The Fifth Assassin

by Brad Meltzer

  In that pregnant moment when the elevator had settled but the doors still hadn’t opened, Wallace lifted his smile into place. Through the doors, he could hear the crowd outside, their voices bouncing through the limestone chamber.

  “Dad, just promise me… about Emily’s father,” Nessie said, tugging at his arm.

  Looking down, he shot her a playful look, a look she knew well. He didn’t have to say it. He’d never do anything—in this entire world—to hurt his daughter.

  With a clank, the elevator doors parted. The President lowered his cap and again put his hands on his daughter’s shoulders, steering her behind A.J. As they stepped outside, the cold wind felt good against their faces, and they blew right past the few people waiting to get on the elevator. Not one of them noticed that the man with the lowered baseball cap was the President of the United States.

  Across the chamber, an undercover Secret Service agent sat on one of the marble benches, pretending to read a newspaper. Another stood in the corner, and another on the right side of the statue, both carrying tennis bags. On the left side of the statue, but at least ten feet away from it, a crowd of ten- and eleven-year-olds bounced on their feet, in the exact spot where they had been told to wait.

  On cue, a few kids started to turn. One of them—one of Nessie’s friends—began to point as she realized who was coming. “Nessie!” another girl yelled as Nessie’s smile bloomed wider than ever. They were yelling her name. Not her dad’s. One by one, the rest of the kids began to turn… began to look… began to smile.

  Yet as Wallace made his way through the chamber, he wasn’t looking at the kids. Or the hidden agents. Or even at any of the dozens of tourists snapping photos in every direction. No, at this moment, with his head craned upward, with two agents in front of him and the mil aide behind him, the only thing the President of the United States was looking at was the towering 175-ton white marble statue of Abraham Lincoln clutching the armrests of his chair.

  He didn’t even notice the bearded old man in the checkered newsboy cap who was standing to the side of the elevator.

  As Wallace passed by him, the man leaned forward, like he was finishing a sneeze. But as the man stood up straight, what Wallace and his agents missed was that he was now wearing a plaster mask.

  “Dad, lookit,” Nessie said, pointing back over her own shoulder. “That guy… he’s actually dressed like Abraha—”

  President Orson Wallace turned. So did the mil aide.

  Neither was fast enough.

  The Knight reached into his pocket.

  There was a soft pffft. Like a muffled gunshot.

  Then a burst of blood.

  Then there was nothing but screaming.

  107

  Eighteen years ago

  Sagamore, Wisconsin

  Marshall should’ve never turned the corner.

  He knew it too. He knew it from the moment he heard that noise coming from the living room. He knew it the moment he left the kitchen. Indeed, as he tiptoed down the hallway that was lined with vacation photos of the pastor and his wife, he felt the universe pushing him back, warning him away.

  The problem was, he knew that voice.

  Every child knows his mother’s voice. Just like they know their mother’s sneeze. And even the sound she was making right now—an indistinct moan that sounded like she was mumbling in her sleep, or twisting in pain.

  Hours from now, as the tidal wave of gossip plowed through the town, everyone would say that Marshall knew… that he came here because he was angry and suspicious of his mom and Pastor Riis. But right now, as the chubby twelve-year-old reached the end of the hallway, about to step into the dimly lit living room with its flickering TV lights, anger was nowhere in Marshall’s makeup. No, as he swallowed hard, feeling like his tongue was stuck in his throat, Marshall was worried. He was confused. That noise his mom was making…

  He just wanted to make sure she was okay.

  “Mom, are you—?”

  As Marshall turned the corner, his mouth was still open, mid-syllable. The first thing his brain registered were two candles, side by side, their flames flickering as they burned on the end table, next to the floral-print sofa. That’s why the room was so dim.

  But as Marshall entered the room, he saw more than the end table. He saw the sofa. And who was on it.

  Marshall froze. He saw her bare back first… and the beauty mark just below her left shoulder blade. She had no top on. But what made him completely confused were the two arms wrapped around his mother’s neck. Someone was hugging her. Someone with freshly painted pink nails. And pale breasts.

