by Gene Riehl
“Anything look illegal?”
“Not right off, but you’d have to show my stuff to an AUSA.”
Monk frowned. “You didn’t call this early to tell me what you haven’t found.”
She laughed, a very pleasant chuckle. “I think I’ve nailed your young lady … Thomas Franklin’s mystery girl, I should say.”
Monk felt his body straighten and his mind go instantly clear. “You didn’t get pictures,” he said. “Tell me you’ve got pictures.”
“Four. I pulled down four pictures.”
Monk tried to ask her how she’d done it, but Eleanor beat him to the punch.
“You know Washington society,” she said. “Damn near every party in this town has a digital photographer, and these people get off on posting pictures of themselves on the Web.”
“So you got Franklin.”
“Dozens of times … but only four of the parties where his girlfriend was around.”
“Now I’m confused.”
“FBI agents,” she said. “You all spend a lot of time that way, don’t you?”
Monk ignored the question. He didn’t know about other agents. “She was with him at these parties? Like a date kind of thing?”
“Not like a date, no, … but she was there, close to him, but not actually with him.” She paused. “Like Monica and Bill, if you remember. Always at the edge of the picture somewhere, never actually in the scene.”
Monk nodded. He could still see the president shaking hands over a rope holding back the crowd, Monica in the front row grinning at him, Clinton patting her on the shoulder the way no one but a lover would.
“When were these parties, Eleanor? Any of the pictures recent?” He already knew the answer but had to ask.
“Three years ago was the latest. I spent two hours searching for something more current. There’s nothing. She’s disappeared from the Web.”
“What does she look like? … What did she look like?”
“Like a groupie. Long brown hair, sexy hair, dressed to kill, that sort of thing. Striking, I guess I’d call her. A potential marriage killer, for sure.”
Monk glanced at the clock again. “Can you e-mail me the pictures?”
“They’re not JPEG. Unless you’ve got the right program in your PC, I don’t think you can download them.”
“But you can print them.”
“Already done, Puller. Waiting for you.”
“I need to see someone first thing this morning, but I should be at your place around ten.”
“May I help you?” Esther Valenzuela asked, when Sung Kim appeared in the doorway of William Smith’s office at ten minutes before seven the next morning.
William’s secretary smiled.
“I’m afraid we’re not actually open for business today.”
“I’m sorry to disturb you,” Sung Kim told her. She looked at the metal plaque on the woman’s desk, at the name printed on the plaque. “Maybe you can help me, Esther,” she said. “I’m looking for an office that’s supposed to be in this building.”
“Of course.”
Sung Kim reached into her purse and pulled out her Beretta, swung the silenced automatic up in one motion and shot Esther Valenzuela just above the left eye. Esther sagged back into her chair, then crashed to the floor. Sung Kim holstered the Beretta and pulled out a second weapon. She turned toward the inner-office door. Before she got there the door opened and William Smith’s head stuck out.
“What the hell’s going on out …”
His voice died when he saw his secretary’s body. He tried to close the door, but Sung Kim shot him with the Taser. The darts stuck in his throat just above his collarbone. He went down in a heap, his body jerking in the doorway.
It was two minutes before he could speak.
Sung Kim timed it on her wristwatch.
He looked up at her as his eyes focused. He stared at the Taser in her hand, then directly into the brown contact lenses she’d chosen this morning. He pawed at the wires that ran from his neck back to her Taser. “What are you doing?” He glanced toward the body on the floor. “What did you do to Esther?” He blinked, over and over, as though trying to awaken from a dream. “Why are you here? What is this all …”
His voice died, and Sung Kim could see he was putting it together.
So she zapped him again.
William’s body elevated slightly. His arms jerked straight outward and he began to spasm. Twitching, writhing, then finally lying still again.
Sung Kim stood over him like a fisherman who’d just flung her still-hooked catch into the boat. Three minutes passed before William began to moan, then opened his eyes again. Now his voice was almost a croak.
“We’re both professionals,” he managed to say. “We don’t have to do this.”
“Your floor safe,” Sung Kim said. “Open it.”
“Floor safe? What are you talk—”
She depressed the switch.
This time his body went completely rigid before the jerking started again.
Five minutes later he came to again.
“What do you want?” he managed to gasp. “Just tell me what you want.”
“Open your safe.”
He took a breath and pushed it out slowly. He stared at her, then closed his eyes. A moment later he opened them again.
“Open the safe,” she repeated, her finger poised above the firing switch.
He seemed to be trying to get enough breath to talk, but when he did, his voice was suddenly stronger.
“Fuck you, Sung Kim. And fuck the people you work for.”
Sung Kim shrugged. “There’s no rush,” she told him. “We have all day.”
She pushed the switch. He fell back. His bowel muscles finally let go. Her head recoiled from the sudden acrid stench.
After he hung up with Eleanor, Monk fell back asleep and didn’t wake up until nine o’clock. It was half past nine when he backed the Saab out of his parking space in the garage and headed for the exit. At the gate he waited as it rose, then drove up the short ramp and out into the street. He glanced to his left, checking for traffic, then turned right and headed toward William’s office. He hadn’t heard from him yet, and Monk was tired of waiting. He couldn’t help replaying the NSA man’s words from the other night. Be careful, William had told him. It might be better to back off whatever you’re doing until you talk to me.
