by Joseph Flynn
Patti squeezed McGill’s hand. “Good. I am so proud of our kids.”
By unanimous consent of McGill, Carolyn, Abbie, Kenny and Caitie, both Patti and Lars Enquist were accorded the honor of thinking of themselves as full parents of the McGill children.
Moving on to other matters, Patti told McGill about Congressman Tilden’s refusal to talk with the FBI and DeWitt’s speculation that Congressman Rutledge might go off the deep end in a homicidal/suicidal fashion.
“Never been one of those among Washington pols, has there?”
“No, and now is definitely not the time to start.”
McGill thought the shock value on Capitol Hill might be salutary.
But a price paid with any bloodshed would be too high.
“No, it’s not,” he said.
“Deputy Director DeWitt came up with a good idea playing off of Galia’s good idea for finding Tyler Busby,” Patti said. She explained in detail.
“Can even the National Reconnaissance Office find one particular yacht out on the ocean? Doesn’t that fly in the face of ‘O, God, thy sea is so great and my boat is so small?’”
“I believe that line was written before the launch of spy satellites. The NRO reply is: ‘Eyes and ears where no human can reach.’”
“Lacks the poetry of my reference,” McGill said, “but it’s probably right on the money. Come to that, I wish I’d had the idea linking Busby to his insurance company. That just might pan out.”
Patti massaged the back of McGill’s neck. “Don’t be too hard on yourself; even the original Holmes had Watson to help him out.”
“Speaking of which, on the ride home tonight, I got a call from Paris.”
“Gabi or Yves?” Patti asked.
“Both. The two of the them and Odo Sacripant have found office space over there. They’ve all but completed the necessary paperwork to operate a private investigations agency accredited to work throughout the European Union.”
“Okay, I heard the ‘all but.’ What’s the hang-up? Something I can help with?”
“No, they’re fine politically and financially. Yves’ father, Augustin, has provided the seed money. What Gabi and Yves want to know is whether I’ll lend my name to their endeavor: McGill Investigations de Paris.”
Patti smiled at him. “What did you say?”
“What any good husband would say: I have to talk with my wife first.”
Patti laughed. Then she saw McGill, beneath the jest, was serious.
“You’re concerned how they’ll conduct their business might reflect on both of us?”
“You more than me. Everyone knows I’m a troublemaker.”
“Sure, but most people love you anyway. If we were talking about someone you knew only slightly, someone looking to capitalize off your good name, I’d say no. But even though I wasn’t with you, I still dream about the story you told me of the fight beneath the Pont d’Iena. Gabi, Yves and Odo were there. They risked their skins right along with you. I trust them completely. I have no objection to the idea.”
“Sort of fits with your notion about my moving up to management when we leave the White House, too, doesn’t it?”
“Serendipity. You told me Special Agent Ky would like to take over your office here in Washington. Maybe you could open a few more and become the twenty-first century equivalent of Allan Pinkerton.”
McGill said, “Never saw myself as a business mogul, but what the heck? I’ll email Gabi and give her the go-ahead.”
“Good. There’s one more thing you should know.”
Patti told him about the DNA family identification of the hair found by Welborn.
“That’s great,” McGill said, “we’re getting closer to this guy.”
“And the closer you get, the more I worry. Especially after recalling that night in Paris.”
“That was scary,” McGill admitted.
“Maybe you should … no, never mind. You have your client to consider.”
“I did promise to be careful, and bring the bad guy back alive.”
“That last part is optional.”
McGill glanced at his watch. “Too early to go to bed.”
“Just as well. I have to polish my speech for tomorrow.”
“Maybe I should put a gloss on a thing or two myself.”
Patti looked as if she wanted to ask what that might be, but she didn’t. Some questions were better left unasked. She’d already told McGill she was on edge about his safety. She didn’t need to say anything more. She’d let it go, knowing he’d always come through the tough spots before and would again.
Please God.
“Whoever gets to bed last gives the other a nudge, okay?” Patti asked.
“Deal,” McGill told her.
Chapter 27
State Capitol — Columbus, Ohio
The Ohio Statehouse was a structure beset by problems from the start. There were arguments about its design, construction and siting. The state government in 1838 held a design competition to determine just what its seat of government should look like. Of the fifty entries that were received, three winners were chosen to design one building. This feat would be achieved by melding elements from each of the finalists. While the wrangling over how to do that proceeded, the legislation that had made Columbus the state capitol was about to expire.
Towns from around Ohio vied for the honor of becoming the new capital.
The excavation for the statehouse’s foundation was filled with earth and became grazing land for livestock.
Then a cholera epidemic further delayed construction.
Eventually, though, a modest two-story Greek Revival structure with a humble dome, eight columns and two flagpoles was erected. Far from inspirational, it did manage to suggest that important matters affecting the fortunes of Ohio’s residents could reasonably be decided there. Well, sometimes reason would prevail, as was all that could be expected of any government.
On the night of March 12, 2014, as the state’s House of Representatives was about to call the roll for a vote on whether to petition the United States Congress to call a Constitutional Convention, the building suffered another setback. The power went out.
