“Makes sense. In those days, the Soviets, the military, and the secret police ran East Germany. And he would have gotten some good operational and field training from the Soviets if he stayed in East Berlin.”
“They list English as a second language.”
“Right. Germans take English almost from day one in school. The Eastern Germans had to learn Russian, as well. Smart bastards. You get any better physical description?”
“Yes, sir. Not a big guy, actually. Five eight, one forty. Blond and blue-eyed. You saw the picture.”
“Right. I was looking for the SS insignia.”
Gary nodded and flipped to the second page of the report. “If the Nazis came back, he’d definitely be there for them. Supposedly collects Hitler memorabilia. Big on racial purity. His father was in the Hitler Youth and his grandfather was a member of something called an Einsatzgruppe, whatever that is.”
“Really,” Swamp murmured. He looked outside. The rain had become heavier as the tail end of the storm stalled over Washington. The streetlights were amber blurs through their window.
“What is that?” Gary asked.
“World War Two death squads. They went into the eastern front in 1942, right behind the regular Wehrmacht units. Did what today we’d call ‘ethnic cleansing.’ Jews, so-called Gypsies, and a hell of a lot of Russian civilians. Take ’em out behind the farmhouse and machine-gun the whole family. I take back what I said about the Soviets training this guy.”
“Unless they didn’t know about those connections.”
Swamp nodded. “That’s possible. It might explain this Heismann/Hodler business. Although the hard-core Stasi guys were typically ready and willing to revisit the eastern front. Remember, the Soviets were an occupying power until the Berlin Wall came down.”
“Well, so were we.”
“Not like the Russians, who lost a million civilians in that war. They crushed the Germans at the end, especially in Berlin, and then sat on the wreckage for forty years. You should see the Soviet war memorial in East Berlin. It’s right out of Roman times. Their theory was that a divided Germany let everyone breathe easier for almost forty years.”
“What was our theory?”
“Not too different from theirs, I suspect. Okay—I’m nowhere with getting help with that record screen. We’re going to have to go through channels after all.”
“I’ve got the dossier as up-to-date as I can get it. I also put a page in there on his weapons use—arson, Taser, a Walther nine, nerve agent, and the fact that he could hire some woman to knife Connie Wall.”
“A hitter for all seasons,” Swamp said. “And well funded.”
“Yes, sir.”
A burst of rain drummed against the windows as the wind shifted more to the north. Swamp could see a cluster of blue strobe lights three blocks away at an intersection. The traffic tonight was going to be horrendous. Gary was eyeing the weather, too.
“I need some time to think,” Swamp said finally. “Keep that dossier file going. Maybe contact the Bureau in the morning, go talk to one of their reconstruction wizards. You know, the ones who can take skull fragments and produce a mannequin head?”
“But we have his picture.”
“Right. You take that, and ask them if it’s possible to go the other way—first get them to build a computer model of that head and face from the picture, then, as we discover surgical procedures, get them to modify their model. Surgical record says they took two centimeters off his nose. What would that look like now?”
Gary made some notes. “Will they do it if we ask?”
“You go establish liaison with the appropriate office. I’ll see what I can do.”
Connie was jolted awake by a lance of pain deep inside her back, as if something had torn loose. She tried to sit up but couldn’t, and she couldn’t cry out because her mouth was as dry as cotton. She moaned a couple of times, and that brought the ICU nurse. When she saw the tears in Connie’s eyes, she gave her some water, rubbed a little Vaseline on her lips, and then checked the pain meds.
“They’ve backed you off morphine, dear,” the nurse said. “That’s why it hurts.”
“Put it back,” Connie mumbled. Her breath was coming in hot little spurts, each inhalation a little bit harder. Something was trying to smother her. She wanted to sit up but still couldn’t. She felt panic rising.
The nurse checked the chart, looking for orders, which apparently weren’t there. She looked at Connie’s face. “I’ll call the doctor right away,” she said. “We’ll get something going PDQ. Just hang in there.”
