House Divided jd-7

by Mike Lawson

  Bradford wondered, however, if his security detail would respond in time. He imagined their first reaction would be that he had hit the button accidentally. All he could do was hope that they would perform as they had been trained.

  There was no doubt in Bradford’s mind that Levy’s plan had been to kill him and then kill himself. Thank God that sergeant had been so fast. Levy had just pointed his gun at him when the sergeant burst into the room, his sidearm already in his hand. Of course his gun was in his hand: Bradford had hit the button, which meant his life was in danger.

  But Levy hadn’t even looked at the sergeant. He was saying, “I loved you more than my own father.” And then he fired, but the sergeant fired too, maybe a millisecond before Levy. The sergeant didn’t hesitate at all. He saw the threat and he fired, just as he’d been trained to do.

  Levy’s aim was thrown off by the sergeant’s bullet striking his head. He never would have missed otherwise, not standing so close. So instead of the bullet hitting Bradford’s heart as Levy had surely intended, he was hit in the shoulder.

  It was a miracle he was still alive.

  43

  “What do we do now?” Claire asked.

  “As I see it, we have two options,” Dillon said. “We-you and I, my dear-can step forward with what we know. We can testify to some congressional committee, share our recordings with them, and let Congress take it from there. We’ll lose our jobs, of course. And our illegal monitoring of American communications traffic will come to a halt, but we’ll damage Bradford’s reputation enough to at least force him out of the army.”

  “We can not let them disband my division, Dillon. It’s vital to preventing another nine/eleven.”

  “That may be,” Dillon said, “but if we expose Charles Bradford, that’s what will happen.”

  “So what’s the second option?”

  “We do nothing. Life simply goes on as it was before. Bradford may have another John Levy or Martin Breed working for him, but even if he does, I imagine he won’t be authorizing any executions anytime soon. He knows we’re watching now.”

  Claire just shook her head.

  Dillon stared at her for a moment, then said very quietly, “I’m sorry, Claire, but I don’t have all the answers. I think Bradford’s won this round and we’ll just have to bide our time and look for another opportunity-and hope he doesn’t figure out that you and I were the ones helping DeMarco.”

  “And what about DeMarco?” Claire asked

  “He’s not going to be a problem. He has no evidence, and he knows what we can do. And I’ll threaten him, of course.”

  “You may be underestimating him, Dillon.”

  “What are you suggesting? That we murder the man?”

  “No, I’m not suggesting that,” Claire said. “If we killed DeMarco, we’d be no better than Charles Bradford. I’m just saying, Don’t underestimate the guy.”

  Dillon handed DeMarco his cell phone and the keys to Perry Wallace’s truck and said, “You’re free to leave, Joe.”

  “So it’s all over,” DeMarco said.

  “Yes, I’m afraid so.”

  “And you’re not going to expose Bradford, are you?”

  “You keep missing the big picture, Joe. I’ve told you before that exposing Bradford is bad for the country.”

  “Oh, right. The big picture. Where does my cousin getting murdered fit into the big picture?”

  “Joe, I don’t have time to debate this with you. And I think you can relax somewhat regarding General Bradford. Now that he knows that other people are aware of his activities, I think he’ll exercise some restraint.”

  “What’s gonna restrain him from killing me?” DeMarco said.

  “What would be the point? You don’t have any evidence and Bradford knows you’re just being used by someone else. Killing you won’t accomplish anything-or not much, at any rate.”

  That was really comforting, DeMarco thought.

  “Now listen to me carefully, Joe. Some of my colleagues think that leaving you among the living is unwise, but so far I’ve been able to prevent them from taking any action against you. But if you talk to anyone about any of this… Well, need I say more?”

  “No,” DeMarco said.

  “And you do know, of course, we’ll be aware if you talk. You need to keep in mind that every word you say in the future might be overheard. Every call you make might be listened to. Every piece of mail you send may be opened. You need to remember you’re dealing with an organization that has at its fingertips technologies you can’t even imagine.”

