She heard that deep voice: Die before you quit.
Drew the hammer back, pressed the barrel against Ely’s side, and pulled the trigger, expecting the sound of a gunshot. Instead there was a whoosh! as Ely’s WD-40–coated suit exploded in flames. He screamed, threw himself onto the concrete floor, and started rolling.
Staggering up and away, Hallie had enough mind left for two thoughts. She could let Ely burn. Probably no one would fault her. But he might well take her house with him. Not a good trade. She picked up her box of climber’s chalk and poured its contents over him, smothering the fire. Ely lay there moaning and gasping, face blistered, melted Tyvek oozing over his body.
Adrenaline took her that far, but the choking had done something. A high, shrill note sang in her ears, and her heart felt flighty and fragile. Her neck, where Ely had tried to crush it, would not turn her head. Thoughts tangled and died. She needed to do something, but remembering was like grabbing smoke.
Finally: Call police.
She staggered up the stairs, almost fell near the top, struggled on, and grabbed the telephone receiver, heavy as a yellow brick. She had to squint to see white numbers on gray buttons.
She pushed 9.
Aimed her forefinger at the 1, missed, tried again, got it.
Her vision blurred, clarified. She poked toward the 1 again but lost her balance and staggered to one side. It saved her life. Ely, staggering himself, only grazed her head with the hammer. He shoved her down onto her back and straddled her. She saw him raising the hammer with both hands, and she raised her own in flimsy defense. She had one last thought:
I am going to die. But I didn’t quit.
It came like an explosion, and then there was nothing at all.
28
The verger’s antechamber was dark. Henry Backer, in a black cassock and framed by the lightless doorway, stood invisible to Newberry and the congregation except for his gloves. Then he stepped into the light, carrying the shining new Bible in his white hands.
He walked toward the end of the presidential pew. When he was ten steps away, he made eye contact with President Laning. She smiled, and he smiled back. Newberry, seeing this, was delighted. It was the first time she had ever seen Henry Backer smile.
In fact, he was very afraid, but he armored himself with prayer: I bring forth a fire from the midst of thee and it shall devour thee.
At the end of the pew, Backer turned left and approached the high altar, where Bishop Newberry stood, having descended from the pulpit. He placed the Bible on the Holy Eucharist table before her. Newberry said the prayer of blessing, made the sign of the cross over the Bible, and nodded at Backer.
When he retrieved the Bible, Backer was still smiling. Newberry noted an odd radiance in his eyes, which seemed to be looking not at her but at some bright vision only he could see. He lifted the Bible and turned toward the president.
29
Hallie was dreaming that Stephen Redhorse was kissing her. His scent was sharp and sweet, like cinnamon, and rich with something close to wood smoke. She came awake and realized that it was not a dream. Someone was kissing her. And it wasn’t Stephen Redhorse. She pushed the man away. It took a second for her blurred vision to clear.
“Agent Luciano?”
He was beet red, either from embarrassment or the effort of CPR. “You had stopped breathing,” he panted, rocking back on his haunches. Another agent, the man she had seen in the Buick, was on her other side. “Agent Scott was doing compressions,” Luciano said. She saw that Scott, too, was blushing. She tried to sit up, and Luciano eased her back down. “Stay there for a while,” he gasped. “We’ve called the paramedics.” He looked around. “What the hell happened here?”
She looked left and saw Ely lying on the kitchen floor, his head in a dark red pool. “He dead?” she croaked.
“Yes.”
“How?”
“I shot him,” Luciano said, going from red to white.
“It was a right shooting,” Scott said. “That hammer was on its way down. Another half second and …”
“Why … why are you here?” Hallie’s throat felt like she had a bad case of strep.
“We have a warrant for your arrest.”
“On Sunday morning?”
“The law never sleeps, Dr. Leland. And judges move at their own chosen speed. When one signs, we go.”
“That man tried to kill me.” She pointed at Ely.
“Yeah, we saw. Why?”
She started to explain, but then remembered. She sat up straight. “Can you communicate with the Secret Service?”
“Of course. Why?”
“You need to call them. Now!”
Luciano helped her stand. He patted her shoulder. “You need to take it easy, Dr. Leland. It’s obvious that—”
Something in Hallie snapped. She shoved his hands away. “Listen to me! The president may die unless we alert the Secret Service. NOW, goddamnit!”
His eyes went vague and she knew he was looking down the long road of his career, maybe ten years done, ten to go. It could be an easy cruise to a sweet pension and a West Palm condo. Or he could embarrass the Bureau and end up chasing Eskimos in Juneau.
He looked at Agent Scott, and she could almost feel the gears clicking in their heads. Luciano’s eyes went blank. A siren, approaching. “I think the medics are here,” he said, and started to turn away.
She had one last shot. “What if President Laning dies? Can you live with that, Agent Luciano?”
30
The petite pregnant woman put a hand to her ear and went wide-eyed. She vaulted over the back of Laning’s pew, knocking the president aside, and tackled Henry Backer, pinning his arms. The Bible fell from his hand.
“Do not touch the book!” the clandestine agent screamed. She hooked her heel behind Backer’s leg and dropped him, smacking his head on the marble floor. He was unconscious even before other agents swarmed over him. The female agent’s bun was in disarray, but otherwise she was fine. She stood up, shed the prosthetic belly, and turned to apologize for hitting the president on her way over the pew.
Too late. A wall of bodies already surrounded Laning and her family. An agent shouted, “Go!” and the whole mass moved like a great centipede, not to the distant main entrance but to a designated door behind the choir gallery. In practice drills, the fastest they had managed this emergency extraction with a presidential stand-in was nine seconds. This time, the last agent cleared the door in seven point four.
Aftermath
“So the Pakistanis wanted revenge for the death of al-Harani. Eye for an eye,” Hallie said as Agent Luciano poured them both fresh cups of coffee. It was Thursday of the week after Easter and she was in his office at FBI headquarters. She still had a painful egg on the side of her head and blue-and-purple bruises striping her neck. An ER doctor had irrigated the ice-pick wound, given her a tetanus booster, and told her not to run for two weeks. She thought one would do it.
“Yes.”
“And we know what Ely told me. What about Backer?”
“He’s a New Patriot. So was Ely. They call themselves libertarians, but the truth is, they’re anarchists. They want to destabilize the government any way they can. Ely used Backer to get close to the president.”