Smooth Operator (Teddy Fay) (6 page)

O
n the rooftop across the street Salih methodically dismantled his rifle and packed it away in his attaché case. He snapped it shut and went through the stairway door that he had carefully left wedged open. He walked quickly down three flights, slipped through the fire door, and rang for the elevator.

In the lobby Salih found everyone hurrying toward the street. He blended into the crowd, and pushed to the front as if to get a better view of the action across the street.

Not that anyone could see anything. Three police cars had arrived, and sirens announced more were on their way. Officers had barricaded off the sidewalk and were preventing people from crossing the street.

Salih pushed his way through the crowd. At the corner he went down in the Metro. He rode three stops, came out of the
subway, and walked down the street to an abandoned garage. He unlocked the padlock on the corrugated metal door and slid it upward.

The garage was dark. There were no lights, and either there were no windows or they had been painted out. After a minute his eyes became accustomed to the light and he saw a gray Chevy sedan, there as promised. He opened the door and the light went on. The key was in the ignition. He tossed his briefcase in the front seat.

“Were you followed?”

Abdul-Hakim was there. Salih hadn’t heard him come in. He spun around to see the familiar thin, swarthy face, darker than usual in the shadows of the garage.

“No. I took precautions.”

“You’re wrong. I followed you.”

“So what? You know me, and you knew I was coming. No one else followed me.”

“True. But I had to be sure.”

“Do you have the money?”

Abdul-Hakim pulled a fat envelope out of his pocket. “Ten thousand, as promised.”

Salih tore the envelope open and riffled through the bills.

Abdul-Hakim shot him in the head. Salih had a second to register sheer amazement, before he fell to the garage floor.

Abdul-Hakim bent down and plucked the envelope from Salih’s hands. He rolled the dead man over, reached in the pocket of the gray suit jacket, and removed a similar envelope. He
checked to see that it also held ten thousand dollars. He tossed the two envelopes onto the front seat of the car. He found Salih’s wallet, removed the fake driver’s license, and replaced the wallet. When he was done searching the body, he dragged Salih to his feet and hefted him over his shoulder.

On the far wall of the garage, a freezer unit purred quietly. Abdul-Hakim carried the dead sniper over, raised the lid, and flopped him in. The body fit fine.

Abdul-Hakim closed the lid and locked the freezer with a padlock. He got in the car and backed out of the garage. He stopped in the middle of the sidewalk, hopped out, pulled the garage door down and locked it. He hopped in the car, backed out into the street. As he drove off, he took out his cell phone and made a call.

C
alvin Hancock watched the coverage of Congressman Drexel’s assassination on the gigantic screen on the living room wall of his penthouse apartment. Calvin had several other abodes, including a villa in Rome, a chateau in Versailles, and a country manor in Gloucestershire, to name a few, but he tended to gravitate toward penthouses because they offered him the most privacy.

His penthouse in Washington was a floor-through duplex, with its own elevator. He had security at the ground floor, of course, but upstairs he was completely alone.

Calvin Hancock was a money man cast from the Koch brothers mold, a kingmaker of such power and importance that his endorsement could make or break a career. If Calvin Hancock backed you, you were in. In the last election Calvin Hancock had spent over a quarter of a billion dollars trying to keep Kate
Lee from being elected. The fact that he failed had been a bitter pill to swallow.

The phone rang.

Calvin Hancock checked caller ID and snatched it up. “Yes.”

“It’s done,” Abdul-Hakim said.

“I know it’s done. I’m watching television. Believe it or not, it made the news. What happened last night?”

“What do you mean?”

“Stone Barrington showed up at the White House dinner. Alive, needless to say.”

“You called at the last minute. The best men were not available.”

“Then you should have gone yourself.”

“I was working on a backup plan.”

“Is it taken care of?”

“It is. We’re monitoring his phone calls. Will that be sufficient, or would you like me to arrange a second attempt?”

“That will do for now. What about the movie producer he called?”

“It’s taken care of. We had him met at the airport.”

“Here?”

“There. In Santa Monica.”

“That’s fast work.”

“We had an ISIS recruit from UCLA, an impressionable fanatic. He was happy to get the job.”

“Are you sure he’s trustworthy?”

“It doesn’t matter. He doesn’t know anything.”

“All right. Good.”

That was the word Abdul-Hakim had been waiting to hear. Without Calvin Hancock’s approval, a job was never done. Now he could move on.

