Seven Grams of Lead (34 page)

“It’s nice.” Thornton reflected that he should have figured that this was the mistress’s place. Langlind could pull in and out of the driveway here in his limo—or in a Sherman tank—without fear of anyone hearing or seeing.

“Drink?” asked Langlind.

“I’m okay, thanks,” Thornton said.

The senator waved him to the closest of two facing
wing chairs in front of an immense stone hearth. Taking the other seat, Langlind said, “So we’re off the record, yes?”

Whatever it took, Thornton thought. “Every syllable.”

“No tape recorder?”

Thornton plucked at the sides of his jumpsuit, where pockets would be. “I don’t even have a pen.”

Langlind slid forward in his seat, his expression serious. “Littlebird is one of the national security stories you need to keep to yourself.”

“That’s a lot of them.”

“You’ve earned a reputation for discretion.”

Langlind was being too nice. He’d been drinking, yes, Thornton thought, but still, the geniality was a notch too high, even by the standards of elected officials. What if Langlind’s game, like Thornton’s own, was to obtain information pertaining to the Littlebird operation? Once Langlind ascertained that his role had yet to be discovered by the authorities, what would stop him from giving a signal summoning men from the woodwork, their weapons drawn, game over?

“Why is discretion in order with this case?” Thornton asked.

“Two reasons. The first is, quid pro quo, our good friend Beryl Mallery’s criminal charges will be dropped. And yours too, of course. Reason number two is national security. Littlebird supplies more than
a trillion dollars’ worth of intelligence per annum to American corporations, bolstering our interests more than any ten weapons systems. Yes, in order to keep the secret, they may have gotten a little carried away. Everyone knows the spooks get carried away sometimes.”

“What’s the TFI going to do about it?” Thornton tried.

“The Office of Terrorism and Financial Intelligence? Littlebird isn’t a Treasury operation. Why would you think that?”

Thornton took another stab. “So it’s Homeland?”

With a smile, Langlind cut him off. “You know all that you need to.”

“I do know that this isn’t just a national security matter. If that’s all it was, the path of least resistance would have been for the Littlebird operators, whoever they are, to appeal to my discretion from the get-go. As you know, I hardly ever refuse to hold a story that would jeopardize national security. But instead of coming to me, they went on a killing spree, which would have included me, too, if not for a couple of lucky breaks.”

“No one’s excusing their actions. Rest assured, there will be repercussions.”

“I’ll rest assured when I know which spooks exactly got carried away and what the repercussions are. Until then I’m an accessory in the murders of innocent Americans like Catherine Peretti.”

The senator shifted uncomfortably. “She got mixed up with the wrong people.”

“Yeah.” Thornton sat upright with—calculated—indignation. “You.”

Langlind looked at a painting. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Thornton countered with a bluff of his own. “I uploaded the recording of the phone call where you say Cathy knows too much and your buddy tells you that she’ll be
taken care of.
”

Langlind paled. “You have a recording of that?”

“Why do you think I broke into SofTec?”

“What’s SofTec?”

“The listening post.”

“Is that the place where the Littlebird audio goes?”

Thornton realized that the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee was no more than a glorified cutout in the operation. The recipient of Langlind’s “Mr. Robertson” call about the supposed ad in the alumni magazine, however, was responsible for killing Peretti, for starters. Who had Langlind called?

“I take it you didn’t know there was a Littlebird in your head,” Thornton said.

Alarmed, Langlind, who wore his watch on his left wrist, shot his right index finger to his right sideburn and rubbed, probing for the device.

“If you’re right-handed, it’s behind your left ear,” Thornton said. “But it’s pretty difficult to feel it.”

Langlind tried.

“Anyway, it’s disabled now, on account of SofTec blowing up,” Thornton added, though it was probable that the Littlebird operation had a redundancy system, maybe even in Bridgetown. He wanted Langlind to keep talking.

The senator clutched his forehead, as though trying to staunch pain. “You have to believe me, I had no idea whatsoever that they were going to kill Cathy.”

“What did you think they were going to do? Send her a strongly worded e-mail?”

