by Martha Carr
“That can’t be good,” said Elizabeth. “We should tell Esther.”
“Do what you want,” said Wallis. “I’m going to go find my family.”
Chapter 19
Richard Bach was always happy to do the right person a favor. He liked it when people in high places owed him something. Ellen Reese didn’t get much higher.
He didn’t ask any questions when he got the phone call from David Whitaker asking for someone who could take care of a problem. David told him whoever it was had to be the best. It was for the Vice President and if there were any slip ups, it would all roll back to Richard.
He was used to that threat. Too many people had tried out exactly the same words on him.
He told them he had just the right man.
It didn’t take long to find Rodney Parris in the combinating room, Richmond’s term for the illegal backroom where small bets were placed every day. Rodney was one of their main bookies and considered this his regular day job.
His side job was taking care of nuisance people, killing them, without ever leaving any tracks to follow. Sometimes he broke into peoples’ houses for fun just to keep his skills sharp. Sometimes he carefully slit the homeowner’s throat where they sat, surprised to find out in the last moments of their life that he was even there. Needed to keep his skills sharp.
Still managed to never leave a mess behind. It was important to him to be seen as a professional. It was one of the reasons he always wore a suit at either job. Mac required it when he was picking up bets or delivering winnings and he required it of himself when he was working his side jobs.
Everything he needed was in the briefcase that was always at his side.
“I have a job for you,” said Richard. “It’s a big one.”
“Okay, for the right pay, no job is too big. I’m sure I can accommodate.” He held his arms stiffly at his side, waiting for more details.
Richard took a look around at the large room filled with locals trying to place bets and the well-dressed employees dotted throughout the crowd.
“Follow me,” said Richard. “We need a little privacy.”
“Nobody in here will interfere with my business,” said Rodney. “Has there ever been any repercussions from any of the jobs I’ve handled for you? Alice Watkins? Lily Billings?”
“You talk to anybody about those?” asked Richard, as he held the door open and they walked out to the sidewalk.
Rodney pulled an imaginary zipper across his lips. “No need to say a word,” he said, “but people talk none the less. Especially those two mysterious endings. Never commented myself, though. Okay, okay, outside is more private.”
“No one cares what we’re doing out here,” said Richard, but he nervously took a look around to see if anyone was nearby. If this went well, he could move up fast in the organization. Finally get away from all of the Robin Spinglers of the world.
“The Vice President has a job for you.”
“Vice president of what?” asked Rodney.
“Of the country,” said Richard, exasperated. “This has to be one of your best ever.”
“How would you know the Vice President of the U.S.A.?”
“I don’t, but the right people knew to come to me when they needed something done.”
“That’s only because you happen to know me,” said Rodney.
“It pays four times your normal fee,” said Richard, ignoring what he said. “Half up front, half when it’s done.”
“You know the target?” asked Rodney.
“Didn’t ask, don’t want to know. Here,” said Richard, handing Rodney a disposable phone.
“You’re going to get a phone call with the necessary place and time. You’ll have to move fast because it’ll be in D.C. You have a place you can stay up there while you wait for the call?
“I do a lot of the sound for some bands in that area. I can bunk with one of them. This can’t take too long, though. Mac doesn’t like it when we take too much time off. This job is my bread and butter.”
“You’ll be getting a call in the next twenty-four hours. Be ready,” said Richard, as he handed over a thick brown envelope. “Small bills just the way you like it, which isn’t easy for this much money.”
“Appreciate doing business with you,” said Rodney. “Till we meet again.”
Richard called David Whitaker and told him, “He has the burner. It’s all arranged.”
David Whitaker hung up the phone and turned around to face his new employer. It was an unexpected pleasure that he had come in person to Richmond, Virginia.
“It’s all set up,” he said. “The man is awaiting the instructions.”
George Clemente clapped his hands together. “Perfect,” he bellowed. “Charlie, is our guest comfortable? He has a front row seat to how we are going to change this country.”
Charlie Foyle didn’t like being so close to where his family lived. It made things more dangerous. He had to wonder who he might run into along the streets.
He still wasn’t sleeping much. There were too many nights he dreamt about killing Alphonso, his eyes bugging out of his head as Charlie squeezed harder. Norman Weiskopf didn’t look much better.
“We’ve accomplished a lot this past week, wouldn’t you say?” boasted George.
Charlie gave him a passive stare. He knew George never really wanted a conversation. The echo of his own voice was enough.
“Once I throttle the account numbers out of the younger Mister Weiskopf then we can leave the family to their own devices.”
Charlie looked up, startled despite his exhaustion.
“You don’t want them dead?” he asked, tensing for the backlash but George smiled and reached out to grasp him firmly by the shoulders.
“No, not at all, unless of course, I don’t get my money back. That was an unforeseen wrinkle. But I need the Weiskopf clan alive.”
“Then, why go to all of this trouble?” asked Charlie. Something was wrong and he didn’t see it. All this time under cover and he may have missed the most important parts of George’s plan.
