Fate of the Union

by Max Allan Collins

  “Our factory supervisor,” Rogers said. “William Robertson.”

  Miggie said, “This is the day before Carolina was murdered, and only a week or so before Robertson’s death.”

  Hardesy was frowning at the screen, which Miggie had frozen on the frowning Robertson. “What the hell was he doing there?”

  Reeder said, “Coming back from Charlottesville, most likely. Something about what was going on there bothered him. He stopped to ask someone who might have answers.”

  “A reference librarian,” Rogers said.

  “Exactly,” Reeder said. “Answering Robertson’s ‘innocent’ questions got her killed.”

  Hardesy asked, “Any way we can know what she told him?”

  Miggie said, “We can try video enhancement and a professional lip reader, but that’s a very long shot.”

  Nichols, generally a cool customer, seemed aghast. “Who would kill a stranger for answering a few questions? Information available to anybody?”

  “Maybe,” Reeder said, “somebody capable of blowing up the Capitol Building.”

  There had been some skepticism in these ranks about Rogers and Reeder’s belief in that possibility. But no one was questioning it now.

  “We’re at the end of our workday,” Rogers said. “We’re less than twenty-four hours from the State of the Union. Joe feels that’s when this conspiracy will come to fruition. And no one outside of this room thinks there’s a problem. Who wants to go home?”

  Nobody said anything.

  “We’ll break for supper,” Reeder said, “and come back and hit it. Name your poison—I’m buying.”

  “We have it in our power to begin the world over again.”

  Thomas Paine

  TWENTY

  Joe Reeder and Patti Rogers sat across from Margery Fisk’s Omaha Beach of a desk. The perfectly coiffed, expensively dressed assistant director of the FBI was at her computer looking at the task force report they’d sent an hour before, explaining why the team believed a bomb still remained somewhere in the Capitol Building . . .

  . . . and why tonight would likely see its detonation.

  In two hours, the State of the Union speech would begin. Cutting it this close was nothing Reeder relished, but he had hoped the various cops and snitches out there, searching for the blond assassin, might come through for them.

  They hadn’t.

  And nobody else in government, besides Reeder, Rogers, and their team, anticipated any problem tonight worse than some far-right Republicans heckling President Harrison at the big event.

  Finally Fisk turned from the monitor toward them, her expression unreadable, even to Reeder.

  “I’m not saying you haven’t made a convincing case,” she said.

  It hit him like a blow. Amy would already be in that building.

  Fisk continued: “But while you have solid facts here, the evidence for the continuing existence of a plot is highly circumstantial. And, if anything, you demonstrate that the threat has been found and removed. Dealt with.”

  Reeder said, “If we’re right, Director Fisk, allowing the State of the Union to proceed isn’t just a bad career move—it’s a tragic mistake of epic proportions.”

  Her eyes flared, and that he could read.

  But her voice remained cool: “If you think that President Harrison can be moved to cancel the biggest night of his political year, you are welcome to go over there, lean on your celebrity and prior dealings with the president, and see how far you get.”

  And that was that.

  In the hallway, Rogers asked him, “Could you do that? Could we get in to see the President?”

  “No. As a former Secret Service agent, I can assure you of that. No, no, and no. Fisk knows that. She blew us off.”

  In the task force conference room, Rogers informed the team of the fate met by the report they’d labored on for so many hours. Their response was a shroud of silence that draped over the room and everyone in it.

  The image on the big wall-mounted monitor was divided into four panels of CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, and C-SPAN coverage. Wide shots on the exterior of the Capitol Building were interspersed with various angles inside the chamber itself, as it slowly filled up with dignitaries and guests.

  Finally, their behaviorist, Ivanek, asked, “How many people will be in the Capitol tonight?”

  Reeder, as if reading from a grocery list, said, “Five hundred thirty-five members of Congress, the President and Vice President, the Justices of the Supreme Court, a gallery full of visitors . . .” including my daughter “. . . the Cabinet, save for the one member who won’t attend to preserve the line of succession.”

