Smooth Operator (Teddy Fay) (19 page)

M
illie and Quentin rendezvoused at a roadside diner at five-thirty in the morning. They slid into a booth and ordered coffee and English muffins. The only other diners in the restaurant were some boisterous fishermen who were gearing up to head out, and an old man hunched over a piece of blueberry pie. No one seemed to be paying any attention to the young couple.

Quentin fished the map out of his pocket and spread it out on the table.

“I get the east and you get the west,” he said.

“That’s right,” Millie said.

“It’s kind of a lopsided map.”

“Oh?” Millie said.

Millie hated holding out on Quentin, but it was the nature of the beast. Fudging the map so as not to show Teddy’s area had
resulted in slight distortions. Some of the cabins that appeared to be hers were actually Teddy’s on the real map she had in her pocket.

“It’s a big job,” Millie said. “But if one of us finishes first, we can team up and help the other.”

—

AT THE FAR
END
of the counter the old man eating pie sighed. He shouldn’t have worried. Millie was doing fine.

Teddy had made a good decision to dress as the old agent Frank Grisham. The bald wig was slightly uncomfortable but well worth it. Without the disguise he wouldn’t have been able to hang out in the diner. Not at that time of the morning with so few people there.

Millie hadn’t recognized him, and she’d been working with him for days. He’d wanted to test out the disguise on her, and be there to personally evaluate the agent to whom he was entrusting a crucial part of the operation. Holly and Millie trusted Quentin Phillips, but a secondhand recommendation was never good enough for Teddy.

It was reassuring to see the young couple. Millie’s FBI agent seemed like a nice young man.

Teddy still wasn’t going to let him in on what was actually happening.

T
eddy was having no problem searching the cabins. He was posing as a none-too-swift private investigator and it was very effective. People were pleasant, even kindly, to the affable if somewhat bumbling old man who apologized effusively for the intrusion and frequently referred to his notes as if he were somewhat afraid this was an assignment he was incapable of doing.

“Milton Hasbrook,” he said, inventing the name out of whole cloth. “He claims the place is his, and points to a broken window to support his claim.”

“A broken window?” the woman who appeared to own the cabin, and probably did, said. “No such thing.”

“Well, I’d be very happy to report there was not,” Teddy said.

Teddy scratched a lot of cabins off his list, but had nothing
to show for it. In between stops he called Millie Martindale to see if she was doing any better.

“How’s it going?” he said.

“Well, I’m eliminating a lot of possibilities.”

“You skip anything?”

“No. I got in everywhere. Two cabins looked promising. One was a family on a camping trip. The other was vacant. The screen door was open, so I went in. There was no sign of the girl, and no indication she’d ever been there. It didn’t look like anyone had been there for a while.”

“You marked the location?”

“Absolutely, as a place to recheck. But my gut feeling is no.”

“Anybody give you trouble?”

“Not really.”

“You have to show your ID?”

“A couple of times.”

“What’d you use for a cover story?”

“I told them I was looking for an escaped mental patient with a habit of hiding in people’s cabins. They were glad to have me look.”

“They didn’t ask you why the CIA was tracking an escaped mental patient?”

“I may have had my thumb over that part of the ID. The important part’s the official seal and my photo.”

“Do you have many more cabins?”

“There appear to be quite a few.”

“Have you heard from Quentin?”

“He just called. Nothing yet, but a couple of possibles to recheck.”

“We’ve got to step up the pace. Congress reconvenes at two o’clock to take the vote. We’re not going to make it.”

“There’s four hundred some odd congressmen. Won’t a roll call vote take all afternoon?”

“They do it electronically. It won’t take more than fifteen minutes.”

“I’ve seen roll call votes where they stand up and say aye.”

“That’s the Senate. They only do it in the House when the electronic ballot fails.”

“How often does that happen?”

“Not often enough,” Teddy said. He hung up and called Kevin. “We’ve got to narrow this down. Have you got anything yet?”

“You’ll be the first to know.”

Teddy took a breath. “Listen, can you hack into anything?”

“I wouldn’t say
anything
.”

“A simple electronic calculator.”

“Connected to the Internet?”

“I don’t know, and I don’t have time to find out.”

“What do you need?”

A
bdul-Hakim parked his car two blocks away, walked down the quiet, suburban street to the unpretentious two-story frame house with the welcome mat and the insufficient security system. The zapper in his pocket raised the door on the one-car garage. This had not been left to chance. It had worked when he tested it the day before.

