Hell's Corner (45 page)
“Lucky you.”
“Yeah,” Stone said dryly. “Lucky me.”
“Do you need a solicitor?”
“Probably, but I can’t afford one.”
“Want me to see what Sir James can do?”
“I think Sir James is pretty much done with me.”
“I think he’s pretty much done with me too. So is there a silver lining here somewhere?”
“We have to start from square one. Go over everything.”
“Well, I’ve got extensive notes and the video of the park on my laptop still. And before we fell out of favor Agent Ashburn provided me with electronic files for a lot of the other video feeds.”
“Let’s go.”
They drove to her hotel and set up a mini command center. For the next several hours they pored over the notes of the case and the video feeds from Chapman’s laptop.
“Well, one thing’s figured out,” said Stone as he stared at the screen.
Chapman joined him. “What?”
“The homeless woman who poured the bottle of water on the tree and killed it?” He pointed at the screen showing the image.
“What about it? That’s one of the few things we can be reasonably sure about.”
Stone hit some keys and zoomed in on the image of the woman. “I was puzzled that they’d bring someone in for such a minimal task.”
“It wasn’t minimal,” Chapman pointed out. “It was the catalyst that set everything else in motion.”
“I wasn’t talking about poisoning the tree. I meant Judy Donohue. Why bring her in just to lie about Sykes and increase our suspicion of him? They could’ve come at it some other way. Now I know.”
“I’m not following.”
“Look at the back of the woman’s hand.”
Chapman hit some keys and zoomed into the image even more.
“Her hand is pretty dirty, but if you look at the bottom right.”
Chapman gasped. “That’s a bird’s foot. The tattoo Donohue had on her hand. What was it? The western meadowlark.
She
was the homeless woman in disguise.”
“They used her for that and then got her to try and implicate Sykes. I don’t think her bosses cared whether she succeeded or not. Sykes was a dead man, and they always intended to kill her too.”
Chapman sat back down and went over some notes. “You know, Garchik said that bombers like to do trial runs to make sure their equipment is working properly.”
“But usually they’ll do it in someplace inconspicuous. At least to the extent you can be inconspicuous when you’re setting off a bomb.”
“And Lafayette Park is hardly inconspicuous. Which means it wasn’t a trial run. It was the mission, albeit part of a larger one.”
Stone looked thoughtful. “Right. The bombing at Lafayette had to take place in order for some other event to occur.”
“We have that list of upcoming events at the park.”
“I don’t think the answer lies there.”
“I agree,” said Chapman. “The bad guys won’t know where the event is going to be, or if the event will even be held.”
“Right.”
She said, “The nanobot thing that has everyone’s knickers in a knot. They occur at the molecular level, which means they can get into anything.”
“And they apparently can be manufactured into just about any bio-or chemical contagion. Synthetic plague or anthrax or ricin maybe. In large quantities.”
“But again, you load all that into a root ball in a tree across from the bloody White House with a bomb attached and you don’t put the plague or another deadly microbe on it? Makes no sense.”
“It’s never made any sense,” agreed Stone. “At least it doesn’t the way we’ve been looking at it.”
Chapman perked up. “Maybe we go back to where it all started.”
“You mean Lafayette Park?”
“Let’s call it for what it is. Hell’s Corner. In fact, I can’t think of it any other way now. Might’ve known.”
“What do you mean?”
“It’s named after a bloody Frenchman,” snapped Chapman.
T
HEY WALKED OVER EVERY INCH
of the park for several hours. Stone and Chapman tried to look at things in a new light, but it always resulted in old conclusions. Old and wrong conclusions. Stone was actually a little surprised that no one came over and asked what they were doing here, or else simply escorted them out of the park. But apparently Riley Weaver could not be burdened with such insignificant details. Stone figured he was probably right now at NIC headquarters going over with his own legal staff and that of the congressional committee members how best to crucify him.
Stone paced the park again and again, looking at things from every angle he could think of. Chapman was doing the same thing on the other side of the park. They had passed each other several times during this exercise. At first their expressions had been hopeful, but now—now there was no hope left in either of their faces.
Stone looked at the government building where the shots had come from. And then at the Hay-Adams Hotel from where they had been meant to believe the shots had come. Then he looked at the places where the four people in the park had been that night. In his mind’s eye he walked or in some instances ran them through their paces. Friedman and Turkekul sitting and standing respectively, and then walking away. Padilla running for his life. The British security guard shadowing Stone and ending up losing a tooth. The explosion. Stone being blown off his feet. Now Turkekul and Padilla were dead. Friedman was disgraced and unemployed. The British agent had long since gone home. He had never even known the man’s name. He probably should have questioned the fellow directly, but what could he really have added to the account?
He stopped a short distance from Marisa Friedman’s office, or former office, in Jackson Place. Staring at the front of the old town house, Stone recalled his last encounter there with her. It could have gone very differently if he’d been willing. And right now he was wondering why he hadn’t been… willing.
“Got something?”
He turned to see Chapman staring at him. She looked over at the building and then at him.
“Friedman’s career in the intelligence field is over,” he said. “Thanks to me.”
