25. “The Asset”
“THE ASSET”
We came back to the loft just after eleven.
Atlas had not told me about Foster’s text in the library. He had waited until we were in the car. He had handed me his phone with the screen open while we were stopped at the light at Sixty-third and Madison, and I had read the two messages and I had not said anything for a full block.
By the time we got to Tribeca I had a list in my head.
By the time we were inside the loft I had crossed two names off the list and was working on a third.
I had Atlas’s coat off him before he had his shoes off.
I had the kettle on. I had the kitchen lights on.
I had the long white legal pad my father had given me at Yale that I used when I was working through anything that needed working through.
I sat down at the long pine table with the pad and a pen and Atlas sat down across from me and Foster, who had come straight from his office and who had a thumb drive in his pocket and a half-eaten sandwich in his hand, sat down at the head.
We worked.
The loft was quiet. The river outside was quiet. The radiator clicked twice and went still.
I sharpened the pen.
I wrote the date at the top of the legal pad. October seventh. I wrote a heading: ASSET. I wrote a subheading: ACCESS POINTS. Under ACCESS POINTS I wrote three sub-subheadings: STAFF. FAMILY. FIRM. CIRCLE.
This was how my mother had taught me to think when something needed thinking through.
She had sat me down at the kitchen counter when I was twelve and the SAT had been giving me a panic attack and she had handed me a yellow legal pad and a pen and she had said: when there is too much in your head, you put it on the page.
The page can hold more than your head can. Trust the page.
I trusted the page.
We worked the staff first.
Sara Lin. Chip’s chief of staff. Sixteen years.
Brendan Olsen. Chip’s senior advisor. Eight years.
Theresa McAdams. Chip’s communications director. Six years.
Two junior staffers in the DC office whose names I had to look up in my contacts.
Three interns.
The compound staff — Mrs. Harris, the gardener Phil who had been with the family since before I was born, the housekeeper’s daughter Jessica who occasionally helped Mrs. Harris on event weekends.
The firm staff — the three junior associates at Cain Sterling Hayes, the office manager, the receptionist, the IT contractor who came in twice a week.
The boys’ circle.
I stopped when I got to the boys’ circle.
I looked at Atlas.
“You do not seriously think anyone in the circle.”
“I do not. I have to write them down anyway. Foster will rule them out. Then we move on.”
I wrote them down. Hawk, Sterling, Cole, Killian, Knox, Maxwell, Roland, Beau. Nine names.
Foster looked at the page.
He took the pen out of my hand. He drew a line through all nine.
“Ruled out. Not because I am a romantic but because I have been watching all of them for three weeks and not one of them has done anything that even pings.”
“Thank you.”
“Welcome.”
We worked the family next.
Aspen. Sloane. Hadley. Vesper.
I crossed Aspen out before I had finished writing her name.
Aspen could not have kept this kind of secret for ten minutes.
Aspen would have been incandescent at me three weeks ago about the Helena photographs and would have demanded I let her drive a brick through Senator Ardent’s car window. I crossed her out.
Sloane. Sloane was harder. Sloane was patient.
Sloane was the only one of the three of us who could have actually pulled off something like this if she had wanted to.
But Sloane had no motive. Sloane loved my father with a quiet and complete devotion that had not changed since she was three. I crossed her out.
Hadley. Hadley was not technically family but she lived as if she were.
She had been at our compound on weekends since she was thirteen.
She had access to almost everything. She had no motive either.
She was a pediatric resident at Mount Sinai with an apartment full of cats and a quiet ambition to be a department chair by forty.
She had no political agenda. I left her name on the list anyway, in pencil, with a question mark.
Vesper, my cousin, who lived in Boston now and had been at the compound at Christmas. I crossed her out.
We worked the firm staff.
Atlas walked Foster through each of them.
The three associates were Ivy League graduates with no political connections.
The office manager had been with the firm for twelve years and had no ties to anybody in Washington.
The receptionist was a graduate student in art history at Columbia.
The IT contractor was a thirty-five-year-old former Navy man who came in twice a week and whose loyalty Atlas had bought by paying him double the going rate the day Atlas had hired him.
Foster ruled them out.
I crossed them out.
We worked the staff.
