Murder on the Metro

by Margaret Truman

  Merle Talmidge took Tull’s hand in both of hers, while the president continued to pray silently to himself, his lips moving and eyes squeezed so tightly closed that his expression looked made of patchwork skin. “You are a great comfort to both of us, Reverend.”

  “It’s never easy to do the difficult thing, Madam First Lady.” Tull glanced toward the president, who continued mouthing the silent words of prayer. “Your husband’s illness is a great gift in the making, because it has sowed the seeds that will soon sprout. That could only be God’s work, and you have only followed his word.”

  The first lady eased her hands away. “God may speak to you, Reverend, but he doesn’t speak to me.”

  “He speaks to all, but only the most fortunate and worthy among us can hear Him. You’ve heard Him loud enough to put His words into action. You and your husband are His vessels. You do what you must, only to serve Him.”

  The president’s eyes snapped open suddenly. “Can we sing again now? We haven’t sung yet tonight.”

  A knock fell on the door and Merle Talmidge rose to answer it, while Francis Tull moved his chair closer to the president’s.

  “I told you we were not to be disturbed,” she said to the assistant she found standing there.

  Then she saw the look on his face, no words required.

  “Tell them I’ll be right down,” the first lady told him.

  CHAPTER

  68

  NEW YORK CITY

  Robert!” exclaimed Mackensie Smith. “Where have you been? I’ve been worried sick. What in God’s name is happening?”

  “I can’t tell you, not over this line.”

  “I still have the secure one,” Brixton’s best friend told him.

  “Hang up. I’ll call you back there.”

  Mac Smith picked up his secure phone before the first ring was complete. “Okay, I’m listening,”

  “Me saying too much would put you in grave danger. Annabel too,” Brixton added, referring to Mac’s wife.

  “What I don’t know, I don’t have to deny.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Spoken like a lawyer, Robert.”

  “I’ve been around one of the best in the last few years. Guess it rubbed off. But I don’t want to involve you any more than is absolutely necessary.”

  “Where are you?”

  “New York City. I just broke a nun out of federal prison.”

  “You … what?”

  “Don’t bother checking the news, Mac. It’s not going to be reported. None of what I’m involved in will ever be reported, if we can stop them.”

  “Stop who?”

  “Does your office still overlook the White House?”

  “I’m the one who’s moving, Robert, not the building.”

  “Enough said.”

  Mac hesitated. “You sound scared.”

  “Terrified.”

  “How can I help? What can I do? Who should I call?”

  “Nobody,” Brixton said, answering Mackensie Smith’s final question first, “because they won’t be able to do a thing to stop what’s coming.”

  “And what exactly is coming?”

  “We need to have this discussion in person, Mac.”

  “Where? I’ll meet you. Just give me a place and time.”

  “That’s why I’m calling. We need a place to hide out, just until tomorrow.”

  “We,” Smith repeated.

  “Numbering three. The names don’t matter.”

  “But one of them is this nun, I’m assuming.”

  “I was thinking maybe the office,” Brixton suggested, “given it’ll be empty until the new tenant moves in.”

  “No, too much going on. People packing up, moving stuff out. What about the house Annabel and I are building on the Chesapeake?”

  “I thought it was a work in progress.”

  “We’ve made a lot of progress. The place is virtually habitable now, and there’s even some furniture, though not enough to make it feel like home.”

  “I’m not picky, Mac,” Brixton told him.

  Smith knew better than to push him further on that, especially under the circumstances. “Anything else I can do for you right now?”

  “You could tell me if you heard from anyone asking questions about me.”

  “Not a peep. I would’ve told you as soon as I heard your voice a few minutes ago, if that were the case.”

  “You need to be careful, Mac. Annabel, too.”

  “How much of this has to do with the whole mess surrounding the Metro bombing?”

  “A whole lot.”

  “I’m a sucker for details, you know.”

  “I don’t want to say any more yet, for your own good.”

  Brixton could hear Mackensie Smith’s breathing on the other end of the line as he paused. “Okay, here’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to take a drive out to the new house and make sure everything’s in order, no strangers lurking about and all that. Stock up the fridge and cupboards with provisions from the Food Lion in Princess Anne. One thing to remember, though, Robert. The house is located on Deal Island. Just one bridge on and off. Not sure if that makes for a great hideout.”

  “It’s perfect, Mac, because at least we’ll be able to see them coming. And I need one more favor. I’m working this with a Secret Service agent named Kendra Rendine. She’s gone dark and I can’t reach her. I was hoping you—”

  “Robert,” Smith interrupted, “it was just on the news.”

  “What?”

  “Kendra Rendine was found dead an hour ago.”

  Mackensie Smith kept talking, but all Brixton heard was “Starbucks” and “slumped over a table.”

  “They killed her,” Brixton heard himself say.

  “Who?”

  “Doesn’t matter. I’ll explain everything when I see you. You need to leave now. Use the back door. Don’t take your car and don’t go home. Just get somewhere safe, somewhere in public.”

  “You mean,” Smith said, “like a Starbucks.”

