Seven Grams of Lead (33 page)

“What other choice?”

“That’s my point.”

The door wrenched outward. Two M16 barrels preceded the marines into the SCIF. This wouldn’t look good, Thornton thought. Lamont and Firstbrook both dead on the floor with he and Mallery standing over them, a gun in her hand.

The captain ordered Mallery to drop the weapon and instructed her and Thornton to turn and face the wall. As he and the other marine patted them down, the captain added, “I’ll be volunteering to be on y’all’s firing squad.”

Thornton doubted that a firing squad would come into play, based on his knowledge that Utah was the only state still practicing that form of execution. That knowledge offered him no consolation.

Rapada was worried.

“The kid put the cell phone in nearly two weeks ago,” explained Canning, hunched over the petroleum hydrocarbon detector—as he’d been calling the device Eppley had assembled here in South Atlantic’s back office, and which Rapada suspected was actually some sort of illicit weapon. “The problem is, a cell battery doesn’t last that long, especially on crap disposable phones like the ones he used.”

Canning flipped open a hatch in the middle of the device, which looked like a giant spark plug. He unscrewed and extracted a small plywood panel adhered to which was a cell phone minus its faceplate. Setting the panel on the desk, he studied the phone’s LED. “Yep, this baby needs charging.”

He drew a six-foot-long white cable from his toolbox and clicked the USB connector at one end into a slot in the phone’s base.

Kneeling to insert the two-pronged plug at the other end into a wall socket, he asked Rapada, “Do you have any idea how many improvised explosive devices are recovered intact by bomb squads because the bomb makers fail to take into account a problem known to any child with a rechargeable electronic toy?”

“So this is actually a bomb?” Rapada said, as if only curious.

Canning chuckled. “I didn’t think that’d get past you.”

Rapada’s worst fears had been confirmed. Play it cool, he told himself. Get to the bottom of this and stop the bastard.

“Is it for al-Qaeda?” he asked. A guess, but wrong guesses prompted corrections from arrogant types like Canning.

“I’m glad you don’t know.” Canning stood up. “With the blogger and his girlfriend on the sidelines now, you were the only loose end.” He drew a long, integrally sound-suppressed pistol from his toolbox.

But not before Rapada freed the CIA-issued Sig Sauer P229 from his waistband. He’d taken the gun from the office safe earlier for exactly this contingency, finding ten .40 S&W rounds in the magazine, another in the chamber. He pointed it at Canning and
pulled the trigger. The result was a tinny click. But nothing more.

What the hell?

Rapada reflexively racked the slide—ejecting a round—and fired again.

Another click.

Had the firing pin been filed down so it couldn’t reach the primer?

“It wasn’t really the CIA who issued that gun,” Canning said, aiming one of his own.

Two Deputy U.S.
Marshals prodded Thornton to the back row of a DC-9, one of the “Con Air” fleet. He was dropped into the middle seat, aggravating his back, which stung from “accidental” elbows. Kidney shots, as the marines at the embassy surely knew, leave no marks. He was now one of the 1,000 passengers the Justice Prisoner and Alien Transportation System transferred every day between judicial districts, correctional facilities, and foreign countries. His hands were held in front of him by signature U.S. Marshals Service cuffs, custom-forged from high-strength stainless steel and overmolded with ordnance-grade black polymer. His ankles sported a matching pair, with the two sets connected by high-tensile chain strong enough for use in towing a semi.
As the marshals took seats to either side of him, Thornton saw that each man carried a U.S. Marshals Service standard Glock 23 and a Taser X26, which delivered nineteen 100-microcoulomb pulses per second of incentive for prisoners to cooperate.

Another pair of marshals deposited Mallery into the flying paddy wagon’s front row. Thornton saw little more than that she was wearing an overly starched orange jumpsuit, like his own. This was his first glimpse of her since the marines placed him in the musty subterranean chamber labeled
BREAK ROOM
on a door that locked from the outside—U.S. embassies and consulates were officially prohibited from having designated detention facilities since neither the State Department nor the CIA had the legal authority to detain anyone. He could only hope that she hadn’t been harmed.