  Luke Hardesy frowned. “Who is that?”

  Miggie already knew. “Secretary of Agriculture Alexander Clarkson, the eighth man in line.”

  “Never heard of him,” Hardesy said with a sour smirk. “I don’t think anybody has.”

  “Unless we figure out a way to stop this,” Reeder said, “that will change tomorrow.”

  Silence again. Able as they were, brilliant and brave though they might be, helplessness was pulling them down like quicksand.

  Sighing glumly, Anne Nichols said, “All we have is the blond.”

  “But we don’t have him,” Hardesy said.

  “I mean, in the sense that he holds the key. He can lead us to the man who hired him, and in all likelihood, he set the detonation device itself.”

  Rubbing a hand nervously over his shaved head, Hardesy said, “But we don’t know that. And even if we do find him—and we’ve tapped every resource available to us, without success—who’s to say he would talk in time?”

  Nichols, with a hardness unusual from the woman, said, “Maybe we march him into the Capitol Building and see what happens as the clock ticks.”

  But Hardesy was shaking his head at his partner. “Annie, the guy may be a fanatic! He may relish being part of the big boom. All those famous people dead, and the next day, he’s the one getting talked about.”

  “No,” Reeder said firmly. “This isn’t a suicide bomber. This isn’t a muddled Muslim looking forward to virgins in the afterlife. He’s a mercenary. In it for money. But, Luke, just the same—you still might be onto something.”

  “Yeah?”

  “He’s been handling everything himself.”

  Rogers said, “Not always, Joe. He was one of three or four who faked the Bryson suicide. And the timing is such that he probably wasn’t the one who took those shots at me at the diner.”

  “You’re right,” Reeder said. “He’s working with a small crew of other mercenaries—that’s my thinking. But when it’s something important . . . not to diminish somebody shooting at you, Patti . . . our blond has done the job himself. You can bet the double-taps are him. He came to Bryson’s security office looking for what Chris had, then came back and torched it the next day. He was in the basement of the Capitol when we were. And he was alone at the Holiday Inn Express, wiping out nine people.”

  Rogers gazed at him with narrowed eyes. “He appears to be taking orders from the top. That seems to include not just loose ends, but high-up coconspirators. So maybe he’s the man who’ll detonate the Senkstone.”

  Hardesy was shaking his head. “We can’t know that.”

  “For a certainty, no,” Reeder said. “But it follows.”

  Ivanek was nodding. “I agree with Joe. Our mastermind, if you’ll forgive the melodrama, has been delegating all his dirty work to this one mercenary. And the mercenary’s mind-set—well, consider that the entire hotel massacre was carried out by him alone. He has an inflated ego. A self-image of considerable worth, with underlying doubts that only proving himself again and again can overcome.”

  “What he said,” Reeder said.

  Miggie’s brow was knit. “But, Joe—if it’s a cell phone detonator, like the one in the Capitol cellar, he can set it off from anywhere.”

  Reeder frowned. “No. I don’t think he can.”

  “Of course he can,
” Miggie said. “He just has to dial the cell wired to the bomb and . . . you know the rest. He could be on the other side of the city, hell, by this time, the other side of the world.”

  “Not likely,” Reeder said. “He takes pride in his work, and he’s a micromanager. Trusts only himself with anything he deems important. Like detonating the bomb. Trevor, are we on the same page?”

  Ivanek said, “We are. This individual will not only be compelled to push the button himself . . . he’ll want to witness the result of his handiwork.”

  “Okay,” Hardesy said, raising his palms in surrender. “I’ll go along with all of this, since I don’t have a better theory. But we still don’t know where the bomb is, or what it looks like. Then there’s the small detail of where the hell our blond is, and how do we keep him from making a mass-murder cell phone call?”

  “Luke,” Nichols said, calming her partner, “we all get that. But at least now we have a starting point.” Her eyes went to Reeder. “How close a ringside seat do you think our man will want to have? I mean, you can see the Capitol from as far away as Arlington, if you find the right spot.”

