The Firefly

10

Gary was waiting for Swamp when he arrived at the office at 10:10 the next morning. He produced a fat briefcase and invited Swamp to go down the hall with him to an empty conference room. Once there, he locked the door before opening the briefcase and showing Swamp a nylon-web harness for a shoulder holster, a .357-caliber Sig Sauer semiautomatic pistol, a spare magazine, and a box of ammunition. Since Gary had checked out the weapon, he had Swamp check the serial number and then sign a subcustody card for the gear. Swamp left it all in the briefcase and they went back to the office.

"Any word from the head shed?" he asked.

"McNamara's been in meetings this morning since eight," Gary said. "I talked to Mary when I went down to get a copy of his calendar for the day, and she said there was another message in from PRU. Concerning you."

"Great. She say what it was?"

"No, sir. She kinda hinted that it might spoil both our days."

"Probably asking if I've been suspended yet."

"Can they just do that shit without a hearing?" Gary asked as they reached Swamp's cubicle.

"Sure. I'm on a 'serve at the pleasure of contract. As long as they don't screw around with my pension or take any adverse personnel action, I can be sent home in a day. For that matter, so can McNamara."

"Damn."

"Technically, I am retired. None of us expects to stay forever. Any hits from those realtors?"

Gary shook his head. "Twelve called back; no recent contracts with a Mr. Hodler or any Royal Kingdom Bank."

"Well, it always was a long shot," Swamp said. "I need to talk to Cullen. Maybe try calling some of the real estate offices that haven't answered. Push a little bit. And you keep your ears to the ground on that message from PRU."

"Yes, sir."

"And Gary? Start thinking about where you want to go in case I really do get the ax. I'll get McNamara to run interference for you."

"Yes, sir," Gary said somberly.

Gary left to go back to his own cubicle and Swamp decided to check in with Mary before seeing McNamara. He raised his eyebrows at her. She looked around at the other agents in their cubes, then passed him a bootleg copy of the PRU message. "Himself is back and would like to see you," she said. "And there's a lady you know in his office with him. Maybe read that before you go down there, and then shred it. Oh, and I don't think she's your friend."

"Thanks, Mary," Swamp said. "I owe you one. As usual."

"Dark chocolates are good," she said with a smile, and wished him good luck.

He sat back in his chair. Everyone was wishing him good luck this morning, as if they knew he had suddenly run out of that commodity. He scanned the two-paragraph memo, which was from the director of the U.S. Secret Service, addressed to the undersecretary for information analysis and infrastructure protection, DHS, copy to McNamara, OSI. The memo stated that retired annuitant T. Lee Morgan, Senior Executive Service (retired), had improperly invoked the name of the U.S. Secret Service in an attempt to obtain information from civilian businesses concerning a figmentary foreign agent by the name of Erich Hodler. It further stated that Mr. Morgan had also been emphatically directed to cease and desist from any and all efforts to locate said Erich Hodler, and to conduct no further investigations into a purported and totally unsubstantiated plot to bomb the U.S. Capitol concurrent with the president's upcoming address to a special joint session of the U.S. Congress.

Then came the killer words: "In my opinion, as the director of the Secret Service, Mr. Morgan has become obsessed with a plot that exists largely in his own mind, and that Mr. Morgan's obsessive nature springs from an incident of personal misfortune in his domestic life that has, sadly, unbalanced his judgment, diminished his fitness for further government service, and led to behavior that continues to cause unnecessary and distracting strains on the current effort to complete the security shield for the upcoming inauguration."

Then the clever part: "It is with great regret and some sympathy that the director of the Secret Service must now conclude that Mr. Morgan's usefulness to the government is at an end. Since Mr. Morgan is a retired Secret Service agent, on temporary recalled annuitant status within the Department of Homeland Security, it is strongly recommended that the secretary terminate Mr. Morgan from further active duty in said department in order to avoid any further embarrassment to the U.S. Secret Service. A replacement asset will be made available to DHS-OSI as soon as the presidential inauguration has been completed."

Swamp put the memo down on the table and exhaled a long breath. Hallory certainly knew what he was doing by getting the director to sign this out. Everyone who was still anyone in the senior ranks of the Secret Service in Washington knew about what had happened the day he retired. Instead of a frontal attack, like trying to bring charges or generate a reprimand, Hallory was acting "sympathetically" in recommending that this annoying nutcase be sent back out to pasture. The poor guy's lost it. He's getting too old for this stuff, desperately doesn't want to let go, and is interfering with security preparations for the inauguration.

His telephone began to ring on the intercom line. Mary, no doubt, calling to say time was up and to get down there.

He did not shred the bootleg copy. He folded it into a government franked envelope, addressed it to himself at the Jackson Inn, and dropped it into the outgoing mailbox as he went down the hall to McNamara's office. Old habits, such as keeping a meticulous paper trail, indeed died hard. He was going to fight this, but if he lost, he'd ram that little love note right up Carlton Hallory's tight ass on the front page of the Washington Post if anything ever did go "bomb, bomb, bomb" downtown.

Heismann stood in his kitchen, examining the piece of paper delivered by FedEx a moment ago. It was a plain white piece of printer paper, with no identifying letterhead or return address. The FedEx air bill indicated that an art gallery in New York City had sent the envelope. On the piece of paper were two addresses. The first was the address for the town house. The second was an address on First Street, SW. Beneath each address was a set of latitude and longitude coordinates, each expressed in degrees, minutes, and seconds, followed by a second set of Universal Transverse Mercator grid coordinates, each expressed in six-digit numbers.

Heismann retrieved the GPS unit from its carrying case and switched it on. He set the display for lat-lon and then waited for the unit to initialize and then lock on to the satellite constellation and display his present location. It agreed with what was on the paper down to the second in longitude, and it was only one second off in latitude. Good. He walked upstairs, carrying the GPS unit, and took a second reading in the room with all the marble blocks. Same agreement, a small difference in elevation. Very good. He switched it over to display UTM coordinates, and the six numbers for each coordinate agreed. So the firing point was properly established.

