The List (25 page)

Bert limped over to Jack, one hand pressed against the wound on his backside. With each step, he was less sure of himself. Deep in his psyche, Bert knew that confronting the horrific corpse of the man who almost killed him was somehow therapeutic. Shrinks talked a lot about closure. This was closure in spades. But it still scared the hell out of him.

He can’t hurt me anymore.
Bert said it over and over in his head.

A mantra. He stopped next to the corpse, leaning down, focusing on the goal, reaching out a hand...

“Don’t let him grab you!” Abe yelled.

Bert took the phone. Triumphant, he began to turn away, but something caught his eye. A piece of paper, sticking out of Jack’s back pocket. Abe tugged it out. A plane ticket.

“While you’re over there being brave, check his wallet.” Roy said.

“No fair,” Abe said. “I killed him, I get his wallet.”

“We’re looking for evidence, Abe, not robbing him.”

Bert patted down Jack’s pockets, careful to avoid getting hooked.

He dug out a billfold, some keys, and a small plastic tube.

“You doing okay?” Roy had come up to him, put a hand on his shoulder.

“I’m fine.” The case was black, about half the size of a pencil. It had a screw top. Bert shook the contents onto his palm.

“What is that? Drugs?”

“I don’t think so.”

The object was small, about two centimeters long. It looked like a miniature missile. Pointy on one end, tiny wings on the other.

“It’s a dart of some kind.” Roy carefully picked it up between his thumb and index finger and held it close. “Has some kind of mark.

Squiggles, like Chinese writing.”

“YOU!!!!”

The three of them whirled to see Jack. Somehow, impossibly, he’d gotten to his feet and launched himself at the trio, one arm stretched out for a pointy and lethal embrace.

Roy shoved Bert to the side and put out his hand to hold Jack back. As soon as Roy touched him, Jack’s eyes rolled up in their sockets and he gasped, falling to the ground. His body jerked twice, and then he was still.

Abe nodded smartly.

“I told you that was gonna happen.”

“Is he dead?” Bert asked. “What the hell did you hit him with?”

Roy shrugged. “I just poked him with the little dart thingy.”

Bloody froth foamed out of Jack’s mouth.

“It killed him that fast?”

“Apparently so. Let’s try to avoid those things in the future.

Gimme the phone.”

Roy took the cell from Bert and pressed some buttons.

“Tom? Yeah, he’s safe. Jack’s dead. Okay, tell me.”

Bert watched Roy’s face. As Tom talked, it became grimmer and grimmer.

“Great. I was hoping this situation would become a lot more desperate. Jack had a ticket on him. Lemme see it.” Bert handed it over. “Tomorrow night, to DC. Yeah, it makes sense. I’ll break it to the guys, call you right back.”

“What is it?” Bert braced himself for bad news.

Roy pocketed the phone. “Well, Shakespeare was a bad guy. He’s dead. It looks like Stang’s plot goes beyond just killing all the clones.

Way beyond. The stakes have gone up.”

“What do you mean?”

“Apparently, the day after tomorrow, Stang is planning on assassinating both the President and the Vice President at the same time.” Roy let the words sink in. “And we all know who’s next in line for the Presidency.”

“The Secretary of State?” Abe looked up from the pile of lures he’d been gathering. “The Attorney General? The Prime Minister?

Don’t tell me, I know this. Oprah?”

“The Speaker of the House. Phil Jr.”

Bert’s stomach dropped. “If he becomes President, we’re all dead.”

“It’s a lot worse than that. He’s planning on blaming China for the assassinations.”

Bert followed the line of thought. “Oh no.”

“That’s right.” Roy’s face creased with worry. “Get ready for World War III.”

Los Angeles

Tom clicked on the
NEWS
icon at www.whitehouse.gov, to check the upcoming events for the President.

“He’s in Canada for the next two days.”

Joan asked, “Where?”

Tom checked where the Prez was supposed to be tomorrow at 4:15—that was the time mentioned in Bill’s speech.
At precisely a
quarter after four, Eastern time, our nation lost two of its finest
leaders...

“He’ll be in Montreal. He’s addressing the North American Energy Commission, whatever that is.”

