The Beltway Assassin (13 page)

Ritter shook his head slightly. “I need information. To know who Jefferson is working for and why they’re killing…a bunch of nobodies.”

“The victims—you got involved after Bendis, a retiree with nothing of note to his history. The next two victims were well-known neocons and involved in the Iraq War, which fits Jefferson’s target pattern. There’s something about Bendis you’re not telling me. What is it?” Shelton asked.

Ritter stared at Shelton for a moment, and Shelton caught one of Ritter’s tells: a slight twitch on his right eye. A lie was coming.

“I don’t know, Greg. Sometimes even I have to be a good little soldier and follow orders,” Ritter said. “The most important thing is that we stop the killing. If we have to bother with the courts, at the very least his tax returns won’t hold up to scrutiny.”

“‘Bother with the courts’? What do you think we’re going to do with Jefferson when we arrest him?” Shelton asked.

“I will use whatever means necessary to find out what I need to know. If he gets shunted down your stovepipe, he’ll lawyer up, and we will never know who he’s working for,” Ritter said.

Shelton slammed a hand on the table.

“If you think I’m going to let you torture an American citizen on our soil, you’ve got another thing coming!” Shelton yelled.

The outburst shook Tony and Irene from their work. They watched Ritter and Shelton’s face-off like children watching their parents fight. A ding came from Tony’s computer.

“I’ve got a hit,” Tony said meekly.

“We can continue this discussion
after
we have him,” Ritter said. Shelton said nothing and turned to Tony.

A map came up on the flat screen, a red pin stuck on a park in Baltimore. Pictures with Jefferson in the background, looking just as disheveled and wild eyed as the surveillance photo from the library where he’d beaten a woman to death, populated the right side of the screen.

“These are all from Twitter, conveniently geotagged to McKeldin Square in Baltimore. He’s at the Occupy rally that set up shop there last fall. Bunch more hipsters showed up in the wake of the bombings, and there are selfies all over social media. Thank you hashtag occupy and thank you self-aggrandizement,” Tony said.

“The photos are from the last few days and odd hours. I’d say he’s sleeping there,” Irene said.

Ritter looked between his and Shelton’s suit and tie ensembles.

“Let’s go, but first we need to change into something a little less ‘federal agent,’” Ritter said.

****

They parked three blocks from the McKeldin Square. Shelton took a pair of handcuffs from a pocket and handed them to Ritter, keys dangling from the lock.

“You know how to use these?” Shelton asked.

“Can’t be that different from zip ties,” Ritter said. Taking prisoners was more akin to kidnapping than making an arrest for him. Grab the target, throw a hood over his or her head, and bind the limbs before he or she could make much noise or get away. This time Ritter had a badge and needed to act like law enforcement, not a spy.

The Occupy movement had picked one of the nicer parts of Baltimore to set up, prime waterfront real estate within site of the National Aquarium and culture centers. If they were going to protest the 1 Percent, it made sense for them to go where the 1 Percent might see them.

Locals avoided Ritter and Shelton as they made their way to the park. Shelton’s size and Ritter’s cold gaze must have given them the air of muggers or muscle on their way to collect on a debt. Their jeans and hoodies under leather jackets certainly didn’t make them look like priests.

“Eric, what’s a ‘beard’?” Shelton asked. “Both Tony and Irene called me that.”

Ritter smacked his lips and glanced at Shelton. “Really? You never heard of that?” he asked.

Shelton shrugged.

“A beard is someone you keep around to make an impression. Gay Hollywood actors used to have sham relationships with women. That way they wouldn’t get blackballed for being gay. Like Rock Hudson and Elizabeth Taylor. Taylor was the beard. So, when you’re around, my cover as an FBI agent is that much better,” Ritter said.

“Wait. Rock Hudson was gay?” Shelton asked.

“Do I have to burst your bubble about Richard Simmons too?” Ritter asked.

They heard the Occupy protest before they saw it. A garbled loudspeaker sent a muddled speech through the park and echoed through the neighborhood. Perfunctory cheers erupted with every pause, more out of rote than enthusiasm.