“She’s a big girl. Nobody made her agree to go along.”
“She actually didn’t have much of a choice.”
“Everyone has choices. You make them and then you live with the consequences.” She paused. “Do you plan to see her again?”
Stone shot her a glance. “What do you mean?”
“The last time we were together with her. It doesn’t take a genius to see.”
“To see what?”
She turned away, directing her attention to the hole in the ground where the bomb had gone off, starting their collective nightmare.
“I don’t plan on seeing her again, no,” said Stone. He seemed surprised by this sudden decision.
Where did that come from? Instinct?
Chapman turned back around. “I think that’s wise.”
As it started to get dark Stone and Chapman drove back to his cottage. They sat in the car by the wrought-iron gates for a few minutes.
“I’ll come with you tomorrow,” she said. “If just for moral support.”
“No,” Stone said decisively. “That would not be good for your career.”
“What career?”
He looked at her. “What do you mean?”
“Friedman wasn’t the only one who lost her professional ride. I got a notice from the Home Office yesterday. I’m basically being ordered to resign from MI6.”
Stone looked anguished. “I’m sorry, Mary.”
She shrugged. “Probably time to try something else. After this cock-up I figure things can only go up.”
“Can’t McElroy help you?”
“No. He’s taken his lumps too over this. It’s out of his hands.” She looked around. “I no longer have access to the British embassy. And my credit card has been revoked. I’ve got passage back on an American military plane leaving for London tomorrow night.”
“I would advise you to be on it.”
She looked up at the cottage. “Mind if I crash at your place for tonight?”
“All right,” said Stone.
“And shouldn’t you prepare for the hearing tomorrow?” she asked. “I can help.”
“I just plan on telling the truth. If I try and prepare, it’ll just make things more complicated.”
“They’re going to come after you with everything they have.”
“I know.”
“You think you’ll come out okay?”
“I doubt it.”
They rose the next morning early and took turns showering. Stone put on his only suit. Then they had breakfast at the same outlet servicing the construction workers. Stone threw away his meal wrapper, finished off his coffee and checked his watch.
“It’s time,” he said.
“I’m coming,” replied Chapman.
“You’re not on the subpoena. They won’t let you in.”
“Then I’ll wait outside.”
“You don’t have to do this.”
“Yes I do, Oliver. I really do.”
The interrogation was to be conducted in the secure hearing room of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. It was in an underground room beneath the U.S. Capitol’s Rotunda, and accessed by a secret elevator. They grabbed a cab and then got out and made their way toward the main entrance.
“Did you get any sleep?” she asked.
“I actually slept remarkably well. I’m getting used to my desk chair.”
“I didn’t.”
“My cot is an acquired taste, I’m afraid.”
“Yeah, next time I try it, I’ll have to be drunk. Slept like a baby that time. Do you know what you’re going to say?”
“I told you, the truth.”
“But you need some plan. Some strategy. And not just the bloody truth. Lawyers can twist that all around.”
“What do you suggest?”
“That you were doing your best. You took a calculated risk based on conditions on the ground. A dozen people had died. The investigation was getting nowhere. You had to try something. The FBI and MI6 signed off on it. The only one whose feelings are hurt is Riley Weaver. And he had produced exactly nothing on the case. And they asked you to come back to work for them. You were doing the best you could under difficult circumstances. And before the hearing even starts I’d pull the government lawyer aside and mention that there are lots of things you can tell the committee that Weaver won’t want them to hear.”
“Such as?”
“Such as NIC withholding critical evidence from the FBI on an international terrorism case? Remember the video from the park? And it also wouldn’t hurt to remind him that your president was, or maybe still is, on your side.”
“So the reason you didn’t get any sleep last night was because you were up thinking about all this?”
“I didn’t want you to go in there and get ambushed. You don’t deserve that.”
“Thank you. I think I’ll take your advice.”
Chapman noted all the uniformed security. “Pretty tight around here.”
“Well, this area is on every terrorist’s wish list.”
They were walking up the steps leading into the building when a uniformed guard strolled by with his black Lab bomb detection canine. The dog sniffed around Stone’s and Chapman’s ankles and then proceeded on.
“At least that’s one sure thing in an uncertain world,” remarked Stone.
“Right. What did Garchik say? The dogs can detect nineteen thousand types of explosive material?”
“And also that there’s not even a machine sophisticated enough to measure how powerful a dog’s nose is. If I—”
Stone froze.
Chapman looked at him. She was holding open the door for him. “You okay?”
Stone didn’t answer. He turned and ran in the other direction.
Chapman called after him, “What the hell are you doing?”
She let go of the door and ran after him. The police frowned on sudden movement at this location. And people running away were even more frowned on. However, Stone was across the street with Chapman right on his heels before any of the uniforms could react.
She caught up to him and grabbed his arm. “I didn’t figure you to chicken out on your hearing. Better to just get it over with.”
“It’s not the hearing, Mary.”
“What then.”
“It’s the dogs.”
“What about them?”
Stone started to sprint. She ran after him.
“Where are we going?”
“To where it all began.”
“We already did that.”
“It’ll be different this time, trust me.”