The Washington Decree

by Jussi Adler-Olsen

  “I want to go in and give the figurine back to Jansen. He made me a promise once, and he has to fulfill it now.”

  “The president doesn’t have to do anything. He has more important things to think about than your little situation, Dorothy Rogers.”

  Little situation. She’d counted on all kinds of answers, but not one that was so contemptuous and totally devoid of any empathy or respect. She could have hit him; her insides were shaking. She’d never liked Sunderland. He was a son of a bitch, hard and calculating and cold. Not the worst characteristics for a man with a career like his, only now she truly hated him for it.

  “What’s . . . What is more important than a person’s life?” she asked, her voice trembling.

  He leaned back his head. “You’re expecting me to let you beg the president to pardon your father, isn’t that so?”

  “Beg? No, I’m going to ask the president to stay the execution because not to do so would be wrong. Information has come to light that could possibly exonerate my father.” There wasn’t the slightest reaction in Sunderland’s eyes. “Listen here, Sunderland. You want to punish the right man, for God’s sake, don’t you?”

  It was clear he didn’t like being addressed so informally—she saw this right away. “What’s the evidence?” he asked, his eyes cold as ice.

  “There are many factors that don’t add up, Mr. Vice President. Just give us a couple of weeks, then we . . .”

  “No, I’m sorry, the case is closed as far as we and the courts are concerned.”

  She could have ripped out his tongue, but instead she prostrated herself again. “I know this is a very undesirable position I’m putting you in, sir, but you are the only one who can give me a few minutes with the president. I’m willing to send in my resignation immediately if only I can be allowed to plead my father’s case. Just one minute!”

  “I’ll gladly accept your resignation, but I can’t go along with the rest.”

  She felt her lips tightening. “Then give my figurine back.”

  But Sunderland held the Buddha close, took a step backward, and leaned against his desk like the class bully flaunting his tyrannical status in the schoolyard. She wasn’t getting the figurine back, it was plain as day. He’d given her his contempt, that was all. She couldn’t expect anything else.

  That was the moment when she had had enough. “Give it to me,” she hissed, jumping towards him and grabbing it.

  Thomas Sunderland was a bony man, still in possession of an old military man’s suppleness and sinewy strength, as she found out when he grabbed her wrist and bent it back, forcing her slowly to her knees. No, goddammit, no! she said silently, and lay her weight onto one leg while she hammered the other knee into his groin with all her might. Sunderland’s face went expressionless and he fell to the floor, groaning as though he’d just had a vision of the devil himself. He turned his head towards her, his eyes gone mad. She’d just been made public enemy number one, no doubt about it.

  “You’re not going anywhere,” he gasped, as she picked the little Buddha up off the floor. “Do you read me, you cunt?”

  It was the disrespect that made her kick him a second time, right there where a man’s feelings lie quivering most of his life. There wouldn’t be much difference between one kick and two, anyway. Punishment would be severe either way, but it bought her a little time, because for the moment Sunderland had left a state of consciousness.

  It felt incorrect and euphoric—all at once.

  She strode back to her office, feeling a thousand eyes following her, impaling her. As she collected her things, she could hear shouting from Sunderland’s office and heavy footfalls in the corridor. Smile at them, she kept telling herself, as she gripped her satchel under her arm and headed for the exit.

  * * *

  —

  It wasn’t until she was standing on Pennsylvania Avenue with a mob of demonstrators before her that she realized she’d just slammed the door she had fought half her life to open, a door behind which lurked forces powerful enough to ruin her life. She noticed growing activity in the guardroom behind the wrought iron fence, then looked over her shoulder one last time, ascertaining that the gate guard had identified her and sounded the alarm. She cut across the lanes of the broad street, past the police cars that were on constant duty, and smiled at the officers, making sure they saw her credential badge.

  Then she plunged into the mass of demonstrators with their sleepy morning eyes and bitter expressions.

