The Kill Button

by Tom Hron

  “I understand, and we’ll do our very best to protect your identities. Justice and the others want to talk to you right away, but there’s something that you need to know beforehand. Afterward, if you’d rather, they can go straight to hell.”

  Blinking, Harry looked at Captain Felleman, who was standing beside the admiral. What on earth was going on?

  Suddenly the admiral had a hangdog look on his face. “Catherine, your wife … ah, former wife … well, she’s been murdered.”

  CHAPTER 20

  THE OUTER BANKS

  Alexis studied the front page of the USA Today, NAVY CAPTURES ABU MUHAMMAD, like someone searching for her own name. It wasn’t so much that the article had grabbed her attention, although she planned on reading it again because it was so interesting, it was the photographs above the fold that had caught her eye. The largest had Muhammad flanked by a group of naval officers and Washington bigwigs aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln. The second was of someone named Harry Sharp, the man who had actually snuck into Iran and caught Muhammad (she had no idea why he’d let anyone take his picture, since now every terrorist in the world would now know what he looked like). The third was a picture of a woman who had once been Sharp’s wife and had been found murdered in her home. Adding to the amazing story was phone records had been discovered that suggested Senator Robert Jefferies, chairman of the Select Committee on Intelligence, might have been her lover. For a spy aficionado like herself, this was manna from heaven. Furthermore, that wasn’t the half of it, because a man in the first photo looked very familiar, despite the grainy newsprint. She shot a look at old Wilma Patch, who owned the home where she was staying. “Do you have a magnifying glass? I need to look at something.”

  Ninety-year-old Patch arched the black creases in her face. “There’s one ‘bout here some place. Maybe oin the sewoin machine.” People born and raised on the Outer Banks spoke with their lips close together and their tongues high in their mouths, giving them a songlike sound, and sometimes Alexis had a hard time understanding them.

  When she had left Manassas, she’d driven through Virginia and down along North Carolina’s barrier islands—Kitty Hawk, Kill Devil Hill, Nags Head, Hatteras, and then she had ridden the ferry over to Ocracoke Island. The little town of Ocracoke (wouldn’t you know, she thought, exactly where Blackbeard had had his head chopped off) was where she had finally stopped, low on money and looking for some kind of hidey-hole. Wilma had rented her a room and there had been part-time work all over town. Yippee, jobs that paid in cash with no questions asked. She had found that Ocracoke was an 1823 lighthouse, pink flowers, sleepy cottages on shady lanes, and picket fences. It was no wonder the pirates had used it as a foxhole so long ago.

  She walked to the antique Singer that Wilma still used, found the magnifying glass, and returned to the newspaper. She increased the size of the face that looked familiar just behind Abu Muhammad, then almost had a heart attack. Who pulls that guy’s strings? she wondered. And what was the connection? She swung toward Wilma again.

  “I gotta leave right away.” She had nixed her Wellesley grammar and blond hair, becoming a mousy redhead. What was more, now poor Tungsten was coal-black.

  Storklike, Wilma straightened herself. “Goodness, girl, you just got here a little bit ago.”

  “I know—I—” What could she say? Wilma would think she was goofy in the head if she tried explaining everything. Oh well, lies were always virtuous between women. She held up the newspaper and pointed at Catherine Sharp’s picture. “This woman was a friend, and I have to go back and help her family.”

  Wilma’s cracked face peered across the room. “Goodness, she dead?”

  “Someone beat her to death.” Alexis then fell silent. Wilma’s question had struck home, leaving her feeling as though she might have divined her own destiny. Mysteriously, she was being drawn back into the danger, even though her sense of survival told her to stay right where she was. It was as if Catherine Sharp’s eyes were reaching out from the USA Today and coaxing her back. However, the compelling, million-dollar question remained, what did any of it have to do with her?

  In the early evening she drove onto the mainland ferry and waited for the night to come, at which time she would dare make her run to Washington. Two and a half hours across Pamlico Sound, three or so to Portsmouth, then another four across Virginia. She would be there by daybreak. SiddhArtha. It was all still spaghetti-like, but now with a pathological killer thrown in just for good measure.

