The Divide Read online

  This is a work of fiction. All the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  The Divide © 2019 by Julie L. Brown

  All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Printed in the United States of America.

  For information address JAB Press, P.O. Box 9462, Seattle, WA 98109.

  Cover Design by Damonza

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2018915314

  ISBN 978-0-9969772-6-5 (paperback)

  ISBN 978-0-9969772-7-2 (ebook)

  First Edition: May 2019

  Contents

  Also by J. L. Brown

  Prologue

  Part I

  Chapter One: Washington, DC

  Chapter Two: Camp David, near Thurmont, Maryland

  Chapter Three: Seattle, Washington

  Chapter Four: Washington, DC

  Chapter Five: Washington, DC

  Chapter Six: New York City, New York

  Chapter Seven: New York City, New York

  Chapter Eight: Washington, DC

  Chapter Nine: The White House, Washington, DC

  Chapter Ten: Washington, DC

  Chapter Eleven: The White House, Washington, DC

  Chapter Twelve: Chicago, Illinois

  Chapter Thirteen: Chicago, Illinois

  Part II

  Chapter Fourteen: Washington, DC

  Chapter Fifteen: The White House, Washington, DC

  Chapter Sixteen: Washington, DC

  Chapter Seventeen: Chicago, Illinois

  Chapter Eighteen: Arlington, Virginia

  Chapter Nineteen: Arlington, Virginia

  Chapter Twenty: Arlington, Virginia

  Chapter Twenty-One: The White House, Washington, DC

  Chapter Twenty-Two: Washington, DC

  Chapter Twenty-Three: Washington, DC

  Chapter Twenty-Four: The White House, Washington, DC

  Chapter Twenty-Five: Washington, DC

  Chapter Twenty-Six: Washington, DC

  Chapter Twenty-Seven: The White House, Washington, DC

  Chapter Twenty-Eight: Washington, DC

  Chapter Twenty-Nine: The White House, Washington, DC

  Chapter Thirty: Washington, DC

  Chapter Thirty-One: Arlington, Virginia

  Chapter Thirty-Two: The White House, Washington, DC

  Chapter Thirty-Three: Washington, DC

  Chapter Thirty-Four: The White House, Washington, DC

  Chapter Thirty-Five: New York City, New York

  Chapter Thirty-Six: Air Force One

  Chapter Thirty-Seven: Washington, DC

  Chapter Thirty-Eight: Washington, DC

  Chapter Thirty-Nine: The White House, Washington, DC

  Chapter Forty: Arlington, Virginia

  Chapter Forty-One: The White House, Washington, DC

  Chapter Forty-Two: Seattle, Washington

  Chapter Forty-Three: The White House, Washington, DC

  Chapter Forty-Four: Washington, DC

  Chapter Forty-Five: Washington, DC

  Chapter Forty-Six: Washington, DC

  Chapter Forty-Seven: The White House, Washington, DC

  Chapter Forty-Eight: Kensington, Maryland

  Chapter Forty-Nine: Fairfax, Virginia

  Chapter Fifty: The White House, Washington, DC

  Chapter Fifty-One: Washington, DC

  Chapter Fifty-Two: Arlington, Virginia

  Chapter Fifty-Three: Washington, DC

  Chapter Fifty-Four: Clayton, Missouri

  Chapter Fifty-Five: Seattle, Washington

  Chapter Fifty-Six: Chantilly, Virginia

  Chapter Fifty-Seven: Casper, Wyoming

  Chapter Fifty-Eight: Seattle, Washington

  Chapter Fifty-Nine: The White House, Washington, DC

  Chapter Sixty: Medina, Washington

  Chapter Sixty-One: The White House, Washington, DC

  Chapter Sixty-Two: Seattle, Washington

  Chapter Sixty-Three: Bellevue, Washington

  Chapter Sixty-Four: Seattle, Washington

  Chapter Sixty-Five: The White House, Washington, DC

  Chapter Sixty-Six: Arlington, Virginia

  Chapter Sixty-Seven: Clayton, Missouri

  Chapter Sixty-Eight: Clayton, Missouri

  Chapter Sixty-Nine: St. Louis, Missouri

  Chapter Seventy: St. Louis, Missouri

  Chapter Seventy-One: The White House, Washington, DC

  Chapter Seventy-Two: Washington, DC

