I glanced across at Sokolov, who was busy fiddling with the helmets we’d grabbed from the SWAT desk before getting on board. Our tech lab had also given us what little wire mesh they could get hold of at such short notice, and Sokolov was fitting it inside the Kevlar helmets. For such a sweet old guy, he had created something with truly monstrous potential. It was easy to understand why he pulled his disappearing act on our guys—which got me thinking about Corrigan again. He was one of the agents to whom Sokolov had given the slip. I was dying to ask Sokolov about him. Maybe he could tell me something about him that would help me out. A description, something, even after all these years. But now was not the time. It would have to wait.
I turned away from Sokolov and saw Larisa watching me.
“You all right?” she asked, her voice coming through the headset.
I shrugged. She slid off her headset and gestured for me to take off mine. She obviously wanted to have a private chat, away from Aparo, Sokolov, and the pilot. On choppers, all the headsets are linked to the same radio setup.
She leaned in close and spoke directly into my ear.
“Sokolov saying he didn’t think anyone should have it. Where are you on that?” Larisa asked.
I flashed on what her role had been in all this. I turned to her ear. “Your guys want him. That’s why they asked you to shadow me, to keep tabs on the investigation and let them know when to swoop in and take him off our hands.”
She didn’t seem that proud of it. “That was the plan.”
I didn’t say anything back and just looked at her.
“That doesn’t fit in with your game plan, does it?” she asked.
“Let’s just say I’ve seen the kind of stuff your guys don’t have a problem doing, and the idea of Sokolov’s baby ending up in their hands doesn’t exactly warm me up inside.”
“We do what we have to do,” she said. “We’re fighting many wars. It can get ugly.”
“Yeah, but messing around with a four-year-old kid’s brain to try and nab some drug lord . . . that’s not war. That’s just sick.”
Her face clouded with confusion. I guess she hadn’t been privy to my file yet, but from my tone and the way she looked at me, I think she realized that it had been something major for me.
“Am I missing something here?” she asked.
I wondered if Corrigan was still active, if he’d been pulling her strings all along. If he’d got me assigned to Sokolov’s case, maybe he’d chosen her, too. Which meant there was a chance that she knew him.
I just said, “Why don’t you ask your boss at Langley about that.” I was going to add, “And tell him I said I’ll be seeing him soon,” but I held back.
It would also have to wait.
69
I checked my watch as we landed at the helipad of the Washington Post Building, which was the one nearest to the Hilton. It was already edging past six fifteen. The president would be arriving in about forty-five minutes.
Everett was waiting for us at the helipad, ready to whisk us up to the Hilton, which was a ten-minute drive away.
“I spoke to the director of the Secret Service,” Everett told me as we set off. “He didn’t exactly embrace this.”
“I didn’t think he would,” I replied.
We blew past Dupont Circle and up Connecticut Avenue, but it wasn’t long before the traffic hit a standstill. It was wall-to-wall limos, one long stream of Lincoln Town Cars and the like ferrying the glamorous attendees to the big event. Media vans were parked to our left all along Connecticut Avenue, satellite dishes deployed. I flashed at how ideal one of those would be for Koschey and wondered if hooking up Sokolov’s machine to those dishes could be done, but based on what Sokolov had said, I discounted it as something Koschey would not have been able to set up this quickly. If anything, this was an opportunistic move on his part. He’d be keeping it simple. Not that it was going to make it any easier to find him.
“Roadblocks and diversions have been up all afternoon,” Everett told us. “They’ve got a major red-carpet thing going. It’s a zoo. And a big headache for us, especially since we’re playing second fiddle.”
I knew what he meant. The dinner had been designated a National Special Security Event by the secretary of Homeland Security. This meant the Secret Service was running the show as lead agency for the design and implementation of the NSSE’s operational security plan. They’d be working in partnership with law enforcement and public-safety officials at the local, state, and federal levels, but it was still their show, and they weren’t shy about showing it.
Everett badged us through a police roadblock to get onto T Street and we came to a stop behind a big gray Mobile Command truck, about a hundred yards south of the hotel’s main entrance.
I glanced at the hotel. It was a huge, sprawling, curved structure, about twelve floors high. It had a ’60s vibe going, what with its two semicircular wings and its facade of white rectangular modules. I asked Larisa and Sokolov to wait by Everett’s car while Aparo and I followed Everett to where a cluster of senior agents were engaged in heated debate.
As we reached the group, a tall suited agent with short graying hair and seemingly devoid of a single ounce of body fat cocked his head to one side and answered a question, his tone dripping with sarcasm: “I’m not going to stand around any longer talking hypotheticals. We’ll know soon enough whether the feds are wasting our time. I’ve got things to do.”
He raised his wrist to his mouth—no doubt to issue a stream of instructions—and started to walk away when Everett intercepted him.
“I’ve got Reilly and his partner here,” he told him, using his thumb to point us out. He turned to me and said, “Gene Romita,” tilting his head at the director of the Secret Service.