He switched the unit off and went back down to the kitchen, where he retrieved the numbers derived from his walk around the Capitol. The target circle was centered on the west portico of the building, a point he could not have reached even in normal times. In theory, the numbers on the courier sheet represented the center of that circle. If those numbers were accurate, the center should lie on a straight line drawn between the town house and the corner of Constitution and First Street, NW, where he had taken his own readings. He had already computed what that azimuth was in true degrees.

He broke out the small handheld Army calculator that had come in the box of sculptor's tools. Mutaib had explained that it was preprogrammed to compute a fire-control solution, expressed as a firing azimuth and range between two GPS coordinate positions for the weapon. He entered the coordinates, using UTM grid numbers for firing point and aiming point. Then he entered air temperature, a notional wind vector, expressed as coming from the northwest at ten, barometric pressure from this morning's television weather, and then pressed the calculate button. The device displayed the range as 2,660 meters, and the firing azimuth as 342 degrees true. He frowned. The GPS unit, in the navigation mode, had computed 2,580 meters. That was pretty close. But the azimuth of the line of fire was off by four whole degrees.

He sat down at the kitchen table and thought about that. He'd drawn the line from the center of the house to the corner of the street intersection. On the map, that line passed right through the west portico of the Capitol. Assuming the map was reasonably accurate and oriented to true north, as it said it was, he had, using a large plastic protractor, come up with 338 degrees true. Being an old gunner, he knew that four degrees of error at 2,660 meters could mean a miss distance of almost 200 meters, especially when you were talking about azimuth.

He swore softly. Mutaib had told him they were getting the Capitol target coordinates from an ordnance survey map of Washington, D.C. Heismann had often wondered how many hikers and campers knew that the real purpose of an ordnance survey map was precisely what he was doing now, calculating an artillery fire-control solution. The big question now was which numbers he should use to set the weapon: his own admittedly crude estimate, the GPS, or the ones supposedly coming from an ordnance survey map created for this very purpose. And yet his numbers should be right, or very close. He had visually lined up the west portico from that intersection. But then he saw the flaw: He had not been able to see his town house. The city tourist map might have been drawn or printed in sections, and thus objects that lined up on the printed map might not actually line up on the ground.

The GPS and Mutaib agreed within one degree of azimuth. All right. That was good enough. He exhaled in relief. He would use the surveyed coordinates.

He went back upstairs and wrote both sets of the coordinates in pencil on the white plaster wall nearest the master bedroom's door, then took the paper and its envelope down to the kitchen, where he burned them in the sink. He could hear the big trucks going by out on his street as the city's road department began to set up the Jersey barriers a few blocks over. He was going to go get the minivan and position it this evening. He'd position the Suburban, with the emergency light rack back in place, late tomorrow evening. There had been police cars everywhere this morning when he walked down to the corner store to get coffee and a pastry, but the police did not appear to be doing anything but establishing a presence. None of them had been staring at pedestrians or pulling over cars in the neighborhood. The television news this morning had been full of reports about the security preparations and further announcements of traffic restrictions around the whole Capitol Hill area and, indeed, in other parts of the city. There had been footage of Air Force fighters in the air above Washington and Army helicopters staging at Andrews Air Force Base. Strangely, there had been other footage of waves of huge Air Force transports descending on bases along the East Coast, with the thinly veiled implication that there would even be troops deployed around the capital city. The Ammies were going a little crazy, in his opinion. You'd think the government was expecting a coup.

He looked at his watch. Almost eleven o'clock. Forty-nine hours and they'd have a reason to go crazy. And every measure of security they were putting in place had already been penetrated.

Swamp gave Mary a wink as he walked past her desk and into McNamara's office. McNamara was sitting behind his desk, looking worried. Lucy was sitting in one of the two chairs parked in front of the boss's desk. Swamp stood for a moment behind the other and looked down at her. She was poised and polished, as usual, and had her hands folded neatly in her lap. She nodded at him but did not say anything in greeting.

"If this meeting has to do with my assignment here in OSI," Swamp announced, "then I would appreciate it if Mr. Hallory's pet snake here is not part of it."

McNamara flushed. "Uh, unfortunately—" he began, but Swamp cut him off.

"Personnel matters are privileged and management personnel from other departments may not take part in meetings that have to do with personnel actions unless it is a formal hearing. Is this a formal hearing?"

McNamara, no expert on personnel procedures, obviously didn't know what to say. And Swamp was using the tone of voice he had used when wearing the mantle of the Senior Executive Service, a rank to which neither McNamara nor Lucy had risen. "Um, no, it is not, but—"

"Then she goes. Or we're done here."

"That's the whole idea, Mr. Morgan," Lucy said. "I'm assuming you've seen Mr. Hallory's latest memo?"

"I have," Swamp said, working hard to keep his temper. He had wrapped both his hands around the top of the chair, and when he turned to address Lucy, the chair moved. Lucy saw it and sat up straighter, no longer affecting that supremely casual pose.

"Well then, you know it was addressed to the undersecretary of this department. Surely you're not expecting him" — she nodded her chin at McNamara— "to put up a fight on your behalf, are you?"

Swamp looked at McNamara, who flushed and shook his head ever so slightly.

"So why not make it easier on everybody, Mr. Morgan?" Lucy said. "Don't get fired. Don't put your pension for life at risk. Don't drag everyone into a quagmire of civil service hearings and lawsuits."

Swamp glared at her, really wanting to pick up that chair and swat her right out the window. She swallowed but stood her ground. "Just go home, Mr. Morgan," she said. "Come the first of the month, your direct-deposit check will go in right on time and you can go back to enjoying life out there in Harpers Ferry."

