The President's Assassin Part 10

"Jesushow do you protect against something like that?"

"I think that's exactly the point."

"What am I missing here?"

"Their notewe can't."

She nodded. Then she suggested, "But there's something importantsomething we're overlooking. I'm not thinking . . ." She glanced in the direction of the ruined BMW, then said, "Ant.i.tank weapons . . . Bouncing Bettys . . . this is military hardware we're talking about."

"And . . . ?"

"And where did these people get their hands on these things? Right?"

Right.

Jennie then rushed off to inform Meany of the newest disaster, our guesses about the weapons used, and what this might mean in terms of fresh leads and whatever.

Left with nothing better to do, I withdrew my cell phone from a pocket and turned it on for the first time that day. The little window informed me that somebody in the 703 area code had called about ten times. Incidentally, the CIA, like the Army, is big on reporting chains and timely communications. Of course, as a lawyer, I'm accustomed to working and operating alone, making my own decisions, accountable to n.o.body but my clients and the court docket. I was having a little trouble getting back into this chain of command thing.

I decided to get this over with and called Phyllis. On an open airwave, I was no doubt engaging in an egregious heresy of some sort. But with three helicopters broadcasting overhead, and a Supreme Court justice splattered across the front of his house, confidentiality was the least of our worries, in my view.

Phyllis sounded a lot annoyed and wasted a few comments reminding me I wasn't the only one working this case, and so on. Then she listened patiently as I unloaded the latest. She asked a few questions, some of which I could answer, and some of which I couldn't. Finally she commented, "Well, I can't recall a worse evening."

I nearly replied, "How about 9/11?" The CIA hadn't exactly ended that day parading down Const.i.tution Avenue draped in victory laurels, as I recalled. But maybe she had a point. By the evening of 9/11 the worst was over, except for the shock, funerals, cleanup, and revenge. These guys weren't through. In fact, the worst could be yet to come. I commented, "Well, the morning wasn't so hot either."

"The morning was just the entree."

"Right." I suggested, "We should probably antic.i.p.ate another hit to start off our day tomorrow."

"It would be a mistake to expect these people to be predictable. They haven't been yet."

"Would you care to wager?"

"No, I would not." She changed the subject and noted, "This is all very mystifying. It's obvious why they a.s.sa.s.sinated Merrill Benedict, don't you think?"

"I think it looks obvious. Like Belknap, he's a confidant of the President, and given his job . . . Well, there's going to be a big hole at the White House morning press briefing tomorrow."

"Indeed. Now, what about Fineberg?"

Good question. Connections are important in any criminal case; they're irreplaceable when they're all you have. So I considered her question and it was a bit tricky.

Justice Phillip Fineberg wasn't close to anybody I knew of. And though it pains me to speak ill of the dead, here goes; the man was a p.r.i.c.k. He was about seventy, a legal egghead plucked two Presidents back from the faculty of Yale Law, and every President since has cursed the choice. The press generally characterized him, somewhat delicately, as cantankerous and iconoclastic, journalistic code words for a robed a.s.shole. He browbeat and terrified every lawyer unfortunate enough to appear at the highest court, even those arguing a case he favored.

The American Bar a.s.sociation could raffle tickets to pee on his gravestone. Also his legal opinions were irrational, and he was famousor infamousfor writing contrarian dissents insulting to both the minority and majority opinions. His eight brethren would dearly love to get this lug in a back alley and lump him up good. Except somebody beat them to the punch.

In truth, Fineberg's murder would be a source of quiet jubilation in many quarters, and made no sense I could see.

Phyllis repeated, "Well? Is there a connection? Or was he just a target of convenience?"

"I don't think there's a specific connection."

Apparently I was being tested, because she snapped, "Think harder, Drummond. This city is filled with targets. There has to be a reason they chose him. Right?"

"Right."

"I didn't give you this a.s.signment to speculate. These killers aren't stupid. You can't afford to be."

So I thought harder. I suggested, "Maybe Fineberg was a decoy."

"For what?"

"To sow doubt and confusion. To mislead us and force us to waste time and precious resources chasing down an empty path. You know"

"Yes . . . possibly." After a pause she observed, "Also, there are many prominent people in Was.h.i.+ngton, our ability to protect them is limited, and by forcing us to spread out, it gets easier for them."

"Right." The lady was on, and I went into the listening mode.

She added, "They're forcing our hand. This makes three important officials in one day We can't very well dissemble any longer, can we? We're going to have to disclose what's happening to the public."

"Maybe we should have done that earlier."

"Don't be naive. There was a very good reason we chose to handle things this way."

"To avoid embarra.s.sment?" I offered.

"Oh please. What n.o.body could in good taste confess this morning. What we all wanted to avoidhysteria. Every person in this town with a hint of an impressive t.i.tle is going to beg for protection. Somebody has to perform the triage."