  She could hear the shouting of the guards behind her and their shrill whistles as she shoved her way between a cluster of demonstrators standing in front of the equestrian statue at Lafayette Square. Noticing that she’d tossed her official badge on the ground, they looked past her towards the White House where several guards were pouring through the gate. Someone who’d crawled up in a tree yelled that the guards were after her, and the demonstrators automatically closed ranks behind her. No one knew why they were pursuing her, but they’d sensed a compatriot in need, and that was enough for them. The crowd made way for her like the Red Sea parting for Moses, closing again behind her, yet strangely enough their spontaneous solidarity made her feel even more alone in the world.

  She looked up at the buildings that surrounded her. She wasn’t sure what to do; where should she head now? At the moment, the number of police and soldiers in Washington was approximately the same as the population of a Scandinavian capital. The odds were grim, but Doggie was determined not to be stopped, and she reached the Hay-Adams Hotel before the police sirens in front of the White House were activated. From there she ran in the chilly morning fog, with her hand to her open collar, through Eye Street and cut diagonally towards the only part of town to which she had no affiliation whatsoever. She maxed out all her credit cards at the first bank ATM she found and hurried on with more than $15,000 buried in her Fendi handbag, the little Buddha lying on top.

  She didn’t stop until she reached a Hertz rent-a-car on 11th Street. There she stood for a moment, staring blankly at the neon-lit offices until reality finally caught up with her. She couldn’t just rent a car, nor would she get far at the airport or Union Station, and going home was out of the question. She simply couldn’t go anywhere she used to—not in Washington or Virginia. She was totally alone and completely out in the open. The manhunt had begun, and it was only eight thirty in the morning.

  “This is insane!” she chanted again and again to herself, then crossed a parking lot at 11th, heading for smaller streets with less traffic. Ahead of her she saw a couple of police cars on patrol and began walking slower. She loosened the grip on her collar and surveyed how she was dressed. If an even halfway accurate description of her had been sent out, she’d have to find some other clothes, and this wasn’t easy in a part of Washington where you didn’t run into many clothes shops, especially not one that was open early Saturday morning. She squeezed in between two parked delivery vans and slipped behind them as a patrol car worked its way down the street. After it had passed she stood for a moment, getting her bearings. As far as she could tell, there were only three options. The first was to go back to the White House and say she was sorry, but that, of course, was out of the question.

  She had attacked the country’s vice president. Even though she hadn’t become an expert in court-martial law at Harvard, she knew she risked serious punishment. The second possibility was finding a hotel where the desk clerk wouldn’t become overly curious if she paid cash, and lie low for a few days. But how was she to find such a hotel? Not downtown, that was for sure, and Anascostia, south of the river, was a long distance away. Nothing and no one could expect easy passage at the bridges’ control posts. She was therefore forced to consider the third dubious option: finding someone at random who had a motor vehicle, who she could persuade to drive her far, far away.

  A faint ringing from the depths of her handbag stopped her in her tracks. “Shit!”
she swore, yanked her cell phone out through the bundles of dollar bills, and turned it off. Why the hell hadn’t she thought of that before? Now they’d doubtlessly tracked her via the phone signal. How efficiently and quickly they could do it, she didn’t know, but apparently not so quickly that she was already caught.

  She bit her lip. Could they track her even though it was shut off? she wondered.

  Her body trembled as she tore the battery out and threw it and the phone back in her bag. They weren’t getting her that easy.

  She crossed the street towards a row of parked cars behind which she could hide if more patrol cars came her way.

  And with long, striding steps, she headed north.

  * * *

  —

  After she’d been walking fifteen minutes she sensed someone following her. Don’t let it be anyone in a uniform, she prayed, but didn’t turn around until she reached the next stoplight. She was relieved to see it wasn’t a cop—at least not in uniform—but just a normal-looking man in his late sixties or thereabouts. Still, it made her uneasy. She tried to distance herself from him by crossing the street to the opposite sidewalk, but he followed her. Maybe she’d expected him to blurt out some kind of nonsense—there were so many weirdos walking the streets—but she wasn’t prepared when he reached out and put his hand on her shoulder. She looked into his piercing eyes, considering crying for help, but she didn’t dare. Anything but drawing attention, she thought, clenching her fists.

