CHAPTER TWO
Alyssa woke the next morning to the sound of her cell phone ringing. Unlike most of the world, she had the dumbest phone she could get her hands on. Too much of her life depended on keeping secrets, and smart phones were designed to publicize everything. She never put a contact list into the phone either. If some future investigator ever got their hands on it, why give them a list of people to interview?
So there was no caller ID but then she gave her mobile number to almost no one, so there wasn't much doubt the call was important enough to wake up for. She rubbed her eyes and then grabbed the phone from its place on her bedside table.
"Hello." She never gave her name when she picked up the phone.
"What did you get me into?"
Her eyes snapped fully open at the barely-articulate yelling. "Who is this?"
"It's your patsy! How could you do it? How could you do it and not tell me what you were doing?"
Once he stopped shouting, she recognized the voice. It was her technician, Gunter Hauptmann.
"Gunter, what are you talking about?"
"Don't play stupid with me! And don't even think you can make me take the fall. You picked the wrong guy for a patsy. I have electronic logs of every conversation we had last night - in the van and on the radio. I can prove it was you who went in there, and I can prove I never left the van, so I don't know what you were thinking," and here his voice rose to a shout again, "but I am not taking the fall for you!"
"Gunter, what are you talking about?"
"I'm talking about the presidential candidate you shot last night!"
Alyssa blinked. Hard. "Say again?"
"I'm talking about Rich West, dead with a .22 caliber bullet in his head! As in, that .22 you told me you always pack when you B&E." B&E was short for breaking and entering.
"Rich West is dead?"
"What, as if you only intended to wound him with a head shot? Chambers, how many times do I have to tell you, I am not that dumb!"
Wheels began to turn in her head. If Rich West was dead… Yes, I'm a suspect. Big time. But… those other people in the office… And then her mind became fully operational. Once awake, Alyssa Chambers was professional to the core.
"Gunter, I promise you, this is not what it looks like. This line is not secure. No line is secure enough for this. Meet me at Alpha."
When she worked with someone, they always had pre-arranged meeting spots known only to them. Telling Gunter "Meet me at Washington Harbor" would have drawn a swarm of FBI agents to the scene, if she were being followed. But a code word like "Alpha" gave him the same information, without telling an eavesdropping outsider anything. She clicked off the phone, jumped out of bed and hurried to the shower. She turned on her radio with the volume up loud enough that she could hear it over the sound of running water.
She cleaned up as quickly as she could, all the while listening to the news broadcast which had pre-empted regular programming. She was lucky enough to catch it at the top of the story.
"Richard West," the announcer read, "all but assured his party's nomination for the Presidency, was found dead in his campaign headquarters this morning, apparently from a gunshot wound to the head. Federal agents are at the scene but have not announced any suspects at this time. Implications of the assassination are already being discussed by pundits. Congressman Mike Vincent, one of West's top advisors, spoke with us a few minutes ago."
They cut to an interview clip.
"Rich West was a beacon of hope in a dark time. America needed him. With him gone... I can't imagine who could take his place. This is a tragedy."
Unless the FBI and Secret Service caught the real assassin very quickly, then they would come up with her name. She lived a life of secrets, but this was no ordinary circumstance. With the death of Rich West, everything was different. The rules changed. People who would keep her name secret under other conditions would rat her right out when she was suspected of assassinating a presidential candidate. There was no doubt. She would definitely be on the run. The only question was how quickly the feds would start chasing.
Chambers climbed out of the shower and clicked the radio off. She dressed hurriedly, opting against the business suit she would normally wear in daylight. She didn't have nearly enough information to know what was going on, but one thing she did know: there was a good chance today would involve running and hiding, and those were better accomplished in pants than a skirt. On the other hand, the authorities might be more likely to look askance at someone in black combat fatigues today. She went with jeans and a t-shirt.
When her cell phone rang for the second time that morning, Alyssa stared at it for two rings, wondering whether to answer. Finally, she decided that if the FBI suspected her already, they wouldn't bother calling. Heart thumping, she clicked the phone on.
"Morning Lyss. Got time to give me a quick quote?"
