Split Second

by David Baldacci

  patterned tie, and on his feet were black rubber-soled dress shoes. And his probing hand had just pulled out a .357 from his shoulder holster. Even his hair was combed differently. Just like he’d styled it back in… Damn! Even his graying temples had been darkened. He tried to check the gun’s magazine, but it had been sealed in such a way that it wouldn’t come open. He could tell by the weapon’s weight that the mag was loaded. Yet he was betting that the ammo in there was blanks. It was the exact model he had carried back in 1996. He put the gun back in his belt holster and looked in the mirror at a man who seemed exactly eight years younger. As he drew nearer to the mirror, he noted the object on his lapel. It was his Secret Service lapel pin, red, the color he wore on the morning of September 26, 1996. A pair of sunglasses were in his jacket breast pocket.

  As he turned his head, he saw the curly cord of the ear receiver in his left ear. It was undeniable: he was Secret Service agent Sean Ignatius King once more. It was amazing that all of this had started with the murder of Howard Jennings in his office. The sheer coinci—He stared at his stunned reflection in the mirror. The trumped-up charges against Ramsey, it hadn’t been Bruno at all. The last piece finally clicked into place. And now there wasn’t a damn thing he could do about it. Actually the odds were he’d never have the chance to right it.

  He suddenly heard it, off in the distance somewhere, the low murmurings of what seemed to be hundreds of muffled voices. The door at the other end of the room stood open. He hesitated and then walked through it. Passing down the hall, he felt a little like a rat in a maze. Actually the farther he went, the more he felt that way. It wasn’t a comforting thought, but what choice did he have? At the end of the corridor something slid open, and through this portal bright light was revealed along with the amplified sounds of the murmuring voices. He squared his shoulders and walked through.

  The Stonewall Jackson Room of the Fairmount Hotel looked far different from the way it had looked the last time King was there. Yet it still felt intimately familiar. The room was brightly lit, the velvet rope and stanchions exactly where they were eight years ago. The crowd—represented by hundreds of carefully painted cardboard characters inserted on metal stands and holding “Elect Clyde Ritter” pennants and signs—stood behind the barrier. The din of their simulated voices emanated from hidden speakers. It was quite a production.

  As he looked around, the memories came flooding back. He saw painted cardboard faces of his Secret Service colleagues positioned exactly where they stood all those years ago, badly positioned as it turned out. There were other faces he recognized. Some of the painted crowd held infants to be kissed, others pads and pens for autographs, still others nothing except broad smiles. On the back of the wall the large clock had been rehung. According to that timepiece, it was about 10:15. If this was what he thought it was, he had about seventeen minutes to go.

  He glanced over at the elevator banks, and his gaze became a deep frown. How exactly was that going to play out? They couldn’t do it the same because the surprise was no longer there. Yet they’d taken Joan for some reason. He felt his pulse quicken, and his hands started to shake a little. It was a long time since he’d been with the Service. In the intervening years he’d done nothing more strenuous than lift some heavy verbiage in thousands of boring, if creative, legal documents. And yet in sixteen more minutes he sensed he was going to have to perform just like the experienced agent he’d once been. Observing the lifeless figures arrayed behind the purple line, he wondered where among them would emerge the real, red-blooded assassin.

  The lights dimmed and the sounds of the crowd ceased, and then footsteps approached. The man looked so different that if King hadn’t been expecting to see him, he probably wouldn’t have recognized him.

  “Good morning, Agent King,” said Buick Man. “I hope you’re ready for your big day.”

  CHAPTER

  70

  WHEN THEY HAD ARRIVED, Parks and Michelle spoke with the officer who was heading up the local contingent of police that Parks had summoned. He had called in marshals and other law enforcement from the North Carolina area. “They’ll get there before we do,” Parks had told Michelle on the way down. She had said, “Tell them to form a perimeter around the hotel: They can be right on the tree line and still remain hidden.”

  Michelle and Parks knelt along the tree line behind the Fairmount Hotel. A police cruiser was blocking off the road leading to the hotel, but still out of sight of the place. Michelle spotted a sniper up a tree, his rifle with long-range scope aimed at the front door of the hotel.

  “You sure you have enough people here?” she asked Parks.

