The Hearing (20 page)

He stopped talking, listened.

“Right. Be quick.” Waiting, he said to Todd, “They just got it from the van. They can tell from the way the dog—Yeah, right,
how long’ll that take? I need it in three minutes, latest. Right.”

He hung up.

“They’re getting another dog and an RF locator. Who’ve we got?”

Todd looked at a chart on the wall.

“Us and the judge.”

“Where’s Mrs. Parham?”

“Out.”

“Beggie?” The cook.

“Shopping. Something. I don’t know. Not in the house.”

“Louisa?”

“With Beggie. Who’s that?”

Two men in dark suits had arrived at the Mercedes, talking to a tall man in a green windbreaker. Another man jogged over from
the Norwegian embassy.

Knight was out the door.

Samantha watched him talk to the other men. Together they walked around the Mercedes.

Knight turned and ran back to the house. He came in yelling.

“Get the judge and Samantha in the limousine and
out
”

“Where did—”

“The Norwegians say the plates and the driver’s documents are all phony. Nothing matches. No one’s seen the driver since he
parked.”

Todd grabbed a set of keys off a hook on a wall board and started for the door.

Knight, punching numbers on the phone, yelled “Run!” Then, into the mouthpiece, “This is Knight at Blossom Three. We have
a confirmed explosives alert. We’re gonna need ATF and an EOD unit. Feebs, military, PD. Fast as you can. Right. And get Falco.”

He slammed the phone down and ran back to the street.

When Todd and Samantha reached the living room hallway they almost bumped into Gus coming down the stairs.

Gus said, “What’s up?” He seemed solemn and distracted. Taeger had had him in the witness chair for three hours that morning.

“Please come with me, sir. There’s a major security problem outside, and I’ve been ordered to take you and Miss Young out
in the limousine.”

“What’s the difficulty?”

Gus looked ready to go to the Box and find out for himself.

“An explosives vehicle, sir. We have to get out right now. Please.”

Gus said, “Let’s go. Where’s Mrs. Parham?”

“Still out, sir.”

“Carl?”

“He’s been called, sir.”

Gus followed Todd and Samantha to the garage. Todd
opened the back door of the limo for them, climbed into the front, put the keys in the ignition, but before he could close
his door he heard Knight’s voice calling to him from the door to the kitchen.

“They in the limo?”

Knight would not be able to see them through the tinted glass.

Todd yelled, “Yes.”

Knight said, “Leave them there.”

Carl, out of breath, appeared beside Knight. “Leave them where they are.”

Todd turned. “Do what?”

Knight said, “Leave them.”

“But—”

Carl said, “Leave them.” He turned and ran back to the street.

Another explosives dog, a brown-and-white beagle that arrived about two minutes after the first one alerted, walked its handler
directly to the back of the Mercedes and sat down, panting and wagging its tail. Pulled away on its leash, it immediately
returned and sat down.

“That’s it,” the handler told Carl. “Definitely.”

“All he did was sit down,” Carl said, trying to talk the handler out of it.

“That’s what he does. Smells explosives, he sits down. It’s there, believe me. Snoopy’s our best dog. Never misses.”

An ATF agent who’d come with the dog handler walked slowly around the Mercedes, examining the front, back, top, bottom. His
name was Rolf Zaeder, and he was older than Carl, well into his fifties, short and fat, a roly-poly little man with a ruddy,
jolly Santa Claus face. A small RF locator in his hand had already detected radio frequency emissions, con
sistent with a remote control receiver, coming from the Mercedes. Now Zaeder got down on his knees, breathing hard, and peered
underneath. He waved a hand at Carl.

“See that?”

Carl took a look. A thin, stiff, gray-colored wire protruded six inches along the bottom of the left side of the Mercedes,
disappearing into a hole the size of a pinhead.

“Antenna,” Zaeder said. “Only you don’t normally see antennas under the bottom of vehicles, do you? So something’s not exactly
kosher.”

Carl said, “Talk to me.”

“Probably comes from a remote detonator. Could be a garage-door opener, model-car radio control, cellular phone. Press the
button, flip the switch, dial the number, current goes into a blasting cap,
Va-voom
.”

Zaeder struggled to his feet, brushed dirt off his knees, but seemed in no rush to put distance between himself and the Mercedes.