She exhaled in relief. It was Matt Barr.
Of course, that brought with it a whole different reason for stress.
The sound of his voice caused her to feel the same rush of emotion that it always did. The primary feeling was guilt. She had betrayed him so many times and never told him.
Theirs was a strange friendship. Matt longed for her. For most of their lives it had been impossible to miss. Despite the disapproval of his preacher father, Matt had been chasing Alyssa since they were teens.
Alyssa, on the other hand, was desperate for Matt to never figure out how bad she’d hurt him. Between a political reporter and a thief who specialized in stealing from politicians, there were bound to be secrets. But her secrets from Matt went so much deeper than that.
For years, he had been a pest, asking her out constantly, behaving jealously if a man so much as looked at her, and in general making it really hard to be his friend.
But something changed. It had gotten easier over the past year. He had finally stopped being quite so desperate. There was a peace about him that she couldn’t miss. Sometimes Alyssa suspected a girlfriend and was glad of it, but at other times she felt like that wasn’t even close to the truth.
None of which changed the facts of their past. She had still set fire to his office once. She had still shut down a prime source for his stories once. She still spent every conversation with him hoping he never found out.
Matt had no idea the drama that went on in Alyssa’s head when he called – every time he called. He just went on talking.
"Everyone even close to the business is going to get quoted. We need some academic analysis from the always-quotable Professor Chambers."
It had occurred to her, around her junior year of college, that she would need some visible means of making money. Of course, her real career plan was to get paid for political dirty tricks, but people would ask how she earned a living. She needed a cover story.
She'd chosen academia. It was an easy way to stay in Washington D.C., an easy way to explain being around politics, and the hours left free time for late nights breaking into campaign offices. So now she taught political science at her old alma mater. Unsurprisingly, the lure of the Chambers name to add to their faculty had been more than enough to get her the job.
However, being a professor was far from her thoughts at that moment. In response to Matt's question, at first she just blinked and kept silent. Academic analysis was the last thing on her mind, but Matt would have no idea she was worrying about being a suspect in the assassination.
Whatever she told Matt, the FBI would most likely be parsing it for clues when the story went live online – if not before - so she wracked her brain trying to come up with a quote that would sound good for Matt and throw the FBI off her track, but it wasn't working. In the end, the best she could do was say something about how the public would need to have a believable suspect quickly in order to have confidence in the election that fall, but she knew that would do her no good. Whoever the Secret Service came up with as a suspect, they would make the case believable.
"Thanks Lyss, you're a gem.
I owe you a cup of coffee at some undetermined point in the future. But not any time soon. I'm not going to get any spare time at all until the assassin is being dragged out of the lethal injection chamber. My source on the West campaign was on the phone just before I called you. Sounds like chaos over there – no surprise. Anyway, I've got to go. Take care."
She muttered something boring by way of farewell, and pondered his offer of a cup of coffee. Matt quit drinking about a year ago. At the time, she asked him why; he had never seemed like he had a problem with it. He stammered through trying to explain it, then said something about his body being a temple. That was definitely out of character. Matt was about as far from being a fitness freak as anyone she knew. Matt’s father used to hate alcohol. He preached about it all the time. She wondered if all the changes in Matt had to do with that relationship. But that seemed as wrong as the girlfriend explanation. The two grew up together, and Alyssa knew Matt’s father. He was stern, judgmental, and holier-than-thou. Matt was none of those things.
She shrugged and finished dressing. She left home with a newspaper and a simple backpack to go with her casual clothes.
The drive to the meeting place went quickly. On the surface, her mid-sized sedan looked quite plain, but the engine under the hood had not come from the factory. The souped-up performance meant she had little trouble outpacing the other cars on the road.
Alyssa Chambers was a spy. Not one who worked for the CIA or any government agency, though. No, she worked for the people who wanted to shape the government. From the age of 18 on, Alyssa had worked in the part of politics journalists never covered. Some people called them plumbers, some called them dirty tricks men. Some simply considered them private investigators. When one candidate wanted to know what his opponent's next ad would say, he hired people like Chambers. When a party wanted proof that their opponent had cheated on his wife, Alyssa or someone like her got the call.
