The Hit

by David Baldacci

  “Is it a problem for you?” asked Robie.

  “No more than it is for you, I’m sure.”

  “Glad we got that straight.” Robie walked out to begin his new assignment.

  CHAPTER

  6

  ROBIE DROVE THROUGH THE STREETS of D.C. with a USB stick in his coat pocket. On it was the career of Jessica Elyse Reel. Robie already knew some of it. By tomorrow he would know all of it, except for the parts yet to be filled in.

  The rain was falling more steadily. D.C. in the rain was a curious spectacle. There were of course the monuments, the popular target of busloads of tourists, many of whom probably despised much about the federal city. But they came to gawk at the pretty structures, figuring their tax dollars had paid for them.

  In the gloom the mighty Jefferson and Lincoln and Washington memorials and monument, respectively, seemed diminished to a grainy outline one would see on an aged, tattered postcard. The Capitol dome loomed large, towering over all other nearby structures. It was the place where Congress did—or increasingly did not do—its work. But even the enormity of the colossal dome seemed lessened in the rain.

  Robie steered his Audi toward Dupont Circle. He had lived in an apartment near Rock Creek Park for years. Less than a month ago he had moved out. That had everything to do with one of his previous assignments. He simply couldn’t stay there anymore.

  Dupont was in the middle of town, full of nightlife, dozens of hip restaurants offering cuisines from around the world, esoteric retailers, highbrow booksellers, and retail shops that one could find nowhere else. It was exciting and energizing and a real asset to the city.

  But Robie didn’t crave the nightlife. When he ate out, he ate alone. He didn’t shop in the hip shops. He didn’t browse through the highbrow bookstores. When he walked the streets, which he often did, particularly later at night, he didn’t seek out contact with others. He didn’t welcome companionship at any level. There would have been little point to it, especially now.

  He parked in the underground garage of his apartment building and took the elevator up to his floor. He inserted two keys into the twin locks—both deadbolts—on his apartment door. The alarm system beeped its warning. The beeps stopped when he disarmed it.

  He took off his coat but didn’t remove the USB stick. He walked to the window and stared down at the wet streets. Rain cleansed, or at least that was the theory. There were parts of this town that could never be clean, he thought. And not just the high-crime areas. He operated in the world of government power, and it was as dirty as the grimiest alley in the city.

  He’d had a brush with normalcy recently. But it was just a brush. It hadn’t stuck to him, and had eventually fallen away.

  But it had left remnants.

  He pulled out his wallet and removed the photo.

  The girl in the picture was fourteen going on forty. Julie Getty. Small, skinny, straggly hair. Robie didn’t care about her appearance. He admired her for her courage, her intelligence, and her spunk.

  She had given him this photo of her when they had parted ways. He should never have kept it. It was too dangerous. It could lead back to her, yet Robie had still kept it. He simply didn’t seem able to part with it.

  Robie had never had children, and never would. If he had, Julie Getty would have been a daughter of whom he would have been proud. However, she wasn’t his daughter. And she had a new life to lead. A life that he could not really be part of. That’s just the way it was. It was not his choice.

  He put the photo back in his wallet at the same time his cell phone buzzed.

  At first he smiled when he saw who was calling, and then the smile turned to a frown. He debated whether to answer, but decided if he didn’t she would just keep calling.

  It was simply how she was wired.

  “Hello?”

  “Robie. Long time.”

  Nicole Vance was an FBI special agent. A super agent according to Julie Getty. Julie had also thought that Vance had a thing for Robie. In fact, she’d been sure of it.

  Robie had never found that out for certain and wasn’t sure he wanted to. Something in the recent past had turned him off to anything remotely resembling a relationship with a woman. It wasn’t an issue of desire. It was one of trust. Without that, Robie couldn’t muster the desire.

  Robie was trained never to be deceived. Never to be played for a fool. Never to be left without a seat when the music stopped. And yet he had been deceived. It had been a humbling experience that he didn’t care to repeat.

  Vance’s voice sounded the same. A little too amped up for Robie right now, but he had to admire the woman’s energy.

  “Yeah, it has been.”

  “You been traveling lately?”

  He hesitated, wondering whether she had put the events in Central Park together with him.

  Vance had a good idea of what Robie did professionally. As an FBI agent sworn to uphold and protect, she couldn’t be privy to any more than she already knew. They operated in two distinct worlds, both necessary, both not mutually exclusive.

  But both incompatible nonetheless. And if their jobs were incompatible, then so were they as individuals. Robie clearly saw that now. In fact, he had always known it.

  “Not much. You?”

