Every nerve in my body was stretched tight and burning. My right hand rested on the hard butt of my Glock. I kept thinking that any one of these people could be Jack or Jill. The handgun seemed insubstantial in the huge, noisy crowd.
I had made it to the second row, just to the right of the ten-to-twelve-foot-high stage. The light in the hall seemed to be fading, but maybe it was the light inside my head. The light inside my soul?
The President was just stepping onto the gray metal stairs. He clasped the hand of a well-wisher. The President patted the shoulder of another. He seemed to have forced the idea of danger out of his mind.
Sally Byrnes climbed the stairs in front of her husband. I could see her features clearly. I held the thought that maybe Jack and Jill could, too. Secret Service agents seemed to take up all the available space around the stage.
I was there when it finally happened. I was so close to President Byrnes.
Jack and Jill struck with a terrible vengeance.
A bomb went off. The loudest imaginable clap of thunder struck near the stage—maybe even on the stage itself. The explosion was completely unexpected by the bodyguards surrounding the President. It detonated inside the defense perimeter.
Chaos! A bomb instead of gunfire! Even though the auditorium had been swept for bombs just that morning, I was thinking as I rushed forward. I noticed that my hand was bleeding—probably from the earlier tussle with the nutcase, but maybe from the bomb.
The worst imaginable sequence of actions began to unfold and in very fast motion. Pistols and riot-control shotguns were pulled out everywhere in the crowd. No one seemed to know where the bomb had hit yet, or how, or the actual calculations of damage done. Or what purpose the explosion was meant to serve?
Everyone dropped to the floor in the first twenty rows and up on the stage.
Thick black smoke billowed toward the ceiling, the glass roof, and overhanging steel girders.
The air smelled like human hair burning. People were screaming everywhere. I couldn’t tell how many were hurt. I couldn’t see the President anymore.
The bomb had detonated close to the stage. Very close to where President Byrnes had been standing, shaking hands and chatting, just a few seconds before. The ringing was still vibrating in my ears.
I frantically pushed my way toward the stage. There was no way to tell how many people had been injured, or maybe even killed, by the blast. I still couldn’t locate the President or Mrs. Byrnes because of the smoke and the bodies suddenly in frenzied motion. TV cameramen were wading in toward the disaster scene.
I finally spotted a cluster of Secret Service agents huddled tightly around the President. They had him up on his feet. Thomas Byrnes was alive; he was safe. The agents were starting to move him out of harm’s way. The Secret Service body guards acted as a human shield for the President, who didn’t appear to be hurt.
I had my Glock out, pointed up at the rafters for safety. I shouted, “Police!”
Several other Secret Service agents and NYPD detectives were doing the same thing. We were identifying ourselves to one another. Trying not to get shot, trying not to shoot anybody else during the terrifying confusion. Several people in the crowd were crying hysterically.
I kept pushing and pulling my way toward the southwest side exit that the Secret Service had used to bring the President in. The escape route had been established beforehand.
Beyond the glowing red EXIT sign, a long concrete tunnel led to a special visitors’ parking area on the river side of the building. Bulletproof, armor-plated cars were waiting there. What else might be waiting? I wondered. A voice in my head shouted for attention as I moved forward as fast as I could. Jack and Jill have always been a step ahead of us. They missed him! Why did they miss?
They don’t make mistakes.
I was less than a dozen yards from the President and his Secret Service guards when it hit me, when finally I understood what no one else did yet.
“Change the route out!” I yelled at the top of my voice. “Change the escape route!”
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NO ONE had heard me shouting. I could barely hear my own voice in the melee. There was too much noise and confusion inside Madison Square Garden.
I pushed ahead anyway, desperately following the phalanx that looked like the rabble at a prizefight from my vantage point. The smoke from the bomb had created a kind of strobe-light effect.
“Change the escape route! Change the escape route!” I shouted over and over.
We finally entered the whitewashed concrete tunnel. Every sound echoed bizarrely off the walls. I was right behind the last of the Secret Service agents.
“Don’t go this way! Stop the President!” I continued to yell in vain.
The tunnel was full of late-arriving special guests and even more security guards. We were pushing forward against a strong tide coming the other way.
It was too late to change the route now. I pushed and shoved my way closer and closer to President and Mrs. Byrnes. I desperately searched the crowd for the face of Kevin Hawkins. There was still a chance to stop him.
Every face I encountered registered shock. The eyes I saw were wide with fear, and they were searching my face. Suddenly, there were several loud pops in the heart of the tunnel. Gunshots!
Five shots seemed to explode inside the tight phalanx of people around the President. Someone had gotten inside the defense perimeter. My body sagged as if I’d been shot myself.
Five shots. Three quick—then two more.
I couldn’t see what had happened up ahead, but suddenly I heard the eeriest sound. It was a high-pitched wail, a keening.
Five shots!
Three—then two more.
The keening sound was coming from where I had last seen fleeting glimpses of President Byrnes, where the shots had exploded just a few seconds before.
I shoved my body, all my weight, against the crowd and forced myself toward the epicenter of the madness.
It felt as if I were trying to swim out of quicksand, to pull myself free. It was almost impossible to walk, to push, to shove.
