“I have time for one more question.”
While Stevens was talking, his head swiveled to take in the whole press gallery. He noticed a stunning brunette sitting in the section usually reserved for foreign press. He decided that since voters cared little about foreign affairs, he would be safe calling on her. He pointed toward the back of the room. “The young lady in the back row.” The president was expecting to hear a foreign accent and was somewhat shocked when she stood and spoke perfect English.
“Mr. President, Liz Scarlatti from the Washington Reader. Congressman Michael O’Rourke from Minnesota has said that even though he thinks your budget is, quote, ‘stuffed with more pork than a Jimmy Dean sausage,’ he would still be willing to vote for it if you shut down the Rural Electrification Administration, an agency that is estimated to cost the American taxpayer five hundred to seven hundred million dollars a year. This agency was founded in 1935 for the sole purpose of bringing electricity to rural America. . . . My question is this: Mr. President, I know that the leaders of our country are very busy, but have you or anyone else in Washington noticed that all of rural America has had electricity for over twenty years? And now that you’ve been informed, what are you going to do to shut down this wasteful program?”
Many of the reporters in the audience started to chuckle.
With a forced smile, the president pulled out his best, good-old-boy drawl. “Well, Ms. Scarlatti, first of all, this budget is one of the leanest budgets that any president in the last twenty years has sent to the Hill.” Eyes started to roll in the audience. The cynical members of the press were getting sick of hearing the factless rhetoric of the president. It was cute for the first year, but they’d grown tired of it. “And second of all, I have been trying to shut down the REA ever since I took office, but the hard fact remains that if I killed the REA, my budget would never make it out of committee.”
Before the president could continue, the fiery brunette shouted again from the back row. “Mr. President, don’t you think it is a harsher fact of reality that your budget is forecasting a one-hundred-billion-dollar deficit and you are still funding federal agencies that are obsolete? Not to mention the fact that you have done nothing to control the growth of Social Security and Medicare!”
Stu Garret could see that the president was in trouble, so he stepped forward and touched his elbow. The president turned and Garret pointed to his watch. Stevens turned back to the press and said, “People, I’m running very late. Let me finish the young lady’s question and then I’m going to have to leave. . . . This administration is very concerned about finding and getting rid of government waste. Vice President Dumont is heading up a task force right now that is vigorously searching for ways to cut government waste. This has been a major priority of my administration and will continue to be one. Thank you all very much for your time and have a good day.” The president stepped back from the podium and waved good-bye. Reporters continued to shout questions as Stevens walked off the stage.
Once backstage, Stu Garret grabbed him by the arm and pulled him close. “What in the hell were you doing calling on someone you didn’t know?”
“She was sitting in the foreign-press section. I called on her because I thought she would ask me a question on foreign affairs. Relax, Stu, I handled it fine.”
Garret frowned deeply. “Foreign affairs, my ass. You were thinking of another type of affair. You know which reporters to call on if you want a question on foreign affairs. That was stupid. From now on, stick with the program!”
5
10:40 P.M., Thursday
THE BLUE VAN WOUND ITS WAY THROUGH THE tiny Washington, D.C., neighborhood of Friendship Heights. Dark green letters strewn across the side of the van read, “Johnson Brothers’ Plumbing, 24 Hour Emergency Service Available.” Inside were two men, both in their late twenties, both extremely fit. They were wearing dark blue coveralls and matching baseball hats. The van slowed down and turned into a narrow, poorly lit alley. Ten yards into the alley the van rolled to a stop and the driver pulled the gear lever up and into reverse. Pulling back out into the street, the van stopped again and then headed back in the direction from which it had just come. To anyone who may have been watching, it looked as if the plumber’s van was harmlessly searching for a house in need of its services.
Back in the alley, behind a row of garbage cans, the dark-haired former passenger of the van crouched silently and observed. After several minutes, he stood and slowly started down the alley, going from shadow to shadow, quietly walking on the balls of his feet. Six houses down, he stopped behind a garage on his right. It belonged to Mr. Harold J. Burmiester. He grabbed a plastic bag from inside his pocket, reached over the seven-foot fence, and dumped the bag’s contents into the backyard. Huddling between the corner of the fence and the garage, he pressed the light on his digital watch. It was 10:44 P.M. He would have to wait another fifteen minutes to make sure the bait was taken.
Burmiester felt that high-tech security systems were a waste of money. His was the only house on the block that did not have one, and the only house on the block that had never been burglarized. This distinction was directly attributable to a rather large German shepherd named Fritz.
The unwelcomed observer waited quietly in the shadows, as he had done on dozens of previous nights, waiting and watching, recording times and taking notes—always reassured by the punctuality of the retired banker.
At 10:55, the backyard floodlight was turned on, and a silhouette of the fence was cast across the alley onto the neighbor’s garage. A moment later, the door opened and the tags on Fritz’s collar could be heard jingling as he bounded down the steps and across the yard. Every night at exactly 10:55, Burmiester would let Fritz out to go to the bathroom, then let him back in five minutes later, just in time for his owner to watch the nightly news.
