She slammed the small metal door and jostled the lock to reset it. Her agitation caught the attention of a man kneeling near her. He smiled when he caught her eye. He probably thought her boyfriend had failed to write.
She strode out of the building, headed west. After six blocks, she stood on the eastern rim of the White House grounds. She cursed herself.
She’d been fucking Tench. She’d been cleaning house, shining silver, reading the Post, doing push-ups in her room at night, waiting for Roosevelt to return, plotting her next step.
And she had not noticed the security on the White House grounds had doubled.
* * * *
February 21
A BURGUNDY ‘39 NASH. Massachusetts plate SCR-310.
For all the excitement of finding out they’d been right about an assassin, and the grim spectacle of Maude Lily King dropping dead at Lammeck’s feet, they’d come away from Newburyport with only two clues: The killer was in fact a woman, and she drove a ‘39 Nash.
That pair of hints might be enough. But Lammeck had little faith they would be. Judith was an apparition. She showed herself only for moments before vanishing again. Though she was now real, she remained incredible. He still had no inkling how she’d murdered Arnold, who she worked for, what she looked like, where she was hiding, or how she would make her move. He and Dag were barely closer to finding her than they were before Maude King named her and swallowed poison.
Despite Lammeck’s misgivings, Dag seemed excited, keyed up for Lammeck’s next insight. Lammeck was glumly certain the man’s eagerness would prove short-lived. He’d gotten lucky, and by definition that didn’t happen often.
Lammeck fired up the engine of his borrowed government Chevy, to run the heater for a few minutes. Washington was in the grip of a late winter cold snap. He was on a stakeout, listening to the two-way radio, watching East Executive Avenue. Dag in his own car sat on the western side of the White House directing the surveillance. All the agents’ and Lammeck’s radios were tuned to Dag on a secret frequency; he was the hub. Other agents motored around town in unmarked cars, keeping Dag apprised of their whereabouts while they searched for Judith’s vehicle. Lammeck listened to their chatter while looking across the street to the White House grounds, where the security detail had quietly been increased. Mrs. Beach had kept her word. She’d given Dag his manpower. The manhunt was in full swing, but all they could do was patrol D.C. in the faint hope that Judith would foul up, and close ranks around Roosevelt without him noticing it when he returned from Yalta. In the meantime, Professor Lammeck dug deep to come up with another lead.
In his lap sat an all-too-familiar folder of photographs, the black-and-white close-ups of the bodies in Newburyport. The last few showed the Assassin’s knife in detail. Lammeck peered at the bloodied onyx handle, at the friezes of ancient Assassin murders carved into it. The artist had taken great care to display each killer wearing the costume of his victim’s household. One emir was stabbed by a man holding the reins to his horse. Another by his cook. A third by a pair of his bodyguards while he rode on a palanquin. In every instance, the murdered man and bystanders shared the same looks, not of pain, but incredulity, that someone they had deemed invisible had so mortally betrayed them.
This strategy was the trademark of Hasan-i-Sabah. His followers were taken into his castle and Pleasure Garden at an early age. There they were indoctrinated and trained, but not schooled or pedigreed. They could get close to their targets only through the barn, kitchen, or field. They could not pose as great men themselves to sidle alongside the powerful enemies marked for death by Hasan. Was this the same path Judith was on? She came to America armed with immense killing skill, but what else? How did she plan on getting close enough to Roosevelt to strike?
Somewhere, here in D.C., this woman was invisible. Lammeck was certain of it.
And what of Marco Polo’s observations about Persian women? Was Judith also beautiful? Wasn’t beauty a weapon? Of course it was. And Judith would use it, the way she would use anything or anyone, brutally.
The pivotal question was: At this moment, who was she using it on?
Lammeck wanted to discuss this with Dag. But he guessed Dag would scoff at one more of his far-flung theories based on tortured logic and arcane knowledge. Over the past few days, on the heels of the first strong leads they’d gotten out of Newburyport, the investigation had taken a more conventional turn. Dag finally had something tangible to sink his teeth into, something to show Reilly and the severe Mrs. Beach that he was not only keen but correct. Dag, sitting blocks away, kept himself eagle-eyed for a glimpse of that one burgundy Nash. He had two dozen other agents assigned to his case. Lammeck had become just one of Dag’s resources.
Lammeck knew he’d been lucky up north finding Maude Lily King, a shot in the dark that had somehow hit home. Now, in his warming car, he knew what steps he had to take, and he figured he would take them alone. More important, he had a sense—for the first time since Dag had rapped on his door in St. Andrews six weeks ago—that he’d set his foot down on a trail that had been hidden to him, and seen beside his own big shoe, at last, a footprint.
* * * *
February 22
Georgetown
SHE BUTTONED HER BLUE maid’s dress, then slipped the cord of her apron around her waist to tie it at her back. Smoothing the apron’s lace edges against her thighs, she stepped into her black crepe-soled shoes.
