Alex Cross 3 - Jack and Jill

by Patterson, James

  “You have the right to remain silent,” I said.

  “What the hell are you saying?” Jay Grayer turned to me and asked.

  “Just getting it out of the way He doesn't have any rights. He's going down.”

  Grayer offered up a crooked smile. We both understood why The good part was coming now. The only good part in this whole affair. “Famous stuff, huh? Here we go. Let's get this son of a bitch.”

  “Absolutely I want to have a nice long talk with Jack, too.”

  I want to kick his ass from this stoplight, all the way back to Washington.

  I want to meet the real Jack.

  NOBODY had figured out the assassination plot until now. Not one of us had even been close. No one had been able to solve the mystery of Jack and Jill until it was too late. Maybe we could unravel the whole mess now. A retrospective on Jack and Jill.

  We were less than a hundred yards away from capturing Jack.

  He was heading down a steep, rolling hill toward a stoplight.

  It was a very picturesque scene. Long lens, like in expensively made movies. The light turned red and Jack stopped like a law-abiding citizen. Unconcerned about anything.

  A free man.

  Jay Grayer and I eased up right behind his trendy, off-road vehicle.

  I could read the sticker on the rear bumper of the Bronco: D.A.R.E. to keep kids off drugs.

  Beartrap was the code for our operation. We had four mainline vehicles. Another half-dozen cars and two helicopters for backup. I didn't see how Jack could escape. I was thinking ahead to the massive ramifications of the assassin's capture, and the even more shocking surprise still to come.

  This was going to get worse, much worse.

  “We take him down on three,” Jay Grayer said into his hand mike. He was extremely cool now, the consummate professional, as he had been from the beginning. I liked working with him enormously. He wasn't an egomaniac; he was just good at his job.

  “We take him real easy,” I said.

  The beartrap was sprung.

  I was one of the six who jumped out of the intercept cars stopped at the innocent-looking country-road light. It was an honor.

  There were two civilian cars waiting at the light as well. A gray Honda and a Saab.

  It must have looked like utter madness to them. That's because it was, and much worse than it looked. The man in the Bronco had killed the President. This was like arresting Lee Harvey Oswald, Sirhan Sirhan,John Wilkes Booth. An ordinary stoplight in northern Maryland.

  I was there] I was glad I was there. I would have paid a huge admission price to be there for this.

  I got to the passenger door of his vehicle as a Secret Service agent yanked open the driver's door. The two of us happened to be the quickest on our feet. Or maybe we were the ones who wanted Jack the most.

  Jack turned toward me -- and he got to look right into the wide-eyed barrel of my Glock.

  He got a real good look at death in an instant.

  Execution-style!

  Very professional!

  “Don't move. Don't even breathe too hard. Don't move a millimeter,” I said to him. “I don't want to have an excuse. So don't give me one.”

  He hadn't been expecting us. I could tell that by the shock spread across his face. He thought he'd gotten away clean with the murders. Thought he was home free.

  Well, he had it all wrong for once.

  Jack had finally made his first mistake.

  “Secret Service. You're under arrest. You have the right to remain silent, and that's a real good idea!” one of the agents barked at Jack. The agent's face was bright red with anger, with outrage at this man who had murdered President Thomas Byrnes.

  Jack looked at the Secret Service agent, and then back at me.

  He recognized me. He knew who I was. What else did he know?

  At first he'd been startled, but now he became calm. It was astonishing to see the calmness and cool take hold. He's calm as death, I thought.

  I shouldn't have been surprised. This was the real Jack. This was the President killer.

  “Very good,” he finally said, commending us for doing a good job, for our professionalism. The son of a bitch nodded his approval.

  “I'm proud of you. You did your jobs extremely well.” It made my blood boil, but I knew the order of the day: we take him real easy. The gentle beartrap.

  He slowly got out of the spit-shined red vehicle. Both his hands were held up high. He offered no resistance; he didn't want to be shot.

