House Divided (30 page)

“That’s all he said?”

“Yes.”

Thank God!

“The only thing I can assume, Agent Carlucci, is that DeMarco’s trying to help his girlfriend. May I ask what your relationship is with DeMarco?”

“We were involved with each other about three years ago but I’m married now.”

“I see,” Claire said. “Well, all I can think is that DeMarco is trying to take advantage of your former relationship. Agent, I can’t order you not to meet with DeMarco, but believe me when I tell you that doing so would not be a career-enhancing move.”

Carlucci didn’t say anything.

“When were you supposed to meet him?”

“In half an hour.”

“Where?” Claire said.

“I thought you guys were following him,” Carlucci said.

Claire almost laughed. Carlucci was testing her.

“We are. Right now he’s sitting in a coffee shop in Rosslyn on Wilson Boulevard.”

“That’s where we’re supposed to meet,” Carlucci said.

“Okay, Agent. Thank you for your cooperation and, again, I want to stress that it’s not in your best interest to get involved in this.”

Claire had no idea if Carlucci would call the FBI’s legal attaché in Kabul or meet with DeMarco, but her gut told her that she wouldn’t do either of those things. All that really mattered at this point was that she knew that DeMarco hadn’t told Carlucci anything significant—and she needed to get him out of that coffee shop.

“Sir,” Perkins said, “the cab dropped him off in Rosslyn, near the metro station.”

“Did he go into the station?” Levy asked.

“No. He went into the McDonald’s near the metro but he’s not there now.”

“All right, Perkins. I want you to get four cars over to Rosslyn and start looking for him. Tell your men when they find him that they’re not to talk to him. I want DeMarco tossed into a car and I want your people to remain outside the car until I get there.”

“Claire,” Gilbert said, “we’re picking up radio traffic from Pentagon police vehicles. They’re searching Rosslyn for DeMarco.”

Shit. She knew that was going to happen. Levy’s men had seen DeMarco use the ATM at the Hyatt, found out from the Hyatt’s people that he’d taken a cab, and it was a cakewalk from there. The good news was they didn’t know exactly where DeMarco was. But if DeMarco left the coffee shop—which he would do eventually when Carlucci didn’t show up—the Pentagon cops might spot him walking on the street.

“Where’s Alice?” Claire said.

“She’s still ten minutes from Rosslyn.”

“What the hell is taking her so long?”

“Traffic.”

Even the NSA couldn’t do anything about the traffic.

“Connect me to that coffee shop,” Claire said.

DeMarco looked at his wrist to check the time, and realized he no longer had a watch. He asked a lady sitting near him for the time and she told him—but made it clear that she wasn’t interested in starting up a conversation with an unshaven guy dressed like an escapee from a poor man’s gymnasium. Diane was late. Only ten minutes late, but she’d always been a punctuality freak. Maybe she’d gotten held up in traffic.

“Sir, is your name Joe DeMarco?”

DeMarco had been looking out the window. He turned to see who was speaking and saw it wasn’t the lady who had reluctantly given him the time. It was the barista, a cute gal in her twenties—but she really should lose the nose ring.

“Uh, yeah,” he said, but he was wondering how the girl knew his name. He’d been in the place a couple of times but had never introduced himself. The hairs on the back of his neck began to stand at attention.

“You have a phone call,” the barista said.

“A phone call?”

“Yeah. Some lady. She said it’s real important.”

It must be Diane calling, probably to tell him that she’d been delayed—or maybe to say that she’d changed her mind about meeting him.

“Sir, do you want to take the call?”

“Yeah, I’ll take it,” DeMarco said. He walked over to the counter and picked up the phone. “Hey, Diane, are you on your way?” he said.

“This isn’t Diane.”

Oh, shit, if it wasn’t Diane, it could only be the NSA. Goddammit! How in the
fuck
did they find him?

“Is this you, Alice?” DeMarco asked. “How did you find me here?”

“It’s not Alice, it’s Alice’s boss—and how we found you is irrelevant. All you need to know is that the Pentagon Force Protection Agency is cruising Rosslyn looking for you, and the Pentagon cops work for John Levy.”

“Who’s Levy?”

“He’s the man who tried to kill you last night at Tuckahoe Park.” Before DeMarco could ask another question, the woman said, “You have a choice to make, DeMarco. You can either stay in that coffee shop—”

“Goddammit, how did you know where I was?” DeMarco asked again.