  DeMarco looked at Dillon for a long moment, then nodded his head.

  “I think I’m starting to see the big picture now,” he said.

  DeMarco was glad that Dillon’s people had been kind enough to move Perry Wallace’s old pickup from the parking garage at the Days Inn in Crystal City to the safe house in Maryland. Had they not done this, Perry’s truck would have been towed away. As things stood now, DeMarco was not looking forward to seeing Perry when he returned the truck, considering how Perry had most likely been grilled by Dillon’s agents.

  DeMarco turned the key in the ignition, shifted the ancient transmission into first, and took off. He knew that far above his head a satellite was possibly watching him. And somewhere behind him was stone-faced Alice or somebody just like her. And Perry’s beat-up Mazda was most likely fitted with a tracking device, and he was almost certain he was wearing listening and tracking devices as well.

  He felt like a dog infested with fleas.

  He drove a little farther, thoughts buzzing inside his head.

  Finally he said to himself, Fuck the big picture.

  44

  “Why’s he stopping, Alice?” Claire said.

  “He’s at that liquor store, the one he went to after he met with Bradford at the Pentagon.”

  “It would appear that Mr. DeMarco has a drinking problem,” Claire said.

  “I don’t know,” Alice said. “He likes his booze, but he doesn’t look like an alky to me.”

  Claire listened to DeMarco’s voice through the speaker in the operations room. Alice, parked half a block from the liquor store, was also listening to him via her headset.

  Hey. How you doin’ today? How ’bout another bottle of Stoli?

  Uh, yes, sir.

  A couple of minutes passed then: That’ll be twenty-two fifty.

  There you go. And thanks.

  And thank you, sir.

  “What was that ‘and thank you, sir’ stuff?” Claire said. “It sounded like DeMarco gave the clerk a big tip or something.”

  “I don’t know what you mean,” Alice said.

  “I mean that sounded funny. It sounded off,” Claire said.

  “You want me to do something?”

  “No. Just watch his ass. I don’t know why, but he’s making me nervous. Dillon had better be right about him.”

  Fifteen minutes elapsed.

  “He’s stopping again,” Alice said.

  “Where’s he going this time?” Claire said.

  “I don’t know yet,” Alice said. “He just parked the truck. Okay, he’s going into an auto parts store.”

  “What the hell for?” Claire said.

  Hey, I need some oil.

  The oil’s right over there, sir.

  Thanks.

  Five minutes later.

  That’ll be twenty-eight fifteen, sir.

  “He’s heading back to the truck,” Alice said.

  “Twenty-eight bucks for oil? Does that sound right to you?” Claire said.

  “No,” Alice said, “but maybe he bought something else.”

  “What’s he doing now?”

  “He tossed a bag into the truck and now he’s adding oil to the engine. That truck’s a piece of shit. It leaked oil all over the garage at the safe house.”

  Claire didn’t say anything.

  “He’s taking off again,” Alice said.

  Fifteen minutes later, Alice said, “H
e’s stopped again. He pulled into a loading zone in front of a Starbucks. I guess he wants a latte for the drive home.”

  Two minutes later, Claire said, “Can you see him?”

  “No.”

  “Get in there, Alice, and see what he’s doing. The GPS shows he’s not moving, but we can’t hear him.”

  It was five long minutes before Alice reported back.

  “Claire, the Starbucks has a back exit that leads to a shopping mall, and I found his clothes in one of the men’s rooms. Everything except for his shoes. And there’s an empty plastic bag that used to hold a set of coveralls. It looks like he bought the coveralls at that auto shop.”

  “Son of a bitch!” Claire said. “So we have no devices on him?”

  “No,” Alice said. She hesitated, then said, “Claire, the Gallery Place metro station is one floor below the mall level. He could be on the metro.”

  Claire called out to the techs in the operations room. “I want live feed from all of metro’s surveillance cameras. Look for a man in coveralls. Start at Gallery Place and expand out from there.”

