Eight seconds later, the panel van eased past him, having just made the turn itself. Another car, a red Honda, followed it ten seconds later. Up ahead, Storm heard the scraping of metal as the Maserati careened along some parked cars. So much for straight. Storm peeked out in time to see the Maserati plow into a yellow cab waiting at the light on Nassau Street. The panel van slowed to a halt behind it. The Honda stopped behind the panel van.
The cabbie had sprung out of his car and was waving his arms in the air, shouting in some language that even Storm didn’t understand. The driver of the red Honda — who couldn’t see past the panel van to know what had happened, but could make out that the light was green — honked his horn impatiently.
It was a perfect cover. Storm raced alongside the passenger side of the panel van. He was assuming there were two people in the van, one driving, the other in back with the equipment. His plan was age-old and simple: shoot the driver, make the guy in back take the wheel, and go someplace a little more private, then have a conversation with him.
Storm yanked the passenger door open and had the trigger halfway depressed when he realized the barrel of his gun was pointed at Clara Strike.
CHAPTER 22
WASHINGTON, D.C.
ing Xi Bang camped out near the Dirksen Senate Office Building, spending the final minutes before her appointment on a park bench, where she could monitor the comings and goings in Senator Donald Whitmer’s suite. Mostly, it was just goings. Around twenty minutes to eight, the last of his staffers went home, leaving the senator alone.
At 7:57, she watched Whitmer take a phone call that, she knew, would be coming from Fake Senator Feinstein’s office. That was Xi Bang’s — or, rather, Jenny Chang’s — cue to move in. She reached into her pouch and pulled out the pill she had been provided. It was a CIA standby: benzotripapine, which counteracted the intoxicating effects of alcohol. It was hell on the kidneys, she had been told, so it wasn’t wise to take it very often. But Storm said Senator Whitmer was a champion drinker, and she needed to be able to keep pace without getting impaired.
Thus prepared, Jenny Chang breezed by Security, into the building, up the elevator, through the front door of Senator Whitmer’s office, through the reception area, and to the outside of the inner sanctum without difficulty.
She tapped on the door.
“What is it?” Whitmer asked. He sounded annoyed. Just like a man who had been asked to stay late and then got stood up at the last minute.
Then schoolgirl Jenny Chang appeared in his doorway, clutching a file.
“Why, hello there, young lady,” he said, his voice warming up by about fifty degrees.
“Oh my God, I’m so sorry,” she gushed. “I thought this was Senator Sessions’s Office. I was just supposed to deliver this to him. Oh my God.”
Donny Whitmer laughed. “Darling, I’m afraid you’re a little lost. Senator Sessions is the junior senator from Alabama and he’s in the Russell Building. I’m Donald Whitmer, the senior senator from Alabama. Although I’ve been told I look five years younger than him.”
Donny ran his hand through his silver hair. There was nothing like a schoolgirl to bring out the schoolboy in any man, no matter what his age or station in life.
“I’m so, so sorry to bother you, Senator,” she stammered. “I’ll just…”
And then it happened. In all her fluster, Jenny Chang let the file she was holding flop open, dropping its contents on the floor. She immediately stooped down to pick it up, making sure to give Senator Whitmer a nice view.
“Oh my God, I’m such a klutz!” she moaned.
“Here, here, let me help you,” Senator Whitmer said, springing out of his chair with very non-septuagenarian agility, until he was kneeling on the floor next to her. Very, very next to her.
“I’ve got it. I’ve got it. Please, I don’t want to trouble you.”
“Now, now, it’s no trouble,” he said, warmly. “But now you’re going to have to tell me who you are. You can’t just walk into my office and throw things around unless I know your name.”
“I’m so, so, sorry,” she said, standing up and holding her arm out stiffly. “I’m Jenny Chang. I’m an intern for Senator Jordan Shaw of Connecticut. I’m sorry. I’m new.”
“I can see that,” Donny said, taking her right hand softly in his.
“I just love working for her, though. She’s just the best. Don’t you just love her?”
Senator Shaw was a Democrat, one of the smartest people in the Senate and yet, in Donny’s mind, a total bitch — one of those female Senators who most certainly didn’t play ball with the boys. He hated her.
“Who doesn’t love her?” he cooed. “She’s a great public servant. You’ll learn a lot from her.”
“Oh, I know. I know. I’m just so lucky to have landed this internship. It just sucks that it’s over in six months.”
“Well, there are always other opportunities on Capitol Hill,” Donny said. “I might have an opening coming for an… energetic young person. If you’re interested.”
“Really? Oh my God, that would be so amazing! But don’t you have to, I don’t know, interview me or something?”
“That’s a fine idea,” the senator said. “How about now?”
“R-r-really? You mean it?”
“No time like the present. If that’s okay with you. Why don’t you take a seat?”
“Oh my God, that’s great,” she said, walking toward one of the chairs in front of the senator’s desk.
“Not there,” he said quickly. “Feels too… undemocratic. Why don’t you have a seat over there. We can get comfortable. Get to know each other in a less formal setting.”
He gestured toward the couch–love seat combination in the corner. She chose the couch. “You mean like here?” she said.
“That’s fine. Just fine. Why don’t I pour you a drink? You can’t work for an Alabama senator unless you learn how to drink a real Alabama-style whiskey.”
“Is that… is that allowed?” she asked, going as wide-eyed as she knew how.
“Well, that depends. How old are you?”
“I’m twenty-two, but…”
He silently gulped. “Well, then, there’s no problem at all.”
One drink led to two. And then more.
Jenny Chang was bubbly and enchanting. She arched her back. She crossed and recrossed her legs. She leaned toward him, then away.
It certainly was having the desired effect. Donny wanted her. Bad. Enough that she was quite sure it wasn’t his big brain doing the thinking anymore.
Oh, he was doing an admirable job at being gallant and gentlemanly. He resisted sliding down the couch toward her. He asked thoughtful questions and seemed to be interested in her responses — which was impressive, since even Xi Bang wasn’t interested in some of the vapid crap that was pouring out of Jenny Chang’s mouth.
He even maintained good eye contact as they spoke. Except, of course, every time she looked away from him, she watched out of the corner of her eye as his gaze traveled downward to her breasts and legs.
Soon, she shifted their conversation toward politics, which Jenny indulged even though it, like, sort of, you know, didn’t always make sense to her. She had to make him explain things a lot. And drink more as he did it.
When he was done telling a particularly self-important story about victory in a partisan scuffle, she threw her hands up in the air and declared, “It just seems, like, so hard to get anything done around here. It’s like everyone’s all ‘Oh, I’m a Republican’ or ‘Oh, I’m a Democrat,’ and they just argue all the time. They forget that they’re supposed to pass laws and stuff.”