“As I was saying, you can either stay in the coffee shop and wait until we pick you up or you can take your chances with Charles Bradford’s people. You have to believe me, DeMarco. We are your best option. We are your only option. And keep in mind, we’re the ones who kept Levy from killing you last night. If we wanted you dead, you’d already be dead. So what’s it going to be?”

DeMarco didn’t answer.

“And one other thing, DeMarco. Agent Carlucci is not going to be meeting with you.”

Son of a bitch!
DeMarco had never believed any of that paranoid Big Brother nonsense the antigovernment crowd was always spouting—but he’d become a true believer in the last few days.

And he’d had enough. He was sick of these people controlling his life.

“I’ll tell you what I’m gonna do. I’m going to call the Arlington P.D., a detective named Glazer I know over there. I’m going to tell him the FBI and the NSA are covering up why my cousin was killed, and that you guys are trying to kidnap me. And after I talk to the cop I’m gonna call the closest TV station. Then I’m going to hold a fucking press conference while I’m being protected by a bunch of SWAT guys. Oh, and one other thing. I’ve got a .38 in my pocket—I got it from Perry Wallace last night—and if Alice’s pals come through the door, I’m gonna shoot ’em if they try to take me out of here.”

How do you like them apples, you bitch
?

“DeMarco, the landline you’re currently using will be dead the minute you hang up. And if you or anyone else in that shop has a cell phone, you’ll find that the cell phone isn’t getting a signal. I repeat: we are your only option.”

DeMarco didn’t answer but at that moment he saw a Pentagon patrol car cruise slowly past the coffee shop, the two officers inside it swiveling their heads as they looked at pedestrians on the sidewalk. He quickly turned so his back was to the window.

“And one other thing, DeMarco. If you don’t cooperate, somebody is going to whisper into the ear of the Afghanistan government that a certain CIA agent is playing around in their backyard. So I’m not screwing around here. You either do what I tell you or your girlfriend is going to become a gigantic embarrassment to the CIA and an international headline—and that’s the best-case scenario.”

“You goddamn—”

DeMarco stopped swearing and took a breath.

“Okay,” he said. “I’ll wait for your people to get here.”

“Alice will be there in five minutes. She’ll park in front of the shop but don’t go to her until she signals you. Do you understand?”

“Yeah, I understand,” DeMarco said. He was so tired of this; he had never felt more impotent in his life.

A couple minutes later he saw a black SUV double-park in front of the coffee shop, but since the vehicle’s windows were tinted he couldn’t see who was in it. Then the passenger-side window powered down. It was Alice. He watched as she looked around and then saw her speak into the phone mike protruding from the headset she always seemed to be wearing. He wondered if she slept with that thing on. She still hadn’t looked over at the coffee shop. She just kept checking the street around her, talking to someone, and then she finally turned and faced him and made an arm motion for him to join her in the car.

DeMarco hustled out of the coffee shop and jumped into Alice’s SUV. Alice immediately said, “Buckle your seat belt.”

Without thinking, DeMarco looked down to find the seat-belt latch and when he did Alice pressed a Taser against his throat.

“Give me the gun, DeMarco.”

“I don’t have a gun. I just said that.”

Holding the Taser against his throat, Alice ran her hands over his torso, behind his back, down his legs. She was close enough to him that he could smell the scent of the shampoo she used. When she finished patting him down, she said, “Okay. But if you give me any shit at all, I’m gonna run fifty thousand volts through you just for the fun of it.”

DeMarco had always liked women—with the possible exception of his ex-wife—but after meeting Alice and talking to Alice’s unnamed boss, his perspective was beginning to change.

Dillon had always been rather indifferent toward automobiles, and he didn’t enjoy driving at all. It was just too frantic—the stop-and-go traffic, the maniacs constantly switching lanes, honking, maneuvering for position. He took cabs as often as possible. Today, however, he decided to drive himself.

It had always been a Crane family tradition to own Jaguars, and he owned a maroon XJ-Series sedan that sold for about ninety thousand with all the bells and whistles. Naturally, his had all the bells and whistles. He drove out the gates of Fort Meade and headed toward Washington, D.C. He had decided to go to the National Mall to ponder on Charles Bradford as it seemed the perfect place to make a decision that would indeed affect the nation.