  “Mrs. Riis…?” Marshall stuttered, staring at the woman everyone called Cricket.

  “Cherise, move…!” the pastor’s wife exclaimed, pushing Marshall’s mother aside.

  “Mom… what’re you—? What’s happening?”

  His mom twisted to face him as she struggled to cover her bare breasts with her hands. Their gazes locked—mother and son—both their eyes wide with terror that slowly shifted to—

  “What’re you doing here!? Get out!” his mom exploded, stumbling, spinning, grabbing clothes to cover herself. She was naked. Naked with Pastor Riis’s wife.

  “You didn’t see this! You hear me!? You didn’t see this!” his mom shouted in a tone Marshall had never heard before.

  “Get him out of here!” the pastor’s wife screamed, grabbing sofa pillows to cover herself.

  Marshall tried to turn and run. But his feet were locked, like they were bolted to the carpet. His eyes swelled with tears.

  “Oh, Lord, we’re dead…” the pastor’s wife whispered, now starting to cry.

  “You didn’t see this!” his mother kept yelling, racing toward him. She pressed her shirt against her chest with one hand. With her other, she clumsily pulled on her skirt.

  Across the room, Marshall just stood there, horrified by the shadowy glimpse of his mom’s pubic hair.

  “They’ll call us abominations. We’re abominations,” the pastor’s wife sobbed.

  “Did your father send you here!?” his mother shouted as she threw on her blouse and snatched her bra and lemon yellow blazer off the floor.

  “No, I—”

  “It’s okay. It’ll be fine,” his mom insisted, her voice softening but still racing. “We’ll go home and it’ll be fine.”

  She grabbed Marshall by the back of the neck, twisting him around and shoving him back up the main hallway, toward the front door.

  “You didn’t see this,” she added, still holding her bra against her chest. “If you didn’t see this—if your father doesn’t know—we’re okay.”

  “Dad didn’t do nothing!” Marshall pleaded, crying, stumbling, barely able to stay on his feet. His mom’s blazer fell to the floor. She didn’t stop to get it.

  As they reached the front door, his mother let go of her son for the three seconds it took to fight with the doorknob. “Don’t run away. Come back,” she said, gripping him again. “It’ll be fine—”

  She was still yelling as the door flew open, bathing them in yellow porchlight. But as they crashed down the front steps and into the warm night, Marshall’s mom was moving so fast… and holding Marshall’s fat neck so tight… and still clutching her bra in her hand…

  … she didn’t even notice that Beecher and Paglinni were standing right there, watching everything from the driveway.

  108

  Two minutes ago

  Washington, D.C.

  The Knight didn’t rush.

  He was patient, with his head down, pretending to look at his watch as the elevator doors slowly opened.

  The President exited calmly, without a fuss, stepping off the elevator and making his way through the small crowd waiting to take it down. Well past the crowd, midway through the chamber, the Knight still didn’t look up. He saw it all out of the corner of his eyes, counting three agents plus Wallace’s daughter.

  The Knight’s skin tingled. He didn’t have to approach th
e President. From where he was standing, Wallace was approaching him.

  The Knight had practiced for this moment. Prayed for it. Like his predecessors, he had run through every detail. Every detail, including putting on the mask. For hours, for days now, the Knight had taken out the mask and slipped it on, taken it out and slipped it on, over and over, until he had it down to one quick movement.

  Seeing President Wallace delivered to him like this, the Knight knew his prayers were about to be answered.

  The President was about to pass him. Leaning forward, the Knight reached into his pocket, palming the front of his plaster mask. At just the touch of it, as his fingers scraped against its chalkiness, muscle memory took over. Time froze. Life moved frame by frame as the two agents in front of the President seemed to float by like life-size parade floats. Two steps behind them, as the Knight pulled the mask from his pocket, the President and his daughter floated by too. Same with the mil aide in back of them. As they passed, the Knight couldn’t help but grin. He was diagonally behind them all now. None of them had even noticed him.