Connie closed her eyes as the waves of pain washed up inside her chest in time with her heartbeat. She felt the first twinges of nausea, and realized that if she vomited, she’d tear her insides apart. She tried deep breathing, and that helped a little. A very little. How could they forget the order for the pain meds. Idiots. Or maybe the attending was one of those guys who was freaked-out about addiction. Screw that. This hurt.
The pain delivered one advantage: Her brain was much clearer. She could remember Carla. Who she was pretty sure was not a Carla at all, but maybe a Carl. She knew she’d seen those eyes before, just once, flashing at her through her dining room window, illuminated by a flashlight. Cat Ballard’s killer, dressing up as a woman, and doing a fine job of it. She recalled the face and knew now that it had been painted on. The only jarring feature had been her nose, which had been too long for her face. What am I saying here? His face. And I, a surgical nurse in a plastic surgeon’s office, flat-assed missed it.
The nurse came back with a clear plastic bag, which she proceeded to hang on the IV stand. “Here now, this will help,” she said as she connected the tubes.
“Need to talk to Cullen,” Connie whispered. “Detective. Washington.”
“Yes, yes, I remember him. Nice man, for a policeman. We’ll make sure he knows. Now, how’s that? Better?”
Connie took a deep breath, and this time her insides didn’t demand revenge for it.
“Yes, better. When…Oh well. Never mind.”
And then she felt the plane of her existence once again tilt forward and down. She was feeling slightly guilty for not talking to Jake first, but then she simply didn’t care. Whoever was driving this plane was doing much better.
“There now, dear,” the nurse said. “There now. Lazy damned doctors.”
Mario got up from the waiter’s table and escorted Swamp to a corner booth in the empty restaurant. Caruso’s was on the second floor of a residential hotel, which was why it was open even on a rainy Monday night. Swamp could hear the sounds of an argument coming from the kitchen, which was at the other end of the room. Mario took his dripping raincoat.
Twenty minutes later, Mario produced a platter of sausages, peppers, eggplant, and onions in a marinara sauce over perciatelli. I’m gonna die, Swamp thought as he tucked a large napkin into his shirt collar and dug in. He was just finishing up when he sensed there was someone standing next to his shoulder. He looked up to find Lucy VanMetre.
“May I join you?” she asked. She was wearing a stylish full-length black raincoat, but he noticed it was not wet at all.
“By all means,” he replied, starting to get up. She put a hand on his shoulder for a moment before sliding into the booth. Her hair was once again coiled in an elaborate coif, and it, too, bore no sign of the weather outside. So tonight she had a driver, Swamp realized. He took the napkin out of his shirt. Mario appeared and she asked for a glass of Lacrima Cristi.
“I was just finishing,” Swamp said. “Mario can—”
“That’s all right,” she said. “I had a late lunch today. It’s been a total Monday.”
Swamp nodded. “I remember those. Your own minders had the shields up pretty high today.”
“By direction,” she said. Mario brought her wine, and raised his eyebrows questioningly, but she shook her head, so he took Swamp’s plates and went away. “Did you know you are becoming radioactive?”
“Mo
i? What have I done?”
“Persist?” she said. “Mr. Hallory is increasingly annoyed.”
“Well, Tad McNamara showed me the latest hate mail, but after I briefed him, he decided we’re going ahead, whether PRU likes it or not.” Or words to that effect, he told himself, feeling a slight twinge of guilt.
“Have you spoken to Mr. McNamara since he got back from the murder board for the NIC briefing?” She sipped some wine and regarded him with those blue eyes.
“No. I left before he got back. Why?”
“Because Mr. Hallory went over there to the briefing room, called him out of the board, and—how shall I put this?—shared his thinking with him.”
Swamp finished his own wine and Mario appeared with his coffee. “What’s Hallory getting so spun up about?” he asked. “If OSI wants to waste time on a firefly, what’s it to him?”
“Because he sees OSI’s decision to proceed with it as a direct criticism of PRU. This isn’t about the firefly anymore. It’s all about an infringement of PRU’s charter within DHS, which is the protection of the presidents—plural in this case—from external threats. If OSI says there is a threat and PRU says there isn’t, it makes PRU look bad.”
