They returned to Lot B and climbed the stairs to the second level. The distant corner was now filled with other cars. As they approached the red Impala, Natalie popped the trunk with her fob, but Safia quickly closed it again.
“Hang the clothes in the back.”
Natalie did as instructed. Then she slid behind the wheel and started the engine while Safia thumbed KEY BRIDGE MARRIOTT into Google Maps. “Follow the signs to the exit,” she said. “And then make a left.”
The bullet-point reports from the FBI surveillance teams flashed onto the video screens at the NCTC like updates on an airport departure board. SUBJECTS PURCHASING GARMENTS AT MACY’S . . . SUBJECTS HAVING COFFEE AT STARBUCKS . . . SUBJECTS DEPARTING MALL . . . ADVISE . . . Huddled in the White House Situation Room, the president and his national security team had delivered their verdict. Listen, watch, wait. Let them run.
“Good call,” said Gabriel.
“Maybe,” said Adrian Carter. “Or maybe not.”
At twelve fifteen the red Impala turned into the parking lot of the Key Bridge Marriott and slid into the same space it had abandoned two hours earlier. The hotel security cameras told part of the story. The terse dispatches from the FBI watchers told the rest. The subjects were exiting the vehicle. Subject one, the Israeli agent, collected the Macy’s bag from the backseat. Subject two, the Frenchwoman, lifted two large paper bags from the trunk.
“What two bags in the trunk?” asked Gabriel.
Carter was silent.
“Where are the bags from?”
Carter shouted the question to the Operations Floor. The answer appeared on the screen a few seconds later.
The bags were from L.L.Bean.
“Shit,” said Gabriel and Carter in unison.
Natalie and Safia had never gone to L.L.Bean.
57
THE WHITE HOUSE
MUCH LATER, THE MEETING BETWEEN the American and French leaders would be recalled as the most interrupted ever. Three times, the American president was summoned to the Situation Room. Twice, he went alone, leaving the French president and his closest aides behind in the Oval Office. The third time, the French president went, too. After all, the two women in Room 822 of the Key Bridge Marriott both held French passports, though both documents were fraudulent. Eventually, the two leaders managed to spend an hour together without disruption before repairing to the East Room for a joint news conference. The American president was grim-faced throughout, and his answers were uncharacteristically rambling and unfocused. One reporter said the president appeared annoyed with his French colleague. Nothing could have been further from the truth.
The French president departed the White House at three p.m. and returned to Blair House. At that same moment, the Department of Homeland Security issued a vaguely worded warning of a possible terrorist attack on U.S. soil, perhaps in metropolitan Washington. When the bulletin failed to attract sufficient attention—only one cable news outlet bothered to report it—the DHS secretary hastily called a press conference to repeat the warning for the cameras. His tense demeanor made it clear that this was no cover-your-backside statement. The threat was real.
“Will there be any changes to the president’s schedule?” asked a reporter.
“Not at this time,” replied the secretary cryptically.
The secretary then listed several steps the federal government had taken to prevent or disrupt a potential attack, though he made no mention of the situation unfolding across the Potomac River, where, at 12:18 p.m., two women—subjects one and two, as they were known—had returned to their hotel room after a brief shopping excursion to Tysons Corner Center. Subject one had hung a Macy’s bag in the closet while subject two had placed two suspect parcels—L.L.Bean shopping bags—on the floor near the window. Three times, the microphones heard subject one asking about the contents of the bags. Three times, subject two refused to answer.
The entire national security apparatus of the United States was desperately asking the same question. How the bags had found their way into the trunk of the Impala, however, had been established rather quickly with the help of Tysons Corner’s massive array of security cameras. The delivery had occurred at 11:37 a.m., on the second level of Lot B. A hatted, coated man of indeterminate age and ethnicity had entered the parking garage on foot, an L.L.Bean bag in each hand, and had placed them in the Impala’s trunk, which he opened after gaining access to the car’s interior through an unlocked door. He then left the garage, once again on foot, and made his way to Route 7, where traffic cameras saw him climbing into a Nissan Altima with Delaware plates. It had been rented Friday afternoon at the Hertz outlet at Union Station. Hertz records identified the customer as a Frenchwoman named Asma Doumaz. The name was unfamiliar to the FBI.
All of which said nothing about the actual contents of the bags, though the highly professional method of delivery suggested the worst. At least one senior FBI official, not to mention a top political aide to the president, recommended an immediate raid on the room. But calmer heads, including the president’s, had prevailed. The cameras and the microphones would alert the FBI the instant the two subjects were preparing to go operational. In the meantime, the surveillance devices had the potential to supply invaluable intelligence, such as the targets and identities of other members of the attack cells. As a precaution, FBI SWAT and hostage rescue teams had quietly moved into position around the hotel. For now, the Marriott’s management knew nothing.
The signal from the cameras and microphones inside Room 822 flowed through the NCTC to the White House and beyond. The primary camera was concealed inside the entertainment console; it peered out at its subjects like a telescreen keeping watch over Winston Smith in his flat at the Victory Mansions. Subject two was lying seminude on the bed, smoking in violation of hotel rules and the laws of ISIS. Subject one, a devout nonsmoker, had requested permission to leave the room to get some fresh air, but subject two had denied it. It was, she said, haram to leave.
“Says who?” asked subject one.
“Says Saladin.”
The mention of the mastermind’s name raised hopes at the NCTC and the White House that critical intelligence would soon flow from the mouth of subject two. Instead, she lit a fresh cigarette and with the remote switched on the television. The secretary of homeland security was at the podium.
“What’s he saying?”
“He says there’s going to be an attack.”
“How does he know?”
“He won’t say.”
Subject two, still smoking, checked her phone—a phone that the FBI and NSA had been unable to penetrate. Then she squinted at the television. The secretary of homeland security had concluded his news conference. A panel of terrorism experts was analyzing what had just transpired.
“What are they saying?”
“The same thing,” said subject one. “There’s going to be an attack.”
“Do they know about us?”