  CHAPTER

  69

  WASHINGTON, DC

  They met in the first lady’s official office, located in the East Wing of the White House. The briefing covered the most salient points of what had become an unmitigated series of setbacks at the hands of two people who were now threatening the entire plot that she and others had so painstakingly put into motion. Covering all the bases, anticipating anything and everything. Or so they thought.

  “If they broke this nun out of jail—”

  “They didn’t actually break her out,” the director of the FBI reminded, after providing a full briefing. “She was already out when they neutralized the transport team comprised of federal marshals.”

  “I believe you mentioned that there were six of those marshals. Six against two.”

  “One of those two was this woman,” the Homeland Security secretary said, placing a photograph in front of the first lady on her desk.

  “Lia Ganz,” Merle Talmidge noted, recognizing her from a still photo isolated off the security footage of the mosque in Baltimore. “Again.”

  She aimed her next words toward the secretary of state.

  “You assured me this had been taken care of. You assured me the Israelis were cooperating.”

  “They were. They did. Something went wrong. They don’t call Lia Ganz the Lioness of Judah for nothing.”

  “So Ganz and Brixton are now in the company of Sister Mary Alice Rose. The risk they took in absconding with her could only mean they’ve somehow figured out that Y-Twelve is the target.”

  “They’re still otherwise alone, cut off, isolated,” the secretary reminded her.

  “That doesn’t seem to bother Ganz much—or Brixton for that matter, does it?”

  “Madam First Lady,” began the secretary of defense, “we have poked a hornet’s nest and are now dealing with what flew out.”

  “Do we have any idea of their whereabouts?” Merle Talmidge asked all of those assemble
d before her, none of whom so much as flinched. “Not even a clue?”

  “We put a tracer on all transactions associated with Brixton,” said the director of the FBI. “We can do that because we’re privy to all his personal information. Not so with Lia Ganz. She could be ten different people and we’d never know it. Nobody does fake documents better than the Israelis, even in the digital age. We believe she most likely rented a vehicle to get the three of them out of the area and are following that up as best we can by collecting security camera footage from all rent-a-car outlets in the general and surrounding area.”

  “That must be hundreds.”

  “Dozens, anyway,” said the FBI director. “It’s going to take some time.”

  “We need to find them. Robert Brixton is not without friends in Washington, and it will only take him getting one lawmaker’s ear to cause a shit storm that could land right on the White House welcome mat. Do we have anything?”

  “We’re following a few leads—contacts and that sort of thing.”

  “I’ll take that as a no.”

  “We’re looking into people Brixton is most likely to contact,” the director of the FBI picked up. “It means marshaling a lot of forces.”

  “If manpower is an issue, just say so.”

  “I’d prefer to keep the circle small, Madam First Lady.”

  Merle Talmidge glared at him across her desk. “You mean ‘small’ as in a former State Department contractor and a retired Israeli intelligence operative? Oh, and add to the mix an eighty-five-year-old nun, for good measure.”

  The head of the FBI didn’t respond.

  “Because we can’t allow these people to waylay our plans. We can’t afford it and the United States can’t afford it. You don’t need a crystal ball to see that the future holds chaos for this country and this world. My husband’s illness has cast us with this one last opportunity to make things right, to set this country on a difficult course that’s the only thing that might save it. With this Sister Mary Alice Rose in their company, it’s clear that Robert Brixton and Lia Ganz have figured out what’s coming tomorrow.”

  The director of Homeland Security smiled, not finding that to be a significant source of worry. “And what chance do the three of them have in penetrating one of the most secure installations in the entire nation?”

  “If I’d asked you two years ago what chance an eighty-three-year-old nun would’ve had in doing the same, what would have you said? What would any of you have said?”

  None of them said anything at all.

  “Just what I thought,” noted the first lady, returning her gaze to the director of the FBI. “Find them. Whatever it takes, find them.”

  CHAPTER

  70

  DEAL ISLAND, MARYLAND

  Mackensie Smith was sitting on the front porch of his new home on the shores of Chesapeake Bay when Lia Ganz pulled the SUV she’d rented in New Jersey during their drive south into the driveway.

  She explained to Brixton that she was on her third and final American identity. It was a long drive, taking the bulk of the day, to the point that they had watched the light bleeding from the afternoon sky. Mac’s new home was located in the fishing village of Deal Island on Tangier Sound, in a very private subdivision on its own private acre of land, just a half mile from the Deal Island Bridge and marina.

  Brixton took advantage of Lia Ganz driving, and Sister Mary Alice snoozing in the backseat, to do a deeper dive into where they were headed on his phone. Both ends of Deal Island offered public boat ramps, where there were any number of local skipjack and fishing captains to cruise the miles of waterways that stretched through the thirteen thousand acres of tidal marshes. Charter fishing and cruises could be reserved with boat captains at Wenona and Deal Island harbors. Brixton made a mental note of all that, along with committing to memory the location of boat rental outlets, on the chance they needed to flee the island that way.

  Mac Smith bounced up out of his chair like a boy excited to greet his parents at the end of the day. He hugged Brixton more tightly than he ever had, after which Brixton introduced him to Lia Ganz and Sister Mary Alice Rose.

