The President's Assassin (13 page)

In truth, Fineberg’s murder would be a source of quiet jubilation in many quarters, and made no sense I could see.

Phyllis repeated, “Well? Is there a connection? Or was he just a target of convenience?”

“I don’t think there’s a specific connection.”

Apparently I was being tested, because she snapped, “Think harder, Drummond. This city is filled with targets. There has to be a reason they chose him. Right?”

“Right.”

“I didn’t give you this assignment to spectate. These killers aren’t stupid. You can’t afford to be.”

So I thought harder. I suggested, “Maybe Fineberg was a decoy.”

“For what?”

“To sow doubt and confusion. To mislead us and force us to waste time and precious resources chasing down an empty path. You know—”

“Yes...possibly.” After a pause she observed, “Also, there are many prominent people in Washington, our ability to protect them is limited, and by forcing us to spread out, it gets easier for them.”

“Right.” The lady was on, and I went into the listening mode.

She added, “They’re forcing our hand. This makes three important officials in one day. We can’t very well dissemble any longer, can we? We’re going to have to disclose what’s happening to the public.”

“Maybe we should have done that earlier.”

“Don’t be naive. There was a very good reason we chose to handle things this way.”

“To avoid embarrassment?” I offered.

“Oh please. What nobody could in good taste confess this morning. What we all wanted to avoid—hysteria. Every person in this town with a hint of an impressive title is going to beg for protection. Somebody has to perform the triage.”

“Go on.”

“A lot of feelings are going to get hurt, and a lot of enemies made. Understand—with an election, the President wanted desperately to avoid that.”

Made sense, I guess. I was reminded of the cold war days, when a select handful of people in the Pentagon were issued special passes to be flown out of the city on the first whiff of an incoming nuclear attack. They would ride out the great cataclysm inside a hollowed-out mountain somewhere not even God knew about, to emerge, I guess, after the Geiger counters stopped having heart attacks. It was the ultimate get-out-of-jail card, the modern equivalent of a ticket to Noah’s Ark. For the rest of us, it was an official stamp of expendability. Fortunately, the big one never came, so there were no hard feelings—as if anybody would’ve been left to feel bad anyway.

Not so this time. The President was involved in a touch-and-go election campaign, plenty of people would remember, and he already had enemies by the bushel. I said, “Got it.”

“I shouldn’t have to explain these things to you.”

Right.

It’s never pleasant getting your butt chewed by the boss. But I didn’t really want to get into it with this lady, who might lace cyanide into my cigars or something. And for the record, if you’ll pardon the pun, the lady was dead-on. Bodies were piling up, and Sean Drummond’s singular contribution was to explain how. What mattered was why, and from there you might get to who.

I asked her for an update on the bounty, and she informed me that no progress had been made, though reports were still filtering in from around the world, and she would let me know. In other words, piss off.

She closed by informing me that Jennie, Meany, and I needed to be back at the Incident Command Center in time for a nine o’clock session of the oversight cell.

I began to wonder if this day was going to end.

CHAPTER NINE

T
HE
9:00
P.M
.
SESSION OPENED WITH AN OVERVIEW FROM A PLUMP AND
pasty-faced Bureau pathologist, who brought along a number of visual aids to jog our imagination and encourage discussion. The information wasn’t all that helpful, really. But I guess it’s good for morale to allow everybody a moment in the sun.

Also, the day had been long and grueling, the hour was late, and a pathology lecture is a lot like a sixth-grade sex ed class—it’s all in the pictures.

At least the bureaucrats seemed to be catching up to the killers’ frantic pace, and there was no unseemly melee as everybody tried to figure out who sat where. Name placards had been prepared; legal pads, sharpened No. 2 pencils, and even bottled waters were arranged. The same players from the morning session were present and accounted for, excluding my big cheese, James Peterson, who I guess was lurking in the shadowy corridors of Langley plotting something. More likely, he was exercising his option to keep his distance from this thing. Smart guy.