Obviously, it was a risky business, and the people who worked in it eventually either became paranoid or got out of the business. Or died. Sometimes two of the three. Sometimes all of the above. Alyssa had only done the first.
Quite simply, she trusted no one. Even the people she worked with were considered potential threats. In some ways, especially them. For that reason, she only hired people with a shady background. Everyone she worked with had at least one secret he didn't want the police or his family to discover, and it was always a secret Alyssa knew. That way, if any of them ever turned against her, she had something to hold over their heads.
Another part of being paranoid was always being prepared for emergencies. In a safe deposit box she had a million dollars in cash, several sets of falsified driver's licenses, passports, credit cards, and documentation of every campaign or organization that had ever hired her. The last item was for blackmail purposes, if she ever needed it.
Alyssa finagled a parking place, made her way to the harbor through the light morning crowd, and took a seat on a bench. She unfolded a newspaper she'd brought from home and to all appearances began to read. But in reality, her eyes never did more than scan the headlines; most of the time they were scanning the street, looking for Gunter or for a sign that she was being followed.
The crowd was nothing compared to what it would be at lunchtime or during the evening, but there were enough people that a tail could have hidden among them. Chambers harbored no illusions about her chances if she were followed.
Federal agents were experts at surveillance. If they set out to follow her, she would be hard pressed to lose them without help and would most likely never know they were there. Her hope was that the investigation hadn't progressed far enough to make her a suspect yet. However, even if that were true, that state of affairs wouldn't last long.
If there were any FBI agents about, she never caught sight of them, but she did see Gunter Hauptmann cautiously approaching her position. She spotted him across the courtyard, trying to watch her without being obvious. His eyes scanned across the crowd much as hers did, searching just as futilely for whoever might be watching. When he realized Chambers had noticed him, he came carefully over.
Easing his tall frame down onto the bench, Hauptmann said, barely above a whisper, "I want to know what’s going on."
"So do I, Gunter, so do I."
"Explain why I should believe that. It looks for all the world like you went in there and killed West without telling me last night."
"Gunter, that's why you should believe me. You know me better than that. If I were going to assassinate someone, would you still be alive to be a witness?"
"Maybe. If you wanted someone else to set up as a suspect."
"I'd make sure he didn't know who the real killer was. You know it."
Hauptmann nodded.
"OK, for now, it's just easier to believe you but don't think I'm firmly convinced. So what did happen, then? Rich West and a third person were in there at the same time as you, and the third person killed him?"
"There were two other people in there. At least two."
Gunter asked, "Can you ID either of them?"
"No," Chambers replied. "My intel said no one else would be in there, so I didn’t study any ID files."
She sat still for a long moment. Finally she said, "I need to talk to the guy who hired me."
"If he'll talk to you at all," Gunter replied. "From where I sit, either he set you up on the timing of that run, or he's convinced you did it. Either way, he's not likely to talk to you."
Gunter would never have asked and she would never have told him, but Tom Wheeler was the one who'd hired Alyssa for this job. Communications Director for the Hicks campaign – Rich West's opposition – he'd wanted research on their opponent. Chambers had never met the man before this job.
But Wheeler came with excellent references. He got her name from no less a person than George Pierce, and that was still a name Alyssa trusted.
"Hard to believe a set up," she replied.
Hauptmann shrugged.
"Even so, he's probably scared out of his mind right now, thinking that the plumber he hired went and offed West, and that he's an accessory."
Chambers nodded.
"I need to talk to him. You suppose he's in his office?"
Gunter nodded.
"He'll have to be. Every politician in America probably has two phones stuck to their heads all day today, trying to play this. It'll be driving him nuts to be in the office, with everyone wondering who did it and him being so afraid they think it's him, but he has to be there."
"OK, then. My problem is just getting into his office without being seen. You, on the other hand, are probably itching to be out of the country."
Gunter nodded. "Congratulations on the understatement of the year."
He reached across to take Alyssa's hand.
"It's been nice to know you. Good luck."
