The Fifth Assassin

by Brad Meltzer

  68

  Twenty minutes later

  St. Elizabeths Hospital

  Washington, D.C.

  Beecher, if anything happens… anything at all,” Tot says through my phone, “you call Mac to put the word out.”

  “I understand. And I appreciate you worrying, Tot,” I say as I head through the lobby for the small bank of metal lockers in the corner.

  Tot goes to say something else, but instead just offers silence. He knows there’s no choice. If we want to know if Marshall’s our killer—or worse, whether he’s reaching out to Nico—this is the only way to find out.

  “Phone and all sharp objects…” the guard says into his intercom, his voice echoing out from behind the thick ballistics glass. Above him, hanging on the bombproof black granite wall, bright silver letters spell out Saint Elizabeths.

  “Listen, Tot, I gotta go. But when it comes to being safe, I know where you are. You do the same.”

  “Just do me one favor, Beecher: Keep an eye out for Marshall. You never know where he’ll show up.”

  Refusing to argue, I hang up and follow the guard’s instructions.

  Last time I was at St. Elizabeths, at the sign-in desk they had a pen with some scotch tape at the back of it that chained it to the counter.

  Today, they have me leave my phone and any sharp objects in this bank of shoebox-size lead lockers. Then I’m guided through an X-ray and metal detector, and scanned by whatever chemical sniffer that they think I can’t see is hidden and built into the doorframe. By the time I step through the glass doors and into the shiny, well-lit room that serves as the visiting area, it’s clear that when it came to this new building, most of their money has been spent on security.

  I don’t blame them.

  John Hinckley, who shot President Reagan, lives here. So does a man who killed his wife and three children, then put them back in their beds, living with their rotting bodies for weeks. But when it comes to their most famous patient…

  “He’s on his way,” a uniformed guard tells me as he closes the glass door behind me, locking me alone in the wide meeting area that has all the charm of a workplace cafeteria. There’re no pictures on the beige walls. No decorations. It’s all brand-new, including the dozen or so empty round tables—all of them built of clear, unbreakable Plexiglas, so that nothing can be snuck underneath.

  Last time I saw him, Nico would only call me by my middle name, Benjamin. He told me he was the reincarnation of George Washington, that I was Benedict Arnold, and that God Himself had brought us on this mission together.

  I know. It’s nonsense. But I can’t help but think of what Tot told me this morning about the Knights, the playing cards, and the attacks on the pastors. No question, the killer we’re looking for—whether he’s part of the Knights of the Golden Circle or not—he’s treating this as his holy mission. And right now I’m seconds away from being face-to-face with the chessmaster of holy missions.

  On the far side of the room, there’s a krrk and a tunk as a magnetic lock unclenches.

  My stomach twists as the heavy door opens.

  There’s no guard with him. Just a nurse, who sticks her head in and gives a quick glance, making sure all is calm.

  “Nico, if you need anything…” she begins.

  “I won’t,” he insists, his too-close-together eyes seizing me. He makes a beeline through the minefield of Plexiglas tables. His lips are flat, but there’s no mistaking the smile underneath.

  “Happy Presidents’ Day, Benjamin. I’m so glad you came to celebrate.”

  69

  September 6, 1901

  Buffalo, New York

  This was the day—at the Pan-American Expo—that should’ve been the greatest day of President McKinley’s life.

  First, the President loved World’s Fairs.

  Second, McKinley was at the height of his power. Months earlier, he’d started his second term. And just a day earlier, he’d used the Expo to give the speech of his life, calling for “concord, not conflict” and proclaiming, “God and man have linked the nations together”—evoking what many described as the hope and scope of George Washington’s Farewell Address.

  So after a breathtaking morning visiting the natural miracle of Niagara Falls, the President was having a perfect day… until his secretary—a wise man and Culper Ring member named George B. Cortelyou—said that he had a bad feeling about the afternoon’s big public event at the Music Pavilion. When Cortelyou suggested that the President skip the reception and enjoy some quiet time, McKinley would have none of it.