Brendan Olsen was forty-one and had been with my father for eight years and had a young family in McLean and had no motive.
Theresa McAdams was sixty-two and had been with my father since 2018 and was a former network journalist who had taken a pay cut to come to the office and who was loyal to my father in the particular way only women who had broken news for thirty years could be loyal.
The two junior staffers and the three interns were too far down the food chain to have access to the kind of information that had made it into Marcus Ellery’s emails.
That left Sara.
I held the pen above the page.
I did not write her name.
I sat there for a long minute looking at the page.
Sara had been at my mother’s funeral.
Sara had held my hand in the receiving line.
Sara had brought me a casserole the week after my mother died and had stood at our kitchen counter for an hour and let me cry into her shoulder while she told me a story about my mother that I had never heard before.
Sara had been my father’s chief of staff for sixteen years.
Sara had access to everything.
I went very still.
Atlas saw me go still.
He waited.
“Sara Lin.”
I said it out loud. I said it in the kind of careful voice you use when you are saying a thing you cannot un-say.
Atlas put his coffee down.
“Your father’s chief of staff.”
“Yes.”
“Eden.”
“I do not want it to be her, Atlas. I love her. She has been with my father since I was ten. She held my hand at my mother’s funeral. I do not want it to be her.”
“I know.”
“But she is the only person who could have planted the leak from inside without setting off any alarms. She has access to the schedule. She has access to the email server. She has access to the senator’s personal letterhead.
She has access to the foundation board materials.
She has access to my father’s call logs.
She has access to me. She has had access to me since I was ten years old. ”
He did not speak.
He did not contradict me.
He put his hand on top of the pen on the page.
He took the pen out of my hand.
He wrote her name on the page in his small careful script.
The pen looked very small on the page beside her name.
I felt the way I had felt at twenty-one when my mother had told me she was sick. I felt the way I had felt at twenty-six on a Tuesday at two p.m. in Tristan’s office. I felt the way I had felt at every single one of the small dropped-floor moments I had cataloged in my life.
I had grown up around Sara Lin’s laugh. I had grown up around her perfume. I had grown up around the small precise way she held a phone to her ear, the way she turned her shoulder slightly away from a room when she was on a sensitive call, the way she touched her own throat when she was thinking.
I did not want it to be her.
Foster watched both of us.
Then he said, very quietly: “I had her on a list. I have not yet wanted to say it to either of you. I have been watching her for two weeks. I do not yet have a smoking gun. I have a few small things that do not yet add up to a story. She has met with two people in DC in the last month who do not appear on her published calendar. She has used a personal email account to send three messages that I have been able to confirm went to a server in Boston that one of Senator Ardent’s PACs uses.
The body of the messages I have not been able to read.
The metadata is consistent with what I would expect to see if she were transmitting case-related material. ”
Atlas closed his eyes.
I watched him close his eyes.
He opened them.
He said: “I want to be the one to talk to her.”
“Atlas.”
“I want to be the one. I have known her for sixteen years. I want her to hear the question from me. Not from a federal agent. Not from your father. From me. I want to ask her in a room that does not have anyone else in it and I want her to have an opportunity to say her version. If I do not give her that I will not be able to live with myself.”
I looked at him.
I knew that face.
It was the face he wore when he had decided a thing and was going to do it whether or not I approved.
“All right,” I said.
He stood up. He went into the next room and he closed the door. I heard the low murmur of his voice on the phone.
Foster looked at me.
“You are all right.”
“I am not. But I am not going to fall apart in front of you.”
“I know.”
He stood up.
He took his coffee mug to the sink and he washed it the way he always washed his mug at my loft, which was with a small particular care, like a man who had spent twenty years in shared housing and knew how to leave a kitchen.
“I am going home,” he said. “I will be at the firm at six. Atlas will tell you the plan.”
“Foster.”
“Yes.”
“Thank you.”
“Of course.”
He let himself out.
I went to the bedroom.
I changed out of the green dress. I washed my face. I brushed my teeth. I put on the long t-shirt I slept in. I came back out to the kitchen.
Atlas was off the phone.
He came across the room. He took my face in both his hands. He kissed my forehead. He held me against his chest for a long moment.
“I love you,” he said.
“I know.”