The Fifth Assassin

by Brad Meltzer

  Quick as I can, I fold the box shut and put the stack of mail back on top.

  I have no idea why Marshall would have his own Abraham Lincoln mask—but considering we’re looking for John Wilkes B—

  Over my shoulder, there’s a low steady sound, like someone breathing.

  I don’t even have to turn around.

  Marshall’s right behind me.

  24

  Four days ago

  Ann Arbor, Michigan

  There are certain moments that change a person’s life. For some, it comes quickly and violently, in the form of a car crash. For others, it comes from bad news at a doctor’s office.

  For Clementine, as she sat Indian-style at the kitchen table in her small rental apartment, papers spread out in front of her, she assumed it would come with Nico’s file.

  She finished reading the file days ago. She read every word. Every report. Every review.

  She read the commendations—six in total. One called her father sober, industrious, and of impeccable character. Another commented on his attendance record, and noted that he had accumulated hundreds of hours of unused sick leave. Another said that Nico had rendered invaluable assistance when there was a fire on base.

  She read the scolding letters of reprimand too—all of them coming in the later years, when whatever they did to him was already long done. Doctors warned of sudden long periods of silence, then of his disregard for the safety of himself and others, and finally of his aggressiveness and inability to distinguish fantasy from reality.

  But as Clementine flipped through the file again and again, there wasn’t much more than that. Yes, the file showed that her father… that Nico… had been inducted into the military three years earlier than his public records say. And yes, if she was piecing it together correctly, that some of that time was spent with the navy, despite the fact he was an army man. Aside from that, as she tried to rebuild the file in chronological order, there was no other paperwork from any of those first three years. They were gone. Three entire years—totally unaccounted for. No commendations, no letters of discipline, no nothing.

  Until Clementine could unlock those years, she’d never know what really happened, never know what her father went through. Most important, assuming she was right that the experiments on him had been passed to her, she’d never be any closer to understanding the cancer that was currently eating through her own body.

  She told herself she shouldn’t be surprised. What’d she expect? That the President would hand her a smoking gun wrapped in a big bow? Here you go… even though we’ve kept it hidden for two decades, here’s that top-secret info about your dad that you kept asking for.

  The truth was, the file already told her the answer. Or part of the answer. Those three years—by the mere fact they were missing—that’s when the damage was done.

  Unfolding herself from her Indian position and sliding one leg under her, Clementine continued flipping through the file. In front of her, on the table, she made four different piles—one for each of the “acknowledged” years that Nico served in the army.

  Page by page, she distributed the papers, assigning each document to its appropriate year. Most of the commendations came in the early years, the reprimand letters in the later years. But for the most part, it was the same as before: nothing.

  That is, until Clementine flipped through a set of paper-clipped documents and noticed a pale pink sheet that was stuck inside. Of course, the pink color stuck out. She’d seen these sheets before: immunization reports. The army took vaccinations seriously, and Nico had a form like this for all four of the years that he’d—

  Wait.

  Cocking an eyebrow, Clementine stared at the piles on the table and counted again. Nico already had four of these.

  This was a fifth.

  Staring down at the sheet, she double-checked the date. The page started shaking in her hand. This was from one of Nico’s missing three years.

  She was reading fast now. There wasn’t much to it. Request for… Nicholas Hadrian… to receive influenza vaccination…

  It was a request for a flu shot. So easy to overlook. But unlike the other immunization reports, this one was… Approved.

  For whatever reason, someone had to specifically approve this flu shot.

  Her hand still shaking, Clementine looked at the bottom of the sheet. There it was, in thin black pen: a muddled signature. The signature of the doctor who approved it. Dr. Michael Yoo.

  From there, the next half-hour was easy. An Internet search with the terms Dr. Michael Yoo and army brought back only two candidates. One died last year, at the age of forty-two. Too young.

  The other lived in San Diego, California.

