Johnstone drove while Lanny rode shotgun, turned partially in his seat to keep an eye on Kreiss. It was Johnstone who kept peppering Kreiss with mildly insulting questions about why he was in town, what he had done that made the Agency people so anxious to see him, and what his part in the Blacksburg homicide had been. Lanny seemed to enjoy it all, but he didn’t say anything. Kreiss remained silent, his eyes closed, as if he were trying to sleep. Johnstone gave up after a while and concentrated on his driving. He took Constitution Avenue down to Twenty-third Street, drove past the Lincoln Memorial, and then went over the Memorial Bridge into Arlington. Kreiss kept track of where they were while he made his mental preparations.
When Johnstone turned down the ramp that led to the northbound George Washington Parkway, Kreiss began to reposition himself, adjusting his body in tiny increments. By now, Lanny had turned back around and was bitching to Johnstone about duty schedules back at FBI headquarters.
Kreiss, who had driven the G.W. Parkway a few thousand times during his career, needed only an occasional glance out of slitted eyes to know
precisely where they were. The G.W. was a four-lane divided parkway, climbing up through the Potomac palisades toward McLean and Langley in northern Virginia. Because they were going northwest up the Potomac River, they were on the river side of the parkway. To the left was the low, stonewalled median and the eastbound roadway, bordered by a band of large trees. To his right were more trees, through which the Potomac was clearly visible, initially right alongside, and then increasingly below them as the parkway climbed some two hundred feet above the river’s rocky gorge.
Kreiss was not going to allow himself to be taken into the Agency headquarters. He knew what could happen there, and where he might be taken from there. Someone pretty senior in the Bureau must have reached an understanding with the Agency hierarchy. Or perhaps higher, he thought, like maybe someone at Justice. This little trip to Langley wasn’t about any bomb plot. This was about payback for Ephraim Glower. It took real juice to launch Misty, so until he knew that Lynn was truly safe, he was going to do whatever it took to remain free and operational. If he could prevent whatever Browne McGarand was planning in the District, fine, although he hadn’t actually promised Carter anything. But she promised you something pretty important, he reminded himself. Either way, he would not allow these bozos just to hand him over like a lamb to the slaughter to a government agency that had every motive to make him disappear. He had personally delivered one individual to the federal maximum-security prison in Lewisburg, someone he knew for a fact had never seen the inside of any courtroom, or the outside world, ever again.
When they passed the first scenic overlook turnout, he got ready.
There was another overlook in exactly one mile, right below the Civil War park where the president’s lawyer had been found shot to death in a supposed suicide. Lanny was complaining about getting stuck on midnight-to-eight shifts twice a month when other, more junior agents were getting tagged only once a month, especially if they were female. Johnstone appeared to be tuning out Lanny’s monologue, but he kept up a steady stream of uh-huhs while he drove and sipped his coffee. Kreiss could see that he was doing an even sixty-five, ten miles over the posted speed limit, but entirely normal for the parkway, especially at 2:30 a.m.
Any Park Police cruiser sitting out there would recognize the sedan as a government car. Johnstone had his left hand on the wheel and his right hand down in his lap, holding the paper coffee cup.
Kreiss began surreptitiously tugging on the seat belts, taking out all the slack until they were almost painfully tight around him, the two
shoulder straps cutting into his chest in an X configuration. When he saw the sign for the next scenic overlook, he sat way back in the seat and tensed his legs. When he saw the actual turnout coming up on the right, he raised his right leg and, pivoting on his left buttock, leaned left and kicked up to strike Johnstone under his right ear as hard as he could. Johnstone gave a grunt and pitched to the left, against the door, which had the effect of turning the car to the left, directly toward the stone wall in the median.
Lanny dropped his coffee, raised both hands, and yelled, “Look out!” to the stunned Johnstone, and then grabbed the wheel, yanking it hard right.
The car swerved back across the two lanes, tires screeching, until the left front tire failed and the car whip-rolled three times down the outer northbound lane in a hail of glass and road dust. Then it hit a small tree, spun around the tree on its side, and slid down the embankment and into the scenic-overlook parking lot fifty feet below the level of the roadway. It righted itself as it slalomed into the parking lot and then crunched partially through the low stone wall overlooking a sheer cliff that fell all the way to the Potomac.
Kreiss, who had been prepared for the crash and was double-belted, was unhurt. He popped the latches on the seat belts and lunged forward to grab Lanny around the throat with his cuff chain. Lanny, stunned by the violence of the crash and entangled in his deflated air bag, did not resist as Kreiss hauled him back over the seat and stuffed him down into the space between the backseat and the floor. He checked on Johnstone, who appeared to be unconscious and pinned beneath the headliner of the car, which had been smashed down on him in the crash. His face was obscured by his deflated air bag. The front windshield was gone, as were all the windows, and there was a strong smell of gasoline in the car.
Kreiss fished in Lanny’s suit pockets for the cuff key. When the agent stirred, Kreiss hit him once in the temple with a raised-knuckle fist, and the man sagged. Kreiss got the key, unlocked the cuffs, threw them out the window, and climbed over the front seat to retrieve the envelope with his own wallet and keys from the floor. He reached into Johnstone’s suit jacket pocket and took his credentials. He left their guns alone. He turned off the ignition and threw the car’s keys over the wall. He tried the right rear door, but it was jammed. He climbed out the right-front window and dropped to the pavement, shaking off bits of glass from his clothes. He found himself standing in a spreading stain of gasoline. He swore and then spent the next five minutes dragging the two unconscious agents out of the car and fifty
feet back away from the wreck. Both had been wearing seat belts and neither one appeared to be bleeding or otherwise seriously injured. They are assholes, he told himself, but they are essentially just working stiffs doing their jobs. There is no reason for them to die for their incompetence. He retrieved the handcuffs from the ground and cuffed their wrists together through the iron rail of a park bench that was cemented to the ground. He took their guns and threw them onto the floor of the car’s backseat.
He went back into the car one more time and ripped out the radio handset, throwing it over the cliff. He saw their car phone dangling by its floor-mount wire. The light was still on in the dial. He hesitated and then punched in Janet Carter’s number in Blacksburg. The phone rang several times but then hit voice mail. He hung up, ripped out the handset, and threw it over the cliff. Then he brushed himself off again, suddenly aware that there really was a hell of a lot of gasoline on the ground. He started up the overlook exit ramp. He hoped the car would not burn, because that would attract immediate attention, and he needed some time to get back down to the vicinity of Key Bridge. There was a hotel right near the parkway ramps at the bridge, and hopefully he could get a cab back into the District. The good news was that it was all downhill.