary Clinton, smiled down on the bald spot of John Powers, a Georgetown professor and sometime advisor to the Department of Defense. Powers was sitting in an easy chair reading the Wall Street Journal. He and Jake knew each other as consultants, and as denizens of Georgetown.
    “I’m much more important than you are,” Powers said to Jake, folding the paper as Jake limped in. He was an urbane man, who looked like he might have run an art gallery. His over-the-calf socks were dark blue with ladybug-sized smiling suns on them. “I publish in Foreign Policy.”
    “That may be true, but my neckties are from Hermès,” Jake said, dropping into a chair across from him. “Wait’ll the faculty senate hears that you were reading the Journal.”
    “They all read it, in secret, greedy little buggers,” Powers said. He probed: “Are you over for the boat review?”
    Jake shook his head and lied. “Nope. I don’t know why I’m over. Probably the convention. History stuff, working it into the program, successor to John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, William Jefferson Clinton, great Americans all, blah-blah-blah.”
    “The convention.” Powers smiled, showing a set of glittering teeth. Campus rumor said that he’d had them veneered for television. “I’m here for the boats. Vice President Landers is leading the charge.”
    “Good luck with that.” Jake opened his case and took out his laptop, balanced it on his knees, turned it on.
    “You don’t mean that,” Powers said, tilting his head. Few people at Georgetown would have.
    “I do,” Jake said. “I hope they build them all.”
    Powers brightened, remembering. “Ah. That’s right. You were in the military.”
    “For a while.” The boats were five atomic-powered attack carriers that would cost twelve billion dollars each. “With the budget as it is, and the old people loading up behind Social Security, I don’t think you’ve got a chance in hell.”
    Powers frowned, said, “The Chinese and Indians . . .” A tall man in shirtsleeves stuck his head into the room and nodded at Powers. “Whoops, here I go. See you at school.” Powers took a step away, then said, “Really? Hermès?”
    “Yup.”
    “What do they cost now? Two-fifty?”
    “Yup.”
    When Powers was gone, Jake plugged into the Net, did a search for Madison and Lincoln Bowe. He got sixty thousand hits, filtered them to the last three days, and caught a reference to a Madison Bowe interview on Channel 7’s Washington Insider with Randall James.
    He called it up from the station’s news cache and watched Madison Bowe do her thing: “They’ve got him, I know it.” The camera made love to her face. “They’ve got Lincoln. If they don’t, why are they so worried about me? They did everything they could to shut me up. I’ll be honest, I’m very worried. I’m worried that they’ll kill him when they’re done with him . . .”
    She had tapes of a big shambling man threatening her in her own house. The tapes were made more effective by their security-camera, cinéma-vérité quality. “This is how they work,” she said after the tape ran out. She was appealing, with a nervous lip-nibble that made a male hormone jump up and shout, “I’ll take care of you.”
    “This is what they’re doing to our America,” she said, speaking directly to the camera.
    They, Jake mused, were us.

    He was moving fast now, scanning the Net news, learning as much as he could about her, and about Lincoln Bowe, and the circumstances around Lincoln Bowe’s disappearance; and about their friends, their political allies. Lincoln Bowe had been a conservative Republican, faithful to the party and to the conservative cause, and an aristocrat. Madison Bowe was a lawyer’s daughter, smart,