In fact, I was a little astonished to see Director Townsend drumming his fingers on the end of the table and watching the mass assemble. But it made sense, I guess. With the White House Chief of Staff, the presidential spokesperson, a Supreme Court justice, and assorted others filling drawers at the morgue, taking in a Kennedy Center musical was probably not the best of ideas. Still, I think it said something about the man that he did not keep his bureaucratic distance, that he was staying in the thick of things, and if—or, as it now looked—
when
the shitstorm hit, he was going to be front and center, with no prophylactic layers of bureaucracy for cover.

Also, I was relieved to see that Mr. Townsend did not appear pissed, distraught, or even moody; he actually looked collected and impassive, as though this was just another day, another investigation, another job to be done. Of course, it wasn’t. But good leadership is four-tenths being there and six-tenths looking the part.

Anyway, the day had been a scorcher—literally and otherwise—and nobody had changed clothes, or showered, and the room was windowless, so it smelled a little ripe, though that was the least of our worries.

In fact, two minutes into it, everybody was stone-cold sober, stealing glances at their watches and waiting for Dr. Death and his nasty pictures to go away, when he got to something I found interesting and useful.

We had finished reviewing the anatomical donnybrook at Belknap’s house and a new corpse flashed onto the screen: an aged and scrawny body sprawled on his left side across his front porch.

One glance and you knew this guy had scribbled his last illegible dissent. The doc pointed at the slide and said, “See here how Fineberg was blown nearly in half. Really the only thing holding him together is his spine. Even a layman can detect from the severity of trauma that his death was virtually instantaneous. Until the autopsy’s complete I won’t venture the exact cause of death...but see here.” He pointed at a fresh slide. “The right side of Fineberg’s body, the hollowed-out side, took the brunt of the blast.”

There followed a number of lavish close-ups of Phillip Fineberg’s oozing entrails, exposed rib cage, and so on.

“The depth of the tissue damage,” the doc continued, “and the heavy accretion of gunpowder on Fineberg’s skin suggests the device exploded, we estimate, within three feet from his body. Of particular interest, judging by the angle of the entry wounds, the device was some three feet off the ground when it exploded. This is curious, yes? The explosion occurred at approximately the same height as the doorknob.”

He paused to allow everybody to consider this novel possibility. Mr. Gene Halderman of Homeland Security was thoughtfully stroking his chin, no doubt thinking, “Ah-hah—the old bomb in the doorknob thing.”

The doctor then said, “But when we found no trace of brass, or even brass enamel, we ruled that out. The device dispensed hundreds of particles composed of iron bauxite, a mixture of tiny pellets and some coarser pieces with sharp, uneven edges, perhaps from the shell of the device. What this means, we don’t know. We do bodies, not bombs. So we’ve forwarded shrapnel fragments and powder residue over to—”

George Meany suddenly pushed back his chair. “Wait!—hold on a minute...” He regarded the picture a moment before he informed the good doctor, “From what you’re describing...I think...” He paused until he had everybody’s undivided attention. “That...that sounds like a Bouncy Nancy.” His eyes roved around the table, and in response to the confused expressions he added, “If you’re unfamiliar with this device, it’s...” and proceeded to give the unwashed and unknowing a brief description of Bouncy Nancys and how the weapon matched the damage inflicted on Fineberg, and so forth.

He summarized by saying, “Incidentally, I should mention another suspicion I’ve been toying with. Regarding the Merrill murder, the police investigators were of the opinion that a rifle was used to send his car out of control. I looked at that car—it was pretty banged up, and had caught on fire. Hard to say for sure, but I suspect an antitank weapon might’ve been used.”

George was scoring big-time points with his boss, Director Townsend, who sat nodding and wide-eyed throughout.

Mrs. Hooper stared with newfound awe and admiration at the deductive wunderkind.

Gene Halderman leaned back in his chair, hands sweeping through his pompadour, no doubt thinking, “Wow. When I grow up...”

Jennie shot me a bemused smile. I smiled back.

That George. What can you do?

George said, “In fact...I think...Well, this might be a new and very critical lead. How did these people get their hands on controlled and sophisticated military hardware?”

Nobody had a ready answer to that question.

After a moment Townsend asked, “Did you serve in the military, George?”

“No...I entered the Bureau out of college.”

“And your apparent familiarity with military munitions, how did you come by that?”

