The Sentinel (39 page)

Garrison nodded agreement, then something caught his eye; the white delivery van that was parked in the driveway, facing away from them. It had tinted windows.

"What's wrong, Pete?"

"That van. There's movement inside."

"You know something, you're right."

Garrison began moving away.

"I swear I had no idea-"

The delivery van's tailgate door flew open and the deafening rattle of submachine-gun fire bit the air. Sebastian was hit and flew backward.

Garrison drew his SIG-Sauer, fired back, and dove for cover behind a trash container as bullets ricocheted off the pavement.

Emerging from the van, a man wearing a ski mask and a bullet-proof vest advanced toward Garrison, firing an Uzi submachine gun from hip level. He was a professional, a military-trained shooter. Rounds sparked violently against the trash receptacle.

Outgunned, Garrison fired two quick rounds, then ran to the hotel furnace-room window, slammed his SIG-Sauer through the glass, and plunged inside headfirst, landing on the cement floor in a shower of glass. Rolling to the right, he fired twice at the window before scrambling behind a large air conditioner. The bullets stopped. Garrison heard someone's footsteps move away from the window.

Garrison sprinted to the door and yanked it open. Launched by all the adrenaline in his body, he ran up a single flight of stairs at full speed. Emerging into a hotel hallway, he dodged his way through a large group of tourists heading to the hotel's main entrance. He burst through the doors and ran outside.

The van was speeding down the alley toward the street.

Dropping to one knee, he aimed his SIG-Sauer with both hands. Holding his breath, he aimed and squeezed the trigger repeatedly firing.
One, Two
... The van turned right, into the flow of traffic, and disappeared down Connecticut Avenue. Garrison ran to Sebastian and kneeled beside him.

"Walter..."

Sebastian had been hit in the chin and the chest. The back of his head was bloody. There were no signs of life. Garrison rose and backed away in horror, his ears buzzing from the gunshots.

People streamed from the hotel. A woman shrieked.

Garrison ran down a service road to Connecticut Avenue. Flagging down a passing taxi, he climbed in the backseat. The driver pulled into traffic.

"Where to, sir?"

Garrison stared back at the hotel, his mind filled with the sight of Sebastian dead in the alley. Closing his eyes for a moment to repress his emotions, Garrison felt his heart throbbing wildly.

"Just head down through the Park."

As the taxi drove south toward downtown, two police cars sped past in the opposite direction, sirens blaring. As the taxi entered the shaded Rock Creek Park, Garrison leaned back in the seat. The driver slipped a CD into the player. The dissonant, twangy sounds of what Garrison assumed was Pakistani music filled the car.

"Is that too loud for you, sir?"

Garrison stared straight ahead, his fists clenched.

"No."

He told himself to calm down, to take responsibility rather than blame himself for Sebastian's death. He willed himself to remain calm. He now knew that the conspiracy reached the highest level of the White House.

Garrison made his decision. He had the driver drop him at a hardware store. Garrison went inside and purchased a screwdriver. For the next few minutes, he walked along Nineteenth Street looking in cars until he found one that had a window down. He looked about, then got in. Using the screwdriver, he hot-wired the ignition and drove out of D.C. at the speed limit.

****

CHAPTER 30

IN THE SUBURB of McLean, Virginia, Garrison drove to Flanagan's residence: a Spanish Colonial revival sandwiched between other similar houses with three-car garages and second-floor balconies. Cruising slowly past, he saw that the shutters were closed and there was no car in the driveway. Across the street was a man-made lake whose water was an unnatural blue.

Garrison turned the corner, pulled to the curb, and turned off the engine. He took out his wallet and looked up Flanagan's telephone number on the White House Detail telephone list. Using his cell phone, he dialed the number and allowed it to ring ten times. Flanagan's voice came on the answering machine. Garrison pressed OFF.

He dropped the screwdriver into his suit-jacket inside pocket and then got out of the car. Looking about to make sure no neighbors were staring out the window at him, he walked around the corner to Flanagan's house. He rang the doorbell. Hearing nothing, he tried the handle. Locked. He moved to a window at the side of the house. Using the screwdriver, he pried off the screen. The window was locked. Shrugging off his suit jacket, he wrapped it around his right hand and punched the glass, shattering it. Praying no one had heard the sound, he reached inside and turned the lock.

Lifting the window, he crawled over the sill into the living room. The furnishings were tasteful: custom-made sofas and chairs, original oil paintings, a large faceless glass bust on an oversized driftwood coffee table. On the walls hung framed photographs of Flanagan with various dignitaries, including shots of him with former President of Russia Vladimir Putin, the First Lady, and the President. An elaborate sound system and dozens of jazz CDs were sitting on the shelves of a floor-to-ceiling entertainment center.

Garrison's investigative experience told him that when people hid things, they usually hid them in their bedroom. Garrison searched dresser drawers, removing each drawer from the chest to make sure nothing had been taped under the drawer. In the closet he found nothing but clothing. It was the same with the other two bedrooms. In a room Flanagan used as an office, Garrison began to feel frustrated and angry as he rummaged through some cardboard boxes. Without something to prove Flanagan a conspirator, Garrison had few options left.