  Chapter Seventy-Three: The White House, Washington, DC

  Chapter Seventy-Four: Washington, DC

  Chapter Seventy-Five: Washington, DC

  Chapter Seventy-Six: Chicago, Illinois

  Chapter Seventy-Seven: Washington, DC

  Chapter Seventy-Eight: Washington, DC

  Chapter Seventy-Nine: Washington, DC

  Chapter Eighty: The White House, Washington, DC

  Chapter Eighty-One: Washington, DC

  Chapter Eighty-Two: Washington, DC

  Chapter Eighty-Three: Washington, DC

  Part III

  Chapter Eighty-Four: Washington, DC

  Chapter Eighty-Five: Arlington, Virginia

  Chapter Eighty-Six: Washington, DC

  Chapter Eighty-Seven: Washington, DC

  Chapter Eighty-Eight: The White House, Washington, DC

  Chapter Eighty-Nine: Washington, DC

  Chapter Ninety: Washington, DC

  Chapter Ninety-One: The White House, Washington, DC

  Chapter Ninety-Two: Washington, DC

  Chapter Ninety-Three: The White House, Washington, DC

  Chapter Ninety-Four: Washington, DC

  Chapter Ninety-Five: The White House, Washington, DC

  Chapter Ninety-Six: Washington, DC

  Chapter Ninety-Seven: Washington, DC

  Chapter Ninety-Eight: Washington, DC

  Chapter Ninety-Nine: The White House, Washington, DC

  Epilogue: Washington, DC

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  Also by J. L. Brown

  Books

  Rule of Law

  Don’t Speak

  Short Story

  Few Are Chosen

  To my mother, Julia, who raised me to be the best that I can be. And I shall be forever grateful.

  Divide and rule, the politician cries; unite and lead,

  is watchword of the wise.

  —Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Prologue

  One Week Ago

  Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

  The first one to leave the meeting, he jogged down the stone steps of the historic building, cinching the lapels of his coat to ward off the late-autumn chill.

  Thanks to “Franklin,” his sponsor, he had been inducted into the Paine Society, or the Society, as his fellow members called it. Membership lasted for life, either a member’s natural-born life or otherwise. Standing before the ninety-nine other members, he pledged to preserve and protect the democracy of the United States.

  How had he ended up in this predicament? Parliamentary government worked just fine, thank you very much. Was assigning him the name “Madison” someone’s idea of a joke? The real James Madison, a founding father and the fourth US president, known primarily for his part in drafting the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, was less remembered for leading the fledgling country into war against the newly elected Society member’s homeland in 1812.

  Th
e present-day “Madison” stopped and stared at his reflection in the window of a closed clothing store. His gray eyes stared back at him.

  Under Franklin’s direction, Madison had been covertly working for the Society, deterring his boss from pursuing the Robin Hood case and discovering the Society’s role in it. His job was to ensure that the case remained closed. Permanently. The warning he issued to Jade Harrington a couple of months ago had not given him pleasure. Over the past year, working alongside her, he discovered that she was one of the good ones. Always trying to do the right thing. An agent he could learn from and aspire to be like someday.

  But he had a higher calling, and as his dad used to say, one’s calling wasn’t a choice.

  A SEPTA bus swooshed past. Glancing at his watch, he hurried toward the 30th Street Station to catch the 10:18 p.m. Amtrak to Washington, DC.

  He had to report to work at the Federal Bureau of Investigation headquarters first thing tomorrow. And he couldn’t be late.