Romita cocked an eyebrow in my direction, then gave me a once-over like I was an attraction at a freak show. Everett shook hands with another one of the men and introduced him to me as Assistant Commissioner Terry Caniff. Caniff was a stocky, gray-bearded man wearing a look of permanent rancor, a look not helped by what Romita had said as we were coming in. I didn’t envy him; it can’t be easy running the police force in a city where every single military and civilian law-enforcement and intelligence outfit either has its headquarters or a significant operational presence.
“Everett tells me you’re playing a hunch,” Romita told me gruffly. “So tell me what you’ve got, but make it quick.” He checked his watch. “POTUS leaves the White House in forty minutes.”
I gave him a brief rundown of what Sokolov had created without getting into the nitty-gritty of how it worked. I then told him about Koschey having it in an undetermined car, and how I thought he might be about to use it.
“That big bust-up at that bar in Brighton Beach,” Aparo added. “You saw the reports, right?”
He nodded.
“That was it,” he told Romita.
“You know that for a fact?”
I said, “We came pretty close to getting hold of the van that night. It didn’t work out.”
Romita mulled it over for a second, then said, “Here’s my problem, Reilly. I don’t know what to make of your story. I don’t know if there’s some Russian rogue running around with some kind of oversized Buck Rogers stun gun. Fact is, even if that were possible and he was out there, we don’t know for a fact that he’s coming here, do we?”
“No, we don’t.”
He didn’t really need my confirmation. “Look, we take any threat—any threat,” he repeated, emphasizing the any, “—to the president’s life very seriously. But we also have to use our better judgment if we’re not going to keep him locked up inside the White House twenty-four-seven. ’Cause as you know, we do get threats. And we have to take a view on how credible each threat is. And my problem with this is, there’s no credible intel. There’s nothing credible about it and nothing to indicate a targeted threat to this event. It’s all just based on your hunch. And if I was going to hustle POTUS into his bunker every time
someone had a hunch, well, then I’d say those bastards have won. You understand me? They’ve won if they can get us to run for cover that easily. And I’ll be damned if I’m gonna give them or any two-bit terrorist wannabe the satisfaction of knowing they can get the president of the United States to scurry for cover just because they said boo. Show me something credible and I’ll lock him down. But it’s gonna have to be more than a hunch.”
He jabbed a forceful finger in the direction of the hotel behind him. “We’ve got this place locked down tight. The entire perimeter is secure from a block away. Nothing comes in or out without our say-so. We’ve got roadblocks and we’ve got sharpshooters on the roofs. And you’re telling me this guy has some kind of brain zapper that doesn’t need line of sight and has an indeterminate range?” He said it like he didn’t believe a word of it, which didn’t really surprise me. “So what do you suggest? You want us to keep the president in the bunker permanently until we get this guy? We talking about a week, a month, a year? ’Cause that’s what you’re saying, isn’t it? He could strike anytime, anywhere. From a distance. What do you want me to do, exactly?”
I wasn’t sure what I was suggesting anymore.
“I hear you,” I said. “All I’m saying is, factor it in on the off chance that I am right. Let’s make sure we do everything we can and take whatever protective measures are available to us, just in case.”
“Like what? You said this thing can’t be blocked out without specialist gear?”
I nodded. “Get hold of as many earbuds and helmets as you can. Hand them out and tell your men to keep them close at hand. Anything weird starts happening, make sure they put them on as fast as they can. And stay close to POTUS and be ready to evacuate him to the deepest basement in the hotel if it happens.”
I spread my arms like, “That’s all I’ve got.” Because it was and, realistically, he was right. We couldn’t lock down the whole country. And president or not, a strike at an event like this would be devastating, and it wouldn’t necessarily be the last we heard of Koschey.
Romita frowned, unhappy with being put on the spot like that. “You got it.” Then he scoffed. “I’ll also hand out some rolls of aluminum foil. Maybe we can wrap some around our heads for added protection.”
He strode off, remora-like agents in his wake.
Like I said. We were going to be alone on this one.
I glanced at my watch. Half an hour to go.
“We don’t have much time,” I told Everett and Caniff. “Show me the setup.”
70
I followed them into the Mobile Command Center, with Aparo, Larisa, and Sokolov in tow.
A bunch of agents were manning various posts, eyeballing a plethora of screens while communicating with the agents on the ground outside.
“Show me the layout,” I asked Everett.
He got one of his techs to pull up an aerial view of the hotel and its immediate surroundings.
“Is this live?” I asked.
“No,” the tech said. “We haven’t tasked a bird, not for tonight.”
From above, the Washington Hilton looked like a scribbled lowercase “m,” kind of how Alex would draw a bird in flight. The tips of the wings were aligned just off the east-west axis, with the main entrance at the center of the left-hand concave scoop. Four circular flower beds were arranged asymmetrically on a large oval of grass that formed the center of a turning circle that fed the entrance. The right-hand scoop cupped a sun patio and gardens and provided no access to vehicles. A large pool sat at the end of the eastern wing tip. Screened from its neighbors by a line of trees, a narrow access road ran along the dual convex bulges of the hotel’s northern facade.
