Most people look for the obvious. Most people are shy and deferential to any hint of authority and take what they see at face value.
He was a hard-looking guy in a jacket. Karen used to tease him when he would fall back into the old postures of a bodyguard without even thinking of it: hands ready at his waist, eyes always searching. He might as well use it.
She opened the door twelve inches.
“Yes?”
He waited for the bolt of recognition, for the shout, for any sign that she recognized him as the man who had just sneaked into her apartment.
“I’m here to pick up Ali,” he said. He stayed well back from the door, didn’t want to spook her.
He thought through the next couple of lines—just a driver out on a call—but she didn’t even bother with questions.
At the mention of Ali’s name, anger crossed her face.
“She’s gone.”
“I was supposed to pick her up. Do you know where she is?”
The cat poked its head around the corner, looked up at him, and purred. Clara eyed him, sharper now. “No. And I don’t want to.”
“Damn. The number I have for her doesn’t seem to work. Any idea where I might find her?”
She retreated into the apartment a few inches, put her hand on the doorknob, and narrowed the opening.
“You’re one of them, aren’t you?”
“Who?” he asked.
She shook her head, nose wrinkling with disdain. “Who is she working for? What is all this?”
“Sorry. I’m not sure what you’re talking about.”
“Coming and going all hours of the night, black trucks, tinted windows, guys like you. What is she into?”
She knew as little as he did. When he didn’t answer, she let out a weary laugh.
“If you find her, tell her to lose my number.”
She shut and bolted the door.
27
Nick was glad he had gone back to the apartment. That was no performance. She didn’t know what Alexandra was involved with, only that it seemed dangerous. He took his phone out, added a new contact, and typed in Alexandra/Ali’s number from memory.
He wanted to call her now, but it might be better to wait, so that she didn’t know how close he was getting, and how much he knew. Perhaps there was a way to use that first call, while her guard was down, to trace where she was.
He couldn’t stop thinking about what Clara had said: black trucks. He’d seen SUVs on his tail when he was searching for Emma and stolen one from the attackers at the house where Widener was murdered.
He crossed the street and circled to his work truck, checking the windshield for a ticket. It was a DC instinct. There were usually a half-dozen conflicting parking signs on any given street in Washington.
He swung open the door, stepped in, and slid his key into the ignition.
A woman paused on the corner a block down, her ash-blond hair pulled into a bun, a bag over her shoulder.
He leaned toward the wheel.
It was Alexandra Hart. She crossed the intersection and took her phone from her pocket.
He climbed out and started walking toward her at a normal pace. He wasn’t sure if she had seen him and wanted to get close without drawing her attention.
She took off around the corner, raising the phone to her ear. He raced after her, shoes pounding against the red-brick sidewalk.
At the intersection he turned left onto a one-way street. The traffic around the Capitol was so bad he was better off on foot. There were crowds ahead, closer to the Senate office buildings, but he thought he’d caught sight of her.
He kept on, darting along the curb to get around a crowd of interns who looked like kids wearing their parents’ clothes.
At the corner of First and Constitution, he looked over the vehicle barriers and guard booths that led to the Capitol grounds, the long hill down to the Mall, and Union Station’s classical facade to the north.
Which way?
He searched every figure, every face. Ali had a head start and may have doubled back or disappeared into one of the buildings along the way.
A woman walked through the park toward the Capitol. He caught a glimpse of her from the back: the hair, the bag over the shoulder. He chased after, past the Capitol Police standing post with their automatic rifles and guard dogs.
She turned and lifted her phone, snapped a photo of herself. It wasn’t Ali.
He started back north, then stopped by the intersection. He turned full circle. The Capitol, the Supreme Court, the Senate office buildings spun past.
Who did she work for? Why had she run here?
“Sir, can I help you?”
He turned and found himself face-to-face with a twentysomething Capitol Police officer kitted out for battle, an M4 rifle on a sling across his chest.
Nick was breathing hard and carried a fresh bruise on his face. He knew the air he must be giving off: a maniac.
He didn’t need attention. Not here. Not now. Not with a pistol on his hip this close to Congress. The police could already have connected him with last night’s murder. After a final glance around, he said, “I’m fine. I thought I saw someone I knew.”
He smiled and strolled away, past the families in freshly bought tourist kitsch, past the staffers with cell phones glued to their ears, past the blast barriers.
And all around him, rolling out from underground garages and through police checkpoints, were black trucks, traveling in packs, protecting the powerful, their passengers invisible behind tinted glass.
28
Gray hit the brakes on the Chevy Suburban and stopped in front of the traffic light. It was green, but the cars ahead were stacked up all the way into the intersection. He didn’t want to get stuck in the middle and attract the attention of the Capitol Police. He had two unregistered handguns in the vehicle and a short-barreled rifle hidden under the back seats. He checked the mirrors for any sign of Nick Averose in pursuit.
Ali Waldron sat in the passenger seat, her right hand gripping the door handle so tightly that her knuckles paled.