“How about the Vice President?”

Tom couldn’t find any mention of him. “I guess he’ll be presiding over the Senate. Roy mentioned that Jack had a plane ticket to DC.

They must be planning on murdering him while Congress is in session.”

“So we’ve got—what—twenty hours to try and stop a double assassination?”

“We can place an anonymous call to the Secret Service, tell them the plot, and they’ll take care of it.”

“They’ll want proof. Which we don’t have.”

“We’ll be real convincing.”

“You’re kidding, right?”

Tom turned and looked at her. “What do you mean?”

“Do you honestly think that the President is going to cancel his speech because of an anonymous phone call? He probably gets threatened every day by nuts from all over the world. Suppose you got a call saying the mayor of Chicago was going to be killed at a speech.

What would you do?”

Tom saw her point. “We’d beef up security.”

“But we have to assume Stang can already beat security. Hell, the Secret Service may actually be in on it, with all of Stang’s connections.

Would the mayor cancel his speech?”

Tom shook his head slowly. “Probably not. He’d have faith in his security staff. Plus he’d want to prove that he’s not easily scared.

Terrorists can’t push this administration around, that kind of thing.”

“So an anonymous call is out. If we tried talking to the Secret Service in person, and told them the truth about everything that happened, how far would we get?”

Tom knew how that would go. “We’d get detained, and possibly arrested. We might be questioned for days, even weeks. Without due process, if Homeland Security got involved. And Stang would deny it all, of course.”

Joan’s face scrunched up in thought. “What if we went to the speech, and tried to warn him in person?”

“We wouldn’t get within a hundred yards of him before the Secret Service swarmed all over us.” Their options were dwindling. “How about the media? Could we tell them?”

“Same problem. We’d have to convince someone really high up before the President would listen, and we don’t have any proof. Do you think Dan Rather is any easier to get a hold of than the President?”

“We have some proof. The speech.”

“Shakespeare is dead. How can we prove he wrote it?”

Tom tapped his fingers on the desk, thinking. “What’s left? Go after Stang?”

“Which one? Senior or Junior?”

“We probably couldn’t get to Phil Jr.—he’s protected by the Secret Service same as the President. But maybe we can pay Phil Sr.

another visit, try to force him to call off his dogs.”

“And then do what? Say he calls it off. Say we even take the next step, and murder him. Within a week, his son would have us hunted down and killed. Then he’d go ahead with the assassinations anyway.”

This was ridiculous. The two most important people in America were going to die tomorrow, and there didn’t seem to be any way to stop it. The same system that protected the President prevented Tom from helping him.

“So what can we do? Warning the President won’t work. Showing up at the speech, if we can even get in, will just get us arrested.”

“Jack had a ticket to Washington, so he was part of this. Attila and Vlad are probably part of it as well.”

Joan let the implication of her sentence weigh on Tom.

“So, we wait for them to show up, and kill them?”

Joan folded her arms. “They’re coming here to kill us.”

“And you can handle this?”

“Yes. Maybe. I don’t know. It’s more than just the President. To be honest, I don’t even like the guy. But if Stang becomes the leader of our country, he’s going to start a war with China. You read the speech.”

Tom nodded. To say the speech was inflammatory was putting it lightly. It blamed China for the deaths, and then made demands that the Chinese would never meet—the Communist government stepping down, a formal apology, restitution, the disbanding of the Chinese Army... This was more than just their lives and the lives of some politicians. There were millions, possibly billions, of lives at stake.

“What if this goes deeper than Attila and Vlad? We don’t know how Stang plans to do it. He could fire a missile from miles away, for all we know. Besides, if they are the trigger men, they’re already on their way to their destinations. A plane ride to Montreal is at least eight hours long.”

“Then we somehow have to get the President and the Vice President away from those areas by 4:15.”

They brainstormed for a few minutes, batting ideas back and forth.

Some were bad, some were impossible, and a few were ridiculous.

Joan chewed her lower lip.

“How about we fake an attempt? Like fire a few bullets into the air? Then they’d get the President out of there.”

“We’d probably be killed before we could even fire the first shot.

