Rasputin's Shadow

70

I followed them into the Mobile Command Center, with Aparo, Larisa, and Sokolov in tow.

A bunch of agents were manning various posts, eyeballing a plethora of screens while communicating with the agents on the ground outside.

“Show me the layout,” I asked Everett.

He got one of his techs to pull up an aerial view of the hotel and its immediate surroundings.

“Is this live?” I asked.

“No,” the tech said. “We haven’t tasked a bird, not for tonight.”

From above, the Washington Hilton looked like a scribbled lowercase “m,” kind of how Alex would draw a bird in flight. The tips of the wings were aligned just off the east-west axis, with the main entrance at the center of the left-hand concave scoop. Four circular flower beds were arranged asymmetrically on a large oval of grass that formed the center of a turning circle that fed the entrance. The right-hand scoop cupped a sun patio and gardens and provided no access to vehicles. A large pool sat at the end of the eastern wing tip. Screened from its neighbors by a line of trees, a narrow access road ran along the dual convex bulges of the hotel’s northern facade.

Everett pointed at the screen and gave me the virtual tour. “The president’s motorcade will drive up the same way we did, up Connecticut. He comes in through the main entrance here, then heads down to the ballroom.”

“Where’s the ballroom?” Sokolov asked.

Everett hesitated before answering, but I gave him a slight nod to let him know Sokolov was fine. “It’s in the basement under this area right here,” he said, pointing to the grass oval outside the left wing.

“What do you think?” I asked Sokolov. “Can it reach there?”

He stared at the screen and shrugged. “One basement, no building overhead. I’d say yes, if he has it turned on full blast.”

“What about ideal positioning?”

He studied the aerial view. “Obviously, facing the front would be the most effective. But again, he could put it anywhere.”

Koschey may not have had the same level of technical knowledge as Sokolov-no one did when it came to this-but he was clearly exceptionally clever and had the ability to grasp complex ideas quickly. He was also a highly trained killer. He would be perfectly capable of gauging line of sight in urban terrain, in addition to factoring in multiple variables.

I asked Everett, “You’ve got the whole perimeter locked down?”

“We’ve got roadblocks on all the approach roads. No one gets in but residents and not without having their vehicles checked.”

I looked at the screen. The Hilton had a lot of open space in front of it, which was good as it provided a natural barrier. There was a large building across from it on T Street, behind us. To our left was a Marriott, a building that housed a FedEx office and an apartment building. I pointed at the building opposite the tip of its northwest wing. “What’s that?”

Everett said, “The Russian Trade Federation.”

I gave Larisa a dubious look.

She pursed her lips. “He’d have access to it, of course. Then again, he’d be incriminating the Kremlin pretty clearly if he did it from there.”

“Maybe that’s what he wants.”

The rest was what looked like apartment buildings, behind the hotel and east of it, between Columbia Road and Nineteenth Street. There was also a big building behind the northeast tip of the hotel that Everett said was a school. It had a basketball court, a playground, and a parking lot for buses.

There were plenty of places someone could park a car and shower the hotel with microwaves.

“And nothing suspicious to report?” I asked Everett. “Everything’s been smooth?”

He nodded. “Yep.”

I checked my watch. Twenty-five minutes till kick-off.

“All right. Best we can do is run a perimeter sweep on foot and hope I’m wrong.” I turned to Aparo and Larisa. “Front, northwest corner, northeast corner. Pick your zone.”

“I’ll take northwest and the Russian Trade Federation,” Larisa said.

“Front,” Aparo said.

“Okay,” I said. “We need comms and earbuds,” I told Everett. He issued a quick command, and one of his techs hooked us up within seconds.

I held up my helmet and buds to Aparo and Larisa. “First sign of any discomfort…”

They nodded.

I turned to Sokolov. “Stay here and online in case we need you.” Then I asked Everett, regarding Sokolov, “You look after my man for me?”

“Go,” he said.