"Did you know that Connie Wall identified the 'woman' who attacked her as the man who's been after her since the clinic fire?" Swamp asked.

Lucy waved her hand. "We don't care, Mr. Morgan. Okay? That's a Washington police matter now. In forty-eight hours, we'll have a change of government here in Washington. That's the only thing we care about right now. The only thing. Can't you understand that?" Her cheeks were getting red and those blue eyes were snapping in righteous anger. "You're obsessed with this… this goddamned firefly. I think you've lost your professional perspective. So does the director. So before you get into real trouble, go home, Mr. Morgan. Just go home."

Swamp took a deep breath and tried to think of something clever to say. The wood in the top of the chair creaked audibly under the strain of his hands. McNamara stood up behind his desk and cleared his throat. "Ms. VanMetre, thanks for coming over today. Why don't you let me take it from here, okay? Give my regards to Mr. Hallory, will you?"

Lucy looked from Swamp to McNamara and back again to Swamp as she stood up. "Thank you, Mr. McNamara," she said formally. She walked past Swamp to the door and then turned around.

"Home means home, Mr. Morgan. Don't even think about going solo on this phantom conspiracy of yours. If nothing else, keep in mind that your firefly is a month away. Play it straight and maybe — just maybe — we'll come back to you. Once the inauguration's over and you've had some time to regain your balance."

With that, she walked out the door and closed it behind her. Swamp sat down in the chair he'd been abusing, hunched his shoulders, and gave McNamara a look that used to make the center on the opposing team seriously consider tennis.

"Don't look at me that way, goddamnit," McNamara said, fingering his collar. "You brought this on yourself when you invoked the fucking Secret Service in your phone calls all over the city. I told you to lay low. What were you thinking?"

Swamp sat back in the chair and exhaled. "Force of habit, I guess," he said. "What's all this mean, practically speaking?"

"It means just what La Mamba said. You get to go home. You don't work here anymore. You turn in your creds and your building pass, you read out of all your clearances, and then you take the train back to Harpers Ferry and get on with your life."

"Upstairs has already decided this?"

"The Under handed his copy of that memo to me this morning at the briefing and told me to 'handle it' by COB today. So, yeah, I think it's decided."

"Can I work with the District cops? Help them catch this bastard who killed their lieutenant?"

"In what capacity?"

"I don't know — consultant?"

McNamara sighed. "We can't prevent you from doing consulting work, but I wouldn't advise it," he said. "For starters, you'd have no inside access to federal LE., and for the city cops, that's the only thing you bring to the table right now. Is that nurse gonna make it?"

"Fifty-fifty," Swamp said. "They moved her to GWU last night."

"Then she's the one who can help them. She's seen this guy a couple of times at least, up close and personal. What's this about the woman hitter being a guy?"

Swamp explained what Connie had told them. McNamara shook his head. "Plastic surgery and the ability to look like a woman? Good enough to fool a plastic surgeon's nurse? No chance you're going to find this guy."

"Like I've said before, there's no chance if no one's looking."

McNamara leaned forward. "Look, everything you've laid out with regard to some attack on the joint session is assumption. The cop getting killed is a fact, and they won't let go of that, not ever. The nurse getting attacked is a fact. So when they get his ass for that shit, the rest of it, all those assumptions of yours, is taken care of, right? Like the lady said, Swamp, just go home. I think it's time."

"You think this is all about what happened on my retirement day?"

"No, no, no," McNamara said emphatically. "I think Hallory threw that in because it would embarrass you and all the elephants up the chain of command. Nobody would want to pull that scab. Easier just to tell me to 'handle it.' Which is exactly what the Under said. Hell's bells, Swamp, this is how it's done. You know that."

Swamp threw up his hands. "Okay," he said. "I give up. I'll turn over my stuff to Gary and then go see the personnel people." He fished out his credentials. "You want these?"

McNamara shook his head. "Personnel and Security. They get everything. Come see me when you're all checked out. I'll be here all afternoon."

"Okay," Swamp said, getting up.

"And Swamp? I'm sorry about this. I really am."

"You know what, Tad? If they can do this to me, they can do it to you, too."

"So the Undersecretary pointed out this morning, Swamp."

Connie spent the better part of an hour chasing a block of hospital Jell-O around her plastic tray before finally stabbing it long enough to get half of it down her throat. Either the meds had numbed her taste buds or the hospital kitchen could screw up even Jell-O. Her stomach threatened retribution, so she gave up and lay back on her pillows. She could hear the hustle and bustle of daily routine out in the hallway. Her back hurt in a numb sort of way, which meant that she probably would be screaming in agony without the regular ministrations of her new best friend, the trusty pain pump. But the rest of her was coming back. She had inquired about some physical therapy, much to the surprise of the attending nurses. They'd said they ask.

She opened her eyes and discovered an hour had passed, and that Jake Cullen was standing in the doorway. "Hey there, Detective," she said.

"Shot at and missed, shit at and hit," he said with a smile. He came into the room bearing a paper wedge of flowers in one hand and his coat in the other. He hooked a chair over with his foot and sat down.

"That good, huh?" she said, wanting to brush a hank of limp hair off her forehead.

"Better than you looked up in that county boneyard," he said. "So how's it coming — you feeling any stronger?"

"Yeah, I am," she said. "My lower back's still riding the magic pump here, but the rest of me is getting bored."

"There's a reason they call you a patient," he said. "Care for some interrogation?"

"Bring it on," she said with a smile. "I'll never crack."

"They sell flowers, but nothing to put the damn things in," he complained, getting up to look for a container.

"That Jell-O will hold them," she said. "That Jell-O would hold up the Washington Monument."

He found an empty plastic urine container in the bathroom, filled it with water, and brought it out. She started to laugh, and then her lower back reminded her that laughing was out of bounds for now. He saw her grimace, and then he sat back down again.