  Suddenly, one of the Secret Service agents sucker punched him. The agent threw a hard roundhouse right that connected with the killer's jaw. I couldn't believe he'd done it, but I was glad.

  Jack's head snapped back and he dropped like a stone. Jack was smart. He stayed down. There was no provocation for the agent's punch, no excuse whatsoever--except that the freak sprawled on the ground had murdered the President in cold blood.

  Jack shook his head and worked his jaw as he looked up at us from the pavement. “How much do you know?” he asked.

  We didn't answer him. None of us said a goddamn word. It was our turn to play games. Now we had a few surprises for Jack.

  JACK WAS ONLY THE BEGINNING. We knew he was only part of the puzzle we were attempting to solve. We had decided to take him down first, but now came the second crucial stop.

  As we rode back to his house on Oxford Street, I felt distant from the scene, almost as if I were watching myself in a dream. I remembered the few meetings I'd had with Thomas Byrnes. He'd told us all to have no regrets, but that advice didn't work out in the real world. The President was dead, and I would always feel partly responsible, even if I wasn't responsible at all.

  I wasn't thinking only about the President's murder. There was thirteen-year-old Danny Boudreaux. I felt an unsettling connection between the two cases. I had from the very beginning. The murders and unprecedented violence were everywhere. It was as if a strange, crippling disease were spreading across much of the world, but especially right here in America. I had already witnessed too much of it. I didn't know how to make the nightmare stop. No one did.

  It wasn't over.

  We were finally at the beginning of the awful mystery.

  This was where it had started.

  At this house just coming into view.

  Jay Grayer spoke into the car's hand mike. "Dr. Cross and I will go the front-door route. Everyone cover us like a blanket.

  No shooting. Not even return fire, if you can help it. Everybody clear on that?"

  All the other agents were clear on the procedure and knew the stakes. Beartrap wasn't over yet.

  Grayer pulled the black sedan up beside the front walk to the house. “You ready for one more shitstorm?” he asked me. “You okay with how this is going down, Alex?”

  “I'm as okay as I'm going to be,” I told him. “Thanks for keeping me in the loop. I needed to be here.”

  “We wouldn't even be here without you. Let's go do it.”

  The two of us got out of his unmarked car and hurried up the red-brick front walkway together. We matched each other, step for step.

  This was where it had all started.

  The big house, the whole street, seemed so innocent and appealing.

  A beautiful, white Colonial stood before us. The house had a big old porch supported by column pedestals. Children's bikes were neatly stacked on the porch. Everything out here was so neat. Was it all a disguise? Of course it was.

  Jay Grayer rang the doorbell and it sounded like the “Avon calling” bell. Jack and Jill came to The Hill But Jack and Jill started right here, didn't it? In this very house.

  The door was answered by a woman wearing a red plaid robe that looked as if it came straight out of the J. Crew catalog.

  A grapevine wreath, one of those peculiar, decorative affairs that looks. like Jesus' crown of thorns, was hung on the front door for the holidays. It had a big red bow tied around it. Here is Jill, I was thinking. Finally, the real
Jill.

  “ALEX, JAY. My God, what is it? What's happened now? Don't tell me this is a social visit?”

  Jeanne Sterling stood just inside the front door of her house. I could see a polished oak stairway glistening behind her. A formal dining room was visible through pocket doors, which were also polished oak. A tall stack of gift-wrapped Christmas presents lay piled near a desk and a six-foot-high standing mirror in the foyer.

  Jill's house. The inspector general of the CIA. Clean Jeanne.

  “What's happened? I just made some coffee. Please, come in.”

  She sounded as if Jay Grayer and I were a couple of neighbors from just down the street. A social visit, right? She smiled and her prominent teeth made it look like a grimace.

  What happened? Has someone in the neighborhood been involved in a fender bender? I just made fresh coffee. Good as the stuff at Starbucks. Let's chat.

  “Coffee sounds fine,”Jay said, showing he could chat with the best of them.

  We walked inside the house that she shared with her children and her husband. With Jack.

