The Liar's Lullaby

by Meg Gardiner

  You’re an artist, he told her. And the Colt .45 is a showstopper. He’ll talk.

  So Tasia reserved connecting rooms at the Reston Hyatt. Chennault hid in the second room. He told her to wait until the Secret Service left the room before unlocking the connecting door, so he could “protect” her if McFarland called the agents back in.

  That was the key to everything: the unlocked door. It was the only way he could gain access, shoot McFarland and Tasia, and escape out the window.

  She was the perfect scapegoat. But she’d betrayed him.

  “Bitch,” he said.

  Tasia had been a vector, a subtlety, beyond all dreaming. She had become gloriously enraged at McFarland. She had been wild with pain and eager to force him to apologize for their marriage.

  But she didn’t carry through. At the last minute, when McFarland arrived, she kept the connecting door locked. Chennault had been helpless. Then she left the Hyatt and returned to her D.C. hotel. The next morning she climbed aboard the tour bus and continued on the Bad Dogs and Bullets tour. And the jackal had gone back to the White House and continued subverting the country.

  McFarland had mesmerized Tasia, and reclaimed her. He had probably taken her sexually, too. Chennault swallowed, nauseated at the image.

  And then Tasia had shut him out. She had refused to see him. She had ignored his calls. When he went to her house the night before the San Francisco concert, she’d had the gall to send her pussy-whipped dog, Searle Lecroix, to shoo him away.

  Noel Michael Petty, at least, had seen to Lecroix. Things were not totally out of balance.

  Tasia had obviously realized that he had intended harm to the president. She had become a loose, loud, unmedicated cannon. He could not have let her live.

  But no evidence existed that he had gone to Reston, Virginia. All his discussions with Tasia had been one-on-one, and the only recording devices present had been the ones he had secretly planted. And he’d always used a jammer to detect bugs and wreck cell phone reception. He was in the clear.

  And that left him an open field on which to run today. He had two loyal soldiers in Ivory and Keyes. They would do what he asked. He had no doubts—he’d been given dossiers on them, as potential recruits, before he put this project into action.

  And didn’t he have a perfect stage today.

  He turned the corner onto Sacramento. Granite and glass skyscrapers lined the street. He had a clear view downhill to the office tower beyond the corner with Montgomery. He slowed. Despite pedestrians and heavy cross traffic, he could see a black Suburban parked outside at the curb. Sunlight kicked off its windshield.

  Chennault sent Keyes a text. Now.

  He inhaled the diesel fumes of the nation’s decay. Steady, he told himself. He kept his eyes on the vehicle parked outside the office building.

  Wait. One black Suburban.

  He picked up his pace. Elbowed a man in the side as he strode past. Cross traffic blocked his view, red Muni buses, yellow cabs, pedestrians in kaleidoscope colors.

  Just one Suburban. Not a fleet. And no police motorcycle escort loitering around, either. The sound of sirens bounced off the buildings in the wind. He hurried down the street.

  DON’T RUN, IVORY told herself. She was breathless, had tunnel vision. The office building was dead ahead.

  Parked across the street from it, directly opposite the black Gub Suburban, was a Blue Eagle Security armored car. Keyes climbed out from behind the wheel.

  He was wearing his helmet, company issue, which looked like a motorcycle helmet with a clear faceplate. He frowned at her.

  “Have you been running?” He turned his head. “What’s with the sirens?”

  She pushed past him and climbed into the cab. “I kicked it off. We can’t wait.”

  “What did you do?”

  She pulled the secure aluminum carry-case from the front seat.

  Keyes grabbed her arm. “Ivory.”

  “One less porker to get in our way.”

  She handed him the secure case. With it, they’d look exactly like security company guards making a cash delivery. Keyes stared at her with shock.

  Then he buckled down. “Send any messages now, because the jammer will freak out both text and voice calls.”

  “I’ve said all I need to say. Leave the keys in the ignition for Paine. He’ll be here, ready to drive when we come out.”

  Keyes glanced across the street. “Just one Suburban.”

  “This is where Tasia’s sister works. The president’s here. He’s visiting family. Who else could it be?”

