The Fifth Assassin (12 page)

My brain starts making guesses. CIA… NSA… FBI… In this town, the acronyms are endless. But if he’s telling the truth—if he’s really on the same side I am—No. Nonono. There’s no way this is all just coincidence.

“We really should grab a drink sometime,” he says, putting his gloveless hand on my shoulder. It’s scarred even worse than his face. Whatever he was reaching for in that fire, he wanted it desperately.

“I didn’t realize I was leaving.”

“Sorry. I need to deal with this phone call,” he says, steering me to the door.

“Well, let me at least give you my email, and my phone at the Archives,” I say, going for one of my business cards. But as I reach for my wallet…

I pat my right back pocket. Then my left. Then my front pockets…

“My wallet!” I blurt, already mentally retracing my steps. “Maybe it fell out in your car…?”

“You check your coat pockets?” Marshall asks.

I pat my coat pockets. Right one. Then left. Sure enough, there it is. Left coat pocket.

“I do that all the time,” Marshall says as I stare down at my wallet.

The thing is, I never put it in my coat pocket. Ever.

“Let’s grab that drink ASAP,” Marshall says, opening the front door, his grin now spread across his face.

As he ushers me into the hallway, I’m still staring down at my wallet. I flip it open. My cards, my ID: Everything’s perfectly in place. I look up at Marshall, then back down at my wallet.

“Really glad we got to see each other, Beecher. Let’s do it again real soon,” Marshall says as the elevator pings behind me and he steps back into his apartment.

I jam my foot in his doorway, preventing it from shutting.

“Beecher, I really have to run…”

“One last question,” I tell him. “Do you remember a girl named Clementine?”

He squints, his glance sliding diagonally upward. “Clementine…?”

“Clementine Kaye,” I remind him. “From that night… With the closet…”

He presses his lips together, shaking his head. “Sorry, Beecher, I don’t. Remember, I left when we were still little.”

With a final slam, he’s gone.

I stare at his closed door. Whatever Marshall’s up to—whatever really happened last night at the church, and whether this has anything to do with Clementine—there’s only one detail I know for sure: I don’t know this guy at all anymore.

But he also doesn’t know
me
.

In the elevator, I pull out my phone and hit the speed dial for Tot’s office. It rings once… twice… then clicks.

“Please tell me Marshall wasn’t home and you’re driving back here right now,” Tot says.

“Tot…”

“Don’t
Tot
me, Beecher. Was he there or not?”

“What’re you going so nuts about?” I ask.

“Because I just got off the phone with Mac, who just got off the phone with a source, who just got off the phone with someone at the White House. Guess who your pal Marshall Lusk really works for?”

A
s he entered the Chinese restaurant known as Wok ’n Roll, Agent A.J. Ennis headed for a booth in the very back.

It was the opposite from Secret Service protocol. In most restaurants, especially where they were guarding a VIP, agents were stationed by the
front
door so they’d have first crack at anyone who raced in.

Today, A.J. was happy in back. Glancing down at his watch, he saw it was—

Ding
, the small bell above the door rang.

Usually, doctors were notoriously late, but with this one… considering everything going on… Right on time.

Clearly upset, Dr. Stewart Palmiotti threw himself into the seat across from A.J., his back to the front door.

“Why’d you pick this place?” Palmiotti growled.

“Wok ’n Roll? He told me you liked it,” A.J. said. “Said you had history here.”

Palmiotti sat there, his mind tumbling back over two decades—before Wallace was President… before he was even governor—when they took a road trip to Washington during law school. With no money in their pockets, cheap Chinese food was always a good option. But the reason the President first brought them here? As the bronze plaque outside the restaurant pointed out, back in 1865, Wok ’n Roll was originally Mary Surratt’s boarding house, where all the Lincoln conspirators, including John Wilkes Booth, plotted to kidnap Abraham Lincoln.

“I just figured… y’know, with this Booth thing—”

“
Is this a damn joke to you!?
” Palmiotti hissed.

“Doc, chill out…”

“Or maybe you think it’s a game! Like we’re playing Monopoly, and you’re the race car, and I’m the dog… and you just move me around the board—”

“Doc…”

“I lost my life! I don’t have a life—!”