  “Why should I?” the President asked. “No one would wish to hurt me.”

  Of course, the President didn’t know about Leon Czolgosz, the pale-skinned, blue-eyed twenty-eight-year-old who was now waiting for him inside the wide Temple of Music Pavilion.

  Like Guiteau, Czolgosz was short and slightly built.

  Like John Wilkes Booth, he wore a mustache.

  And like both of them, he was prepared, arriving so early for the event that he had a prime spot right by the stage.

  Czolgosz knew this was God’s will. Especially when he saw the venue. The Temple of Music. How perfect. A temple.

  From there, his plan was simple. He’d stand in line like the hundreds of others who were waiting to shake the President’s hand. And when it was Czolgosz’s turn, well… His right hand was covered by a handkerchief so it looked bandaged. But underneath the handkerchief, Czolgosz held the .32 caliber Iver Johnson revolver that would end the President’s life.

  All he had to do was wait.

  As McKinley entered the room, the grand organ played the national anthem, and the crowd let out a huge cheer.

  The Secret Service weren’t nearly as thrilled. One year earlier, an assassination plot to kill the top rulers in the world had been discovered. The first two on the list were already dead. President McKinley was number five.

  “Watch every man approaching the President,” one of them warned.

  They did. But as the long line of strangers and admirers snaked toward the President—as McKinley shook every hand and literally kissed every baby—none of them noticed the man with the slight mustache who was waiting in line so patiently. Dressed in shirt and tie, he looked like everyone else—except for the handkerchief that was covering his hand.

  Watching from the crowd, Leon Czolgosz took another step forward. He was almost at the front.

  Across the room, the massive organ began playing Schumann’s Traumerei.

  Looking at his pocket watch, the President’s secretary asked that the doors be closed—the line needed to be cut off.

  Czolgosz never panicked. He took another calm step forward, so close that he could see the carnation that President McKinley always wore in his lapel.

  As for the Secret Service, they were focused on the man directly behind Czolgosz—a large black waiter named James Parker. He was the suspicious one. The Negro.

  With only one person in front of him, Czolgosz took a breath, knowing this was it.

  The President smiled at Czolgosz, reaching for a handshake.

  Czolgosz never smiled back. Facing the President, he extended his hand, pressed the handkerchief-covered gun against McKinley’s chest, and fired two quick shots.

  McKinley stumbled backward, crashing into a potted plant as blood poured out through his shirt.

  The handkerchief that held the gun burst into fire from the gunshots.

  Fairgoers screamed. People in the room scattered.

  Czolgosz tried to fire again, but James Parker, the large black man behind him, smashed the assassin with one hand and grabbed the gun with the other. Within seconds, the Secret Service and other fairgoers tackled him to the ground.

  “I done my duty!” Czolgosz shouted.

  It was the same thing he’d later say to the police. “I done my duty.” But when the police asked him to write it as a confession, Czolgosz’s hands were shaking too much. So they brought in a stenographer, who typed what Czolgo
sz repeated over and over: I done my duty. I done my duty. I done my duty!

  He had.

  Behind him, the President collapsed to the floor, blood now soaking his shirt. The first bullet had hit McKinley in the chest, right between his second and third ribs—but it never penetrated the skin, deflecting off a button.

  The second bullet did the real damage, hitting the President in the stomach, entering down the front of his abdomen, and burrowing toward his back.

  As the pavilion was cleared, the Secret Service agents were still beating on Czolgosz.

  “Be easy with him, boys,” McKinley called out, trying to protect his attacker even as he fought to stay conscious.

  As Czolgosz was taken into custody, he initially told a policeman that his name was Fred Nieman, an alias that came from the word Niemand, which in German meant Nobody. He was Nobody.

  As for the President, a group of hastily assembled doctors, headed by a gynecological surgeon, rushed him into surgery to find the second bullet. Thomas Edison sent an early version of an X-ray machine, though it wasn’t used. As heads of state flooded into Buffalo, including Robert Todd Lincoln, who now had the distinction of being near all three assassinations, the nation held its collective breath.

