Primary Command

by Jack Mars

  He opened his eyes.

  “Okay,” he said. “It’s okay.”

  But he knew that wasn’t true. It was most definitely not okay. He got up and padded into the living room in his boxer shorts and T-shirt. He hit the remote control and CNN came on. This was his morning ritual, no different today from any day.

  He hated the news. He hated the voices of the talking heads. He hated the enthusiastic fake seriousness of the newscasters. But if you lived in Washington, and you wanted to be a player, you had to know what was going on and who was doing and saying what. Up to the minute was good. Before it happened was better, of course, but you couldn’t always be that far ahead.

  Sometimes, though… you knew things before everyone else. It’s what you did with that information that counted.

  He rubbed his bald head, went into the kitchen, put the coffee on, then came back out with a banana and small glass of orange juice. He stood there, staring at the muted TV.

  There was an image of fencing along the Pennsylvania Avenue pedestrian mall. A large chunk of the fence was ripped apart and thrown in the street like a broken toy. The charred skeleton of some kind of delivery van lay near the hole, burned to such an extent that it resembled a human skull.

  LIVE it said at the top left. White House ATTACK thwarted. Secret Service and DC Metro Police give all clear.

  Along the bottom scrolled more good news. Dogfight in the Bering Strait. Three Russian MiG-29 fighter jets and one American F-18 have been confirmed destroyed over western Alaska. “We are as close to war as we have ever been,” Pentagon general says.

  A mug shot appeared on the screen. It was the face of a hard young man, with glaring eyes and a crew cut. He was half-smiling, as if the fact of being in police custody, possibly facing jail time, was a joke to him.

  Keller turned the volume on.

  “Aleksander Rostov was the first man killed by the Secret Service,” a female voice said. “The thirty-one-year-old native of Astrakhan, in southern Russia, had been living in Brighton Beach, Brooklyn, for the past several years. He has been arrested numerous times by the NYPD, and is thought to have been an associate of Russian mobsters operating in Brooklyn and in other East Coast cities.”

  Keller watched, not in disbelief, but in slowly mounting fear. A Russian mobster was killed at a White House gate by the Secret Service? For what? The president wasn’t even there. At the time of the alleged attack, he was over at the Lincoln Memorial, being Tasered by agents of the…

  Another mug shot appeared on the screen. This man was older, heavier, balding with dark hair. He could use a shave. He stared straight at the camera, not smiling. He looked like he might kill the cameraman, or eat him.

  “Viktor Bakhurin, forty-three, was an ethnic Russian raised in eastern Ukraine. He has long been associated with organized crime figures in both Kiev and Moscow, as well as Hungary and Bulgaria. He is thought to have been involved at the highest levels in a wide range of criminal enterprises, including drug smuggling, weapon sales, human trafficking, prostitution, and murder for hire. It is unknown how long he was in the United States. He was at the wheel of the getaway van when it exploded, and he died in the subsequent fire.”

  It wasn’t true. Of course it wasn’t true. The young guy, maybe. But this guy, this Bakhurin? There was no way a high-level mobster sends himself on a suicide mission, one that had no hope of success.

  Attack the White House? And do what?

  Kidnap the president, of course. This was the cover story. The president was gone. They apparently hadn’t announced that yet or it would be the only thing on. And if the president never came back, then…

  The Russians did it.

  They must have had these Russian mobsters on ice, tucked away somewhere until they needed them. Mobsters disappear all the time. Their friends kill them and dispose of the bodies. They become government witnesses. They decide it’s just a good idea to make themselves invisible for a while. No one even really looks for them.

  The full horror of this reached Keller, and he began to go numb. They had taken David, and they weren’t going to give him back.

  Really?

  Another image appeared. It was of a smiling young man in a green turban. It appeared to be the photo identity they posted on the back of the glass partition when you took a taxicab. The man’s eyes were blacked out. The name on the ID was blurred.