Crude slogans on bed sheets and the bare backs of plastic marquees fenced in McKeldin Square. Text for Chinese food and tire repair bled through thin vinyl for slogans against the theft by the 1 Percenters. Eddies of trash collected between the crooked rows of one- and two-person tents. A stage in the middle of the park boasted floodlights and a single speaker.

The speaker, a white man with dreadlocks and pants so tight Ritter wasn’t sure how blood circulated to the man’s feet, blathered into a megaphone. The crowd around the stage bled off spectators as the speaker shifted into market theory and the impact of free-trade coffee beans on the indigenous farmers of Honduras.

Ritter had trouble telling the difference between the true-believer Occupy protesters and the homeless who moved into the park to coincide with the free food sympathetic businesses had donated to the protest.

“We should split up. Call if you see him,” Ritter said.

“We should stay together. Safer,” Shelton said.

“Which is exactly what cops would do. He doesn’t know who we are or that we’re looking for him. We’ll spook him if we’re together,” Ritter said. “You start on the north side. I’ll go south. Work your way to the stage.” He peeled off from Shelton, not willing to discuss the manner further.

Ritter had a snub-nosed .22 caliber pistol on the small of his back. The small-caliber gun normally carried little in the way of stopping power, but the loaded hollow-point rounds made up for that deficiency. A bullet would blow out a lump of flesh the size of a lemon if it hit. Naturally, the Occupiers had posted several gun-free zones around the park, whi Ritter ignored without hesitation.

The park stank of unwashed bodies and stale urine. He wandered through the tents, scanning for anyone boasting Jefferson’s height and wearing the dark-green overcoat he’d worn in the last series of photos.

“But, you got to take into account the intransigence of the proletariat, man. They’re numb to the world through TV and fast food. Pabulum of the mind and body,” a voice said from within a pup tent. The strong smell of marijuana wafted from the tent.

“Got to spark the revolution…man,” the same voice said. Ritter stepped around to the tent opening. A woman in her early twenties, her hair twined into a single long braid and wrapped around her head like a bird’s nest, had a bong on her lap. A skinny old man, who looked like a veteran hippie, slept on a rumpled comforter, snoring through his tent mate’s speech.

“’Sup, dude?” the woman said. “You want a rip?”

“No, thanks. You know where I can find Jefferson?” Ritter asked.

The stoner coughed and retreated back into her tent. “He’s…ugh. He’s…not here. Think he left a while ago.”

Ritter pulled out a tight roll of twenty-dollar bills. “I owe him some money. Can I leave this with you and you pass it on the next time you see him?”

The woman’s bloodshot eyes widened at the sight of the money. She reached for the cash, but Ritter pulled it just out of her reach.

“Where’s his tent? I’ll leave him a note to find you,” Ritter said.

“Two rows over, blue with white mosquito panels. He’s got some awesome scrawl on it,” she said. Ritter tossed her the cash and left.

From the tent he heard, “Edgar! Edgar wake up. We’re getting Chipotle!”

Jefferson’s tent was easy to find. The words “The tree of liberty needs the blood of patriots” were written in silver paint marker around the tent dome. A mountain bike with wheels caked in soil was locked to a spike in the ground. Despite the era of good feelings the camp espoused, Jefferson had seen that he needed to secure his valuables.

A tiny padlock secured the zippered entrance. Ritter faked a trip and kicked at the base of the tent. There was something heavy inside but not big enough to be a man. Ritter turned the trip into a stumble and came down on his knees in front of the padlock. He fished a tiny metal shank from his breast pocket and picked the lock in seconds.

Ritter grabbed the pistol on his back and opened the tent. No one there. The tent didn’t smell like sweat and mud like the rest of the camp; it reeked of fertilizer. A pile of old books, a green foam mat, and a black bag were inside. Ritter ducked into the tent and closed the flap behind him.