"Goon."

"A lot of feelings are going to get hurt, and a lot of enemies made. Understandwith an election, the President wanted desperately to avoid that."

Made sense, I guess. I was reminded of the cold war days, when a select handful of people in the Pentagon were issued special pa.s.ses to be flown out of the city on the first whiff of an incoming nuclear attack. They would ride out the great cataclysm inside a hollowed-out mountain somewhere not even G.o.d knew about, to emerge, I guess, after the Geiger counters stopped having heart attacks. It was the ultimate get-out-of-jail card, the modern equivalent of a ticket to Noah's Ark. For the rest of us, it was an official stamp of expendability. Fortunately, the big one never came, so there were no hard feelingsas if anybody would've been left to feel bad anyway Not so this time. The President was involved in a touch-and-go election campaign, plenty of people would remember, and he. already had enemies by the bushel. I said, "Got it."

"I shouldn't have to explain these things to you."

Right.

It's never pleasant getting your b.u.t.t chewed by the boss. But I didn't really want to get into it with this lady who might lace cyanide into my cigars or something. And for the record, if you'll pardon the pun, the lady was dead-on. Bodies were piling up, and Sean Drummond's singular contribution was to explain how. What mattered was why, and from there you might get to who.

I asked her for an update on the bounty, and she informed me that no progress had been made, though reports were still filtering in from around the world, and she would let me know. In other words, p.i.s.s off.

She closed by informing me that Jennie, Meany, and I needed to be back at the Incident Command Center in time for a nine o'clock session of the oversight cell.

I began to wonder if this day was going to end.

CHAPTER NINE.

The 9:00 P.M. session opened with an overview from a plump and pasty-faced Bureau pathologist, who brought along a number of visual aids to jog our imagination and encourage discussion. The information wasn't all that helpful, really. But I guess it's good for morale to allow everybody a moment in the sun.

Also, the day had been long and grueling, the hour was late, and a pathology lecture is a lot like a sixth-grade s.e.x-ed cla.s.s it's all in the pictures.

At least the bureaucrats seemed to be catching up to the killers' frantic pace, and there was no unseemly melee as everybody tried to figure out who sat where. Name placards had been prepared; legal pads, sharpened No. 2 pencils, and even bottled waters were arranged. The same players from the morning session were present and accounted for, excluding my big cheese, James Peterson, who I guess was lurking in the shadowy corridors of Langley plotting something. More likely, he was exercising his option to keep his distance from this thing. Smart guy In fact, I was a little astonished to see Director Townsend drumming his fingers on the end of the table and watching the ma.s.s a.s.semble. But it made sense, I guess. With the White House Chief of Staff, the presidential spokesperson, a Supreme Court justice, and a.s.sorted others filling drawers at the morgue, taking in a Kennedy Center musical was probably not the best of ideas. Still, I think it said something about the man that he did not keep his bureaucratic distance, that he was staying in the thick of things, and ifor, as it now lookedwhen the s.h.i.+tstorm hit, he was going to be front and center, with no prophylactic layers of bureaucracy for cover.

Also, I was relieved to see that Mr. Townsend did not appear p.i.s.sed, distraught, or even moody; he actually looked collected and impa.s.sive, as though this was just another day, another investigation, another job to be done. Of course, it wasn't. But good leaders.h.i.+p is four-tenths being there and six-tenths looking the part.

Anyway the day had been a scorcherliterally and otherwiseand n.o.body had changed clothes, or showered, and the room was windowless, so it smelled a little ripe, though that was the least of our worries.

In fact, two minutes into it, everybody was stone-cold sober, stealing glances at their watches and waiting for Dr. Death and his nasty pictures to go away, when he got to something I found interesting and useful.

We had finished reviewing the anatomical donnybrook at Belknap's house and a new corpse flashed onto the screen: an aged and scrawny body sprawled on his left side across his front porch.

One glance and you knew this guy had scribbled his last illegible dissent. The doc pointed at the slide and said, "See here how Fineberg was blown nearly in half. Really the only thing holding him together is his spine. Even a layman can detect from the severity of trauma that his death was virtually instantaneous. Until the autopsy's complete I won't venture the exact cause of death. . . but see here." He pointed at a fresh slide. "The right side of Fineberg's body, the hollowed-out side, took the brunt of the blast."

There followed a number of lavish close-ups of Phillip Fineberg's oozing entrails, exposed rib cage, and so on.

"The depth of the tissue damage," the doc continued, "and the heavy accretion of gunpowder on Fineberg's skin suggests the device exploded, we estimate, within three feet from his body Of particular interest, judging by the angle of the entry wounds, the device was some three feet off the ground when it exploded. This is curious, yes? The explosion occurred at approximately the same height as the doork.n.o.b."