  “If he’s underground,” Alice said, “we can’t follow him by satellite until he surfaces again.”

  “I know that,” Claire snapped. “What color were those coveralls?”

  “The bag didn’t say. Just coveralls.”

  Shit.

  “He’s going to be hard to spot in the crowds coming off the subway,” Alice said.

  “Goddammit, quit telling me things I already know!” Claire screamed.

  Claire paced the op room, hovering over her technicians. Ten of them were now looking at surveillance camera images from metro stations trying to spot a man in coveralls. The problem was that from the Gallery Place metro station DeMarco could have gotten on either the Green, Red, or Yellow lines. And one station away was Metro Center, where he could switch to the Orange or Blue lines. He could be headed in any direction, to any place in the District, Virginia, or Maryland-and he could get off at any one of eighty-six metro stations.

  But what the hell was he doing? Claire wondered. Where was he running to? Or who was he running to?

  “Alice,” she said.

  “Yes?”

  “Go back to that liquor store and question the clerk. There was something funny about DeMarco going there.”

  “Roger that,” Alice said.

  Fifteen minutes later, Alice called back. “We got a problem,” she said. “The clerk at the liquor store is the son of a guy DeMarco works with at the Capitol. When DeMarco went to the store after seeing Bradford, he had the clerk copy the digital recordings to a flash drive.”

  “Aw, Jesus. Did the clerk listen to the recordings?”

  “No.”

  “Do you believe him?”

  “Yeah. He told me the truth.”

  Claire wondered what Alice had done to the clerk.

  “And today,” Claire said, “DeMarco went back to the store and got the copy, didn’t he?”

  “Yes. He’s taking the recordings to somebody. Maybe you should focus on the metro stops near the Post, and I’ll head on over there now. But what do I do if I find him?”

  “Tackle him. Taser him. Hit him with your damn car. I don’t care. Just get that flash drive.”

  DeMarco waited as the train approached the next station. He’d switched trains a couple of times to see if he could spot anyone following him, and he thought his tail was clear. They couldn’t hear him and they couldn’t see him underground with their damn satellites, but he bet they could monitor the surveillance cameras in the stations. Nothing he could do about that.

  The station he wanted was coming up next, and once he left the station it was gonna be a foot race.

  The metro driver announced the next stop: Union Station.

  He put the Nationals baseball cap on his head. He’d paid a kid, one of the metro riders, thirty bucks for the cap. Goddamn thief. The kid could tell he was desperate for the cap.

  The train pulled into Union Station. He walked calmly toward the exit, keeping his head down, the bill of the ball cap-he hoped-hiding his face.

  “Claire,” a tech said, “I think I’ve got him.”

  Claire ran over to the tech’s monitor. “Where is he?”

  “You see that guy?” the tech said. “Coveralls. Ball cap.”

  “Blow up the picture,” Claire said.

  The technician did. Claire couldn’t see the man’s entire face because of the bill of the cap, but she could see his chin. Yeah, that was DeMarco’s stubborn chin.

  “That’s him,” she said. “Where is he?”

  “Union Station.”

  Dillon walked into the operations room. Claire had called him as soon as she learned DeMarco had made a copy of the recordings.

  “Where the hell’s he going?” Claire muttered to herself.

  “The Capitol?” Dillon said. “To see a congressman he knows?”

  “Then why didn’t he get off at the Capitol South Station? That’s closer to the House offices.”

  “Then maybe it’s a senator he wants to talk to. The Senate Office Buildings are three blocks from Union Station.”

  “We have him on the satellite, Claire.” It was one of the techs speaking, his little nerd eyes shining. “He’s running.”

  Claire looked up at the screen. Yeah, there he was outside Union Station, running. And he wasn’t jogging; he was sprinting. Claire bet DeMarco hadn’t run that fast since high school.

  “Alice,” Claire said, “he just came out of Union Station. Do you have anyone near there?”

  “I’ll be there in two minutes,” Alice said.

