“Yes, Papa.”
His voice became emotional. “I held your dead mother in my arms. I see her when I dream. I see your brother. I smooth his hair, and your mother says to me, ‘Saeedi, you must be strong. You must stop them. You must avenge my death.’ My son, your brother, says to me, ‘Papa, why did the Jews kill me? I did nothing to them. Don’t let the Jews kill other little boys and girls like me.’”
Tahira’s eyes were glistening with tears, and he was glad when he saw them.
“Listen to the pleas of your mother and your brother.” He put down his coffee cup. “Now, tell me, my daughter. Will you be ready to do what your mother asked, what your brother demands? Will you do your duty as a soldier? Will you obey the Qur’an and kill the idolaters wherever you find them? Or will you spit on the memories of your mother and your brother?”
Nine
The phone woke Brett Garrett.
“You’re in the paper,” Thomas Jefferson Kim announced.
Garrett’s first thought was the two dead Iranians who’d chased him the day before. He switched on a bedside light. Checked the time: 4:23 a.m. Swung his legs over the edge.
“About yesterday—the car chase?”
“Yesterday? Car chase? No, Africa. The assassination of Andre Gromyko. What’d you do yesterday?”
“Which newspaper?”
“The Washington Interceptor. I can’t believe you spoke to its reporter.”
“I didn’t. I never talk to reporters—you know that.”
“That’s not what the paper says. I’m sending a link.”
Garrett moved to his portable computer on a glass-topped coffee table in his living room. All of the condo’s furniture was from the previous owner. He rubbed his eyes. Flipped open the laptop. Tapped on the link and found himself looking at his own image—the official White House photo of him posing next to President Fitzgerald and Kim at the White House medal ceremony:
Medal of Freedom Hero: A Cold-Blooded Assassin?
By Investigative Reporter Robert Calhoun
Washington, DC—An investigation by this newspaper has uncovered evidence that Presidential Medal of Freedom awardee Brett Garrett murdered a Russian general in the African Republic of Guinea-Bissau.
Until now, the gruesome killing of General Andre Gromyko, a former adviser to Russian president Vyachesian Kalugin, has remained unsolved.
Garrett skimmed the next several paragraphs, which described Gromyko’s stabbing death, stopping when he reached these words:
According to multiple sources, Garrett recently was questioned by the Arlington County Police about another stabbing death, this one involving an Iranian immigrant named Nasya Radi. Garrett and Radi were neighbors in the same Rosslyn condominium complex.
Rogue Operative/Black Ops
A former Navy SEAL, Garrett was court-martialed and imprisoned for disobeying direct orders during a failed CIA “black ops” mission that resulted in the deaths of three American soldiers and three civilians.
“He’s unhinged,” one source said.
When contacted by the Washington Interceptor for comment, Garrett denied he had anything to do with either Gromyko’s ghoulish death or the recent unsolved fatal stabbing of his neighbor. “If you print anything, I will hunt you down,” he threatened this reporter before slamming down the phone receiver.
Kim was still on the phone. “Did you actually threaten to hunt down a reporter?” he asked. “That’s ballsy even for you.”
“I never talked to this clown. Never heard of him. And I couldn’t have slammed down my phone, because all I have is a cell. It’s fake news.”
“Fake or not, it’s out there now, and people will read it.”
“Kim, you can get anyone’s number. Find his for me.”
“Whoa, brother. Calling him is a bad idea, a very bad idea.”
“The man lied about me. Made stuff up.”
“Let it slide. No one will remember it tomorrow.”
“I will, and so will employers who keep refusing to hire me.”
Ten minutes later, Garrett was dialing Interceptor reporter Robert Calhoun’s personal cell.
“Listen, you bastard,” Garrett began, “you never interviewed me, and I never threatened to hunt you down.”
“Mr. Garrett,” said Calhoun, “let’s talk about this like two rational adults. What exactly are you disputing about my story?”
“Are you stupid? I just told you. You never interviewed me. You fabricated a quote. You claimed I threatened you.”