A.J.’s hand shot across the table, like a viper. “
Listen to me
,” he growled, gripping the underside of Palmiotti’s wrist and squeezing hard enough to compress all the blood vessels and nerves. Hard enough so Palmiotti stopped talking. The few customers around them stopped staring and went back to their meals.

Palmiotti unclenched his jaw, trying to swallow. He was in pain.

“Listen, Doc—I know what you gave up,” A.J. whispered, leaning into the table and easing his grip. “I know. And
he
knows. So if it makes you feel better, the only reason he told me to take you here is because you liked it.”

Seeing the doctor’s calm return, A.J. released his grip and sat back in his seat. From the wooden bowl between them, he stole a handful of crunchy Chinese noodles, tossing them back one by one and studying the man who was across the table from him.

Palmiotti was the same age as President Wallace. But over the past month… these new lines on his face… plus the way he stared down at the empty table… The bullet wound had taken its toll. He looked twenty years older.

“Doc, your friend needs you right now.
The President needs you
,” A.J. added, sitting straight up and no longer reaching for Chinese noodles. “To pull this off… especially with Beecher so close…”

“I can do it,” Palmiotti whispered.

“You sure?”

“I can do it. I’m already doing it,” he insisted. “He knows I won’t let him down.”

“Not just
him. Us
,” A.J. said. “All of us. We’re all in it. Like a team.”

Palmiotti nodded. Slowly at first. Then faster. The words made him feel better.
Like a team.

At that moment, a busboy came by, putting two water glasses on the table. The two men didn’t say a word until the busboy was gone.

“So you hear anything else from Clementine?” A.J. finally asked.

Palmiotti shook his head. He was staring at the water glasses, watching drops of water swell and skate down the sides of the glass. Like tears.

“But you think the rest is going well?” A.J. asked.

Palmiotti nodded. “This’ll be a big win for us.”

Now A.J. was the one nodding. That’s what he needed to hear.

From the bowl, Palmiotti took a single crunchy noodle. “A.J., can I ask you a question?” Before A.J. could even reply, Palmiotti added, “How’s he doing?”

“He’s doing fine, Doc.” There was a pause. “I think he misses you.”

“I miss him too. We’ll have our time, though.”

“You will.”

“At the Presidents’ Day event. We’re still on for that, yes?”

“Absolutely,” A.J. promised, putting both palms flat on the table and getting ready to stand.

“Do me one favor, though,” Palmiotti urged. “Don’t tell him I lost my cool today, okay?”

“Of course,” A.J. said, rising from his seat and never taking his eyes off the doctor. “I’d never say a word.”

J
ust tell me who he works for, Tot.”

“Not until you get far away from him,” Tot warns in my ear. “Your pal Marshall… Promise me, Beecher. This is not someone you want to be around.”

“Relax, I’m nowhere near him,” I insist, sitting in the pristine 1966 pale blue Mustang, two blocks from Marshall’s building. From the angle I’m at, I’ve got a perfect view of his garage in back. Marshall said he had to run out. Like he had an emergency. So whenever he drives out—wherever he’s going—I’m going with him.

“Beecher, please don’t be stupid. You think I don’t know you’re trying to follow him?”

“You just said the killer was wearing a plaster Abraham Lincoln mask—right as I find a plaster Abraham Lincoln mask in Marshall’s apartment. You really telling me you don’t want to know where he’s going right now?”

“No, what I’m telling you, is, you’re being reckless. Without any training—”

“Tot, you said the most important part of this job would be me using my brain. I’m using it. If he wanted to kill me, he could’ve done it in his apartment. Otherwise, I’m the only one here right now. So I either follow him, or we lose him,” I say as the door to the underground garage opens. A white Mercedes shoots out with a black woman at the wheel. Not Marshall.

“You’re still not listening, Beecher, because when it comes to superpowers, your friend Marshall’s superpower is
this
: losing people and getting away.”

Up the block, the Mercedes disappears around the corner, and the garage door lowers back into place.

“Just tell me who he is. Navy SEAL? FBI? CIA?”

“Oh, he’s far worse than that. According to Immaculate Deception, Marshall Lusk is GAO.”

“
Government Accountability Office?
” I say, referring to the guys who do our audits. “They’re America’s accountants.”