Langlind took the remaining half of his scotch in a single slug. He got up, poured another from the crystal decanter on the mantelpiece, and dropped back into the seat with the weariness of having just climbed a mountain. “How can we keep my name out of this?” he asked.

“Right now, your name’s conjoined to the operation, and it’s only going to get worse,” Thornton said. “If, however, you were to implicate the true guilty party …”

“There’s no way I can do that.”

“No one has to hear that call recording.” Thornton put on an air of sympathy. “You were used. If you tell me who had Catherine Peretti killed, you can walk away.”

Langlind winced. “To face charges of election fraud.”

“That’s something we can work—”

“Also you’re assuming they would let me walk away.”

“They’ll be in Allenwood.”

“They’ll take me to Allenwood with them, given what they’ve got on me. And that’s at best.”

Thornton recalled Mallery’s speculation that Langlind Petrochemical might have made hay with the Littlebird intel.

Langlind thrust himself into an upright position. Still he appeared to be crumbling. He continued to feel for the Littlebird, muttering, as if to whoever implanted the bug, “So that’s how you knew …”

Election fraud and passing along inside information probably ranked among the more benign of Langlind’s transgressions, Thornton suspected. “Senator, this is your chance to make amends,” he said. “If nothing else, you’ll be acting patriotically, potentially saving lives.”

Langlind rose abruptly, inadvertently elbowing his tumbler from its perch on the arm of the chair. The glass shattered against the stone fireplace. He didn’t seem to notice. Fixing moist eyes on Thornton, he said, “No matter what, I’m a complete goddamned disgrace.”

He punched the wainscoting to the side of the mantel. A hidden panel sprang open, revealing a pistol of heirloom variety, a Colt model 1911, it looked like, with a hand-detailed steel barrel, ivory-inlaid grip, and, more pertinently, .45 ACP bullets sufficient
to take Thornton’s head off. Hands slippery with scotch or perspiration, Langlind struggled to get a firm grip on the weapon.

Thornton threw himself over the side of his wing chair, then dove for the floor behind the seat. The leather and stuffing would reduce the speed of a lethal shot by only a few negligible miles per hour, but if Langlind couldn’t see him, he would have greater difficulty hitting him.

Thornton landed sharply, the sounds lost beneath the roar of the gun.

In the reflection on a ceramic sculpture, Thornton saw Langlind topple before the fireplace apron knocked the gun free of his mouth and he lay stockstill, a crater where his left eye and cheekbone had been. Brain tissue and blood streaked the white wainscoting like spilled paint. Suicide, Thornton realized, with a mix of shock, relief, and revulsion. His hands and forearms were dappled with more blood. He pried what he took for the ricocheted bullet from his forearm. A skull fragment, he realized.

What the hell were you thinking in coming here? he asked himself.

Followed by the more pressing question: Now what?

Call the police? He’d gathered no evidence, only left it: His fingerprints were everywhere, including in blood on the wing chair. Which was the least of it. Another brick of Semtex would be required to erase
his biological presence from this scene. And still he would be damned by testimonies of four witnesses from the DOJ. Calling the authorities now would only add another lifetime to his sentence.

The pool of blood beneath the body was spreading along the floorboards toward Thornton. An odd idea struck him: What if Langlind has his cell phone on him now?

Thornton could scroll through the list of outgoing calls and find out whom Langlind called the day before Peretti was killed.

Why the hell not?

Rising from behind the wing chair, he averted his focus from the gruesome remainder of Langlind’s face. Kneeling by the body, which lay on its left side, he dipped his fingers into the right suit pants pocket and hit something metal and boxy. He withdrew the keyless remote for a Ford. Nothing else in the pocket.

That the cell phone would be in the gabardine suit coat draped over the sofa was too much to hope for. He got up and looked anyway. Nope, no sign of it.

Stomach clenched, he returned to the corpse, took hold of the slick shoulders, and rolled over the torso. Heavier than he looked, Langlind fell onto his belly with a splash, the blood peppering Thornton’s face. Grimacing, he shot a hand into Langlind’s left pants pocket. He found a BlackBerry.