There was a car in the garage, but that didn’t mean anyone was home. The congressman took a car service to work, another detail Abdul-Hakim had taken care to learn. He never left anything to chance, except when Calvin Hancock sprang things on him at the last moment, and then acted like it was his fault when they didn’t work out. Abdul-Hakim smiled with satisfaction, knowing he wouldn’t have to put up with Hancock much longer.

Abdul-Hakim slipped inside the garage, closed the door,
and switched on the light. The door to the house was unlocked. If it hadn’t been he had the tools to pick it, and plenty of time to do so. But there was no need.

A small breezeway led into the kitchen. He set his briefcase on the kitchen table and popped it open. He took out a box of disposable latex gloves, selected a pair and pulled them on. He took a dish towel from the kitchen sink and went back and polished any surface he might have touched on his way in. He’d been careful and there weren’t many, still he made a good job of it. It was something that had to be done. He couldn’t walk around the neighborhood in latex gloves; he might as well have the word
burglar
tattooed on his forehead.

He left his briefcase on the table and searched the house. It was as unpretentious inside as it was out. The TV in the living room wasn’t even high-definition; it was the old-fashioned tube type. He clicked it on and flipped through the channels. It had only the most basic cable. It certainly didn’t have C-SPAN. He clicked it off again. The only news reports he’d get in the afternoon would be if something happened. By then he’d be gone.

Abdul-Hakim checked out the rest of the downstairs rooms. There was a small dining room and a study. The study had a wooden desk that had seen use, and a swivel desk chair.

There was a computer on the desk, an ancient affair that still used floppy disks. It couldn’t upload data from a computer chip. At least it was attached to a printer, albeit a microdot, not a laser jet.

Abdul-Hakim sighed. He went back to the kitchen, got his
briefcase, and brought it into the study. He sat down at the computer and opened the word processing program.

He opened his briefcase on his lap, took out the file folder, and set it on the desk next to the computer. He closed the briefcase and set it on the floor.

Abdul-Hakim flipped the file folder open and began typing.

T
here was no way Kevin was getting close to the Capitol, particularly with a tool kit. He found a loose manhole cover three blocks away. Careful no one was looking, he pried it up and climbed down the ladder below, closing the cover above him.

The sewer was dry, but filled with sludge. He’d ruin his shoes, but aside from at the White House, he seldom wore them. He took his flashlight out of his bag, got his bearings from the GPS in his cell phone, and set out.

A rat scurried down the tunnel in front of him. Kevin flinched, and gave ground. The movement was enough to spook the rat. It stopped, turned, and vanished in the darkness. Kevin took a breath to calm himself and followed the rat down the tunnel.

Even in the sewer he couldn’t get close to the Capitol.
Padlocked iron gates blocked his progress. No matter. His flashlight beam played across the walls and lit up a veritable maze of pipes and conduits.

Kevin took the printout he’d downloaded from Holly’s secure server, and tried to make sense of it all.

—

SPEAKER BLAINE GAVELED
the House into session shortly after two o’clock. At least he tried to. He was besieged by fellow congressmen shouting indignant questions and demanding to know how he intended to vote. He banged the gavel again and again with very little effect. He grabbed the microphone.

“Congressmen, please take your seats. It’s time to vote on the proposition.”

The announcement merely set off a fresh barrage of shouted protests. It took a good half hour for everyone to settle down and get seated. When they were finally in place, the Speaker banged the gavel again, and had the clerk read the proposition. It was the clean, unamended version, to be voted on first.

The reading of the bill was met with shouts of derision. The Speaker was wearing out the gavel.

The Speaker pulled the microphone to him. “All in favor.”

“Aye!”

The ayes were met with a chorus of boos.

“Those opposed.”

“Nay!”

The ayes and nays were equally loud.

The congressman from North Carolina was on his feet. “Mr. Speaker, I call for a division of the House!”

“There is no need, Congressman,” Speaker Blaine said. “It is clearly too close to call. We will proceed with a roll call vote. This is done electronically. When the bill is uploaded on your screen, type in your password and vote aye or nay.”

The Speaker set down his gavel, took a sip of water, and mopped his brow. Every congressman in the room had seen his lips move during the voice vote. There was no more fence-straddling. No more equivocation. No more bipartisan bluffing. The Speaker had voted aye. The Speaker had supported the bill. At least some Republican congressmen would surely follow. Within fifteen minutes the bill would have passed.

The Speaker prayed what he was about to do would save his daughter.

The ballot appeared on the screen. All that remained was for him to bang the gavel and tell them to enter their votes.

The Speaker took a breath.

Every light in the room went out.

