The Fifth Assassin (47 page)

“I’m your daughter,” Clementine offered.

Nico almost turned away. But he didn’t.

“I thought you’d be with Beecher,” he finally said.

“I’m not.”

“He’ll be looking for me. They’ll all be looking for me.”

“I understand,” she insisted. “I’m still your daughter.”

Clicking his front teeth together, Nico felt his cheeks rise into a crooked grin. “I need a razor,” he insisted.

“We can get it later,” she replied, kicking the gas and twisting the wheel as the car took off up 6th Street.

“I need it now. I need a razor right now,” he told her, staring up at the passing storefronts and streetlights. It’d been so long since he’d been outside the hospital.

Ten minutes later, after a quick stop at a nearby CVS while Nico waited in the car, Clementine handed her father a can of shaving cream, a set of disposable plastic razors, and a bottle of water.

“You don’t have to do this now,” she said, sending the car racing up the street. Next to her, Nico popped open the shaving cream and sprayed it into his hand.

With a quick smudge, he spread the cream into his black hair and tore open the bag of razors with his teeth.

“You need to use the water,” she told him.

Nico didn’t care. Starting at the back of his own neck, he pressed the blade to his skin and tugged upward, taking out a square of black hair and leaving a tiny nick of…

“You’re bleeding,” Clementine said, turning quickly and pulling onto a quiet side street where they’d be better hidden. “Please… can’t this wait?”

But it couldn’t. If Nico was in pain, he didn’t show it. Rinsing the blade with a dump of bottled water, he started again, working his way upward.

Shutting the car and watching him, horrified, Clementine assumed he was worried about being seen or recognized. By now, his picture was all over the news. But as the clumps of hair fell away, she noticed there was something else besides stripes of shaving cream and streaks of blood on the back of his head. At first, she could only see the edge of it: a thin line. It was muddy and pale green.

“Is that a tattoo?” Clementine asked, mesmerized as she studied its curved lines. Slowly, Nico worked the razor upward, shaving his own head.

“No,” Nico said. “It’s a symbol.”

With a sharp tug, the metal blade swallowed a final chunk of black hair from his nearly bald skull, which was shaved down the center like a lawn mower plowing a jagged line through a black forest. But it wasn’t until Nico lowered the razor and turned toward the passenger window that Clementine got a good look at what—for decades now—he’d kept hidden underneath. The final secret Nico Hadrian had kept from them all, even the Knight: a small tattoo that dated back to the Renaissance, where it was the fifth and final suit in certain decks of cards: a crescent moon.

The final suit of the final Knight. And the clear sign that—dear Lord, he had no choice but to admit it now—this mission had always been his.

His body shook, fighting to contain the tears he was keeping inside. In that moment, his entire life made sense. This was why he was chosen. Fate had led him to so many places—and now, once again, it had led him back here. Back to the original mission. Like his predecessors, like his fellow Knights, it was his destiny to kill the President of the United States.

The Knights of the Golden Circle would live again.

Facing the back of her father’s head, Clementine studied his reflection in the passenger-side window. “You know you don’t have to do this,” she told him.

Nico raised his close-set eyes, staring back at her. “That’s what you’ve never understood. I don’t have a choice.”

Knowing better than to argue, and wondering if he might actually be right, Clementine continued to study her father’s reflection. The more hair he took off his head, the more he looked like Clementine without her wig.

“Were you being honest before?” Nico asked, running the razor up the side of his head. “Do you have my cancer in your body?”

Clementine nodded, feeling her blonde wig clamped against her skull. But as she started the car, she didn’t want to talk about cancer, or killing, or anything else. For the first time in her life, Clementine just wanted to enjoy a quiet night with her father.

One week later

Camp David

W
hat about meatballs. You like meatballs?” the President asked.

“You know I like meatballs,” eight-year-old Andrew replied, trailing behind his father through the cabin’s rustic living room.

“And do you like hamburgers?”

“Maybe.”

“Don’t say
maybe
,” Wallace told his young son, heading into the bedroom, toward his closet, where he pulled out a fleece pullover with the presidential seal on it. “That’s a rule for life. When someone asks you a question, say
yes
or say
no
. Stand for something. Now, do you like hamburgers?”