  They crossed the street to the building. Waymire & Fong was on the fifth floor.

  54

  LEWICKI PUNCHED A NUMBER ON HISPHONE. HE THREW A FIERCE GAZE at Jo.

  “Sic semper tyrannis. Booth shouted it after he jumped from the president’s box to the stage at Ford’s Theatre. This guy Chennault is an assassination groupie.”

  He spoke into the phone. “Bill, we have a problem. It . . .” He pulled the phone from his ear. “Dammit. Cut me off. What—” He punched the number again.

  The screams came from the lobby.

  KEYES WAS FIRST out of the elevator but Ivory raced past him across the law firm lobby, straight at the receptionist sitting behind the desk.

  The woman was on the phone. She looked up. Her eyes registered confusion. She was seeing a man and a woman from Blue Eagle Security, dressed in their armored-car driver uniforms, wearing the regulation motorcycle helmets with clear faceplates. Carrying the silver case they always did whenever they went into a bank or brokerage to pick up cash.

  But Blue Eagle Security drivers didn’t usually open the secure case and pull out weapons. And they never aimed those weapons at wide-eyed receptionists whose mouths were hanging open.

  Keyes extended the stock on the MAC-10 machine pistol. Ivory shoved the Desert Eagle into her waistband and picked up the Glock.

  Before the receptionist could rise halfway out of her seat, Ivory charged the desk and raised the butt of the gun like a club. The receptionist shrieked like a fool. Ivory leaped over the desk and battered the girl from her chair with the Glock. Then she lifted the receiver on the phone bank and activated all the lights, jamming the system.

  The receptionist crawled away screaming, crabbed to her feet, and ran down the hall.

  “Lock the elevators,” Ivory told Keyes. “Is the cell phone jammer working?”

  She felt unleashed, fully human for the first time in years, ready to wreak scary hell on all these sheeple.

  She racked the slide on the Glock. “Let’s find him.”

  JO TURNED TOWARD the open conference room door. Lewicki paused, gripping his phone like a grenade.

  More screams, a woman’s voice. Distant, muffled by walls and carpet, a man shouted, “On the floor.”

  Jo rushed to the door. In the hall people were running. Lewicki came up beside her and slammed the door.

  From the lobby the man shouted, “This is the New American Revolution. We are watering the tree of liberty.”

  The gunfire was loud and sudden. Jo jumped. Screams furrowed the air. Footsteps pounded in the hall.

  Jo reached into her pocket for her phone. It wasn’t there.

  She’d left it in her purse in Vienna’s office. She ran to the credenza and grabbed the office phone. She got a circuits-busy sound.

  Lewicki eased the door open an inch. Jo saw lawyers and assistants rushing into offices, crashing into walls and potted plants and each other. More shots, deeper and closer. The screaming was intense. Lewicki shut the door and grabbed a chair. Before he could jam it under the knob, the door burst open.

  He swung a fist, hard. He hit Dana Jean in the nose. She bounced against the wall. Lewicki cocked his arm again, but Dana Jean covered her nose with one hand and slugged him back with the other. “Son of a bitch.”

  Jo jumped between them. “She works here.”

  Behind her came a portly attorney, glasses askew on his face. He barreled thr
ough the door. Lewicki slammed it and jammed the chair under the handle.

  “They’re shooting at people.” The man was in his late fifties, an African American who looked like he was ten seconds from a heart attack. And five seconds from running back into the hall to grab his colleagues.

  Lewicki pushed him away from the door. “How many?”

  Another shot. Dana Jean squealed.

  Lewicki pointed at Jo. “Shut her up.”

  The attorney put his arm around Dana Jean. “Who the hell—”

  “All of you, be quiet,” Lewicki said.

  The attorney straightened his glasses. “I’m Howell Waymire. This is my firm.” He pointed at the door. “Those are my friends out there, and they’re being shot at like dogs.”

  “How many shooters?” Lewicki said.

  Dana Jean fought not to sob. “A man and a woman with crazy white hair.”

  Lewicki blinked. “White?”