The DC-9 soon jumped from the Grantley Adams International Airport runway and into the night sky. Thornton watched Bridgetown’s lights grow smaller and smaller. He wouldn’t have guessed he’d be sorry to see Barbados go, but without so much as a mouse pad of evidence from SofTec, he had only his version of the story, and no more proof of the existence of Littlebird than of Bigfoot. What he did have: two charges of first-degree homicide at the U.S. embassy and a bevy of additional criminal charges in Bridgetown. To face them, he had put in a call to the ideal lawyer for this case. Mallery certainly had potent legal
representation—the two of them had been separated immediately after the SCIF incident, so they hadn’t been able to coordinate strategies. Unfortunately Thornton’s call had yet to be returned, and it was doubtful prisoners had in-flight telephone privileges.

He might as well sleep, he decided, while he had the chance.

He was out in a second. Two thousand sixty-five miles later, he woke to the landing gear punching a Reagan Airport runway that was delineated from darkness by the first hint of sunrise.

Within seconds of arrival at the terminal, Mallery was led off the plane. There was no sign of her when Thornton reached the tarmac. He was stuffed into the backseat of a black Lincoln Navigator that was parked by the tail of the jet.

A short drive ended at the loading dock of the towering U.S. Marshals Service headquarters in Crystal City. Across the Potomac, Washington shimmered in a glossy dawn that intensified the cold darkness of the underground corridor into which he was propelled, his cuffs slicing his shins as he struggled to keep pace with his handlers, each gripping one of his elbows.

He was locked in a room that was underlit despite a quartet of fluorescent rings on the ceiling. The walls were paneled with dingy powder blue fiberglass. Musseridge sat behind a plain wooden desk, his right hand on his holster.

“Please take a seat,” he said with a cordiality
Thornton attributed to the presence of a recording device.

Thornton clanked over and lowered himself onto the bridge chair facing the desk.

“Why did you poison Special Agent Lamont?” Musseridge asked.

Thornton still hadn’t heard from his lawyer, and he knew it was foolish to say anything without an attorney present. On the other hand, if the Littlebird operation’s reach included a CIA base chief, he might sorely need Musseridge on his side.

“I have a question for you,” Thornton said.

Musseridge folded his arms. “That’s not how this works.”

“If I had had any intention of harming Agent Lamont, why would I have waited until we were locked into an SCIF with a CIA officer at the table and two armed marine guards standing outside?”

Musseridge waved a hand in dismissal. “Same answer I give every other perp who asks,
Why would I have done that?
You thought you could get away with it.”

Regretting the wasted ten seconds, Thornton changed tack. “Lamont was killed for the same reason Peretti and O’Clair were. All three got in the way of an operation whose objective has been to eavesdrop on the Sokolovs. Firstbrook was in on it. You’ll want to get into the SofTec office in Bridgetown before it’s rolled up. That’s what Agent Lamont was trying to do.”

“I know about the operation at SofTec,” Musseridge said. “It’s why you and Miss Mallery broke in and planted the bomb.”

Thornton hoped this was a bluff. “Bomb?”

“A brick of Semtex 10 you evidently took from a locked safe at the Bank of Barbados construction site. Didn’t you once write a story on safecrackers?”

“I also once wrote a story about a civilian who solved an FBI cold case.”

“Well, the blast demolished whatever Mallery was bankrolling there.”

“Suppose I told you SofTec fronts a U.S. intelligence service?”

“I’d ask if you had any evidence.”

“You’d call it hearsay. The evidence was at SofTec. Maybe still is. There’s a good chance the security guard knows something.”

“In that case, it’s unfortunate you blew him to bits.”

Thornton cursed to himself. Why the hell, he wondered, was he bothering with Musseridge? It was increasingly obvious that he would have to obtain evidence by himself. He regarded his two sets of cuffs, each set with its own lock. The person with a Bic pen-type method of unlocking them probably hadn’t been born yet.

The door swung open, forestalling Musseridge’s next question. Thornton made out four men clustered in the dark corridor. A fifth, a U.S. Marshal, stepped
past them and into the doorway, his gray crew cut catching the faint light. Thornton recognized him as the leader of the Con Air detachment. The marshal beckoned Musseridge, who lugged himself over with all the enthusiasm of someone going out into a rainstorm.

