The Sentinel (20 page)

"I'll look into it."

"If we have someone operating us from the inside, we have no time to waste. Not one second. Cut Garrison out of the loop in your investigation from here on. Avoid him. He is to be considered a suspect. Is that clear?"

"Yes."

But she couldn't see Garrison as a turncoat. It just didn't fit with what she knew about him.

"Keep me informed at every step."

"Okay."

As he walked back toward his car, the sun was coming up. Breckinridge turned her head from the brightness.

"What was that all about?" Kallenstien asked.

Breckinridge told her what Wintergreen had said.

"Goddamn."

"Rachel, I don't think Garrison is guilty of anything like this."

Breckinridge shifted her weight from one foot to another. There was dirt in her shoes.

"I don't either," said Kallenstien. "As far as I am concerned, lie-detectors are baloney."

"Once, when I was in the police department, they called me in to the Internal Affairs office and told me that an informant had named my partner as having been involved in a series of on-duty burglaries. There had been no question then. I'd had a feeling he'd been up to no good for a long time, but I just couldn't prove it. But Garrison doesn't fit with being involved in terrorism or, for that matter, being compromised at all. Unless I'm missing something, unless Garrison has some evil part of his personality that is completely hidden, Wintergreen is barking up the wrong tree. Garrison isn't good for this. Someone could say the same thing about you or me."

"On the other hand, there is always the unknown about people. You think you know someone, and then all of a sudden the truth comes out."

"I have a funny feeling about all of this." Breckinridge knew there was no end to disappointments in law enforcement and security work. But it didn't matter. "What happened to Charlie ... and now this. Nothing like this has ever happened before in the Service. Something is wrong."

"Garrison being in with the bad guys could wreck our operations. There is no doubt about that."

Kallenstien nodded. "And what if it isn't him? What then?"

"Then someone else-"

"Someone in headquarters. Someone high up in the chain. This isn't some junior agent who planned this one out."

****

CHAPTER 17

THE TELEPHONE RANG. Garrison awoke, and reached to the nightstand and picked up the receiver.

"Hello."

"This is White House Signal Operator 23," a woman said. "I just got a call from someone named Frank who was trying to reach you. He wouldn't give his last name and said he wanted to talk to you about a Presidential threat. He said it was an emergency. He left a phone number."

"Hold on."

Garrison dropped his feet to the floor, opened the nightstand drawer, and took out a pen and pad. He wrote down the number she gave him.

"Thanks."

He pressed the cradle, and then dialed the number. Hightower answered on the first ring.

"What's up, Frank?"

"We need to meet."

Garrison glanced at the clock radio. The display showed 6:03 A.M.

"The museum is closed to the public right now."

"How about, say, K Street and Connecticut?"

"See you there in a half hour."

Garrison put the receiver down and rubbed his eyes. It wasn't unusual for Hightower to reach him through the White House operator. During Garrison's PRD days, he'd met Hightower often on his way to work. Hightower knew Garrison walked, rather than drove to work every day. Garrison ran a hand through his hair. He'd come to believe that Hightower was trying to put something over on him. There was no one issue on which he could base his suspicion, but rather a combination of things, including Hightower's tone of voice and body language, his omission of certain relevant facts, and the way he was doling out information. All of this was nothing like when Garrison had dealt with him in the past. It was as if Hightower might be working from a prepared script. Garrison told himself that it had gone on long enough. He was going to confront Hightower and insist that he take a polygraph test. It had come to that. Garrison knew that informants were indispensable to both intelligence and security work, but they were also dangerous.

Garrison dressed and put on his gun and handcuffs. Locking his apartment, he departed.

As he walked along Rhode Island Avenue toward M Street, the commuter traffic was beginning to pick up. Garrison worried about the lie-detector test he'd submitted to. He hoped the operator had chalked up his problems with some of the questions to an anomaly. If not, he was going to be in for more questioning.

A brown late-model Honda with tinted windows slowly drove by. The driver wore dark glasses and a baseball hat. Maybe the driver was lost, Garrison told himself. After all, though Washington, D.C., was the best-planned city in the U.S., tourists often had trouble finding their way through its labyrinth of one-way streets. As Garrison neared the middle of the block, the Honda drove past again. Was the driver eyeing him? People lost in traffic usually focused on street signs and landmarks rather than pedestrians. What was he up to? Garrison crossed the street to an outdoor newsstand adjacent to St. Matthew's Cathedral. He picked up a copy of the
Washington Post.

"Don't look now," Garrison said to the seller, a young dark-skinned man. "But is there a Honda across the street?"

The man focused across the street. "Yes."

"The driver. What's he doing?"

"Looking this way. Is everything okay, mister?"

"I'm not sure."

Garrison paid for the paper, then tucked it under his arm and continued along the street. At the corner, he headed south on Connecticut Avenue.