Carl said, “So it’s a remote detonator. Not a timer.”

“Both.”

“You said—”

“If it’s a remote, there’s a timer too.”

“How do you know that?”

“They’ve got a remote, they’re waiting to see their target, waiting for something to happen, right? If it never happens, they
never see the target, what do they do? Get in the Mercedes and drive back where they came from? No way. People who use remotes
always—
always
—have a time limit. Usually a few hours. Rarely more than a day. Longest I ever saw was Cairo in ‘eighty-nine, car bomb at
the Jordanian embassy sat there two days, then
Boom!
Who wants to recover a car bomb? Real professionals, take pride in their
work, the device never gets taken, enemy never gets a chance to examine it.”

“So the Mercedes will sit there, and if nothing happens, eventually it’ll blow up all on its own.”

“Right. Eventually. Hours, days, who knows?”

“So what are you recommending?”

Zaeder took a deep breath and let it out in a long sigh. “If whoever has the remote hasn’t blown it yet, he hasn’t seen what
he wants to see. They’re waiting for something, an arrival or departure, maybe someone coming to the reception, or someone
at Blossom. If they know there’s fortification, they’ll want to get their target outside.”

Knight walked up, shook hands with Zaeder. “The PD’s evacuating neighboring buildings. I told them at least a square block,
maybe more.”

Carl said, “Is Blossom fortified?”

Knight said, “Up to five hundred pounds per square inch on the facade.”

Zaeder said, “The limo’s probably another three hundred.”

“If all the numbers are right,” Knight said, “the judge and Samantha have a chance inside the limo inside Blossom. Inside
the limo
outside
Blossom—in the driveway, on the street—it’s another story.”

Carl looked at Zaeder. He shook his head. “Outside, forget it. Zero.”

Carl said to Knight, “Let’s keep them where they are, at least for the moment. Till we work something out.”

Knight left. Zaeder kept his eyes on the station wagon. “I’d like to know what’s in that thing.”

“Guess.”

Zaeder made a face, eyebrows arched. “You could get
a thousand pounds into that vehicle, maybe closer to two thousand if you reinforced the shocks—half what they had in Oklahoma.
Ampho, dynamite kicker, do a lot of damage. High explosive, say Syntex or RDX, and it’d be a lot worse. The whole block’ll
go.”

“How much damage would it do to the house?”

“That house? There?” He pointed at Blossom. “Oh, it won’t damage that house at all. It’ll just totally mush that house right
down into the ground, squash it so flat you won’t even know there was ever a house there.”

“And someone inside?”

“Turn ‘em into slop.”

“Two people, inside an armored limousine in the garage.”

“Front of the house?”

“Back.”

“That’s good. Underground?”

“About halfway down. The house’s built on a hill, so part of the back of the first floor is underground.”

He shook his head. “Maybe. I don’t know. They might make it.”

“Odds?”

“Wouldn’t want to say. We don’t even know what’s in the thing. Won’t know till it blows up.”

“We’d prefer not to wait that long.”

Zaeder shot him a glance. He didn’t like the sarcasm.

Carl said, “No way to find out?”

“Oh, there’s a way.”

“And that is?”

“EOD. Explosive Ordnance Division.”

“What’d they do?”

“Start with a probe. Take a Customs probe, what they
use at the airport, find out is that cake you brought back from Paris filled with cocaine or diamonds. Drill a tiny hole
in the top of the Mercedes, stick in a probe, couple of feet long, little barb on the end, come out with a speck of ammonium
nitrate, you got an ampho bomb. Comes out with RDX, a whole different problem. Probe hits, say, six inches in from the top
and sides, the vehicle’s packed. Big, big problem. Not packed, not so bad. We might even cut a hole in through the top, get
a man in there, take a look at the detonator, see something familiar, easy disconnect, no problem. Hook up the Mercedes, tow
it way, everyone goes home safe and sound.”

He smiled, widely, ear to ear.

Carl said, “Put a
man
in there?”

“Yeah. Or a woman. Someone little. Squirm around. Depends is the Mercedes filled or not.”

“You’ve got people who do that?”

“EOD does. Oh, sure.”

“What kind of person would do that?”

“Someone not too tightly wrapped.”