  Ten digits later, Clementine had her cell phone to her ear, listening as it rang once… twice…

  “Hello…?” a soft older man’s voice asked.

  Clementine didn’t say a word.

  “Hello? Who’s there?”

  “I’m looking for Dr. Michael Yoo,” Clementine blurted.

  “Who’s this?” he countered.

  For an instant, Clementine searched her brain for the best way to keep him talking. But all she came up with was, “I think you know my father. Nico Hadrian.”

  There are certain moments that change a person’s life. For some, it comes in the form of a car crash. For others, it comes at a doctor’s office.

  For Clementine—as she sat there, her hand now steady—it came from a stranger on the other end of a phone call.

  “You must be Clementine.”

  25

  Today

  Crystal City, Virginia

  I spin around. Marshall’s almost nose to nose with me.

  “I hope your call wasn’t bad news,” I say.

  “Now you’re wondering about the mask,” he says, calm as ever.

  “Listen, Marsh—”

  “Marshall. And I’m not mad, Beecher. You saw the mask. You should have some questions. Especially considering it came from the crime scene.”

  “The mask did?”

  He makes a mental note, tracking the fact that, at least for me, the mask is a new piece of the puzzle. “Where do you think I found it?” he asks.

  “So now you found the mask?”

  “Please don’t take that tone, Beecher. If my story didn’t check out, you think the detectives would’ve released me last night? I know how investigations go. I do them for a living. And I know how often they incorrectly grab the first suspect just because they’re the closest suspect.”

  “Just tell me about the mask, Marshall.”

  “I found it two blocks away. In a garbage can on the corner of 17th Street.”

  “Why’d you even go looking for it?”

  “You’re joking, right? If you really have friends who are D.C. Police, you know how overwhelmed they are. If they’re accusing me of murder—which thankfully, they aren’t anymore—you better believe I wanted every piece of evidence that proves my innocence.”

  “So why didn’t you tell the police about it?”

  “I did. Called them last night. Then again this morning, which is when they finally assigned a detective to the case. Check their call log; you’ll see. They asked me to handle it only with gloves, pack it up in bubble wrap and bring it in today.”

  I glance over my shoulder at the closed box that holds the mask and the bubble wrap. Another perfect story.

  “What kind of investigations do you do?” I ask.

  “I was about to ask you the same,” he counters, reaching for the deck of playing cards and sliding them back in his pocket. “I mean, for you to be looking into this… to track me here… Who you working with these days?”

  “Uncle Sam,” I reply, watching him carefully.

  “Funny. I have that exact same uncle,” he replies, watching me just as carefully.

  My brain starts making guesses. CIA… NSA… FBI… In this town, the acronyms are endless. But if he’s telling the truth—if he’s really on the same
side I am—No. Nonono. There’s no way this is all just coincidence.

  “We really should grab a drink sometime,” he says, putting his gloveless hand on my shoulder. It’s scarred even worse than his face. Whatever he was reaching for in that fire, he wanted it desperately.

  “I didn’t realize I was leaving.”

  “Sorry. I need to deal with this phone call,” he says, steering me to the door.

  “Well, let me at least give you my email, and my phone at the Archives,” I say, going for one of my business cards. But as I reach for my wallet…

  I pat my right back pocket. Then my left. Then my front pockets…

  “My wallet!” I blurt, already mentally retracing my steps. “Maybe it fell out in your car…?”

  “You check your coat pockets?” Marshall asks.

  I pat my coat pockets. Right one. Then left. Sure enough, there it is. Left coat pocket.

  “I do that all the time,” Marshall says as I stare down at my wallet.

  The thing is, I never put it in my coat pocket. Ever.

  “Let’s grab that drink ASAP,” Marshall says, opening the front door, his grin now spread across his face.

  As he ushers me into the hallway, I’m still staring down at my wallet. I flip it open. My cards, my ID: Everything’s perfectly in place. I look up at Marshall, then back down at my wallet.