"Where's my Shelby?" she asked.

It was Jake's turn to laugh. "All those deputies up there? They were getting ready to make it into some kind of Thunder Road shrine. So you'll be pleased to know that I've had it towed back to your house. Guy's gonna drop it on the street, then drive it up into your driveway. Said he'd put the keys in the exhaust pipe."

"You're shitting me."

"West Virginia safe-deposit box," Jake said with a grin. "And your little reptile atomizer's in the trunk. You make sure you bend your elbows, you ever shoot that thing."

"That's what the dealer said," she replied. "The exhaust pipe? Which one?"

"How the hell do I know. How many are there? I think you can manage it."

"Thanks," she muttered. "I think." She used her elbows to lever herself into a more upright position and then waited until her head stopped spinning. Have to do better than this if I'm ever going to blow this pop stand, she thought. Much better.

"Don't push it," he said. "Just tell me what happened that night."

She nodded, pressed the button on her pump, and then told him the sequence of events that night. When she was done, he was nodding silently.

"The other lady in the bathroom — what happened to her?" Connie asked.

"He stabbed her three times in the upper stomach, got her aorta. Gone in sixty seconds, as the expression goes."

"Oh."

"Guy's a badass, no doubt about it," he said. "But you said she fooled you completely?"

"She'd had work. No woman comes into the world with boobs like that. There was something off about the nose, but I couldn't tell what it was. The top just sloped out of her forehead. Not natural. And I couldn't just stare like I do in the OR. Hispanic, or may be Mediterranean. Exotic. Lots of makeup, but skillfully done. Slim legs, and some serious stockings or panty hose. Oh, and no noticeable Adam's apple."

"Say what?"

"That's how you can almost always tell a tranny — besides the husky voice, they'll have a protuberant laryngeal prominence. That's Adam's apple in English. This thing didn't, so I never suspected until I saw his eyes when he got his killer juices going. Those I remember. From the window and from the woods."

She subsided into the pillow, suddenly exhausted. He put his hand on her arm and rubbed gently with his fingertips from the back of her hand, where the IV had been, up to her elbow. His hand was cool from being outside, and it felt good. They sat that way for five minutes while she drifted, and then she came back.

"This guy's still out there, right?" she asked.

"We're working on it. Us and that big Secret Service guy with the pretty face."

"But there's no cop on my door anymore."

"Well, they're pulling everyone in the department into this inauguration flail. Double shifts on the big day, so they're trying to give guys some time off right before."

She closed her eyes again, worked on her breathing. Talking still seemed to take all the oxygen right out of her. "Then I want out of here," she said. "Anybody can come in here."

Jake frowned. "They've got security, just like everywhere else."

She shook her head, slowly this time. "Anybody can come in here. An old lady wandered in this morning before breakfast, looking for her daughter's room. She had the wrong room, wrong floor."

"I don't think you're exactly ready for prime time," Jake said. "Look at you — you can't even talk and breathe at the same time."

"Then I won't talk," she said wearily. "But I don't want to wake up and see that thing standing next to the bed in his Nancy Nurse uniform."

"There's no way he could know you're here," Jake protested.

"See that phone?" she asked. "I called the hospital at Garrison Gap, asked the operator where the nurse from the stabbing incident had gone. She said GWU Medical Center."

He blinked. "Just like that?"

"Just like that."

"Shit."

"Yeah. So I want to go bye-bye."

Jake got up from the chair and started pacing the room. "Putting the medical aspects aside," he said, "you can't just go home to that empty house. You'd be even more vulnerable. How're you paying for all this, by the way?"

"I'm going to sue the police department for failing to protect me after I agreed to be bait," she said.

He turned to stare at her, and she maintained a straight face for about five more seconds. He shook his head. "Don't even talk like that," he said, although he knew she probably could sue.

"I was the one who ditched her minder, remember?" she said. "Although our boy did have himself a time with those street cops, didn't he?"

Jake nodded reluctantly.

"Which is why I want out of here. He wants my ass dead, and he's nearly succeeded. A couple of times. Plus, there's something important I need to remember about him and I can't."

"You won't be any safer out there," Jake said.

"I've worked in hospitals for a long time, Jake," she said. "I'm not safe here, medically or securitywise. All hospitals are contaminated with staph, a host of infectious diseases, ERs with walking TB cases, toxic waste and bio-hazards in every trash can — you name it. That's why doctors want you up and out as soon as possible. It's not about money. They want to improve their own save stats."

"Okay, okay," he said. "Look, I've got a condo apartment up in Bethesda. It's actually pretty big. Two bedrooms, two baths. Plenty of privacy."

"Never been divorced, huh?" she asked.

He laughed. "Or married. The only guy on the Homicide squad who hasn't. But you could stay there. The building has a sitting service. I could get someone to come in, check on you three, four times a day. You know, to make sure you aren't tearing the joint up, entertaining gentlemen callers…"

She looked at him for a long moment. "That's very nice," she said. "But getting over all this may take awhile."

He sat back down and took her hand again. "I've got awhile," he said, and then he suddenly seemed embarrassed. "Anyway, you think about it. And make sure you're safe to make the trip. Talk to your docs. They may not let you out of here."

"The hospital will when I tell them I have no insurance," she said brightly. "I'm unemployed, remember?"

Gary was visibly embarrassed as he accompanied Swamp down to the lobby of the OEOB. Without a building pass, he could no longer be in the building without an escort. Swamp had tried to say good-bye to McNamara, but he'd been called away to a meeting at State, so that was that. He carried the briefcase with the tactical gear underneath the raincoat he had folded over his left arm. He'd also made a copy of the realtor list on Gary's desk, annotated as to which ones had called back. Not many more had.