S
amantha and Gus had been alone in the limousine for three minutes, and Gus’s eyes were in a hard stare. She didn’t want to
interrupt his thoughts. After another minute he looked at her.

“I’m sorry, Samantha.”

“Sorry for what?”

“That you’re … in this predicament.” He smiled, trying to encourage her. “But don’t worry, it’ll be okay. A lot of action,
right?”

“Yeah, really. At least if we’re stuck in a car it’s a limo. I never knew politics was this exciting.”

“It’s not politics. It’s a judicial process.”

She stretched her legs. Her feet didn’t even touch the back of the front seat. She had a lot of questions, but Gus didn’t
look like he needed questions. The limo had a TV. Maybe something would be on the news. Too soon for that. Also a fax machine
and a bar. Gus looked like he could use a drink.

With what she hoped was an encouraging smile, she waved a hand at the row of glasses in a door recess, and said, “Have a drink?”

Gus said, “What? I didn’t—Oh, no, thanks Samantha, I don’t think so right now. Thanks, anyway.”

It was twenty minutes since Gus and Samantha had been rushed into the limousine, and Carl stood with Knight in a growing crowd
of agents and police near the intersection of Blossom’s street with a traffic circle three blocks away.

Knight said, “I don’t like leaving them there. We ought to drive them out.”

His boss, chief of security for State Department domestic dwellings, had just arrived and was agreeing with Carl. “If there’s
a remote and they’re waiting for sight of Parham, he’s better where he is. We need to talk to the fortification people.”

Carl, standing on a patch of grass by the curb, said, “On their way. Along with everyone else.”

Knight, looking up the street, said, “Speak of the devil.”

A dark blue tractor-trailer made its way around the traffic circle. An FBI command truck, it had a yellow Justice Department
seal and the letters
FBI
emblazoned on the side. It pulled to the curb, and a man in the passenger seat jumped down.

An agent in a windbreaker with
ATF
on the back said, “I wouldn’t.”

The FBI man looked at him with a half-grin, uncertain.

The ATF agent said, “Move it or lose it.”

“Where would you put it?” The FBI man, understanding, had lost the smile.

“Up there. Out of sight. Get some buildings in the way.”

Ten minutes later the command truck was parked 200 yards up a side street at right angles to Blossom. Inside, counters running
the length of each side were covered with computer consoles, TV monitors, radios, telephones, and fax machines.

Knight, sitting in a wheeled swivel chair at the console nearest the entrance, said to Carl, “You have any opinion when that
thing might go off?”

“Any second. Or next week. Or when someone sees the judge come out, or Samantha. The device has a remote detonator, but it
also has a timer.” He repeated what Zaeder had said about remotes always having timers. “I’d love to know when the timer’s
set for. But right now we have to be more concerned about the remote.”

Knight said, “Who’s holding it, would you guess?”

“Who’s close enough to see? Norwegians? Brazilians?”

“Not too likely.”

Carl said, “Across the street?”

When Knight took over the Blossom security job, he’d read classified background reports on the neighbors. The Colombian Trade
Commission, which had moved in a year earlier across the street from Blossom, was run by the Colombian security service, tightly
linked to the cocaine traffic, and if there was nastiness in the area the Trade Commission would bear watching. He had also
seen a top-secret
White House “alert memo” mentioning Colombian agents and predicting a terrorist action in the capital.

Carl, who had also seen the memo as well as the hard data supporting it, had his own suspicions. The head of the Freedom Federation,
with a reputation like Helen Bondell’s for tooth-and-nail combat, had to have had something solid in mind, something that
scared her, when she took the time, trouble, and risk to meet a federal agent in a coffee shop to warn him about Vicaro.

Carl sat in the swivel chair next to Knight, picked up a phone, and called the limousine.

“Gus, it’s Carl.”

“What’s happening? Where’s Michelle?”

“Michelle’s fine. I’m not exactly sure where she is, but she’s not in the house. She went out someplace. She’s okay.”

“Tell me about the Mercedes, Carl.”

He told Gus about the explosives, the remote detonator. “We’re going to have to ask you to stay put for a while. We’ve got
about a million security folks out here, and more arriving. Samantha okay?”

“She’s fine. Find Michelle, Carl.”

“Don’t worry. I’ll call back. Are the keys still in the ignition? Todd said he left them there.”