Calhoun was quiet for a moment. “Mr. Garrett, I understand why you’re bothered, but let me tell you how I see this. You would not have agreed to talk to me, isn’t that correct?”
Garrett replied with a profanity.
“I thought so. That’s why I did my due diligence. I interviewed people about you, people who knew you, and then I published what you would have said if you had talked to me. You can’t deny that what I wrote is accurate, whether or not you said it. And now you are threatening me, aren’t you?”
“This is bullshit.”
“Mr. Garrett, I sympathize. You’d probably like to kick my ass right now.”
Garrett’s cell phone shook, indicating he had received a text while talking. He lowered it from his ear. From Kim.
He’s tweeting about you! Kim wrote. Get off your phone. He’d forwarded Calhoun’s tweet.
On the phone talking to a furious and profane Brett Garrett. Threatening to “kick my ass” for exposing the truth in today’s edition about two brutal murders. Read my exposé about a CIA assassin.
When Garrett raised his phone back to his ear, Calhoun was still talking. “These sorts of misunderstandings happen, Mr. Garrett. I feel badly, so let me give you an opportunity to set the record straight. Let’s go completely off the record. Just talk like two guys having a beer after work. Now, are you denying that you murdered Andre Gromyko as part of a CIA covert action?”
Another text message from Kim. Hang up! It included a new tweet that Calhoun had just sent.
Garrett refuses to deny he’s a CIA hit man. Refuses to deny he committed murder. Confirms my exclusive reporting in today’s edition.
“I’m reading your tweets!” Garrett shouted.
“Gromyko’s autopsy showed you tortured him with a knife,” Calhoun continued without hesitating. “‘Slice and dice’—that’s the term, isn’t it? Was your neighbor a CIA ‘slice and dice’ operation too? The Iranian scientist?”
Another tweet followed, forwarded by Kim.
B. Garrett refused to deny Gromyko was tortured. Joked—in CIA parlance: “Sliced and diced.”
Quickly another:
My newspaper has hired 24-hr protection for me after B. Garrett called my unlisted cell phone. He won’t silence me. Free press = Free America. Read my exposé in today’s paper.
Garrett ended the call. Kim rang him. “I warned you to leave it alone. He’s playing you. Working you. He’s got nearly a million followers. He’s riding your back to a Morning Joe spot. Now listen to me, Garrett. I got a team that specializes in reputation protection, damage control, and rebranding. I’ll get them to help you.”
“I don’t need damage control or rebranding,” Garrett said. “I’ve got nothing to hide.”
“Yeah, you do. Readers follow him because they believe him. They aren’t going to believe you.”
“I don’t tweet, and I don’t need lawyers to fight my battles.”
“That’s my point. You got no following. No social network. And the fact that you got a Medal of Freedom makes you a public figure, so you can’t sue him for libel. Now he’s riled you up. Poked the bear. He’s going to keep at it. He can literally write anything he wants, and there’s not a damn thing you can do about it.” Kim paused. “Besides, you and I both know you’d be insane to ever say a word about Gromyko—even if Calhoun was an honest reporter and wanted to tell the truth.”
“Are there any?”
“Garrett, I’m your best friend, and wh
en I read what he’d written, I thought you had talked to him. It sounded like you—getting in his face, threatening to hunt him down. Don’t forget, I was in Africa too when you took out Gromyko.”
Garrett ended their call.
The prescription bottle of oxy was still where he’d left it the night before. He shook one out. Held it in his open right palm. Stared at it. Every dose could be deadly, but doubly so after you were hooked, stopped, and started again. Receptors. Neurotransmitters. “You’ll likely kill yourself if you start taking them again,” his doctor had warned.
He slipped the capsule back, closed the bottle.
Within minutes Calvin Russell, the condo’s front desk guard, called from the lobby. Two television crews and a Washington Interceptor reporter had arrived downstairs.
“I told ’em to get out, so now they’re congregated on the sidewalk. I can’t do nothing to get rid of them because it’s a public sidewalk,” Russell explained. “Thought you should know they’re waiting to ambush you.”