Tench lay naked across his bed. One arm was lapped over his face like a man hiding his eyes from grief, but she knew whatever it was he felt, it wasn’t sorrow. He glistened with sweat, though the bedroom bore a chill. Judith looked down at him, motionless with his eyes covered and legs spread, still deep in his body where she had driven him, savoring the last dregs of pleasure she’d loosed in him.
She looked on Tench without disgust. He was an adequate lover and attentive enough, even to a maid, to a Negro. He was in a marriage of power, not love, and Judith understood this bargain. He sought ways to be kind to her within their respective boundaries. Tench was an intelligent and liberal-minded man. But his wife, like the old Muslim saying, was both horse and burden. Judith didn’t blame Tench for his weakness, and so used him well in her sympathy.
His breathing slowed. She covered him with the quilt, but did not want him asleep. She sat on the mattress. He shifted and murmured. She set a hand to his bare chest. He did not move again, pretending sleep; she slid fingers slowly downward, under the edge of the quilt, playfully threatening to attempt a resurrection. This he could not do, so he awoke suddenly, playfully, and grabbed her arm.
“Nope,” he said, eyes wide, “we’re all out of stock. You’ll have to come back later, lady.”
She pretended to pout. “Shoot.”
He looked up at her with what she determined was genuine affection. He laid a moist palm to her neck.
“I wish,” he said.
“Wish what?” she asked, but she knew.
“Nothing.”
She squeezed his hand at her throat, then stood.
“Well, Mr. Tench, a man who wishes for nothing is either happy or hopeless. Which one are you?”
He grinned broadly. “Neither. Where do you come up with these things, Desiree? You don’t talk like a maid.”
She bent to slap at him. “And how does a maid talk? How many you talked with?”
They laughed. He sat up, keeping the quilt over his lap. He glanced around for his pants.
“Oh, hey,” he said, “I just heard something today. About the President.”
Judith’s attention perked. “Uh-huh.”
“Pa Watson died two days ago, on the boat back from the big meeting with Stalin and Churchill. It’s not in the papers yet. FDR asked to keep it quiet ‘til he gets back.”
“Who was Pa Watson?”
“General Edwin Watson. Roosevelt’s military aide and secretary for years. And a real close friend. He had a heart attack out in the Atlantic. Christ, can you imagine being at sea
with one of your pals dead like that on board with you? Poor old Roosevelt. It’s gotta be rough on him. And just when things were looking so good.” Tench bit his lip. “I guess life balances out.”
Judith sat on the bed. This was delicate.
“When’s the funeral?”
“Maybe next Wednesday, is what I hear. At Arlington.”
She paused and lowered her eyes to be demure. “Can I go with you?”
“Desiree.” He shook his head. “Be reasonable. The President’s burying one of his best friends. That’s not a good time to be shaking hands with the guy.”
“In other words, you’ll have your wife with you.”
“And yes, to be honest, if I go I’ll have her with me. It’s a funeral but it’s also politics. How am I supposed to explain you coming along?”
“Explain me to who?’’
“My wife, for starters.”
Judith shook her head, dismissing this. She could handle the wife. “Who else?”
“Jesus wept, everybody else.”
Judith nodded. “Politics.”
“Look, you know if it was up to me. But people in this town... Why don’t I just take Mrs. P. along too?”
Judith sat beside Tench on the bed, to drag the back of her nail gently up his spine. He writhed.
“Just an invitation, Jacob. Your wife won’t even see me. I’ll hide. I just want to see the President up close. Once. That’s all.”
“I can’t.”
“You can.” She dropped her finger from his skin. “But you just won’t.”
Judith rose from the mattress to stand in front of Tench. She swayed her hips below his chin.
“You said for me to come back later, Jacob. How much later?”
Tench’s gaze tumbled from her face, locking on the motion of her hips. With the fingers she’d run up his back, she reached behind her to tug on the shoelace knot that held the apron cord about her waist. The cord loosened, then dangled free.
“A lot later, Jacob?”
* * * *
February 28
Arlington, Virginia
JUDITH DROVE HER CAR into Virginia. She parked a quarter mile from the Tench household, then took a bus to the big gates of Arlington National Cemetery. She wore a mourning dress at calf length and a new black overcoat and felt hat. She sat on a front bench of the bus.
Stepping off, she followed a phalanx of limousines and olive drab army sedans through the stone gates, all the vehicles puffing exhaust into the cold noon, matching her breath. The funeral procession came across Memorial Bridge nonstop; Pa Watson must have been beloved. Judith watched for Roosevelt’s heavy car and security detail to rumble by, but did not see them. She quickened her pace into the wintry paths of the vast graveyard.
She had not been here before. She was taken with the seeming endless fields of white crosses, the occasional Jewish star, granite spires marking great men, and the fatness of the trees, the placid, eternal view of the river. Death, her trade, was treated grandly here. She liked the place.
She easily found the funeral for General Watson. A crowd flowed among the headstones to gather under tent tops set against the chill and the possibility of rain. At a hundred yards away from the grave site, a half dozen men in dark suits and overcoats eyed men and women filing past, checking credentials of those they did not recognize. Judith approached and showed the pass Tench had written her. The guard glanced at her face, then passed her onward.