Swamp had asked Gary to continue taking calls from the realtors, but he'd told him not to make any more follow-up calls. "None of this is going to rebound on you," he reassured the younger agent. "As long as you don't do anything proactive. Taking phone calls is just doing your job."

"And if we get a hit?"

"Pass it to Detective Cullen over at District headquarters. He's the only one left on point right now."

They reached the lobby, and there was a brief discussion between Gary and the security guards. If Mr. Morgan here was now technically a visitor, why hadn't Mr. Morgan signed the visitor's log. Gary handled it and then walked with Swamp to the ornate doors at the corner of the building.

"I don't know what to say," Gary said. "Except it was interesting while it lasted."

"Yeah, and you did fine. I'll remind McNamara to make sure you get a decent performance evaluation."

Gary looked through a side window. "There are two guys out there in a government vehicle, watching this entrance."

Swamp smiled. He still had his minders, and they had been informed. "Great," he said. "Let's see what they think about a run back out to Harpers Ferry."

Gary's smile was a bit weak. "Do I have your phone numbers, sir?"

"Well, let's see. West Virginia, the apartment — you have those. Although the apartment's going to go away, I guess. And I suppose I need to go get a cell phone now that Uncle's reclaimed his."

"Call it in when you get one," Gary said. "I don't want to lose touch." He looked around to see who might be listening. "I'm beginning to think this career move of mine wasn't such a great idea. I may want some advice from time to time."

"Absolutely," Swamp said. "But this wasn't personal, Gary. I got in the way of a little man with a big mission, that's all. The Secret Service is a great outfit. You'll see." They shook hands and Swamp walked out onto Eighteenth Street, where he was met by a brisk wind. One of the Secret Service agents got out of the car and came over.

"We got the word an hour ago, direct from La Mamba," he said. "Said to keep tabs until you left for the countryside. For what it's worth, we both think it's a bum deal."

"Thanks for that," Swamp said. "I need to clear my stuff out at the apartment and then unrent that thing. I'll probably sleep over there tonight, take the train out to Harpers Ferry in the morning."

"We'd be happy to offer you a ride over there," the agent said.

Swamp just looked at him for a moment, wondering if he should be alarmed. But the expression on the agent's face seemed to be more one of genuine sympathy than hard-ass procedure. As if sensing Swamp's curiosity, he pointed out that if they went by car, one of them wouldn't be forced to get out and physically follow Swamp around in the cold. Swamp nodded and got into the backseat of the car.

As they drove downtown toward the river, the agent riding shotgun asked if he'd mind telling them what this was all about. He did. When he was finished, they rode in silence across the Fourteenth Street Bridge. The driver finally broke the silence.

"I was a rookie when you were a DAD," he said. "I sure as shit hope they're right and you're wrong."

"So do I," Swamp said. "Mostly, they hurt my feelings. Know any good bars along the way?"

"Yes," both agents responded simultaneously.

Heismann drove around for almost an hour in search of the perfect parking spot for the minivan. He wanted it to be within three blocks of the town house, but far enough away that anyone who might chase him on foot would have to be in pretty good shape. He drove through several back alleys and up and down streets and cross streets around his neighborhood. This area was all outside the security zone, so there were no barriers and only the occasional police car.

Mutaib had relayed the realtor's warning about on-street parking in the Capitol Hill area, that it was all by permit only and that permits were color-coded for various neighborhoods. He wasn't worried about a policeman ticketing the vehicle as much as some irate resident calling the police to tow off an interloper. Once he'd made his decision, he would have to find some colored acetate to convert his own street permit to the right color. Then he would spend an hour or so laying out his escape route from the town house to the minivan. He needed the first leg of it to be across the street and into an alley, because he was going to be something of a spectacle when he made his escape. He'd position the minivan tomorrow morning, after people had left for work but before the neighborhood commuters returned, so that there would be more open spaces on the street he finally chose.

Once his route had been set and the parking permit taken care of, he would then have to move the Suburban completely out of the Capitol Hill area and away from all the avenues where the inaugural events would take place. He'd narrowed it down to two options: going deep into the southeast quadrant of the city, which he'd already discovered was something of a no-go zone for anyone who didn't live there, or finding some extremely public place where the Suburban, made up as a federal police vehicle, would blend in with the background for Inauguration Day. He had selected two possibilities for that: under the bridges where Interstate 95 and Fourteenth Street crossed Haines Point — a spit of land in the river, it was now a park — or on one of the perimeter roads near the Tidal Basin.

He planned to reequip the Suburban with the light bar tomorrow night and drive it down to one of these two spots, then walk over to the nearest Metro station to get back to Capitol Hill. There was a direct route from Capitol Hill down to that general area, and from either location he should be able to determine how much of the downtown had been blocked off by the time he got there. His ultimate destination was in northwest Washington, after one stop at the Arab bank, but he wanted the option to cross the river if he had to. There would be pandemonium in the downtown area, and he fully expected the government to shut down the Metro and all other modes of transportation once the attack occurred, if not before then. He might just have to walk out.

He had a final teleconference with Mutaib set for tonight at midnight. He didn't expect anything in the way of new information, but he did need to find out one last thing: where the princess would be at noon on der Tag. Ideally, right there at the bank, along with all his pretty minions.

After dinner, using a walker, Connie made her second trip of the day from the bed to the bathroom all by herself. The first one had taken some help, but having been up once, she was determined to stay up if she could. Afternoon rounds had been encouraging. The surgical repairs seemed to be holding up well, and there were still no signs of infection. When she'd broached the subject of getting out of there, the docs had waffled a bit, coming down on the side of her staying a few more days just to make sure. She could take the pump, of course, but they'd prefer to migrate her to the next tier of pain meds before they discharged her. She'd had the feeling that they'd been a little more honest with her in deference to her own medical background, so she'd casually reminded them of the dangers inherent to the hospital environment, even at a first-rate place like GWU. That had provoked some throat clearing, watch checking, and questions for the interns, and then they moved on.

