Blown (14 page)

Cuddy hadn’t looked at her much as he ricocheted along the riverbank toward Georgetown. The car hugged the wide curves of the Potomac at a speed that was nowhere near legal.

“With Eric dead, finally dead, there’s nobody to screw Scottie’s perfect little world. We can’t give him that one, Carrie. We can’t let our Great White Chief walk away clean. We’ve got to fight.”

“By shutting Eric in a hole?” she shot back bitterly. “Where the fuck are we, anyway?”

Cuddy had pulled up next to a leafless cherry tree drooping over a cracked curb. A pink flamingo stabbed the mulch near a set of entry stairs.

“Steve Price’s house.”

“The reporter?” She was incredulous. “I don’t even
know
him.”

“Exactly. So Ricin Boy’ll never think to look for you here.”

He had thought of everything, it seemed. A change of clothes for the woman she’d become—black mini, stiletto heels, a set of breasts far more impressive than her own. As she stood with her small black shoulder bag in the center of the empty living room, he delivered his whole script in rapid-fire staccato. Al Capone with words of one syllable.

“Wear the clothes and the Look when you go out.
Wear
them, Mad Dog. I want Caroline Carmichael to disappear from the face of the earth, you understand?”

“What if the Bureau gets nervous?”

“I’ll tell Shephard you’re heading to Hank’s for some R and R. Leave the number where you can be reached on Long Island. Then have Hank screen your calls.”

She considered this; it might work. Hank was her great-uncle, the man who’d raised her from the age of twelve. Hank would die for her, if only she’d ask.

“And don’t call me at work,” Cuddy warned. “If you need to meet, have Price get in touch. He can contact me without looking suspicious.”

Caroline glanced despairingly around the unfamiliar apartment. “The poor sucker can’t realize the danger he’s in. What he’s taken on by helping me.”

“He’s well paid.”

“By whom?”

“You, Carrie.” For the first time that day Cuddy smiled. “There’s a quid pro quo involved. You get a room that’s clean; Price gets your story. And
God,
does he want it. Just decide which one to tell him. Personally, I’d use the power of the press for all it’s worth.”

“I should find another hotel. I could register as Miss—Miss whoever I am.” She shook the latex mask at him.

“Jennifer Lacey.” He handed her a wallet. Driver’s license, Visa card, passport—all in the Look’s name.

“Raphael just
gave
you this stuff?” Raphael was the legendary head of OTS. “What lie did you tell him?”

“—That I’d recruited the wife of a terrorist,” he said indifferently.

“You’re mounting an op!”

“Damn straight.”

She studied his face; as usual, the steady brown eyes gave nothing away, but by this time she could almost read Cuddy’s mind. “CTC is your cover job. Scottie’s your target. I’m your girl on the street and Eric’s the bit of business you’re using to distract the audience. What exactly do you want me to do, Cud?”

“Stay alive. And work your leads. I can’t, sitting under Scottie’s nose.”

Her leads. The names of five staffers in the Payne household and a twelve-year-old boy who might or might not be poison.

“You can start with this.”

He was dangling a CD-ROM in a plastic case.

“You managed to save Eric’s disc?”

“No. Scottie ordered me to hand it over and I watched while he destroyed it. But he didn’t think to ask if I’d made copies.”

Of course Cuddy had made copies.

“You took classified information out of the building, Cud.”

“With Dare dead and the original destroyed, there’s no record we ever got Eric’s information. I think we can use it to undermine Scottie without admitting this disc ever reached the CIA.”

“And what about Eric? What happens to Eric?”

“The BKA has charged him with murder.” Cuddy pocketed her keys; apparently even her Jetta was to be confiscated. To be parked at Dulles while some blond double flew to JFK, if Caroline knew Cuddy. “His blood and prints are all over a stiff they found at the Berlin lab. We’ll extradite him, of course.”

“That could take months.”

“Not this time. The Germans are falling over themselves to look helpful. They want the credit for nabbing Sophie Payne’s kidnapper, and the public’s thanks for returning our terrorist to crucify. I’d give it three days before he’s home.”

“Three
days
? Cuddy—that’s not enough
time
. Not enough to—”

“Pin Scottie to the floor with a scalpel? We’ll manage it. We’ve got more friends than Scottie does.”

