The Liar's Lullaby (36 page)

He stepped out of line and casually walked out. If anybody noticed him, if they caught a glimpse of his face, clothing, anything, they quickly forgot, excited by the chance to move forward an extra two feet in the line. Sheeple. Nobody had commented on the blue cast that covered his left wrist. With his baggy windbreaker, it was virtually unnoticeable.

He strode toward Sacramento Street. The wind felt bracing. With his good hand, he texted Ivory.
Waymire & Fong. Vienna Hicks.

He signed it,
Paine.
Ace Chennault was a ghostwriter, and a ghost. Paine was Revolution, its spirit and its fuse.

He picked up his pace. This day hadn’t been in his original outline. But he’d had to work around the failure of Plan A.

Tasia had been Plan A. And her death had to be seen as a sacrifice. The sheeple who listened to talk radio and watched Edie Wilson and swallowed the hyperbolic nectar written at Tree of Liberty believed Tasia’s death to be a political murder.

And, in a perverse way, it was. The faithful saw Tasia’s death as a crucifixion. To them she was a martyr. But Tasia hadn’t been Christ. She’d been Judas.

The conspiracy theorists believed Tasia had died because she knew too much about the McFarland administration. In fact, she had died because she knew too much about the plans of people scheming to bring down the McFarland administration.

And today the hardest of the hard-core True Americans were ready to storm the Gub, on Paine’s orders. He inhaled. God almighty, power felt good.

He leaned into the wind and set his face in the buffoonishly pleasant mask that defined Ace Chennault. It was the face that had gotten people to sign up for his services as an insurance agent. It was the affable look that won him freelance gigs for current affairs and music magazines. It was the happy fanboy face that had persuaded Tasia to accept him as a music journalist and eventually her ghostwriter.

And he was a hell of a writer. He had a legitimate career, with years of publication credits. But words could never surpass his political performance art. His most recent jobs had been quiet masterpieces. Hacking into a federal appeals court justice’s cell phone to plant texts and photos from underage hookers. That got international weapons smuggling charges against a military contractor dismissed. Sending newspaper cuttings to an investigative journalist whose little boy was undergoing treatment for leukemia—stories about tragic cases in which the wrong medications had been administered and killed fragile hospital patients. That persuaded the journo to quash his investigation into links between a fundamentalist megachurch and private paramilitaries in Central America.

Subtlety had its uses.

But subtlety was mainly useful for putting money in the bank. Political violence was poetry, and Chennault was possibly the richest poet in America because his work paid big cash. That cash would finance his escape to the sunny climes where, after today, he would need to hide out for a decade or so.

Fear trilled through his stomach. He would go abroad, as Thomas Paine had done. He would take refuge while True America’s patriots fought to cleanse and restore the nation.

But he wouldn’t be a coward. Today, subtlety had run out of uses. He’d tried that with Tasia, had worked on it for fourteen long goddamned months, only to see her crumble in the face of the Usurper’s hypnotic power.

Plan A had failed. And if Plan B failed today, none of his precautions or insurance policies could save him. He had records of the meeting at which the mission’s parameters and his fee had been arranged. He had photos and credit card records from his trip, and a password-protected recording of the meeting stashed on his computer and in a safe deposit box. He had matchbooks from that truck stop in Hoback, Wyoming. But none of that could protect him now. He’d taken half his fee up front. He’d put the plan into motion. Keyes and Ivory were involved. And, above all, he knew everything. Fail, and he’d be silenced for good. Mercs, a hit man, government agents acting under official orders—somebody would kill him.

Through rising anxiety, Chennault maintained the cheery buffoon mask and walked toward Sacramento Street. An open-air, double-decker tour bus gargled past. The driver was droning an amplified travelogue to a mob of Chinese tourists.
That
was soon going to stop.

Fourteen months he’d worked with Tasia. When he had been hired for this assignment, he at first thought it would be impossible. The mission parameters were strict: Robert McFarland must exit the White House. He must leave in such a way that he could never return. His legacy must be tainted forever. This must be accomplished by embroiling him in a major scandal involving his ex-wife.