  He pointed toward other places in the darkness, indicating where other lawmen were positioned. Michelle couldn’t see them but sensed their comforting presence.

  “We have more than enough to do the job,” he said. “The question is, can we find Sean and the others alive?” Parks laid down his shotgun and picked up his walkie-talkie. “Okay, you’ve been in that hotel and know the layout. What’s the best way for us to hit it?”

  “The last time we were here, when we nabbed the convicts, Sean and I managed to make a gap in the security fence as we were leaving. It was easier than climbing over. We can go in that way. The front doors are chained shut, but a large window about thirty feet from the front has been busted. We can go in there and be in the lobby within seconds.”

  “It’s a big place. Any idea where they might be?”

  “I have a guess, but it’s a pretty educated one. The Stonewall Jackson Room. It’s an interior room right off the lobby. There’s one door going in and a set of elevators inside.”

  “Why are you so sure they’re in this Stonewall Jackson Room?”

  “This is an old hotel, and there are lots of creaks and groans and rats and creepy things. But when I was in that room and the door was closed, I didn’t hear anything. It was quiet, too quiet. But when the door was open, you could hear all the normal sounds.”

  “I’m not getting your point.”

  “I think the room’s been soundproofed, Jefferson.”

  He stared at her. “I’m starting to see where you’re going with this.”

  “Are your men in position?” He nodded. Michelle checked her watch. “It’s almost midnight but there’s a full moon. There’s an open stretch of ground we have to cover before we reach the fence. If we can direct the main attack from inside, we might have a better chance of not losing anybody.”

  “Sounds like a plan. But you lead the way. I don’t know the lay of this land.” Parks spoke into his walkie-talkie and ordered his men to move their perimeter closer in.

  Michelle started to sprint off but he grabbed her arm.

  “Michelle, I was a pretty good athlete when I was younger, but I was no Olympian. And now my knees are shot, so could you just slow down enough so I can keep you in sight?”

  She smiled. “Not to worry, you’re in good hands.”

  They darted through the trees until they came to the open ground they had to cross to get to the fence. They paused there, and Michelle looked at the hard-breathing Parks.

  “You ready?” He nodded and gave a thumbs-up.

  She jumped out and ran for the fence. Behind her Parks did the same. As she hustled along, Michelle focused at first on what was in front of her. And then her attention moved to what was behind. And what was there was suddenly chilling.

  Those weren’t the sounds of normal strides; they were the same disjointed lunges she’d heard outside her bedroom window at the inn—the ones made by the person who’d tried to kill her. She’d been wrong. It wasn’t the painful jogging of a wounded man. It was the arthritic loping of a man with ruined knees. And he was now wheezing too.

  She jumped behind a fallen tree a split second after the shotgun was racked, and the blast hit right where she’d been. She rolled, pulled her weapon and fired back, scattering shots in a wide, lethal arc.

  Parks cursed at his miss and threw himself down, ba
rely avoiding her fire. He fired again.

  “Damn you, girl,” he yelled. “You’re too quick for your own good.”

  “You bastard!” Michelle screamed back as she scanned the area both for an exit and any accomplices Parks might have. She aimed two shots at Parks that blew chips off the large rock he was hunched behind.

  He returned the favor with two blasts from his shotgun. “Sorry, but I had no choice.”

  She eyed the line of thick woods directly behind her and wondered how she could make it there without dying. “Oh, thanks. That makes me feel a lot better. What, doesn’t the Marshals Service pay good enough for you?”

  “As a matter of fact, they don’t. But I made a big mistake a long time ago when I was a cop in D.C., and it’s come back to haunt me.”

  “Care to enlighten me before you kill me?” Keep him talking, Michelle told herself. Maybe she could figure a way out of this.

  Parks hesitated and then said, “Nineteen seventy-four ring a bell?”

  “The Nixon protest?” Michelle racked her brains, then she seized upon it. “When you were a D.C. cop, you arrested Arnold Ramsey.” Parks said nothing. “But he was innocent. He didn’t kill that national guards—” The truth hit her in a blinding flash. “You killed the guardsman and pinned it on Ramsey. And you were paid to do it.”

