by Tom Abrahams
Here she sat with her nation’s security at stake again, finding out firsthand that nothing had changed. The imaginary walls still existed. Agencies were willing and ready to pass the buck to protect themselves rather than share vital intelligence.
Matti thought about a position paper she’d come across a few years back, written by a blogger and self-professed security expert named Bruce Schneier. She’d memorized the opening lines of his argument because they served as a reminder to her about the importance of her job.
“Security is both a feeling and a reality,” Schneier wrote, “And they’re not the same. The reality of security is mathematical, based on the probability of different risks and the effectiveness of different countermeasures. But security is also a feeling, based not on probabilities and mathematical calculations, but on your psychological reactions to both risks and countermeasures.”
In this case, Matti neither felt safe nor had confidence in the math. The FBI would be too late based on the intelligence she believed they’d obtained from their own investigation and that they’d received from the NSA.
She knew the FBI would wait to thwart the plot. If they acted too soon, they risked losing evidence of intent. Their method of operation was to wait until the last possible minute to stop the detonation, if they even had the ability to do it.
Matti wasn’t convinced the FBI knew about the casket bomb. She wasn’t sure they had intelligence about the cell phone detonators. For all she knew, they were expecting a more conventional attack.
She could try to alert them through some radical, attention-getting act. Getting arrested somehow might facilitate a meeting with the right people. But by the time authorities bought into her story and deemed her legitimate, it could be too late.
Matti’s reasoned calculations were hijacked by a seemingly impossible notion. She tried to fight the ridiculous idea. But as she mentally played out the various endgames in her head, the conclusion was always the same. Matti more carefully sipped through the foam in her latte as she convinced herself of the laughable. She would need to stop the attack herself.
Chapter 36
Laura Harrowby’s temples were throbbing, with each pulse beat more excruciating than the one before it. Her tongue felt thick and her stomach uneasy. The acid of the merlot was scolding her for the overindulgence.
Laura was prone on the love seat in Thistlewood’s Embassy Row apartment, a cool washcloth covering her forehead. She was still in the sweater dress she’d worn the night before. Her flats were on the floor, as were her pantyhose and bra.
“Are you feeling any better?”
Thistlewood was seated in one of the room’s two overstuffed chairs. The mantel clock chimed. It was later in the day than Laura imagined it would be.
“No,” she said in a gravelly voice. She cleared her throat. “How long before I can have something else for my headache?”
“I don’t know.” Thistlewood looked at the clock. “An hour maybe?” He was thumbing through The Washington Post, but he was only mildly interested in the content. He was killing time until it was killing time.
“Remind me of what happened last night?” Laura slipped the cloth off her eyes so that she could see her boyfriend. “I know I drank too much wine. I know we went over to my dad’s place. After that, it gets kinda fuzzy.”
“Well”—Thistlewood shifted his body to face Laura—“we had some fun. A couple of times. And then, because I didn’t want to leave you alone at your place, I brought you back here. I’ve been nursing you back to health since you awoke.” He smiled at her and winked with his right eye.
“You’re too good to me,” she cooed, her voice still raspy. “I’m so lucky to have you.” She pulled the cloth back over her eyes. “You’re such a giver.” She giggled.
Thistlewood felt a tinge of guilt wash through him. He’d used her. He’d betrayed her trust. It wasn’t right and he knew it. But the guilt, however sincere, was not enough to push him from the prescribed course. It was too important. It was greater than his relationship with Laura Harrowby.
“You know,” he suggested, “you can stay here for the rest of the day. I’ve got to leave for a little while. You can hang out until you feel better. If you’re here when I get back, we could head out for a late bite to eat.”
She was quick to respond despite her funk. “I don’t think I will feel much like eating today. At all. But I will take you up on your offer to stay here. I like being with you. Are you sure you have to go?”
“Yes, I have a quick meeting. Maybe a couple of hours or so, but I’ll be back before it’s too late.”