  “He’d be closer than that,” Reeder said. “He may figure we might expose his plan and send people streaming out of the Capitol before the speech starts. He’d have to be close enough to see that, so he could detonate earlier than planned.”

  “Joe’s right,” Ivanek said. “He won’t be too far away.”

  Rogers—not participating in this discussion, since Reeder spoke for her on the subject—stood at his side with a thick printout of Barmore’s financials folded back to a page she was staring at in frowning interest.

  “What?” he asked.

  Her response was a seeming non sequitur: “Did Frank Elmore love Karma Sabich?”

  All eyes were on Rogers, as if she’d begun speaking Esperanto.

  The best Reeder could manage was: “What?”

  “Is it possible,” she asked him, “that Frank Elmore was in love with his transvestite hooker?”

  “Anything is possible, between two people. Why does it matter?”

  “It matters,” she said, “because looking at this data for the thousandth time? Something jumped at me. Something I should have noticed before—Davis Construction.”

  “DeShawn Davis,” Reeder said slowly. “Karma’s real name . . .”

  “No excuse for missing it,” she said, shaking her head, “but Davis is a top-five common surname, like Jones or Smith or Williams.”

  Reeder said, “Miggie—Davis Construction?”

  “Already on it,” the computer expert said as he typed the words into a search engine on his personal tablet.

  Miggie quickly brought up the construction company’s website and set the tablet on his desk, Reeder and Rogers gathering around to look over either shoulder, Nichols, Hardesy, and Ivanek crowding in, too.

  Rogers asked Mig, “Can you put it on the big screen?”

  He shook his head. “Not if we don’t want the guys in the weeds knowing what we’re up to.”

  The Davis Construction and Renovation home page had a line of tabs across the top: HOME, ABOUT US, FAQ, AWARDS, CONTACT, and so on. Prominent in the left lower corner was a smiling picture of their president, Cornelius Davis, a handsome middle-aged African American.

  “Looks like DeShawn,” Rogers said.

  “Out of makeup,” Hardesy added, getting a quick dirty look or two. “So, if DeShawn’s daddy is the company president . . . where does Barmore fit in?”

  “They own the company,” Rogers said. “Cornelius probably owned it at one time, then sold out and stayed on as manager, retaining his old title. But the business is wholly owned by Barmore Holdings.”

  Reeder said, “Here’s a quick scenario, just guesswork. DeShawn’s father’s business gets in trouble, and Frank has Barmore buy it, as a favor to DeShawn.”

  “All I got for Valentine’s Day,” Nichols said, “was flowers.”

  Checking the Barmore financials printout again, Rogers said, “They purchased the company less than two years ago. Was doing DeShawn a solid the only reason behind that?”

  On the tablet’s screen, the main photo in the center of the home page had been slowly scrolling, showing projects Davis Construction and Renovation had worked on. Several older buildings in the city revealed themselves, then came a shot of two bunker-like identical buildings separated by a parking lot—immediately recognizable to Reeder and Rogers, since the structures had blown up in their laps.

  “Jesus,” Reeder said.

  The next pic rolled up and Rogers finished his thought: “Christ.”

  Davis Construction’s current project, the company’s biggest honor (according to the banner headline on the photo), was aiding in the restoration of the United States Capitol Building. The photo showed the dome encompassed in silver-pipe scaffolding courtesy of Davis Construction.

  “It was right there in front of us,” Reeder said through his teeth, “the whole goddamn time.”

  He looked up at the big wall monitor, where exterior views of the Capitol Building took up two of four panels.

  “The scaffolding,” Rogers said breathlessly. “It’s Senkstone!”

  Hardesy was almost glaring at them. “How could you know that?”

  Reeder got up and went to the front of the conference room, standing with hands on hips. “The only thing locals reported about the loading of trucks in Charlottesville was that they maybe saw pipe. We assumed that meant the PVC Senk we found in the Capitol basement. Bomb squad tests proved that no more Senk was inside the building, so . . .”

