A Brewing Storm

CHAPTER EIGHT

Storm left the hotel shortly after 12 P.M. in the rented, white Ford E-series commercial van that the concierge had arranged for him. The van had seats for a driver and a passenger, but its cargo bay was empty. There were no windows except for the windshield and the front doors. After driving through the Virginia suburbs for a half hour to make certain that he wasn’t being followed, Storm bought four women’s gym bags at a sporting goods store and then returned to the District. He drove to the Thomas Jefferson Memorial, located at the southern end of the National Mall, adjacent to the Tidal Basin in West Potomac Park. He parked the van there and flagged down a taxi, which brought him back to his hotel with the gym bags.

Storm grabbed a shower and dressed in loafers, khaki pants, a blue shirt, and a navy sports coat. He tucked his Glock .40-caliber semiautomatic into the special holster that he wore in the center of his back and made certain he had extra ammunition. Now ready, he went downstairs and gave the valet his parking stub. A few minutes later, Storm was driving east toward the Capitol in the Taurus sedan that Jones had rented for him. He was scheduled to meet Samantha Toppers and Senator Windslow in the Dirksen SOB at 4 P.M.

Toppers was pacing nervously inside the senator’s inner office when he arrived. Senator Windslow was seated at his desk.

“I’ve called the president at Riggs Bank and arranged for Samantha to have access to the safety deposit box,” Windslow said. “Did you get the gym bags?”

“They’re in the car,” Storm replied.

Windslow suddenly shouted at Toppers. “Stop fidgeting, girl! And make sure you have your damn cell phone with you.”

“I’ve got to use the bathroom,” she stammered. She ducked into the senator’s private toilet that was connected to his office.

“You haven’t told the FBI about this, have you?” Windslow growled.

“No. I told you that I’d keep it confidential.”

“Does Jedidiah know?”

“No.”

“Good.”

A still visibly frantic Toppers joined them. “I’m not sure I can go through with this!” she said. “What do you think is going to happen tonight?”

“They’ll make us drive around the city,” Storm answered. “We’ll be sent down one-way streets and then they’ll have us reverse our route so they can see if anyone is following us. They’ll probably select routes that don’t have much traffic so it will be obvious if we are being tailed. And when they are convinced that we are in the clear, they’ll have us make the deliveries.”

“What if they take us hostage?” she asked. Storm noticed that her hands were trembling.

“Don’t worry, dear,” Windslow said. “You have him to protect you — and my six million.”

Storm added, “I’ll make certain nothing happens to you. Let’s go.”

Riggs National Bank was located about a block from the White House and could be seen on the back of a ten-dollar bill, behind the U.S. Treasury Building. Naomi Chatts, a senior bank official, met Storm and Toppers at the entrance and escorted them to the safety deposit vault in the building’s basement. Storm stayed outside the giant walk-in chamber, which was protected by a huge swinging stainless steel door. It was an older Diebold model that was three and a half feet thick and operated on a time lock. A beefy security guard was stationed at a desk next to the vault’s entrance, and Storm made small talk with him.

Ms. Chatts escorted Toppers inside the massive vault and then joined Storm and the guard outside the chamber’s entrance. About ten minutes later, Toppers appeared at the vault door lugging the four gym bags, two per each hand. Storm took the stuffed bags from her while Ms. Chatts ducked into the vault to make certain Toppers hadn’t accidently left anything behind.

“Can you have two of your guards escort us to our car?” Storm asked Chatts. There would be no way for him to carry the four bags and defend himself.

“Yes,” Ms. Chatts said. She had the guard make a telephone call, and by the time that Storm and Toppers had gone upstairs, there were two armed, uniformed officers waiting at the entrance for them.

“Please give my best regards to Senator Windslow,” Ms. Chatts said cheerfully as they exited the bank. The Taurus was double-parked directly outside the door. Storm put all four bags into the rear seat while Toppers took a seat in the front.

So far, so good. It was show time now. He needed to stay alert. To watch for some tip off, some clue to the kidnappers’ identity. Something he could use.

As he merged into traffic, Storm checked his rearview mirror and spotted an unmarked Ford sedan behind them. He drove the Taurus to K Street, which was often referred to as the city’s main street because of the many law firms and lobbyist offices that bordered it. The Ford stuck with them. Storm was going West on K Street along with a steady stream of rush hour drivers.