Five shots. What had happened up ahead?
Then I could see. I saw everything at once.
My mouth felt incredibly dry. My eyes were watering. The bunkerlike tunnel had become strangely quiet. President Thomas Byrnes was down on the gray cement. A lot of blood was flowing in rivulets, spreading down his white shirt. Bright red blood drained from the right side of his face, or maybe the wound was high in his neck. I couldn’t tell from where I was.
Gunshots. Execution-style.
A professional hit.
Jack and Jill, those bastards!
It was their pattern, or close to it.
I waded forward, roughly, shoving people out of my way. I saw Don Hamerman, Jay Grayer, and then Sally Byrnes. Everything seemed to be happening in slow motion.
Sally Byrnes was trying to get to her husband. The First Lady didn’t appear to be hurt. Still, I wondered if she was a target, too. Maybe Jill’s target? Secret Service agents were holding Mrs. Byrnes back, trying to protect her. They wanted to keep her away from the bloodshed, from her husband, from any possible danger.
I saw a second body then. The shock was like a low hard punch to my stomach. No one could have anticipated this terrible scene.
A woman was down near the President. She’d been shot in her right eye socket. There was a second wound in her throat. She appeared to be dead. A semiautomatic lay near her sprawled body.
The assassin?
Jill?
Who else could it possibly be?
My eyes were drawn back to the motionless figure of Thomas Byrnes. I was afraid that he was already dead. I couldn’t be sure, but I believed he’d been hit at least three times. I saw Sally Byrnes finally reach her husband’s body. She was weeping uncontrollably, and she wasn’t the only one.
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JACK SAT STILL and calmly watched the maze o
f bumper-to-bumper cars and tractor-trailers stalled on West Street near the entrance to New York’s Holland Tunnel.
He could hear radios blaring on each side of his black Jeep. He observed the troubled and confused faces inside the cars. A middle-aged woman in a forest-green Lexus was in tears. A thousand sirens screamed like banshees on the loose in midtown.
Jack and Jill came to The Hill. Now everyone knew why, or at least they thought they did.
Now everyone understood the seriousness of the game.
Turn off your news reports, he wanted to tell all these well-meaning people approaching the tunnel out of New York. What’s happened has nothing to do with any of you. It really and truly doesn’t. You’ll never know the truth. No one ever will. You can’t handle the truth, anyway. You wouldn’t understand if I stopped and explained it to you right here.
He tried not to think about Sara Rosen as he finally rode into the long, claustrophobic tunnel that snaked beneath the Hudson. Beyond the tunnel, he drove south on the New Jersey Turnpike, then on I-95 into Delaware and points farther south.
Sara was the past, and the past didn’t matter. The past didn’t exist, except as a lesson for the future. Sara was gone. He did think about poor Sara as he ate at the Country Cupboard near the Talleyville exit on the turnpike. It was important to grieve. For Jill, not for President Byrnes. She was worth a dozen Thomas Byrneses. She had done a good job, a nearly perfect job, even if she had been used right from the start. And Sara Rosen had definitely been used. She had been his eyes and ears inside the White House. She had been his mistress. Poor Monkey Face.
As he approached Washington about seven that night, he made a vow: he wouldn’t sentimentalize about Sara again. He knew he could do that. He could control his own thoughts. He was better than Kevin Hawkins, who had been a very good soldier indeed.
He had been Jack.
But he was no longer Jack.
Jack no longer existed.
He was no longer Sam Harrison, either. Sam Harrison had been a facade, a necessary safeguard, a part of the complex plan. Sam Harrison no longer existed.
Now his life could be simple and mostly good again. He was almost home. He had completed his Mission: Impossible, and it was a success. Everything had gone almost perfectly.
Then he was home, pulling into the familiar rounded driveway that was filled with colorful seashells and tiny pebbles and a few children’s toys.
He saw his little girl come running out of the house, her blond hair streaming. He saw his wife close behind her, also running. Tears rolled down her cheeks and down his own. He wasn’t afraid to cry. He wasn’t afraid of anything anymore.
Jesus God, mercy, the war was finally ended. The enemy, the evil one, was dead. The good guys had won, and the most precious way of life on earth was safe for a little while longer—for the lives of his children, anyway.
No one would ever know how and why it had happened, or who was really responsible.
Just as it had been with JFK in Dallas.
And RFK in Los Angeles.
And Watergate and Whitewater and most every other significant event in our recent history. In truth, our history was not knowing; it was being carefully shielded from the truth. That was the American way.
“I love you so much,” his wife whispered breathlessly against the side of his face. “You are my hero. You did such a good, brave thing.”
He believed it, too. He knew it deep within his heart.
He wasn’t Jack anymore. Jack no longer existed.
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IT WASN’T OVER!
At a little past noon, the Secret Service received news from the NYPD of another homicide. They had strong reason to believe it was related to the shooting of President Byrnes.
Jay Grayer and I rushed to the Peninsula Hotel, which is just off Fifth Avenue in midtown. We were completely numb from the horror of the morning and still couldn’t believe the President had been shot. Even so, we had all the details of the latest murder. A chambermaid at the hotel had discovered a body in a suite on the twelfth floor. There was also a poem from Jack and Jill in the room. A final poem?