He paused to allow everybody to consider this novel possibility. Mr. Gene Halderman of Homeland Security was thoughtfully stroking his chin, no doubt thinking, "Ah-hahthe old bomb in the doork.n.o.b thing."

The doctor then said, "But when we found no trace of bra.s.s, or even bra.s.s enamel, we ruled that out. The device dispensed hundreds of particles composed of iron bauxite, a mixture of tiny pellets and some coa.r.s.er pieces with sharp, uneven edges, perhaps from the sh.e.l.l of the device. What this means, we don't know. We do bodies, not bombs. So we've forwarded shrapnel fragments and powder residue over to"

George Meany suddenly pushed back his chair. "Wait!hold on a minute . . ." He regarded the picture a moment before he informed the good doctor, "From what you're describing ... I think . . ."He paused until he had everybody's undivided attention. "That. . . that sounds like a Bouncy Nancy" His eyes roved around the table, and in response to the confused expressions he added, "If you're unfamiliar with this device, it's . . ." and proceeded to give the unwashed and unknowing a brief description of Bouncy Nancys and how the weapon matched the damage inflicted on Fineberg, and so forth.

He summarized by saying, "Incidentally, I should mention another suspicion I've been toying with. Regarding the Merrill murder, the police investigators were of the opinion that a rifle was used to send his car out of control. I looked at that carit was pretty banged up, and had caught on fire. Hard to say for sure, but I suspect an ant.i.tank weapon might've been used."

George was scoring big-time points with his boss, Director Townsend, who sat nodding and wide-eyed throughout.

Mrs. Hooper stared with newfound awe and admiration at the deductive wunderkind.

Gene Halderman leaned back in his chair, hands sweeping through his pompadour, no doubt thinking, "Wow. When I grow up . . ."

Jennie shot me a bemused smile. I smiled back.

That George. What can you do?

George said, "In fact... I think . . . Well, this might be a new and very critical lead. How did these people get their hands on controlled and sophisticated military hardware?"

n.o.body had a ready answer to that question.

After a moment Townsend asked, "Did you serve in the military, George?"

"No ... I entered the Bureau out of college."

"And your apparent familiarity with military munitions, how did you come by that?"

"I try to stay up on things, sir. I recall reading about mine types. And as the doctor was describing the judge's injuries, it struck me th"

"Were you aware I was a Marine platoon leader in Vietnam?"

"Yes ... I think I knew that."

"That I still carry shrapnel in my left hip? In fact, it might interest you to know the shrapnel came from the very device you're trying to describe."

"I'm sorry to hear that. Is it painful?"

Those unblinking eyes regarded George. "Bouncy Nancy? The proper nomenclature is a Bouncing Betty."

George glanced very briefly at Jennie Margold, who had become curiously occupied dislodging something from under a fingernail. Then he returned his boss's stare. "I misspoke." After a moment he added, "Of course I meant a Bouncing Betty."

"Of course you did." Those dead-fish eyes turned to me. "Drummond, right?"

"Yes sir."

"You were at the crash site?"

"I was."

"And you were briefed on Fineberg's death?" The question was obviously rhetorical, and he offered, "Maybe you have other observations you'd care to share with usthat is, to share directly."

Phyllis's eyebrows rose. I cleared my throat. "Well. . . actually, Agent Margold discovered another important connection."

Jennie looked up from her fingernails. Townsend replied, "Proceed."

So I did. "During our search of Jason Barnes's townhouse, we discovered a small batch of military manuals on his bookshelves. I thought nothing of it, actually."

"Yes?"

"But at the crash site, Agent Margold recalled that one was the Army field manual on the Light Ant.i.tank Weapon, or LAW."

"Is that so?"

"Another was the field manual on military mines."

For a moment you could hear a pin drop. Actually it was the sound of two tons of s.h.i.+t hitting the floor. Chuck Wardell lurched forward in his seat. "There could be a thousand perfectly innocent explanations for that."

Phyllis responded quickly, saying, "No doubt there could be. But shouldn't we focus on the one that's not at all innocent, Charles?"

"I... I can't believe this," Wardell stammered. "Jason Barnes is a fine and loyal agent. He has no motive, and . . . and I... I won't sit here . . . and . . . and let you people ... let you lynch him . . . and . . ."

His convoluted syntax aside, I actually admired Mr. Warden's effort to cover Barnes's a.s.s. In a ruminative moment it struck me that were it my gilded a.s.s up in the air, I shared no tribal loyalties with anyone in this room, and n.o.body was going to rush to my defense. I glanced at Phyllis, but she appeared to be preoccupied staring down Mr. Wardell. I looked at Jennie, and she nodded and smiled. She was really nice. I smiled back.

I really needed to make a few friends. If we didn't start making progress, p.r.o.nto, this thing would turn ugly, and I was the lowest-ranking person on this team. As a rule of thumb in Was.h.i.+ngton, it's always lonelier at the bottom than the top.