Capitol Punishment (An Art Jefferson Thriller Book 3) (33 page)

“We have,” Frankie said.

“Well, then you know more than I can give you already. He was closer to Monte Royce than I was.”

But you were the one to help Royce
. Art thought on that for a brief second. Maybe Royce thought Crippen would balk at the request. Maybe not. It was just the luck of the draw. Vorhees had come up short.

“If you’ll excuse me?” Vorhees said, politely waiting for a nod, or some signal that his inquisition was finished.

*  *  *

Darian eased the Volvo through the intersection after pausing at the four-way stop, looking right past Moises at their next target. “Those are pigs. I can smell ‘em.”

Jesus!
Moises slid a bit lower in his seat.
That’s him. The FBI guy.

The Volvo passed through the intersection and continued down Monroe. Vorhees’s residence was eight houses down. Darian slowed as they passed. “Did you get the route down?”

“Yeah,” Moises said, coming back up in his seat.

“What’s the matter with you?”

“Nothing.”
You can’t tell him that pig was in your house. Who’d believe that and not think you were a snitch?
“When you said there were pigs there I got nervous.”

“Pigs are pigs are pigs,” Darian said. “They bleed, they die, just like anyone. Funner to kill than ordinary people, though.” He’d only killed one pig up close— several had died in the World Center attack—but he was certain that would change before too long. “So you got it?”

Moises tapped the marked-up map book on his lap. Three times now they’d followed the gimp on his nightly walk, and each time he’d taken the same route. He was either cocky or stupid, Moises thought. An easy target. An opportune target.

“Let’s get home,” Darian said, accelerating down the street as the sight of the waddling congressman became visible in the rearview. The pigs were done with him. But
they
weren’t.

*  *  *

Toby opened the long brown box and lifted the contents out with one hand. It wasn’t light, but it wasn’t heavy either. He knew that weight would be the key to making this work. “Looks fake as hell, huh?”

John took the prosthetic limb, cradling it with both hands. It was roughly flesh colored, though one could tell by appearance that its surface did not approach the softness of real flesh. To touch it one would know that its exterior was a hard plastic material. The top, where the stump of the limb amputated below the knee fit into a form-fitting cup, was heavier in balance, as was the bottom. At that end a crude foot was attached. It rotated on a metallic ball joint through only a front-back motion to allow the wearer to walk, though not naturally or comfortably. This was a clunker, John knew. Not a new model at all.

“Are you sure it’s the right one?” John asked.

“It was in the file, and the Africans said the doc confirmed it.” Toby touched the artificial limb. “And it’s a good thing I was able to find this used. They don’t even make this model anymore.”

“Used is better,” John said. “It’ll look natural.” But looks were only part of the equation. Function was another. That they would start with immediately. “We’ve got work to do.”

“In the garage, Pop?”

John headed that way. “That’s where the tools are.”

*  *  *

While his father and brother toiled with the work of the hand, Stanley Barrish availed himself of a more cerebral activity a hundred and fifty miles to the east. Namely, reading the paper.

The Wednesday
Washington Post
carried the information he’d been waiting for on page five, in a little blurb that barely used two column inches to explain.
The Secretary of State. Well...
Stanley had read enough about the ways of appearance-conscious Washington—far more than his older brother—to know that having the secretary of state not attend the State of the Union address deserved more exposition in the capital’s paper. Maybe that would come in the days ahead. It was only two days after Christmas, and this little tidbit had obviously been released by the White House to be buried while most of official Washington was away enjoying a long winter break. That might be so, but Stanley had all he needed to get started.

The first question to be answered was
where?
Where would the secretary of state be the evening in question? Would he watch the speech from the State Department? Probably not. It was too close to the actual event. From a secret location somewhere? If that was the case, there would be little he could do to find it. Stanley knew he had a talent for subterfuge, but he wasn’t a magician. So he had to focus on what he could do, on what he could glean from sources available to him. It might take time. It might not. But he wasn’t going to find the answer in the Virginia capital.

