“Lennon took no chances,” Bourne said as they approached the area near the Tidal Basin where Deborah Mueller had been murdered. The bone-white monuments to Washington and Jefferson glistened under the morning sunshine on the other side of the water. “See the camera on the light post? It was disabled. Shot out. He wanted to make sure there was no record of what happened.”
“You think it was Lennon himself?” Abbey asked. “He did the actual killing?”
“The description of him was tall and blond. That fits, although he changes his appearance a lot. I’m beginning to think that the payoff in Iceland was for Mueller’s murder. Which means the Pyramid was taking no chances with her. If they brought in Lennon, she must have been a high-value target, and they’ve worked hard to keep the truth behind her death under the radar.”
“But who was she? My source at ICE couldn’t find her at all. It’s like her photo had been erased from the system.”
“Lennon has moles in most of the government agencies. Plus the airlines, too, I’m sure. He could have eliminated any record of her arrival, made sure she got wiped off the books. That’s why people pay for Lennon’s services. It’s not just a question of assassinations. There are a lot of killers for hire if you don’t care how it’s done. But Lennon can handle things quietly in a way that others can’t.”
They continued past the cherry trees to the water, where the sidewalk was crowded with tourists. Abbey pointed out the area where the killing had taken place, and she played him the video from her phone of the homeless woman who’d witnessed the murder. Then she showed him the second video of the taxi line outside Reagan National, where the woman named Deborah Mueller had skipped to the third taxi in the queue.
Bourne played it twice more, and then he froze the video in place. His finger tapped the screen. “She was already being followed.”
Abbey leaned in to see where Jason was pointing. “Where? How do you know?”
“This man here. The middle-aged guy in the turtleneck. He’s checking his phone whenever Mueller looks his way, but as soon as she focuses somewhere else, he’s watching her. They knew she was coming. Hell, this guy was probably on the same plane with her.”
“He doesn’t look like a killer.”
“He’s not. Just surveillance. The video cuts off as Mueller leaves, but I’m sure he passed along her cab number to somebody outside the airport. Then they took over the tail as the cab headed out.”
“So the whole meeting was a trap?” Abbey asked.
“No, I don’t think so. Not the meeting itself. If it was, the guy she was planning to meet wouldn’t have come back a couple of days later. In fact, he wouldn’t have shown up at all. He would have left the whole thing to Lennon. That’s what makes him worth finding. Whatever this meeting was, it was worth killing Deborah Mueller to stop it from taking place.”
They continued along the Tidal Basin. Ten minutes later, after crossing the channel over the Potomac on Ohio Drive, they arrived outside the Jefferson Memorial. They sought out the wide grassy area behind the colonnade, where the imposing statue of Jefferson was just visible between the white columns. Bourne spotted a park police officer in the middle of the grass. She was only in her mid-twenties, Black, with rigid posture. Her hair was tucked under her cap, and her uniform fit snugly on her muscular physique.
“Is that our contact?” Abbey asked quietly.
“Yes.”
“Do you want me to hang back?”
“No, you should hear this, too.”
Bourne approached the police officer in the grass. She had no smile, and her eyes watched him warily, which told him that she knew he was the man she was supposed to meet. He came up beside her and made a show of pointing at the memorial, as if he were nothing but a tourist asking a question.
“Who’s your favorite president?” Bourne asked.
“How about Chester A. Arthur? I’m a sucker for muttonchops.”
Jason smiled. “Nash says hi.”
“Yeah, right. Tell Nash I do this, and we’re even.”
“I will.”
The police officer eyed Abbey. “Who’s this? Nash didn’t say anything about a third party.”
“She’s with me,” Bourne replied.
The woman shrugged, then gestured at the building, as if answering Jason’s history questions. “First of all, you’re right about the night of the Mueller murder. Somebody took out the security camera in that area. So we don’t have any footage that shows what actually happened. Although I don’t know what you’re looking for, because the whole thing sounded pretty cut-and-dried.”
“And what about two days later? The parking area?”
She frowned. “Nash said you were looking to ID an old man driving a vintage silver car with out-of-state plates. That doesn’t exactly narrow it down around here. Every retiree in the country shows up in DC sooner or later, and silver or gray is a pretty common color. Plus, it was cherry blossom season. Everybody has to see the cherry blossoms.”
“What did you find?” Bourne asked.
“Ten possibles. I captured the best shots I could get from the feeds.”
She dug into her pocket and slid out her phone. With a few taps, she opened the photos app and slipped the device to Bourne. Still pretending to converse about the memorial, he began to examine the pictures, which all showed old men in or near gray and silver cars in the parking area near the FDR memorial. Abbey sidled close to him, and together they swiped through the photographs.
