Hour of the Assassin

by Matthew Quirk

  He checked his mirrors. Would Nick come here now? He didn’t know. He was a stoic and despite everything might not want to bring the danger back near his wife. But he was desperate, too.

  Karen walked through the house, and he tracked her: bathroom, bedroom. He had lost Nick, sure, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t control him. His friend was a man of simple drives: to protect, and protect what he loved most of all.

  He watched Karen slip her sweater over her head and then pull the blinds.

  If it came to that, what was one more death? There was a certain grace in his sins. He was already so far gone his only choice was to keep going.

  63

  Sam MacDonough opened the door to the apartment and stepped inside.

  “Ali,” he called out.

  He took his jacket off and hung it over a low chair in the living room. He heard soft footsteps from the bedroom and walked over. Ali stood in the doorway.

  “There she is,” he said, smiling.

  If there was ever a day he could have used a break, it was today. He needed someone like her, part of that world he shared with David, someone who wasn’t scared of a little darkness. This thing they had would be over soon, too risky after he announced. He would miss it.

  He went to her, took her hand, and put his arm around her waist. Something was wrong. Her body felt a little stiff to him for some reason.

  “What’s going on?” he asked.

  “Sam,” she said. “I need to talk to you about something.”

  He took a step back. He didn’t need more problems. Not this week on top of everything else. This place was through the looking glass. He would meet her here and forget the campaign for a moment, forget the ceaseless pressure of the secrets he kept. His whole life, at home, in public, was under a microscope, but here he could be free.

  “What is it?”

  “You know you can tell me anything,” she said.

  He crossed his arms, not bothering to hide his annoyance.

  “I’m worried about what’s happening,” she said. “I’m worried about David Blakely. I’m worried you’re going down a path that will hurt you in the end.”

  “Ali, this is all above your pay grade.”

  “What happened to Malcolm Widener?”

  Sam felt his teeth grind together, the muscles in his cheeks standing out. He took a breath, regained control.

  “What are you talking about, Ali?”

  “What has David Blakely had on you for all these years? It doesn’t have to be like this. You can get out from under him. I can help you.”

  Sam felt the doubt working its way in. She was in his head. He would do anything to be free of Blakely, of that one stupid mistake, one moment of weakness twenty-five years ago he could barely recall. Why should he pay for it for the rest of his life?

  But Sam was careful. He couldn’t let the doubts show, couldn’t let her know she was getting to him. His face was his mask, his instrument, his livelihood, and now he turned it. He wore it neutral, bewildered. Was it a setup? Was she taping him?

  “Ali, you’re not making any sense,” he said. He moved closer, and she retreated. “What is this?” he asked. His voice was calm, but the anger flashed in his eyes as he grabbed for her.

  A hand clamped on his forearm, squeezing the bones like a hydraulic press. His head turned.

  A man loomed over him: Nick Averose.

  64

  Nick held a gun between them and let Sam’s arm go. The senator took a long step away, his eyes frozen, his mouth drawn tight in a grimace even as he let out a short, shocked laugh. He retreated until he backed into the dresser.

  “Are you out of your mind?” he said. “You know who I am?”

  The battle cry of the privileged. “That’s why I’m here,” Nick said.

  Sam swallowed, licked his lips and pressed them together. Ali backed out of the room, her eyes on the gun.

  This trap had been Ali’s idea, a way to lure Sam to a place where he would lower his defenses. Now they had him.

  Sam MacDonough watched her walk out of the room and turned to Nick.

  “Just put down the gun. You can’t do this to a senator. This is suicide. You know that.”

  Nick nodded. He tried to stay calm, despite the sweat building on his palm. He gripped the pistol. They’d bought it using Ali’s driver’s license at a sporting goods store in Virginia on their way back to the city, along with some clean clothes and a first-aid kit.

  It did feel like a death wish, going after a man like this. Not an exercise this time, the real thing. But he was already dead if they caught him, in prison for life if the police found him. And as he thought of all the pain this man had caused, the fear and the doubt disappeared.

  “Emma Blair. Where is she?”

  Sam held his hands up. “I don’t know.”

  “She knew what you did, and you hunted her down. Tell me what happened.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Sam said, almost pleading.

  “What did she know?” Nick asked. “What have you been hiding all these years? What did you do to that woman?”

  “What woman? What are you talking about?”

  “Catherine Wilson. Fourth of July twenty-five years ago. The Whitleys’ country house. Emma had evidence that connected you to her death.”

  “You’re not making any sense,” MacDonough said. “Just tell me what you want. I can help you.”

  Nick glanced to the right. Through the door he could see Ali in the living room, though she was hidden from the senator’s view. Nick had already disabled the security cameras.

  Ali reached into MacDonough’s jacket pocket and took out his phone.

  Nick moved closer to Sam. “You’re used to lying without consequence. But think carefully about every word you say. If you lie to me again, you will die in this room.”

  MacDonough nodded twice, fast.

  “Where is Emma Blair?”

  “I . . . I don’t know.”

  Nick straightened his arm, leveled the gun. “Don’t.”

  “I . . . listen . . .”

  Nick pressed the muzzle to his forehead.

