The Prisoner

by Carlos J. Cortes

  For a long time, General Erlenmeyer stood rooted to the spot, two white circles slowly forming on his cheeks. “So help me God …” He lunged forward and, for an instant, Palmer flinched before the blow that never materialized. “Damn you to hell, Palmer.” The general pounced on the table with fury and swiped the sheet of paper from its surface. He turned on his heel and strode to the door. One hand on the handle, he looked back. “You have until noon.” Then he yanked the door open and slammed it shut in his wake.

  “Well, I’ll be damned …” Robilliard leaned over, both hands flat on his desk. “He’ll do it. But instead of the Rubicon, he’ll march his legions across the Potomac!”

  “I never doubted he would.” Palmer reached for his glass, covering his shaking hand with the bulk of his body so Robilliard couldn’t see through his lie.

  “Good luck.” Robilliard raised his glass, took a sip, and then straightened. “Go on, spare me the misery. Why did Caesar do it?”

  Palmer reached for his briefcase. “Because he was Caesar.”

  chapter 55

  09:30

  “Stop the engine and step down, hands on your head.”

  “What’s going on, Officer?” Henry Mayer leaned out the window, pasting a silly smile on his face.

  “Stop the engine and step down, hands on your head. I will not repeat myself. Step down or I’ll open fire.”

  Henry shrugged, nodded to Harper Tyler, and opened the truck’s door. Once on the ground, he obliged by placing both hands on his head, turning around to face the truck’s bodywork, and spreading his legs. To one side, two DHS FDU officers in full body armor took station ten yards away, helmets bristling with communications gear mated with shiny face masks. Their boxy assault weapons were trained on him. A couple of seconds later, Tyler walked around the front of the vehicle, shadowed by another hulk in carapace.

  The police officer who had ordered them to stop in the first place stepped forward, kicked Henry’s legs another foot apart, and ran his hands over Henry’s body in a much-rehearsed pattern. Henry flinched and tittered. The hands paused. “It tickles.” A huff and more hand-running. Then the heavy boots moved toward Tyler and repeated the frisking.

  “Turn around. No sudden movements.”

  Henry didn’t alter his splay but turned around with mincing steps, hands planted on his head.

  The officer frowned, arms akimbo. “What are you, a joker?”

  “You said to turn around, not to change position.”

  “Cut out the crap. Where do you think you’re going?”

  “That building ahead; their toilets are blocked solid. Or so they say.”

  “Who says?”

  “How would I know? I only drive the fucker; he’s the boss.”

  The officer turned to Tyler.

  “We’re answering an emergency call. I have the papers here.” Tyler nodded to folded sheets stuffed in his shirt’s top pocket.

  The police officer stepped over and slapped a hand over the papers as if they were poisoned. He held them at arm’s length and, looking a little crestfallen, reached for his reading glasses.

  On the opposite side of the street, three more cars had been stopped and their occupants underwent a similar routine. Henry counted six DHS FDU trucks, at least fifty officers, and, a couple of hundred yards farther off, a blue van. He froze, then did a quick double take. The van across the street was the same color and model as the one carrying Laurel and the others. Across Capitol Avenue, different teams had laid chains bristling with spikes on the tarmac, creating a zigzagging path any vehicle attempting to reach the Capitol would have to negotiate—although by the look of things most vehicles were being turned back. Other accesses to Capitol Hill shared similar checkpoints, or so the radio announcer had said.

  “You can’t pass.” After much peering at the papers and turning them in all directions, the police officer handed them back. “Get inside your vehicle, turn around, and come back tomorrow.”

  Tyler smiled but didn’t reach for the papers. “That’s great with me, but I need a signature.”

  “A signature?”

  “Yup. As you can see, the order came this morning at nine o’clock, flashed through the head of the Capitol’s maintenance services with top priority. They must be swimming in it down there. It’s no skin off my teeth, pal, but I need the signature of someone in charge to attest that we came and weren’t allowed in.” He leaned forward and winked. “That way we can charge extra for this call … and again tomorrow.”