Garrett made a mental note to give Russell more than ten bucks at Christmas as a gift. As he stripped and turned on his shower, he fantasized about confronting Calhoun. Beating him bloody. The hot water felt good. Helped revive him. He needed a plan. He needed to get Nasya Radi’s letter translated. To do that, he had to return to the parking garage where he’d left his motorcycle. Before Russell had tipped him off, Garrett had planned on hailing an Uber. Now that would be too noticeable. He’d pose as a jogger. Get a few blocks away and then summon a ride. The reporters wouldn’t be expecting that. He slipped on a black pair of long Nike pants, a tight running shirt, and a light jacket. Once he’d added sunglasses and a stocking cap, he was ready. The elevator took him to the condo’s underground garage, where he walked up the exit ramp. Opening a door locked from the inside, he peeked out.
A camera crew was positioned at the corner of the condo building, on his right. To his immediate left was a commercial dumpster. No camera crews in that direction.
Garrett heard the grinding sound of the electric motor that lifted the underground garage door. A Cadillac Escalade was coming up the ramp, about to exit the garage. Perfect cover. He waited and then made his move. Using the Cadillac as a shield, he darted to his left, keeping his back to the camera crew, and slipped into the narrow gap between the building’s exterior wall and the large green dumpster. By the time the Cadillac had pulled onto the street, Garrett had ducked around the rectangular dumpster’s end. Safely out of sight of the camera crew.
“Ahhh!” a man screamed.
Garrett had stepped on a homeless man lying next to the dumpster. He recognized him—the man who usually slept across the street from the condo building, in the bagel shop doorway.
“You okay?” Garrett asked.
The man glared at him.
“I should have been more careful,” Garrett apologized.
The man braced his back against the dumpster and pulled a half-eaten bagel from under his dirty blanket. He took a bite, revealing a missing front tooth.
Garrett peeked around the edge of the dumpster. The camera crew was still at the corner, less than twenty yards away.
The homeless man noticed Garrett’s running suit. “Who’s chasing you?” he asked.
“Just out for a morning run.”
“I’ve seen you before. Look here.” The homeless man tossed his bagel aside and lowered the gray blanket wrapped around him, revealing a badly faded T-shirt with an imprint of the US Marines raising the flag on Mount Suribachi during the Battle of Iwo Jima. A participant’s shirt from the Marine Corps Marathon.
“You ran it?” Garrett asked, surprised.
“Took me four damn hours, but I did it. Never stopped neither. Hoorah!”
“Oorah,” Garrett replied.
“No!” the man snapped. “I was a Navy corpsman. It’s ‘Hoorah’ for us. Lot of people don’t know the difference, but I do.”
“I’m a Navy vet too. Where’d you serve?” Garrett asked. He wanted to wait for a few more seconds before making a break from his hiding spot.
The man raised the blanket covering his shirt. “You a cop?” he muttered.
“No. Navy SEAL. Tours in Afghanistan. You?”
“Was there before you. Operation Enduring Freedom, December 15, 2001. A year after I ran the marathon. Can’t run now.”
He lifted the bottom of the blanket, exposing his legs. “IED took my leg. Most people don’t know Navy was in-country, but we was.”
Garrett hadn’t noticed the prosthetic. He guessed the man was in his early fifties, but he could have been younger.
“You ever run it?” the man asked.
“Marine Corps? Three times, but it’s getting harder and harder to get in.” Garrett dropped to his knees, stuck out his hand. “I’m Brett Garrett.”
The man looked at his hand. Turned his head away.
“You a cop? You look like a cop.”
“No.” Garrett withdrew his hand.
“Jacob,” the man said, still looking away. “That’s my first name. You don’t need to know my last.” He mumbled something unintelligible, as if he were speaking to someone besides Garrett.
“I’ve seen you sleeping outside the bagel shop,” Garrett said.
“You spying on me! You a cop!”
“No, no, I just notice you there sometimes when I run.”
Jacob stared blankly ahead. “Yeah, I’ve seen you running in the mornings.” More mumbling. “You spare a cigarette?”
“Don’t smoke,” Garrett said. “Must be tough living on the street.”