“Yes,” Andrew said assertively.

“And do you like taco meat?”

“May—Usually,” the boy said.

“
Usually
counts as a yes,” the President pointed out, sliding his arms into the fleece and pulling it on. As his head popped through the neckhole, Wallace’s hair was still perfectly in place. “Then you should like steak. Meatballs, hamburgers, taco meat… that’s all steak is, just in a different form.”

“But it’s harder to chew,” the boy countered.

Making his way back to the front door of the cabin, the President of the United States stopped and looked back over his shoulder
at his son. “You really are going to be a politician when you grow up, aren’t you?”

“I don’t like what I don’t like,” Andrew said.

“That’s fine. Tell Suzanne to make you some spaghetti instead. And tell your mother we’re not having any more children.”

Grinning at the victory, Andrew ran toward the kitchen.

“I’ll be back,” the President called out, still amazed, after the recent horror, how quickly life could return to normal.

For nearly a week now, the Secret Service had kept them all at Camp David, not just to help Wallace relax, but to let the nation catch its breath after the shooting. With no press to bother him, and barely any staff, Wallace played air hockey with his son, taught his daughter how to shoot a proper free throw, and spent his nights either watching a movie in the private theater or simply reading in front of the stone fireplace with his wife. Even when they were just having a meal together, his family was acting like a family again.

Still, that didn’t mean he couldn’t squeeze in a few business meetings.

Kneeling down on one knee, he double-knotted the laces on his running shoes. As he tugged open the front door, the frozen air chilled his cheeks, reminding him just how unforgiving the mountain winds could be. And how invigorating.

“Did you stretch?” he called out.

If Wallace were in the White House right now, there’d be a small army of staffers waiting, plus a half dozen uniformed and plainclothes Secret Service agents.

Today, at the foot of the porch, among the poplar and hickory trees of Camp David, there was just one. A young agent in a faded Duke sweatshirt.

“I’m all set, Mr. President,” A.J. replied.

Without another word, President Wallace began to run, slowly at first, giving A.J. a chance to join in. In no time, they were jogging side by side, away from the cabin known as Aspen, and away from the Secret Service command post.

As their breath snowballed from their lips, they followed the
main path, then a narrower path that broke off from it. The ground was hard in the cold, but it didn’t take them long to enter the southern part of Catoctin Mountain Park, where they picked up a trail known as Hog Rock Loop.

When George W. Bush was President, he used to love running Hog Rock, which was filled with beautiful streams and a nice big hill that put your calves and quads to the test. To this day, the Secret Service still joke that every time Bush was halfway toward the peak, he’d say the same thing to whichever agent was his runner: “Seemed like a good idea at the time.”

It
was
a good idea at the time.

Just as it was for Wallace and A.J. today.

Feeling the pitch steepen and his lungs tighten, the President still had a half-step lead. He knew A.J. was taking it easy on him, letting him set the pace. That is, until they spotted an old, warped picnic bench that sat under a towering tupelo tree. Picking up speed and checking over his shoulder, A.J. pulled ahead of the President and made a sharp left downhill, off the path, a clump of wet leaves shifting with his heel. Wallace followed him into the forest.

For nearly half a mile, the two men continued to run downhill side by side, cutting between trees, neither saying a word. Unlike the mostly paved path, the ground here was covered with snow, making it far more slippery. Every few yards, A.J. would scan the area—left to right, then up and down—making sure they were alone as he searched for…

There.

Up ahead, hidden by a thicket of mountain laurel bushes that were hardy enough to still be green in the winter, was a tall man in a dark overcoat. The President slowed down, eyeing the man’s black dye job. But even if his hair had been pink, Wallace would still know his oldest friend a mile away.

“Not even huffing and puffing, huh? Your color’s better too,” Dr. Palmiotti said.

“Y’know I still hate your hair like that,” the President teased, bending over and catching his breath.

“Nice to see you too, sir,” Palmiotti replied, his wide smile revealing just how happy he was to be back in the mix. Better yet, in over a week, his name still hadn’t appeared in the papers. At least that secret was safe.