  Part I

  @TheGodOfVeritas: While thousands of NYC citizens won’t be eating dinner tonight, Sebastian Scofield is attending a $1000-a-plate dinner at the NYPL. #shame

  Chapter One

  Washington, DC

  “What do you want to show me?”

  Jade Harrington leaned forward, forearms on her thighs. Next to her, Pat Turner sat perched on a seat cushion, a sweater draped over the back of her chair. Photographs of TV characters from Star Trek, The Twilight Zone, and The Big Bang Theory covered the three walls of Pat’s cubicle. A space heater under the desk blew hot air against Jade’s legs.

  The rest of the agents on the fourth floor had left for the night, their cubicles dark.

  Pat, gray-haired and in her early fifties, had been with the bureau long enough to understand how to get things done within the bureaucracy. She knew where all the bodies were buried—Jimmy Hoffa’s included, it was rumored.

  She pointed at the monitor. “Read it for yourself.”

  After selecting a blue peanut M&M, Jade slipped the small bag back into her pants pocket while she read the text on the screen. It was a report from CART, the bureau’s Computer Analysis Response Team.

  “What the… ?” She looked at Pat. “This means…”

  The other woman nodded. “He didn’t do it.”

  Jade leaned back in the chair and briefly closed her eyes. Not in prayer, but in shame. “How could I make a mistake like this?”

  Pat’s shoulders sagged. “It wasn’t just you. It was all of us.”

  “But the buck stops with me. Damn!”

  She jumped out of the chair and paced back and forth a couple of times before returning to her seat.

  “Explain,” Jade said.

  “We messed up. As I told you months ago, something about fingering Noah Blakeley always nagged at me. All the evidence pointed to him, but his technical skills lacked the proficiency to create a hack as sophisticated as Astrea.”

  “The Goddess of Justice.”

  “The perp used Tor to anonymously send malware via email asking for donations from prospective donors of Noah’s nonprofit. The program stole the victims’ passwords to their online banking sites and then drained their bank accounts. The hacking of Blakeley’s computer made it seem like all the transactions originated from there.”

  “If it wasn’t Noah, then who was behind the hack?”

  Pat sighed. “That we’re still working on.”

  Jade glanced down at her watch. “It’s 6:00 p.m. there. I need to make a call.” She looked the older woman in the eye. “Good work, Pat.”

  Popping out of the chair, Jade sprinted down the corridor between cubicles to her office.

  Chapter Two

  Camp David, near Thurmont, Maryland

  “Why are we here?”

  Her younger son stood in a wide stance in the middle of the living room of the main house. Once his bangs had flopped on his forehead, but now his hair was cut close on the sides and in back, the hair on top a little longer. His hands were in the front pockets of his dark blue slacks, and his white shirt was open at the collar, the uniform of a young staffer on the Hill. His red tie was draped over the armrest of a chair.

  “Mom,” Chandler said, “I’m needed back in Washington. I have work to do.”

  “I can only imagine,” she said. Chandler Fairchild was a legislative aide for Nebraska senator Paul Sampson.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Nothing. Although you might want to think about switching to a winning team.”

  Emma laughed from her chair adjacent to the fireplace.

  “Shut up,” he said, whirling on her.

  “Don’t talk to your sister that way,” Whitney said.

  “Yeah,” Emma said. “Don’t talk to me that way.”

  Whitney flashed her daughter a warning look. “Emma.”

  “He’s so stupid, Mom,” Emma said.

  Grayson, Whitney’s husband, sat next to her on the sofa.

  “Don’t call your brother stupid,” he said.

  “Well, he is. He doesn’t believe half the things he says.” She turned to face her brother. “They’re using you to provoke Mom. That’s the only reason Sampson hired you.”

  “You think?” Chandler asked.

  Leaning toward him as if in confidence, she said, “It wasn’t for your political mind.”

  “That’s enough, Emma,” said Grayson.

  Chandler turned to Whitney. “Are you on the winning team, Mom?”