Dillon may have come across as a jaded cynic but he was, in fact, terribly sentimental when it came to the National Mall. It symbolized all that was good and great about America: her past, her glory, her promise. The long, broad expanse between the Capitol and Lincoln’s memorial, Washington’s obelisk, Jefferson’s temple, the memorials to those who had died in war, the magnificent buildings surrounding the mall containing art and history and the machinery of democracy … After all these years, the sight still took his breath away.

He parked near the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, in front of a fire hydrant. He didn’t care if he got a ticket but he didn’t want the car towed, and to prevent that from happening he placed a placard on the dashboard that read
FEDERAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION. TOWING OR TAMPERING WITH THIS VEHICLE IS A CLASS B FELONY
. The placard had the FBI’s official seal on it.

Dillon had no idea what a class B felony was, or if there even was such a thing, but the sign had worked in the past. Traffic enforcement folks probably figured an FBI agent who drove a Jag was someone special.

He took a slim leather briefcase out of the car and began to walk.

He sincerely believed, as he had told Claire, that exposing Charles Bradford would be disastrous for the country. The United States was not well regarded in large parts of the world, and even our allies believed that to safeguard our fragile economy, much less our security, we wouldn’t hesitate to subvert any regime that posed a threat. Dillon imagined citizens in other countries would not even be surprised that an American general went about assassinating high-ranking foreigners.

Dillon also had to admit he agreed with most of Bradford’s decisions—not the executions themselves but the fact that the men Bradford killed had indeed been national security menaces. It could be argued that Bradford had acted without proper authority and shouldn’t have acted unilaterally, but it was clearly better to eliminate a single foreigner than go to war. How many American lives could have been saved if a single well-placed bullet had been used to fell Saddam?

He didn’t concur, however, with Bradford killing American citizens whom he considered traitors. Morality aside, if it ever became known that Bradford had assassinated fellow Americans, every bleeding-heart liberal in the country—as well as every right-leaning anti-government militia nut—would have all the evidence they needed to justify their paranoia.

By the time he reached the Lincoln Memorial, Dillon found himself in exactly the same position where Martin Breed had been before he died. He saw the
logic
in the things Charles Bradford had done but knew in his heart that the man had gone too far. He also knew if Bradford remained in power that the assassinations would continue and the possible unintended consequences could be disastrous. As Claire had said, Bradford could actually start the war he was trying to prevent if he killed the wrong foreign politician.

Dillon’s thoughts were interrupted by a peal of laughter from a small girl, the sound of a child absolutely delighted by something. He looked over and saw a man his age holding the hand of a girl of four or five: a grandfather taking his granddaughter for a walk. The little girl was pointing a short, chubby finger at a fat, waddling pigeon.

Dillon had never even come close to getting married. He knew he’d make a terrible husband. And the thought of rearing children … well, that was absolutely terrifying. Yet for some reason after his sixtieth birthday, he occasionally wished that he had a grandchild to spoil, and preferably a granddaughter. It was an irrational desire.

But back to Charles Bradford.

Dillon was too objective not to recognize his own hypocrisy. What Bradford had done was in a way no different than what he and Claire were doing. Bradford had taken it upon himself to decide who America’s enemies were and then he eliminated them. Dillon, although he didn’t kill people—Hopper was the only exception—had taken it upon himself to invade the privacy of American citizens and trample on their constitutional rights. But Dillon knew there was a wavy gray line out there and he believed he was on the right side of that line, whereas Charles Bradford had stepped over it. Way over it. Was he deluding himself? Maybe. Nonetheless, he had made up his mind: Bradford had to go.

He stopped at a bench in front of the Lincoln Memorial, wiped off the bench with a handkerchief, and sat down, crossing his long legs. “What would you do, Abe?” he said, softly but out loud.

Abe didn’t answer.

As he had told Claire, he wasn’t convinced that releasing the Breed recording would be enough to force Bradford to resign, much less convict him of a crime. Unless John Levy was willing to testify against Bradford, which Dillon couldn’t imagine him doing, there was no concrete evidence to support Martin Breed’s claims. And Dillon could foresee congressional hearings going on for months, if not years, resulting in a national quagmire proportional to Watergate and possibly concluding with Bradford still in uniform and more popular than ever in some political circles.