  I noticed details -- everything seemed important, telling, evidence. The bright colors and exuberant style on the inside of the house said “American,” but the accents communicated “world travel.” French etchings. Flemish weavings. Chinese porcelain.

  Jill the traveler. Jill the spymaster.

  There's an old saying in classic mysteries, which I'd never felt made much sense -- cherchez la femme. Look for the woman. I had my own catchphrase for solving many modern-day mysteries -- cherchez l' argent. Look for the money.

  I didn't believe that Jeanne Sterling and her husband had acted on their own. I didn't believe it any more than I had ever bought that Jack and Jill were celebrity stalkers. Aldrich Ames had supposedly received two and a half million for exposing a dozen American agents. How much had the Sterlings received for disposing of a troublesome United States president? A loose cannon who had gone against the system?

  And who had given them the money? Cherchez l'argent. Maybe Jeanne would tell us if we twisted her arm a little, which I definitely planned to do.

  Who would gain the most from the murder of President Thomas Byrnes? The vice president, now the president? Wall Street? Organized crime? The CIA? I would have to ask Jeanne about that. Maybe over steaming pewter mugs of coffee. Maybe that was what we could chat about.

  She turned and led the way back to her kitchen. She was so calm and collected. I continued to notice the furnishings, the pristine decor, the neatness, even with three kids in the house.

  I thought that I knew how Jeanne and her husband could afford such a terrific house out here in Chevy Chase. Cherchez l'argent.

  “There's been some kind of a break, hasn't there?” she said and turned to look at us. “You have me completely baffled as to what it could be. What's happened? Tell me.” She rubbed her hands together gleefully. Quite an act. Quite an actress.

  “There has been a break,” I finally said. “We've found out some interesting things about Jack.” We decided to take him down first. Now it's your turn.

  “That's excellent news,” Jeanne Sterling said. “Please, tell me everything. After all, Kevin Hawkins was one of ours.”

  We entered a large kitchen, which I remembered from my first visit there. The walls were covered with terra cotta tiles and expensive-looking wooden cabinets. Half a dozen windows looked out on a gazebo and a tennis court.

  “We've arrested your husband, Brett, for the murder of the President,”Jay Grayer told her in a cold, flat voice. “We have him in custody right now. We're here to arrest you.”

  “It's so damn hard to control every single detail, isn't it? One little slipup was all it took,” I said to Jeanne. "Sara made a mistake.

  I think she fell in love with your husband. Did you know that? You must have known about Sara and Brett's affair?"

  “Alex, what are you saying? What areyou saying, Jay? Neither of you is making any sense.”

  "Oh, sure we are,Jeanne. Sara Rosen kept a dupe of the footage of Senator Fitzpatrick's murder at her apartment in D.C. Your husband is on the tape. She was in love with him, the poor spinster.

  Maybe you planned on that. You must have at least suspected it. We even have a partial fingerprint of his at Sara Rosen's apartment in Foggy Bottom. We'll probably find more now that we know what to look for."

  Her look darkened, her eyes narrowed into slits. I sensed she might not have known everything about her husband's close “relationship” with Sara Rosen.

  She knew about Sara, of course. In the last few days, we had discovered that Sara Rosen had been an Agency spy inside the White House. She had been the Agency's mole there for eight years. That was how Jack had found her, and knew she would be loyal. Sara Rosen had been the perfect Jill. Sara had believed in “the cause,” at least as much as she was told about it. She was extremely right-wing. Thomas Byrnes wanted massive changes at the Pentagon and CIA. A powerful group felt the changes could destroy the country, would destroy the country. They had decided to destroy President Byrnes instead. Jack and Jill had been born.

  Jay Grayer said, “This is going to be worse than Aldrich Ames, you know. Much, much worse.”