Chennault had not been instructed on how to accomplish these goals. But he had been told that Fawn Tasia McFarland was bipolar with paranoid tendencies, sometimes hypersexual, sometimes suicidal, and in possession of a handgun legally registered to the president. The poetic details had been left up to him, though the phrase “murdersuicide” was mentioned more than once.

So for fourteen months, Chennault had worked on Tasia. And she had been so intense, so eager to listen to him, that he had come to think she was the real thing: a renegade, a Madonna who had lived inside the jackal’s tent and escaped to tell the truth.

Fourteen months.
He had convinced her of Big Pharma’s mission to tranquilize the populace on behalf of the Gub, and so she’d quit taking her medication. Once she did, her creativity and huge animal energy had roared to the fore. So too had her paranoia. As in earlier times when her mania was uncontrolled, she was easily convinced that Robert McFarland had destroyed her health and happiness—and had never apologized for it. And then, when she inevitably crashed into depression, Chennault had given Tasia a doctor’s name.
Forget about the mood stabilizer—ask him for Prozac. Live with passion and commitment, but not the blues.

Send her into orbit, that had been Chennault’s goal. Agitate her. Agitation was a risk factor for suicide. Turn her into the energizer bunny of mania. In that condition, Tasia had been ready to help bring down the false god that was devouring Washington.

Chennault convinced her that McFarland needed to own up to the terrible choices he had forced her to make during their marriage. Contact him, he told her. Tell him you’re writing an autobiography. He’ll meet with you—he’ll be desperate to know what you’re writing. And when you get him alone, force him to beg forgiveness for leaving you lonely and depressed while he was deployed overseas.

Oh . . . and reserve connecting hotel rooms. That way, Chennault said, he could record everything McFarland admitted to, in crisp stereo sound, through the connecting door.

Tasia had asked:
And if he refuses to talk?

You know how to make him speak honestly,
Chennault answered.
Bring the gun. McFarland won’t possibly balk if you threaten suicide.

You’re an artist,
he told her.
And the Colt .45 is a showstopper. He’ll talk.

So Tasia reserved connecting rooms at the Reston Hyatt. Chennault hid in the second room. He told her to wait until the Secret Service left the room before unlocking the connecting door, so he could “protect” her if McFarland called the agents back in.

That was the key to everything: the unlocked door. It was the only way he could gain access, shoot McFarland and Tasia, and escape out the window.

She was the perfect scapegoat. But she’d betrayed him.

“Bitch,” he said.

Tasia had been a vector, a subtlety, beyond all dreaming. She had become gloriously enraged at McFarland. She had been wild with pain and eager to force him to apologize for their marriage.

But she didn’t carry through. At the last minute, when McFarland arrived, she kept the connecting door locked. Chennault had been helpless. Then she left the Hyatt and returned to her D.C. hotel. The next morning she climbed aboard the tour bus and continued on the
Bad Dogs and Bullets
tour. And the jackal had gone back to the White House and continued subverting the country.

McFarland had mesmerized Tasia, and reclaimed her. He had probably taken her sexually, too. Chennault swallowed, nauseated at the image.

And then Tasia had shut him out. She had refused to see him. She had ignored his calls. When he went to her house the night before the San Francisco concert, she’d had the gall to send her pussy-whipped dog, Searle Lecroix, to shoo him away.

Noel Michael Petty, at least, had seen to Lecroix. Things were not totally out of balance.

Tasia had obviously realized that he had intended harm to the president. She had become a loose, loud, unmedicated cannon. He could not have let her live.

But no evidence existed that he had gone to Reston, Virginia. All his discussions with Tasia had been one-on-one, and the only recording devices present had been the ones he had secretly planted. And he’d always used a jammer to detect bugs and wreck cell phone reception. He was in the clear.

And that left him an open field on which to run today. He had two loyal soldiers in Ivory and Keyes. They would do what he asked. He had no doubts—he’d been given dossiers on them, as potential recruits, before he put this project into action.

And didn’t he have a perfect stage today.