A couple of the pictures were too blurred to make out the faces properly. There was also one silver SUV from DC, not out of state. Two of the men looked way too young, their hair too dark, to match the description that Abbey had gotten from the postal worker in Hyattsville.
Bourne glanced at Abbey. “What do you think?”
“I’m not sure how to tell which one it could be. Or whether it’s any of them.”
“Look again,” Jason said.
With his thumb, he scrolled slowly through the pictures a second time, and this time, he enlarged the faces as much as he could with each photograph. He wished that the park police officer had downloaded actual video clips, rather than stills, because the behavior of each person would have helped rule them in or out. With just a picture of a face, it was hard to isolate whether one of these men was something more than a tourist.
Then Abbey said, “Wait. Look at that one.”
Bourne stopped. He examined the picture that had drawn Abbey’s attention. The man in the photograph was old, possibly in his eighties. He wore stylish sunglasses that wouldn’t have been out of place on a much younger man, and his clothes were casual but definitely expensive. Age had worn deep wrinkles into his skin, but he had a notably angular face, the bones looking as if they could have been sculpted by an artist working in stone. He was tall, with shoulders slightly hunched, as if worn down by time.
The silver car he stood beside definitely qualified as vintage. A collector’s car. It was a Lincoln Continental Mark IV that must have dated back to the 1970s. And the plates were partially cut off in the photograph, but the coloring suggested that the car was registered in Pennsylvania.
“He fits the profile,” Bourne agreed, “but so do a couple of the others.”
Abbey shook her head. “It’s more than that.”
“What do you mean?”
“I feel like I know him. I mean, I’m sure we’ve never met, but I know who he is.”
“Who?”
She frowned. “That’s the thing, I’m trying to place him. I’ve seen the face, but younger, and only in a photograph. A formal portrait. No sunglasses. He’s got amazing blue eyes. I can see his blue eyes, so I know I’ve seen his photo somewhere. Damn it, where? The picture was close-up, like on the—”
Abbey stopped. Jason watched her squeeze her eyes shut, trying to think, trying to remember. He knew only too well that memory didn’t work that way. But then Abbey’s eyes flew open.
“Serpent!” she whispered.
“What?”
“The novel that came out last year. The one that was obviously about the Medusa operation. I wrote to you about it, don’t you remember? There were characters in it that seemed to be based on you and me. They were too close to both of us to be a coincidence. I think I even asked you if you’d talked to him.”
“I didn’t,” Bourne replied, “but I remember you mentioning the book in one of your letters.”
Abbey jabbed a finger at the photograph. “It’s him. He wrote it. He wrote Serpent! He’s been writing conspiracy thrillers like that for years—Jesus, for decades. I found one of his books in the library when I was a teenager. It was supposedly just a novel, but the premise was that J. Edgar Hoover had actually been murdered. I remember thinking that he knew something, like it really could have happened that way. There’s no way this is a coincidence, Jason. Deborah Mueller was in DC to meet him. His name is Peter Chancellor.”
By nightfall, after nearly six hours of driving, Jason and Abbey were near the town of Clarendon, Pennsylvania, population three hundred and seventy. Their route took them deep into the heart of the Allegheny National Forest. Dense trees closed in on both sides, but every few miles, they passed a lonely house or trailer carved out of the wilderness. The road was dark, with a railroad track and overhead power lines running parallel to the highway. Somewhere nearby—they didn’t know exactly where—was the wooded hideaway belonging to Peter Chancellor. According to magazine articles they’d found, Chancellor lived like one of the characters in his conspiracy novels, in a reclusive, high-security estate.
Clarendon itself was only a few blocks long, tucked in a valley between the ridge lines of hills on both sides. Bourne’s rented Jeep was the only vehicle on the road. The small population lived in modest country homes, and the people and their children were mostly inside for the night. There were no fences separating neighbors. It was the kind of locals-only area where everyone knew everyone else, and Bourne was counting on the fact that a millionaire celebrity author couldn’t hope for privacy in a place like this.
The town included one stoplight on the main road, which was one more than it really seemed to need. A small tavern with a weathered wooden exterior was located at the intersection, and it seemed to be the only business that was still open in Clarendon when they arrived late in the evening. There were several other vehicles in the gravel lot adjacent to the building.
Bourne parked there, and he and Abbey got out. It was a cool night, and the sky was bright with stars. Inside, half a dozen people clustered near the counter of the bar, and others played darts and hung out in small groups. Alan Jackson sang on the jukebox. There was a loud, drunken vibe in the place, but it came to a dead halt—other than the chorus of “Chattahoochee”—as soon as they walked in. Strangers were obviously a rare sight here, and nobody hid their curiosity. Bourne ignored the stares as he led Abbey to two empty stools at the far end of the bar.