  “As soap. They’re wearing Blue Eagle Security uniforms. Armored car drivers. They pulled guns out of their briefcase.” She stuck her fingers in her mouth. She was shaking like a loose wheel.

  Down the hall a door was kicked open. “Where’s the president?”

  Lewicki looked confounded by Dana Jean’s description of the attackers. He tried his phone again. Hung up. “Nothing. They’re jamming the cell phones.”

  “Where is he?”

  A woman screamed, “Who?”

  The shot was deep and carried the sound of finality. Dana Jean jumped and cringed against Waymire’s lapels.

  “Why do they think the president is here?” she said.

  Waymire looked at Lewicki. “I know who you are.”

  Another door was kicked open, closer. Jo’s throat constricted. The walls themselves seemed to constrict. Claustrophobia crawled over her skin.

  “Where’s the president?” the man bellowed. “Take me to him or I’ll shoot you.”

  His voice was deep and backwoodsy. It was not Ace Chennault.

  Waymire stepped toward the door. “We have to get out of here.”

  Dana Jean grabbed his sleeve. “No. They jammed the elevator doors open and put chains on the fire stairs. The woman’s guarding the lobby.”

  Sweat beaded Waymire’s forehead. “We don’t have phones, we can’t call for help. We have to do something.”

  In response, Lewicki picked up the phone on the credenza, though Jo had already tried it. He seemed to believe things only when he did them himself.

  Dana Jean said, “They don’t know we’re in here. We’ll hide.”

  Jo no longer heard fleeing footsteps or screams outside. Nobody from the firm was left in the hall. The conference room felt like a shrinking cardboard box. And the shooters were working their way toward it.

  The chair jammed under the doorknob wouldn’t stop them. “They’ll shoot through the door,” she said.

  Lewicki turned to the conference table. “Barricade. Come on.”

  He picked up one end of the conference table, his neck and shoulders bulging with the strain. Jo and the others added their muscle and they dragged the table to the door. Waymire shoved it hard against the wood.

  He winced. His face had gone gray and sweaty. He put a hand to his chest, swiped at the table for support, and sank to his knees. Jo’s throat turned papery. He actually had been ten seconds from a heart attack. And now he was having it.

  IVORY MARCHED DOWN the hall, blood ringing in her ears. She hadn’t shot these law firm fools in the head because she needed them to talk. But if they didn’t stop screaming, she was going to open up on them.

  Where the hell was McFarland?

  She reached the end of the hall and turned the corner, ran to the far side of the building, saw Keyes coming toward her. He booted open an office door and fired a volley inside. Glass shattered and a man begged for his life.

  “Where is he?” Keyes bellowed.

  Ivory turned in a circle. At the end of the hall was a closed door. CONFERENCEROOM.

  “This way,” she said.

  WAYMIRE SLUMPED TO the floor. Dana Jean grabbed his arm. “What’s wrong?”

  “Pain.” He gasped for breath. The beds of his fingernails were blue.

  Jo knelt beside him. “Hold on.” She loosened his tie. “Anybody have an aspirin?” No one replied. She helped him to lie down beneath the conference table. She could do little else. He needed an ambulance.

  The whole place did.

  Lewicki ducked beneath the table. “Come on. Everybody under.”

  Dana Jean scooted beneath it.

  Jo caught Lewicki’s eye. “The table won’t stop rounds from automatic weapons, will it?”

  He hesitated. “Maybe the first couple.”

  In the hall, a man shouted, “Surrender the president or be executed for treason.”

  Jo eyed the door. Certainty pealed through her. The attackers would blow off the lock, then keep shooting. And if they could kick open the door even two inches, they’d have an angle to fire into the room. It would be open season.

  Dana Jean clutched her knees. “We’re trapped. There’s no way out.”

  Jo turned to the windows. “Yes, there is.”

  55

  GABE DROVE THROUGH HEAVY TRAFFIC ON SANSOME, INCHING PAST smoked-glass skyscrapers and neoclassical bank buildings toward Sacramento Street. The stereo was blasting Elvis Costello, “Complicated Shadows.” For the first time in twenty-four hours, he felt that his head was above water. It was raging white water, to be sure, but he could breathe, and was swimming for shore.