  “Please . . . ,” Sam said.

  “Tell me the truth.”

  “I can’t.”

  The man’s whole body started to shake. Nick could barely remember the fear he had felt the first time he was on the wrong side of a gun, looking down the barrel. He’d forgotten the way it paralyzed him, the way the terror shut the mind down. Year after year of hard training had taught him to control those instincts. But he knew that fear, called it up now. He needed to make MacDonough taste death, because he didn’t want to pull the trigger.

  He wasn’t a killer.

  Nick saw it all again: the pistol coming toward his throat that morning, Widener dead in a chair with his blood streaking Nick’s hands. As he looked at this man and weighed what he had done, Nick realized he had no idea who he was anymore.

  “Three,” Nick said, and tightened his grip. “Two.” MacDonough closed his eyes. “One.” A moan, but no words.

  Nick’s finger curled around the trigger. He felt the spring push back. A whimper escaped MacDonough’s throat.

  But Nick didn’t pull.

  The senator opened one eye, just barely, risked a glance up at him.

  Nick looked at Ali, standing now in the other room, waiting for him. She had put the phone back in the jacket pocket.

  Nick sidestepped away from MacDonough, toward the door, keeping the gun between them as he backed into the living room.

  Ali started walking toward the apartment entrance.

  Boom boom boom.

  Three hard knocks at the front door. She retreated and stood beside Nick.

  “Senator!” someone called through the heavy door. “David Blakely sent us. Open up.”

  Nick stepped back. The only way out was the window. He gestured Ali toward it with a flick of his head.

  MacDonough looked at him from the bedroom. “Ju
st put the gun down,” he said. “No one needs to get hurt.”

  “Senator? Hello? Open the door!” someone shouted from the hall.

  Ali unlocked the window and shoved it open. The sound of traffic poured into the room.

  Boom. The door strained against its hinges as someone battered it from the outside.

  Ali climbed onto the windowsill, then lowered herself down the exterior wall.

  Nick kept the gun on MacDonough.

  The door shook again with the sound of splintering wood.

  Nick moved backward, climbed onto the sill, then leaped out. He hit the ground hard, rolled over his shoulder, and came up running.

  65

  Nick’s sweaty shirt stuck to his back. His eyes darted to the rearview. His hands grasped the wheel like he was wringing out a rag. A car raced toward them from behind and cut into the lane to their left. He looked at the driver.

  “Nick!” Ali cried from the passenger seat, her hands stretching out toward the windshield. A car ahead had come to a sudden stop.

  He slammed the brakes, and the car shuddered as the antilock system kicked in over screeching tires. He came to a halt five feet from the other car’s bumper and then saw the rare open parking spot that the guy had stopped for.

  The car to his left raced forward, and he saw the chrome aftermarket tailpipe. It was an old Crown Vic on custom rims.

  Full of kids.

  Nick pulled around the car in front. They were in Ali’s Toyota, which they had reached after a minute of flat sprinting away from Sam MacDonough and his men.

  “Did you get it?” Nick asked. “His phone?”

  “Yes.” Ali held up a small blue device, about the size of a thumb drive. She had plugged it into Sam’s phone while Nick was in the bedroom with MacDonough.

  Before they had gone to MacDonough’s apartment, Ali and Nick had met with Delia, and she had given them that bug. It would allow them to set up on Sam’s phone, listen in on his conversations, track him, maybe more.

  They needed to get the truth out of Sam MacDonough, to find some evidence they could use to take him down. Ali had tried kindness. Nick had used threats. But Nick had known that MacDonough was careful, that even a gun in his face might not be enough to shake him.

  So Nick had played their own tricks back on them: spy, hack them, get inside.

  Nick wanted to rattle MacDonough, see who he called and where he went next. He wanted him on tape incriminating himself. It wouldn’t stand up in court, but it would still be something solid Nick could use to show a lawyer or the press.

  He drove on, fast and slow, turning without signaling, on highways and quiet residential streets in Brookland, working methodically to spot or lose any tails before he met up with Delia to start exploiting Sam’s phone.

  He crossed the Anacostia and quickly turned toward the local streets. They passed under a bare canopy of trees, heading back toward the river and the wetlands that surrounded Kenilworth Park and Aquatic Gardens. Beside the park there was a miles-long stretch of swampy riverfront, and he could count on it to be empty out of season.

  He pulled down a side road of cracked asphalt, turned on an access path, and parked along a low rise, with a view of the Anacostia and the hills of the National Arboretum across the river.

  “Are we clear?” Ali asked, her eyes searching through the surrounding trees.

  Nick had good lines of sight on every approach. He sat back and took his first full breath in an hour.

  “Yes.”

  66

  Jeff knew Karen was home. He’d been watching. He knocked twice on the front door and waited, listened to her footsteps shuffling through the house. She opened the door a few inches and peeked through, her face wary. She smiled as she recognized him, opened the door wide, and gave him a quick hug around the shoulders.

  He turned slightly, so she wouldn’t feel the pistol on his belt, then she led him inside and shut the door. Jeff was able to screen her calls, delete any voicemail, but he was still alert, ready to act, wondering if her husband had found a way around him, a way to talk to her directly.