  “My God,” Hardesy said, finally onboard. “It’s all around it!”

  Nichols, trying to process this, said, “The repairs were due to an earthquake, Joe. You can’t be saying a conspiracy caused that?”

  “No,” Reeder said. “I’m saying a conspiracy took advantage of it.”

  “The furnace’s PVC, made out of Senk,” Miggie said, with a sick smile, “was just meant to distract us from the real stuff.”

  “Or if the basement bomb wasn’t found,” Reeder said, “it could be part of a one-two punch.”

  “Either way,” Miggie said, looking past everyone, “it worked.” Everyone followed Mig’s hollow-eyed gaze to the wall-mounted monitor and saw every network covering President Harrison and his Secret Service entourage entering the Capitol Building.

  “We have to get this new information to Fisk,” Rogers said, “right now. We have to get the chamber, the whole building, cleared, and send the Bureau bomb squad in.”

  “No,” Reeder said.

  “No?”

  “We can inform Fisk, and should, but she won’t have that building cleared. Or at least she shouldn’t. It’s too late.”

  Ivanek, his face bloodless, was nodding. “The blond assassin is out there somewhere, watching. Just like we are. And if he sees efforts being made to clear the Capitol, he’ll detonate.”

  Rogers asked, “How the hell can we stop him then?”

  Reeder was already heading toward the door. “Patti, inform Fisk of what we now know, and tell her we’re taking steps. Don’t ask her permission—tell her.”

  “All right,” Rogers said. “But what steps?”

  “We’re each going to take a corner of the Capitol grounds and look for him. Old-fashioned shoe-leather police work. Hardesy, take the southwest . . . Nichols, the northwest . . . Patti, make your conversation with the AD brief, because you’re taking the northeast and I’ll cover the southeast. Trevor, you rove on foot. Miggie, call Bohannon and Wade, whether they’re at home or Constitution Hall, and tell them to meet us at the Capitol and just drive around the area. They’ll be our rovers on wheels.”

  “Got it,” Miggie said.

  “And tell them each to bring their personal cars and not a Bureau vehicle. We don’t want to tip our hand. If he figures out we’re there, he makes that phone call.”

  Hardesy said, “He could be in a building.”

  “No,
they’re all government buildings and it’s after hours. Rooftops won’t be accessible to him, which is good because we can’t in this time frame bring in copters. We have to assume he’s on foot.”

  Everyone was waiting, as if Reeder were the coach and he needed to blow a whistle.

  “You all have to understand,” Reeder said, “that if the explosion happens, we will likely be too close to it to survive. Patti, make sure Wade and Bohannon are informed of that. Miggie, you need to stay here and monitor what we’re doing, and feed us anything we might need to know. Use your personal tablet only.”

  Miggie nodded.

  Rogers said, “Any questions?”

  No questions.

  They were well armed, Kevlar-vested, earbud and wrist mic–equipped, and on their way in under ten minutes, riding in a single vehicle, no siren. Within another ten minutes, they had parked and dispersed to their stations.

  Reeder wore a parka—the Burberry would have stood out—and the stocking cap was less for cold protection than to keep the assassin from recognizing that famous head of white hair. Breath visible, he walked between cars parked along the twisty drive on the edge of the Capitol grounds, checking his watch.

  In ten minutes, the address would begin.

  If the government lay in ruin—with Reeder and his colleagues and even Amy paying for a madman’s vision—the irony would be how beautiful this winter night was, stars like holes punched in the sky letting in bright light from behind its dark-blue curtain, the moon a fat enough sliver for Huck Finn to sit on it and cast his line.

  This kind of crisp cold evening did not scare off tourists, and plenty were strolling by, taking pictures, his own mental camera checking every face. Pedestrian traffic was a constant around the great building—people wanting to see it, feel the aura of the place—but tonight, despite the weather, more tourists were on tap than usual. Even if they couldn’t be in there, visitors from around America liked to think that just inside that grand structure, the President of the United States would be delivering the State of the Union.