The line to the entrance of the Spy Museum snaked down Eighth Street toward Chinatown and the Verizon Center. Chow Ying stood near the front of the triple-wide crowd sucking the sweet coating off the Advil pills in his mouth before swallowing the remains. The Mountain of Shanghai, his foot bandaged and throbbing, mixed with the tourists, rubbing shoulders with a smattering of intelligence buffs and ex-spook types waiting for a chance to admire the best display human ingenuity had to offer.
It was his third day off from surveillance. Hobbling on one leg was no way to try to kill a man. He had no idea if his ankle was broken or not, and he wasn’t going to the doctor to find out. Ice, compression, and elevation were the self-prescribed treatment for the dark blue bruises on the oversized appendage. As soon as he could get his foot back in his shoe, he would be back in business.
Besides, Peter Winthrop had proven to be a hard target. He didn’t come to the office with the same strict regularity as the rest of the building. Chow Ying had come to recognize dozens of faces coming and going, but in a week of stakeouts he had seen Peter get out of his black sedan-for-hire, enter the building, and move quickly into the lobby exactly one time. He had waited until midnight for him to exit the building, but the man he had met in Saipan over a month ago never showed his face. There were reasons. There was a private parking garage under the building and another exit facing the street around the corner. It was a lot of ground for one person to cover. It was impossible on one leg.
But Chow Ying had notched one hit under his belt in just over a week in the capital. And it had been a thing of beauty. No gun, no knife. No piano wire around the neck, no pillow over the face. And no suspicion. There was nothing on the news about a killer loose on the street, and there was nothing in the paper beyond a brief mention of an accident and the normal obituary. He now needed a plan to get both father and son, and when they joined their secretary underground, he could work on executing his long-term survival strategy.
He still carried the gun Mr. Wu had given him in New York in the back of his pants, his shirt pulled over it. But as a tool of an assassin, the gun had its drawbacks. He had never test fired the .38 caliber weapon, and with a loose pistol grip he couldn’t be sure of its accuracy. He had wondered why Mr. Wu hadn’t at least provided a new gun, perhaps one with a silencer, but deep down he knew the answer. Mr. Wu didn’t expect Chow Ying to live that long. When C.F. Chang sends you on a mission to the U.S. and threatens to take your passport, contributing to a retirement account is a waste of good money.
As easy as it sounded, walking up behind Peter Winthrop and his son, if he could get them together, and blowing their brains out on the K Street sidewalk, would bring an immediate and intense police response. He knew from experience that you could stab someone on a crowded street and keep walking before anyone noticed. It was done everyday in prison by inmates with shivs. But fire a gun and mayhem would follow. Guns are noisy, and a prominent businessman murdered in the midst of gunfire on the sidewalk would draw attention. Without a major distraction to give him a chance for escape, opening fire on a public street was his last option.
Chow Ying stood behind the crowd control barrier on the sidewalk and thought about other concerns. Men are more difficult to kill. They fight more, cause a bigger scene, take longer to die. He didn’t take any particular pleasure in killing women, but he had to admit they were easier to hunt, easier to kill. Taking out two men, one of who could identify him on sight, was going to be difficult. If he killed just one, the other would be suspicious. Two deaths in the same office over the span of a week would have everyone jumpy. Including the D.C. Police. Chow Ying needed to get them together. He was working through several scenarios in his head, all of them ending with a dash to the airport for the next plane out. With ten thousand in cash, he had enough money to run. Not far or long, but enough to get a head start.
The Spy Museum was a field day. He laid his fifteen bucks on the counter, got his ticket, and entered the new museum as giddy as a schoolboy. He breezed by the cryptology section and the biographies and busts of the most infamous names in the history of espionage. Agents, double agents, and triple agents. Heroes and traitors. He absorbed every word of the Israeli, Chinese, and Russian espionage sections. When Chow Ying entered the room named “Assassins and Tools of the Trade,” he slowed to a snail’s pace. He didn’t want to miss a thing.