She feigned a frown and moved a pillow to a more comfortable position under her head. She felt like she could vomit. Again.
“Do you mind if I watch some television?” he asked. “I’ll keep the volume low so as not to amplify your headache.”
“Whatever you want. I’ll be fine.” He could have asked her to stick her head inside a bass drum while he thumped it and she would have obliged. They both knew it.
He leaned forward in his chair and reached for the wrought-iron and glass coffee table. Atop a large art book was the television remote control. He pulled it to him and turned on the thirty-two-inch LED panel that hung from the wall amidst his Trek Kelly art collection.
The television glowed to life and an image of President Foreman’s cortege appeared on the screen. Thistlewood adjusted the volume so that it was loud enough to hear it but soft enough not to irritate Laura.
“This is a sight,” observed the commentator, “that we hope to never see. The memorializing of a sitting president. It is at once both majestic and heartrending.”
Thistlewood watched the screen as the president’s casket was pulled from the hearse and placed onto the caisson. He looked at his watch and then at the clock. Time was crawling.
“This exchange would normally take place at the Pennsylvania Avenue entrance of the White House,” offered the newswoman. “That is the protocol for a sitting president after his death, given that traditionally he would lie in repose in the East Room prior to the procession.”
“She’s quite the historian,” quipped Thistlewood.
“Who?” Laura’s eyes were closed, and she wasn’t listening intently to the television.
“The newswoman on TV. What’s-her-name from the political show. You know…”
Laura listened to the woman and then snapped her fingers. “I know her voice.” It was on the tip of her tannin-thickened tongue.
“Who is she, then?” Thistlewood turned to look at his girlfriend. For just an instant they were again a legitimate couple in his mind. He’d not betrayed her. She wasn’t merely a means to an end. It felt good for that moment. But when she answered him and he turned back the television and the truth of the situation, the pseudo-euphoria evaporated.
“Vickie Lupo.” Laura pointed at her boyfriend and then clapped. Her face was still covered in a damp cloth that was quickly acclimating to room temperature.
“The Avenue is her show, right?”
Lupo appeared on screen briefly before the “live” video of the procession replaced her. She continued her exposition.
“So we understand that from this point at Sixteenth Street and Constitution in front of the White House South Lawn, the procession moves down Constitution at the other end of the Mall. Once it arrives at Fourth Street, military jets will fly overhead and assume a missing-man formation.
“Now as we watch, the caisson begins its path to the Capitol,” she continued almost breathlessly. “I want to take a moment to talk about tomorrow’s funeral and give you a sense of the history there.”
“See.” Thistlewood pointed at the screen in disgust. “What did I tell you? History professor Vickie Lupo.”
“Are you threatened, baby?” Laura’s tone was sympathetic. And it was obvious that she was joking. “Is the big, bad news anchor coming to take your job?”
Thistlewood knew that Laura was teasing him and he laughed. In reali
ty, he was bothered that highly paid teleprompter readers got to play the part of historian in front of such large audiences. He knew, and Vickie Lupo knew, that the information she was spouting was fed to her by a producer and a researcher. And they both knew that she was merely reading it from a script or from notes. It irritated him that a person of such little education, but with a flair for the dramatic, could command such attention.
As a lover of history and politics, he should have been thrilled that anyone with a soapbox might deign to educate. Any discussion of political perspective was good and was needed. An informed electorate was the only path to a true democracy.
But Thistlewood was small and paranoid. And despite Laura’s sense of humor, he knew that if someone like Vickie Lupo wanted a job teaching politics at a university, she’d get one. She had cachet. She had a name, even if he had trouble remembering it.
Thistlewood was certain that was how Bill Davidson got his plush gig at Hanover. It wasn’t because the former AG had some stout political mind, the professor surmised. It was because he had a name.
Everyone knew that Davidson was an ineffective lawyer at every level. But his name, or more correctly his father’s name, scored him one advantage after another. It made Thistlewood want to rage against the machine.