  When the ferry reached Swan Quarter, she pulled off and drove into the nighttime. She drove with both hands high on the steering wheel and with her eyes watching the rearview mirror. She drove exactly at the speed limit, nothing more and nothing less. She drove with fear making her sick to her stomach and with her eyes feeling as though they were coming out of her head. If the highway patrol spotted her car, she was toast.

  She blanked out her mind and listened to every talk show she could find on the radio, yelling when she didn’t like what was being said. Tungsten stared at her as if she was going mad, and maybe she was. She imagined the eighteen-wheelers were running her off the road and that the interstate would never end. There was always motion but never any progress. She filled up at a gas station and started again, with her loneliness becoming paranoia. Whom could she trust?

  At six in the morning she crossed the Potomac River on the Ramchambeau Bridge, swung past the Jefferson Memorial, then exited onto Constitutional Avenue. Minutes later, she parked along the Mall, the great boulevard between the Washington Monument and the Capitol. She sat there with every emotion running up and down her spine. The rising sun had just backlit the Capitol’s dome with its brassy glow, leaving its columns shining in gold. The symbol of democracy, she thought to herself, but now the paragon of evil as well. Why would anyone in his or her right mind want an old ethnic disease lying on the bottom of the ocean, let along being willing to kill for it? She would sleep until midmorning, then start finding out.

  At nine o’clock she woke, since in her life there was this alarm in her head that never seemed to fail. She sat up, checked around her car, then got out with Tungsten and let him walk around in the park-like Mall. Afterward, she put him back in the car and set off for the National Museum of American History, the closest major complex. She needed to find a bathroom and then a public phone, which was becoming hard to find. The Mall was filled with about a million tourists, or so it seemed, leaving it perfect for her. In the unlikelihood that someone recognized her, she’d be hard to catch in the infinite crowd.

  After freshening herself, she found a pay phone and looked up Senator Jefferies’ office number in a beat-up Dex phonebook, then dialed it. A receptionist answered but gave her the usual runaround … until she gave the woman her name and told her that she had worked for the CIA and had information about the Sharp murder. Seconds later, Jefferies picked up the phone.

  “Miss Mundy, you’re the woman the FBI is chasing. Where are you? I was given a briefing about you just a week ago.”

  Where does one start when you’re fishing with grenades? she wondered, and with a senator, no less. She told him that it didn’t make any difference where she was. Besides, I’m being framed by the Agency. Then she jacked up her voice. “Do you know a man named Daniel Reechi? He works in the White House.”

  For a moment the line went silent. “Dan Reechi is the intelligence director for the president’s National Security Council. Of course, I know him. Why do you ask?”

  She played her own moment of silence. “He was at the CIA right after my supervisor, Dewey Chambers, was murdered, then on the Abraham Lincoln after Catherine Sharp was killed. Don’t you think that’s a little unusual?”

  “How do you know he was on the Lincoln?” Jefferies voice had gone up an octave.

  “His picture is in the newspapers, two rows behind Abu Muhammad.”

  Jefferies voice came back down again. “That doesn’t mean he had anything to do with Catherine’s murder, and actua
lly it might give him an alibi, instead.”

  “Okay, then, did you kill her, since you think he’s so innocent?” she demanded. Now she wanted to hurt him.

  There was no answer, only the sobs of a man choking on his sadness. Crying as only a bereaved love could, he wept from his heart. She said that she was sorry, and had done it between her own moans.

  God only knew what made her look up. Maybe it had been the cries of people being shoved aside or maybe the approaching sound of pounding shoes. She slammed down the phone and ducked into a nearby crowd only a split-second before three sports-coats came barreling around a corner. She was so shaken that she had trouble controlling herself, and she quickly struck up a conversation with two older women looking at the inaugural ball gowns in the First Ladies’ Hall. Be cool, smile, act like one’s your mother. Out of the corner of her eye she watched the sports-coats eyeball every blond in the room.