Scratch that, we wouldn’t even be able to get a gun anywhere near him. Where is this thing happening, anyway?”

Tom did a search for
North American Energy Commission
and found their website. He clicked on upcoming events.

“It’s indoors. Invitation only, some kind of formal dinner. We couldn’t get in if we wanted to.”

Tom took out his cell and dialed Roy’s new number. Maybe they had some ideas.

“How about we get one of those planes that do sky writing?” Roy suggested.

“The speech is inside. Last I checked, the Senate holds session inside as well.”

“Maybe it’ll be a nice day, they’ll hold it on the White House lawn. Hold on, Abe has an idea.”

Tom listened to some mumbling in the background. When Roy came back on, he laid it out. Tom was impressed.

“That’s so simple it just might work,” Tom said. “Do they have tours?”

“Bert says yes. He’s been to Washington before.”

“Will you be able to get what you need? It’s a long time until the Fourth of July.”

“Abe has got that covered. Think this can work for you, too?”

“I doubt it. We probably won’t even be able to get in the building.

Plus we don’t have Abe. I’m not as recognizable in the public eye.”

“Good luck. Call when you figure it out. We’re going to stop by Abe’s, then go to the airport. Good thing I took out the extra insurance on that rental car.”

Roy hung up. Tom related their plan to Joan.

“Abe will probably get arrested. They’ll put two and two together.”

“He knows. But they won’t be able to hold him for long.”

“It wouldn’t work for us.”

“I know. But maybe we can use the same principle.”

Tom sketched out an idea. Joan listened, and added to it. After bantering back and forth a few times, they had something that might actually fly.

“We’ll need a sensor, or something that can pass for one. And uniforms.”

“No problem. I’ll call Stevie. He’s been the prop master on my last two movies. He can get anything. Just find a logo.”

Tom searched the internet for Canadian companies. When he found a suitable picture he saved it to the hard drive. Then he enlarged it in Photoshop and printed out a high resolution copy.

“Perfect. Let me use your phone.” Joan took it and left the room.

Tom searched through Bill’s programs and found a business card creator. With it, he made some cards using the Canadian logo. He left the phone number blank, then printed up six on some card stock, three with the name Tom Johnson and three with the name Joan Smith. They came out looking professional, though it bothered him the printing wasn’t embossed. Hopefully no one would notice. When he was finished, Joan approached the desk with a phone book.

“There’s one magic shop nearby, but they close in twenty minutes.

Are we convinced Attila and Vlad are a no show?”

“We don’t have a choice. I don’t know if we can get what we need in Canada. What about the other stuff?”

Joan handed him a piece of paper. “This is Stevie’s email address.

He wants you to send him a jpeg of the logo. If he gets it now, he can be ready in about two hours.”

Tom looked at his watch. He still had to stop back at the hotel for his laptop and luggage, and then go to Joan’s place. If they caught a late flight, they would get there late tomorrow morning, just enough time to get set up and work the kinks out of the plan. Tom emailed Stevie the logo.

“Do you have any other business you need to take care of before you go?”

Joan’s eyes clouded. “I called Marsha after I talked to Stevie.

She’s going to close the business for a few days, make arrangements for Marty. The police found my purse, and they’re looking for me.”

“They want to question you, that’s all.”

Joan’s eyes drifted to Bill’s body, for the umpteenth time. Tom sensed her indecision.

“You don’t have to go.”

“Yes, I do.”

“You can stay here, talk to the police, explain everything. I can manage in Canada without you.”

He couldn’t. Not by a long shot. But she was just a movie producer. She’d been through half a dozen traumas in just a few days.

He had to give her an out.

“I’ve never run away from anything.”

“I wouldn’t call this a typical situation.”

Joan met his eyes. “We have to hurry. The store is only a few blocks away.”

Tom nodded, relieved. He gathered up what he needed and they headed for the car.

If they lived through this, he wanted to ask Joan if bravery came easily to her, or if she had to force it like everyone else. Tom had been forcing his since he arrived in LA. He wasn’t sure how much more he had left.

Washington DC

“Still no word from Jack?”

Phil Jr. took another sip of scotch. The tension was getting to him.