Which meant something good, Monk knew.
That he was pushing the right buttons.
Roger Carmody had probably been the last straw. When Carmody told Franklin that Monk was asking about …
Lost in thought, he reacted slowly to the delivery truck that had come to a stop ahead.
Monk hit the brake and barely managed to avoid hitting the iron lift gate jutting from the rear of the truck. He nudged the gas pedal, but the Saab’s engine died. Damn it, not again. He had too much to do today for this. He turned the key and the engine fired right up, idling fast, too fast now. He tapped on the accelerator to release the automatic choke and the idle returned to normal. Goddamned car. He had to get that choke taken care of.
The light changed and he accelerated with the traffic, but not for long before the line ahead stopped again. Ten seconds later it began to move. This time Monk nursed the gas. The Saab seemed to stumble for a moment before shooting ahead.
Christ!
He had to stomp the brake to get the car back under control. What the hell was the matter with this thing? He better take care of it this morning, right now, before he killed somebody. Barely nudging the pedal, he crept along. Now it was running fine. He came to a stop and smiled when the engine didn’t die, when it idled smoothly. In front of him the light changed. He hit the gas and the engine died. “Shit!” he muttered, then turned the key. The driver behind him leaned on the horn, then another one joined in, and another. “Hey!” a voice shouted. “Move it or I’ll do it for you!”
In her Volvo wagon two cars behind Monk, Sung Kim scowled. She’d be
en lucky to get to his loft in time to catch him leaving the garage, but now there was another problem.
His Saab shouldn’t be stalling like that. It shouldn’t be doing anything but gliding down the street the way a Saab always does. Monk was going to get sick of it, going to leave the damned car in the street and take a cab. She shook her head. You could plan and you could execute, but you couldn’t control the equipment.
Then Sung Kim saw what was happening, and sat up straight. The Saab had died again when the light turned green. Now it was a full hundred yards behind the delivery truck ahead. She glanced at the massive black iron lift-gate extending from the rear of the truck, then reached for the transmitter in her lap, pointed it in the direction of the Saab and pushed the switch.
Behind Monk the honking grew even more angry as he restarted the car. He looked up and saw that he was half a block behind the same delivery truck he’d been following. Jesus, no wonder they were yelling at him. Before he could warn himself about the sticky throttle, he mashed the gas. The big turbo roared as the throttle stuck wide open.
The back end of the Saab slewed sideways with the force of acceleration, momentarily out of control before the tires dug into the pavement with an angry squeal. The car shot forward as though fired from a slingshot. Monk’s head slapped backward against the padded rest, then bounced forward. The Saab hurtled toward the truck that was now stopped again, directly in front of him.
Monk stood on the brakes, but the Saab accelerated even faster.
Monk kicked at the stuck gas pedal, but it felt welded to the firewall. The engine redlined … roaring like a jetliner.
This can’t be happening!
He grabbed the ignition key, switched the engine off, and crushed the brake pedal with both feet, but the Saab’s momentum was far too great. His head jerked upward. The lift-gate on the rear of the truck filled his vision.
FORTY-EIGHT
“Jesus Christ, mister, are you okay?”
Monk heard the voice as though it came from a long way off, above the tremendous din in his head. Wedged between the passenger seat and the floor of the Saab, he managed to turn onto his back. Now he could see the dirty underside of the truck.
“What happened?” he yelled. “What the hell happened?”
“You went right under the lift gate!” the same voice hollered. A man’s voice. “Right underneath the truck!”
“It’s a miracle you’re alive!” A woman’s voice this time.
Now Monk remembered.
Just before impact he’d somehow hurled himself to the floor of the car.
Then he realized the top was gone … the entire top half of the Saab was gone. The truck had peeled it away like opening a can of sardines.
But he was alive.
As a matter of fact, he wasn’t even scratched.
He pushed himself up and looked to his right, toward the voices.
“What are you doing?” a woman said. “You’ve got to wait for the paramedics.” Now Monk could hear the whoop of an approaching siren. “You could be bleeding inside. You can’t move until they check you out.”
“I’m not hurt. Help me out of here. Pull the door open and get me the hell out of here.”
Monk heard a grinding screech as they jerked the passenger door open. He crawled through it, then out from under the truck. A crowd had gathered, faces staring. Monk turned back to the Saab. Christ, he thought. He’d never heard of anything like this. Even if the automatic choke was completely broken, it should have released long before this happened.
He turned back toward the car, suddenly needing to see for himself.
With the Saab wedged under the truck like that, he couldn’t open the hood, so he’d have to go underneath. He bent over and crab-walked under the truck, then dropped to his knees next to the right front tire of the Saab. He could hear a siren getting louder, then stopping somewhere beyond the crowd. The paramedics were here, and they’d grab him before he got a chance to look. He dropped to the ground and scooted under the car, straining to check out the throttle linkage in the semidarkness. His eyes opened wide when he saw what had been done.
It was close, but Monk got away before the paramedics could stop him.