  After what seemed like a millennium she sidled into a large group leaving the museum and trooped back outside, then hurriedly lost herself in the thousands walking the Mall. She was safe for the time being, but for how long? she wondered. One of two things had happened to her—Jefferies’ receptionist had called the FBI and gotten a trace on the pay phone, or Jefferies’ office was wired and the call had been traced that way. There were no other explanations. She suspected door number two, which fit the government’s standard modus operandi. In the worst way, she needed a diversion.

  She returned to her car and got her cell phone, which she hadn’t dared use since she’d left Langley for fear of being found. Next, she headed for the National Air and Space Museum, always the busiest place on the Mall, and started looking for just the right person. Someone who was really fast. Someone who was street smart. Someone who could smell the law from a mile away. The city also had the reputation of being the nation’s crime center, which she now hoped was true. She hated losing all her messages, especially the ones from her parents, who would be frantic by now, but she had no other choice. She was hunting a killer.

  After a few minutes of trolling, she spotted the young man she needed. He was tall and lean and was wearing brand-new sneakers, and rather than the archetypical baggy jeans with the crotch almost down to his knees, he had on slacks that were formfitting and fast. His black hair was slicked-back and his ears were pierced with studs. After catching his eye she glanced away, as though she had something to hide. She set her cell phone down on a bus-stop bench, fiddled with her purse, then got up and walked away, leaving the phone behind.

  When she looked back, he was jogging the other way with her phone. She quickly walked an angle between the Air and Space Museum and the direction he’d taken and waited to see what would happen. She doubted that he could resist the “free minutes” for long. Five minutes passed, then ten. Suddenly she saw the sports-coats tearing off across the Mall, chasing the target they’d obviously been given on their earphones. She made a self-satisfied face. They were about to go on a run they’d never forget with very little chance they’d ever see whom they were chasing, and the race wouldn’t even be fair.

  She walked back to the Air and Space Museum, found another pay phone, and called Jefferies again. Why did you have my call traced? she demanded when the receptionist answered, curious about what the response would be. The woman insisted that she hadn’t, then put her through to Jefferies again.

  “Why did you hang up?” he asked, still sounding forlorn.

  “Because you either had my call traced or your office is bugged.” Then she raised her voice for effect. “I was almost arrested.”

  “I wouldn’t do that,” he answered softly.

  “Then your office is wired and you need to have it swept. Call a detective agency, and don’t let anyone in the government do it, not unless you want it bugged all over again.”

  “My God, are you sure?”

  “Look, I can’t talk any longer.” She had given herself thirty seconds, and it was time to hang up and walk away.

  She drove away from the city the way she’d come, searching for a mom-and-pop motel where she could spend the night. One that was cheap and clean. One that was happy to take cash. One where you could park in back. The smaller towns always had two or three of them, and they usually were decent places to stay. She exited off the interstate and drove into Dumfries, Virginia, then a little later found what she wanted. The Tidewater Inn. Cable TV. Vacancy. She pulled up to its colonial-style front and registered under a phony name. Sharon Rhon. In an investigation, they would continually mess up the last name, whether the FBI tried spelling or pronouncing it.

  Halfway exhausted, she undressed and fell into bed, but then found she couldn’t sleep. The day’s events and all the things that had been said kept spinning in her head. What had she learned?… First: Jefferies apparently hadn’t killed Catherine Sharp because he had been in love with her instead. Second: someone had wanted to destroy him, so what better way than involving him in a murder investigation? Yet, something just seemed a little too theatrical about that. Third: Reechi was a prime-time player in the nether world of national intelligence. Fifth: the Central Intelligence Agency and the National Security Agency answered to him, not the other way around, as she had first thought. Sixth: the president’s Security Council was somehow connected to two murders, as unbelievable as it seemed. Conclusion: she was playing with nitroglycerin.