  The doctors never found the bullet. The technology at the time couldn’t see the extent of the damage. Eight days later, President McKinley was dying from infection.

  After singing his favorite hymn (“Nearer, My God, to Thee”) and saying his favorite prayers, McKinley’s final words were simple: “Oh, dear.”

  Yet for the Knight of Clubs, the battle had just begun.

  Unlike his predecessor, who had murdered President Garfield, Leon Czolgosz wasn’t a raving nut. He was calm. Unafraid. In his jail cell, he combed his hair methodically, and asked for a handkerchief, which he would fold and refold over and over on his gun hand.

  From the moment he was arrested, Czolgosz insisted on only one thing: He was working alone.

  Few believed it.

  Government officials pointed to his ties to various anarchist groups.

  But those same groups, five days before the shooting, had issued a warning in their anarchist publications that Leon Czolgosz was actually a spy working for the government.

  Accusations flew in every direction. But Leon Czolgosz remained as calm as he was when he stood in line to kill the President, never losing sight of the bigger mission.

  “I don’t regret my act,” Czolgosz explained, “because I was doing what I could for the Great Cause.”

  With McKinley cut down, the nation demanded vengeance. Czolgosz was rushed through a two-day trial and immediately sentenced to death. Indeed, the electricity from Niagara Falls, which literally lit the Pan-American Expo where the crime took place, also supplied the current that ran Czolgosz’s electric chair.

  When he died, a death mask was made of Czolgosz’s face. After the autopsy, which found no evidence of delusion or craziness in his brain, his body was placed in a black casket and covered with sulfuric acid. The warden didn’t want Czolgosz to become a martyr.

  His body disintegrated in twelve hours. His clothes and all his letters were burned.

  Except one.

  A man named John Grinder came forward with a letter that Czolgosz had written him a few weeks before the shooting. Both Czolgosz and Grinder were members of the Golden Eagle Lodge, which most history books fail to mention was also known as…

  The Knights of the Golden Eagle.

  And so, the question remains: What did Czolgosz write in this final letter, in red ink?

  “Brother Grinder, will you send my book to me?”

  To this day, no one knows what book Czolgosz was referring to.

  But Czolgosz knew.

  It was a novel called Looking Backward, and it would never be forgotten. Especially by the current Knight and a man named Nico Hadrian.

  70

  Today

  Washington, D.C.

  Today was a perfect day to kill a President.

  The Knight knew it as he pushed open the door marked Employees Only. Entering the dark storage closet and purposely not putting on the light, he smelled the tubs of cleaning supplies and cans of fresh paint that were stacked throughout.

  After so much planning, today was finally the day. And such an appropriate day. Presidents’ Day.

  To be honest, the Knight was hoping he could’ve moved things a bit faster. But after yesterday, to have A.J. show up so quickly at the hospital… to have him asking all those questions of the previous lamb, plus just keeping track of Beecher…

  Adjustments needed to be made.

  In many ways, it was no different for his third predecessor. Three days before he killed President McKinley, Leon Czolgosz purchased a .32 caliber revolver and was there as McKinley exited from his arriving train at the Pan-American Expo. Two days earlier, gun in hand, Czolgosz stood right near the President during a speech, but got jostled by the crowd. And one day earlier, Czolgosz couldn’t get close enough for a clear shot. Over and over, roadblocks were put in Czolgosz’s way. But the Knight of Clubs never lost faith. Indeed, by shifting his plans, Czolgosz found the Temple of Music.

  Czolgosz took it as a sign.

  And on that day, God’s will was done.

  Just as it would be today.

  Flicking on the light switch in the storage closet, the Knight noticed that so many of the janitorial supplies were labeled Poison. Yet the far deadlier object rested in the corner. Pushing aside an empty mop bucket, he revealed a medical rolling cart—marked Bookmobile—that was stocked with magazines and used paperbacks.