“I take it things are going better?” the President asked.

Palmiotti knew what his friend was talking about. Lydia. “I appreciate you doing what you did. She sends her best.”

“You’re just happy you’re getting laid again,” Wallace said.

“Sir, we really need to make it quick,” A.J. interrupted, talking to the President, but shooting a scolding look at Palmiotti. This wasn’t a social call.

“So we’re back on track?” the President asked.

“Why don’t you ask the man himself?” Palmiotti replied, stepping aside and motioning to the thicket of mountain laurel behind him.

From behind the bushes, a man with thin, burnt-away lips stepped out as javelins of sunlight stabbed down from the treetops at his candlewax skin.

“Here he is, America’s unsung hero,” the President said, offering Marshall a toothy grin.

Marshall didn’t grin back, his gold eyes glancing around the empty forest. “You sure there’re no cameras here?”

“No cameras,” A.J. insisted.

It didn’t make Marshall feel any better.

“What’s wrong, son?” the President asked. “You look miserable, even for you.”

“I don’t like being second-guessed,” Marshall said.

“Pardon me?” the President asked.

“You said you trusted me.”

“I do trust you.”

“But yet you still thought I was the Knight, didn’t you?” Marshall challenged. “That I was the one who killed those pastors.”

“Marshall…”

“Don’t insult me by denying it. Palmiotti and A.J. both said as much.”

“What’d you expect us to think?” Palmiotti asked. “First you
get caught at the scene of the crime, then the police find Beecher’s name in your pocket—”

“Stewie, stop talking,” the President scolded. Never taking his eyes off Marshall, he put a calming hand on his shoulder, massaging it with the same reassuring confidence that convinced Syria to sign last year’s peace accords. “Marshall, this lunatic we were fighting… this Knight who was trying to murder me… I’m sorry he killed your friend.”

“Pastor Riis wasn’t a friend. He was like a father.”

“And I know how precious fathers are. I do. Mine walked out when I was in my teens. My mother still used to kiss his picture every night before bed. But we picked you for a reason, Marshall. I hired you to do a job, not to race off on your own investigation.”

“Well in this case, you got a twofer,” Marshall shot back.

“Watch your tone,” Palmiotti warned.

“Then use your brain,” Marshall said. “You really think Beecher would’ve come along if I just showed up and said,
I really missed you, old pal
? That trick might’ve worked on him once, but it wasn’t gonna work again. Beecher needed to feel like
he
found
me
. And it worked. In fact, the way I see it, you got what you wanted
and
you’re still alive. So forgive me if I’m having a little trouble understanding why you’re still complaining.”

Palmiotti started to say something, but the President cut him off with a glance. Same with A.J. On a day like today, the time for fighting was over.

“Y’know, one of my agents, when he tackled you and the Knight to the ground,” the President began, his hand back on Marshall’s shoulder, “he kept it out of his report, but he said that you were talking to Frick, asking him why he killed Pastor Riis.”

“What about it?” Marshall asked.

“He said Frick died without replying. That you never got your answer.”

“Again, what about it?” Marshall repeated.

“I’m just saying, if you’ve been reading the papers, or at least the bloggers…”

“I don’t read bloggers.”

“That’s smart of you, Marshall. But even the mainstream press, well… at this point, it’s just conjecture, but considering the way the Knight was communicating with him, plus his recent escape from St. Elizabeths, and his ties to your hometown…”

“Are you trying to tell me that Nico was the one who sent the Knight after Pastor Riis?”

“Son, how could I possibly tell you that? The only person who knows that is Nico himself.”

“I’m not sure I understand your point, sir.”

“All I’m saying is, whoever catches Nico first—be it the Secret Service or anyone else in law enforcement… Well, it wouldn’t surprise me if Nico fights back with such ferocity, he takes a bullet to the neck and, like John Wilkes Booth or even Lee Harvey Oswald, never even makes it to trial.”

For a long moment, Marshall stared across at the President, who was a full head taller than him. “I appreciate that, Mr. President. But when do I get what we talked about?”