  “Hurry, Alice,” Claire said. “Two minutes may be too late.”

  One of the techs watching the satellite feed said, “He’s not going to the Senate Office Buildings. He just ran past them.”

  Dillon closed his eyes. He knew where DeMarco was going.

  “He’s going to the Supreme Court,” Dillon said. “He figured out who Thomas is.”

  Alice could see DeMarco ahead of her; he was just starting up the steps of the Supreme Court. She couldn’t get any closer to the building in her car because concrete security barriers blocked the street in front of the court.

  She stopped the SUV, opened up the tail gate, and took out the rifle. She heard a nearby pedestrian cry out in alarm.

  DeMarco was now halfway up the steps.

  She aimed at DeMarco through the scope, took a breath, and pulled the trigger.

  DeMarco was almost there. He could see U.S. Capitol cops at the top of the stairs looking down at him. He could tell they didn’t like the way he looked-some wild-eyed guy running up the steps like a madman. He figured they were going to swarm all over him as soon as he made it to the top of the steps-and that was fine by him.

  Then he tripped. He was winded running all the way from Union Station and his left foot hit one of the steps and he pitched forward. At that moment, just as he tripped, he saw a woman coming down the steps topple over. One minute she was walking, and the next second she dropped to the ground like her legs had turned to rubber. He didn’t know what had happened to the woman and he didn’t have time to find out. He got up and started running again.

  “Damn it,” Alice muttered. The son of a bitch tripped and she missed him. She figured she had time for one more shot. She aimed again.

  As DeMarco passed the fallen woman, he saw the dart sticking out of her chest. A fucking tranquilizer dart. Someone was shooting at him.

  But he was almost there now, just a couple more steps to go. And the Capitol Cops were coming right at him, five of them.

  DeMarco zigzagged to his left-not to avoid the cops but to throw off the shooter’s aim. But the cops thought he was trying to get past them, and one of them pulled out a gun. Oh, shit. The other four cops just kept coming at him but before they reached him, the one in the lead dropped to the ground. There was a dart in his neck.

  And then the cops were on him, driving him to the ground, cove
ring him with their bodies.

  Thank God.

  “How did he figure out that Thomas was Thomas Antonelli?” Claire said.

  Dillon stood up. “I don’t know,” he said, “but he did.”

  “Where are you going?” Claire said, when she saw Dillon walking slowly toward the door of the operations room.

  “Where am I going?” Dillon repeated. “Well, Claire, I think I’m going to jail.”

  And Dillon was right.

  Epilogue

  “Okay, Calvin, I’ll see your three Marlboros,” Clarence Goodman finally said, and tentatively put three Salems down in the center of the card table like they were hundred-dollar chips.

  George Aguilera, smiling like he’d already won, immediately added a small can of smoked oysters to a pot which consisted mostly of cigarettes but also a John Grisham paperback and a five-year-old Playboy. “I’ll call your three and raise you three,” Aguilera said.

  “Wait a damn minute,” Calvin Loring said. “I thought we agreed yesterday that the oysters were worth five cigarettes, not six.”

  The debate ensued-and Dillon closed his eyes.

  In the minimum security section of the Allenwood Federal Correctional Complex at White Deer, Pennsylvania, cigarettes were the gold standard and other commodities for bartering and wagering were based on their value. The value of a cigarette, however, changed periodically, owing to availability of supply and other more esoteric factors. Dillon was thinking about writing an essay on the subject, explaining how the prison economy in black market goods and services was eerily parallel to that of the outside world-there was inflation, price-fixing, insider trading, and market fluctuations due to disasters-although the disasters themselves were unique to prisons, such as lockdowns or retribution from the guards.

  Dillon and the three men playing poker with him were dressed identically: blue jeans, white T-shirts, white socks, and plain-toed black lace-up shoes. Dillon’s jeans, however, had been tailored by another inmate, a man incarcerated for identity theft but who was quite skillful with needle and thread.