  “A taxi driver was found dead two blocks away, of a gunshot to the back of the head. His body was left on the sidewalk. Police believe he was the victim of a carjacking by an unknown number of the escaped White House attackers. CNN is not releasing the man’s name pending notification of next of kin. His taxicab has not been recovered.”

  Keller stared at the man. A new feeling began to come over him. Terror.

  David had taken a taxi to the Lincoln Memorial. It was the first thing he told Keller. He had been absurdly proud of himself for that. Apparently, he hadn’t been inside a taxicab in close to three decades.

  They killed his cab driver.

  Keller felt his heart pumping, banging on the wall of his chest. If they would kill a cab driver, who knew little or nothing about what was going on, what would they do to the man who had set up the president in the first place?

  Why hadn’t they killed Keller last night? Because they were going to offer him a great job? He doubted it.

  Because the missing president’s former chief of staff lying dead on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial is bad optics? That seemed more likely.

  Yet another image appeared on the screen. It was of a young smiling black man with wearing a formal Marine Corps “dress blues” uniform. His white peaked cap with gold device told Keller he was an enlisted man. His gold Naval Parachutist badge said he had made at least ten qualifying jumps. His red, white, blue, and gold Navy Combat Action Ribbon informed Keller that the man had seen combat.

  Keller knew these things about the young man in the blink of an eye, almost before he was aware he was taking in the information. He hadn’t studied the man. He had merely glanced at him. You left the Marine Corps, but it never left you.

  “This just in. The Secret Service agent killed in the gun battle on the White House grounds has been identified as twenty-nine-year-old Enrique Saviello of Union City, New Jersey. Agent Saviello was just a two-year veteran of the Secret Service. Previous to that, he served with the United States Marine Corps, performing one tour of service each in both Iraq and Afghanistan. He leaves a wife and an eighteen-month-old daughter behind.”

  Keller went into the bedroom and kneeled by the bed. There was a bunch of junk under here. Shoes he never wore anymore, an old laptop, a travel iron. He moved that stuff out of the way. Here was a flat box. He pulled that out.

  He opened it. A Sig Sauer P226 semi-automatic handgun lay encased in protective foam. Next to it were three fifteen-round magazines, loaded with .40-caliber Smith & Wesson hollow-points, bullets designed for maximum penetration and maximum soft tissue damage. He had a license to carry this weapon.

  Good Lord. He had made an audiotape of David’s kidnapping.

  That fact hit him with the weight of a thousand bricks. In ordinary circumstances, it might be a good thing. But these weren’t ordinary circumstances. They knew his habits. They knew he taped conversations. He had provided them with tapes in the past.

  He pictured Wallace Speck putting a finger to his lips and shushing him.

  “Oh my God,” he said out loud.

  They already knew. They knew even then.

  He had to get out of here. Just get in the car and drive somewhere far away. Keller was nothing if not a chess player. He had created false personas for himself in anticipation of this day, or a day just like it. There was money, identification, another car, a cabin, and another apartment waiting for him out there in the world.

  It was enough to give him a head start. At some point, that head start would run out and he would have to improvise. But improvisation was another one of his skills.

/>   Of course, there was nowhere on earth you could go where they couldn’t find you. He’d just have to be ready for them when they did.

  If they thought they were going to take him easily, then they didn’t know Lawrence Keller very well.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  7:40 a.m. Eastern Daylight Time

  Parkfair Apartments

  Columbia Heights

  Washington, DC

  This should be the right apartment. 3B.

  The man’s large, hairy fist knocked on the heavy steel door again. He glanced at his partner, a tall, good-looking black man he’d been told to address as Roger Stevens. That wasn’t the man’s name. Or maybe it was. Impossible to say.

  Stevens was dressed in the uniform of a DC Metro police officer. He certainly looked like a cop. Serious like a cop. He had a whole benevolent hard-case, up from a difficult childhood thing, happening around his eyes. The act was convincing.

  “I don’t know, Rog. It’s early, you’d think someone would be home.”