  He’d reach it. Jo was there.

  At the corner, traffic clogged completely. Down Sacramento he saw trucks, a police car, buses. He cruised past the corner. Of course traffic was a mess—the White House chief of staff was at Waymire & Fong. He circled the block. Halfway around, he spotted an alley. He cut through and came out not far from the Waymire building.

  When he stopped, he heard sirens.

  JO’S HEART JUMPED high and hard into her throat. She ran to the window and muscled it farther open. The noise of the city flowed in. Distantly she heard sirens.

  Lewicki sounded incredulous. “Are you going to throw paper airplanes with Help written on them? Get down. Stand there and your head might as well be a watermelon on a pike.”

  Outside the barricaded door, a woman cried, “Keyes, over here.”

  The doorknob turned and the door jiggled. Dana Jean squealed. Crouching low, Jo hurried to the conference table. Beneath it, Waymire put a hand to his chest.

  “Pain . . . crushing,” he said.

  “Hang in.”

  The attackers thumped against the door.

  Lewicki gave Jo a pitiless bull terrier stare. “Get your ass under the table and brace it.”

  “No. We’ll never hold them off. We have to escape.”

  Lewicki opened his mouth to bark at her but Jo grabbed him by the necktie. “We can climb down to the floor below.”

  “What if there are more of them outside?”

  Jo got right in his face. “There are more. Ace Chennault is not here with them. He’s someplace else.”

  “I—”

  “And he’s going to try to kill the president.”

  Lewicki flinched, but briefly, as if she’d poked him in the eye. He had bigger worries than the president. Namely, his own ass.

  With thunder and splinters, the doorknob blew off. It clattered across the tabletop. The blast created a ragged hole in the door. Cordite stank in the air.

  Jo held tight to Lewicki’s tie. “We have to get out. Waymire’s going to die otherwise. Nobody but you and I know that Chennault’s gunning for President McFarland. And the shooters are going to bust the door down in a matter of minutes.”

  Lewicki looked angrier, and more disbelieving, than any man she’d ever seen.

  Her skittering heart beat in her ears. “We have to escape—to save ourselves, and the president. I have to climb down to the floor below.”

  They heard a
hand working to pull apart the broken doorknob assembly. Then grunts and a shoulder slamming into the door.

  The shooter yelled, “We know you’re in there, McFarland. Surrender or everybody dies.”

  They heard metal ratchet against metal, then a slap. Somebody had inserted a full magazine of ammunition into a big weapon. Jo’s nerves tried to jump out of her pores. The urge to flee felt so powerful, she could barely hold herself to the floor.

  She clutched Lewicki’s shoulder. “Help me.”

  Lewicki looked like a dog with a bone in his teeth. He was fighting to hold on to the notion that he was in control, that things would be determined by his command.

  Then he said, “I’ll hold them off.”

  Jo squeezed his shoulder. Staying low, she ran to the window, leaned out, and looked down. The view was nauseating: a five-story vertical drop to concrete.

  Behind her, she heard a sawing sound. The barrel of an automatic weapon was being wedged into the door frame as leverage.

  The window ledge was eight inches wide. The building’s Art Deco design offered her corners and cracks and juts, but the fourth-floor window was ten feet down, recessed in solid stone casements. And the wall directly below her was a flat, virtually featureless surface.

  She took a breath. Free climb it? Holy shit.

  She had to find a rope. Then she could get down to the fourth floor. After that Lewicki could lower Dana Jean and Waymire, one at a time, and she could pull them in. Hook their belts to the rope, or use nylons as a swami belt, something.

  She scurried to the credenza. Inside—thank you, god of chaos—was the cable for the audio-visual system. It was heavy black television cable, wound around a wooden spool.

  She yanked the spool out. She needed maybe ninety feet of cable. If she couldn’t get inside the fourth-floor window she’d have to keep going down the side of the building, so she wanted plenty of extra rope. Cable. Life.

  The long barrel of an automatic weapon squirmed through the slit in the door, working up and down like an obscene appendage.