  “Okay!” she said, confronting him. He was gray-haired and gray-skinned, and the arms of his tweed jacket were too short. “Do we know each other?”

  “It was your father who murdered the president’s wife. I recognize you from television; you can’t deny it!”

  She shoved his hand away and looked at him angrily, even though she was filled with all kinds of feeling but anger. She wanted to say to him that it was a case of mistaken identity, that it happened all the time. But she couldn’t. Instead she said, “It wasn’t my father who killed Mimi Jansen, it was his handyman!”

  “Yeah, that’s what you say.”

  She pushed him in the chest and went up to the next intersection but saw he was still following her.

  Go away! she thought. What’s it all got to do with you? Haul ass, you old fool!

  People in the vicinity began to notice the episode. She surveyed the passing pedestrians’ expressions, how they reacted when, in spite of trying to detach himself from her, she still didn’t begin running. They were surely telling themselves there had to be some reason; their curiosity had been awakened.

  “Why don’t you get tired, old man?” she mumbled a few hundred yards farther on, noticing how the neighborhood was changing. She was as far out on the periphery as she had ever been. She had no idea what was in store between here and Adelphi, north of town, but she had to keep going in spite of her chafing shoes and a brutal stitch in her side. She’d passed the cemeteries a while ago where she might have spent the night before continuing on, but it was still broad daylight, and who could have known at the time that this ancient stalker would show up?

  Once more he caught up with her, out of breath, as she was turning down a side street. He must have been a quarterback in college, she thought, breathing through her teeth.

  “I remember you from the trial!” he cried, one step behind her. “It’s your fault everything’s going to hell with our country! It’s your fault our president has lost his mind, do you realize that?”

  She turned suddenly and faced him. “If there’s anyone who’s lost his mind here, it’s you! Why in the world are you running around the streets, carrying on like this, old man? Go home. You’ll give yourself a heart attack.”

  His heavy breathing pumped a rotten odor in her face, but before she could come up with a derisive comment, he hit her hard on the cheekbone so that her head hit the wall behind her and she fell to the sidewalk.

  “Don’t you call me crazy,” he whined, stomping the ground dangerously close to her face.

  She pulled herself back against the wall, but the man obviously wasn’t finished yet. “Make it stop before we’re all slaughtered like dogs, you disgusting cow!” he wailed. He was about to kick her, but a few passersby had begun to gather, calling for him to stop, and then a shadow whizzed past her and pushed the old man away.

  “Mind your own business, nigger,” the madman hissed, his eyes wide and white spit in the corners of his mouth.

  The black man raised a finger. “One more word out of you, you senile, quasi-fascist, albino motherfucker, and I’ll take that sad, disgusting, cheap-ass Walmart jacket and shove it in your fucking, miserable excuse for a kissable mouth . . . which mine, on the other hand, happens to be.” He pointed at his own mouth, slowly revealing a massive set of white teeth, lips curled back. Some of the bystanders broke out laughing, but the old man didn’t hear them. His rage had made him deaf but not dumb.

  It took a while before he finished spitting out his gall and finally scuttled off, and by then no one was in doubt as to who she was. “That bitch is named Doggie Rogers—remember her?” he’d said. “They’re sticking the needle in her old man on Monday, and I’m looking forward to it!”

  After that little speech, no one spoke to her or helped her to her feet. They just stood, craning their necks to get a glimpse of her. She could hear newcomers asking what the old dude had said, and after a few minutes they all left without a word. Only the guy who’d stepped in to help remained.

  “That was goddamn fucking unbelievable,” he muttered, and stretched out his hand.