This was not a citywide failure. The diameter of the blackout was one mile with the statehouse at its epicenter. The majority of House members who had intended to vote for the petition did not think the sudden descent of darkness was a matter of happenstance.
They cried, “Sabotage!”
Followed quickly by, “Candles!”
The vote might have been carried out old school, if not for the stench.
A sulfurous stink of rotten eggs filled the statehouse.
Politicians of all stripes ran for the exits, trying to repress their gag reflexes.
In the coming days, as the building was airing out, the finger of blame was pointed at White House Chief of Staff Galia Mindel. She denied the charge vigorously. The accusers persisted. But no one was ever able to prove Galia guilty.
Or anyone else for that matter.
In the end, The Big Black Stink was just another page added to the statehouse’s lore.
White House Gym
SAC Elspeth Kendry was just about to go home when she got word Holmes had left his personal quarters and gone to the gym. The man was going to do a workout now? Why? Dear God, she thought, don’t let him be planning some midnight escapade.
She snagged Special Agent Deke Ky before he could go home and dragged him along to see what was happening. They found McGill holding a knife with a wicked-looking black blade. He held it in a reverse grip — tip pointed down, cutting edge out — in his right hand. His left hand rested against his chest. Ready to shield his heart, neck, abdomen or groin.
He balanced himself on the balls of his feet, giving the impression of a cat about to pounce. Instead of taking to the air, though, he glided to his left and right, forward and back, changing direction fluidly and in no particular pattern. As he stepped in one direction or another, his knife di
pped and rose, like a hen pecking kernels of corn with her beak.
Someone with an untrained eye might have wondered what the point of such an exercise could be. Both Elspeth and Deke, however, had long exposure to knife-fighting cultures. They could infer the invisible opponent McGill was fighting: someone else with a knife held in a standard grip — tip pointed forward, cutting edge down — was trying to stab him in the gut or groin.
Each time the imaginary foe lunged to strike, peck-peck-peck, McGill’s blade came down hard, fast and repeatedly, deflecting his foe’s thrust, damaging the opponent’s knife hand, probably causing him to drop his weapon. Once disarmed —
McGill stopped pecking. His knife hand flashed upward and to his left and moved through a horizontal figure-eight. Elspeth and Deke understood this maneuver, too. McGill saw his assailant go for his throat. He barricaded the attack with his knife, slashing his opponent’s wrist. He turned the first loop of the figure-eight to go for the other man’s throat, following through with a return loop to reverse direction and slash his adversary’s abdomen.
Then McGill took a quick step back, as if to see the damage he’d wrought.
Apparently, it was sufficient to let him look over his shoulder and see his audience.
He waved them into the room.
Before entering, Elspeth told Deke, “You see anyone approach Holmes with a knife —”
“I’ll shoot him.”
“Damn right, you will.”
Then McGill explained to Elspeth and Deke why life would not be that simple. He informed the Secret Service agents that the president would like to have Jordan Gilford’s killer taken alive, if at all possible. The problem with that was doing trick shots, shooting to wound not kill, was not a standard part of Secret Service procedure.
They were all about taking out anyone who threatened their package.
That being the slang for a protected person.
McGill wasn’t entirely happy with the situation either.
He said, “I know I’m making things harder for you, but we need this guy alive to help sort out some very big problems. I’m reasonably good with a knife, but there’s still a probability any wound I might inflict could hit a major blood vessel and the guy could exsanguinate in a hurry.”
Elspeth gave McGill a look. “What about you? You’re not worried about bleeding out?”
“I’ll do my best not to.”
“What if the other guy brings a gun to your knife fight?” Deke asked.
“I’ll have my firearm with me. You’ll have yours. If Elspeth is around, she’ll surely have hers. There’s no question: If it’s me or him who has to go, let’s make it him. Still, the preferred choice would be to bring him in alive without my buying the farm. You know what? Let’s say the other guy uses a blade but I fight with something that has superior reach.”
McGill opened a cabinet and brought out two six-feet long bamboo poles.
He asked, “Do either of you know anything about fighting with longstaffs?”
To their chagrin, both Elspeth and Deke did; neither looked forward to sparring with McGill. Elspeth asked, “You going to keep a longstaff in your pocket?”
McGill grinned. “Maybe somebody will leave one lying around.”
Being a good soldier, Deke volunteered to be McGill’s first sparring partner.
But Elspeth took her turn, too.
Their techniques were grounded in classical kung-fu.
McGill’s style was pure Dark Alley.
“Whatever works,” being the mantra of that martial art.
Connecticut Avenue NW — Washington, DC
Representative Philip Brock looked at the glass of Pappy Van Winkle bourbon he held in his hand. It contained less than two fingers of the sought-after elixir. The drink was his first and last of the day. A nightcap to ease him into sleep. Despite all that, he wondered if he was coming to like the damn stuff too much.
