She shook her head. “Believe me, I’ve wondered, but that whole time is just a foggy dream in my mind. He left a cooler with sandwiches, and some water, and I’m sure the food and water had more of whatever was in that hot chocolate. But it was like I didn’t even care. I barely remember any of it. Sometimes I even wonder if it happened at all.”
“I think it did, Molly. Please go on. How long were you there?” I asked.
“Three days. I was in and out the whole time. Then, at some point, I woke up again and I was just … back home. In my bed. There was a note from Rod, trying to apologize, and all of his things were gone.”
She took a long, deep breath and looked over at me for the first time since she’d started her story. She was still shaking, but not as much as before.
“That was it. A week later, I called a lawyer and filed for divorce. Rod didn’t contest it.”
“And you never pressed charges?” I asked.
“I never told anyone about this,” she said. “Not a soul. I know how that must sound, but … I don’t know. After losing Zach and everything else that happened, I just couldn’t stand to look back anymore. Like I’d go crazy if I thought about it too much. All I wanted was to move on.” She smiled again, sadly, down into her lap. “You must think I’m pretty pathetic.”
“No,” I said. I reached over and took her hand, fighting back my own tears. “Just the opposite. I think you might be a hero.”
ON THE WAY back to DC, I got Bob Shaw, the captain of MPD’s Homicide Unit, on the phone and started lining up an immediate mobile surveillance team on Rodney Glass. This detail needed to be as covert as possible. That meant pulling cars out of the pool that weren’t Crown Vics or Impalas — makes that screamed “undercover cop” to the informed eye.
I also gave Shaw a list of names from Narcotics and a few of the warrant squads — guys I knew had the look and skills to go unnoticed on the street. What I didn’t want was anyone who had been anywhere near the Branaff campus since this investigation had started.
That included myself. Glass knew me. I was going to have to stay on the fringes of this surveillance for the time being.
By four o’clock that afternoon, I was back in the city, and we had three cars positioned strategically around the school neighborhood, just as Glass was leaving for the day.
All of my team were carrying GPS locators so I could use a single laptop to track them from a distance in my own car. We had radio communication set up on an alternate, nonrecorded channel, which was as private as we were going to get on short notice. I parked several blocks away and listened in.
“This is Tango. He’s out the south gate. Green Subaru Forester, turning north on Wisconsin.”
“Go ahead, Tango. This is X Ray. I’ll cut around and get you somewhere after Thirty-seventh Street.”
“No problem. Bravo, hang back if you can.”
“Copy that.”
We had just enough units to run a floating box, with one car following for a while, then dropping off while another came in to take its place. I gave them some time to get ahead of me, then pulled around and brought up the rear from about half a mile back.
“Who’s got eyes on him?” I asked, once I was headed up Wisconsin the way they’d gone. “What’s he doing?”
“This is Bravo. He’s just driving. Listening to music, it looks like, tapping his hands on the wheel. Guy doesn’t seem like he’s got a care in the world.”
“Yeah, well, I think maybe he does.”
Glass stayed on Wisconsin for a couple of miles. It seemed like he might be headed into Maryland, but then I got word he was stopping in the Friendship Heights shopping mall. He parked in the lot outside Bloomingdale’s and walked over to the Mazza Gallerie mall.
I sent two guys inside after him and kept one circling the block, then parked myself just past the lot, where I could see Glass’s empty car.
For the next forty-five minutes, it was the usual kind of boring minutiae you get on ninety-nine percent of surveillance details. I sat and listened while Glass went to McDonald’s. Got a burger. Sat at one of the tables, reading a paperback copy of Sebastian Junger’s War, which I’d read myself. He didn’t seem to be in any kind of hurry. Nothing special about the day.
When he finally got up again, they followed him into Neiman Marcus, leapfrogging around the store while he looked at shoes and men’s shirts. It almost seemed like he was deliberately killing time for some reason.
And then suddenly he was gone.
“Tango, you got him?” I heard.
“Negative. Hang on a second. Hold on. I think he went into the bathroom.”
Another fifteen seconds ticked by. C’mon, c’mon, c’mon!
“What’s going on there?” I said.
“This is Tango. It’s not him in the bathroom. I think we might have lost him.”
“Lost him?” I said, trying not to rip anyone’s head off — yet. “Or he gave you the slip?”
“I really don’t know,” he said. “But we’re going to want some more eyes in here.”
I resisted the urge to run inside myself. I didn’t want to lose my head and blow this thing. But I sure as hell didn’t want to lose Rodney Glass, either.
THIS WAS PURE misery. A disaster — and I’d been in charge. I was so angry at myself, even if I couldn’t have done anything differently now.
I was going crazy, watching Glass’s Subaru from the confines of my own car, and listening to nothing but radio silence while my guys scoured the neighborhood.
Both malls.
The parking lots.
Side streets.
Then, just after seven o’clock, I spotted Glass.
He came sauntering around the corner from the front of the mall and cut diagonally across the parking lot. That son of a bitch!
“I got him,” I radioed. “He’s headed back to his car. Get out here, and get yourselves ready to go.”
