by Ed Markham
“Where do we stand,” she asked the head of the SEMU team—a brawny, bearded man who wore a silver name badge that said “SHATZER.” As she spoke, she watched Spencer Farnsworth make his way up the stairs that led to the waiting area just off the left side of the stage.
Shatzer flashed her a thumbs up without taking his eyes from the monitors. “So far so good,” he said. “Audience screening and thermals haven’t turned up anything suspicious. Security perimeter around the stage is intact, and everyone within it has been patted down and okayed.”
Lauren nodded, her eyes on the monitors now.
When the roars of the crowd had finally subsided, she watched Philip Goodman smile and pass his eyes over the masses of spectators.
“Many of you know how much I like to reminisce about my childhood in Marietta, Georgia,” he said. “And many of you may have heard me tell the story of my Uncle Jimmy and the gift he gave me when I graduated from high school.”
Goodman grinned. The crowd—knowing well what was coming next—began to cheer.
“My uncle’s gift is what joins us all together here today,” he continued, laying a hand on top of the breast pocket of his suit coat. “And when my Uncle Jimmy gave me this gift, he said to me, Hold fast to it, Philip. And hold fast to what matters most. And you know what? I have.” He paused to allow the crowd another opportunity to cheer. “But before I talk anymore about this gift, I think it’s about time I introduced a very special guest.”
At that moment, Lauren felt the buzz of her cellphone.
“David,” she answered. “Where the hell have you—”
“Listen to me, Lauren.”
His tone was enough to quiet her instantly. She listened, and her mouth went dry.
Chapter 39
“SEMTEX,” LAUREN REPEATED, her voice filling the inside of David’s vehicle.
He and Martin were back in the car now and racing down Independence Avenue at nearly sixty miles per hour.
While David drove and spoke with Lauren on his car’s speaker system, Martin looked over the schematic they’d pulled from the basement wall. After scaling the fences behind the houses, they’d paused in front of 513 A Street just long enough to shout out the location of the bomb to the D.C. Police officers who had converged on the block to clear out the surrounding houses. The Bureau’s bomb technicians hadn’t yet arrived, but David wasn’t thinking about them now. He was thinking about Lauren.
“You can’t let him anywhere near the stage,” he said to her, trying his best to keep his voice calm—though that was nearly impossible.
“David, they’re both on stage right now,” she said. “Goodman is introducing Farnsworth as we speak.”
He felt his hands tighten around the steering wheel. “Is he holding anything—some type of briefcase?”
“You think we’d let anyone near the stage with a fucking briefcase?”
As she said this, David felt his father nudge his shoulder. He looked and saw Martin was pointing at the lower half of the schematic. “Looks like a man’s torso,” he said. When David shook his head, not understanding, Martin added, “The lead pallets, on the worktable.”
The basement’s puzzle pieces assembled themselves in an instant. “He’s wearing the semtex, Butch,” David said. “It’s packed into a bulletproof vest he must have on underneath his clothing.”
“How much semtex?”
“Enough to kill everyone within twenty-five yards of the stage.”
David felt his ears begin to throb. Then he remembered the gasoline-filled generators below the stage, and the warning they’d received from the NPS engineer about the monument’s compromised foundation. He pressed his foot down on the accelerator, propelling them forward.
As he cut the wheel around stopped vehicles and sped through traffic lights, his eyes leapt from the road ahead to the Washington Monument, looming in the distance.
“What are my options?” Lauren asked. “Execute him on stage?” Her voice sounded hollow now, as though the part of her that could acknowledge strong emotion had withdrawn.
“NO,” Martin cut in. With his eyes glued to the schematic, he said, “From what I see here, it looks like the detonator is activated by disconnecting a current. He may have wires pinched together somewhere on his body—in his pocket, maybe, or his armpit. You blow his head off, and you risk triggering the device.”
“You have a visual?” David asked her.
“I’m looking at him right now.”
“Do you see anything—some movement or hand placement—that might betray a detonator?”
“No,” she said. “Nothing.”
David’s mind grappled for a solution.
“David,” she said, her voice pleading. “I need something.”
Ideas and scenarios flickered through his head, each discarded in an instant. And then he had it. He spoke quickly, knowing they had only seconds.
“You got it?” he said.
He heard a beep and looked at his car’s dashboard. The call had been terminated.
Chapter 40
HIGH ABOVE THE National Mall, rainless clouds combined and separated to form amorphous clusters of gray.
As the audience buzzed with anticipation, Philip Goodman looked toward the south side of the stage. His expression had grown serious.
“I’m pleased this man could be here with us today,” he said, “because I want him to experience exactly what we’re all about and exactly what this country is all about.” He paused and shook his head. “There are times when I think he and plenty of other elected officials have lost sight of what’s important about America. They’ve become too concerned with earmarks and elections, and they’ve forgotten about people and principles.”
The crowd responded with cheers, but they quieted quickly—anxious to learn the identity of Goodman’s surprise guest.
“Now, I’ve never hidden the fact that I disagree with this man,” Goodman said. “And so many of you may not feel any special affinity for him or his politics. But I want our guest to feel the power of our shared belief in America and our Constitution. So please, help me offer a very warm welcome to the Speaker of the House, Mr. Spencer Farnsworth.”