  All the peripherals bothered her as well—things like where did Harry Sharp fit into everything, and why had his picture been printed in all the newspapers? Obviously, someone wanted him dead as soon as possible, and what better way than let every al-Qaida terrorist in the world know exactly what he looked like? In addition, Iran, if it hadn’t already, would issue a fatwa with a million bucks on his head, just as they had with the British author, Salman Rushdie and many others. The more she thought about it, the more she wanted to talk to him. Somehow, he was the wild card in the whole thing and was obviously in a lot more trouble than she was, and if she could just pick his brain maybe a few things would match up. Her first question would be what do you know about a guy named Reechi? His answer might explain why the NSC’s spy chief kept popping up in all the wrong places … Slowly, somehow, she fell asleep.

  Next morning she slept in, partly because she was overtired and partly so her subconscious (with which she was always on good terms) could come up with some idea, or maybe answers. Now she wanted to talk to Harry Sharp in the worst way, but how? Simple logic suggested that there was an association between Jefferies and him somewhere beyond the ex-wife, but she would be risking everything if she tried calling the Hart Senate Office Building again, at least until she knew for sure the bugs were gone. By now, everyone in Washington would be watching him like a hawk. The CIA, the FBI, the cops, you name it, they would all have him under surveillance. For now, he was like poison.

  She got out of bed and dressed, then checked out and bought a Washington Times. In the obituaries, she found Catherine Sharp’s death notice, giving the funeral arrangements at the Resthaven Mortuary in Bethesda and the Forest Oak Cemetery in Montgomery County. She set off for D.C. again. She would buy a sensible dress at the first Penny’s store she came to, then begin with the wake. She could only pray the people who were snooping after Jefferies and Sharp wouldn’t be the same ones hunting her. It didn’t seem likely, but one never knew, and she hoped she had Tungsten’s nine lives.

  That evening she parked one block over from the Resthaven and walked around to the front where there were several people standing, seemingly hesitant to go inside. She climbed the steps and then stopped beside two young women her own age. A little startled, they exchanged funeral smiles with her nonetheless, which was exactly what she had wanted. Friends together mourning their loss. Cutting her eyes back and forth, she studied everyone near them. Three middle-aged women were talking up a storm, ostensibly discussing the murder. An elderly man in a double-breasted brown coat and mismatched slacks was having a smoke. He was an out-of-towner who was presumably no t
hreat. A round-faced chauffeur was waiting beside a black limousine. He wasn’t African-American … but what was he? He had the most penetrating eyes she had ever seen. She slowly turned to the women she had just joined.

  “I hope you don’t mind,” she whispered with pleading eyes. “I’m all alone and so sick about this.”

  She couldn’t have said it better because both women quickly stepped closer to her. Isn’t it awful? they answered. Cathy. We can’t believe it, and how could someone do such a thing?

  Have you seen Harry yet, she asked next, or Senator Jefferies? I wonder how both are taking this? It must be devastating for both of them. Can you imagine?…

  Her entreaty set them off, with both buzzing around her like houseflies. No, we haven’t seen either one, they said. Do you suppose they would show up at the same time? God forbid. Do you suppose Jefferies did it? No, that couldn’t be. There must have been something going on between Cathy and him. Anyway, that’s what everyone thinks, but you never know? He’s a politician and they’re capable of anything. On and on both went until Alexis suggested they had better go in. Girlfriends united … and now she had her cover.

  The mortuary was an older building with a dim-lit lobby, large viewing area, and adjoining chapel. Its walls were pale with walnut woodwork and wine-colored curtains. Every room was filled with folding chairs, flowers, and people solemnly shifting from one foot to the other while they talked. With the two women, Alexis walked forward and looked in the casket, then almost lost it. Even in death, Catherine Sharp was wonderfully beautiful with angel-like hair, a golden face, and delicate hands clasped over a demure blue dress. She came away with tears half blinding her, and suddenly she realized the risks of her coming were superfluous.

  “Someone will pay for this, I promise,” she murmured, forgetting her caution for a moment.

  “What did you say?” asked one of her companions.