“It’s not illegal!”
“Jacob, I didn’t say it was. Just wanted to make conversation.”
“That bagel woman gives me coffee before she opens, but I always leave before her regulars arrive. Don’t want to scare away business with my unsavory self.” A brief laugh turned into a deep cough. Jacob turned his head and spit. Regained his breath. “She’s got a brother on the streets, she told me. But he’s not like me. He’s batshit crazy.”
Garrett could smell alcohol emanating from the filthy wool blanket, but Jacob was clean-shaven, his hair neatly combed. Garrett noticed a cut above his right eye.
“Where do you go during the day after you get your bagel?” Garrett asked.
“Why, you a cop?”
“No, just curious.”
“Georgetown. A church there. Georgetown Ministries. They let you get your mail. Take a shower. Wash clothes. There’s a cupcake shop there. Sit outside. People buy cupcakes for me. They’re good. Maple flavored. That’s my favorite.”
“But not today? You’re here.”
Jacob grunted. “You a cop? Someone called the cops on me, you know. They came here.”
“They weren’t after you,” Garrett said. “They came because a man in my building was stabbed in the lobby. Not because of you.”
“Your friend—the dead man?”
“I didn’t really know him.”
“You a cop?”
“No.”
Garrett rose from his knees and looked around the dumpster’s edge. The TV crew was still positioned at the corner. One of them was looking his way. He would see him if he left the dumpster.
“Would you be willing to sell me your blanket?” he asked Jacob.
“I need it. Gets cold out here.”
“How about I rent it? You let me wear it, and when I get down to the end of the street and turn up that side street, I’ll drop it by the building there on the sidewalk.”
Garrett fished a twenty from a zippered pouch around his waist that he was using to carry his cell phone, ID, license, medical card, cash, and the letter from Nasya Radi that needed translating.
“How do I know you won’t keep it?” Jacob asked.
“Because we’re both vets,” Garrett replied. “Hoorah!” He pulled out another twenty and added it to the first.
Jacob snatched both bills. He awkwardly stood on his game leg and removed the blanket. “You leave it a
t that corner. Don’t steal it.”
Garrett wrapped the blanket around himself.
“I saw them, you know,” Jacob said.
“Who? The police? I told you, they weren’t after—”
“No,” Jacob said. “The killers. I knowed them. He was wearing a Washington Nationals baseball cap. She had on a stocking hat and scarf. Killing him was a mistake, I’m telling you. They was looking to kill me and got him.”
Garrett froze.
“You saw them kill my neighbor in front of the elevator?”
“Yeah, from the bagel shop, but they were looking for me,” Jacob repeated. He raised his right index and pointed to the cut above his eye. “She hit me that afternoon, outside Clyde’s.”
“Clyde’s? Clyde’s of Georgetown?”
“He shoved me. I took a swing but missed. It was the girl who sucker-punched me. Got me good. Laid me out. Stronger than she looked.”
“Wait a minute. You got into a fight with them before they murdered my neighbor?”
“That’s right. Mister, I felt really bad when I heard about your friend. Maybe he looked like me. But it was me they were after. All I did was ask them for spare change. I swear it. He took a swing, and then she hit me. No call for any of it. A man’s gotta eat.”
Before Garrett could ask another question, Jacob lowered his finger to his lips. “Shh! They’re listening.”
“They weren’t after you,” Garrett said. “It wasn’t your fault.”
Jacob took out his cell phone. It was an old flip version. He whispered into it, even though he hadn’t dialed a number, and the phone hadn’t rung. “Go away. I’m watching for them—the hajis,” he said softly.
Garrett recognized the derogatory reference to Muslims, used by combat troops in Afghanistan.
Still clutching his phone, Jacob said, “I killed ’em, but they’re coming for me. All them hajis.” His facial expression changed. Tears filled his eyes. He snapped shut his phone. “You’re a cop. Get out!”
Jacob slumped back down on the pavement. Opened his phone again. Whispered into it.
Garrett tried to think of something he could say. But Jacob had turned his head away.
Shakedown Page 5