Judith moved with the mourners, slowly, nodding somberly at quizzical others who caught her eye. She located Jacob and his wife and avoided them, circling wide to their rear. Roosevelt was nowhere to be seen.
She stayed back from the hole in the ground and the shining dark coffin resting on its black bier. The crowd, perhaps two hundred, shuffled into a ring around the burial spot. Seven Marines in brilliant blue, red, and black uniforms formed a stiff line beside the coffin, rifles at ceremonial parade rest. Pa Watson’s family sat on folding chairs, the women in veils, the men all in ebony broken only by white pocket kerchiefs. Judith, in the outer reaches of the crowd, kept her face down. The gathering waited; a chaplain stood near the hole with a Bible closed in his hands. Then Roosevelt appeared.
A Secret Service agent rolled the President’s wheelchair through the furrow opening in the crowd. Much closer to him this time, Judith felt the President looked no better than he had at his inauguration. The man’s eyes appeared sunken and rimmed, his cheeks caved in. He slumped in his chair, accepting without lifting his head the pats on his shoulder from people he glided past. The ungainly woman walking behind was Eleanor, recognizable from her pictures. Hale and upright, touching offered hands on all sides of her and smiling appreciatively, his wife made Roosevelt appear by contrast even more collapsed.
The ceremony began as soon as Roosevelt and his wheelchair were settled beside the grave. Only family members sat for the chaplain’s words, and the President. The burial service droned on for ten minutes; Pa Watson’s career had been stellar and he’d affected many lives. Judith watched Jacob and Mrs. Tench from behind. They did not touch.
When the chaplain was done, the Marine honor guard fired their salute, three deafening volleys in the silence. The reports shook a few birds off bare branches, and nothing else moved until the echoes were finished. The casket was lowered on ropes into the grave. The chaplain folded shut his Bible. The crowd began to unravel, drifting past older graves, back to the warmth of their cars. Limousine and military drivers cranked engines to prepare for the returning riders.
Judith held her ground. Men and women eased past her. She waited until Jacob Tench and his wife finished shaking hands with several well-wishers, then watched the couple make their way to their own idling limousine. She eyed a small clot of dark-clad people beside the grave. At the heart of them, accepting hands and words, sat Roosevelt.
No line formed before him. People simply walked up, shared a quiet second with the seated President under the intense gaze of several agents, then moved off. Judith did not step forward yet, but opened her black purse.
Onto her right hand, she slid a white cotton glove. Quickly, over the index and middle fingers of her left, she stretched condoms, then stabbed the hand into a thin silk sheath. Over this she slipped on the matching left-hand cotton glove. From her coat pocket, she palmed a small bottle of cyanide mixed with dimethyl sulfoxide and lanolin. She walked forward.
The President was lingering beside the grave, working a separate klatch of dignitaries from his wife, who stood five yards behind him. When Judith was twenty steps away, still moving in, she un-stoppered the little bottle to drip the contents onto her coated fingertips. The white glove instantly emitted the almond waft of the poison. Judith breathed it in and knew the odor was too slight and unexpected to be noticed. She tucked the emptied glass back into her coat and advanced with her head up, her expression sad and sympathetic.
Roosevelt did not look to see her coming; his attention was held by an old courtier gripping his hand and wagging his gray head. Judith stepped close, scrutinized by an agent who made no move to interrupt her progress. Judith halted five feet from the President’s wheelchair. She brought her left hand up, to lay it on Roosevelt’s the instant he swung his attention to her. The almond aroma fluttered past her nose.
Roosevelt nodded to the older man, who finally released his grip, still talking. Judith studied the President’s open hand, the distended veins on the back where she would wipe the cyanide while she squeezed with her other hand, smearing the toxin on the thin and spotty skin into his blood. Inside of a hundred minutes after her touch, he would be dead.
Roosevelt glanced back at his wife, who nodded, agreeing it was time to go. A Secret Service agent stepped behind the wheelchair to roll the President away. Judith took a step forward. She opened her lips to say, “Mr. President.”
A strong grip encircled her left arm. Before she could react, she was tugged off balance, away from the President’s wheelchair. She almost stumbled und
er the dragging grasp, then turned, a spike of anger in her chest, to face a large, bald man. He did not look at her but pulled her several steps from Roosevelt. She cut her eyes back over her shoulder to see the President had now been taken in hand by the Secret Service and was rolling away from the grave.
Judith yanked her arm to be let go. The big man held firm; he was at least six and a half feet tall and powerfully built. She could have made a dozen moves to escape him, and another dozen to take him down and end his life. She saddled every one of these impulses; this was absolutely the wrong time and place. Judith held her tongue in check as well. She did not know who this man thought she was, a white guest at a power funeral or a Negro maid interloper? She could have swiped his hand with the poison-damp glove and paid him back hours from now for thwarting her. Again, Judith curtailed all her instincts to act and waited instead for information. She surrendered to the man’s pull and silently trod beside him far from the remains of the crowd, past many grave markers.
The Assassins Gallery - [Dr Mikhal Lammeck 01] Page 21