He left Richmond, where he’d stayed the night before, experimenting with the pleasures of a pretty young girl, and drove north to Washington after reading the morning
Post
. The trip on Interstate 95 took two hours to the beltway, then another forty minutes before Stanley crossed the Roosevelt Bridge to reach the District of Columbia proper. His first destination was a somewhat random choice. Almost anywhere with a public building would do, but there was one place not far that at least held some interest. A short jaunt up the Rock Creek and Potomac Parkway, past the Kennedy Center, brought him to that place: the Watergate. It was home to a dark chapter in American political history.

It was also home to banks of public phones.

Stanley Barrish parked and entered the Watergate with the
Post
folded under his arm and chose a phone at the end of a line of three. The two to his right were empty. He opened the Post to its listing of phone numbers and editors and circled the number for the city desk, dialing after checking that no one was in earshot.

“Editorial, city desk.”

“Yeah, this is Paulie Schwartz. Litton advanced optics. One of your photo crews needed a low-light lens, and I’m supposed to deliver it to the shoot site. But I don’t know where that is. Do you have the photo assignment desk number?”

“I’ll transfer you.”

Simple enough, Stanley thought. But that was the easy lie. The next one would require more guile.

“Assignment desk.”

Stanley looked to the photo credit under the largest photo on page five, reading the name into memory before speaking. “Yes, is...uh...Mr. Heidell in?”

“Chuck Heidell? Hold on.”

It was a chancy shot, to be sure, but Stanley was banking on the supposition that most photographers for a big city paper probably spent little time in the office. They didn’t take pictures of colleagues at their desks, after all. Out and about was their business. Or so he hoped.

“Chuck’s out. You want to leave a message?”

“Uh, this is Billy in research. Mr. Heidell wanted me to pull any stories on a specific address for him. He wanted to see any accompanying photos, I guess. But I don’t know where the house is.”

“Billy...are you new here?”

“Yes...”

“I thought so, because if Chuck ever heard you calling him
mister
he’d eat you for lunch.”

“Oh. Okay. I didn’t—”

“Yeah, all right. So you need, what, an address?”

“Yes. He said it’s the secretary of state’s house.”

“Hang on.”

It was
that
simple? Stanley wondered if he could bluff his way into the White House. His dad would
love
that. Probably.

“You got a pen.”

“Yeah,” said “Billy.” Stanley copied the address onto the margin of the
Post
and thanked the photo desk. He was back in his car and heading across the Roosevelt Bridge ten minutes later, this time going north on the GW Parkway to the Lee Highway. Falls Church, Virginia, was eight miles distant.

Hillsborough Drive curved off of Lee Highway just past the Leesburg Pike. Stanley slowed the cream-colored Toyota as he entered the residential street, both because of the speed limit and to admire the beautiful homes.
Fashionable
, they were called, but the younger Barrish boy had no point of reference for comparison. He’d never lived in, or near, houses like those he was passing. They were huge, many with red brick facades that seemed calming somehow. At least he thought so.

He was not there to admire, though, and such idle thoughts would only remove focus from his task. He was there to look for one house. Just one.

But he almost missed it, the address placard blocked by a phone company truck parked facing the wrong way. Stanley passed the address, noticed he’d skipped a number, then backed up, stopping just feet from a phone company worker at the back of the open van.
Phone Company?
He looked up at the fine Tudor-style house beyond the natural carpet of green. Number 695.
Mr. Secretary’s house. And some phone trouble to boot... Or, maybe...

“Hey, buddy.”

The phone worker looked left to Stanley. “Yeah.”

“My folks live down the street,” Stanley lied. At least this one didn’t require that a false name be used. “Is there phone trouble?”

“Nah. Just adding some lines here.”

Stanley nodded, and as he did a second workman emerged from number 695 Hillsborough Drive, coming down the meandering walk to the truck. A smile joined the nod. “Great. Thanks a lot.”

Adding lines? I wonder why they’re doing that?
Stanley asked himself as he steered the Toyota back toward Lee Highway. He didn’t have to think long to convince himself of the answer.

