Deliver Us From Evil

80

FEDIR KUCHIN stared out the window of his hotel room into the wash of streetlights. He was dissecting the city in his mind. Washington, D.C., was separated into four quadrants. The sector tourists were most familiar with was northwest D.C., where most of the major monuments and the White House were located. This area was relatively safe. Yet there were narrow but consistent pockets of violence throughout the rest of the city. He had learned that three percent of the zip codes here accounted for over seventy percent of the violent crime. Much of it was drug- and gang-related and kept the police chief deploying more and more resources in those areas.

Kuchin sat back down and studied his map of the city, breaking it down as he had in other battles. D.C. had a fairly large footprint, but was certainly not the most populous metropolis in the country. Still, nearly six hundred thousand people called it home and far more than that commuted into the city every day from the suburbs. He did not think Katie James would be staying in any of the high-crime sections, so that somewhat limited his search. In the business district were mostly hotels. To stay there she would need to use a credit card, so he could reasonably rule that out. Around the U.S. Capitol Building where the four quadrants converged were residential neighborhoods where she conceivably might be staying. There were also high-dollar areas in Georgetown to the west and up along Massachusetts Avenue, or Embassy Row as it was known, and on Connecticut Avenue and Sixteenth Street heading toward the Maryland state line. He had a finite amount of manpower with him and did not intend on deploying it inefficiently.

He was staying at the Hay-Adams Hotel, on the back side of Lafayette Park, which was across Pennsylvania Avenue from the White House. He was here with six men including Pascal to conduct his hunt for the elusive journalist. And that was the key for him. She was a journalist. What did journalists do? They traveled, wrote stories, interviewed people, and checked in with their employers from time to time. The problem was, it seemed that James was not currently employed.

He stared down at his list. Still, she might be working at some point. If so, there were a few possibilities.

The Washington Post was the city’s best-known newspaper. James had worked for them years ago and had since done freelance jobs for them, though not for several years. Its offices were on Fifteenth Street northwest. Kuchin had a man posted there with a picture of James. Another man was watching the bureau offices of the New York Tribune, which was two blocks over from the Post. James had won two Pulitzers while at the Trib, but Kuchin had learned that the reporter and the paper had had a falling-out. Still, it was a base he had to cover.

The New York Times had its bureau headquarters at First Street, also in the northwest quadrant. CNN, while not a print publication, was also located on First Street, but in the northeast. Both the Times and CNN were in sight of the Capitol. According to her file, James had also worked for the Times and had done both on- and off-camera reporting for CNN during the first years of the Afghan war. There were many other news organizations in the city, but these, at least in Kuchin’s mind, were the most likely to attract the attention of a journalist with the hefty reputation of Katie James.

Kuchin paced his hotel room. He would give this strategy a few days to see if anything came of it. He would also hope that Katie James used a credit or ATM card, or perhaps enabled her GPS chip in her phone. If she did Kuchin was confident his “friend” would alert him. He also had another list from this same source. It contained four names, all friends of James, who were also in the news business and lived in the D.C. area. Two, Roberta McCormick and Erin Rhodes, were stateside and thus it was doubtful that James would be encamping in their homes. The other two were out of the country. Thus Kuchin had sent his remaining men to those locations.

He thought things over. His chess pieces were in place as best he could employ them. It was a waiting game now, and despite his combat experience, Kuchin had never been comfortable waiting. He took a walk. He passed the White House, stopped and stared through the wrought iron fence. Thirty years ago Kuchin and his fellow Soviets had done everything in their power to bring down the person occupying this house. Capitalism was evil, personal liberties were even more counterproductive. Marx had it right; Lenin had it even more right; and Stalin and his progeny had perfected the system. Yet they all had been wrong, of course. The wall of communism had toppled, Kuchin had fled, and now he lived like a king in the land of his former nemesis employing the same free-market tools he had long fought against. Well, one adapted or one died, he reasoned.

He eyed a uniformed Secret Service agent who seemed to be taking an unhealthy interest in him. He backed away from the fence and walked toward Fifteenth Street, drawing in the fresh, hot air and showing a middling interest in the gaggles of tourists and their stupid cameras.

His phone buzzed.

“Yes?”

“She just used her ATM card,” said his friend. “Corner of M and Thirty-first in Georgetown. I’m awaiting photo confirmation from the ATM camera.”

Kuchin immediately phoned his man closest to this location and then jogged back to the hotel. In five minutes he was in a rental SUV driving himself west to Georgetown. The traffic was bad, the intersections snarled. Kuchin anxiously tapped his fingers against the glass. His phone rang again. He was still at least ten minutes away.

“Yes?”

“No sign of her, sir,” said Manuel.

“Call in the rest of the teams. Set a ten-block perimeter outward from the ATM. Four men walk every square inch of it starting at that point. Two men in cars ride a circuit on the outside of the perimeter, one clockwise and the other in the opposite direction. I’ll be there as soon as I can. She just got cash so it’s a reasonable bet she’s going to spend it on something, so check any shops or restaurants you think appropriate.”

He slipped the phone back in his jacket. He had been convinced they would not find her on this go-round. That would be too easy, too lucky. Those things happened in movies, not in real life. But now they had a perimeter. And Kuchin knew how to work a perimeter like few people in the world.