The bartender was a woman in her thirties, with bushy blond hair, who wore a Phillies T-shirt and old blue jeans. She was pleasant enough and obviously figured a customer was a customer, even if they were out-of-towners. “What’ll you two have?”
“Rolling Rock,” Bourne said. That was his own rule. Always order what the locals were drinking.
Abbey nodded, taking a cue from Jason. “Same.”
The woman popped open two green bottles and put them in front of them. “So what brings you two in here?”
“We’re just passing through on our way to Jamestown,” Bourne said.
“You want some food?”
“Sure.”
They both ordered burgers. While they waited, Bourne spun around on the stool and checked out the other people in the tavern. He and Abbey were still the center of attention. The crowd stole glances at them and conversed under their breath, no doubt speculating about who they were. Most of the people appeared to be harmless, but Bourne spotted four men at a table in the corner who didn’t hide their suspicion of the newcomers. All four were in their thirties, burly and tall, and one seemed to be the leader of the pack. He was bald, wearing a camouflage jacket and drinking whiskey rather than beer. His rolled-up sleeves revealed muscular arms and multiple military tattoos. Unlike the others, who shot sideways glances at Bourne and Abbey, this man held Jason’s stare without flinching.
Their burgers came. They ate in silence and nursed their beers. About ten minutes later, the man in camouflage pushed back his chair with a screech and came up to the bar. He stood next to Bourne, flagging the bartender’s attention. He didn’t look at Jason, or say anything, but the man stood close enough that his arm bumped Bourne and caused him to spill some of his Rolling Rock.
The man didn’t apologize. Bourne said nothing, but as the bartender headed their way, he nudged Abbey. He wanted the man to overhear their question.
Abbey smiled at the blond woman behind the bar. “Hey, I’m curious. I read that Peter Chancellor lives near here. Do you know where?”
The bartender glanced at the man in camouflage, then back at Abbey. “Who?”
“Peter Chancellor. You know, the writer.”
“Sorry. Don’t know him.”
The pained look on her face made it clear that she was lying. Next to Bourne, the bald man slowly clenched his fists together. Instead of ordering more beers, he waved the bartender away and then returned to the table in the corner. Not long after, all four men got up and left the bar.
Bourne and Abbey took their time finishing their meals. He didn’t drink most of his beer, and neither did she. Half an hour later, he paid cash, and they got off the stool and headed for the door, with the eyes of the crowd still following them. They exited to the quiet main street, then turned left to the gravel lot where he’d parked the Jeep. He had his hands in his pockets, fingers around the butt of his Sig.
The bald man in camouflage was waiting for them. He leaned against Bourne’s Jeep, one hand holding a phone, the other holding a Smith & Wesson revolver. Next to him, one of the other men stood with a Ruger 10/22 rifle pointed across the lot at Bourne’s chest. Jason stopped, then glanced over his shoulder to see another man emerge from around the far side of the tavern, an AR-15 propped against his shoulder. The last man walked their way down the sidewalk north of the bar. He carried a shotgun.
Their escape routes were closed off.
“Jason,” Abbey murmured.
“Don’t worry. It’s okay.”
Bourne stayed where he was. He took his hands slowly out of his jacket pockets and spread his fingers wide. “Evening. We’re not looking for any trouble here. What can we do for you gentlemen?”
“Why are you looking for Peter Chancellor?” the man in camouflage asked.
“I’m a fan,” Abbey blurted out, before Jason could stop her. “I’ve read a lot of his books.”
The man was smart enough to recognize the lie. “Bullshit. What’s the real reason?”
“All right, we want to talk to him,” Bourne said.
“Why?”
“We think he has information that can help us.”
“What kind of information?”
“About a woman named Deborah Mueller,” Bourne replied. “She was murdered in Washington. We think Mr. Chancellor knows why.”
“And who are you?” the man asked.
Jason nodded for Abbey to talk first.
“My name is Abbey Laurent,” she said. “I’m a journalist. Although I suspect Mr. Chancellor already knows that, because he based a character in his book Serpent! on me.”
The man in camouflage waited, but Bourne said nothing more.
“What about you?” he demanded when he could see that he wasn’t getting a reply.
“I’m with her,” Bourne said simply.
There was a long silence. Then the man held up the phone to his ear and said, “You get all that? What do you want us to do?”
The man listened, then hung up the phone and shoved it back in his pocket. He holstered his pistol and nodded at the other three men, who lowered their weapons. He took a few steps away from the Jeep, clearing a path for Bourne and Abbey.
“Follow us,” the man in camouflage told them. “He’s waiting for you.”