Suddenly, he swerved off the main thoroughfare into the entrance to an underground parking garage. He turned so quickly that he nearly hit a woman walking on the sidewalk. She jumped back and shot him the finger as the Taurus raced down the lot’s ramp.

As soon as the car reached the garage attendant’s station, Storm leaped from it, tossed the keys to one of the workers there, and grabbed the four gym bags from the backseat.

“C’mon!” he hollered to Toppers.

“Where are we going!” she shrieked.

“Follow me! Now!”

Storm rushed down the parking ramp to a basement exit. With Toppers chasing after him, he ran up two flights of concrete steps to a street exit that opened into an alley behind the office building. He dashed out and hurried down the alley to Nineteenth Street NW — a one-way street filled with southbound traffic. The bored taxi driver who stopped for them didn’t bother getting out of his cab. Instead, he pushed a remote button to pop the car’s trunk. Storm tossed the four bags into it and got into the backseat with a now breathless Toppers.

“Where to?” the driver asked.

“State Department and we’re in a hurry.”

“Everyone is,” the cabbie said. “That’s what’s wrong with this country.” The driver, whose taxi license was on display, was from Ghana, and he launched into an immediate monologue about the ills of America’s rushed society. Storm ignored the mindless chatter. He was looking at the alleyway to see if anyone had followed them. He didn’t see anyone.

The cabbie abruptly stopped talking, and when Storm looked at the car’s rearview mirror, he saw why. The driver’s eyes were locked onto Topper’s breasts, which were heaving as she struggled to catch her breath from running.

“You might want to redirect your eyes to the road,” Storm suggested.

Storm again glanced behind the cab to see if the Ford was behind them. It wasn’t. He had a hunch that the men inside it were now in the parking garage having a frantic conversation with FBI Agent Showers. She would have known that a ransom drop was being made as soon as Storm traveled from the Dirksen SOB to Riggs National Bank. Why else would he go there? Storm assumed that she had immediately sent two special agents to tail them. At that point, Agent Showers had made a critical error. She’d felt a false sense of security because of the monitor in the Taurus. She had not felt a need to flood the area with agents or call in air surveillance. Storm had not only abandoned the car in the underground parking garage, he’d also left the cell phone that Jedidiah Jones had given him on the vehicle’s front seat. It was probably ringing right now.

When the taxi was about a block from the State Department, Storm announced that he’d changed his mind. “Take us to the Jefferson Memorial,” he said.

As the cab continued south into the traffic traveling around the National Mall, Storm checked for tails. There were none. They had gone “black.”

“You guys married?” the cabbie asked when the cab stopped at a red light.

“No, we work together,” Storm said.

The cabbie caught another peek at Samantha’s cleavage. She was wearing black wedge leather slip-ons without stockings, a tight denim blue jean skirt, and a bright pink, short satin jacket that was layered over a cream-colored silk blouse and sexy black lace camisole.

“You’re a lucky guy,” the cabbie said as the light changed. “To work with such a pretty lady would be a pleasure indeed.”

Samantha smiled and said, “Thank you!”

Ten minutes later, the taxi reached the Jefferson Memorial parking lot. Storm took the four gym bags from the trunk and eyeballed the lot while the driver got out of the car to open the rear passenger door to Samantha, anxious to take a mental snapshot of those architectural marvels, no doubt.

Confident that they hadn’t been followed, Storm led Toppers to the Ford cargo van that he’d parked here earlier.

“We’re taking this,” he explained, unlocking the doors. “Get in.”

Storm had just stored the four gym bags in the cargo area when the rhythmic voice of Rihanna could be heard coming from inside Toppers’s Lilly Pulitzer handbag.

“Your phone?” he asked her.

“Yeah.” It was 6 P.M. The kidnappers were calling right on time.

Toppers was so nervous that she dropped the phone while she was removing it from her handbag. She bent forward and snatched it off the floor mat.

“Give it here,” Storm ordered. He answered it.

A deep voice that sounded like Darth Vader said, “You got our money?” The caller was using some sort of voice changer software.

“That’s right. Where do you want us to go?”

“Arlington National Cemetery. Robert E. Lee mansion. Leave the first gym bag in a public trash receptacle about fifty feet from the house’s front entrance. There’s a National Park Service sign next to the trash can.”