  The man’s name was Dell. Michael Dell. Call him Mike. That wasn’t really his name, either. It would be nice if it was. He was dressed like a cop, too. Somehow, he felt like he didn’t pull it off quite as well as Officer Stevens.

  For one, he was bulkier than Roger Stevens, and the cop suit didn’t fit him right. For another, he had tattoos. A lot of tattoos, to be frank. Mostly, they weren’t showing right now. The cop suit hid them pretty well. All except for the ones on his knuckles.

  The fingers on his left hand, if they were coming at you in a fist, spelled out the word BANG. The fingers on his right hand spelled out the word POW! He was right-handed, and tended to jab with his left. So: BANG, BANG, BANG. Then the right: POW!

  Good night.

  Most cops didn’t have tattoos quite like these. Oh well. It probably wouldn’t matter. The cop game only had to last a few minutes.

  “I hear a rustling in there,” Officer Stevens said. “I think she’s coming.”

  They were in the third-floor hallway of a new, clean, well-kept building of low-income housing. The neighborhood outside was gentrifying, with the immigrants and minorities who had lived there for generations being joined by a steady influx of well-to-do young white people armed with college degrees and entry-level jobs on Capitol Hill. Restaurants and nightclubs and malls were opening to cater to them.

  The neighborhood had been a dump not that long ago, and now it wasn’t as bad. Officer Michael Dell thought that was all very nice. Heartwarming, even. An urban success story.

  The door to 3B opened. A beautiful young woman stood there. She had straight black hair, dark coffee-colored skin, and she wore a loose, flowing garment of white and purple. Her brown eyes were tired, but wary. She looked like she just woke up.

  “Yes?”

  Officer Dell glanced at the card in his hand. He held the card out to his right, above and away from her. He was mindful of the POW! on his fingers.

  “Are you Nisa Kuar Brar?” he said, nearly stumbling over the tongue-twister name. “Wife of Jahjeet Singh Brar?”

  She looked from Dell to Stevens and back again, her eyes widening.

  “Yes?” she said.

  “Your husband drives a taxicab for On Time Taxi service?”

  She nodded. “Yes.”

  Dell nodded. “I’m Officer Dell, and this is Officer Stevens, of the Washington, DC Metropolitan Police Department. May we come in a moment?”

  “What’s wrong?” she said, her eyes darting back and forth now, something like a panic starting. “Is it Jahjeet? Is he all right? Is he in trouble?”

  “Please, ma’am. May we come in?”

  She stood aside and allowed them to pass into the apartment. Dell heard the woman shut the door behind them, and—a small gift—she bolted the lock as well. The policemen were inside now, behind a door that was closed and locked. And that meant the game was over almost before it had begun.

  Down a narrow hallway there was a living room. Morning light flowed in through two large windows. The floor in the hall was some kind of wood laminate, probably over concrete. It was the same in the living room.

  These apartments were generic, built for efficiency and resistance to wear. The family had dressed the place up with too much furniture, and with photographs of family members, a colorful rug, and various religious totems on shelves. But the brute Stalinist form was still there beneath it all.

  There were children in here. A small child, in a diaper and a pink shirt, crawled slowly across the rug. A larger child, a girl perhaps three or four years old, sat on the sofa in bare feet and Barney the Dinosaur pajamas. She was absorbed in some sort of hand-held electronic game. Her hair was long and black like her mom’s. She was a pretty little girl, like her mom.

  That was bad. Michael Dell didn’t like the child aspect of all this. But a job was a job and it had to be done. He glanced at Officer Stevens. He barely knew the man. Stevens reached out and almost touched a plant on the windowsill with his hand. He didn’t touch it, but it looked like he did. Very clever.

  Maybe Stevens was one of these stone killers. That would make this go easier.

  The woman, Nisa, came into the room. She was a head shorter than either of them. She didn’t offer them something to eat or drink; didn’t invite them to sit down. It was just as well. They weren’t going to stay long.

  “Is everything all right?” Nisa said.

  “Mrs. Brar,” Stevens said. It was the first time he had spoken since she opened the door. “When was the last time you spoke with your husband?”