  “Really glad we got to see each other, Beecher. Let’s do it again real soon,” Marshall says as the elevator pings behind me and he steps back into his apartment.

  I jam my foot in his doorway, preventing it from shutting.

  “Beecher, I really have to run…”

  “One last question,” I tell him. “Do you remember a girl named Clementine?”

  He squints, his glance sliding diagonally upward. “Clementine…?”

  “Clementine Kaye,” I remind him. “From that night… With the closet…”

  He presses his lips together, shaking his head. “Sorry, Beecher, I don’t. Remember, I left when we were still little.”

  With a final slam, he’s gone.

  I stare at his closed door. Whatever Marshall’s up to—whatever really happened last night at the church, and whether this has anything to do with Clementine—there’s only one detail I know for sure: I don’t know this guy at all anymore.

  But he also doesn’t know me.

  In the elevator, I pull out my phone and hit the speed dial for Tot’s office. It rings once… twice… then clicks.

  “Please tell me Marshall wasn’t home and you’re driving back here right now,” Tot says.

  “Tot…”

  “Don’t Tot me, Beecher. Was he there or not?”

  “What’re you going so nuts about?” I ask.

  “Because I just got off the phone with Mac, who just got off the phone with a source, who just got off the phone with someone at the White House. Guess who your pal Marshall Lusk really works for?”

  26

  As he entered the Chinese restaurant known as Wok ’n Roll, Agent A.J. Ennis headed for a booth in the very back.

  It was the opposite from Secret Service protocol. In most restaurants, especially where they were guarding a VIP, agents were stationed by the front door so they’d have first crack at anyone who raced in.

  Today, A.J. was happy in back. Glancing down at his watch, he saw it was—

  Ding, the small bell above the door rang.

  Usually, doctors were notoriously late, but with this one… considering everything going on… Right on time.

  Clearly upset, Dr. Stewart Palmiotti threw himself into the seat across from A.J., his back to the front door.

  “Why’d you pick this place?” Palmiotti growled.

  “Wok ’n Roll? He told me you liked it,” A.J. said. “Said you had history here.”

  Palmiotti sat there, his mind tumbling back over two decades—before Wallace was President… before he was even governor—when they took a road trip to Washington during law school. With no money in their pockets, cheap Chinese food was always a good option. But the reason the President first brought them here? As the bronze plaque outside the restaurant pointed out, back in 1865, Wok ’n Roll was originally Mary Surratt’s boarding house, where all the Lincoln conspirators, including John Wilkes Booth, plotted to kidnap Abraham Lincoln.

  “I just figured… y’know, with this Booth thing—”

  “Is this a damn joke to you!?” Palmiotti hissed.

  “Doc, chill out…”

  “Or maybe you think it’s a game! Like we’re playing Monopoly, and you’re the race car, and I’m the dog… and you just move me around the board—”

  “Doc…”

  “I lost my life! I don’t have a life—!”

  A.J.’s hand shot across the table, like a viper. “Listen to me,” he growled, gripping the underside of Palmiotti’s wrist and squeezing hard enough to compress all the blood vessels and nerves. Hard enough so Palmiotti stopped talking. The few customers around them stopped staring and went back to their meals.

  Palmiotti unclenched his jaw, trying to swallow. He was in pain.

  “Listen, Doc—I know what you gave up,” A.J. whispered, leaning into the table and easing his grip. “I know. And he knows. So if it makes you feel better, the only reason he told me to take you here is because you liked it.”

  Seeing the doctor’s calm return, A.J. released his grip and sat back in his seat. From the wooden bowl between them, he stole a handful of crunchy Chinese noodles, tossing them back one by one and studying the man who was across the table from him.

  Palmiotti was the same age as President Wallace. But over the past month… these new lines on his face… plus the way he stared down at the empty table… The bullet wound had taken its toll. He looked twenty years older.