The line went dead.

A trash container in a public park. It was an odd place for a drop. Or was it?

Pulling from the memorial’s parking lot, Storm headed west across the Potomac River into Northern Virginia. He glanced at Toppers. Her face was ghost white. She looked as if she were about to faint or vomit. When he lowered his eyes, he noticed that her tight jean skirt had risen up when she’d bent over to retrieve her cell phone from the floor. She was wearing a tiny red thong with white polka dots. She’d either not noticed or felt no need to readjust her skirt.

She was a distraction and he needed to be focused. He decided to do what he always did when a woman was distracting him, especially sexually. He would talk with her. He would calm her down. Then he could focus on what was important and not her taut little body, her freshly shaved legs, her muscular thighs.

“You’re doing fine,” he said. “Think about something else. Tell me about Matthew. Where did you meet?”

“We were in the same first-year English class. He asked me to have coffee. He kept his eyes on my eyes the entire time. Not many boys do that.”

Her candor surprised him. Why? Did he think she was so naïve that she didn’t understand how her figure affected men? How she could use it to manipulate them?

“What are you studying in school?”

“No one believes me when I tell them, because they assume that someone who looks like I do has to be dumb, but I’m studying mechanical engineering.” She laughed.

Good. He was breaking the tension. Helping her relax. Mechanical engineering. Curious.

Continuing, she said, “I know Senator Winslow thinks I’m stupid. He told Matthew that I was an airhead. But I’ve always been good with math and designing. I’m a whiz at reading and drawing blueprints.”

“Good for you,” Storm replied. “The senator’s a jackass.”

“Where did the kidnappers tell you to stash the money?” she asked him.

Her question set off an alarm bell. Although he’d heard her, he acted as if he hadn’t. He wanted to make sure that he’d heard exactly what she’d said.

“What did you say?” he asked.

“Where did they tell you to stash the cash?”

He had heard her correctly.

“In an outside trash can,” he replied. “How long have you been engaged to Matthew? Tell me a little about your background.”

“He asked me three months ago. It was a total surprise. He wants to have a big wedding in Texas on a ranch.”

“You aren’t getting married in your hometown?”

“No. I lost my folks when I was a teenager. In an accident.”

“An accident?”

“An awful car accident. We were vacationing in Spain, where my parents had a house. My mom and dad and a friend of mine who was on vacation with us were killed by a drunk driver who swerved into the wrong lane. It was horrible.”

“You weren’t with them?”

“No. Everyone said I was lucky.” Tears began to fill her eyes. “I had a bad cold that night and stayed home when they went to dinner. I’d rather not talk about it.”

The Taurus reached a traffic circle. Storm turned from it into the entrance to Arlington National Cemetery.

“Is that where we’re going?” Toppers asked, looking at a house directly in front of them on a hill.

“Yes,” he replied. “That’s Lee’s mansion.”

A guard stopped them at the cemetery’s gated entrance.

“Sorry, you missed the last tour of the house,” he said. “It was at four-thirty.”

“ I’ve got friends buried here. Iraq,” Storm said. “We’ll pay our respects and tour the house some other time.”

“Take this,” the guard said, handing Storm a pamphlet. He waved them through.

The Robert E. Lee house was built in the early 1800s, in the Greek Revival style. Designed by one of the architects who worked on the U.S. Capitol, the stone mansion had six large columns holding up the front of its massive portico. When the Civil War started, the Union began burying fallen soldiers near the house because President Lincoln wanted the Lee family, including the Confederate general’s wife, who was living there, to see the graves when she looked out her windows each morning.

Storm weaved through the acres of white tablets, eventually making his way up the hill to the front of the mansion.

“There’s the drop site,” he said, pointing to a dark green outdoor trash container. It was overflowing with garbage.

Storm drove to it and scanned the area. No one was watching them. He picked up a gym bag and unzipped it. Toppers had carefully stacked one-hundred-dollar bills in neat rows. Closing the bag, Storm stepped from the still running cargo van and shoved the money deep inside the debris, covering the top with discarded newspapers.

Toppers’s cell phone rang as soon as he returned to the driver’s seat. It was Darth Vader again.

“Time for the next drop.”