  “Crazy times back then. I was a different person, I guess. And it wasn’t supposed to be that way. I guess I hit the kid too hard. Yeah, I was paid off all right, and as it turns out, I wasn’t paid nearly enough.”

  “And whoever you were working for back then is blackmailing you to do all this?”

  “Like I said, it’s cost me big. No statute of limitations on murder, Michelle.”

  She wasn’t listening now. It had occurred to her that he was employing the same strategy she was. Keep her talking while they outflanked her. Now she was trying to recall the exact model of shotgun Parks was carrying. Okay, she had it. Five-shot Remington. Or at least she hoped. He’d fired four times, and it was so quiet out here she was sure she would have heard him reload.

  “Hey, Michelle, you still there?”

  In answer she fired three rounds at the rock and received a shotgun blast in return. As soon as the buckshot sped by, she leaped to her feet and raced to the woods.

  Parks jammed fresh shells in, cursing the whole time. But by the time he took aim she was too far away for his buckshot to do any damage, and accelerating fast. He yelled into his walkie-talkie.

  Michelle saw him coming. She cut to the left, hurdled a log and went flat to the ground just before the slug slammed into the bark.

  The man she thought was a police sniper up the tree was now also gunning for her. She placed several shots in his direction and then slithered on her belly for about ten yards before leaping to her feet.

  How could she have been so damn blind? Another shot slammed into a tree near her head, and she hit the ground again. As she sucked in air, she assessed her abysmal options. There really weren’t any that didn’t involve her violent death. They could track her grid by grid, and there wasn’t much she could do about it. Wait, her phone! She grabbed for it only to find it had fallen off her belt clip. Now she was cut off from all help and had at least two killers stalking her in dark woods in the middle of nowhere. Okay, this beat the hell out of the worst nightmares she’d ever had as a child.

  She sprayed a few more shots in the direction she thought they were coming from, then leaped up and sprinted hard. The full moon was both a blessing and a curse. It enabled her to see where she was going, but it also allowed her pursuers to spot her as well.

  She broke free from the woods, then pulled up just barely in time.

  She was right at the edge of the embankment of the river she’d observed on her first visit here. A long drop awaited her if she took another step. The problem was that Parks and his partner were right behind her. She checked her mag: there were five rounds left, and she had one spare mag on her. Okay, in another few seconds they’d break free of the trees and have an unobstructed shot at her unless she could find somewhere to hide and nail them first. Still, even if she got one of the shooters, that would reveal her position, and the other shooter would probably bring her down. She looked around, seeking a solution with higher odds of survival. Then she checked out once more the long drop and the fast-moving river. Her plan came together in seconds. While some might call it foolish, most would term it suicidal. But what the hell, she’d always loved the extremes in life. She holstered her weapon, took a deep breath and waited.

  As soon as she heard them make the clearing, she screamed and jumped. She had picked her spot carefully. About twenty feet down, there was a small rock ledge. She hit it and splayed out, grabbing for anything she could. Still, she almost slipped off and came within two frantically curled fingers of plunging into the river.

  She glanced up and saw Parks and the other man peer down, looking for her. Because of where she’d landed, a chunk of jutting rock to the left of her blocked their view of her location. And the moon was behind them, silhouetting both men beautifully. She could have picked them both off with no problem, and was really tempted to do so. But she was thinking big picture here, and she had another plan. She put her shoe against the small tree trunk that had caught on the ledge she was on. That and its natural cover was why she’d picked this landing place. She pushed against the tree trunk until it was right at the edge of the precipice. She looked up at Parks. They were shining lights around, looking for her and pointing. As soon as they were both looking the other way, she gave the trunk one huge push, and it plunged downward. At the same time, she let out the loudest scream she could manage.

  She watched as the trunk hit the river’s surface, then glanced up at the men as they shone their lights at that spot. Michelle held her breath, praying they’d believe that she’d plunged to her death in the river. As seconds went by and they didn’t leave, Michelle began to think that she’d indeed have to attempt to shoot them both. Moments later, though, they apparently made up their minds she was dead, turned and went back into the woods.

  Michelle waited for about ten minutes, to make sure they were really gone. And then she grasped a rock jutting out of the side of the embankment and began to climb up. If Parks and the other man could have seen the expression on the woman’s face as she pulled herself from oblivion, they would have been, despite their weapons and superior number, in very real fear for their lives.