  The officer looked back at the papers, stopping at the scrawled signature and stamp at the bottom of the forms.

  “These are copies.”

  “We received them on the fly.” Tyler nodded toward the driver’s cabin. “A printer in the cab.”

  After a frown and a step back, the officer’s lips moved close to his shirt collar.

  A flurry of shouts drifted across the tarmac as a plump woman in a flower-printed dress spoke angrily to a towering FDU officer. Then she whirled around, slipped into her car, and continued to deliver a steady stream of invective over the racing whine of her engine as she threw her vehicle in reverse.

  Farther on, the side door of the blue van slid open, and a man in an old-fashioned hat and thick glasses alighted. As the door closed at his back, he raised his face to the sun for an instant, dug his hands into the pockets of a tweed coat, and strolled unhurriedly in their direction.

  Tyler exchanged a quick glance with Henry, who had suddenly found the tips of his lizard boots irresistible.

  The man with the tweed coat made a beeline for the officer holding the papers and put out his hand, palm up, his eyes running the length of the truck and stopping at the rear door and its bolts.

  “What’s in there?” His voice was refined, with a slight lilt to it.

  “Er …” Henry turned around and eyed the truck as if the vehicle had just materialized behind him. “Shit.”

  “Pardon?”

  Henry wrung his hands. “Refuse, sewage …”

  “But it says here you are supposed to unblock drains. Do you always go to a job already loaded with the stuff?”

  The police officer leaned over to the man and whispered, nodding toward Tyler.

  The plainclothesman lowered the papers and turned to Tyler, his head slightly cocked to one side. He blinked startling china-blue eyes beyond his old-fashioned bifocals.

  “We had an earlier call at a Lebanese takeout down on Mulberry Lane,” Tyler said. “I have the papers in the cabin. When we flagged this call, we drove straight here. Plenty of room in the tank.” For once, Tyler delivered his lines without gesticulating with his hands.

  “Open it,” the man said.

  Tyler gaped. “Here?”

  “I didn’t say empty it. That thing at the top opens, doesn’t it?” The man nodded to a circular lid on top of the tank.

  “Yes, but …” The two FDU men had already shouldered their weapons and climbed the truck, negotiating the front and rear handholds. When they reached the top, one grabbed the wheel of a screw fastener and twisted with energy. Then he lifted the lid and jerked his head out of the way.

  The man in charge raised an eyebrow.

  “Shit,” the DHS officer blurted.

  The man in the hat nodded and turned to the police officer. “May I borrow your flashlight?” Then he rammed the offered device in his coat pocket, neared the truck, and climbed. He leaned over the opening, pointing the flashlight downward and flicking his wrist. Then he nodded and retraced his steps. “It’s shit, all right.”

  Once on the tarmac, he returned the flashlight to the police officer and dug his hands once more into his coat’s pockets. “You may go through.” Then he turned on his heel, walked a few steps, and stopped, only to turn around slowly, drawing a finger to his lips. “Say, you mentioned a greasy spoon—er … a Lebanese takeout—didn’t you?”

  Henry tensed and glanced at Tyler, following his slow nod.

  “It smells like pig shit to m
e, but then, I’m not an expert.” With that, he once again raised his face to the sun and strolled toward the van on the opposite side of the road.

  chapter 56

  09:56

  At the intersection of South Dakota and Rhode Island Avenues, something strange happened. When the traffic light changed, they turned onto Rhode Island, but the light must have changed again, because no other car followed. Someone had to be controlling the lights from a remote location. Before them opened a vast stretch of road, also empty of traffic.

  “This is it, then?” Lukas gripped his seat belt, as if ready to withstand impact.

  “Looks likely,” Raul said, steering closer to the dividing line down the center of the road.

  Laurel leaned forward, peering into the distance as a dark line of trucks converged from both sides of the next intersection, like sliding doors. She narrowed her eyes, imagining that a similar scene would be unfolding at their back. Her fingers tightened around the syrette Floyd had slipped in her pocket.