  They were all locked on their destination—on the group of kids across the chamber. As the President got closer, a few kids began to turn. One of them, a girl with big cheeks and brutal-looking braces, lifted her hand, beginning to point as she realized who was coming. Another began to mouth the President’s daughter’s name. One by one, the rest of the kids began to turn… began to look… began to smile. The Knight’s plaster Lincoln mask was firmly in place.

  “Dad, lookit,” Nessie announced, pointing back at the Knight. “That guy… he’s actually dressed like Abraha—”

  President Orson Wallace turned. So did the mil aide.

  The Knight reached into his jacket pocket, where his gun—

  No. His gun was gone. How could that—?

  Pffft.

  Something with burning teeth bit into the Knight’s lower back.

  Grabbing at his own back and clutching at the pain, his finger hit a hole. In his back. There was a hole in his lower back.

  He looked down at his stomach. It was soaked… and red… Blood. His own blood, seeping and spreading down to his waist.

  He’d been shot. Someone… someone…

  “Why?” a barbed wire of a voice growled closely behind him.

  The Knight teetered, spinning to face his shooter, who was holding the Knight’s gun. The man wore a bright red scarf that covered the lower half of his face. But under the scarf… there was something wrong with the shooter’s skin. Like it was melted.

  Cocking his head, the Knight felt his eyesight go blurry, then come back again. He knew the man—the man with the melted skin—the man who had just shot him and saved the President’s life: That was Marshall.

  “Why did you kill Pastor Riis!?” Marshall demanded, reaching for the Knight’s mask.

  The answer never came.

  People were screaming, scattering in every direction.

  “Shots fired! Shots fired!” someone yelled.

  In a blur, undercover agents plowed into Marshall and the Knight. Both men went limp, their heads snapping sideways and backwards as they plummeted like tackling dummies. Yet as Marshall fell—the Knight could see it on his face—he was calm, unconcerned. It’s what made Marshall so dangerous. He didn’t care about himself.

  As he hit the floor face-first, the Knight’s mask shattered. Half its pieces skittered outward; the other half chewed into the Knight’s face, peeling away the fake beard, finding blood, and revealing a man with a dimpled chin and a boxer’s nose.

  Chestdown next to him, Marshall knew him immediately—from the shooting at Foundry Church: the pastor. The pastor who was shot… who fell to the carpet… and who lived. The same pastor who took the Christmas photo with the rabbi and the imam… and who was in the hospital chapel when both the chaplain and Tot were attacked.

  “I didn’t do anything!” Pastor Frick yelled as they tore through his pockets. “He shot me!”

  “Knife!” a Secret Service agent shouted from the dogpile that smothered Pastor Frick. From Frick’s pocket, he pulled out the hunting knife with the curly birch handle.

  “Go, go—move!” an agent yelled across the chamber.

  In the distance, a group of agents formed a human wall around the President, gripping him by the elbows, lifting his feet off the ground, and rushing him to the preselected saferoom. At the back of the statuary chamber was a door that led to the Park Police’s breakroom. Racing behind them, A.J. scooped Wallace’s daughter into his arms.

  “Your dad’s fine. He’s fine,” A.J. whispered, following the group to the saferoom as, shaking, she sobbed into his chest.

  Still pinned facedown, Pastor Frick let out a wordless howl as the Secret Service drilled their knees into his lower back—into his wound—and cuffed his hands behind him. They didn’t care that he’d been shot—or that he couldn’t feel his legs—or that unlike the wound he’d so carefully inflicted on himself in his office, this wasn’t the kind of attack he’d walk away from. Marshall had gone for vital organs.

  Across from him, under his own dogpile and with his own hands cuffed behind his back, Marshall didn’t struggle… didn’t say a word. Chin to the ground, he simply stared at Pastor Frick—his gold eyes burning with that first question he’d asked: Why did you kill Pastor Riis?

