There is slack in every rope. Houdini had said that, Hallie had once read it, and while they were talking in the dark, she had been twisting and pulling against the towels as much as she could without making noise. Now she redoubled her efforts, listening to him opening drawers, shuffling contents. She heard him say, “Just the thing.”
He came back downstairs holding an ice pick.
22
President Laning reached for the handsome man’s hand to shake it, but it disappeared for an instant and reappeared holding something. The sun was behind him, it was hard to see clearly, but there was a flash in that bright painful light and she thought, A gun, and wanted to dive away, but it was all happening faster than she could move, faster than thought, and then something touched her hand, not a bullet but a white thing, and the man disappeared beneath a wave of Secret Service agents and another wave was washing her back to the Beast.
23
“Hanging ruptures the eardrums,” Ely said. “So we’ll have a little fun in there first. Nobody will know.” He gazed down at her. “Which ear? I guess it doesn’t matter.” He put his left hand on her head and leaned in, raising the ice pick.
With a last screaming jerk, she yanked her right arm free, grabbed a handful of his hood, and slammed his forehead with all her strength against the end of the wooden chair arm. She thought she heard something crack, his skull or the wood, maybe both. He grunted and collapsed facedown on the cement floor.
Her left arm first. Then, with both hands free, she loosened the rope and pulled it over her head. She started unwrapping her legs. Ely had been thorough — they looked like the puttees of old uniforms. She freed her right leg, started on her left. Ely groaned and moved his head. She picked it up, slammed his forehead down onto the concrete floor, and he lay still.
Freeing her left leg took longer, but finally she was loose. She stood up and fell to her hands and knees. Her legs had fallen completely asleep. She staggered up, stamped her feet, felt agonizing pins and needles, stumbled toward the bottom of the stairs.
A hand grabbed her left ankle, yanked back, and she fell forward. Ely had come around. He grabbed her other ankle. The man was stronger than she’d realized. He hauled her toward him and drove the ice pick into the back of her thigh.
24
Strong arms stuffed Laning, Paul, and the girls into the Beast, and Agent Delaney was about to order its driver to lock and go. Laning said, “Stop,” in that brain-snapping voice.
Addressing Delaney directly, she said, “Robert, we came here to worship, and we shall. Do what you need to, and quickly. I want to be out of this vehicle and moving toward the cathedral in three.”
The agent shook his head, stone-faced. “Madame President, my responsibility is to—”
“Make it happen, Agent Delaney.”
And they did. When the massed people saw her get out of the Beast, there was an astonished silence. Then they screamed and cheered and kept cheering long after she and her family disappeared through the massive cathedral doors.
A thousand heads swiveled to see the president and her family. Somebody clapped, and then everybody was clapping and cheering, and it lasted as they strode up the nave aisle four abreast, preceded and followed by twice the usual number of sweating agents.
Bishop Newberry, aloft in the magisterial Canterbury Pulpit, marveled at the appearance of the most powerful woman on earth in her church. The grand organ boomed, and the choir filled the cathedral with heavenly harmonies.
25
Hallie screamed and kicked Ely in the face with her other foot. Kicked again, dragged herself away, pulled the ice pick out.
They scrambled up at the same time. He crabbed sideways, putting himself between her and the stairs, and picked up a hammer from the workbench. An ice pick was a poor match for a hammer. She grabbed the only thing in reach: a broom.
He came at her, swinging the hammer. The safety glasses were gone — that cracking she’d heard — and she jabbed the broom’s stiff bristles at his eyes. He snatched at the broom, and she stabbed his hand with the ice pick. He screamed, let go, kept coming. He was stronger, but she was quicker, and they danced around in a flurry of hammer swings and ice-pick stabs and broom thrusts. She threw a box of nails, then flung a screwdriver at his face. The exertion was getting to him — betrayed by ravaged lungs, he was gasping for breath.
But also enraged. He threw the hammer at her head. She dodged, but it hit her left shoulder, and that whole side went numb. The broom fell out of her hand. She dropped the ice pick, grabbed a can of WD-40, and sprayed a burst through the long red straw into his face. That backed him off, so she kept spraying until the can was empty. She threw it, hit his head, but did no real damage.
Blinded briefly, Ely still managed to stay between her and the stairs. She picked up a long plumber’s snake and whipped its barbed end at his face, making him dance away. She knew that there was one chance for her, and to seize it she had to keep him moving.
Sooner than she’d foreseen, Ely bent over, hands on knees, gasping like an asthmatic. His diseased lungs could not deliver enough oxygen. Hallie picked up the hammer, fully intending to smash his skull. But the human brain is hardwired against killing its own kind. Despite herself, she hesitated, betrayed by evolution.
It was enough. Ely lunged, tackling her around the waist. She landed on her back, and her head smacked down hard on the concrete floor. The hammer went flying. She was too stunned to fight as he straddled her and put both hands around her neck.
“Not what I planned, but dead is dead,” he gasped.
He squeezed harder, and pain faded as her mind darkened. She had been clawing at his face. Her hands fell away and lay on the floor, fingers twitching with the last impulses of life.
26
The front pew on the left side of the nave was reserved for the president and her family. Amica and Leanna slipped in first, then the First Husband. President Laning took her place of honor at the end of the pew, on the aisle. She had noticed a petite, very pretty, and very pregnant woman in the pew behind. The expectant mother had on a pale blue maternity suit and wore her blond hair in a prim bun. Laning turned and asked softly, “When are you due?”
The young woman blushed bright red. Then, recovering her composure and smiling shyly, she said, “Next week, Mrs. President. Ma’am.”
“Good for you. Best thing I ever did.” Laning started to turn back, then said, surprising even herself, “All this”—she touched her chest with one hand—“will end. Family never does.”
Newberry stood in the pulpit, smiling, and hyperalert Secret Service agents spoke into their lapels, heads swiveling, and a thousand chests breathed out at once. Newberry looked toward a door in the gray stone wall opposite the far end of the presidential pew. It was time for a verger to enter with the commemorative Bible. The door in the wall swung outward, and Henry Backer stood in its frame.
He knew that every eye in the cathedral was focused on him. For the briefest moment he closed his eyes and felt light filling his chest, coursing out through his veins to the farthest reaches of his body. The glory of God, he thought. Hallowed be thy name, my heavenly Father.
27
Hypoxia takes sight first, then hearing, motor control last. Hallie’s left fingers touched something small and hard. She recognized the familiar feel of a gun in her palm. Just a cheap little pocket gun that Ely must have been carrying and that had fallen from a pocket. But a gun nevertheless. She tried to cock the hammer, but her left thumb didn’t work. Ely, crushing her neck, watching the life fade from her eyes, took no notice.