  Barandus rustled on the stretcher and wrapped the drab blanket tighter around him, before breaking into the chorus of “We Shall Overcome” in a deep voice.

  Raul reduced their speed even further and slammed an open hand on the steering wheel. “For crissake, shut up!”

  Lukas lowered his head, his lips moving, and Laurel thought there couldn’t be a much better reason to pray.

  “Stop the vehicle and switch off the engine,” boomed a voice with a Hispanic accent coming out of nowhere and everywhere at once. Raul jerked and slammed on the brakes. Barandus resumed his singing in a low voice.

  “Stay in the vehicle. Don’t attempt to leave it,” the same voice echoed once more.

  Raul yanked out the van’s ignition card. The chunky piece of plastic swung from a thin chain attached to the steering wheel, clicking against the dash. Otherwise, there was silence.

  “Now what?” Laurel asked.

  Raul placed both hands on the steering wheel at ten and two. “Now they blow us to kingdom come.”

  Lukas sat straighter.

  Ahead, the trucks disgorged never-ending lines of armor-clad DHS FDU teams, who deployed in an advancing semicircle. Through the driver’s-side mirror, Laurel eyed a dark wave approaching from the rear. She thought the ancient Roman legions must have looked like that. Not like individuals but one unit: an army. Then the ranks ahead parted to allow a squat tracked vehicle—like a miniature tank—through, with what looked like a cannon mounted on top.

  “They’re going to fire.” Laurel closed her eyes when Lukas joined with Barandus in singing, “We shall overcome, one day …” in a trembling voice.

  “Someone is coming.” Raul glanced at his mirror, almost filled by a dark van approaching from behind at a sedate pace.

  The tiny tanklike vehicle slowed to a standstill thirty feet ahead, then it swerved to the right and continued moving at an angle to take up station ten feet to their side, the cannon rotating on top as if preparing for a broadside.

  “It’s a camera,” Laurel said.

  “What is?” Raul asked.

  “The cannon. It’s a camera.”

  The contraption drew closer, motors whirring. Three feet from their van, it stopped, and the tube rose on concertina arms like the eye of an alien cyclops. Then powerful projectors fired, bathing the interior of the van in bluish light. Laurel flinched and her knees started to shake. After endless seconds, the lights doused and the contraption whirred away, its rubber tracks producing curious flapping noises.

  On their left side, some fifty feet away, the dark-blue van stopped and its side door slid back to disgorge a slight man in an old-fashioned hat, smart tweed overcoat, and thick glasses. The man raised his face to the sun, then turned toward a single DHS officer standing to one side and nodded. When the officer drew near, the man in the hat reached into his jacket pocket and handed him a piece of paper. He waited until the officer finished reading and recovered the paper. Then, hands deep in his coat’s pockets, he strolled in their direction, lazily glancing right and left.

  Around them, scores of DHS FDU officers, their black armor gleaming under the strong sun, deployed in a circle perhaps one hundred feet in diameter containing both vans. Their weapons were trained steadily on the fugitives.

  “That van is just like ours—same model, same year, same color,” Lukas said, looking straight ahead into the black ring of DHS forces.

  “And same plate number,” Raul muttered.

  Laurel looked at the parked vehicle. The driver, a young man with wraparound sunglasses, had descended, hefting a large shoulder bag, and marched purposefully toward the other side of the road. The tracked vehicle with the camera turned around when it reached the ring of troops, and its arm swung to train its camera on the van the young man had just vacated. The officer who had conferred with the man in the hat marched before the line of DHS troops and pointed toward the other van.

  “How do you know?” Laurel asked.

  “I checked as it approached.”

  When the newcomer stopped, his nose scant inches from their van’s driver’s side, Raul reached to his door and lowered the window. “Wh-what do you want?” Raul asked, his hands back on the steering wheel at ten and two.