  Still on the ground, with his bloody cheek pressed against the bits and pieces of his mask, Frick could barely see anything. The world was still blurry, the edges of his vision ringed by a red circle that began to shrink and tighten, leaving only black. Frick tried to answer… he looked at Marshall and said the words: Nico told me to.

  Nico told me to! he insisted.

  But all that came out was a wet gurgle. It came up from Frick’s chest, up his throat, rattling like a bag of teeth.

  Indeed, as the red circle continued to tighten and blackness filled his peripheral vision, Pastor Frick’s final thoughts were of the simple fact that, all this time, he had it all wrong.

  For years now, Frick had heard the rumblings and rumors about the Knights and John Wilkes Booth. But it wasn’t until four months ago, when the church picked Associate Pastor Frick and put him here—right in Abraham Lincoln’s church—that he began to understand God’s message. Surely, this was fate.

  And then, to get the call that President Wallace was coming to visit. Frick had known the President wasn’t a churchgoer. Wallace attended on Easter, on holidays… only when there was a camera around. But now, with the President coming, here it was. Every life exists for a reason. This would be Frick’s chance to bring faith to millions.

  Yet what Wallace did on Christmas—using Frick’s church and Frick himself, bringing the rabbi and imam, then parading the three of them together like cheap interchangeable toys, as if one size would fit all. For the millions watching, and for Frick himself, it was a blasphemy.

  During those days, Frick understood the real reason why God had sent him to Lincoln’s church. Here in D.C., he could feel the church’s greatest threat raising its head once again. Every President has power; so too does the church. But to Frick, it was now clear why the balance between the two was shifting. Rather than looking to the church for moral guidance, the world watched as the President trivialized the name of Christ and everything it stood for.

  Was it any wonder that congregations were shrinking, members were disengaged, or that some refused to believe altogether? Today’s church was being reduced to a community center where people were bribed with Date Nights and fruit smoothies. It was time for the pollution to stop, for the sacrilege to end, and for the pure church, with its intended purpose, to make its return.

  The President didn’t even hide his goal—he said it right to Frick’s face: He would bring all three voices… Christian, Jewish, Muslim… the President would do everything in his power to bring the country together. Like Lincoln! Like JFK! Like every king whose growing influence would challenge church power. The church had lost so much lately. It couldn’t af
ford to lose more.

  Frick knew he’d need help. He knew he couldn’t do it alone. That’s what made him seek someone with experience and inspired him to reach out to Nico. And then to learn that one of his congregants—that Rupert—that Rupert worked with Nico… And to hear Nico’s stories and all that had gone before…

  Centuries ago, Vignolles created the Knights to protect the Name of God. But even Vignolles knew that what he was really protecting was the church’s power. When that power shifted between church and state, Knights like Booth, Guiteau, Czolgosz, and Oswald stepped forward to restore a proper balance. Now it was Frick’s turn. Someone had to stop this civil war and end this blasphemy.

  With Nico’s help, it was all so clear. How could this not be Frick’s mission? He thought he was chosen! Frick was the final Knight! But to look at it now, to look around and see the pieces that remained… No, now Frick understood: It was never he who was Chosen. From the start, he had it wrong. The Chosen One was always…

  Nico.

  Nico was the final Knight. And his mission was just beginning.

  It was that final thought—of Nico and the mission still to come—that sputtered through Frick’s brain as the red circle shrank into a pinhole and the world went black. That and the fact that he’d been right about one thing: He wouldn’t survive this day.

  109

  Eighteen years ago

  Sagamore, Wisconsin

  It was a small funeral. Not by choice.

  In a town as watchful and religious as Sagamore, judgments moved even quicker than gossip. Especially gossip like this.

  At the close of the funeral, they called on Marshall as one of the pallbearers. His father too. But since a twelve-year-old and a double amputee can’t be relied on to lift anything heavy, he and his dad simply put their open palms on the back of the coffin as it was rolled on the metal scissor-cart out to the hearse.