“If you want to create something that will last, like the founders of Management, you have to play the long game,” said George. “You have to stay about ten steps ahead of everyone else and then let them trip over themselves trying to solve something that was never going to be a problem. That way, they won’t notice when the real plan is underway.”
“Is the real plan underway?” he asked.
“Soon enough. It’s taken me a long time to get this far. But I had to learn something along the way. It’s not necessary to be seen as the leader in order to be in charge of everything.”
“Who was that on the phone?” asked Charlie, risking exposing just how badly he wanted to know.
“My own personal solution,” said George. “My Plan B. Come we have a meeting to get to and we can’t be late. Some very important people in Management want to talk about peace, thanks to Ms. Jones.”
Ellen Reese made the phone call telling Rodney Parrish when to show up at the Grand Hyatt on H Street. There would only be a five minute window. “Do you understand?”
“Plenty of time,” Rodney reassured the Vice President.
It was all too easy. He picked up the badge just where it was supposed to be and gave the name, Rodney Johnson, just like it said in his instructions. No one really gave him a second look. The tools he needed were waiting for him behind the bar, left there by the bartender, in a leather satchel. It was nicer than his old briefcase.
He made a mental note to spend some of the money from the job on a new leather satchel, just like this one. His instructions were to leave the satchel just outside the door to the hotel when he was done, behind the large potted plants. Someone else would pick it up from there.
Rodney planned to follow every instruction to the letter.
When he entered the room he found his target sitting alone, quietly thinking, his eyes shut. It’s a lucky break, thought Rodney. He wasn’t really into a
lot of fuss or bother.
All it took was one swift motion with the sharp blade across the man’s and a startled look of surprise followed by a throaty gurgle. Rodney didn’t stay around to watch him die. There wasn’t enough time.
As he turned to go, pleased with how easy it was all going, the door opened unexpectedly.
“What have you done?” yelled a surprised Ty, as he looked at the body of the President and the bloody knife in Rodney’s hand.
Rodney was just about to wipe it off and slide it into the satchel when he was interrupted. “Help! Help!” yelled Ty. “The President!”
Rodney heard the running footsteps and for the first time in his long and fabled career he felt a small moment of panic. Not one to give up too easily, he stepped forward quickly and silenced Ty Nichols, ruining one of his new ties as the blood sprayed out in front of him.
Ty fell hard on his knees, lurching over onto his side, his eyes still wide open in shock. He had only made it through one week of his new job.
The footsteps grew louder as Rodney kept walking out of the room that was adjacent to the large meeting room, and down the hall.
“Stop!” someone yelled. He didn’t even turn around to see who it was or to offer an explanation. “Stop!” He heard the sound of guns being drawn and wondered if they would actually shoot a man in the back without knowing who he was, or if he was just walking by the room.
“The President is dead!” yelled another man. “Secure the Vice President.”
Rodney only felt the first few bullets as they entered his back but by the time they had all unloaded their weapons into his body he was long dead, still clutching the satchel.
George Clemente was sitting in a meeting room at the Commonwealth Club when he heard that there was breaking news. One of his guards came in and whispered, “The President is dead.”
“What about the other issue?” asked George.
“He’s in the building,” the guard whispered in his ear, loud enough for Charlie to overhear. Charlie tried to piece together what they were talking about, looking back and forth from the guard to George.
George smiled and stood up, thanking the elderly, white haired gentleman who was sitting across from him. “Walter Jones was your oldest and dearest friend,” said George. “You two were the last of your generation, which is why this pains me so much. But, can’t be helped,” he said. He quickly pulled a small revolver from his coat pocket, holding up a small decorative pillow from his chair, and shot the man in the face at close range. White feathers, some of them tinged in red, flew in every direction as if a small bird had just exploded.
Charlie stood up so quickly he knocked over the chair behind him.
“What?” he said, still trying to take in what had just happened. “What’s happening?” he asked, trying to piece together who had just died. “What president is dead?”
“Sadly, the one that was duly elected to run this country. Very unfortunate,” said George. “These things happen,” he said, waving his hand. “What is important is that by now, Fred Bowers is close to the room.”
He turned to the guards, his face dropping back into a scowl. “Spread the word,” said George. “Charlie, we are leaving,” said George. “We have an empire to run.”
“What about Norman Weiskopf?” Charlie felt light headed and was trying to think quickly on his feet. “What was this?”
“Charlie, this has been the world’s longest goose chase, but not for us.”
“You didn’t want to bring everyone together?”
George shrugged. “If that had happened, I could have worked with it. I just didn’t think it was very likely. It was never really my plan.” He seemed so calm that it was disorienting Charlie.
“Charlie, sometimes you can get more done with an illusion than the truth. And what is going to matter more, going forward, is what everyone will swear is true. The facts will be terribly inconvenient.”
“What about your money?” asked Charlie, still trying to see the real end game.
“Oh, I will get that money back but I’m not going to ruin the bigger plans over a mere billion dollars. I missed my opportunity with the young man but we will meet again. I will get my money back if only to prove a point. We still have far more at stake than that and we will leave so that we can lead another day. Right now, what matters is that we are not seen anywhere near here.”