  The man didn’t answer but peered with piercing china-blue eyes at Raul’s head, slowly traveling his face and chin, then panned over to Lukas, his lips blossoming into a slight pout, as if ready to blow a kiss. He sidestepped to the passenger window and leaned both arms on the windowsill, his nose inside the vehicle.

  Laurel caught a slight whiff of cinnamon and something else, perhaps citrus but equally pleasant, like a warm cake.

  Then the man must have caught Barandus’s song, even though it had died down to a whisper. He cocked his head and narrowed his eyes in concentration for what seemed a very long time before nodding once. “Indeed you shall.” Slowly he straightened, rested a hand with soft fingers on the sill, and spoke into his lapel. “Blast it.”

  The air burst into an earsplitting cacophony of explosions as the troops fired a never-ending rosary of high-caliber bullets into the van parked scant yards away. Windows shattered, tires burst, and the sickening crunch of twisting metal followed when the vehicle exploded in a fireball.

  Laurel closed her eyes and screamed, hands drawn to her ears in a useless effort to stop the clamor of smashing bullets. Then a whoosh of hot air buffeted her face, and she threw out her hand to grasp on to something. When the roar subsided, she opened her eyes to sparkling blue eyes watching her a few inches to her left.

  Outside, like a scene from Dante’s Inferno, a low mist had fallen on the road. The ghostly soldiers in their black fatigues turned on their heels, moving toward their vehicles through swirling smoke redolent of cordite and burned rubber.

  “Can I have it back?”

  Laurel gazed, realized she was gripping his hand, and immediately let go. “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be.” He squinted. “The Capitol is that way.” He nodded toward the next intersection and, giving wide berth to the burning vehicle, turned toward the young man waiting with his shoulder bag.

  chapter 57

  10:12

  The view past the heavy brocaded curtains and sheers framing the window was different from what Odelle Marino remembered. The grass stretching past the granite monolith of the fountain built over the Senate garage seemed dull, as if all color had been leached from it. Even the lion-head spouts on the fountain looked somber. In the distance, blurry through a gauzy morning mist, the rectangular mass of the Robert A. Taft Memorial and Carillon also appeared featureless and dull.

  Yes, today Capitol Hill looked different—not so much a place of glory and recognition but of reckoning. I have nothing to worry about; everything is under control. She turned and panned slowly across the magnificent room, obviously not an office despite its furniture: a desk with two easy chairs, and two sofas flanking a low table framed by the backdrop of twin windows. No doubt the room was used as an antech
amber for meetings or a sweat room for witnesses and experts to cool their heels. That she had been made to wait for a shamefully long time was something she had filed away in her repository of scores to settle.

  After a slight rap, the door opened and a slender, immaculately groomed young man with half-closed eyes, whose badge read Anthony, stood straight. “They are waiting for you, madam.”

  Although both she and Vinson had been summoned, the committee wanted them in separately. Genia Warren, the little bitch, was also supposed to appear before the committee, but so far she was nowhere to be seen. Odelle glanced at the orderly, then did a double take. The sleepy-lidded young man was looking around with the calculating poise of a professional killer. Only an idiot would fail to recognize a superbly trained professional. She stifled an inward curse before turning toward Vinson Duran. They had been contained for the best part of an hour in the Russell Senate Office Building. Vinson glanced at his cellular-phone screen and pressed his lips together into a thin line.

  Still no news. Nikola had demanded full authority over the DHS FDU units to oversee the mopping up. Yes, demanded was the correct term. The man was becoming hectoring in his old age and had probably outlived his usefulness. One thing at a time.

  “Give me a minute.” The inquisitors can also wait, she thought.

  “Yes, madam.” The young man nodded and left the room, softly pulling the door behind him.

  “Wait. Have the sergeant at arms come over.” Odelle cocked her head but didn’t turn to face the orderly. “Please,” she added, as an afterthought.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  The device in Vinson’s hands pinged and he lowered his face to it, as if closeness could speed reception. Odelle clenched her hands for an instant, eyes on the grass outside, marshalling her body language to disguise her trepidation.