The God's Eye View

CHAPTER 20

Thomas Delgado emerged from the Washington, DC Metro at Farragut West and headed south on Seventeenth Street NW, the area a kaleidoscope of streetlamps and office windows and car headlights. The worst of rush hour was past, but there were still plenty of cabs jockeying for position as they trolled for evening fares; office workers heading off for a bite with their cronies or a drink by themselves; Metro buses hissing and squealing as they absorbed and disgorged the nightly worker-bee effluent. More pedestrians would have been a plus, but daylight would have made for clearer footage on surveillance cameras. This was the right compromise.

He turned left on H Street, pulling the wheeled carry-on bag behind him, just another cubicle denizen returning to the office after arriving at Washington National or Union Station, still casually dressed in jeans and a button-down shirt, comfortable travel attire. A pair of nonprescription horn-rimmed glasses fit the overall office geek vibe, and though his Orioles cap might have been a little out of keeping, well, who in DC would begrudge a fan for flying the team’s colors? The main thing was to look enough like a local not to be noticed, while obscuring the features enough not to be recognized. The glasses and cap weren’t much, but in the low light, he was confident they would do.

He passed Lafayette Square, where a few lonely protestors stood facing the White House, holding vigil amid the buzz of insects in the trees and the surrounding sounds of traffic. Stop the war, stop the fracking, stop killing black men, stop, stop, stop. Perennial shit. He wondered why these losers bothered, why they didn’t just give up and get a life.

He powered up one of the phones the director had given him and used it to call the cell phones of a few members of a local mosque, along with the numbers of the two other phones the director had provided him. Then he powered down the unit and kept moving.

A few blocks from the White House, he saw what he was looking for: a catering truck, parked in front of one of the area’s innumerable monolithic office buildings, its driver doubtless delivering dinner inside to keep late-working drones nourished and productive into the night. He unzipped the carry-on bag and checked his surroundings, then ducked down, removed the device, and attached it via its magnetic fastenings to the truck’s undercarriage, no more obtrusive than a man tying his shoe. Seconds later, he was on his way.

He zigzagged over to Pennsylvania Avenue and headed southeast, losing the carry-on in a Dumpster along the way after wiping down the handles and zippers. Maybe someone would find and appropriate it; maybe it would molder in a landfill. Either way, there would be no way to connect it with him.

He paused in front of the Capitol Reflecting Pool, where he repeated the phone operation with the second of the units the director had given him and another set of numbers. Finally, he looped around the Capitol grounds to the Supreme Court, where he went through the procedure once more with the last of the three phones. Then he continued southeast until he reached the Seventeenth Street SE side of the Congressional Cemetery. He slipped over the low brick wall, into the comforting gloom, and padded across the soft grass toward the interior, the light growing dimmer and the sounds of traffic more muted with each step.

He came to a row of mausoleums, faintly outlined against the glow of the adjacent Anacostia River. He paused with his back to one, letting his eyes adjust, listening. The director had warned him there would be intense coverage of the cell phones he was carrying, and that he needed to begin and end his route in what the director called “cataracts”—blind spots in NSA’s pervasive coverage. The Congressional Cemetery was one such. No cameras, no sensors, no IMSI-catcher phone trackers. Going in one end of a cataract and coming out the other was akin to crossing a river to throw off pursuit. Not a perfect solution, but with enough such crossings, a pretty effective way of ensuring no one would be able to follow your tracks.

He unbuttoned his shirt, exposing a tee shirt and belly bag beneath. Into the belly bag went the outer shirt, the glasses, the baseball cap, and the phones; out came a bandana, which he wrapped around his head. An office worker had entered the cemetery; a hipster in a do-rag would leave it.

He had zipped up the bag and was about to move out when he saw a pair of faintly glowing eyes looking up at him from the ground — eyes and a human figure. He leaped back, one hand going up in a protective gesture, the other clearing and opening the Zero Tolerance 0300 folding knife he kept clipped to his front pocket. “What the fuck?” he said in a loud whisper.

“Oh… sorry, man,” the person said. “Didn’t mean to startle you. I thought you’d seen me. This is my spot.”

Delgado squinted, trying to make out who he was talking to, then reminded himself to look around. He didn’t see anyone or anything else, but then again he’d missed this guy. Christ, he’d been so sure he was alone, he hadn’t been paying adequate attention.

He looked back to the man and could faintly make out bushy hair and a long beard. “What do you mean, your spot?”

“This is where I sleep, man. Find your own spot.”

“You’re homeless?” It was so ridiculous it was almost funny. All this care avoiding advanced NSA capabilities… and busted by some skell sleeping it off in the cemetery.

“No, man, the Waldorf Astoria was full tonight, so I decided to sleep under the stars, instead.”

The guy was funny. “The Waldorf Astoria is in New York. Maybe you mean the Willard.”

“Whatever, man. Look, I’m not looking for company, you know what I mean?”

“There are other people sleeping in this cemetery?”

“What am I, the fucking census taker? Yeah, people sleep here. But we respect each other’s privacy, too, if you catch my drift. Hey man, what’s with the costume change?”

Shit. “Costume change?”

“Yeah, the shirt and the bandana. What are you, like, on your way to an ultimate Frisbee game?

Oh, well. “Actually, I’m up to no good.”

The man chuckled. “Ain’t we all, man, ain’t we all.”

“If I give you fifty bucks, will you forget you saw me?”

The man’s eyes grew wide in the dark. “For fifty bucks, man, I’ll forget my own name.”

Delgado smiled. “All right, it’s a deal. Where are you, though? I can barely see you.”

The man sat up and extended his hand. “I’m right here, bro. Lay it on me. And this conversation never happened.”

Delgado stepped to the side of the man’s outstretched arm, pivoted behind him, dragged his head back by the hair with one hand, and slit his throat with the other. The man’s hands flew to his neck and Delgado kicked him away to avoid the spray. The man fell to his side, managed to get to his knees, then collapsed again, all the while making a series of low burbling sounds. Delgado looked around. He saw no one, which suggested no one was close enough to see him, either.

After a moment, the man lay still. Delgado wiped the blade on the grass, then closed and pocketed it. He moved off in the direction of Stadium Armory Metro Station.

Bad luck, running into someone. But no harm done. These bums seemed uppity about their little sleeping spots. He doubted this was the first time an argument about who the ground belonged to had escalated to bloodshed. And he doubted the police would give the matter any attention beyond that obvious explanation.

He wondered again who Ariel was. He wished he knew. Killing the bum had made him horny.