  “Any word from Nick?” he asked as she ushered him inside.

  She shook her head.

  “And how are you holding up?”

  “One foot in front of the other,” she said.

  “What can I do for you?”

  She brushed her hair back behind her ear. “I’m not sure yet. I’m glad you’re here.”

  A buzz sounded from the rear of the home. A clothes dryer.

  “Give me a second, okay?”

  “Of course.”

  She turned and walked down the hall. He strolled through the house, moving closer, step by measured step, silent along the runner, watching her from behind. He pondered that dancer’s neck. Such a fragile thing.

  He passed the dining room, remembered the nights they had all sat around the table. He didn’t want to do it, to see Karen afraid the way Emma Blair had been. But this whole thing was spiraling out of control. Nick was on the loose, and now he knew who Jeff truly was. He had to be brought in.

  Karen trusted Jeff. She was on his side, for now, and she would be useful one way or the other. Jeff had to be careful with her. She was smart, sharp enough to threaten everything.

  He paused in the hall, watched her through the crack of the laundry room door, her back to him, her hair shining in the light like summer wheat.

  How many had he killed in futile wars? How many to protect and enrich the corrupt? He’d lost count. He had always been a gun for hire, though now, finally, he was getting paid what he was worth.

  That was Jeff’s gift, his detachment. Kill enough and it becomes mechanical, as thoughtless as slicing steak. He had learned to switch off the hardwired human sympathies. At first, he was startled by how easy that was for him. He had to hide it. It made people afraid. But some of the men he contracted for recognized it and rewarded it. It was rare to find someone with that skill who could also camouflage it, move unseen through the everyday world. That was what made it so lucrative. It had earned Jeff a life like those of the men he’d once served.

  His mind went back to the day one month ago when he’d come for Emma Blair. It was a quiet home like this one, a sun-filled parlor. He needed her and the journal that she kept.

  He’d brought her to David Blakely’s country place, the guesthouse in the back, hidden and secure. He’d leafed through the pages of that diary and read about what she had seen upstairs on that Fourth of July twenty-five years ago.

  It turned out that Emma Blair kept many secrets, and now Jeff knew them all. They were as valuable as they were dangerous. He had to be careful, to pick the right moment to make his move and use what he had learned as leverage. If he handled it right, he could become a real player instead of a button man.

  In the end, Emma refused to give in, to stay silent. She fought back that day. Jeff once again saw her eyes locked on his as he closed his hands around her throat.

  “Jeff?” Karen’s voice startled him out of the memory. His hands shot forward an inch before he checked himself. “Is everything all right?” she asked.

  “Of course,” he said, and pulled his face into a kind smile.

  67

  Nick and Ali sat in her car, still parked in the woods along the Anacostia River. She leaned forward, peering through the windshield at the kudzu and trash at the end of the road.

  Her face was ashen. She had gone against MacDonough, head-to-head. There was no turning back. The reality of it was sinking in as the adrenaline ran out.

  “Are you all right?” he asked her. She didn’t answer, just clenched her teeth, shut her eyes, and took a long breath in through her nose. He wondered if she was going to break down. He wouldn’t blame her. But after a moment she straightened up and opened her eyes as if nothing had happened.

  “I’m good,” she said, and turned toward him. She looked at his shoulder and frowned. “You’ve got to let me clean that up.”

  He followed he
r gaze to his arm, where blood stained the fabric of his new jacket. It was where Singh had cut him, and it must have opened up as he hit the ground getting out of MacDonough’s apartment.

  He’d felt it burning but hadn’t had much time to give it thought.

  He nodded and slipped off his jacket while she reached into the back seat and grabbed the first-aid kit they’d picked up at the sporting goods store. He pulled up his sleeve and she eased off the old bandage.

  He watched her work, getting her hands dirty, all down-to-earth competence as she cleaned up the cut. She now looked like the opposite of the woman she had presented to him when they met in his office two days ago.

  “How did Blakely get to you?” Nick asked.

  “I got to him,” she said, and dabbed at the cut.

  She looked at Nick’s face. “You were expecting something else?” She shook her head. “No. I wanted to be a part of this game. I just didn’t know how ugly it really was.

  “I used to see Blakely at the private clubs around DC. I was an event planner, part-time. I had a lot of different gigs. At those events, I would see all these guys schmoozing, cutting each other in on contracts, just raiding the government for millions, lighting money on fire. It killed me, because I was smarter than most of them. I worked ten times harder.

  “I was poor my whole life, and I was tired of being broke and powerless, at the mercy of guys like that, all the shit they get away with, the things they do to women who don’t matter. I wanted to matter.

  “I knew David was the real deal. I went up to him at the club one night, Chevy Chase. I told him I wanted to work for him, flirted a bit. He saw through that, but he also must have seen something he could use. I was good at playing a part.”

  She pulled two Steri-Strips from the kit and peeled them back.

  “He used me, and I used him. I learned how he got information, control, influence. There’s something about the people in DC; they all seem a little lonely, immature, lost outside of work, especially the guys. It’s so easy to get to them. Their world is virgins and whores, day and night, home district and capital.