“Lotta alphabet soup showing there, Lucy,” Swamp replied. “OSI hasn’t said anything critical of anybody. We’re continuing an internal investigation, that’s all. And as I’ve said before, if we find a bad guy in the shadows, we call in the United States Secret Service.”
“But why are you going on with this? Are you any closer to your ‘bad guy in the shadows’?”
“Did you know we’ve identified a Saudi connection?” Swamp asked.
“Connection to what?”
“To the guy we’re hunting. He got the money to buy a vehicle from the Saudi bank here in town.”
“Really!”
“Well, let me qualify that,” Swamp said. He described the transaction, noting that all the documents were to be sent to the Royal Kingdom Bank.
She dismissed it immediately. “That’s not funding; that was a money-changing transaction. It’s a bank.”
“Then why send the registration papers back to the bank?”
“Because he didn’t have an address here in the city yet?”
“He’s been in this country for over eighteen months,” Swamp said, and then told her about the purchaser’s name being Hodler, and that a Mr. Hodler had come across the street and found out where Connie Wall was going, after which a female hitter had appeared out of nowhere out in West Virginia. That Heismann, the original name, was linked to the alias Hodler by Interpol.
“This all sounds very circumstantial to me, Mr. Morgan. You think all these things are true, but you cannot prove any one connecting element. Can you?”
“McNamara and I gave it the Washington Post test this morning. We’d be fools not to pursue it.”
“And has Ms. Wall spoken yet?”
“Nope.”
“So you’re no closer with a description. There’s no way to find this ‘bad guy’ of yours, is there?”
“Certainly not if we don’t look,” Swamp said impatiently.
She started to answer but then sipped some wine. “You cannot appreciate,” she said slowly, “the degree of stress PRU is under right now.”
“Sure I can. You’ve got the inauguration. The ultimate terrorist target in the United States.”
“Yes, it is. The old president and the new one. The outgoing government and the incoming one. The entire executive and policy base of the United States, all assembled in one public place. So, yes, we’re taking extraordinary measures. Did you know, for instance, that all cell and landline phone service in Washington will be turned off for the entire workday on Friday?”
“What? Why?”
“So no one can trigger a preplanted bomb with a phone call, as they’ve been doing in Israel for the last four years. In case you’ve forgotten, cell phones are radios.”
“Okay, I can see that, but—”
“There will be four—count them—just four television channels allowed within the security zone. Each cameraman will have a Secret Service agent standing behind him with a gun. We will have direct control of all their transmission facilities. Every image you see on television that day will be thirty seconds behind real time. So no one can give a signal or send out an ‘initiate’ message. There’s more.”
“Do tell.”
“We will have control over all radio frequencies, police, fire, EMT units, data, radar-link, microwave, you name it. We will own the entire spectrum.”
“That’ll put a crimp in business all right.”
“There won’t be any business. The markets in New York will be shut down. All government workers furloughed with pay for the day. Airports and train stations closed until Friday night.”
“The vacuum-packed inauguration,” Swamp said. “The First Amendment wienies must be going snakeshit.”
“Yes, I know that’s what they’re calling it. And as you say, there is the teeniest bit of opposition. The media corporations are already suing. The Congress is very unhappy, because they have this quaint notion that the Capitol is their building. And the District Police Department is…well, there aren’t really words for it. They’re completely overwhelmed, and the lockdown hasn’t even begun yet.”
“So why worry about one recalled retiree chasing after a firefly, maybe even a phantom firefly? This doesn’t affect the inauguration. This deal’s about something that’s almost a month away.”
“As I told you, it’s being seen by Hallory and people senior to him as a direct challenge to PRU’s exclusive purview in these matters.”
“Well hell, Lucy, tell him to get over it. It’s not like we’re going out to the press and throwing stones.”
“You made calls all over Washington today, looking for help with your records screen. That got back to Hallory. Along with the ‘why.’”
Oops, Swamp thought. “But it was still all inside federal LE. We’re both in the same department. Individual offices disagree within cabinet departments all the time. And, by the way, I got zilch in the way of help.”
