CHAPTER

51

 

Hudson bought coffee from Around the Ground and walked back toward the building that housed RIO. In suite 427, he passed the reception desk, went into his office, and closed the door, finally alone. He placed both hands flat on the desk in front of him and tried to quiet his mind. He steepled his fingers in front of his face, then picked up his coffee as the phone rang.

“Russell Hudson,” he said.

“Finally caught you in,” Tolman said.

Hudson sat upright. “Meg, where are you? I haven’t had time to call you back. I’ve been dealing with the investigation. Is this a secure line? Can you talk?”

“Oh, I can talk, Rusty.”

“What do you mean?”

“Glory Warrior.”

“What?”

“You’re a fucking Glory Warrior. Don’t insult me by denying it.”

“Meg, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“You prick! All these years, I thought we were friends. Hell, even more than that, I thought you were a professional. As much as I teased you about being a bureaucrat, I respected you. You fooled me every day for five fucking years.”

“Meg, I—”

“I had you over to my apartment. I made you dinner, and I don’t even fucking cook! All your interest in my music, asking me what pieces I was working on. I thought you understood me. I let my guard down with you and told you about my mother. And all this time, all these years, you’ve been planning on overthrowing the U.S. government.”

“Meg, what is the matter with you?”

“You’re asking me that? You shit, you’re asking what’s the matter with me? After everything you’ve done, you have the balls to ask me that?” Tolman’s voice had been rising, and now she was screaming. “Vandermeer and Darlington, that whole charade of the threat assessment, letting me present it. Oh, that was a good one, that was really inspired. And pretending to call the Pentagon, that was better yet. You knew all along that Lane and Standridge were alive, because you’ve been paying Lane’s wife all this time!”

“Where are you? What do you—?”

“Shut up!” Tolman shouted. “My friend, my mentor, my boss … just shut your fucking mouth and listen. You go tell Jackson McMartin—yes, we know who he is—that the two of you are going to meet Journey and me in Oklahoma, at Fort Washita at three o’clock tomorrow afternoon. You like drama, playing your little role all these years? Well, here’s a little more drama for you. Journey knows exactly where the signature page is, and you people haven’t been able to find a damn thing on your own so far.”

“You don’t know what you’re doing.”

“You’ve screwed RIO and the government and the whole fucking country over for God only knows how long. And you’ve been screwing me over for five years. I know exactly what I’m doing.”

Hudson gripped the phone. “You’re in no position to talk to me this way.”

“You know what? I don’t give a shit, not anymore.” Her voice took on a bitter, mocking tone. “‘Oh Meg, where are you performing this week? Falls Church, how wonderful. How’s that new piece coming? Regards to your father, Meg, and by the way, I’m working to suspend the U.S. Constitution and stage a coup. Have a nice day, Meg.’” Tolman lowered her voice. “You make sure McMartin brings the missing pages from Grant’s memoir, the ones Grant had Mark Twain take out of the book at the last minute. And call your watchers off Journey’s ex-wife and kid. Yeah, I know about that, too. I know about the bank accounts and all the millions of dollars moving all over the place. You covered yourself with all those pass-through accounts and the one in Aruba, but at some point there had to be real names on that money, and that’s where I found you. So you go to McMartin and you get moving. If you don’t, Journey and the page disappear forever. I’ll create new identities for him and his son and they’ll vanish. You know I can do it, too. Three o’clock tomorrow, Fort Washita. McMartin probably has a jet, so you can travel in style.”

“What do you get out of this?”

Tolman barked a harsh laugh into the phone. “Not a goddamn thing, Rusty.” The line went dead.

Hudson sat for a moment, holding the phone before he placed it back in its cradle. His mind raced through the possibilities. He contemplated calling the other Washingtons, but Graves was untouchable at the moment. One was almost always untouchable, and Three was getting into position on Harwell.

He tried to clear his mind again, but all he heard was Meg Tolman’s voice.

No.

He had worked for twenty-five years, patiently doing his part, becoming Washington Four. In short order, he would become the fifth most powerful man in the country.

He had come too far. They all had.

Hudson looked at his watch. If he left now, he could be in Matewan by midnight. He picked up the phone and called the Judge. “We have both a problem and an opportunity,” he said.

*   *   *

Washington Three didn’t scare easily. The idea that he was less than twenty-four hours away from assassinating the president of the United States did not bother him. He had trained for it all his adult life. The Glory Warriors recruited him off the campus of Stanford when he was eighteen, followed him through his active duty military years, including a tour in Desert Storm, and facilitated his entry into the Secret Service and his climb through the ranks until he joined the protective detail of newly elected president Harwell seven years ago. Harwell was just another politician, and Washington Three was about to make history.

But driving alone into the Anacostia neighborhood at night came close to scaring him. He passed at least four drug deals in progress and saw one kid who could not have been more than fourteen threatening an even younger boy with a knife. He wondered if one of the boys would be dead by morning.

When he turned onto Valley Place, he showed his Service ID at the end of the block and the D.C. cop on duty passed him through.

“My boss wanted me to check on one more thing,” he told the cop, who smiled back at him. They both knew about difficult bosses.

The new community center was well lighted, but no one was around. It didn’t officially open until after the dedication ceremony and the president’s speech tomorrow. Now, Three thought, the opening would no doubt be postponed further as the nation mourned its fallen leader, just as it mourned the crusty old Speaker of the House and the nation’s first female chief justice, the grandmother from Alabama.

He parked three doors down from the house and took his black gym bag from the backseat of the car. He walked to the vacant house with the half-covered window on the second floor, turned in at the gate, and walked right in. The place had no door.

Upstairs, he slipped on a pair of rubber gloves, then opened the bag and reassembled the broken-down sniper rifle in less than two minutes. He inserted a magazine, lay the rifle parallel to the window, and left the house. He had signed off on the house. It was secure. No one would be in it again until tomorrow. And then he would wait.

Washington Three walked back out into the damp night. It had rained in the afternoon and the streets were slick and murky. The tall trees on either side of the community center dripped water onto the pavement. Three scanned the rooftops. The agents up there would be complaining about standing water tomorrow. Some of them would probably ruin their shoes.

He grinned at the absurdity of it, then got back into his car and drove away from Valley Place.