She sat down abruptly on her suitcase, all the hopeless misery suddenly overwhelming her.
Three days.
She would lose him for good this time.

“It’s not all bad, you know,” Cuddy said awkwardly. “Eric’s under twenty-four-hour armed guard and he’s guaranteed a ticket home. He’s got a chance to tell his story in federal court with the entire country watching. He’s got a
chance,
Carrie.”

Instead of a bullet in the brain.

She had to agree it was something.

Chapter 27

BETHESDA, 4:19 P.M.

“What have you got for me, Kaylie?” Shephard demanded.

He was standing just inside the yellow tape that separated a ghoulish band of spectators from the abandoned black limousine Norm Wilhelm had driven through Arlington National Cemetery that morning. Wilhelm was still sitting in the driver’s seat, hands in his lap and a slack expression of contentment on his middle-aged face; most of his brains were spattered over the armor-plated door.

“Hair samples and some mucous,” Kaylie Marks answered briskly. She was a slight woman in aqua hospital scrubs; the bones of her face were prominent as a horse’s. Kaylie had spent nearly a decade in the Bureau’s Laboratory Division and was in charge of the forensic team dispatched to this deserted spot on the vast asphalt parking lot of White Flint Mall, after a bunch of suburban skateboarders had bolted in terror from the sight of Norm Wilhelm’s blasted cranium.

The first police response had come at three-fifteen; it had taken another forty-five minutes to connect a random chauffeur’s murder with Jozsef Krucevic. His doctors had phoned the Secret Service, asking when the boy would be returned to Bethesda Naval. It was the first hint anybody had that Jozsef had vanished.

And he didn’t walk away,
Tom thought,
leaving this mess behind him. The kid was in no state to walk.

“I took the samples from the backseat and headrest.” Kaylie held up a plastic bag for Tom’s inspection. “Kid was sedated, right? That’d explain the drool. And he was under a blanket?”

Tom nodded.

“We found some wool fibers. We can compare this stuff with whatever data Bethesda Naval might have—but DNA sampling will take time, you know.”

“Any blood?”

“Nothing major in the back,” she said cautiously. Major blood didn’t need explanation; it was all over the front seat. “Just spatters we’ll probably find are from the driver. And
this
.”

She dangled a second bag with a single hair in front of Tom’s nose. He strained his eyes to see it; brown and long: Jozsef’s was black and short.

“Probably a woman’s,” Kaylie added. “Snagged on the headrest.”

“Back or front?”

“Back.”

“But Jozsef was alone—”

She frowned. “Way I see it, sir, is either she sat in the seat after the boy was taken from the car—unlikely, since his samples weren’t disturbed—or she bent over to lift him out.”

“And her hair swung forward and caught,” Tom said approvingly. “A woman drove the shooter at Arlington. Did this one kill Wilhelm?”

“Not from behind. The shot to the chauffeur’s head was probably fired by a right-handed person sitting in the front passenger seat.” Kaylie set down the evidence bags and moved swiftly around to the right-hand door. Tom followed her. “He or she placed the muzzle flat against the temple and pulled the trigger. The powder burns are almost circular. And another thing—the bullet passed right through Wilhelm’s brain and exited over his left ear. We found it buried in the inner plating of the driver’s door.”

“M16? Like Dare Atwood?”

“No way.” She shook her head regretfully; like all the old hands of Laboratory Division, she relished a consistent investigation. “The bullet’s a thirty-two caliber. Handgun. Beyond that, I can’t tell you much. There are fourteen thousand kinds of ammunition manufactured in the United States, and none of it’s traceable.”

“But this slug may match the bullet that killed the EMT on Memorial Drive. Any long brown hair in the limo’s front seat?”

“None.”

It made sense, Tom thought: The woman had driven the gray Chrysler K-car through Arlington National Cemetery while someone—Ricin Boy?—fired out the back window; then she’d taken Jozsef from the rear of the limo while her partner finished off Wilhelm. But how had the hit gone down? There was no sign of a struggle—no damage to the car or its driver. It was almost as though Wilhelm had been expecting to lose his passenger . . . as though he’d driven here to White Flint Mall, a bare few miles north of Bethesda Naval Hospital, on purpose to meet his killers . . .