She'd gone down for a nap after lunch, and then put a call in to the business office to discuss the really important issue. The insurance nazi on duty obliged her immediately with a lecture on financial responsibility. Connie theoretically still had medical insurance, courtesy of the COBRA law, but, as she pointed out, the company had really consisted of the two docs. They were dead, their families gone, the accounts closed, which left the question of premium payments kind of up in the air, which in turn might make the claims process "interesting." She made a bet with herself after hanging up that there'd be a wholly different take on her prospects for discharge by morning rounds.

The offer from Jake was tempting on several levels. She was growing to like him a lot, more than Cat, in fact, who'd been focused entirely on the physical side. She had no illusions about what long-term recovery was going to be like, especially if there were any setbacks, which were more likely than not, given her injuries. If she was going to get something going with Jake, she wanted it to be on a whole and handsome woman basis, with no memories of bedpans and vomiting episodes in the night to get in the way later. Besides, she really did want to go home. She didn't care much for that business of the car keys in the Shelby's tailpipe. And home should be the last place that bastard would expect her to show up.

She let herself lie back down in the bed and murmured a prayer of thanks for articulating hospital beds. She'd have to get one into the house, and the idea of a nursing service seemed attractive, too. She had the money for that, even if the insurance fell through. But for now, a night's sleep looked pretty good.

She smiled to herself as she thought about the memo being put out on the hospital intranet right about now: "The billing department notes with concern…"

Swamp finished his solitary dinner at Caruso's and settled up with Mario, probably for the last time, he realized. He left a generous tip and told the old man he'd be away for a while; then he walked back to his apartment building. There were two new faces peering at him from the watch car out front, and he nodded to them as he walked up to the entrance to the building. He'd told them where he was going and when he'd be back, and they'd taken him at his word. Apparently, his conversation with the two agents who'd picked him up at OEOB had been percolating through the grapevine.

Back in the apartment, he got out his newly acquired cell phone and skimmed through the instruction booklet. He saw his wallet sitting on the living room table, next to the empty credentials holder. He felt naked without his government phone, credentials, building passes on chains, and the whole infrastructure of police powers they represented. Poor me, he thought. Just a plain vanilla civilian now.

He made himself a short drink and went out onto the balcony, which faced three other high-rise apartment buildings across the alley. Looking to his right, he could see the amber glow of Washington on the horizon, and the twinkle of aircraft warning lights on cell towers and television antennas all over northern Virginia. A jetliner passed overhead with a crisp engine sound as it descended into Reagan National, leading the formation of landing lights that was shaping up in the western sky.

He would miss it. Washington pulsed with the energy of the center of empire, twenty-four/seven. Everything was always urgent, even the nominally routine, because a boss was always worried about being caught off base by a bigger boss. "Did you know about this?" was the one question that could spin up an entire department. If you had to stand up at the morning briefing and admit that you didn't, and the issue lay in your area of responsibility, the backroom gossip would have you on that infamous slippery slope. He heard the phone ringing and went back inside the sliding glass doors to get it. It was Bertie.

"A ripple of news came under my door," he said cryptically.

"That ripple started out as a wave of shit," Swamp replied, sitting down on the couch.

"Are you now officially a nonperson?" Bertie asked.

"If you have to ask…"

Bertie was laughing softly. "So whatever happened with your firefly?"

Swamp told him, aware that any listeners might be hearing all this for the first time. Good, he thought. The more working stiffs in the Secret Service who knew about this now, the better if it blew up in their faces. Bertie said nothing for almost thirty seconds. Then Swamp heard him light a cigarette. "And they're just going to let all this — what, compost until after the inauguration?"

"Hallory's certainly not going to work it," Swamp said. "I think the District cops will keep trying to find this guy, but, you know, they're all being folded into the inauguration security effort, too. They've got detectives going back into uniform starting late tomorrow night."

"But it sounds so damned plausible," Bertie said.

"Unless you've got your hands full and thirty-six hours until showtime. Hell, Bertie, it wasn't like they didn't warn me off."

"So what's next? I was depending on you being here to show me some decent watering holes."

Swamp laughed. "Next is, I'm going back to Harpers Ferry. Let someone else carry the Entire Free World on their shoulders for a while. Come next month, I'll go to Acapulco, watch CNN the night of the joint session address, and hope they were all right and I was all wrong."

"Yeah, that's what worries me. You weren't exactly famous for being wrong all that much. Pain in the gump stump, yes, but wrong? Not often. Hang on a minute — I've got another call."

Swamp finished his drink while he waited. Then Bertie was back. "Just checking something. Your line's clean tonight. Look, would you consider maybe going solo on this thing?"

"La Mamba was pretty explicit about my not doing that."

"How about if you were working for us?"

"Me? Work for the Agency?"

"Why not? We hire 'consultants' all the time. We pay better than your dear old Secret Service, too."

"Would I get a secret decoder ring?"

Bertie laughed but then grew serious. "If there is some evil shit afoot, I would love to surface it. We would love to surface it, if you catch my drift."

"Ah. And stick it up DHS's ass in some memorable interagency meeting."

"Why, yes, I suppose that's possible."

"You suppose. Actually, you're supposed to be cooperating and collaborating with all the working stiffs across the river these days, Bertie. I can't believe you'd let a little bureaucratic one-upmanship guide Agency policy."

"Are you all through?" Bertie said. It was Swamp's turn to laugh.

"Because I'm not retired, remember?" Bertie continued. "If there's even a chance you're right, it would be positively delicious to break Hallory's balls with it. And to step on La Mamba's pretty neck. She was the one who called to tell me you were being sent home, by the way. Sounded very pleased with herself."

"And did she also tell you they'd warned me not to go solo?"

"Where do you think I got this idea, old buddy?" Bertie replied softly.