“No. That’s where you’re wrong. Accountants deal with numbers. What the GAO does is look for waste and inefficiency.”

“And that’s different from an accountant because…?”

Up ahead, the garage door again opens. This time, a light gray Toyota rolls out. Another woman at the wheel. But just as the garage door is about to roll down, it jerks back up.

Another car pokes its nose out. A navy SUV.

Marshall’s car. With Marshall behind the wheel.

As he takes off, he’s two blocks ahead. I give him another block as a head start. He’s in a rush, but I still see him.

Time to find out where he’s going.

B
eecher, listen to me,” Tot says through the phone as I kick the gas and trace Marshall’s path. “You ever hear of something called
pen testing
? Penetration testing?”

Up ahead, Marshall weaves through traffic. But as he makes a sharp left, it’s clear he’s going straight to the highway—north on 110—back toward Washington.

For the most part, he sticks to the left lane, making good time. I let him keep his lead.

“Long before SEAL Team Six or even the Navy SEALs themselves,” Tot explains, “there was a group known as the S&Rs—Scouts and Raiders.”

“The first group of frogmen,” I say, sticking behind a white van and using it to stay out of sight. “I’ve seen their files in the Archives.”

“Exactly. The Scouts and Raiders started eight months after the attack on Pearl Harbor—made up of army and navy men. And in 1943, these sneaky sons of bitches’ graduation exercise was supposedly to kidnap the admiral in charge of the 7th Naval District. During wartime!”

“Did they do it?”

“The point is, that’s what penetration testing tells us. When our own guys break in and grab an admiral, that tells us we have a real problem in security. The military’s used it for decades: hiring units to try and penetrate our top facilities, from nuclear depots, to Air Force One.”

Up ahead, as we approach Arlington Cemetery, Marshall’s SUV veers to the right, following the exit toward the roundabout at Memorial Bridge. Time to pick up the pace. “So that’s what Marshall
does now?” I ask as I pull out from behind the white van and hit the gas.

“It’s what
everyone
does now. These days, we have people trying to break into the White House, into the Capitol, even into the cafeteria at the Air & Space Museum.”

“Like when you see those news stories about guys successfully sneaking knives onto airplanes.”

“Penetration testing,” Tot says as I spot the roundabout up ahead. The few cars around us all begin to slow down. I’m now barely five or six cars behind Marshall. He’s never seen my car. I pull down my sun visor so he can’t see my face. “After 9/11, the GAO realized that it wasn’t just useful for the military. It’s a test for all of us,” Tot explains. “Penetration testing isn’t just about
breaking in
. It’s about
solving problems
.”

“So again, back to Marshall,” I say. “He does these penetration tests.”

“And does them well. That’s how he got out of jail last night. In his line of work, when things go bad, he’s got a direct line to the Justice Department, who’ll get him out of any mess he gets into. But yes—from what we can tell, he’s spent nearly four years in the GAO’s Office of Investigations.”

“So why do I hear that worried tone in your voice?”

“Because he’s the
whole office
, Beecher. There used to be a few of them, but once Marshall came in… that’s it. He’s all they needed. According to our source, when he first started, Marshall was sent to break into some unlisted military base out in Nebraska, and since the general in charge of the base didn’t want to be embarrassed—which is what happens when strangers break into your military base—the general actually broke the rules and told his security guys that Marshall was coming… that they should keep a serious lookout. That night, at three in the morning, Marshall was standing in the general’s bedroom—and woke up the general by putting a gun to his head and whispering, ‘
You lose
.’ ”

As Marshall’s SUV merges onto the roundabout by Memorial Bridge, my thoughts run back to his apartment—to my wallet being
in my coat pocket and me telling myself that there’s no way Marshall could’ve pulled it off.

“Now you understand why I don’t want you confronting him? Look at the facts from last night: for a guy like Marshall—a guy who regularly sidesteps the best security in the world—for him to get nabbed coming out of a church… by two D.C. beat cops…”

“It was bad timing. Maybe the cops just got lucky.”

“No. There’s no luck. Not with people like this, Beecher.”

“So what’re you saying? That Marshall killed this rector and then got arrested
on purpose
?”