  Jeanne Sterling slowly nodded her head. “Yes, I suppose it will be. I suppose,” she continued, her eyes trailing back and forth between Grayer and me, "that you're proud to be a part of the destruction of one of the few, the very few, advantages the United States holds over the rest of the world. Our intelligence network was second to none. It still is, in my opinion. The President was a foolish amateur who wanted to dismantle intelligence and the milita In the name of what? Populist change? What a mock-cry, what a sad, dangerous joke. Thomas Byrnes was a car salesman from Detroit! He had no business making the decisions he was entrusted With. Most presidents before him understood that.

  I don't care what you believe about us. My husband and I are patriots. Are we clear on that? Are we clear, gentlemen?"

  Jay Grayer let her finish before he spoke again. "You and your husband are slimy traitors. You're both murderers. Are we clear?

  You're right about one thing, though. I am proud about bringing you down. I feel great about that. I really do,Jeanne."

  There was a sudden flare of bright white light in the kitchen!

  A muzzle flash.

  A deafening shot rang out in the most unexpected of places. Jay Grayer's body arched. He fell back against the kitchen counter, knocking over a row of tall wooden stools.

  Jeanne Sterling had shot him point-blank. She had a gun hidden in her robe. She'd fired right- through the pocket. Maybe she had seen us approaching the house. Or maybe she always had a gun nearby. She was Jill, after all.

  Jeanne shifted her feet and turned the gun on me. I was already diving down behind the kitchen counter.

  She fired the semiautomatic anyway.

  Another deafening blast in the kitchen. A flash of light. Then another shot.

  She kept firing as she backed from the kitchen. Then she ran.

  Her robe flew behind her like a cape.

  I quickly moved to where Jay Grayer had gone down. He was wounded high in the chest, near the collarbone. His face was drained of color. Jay was conscious, though. "Just get her, Alex.

  Get her alive,“ he gasped. ”Get them. They know everything."

  I moved carefully but quickly inside the Sterling house. Don't kill her. She knows the truth. We need to hear it from her just this once. She knows why the President was killed, and who ordered it.

  She knows!

  Suddenly, a Secret Service agent came rushing inside the front door. Another agent was close behind him.

  Two more agents appeared from the direction of the kitchen.

  All of them had their guns drawn. Looks of shocked concern were on their faces.

  “What the hell happened in here?” one of the agents shouted.

  “Jeanne Sterling has a gun. We take her alive, anyway We have to take her alive!”

 
I heard a noise in the direction of the front hallway Actually, two noises. I understood what was happening, and my heart sank.

  A car engine was being started.

  An electric garage door was being raised.

  Jill was getting away.

  MY CHEST was thundering, ready to explode, but my heart had gone icy cold.

  Take her alive, no matter what! She's even more important than Jack.

  The door to the garage was down a narrow hallway that led past a large sun room. The sun room was awash in blinding morning light. I sucked in a breath. Then I opened the garage door carefully, as if it might explode. It just might, I knew. Anything could happen now. This was the house of dirty tricks.

  There was a dark, narrow corridor between the house and the garage. The passageway was about four feet long. I moved down it in a low crouch.

  Another closed door was at the end.

  Take her alive. That the one imperative.

  I yanled open the second door and jumped out into what I figured had to be the garage. It was.

  Instantly, I heard three loud pops. I hit the concrete floor hard.

  Gunshots!

  Thunderous, scary noise in the confined space. No thud of a bullet to my chest or head, thank God.

  I saw Jeanne Sterling leaning out of the window of her station wagon. She had a semiautomatic clutched in one hand. I pushed myself up again.

  Take her alive! my brain screamed as I ducked out of sight.

  I had seen something else in the car. She had her youngest daughter with her. Her three-year-old, Karon. She was using Karon as a shield. She knew we wouldn't shoot with the girl in the way The little girl was screaming loudly. She was terrified.

  How could Jeanne Sterling do this to a child?

  I crouched behind the oil tank in the darkened, cramped space.

  I was trying to think straight.

  I shut my eyes for a beat. Half a second at most.

  I drank in a huge breath of cold air and gasoline fumes. Tried to think in absolutely straight lines. I made a decision and hoped it was the right one.