As Goodman gestured to the far end of the stage and the crowd let out surprised cheers or—in many cases—disapproving catcalls, Spencer Farnsworth emerged from behind the set barriers and began to make his way toward the host. But after just two steps, he stopped abruptly.
At the same time, more than 100,000 spectators gasped in unison.
Three men in dark suits had burst onto the far side of the stage and rushed Philip Goodman from behind. While one threw himself at the backs of the host’s legs, the others grabbed him around the torso and wrestled him to the ground.
Lauren followed close behind them, her weapon drawn. As she moved, she spoke through her earpiece to the FBI’s sharpshooters. “If he reaches for any of his pockets, take him.”
After hanging up on David, she’d had no time to explain the complexities of the situation to her team or their counterparts with the Parks Service or D.C. Police. She’d had no time to fear for her life. She’d only had time to warn everyone away from the stage, to inform three of her agents to take down the host, and to notify the security personnel of the presence of an explosive device.
Now, as the agents held Goodman down, Lauren leveled her eyes and her pistol sights on the far side of the platform. “DO NOT MOVE,” she shouted out to Spencer Farnsworth. She stopped when she’d reached a position between the Speaker of the House and Goodman. “WE KNOW ABOUT YOU AND EDITH VEREEN,” she called to him. “WE KNOW YOU’RE WEARING A BOMB.”
Chapter 41
FOR ONE BREATHLESS moment after their call was disconnected, David thought the device had detonated and Lauren was gone.
As he and Martin tore past the Capitol Building and, seconds later, the Air & Space Museum, he looked toward the Washington Monument—expecting to see a plume of flame. An image flashed through his head: Lauren as
she’d looked the night they’d met for drinks at Gilroy’s. He saw her in her violet shirt with her sleeves rolled up, the touch of makeup she’d worn making her green eyes glow as she smiled.
When the explosion didn’t come, David felt his heart start beating again. “She hung up on us,” he said, as much to reassure himself as to inform his father.
“She doesn’t have time to talk,” Martin shouted over the roar of the car’s engine and the horns of the vehicles they passed. “She’s got a job to do.” Holding the dashboard for support, he added, “So tell me why this will work.”
“I don’t know if it will,” David said as he drove. “Goodman and Farnsworth may be in this together for all we know. But I don’t think so.”
“The video from UVA,” Martin said. “Omar told you it showed Farnsworth with Edith Vereen?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t understand.”
David was quiet for a moment, his mind still struggling to unravel the truth tied up in everything he knew about the Speaker of the House.
“Farnsworth’s wife was killed last year by a right wing radical,” he said. “Since then, he’s been speaking out about the dangers of bipartisanship and extremism. I saw him interviewed two nights ago, and he was rambling about the Red Scare trials of the fifties and 9/11—and how a tragedy could shock the country toward the political middle ground.”
He paused as he cut the wheel around a line of stopped vehicles. He slammed on the brakes when it seemed they were about to collide with a passing truck, and then he mashed his foot down on the accelerator, rocketing them forward again.
“Goodman told us he and the speaker grew up together in Georgia,” he continued, talking through it even as his mind sorted out the clues. “So Farnsworth probably knew Goodman was adopted. And it wouldn’t be hard for the speaker to find out Goodman’s birth name—assuming he didn’t already know it somehow. I think he’s been using that name—Levi Harney—so we would eventually pin all this on Goodman. That’s why he had Vereen follow Goodman’s show around, and that’s why he targeted people Goodman had called out on his program. He was drawing arrows for us that, in hindsight, would point to the host. And as much semtex as he’s wearing, if he was standing close to Goodman at detonation, we’d never be able to tell who was wearing the vest.”
“And you think if Butch keeps them separated, Farnsworth will give it up?” Martin asked.
“Farnsworth knows he’s on camera, and he knows we’ll be able to tell from the video where the explosion originated.” He paused. “If he also knows we’re aware of his relationship with Vereen, killing himself and thousands of innocent people won’t accomplish what he’s after.”
As they crossed 12th Street and, a few seconds later, 14th Street, David could see the dense mass of spectators that had coalesced around and beyond the base of the obelisk, which now loomed just a few hundred yards away.
“Jesus Christ,” Martin said. “Look at all the people.”
When they were almost parallel with the monument, David stamped on the brakes and cut the wheel hard, jumping the curb. His car leapt onto the trampled grass of the National Mall and started to surge up the sloped hill toward the monument, but he could drive only thirty yards farther before reaching the National Park Service’s security blockades.
His door was open almost before the car had come to a complete stop.
“Wait a minute—” Martin said, reaching for his son’s arm.
But David was already out of the car and flashing his Bureau ID at the security personnel who had rushed toward the gray Lincoln the moment they saw it leave the street.
He slowed just long enough to identify himself. Then he was beyond the barricades and sprinting toward the monument and the back of the stage.
Chapter 42
LAUREN STOOD HOLDING her breath, her pistol pointed at Spencer Farnsworth’s head.
