The Third Coincidence (31 page)

The woman left his room at four in the morning. Dalton had paid the agreed fee and a tip of an extra hundred. He could not imagine his next sexual collision topping this one, but he planned to try, per- haps to celebrate his ending the reign of the chief justice of the United States.

Already naked, he decided to risk taking a shower. It would make his DNA discoverable, but there were many places at which that could be true. He remained confident the authorities would have no reason to take note of a room rented under the name Tim LaRue.

After taking a long shower and rechecking his gear, he decided to go downstairs for breakfast. Before leaving the room, he slipped the do-not-disturb sign into the door’s outside card-lock slot, and wedged two tiny slivers of transparent paper behind the sign in such

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a way that they would be dislodged if anyone moved the sign to in- sert a card key.

Forty minutes later, after swallowing the last bite of a Belgian waffle, Dalton left the hotel and walked south on New Jersey Av- enue, crossed Louisiana Avenue, and entered the National Mall near the Taft Memorial. He stopped next to the Peace Monument and watched the rising sun create a nimbus around the Capitol Dome. He was sure the sighting was a symbol from God, or perhaps his father. There would soon be a new dawning for America.

Near the Smithsonian Institute, he cut over to pick up Ninth Street, then veered right at Constitution Avenue to start his trip back to the hotel. Along the meandering route, he selected the spots where he would leave the red baseball caps and several places where he could slip out of sight.

His first choice would be the bushes behind the café in the Sculpture Garden between Constitution Avenue and Madison Drive, across Seventh Avenue from the West Building of the National Gallery of Art. If events prevented him from getting there, he would duck into either the Sudworth arborvitae and false cypress near the southwest corner of the garden, or the bushes beside the yellow buckeye tree at the corner of Seventh Street and Madison Drive. The latter would provide the poorest cover, but be directly on his route back to the Hyatt.

He would make the final decision on the fly, as circumstances dictated.

After long practice he had reduced to twenty seconds the time needed to remove the velcro-attached leggings, pull off his sweat- shirt, slip on the orange sweatbands and, if he had a few extra sec- onds, stick some bright-orange reflective tape onto his running shoes. After that he would emerge from hiding with his appearance changed from a man in full-length pants, a sweatshirt, and a red baseball cap, to just another jogger in shorts and a T-shirt.

Then transformed, he would cross Madison Drive and, under

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cover of the trees, move east with the tourists and other pedestrians. To return to the Hyatt he could take either Third Avenue to D Street, or Constitution Avenue to New Jersey Avenue.

At seven he eased his way down the hall to his hotel room and silently pulled out the do-not-disturb sign. The paper slivers softly fluttered to the hallway carpet. He smiled. No one had entered his room.

He set the alarm clock and, for a backup, called downstairs for a noon wake-up call.

I cannot be late. Today, is Daddy’s birthday.

CHAPTER 48

Nominees are delaying their appearances, waiting for Jack McCall or his rumored replacement to put an end to the terror of Commander LW.

—Marian Little, NewsCentral 7

june 21, 3:37 a.m.

For centuries, agents and soldiers had filled their solitary time be- fore dangerous missions with prayers and silent messages for their loved ones, entrusted to the telepathic winds. It had likely been that way since the beginning of soldiering. It was in that kind of quiet that Jack and the members of his squad traveled north on I-95, fol- lowed by an unmarked FBI SWAT van.

After parking on a tree-lined side street, they quietly moved to the edge of Dalton’s property. The moon, peeking in and out from behind passing clouds, brightened and darkened what appeared by all reasonable measures to be just another sedate suburban home.

In the distance, the tires of a car squealed rounding a corner. A residential street light, nearly defeated by a canopy of tree branches, brought an illumination similar to a jungle in the refracted light pre- ceding sunrise.

Jack could see the west side of the garage and enough of the front to know its straw-like yard suffered from neglect. He had limited the number of SWAT agents to four plus their squad leader and two elec- tronic surveillance experts. In foreign ops he had handled tougher in-

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filtrations with less manpower. If they didn’t catch Dalton, Jack didn’t want the neighbors and, through them, the media to learn of this raid. Given the tense state of the union, anything even possibly about LW became instant news.

The FBI SWAT team used a FLIR scope to confirm Dalton had not applied the heat-generating chemical on his own home.

SWAT Team Leader Mike Edgerson dispersed his four SWAT men to the four corners of Dalton’s house. These positions would allow two shooters a view of the front, back, and each side of the house.

“Set. Set. Set. Set.”

The four shooters whispered in rapid sequence to indicate they had taken their positions out of sight off the corners of the house. It also meant they had set up portable lighting to illuminate the perimeter. The lamps would not be lit unless they heard the com- mand “light it up,” or heard gunshots in or around the house. Every- one involved in the assault was wearing dark SWAT jackets with reflective FBI lettering on the back.

Jack, Colin, and Rachel crept toward the front door where a vine- covered trellis provided cover from the closest neighbor, while Frank, Nora, and Rex moved toward the back door.

Jack turned his attention to picking the locks and at 4:23 a.m., with the yet unseen morning sun throwing orange across the eastern sky, he whispered into his radio.

“Ready.”

“On your command,” Frank replied, letting Jack know he had also picked the lock in the rear door.

“Now.”

The hinges screeched as Jack nudged the door. For a moment he stood frozen to the spot listening for any noise from inside. Hearing only quiet, he pushed the door far enough for them to enter. There were no more squeaks.