He turned the corner onto Sacramento. Granite and glass skyscrapers lined the street. He had a clear view downhill to the office tower beyond the corner with Montgomery. He slowed. Despite pedestrians and heavy cross traffic, he could see a black Suburban parked outside at the curb. Sunlight kicked off its windshield.

Chennault sent Keyes a text.
Now.

He inhaled the diesel fumes of the nation’s decay.
Steady
, he told himself. He kept his eyes on the vehicle parked outside the office building.

Wait.
One black Suburban.

He picked up his pace. Elbowed a man in the side as he strode past. Cross traffic blocked his view, red Muni buses, yellow cabs, pedestrians in kaleidoscope colors.

Just one Suburban. Not a fleet. And no police motorcycle escort loitering around, either. The sound of sirens bounced off the buildings in the wind. He hurried down the street.

 

 

D
ON’T RUN,
IVORY told herself. She was breathless, had tunnel vision. The office building was dead ahead.

Parked across the street from it, directly opposite the black Gub Suburban, was a Blue Eagle Security armored car. Keyes climbed out from behind the wheel.

He was wearing his helmet, company issue, which looked like a motorcycle helmet with a clear faceplate. He frowned at her.

“Have you been running?” He turned his head. “What’s with the sirens?”

She pushed past him and climbed into the cab. “I kicked it off. We can’t wait.”

“What did you do?”

She pulled the secure aluminum carry-case from the front seat.

Keyes grabbed her arm. “Ivory.”

“One less porker to get in our way.”

She handed him the secure case. With it, they’d look exactly like security company guards making a cash delivery. Keyes stared at her with shock.

Then he buckled down. “Send any messages now, because the jammer will freak out both text and voice calls.”

“I’ve said all I need to say. Leave the keys in the ignition for Paine. He’ll be here, ready to drive when we come out.”

Keyes glanced across the street. “Just one Suburban.”

“This is where Tasia’s sister works. The president’s here. He’s visiting family. Who else could it be?”

They crossed the street to the building. Waymire & Fong was on the fifth floor.

L
EWICKI PUNCHED A NUMBER ON HISPHONE. HE THREW A FIERCE GAZE at Jo.

“
Sic semper tyrannis.
Booth shouted it after he jumped from the president’s box to the stage at Ford’s Theatre. This guy Chennault is an assassination groupie.”

He spoke into the phone. “Bill, we have a problem. It . . .” He pulled the phone from his ear. “Dammit. Cut me off. What—” He punched the number again.

The screams came from the lobby.

 

 

K
EYES WAS FIRST out of the elevator but Ivory raced past him across the law firm lobby, straight at the receptionist sitting behind the desk.

The woman was on the phone. She looked up. Her eyes registered confusion. She was seeing a man and a woman from Blue Eagle Security, dressed in their armored-car driver uniforms, wearing the regulation motorcycle helmets with clear faceplates. Carrying the silver case they always did whenever they went into a bank or brokerage to pick up cash.

But Blue Eagle Security drivers didn’t usually open the secure case and pull out weapons. And they never aimed those weapons at wide-eyed receptionists whose mouths were hanging open.

Keyes extended the stock on the MAC-10 machine pistol. Ivory shoved the Desert Eagle into her waistband and picked up the Glock.

Before the receptionist could rise halfway out of her seat, Ivory charged the desk and raised the butt of the gun like a club. The receptionist shrieked like a fool. Ivory leaped over the desk and battered the girl from her chair with the Glock. Then she lifted the receiver on the phone bank and activated all the lights, jamming the system.

The receptionist crawled away screaming, crabbed to her feet, and ran down the hall.

“Lock the elevators,” Ivory told Keyes. “Is the cell phone jammer working?”

She felt unleashed, fully human for the first time in years, ready to wreak scary hell on all these sheeple.

She racked the slide on the Glock. “Let’s find him.”

 

 

J
O TURNED TOWARD the open conference room door. Lewicki paused, gripping his phone like a grenade.

More screams, a woman’s voice. Distant, muffled by walls and carpet, a man shouted, “On the floor.”