The professor sat there seething, but faking an understanding laugh to appease Laura, and his motivation became clear. As much as he wanted to deny it to himself, he knew the real reason for his involvement in the plot.
He wanted to make a name for himself. He wanted others to study his papers and discuss his intellect. It wasn’t about the greater good. It wasn’t about country. It was about his deviant, pathological need for recognition.
It was a godless epiphany that initially took Thistlewood by surprise. Had he really done this because of his ego? Had he devolved into a homegrown terrorist because his mother didn’t breastfeed him and his father never played catch? Suddenly the room was spinning, and it was he who needed the cool cloth and painkiller. Almost as quickly as it began, the spinning stopped and Thistlewood again focused his attention on the screen in front of him.
It was better to push aside his Freudian rationale and instead focus on the task ahead. The self-realization was too painful. He could convince himself again that his calling was much higher than that of narcissism.
“The service at Arlington National Cemetery will be historic for a number of reasons,” Vickie Lupo said, back on screen now, framed to the right. The procession video filled the left half. “Only two other US presidents are buried at Arlington. John F. Kennedy was laid to rest there in 1963, and William Howard Taft was buried there in 1930.”
“She didn’t mention Wilson,” chimed Thistlewood. “He’s not buried at Arlington. But while she’s giving a lecture, she might as well mention Wilson.”
“Why?” Laura was feeling better. She was sitting up and had removed the cloth from her head.
“He’s the only other dead president not buried in his home state. He’s buried at the National Cathedral.”
“Where are the non-dead presidents buried?” She giggled.
“Funny.” He wasn’t laughing.
Lupo was again replaced with a full-screen shot of the procession. Hundreds of people were lining the streets as the president’s casket passed. “And as for President Foreman, he will be buried near the Lockerbie Memorial. It’s one of twenty-five monuments and memorials at the cemetery.”
“What’s the point of this?” asked Thistlewood rhetorically. “Are we watching Jeopardy! now?”
“The Lockerbie memorial is officially known as the Pan Am Flight 103 Memorial Cairn. It was built with two hundred seventy blocks of red Scottish sandstone, one for each of the victims of the 1988 terrorist bombing of that plane.” Lupo was affecting a softer tone intended to convey empathy. “It is amazing to think,” Vickie Lupo said, histrionic now, “that in just twenty-four hours from now, our president, Dexter Foreman, will be buried alongside those important, historic Scottish stones. Let’s pause to think about that.”
Thistlewood thought about how wrong she was. He thought about how different the world would be in those twenty-four hours. He imagined how his own monumental place in history would change in two full sweeps of the mantel clock. It chimed and a sardonic smile stretched across his face. It was almost teatime.
*
Ings chose to ride the tour bus, rather than drive his own car or take a taxi, to avoid easy identification by security. He hoped being part of a large group of bag-toting tourists would help ease his entry and egress.
“Arlington Mansion and two hundred acres of ground immediately surrounding it were officially designated as a military cemetery June 15, 1864, by Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton,” the bus narrator said.
The bus passed through Memorial Gate and turned right onto Schley Drive. Ings shifted uncomfortably in his seat and pressed his left foot against the backpack. He could feel the sweat forming under his armpits.
“And here we are passing the monument for President and Justice William Howard Taft.” The narrator’s voice was deep and without accent. “President Taft was interred in Arlington National Cemetery March 11, 1930. His widow, Helen Herron Taft, was buried beside him May 25, 1943. Following the president’s interment, the War Department placed an order for a headstone with the Vermont Marble Company.”
Ings watched as they drove by the fourteen-and-a-half-foot-tall monument. He looked at the small Arlington Cemetery map the tour guide had given him when he boarded the bus. The lettering was too small for him to read.
The bus made a left onto Sherman Drive, another left onto Sheridan, and then slowed in front of a small circle to the right. They were in front of the memorial to President John F. Kennedy and his brother Robert F. Kennedy.