The books were worn copies of Thomas Jefferson’s letters, Marx, and Che Guevara’s writings. Strange bedfellows to Ritter but not his immediate concern. He thumbed through the books’ pristine pages, looking for phone numbers or scraps of paper that might hold contact information for whoever Jefferson worked for. Two sheets of paper, folded into neat halves, slipped out of a book. One sheet was bare; the other had eight printed names. Bendis, the first victim of Jefferson’s bombs, was on the list, highlighted in yellow and crossed off. Other names, hand written in spiky scrawl, were in the gaps between the names and along the margins: McBride and Allesio. Their handwritten names were also highlighted and crossed off.

Ritter immediately recognized one other name; it was highlighted but not crossed off.

“Tony,” Ritter said into a mic on his watchband. “I need to know where Congressman Hawker is. Right now.”

“On it,” Tony said through Ritter’s earpiece.

Ritter opened the black bag. There was a canvas cash belt, a harness used to transport stacks of bills under the wearer’s shirt without attracting much attention. Wads of explosive ammonium nitrate, a white taffy substance flecked with aluminum, wrapped in plastic wrap big enough to fit into the cash belt pouches, were in the bag.

He found two small syringes, filled with red powder, with wires running to a doorbell switch in a side pocket: detonators. He held the wires up to his ear and bent them in half; he heard the glass fiber-optic cables inside break. There was no metal component to anything he found. Ritter could have put the vest together and walked right through a metal detector.

This must be the death pact Garcia was talking about
, Ritter thought. The explosives fitted into the cash belt would make the wearer into a walking bomb, what he’d called a “suicide vest” in Iraq. But suicide wasn’t Jefferson’s goal; killing Congressman Hawker was. With only one suicide vest remaining in the tent, Jefferson must have the other.

“Eric, Congressman Hawker is at the DC Marriott for a fund-raising dinner. He’s scheduled to give a speech about—”

“Get me his security detail’s number ASAP and call in an anonymous bomb threat. Jefferson’s next target is the congressman. This time Jefferson
is
the bomb,” Ritter said.

The flap to the tent flew open. Shelton was there, his Glock aimed at Ritter. Ritter didn’t flinch as he slipped the blank sheet of paper into his jacket pocket, slow and easy for Shelton to see. The sheet with the names stayed cupped in Ritter’s hand.

“You’ve got something?” Shelton said as he holstered his pistol.

“I know his next target,” Ritter said.

****

Zike rubbed his sore jaw and poked at the tender flesh around his neck. The bruises might be mistaken for hickeys, which were decidedly unprofessional in his line of work. A high-collar shirt hid most of them, and as the senior agent on station, it wasn’t his job to be seen by his charge or by the attendees of tonight’s gala.

His perch on the mezzanine overlooking the Marriott rotunda looked out at the rows of chairs radiating in a wedge from the podium where Hawker would deliver his speech. The image wasn’t too dissimilar to the House of Representatives chamber where Hawker would wield the Speaker’s gavel in a few more weeks, if rumors were to be believed. Most of the seats were full of reporters and those rich enough to attend the $5,000-a-plate dinner and photo op following the speech.

A former college history professor turned Beltway think tank manager droned on about the cycles of history. Zike didn’t care to follow along; he kept his eyes on the two points of entry manned by his Secret Service detail.

Congressman Hawker had never considered canceling the event even while a mad bomber was loose in and around Washington, DC. He’d taken to one of the news networks and spoken about strength, about being brave in the face of fear, but that might prove to be a fatal mistake in the next few minutes.

“Sir, Hawker is in the restroom. ETA to the podium is five minutes,” an agent said to Zike. Zike dismissed him with a wave. His agents on the door were selected for their loyalty and adherence to the cause. They knew what to do when the right person arrived.

There. Jefferson made it through a cursory security check and walked stiffly to a seat that opened up next to the podium with convenient serendipity. The agent who gave up his seat so Jefferson’s line of attack to the congressman was short and unobstructed went to the restroom and would never return to the lecture hall.

Zike took the remote detonator, disguised as a thick pen, from his coat pocket. The Iranian had given Jefferson the triggers for the suicide vest. Each trigger had a special fail-safe in case the bomber had second thoughts about his mission. Terrorists in Iraq had pioneered the technique; sometimes martyrdom needed a gentle push. Jefferson was a true believer, but some things couldn’t be left to chance.