“What next?” Abdul-Hakim said.

“The girl.”

K
aren Blaine lay on the bare cot and plotted her escape. They picked the wrong girl when they kidnapped her. Karen wasn’t some helpless pushover, too frightened to be any problem. A straight-A student with an analytical mind, Karen was used to figuring things out. Her situation was just another problem to be solved.

She was in a small room with no windows and a wooden door. It was an old door, really old, the kind that locked with a skeleton key.

The room was unfurnished except for the cot. There was a metal sink deep enough to fill a mop bucket on one wall, and a toilet in what at first glance appeared to be a closet. At one time this had been a workroom. Now it was a jail.

Her captors were the odd couple. There was the Arab, the
smarmy, well-dressed Middle Eastern man who’d kidnapped her from campus. He probably wasn’t an Arab, but she dubbed him that, a useful shorthand. He spoke good English, with just a trace of an accent.

The big man was another story, a run-of-the-mill American goon, dressed like a slob in a tattered T-shirt so worn she couldn’t make out the rock group depicted on the front. The big man was dumb as a board, not that he ever talked to her, besides grunting out commands. She’d given up trying to talk to him. He just ignored her, or at most muttered for her to shut up. It was clear he wasn’t the brains of the operation, just the muscle.

Karen had no idea why she was here. She assumed it had something to do with her father. That was the danger of being the daughter of a prominent, powerful man. Her father had always warned her to be on her guard, but she’d never taken him seriously.

Clearly she’d been wrong, and now she was paying the price. She never should have gotten into the man’s SUV, but he had CIA credentials. He’d looked like a CIA agent, and acted like one, too, with his suave, efficient manner, and he had such a plausible story: he’d been sent by her father, it was an emergency, and she had to come at once. Her heart was pounding when she climbed into the front seat of the SUV. He’d leaned over to buckle her seat belt, and the next thing she knew she woke up here.

Wherever here was. It could have been right near campus or
it could have been a million miles away. There was no way to tell with no window and not even the smallest crack to peek through. Karen never even knew if it was day or night, let alone what time it was. She measured out her days in sandwiches. She’d been here for eight or nine sandwiches; she wasn’t sure when she’d started keeping track.

The big man was the one who brought the sandwiches and took away the empty plates. He never brought her anything useful, like a fork she could bend the tines of to make a key. The meals were sandwiches, for the most part processed cheese with mayonnaise on white bread. Nonetheless, every time she heard the key in the lock Karen glanced up expectantly, hoping this time he would bring her something she could use. But he never did.

What she needed, of course, was something to pick the lock. She had a simple coiled bedspring she’d found hanging from the frame of the cot, and she’d spent a lot of time trying to twist it into a key, but no matter what shape she bent it into the round wire wasn’t substantial enough to move the tumblers. And there wasn’t anything else in the room that might work.

There came the familiar sound of the key in the lock. The big man stuck his head in the door. He did that now and then, just to reassure himself she was there. He never came any closer. It was as if he didn’t trust himself with her. Or as if he didn’t trust her with him.

That didn’t stop Karen from trying.

“It’s you. Thank goodness. I need my purse. I know you have it. You took it from me. There’s a book in it. I’m going nuts. I need to read.
Please
bring me my purse.”

The big man gave no sign he even heard her. He just turned around and left.

Karen wasn’t crushed. It had been a long shot, first that they even had the purse, second that they’d let her have it. There was nothing in it that she could use for a weapon except pencils and pens, and they’d be sure to take those. Still, they wouldn’t let her have it.

There came the sound of the key in the lock. Karen’s heart leaped. Was it possible?

The big man came in and her hopes were dashed. He had the paperback thriller she’d been reading.

He brought the fucking book!

“Oh, thank you, thank you,” Karen said. “But I can’t read it. I need my glasses. They’re in my purse. Can you get me my purse, please?”

Without a word he set the book on the floor, went out, and slammed the door. Again she heard the key in the lock.

What were the odds this time? The ice had been broken. He’d given her one thing, he could give her another. Conversely, he’d made a goodwill gesture and she’d slapped him down, complained about it, said it wasn’t good enough. He’d never do it again.

There came the sound of the key in the lock and the big man
was back. He didn’t have her purse. He had her glasses. He set them on the floor and went out.

Karen snatched them up.

The glasses were broken. The screw had come loose, and one of the plastic temples had fallen off. She never found the tiny screw. It probably would have been stripped anyway. But she’d managed to repair the glasses.

