“No. What happened?”
“According to the authorities, I blew it up.”
“Why would you do that?” Hoagland asked.
An odd question if he had any inkling of the truth, thought Thornton. “I didn’t,” he said. “Actually, the last thing I would have wanted was to destroy the evidence. Whoever you’re covering for was responsible, and took out a security guard and a local cop in the process. If you give me names, maybe we can get you enough brownie points to avoid doing time.”
Hoagland paused, as though reflecting. “I can’t help you,” he said finally.
“Think of it as helping Emily and Sabrina.”
“That’s exactly what I’m doing. Catherine was told what would happen if she talked, and obviously it wasn’t an idle threat. Afterward, it was made very clear to me that if I said anything, the next funeral wouldn’t be mine; it would be one of the girls’. Not both. Just one.”
“Incremental incentive?”
Hoagland exhaled. “Now you have some idea of what I’m up against.”
“I’m glad to know you’re not responsible for Catherine’s death. But what happens when whoever they are decide they’ll sleep better if you’re no longer around? Tell me the real story; I’ll post the details to my site. I won’t mention your name, but you’ll no longer be a liability for the bad guys because a quarter of a million readers will know the truth. Also the bad guys will have their hands full with law enforcement agencies.”
Hoagland hesitated and then said, “Catherine promised me she wasn’t going to tell anyone, so I don’t know this for sure, but I believe that in going to see you, she was planning to expose the ‘bad guys.’ And how did that work out?”
“Unfortunately, they were already onto her. But they’re not onto you — for now. The thing is, that window won’t be open long. Whoever they are, they won’t worry about murders. They’ve actually pinned a couple on me. In fact, the police are looking for me.”
Four of the seniors from the tour bus joined the young couple already admiring the sculpture.
Hoagland stepped closer to Thornton, opened his mouth as though about to speak, then, apparently thinking better of it, sighed.
Hearing police chatter reverberate from a radio around the corner, Thornton’s stomach tightened. “Look, I know it’s a DOC operation,” he said — a guess, but not entirely a blind one.
Hoagland looked on in bewilderment. “How did you find out?”
“Process of elimination, plus something somebody said.” Thornton wondered why he hadn’t figured it out sooner. The Bureau of Industry and Security, the Department of Commerce’s clandestine operations division, was one of just a handful of services with the budget to stage a show on the scale of Littlebird, and that sort of intel was their bailiwick.
He heard, or imagined, the voice of Musseridge over the radio. “In a fucking cowboy hat.”
“Listen, I may have to split any second,” he told Hoagland.
Hoagland moved behind the Big Man, acting more interested in the sculpture than in Thornton. Thornton followed, bringing them out of earshot of the other patrons.
Hoagland said, “Even though I knew they could have been eavesdropping when you and I spoke in Potomac, I hoped that you could help. The fact is, my firm is a DOC off-the-books operation. I signed on because I wanted to be of service to my country. And, bluntly, it helped that I stood to make twice what I was earning at Goldman. As the company grew, management brought in more analysts and traders, all legit. Most of them don’t know about the DOC — they’re what we call ‘cutouts.’ All are compensated well enough not to ask too many questions. Those of us who do know wonder whether we made a Faustian bargain. This morning, for instance, I had to go ‘service a dead drop’—is that the right phrase for hiding something in plain sight?”
“It depends,” Thornton said. Dead drops once were a staple of clandestine exchanges, but in modern times were a rarity due to the ease of covertly sharing information online. “What did you do?”
“I went to the Willard Hotel and stuck an envelope to the back of a radiator in a corner of the lobby. That’s when I got the text I thought was from Langlind. I figured his wanting to meet me was related to the envelope.”
Thornton thought better of explaining how he came to text Hoagland. “What was in the envelope?”
“I didn’t open it — I’ve learned it’s better not to know.”
“What was it that Catherine found out?”
“She happened to see satellite imagery of one of our Commerce Department liaisons taken the night Leonid Sokolov was killed — the exact same imagery the FBI used two months earlier when looking for their ‘Russian.’ They either didn’t notice or didn’t think twice about a Commerce official in a yacht on Lake Michigan five miles away from the crime scene. But Catherine noticed. She also knew that the guy was a spook. And, most importantly, she hadn’t forgotten your theory that Sokolov’s killer had operated in Russia. She did some digging and found out that the guy had served in Moscow for a couple years. From there it was connect-the-dots.”
Patrons came and went, but no law enforcement.
“So who’s the guy?” Thornton asked casually.
“Peter Canning.”
No bells. “Is he the one who sent you to the Willard Hotel?”
“Yes. Why?”
An unnaturally quick motion registered in Thornton’s peripheral vision. He peered over his shoulder in time to see a uniformed man dart across the opening of the corridor. The uniform was similar to the security guards’, but a darker blue. And Thornton heard the jangle of cuffs.
“I think I can help after all,” he said.
52
THE CAPITOL POLICE SECURITY CAM FACIAL RECOGNITION SOFTWARE REGISTERED A COLD HIT AT THE HIRSHHORN ART MUSEUM… While leading two D.C. plainclothes FBI agents and fourteen uniformed policemen and women to the Mueck corridor, Musseridge mentally composed the FD-302 he would type up later. IN THE COURSE OF APPREHENDING THE SUSPECT, THE WRITER HAD NO ALTERNATIVE BUT TO DISCHARGE HIS WEAPON.
And there he was, in the cowboy hat, one of six patrons checking out a sculpture of a huge naked guy. Ideally, in this situation, Musseridge got as close as possible to a suspect without his knowing. But the long corridor here precluded sneaking up. He signaled for the D.C. Metro cops to handle the crowd. Then he gestured for a Capitol cop to hand over his megaphone.
Flicking it on, Musseridge said into it, “Mr. Thornton, this is the FBI. Please put your hands in the air and turn around nice and slow.” The order resounded against the bare walls.
The guy who turned around looked a little like Thornton, but he was leaner, with sharper features and more polish. He resembled Peretti’s husband, the hedge fund guy, Musseridge thought. Of course that guy didn’t wear a cowboy hat or have a fucking mullet.
Turning to the Capitol cop, Musseridge said, “That facial recognition software of yours needs to be shit-canned.”
Thornton climbed from the top of the radiator in the empty men’s room, hoisting himself through the window. When the tour group in the courtyard sculpture garden shifted its attention to a Calder, he gathered up the tails of Hoagland’s trench coat and let go, a ten-foot drop. He landed on mercifully soft grass.
Fighting the urge to sprint, he ambled out of the courtyard and back into the building, in time to see the phalanx of law enforcement officers streaming down the Mueck corridor.
He passed through the main exit, turning onto Independence. The Willard Hotel was a little more than a mile away, and it seemed likely to him that the package in the lobby there had something to do with Sokolov’s E-bomb. It would be odd if it didn’t. A connection to one Sokolov or the other had cropped up at every stage of what had amounted to his investigation. Beating the intended recipient to the envelope offered a singular chance not only to obtain tangible evidence, but also to prevent thousands — maybe hundreds of thousands — of additional deaths.