  CHAPTER

  71

  YOU’VE CHANGED A LOT, Sidney,” said King. “Lost weight. I hardly recognized you. You look good, though. Your brother hasn’t aged nearly as well.”

  Sidney Morse, Clyde Ritter’s brilliant campaign manager who was supposed to be sitting in a mental hospital in Ohio, looked at King with an amused expression. He also held a pistol that was pointed at King’s chest. Dressed in an expensive suit, his face clean-shaven, graying hair thin but nicely styled, Morse was a slender, distinguished-looking man.

  “I’m impressed. What led you to think someone other than the unfortunate Mr. Scott was behind this?”

  “That note you left on my bathroom door. A real Secret Service agent would never have used the phrase ‘pushing a post’; he would’ve just written ‘pushing.’ And Bob Scott was ex-military and always used the twenty-four-hour clock. He wouldn’t have used ‘A.M.’ And then I started thinking, why Bowlington? Why the Fairmount Hotel in the first place? Because it was thirty minutes from Arnold Ramsey, that’s why. As campaign manager you could have easily arranged that.”

  “But so could several others, including Doug Denby and Ritter himself. And to the world I’m a zombie in Ohio.”

  “Not to a Secret Service agent. I admit, it took me some time but I finally got it.” He nodded at the gun Sidney held. “You’re left-handed, I finally remembered that. Munching your candy bars. We in the Service tend to focus on the small details. And yet the ‘zombie’ in Ohio catches tennis balls in his right hand. And in a photo at the hospi
tal Peter Morse was holding a baseball bat in his right hand, so I had confirmation of that.”

  “My dear brother. He was never good for much.”

  “Well, he was an integral part of your plan,” King said in a prompting manner.

  Morse smiled. “I see you haven’t the brains to really figure all this out, that you just want me to lay it out for you. All right, I really don’t see you testifying about it later. I got the sanitized guns Arnold and I had at the Fairmount from my criminally inclined brother.”

  “And you hid your gun in the supply closet after Ritter was killed.”

  “And that maid person saw me and spent the next seven years blackmailing me, only stopping when she believed I’d been committed. Your friend Maxwell unwittingly revealed the blackmailer’s identity to me. And I paid her back. With interest.”

  “Just like you did Mildred Martin.”

  “She couldn’t follow directions. I don’t tolerate stupid people.”

  “I guess that included your brother.”

  “It was probably a mistake to involve him, but he was family, after all, and quite willing to help. However, as time went by and my poor brother continued to abuse drugs, I was afraid he’d talk. I also had all the family money, and there was always the possibility of blackmail. The best place to keep one’s ‘problems’ is in plain sight, so I kept him around, supported him. When the time came, I switched identities with him and had him committed.”

  “But why switch identities at all?”

  “It ensured that the world thought I was somewhere else while I put this little plan together. Otherwise, people might start nosing around.” Morse stretched his arms out. “Think about it. Several of the players in the Ritter imbroglio brought together on an elaborate set like this? People inevitably would start thinking about me. Being institutionalized was better than even being dead. People can fake their deaths. I was confident no one would be able to find out I had committed Peter rather than the other way around.” Morse smiled. “And why do it if you’re not going to do it with panache?”

  King shook his head. He figured he’d buy as much time as possible by keeping Morse talking. The man obviously wanted to brag about his grand plan, and King could use the extra time to work out a strategy. “I would have done it differently. Commit him, then kill him. That way, you’re assured people think you’re dead.”

  “But killing him could lead to an autopsy, and that might show he wasn’t me if they got old medical and dental records to compare against. If he dies naturally, all is fine. Besides, we looked enough alike, and the other little touches I devised were enough to fool anyone. My genius is in the details. For example, this room is soundproofed. Why bother in a deserted hotel? Because you just never know about sound: it carries in strange, unpredictable ways, and I really can’t have any interruptions. It would ruin the whole performance, and I’ve never disappointed an audience yet. I also like to bring things off with a certain flair. Like the note you mentioned. I could have just slipped it in your mailbox. But a body hanging on the door, it’s classic. And blowing up your house. It’s just the way I do things.”