The temple was held on by a safety pin.

L
ance Cabot, director of the CIA, scowled at the men assembled in his office. “I have to brief the President in half an hour, and I don’t know what I’m going to say. Who wants to fill me in?”

The agents looked at each other. One of the field directors spoke up. “Sir, we flooded the area with agents, but there is no sign of the shooter. It’s difficult. We’re tripping all over the D.C. police.”

“I’m not interested in excuses. What
is
being done?”

“The attack came from the roof of the building across the street. We pinpointed it rather quickly. The windows of the building do not open, but the roof gave the optimal angle. An expended cartridge shell was found there, and it’s consistent with the type of sniper rifle that would have been used in the attack.”

“And no one saw the sniper?”

“It’s a busy office building. Before the attack no one would have noticed. After the attack everyone rushed for the street.”

“I understand. What’s being done?”

“We’re questioning everyone. So are the police.”

“And the overlap?”

“Anyone who saw anything is being shunted from us to the cops to Homeland Security to the FBI to the NSA. All those interviews are being compared and coordinated to see if they add up to anything.

“At the same time we’re screening hundreds of hours of surveillance video from the cameras in the building, with an emphasis on the elevators and the upper floors.”

“With what result?”

“It’s early yet, but we have no reports of anyone carrying anything long enough to have contained a rifle. Several reports of men carrying briefcases which could have housed a disassembled rifle. No metal cases. Ruling out soft leather cases and messenger bags, we get standard-size hard cases, black, brown, and tan. Carried by men of all descriptions—white, black, Asian, and Middle Eastern.”

“What are we tracking with regard to terrorist activity?”

Another agent spoke up. “Sir, we have eleven high-ranking suspected terrorists in the D.C. area. None could be the shooter. All are under surveillance, and ironically, our own men give them alibis.”

“Which proves nothing. They’d have ordered it done anyway.”

The intercom buzzed.

Lance scooped up the phone. “I said hold my calls.”

“You want this one.”

“Is it the President?”

“No.”

“Then I don’t want it.”

“Yes, you do.”

“Margaret—”

“You hired me to screen your calls. Take this one, or fire me and hire someone whose judgment you trust.”

Margaret hung up.

Lance scowled at the phone. Line two was blinking. He exhaled, pressed the button on the line, snarled, “Yes?”

The young man on the phone stammered. “S-sir.”

“Who’s this?”

“It’s Jenson, at ballistics, sir. I’m running tests on the shell casing found on the rooftop across the street.”

“Yesterday’s news, Jenson. I’m being briefed on it now.”

“I noticed something I thought you’d want to know.”

“What’s that?”

“The cartridge was standard CIA issue.”

Lance blinked. “Run that by me again.”

“It’s an exact match for the rounds we issue. I can’t imagine how an assassin would have gotten his hands on one.”

Lance didn’t say anything.

“Sir?”

“Who knows this?”

“Only me. I just noticed myself.”

“Okay. Sit on it and I’ll get back to you.”

The others were looking at Lance expectantly. He made a show of slamming down the phone, and snorted impatiently. “Everyone thinks their business is so fucking important. All right. Anyone got anything new?”

No one did.

“Get out of here and get me something. Frankly, we got caught with our pants down.”

As soon as they were gone Lance snatched up the phone. “Margaret?”

“Sir?”

“Did you tell anyone about this?”

“No, sir.”

“As long as you don’t, you can keep your job. Call the guy back, give him the same message. Tell him not to put it in his report.”

Lance hung up the phone, leaned back in his chair, rubbed his forehead. A dull, persistent ache seemed to be settling in. One he hadn’t felt in a while.

The situation had unpleasant connotations for Lance. He could think of only one other instance of a congressman killed by a sniper with a CIA background.

Could Teddy Fay be alive?

Lance logged onto the CIA mainframe, plugged in the name Teddy Fay.

Nothing came up.

Lance wasn’t concerned. For years any mention of Teddy
Fay had been classified information that would not show up on such a lowly level.

Lance entered his personal security codes, instituted years ago and changed every week primarily for the purpose of keeping Teddy Fay out.

Nothing.

Lance pushed himself back from the computer, breathing hard. The assassination of a congressman in his town, on his watch, was bad enough. But the thought that his nemesis might have come out of hibernation and begun another reign of terror was almost more than he could bear.

Lance pulled himself together and picked up the phone.