It was dark by now, but the parking lot was well lit. I used a small pair of binoculars to try and see what Glass was carrying. He’d been empty-handed on the way in.
The shopping bag he had in one hand was from Anthropologie, I saw. The kind of place where my kids might shop. Or the president’s kids, for that matter. Nothing in there for someone like him. He was a tall, strapping guy — a grownup, for starters. He favored L. L. Bean and Carhartt, as far as I could tell. Not the trendy fashions of this place. What was that about?
In his other hand, he had a tall cup with a straw sticking out the top. The logo on the side said AMC. That meant the movie theater, not the food court.
Jesus. Had I been tearing out my hair for three hours while Rodney Glass had taken himself to a matinee?
Or was that just what he wanted us to think? Was this all for show? Where else might he have been all this time?
As I watched him throw his bag into the back of the car — casually, maybe too casually — I started to get a horrible, sinking feeling. It was nothing I could prove to myself either way, but my gut was starting to tell me what my head didn’t want to know.
He knew he was being watched, didn’t he? He knew.
Book Five
RUSH TO
THE FINISH
HALA KEPT HER head down, her face averted, as she walked up First Street.
She crossed K Street and then cut left into a narrow alley near the bus station.
It was well screened at the front by several large, gray dumpsters, with stacks of wooden pallets, abandoned furniture, and old bags of garbage at the back, where Tariq was waiting for her.
He was even paler than when she’d left him. It looked like he’d lost a good deal of blood. Tariq was becoming a liability.
“Did you get it?” he asked.
“Some of it,” Hala answered, and knelt down where he was sitting propped against the brick wall. From inside her shirt, she pulled out a small bottle of Tylenol, a roll of gauze, and an Ace bandage. It was as much as she’d been able to lift at the drugstore without being seen
.
“Let me see your hand,” she said. “Please. Let me see.”
She pulled away the strip of shirt cloth she’d used to wrap Tariq’s wound the night before. It was in horrendous shape. The bullet had passed right through, probably shattering the metacarpal of his right thumb as it did. He had no flexion, no extension at all. If they didn’t get proper medical attention, and soon, she was going to have to start cutting away the dead and dying flesh.
That part, she kept to herself.
He moaned as she rewrapped it, using the gauze first, then the Ace bandage. Pressure was the only tool she had at her disposal for now, but she could see the agony it put him in.
When she held out several of the Tylenol, he shook his head.
“Hala, please,” he said. “It’s not enough. You know what I want.”
She did. That was exactly why she’d taken the cyanide from him. Both of their capsules were now in her pocket, where she intended them to stay.
The only other thing they had left to their name was Hala’s Sig Sauer pistol. Everything else — their passports, money, computer, all of it — was back at the Four Seasons. It might as well have been locked in a vault. Even on her quick trip to the drugstore and back, Hala had seen her own grainy image gracing the cover of several newspapers.
They didn’t even have the means to get themselves out of Washington. This godforsaken city had become their prison — and Tariq knew it. The empty, defeated look in his eyes said everything she needed to know.
“Please, Hala,” he tried again. “There’s no dishonor in this. We’ve done all we can.”
She pressed the Tylenol into his hand. “Take them,” she said. “Trust me, my love. We’re not done yet. Not even close.”
There was still one possibility she could think of. It was a risk, but less extreme than the option at the bottom of her pocket.
When she got up to leave again, Tariq reached after her like a child who couldn’t bear to be left alone. “Where are you going?” he moaned.
“Not far,” she said. “Just wait here. I’ll be back for you. I promise.”
HALA LEFT TARIQ at the back of the alley and crossed the street to the bus station.
There was every reason to feel terrified right now, but she wasn’t. The more Tariq seemed to be giving up, the more determined she became. Their backs were against the wall, and so what? They’d been there before. They had trained hard for just this eventuality.
And, if the worst did happen — if the capsules proved necessary in the end — there were still nine rounds left in her gun. That meant nine more Americans who would die before she did.
Inside the mostly deserted bus terminal, she crossed the waiting area to a small bank of battered and heavily graffitied pay phones at the back. Surprisingly enough, the first one she picked up gave a dial tone, and she pressed zero.
It took an irritating amount of time to place the call — overseas, collect, to Saudi Arabia. The American operator was virtually useless.
But then all at once a familiar voice was there on the other end of the line, accepting the charges.
“Hala, darling, is it you?” her mother said in Arabic. “Where are you?”
“Still in America, Mama,” Hala said. It was strange, using her native language after so many weeks of English. “Our business isn’t done here yet. Tariq and I are staying on First Street. Between K and L.”
“I don’t know what that means, Hala. K and L?”
“It’s where we’re staying right now,” she said.
“But when are you coming home?” her mother wanted to know. “Fahd and Aamina ask about you every day. They miss you so much.”
Hala squeezed her eyes shut against the tears that wanted to come. She mustn’t do anything to draw attention here, she knew. Not even the smallest thing. She would not let herself cry, or show any other weaknesses.
“Give them my love, Mama,” she said. “Please.”
“But they’re right here,” her mother said.