  “History will reflect favorably on my legacy.”

  “Doesn’t seem like you’re winning. The New New will die die.”

  The New New Deal Coalition Act, a modern incarnation of the New Deal implemented by Franklin D. Roosevelt in the 1930s, rendered relief for the unemployed and underemployed poor and middle class, recovery of the American Dream through the provision of universal preschool and a cap on college tuition, and reform of the financial system and the national infrastructure, which would build and repair highways and bridges and provide low-income housing.

  “What makes you say that?” Whitney said.

  “No reason,” he mumbled.

  “Take a seat, son,” Grayson told him, “and watch your mouth.”

  “Yeah!” Emma said. “When you hold a real political position, then you can talk. She’s your mom and the president. You should respect both.”

  “Emma, I’m not going to tell you again,” Grayson said.

  Despite the chastisement, Emma appeared pleased with herself. Chandler, on the other hand, shot each of them a look before sitting in the chair on the other side of the fireplace.

  Whitney clasped her hands in her lap. “We have something to tell you.”

  “You’re getting a divorce,” Chandler blurted.

  This caught Whitney off guard. “What?”

  Chandler’s leg bobbed up and down with nervous energy. “What else could be important enough to drag us out here to the country? You told us about that psycho, Landon. There’s not another sibling we don’t know about, is there?” He barked out a laugh.

  “Being a victim of rape isn’t funny,” she said. “You make it seem as if it was my fault.”

  Under her breath, Emma said, “I told you he was stupid.”

  Chandler’s face softened. “Sorry, Mom.”

  She looked at her son. He had become a stranger to her. Though Emma, too, had changed. For both of them, Whitney suspected, it was more than the usual pangs of growing up. The pressure of being the president’s children—not to mention the children of the first female US president—didn’t help. The two siblings had been close until a couple of years ago. They rarely spoke to each other now. When they did, their words weren’t kind.

  Whitney glanced at her husband. “Landon Phillips,” she said carefully, “believed he was my son.”

  “We know,” Chandler said.

  “It’s not true,” Whitney said.

  Emma sat up. “What?”

  “What�
�s not true?” Chandler said.

  Soldiering on, Whitney said, “For some reason, perhaps because of our mutual circumstances—coincidences—he conjured up this entire scenario that I gave him up at birth.”

  “Why would he do that?” Chandler asked.

  “I don’t know,” Whitney said.

  “Who’s his biological mother?” Emma asked.

  “I don’t know that either.”

  “You don’t have another son?” Chandler asked, hopeful.

  She pondered, not for the first time, if this was the root cause of her son’s drastic personality shift over the last year.

  “That’s not why you asked us here,” Emma said. “There’s something else.”

  “Yes.” Another glance at her husband, who winked at her, bestowing a smile that nestled her in a warm blanket. He patted her hand.

  “After the terrorist attack on Rockefeller Center,” she said, “my press secretary needed a blood transfusion.”

  “Blake Haynes,” Chandler said.

  Whitney nodded.

  “Wait a minute,” he said, standing. “Haynes is your son? Is that what you’re saying?”

  “Yes.”

  “Are you sure this time?”

  “Watch your tone. I’ve had enough of your attitude.”

  Chandler brushed back bangs no longer there. Was he analyzing the political implications as she had when she’d received the test results? Or were his calculations more personal?

  “Yes, we’re sure,” Whitney continued. “DNA testing proved beyond a doubt that Blake is my son, and your half-brother.”

  “He’s not my brother,” Chandler said.

  “Since his politics are more aligned with Mom’s than yours are,” Emma said, “maybe you’re the one who’s adopted.”

  “Emma!” Whitney said.

  “Just kidding, Mom.” Emma rose, crossed the room, and sat on the other side of her. Hugging Whitney tightly, she whispered in her ear, “I love you, Mom,” before resting her head on Whitney’s shoulder.

  “I love you too.” Whitney laid her cheek on her daughter’s head and looked up at her son.