  “Doc, your friend needs you right now. The President needs you,” A.J. added, sitting straight up and no longer reaching for Chinese noodles. “To pull this off… especially with Beecher so close…”

  “I can do it,” Palmiotti whispered.

  “You sure?”

  “I can do it. I’m already doing it,” he insisted. “He knows I won’t let him down.”

  “Not just him. Us,” A.J. said. “All of us. We’re all in it. Like a team.”

  Palmiotti nodded. Slowly at first. Then faster. The words made him feel better. Like a team.

  At that moment, a busboy came by, putting two water glasses on the table. The two men didn’t say a word until the busboy was gone.

  “So you hear anything else from Clementine?” A.J. finally asked.

  Palmiotti shook his head. He was staring at the water glasses, watching drops of water swell and skate down the sides of the glass. Like tears.

  “But you think the rest is going well?” A.J. asked.

  Palmiotti nodded. “This’ll be a big win for us.”

  Now A.J. was the one nodding. That’s what he needed to hear.

  From the bowl, Palmiotti took a single crunchy noodle. “A.J., can I ask you a question?” Before A.J. could even reply, Palmiotti added, “How’s he doing?”

  “He’s doing fine, Doc.” There was a pause. “I think he misses you.”

  “I miss him too. We’ll have our time, though.”

  “You will.”

  “At the Presidents’ Day event. We’re still on for that, yes?”

  “Absolutely,” A.J. promised, putting both palms flat on the table and getting ready to stand.

  “Do me one favor, though,” Palmiotti urged. “Don’t tell him I lost my cool today, okay?”

  “Of course,” A.J. said, rising from his seat and never taking his eyes off the doctor. “I’d never say a word.”

  27

  Just tell me who he works for, Tot.”

  “Not until you get far away from him,” Tot warns in my ear. “Your pal Marshall… Promise me, Beecher. This is not someone you want to be around.”

  “Relax, I’m nowhere near him,” I insist, sitting in the pristine 1966 pale blue Must
ang, two blocks from Marshall’s building. From the angle I’m at, I’ve got a perfect view of his garage in back. Marshall said he had to run out. Like he had an emergency. So whenever he drives out—wherever he’s going—I’m going with him.

  “Beecher, please don’t be stupid. You think I don’t know you’re trying to follow him?”

  “You just said the killer was wearing a plaster Abraham Lincoln mask—right as I find a plaster Abraham Lincoln mask in Marshall’s apartment. You really telling me you don’t want to know where he’s going right now?”

  “No, what I’m telling you, is, you’re being reckless. Without any training—”

  “Tot, you said the most important part of this job would be me using my brain. I’m using it. If he wanted to kill me, he could’ve done it in his apartment. Otherwise, I’m the only one here right now. So I either follow him, or we lose him,” I say as the door to the underground garage opens. A white Mercedes shoots out with a black woman at the wheel. Not Marshall.

  “You’re still not listening, Beecher, because when it comes to superpowers, your friend Marshall’s superpower is this: losing people and getting away.”

  Up the block, the Mercedes disappears around the corner, and the garage door lowers back into place.

  “Just tell me who he is. Navy SEAL? FBI? CIA?”

  “Oh, he’s far worse than that. According to Immaculate Deception, Marshall Lusk is GAO.”

  “Government Accountability Office?” I say, referring to the guys who do our audits. “They’re America’s accountants.”

  “No. That’s where you’re wrong. Accountants deal with numbers. What the GAO does is look for waste and inefficiency.”

  “And that’s different from an accountant because…?”

  Up ahead, the garage door again opens. This time, a light gray Toyota rolls out. Another woman at the wheel. But just as the garage door is about to roll down, it jerks back up.

  Another car pokes its nose out. A navy SUV.

  Marshall’s car. With Marshall behind the wheel.

  As he takes off, he’s two blocks ahead. I give him another block as a head start. He’s in a rush, but I still see him.