Storm sensed that they were being watched. It was a sixth sense that had served him well in combat. There wasn’t anyone near the Lee house, but there was a large group of people several hundred yards down the hill. Storm had been to enough funerals to recognize that the departed had just been given full military honors. The flag-draped coffin had been carried on a horse-drawn caisson to the grave site. A color guard had escorted it there. A military band had sounded a farewell, followed by a three-rifle volley. It was dusk and that was late for a graveside service, which meant someone important had pulled strings to arrange it. The evening sun was setting, but from the grave’s vantage point, a mourner could glance up the hill and see the white cargo van.

Had one of the kidnappers blended into the crowd of mourners? Was Darth Vader among them?

The scrambled voice said, “Head to Georgetown. The canal on Thirty-first Street. Walk down the path to Wisconsin Avenue. The first trash can on the right. Leave the second bag in it.”

Storm exited the cemetery and crossed the Potomac back into the District, where the van was immediately stuck in traffic. A woman talking on her cell phone nearly collided with them when she cut in front of the van.

“Stupid broad,” Toppers snapped. “It’s against the law to use a cell phone in the District unless you’ve got a hands-free device. Someone should arrest her. She could have killed us.”

An accident was all that they needed. A cop further stalling traffic. A fender bender disrupting their delivery schedule.

“Senator Windslow said you were a trust fund baby,” Storm said, casually probing. “That’s one reason why he knew you wouldn’t run away with his six million.”

“It’s not polite to talk about money,” Toppers said. “My parents had houses in Connecticut, Spain, and in Palm Beach, too. I loved it there. You ever been?”

“It’s too rich for my blood,” Storm replied. “I was there but not during the Season.”

“The summer,” she said. “That’s the best time. Me and a friend of mine had a wild time there. Actually, we had a bet to see who could lose their virginity first!” She took a stick of gum from her purse and offered him a piece.

“No thanks,” he said. She put two in her mouth and began chewing.

The Season. In Palm Beach, that term had special meaning. It was a five-month whirlwind of parties, balls, and charity events that no one who was anyone dared miss. It was a timeless ritual for America’s most wealthy, the Old Guard’s most treasured social event. It was a tradition carefully passed down from generation to generation. And it was not during the hot summer months. It was when the snowbirds ventured south to escape the cold.

When they reached 31st Street NW, Storm slipped into an alleyway and left Toppers in the van while he walked briskly to the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal. The man-made canal had been constructed because the Potomac was considered too unpredictable for safe travel. Merchants needed a safe way to transport tobacco and other commodities some 185 miles west. By the time the canal was dug, it was already obsolete because of the railroad. Now couples used the pebble-strewed path next to the canal for evening strolls, while bicyclists and joggers hurried by them.

Storm waited until the path was empty, and then he stuffed the gym bag into the trash receptacle, covering it with discarded cups, cans, bottles, and papers.

As had happened after the first delivery in Arlington Cemetery, Rihanna’s voice greeted Storm as soon as he returned to the van.

Four kidnappers had abducted Matthew. Was it possible that a different one of them was monitoring each delivery? How else would they know where he was?

“What took you so long?” Darth Vader asked.

“There were people on the path,” Storm replied. “What happens if a stranger gets one of the gym bags by accident?”

“Your boy dies.”

Darth Vader told them to drop the third bag at Hains Point, located at the southernmost tip of East Potomac Park — a good twenty-minute trip from Georgetown during rush hour.

Bordered by the Potomac River on one side and the Washington Channel on the other, Hains Point was at the tip of a man-made island composed of dirt dredged from both rivers. When they reached it, Storm hid the bag in a public trash container just as he had hidden the others.

The final drop-off point was at Battery Kemble Park, a tiny area of grass and woods in Northwest Washington, smack in the middle of expensive homes. The park was a former Civil War battery built on high ground so that Union troops could look down during the fighting and fire canons if enemy soldiers attempted to cross the Potomac and enter the city. Now it was popular with local dog walkers. Storm dumped several bags of discarded poop onto the gym bag.

Samantha’s phone rang as if on cue.

“Okay, we’ve done our part,” Storm said. “Where’s Matthew?”

“Wait in Union Station for my next call.”

“We’ve played by the rules,” Storm told the caller. “If you don’t, you’ll never live to enjoy your money.”

The line went dead.

He looked at Toppers. She’d pulled down her skirt. She was still chewing her gum.

She had no idea that he had been interrogating her.