  “Just the mean streets of D.C.”

  “So what’s up?”

  “You free for dinner?”

  Robie again hesitated. He hesitated so long, in fact, that Vance finally said, “It’s not that complicated, Robie. Either you are or you aren’t. No skin off here if you say no.”

  Robie wanted to say no. But for some reason he said, “When?”

  “Around eight? I’ve been wanting to try this new place over on Fourteenth.” She told him the name. “I hear they strain their tomatoes through linen cloths to make their cocktails.”

  “You like cocktails that much?” he asked.

  “Tonight I do.”

  Robie knew there had to be an ulterior reason for Vance to be calling him to go to dinner. Yes, he believed that she liked him. But she was super agent Vance for a good reason. She never turned it off.

  “Okay,” he said.

  “Just like that?”

  “Just like that.”

  “I’m officially surprised.”

  So am I, thought Robie.

  “Any interesting cases you’re involved with?” she asked. “It’s just a rhetorical question, of course.”

  “How about you?”

  “Oh, this and that.”

  “Care to elaborate?”

  “Maybe I will at dinner. Or maybe I won’t. Depends on the quality of those cocktails.”

  “See you then.”

  He put the phone away and watched out the window again as people scurried along the streets trying to escape a rain that seemed to have settled into the bones of the area, making things as wet and chilly and miserable as possible.

  Robie slowly moved through the eleven hundred square feet of his apartment. The place was where he lived, but it seemed to be uninhabited. There was furniture, to be sure. And food in the fridge. And clothes in the closet. But other than that there were no personal effects whatsoever, principally because Robie had none to bring here.

  He had traveled the world, but had never purchased a souvenir to bring back. The only thing he had to bring home on his return trips was himself, surviving to do what he did another day. He’d never purchased a postcard or snow globe after ending someone’s life. He just got on a plane, or train, or sometimes drove or walked home. That was it.

  He took a nap and when he woke he showered and changed into fresh clothes. He had a few hours to kill before going to meet Vance.

  He opened his laptop, inserted the USB stick, and the life of Jessica Elyse Reel came to life in all its megapixel glory.

  But before he could start reading his phone buzzed.

  He looked at the email that had just popped into his box. It was quite to the point.

  Sorry it’s come to th
is, Will. Only one can survive, of course. Selfishly, I hope it’s me. Respectfully, JR.

  CHAPTER

  7

  ROBIE IMMEDIATELY CONTACTED Blue Man and told him what had happened. A trace was put on the email Robie had received. The report came back thirty minutes later and it was not good.

  Untraceable.

  For Robie’s agency to concede something was untraceable was a big deal. Whoever Reel was working with, they weren’t slackers.

  The other point to consider was how Reel had gotten Robie’s email address. It certainly wasn’t public knowledge. Blue Man was probably thinking the same thing.

  Reel might have a con federate in the ranks of the agency. A leave-behind who was feeding information to the woman. That information might include that Robie had been assigned to track her down, a fact that was only hours old. Whoever the insider was, he had access to a lot.

  Robie once more began reading the file on Jessica Reel contained on the USB stick. Reel had had some impressive hits over the years. She, like Robie, operated at the highest level and had taken down people in situations that would have challenged Robie to the fullest.

  He’d never doubted that Reel was good. But he was a little surprised that she was that good.

  And she may have a spy on the inside telling her all she needs to know to get enough of an advantage to take me out before I get to her. Which means my own agency is a threat.

  Robie kept reading until he came to the hit on Doug Jacobs. Quick, clean, ingenious really. Nail the handler while he thinks you’re about to take out someone else.

  And a sniper’s nest had been found in the hotel in the Middle East. The gun muzzle had been placed perfectly so that when Jacobs did the satellite zoom Reel had suggested, he could see the gun barrel. But there had been no sniper.

  There was no evidence that Reel had been the shooter who had ended Jacobs’s life. But the email Robie had just received left no doubt that she was involved somehow.

  So the woman was supposed to be in the Middle East, but she might have been in D.C. drawing a bead on the man talking to her through a headset. Other things being equal, it probably was Reel who took the shot on Jacobs. If it were Robie, he would want to make sure the kill was done correctly. He wouldn’t have wanted anyone else pulling the trigger.

  Which meant he had to go somewhere right now, before he met Vance for dinner.

  Robie barely glanced at the three-story building where Jacobs’s life had ended. He knew what had happened there, at the end of the bullet’s path. Now he needed to understand the beginning of that path.