“From here you may visit the Kennedy family gravesites,” the narrator offered as the tourists stood from their seats. “And a short walk to the northeast will put you in front of Arlington House and the Robert E. Lee Memorial. Please feel free to explore the immediate grounds and meet back here at the bus in twenty minutes.”
Ings reached down to pull the backpack up onto the seat next to him, slinging one of the straps over his right shoulder as he stood. He carefully filed into the line of tourists and stepped off the bus and out into the cemetery.
He looked at the map again, and though he still couldn’t read it precisely, Ings had a sense of where he needed to go. He walked purposefully to the northeast with a small group interested in foregoing the Kennedy plots to see Arlington House.
The group stopped at the house; Ings kept trekking. He passed the Civil War Unknowns Monument and found himself back on Sherman Drive. Walking north across the Chaffee parking lot, he could see the Pan Am Flight 103 Memorial Cairn straight ahead. To its left was a barricaded area that Ings assumed was reserved for President Foreman’s funeral.
The drunk carefully and inconspicuously trudged up to the memorial and stood a foot from it, admiring its height. It stood slightly taller than a basketball hoop. From a plaque on its side, Ings read the inscription: “IN REMEMBRANCE OF THE TWO HUNDRED SEVENTY PEOPLE KILLED IN THE TERRORIST BOMBING OF PAN AMERICAN AIRWAYS FLIGHT 103 OVER LOCKERBIE, SCOTLAND 21 DECEMBER 1988 PRESENTED BY THE LOCKERBIE AIR DISASTER TRUST TO THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA”.
Ings pulled the backpack from his shoulder and placed it on the ground in front of him. He knelt and carefully unzipped the small front pocket, pulling out the small card containing the number for the Nokia cell phone attached to the explosives in the larger portion of the backpack. He stood, slipping the card into his pocket, and picked up the backpack.
Ings looked over his shoulder toward the parking lot, and to his left at the area readied for the next day’s funeral, before placing the backpack down at the base of the cairn.
Ings slowly backed away and then turned to quickly cross the parking lot, and it never occurred to him how ludicrous it was to do what the knight had asked of him. It also didn’t cro
ss his mind that he’d been set up. Not even when he heard someone calling his name from behind him.
“Mr. Ings?” The man’s voice was forceful. “Mr. James Ings?”
Ings resisted the reflexive urge to turn around at the mention of his name. He kept walking.
“Mr. Ings.” The voice was strong but wavering as the man began to walk hurriedly behind him. “Please stop, sir. I think you’ve left your bag.”
Ings glanced to his right and saw a second person coming toward him, a uniformed security guard. The man was moving at a pace somewhere between a jog and a run. Ings quickly looked away from him and to his left toward the Guard B Comfort Station. There was another guard moving directly toward him. Ings knew he was in trouble.
“Mr. Ings,” the voice behind him said, louder, closing in on him, “you left a bag at the Memorial Cairn. I’d like to talk to you about it.”
Ings looked over his shoulder at the Good Samaritan guard and saw the man with his weapon drawn. He was not returning the backpack. For a moment he thought about pulling out his cell phone and detonating it, but by the time he’d fully contemplated the idea, he was caught.
Guards from either side of him grabbed Ings’s arms and pulled him to the ground as he passed the Old Amphitheater at Sherman Drive. His face hit the gravel and dirt, and the wind rushed from his chest. He lay on the ground, arms behind his back, considering how quickly the men had descended upon him.
“Mr. James Ings?”
“Yes?” Ings grunted and he felt the cold metal of handcuffs clipped to his wrists. His thumbs were held against the small of his back.
“You have the right to remain silent, sir.”
That was when he got it. The clue was there from the minute he’d pressed pause on his DVR a couple of hours earlier. But he’d never bothered to ask the question. The knight had set him up and tipped off the authorities.