  She let herself be pulled to her feet. At least no one had mentioned that she was wanted by the authorities. Maybe she was mistaken; maybe she wasn’t wanted.

  He made a motion to leave, but Doggie didn’t let go of his hand. If you couldn’t trust someone who’d just helped you like that, who could you trust?

  “Do you have a car?” she asked, one side of her head still throbbing.

  A brief frown crossed his face, as though he couldn’t see what his having a car could possibly have to do with her.

  Then he nodded slowly.

  She opened her bag discreetly and removed a single bundle of bills; there was no reason for him to see all the cash. “Drive me to New York, and I’ll give you this. I can’t be sitting behind the wheel myself, I’d be much too exposed. I have to be able to hide myself if necessary. Drive me, and it’s yours.” She showed him the money.

  He stared at it for a long time, as though he was converting the thickness of the bundle into dollar figures. Then he took the money and counted it.

  “Hello . . . ?” he finally said. “Girl, there’s three thousand dollars here! What’s going on?”

  She looked at the bundle again. So it was thicker than she’d thought. “I kicked the vice president in the balls. Twice. That means I’m on the run.”

  He opened his mouth in surprise. This news needed time to circulate in his head—all the way up to his Rastafarian hat and down again—before his face broke into a grin and he emitted a chuckle as deep as an idling Buick LeSabre. “You let him have it right in the nuts? Vice President Sunderland?” He had to catch his breath.

  This was the best one he’d heard all day.

  * * *

  —

  He led Doggie around the block and over to one of the most fossilized vehicles she’d ever seen. No matter where one’s eye fell on its battered exterior, it was impossible to determine what make—not to mention which model or which year—it was. Parts from at least ten cars had been recruited to carry out this heap’s ingenious reconstructions. Doggie’s heart sank. How this technical monstrosity was ever supposed to transport itself out on Interstate 95—let alone to New York—was a mystery she didn’t feel like trying to solve at the moment.

  He saw her skepticism and pulled a key fastened to a canine tooth out of his pocket. “For the three g
rand you get the car, too, okay?”

  Doggie didn’t know what to say.

  “All right, then just give me twenty-five hundred, and we’re even. I’d say it’s pretty risky, transporting America’s most-wanted ball crusher through ten or so roadblocks.”

  She sighed. “Do you happen to have a cell phone? I need another SIM card, or else they’ll be able to track me.” She took her own shiny, hi-tech phone out of her bag and showed it to him.

  This brought his charismatic teeth to view once more. “Yeah, baby,” he said. “I have a cell phone, but if we’re switching SIM cards, I want your phone, too.”

  Some trade-off! Her phone had cost at least twenty times his.

  Wearily she tried to make him aware of the vital importance of getting rid of her SIM card immediately, or at least waiting a month before he used her cell phone. He nodded with his giant grin and handed her a shabby Nokia that doubtlessly had fallen into the local pool hall’s latrine more than once. Then he disappeared up the most decrepit front stairs of all the buildings on the block, returning ten minutes later with a plastic bag in each hand.

  “A little food for the road and some things you can change into while we’re driving.” He opened one of the bags and pulled out an XXL Knicks T-shirt. Then he laughed. “Yeah, yeah, don’t worry, the rest of the stuff’s good enough.”

  * * *

  —

  Ollie Boyce Henson—as the Rastafarian was named—obviously had a woman at home who loved bright colors, ruffles, and low necklines. No one in their right mind would ever suspect that this carnival-clad female sitting at Ollie’s side, trying to hear herself think to a harsh background of nonstop rap music, was none other than the stylish Harvard grad Doggie Rogers. It didn’t take her long to realize that the little cosmetic kit she had with her wasn’t exactly compatible with this orgy of colors, and she had to use most of her lipstick to achieve the proper blatant-but-not-quite-cheap effect. One always had to be color coordinated, as her girlfriends at school used to say.