"They find out I'm still beating these bushes, they're gonna shit, Bertie."

"If you're right and they're wrong, they're really gonna shit," Bertie said. "So call me in the morning. Early's good."

Swamp shook his head after he hung up the phone. What the hell, he might just do it. And not tell McNamara or anyone else. Except maybe Jake Cullen.

Heismann called Mutaib's private number at the bank from a phone station in the lobby of the Sheraton Capitol Hill at midnight. It was picked up by one of the whispering minions, who put him on hold. A minute later, the emir came on the line.

"Everything is in readiness," Heismann announced.

"Very well."

He paused while two men walked by in the lobby. "And you still wish me to proceed?"

"We do."

"You will not forget the second payment?"

"My dear fellow, it will be deposited to the agreed-upon account one minute after we hear the, um, appropriate noises. One minute. I will do it right from here unless they cut off all the telephone lines in the city."

And that's what I needed to know, Heismann thought. "All right. What time do you wish me to turn on the special phone?'

"Turn it on fifteen minutes prior to midnight tomorrow. When it rings, hit the talk button, but do not speak. It will be a text message only."

"Ah. A code?"

"No. Plain English. You will understand it. After midnight, put the phone outside in the sink. There is an acid destructor inside that will melt its circuits when it receives the execution-order string."

"And if your people change their minds at the last minute?"

"Midnight tomorrow is the last minute. We think communications in the city will become difficult, if not impossible, as the event approaches."

"What will be the cancellation code?"

"No code. Plain English. And if that happens, leave the house. And leave the city at once. And if you do run, don't use that Suburban."

The lobby was starting to fill up with formally dressed people as a banquet came to an end. A couple walked by Heismann, a man and a woman this time. The woman was a little drunk and laughing noisily. "Where in the world are you?" Mutaib asked.

"A safe place," Heismann said, and then he asked Mutaib the question he'd been wanting to ask ever since this thing began. He had all the money he really expected to get, so he risked nothing by asking it. "Do your people have any idea of what the Ammies will do if they tie this thing to the Saudis?"

"I don't think they can, my dear fellow. Besides, if they do, it's going to look a lot like Al Qaeda, not the Saudis. The Kingdom will be suitably apologetic, just like last time."

"But if this succeeds, and it should, and all the civilians die, it will be the generals in charge this time."

"In Russia, that might be a problem, but not here, Herr Hodler. That's why they call it the Department of Defense. They'll buzz around for a while, but until there's a president, they won't do anything."

"I hope you are right about that," Heismann said. "I would hate to find out that your bank had been atomized before that check clears."

Mutaib laughed. "You just tend to your business and we will tend to ours."

Heismann couldn't say what he was thinking, so he hung up. He felt suddenly exposed in the brightly lighted lobby area, and he was anxious to be out of there.

Once he was back out on the street, he decided to take an oblique route back to the town house. He had little doubt but that Mutaib was not only going to cheat him of any second payment but would try to have him killed soon after the attack took place. Mutaib could never allow the single person who could tie the Royal Kingdom Bank to the attack to survive the incident. And the obvious way to do that would be to create some difficulty with the second payment that would require Heismann to meet Mutaib or one of his security men somewhere. Like claim the city's telephone system had been shut down, tell him they'd pay him in cash instead.

He crossed the avenue in front of the hotel and then kept going east, walking toward the Anacostia River. Or, he thought, they could have marksmen waiting somewhere in my street on der Tag. Well, he had a plan for that. When he burst out of that house right after the attack took place, he was going to look very, very different, which should distract any of Mutaib's shooters long enough for him to get into the alley across the street to begin his run to the minivan. By the time they figured it out, there would be other distractions going on in that street.

Two blocks farther east, he turned north onto Fourth Street, SW, then reversed course suddenly to see if anyone was following him, either on foot or in a car. When he didn't see anyone, he resumed walking toward his town house. The row houses along here ran the gamut from expensively refurbished buildings all the way to some decidedly derelict burned-out shells. The furtive shapes of Washington's nocturnal drug trade melted back into nearby alleys as he came walking purposefully up the street, looking like a man on a mission. There was a car at the curb, its parking lights on and its engine running. As soon as the clockers began to fade into the shadows, the car pulled out into the street and then executed a lazy turn around the corner. Even so, Heismann kept a grip on the Walther in his coat pocket until he approached his own block.

He walked past his front steps without so much as glancing sideways at his neighbor's house. Then he continued around the corner and into the alley behind the row of houses. He'd been as quiet as he could opening the back gate and making his way across the narrow yard, not wanting to attract any attention from his neighbor. But when he stepped into the kitchen and reached for the light switch, he stopped, his hand in midair.

What's this? Something is different.

He scanned the semidarkened kitchen, where he could see fairly well because of the alley streetlight. Nothing seemed to be out of place. And certainly no place here for someone to hide. The door to the front hall was open, and there was light coming from the front streetlights there, too. He listened, but all he heard were normal sounds: the next-door neighbor's heater running down in the basement; the ticking of a small clock on the electric oven, the night wind stirring halfheartedly across the back porch, pushing a small draft of cold air through the partially open kitchen door.

Then he had it. Not a sound. A smell. The smell of food.

He had neither cooked nor eaten cooked food in the house since he'd been there. But he could definitely smell food, and it was an exotic scent. He finally recognized it: the same scent that had permeated the apartments of the Arab underground in Hamburg and, later, Berlin. Middle Eastern spices. That's what he was smelling. And since it wasn't likely to be coming from his neighbor's kitchen, it meant that someone who stank of Middle Eastern food had been in his house, and maybe was still there. He lowered his hand and felt for his pistol, easing it out of the pocket. Then, one-handed, he shed his overcoat, hat, and shoes as soundlessly as possible while still standing just inside the back door. He slipped the safety off the gun and nudged the slide back to make sure a round was chambered. He nudged the kitchen door shut with his heel.