“How did he find me? What if he’s following me now?”
“I’ll take care of it. You’re safe, Ali. You can relax.”
It was the same script Gray used with every potential victim. Calm made everything easier.
Ali was safe for now, as safe as any of them were. Nick Averose was loose, connecting dots. Not one day after the killing, and he had found the right thread, twined it around his fingers.
She turned and considered him. “Are you new?”
“Old.” Gray smiled.
He looked at her warmly, and she seemed to relax. Kindness was a tool like any other.
As they drove on, Ali sat back, closed her eyes, and took a few long, deep breaths.
Gray was supposed to be insulated from as many witnesses as possible, but the normal, carefully rehearsed rules of this operation were bending hour by hour.
He and Blakely had arranged Ali’s part in luring in and framing Averose, but she had never seen Gray.
Ali looked down at her wrist. Gray had grabbed it as he pulled her into the car. She flexed it and winced slightly.
“Are you okay?” he said.
“It’s fine.”
“Averose was parked on the next street over?”
She nodded. “I think so. He was in a white pickup.”
“You saw him get out of it?”
“Yes.”
Averose would be back. He needed his truck. Gray stopped at an intersection. He had a chance to take his man down now.
He palmed the wheel to the left and drove in the direction of Averose’s vehicle, but he didn’t go down the street where it was parked.
“It’s that way,” Ali said, pointing over her shoulder.
“I know,” Gray said, and pulled over in a loading zone. He was just around the corner from the truck. He wouldn’t get too close. He was going to wait, like a hunter in a blind, for Averose to walk into the
kill.
“Sit away from the window.”
She pressed herself against the leather while he examined the street. The setup was not ideal, but it was manageable.
“You should get in the back,” Gray said. He put his finger on the stalk coming out of the steering column that controlled the wipers, pressed the tip of it in, and held it for three seconds. A soft pop came from under his seat, and he reached down and pulled out a zippered nylon bag.
He opened it and took out a pistol and suppressor.
“You’re going to kill him?” she asked as Gray threaded on the suppressor. “In the middle of the street?”
That was how it worked sometimes, when things were moving too rapidly for weeks of planning. Stroll up behind, two pops, heart and lungs from the back, then one in the head on the ground, all without breaking stride.
You could be around the corner before any passersby managed to gather themselves enough to react. But that was an ugly option. Gray looked at the truck in his rearview. Better to simply roll by and do it through the window. The Suburban couldn’t be traced.
“That man Averose is very dangerous, Ali. He’s a murderer, and he would take your life without a second thought. Now get in the back.”
She clambered over the console, into the rear seat, and pressed herself into the corner. Gray waited, gun in his hand, eyes on Nick’s vehicle.
29
Nick walked down Constitution toward his truck, hands in his pockets, a light coat of sweat on his palms. It was just around the corner.
The adrenaline was slow in burning off. Every sound seemed extra sharp, extra loud, like he had turned the volume up on the world.
He wanted to chase down Ali, wanted those answers now. She was gone, but he was getting closer. He had a name and number, something that could pierce the fake persona she had been using with him. He would track her down. It was a small victory, and as he neared the intersection and saw his truck, he felt the muscles in his face and neck relax, his breath come a little easier.
He stopped hard on the bricks. Someone bumped into his shoulder, and he spun toward him. It was just a staffer in a suit, his credentials dangling. He looked at Nick nervously, and Nick deserved it, standing here, blocking the way, scanning the street like a hunted man.
He turned and walked the other way. Ali had seen him get out of his truck and then gone for her phone. If she had called in the encounter to someone, they would be watching his vehicle. They would ambush or track him. It was what Nick would have done.
He needed to put distance between himself and his last observed location. He held his hand out toward a red and gray cab.
He climbed in, and the driver looked at him expectantly.
“Just head down Pennsylvania,” Nick said. “I’ll give you the address in a second.”
He looked back and watched the Capitol shrink in the distance.
30
Sam MacDonough strolled through the rotunda of the Russell Senate Office Building. Theo loped beside him on the left, and Sam’s chief of staff kept up on the right while tapping on his phone.
He turned down a hall. A Capitol policeman stepped into his path, leaned down, and rubbed the dog’s flank.
“Williams, how’s your daughter doing?” Sam asked.
“Better. Much better. Thank you for the help.”
“If you ever need another referral or anything else, just come by the office and talk to Tim, okay?”
He pointed to his chief of staff, who lowered his phone, then gave Sam the look. Sam was always talking to everyone, always late.
“I will, and . . . uh-oh, sir,” Williams said, and pointed down the hall. “I think they’re onto you.”
MacDonough looked across the rotunda and saw a pack of reporters moving toward him with their rumpled shirts and lanyard credentials. They were brandishing iPhones and recorders like the spears of a hoplite phalanx.
MacDonough winked at him and started walking, following the lead of his chief of staff. He knew why they were coming. Good news entirely.