  “Sister?” Smith repeated. “That’s right, you’re the nun Robert here broke out of prison.”

  “In the flesh, Mr. Smith,” Sister Mary Alice told him.

  Smith looked at her with a spark of recognition flashing in his eye. “Friend of mine from another firm helped defend a nun arrested for staging a protest at a nuclear facility.”

  “He did the best job he could. The deck was stacked against him.”

  Smith looked toward Brixton. “Why do I have the feeling that same nuclear facility is a part of what’s going on here?”

  “Because you’re a smart man, Mac.”

  “And this all goes back to the Metro bombing…”

  “It goes further back than that.”

  Mackensie Smith’s expression tightened. “You need to tell me what’s going on. Everything.”

  “Mac—”

  “I couldn’t live with myself if something happened to you, Robert. As of two hours ago, Annabel left to join some friends at our house in Saint Croix. I need to know everything, on the chance I can help you by more than just putting a roof over your head. And you need me to know.”

  “Because if something does happen to me…”

  “It won’t, but just in case.”

  * * *

  The house seemed to be formed of nothing but glass, letting huge swatches of light into every single room, depending on the time of day. The direct views of Chesapeake Bay were spectacular from the living room, kitchen, and front porch as well as from a pair of master bedroom suites on the second floor. Those master suites would share a six-foot whirlpool tub that hadn’t been installed yet.

  Lia Ganz went off to scout the area, as she put it, while Sister Mary Alice found a sun-splashed space for her prayers, leaving Brixton and Mackensie Smith to adjourn to the front porch, where the view of the bay was sprawling and magnificent in the cool, late afternoon breeze. A few sailboats and fishing craft dotted the waters, none of them appearing suspicious, although if they lingered into the night that would change.

  “I can see why you chose this place,” Brixton noted, as a trio of pelicans flew overhead, joining the herons, egrets, and ibis which came and went in flocks.

  “Never mind that,” Smith started. “Tell me exactly what that Metro bombing has to do with a nuclear facility?”

  “What’s the most obvious answer, Mac?”

  “Terrorism.”

  “You’re half right.”

  “Half?”

  “The Metro bombing wasn’t a terrorist attack; it was only supposed to look like one. Same thing for what’s coming. You heard about the gunfight at that Baltimore mosque?”

  “Details are all over the place,” Smith affirmed.

  “That woman you just met, the one scouting the property…”

  “Was that accent Israeli?”

  “It was.”

  Smith’s eyes bulged. “The mosque? Don’t tell me she was…”

  “I just did,” Brixton said, when his best friend’s voice tailed off.

  Smith accepted that at face value. “And this nun, Sister Mary whatever?”

  “Sister Mary Alice, Mac. Lia Ganz and I interrupted her federal prison transfer from the Metropolitan Detention Center to parts unknown. That nuclear facility she was arrested in is called Y-Twelve.”

  “Never heard of it.”

  “You will, and for all the wrong reasons.”

  Brixton laid out for Mackensie Smith what was coming tomorrow, supplementing the broad strokes with just enough of the details the professor had furnished about the massive catastrophe the United States was about to face, noting that the event was virtually certain to change the narrative enough to both radically shift the agenda and to assure that the Talmidge administration remained in power, with the first lady eventually succeeding her husband as president. When he was finished, Smith
sat back far enough to shrink into the wooden Adirondack chair. He remained silent for a time, as the sun fell, long enough for the descending darkness to hide his features from Brixton.

  “Five million people is more than the sum total of Americans lost in every war this country has ever fought, and that includes the Civil War.”

  “It could be more, Mac, even millions more.”

  Smith visibly shuddered. “Did you know that during the Manhattan Project, more than a hundred scientists signed a petition urging the government not to use the bomb? They believed there was a very real chance that the blast would start a chain reaction that would destroy the planet.”

  “I didn’t.”

  “The point being that nobody was sure of the actual effects. Everything was theoretical then, just as it is now. They may have tested all this in a lab, just like they tested those first nukes at Alamogordo, but until Y-Twelve blows, nobody’s really sure of how bad it’s going to get. What if this death cloud moves west? What if it moves south? What if it reaches Canada? What if it spreads directly over Washington, Philadelphia, New York, Boston, and all the densely populated places in between to land direct hits? How long would people have to stay inside?”

  “I’m not sure staying inside would save them, Mac.”

  Smith lapsed briefly back into silence. “You’ve got to let me help you, Robert.”

  Brixton gazed about him, gesturing toward the house at their rear. “You already have.”

  “I’m talking in a bigger way.” He took out his phone and held it up. “You have any idea how many congressmen, senators, and former government officials I have on speed dial?”

  “I’m sure it’s a veritable who’s who of power brokers.”

  “Damn right.” Smith brought the phone in closer. “Pick any letter in the alphabet and let’s call somebody right now. Get the wheels turning with more than just you, your Israeli, and your nun behind the wheel.”

  “They’ll crash, Mac. I thought I’d made it clear how high up all of this stretches.”