  The old town house was only a few failed support columns from collapsing. Built in the late 1800s, the five-story building had been used for many different purposes over the years. These included a private school and a men’s club that had ceased to exist over fifty years ago. But no one famous had ever lived there, so it would never become a historical registry building. In the coming years it would probably be knocked down if it didn’t tumble down on its own first.

  Robie gazed up at the building’s front. Staring back at him were aged brick, scraggly vines clinging to the walls, dead grass, and a rotted front door. He walked gingerly up the steps, avoiding the holes in the porch planks. The building had been secured, but stealthily. There were watchful eyes that had already cleared Robie to enter the premises. He used a key he had been given to open the front door and entered. The electricity had long since been turned off, so he pulled a flashlight from his pocket and walked on, clearing piles of rubble and giving a wide berth to missing floorboards.

  The building was hundreds of yards from the agency outpost where Jacobs had been working. It was a long-distance shot certainly, but manageable ten times out of ten by a capable shooter.

  Robie took the stairs up to the fifth floor. He had already been told that that was from where the shot had come. It was the only position in the town house that provided a clear sight line to Jacobs’s office.

  He heard raindrops starting to fall more heavily as he reached the fifth floor landing. He walked down the hall. He felt the chill from the outside reach him through innumerable chinks in the building’s walls. He might be able to see his breath if it weren’t so dark.

  He shined his light ahead of him, taking care to avoid weak spots in the floor. It would have been dicey setting up your shot from here, despite the clear sight line. You had no way to know if the floor would collapse under you.

  But it hadn’t and Jacobs had died.

  Robie slowed his walk as he approached the room. It was in a turret on the right side of the building.

  He knew the place had already been gone over by agency personnel, but he also had been told that nothing had been disturbed. And the police hadn’t been told about this building yet, but no doubt their investigation would get here at some point. But for now Robie had a small window of opportunity.

  He opened the door and stepped inside.

  There was only one spot in the room from where the shot really could have been made. The turret room had three south-facing windows. The one in the middle had the truest sight line to Jacobs.

  Robie drew nearer and shined his light around. On the windowsill was a narrow disturbance in the dust pattern. That was where the rifle muzzle had rested. Another disturbance of dust on the floor represented the shooter’s knee.

  There was a slight discharge from the rifle on both the sill and the floor. The suppressor would have vented the propellant gas out just about there.

  No shell casing had been found, so the brass had been policed, as Blue Man had pointed out. But the dust disturbances could easily have been covered up as well.

  Only they weren’t, which told Robie that the shooter didn’t care if the sniper’s nest was discovered.

  He picked up a long piece of shoe molding that had broken off, knelt down, and, using the molding as an imaginary weapon, drew a bead on Jacobs’s office.

  Fifth floor looking down on third floor. The reverse wouldn’t work, of course, because of the angle of the shot. You couldn’t fire up and nail your target. You had to fire down. If Jacobs’s building had been taller than five stories and he had been on a higher floor, the old town house would not have worked as a shooting nest.

  But they would have just found another place that did work.

  Robie assumed that bulletproof glass was being added to the windows of many agency buildings right this second.

  It was clear that Reel, or whoever the shooter had been, was in possession of the layout of Jacobs’s office. Back to the window, computer screen in front. No obstructions to the flight path of the killing round. Chest shot, wrecked the heart, clanged off a rib, and exited the body, hitting the computer.

  Robie was guessing about the collision with the rib. If the bullet had passed right through the body it would have hit the top of the desk most likely, not the computer. The angle was too extreme. Ribs were hard enough to change a bullet’s flight path. He hadn’t seen Jacobs’s autopsy results, but he wouldn’t be surprised to see that sort of internal damage.

  So the shot was fired. Jacobs was dead. If Reel were the shooter she would have heard through her headset the window breaking, the impact of her round with Jacobs, and Jacobs dying. Confirmation of a kill. It was always nice to have when you were firing blind through a window.

  And she would have had possession of the layout of Jacobs’s office. Reel wouldn’t have actually been shooting “blind.”

  Inside info again.

  Like my email address.

  She might be following me right now. Or she might be here waiting for me, figuring I would come to the town house at some point.

  Robie scanned the street below, but saw nothing other than people scurrying along to get out of the rain. But people like Reel wouldn’t show themselves so carelessly. Robie looked down at his shoe. Something white was sticking out from under the sole. He picked the item off. It was soft, falling apart. He held it to his nose. It had a scent.

  The
n Robie forgot about that when he heard a disturbance outside the house. Raised voices. Sounds of footsteps on the front porch.

  He raced out of the room and down the hall. He reached a window where he could see the front door. There were people clustered out there. An