The marshal muttered a few sentences, to which Musseridge protested, apparently to no avail: Head lowered, he stepped aside, admitting the four men. The weight-room builds on each were evident despite their billowy navy blue DOJ windbreakers—Department of Justice. They whisked Thornton into the corridor, then back the way he’d come, lifting him off the floor to negate the delay posed by his ankle chain.

“What’s this about?” he asked.

If any of them heard, they gave no sign, possibly due to reluctance to have their responses recorded by the U.S. Marshals Service mics.

Thornton had an inkling that things had taken a positive turn. After being Mirandized at the U.S. embassy in Barbados, he’d telephoned Gordon Langlind’s spokesperson, who was a onetime
RealStory
source. He asked her to forward a message to the senator, who, according to Mallery, had gone to law school. The message was,
Serve as my legal representation in Washington; otherwise I use Mr. Robertson.
Mr. Robertson had been the code name Langlind used on the phone call he placed at 9:02
P
.
M
. on October
23, the transcription of which Thornton and Mallery read at SofTec.

Langlind had apparently taken the bait, and, accordingly, was now extricating Thornton from Musseridge’s custody by remanding him to the Department of Justice. A claim of a national security matter superseding the Bureau’s case would do the trick. Such transfers took place frequently. The DOJ agents might now facilitate a private conversation with Langlind in which Thornton could obtain the truth about the Littlebird operation, not to mention testimony that would exonerate him. Thornton also considered several much less rosy scenarios.

The unmarked Durango
navigated sluggish Beltway traffic out to Alexandria. Thornton sat in back, bookended by Department of Justice men. He took in the Virginia suburbs through side windows whose nonreflective tinting couldn’t possibly meet the legal requirement of allowing in at least 35 percent of outside light. Despite it, on this brilliant autumn morning, the prim colonial brick homes and their tidy yards and sparkling picket fences looked pretty enough for use in an advertisement for America.

Gradually the houses grew farther apart and the woods thickened. The Durango turned up a long, steep driveway, passing through a tunnel of tall trees, hedges, and overhanging boughs. The driver parked by a detached garage across from a house that
predated horseless carriages, a majestic two-story colonial.

Pushing open his door, the DOJ man to Thornton’s right jumped down to the gravel. The man on Thornton’s other side nudged him to follow before getting out himself and circling the Durango’s hood. The two then removed Thornton’s restraints.

“You’re free,” the first said to him, “for now.”

“There’s a knocker on the front door.” The second man cocked his head toward the flagstone path leading to the front of the house. “Tap it six times in a row, slowly. You’ll be asked, ‘Is that you, darling?’ You reply, ‘I’m here to read the water meter.’ Got it?”

“All except one thing,” Thornton said. “Where’s Mallery?”

The men swapped blank looks before responding to the driver’s exhortation to hustle, climbing back into the Durango. The driver executed a lightning three-point turn and blasted back down the hill. Thornton was left in total silence, save the rustle of branches and the calls of the few birds yet to head south. There was no hint of civilization other than the house. This was either a fantastic refuge, he thought, or a great place to whack someone.

He proceeded to the front door, passing window after window with the kind of shutters that could actually shut. Four steps brought him onto a slate stoop as big as most patios. Gingerly he pulled back the large knocker ring from the claws of the pewter eagle
on the door. Before he could follow the DOJ agent’s instructions, the door swung inward, revealing none other than Senator Gordon Langlind, in shirtsleeves, gabardine suit pants, and a rep tie. He held a tumbler of scotch in his free hand, perhaps explaining why he seemed happy to see Thornton.

“How’re you doing, Russell?”

“That depends on what’s happened to Beryl.”

Langlind turned out of the foyer and headed toward the living room. “She was released on the recognizance of her own attorney. It’s my hope to bring this business to a mutually agreeable conclusion, and, toward that end, I think we’ll get further without her.”

Thornton followed Langlind into a vast living room, decorated like Mount Vernon but with the odd contemporary splash, including recessed lights, heat and air-conditioning registers discreetly cut into the tall baseboards, and a bevy of abstract paintings and sculptures.

“I got this place for Selena,” Langlind said.