Everett pointed at the screen and gave me the virtual tour. “The president’s motorcade will drive up the same way we did, up Connecticut. He comes in through the main entrance here, then heads down to the ballroom.”
“Where’s the ballroom?” Sokolov asked.
Everett hesitated before answering, but I gave him a slight nod to let him know Sokolov was fine. “It’s in the basement under this area right here,” he said, pointing to the grass oval outside the left wing.
“What do you think?” I asked Sokolov. “Can it reach there?”
He stared at the screen and shrugged. “One basement, no building overhead. I’d say yes, if he has it turned on full blast.”
“What about ideal positioning?”
He studied the aerial view. “Obviously, facing the front would be the most effective. But again, he could put it anywhere.”
Koschey may not have had the same level of technical knowledge as Sokolov—no one did when it came to this—but he was clearly exceptionally clever and had the ability to grasp complex ideas quickly. He was also a highly trained killer. He would be perfectly capable of gauging line of sight in urban terrain, in addition to factoring in multiple variables.
I asked Everett, “You’ve got the whole perimeter locked down?”
“We’ve got roadblocks on all the approach roads. No one gets in but residents and not without having their vehicles checked.”
I looked at the screen. The Hilton had a lot of open space in front of it, which was good as it provided a natural barrier. There was a large building across from it on T Street, behind us. To our left was a Marriott, a building that housed a FedEx office and an apartment building. I pointed at the building opposite the tip of its northwest wing. “What’s that?”
Everett said, “The Russian Trade Federation.”
I gave Larisa a dubious look.
She pursed her lips. “He’d have access to it, of course. Then again, he’d be incriminating the Kremlin pretty clearly if he did it from there.”
“Maybe that’s what he wants.”
The rest was what looked like apartment buildings, behind the hotel and east of it, between Columbia Road and Nineteenth Street. There was also a big building behind the northeast tip of the hotel that Everett said was a school. It had a basketball court, a playground, and a parking lot for buses.
There were plenty of places someone could park a car and shower the hotel with microwaves.
“And nothing suspicious to report?” I asked Everett. “Everything’s been smooth?”
He nodded. “Yep.”
I checked my watch. Twenty-five minutes till kick-off.
“All right. Best we can do is run a perimeter sweep on foot and hope I’m wrong.” I turned to Aparo and Larisa. “Front, northwest corner, northeast corner. Pick your zone.”
“I’ll take northwest and the Russian Trade Federation,” Larisa said.
“Front,” Aparo said.
“Okay,” I said. “We need comms and earbuds,” I told Everett. He issued a quick command, and one of his techs hooked us up within seconds.
I held up my helmet and buds to Aparo and Larisa. “First sign of any discomfort . . .”
They nodded.
I turned to Sokolov. “Stay here and online in case we need you.” Then I asked Everett, regarding Sokolov, “You look after my man for me?”
“Go,” he said.
71
With a comms bud in one ear and a helmet and earplug in my hand, I trotted off along T Street, away from the hotel’s entrance, leaving the limo parade and the attendant media bustle behind. I had the massive curving facade of the hotel beyond the landscaped green to my left, a tall office building looming over me to my right.
The roads had all been cleared of parked cars, and despite the hubbub behind me, the street ahead had an eerie, empty feel. I passed the office block and banked onto Florida Avenue, where I encountered the first police roadblock. It consisted of two patrol cars blocking the road, with four officers directing the few cars that had ventured this far to turn back. I surveyed the wide intersection, but couldn’t see anywhere that Koschey and his vehicle could be lurking, so I kept going.
I turned off Florida onto Nineteenth Street, with the hotel still to my left. Its loading bays were there, underneath the large e
levated deck where the pool was. There was a lot of activity there. Catering trucks and other suppliers were parked in the half dozen bays, with a lot of staff milling around. A lot of mouths to feed in there. I was approached by a couple of cops and showed them my creds.
“Anything to report?” I asked them.
“It’s all good here,” one of them said.
I checked the bays as I passed them, but I couldn’t see anything out of place. There were too many people working the loading area for Koschey to risk using it as his approach.
I got back on the street and advanced north on Nineteenth, the hotel’s rear elevation curving away from me. The street was pretty and lined with lush trees. To my right was a series of three- and four-story redbrick town houses and small apartment buildings. No cars parked on Nineteenth, no cars moving, either.
Larisa’s voice came through my earbud. “Reilly?”
“Where are you?”
“Moving northeast on Columbia,” she said.
I called up the map in my mind’s eye. We were moving in parallel up the two angled, intersecting roads that flanked the hotel.
“Trade building clear?” I asked.
“Yes,” she said. “I spoke to the guard at the gate, in Russian. Everyone left early to avoid the traffic and no one’s been in all afternoon.”
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