“Can I help you?” asked a saleswoman.
Over her shoulder, Thornton took in a row of ergonomic desk chairs lining the back wall. He asked, “Do you have the kind of desk chair that’s good for your back?”
She smiled. “Right this way.” She turned toward the back of the store.
He went the opposite way, exiting onto F Street as the doorman and cops turned into the parking garage. He ran to the corner and peered around, spotting a smattering of cars and pedestrians on 14th Street, but no cops. He joined the pedestrian traffic to Pennsylvania Avenue. When no one tried to stop him there, he stepped onto the crosswalk and, within seconds, was in Hoagland’s station wagon, sliding forward in the driver’s seat so that his head was below the window. He tore open the manila envelope to study the cell phone.
It was a high-end disposable, the sort he sometimes picked up for use with dicey sources. Its call log showed four calls placed to the lone contact listed, Bob, number 5 on the speed dial. Possibly a phone dedicated to the bomb, the calls having been made to test the connection. This information ought to be enough for the FBI to locate the weapon.
Finally, it was time to call the authorities for help. Thornton weighed the pros and cons of dialing Musseridge — the devil he knew — when the phone rang. Best not to answer it, he thought, until the caller ID appeared: MALLERY, BERYL.
He punched ANSWER. “Hello?”
“Hey, Russ,” she said.
“Where are you?”
“Listen, I finally found the guy I’ve been looking for, and I want you to leave the two of us alone here—”
What sounded like a robust slap was followed by the upending of furniture. Thornton’s blood froze.
A man’s voice came on the line. “Ask her a proof-of-life question.” Soft and gentle, not the rasp Thornton had imagined for Canning. But this was Canning. Mallery had said as much.
Thornton scrambled to think of a question only she could answer. He came up with What was your first home? The answer, a Volkswagen Kombi. But he recalled that that conversation had been recorded by Littlebird. Canning might well have techs at the ready with a searchable Littlebird database. Thornton needed something he’d learned after the devices had been removed. One came to mind, not his favorite, but it would do. “According to your site’s metrics, how do we score as a couple?” he asked.
“Initially, in Nantucket, I calculated fifty,” she said. “Now, one hundred and ten.”
Although at this juncture Thornton had no business deriving satisfaction from her answer, he did.
Canning returned to the line. “Acceptable?”
“Couldn’t have been better,” Thornton said.
“Then I want the phone you’re now speaking on. In exchange you get her, alive.”
“Good,” Thornton said. Understatement. “Meet someplace public?”
Canning scoffed. “Like the Hirshhorn Museum?”
It was what Thornton had been thinking. He took it as a mandate to think faster. “What do you have in mind?”
“Unfortunately, since Hoagland is busy stonewalling the police, he won’t be able to die in a traffic accident. The flip side is you have his car, so you can come to us. I’ll text you directions. As you’ve surmised, I’ll know where you are at all times because I’m tracking the phone, which is also hot-miked.” Thornton understood this to mean that the mic within the cell phone’s mouthpiece transmitted constantly, whether or not a call was in process. It was a means of electronic eavesdropping almost as old as telephones.
“That’s how — one way how — I will know if you apprise anyone of what we’ve discussed,” Canning added. “In fact, if I even suspect anything …”
Thornton heard more rustling followed by Mallery’s piercing scream, nearly costing him his grip on the phone. The blare of a car horn brought him to his senses. He returned the receiver to his ear to catch Canning saying, “Any hijinks, she gets two and a half grams of lead in her lovely head. Now, get moving, beginning with a right onto Independence.”
As Thornton cranked the Volvo, he noticed a police car pulling up at the Willard’s main entrance. He considered transmitting some kind of SOS to the policemen but decided he didn’t dare. Probably they were looking to arrest him.
Unfortunately, he thought, the disposable cell phone constituted his only means of stopping Canning. Assuming Canning killed him. And Canning would try — that was a given. He almost certainly planned to kill Mallery too, as well as E-bombing thousands of others.
54
On a phone call designed to appear as if it originated at a sporting goods store in Kansas City, a man whose voice sounded very different from Canning’s conversed with a middle-aged woman at a customer support call center in Mumbai. In fact, while pacing the backyard of the safe house overlooking Chesapeake Bay, Canning spoke on a satphone, attempting to convince Izzat Ibrahim al-Hawrani to continue with the E-bomb operation. Although both of the Iraqi’s operatives in Washington had gone down, Canning maintained, success was imminent.
The problem, Canning knew, was that he himself had made several critical mistakes. In his rush this morning to traffic the remote detonator and capture Mallery, he’d left Mickey Rapada’s body in the South Atlantic Resources office. The corpse could be erased once the E-bomb detonated, but without Rapada to service the dead drop, Canning had leaned on Hoagland — who was a cutout in the E-bomb op. Was, until Thornton filled him in. The banker wouldn’t dare talk to the FBI, but the Bureau might elicit actionable intel without his realizing it. Or one of his colleagues would say too much. And God only knew what Langlind had blabbed after Bridgetown went down. Meanwhile the mess in the Caribbean would bring in DOC Internal Affairs officers, with CIA and ODNI breathing down their necks. All the loose ends added up to a net about to ensnare him, Canning thought.
He glanced at the tall mast bobbing in and out of sight. He’d acquired the sailboat — rather than a motor-powered yacht that the E-bomb pulse would cripple — as part of his escape plan. He could still sail away now, but as a defeated and penniless fugitive. The most grievous error, he reflected, had been his failure to anticipate the need for a backup remote detonator, a simple matter of adding another ten-buck cell phone to the Centrex loop.
He admitted none of his mistakes to al-Hawrani. After all, things going wrong was to be expected, and Canning had planned accordingly. In a matter of minutes, his biggest loose end was about to hand deliver the remote detonator. The blogger was about to become a Ba’athist martyr.
55
There was little late-afternoon traffic, a rarity in D.C. Thornton wondered if Canning was monitoring the grid and guiding the Volvo clear of congestion. Canning’s texts directed him onto Capitol Street, past the Nationals’ stadium, and across the Frederick Douglass Bridge. As an increasingly suburban Maryland flashed past, Thornton thought it curious that Canning hadn’t simply pulled a van into a parking space on 9th Street to make the “swap.” Possibly he preferred to meet at a location where he would be in complete control or, at least, minimize his chances of exposure. Or maybe this was just more misdirection. Maybe the text messages would loop Thornton back to 9th Street. Canning seemed to like deception. To a fault, Thornton reflected. If Canning had shot Sokolov with an ordinary nine-millimeter round, as opposed to one cast from seven grams of lead on the nose, Thornton would have had no insight whatsoever into the incident. Peretti, in turn, wouldn’t have thought twice about the satellite image of Canning on a yacht. And Thornton would be spending this evening Web crawling in his apartment.