I strolled over, my pores opening immediately in the afternoon humidity. It was a cloudy day, but somehow the absence of sun exacerbated the heat, which felt like it was radiating from everything rather than from some single, identifiable source. Even the squirrels in Lafayette Square seemed listless, lethargic, as motionless as the nearby humans slouching on park benches and sweating under the useless foliage in rolled shirt-sleeves and loosened ties.
As I exited the park, I was immediately struck by how fortified the area was. Pennsylvania Avenue had been shut down to automobile traffic, presumably out of fear of truck bombs. There were steel vehicle traps through which delivery trucks had to pass for inspection; multiple guard posts; swarms of uniformed cops and military personnel patrolling on foot, on bicycles, and in cars. The windows of the far-off building itself stared insensate through the thick iron bars separating the grounds from the citizenry, as blank and impenetrable as the tactical shades of the scores of men guarding them. What had once been a residence and office was now, in essence, a bunker.
I moved on, heading southwest in the beginning of a long loop that would give me ample opportunities to confirm I wasn’t being followed before arriving at the Hilton. Outside the garrisoned grounds of the White House, the city was unremarkable, even bland. The streets were wide and straight; the architecture unimaginative; the ambiance, nonexistent. I noted that, along with London and New York, Washington seemed one of the few remaining cities where men were determined to wear jackets and ties even in the summer. The difference being that in London and New York, the men knew how to dress. But what they lacked in sartorial sense, Washington’s office workers made up for with a certain bounce in their gait. I wondered what might account for their perkiness, and decided it was proximity to power. After all, a dog wags its tail even when it’s begging for a scrap, not only when it receives one.
I had called Horton from the airport and briefed him on what happened in Vienna. As with Shorrock, he’d already heard. He told me the money had been deposited and proposed that we meet to discuss the next assignment. But I saw no upside to a face-to-face. We still had the communications gear he’d given me in L.A. I’d ditched the cyanide, and didn’t think I’d need a replacement. So I declined, telling him to use a secure site I’d set up, instead.
I paused in another park, fished the iPad out of my shoulder bag, and found a public Wi-Fi network. I checked the bank account and confirmed deposit of the three hundred thousand. Then I checked the secure site to see if Horton had uploaded the target file.
He had. I opened it and saw the name. I would have recognized it even if it hadn’t been immediately followed by her title:
Diane Schmalz. U.S. Supreme Court Justice.
No, I thought, shaking my head at the screen. Not a chance.
He was ignoring my rules about women and children. Maybe he thought I wasn’t serious, that the money would matter more. If so, he was wrong. I’d lived by my rules for a long time, and even the one deviation hadn’t really been an exception, because I did it for personal reasons, not as part of a job. I wasn’t going to change now.
But what if killing her saves thousands?
No. I didn’t care. If there’s one thing I know as well as I know killing, it’s how subornment works. One baby step at a time. The art of getting someone to cross a line he doesn’t even see until he looks back and realizes it’s already impossibly far behind him.
I glanced through the file. Photographs. Home addresses, both in D.C. and a weekend place in western Maryland. Schedule. No observed security consciousness and no protection, because no Supreme Court Justice had ever been assassinated.
But it didn’t make sense. I’d never had much interest in what passes for justice in America, but I knew Schmalz’s name, and I knew she had a reputation as one of the court’s last guardians of civil liberties. It was hard to imagine her being part of a plot to end those liberties. If anything, I would have expected her to be on the other side.
I scanned down and saw that Horton must have anticipated my concern. He had written:
When the president declares his assumption of emergency powers, he’ll be sued. There are four authoritarian Justices who will back him. The other four might or might not. Schmalz would absolutely oppose him, leading to a possible five-four defeat. Not necessarily fatal to their plans, but certainly it would be a major public relations setback not to secure the Supreme Court’s blessing along with that of Congress.
Schmalz’s son is a lawyer, married with three small children. He is a closeted homosexual and the plotters have graphic photographic and video evidence of his infidelities. He has also twice threatened suicide, and received therapy and other treatment afterward. Schmalz understands that were her son’s homosexuality revealed, it would destroy his family and career, devastate her grandchildren, and likely cause this unstable man to take his own life. She will do what’s she’s told to prevent all this.
But not if she passes away beforehand.
I reread the relevant paragraphs and felt an uncharacteristic anger taking hold of me. One of my rules has always been no acts against non-principals. Meaning no deaths of non-principals primarily, but still, I’ve never liked the idea of solving a problem with Person A by going after Person B. Kill Schmalz? If I really wanted to do something good in the world, I thought, I ought to go after the people who were threatening to ruin her son and grandchildren just to secure a favorable vote.
I wondered why Horton didn’t do something arguably less extreme. Find some way to out the son in advance and defuse the blackmail bomb by preempting it? Maybe he thought that would tip his hand to the plotters in a way that a kindly-looking grandmother’s peaceful demise in her sleep wouldn’t.
But I didn’t care. I didn’t like the smell of this thing anymore, or where it seemed to be taking me. The others could do what they wanted. I was out.
I exited the site and purged the browser, then found a payphone, called the Hilton, and asked for James Hendricks, the name Dox had told me he would check in under. “We on?” I said.
“Gang’s all here, partner. Twelve-thirty-four.”
That meant they were in room 901. My habit with Dox was to use a simple code when mentioning exact dates, times, room numbers and the like. We just added three to each digit. It wasn’t much and wouldn’t be all that difficult to crack, but one more layer of defense never hurt anyone.
“I’ll be there in ten minutes,” I said, then hung up and unobtrusively wiped down the handset with a handkerchief. Being in the belly of the beast was making me twitchy.
I headed over to the Hilton. The lobby was crowded, apparently due to the annual convention of something called The American Constitution Society. I couldn’t help smiling a little. If you only knew.
I took the elevator to the tenth floor, then the stairs down to nine. I emerged into the middle of a narrow corridor about a hundred meters long. I looked left, and at the far end saw two men in suits and shades who looked like bodyguards waiting outside a VIP’s room. Not so unusual, and easily explained by the convention downstairs or by one of the nearby embassies. Still, I wasn’t sorry to see from a sign that 901 was to the right. I walked to the end of the corridor, made a left, and found the room. I knocked once and the door opened instantly-Treven. He must have been watching through the peephole. I nodded in acknowledgement and walked in. Dox and Larison were sitting across from each other on the room’s twin beds, eating sandwiches. I heard Treven latching the door behind me.