The Honda drove by.

Reaching De Sales Street, Garrison saw the Honda again coming north on Connecticut. About a half block up the street, it pulled to the curb in a no-parking zone. If Garrison continued the way he was going, he would have to pass by it. He knew that a trained surveillance agent would never park facing him. They would park farther away and use binoculars to monitor him. But if the driver wasn't a Secret Service agent assigned to surveillance duties, who was he? Garrison knew he'd made enemies working against terrorist groups. And he knew that terrorists frequently talked about how they'd like to kill a federal agent. Could the Aryan Disciples have targeted him? He decided to find out.

South of K Street, he turned left and walked into an office building. Crossing the lobby, he asked a young woman stepping out of the elevator for directions to the rear exit. She pointed. Making his way out the back door, he followed an alley east to 18th Street, then turned south to K Street. Heading back to Connecticut Avenue, he circled behind the Honda. Garrison pulled his SIG-Sauer. Holding it under the newspaper, he walked into the street. Remaining in what he believed was the driver's blind spot, he approached the Honda from behind, moving toward the driver's door. Reaching the car. Garrison held his badge out. The man reacted with an audible "uh" sound.

"Why are you following me?"

"I'm just waiting for someone."

Garrison's danger radar alerted a sixth-sense alarm that activated when the right stimuli reached the brain's danger-survival center. The driver was wearing skin-colored latex gloves. He had a thin, red scar under his left eye. Garrison pictured him without the cap and sunglasses he was wearing. Could he be Garth Alexander, the mercenary whose room Garrison and Breckinridge had searched at the Plantation Motel? Garrison recalled that in Alexander's mug shot that Breckinridge had shown him, Alexander had had black hair. But now his hair was reddish. It was a wig. Garrison hadn't recognized him earlier because of the tinted window glass.

"Turn off the engine and put the keys on the dashboard."

"Whatever you say, Officer."

Alexander's expression unsettled Garrison. It could best be described as between anger and desperation; a trapped appearance that Garrison had seen before. As Alexander complied, his carotid artery pulsated abnormally and his hands trembled. Alexander was going to do something. He was going to commit.

Garrison fingered the trigger on his SIG-Sauer.

"Now get out of the car and keep your hands where I can see them."

"Take it easy," Alexander said. "I'm getting out."

Alexander opened the door with his left hand. As he climbed out of the car, his right hand dropped just for a moment and he whirled toward Garrison with a revolver in his hand.

Garrison fired twice, his right hand jerking upward with each deafening shot. Alexander flew back into the car door and slumped down, his revolver clattering onto the pavement. Both hands gripping his SIG-Sauer in the combat-fifing position, Garrison moved closer and kicked Alexander's gun away. Alexander was dead.

Standing at the curb, next to a police car, Garrison had the feeling that everything was happening in slow motion. A small crowd of gawkers had gathered on the sidewalk to stare at Alexander's sheet-covered corpse. The curb lane had been blocked off with police evidence tape, and uniformed Metro officers and detectives were moving about.

Two black Mercurys swerved around the corner and pulled to the yellow-tape line. Wintergreen got out of the first car. Wintergreen's adjutant, Gil Flanagan, and Agent Ted Beatty got out of the second car. Beatty was a member of SOT, the Secret Service Special Operations Team of twelve handpicked agents headed by Flanagan.

"You okay, Pete?" Wintergreen asked.

Garrison nodded. He detected an edgy lilt in Wintergreen's voice. And the man was slightly pale. Wintergreen was shaken.

"It was Alexander. The mercenary Hightower told me had been hired by the Aryan Disciples."

Flanagan and Beatty were staring at him. "How did it go down?"

"I spotted a car following me. I ordered him out of his car. He drew down on me."

Wintergreen coughed dryly. "I've assigned Flanagan to take over the investigation of this shooting."

"Why would SOT handle this rather than the police department?"

"This incident and Marine One going down. I've already spoken with the Chief of Police-"

"Marine One?"

"It crashed a few hours ago coming back from the Camp. The pilot and copilot were killed. It looks like sabotage. We're exerting our authority under the Federal Anti-Terrorist Statute."

The law empowered the Secret Service to assume control of any felony investigation involving possible terrorism. Congress had passed it as a response to a wave of terrorist incidents.

"My God-"

"Pete, I'm relieving you of duty. I'll have to ask for your gun and badge."

Garrison tried to comprehend what was going on. He felt coldness around his lips.

"You've got this all wrong-"

"I order you to surrender your weapon."

Flanagan and Beatty moved closer.

"You think I had something to do with the sabotage?"

Wintergreen held out his hand. "The gun, Pete."

Garrison studied him for a moment, then reached inside his coat and handed over the gun. Wintergreen handed it to Flanagan.

"Go with Flanagan. He will take your statement and he will handle any follow-up investigation."