I
t was actually every light in the Capitol. Kevin couldn’t hack into the voting system, at least not in time, and he’d had to rely on the primitive method of severing a power line. It was surprisingly easy to take out the Capitol. The hard part was not taking out the White House, too, which would have wiped out his wiretap.

Considering the notice he’d been given, it wasn’t a bad job. The main thing was not getting caught. Kevin hadn’t asked what would happen if he did, but he was sure they’d all disavow any knowledge of him.

Kevin hurried back to the manhole. He had a moment of panic when the sewer branched and he couldn’t remember which way he’d come. He consulted his GPS. He’d made a wrong turn. He retraced his steps and got back on track. It seemed like
forever, but was really no time at all. He reached the manhole and climbed the ladder.

Kevin tentatively pushed up the manhole cover, and dropped it again as several police officers hurried by in the direction of the Capitol.

He also dropped his flashlight. He could hear it clatter at the bottom of the sewer. He climbed down the ladder and fumbled for it in the dark. He found it, switched it on, and climbed back up the ladder.

This time there was no one there. Kevin shoved his bag of equipment onto the street and crawled out after it. He eased the manhole cover back into place and slipped between two parked cars just as an official-looking vehicle hurtled down the block.

Kevin let the bag of equipment hang down his side as inconspicuously as he could, and strolled along with a nonchalance he didn’t feel.

—

THE CONGRESSMEN
were not in the dark for long. The emergency lights came on at once, and the backup generator kicked in a minute later. The generator ran the lights and the air-conditioning units and almost everything else electrical in the Capitol building.

There was one glaring exception.

“It doesn’t work?” Speaker Blaine said.

“No, sir,” the young aide said. “It won’t run off the generator.”

Congressman Blaine felt as if he were losing his mind, as if he were in some bad dream from which he could not wake up. His daughter was going to die unless he managed to complete the roll call vote, and the equipment he needed to take it wasn’t functioning. That wouldn’t matter as long as the kidnappers knew the vote was going forward, that it would be taken and completed this very afternoon. That was all they had asked for, and all he had promised them. And, by God, he was going to deliver.

“Very well,” he said. “The clerk will have to read the roll.”

“Sir?”

“We’ll do it the old-fashioned way. We’ll have a genuine roll call vote. The clerk will read the roll, the congressmen will stand when they hear their name and cast their vote, and the tally will be taken.”

“Can that be done?”

“Of course it can be done. What do you think we did before there were computers?”

The young aide, who had never experienced life without computers, had trouble envisioning such a time, but he hurried off to find someone who knew how to conduct a roll call vote.

T
eddy snatched the cell phone off the passenger seat. “Yes?”

“It’s Kevin. I took out the Capitol, but they have a backup generator.”

“What?” Teddy said irritably.

“Sorry. I couldn’t hack the system so I cut the power lines to the Capitol. Knocked the whole building out. Backup generators kicked in, but they can’t run the voting system. They’re going to have a roll call voice vote.”

“Has it started yet?”

“No, but anytime now. They’re setting it up.”

“I take it the Speaker hasn’t gotten another call?”

“No.”

“Okay, hang in there.”

Teddy tossed the phone on the seat and heaved a sigh of relief. It had been a gamble, knocking out the voting system.
Congress could just as easily have decided to postpone the vote until it was working again. But the Speaker had prevailed. They were taking a roll call vote.

Teddy wondered how much time it bought him.

—

THE AIDE REPORTED
BACK
to the Speaker. “It’s all set. The clerk and some of the aides are keeping track of the votes. And they’ll be keeping a running tally on C-SPAN.”

“Of course,” Speaker Blaine said flatly. “They have power for the TV cameras, but not for the voting machine.”

When the congressmen had more or less reassembled the Speaker gaveled the session to order. “It is time for the roll call vote. Since the electronic method is not working, the clerk will read the roll. When your name is called, stand and respond ‘Aye’ or ‘Nay’ so your vote will be tallied. The clerk will read the motion.”

The bill was read again while the congressmen grumbled. No one listened. They all knew what it said, or didn’t care and were voting party lines.

The clerk proceeded to call the roll. It went smoothly with no real surprises until he got to the Speaker.

“Congressman Charles Blaine, Republican, Ohio.”

The Speaker stood. He looked around the room, paused, and took a breath. “Aye.”

Congress burst into an uproar. There were shouts of protest.
Congressmen sprang from their chairs. There were cries for the Speaker’s resignation.

But when the roll was finally resumed, one thing was immediately clear.

Several Republican congressmen, not wanting to be left behind, were joining the Speaker and voting for the motion.

Speaker Blaine sat in silence, watching his political career go up in smoke.

He prayed it was enough to save his daughter.