He searched the kitchen. On the refrigerator was a Secret Service White House Detail weekly duty schedule. In the space for today's date was a notation that read, "Kennedy Center-POTUS (Tux)." POTUS was the Secret Service acronym for "President of the United States" and "Tux" was for tuxedo, the required agent duty uniform when accompanying protectees to the Center.

In the garage, there were some gardening tools in the corner, a stack of used brick, a bicycle suspended from a rafter, a collapsed lounge chair hanging on a wall hook. On a wooden workbench were nails and screws in old coffee cans, a hammer, a roll of duct tape, pliers, electrical wire, wire cutters and other tools, and something else that caught Garrison's attention: two photographic developing trays, some developing solution. Flanagan must have developed the film taken at Rehoboth Beach.

Garrison pulled open a wooden drawer under the bench. It too was filled with garage litter: string, paraffin, and hacksaw blades. Something at the back of the drawer, an inch-long narrow copper tube with a wire extending from it, caught his eye, a blasting cap of the kind used to detonate explosives. Blasting caps were supposed to be stored in a secure facility. If handled improperly, the resulting detonation, even without a main explosive charge, could prove fatal. A blasting cap was probably what had detonated the C-4 explosive in Marine One. Flanagan had probably assembled the bomb he planted in the helicopter here. But Garrison knew that a blasting cap alone wasn't enough to convince the President. He needed incontrovertible evidence. There had to be something else.

He went back to the master bedroom and then ripped the covers off the bed. He flipped over the mattress. Nothing. He slid open the closet door and dropped to the carpet. Recalling a case he'd worked on early in his career, he shoved shoes out of the way and hunted for any uneven spot. Finding a square ridge in the carpet, he grasped the carpet at the wall and pulled it back. There was an opening in the hardwood floor about two feet wide. He reached inside and lifted out a black metal box.

He opened the box and held the light close. Inside was a Nikon camera with a long-distance lens and a bankbook of the Credit Suisse bank, Zurich, Switzerland. He opened it. The account was in Flanagan's name. The ledger indicated that four hundred thousand dollars had been wire-transferred into the account from a bank in Panama a few days earlier. It occurred to Garrison that no person, no group would give Flanagan that much money and not demand that he perform. Flanagan was on the hook. Also in the box was an unmarked audiocassette tape.

Returning to the living room, Garrison inserted the cassette tape in a tape player. He pressed ON. There was a static-like sound as the tape began to play, then faint jazz music playing in the background.

"I just want to make sure that we understand one another," Flanagan said.

"We've been through this over and over, Gil," Wintergreen impatiently said. "I'm beginning to think you're getting cold feet."

"This isn't like we're talking about buying a used car here. Jesus H. Christ..."

"Okay. Let me go through it again for you. You will get two million dollars once it is done, deposited into a Swiss account."

"In my name."

"Of course."

"And you are sure that the money is no problem?"

"She's worth hundreds of millions. Her father owned half of San Francisco. She'll just go on the Internet and transfer money from one account to another. No one will ever know. You pick up the money when you want.

"What are you getting?"

"More than you, my friend. But rank has its privileges. "

"What's in it for her, Larry?"

"She's crazy. "

Garrison had the feeling that the floor had fallen away from beneath him.

****

CHAPTER 31

WALKING ALONG A White House West Wing hallway, Wintergreen had the butterflies-in-stomach feeling. He recognized the sensation as part of being in the arena, the fast lane that had characterized his life.

In the reception area of Helen Pierpont's office, a secretary told him Pierpont had been expecting him. She asked him if he wanted coffee or water. He declined. She smiled, and he moved toward the inner office. Pierpont was sitting behind a massive desk.

"Thanks for getting here so promptly. First, has anything been determined at the Marriott?"

"I've been out there with the agents interviewing witnesses. It appears that Garrison had a backup man with him, possibly a member of the Aryan Disciples. From what it looked like to me, the Disciples may have tried to kidnap Sebastian. The theory we are working is that Garrison was cooperating with the Disciples in a kidnap operation. Sebastian put up a fight and got killed. A witness saw Garrison run down the street and get in a taxi. I tired to trace the taxi myself and came up with nothing. It appears that a Disciples member was driving the taxi."

"This is terrible."

"There is only so much - everything possible is being done."

She motioned him to a chair. "I want the rundown on the security at the Kennedy Center."

He sat. "With all due respect, it's somewhat unusual to have Secret Service security plans reviewed by-"

"An outsider?"

He graciously smiled. "The Secret Service does have sole jurisdiction for protecting the President."

"Being defensive aren't we, Mr. Director?"

"Nothing personal."

He reached in his inside jacket pocket, took out a copy of the Kennedy Center advance security report, and handed it to her.

She thumbed a few pages.

"The President arrives in the underground garage...and then takes the elevator to the lobby floor-"