She smiled at him, and shook his hand.
"Happy running, Gunter."
He stood up.
A bullet drilled through his back and out his chest, killing him instantly.
Chambers couldn't help herself. She screamed when Gunter Hauptmann fell dead across her lap. Seconds later, the pedestrians around her were screaming, too.
However, after the initial fight or flight instinct, she found herself strangely detached. She observed the crowd, calculated where the shot that hit Gunter must have come from and plotted how to use the other people as cover from a second shot from that direction.
Most people nearby were screaming in panic but several passers-by were collected around her, trying to help her, some checking if she had been wounded, others trying to console her about the grisly mess she and her clothing had become. Alyssa tuned them all out. She got out from under Gunter and stood up, causing several people to jump back at the sudden movement. Then she took off running.
Shouts of confusion and alarm rang out behind her, but she ignored them all. In another second, she was across the open courtyard and diving into t
he river.
The Potomac had never been the nicest place to swim, but Alyssa didn't feel she had any choice. For one thing, it was obvious that whoever had fired the shot that killed Gunter had been aiming at her. The crowd had doubtless given her some cover, preventing a clean shot, but the killer could fire again as soon as he got the chance. Getting in the water made it much harder to shoot her.
Moreover, her clothes were covered with gore from Hauptmann's body. Running, she'd have been instantly recognizable, and stood no chance of escape, but the river cleaned her up at least a little bit.
Of course, sopping wet clothes were not much less conspicuous than bloody clothes, but at least she'd be far away from the scene.
She did most of her swimming underwater, with her eyes closed tight against the dirty river. There was a gunman out there, and if she stayed on the surface for long, she was a goner. The powerful current dragged her downstream as she swam, but that was fine with Chambers. She didn't have much of a plan yet, except to clear the area as fast as possible. And the current was moving much quicker than she could swim.
She swam for quite a while before finally working out a plan. Paddling to one of the yachts moored along the waterfront, Alyssa climbed aboard. As she expected, since it was still morning, the yacht was deserted, which suited her needs perfectly. Crossing her fingers, she hoped these people left some clothing aboard.
She got a lucky break. Not only was there clothing to be taken, but it was women's clothing. She threw the outfit she'd left home in into the Potomac – saving only the backpack – and dressed in clothes the mystery woman had left behind. The cut off shorts and tank top weren't exactly her style, but they would have to do.
She walked off the yacht as if she owned the thing – her family did own a couple yachts, after all – and disappeared into the crowd.
It wasn’t much of a walk to the bank branch on the corner of Wisconsin and M where her safe deposit box was located. Walking through the elegant glass door, she felt like every security camera in the room swiveled to catch her entry. Nonsense, of course, but the feeling was still there, causing her skin to crawl.
This was her biggest risk. Chambers wasn't sure how fast the FBI would learn that she'd been in the West headquarters last night but if they already knew, then trying to access her deposit box would be the end of things. They'd have the place staked out, and she'd be arrested any moment now.
On the other hand, if she wasn't a suspect yet, and she got out of here with the contents of the box, then Alyssa was confident she could elude the FBI indefinitely. However, that was only part of the problem. There was also the small matter of someone shooting at her at the harbor.
No way was that the FBI.
An easy first guess would be that the person who fired the shot that killed Gunter was the real killer. It could easily have been aimed at her and just hit Gunter by accident; Perhaps he'd learned that Chambers had been in the building too, and was afraid she'd seen the whole thing. But if he knew she was there at the time, why didn't he kill her then? And if he only learned it after she'd gone, how did he learn?
And how could she prove it was him who shot West and not her?
In a lobby chair, waiting for a banker to help him with a loan, a man in a dark suit adjusted the newspaper he was reading. Across the room, someone standing in line brushed her fingers through her hair. Any or all of those motions could have been signals between watching federal agents.
Apparently, none of them were. As a clerk led her back to the safe deposit boxes, Alyssa began to believe she was safe for the time being. Walking out of the bank with all her cash and several fake passports and credit cards, she finally felt as if she could begin planning a few steps ahead, instead of on the spur of the moment.