“No! I can’t stay on the phone,” she tried, but too late. A moment later, Fahd’s sweet voice was in her ear.
“Mama! I miss you!”
“I miss you, too. Are you being a good little man?” she asked. Her own voice was thick. She hoped the boy wouldn’t notice. It was nearly overwhelming.
“Yes, Mama. We’re learning about geology in school. Do you know what sedimentary rock is?”
“I do,” she said. “But, Fahd, I can’t talk right now. Mama has to go.” She could hear poor little Aamina clamoring for a turn in the background. “Back to First Street, between K and L. Across from the bus station.”
“What, Mama?”
“I have to go,” she said quickly. “Tell your sister that Papa and I love her very much. We love you, too. You are the best children in the world.”
“Will we see you soon?” he asked.
Hala gave the only answer she could bring herself to give. “Yes,” she said. “Soon. Very soon.”
Hanging up the phone on Fahd was as difficult as anything Hala had been called upon to do in America. But also just as necessary. Every second she spent in public here was a large risk. As soon as she’d gathered herself, she turned and walked quickly back the way she’d come.
Now all she could do was pray that the right people — and none of the wrong ones — were listening in on her parents’ telephone calls. The Family was very thorough that way, but so much had changed in the past few days.
Whether or not they’d heard what she said, and whether they’d come for her and Tariq, only time would tell.
Inshallah.
I WOKE UP to a text on my Blackberry the next morning. It had been sent by Peter Lindley’s office assistant: “8:30 AM Liberty Crossing, vital meeting with AD Lindley. Pls confirm.”
The last thing I wanted now was to be pulled back out to LX1. I’d tripled the surveillance on Rodney Glass and had three teams keeping an eye on him around the clock in eight-hour shifts. If he made any more odd moves, I wanted to be close by when they happened.
So I was feeling more than a little anxious by the time I got all the way out to Langley. What I expected was a full meeting of our CIA work group, but when I came into the conference room, it was just Lindley and half a dozen of his own case agents and team leaders. Two stories below, through the glass wall, I could see the command center bullpen, buzzing away.
“You’re here. Good,” Lindley said, waving me inside. It looked like the rest of them had been at it for a while. Ties were loose, sleeves were rolled up, and the table was littered with files. Most of those had the Bureau’s seal stamped on the front.
“First of all, we’ve got a credible line on another accomplice to the kidnapping,” Lindley said.
One of the agents dropped a file in front of me.
I opened it to see a small photocopy of a mug shot, bulldog-clipped to what looked like several arrest reports. The name on the photo was Deshawn Watkins.
“What about him?” I asked. “Who is he?”
“His girlfriend came in through one of the hotlines,” Lindley said. “One of a million calls, of course, but she had a few interesting things to say. Namely, that Mr. Watkins was recruited online and paid five hundred dollars for his services, plus a hit of some kind of high-grade smack.”
“Just like our van driver, Mr. Pinkney,” I said.
“Our first van driver,” Lindley said. “It seems now that maybe there were two.”
I started flipping through the file. Watkins had a mile-long record of misdemeanors and a few felonies, including some jail time for armed robbery when he was sixteen. He’d also done a couple of court-ordered stints in rehab.
“The girlfriend says Watkins was instructed to pick up a vehicle on the morning of the kidnapping, then back it up to the groundskeeping shed at Branaff and wait for some kind of package to be delivered. After that, she says, he drove it out to Reagan National, long-term parking, and walked away. The back of the van was locked from both
sides, and he never got a look at what he was transporting.”
“Or who put this ‘package’ into the van,” I said.
“That’s right.”
“Smart. Jesus.”
It was starting to add up … to how Rodney Glass could have gotten Ethan and Zoe off campus and still be around for the aftermath. Then all he’d have to do was drive out to the airport, maybe stop to sedate the kids again, and continue on to wherever he wanted to take them. If anything had gone wrong in the meantime, Glass had a fire wall of anonymity for himself. Pinkney and Watkins couldn’t finger him if they wanted to. They had no idea who he was. None at all.
“Where’s Watkins now?” I asked.
I saw a few smirks around the table. “That’s what the girlfriend wants to know,” one of the case agents told me.
“Apparently, Watkins skipped town two nights ago — along with this woman’s younger sister. Sounds like she ran out of reasons for protecting him. She came in with a lawyer this morning and struck up a pretty quick deal.”
“We’ve got his name out on WALES, and every field office in the country’s looking for him,” Lindley said. “But quite honestly, Deshawn Watkins is not our number one concern right now.”
I looked up from the file. Lindley was just picking up a steel briefcase from the floor.
He set it down in front of him with his hands on the double combination lock. Then he nodded to the half-dozen other staff around the table.
“Excuse me, everyone. Could we have the room, please?”
AS SOON AS we were alone, Lindley opened the case. The Toughbook inside powered up automatically, and he entered a long string of characters to access whatever it was he wanted to show me in private.
“What you’re about to see is a video that came into the Richmond field office this morning. A copy, anyway. The drive it came on is at the lab, but the First Lady asked personally for you to see this.”