The smells of old food and stale air crowded them as the narrow

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light tubes from their handheld flashlights bleached out hunks of darkness, beyond their lights the sense of an ancient Egyptian tomb. An arcing light in the kitchen, the size of a quarter, told Jack that Frank, Nora, and Rex had successfully entered through the back of the house. Frank held his hand in front of his flashlight and raised his thumb. Jack raised his. The ground floor appeared clear. Frank’s team moved to check the two-car garage.

The SWAT team had been instructed not to use their radios once Jack’s squad got inside other than to say one of three words: front, back, or garage. If it came, the one word signal would mean they were about to have company and the expected point of entry. If more than one person approached, a number would be added after the one word. Jack had instructed the SWAT team to let whoever ar- rived enter without interference.

Frank came close and whispered. “It looks like he’s gone.” “Car?” Jack asked.

Frank shook his head. “Gone.”

Jack knew there were reasons why a person might be home with- out their automobile. He told Frank to stay downstairs with Rachel and Nora in case an entry alert came from outside, then motioned for Colin and Rex to follow him upstairs.

The three men inched up the stairs keeping their feet to the sides where stairs were least apt to complain to a step. When the stairs creaked anyway, the three men stood motionless, sweat beading on Jack’s forehead. But there was no sign their quarry had been alerted. After Colin nudged Jack, they continued on without stopping until they reached the landing at the top.

They worked the upstairs landing from left to right, communi- cating with only their hands. Jack focused on each doorknob. Colin kept his focus on the entire door, and Rex stayed alert for an assault originating from the remaining doors to their right.

The first door opened into a linen closet. The next, a full bath. The room beyond that was a study with a desk, computer area, and

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file cabinets. There were framed photographs covering the walls, many of them of a man, but the majority were copies of documents. From the news accounts he recognized Isaac’s father. As for Isaac himself, Jack had seen one picture, but that was enough. The rest were likely some of the older Dalton’s writings, the stuff Marsha had

found in the archives.

A muted sound came. The three men froze. The low clattering came again. The muscles in Jack’s stomach tensed. He saw Colin rotate his hand in the air before pointing toward a narrowly open window where irregular breezes were pulsing the metal blinds against the sill.

The next room, a bedroom, was empty except for a tanning bed placed in the center of the floor. A woman’s clothes hung in the closet, inside plastic bags the way they would come from the dry cleaners.

Then another bedroom, this one stained with the blunt smell of body odor. Clothes were strewn everywhere. Jack’s flashlight found an empty Cracker Jack box, its contents scattered, the beam chased a cockroach into a pile of clothes. Pictures of women crowded the top of the dresser. No. The pictures were all the same middle-aged woman. The room had a messy closet and the attached bathroom was filthy.

Isaac Dalton’s bedroom. It had to be.

When the three joined the others downstairs, Jack raised his radio and said, “Clear.” That one-word instructed SWAT Leader Edgerson to send in the two electronics experts. Jack met them at the door.

“One up. One down. You know what to do. Keep it moving. We need to be out of here as quickly as possible.”

The experts turned on the small lights in their headgear and spread out to plant cameras and listening devices in the living room, kitchen, the upstair’s office, and Dalton’s bedroom. They would also bug the phones.

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Jack took his squad upstairs. “See what you can, but leave things as you find them. And be ready to go when the electronics guys are done. Estimate twenty minutes. Rachel, get on that computer. The rest of you look for files on the targets. Frank, let’s look downstairs.” The next twenty minutes passed like two hours. At 4:59, Jack leaned into the office doorway and looked first at Rachel, then at

Nora. They both shook their heads.

“The electronics are done,” he said. “We’re out of here. Leave everything just like you found it.”

Rachel turned off the computer and repositioned the keyboard and mouse to the precise places she had found them.

“Nothing in Dalton’s computer had been encrypted or even pro- tected by a password,” she told Jack. The two teams left the house the same way they had entered. “I copied his files and e-mail onto a CD,” Rachel said. “He had no electronic address book.”

In the spreading predawn light, Jack saw a
For Rent
sign in the yard of the house across the street.

“Check that out, Mike,” he told the SWAT leader. “If it’s empty, occupy it and man an observation post until we can get agents here to relieve you.”

Edgerson nodded and alone started across the street. The others waited in the trees. A minute later, Edgerson’s voice came over their shoulder-mounted radio. “Vacant.” His SWAT team set up cameras to watch the back door of Dalton’s house before they crossed the street to join Edgerson. On their way, one of them removed the rental sign.

“Rex, as soon as we get back to the CIA, get ahold of that prop- erty owner. Have them tell the leasing agent they are taking the property off the rental market. Tell the owner the government will be using the house in an investigation and that the use must be con- fidential. If the owner is not cooperative see Director Hampton. Within the hour I want a sign on that house designating it as a health hazard, with a do-not-enter sign carrying a phone number answered

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at FBI headquarters. Callers are to be told there’s no danger as long as they don’t trespass, and that an environmental contractor will abate the hazard within a week to ten days.”

Five minutes later they were back on I-95 heading south. In the distance the headlights from a steady stream of early traffic pierced the withdrawing darkness as if chased by the rushing beams of light.

After minutes of tense silence, Nora broke the ice. “That upstair’s office was a goddamned shrine. It felt creepy.”

“He had a beautiful computer desk,” Rachel said.

“So were the walls,” said Colin. “The room had cherry wood wainscoting with forest green vinyl wall covering above it and a cherry wood floor with an expensive Persian area rug.”

“I didn’t know you were into interior decorating,” Nora re- marked.