“You got nowhere because I made some calls after you first called in to the Bureau.”
“Oh,” he said, surprised. “So you’re saying we’re on our own with this one?”
She gave him a long look. “I’m saying you need to cease and desist, or you’re probably going back to your little bed-and-breakfast or whatever it is out there in Harpers Ferry.”
Lucy wasn’t smiling now, and for the first time in his conversations with La Mamba, Swamp felt anger. “Now that sounds like a threat, Lucy,” he said evenly. “And it also sounds like perfect fodder for a quick little spot on the Today Show.”
“You even try to do that, and you’ll join some well-known guests of the government down in Guantánamo Bay,” she said, leaning forward. “Are you aware that we’ve already picked up over three hundred individuals right here in Washington, D.C., for protective custody?”
“Protective custody? Protective of whom?”
“You figure it out, Mr. Morgan. But I strongly suggest you stop this little crusade of yours, and now would be nice.”
Swamp pushed back from the table and stood up. “You know, Lucy, I think it’s time we stopped having these little meetings. I’ll talk to my boss; you talk to yours. That’s what they get paid for.” As he reached into the pocket of his suit jacket for his wallet, two men in suits stepped into view in the restaurant’s main doorway. Both of them were staring at him and had their hands in the draw position under their suit jackets. Swamp recognized them as Secret Service agents. He stopped moving.
“What the fuck?” he growled. Then he took out his wallet—slowly.
Lucy stood up and looked at him. “PRU will brook no interference in the security arrangements for this inauguration,” she said firmly. “By all means, talk to your boss in the morning. I suspect he will have been properly calibrated by then. Good night, Mr. Morgan.”
Lucy strode out of the dining room, her blond hair flashing in the subdued light, followed by the two agents. Mario, who had been watching all this from his waiter’s station, came over to Swamp’s table and asked if he was okay.
“You need a gun?” he asked. “Those guys, they had guns, no?”
Swamp smiled. He had a quick vision of Mario producing a Sicilian lupara from the restaurant’s linen closet. “Thanks, Mario, but I don’t think so. Maybe just the check for right now.”
“Watch out for the beautiful woman,” Mario warned. “They are always the dangerous ones.”
Got that right, Swamp thought.
Heismann had walked three blocks to the little pizza shop as soon as real darkness fell over Capitol Hill. Now he was walking back up Fifth Street, which paralleled First Street four blocks over from the Capitol itself. The rain was steady, but he was well bundled up in the loden overcoat and hat, and he carried a large umbrella over his head. He had plastered on a dark beard, thick eyebrows, and the Coke-bottle eyeglasses.
Fifth Street was apparently outside of the security zone for the inauguration, because the Jersey barriers began on Third Street, which ran north-south behind and to the east of the Folger Library. Right now, the concrete sections were stacked on either side of the street, but the newspaper said they would start being assembled as barriers on Wednesday night. Thursday would be used to sort out any residual traffic problems and stranded vehicles until noon, and from then until Friday evening, no civilian vehicle would be allowed to approach or move inside the security zone. The southern boundary of the zone would be D Street, between Second Street, SW and Third Street, SE. The northern boundary was a triangle consisting of Louisiana Avenue, Union Station, and the tail end of Massachusetts Avenue.
Fortunately, his own town house was three blocks outside the zone. There was little traffic at this hour, and only an occasional police car came swishing by in the rain. He was careful not to go near the security zone, because he had seen some television cameras being installed on streetlights and telephone poles that afternoon. When he got to Independence Avenue, he turned around and started back toward his own town house. He paused for a moment under a tree on the corner, read the street signs, looked both ways for oncoming traffic, and then pulled the lapel of his coat aside and examined the tiny glowing square of the GPS unit. It displayed the streets on a scale that contained three city blocks, and showed him standing right where the signs said he was. The image was clear one moment and then it would fade. So, he thought, this works, even in the rain. Tomorrow, he would make his noontime walk. Then he needed to acquire a smaller-scale touring map of the downtown area and record his calculations on it.
The Firefly Page 31