He backed away and began scrolling through the recent calls.

And there it was:
OCTOBER 23, 9:02 P
.
M
.

Same as on the transcript.

The recipient’s number was in the 305 area code: northern Virginia. Thornton tapped open the Web browser and accessed the potent reverse phone directory to which
RealStory
subscribed.

Nothing for this 305 number. Could be that the phone was a prepaid; often, even long-held cell numbers didn’t appear in directories.

He wished he had reason to believe the FBI could get any further with the number. But if and when Musseridge and company got around to it, the phone would long since have been disposed of.

For a time, though, Thornton realized he had capital that might net him the identity of the killers. For as long as no one else knew Langlind was dead, he could pose as the senator and call the 305 number …

But then what? It was unlikely the person on the other end would answer by name. And, although Thornton once wrote an in-depth feature about a versatile theater actor, he couldn’t pass for Langlind to save his life.

He noticed, however, that Langlind had texted frequently. None of the accessible texts had been sent to the 305 number. But what was there to lose in texting it now?

Thornton chose
TEXT
, then entered
“need 2 meet u asap someplc crowded,”
and hit
SEND
, blipping the message into the ether.

Awaiting a response, he took in a colorful Gustav Klimt lithograph and a distorted face painted by Dalí. The silence from the corpse was unnerving.

A whole minute passed.

What the hell was he expecting?

Time for a different plan. He pocketed the phone, thinking about finding himself some clothing that wasn’t covered in gore and then—

The phone vibrated, shocking him.

Mr. X had texted back:

Eleven thirty, one hour from now. Unless 1130 were code for, say, twelve thirty. Encrypting a meeting time by the addition or subtraction of a certain number of hours or minutes was typical in clandestine circles. But “Langlind” had asked to meet
asap.
Also the real Langlind was clumsy with tradecraft, as exhibited in his transcribed attempt to call Mr. X, as well as in answering the door here. X probably would be wise to steer clear of encryption. It was likely 1130 indeed meant eleven thirty.

So what was
bm
? Basement? If so, why not just
b
? Thornton suspected
bm
was a location in and of itself. Closest the search engines got him was a public relations firm, Burson-Marsteller, on Vermont Avenue. Doubtful. He could text back and ask, but if
bm
were a previous meeting spot, Mr. X’s suspicions would be aroused.

Thornton keyed in
BM
as a search term for Langlind’s thousands of texts, netting jut one result,
submission
, used in regard to a
Post
op-ed ghostwritten for him by one of his staffers.

Thornton tried a colon, used almost uniquely in reference to times in texts. He netted forty-seven. Two offered a lead. Both at eleven forty-five one September morning and at eleven forty-eight on another, Selena Seldridge had proposed that she and Langlind meet “@ the big man.” Could Langlind have been so deficient in tradecraft that he rendezvoused with his mistress for lunch at the same place he conducted clandestine meetings? No-brainer.

So where was
the big man
? The Lincoln Memorial fit the bill for a public meeting spot, but it seemed
too
public. Tour group leaders and politics junkies would recognize Langlind. Thornton returned to the BlackBerry’s search engine and entered
big man Washington dc
, generating the moniker for an untitled sculpture by artist Ron Mueck. This
Big Man
could be found at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, which “showcased modern and contemporary art and sculpture.” Looking around this house, one would conclude that Langlind—or at least the homeowner, Selena Seldridge—had an affinity for modern and contemporary art and sculpture. Also the Hirshhorn was on the National Mall, seemingly public enough, but not too public, as opposed to its neighbors, the Smithsonian and the
National Air and Space Museum. It was more easily accessible, too, with less security and fewer cameras. In short, a decent location for a clandestine get-together, and just a fifteen-minute walk from Langlind’s office.

John Doe number
four met the Department of Justice SUV by the side door to the Mandarin Oriental hotel. He whisked a cashmere overcoat from a Saks shopping bag and held it out for Mallery. Considerate of him, she thought: she wouldn’t have to suffer the indignity of being seen in the orange jumpsuit. She backed into the coat, the high collar nicely countering the knifelike gusts off the Potomac.