Hell's Corner

CHAPTER 31

Chapman dropped Stone off at his cottage and then went on to her lodgings. Stone walked around the cemetery tidying up things at the same time he was thinking about the day’s events. They had hit dead ends pretty much in every direction. Each person in the park that night had been checked and found to have nothing to do with the bombing or the gunfire. Alfredo Padilla had been blown up by mistake. Marisa Friedman worked nearby and had been calling her lover. Fuat Turkekul was there to meet Adelphia to discuss their very important operation. The British cop had been there on orders from MI6. Four promising leads turned out to be worth nothing.

Stone went inside and sat behind his desk. It was late and he should sleep, but he wasn’t tired; his mind was working too fast to rest. He attempted to read a book to try and relax, but his mind kept coming back to what had happened in Lafayette Park.

Someone had carried off an incredible feat of terrorism smack in the middle of one of the most protected areas in the world, and they had done so for no apparent reason. He did not believe the statement from the organization in Yemen. This operation had to have taken a long time and required enormous resources. While Islamic terrorists had a lot of both, their assets were not infinite. They could not afford to waste them. Therefore, you did not undertake all that for symbolic reasons, any more than you would go to all the trouble of hijacking a jumbo jet and “symbolically” flying it close to a tall building instead of directly into it.

And he also didn’t buy the theory that he had seen some pundits bandying about on TV. That people would be scared to come to D.C. now. So what? The government wouldn’t be crippled because busloads of tourists from Iowa or Maine decided to go somewhere else on vacation. It was not a “replicable act,” as some counterterrorism specialists liked to say. This wasn’t a shopping mall or an airport ticket counter. You detonate in one of those places and you terrify people all over the county, who will stay away from their malls and airports. That would severely disrupt the economy. But there was only one White House. Only one Lafayette Park.

If it doesn’t make sense the way I’m thinking it through, it means I’m thinking it through wrong. But then what way is right?

He was about to try a different tack when he sank down in his chair after putting out the desk lamp with a flick of his hand.

There was someone outside.

He dropped down and smacked a part of the plank floor in the kneehole section of his desk. The short board spun on a swivel. Inside a holster clipped to the underside of the plank was a custom pistol that he had carried for many years on the job. Back then it was as much a part of his body as his hand. Stone gripped it and swung the board back into place.

He crawled to the rear window and peered out. There was a moon, and even though the men were moving stealthily through the underbrush, Stone still saw them because he knew where and how to look.

He slipped his cell phone from his shirt pocket and was about to text a message when he heard the voice.

“Stone? I’d like to talk to you.”

Stone’s finger was poised over the send button. He recognized the voice. His mind was moving swiftly over the possible reasons why the man would have come here to see him.

“What about?” he called back.

“I think you know. I’m sure you have a gun and I’ve been told how well you wield one. And I’m sure you’ve spotted my men despite their best efforts. So that no one gets hurt, I propose that I come inside and meet with you. Just one-on-one. Does that work?”

“And if it doesn’t?” Stone shot back.

“I could say we would just leave.”

“Why don’t I believe that?”

“We’re both on the same side here.”

“It doesn’t feel that way right now.”

“I give you my word. I just want to talk.”

“Then why come late at night with a strike team?”

“It’s just the way I travel. Don’t take it personally. But I do just want to talk.”

Stone thought rapidly. He really had no leverage here at all. And information could be a two-way street.

“Just you,” he called back. “And I do have a gun. If I see even one red dot floating in the air, things will get ugly very fast. Understood?”

“Understood. I’m coming in.”

“Slowly.”

“Right. Slowly.”

A few moments later Riley Weaver, the head of NIC, appeared in the doorway of Stone’s humble cottage, which was surrounded by the dead and also now at least a half dozen armed men.