“What is the NYPD saying?” I asked Jay during the ride uptown. “What are the details?”
“According to the initial report, the dead woman might be Jill. Jill could have been murdered—or maybe she committed suicide. They’re reasonably certain the note is authentic.”
The mysteries inside horrific mysteries continued. Was this death part of the Jack and Jill scheme, too? I thought that probably it was, and that there were even more layers to unravel—layers upon layers—before getting to the core of the horror.
Grayer and I emerged from a gold-plated elevator onto the crime-scene floor. New York police were everywhere. I saw emergency medics, SWAT team members in helmets with Plexiglas face masks, uniforms, homicide detectives. The scene was instant bedlam. I was worried about evidence contamination, leaks to the press.
“The President?” one of the New York detectives asked us as we arrived. “Any word? Any hope?”
“He’s still hanging in there. Sure, there’s hope,” Jay Grayer said; then we moved on, away from the cluster of detectives.
At least a dozen New York police and FBI agents were crowded into the hotel suite. The ominous sounds of police sirens rose from the streets below. Church bells pealed loudly, probably at nearby St. Patrick’s Cathedral, just south on Fifth Avenue.
A blond woman’s body lay on the plush gray carpet next to an unmade double bed. Her face, neck, and chest were covered with blood. She was wearing a silver-and-blue jogging suit.
A pair of wire-rim eyeglasses were on the rug near her Nike sneakers.
She had been shot execution-style—as the early victims of Jack and Jill had been.
One shot, close to the head.
Very professional. Very cold.
No passion.
“Was she ever on any of our suspect lists?” I asked Grayer. We knew that the dead woman’s name was Sara Rosen. She had been cleared as part of the White House staff. She’d escaped detection during two “thorough” investigations of the staff, and that was the scariest piece of evidence yet.
“Not that we know of. She was something of a fixture at the White House communications office. Everybody liked her efficiency, her professionalism. She was trusted. Jesus, what a mess. What a disaster. She was trusted, Alex.”
Part of the left side of her face was gone, ripped away as if by an animal. Jill looked as if she had been caught by surprise. Her eyebrows were arched. There was no fear in her eyes.
She had trusted her killer. Was it Jack who had pulled the trigger? I noticed the smudging around the wound, the gray ring. It was a close-range discharge. It must have been Jack. Professional. No passion. Another execution.
But is this really Jill? I wondered as I bent over the body. The contract killer Kevin Hawkins had died at St. Vincent’s Hospital downtown. We knew that Hawkins had disguised himself as a female FBI agent to get into Madison Square Garden. He had used the concussion bomb to get his target where he wanted, when he wanted. He’d been waiting in the exit tunnel, dressed as a woman. It had worked. What was Kevin Hawkins’s relationship to this woman? What in hell was going on?
“He left a poem. Somebody did. Looks like the others,” Jay Grayer said to me. The note was in a plastic evidence bag. He handed it to me. “The last will and testament of Jack and Jill,” he said.
“The perfect assassination,” I muttered, more to myself than to Grayer. “Jack and Jill both dead in New York. Case closed, right?”
The Secret Service agent stared at me and then slowly shook his head. “This case will never be closed. Not in our lifetime, anyway.”
“I was just being ironic,” I said.
I read the final note.
Jack and Jill came to The Hill
Where Jill did what she must.
Her reason drove her
The game is over
Thou
gh dead Jill’s cause was just.
“Fuck you, Jill,” I whispered over the dead body. “I hope you burn in hell for what you’ve done today. I hope there’s a hell just for you and Jack.”
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NOWHERE was the news of the shooting taken any harder than in Washington. Thomas Byrnes was loved and he was hated, but he was one of the city’s own, especially now.
Christine Johnson was in shock, as were her closest friends and most everyone that she knew. The teachers at Sojourner Truth and the children were completely destroyed by what had happened to the President in New York City. It was so horrifying and stark, but also so unbearably sad and unreal.
Because of the shooting, all D.C. schools had canceled classes for the afternoon. She had been watching the nightmarish TV coverage of the assassination attempt from the first moment she got home from school. She still couldn’t believe what had happened. No one could believe it. The President was still alive. No other bulletins were being released.
Christine didn’t know whether Alex Cross had been at Madison Square Garden, but she imagined that he had been there. She worried about Alex, too. She liked the detective’s sincerity and his inner strength, but especially his compassion and his vulnerability. She liked the way he looked, talked, acted. She also liked the way Alex was bringing up his son, Damon. It made her want children even more herself. She and George had to talk about that. She and George had to talk.
He arrived home before seven that night, which was an hour or two early for him. George Johnson was a hard worker in his corporate law job. He was thirty-seven years old and had a smooth, attractive baby face. He was a good man, although way too self-centered and, truthfully, a little bit of a buppie at times.
Christine loved him, though; she accepted the good and the bad. She was thinking that as she fiercely hugged him at the front door. There was no doubt of it in her mind. She and George had met at Howard University and been together ever since. That was the way she believed it ought to be, and would be as far as she was concerned.
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