TWENTY FOUR

Function

Almost two weeks it had taken. Now, though, they were ready for final assembly.

“Give me the cylinder,” John said.

Toby handed the small tank of destruction to his father with one hand. John accepted it with two and slid it into the padded skeletal frame he’d carefully constructed from the lightest, strongest metal he could get his hands on: titanium.

Weight. That had been the determining factor in how to do it. The plan was simple enough; get the cylinder of VZ into Vorhees’s leg and he’d unknowingly get it into the State of the Union for them. A timer would do the rest after that. Predicting when a speech would start and end was not that difficult in the era of network television. The president would start at a certain time, or reasonably close to it, and word had already leaked out that the chief executive, a debater from his college days, was going to break the one-hour mark with this speech. It was backwards determination. Pick a time somewhere in the window of opportunity and subtract a hundred hours—the maximum length of the digital timer they’d chosen—and the “package” would go off at the appointed minute. There were other considerations, such as how to get the good congressman to switch limbs, but that had been taken care of...or would be very soon. All would work as planned.

Getting to this point with the package, though, had been a test of skill and ingenuity. The prosthetic limb Toby had acquired weighed in at six pounds even, the majority of which was the inch-diameter steel support column running from the metal ball joint—or ankle—to the cup in which the stump rested. This steel column was concealed in a hollow plastic form that approximated the shape of the human calf. That was cut away carefully for later replacement, giving access to the column. The first problem was this steel rod. It was in the way, making it impossible to fit the cylinder of VZ in the limb. The other consideration was weight. Even if there were room, the added mass of the cylinder would surely convince the congressman that something was amiss.

The only solution then was to replace one with the other. The rod, as severed just below the cup connector and above the ball joint—leaving three quarters of an inch on each as a base for connection—weighed in at three pounds and four ounces. The cylinder of VZ and its associated timing and release equipment tipped the scales at two pounds and twelve ounces. An eight-ounce difference. John figured they could afford an extra half-pound without changing the feel of the limb too much. Vorhees, after all, had probably not worn it since getting his newer, lighter limb thirteen months earlier. It would be somewhat unfamiliar even to him.

Sixteen ounces. One pound. That was what John had to work with to replace the structural service of the support column, while providing room for the cylinder of VZ. He first considered actually using the cylinder as part of the new support column, but discarded that thought after being unable to convince himself that it would not damage the workings of the release and timing mechanisms. He knew all this should have been thought of before Kostin chose the cylinders and filled them, but that was the past. He now had to make the best of what he had. And he finally came up with a solution. It came to him while staring at, not out, a window.

As any carpenter worth his salt knows, when one wishes to place a window in a previously untouched wall, there is the consideration of load that must be addressed. Walls in general home construction are made of a series of studs that run vertically, parallel to each other about sixteen inches apart. These studs form part of the support system of the structure, transferring the load of the roof or stories above to the foundation below. When cutting a window into a wall, several of these studs have to be removed to make an opening of the desired size. This leaves the top portions of the studs hanging, unable to transfer their share of the load to the foundation, and the bottom portions jutting up uselessly. It is the top portions that are critical, though, and the solution to the problem is something called a header. Simply, it is a horizontal piece of lumber, running between the complete outer studs and connecting to the dangling studs, allowing the weight
they
carry to be transferred to the foundation through the full studs supporting the header. The header allows the load to be transferred
around
the empty space.

Why not in his mini-construction project? John had thought.
No reason at all
, was the answer.

To achieve the transfer of load from the cup to the ankle he chose to create a metallic header of titanium that would curve over the top of the cylinder, looking much like the skeletal framework of a dome. This “dome” header then would mate with a skeletal tube, also of titanium, that had a slightly larger interior dimension than the outer dimension of the cylinder. The tube’s bottom was a slightly less curved “foundation” of titanium that was mated to the ankle joint. The design simply took the load around the cylinder as a header and studs carry it around a window opening.