“I try to stay up on things, sir. I recall reading about mine types. And as the doctor was describing the judge’s injuries, it struck me th—”

“Were you aware I was a Marine platoon leader in Vietnam?”

“Yes...I think I knew that.”

“That I still carry shrapnel in my left hip? In fact, it might interest you to know the shrapnel came from the very device you’re trying to describe.”

“I’m sorry to hear that. Is it painful?”

Those unblinking eyes regarded George. “Bouncy Nancy? The proper nomenclature is a Bouncing Betty.”

George glanced very briefly at Jennie Margold, who had become curiously occupied dislodging something from under a fingernail. Then he returned his boss’s stare. “I misspoke.” After a moment he added, “Of course I meant a Bouncing Betty.”

“Of course you did.” Those dead-fish eyes turned to me. “Drummond, right?”

“Yes sir.”

“You were at the crash site?”

“I was.”

“And you were briefed on Fineberg’s death?” The question was obviously rhetorical, and he offered, “Maybe you have other observations you’d care to share with us—that is, to share directly.”

Phyllis’s eyebrows rose. I cleared my throat. “Well...actually, Agent Margold discovered another important connection.”

Jennie looked up from her fingernails. Townsend replied, “Proceed.”

So I did. “During our search of Jason Barnes’s townhouse, we discovered a small batch of military manuals on his bookshelves. I thought nothing of it, actually.”

“Yes?”

“But at the crash site, Agent Margold recalled that one was the Army field manual on the Light Antitank Weapon, or LAW.”

“Is that so?”

“Another was the field manual on military mines.”

For a moment you could hear a pin drop. Actually, it was the sound of two tons of shit hitting the floor. Chuck Wardell lurched forward in his seat. “There could be a thousand perfectly innocent explanations for that.”

Phyllis responded quickly, saying, “No doubt there could be. But shouldn’t we focus on the one that’s not at all innocent, Charles?”

“I...I can’t believe this,” Wardell stammered. “Jason Barnes is a fine and loyal agent. He has no motive, and...and I...I won’t sit here...and...and let you people...let you lynch him...and...”

His convoluted syntax aside, I actually admired Mr. Wardell’s effort to cover Barnes’s ass. In a ruminative moment it struck me that were it my gilded ass up in the air, I shared no tribal loyalties with anyone in this room, and nobody was going to rush to my defense. I glanced at Phyllis, but she appeared to be preoccupied staring down Mr. Wardell. I looked at Jennie, and she nodded and smiled. She was really nice. I smiled back.

I really needed to make a few friends. If we didn’t start making progress, pronto, this thing would turn ugly, and I was the lowest-ranking person on this team. As a rule of thumb in Washington, it’s always lonelier at the bottom than the top.

Anyway, before it turned really pissy, Director Townsend asserted himself and informed Mr. Wardell, “Nobody’s lynching Jason Barnes.” Everybody nodded—there were no hasty lynchers in this room.

After a moment Townsend emphasized, “Absence of evidence is not necessarily evidence of absence. Everything I’ve heard is circumstantial.” Again, everybody nodded and a modicum of equanimity was restored. He then looked around and asked, without even a hint of irony, “Can anybody tell me what we know about this Jason Barnes?”

Jennie-on-the-spot was apparently prepared for this pointed question and she swiftly and efficiently recounted the observations we had picked up at Jason’s home, his personal quirks and habits, and so forth. Wisely, she did not reveal or even imply that Jason was an exact match for the type of compulsive, organized killer we were looking for, mollifying Mr. Wardell, for the moment. She reached down to her briefcase and said, “I made copies of his Secret Service personnel file. Why don’t I distribute them?”

She walked around the table, dropping folders, and everybody began leafing through the professional life and times of Jason Barnes. Mr. Wardell was nobody’s idiot and refused to retreat into a consent of silence, mumbling things like “steamroll” and “rush to judgment,” and whatever.

Like prison records, apparently, the longer you serve, the thicker the book. With only two years in His Majesty’s Service, the info on Barnes was sparse, factual, and not all that illustrative, or even enlightening—Caucasian, male, age, academic degrees, height, weight, and so on. Also included inside the folder were the annual ratings from his boss, Mr. Kinney, which I took a moment to examine. They were, as he had indicated, universally exceptional.