He was around the corner and into a taxi before they knew it.
Now, half a block from the trolley barn, he reached for his cell phone, then stared at it. The phone was turned off. Damn it, when had he done that? He hit the power button and saw that he had voice mail. Good, he thought. Lisa had finally come to her senses.
But it wasn’t Lisa.
It was Eleanor DeWitt’s voice, and she sounded terrified.
“Christ, Puller!” she whispered, just loudly enough for him to hear. “I think there’s someone here! Someone trying to break into my apartment! You’ve got to help me! Oh God, Puller, how soon can you get here?”
Monk held on to the phone as the cab arrived at the barn, as he threw a twenty-dollar bill at the driver. He didn’t wait for his change before sprinting to the door, opening it, and dashing into the garage. He took the Ferrari. Kendall Jefferson would kill him, but Jefferson could get in line. The flaming red Enzo could do two hundred miles an hour, easy. The only thing in his way would be the traffic.
He punched Eleanor’s phone number as he waited for the gate to lift out of the way, but there was no answer. He threw the phone aside. Shit. What had he done to her? How could he have let her down this way?
The gate finally rose high enough for the low-slung Ferrari. Monk shot under it and into the street. He turned left toward GW University, his foot dancing on the accelerator pedal as he looked for holes in the traffic.
She was dead when he got there.
The door was standing open, and in her office off the living room, Eleanor was lying on her left side next to her overturned wheelchair. A crusty brown hole bisected her forehead, a single long drip of dried blood extended to her left ear.
Monk backed up through the door and grabbed for his gun before realizing he was being foolish. The killer was long gone. Monk went through the door again and moved directly to her body. “Oh, Eleanor,” he said, then looked away. When his eyes returned to her, he felt an icy weight in his stomach. He forced himself to look at her far longer than he wanted to. An image formed in his mind, the face of a billionaire. His gaze swept the room. It was untouched, and that was not good. It meant that Eleanor had put the pictures she’d downloaded for him out in plain sight, that Sung Kim hadn’t had to search for them at all.
Monk turned suddenly and left the room, strode directly to the front door and through it. By the time he reached the Ferrari his body was quivering with fury and remorse. There was only one thing he could do for Eleanor now. There was only one thing he could do for himself.
In her home in McLean—in the bedroom she’d converted into a home office—Bethany Randall sat at the desk under the window, staring into the backyard before picking up the phone and dialing quickly.
“FBI,” a woman’s voice said. “How may I direct your call?”
Bethany told her, and a moment later a second voice came on the line.
“This is Agent Sands.”
“It’s Bethany Randall.” She waited for a response, but there wasn’t one. “I think we better talk.”
“I’ve got nothing to say to you, not anymore. Not since Puller made his choice.”
“I’m not talking about Monk.”
Silence. Sung Kim gave Lisa a few seconds before continuing.
“I have videotape. You thought you were safely hidden in my yard, but the security camera caught your whole act.”
“Videotape?” Lisa paused. “Should I have some idea what you’re talking about?”
“Another question like that and I hang up. Do you understand me?”
Seconds ticked by.
“What do you want?”
“To talk to you, Lisa, that’s all. To try to work this out between ourselves before it gets any worse.”
“I told you I have
nothing to say.”
“Well, I won’t keep you any longer then. I’ll let you go back to work while I take this up with your boss instead.”
This time the silence was twice as long.
“Where?” Lisa finally responded. “Where can we meet?”
Bethany told her, then hung up the phone, sat back and gazed out the window into the backyard she’d grown to love. A few moments later she opened the right-hand desk drawer and pulled out her contact-lens case. She set it on the desk and opened it up, then took her time slipping the brown lenses over her eyes. From a deeper drawer she pulled out her long brown wig. She would put it on in the bathroom, after she’d pinned her hair to the top of her head and fastened the skullcap into place.
Then she opened the middle drawer and pulled it all the way out to the stops. She slid open a narrow compartment hidden in the rear wall of the drawer. Reaching through, she pushed her one-time pad aside to get to the cell phone. She couldn’t add Lisa Sands—couldn’t add a second FBI agent to her mission—without talking to Pyongyang. It was dangerous to risk another call, but she had no choice.
FORTY-NINE
Lisa didn’t respond to her cell phone, so Monk called her office. She wasn’t at her desk, either, and he waited for the call to transfer to the squad secretary.
“Sorry, Mr. Monk,” Janet Halper told him. “Lisa left a few minutes ago.”
“Where’d she go?”
“Didn’t say, but she left in a hurry, I can tell you that much. Went by me like a tornado.” Janet paused. “You have her cell number?” She laughed. “Dumb question … Of course you do.”
“I’ll try to call her, but if you talk to Lisa before I do, ask her to call me.”
He hung up and punched numbers for Lisa’s cell phone, but she didn’t answer. He left a message on her voice mail, then dialed her pager number and left the same message. Twenty minutes later he still hadn’t heard from her, so he did it all again. Still no luck. He threw the phone into the Ferrari’s passenger seat, and felt his grip tighten on the steering wheel. He couldn’t do anything about finding Lisa if she didn’t want to be found.