Tom straightened and stepped back from the bloodied limo door, his exhausted mind suddenly racing.
Wilhelm had known his killers.
He’d deliberately stopped to hand off the boy. Caroline’s voice—Caroline’s stubborn insistence spiraled through Tom’s ragged thoughts:
Thirty April had agents in place inside the Naval Observatory.
Wilhelm? Or one of his friends?

“Thanks.” Tom turned abruptly away from Kaylie Marks. He had to get back to Headquarters; he needed to pull those background files.

“Sir!” the forensic technician called after him. “
Sir!
There’s one more thing!”

He stopped short. “Well?”

With the air of an art dealer unveiling a particularly choice piece, Kaylie held up a small square card between her fingertips.

“Prints,” she said. “A nearly perfect set of somebody’s right hand. We found them on the underside of the back door handle.”

For the first time in nearly a year, Rebekah felt the singing, light-headed joy of the Lord’s presence as she plunged the truck through the ruts of the unpaved road. She was buoyed by it, this return of the Savior and the enfolding love that steadied her hands as she gripped the steering wheel. When He had struck down her Dolf in His terrible mercy and carried him off to Glory at His right hand, she had not understood His infinite wisdom or the plan that lay so clearly marked out before her. She had turned her back on the Lamb. She had wailed in the desert against the hardness of this misery, this brutal, wrenching loss that cut the living heart from her body. She had sunk deep into the abyss of her grief, had wanted self-murder, wanted the pain of torn flesh and violence, as though in bleeding herself she might understand what her boy had endured before the end.

She had sinned, again and again, in the treachery of her disbelief. He had tested her will and her allegiance and she had failed every test. But the Lord had returned, to show Bekah just how much His love could stand; this time, she was ready. She could lift up her face and welcome Him with open arms, because He had seen fit to give her a second child, washed new in His blood.

The Savior was riding shotgun at this moment beside her while the sleeping boy wedged behind her seat moaned in drugged dreams. His Divine Love governed Bekah’s every move, and she knew now, with the certainty of this singing joy, that no one had seen them. No one would follow. They had delivered the boy from his enemies, and they would protect and rear him against the final assault of the End Times.

“. . . washed new in the blood of the Lamb,”
she muttered aloud.
“Washed new in the blood of the Lamb.”
She would fix Dolf’s favorite meal—ham and potato salad and baked beans—and this boy, this Son of the Leader sacrificed to His Enemies, would eat and be glad.

Ahead, in the dirt pullout beside the switchback that led toward the farm, a motorcycle was waiting.
Daniel.
When he caught sight of the truck, he stepped out into the road, his arms waving. A slight figure in his old field jacket and wool cap, his sharp-featured face neither welcoming nor touched with Glory. Bekah frowned, her fingers white on the wheel. What was he doing here? It wasn’t part of the plan. But she must Trust in His Goodness. Must shut her mind to the voice of the Devil, the voice of Reason, which was as nothing to the sword of Faith.

She pulled over behind the bike.

“Well?” she asked as she rolled down the window.

“Get out, girl.”

“But,
Daniel—
”

“Take the bike home. I’ll call you from the road.”

His strong blunt hand was on the doorframe and she saw what he meant to do—how he meant to take the boy for himself and head out into the night with his bloodshot eyes and his face lined with weariness from the long hard servitude under the Lord—and all her agony welled up inside her. The singing light-headed joy melted into desolation.
My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me?

“Come on, now,” he snapped, “I ain’t got all day.”

“What about the boy?” she whispered. “He needs dinner.”

Daniel glanced into the back. “Don’t know which end is up, looks like. You go on home. I’ll be in touch.”

She jumped from the truck’s running board to the ground. He brushed past her, not a word or a look of comfort. There was blood on his field jacket, she could see it now, and the smell of sweat rose from his unclean skin. How long since he’d sat down in his own house? How many days? She’d lost count.

“Where’s Norm gone?”

He didn’t answer. The truck door slammed.

“Daniel—I asked you where my brother is!” she shouted over the sound of the ignition.

He lifted his hand in salute, broad flat fingers swerving out from his forehead like he’d been taught by the Zoggite masters. She pounded once on the hood of the truck but he surged forward, arms roving over the steering wheel, and that quickly she was alone. Dust in her nostrils. Darkness falling. And the first spattering of harsh rain.