The Bin Laden Plot

“Analysis is working the shipment end. Trying to figure out what ship the containers were loaded onto and what’s inside. Rolow sends his regrets, but he wants you to come in and review what we’ve got, first thing tomorrow. The meeting is at eight.”

“All right. I’ll see you in the morning,” he said, then hung up the phone.

Angie was sitting up in bed, the sheet pulled around her body as she stared at him.

“We might have a lead on Mixell,” he said. “A shipment he might be involved in. I need to head in to Langley tomorrow.”

“To meet with Christine?”

Harrison sighed. How many times do we have to go over this? “You really need to stop thinking about Christine.”

“I have to stop thinking about her? What about you? I asked you about a plan for tonight — spending time alone together — and the first thing that comes to your mind is Christine!”

Angie had a point, but he hadn’t been thinking about spending time with Christine. He’d been searching for a way to keep Maddy occupied and had devised an ingenious plan, if he said so himself, creating some romantic time for them while helping Maddy with her beam routine. He should be commended for his effort, not demonized.

“I thought it might help Maddy,” he said. “Nothing more.”

He leaned in to kiss her, but she turned away.

Frustrated at not getting through to her — about how much he truly loved her — he went to the sliding glass doors that opened to the balcony. Pulling them aside, he stepped into the cool night air wearing only his boxers. The view was spectacular, overlooking the Potomac River, the boats cruising the waterway, and the Alexandria skyline in the distance.

The scenery, however, was lost on him. Instead, he remembered something that had occurred more than ten years earlier. It was a month after he proposed to Angie. Christine had called — unaware of his proposal — letting him know she was ready to settle down. The next day, he had returned home from work to find Angie in a gloomy mood. When he pressed her for the reason, she had blurted out — I can’t compete with her!

Angie had never met Christine and had spent the day researching her on the internet. By then, Christine was an analyst for the House Appropriations Committee, leading the reviews of Pentagon weapon programs, and was well connected in D.C. Angie had come across a picture of Christine at a White House state dinner wearing a formal evening gown that hugged her body. Her hair had been pulled up, highlighting her glittering blue eyes, high cheekbones, and the sleek lines of her neck. Several other men and women stood nearby, most of them staring at Christine.

He had tried to explain to Angie that she had nothing to worry about — that she simply didn’t know how beautiful she was, largely because she didn’t put the effort into it that most women did. She was happy to pull on a pair of jeans and tie her hair in a ponytail, and head out to dinner without any makeup. Angie was as beautiful as Christine and just as smart. They both had college degrees, but Angie had done it the hard way, working nights to put herself through school, the first in her family to graduate from college. He repeatedly told her to stop worrying about Christine — that Angie was everything he ever wanted in a woman. But no matter how many times he told her so, she just scowled and told him to quit lying.

He returned to the room to find Angie still in bed, the sheet wrapped around her body and tucked under her arms. She was still turned away from him, but it didn’t matter; she was beautiful from any angle. He sat beside her and kissed her shoulder. When she turned her head toward him, he gently tugged on the sheet. But she held it firmly against her body.

Harrison sighed and lay on his back, staring at the ceiling, searching for the right words, something he hadn’t already told her a dozen times or more.

A moment later, Angie’s face was above his, looking down at him.

“Well, come on,” she said with a grin, the sheet still tucked under her arms. “You’re not going to give up that easily, are you?”

He ripped the sheet away and pounced on her, and she shrieked with laughter until his attention moved from her lips to more erogenous zones, and it wasn’t long before her cries of ecstasy spilled out into the night.

56 ARLINGTON, VIRGINIA

Earlier in the evening, Maddy had finished warming up on the low beam, and Christine had noted that her back handsprings looked fine. But that wasn’t unexpected. Once girls moved to the normal beam, their fear sometimes kicked in and affected the move. Performing blind backward moves on the four-inch-wide beam was terrifying for some girls. Even on a basic back handspring, a girl’s feet would leave the beam before the hands were planted behind her. If the hands didn’t land where they were supposed to, the move could end in disaster.