George Clemente was already rapidly making his way out of the suite and down the hallway to the elevator that would get them to the lower lobby. The hallway was quiet. No one had heard the small crack from the gun.
Just outside the room two Watchers that had accompanied the old man were lying dead. More bullet holes in their heads. Clean shots that looked like a professional must have done it quickly and quietly.
Charlie followed George down to the lobby and out of a service entrance where there was a car waiting for them. He got into the back and stared straight ahead, wondering how much of the world had just changed. He couldn’t help but wonder if he had just failed his entire mission. It was more than he could contemplate.
A thought began to crystallize for him. He saw that if he didn’t leave in that exact moment, then he would never be allowed to leave. Charlie had done one part of his job too well. George Clemente trusted him. This would become his entire life, more than it was even now.
He had to make a choice right now or surrender to this life. He held his face carefully blank and felt for the door handle, waiting for the right moment.
As the car turned onto Franklin Street and headed downtown, Charlie opened the door and let himself roll out onto the one way street, coming to a hard stop at the curb, bruising his shoulder. He stayed crouched down, running for the opposite side of the street. He kept scanning to see if the car would circle back to find him.
He pulled his phone from his pocket and put in the updated code for an operative in need of a rescue and ran as fast as he could toward the Virginia Commonwealth University campus and the nearest safe house. Within the hour his family would be scooped up by Circle operatives and sequestered away until they could be given new identities.
Fred Bowers saw the car pull out from a window inside the hotel and knew he had missed his chance by mere moments, again. He stopped when he saw Charlie roll out of the car just a block down the street and was surprised when he saw the car pull away, gaining speed in the other direction. Something wasn’t right.
“There he is!” someone yelled. Fred turned and saw a team of Watchers, one of them pointing in his direction. “He killed Mr. Armitage.”
Fred didn’t wait to find out what had happened. He ran out of the hotel and down a side alley and got back on the motorcycle he had borrowed, cutting across a few streets until he was clear of downtown and back on the highway. He knew George Clemente had managed to use him, once again. The anger burned in him, making it difficult to think of what to do next. He needed to talk to Helmut.
There was still the coded message from Ty Nichols to deal with as well that said the President was being compromised. Too many things were going wrong to be a coincidence, he thought.
Tom received a relay of Fred’s distress call as he watched the histrionics on the television about the assassination of the President. They were standing outside of a Shell gas station while Phil put gas in his car.
They piled back into the car and drove the last few miles to the church driving down into the parking lot. Sitting on the curb in the parking lot was a man wearing a hood over his head, his hands tied behind his back.
“Stop!” yelled Ned, already opening the car door before Phil had brought the Golf to a complete stop. Juliette jumped out of the car as Ned crawled out behind her, running as fast as he could down the hill. “Dad! Dad!” he yelled.
“Ned, wait!” yelled, Tom. “This could be a trap! We don’t know who it is!”
Ned wasn’t listening and he ran to the figure on the curb and pulled at the hood. His father, Norman Weiskopf, in the same clothes as whe
n he was taken with a week’s worth of stubble on his face, looking tired and a little bruised, blinked in the sunshine.
“Ned,” he whispered, as tears came down his face and he tried to lean against his son, his hands still tied behind his back.
“Dad,” said Ned, more quietly, as he hugged his father around the neck. “You’re alive,” he said into his hair. “Alive.”
Helmut Khroll watched the newsfeed on his phone, wondering if Fred Bowers had heard the news.
“Do they know who did it?” asked Father Donald, as they waited at a stoplight.
“It says the Secret Service shot a suspect, so I’d say, yes.”
Helmut knew he needed to get to Fred before Fred came up with any kind of plan on his own. His phone rang before he could even try dialing his number.
“Helmut,” said Esther. “Find Fred Bowers and get to Bishop Crane, immediately. Do nothing else. Too much has happened.”
“What else has happened besides a dead president? I would love to find Fred but frankly, I’m not sure where to start. I have to hope he will answer his phone,” said Helmut.
“He’ll answer. There are too many people out looking for him. He’s going to need a friend. Get him safely to the Bishop. That’s your first priority. I will explain everything later. The Circle is at risk.”
“The entire operation?” asked Helmut. “Tom is dead,” he said, almost dropping his phone.
“What?” said Father Donald, hitting the brakes a little too hard, throwing them both against their seatbelts and making the drivers behind them honk.
“No, no,” shouted Esther into her phone. Helmut put the phone on speaker and said, “What is in jeopardy?”
“It’s too much to explain over a phone and too dangerous. We have lost control of everything. Get to Bishop Crane. He will tell you more. That is the only thing you need to know right now.”
Richard Bach paced inside of his living room, wondering if he should stay put or make a run for it. The President is dead. The thought kept whizzing around in his brain, over and over again. He wasn’t sure that was the job he sent Rodney to do but David Whitaker was nowhere to be found and there were a lot of police surrounding the combinating room.