The dog ran straight to the back fence, where his master had trained him to go to the bathroom. Fritz was urinating on the fence when he started to sniff frantically. Dropping his leg, he ran toward the corner where the meat had been deposited and immediately started to snap up the small pieces of beef. The motionless man listened intently as the dog feasted on the meat. After several minutes, the creaking noise of the back door opening broke the silence of the cool night air, and without being called, Fritz sprang away from the fence and ran into the house.
12:05 A.M., Friday
Sen. Daniel Fitzgerald’s limousine lumbered north along Massachusetts Avenue. It was just after midnight, and the senator was sitting in the backseat, drinking a glass of Scotch and reading the Post. He’d just left his third party of the evening and was on his way home. Fitzgerald was the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee and one of the most powerful men in Washington. He had a full head of gray hair and a red, bulbous nose that was a direct result of his heavy drinking. The senator had two vices—women and alcohol. He had already been married three times and was currently separated from his third wife. He’d been through approximately a half dozen treatment programs, none of which had worked. Several years earlier, he’d decided to stop fighting his addiction. He loved the booze, and that was that. During all of the personal turmoils of ruined marriages, bouts with depression, and six children that he didn’t know, the senator had always clung to one thing—his job. It was all that was left in his life.
Fitzgerald had been in Washington for over forty years. After graduating from Yale Law School, he had gone to work for a prestigious law firm in Boston, and then, at the age of twenty-eight, he was elected to the United States House of Representatives. After serving as a congressman for three terms, one of the two Senate seats in his home state became available. At the urging and financial backing of his father, Fitzgerald launched the most expensive campaign New Hampshire had ever seen. The political machine his father had built ensured a victory, and Fitzgerald was elected to the United States Senate.
For the last thirty-four years, he’d survived scandal after scandal and hung on to that seat like
a screaming child clutching his favorite toy. Fitzgerald had been a politician his entire adult life, and he knew nothing else. He’d grown numb to the day-to-day dealings of the nation’s capital. The forty-plus years of lying, deceit, deal cutting, career trashing, and partisan politics had become so ingrained in Fitzgerald that he not only thought his behavior was acceptable, he truly believed it was the only way to do business.
Dan Fitzgerald had been pulled into the vacuum of Washington politics, and like so many before him, he’d checked his conscience and morals at the door. For Fitzgerald, such things as integrity, hard work, taking charge of one’s own life, individual freedom, and the Constitution of the United States had little meaning. To him, being a leader of the country was not about doing the right thing. It was about holding on to power. Holding on no matter what it took. Fitzgerald was addicted to power no differently than a crack addict is addicted to the rock. He always needed more, and he could never get enough.
Fitzgerald lived only for the present and the future. He had never bothered to look back on his life until now. He was experiencing something that many of his predecessors had gone through late in their careers. He’d sold his soul and integrity to get to the top, and now that he was there, he was starting to realize it was a lonely place. With old age staring him straight in the face, he was, for the first time, forced to look back on his life with a critical eye. He had always known he was a failure as both a father and a husband. Everything he had, he’d put into his career.
Leaning his head against the window, he took a long pull off the fresh drink and closed his eyes. Senator Daniel Fitzgerald had never been interested in the truth, but now in his waning years, he could no longer escape it. He had never liked being alone. He had always needed others around to feel secure, and it had only gotten worse over the years. He had worked his whole life to get where he was, and now that he was there, he had no one to share it with. But, even worse was that deep down inside something was telling him he had wasted his life fighting for the wrong things. He finished off the glass of Dewar’s and poured another.
The limousine turned off Massachusetts Avenue and wound through the narrow residential streets of Kalorama Heights. One block before its destination, the limousine passed a plain, white van. Inside were two men who had been waiting— waiting and preparing for this night for over a year.
The limo stopped in front of Fitzgerald’s $1.2-million brownstone, and the driver jumped out to open the door for his boss. By the time he got around to the rear of the car, Fitzgerald was out of the backseat and stumbling toward the house. Fitzgerald fancied himself too important a man to shut car doors, so as usual, he left it for the driver to take care of.
The driver shut the door and wished his employer a good night. Fitzgerald ignored the pleasantry and continued up the steps to his front door. The driver walked back around to the other side of the limo and watched Fitzgerald punch in his security code and unlock the door. When the door opened and the senator stumbled into the foyer, the driver got into the limo and drove away.
Fitzgerald set his keys down on a table to the left of the door and reached for the light switch. He flipped it up, but nothing happened. He tried it several more times, and the result was the same. Swearing to himself, he looked around the dark house. The front door was bordered on both sides by panes of glass six inches wide that ran from the top of the door to the floor. Through the two narrow windows, the streetlight provided a faint glow to the front hallway. From where Fitzgerald stood, he could barely make out the white tile floor of the kitchen, just thirty feet away, straight down the hallway.
