Chapter 15 – Bypass

The White House was truly beautiful inside. How surprising that the lying hasn’t destroyed it yet just like some of those streets of the city.
- “Which way are we gonna be heading then?” Vince asked.
- “It’s always up.” Christina answered.
- “We’ll need to ask someone to help us find that Sam Thompson person.”
- “Will be hard to find the truthful guide though.”
- “Unfortunately yes.”
They proceeded towards the stairs. Those were at the end of a corridor, so three of them had to walk across the whole building pretty much, with guards looking at them in a menacing fashion.
- “I hate being in situations like these.” Christina admitted, “You know, hiding things from others.”
- “I understand. It’s not an easy feeling, but best thing to do is to think about your goal ahead. Concentrating on that causes you to become kind of numb to everything else.” Vince explained.
- “I guess that makes sense. I will try that. Thanks.”
- “You’ll get used to it soon enough.” Pete added, “Because I bet we’ll need to do more of that if we are to succeed.”
Christina knew that Vince and Pete were used to the situations like these already, but she wasn’t yet. She hated getting into trouble. It was really worrying her and giving her a stomach-ache.
They reached the staircase now. It proceeded all the way to every floor.
- “Right then. We need to look for him on every floor then or does any of you have a better idea?” Vince began.
- “We’ll probably need to take our chances with one of the guards and hope he speaks the truth.” Christina said.
- “Slim chance, but what the heck, let’s try.”
Three of them went up to the first floor and entered the hallway there. The first guard they saw, they approached and Vince spoke:
- “Could you tell us where Sam Thompson would be?”
- “That way.” The guard pointed back at the stairs where they came from.
- “Let’s try another one.” Vince said quietly to Christina and they moved away from the guard.
- “Shouldn’t they be like escorting us anyway?” Pete brought up.
- “Yeah, I am surprised they just let us walk around the White House like this.” Vince agreed.
They then approached another guard.
- “Excuse me, could you…” Vince began, but the guard was stuffing his face with food and not paying attention at all, so he stopped talking there.
- “Vince.” Christina suddenly called and ran up to something, “a map.”
- “Excellent. Let’s have a look at it.”
The map hung on the wall and featured every floor of the building. Vince was pretty good at reading maps, but this one was pretty complex still. They looked around the map of each floor there. It seemed that more important people seemed to be on higher floors.
- “His office should be there.” Christina pointed at the 4th floor.
- “Let’s give it a try then.” Pete agreed.
Three of them headed back for the stairs and climbed to the 4th floor. They then proceeded through a small corridor and entered the lobby there. One of the guards approached them:
- “Who are you? You shouldn’t be here.”
- “We know, we’ll be out in 5 seconds.” Vince told him.
- “OK.” The guard said and then left them.
They carried on forwards through the lobby until Christina said:
- “There he is.” And pointed at a rather small guy not too far away, talking to one of the guards.
- “This is our chance. Let’s go.” Vince told them.
- “What are we going to say?” Pete asked.
- “Don’t you worry about it. Let Chrissie and myself do the talking.”
They quickly walked up to him. He couldn’t help but notice them and so asked:
- “I am sorry, could I help you?”
- “Yes, we must have a word with you. It won’t take long.” Christina said.
- “All right. And who would you be?
- “I am Vince.”
- “And I am Christina. We live not far from here.”
- “My name is John.” Pete lied, which caused a slightly disapproving look from Vince and Christina for a second.
- “Follow me to my office then.” Sam said.
The guard followed but Sam gave him a sign, meaning everything is OK. His office was just around the corner. He opened the door and all of them entered.