After three weeks of failed negotiations, MacDonough had just forged a breakthrough on the spending bill that was paralyzing Washington. He made it into his office before the reporters caught up to him. The staffers started clapping as he entered, and his legislative director gave him a squeeze around the shoulders.
MacDonough looked at the TV mounted near the reception desk. A CNN reporter spoke into the camera, staked out in the hall in front of this office.
His deputy chief of staff leaned in. “How’d you do it?” he asked.
Sam couldn’t tell him the truth: that he’d met David Blakely early that morning. As they’d walked through a cold fog outside the botanic gardens just down the hill from the Capitol, David had told him that the opposition was secretly desperate to make a deal. They had been standing firm publicly, with the president threatening to shut down the government, but David had gotten his hands on their internal polling and strategy memos. It showed them bleeding support among their constituents. When Sam had gone into that room to negotiate, he’d known the other side would cave.
“There’s always common ground,” Sam said in mock solemnity. “A win-win.”
“Like we get everything we want, and you might give them their balls back?”
“Exactly.” Sam smiled.
There was a new ABC News/Washington Post poll out this morning about the upcoming election, far too early but still telling. Sam led the pack of primary candidates by eight points, and his favorability was twenty points higher than that of the president he would be challenging.
That and the spending deal had the reporters drooling outside the office. He looked up to see a new shot on CNN: it was Malcolm Widener’s house, surrounded by the police and FBI.
“Congratulations, Sam,” someone said, but the voice sounded distant, underwater. “All the press are here now. I think it’s time.”
“Sam?”
“One minute,” he said as he stepped into his inner office and shut the door.
He sat down on the sofa and brought his hands over his mouth and nose as if breathing through a mask. The walls seemed to waver. The overhead light doubled in his vision. His heart was a balled fist inside his chest.
This was real. The FBI was onto Widener’s murder. What else would they uncover?
Sam’s secret had been safely buried for decades, and then Emma Blair had come along. She’d started asking questions about one night twenty-five years ago, a party at a country house on the Fourth of July. They were dangerous questions, and David Blakely had done what he did. He’d made it all go away. He hadn’t even told Sam about it then.
That was the beauty of David. He operated invisibly, on his own initiative. Sam didn’t know the full extent of David’s work on his behalf. He didn’t want to. He was glad for the help, and distinctly uncurious about how everything always just seemed to break his way.
But Emma had talked to Malcolm Widener about that party. She and the former director had been close friends in school, and she had gone to him just before she went missing a month ago. Emma thought he had been upstairs at that house that night years ago, and asked Malcolm if he had seen Sam MacDonough and David Blakely upstairs, too.
He hadn’t. Widener was a busy man and had let it drop—he probably thought it was just Emma being Emma, on some new kick, stirring up trouble.
But after Widener found out that Emma had disappeared, he approached Sam. He wanted answers. He talked about how somber Emma had been when she came to him with those questions and the fear in her eyes at the mere mention of Sam’s name.
That was the first time Sam had heard about any of this. His stomach writhed like a tangle of snakes, and he thought he might be sick right there in front of Widener.
“What was she so afraid of, Sam?” Malcolm asked. “What really happened that night?”
Sam managed to put him off that day, to talk his way out of it, to buy time. He went to David Blakely.
David kne
w that Widener would be a problem. The former director had come up as a prosecutor, was relentless, and still had breakfast with the attorney general, an old Georgetown roommate, twice a month. David did what he did and saw that Widener wouldn’t let this go until he found the answers. He and Sam had no other choice.
That country house. That Fourth of July. That night twenty-five years ago. Sam MacDonough’s mind went back: the flowers on the wallpaper, the piss taste of light beer, the room upstairs full of silver light.
Three knocks sounded on the door, and Sam flinched. He looked up as his chief of staff stepped in.
“Are you ready to take some questions?” he asked, his voice bright as a bell. “We should really make the most of this.”
Sam stood and walked toward the door, saw the half-dozen reporters and the network cameramen setting up just outside the office with their Porta-braces and lights, ready to go live. The news of Widener’s death still played on the television. His tongue was as dry as sand. It was too much. There were too many eyes on him. This was insanity.
“Sam?” his chief of staff said.
You can handle this. David had told him that this morning, his hand on Sam’s back. He’d been handling it for twenty-five years. They could lock up the major donors by tomorrow night.
Sam walked out. The lights hit his eyes. The shot was live.
He had this.
Sam tugged his cheeks into a tight little smile as Theo slipped through the reporters’ legs, drawing a few grins. The first two questions were about the appropriations deal and Sam fed them some boilerplate about reaching across the aisle.
An Associated Press reporter shoved her way between two cameramen. “When are you going to announce, Senator?”
“Announce what, Kasie?”
“Your candidacy for president.”
“Is there an election coming up?” he said, and glanced at his chief of staff. “You’re supposed to tell me about these things, Tim.” He let the laughter roll on for a second and then pointed to NBC. “Mark, go ahead.”
Hour of the Assassin Page 7