The world had grown silent for her; she was not aware of the audience, or of Philip Goodman, who was grunting and trying to break free from the agents who held him on the floor of the stage a few feet behind her. She was aware only of the Speaker of the House of the United States, whose mouth was drawn into a tight line—his eyes narrow and a little glassy with disbelief.
As he’d walked out before the crowd, Farnsworth had started to raise a hand to exchange a shake with Goodman. Now his outstretched arm hung suspended in front of him like a marionette’s.
After what seemed to Lauren like an eternity, the speaker’s eyes fell to the floor of the stage and he lowered his arm. He let out a small groan, which reverberated out over the audience, and also seemed to startle him. She could tell he’d forgotten he was wearing a live microphone.
“I was doing this for my country,” he said, his voice throaty and soft with emotion. His eyes had come back up to meet Lauren’s as he spoke, as though she was his judge and jury.
He shook his head slowly, and then he turned his attention to the audience, his expression hardening.
“DON’T MOVE,” Lauren shouted to him, but he didn’t acknowledge the command.
“You people don’t understand anything,” he said to the bewildered spectators, many of whom had begun to move away from the stage in panic when the agents tackled Philip Goodman. “You’re hypocrites, and you’re easily manipulated.”
The speaker’s mouth had turned down in a bitter scowl, and the emotion in his voice had turned caustic. “You worship these over-simplified mythologies about the men who founded this country, but you support politicians who make a mockery of the system those founders created.”
Lauren could tell Farnsworth was working himself up to something, and her heart felt like it would explode from her chest. She tightened her finger on the trigger of her firearm.
“You wave your flags,” he continued, “and shout your slogans, and you believe you’re fighting for your principles. But you don’t understand a damned thing about America.” He turned his eyes to where Philip Goodman lay on the stage. “But you do, Philip. You understand perfectly. And still, you’ve chosen to turn your back on what you understand in order to make a career for yourself.”
Farnsworth shook his head, his expression pained. “You’ve been carried away on the wings of your own rhetoric, and you didn’t stop even when my Lynn was killed. You just kept pouring fuel on the fire—kept tearing this country apart when you could have been bringing people together. You sicken me.” Turning his attention back to the crowd, he added, “You all sicken me.”
Angry boos began to pour forth from many of the spectators, and Lauren thought, Oh god, stop that.
Farnsworth smiled—an ironic, mirthless expression filled with sorrow.
And as he smiled, Lauren saw David appear on the other side of the stage at the speaker’s back. He held something in his hand that she didn’t recognize. Their eyes met, and he made a gesture for her not to shoot.
She nodded to him and said into her earpiece microphone, “Sharpshooters, DO NOT FIRE.”
As she spoke, she saw the Speaker of the House close his eyes. Tears broke free onto his cheeks, and he reached a hand up toward the inside breast pocket of his suit jacket. “God Bless Ameri—,” he began to say.
But before he could finish, David was on him.
Latching his free hand onto Farnsworth’s so the speaker couldn’t reach his pocket, David raised the syringe of fugu he’d collected from the basement refrigerator and plunged it into Farnsworth’s neck. He depressed the plunger, emptying the toxin into the speaker’s veins, and then he wrapped his arms around Farnsworth in a tight embrace.
Lauren saw the speaker’s body go rigid. For several seconds, his head jerked violently from side to side and the muscles in his neck and forehead stood out from his skin as though they might burst. He let out a furious groan as his feet pushed up off the stage floor and his legs flailed from side to side. But David held him fast.
Finally the paralyzing toxin began to take effect. Farnsworth’s eyes rolled into the back of his s
kull and his legs ceased kicking. A second later, his head fell forward onto his chest.
After holding him motionless for another half minute, David slowly lowered Farnsworth to the floor of the stage.
Lauren collapsed onto her knees, her pistol dropping to her side.
Epilogue
THE EVENING NEWS began with its triumphal horn blasts, which soon gave way to the familiar voice of the program’s anchor.
“Just forty-eight hours ago, on the anniversary of the signing of the United States Constitution, we were among the first to tell you about the harrowing scene that took place on the National Mall early Sunday afternoon. Tonight, new details have emerged surrounding what could have been the most devastating domestic terrorist attack in our nation’s history.”
As the anchor spoke, a graphic depicting the obelisk of the Washington Monument, coupled with the words “A Monumental Threat,” appeared over his left shoulder. The broadcast soon transitioned to an aerial shot recorded Sunday afternoon. The monument’s gray obelisk was surrounded by the flashing lights of police vehicles and fire engines, as well as hundreds of emergency response workers, law enforcement officials, and curious onlookers.
“By now, these images are no doubt familiar to you,” the anchor said. “During the live broadcast of cable-news personality Philip Goodman’s rally to commemorate the signing of the Constitution, pandemonium erupted when FBI officials physically restrained both Goodman and Speaker of the House Spencer Farnsworth in front of the tens of thousands of people in attendance.
“Details were hazy in the event’s immediate aftermath, but we learned yesterday about the FBI’s discovery that Spencer Farnsworth had plans to detonate an explosive device on stage. We also told you about the speaker’s secret ties to a radical website that advocated the overthrow of the federal government.”