  “Is he in trouble?”

  Stevens shrugged. “He’s not in any trouble. He doesn’t have to be. Just please tell me when you spoke with him. And please be honest. We’ll know if you lie.”

  Now the look of panic on the woman’s face began to transform. She looked like a rabbit about to take off running.

  “This morning,” she said. “Maybe ninety minutes ago. I was asleep when he called. I almost couldn’t believe the things he was saying.”

  “What did he say?”

  “It didn’t seem to make sense. He said that he drove the president of the United States in his taxi. He said the president appeared out of the darkness late at night near the White House grounds, and requested to be driven to the Lincoln Memorial, which is not very far away. Jahjeet was very excited, and drove him there. He did not plan to charge the man for the ride, but the president insisted on giving him a fifty-dollar bill. So he accepted.”

  “Do you believe that the man he drove was the president?” Dell said.

  Nisa shook her head. “I don’t know. It’s all very extraordinary. I would suppose that the president should have his own car service, and armed bodyguards with him.”

  “But he didn’t?” Stevens said.

  “Jahjeet said no. He was alone.”

  “Did Jahjeet see him again after he dropped him off?”

  She was looking at the floor now. “He said no. He said the man told him someone else would drive him back home.”

  “Now Nisa,” Stevens said. “I have to ask you a very important question. It’s the most important question I’m going to ask you.”

  “Where is my husband?” Nisa said.

  “We’ll get to that in a moment. But first, and I want you to think carefully about this, who else have you told about your husband’s little encounter?”

  Dell moved to the window. He was relaxed about it, just a cop circulating around an apartment during an interview with a possible witness. He looked outside. Three stories below was a drab courtyard between buildings, concrete walkways with small squares of grass in between.

  Very subtly, he gravitated to his left, moving in behind the woman. There was an open door a little further left. He glanced inside. He saw a double bed, with the covers kicked down near the bottom. The parents’ room.

  “I told no one. I was asleep. I just got out of bed a little while ago.”

  “You’re sure about this? You didn’t tell
anyone?”

  She nodded. “I told no one. You must understand. Jahjeet is a beautiful man. He is honest, and a good provider. But he is quick to believe. Too quick, sometimes. His story of driving the president…”

  She shrugged. “I wouldn’t tell anyone this story. I wouldn’t want him to be embarrassed…” She trailed off.

  “When it turned out not to be true?” Stevens said.

  “Yes.”

  “Where did you say you folks are from again?” Stevens said.

  “I didn’t say. But we are from India. Punjab.”

  Stevens nodded sagely, as if this confirmed some piece of information he had already acquired.

  Dell was directly behind her now, still near the window. He pulled the garrote from his pocket. It was nothing more than a length of wire, with small wooden grips fastened at either end. The wire was standard network cabling. Good for this kind of work. Dell had experimented in the past with more durable wires like steel and copper, and he’d had a couple of messy near-decapitations. That was not his cup of tea.

  He nearly smiled. The woman was Indian. They grew tea in India.

  “You’re absolutely positive you didn’t tell anyone?” Stevens said.

  She shook her head. “Why would I lie? I told no one. I can promise you…”

  That was enough confirmation. Dell stepped up from behind her and slipped the wire over her head and around her throat. She gasped as he crisscrossed his arms, tightening it. In almost the same move, he pulled her backward and into the bedroom, away from where the children might see. The whole thing happened in three seconds.

  She was so small and light, her struggles were useless. He sat down on the bed and anchored his feet against the floor. Her hands were on the wire, fingers trying to pull it or move it. She didn’t try to hit Dell or attack him at all. She choked, sputtered, and wheezed. He held on a while longer.

  Sounds came from out in the living room. They were furtive sounds, rustling, fast movements. Dell put those out of his mind.

  When he was sure, completely sure, he let her body slide onto the floor. He put the garrote back into his pocket. He sat for a few moments, breathing deeply. He thought back through this interaction. Had he touched anything in the apartment with his fingers? Anything at all?