He'd made no effort to keep quiet when entering the house, so if someone was waiting, they'd know he was inside. They. More than one? But where? He could see down the hall. He moved to his left in stocking feet, sliding across the linoleum until he was standing partially in the dining room and could see into the living room. The brace structure was still in place, and the living room furniture all looked right. Nothing visibly disturbed. Sliding his feet across the floor again, he went around the brace and into the living room, crouching slightly, gun ready, until he reached the front door. He checked the locks, but everything was in order. He peered up into the darkened stairwell.

Upstairs, then.

No, wait. The basement.

He stepped into the hall, staying close to the wall to avoid creaking boards, listening carefully for any signs of movement upstairs, but still he heard nothing. The door to the basement was under the stairs. He reached for the knob but then stopped. He knelt down and sniffed the door handle. The stink of Middle Eastern spices was on the doorknob itself.

All right.

The light switch for the basement stairs was right next to the door. He flipped it on, not opening the door.

If you're down there, he thought, now you know I've found you.

He peered back around the corner of the stairs to make sure there wasn't someone coming down the hall behind him, but there were no looming silhouettes — only the rectangles of amber light from outside flanking the front door. He recalled the layout of the basement: open-backed steps going down ten feet to the dirt floor, whitewashed rough stone walls, a concrete pad where the oil-fired heater and its service tank stood. Duct work and cast-iron bathroom drainpipe spidering across the ceiling. The old coal scuttle at sidewalk level in the front wall. An ancient but apparently serviceable submersible pump sitting in a shallow well in the middle of the floor. A single-bulb light fixture hanging from the floor joists.

No place to hide at all once that light was on. Plus, anyone lurking down there could be so easily trapped. So, it was not likely anyone was down there. Not now anyway.

There was a latch bolt on the hallway side of the door. He slid the bolt into the closed position, then went upstairs, turning on lights as he went, making no effort to be quiet now. He was sure that someone had been in the house. Had been in the basement and was now gone. It just felt that way, and he'd learned to trust his instincts when it came to an ambush. The upstairs was clear, the marble blocks, the tools, everything just as he'd left it. He left the light on in the hall bathroom and in the room he was using as a bedroom, then went back downstairs. He thought he knew what was going on now.

He confirmed that the front and back doors were locked, and then he looked in all the downstairs closets and behind the furniture. Then he grabbed a flashlight and unlocked the basement door. He went halfway down the steps and looked around. The dirt floor was too hard-packed to show footprints, but the smell of food was present even down there, just barely discernible over the smells of heating oil and old plaster dust. He went over and examined the coal scuttle, which was big enough for a large man to get through, if he was then willing to drop seven feet from the sidewalk level onto the hard-packed dirt floor. But all along its sides, there were spiderwebs that obviously had not been disturbed in years, and the whitewashed stone walls bore no scuff marks.

So, the heating system. He went over to the heater, which contained the oil burner itself and the fan chamber, all attached to a large square metal duct that rose into the ceiling and then began branching out into feeder and return lines between the floor joists. He checked the cover of the heater control panel, which was attached by four small Phillips-head screws to the base of the heater. He pointed the flashlight at them and each one showed bright metal.

Suspicions confirmed.

He went back upstairs to the kitchen and peered out the back windows. Then he rooted around in the drawer that contained small household tools and found a screwdriver. Back in the basement, he unscrewed the cover plate and lifted it off. He found a maze of old fuzz-covered wiring, some switches, metal contacts, plastic splice caps, and one brand-new white wire that led to a small plastic cigarette pack-size box taped into an empty corner of the control unit. A second wire, this one black, came out of that box and went up through the connector fitting that transmitted power to the control panel. Tracing that wire, he found that it led across the back of the heater itself and over to the fuel tank. A tiny hole had been drilled high on the back of the fuel tank to admit that wire into the tank.

There were two fill fittings and one air vent on top of the tank. One of the fill fittings was hard-piped to a two-inch-diameter metal pipe leading to the fill valve out on the street. The other had a screw cap, which, upon close inspection, revealed a wafer-thin band of metal with what looked like a printed circuit engraved on it. This was wrapped tightly around the threads and made contact with the cap. He stood there for a moment. If he opened that cap, he might activate an antitampering circuit or other booby-trap device. But he knew what had to be in the tank. The electronics pack stuck into the controller box was probably a timer, set to go off a few minutes after noon on Friday.

Mutaib's solution to his loose-end problem.

He would have to think about how to disable this bomb, because he would need a full minute, perhaps two, once the attack had been completed. Not much more, but definitely a better escape window than the mere seconds this device would probably allow. He'd planted some bombs of his own before, and he knew that cutting a wire could lead to uncertain and often adverse consequences. And since he didn't know anything about the control or timing circuitry, he didn't dare risk it. He knelt down on one knee and looked at the bottom of the fuel tank. Then he smiled. There was a drain valve, untouched, from the look of it. He looked over at the sump pump. That pump should move oil just as well as water.

Early Friday morning, he would drain the fuel tank and pump the heating oil into the city's sewer system with the sump pump. The actual bomb couldn't be very big, because it had to fit through that two-inch-diameter fill tube. Mutaib's explosives man was probably counting on a two stage fuel-air explosion: a low-impulse explosive that would burst the tank and vaporize three hundred liters of heating oil into an explosive cloud that would fill every cubic centimeter of the basement, with ignition following in milliseconds by the much higher energy of the second-stage explosive. An entire basement full of fuel vapor would be quite sufficient to blow the entire duplex, both sides, into next week. But if he drained the fuel, not that much would happen. A fire perhaps, but he would have already started some of those by then.

And now he didn't feel quite so bad about what he was going to do to Mutaib. He smiled again. As if he ever had.