The taste pleased him so well that as a private joke he’d once partaken by means of an eye-dropper. Savoring each drop that fell onto his tongue while anticipating the next one. He’d done that just the one time, but he could see doing it again. Soon.
Wouldn’t it be the most comic and karmic of jokes if Howard Hurlbert’s preferred drink ultimately did him in? Would his final sip of the bourbon turn bitter in his mouth? Would he hear the ghost of the senator from Mississippi cackle as he breathed his last?
Nah, bullshit. One of the perks of being an atheist — a personal point of view he’d never shared with his voters — was that you could thumb your nose at all that superstitious crap. God, ghosts, the hereafter. He didn’t believe in any of it.
Come to that, even the power of ethics shrank to the vanishing point when you didn’t believe in anything greater than yourself. Eggheads might call that sociopathy. He regarded it as focused self-interest and a proper allocation of his time and resources.
Those very traits had earned him a fortune in investment banking.
Alienated his parents, too, but that was an acceptable loss.
These days, he had a hard time remembering what Mom and Dad looked like.
He finished his drink and picked up his iPad for one last glance at what the Washington Post had to report about the world’s state of decay. Paired photos of Bahir Ben Kalil and his sister Hasna Kalil caught his eye. Sis was taking her brother’s bones home. She urged the American authorities to give her family justice for the death of her brother.
The story went on to mention that the deceased and his sibling were fraternal twins.
To Brock’s eye, though, the resemblance was even more striking than that.
If not for the gender difference, they might be considered identical. Would Bahir have shared his and Brock’s secret plan to assassinate the president at Inspiration Hall with Sis? Sure, he would, especially if she used her respectable job, a do-gooder doctor, as a cover the way Bahir had done with his. Just looking at the likenesses of the two of them, he couldn’t imagine the one of them keeping any secrets from the other.
Hell, the woman might have been the one to recruit Bahir to the jihadi cause.
So the question of the moment was: Did she have the assets in the U.S. to get to Brock? Maybe, maybe not. If she did, she’d at least want to ask him what he knew about her brother’s death, and Brock would bet she could be a very persuasive interrogator.
If she didn’t have any local muscle available, she could still be a threat. All she’d have to do to cast suspicion on him would be to drop his name to the FBI. If the feebs were on the ball, they’d see that Bahir had disappeared the same night Senator Howard Hurlbert had been killed. Shit. Any number of people at The Constellation Club could put Brock together with Hurlbert in the days before his death.
As another worry, he’d already considered the possibility that Tyler Busby might try to use him for leverage in a plea deal. Then there had been that suspicious visit by Putnam Shady to his office. Brock still didn’t know what the hell that had really been all about.
But he was sure it didn’t bode well for him.
So an evening that started out mellow and lazy was veering into near panic.
And then his phone rang.
His friend, the speaker of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives, had news for him, but far from what he’d wanted to hear. “The goddam power at the Ohio statehouse went out before the roll could be called on the big vote, and the place filled up with a stink like the devil’s asshole, and it’ll be days before we can get back on track.”
Brock hung up without saying a word.
He filled his glass with bourbon and gulped it.
Then he started packing for a quick and possibly permanent return to Costa Rica.
Federal Correctional Institution — Danbury, Connecticut
Prison was rarely a quiet place, even after the lights dimmed just enough that the inmates didn’t have to squeeze their eyelids shut to get some sleep. People could adjust to almost anything, and once a prisoner accli
mated to the fact that she wouldn’t be sleeping in anything near total darkness, it was possible to get some rest. Snoring from any number of inmates attested to that. But not even those who’d been locked up for decades slept deeply.
You had to watch your ass even when your eyes were closed.
In the interest of not making any unnecessary enemies, among either the general population or the correctional staff, it was a good idea not to raise a ruckus during the night. Ticking people off for any breach of manners could be cause for retaliation. Usually when it was least expected.
So when Erna Godfrey spoke to her new cellmate, Joan Renshaw, shortly before midnight, she spoke softly. “They tell you who I am?”
Joan had been pretending to sleep. She opened her eyes. Looked at Erna.
She was relieved to see the woman didn’t have a weapon in hand.
That hadn’t always been the case.
Her first jail experience had been at the federal corrections center in downtown Chicago. They’d taken her there after she’d admitted her involvement in the thwarted attempt on Patricia Grant’s life at Inspiration Hall. Every morning she’d awakened since then and seen she was still incarcerated, she’d cursed herself for her stupidity.
Admitting that she’d been in on the plot to kill Patti Goddamn Grant.
Just so she could get a rise out of the woman. Hurt her feelings.
Yeah, shit. She’d shown Patti Grant, and got her own ass locked up. Probably for life.
Not that her life might be all that long. One morning, soon after she’d been locked up in Chicago, she’d awakened to find her cellmate staring at her and holding a toothbrush with a handle that had been carved to a needle-sharp point. For one heart-stopping moment, Joan thought the woman meant to murder her. Seeing and enjoying Joan’s fear, the woman had just laughed and used the pointed handle to extract particles of food from between her teeth.
The other woman did have a clean if maniacal smile.