  Kneeling down, he slid open a small compartment and pulled out a brown paper bag labeled For Pediatric Unit—Do Not Touch.

  Inside the bag was the white plaster Abraham Lincoln mask that he had put there last night.

  The Knight checked his watch. Nearly 9 a.m. The same time Czolgosz first entered the Temple of Music. Tucking the Lincoln mask under his jacket and feeling the weight of the .32 caliber Iver Johnson revolver and the specially designed sound suppressor in his coat pocket, the Knight was well aware that Czolgosz had not used a suppressor. But again, like the timing of it all, adjustments had to be made. Tugging open the closet door, he stepped out into the polished hallway that was lined with hospital gurneys.

  Keeping his head down to avoid the morning arrival of doctors and nurses, the Knight didn’t even register the automated grand piano on his far left that played a slowed-down Musak version of Prince’s “Little Red Corvette.” Heading right, he stayed focused on his destination at the end of the long corridor: the door with blue-and-gold stained glass in it. The Interfaith Chapel, which was the best place to find Chaplain Elizabeth Stoughton.

  The Knight had spotted her yesterday. A chaplain. Like a pastor. And one who had prayed directly with President Wallace.

  Like his predecessor, the Knight knew a sign when he saw it. Pastor Frick had served his purpose. There was a new lamb now. A fresh lamb.

  With fresh blood.

  Taking one last glance at his watch, the Knight wasn’t moving quickly. Like Czolgosz, he was calm and focused. But it was for that exact reason that, as he passed the grand staircase that overlooked the main atrium downstairs, he never glanced over the railing or saw who had just stepped inside, one flight below.

  “Beecher, if anything happens… anything at all,” Tot whispered into his phone as he stepped through the hospital’s sliding doors and approached the visitor check-in desk, “you call Mac to put the word out.”

  “I understand. And I appreciate you worrying, Tot,” Beecher replied.

  Tot went to say something else, but as the greeter at the check-in desk waved him forward, Tot raised a fake grin and handed over his driver’s license.

  There was still so much Beecher didn’t know—about the Culper Ring, about what was really going on with the President, and even about Tot himself. But Tot had been at this long enough to know that you don’t get to treat the mino
r wounds until you deal with the big ones.

  “I’m here to see Pastor Frick. He’s on the fourth floor,” Tot told the greeter.

  The computer clicked as the ID camera took Tot’s picture.

  “Listen, Tot, I gotta go,” Beecher said through the phone. “But when it comes to being safe, I know where you are. You do the same.”

  Tot nodded, scanning the grand staircase. One flight above, there was no one in sight. An automated grand piano played a Musak version of Prince’s “Little Red Corvette.”

  “Just do me one favor, Beecher: Keep an eye out for Marshall. You never know where he’ll show up.”

  Heading for Pastor Frick’s room, Tot had no idea how right he was.

  71

  I like the new building,” I say, glancing around the sterile visitors’ room.

  “You’re trying to look relaxed, Benjamin. It’s not working,” Nico says, sitting directly across from me at the round see-through table. His hands are clasped—prayer-style—on the Plexiglas. In his lap, he’s got an old book with a leather cover. I try to read the spine, but the print is too small.

  “We can speak back there if you like,” Nico adds, motioning toward the few private rooms in the corner. The signs on them read Lawyer’s Room. They’re for patients to talk privately with their attorneys. But right now, as I look over my shoulder and spy the guard at the X-ray who’s staring at us through the bulletproof glass, plus the wide window behind him that looks out onto the sunlit front of the building, I’m happy for the lack of privacy.

  “You’re afraid of being alone with me,” Nico says.

  “Not at all,” I say, keeping my voice upbeat. “Why would I come here if I didn’t want to see you?”

  Staring uncomfortably at me, Nico doesn’t answer.

  “So they still letting you feed the cats?” I add, remembering how much easier he is when he’s saying yes.

  “No. No more cats,” he says with a twinkle in his eye. He’s gloating. Like he’s already won. “Why don’t you tell me what you’re really here for, Benjamin?”