He was staying at the Hay-Adams Hotel, on the back side of Lafayette Park, which was across Pennsylvania Avenue from the White House. He was here with six men including Pascal to conduct his hunt for the elusive journalist. And that was the key for him. She was a journalist. What did journalists do? They traveled, wrote stories, interviewed people, and checked in with their employers from time to time. The problem was, it seemed that James was not currently employed.
He stared down at his list. Still, she might be working at some point. If so, there were a few possibilities.
The Washington Post was the city’s best-known newspaper. James had worked for them years ago and had since done freelance jobs for them, though not for several years. Its offices were on Fifteenth Street northwest. Kuchin had a man posted there with a picture of James. Another man was watching the bureau offices of the New York Tribune, which was two blocks over from the Post. James had won two Pulitzers while at the Trib, but Kuchin had learned that the reporter and the paper had had a falling-out. Still, it was a base he had to cover.
The New York Times had its bureau headquarters at First Street, also in the northwest quadrant. CNN, while not a print publication, was also located on First Street, but in the northeast. Both the Times and CNN were in sight of the Capitol. According to her file, James had also worked for the Times and had done both on- and off-camera reporting for CNN during the first years of the Afghan war. There were many other news organizations in the city, but these, at least in Kuchin’s mind, were the most likely to attract the attention of a journalist with the hefty reputation of Katie James.
Kuchin paced his hotel room. He would give this strategy a few days to see if anything came of it. He would also hope that Katie James used a credit or ATM card, or perhaps enabled her GPS chip in her phone. If she did Kuchin was confident his “friend” would alert him. He also had another list from this same source. It contained four names, all friends of James, who were also in the news business and lived in the D.C. area. Two, Roberta McCormick and Erin Rhodes, were stateside and thus it was doubtful that James would be encamping in their homes. The other two were out of the country. Thus Kuchin had sent his remaining men to those locations.
He thought things over. His chess pieces were in place as best he could employ them. It was a waiting game now, and despite his combat experience, Kuchin had never been comfortable waiting. He took a walk. He passed the White House, stopped and stared through the wrought iron fence. Thirty years ago Kuchin and his fellow Soviets had done everything in their power to bring down the person occupying this house. Capitalism was evil, personal liberties were even more counterproductive. Marx had it right; Lenin had it even more right; and Stalin and his progeny had perfected the system. Yet they all had been wrong, of course. The wall of communism had toppled, Kuchin had fled, and now he lived like a king in the land of his former nemesis employing the same free-market tools he had long fought against. Well, one adapted or one died, he reasoned.
He eyed a uniformed Secret Service agent who seemed to be taking an unhealthy interest in him. He backed away from the fence and walked toward Fifteenth Street, drawing in the fresh, hot air and showing a middling interest in the gaggles of tourists and their stupid cameras.
His phone buzzed.
“Yes?”
“She just used her ATM card,” said his friend. “Corner of M and Thirty-first in Georgetown. I’m awaiting photo confirmation from the ATM camera.”
Kuchin immediately phoned his man closest to this location and then jogged back to the hotel. In five minutes he was in a rental SUV driving himself west to Georgetown. The traffic was bad, the intersections snarled. Kuchin anxiously tapped his fingers against the glass. His phone rang again. He was still at least ten minutes away.
“Yes?”
“No sign of her, sir,” said Manuel.
“Call in the rest of the teams. Set a ten-block perimeter outward from the ATM. Four men walk every square inch of it starting at that point. Two men in cars ride a circuit on the outside of the perimeter, one clockwise and the other in the opposite direction. I’ll be there as soon as I can. She just got cash so it’s a reasonable bet she’s going to spend it on something, so check any shops or restaurants you think appropriate.”
He slipped the phone back in his jacket. He had been convinced they would not find her on this go-round. That would be too easy, too lucky. Those things happened in movies, not in real life. But now they had a perimeter. And Kuchin knew how to work a perimeter like few people in the world.
81
TELL ME about Kuchin’s friend,” said Shaw.
“Which friend?” asked Reggie.
“The skinny one with white hair who shot Dominic in the arm.”
It was late at night and they were sitting in a small room on the second floor at Harrowsfield that Reggie shared with Whit as an office of sorts. It was cramped and cluttered. Reggie sat on the only chair and Shaw was perched uncomfortably on a small cardboard box. Outside a light rain fell.
“Alan Rice. He’s a business associate of Kuchin.”
“What else?”
“I only spoke with him a few times. Although there was one odd thing.”
Shaw sat up straighter. “Word for word.”
“Well, I can’t remember it word for word, but he was warning me. About Kuchin. Well, of course he used the name Evan Waller.”
“Warning you how?”
“He said that his boss could get a bit weird around women. That he’d done so in the past. Become obsessed. He was basically telling me to shove off for my own good.”
“So he was concerned for your safety?”
“Apparently so, yes, although he said he was doing it to protect his boss.”
“That’s interesting.”
“Why is it interesting?”
“Because I think Rice tried to kill his boss in the catacombs back in Gordes.”
Reggie looked over at him in shock. “What? Why do you think that?”
“In a crisis you fire your weapon at primary threats, Reggie, not at secondary targets.”
“I’m not following.”
“Rice had his gun pointed at Whit, who was not near Kuchin. On the other hand, Dominic was maybe a foot to the right of Kuchin. When I hit the first guy, Rice wheeled around and saw me. A second later I hit the second guy, the smaller one. Rice could have taken me out then. He was only five feet away with a clear line of fire. Instead he turned and fired at his boss.”
“But he hit Dominic.”
“He hit Dominic probably because he was a bad shot. It’s a lot harder to nail someone from even ten feet away than it looks. But that round did come within a hair of impacting Kuchin’s brain. So he doesn’t take me out when he could but instead tries to kill his boss.”
“But that makes no sense. Why try to kill Kuchin? He was there to rescue him.”
“Or make it look that way.”
“What would it matter how it looked if Kuchin ended up dead?”
“Think it through. Kuchin’s guys would still be alive. They might not take too kindly to the second banana blatantly offing the boss in front of them. It has to look like an accident. And on the other hand, what if Kuchin survived the shooting?”