“Who hired the assassin?” Dorfman asked.
“No idea, sir,” Hooper said. “Guesses are three for a quarter, but I wouldn’t bet against you if you thought the same people are behind all of this.”
“Aldana,” Dorfman said as if the very name were poisonous.
Dan Quayle spoke slowly, seemingly feeling his way: “The question is, what are we going to do to prevent any more of these slaughters?”
“We’ve got to find these other Colombians,” Dorfman said.
“Heavy guards around all public buildings and likely places,” somebody added.
“That won’t stop these people.” The words were spoken quietly but with force. Everyone looked at the speaker, Captain Jake Grafton. He continued, “All these people are after is an atrocity. They want publicity, fear, terror, to force the government to do their will. They’ll find a target regardless. In Colombia they’re blowing up department stores and banks and airliners. We’ve got all that plus shopping malls and these boutique emporiums, like the ones at the Old Post Office and Union Station. This close to Christmas …” His voice tailed off.
“I want to call out the National Guard,” Quayle said. “We’re going to have to guard the public buildings regardless, and as many of the shopping areas as we can find people for. And we can use the troops to search for these Colombians.”
“Are you talking martial law?” General Land asked.
“I don’t care what you call it.”
“Troops will never find these terrorists, even if they’re here,” the chairman of the Joint Chiefs protested. “We can’t have troops going door to door, searching every house. They aren’t trained for that. That’s what the FBI and police are for.”
“FBI, what do you say?” Quayle directed his question at the director.
“These aren’t ordinary times. We need quick results. To get quick results we need a lot of people. Yet when this is over the American people are going to hold the FBI and the military accountable if innocent people’s rights are trampled on, injustice done. That’s inevitable.”
William Dorfman jumped in with both feet. “The American people will hold us accountable if these murdering swine aren’t caught and caught damn soon. We’ve got to move heaven and earth to stop this slaughter or this country will come unglued. That’s the first priority. Better to jail some innocent people and turn ’em loose later than let the guilty stay free.”
“How about innocent people shot by nineteen-year-old kids with M-16s?” General Land asked Dorfman.
“Don’t be a damn fool,” Dorfman retorted. “Your job is to make sure that doesn’t happen. If you can’t do the job we’ll—”
Dorfman had the sense to shut up just then, for the look on Hayden Land’s face would have boiled water. Jake Grafton doubted if there was another man living who had ever had the temerity to tell the general to his face that he was a damn fool.
The silence that followed Dorfman’s outburst lasted for a long moment.
“Why not use regular troops?” Gideon Cohen suggested with a glance at General Land. “Handpicked noncoms and officers? This is the federal district. I think that would be legal. Certainly justifiable. Even if it isn’t legal, it’ll be a while before a judge says so.”
“No,” Dan Quayle said. “National Guard.” He stood. “When I get back to my office we’ll announce it and prepare an order. In the meantime all nonessential government buildings should be evacuated, the employees sent home.”
Quayle left the room first, surrounded by Secret Service agents.
Walking the corridors of the Capitol with General Land, Jake Grafton felt profoundly depressed. General Land apparently was in a similar mood. They paused by a body draped with a sheet that the forensic people had yet to get to and stood for a moment. Holes and blood in the wall, pieces of plaster and plaster powder on the floor. The toe of a woman’s shoe was just visible under the edge of the white cloth.
She had been somebody, with a family and a job, ambitions and a future. Now she was a hunk of meat to be diced and sliced, mourned and buried.
We’re all victims, Jake mused, the living as well as the dead. The America that had given birth to this woman and made her what she was would soon be changed in unforeseeable, incalculable ways by the white-hot fury of the forces that had been unleashed here this morning. The transformations caused by war — make no mistake, this was war — would be irrevocable. And Jake knew that the changes so wrought would not be welcomed by most Americans, himself included.
God damn these terrorists. He said it to himself as a prayer.
He was walking down the sidewalk carrying the toolbox in one hand and a four-foot length of ducting balanced on his shoulder when he realized that there were men on the rooftops. Henry Charon stopped at the corner and took a quick look upward at the tops of the buildings while he shifted the duct pipe to his other shoulder.
He had driven in from the east and had no trouble finding a place to park. A lot of people hadn’t come to work today.
Keeping his gaze on the sidewalk, he proceeded to the entrance of the old office building and climbed the stairs. In the lobby he set the toolbox on the floor and punched the elevator button. The lobby was empty. Now if that office still was …
In the elevator he pushed the button for the top floor. The contraption wheezed and moaned, then with a hum rose slowly for several seconds. It lurched to a halt and the door opened.
The woman standing there gasped when she saw him and started.
“Oh, my God!”
Henry Charon smiled.
Horror contorted her features. “Oh, I’m sorry! Oh, my heavens, I am so sorry.” The door started to close, but she popped in, beating it.
“What floor?” he asked.
“Five, please.”
Charon pushed the button as she continued breathlessly, “I just didn’t expect anyone to be in here. I’m so jumpy. All these terrorists and murders! My God! I should have stayed home. I am so sorry. What you must think.”
“Forget it.”
She gave him a big, embarrassed smile and got off at the fifth floor. He grinned at her again as the door closed.
The top floor was the seventh, and Charon got off there. The hallway was empty. He walked over to the door labeled STAIR and pushed at it. It opened. Satisfied, he went to the door at the rear of the hallway and laid down the duct pipe and toolbox.
The lock took half a minute. He sat the box and pipe inside, surveyed the empty room, then locked the door behind him.
Through the tree branches he could see the northern half of the Capitol’s grand staircase that led up to the main entrance, which led into the Rotunda. The marble steps were covered with people. That was the door those suicide pilots from Colombia went in this morning. But Charon could see only half the stair. The other half was obscured by the Supreme Court building.
The window was dirty. He wiped the inside of the glass with his sleeve. Some of the dirt came off. Out of the corner of his eye he picked up a man on the roof of the Supreme Court building.
This would have to do.
Luckily it was winter and all the trees on the Capitol grounds had lost all their leaves. In summer the vegetation would obscure the scene from here.
The scoped rifle was carefully packed inside the duct pipe and padded with bubble wrap. He removed the weapon and the three long sticks that were also there. These had a piece of rope carefully wrapped around all three sticks, near one end, so when he spread the sticks apart the contraption became a tripod.