As he started for the kitchen, he passed the dark entryway to the living room on his right and the stairs that led to the upper floors on his left. His heavy, expensive wing tips echoed throughout the house as they struck the hardwood floor with each step. The dim light shining through the windows cast a long shadow of him that stretched down the hallway toward the kitchen. With each step his round body blocked more and more of the light coming from the street. By the time he reached the kitchen, he was surrounded by darkness. He turned to his left and searched for the light switch. Before Fitzgerald could find it, a pair of gloved hands came out of the darkness and grabbed him from behind.
The blond-haired intruder yanked the older man off his feet and slammed him face first into the tiled floor. Dropping down on his target, the powerful man thrust his knee into the center of Fitzgerald’s upper back and grabbed the senator’s head with both hands. In one quick burst of strength the assassin brought all of his weight down on the back of Fitzgerald’s head and yanked up on his chin. The noise that the senator’s neck made as it snapped shot through the quiet house like a brittle tree limb broken over a knee. The crack was followed by silence, and then an eerie gurgling noise that emanated from Fitzgerald’s throat. The dying senator’s eyes opened wider and wider until they looked as if they were about to pop out. About thirty seconds later the gurgling noise subsided, and Fitzgerald’s body lay lifeless on the cold, tile floor.
The assassin rose to his feet and exhaled a deep breath. He looked down at the dead body on the floor with a sense of great satisfaction. The killer standing over Fitzgerald had just avenged the deaths of eight of his closest friends—eight men who had died a senseless death in a desolate desert, thousands of miles away, all because men like Fitzgerald didn’t know how to keep their mouths shut. The killing of Fitzgerald was personal, but the next two would be business. The thin arm of a microphone hung in front of the assassin’s square jaw. He spoke with a precise voice, “Number one is in the bag, over.” After a brief second, a confirmation came crackling through his earpiece, and he went back to work.
Grabbing the body by the ankles, he dragged it down into the basement and deposited it in a large storage closet. The assassin took one last tour through the house, collecting the electronic listening devices he had placed there the previous week. Before leaving, he zipped the collar on his coat up around his chin and pulled his baseball hat down tight over his short, blond hair. He stood at the back door momentarily, looking out the window into the small yard. The wind was picking up, and the trees were swaying back and forth. Once again he spoke softly into the mike, “I’m on my way, over.” He locked the door and closed it behind him. Casually he walked across the yard, through the gate, and into the alley. When he reached the end of the alley, the white van stopped just long enough for him to climb in, then sped off down the street.
3:45 A.M., Friday
The blue Johnson Brothers’ Plumbing van was again driving through the streets of Friendship Heights. It pulled into the same alley it had stopped in five hours earlier. While the van was still moving, the passenger jumped down onto the pavement and walked beside it, crouching and holding on to the door. The dome light on the inside of the van had been removed. As the van stopped, the broad-shouldered, dark-haired man quietly closed the door and darted into the shadows. He waited while the van drove away. Slung over his shoulder was a large black canvas bag. After several minutes passed, he started to make his way down the alley. When he reached Burmiester’s fence, he pulled a can of WD-40 out of his bag and sprayed the hinges of the gate. He waited for the oil to take effect, then carefully lifted the latch on the gate and opened it. Slipping into the backyard, he dropped down behind a row of bushes and looked up at the windows of Burmiester’s house and the neighbors’, waiting to see a face peering out or a light being turned on, announcing that someone had seen him. For almost five minutes he sat behind the bush, waiting and watching. There was time to be careful and that was the way he liked it, the way he’d been trained.
The man reached into the bag, this time retrieving a pair of wire cutters. Cautiously rising to his feet, he walked along the edge of the garage and then darted across the small open space to the back stoop, where he crouched down. Again, he used the can of WD-40, spraying the hinges of the screen door. While he waited for the oil to soak in, he grabbed the pair of wire cutters and cut the phone l
ine running into the basement of the house. He put the wire cutters back in the bag and grabbed a glass cutter. Jumping up on the stoop he opened the screen door about two feet and slid in between it and the back door. The back door was wood with the top third split into four sections of glass. He placed the cup of the glass cutter in the middle of the bottom left pane and swung the cutting edge around the suction cup in a clockwise direction. After five revolutions, he took both hands and pressed in on the newly created circle. The freshly cut piece of glass popped free and stayed attached to the suction cup. Sticking his arm through the hole, he unlocked the door, opened it, and stepped into the kitchen, carefully closing the door behind him. He stood completely still and looked out the window, staring at the neighbors’ houses, looking for anything that might have changed while his ears focused on the inside of the house. He heard the dog breathing and turned to see him lying on a piece of carpet in front of the kitchen table, completely relaxed and limp. Pulling the microphone down from under the brim of his baseball cap, he spoke in a soft whisper, “I’m in, over.”