“Senator.”
Morris waved Shepard Jenkins, his chief political strategist, toward one of the overstuffed leather client chairs. “Shep.”
“You heard about Case, I presume,” Jenkins said.
“Shit, by now, everyone’s heard about him. You know anything that’s not already been on the news?”
“Not yet, Senator. My concern right now is how anyone could have known what he was up to. We’ve kept this strictly on a need-to-know basis. Other than the two of us and Case himself, who the hell else could have known?”
“Maybe the sonofabitch had a loose lip. He was a self-aggrandizing bastard,” Morris said. “My biggest concern is the loss of the information he was gathering. Now what do we do? Give up on this project?”
“Dunno, but that’s certainly one option.”
Morris didn’t like the sound of that. He tugged nervously at the collar of his expensive shirt and stepped away from the windows. “Jesus, it was supposed to be so simple Do we even know whether Case found those old records from his days with the Agency?”
“Whether he did or he didn’t, I’m guessing that’s what got him killed,” Jenkins said.
“Of course that’s what got him killed!” Morris said. “If only I could have gotten my hands on those fucking files and released them to my contacts in the news media. The ensuing shit storm would have played well on the left and likely elevated me as the party’s frontrunner in next year’s presidential campaign. Assuming that pompous, arrogant fuck-up of an incumbent doesn’t try to stand for reelection. Laski keeps assuring me that he won’t, but I’m not convinced the sonofabitch intends to step aside.”
He walked around the desk and sat in the other client chair. “You’re my fucking strategist. What do we do now?”
“First, we stay calm. Then we figure out whether anyone else knows about what Case was doing and whether they might be able to trace it back to us.”
Morris shook his head in despair. “They assassinated the sonofabitch. Fucking assassinated him. Laid in wait and ambushed him.”
“Along with three presumably capable bodyguards,” Jenkins said. “Whoever is behind this is pretty damned good. The dead guys were part of Chaim Laski’s private army. Did you know that two of the bodyguards were killed in hand-to-hand combat?”
Slamming his fist down on the desktop, Morris said, “I don’t give a flying fuck how they died. They clearly weren’t worth a shit at protecting anyone.”
The intercom on his desk buzzed again. He shouted angrily at it. “What is it, Janine?”
“A courier is here with a small package of some kind,” she said. “Should I sign for it?”
Morris stiffened in fear. Was it a bomb? Were the same people who had killed Harold Case going to assassinate him next? The day had barely started and already it was rapidly worsening.
“Senator?” Janine said.
“Who sent it?” he said at last.
Janine said, “A Mr. Case.”
6 GEORGETOWN
In the hours following the early morning incident in Georgetown, SWAT teams of FBI and local law enforcement officers began conducting a house-to-house campaign. Branching out concentrically from the scene of the incident, they searched each house and surrounding property. Farther out, police cars patrolled the neighborhoods looking for anything or any person of a suspicious nature.
Shortly before eight o’clock, a brown Ford Econoline 350 box truck pulled to the curb in front of Levell’s home. Its markings indicated it was a delivery vehicle for a chain of appliance stores. A man climbed out on either side of the cab. They were wearing brown work uniforms, jackets, and brown ball caps, all bearing logos that matched the one on the side of their truck. They went to the front door of the home and spoke to Rhee for a moment, then returned to the rear of the truck and raised its roll-up gate. One of the men climbed into the cab and backed the truck into the driveway. Rhee opened the garage door from inside the house.
The men wrestled a Frigidaire 19.7 cubic foot commercial deep freezer from the back of the truck to the hydraulic liftgate. Lowering the freezer to the street, they maneuvered it onto a heavy-duty four-wheeled dolly, then rolled it into the garage. Rhee closed the garage door behind them.
Approximately ten minutes later the garage door reopened and the deliverymen rolled an older looking deep freeze out to the truck. As they loaded it onto the hydraulic liftgate, a police cruiser with two cops in it rolled to a stop in front of the truck. The deliverymen glanced at each other and kept moving.
The officer driving the car rolled his window down and said, “Morning, men. Kinda early to be working so hard.”
“Yeah, well a job’s a job. We got no say in what gets done or when,” the truck’s driver said.
“You guys seen anything that don’t look right to you in the neighborhood this morning?” the cop said.
“Like what?” said the truck driver.
“Well, like any fuckin’ thing that don’t look right.”
The truck driver looked at his partner. “I ain’t seen nothin’. What about you. You seen anything?”
“Nah, I ain’t seen nothin’ either. But I wasn’t exactly lookin’ for nothin’. It’s fuckin’ early, it’s cold, and I ain’t exactly wide awake yet.”
The cop turned and looked at his partner, who shrugged. He turned back to the deliverymen. “Well, you see somethin’,” he said, “you flag down the first unit you see and tell ‘em about it.”
“Yeah, sure, we’ll do that,” the truck driver said.
The cruiser slowly moved off to continue the assigned search pattern. The deliverymen looked at each other again. The driver said, “Let’s get moving.”
Working as fast as they could, they maneuvered the freezer onto the hydraulic liftgate, hoisted it into the back of the truck, and secured it. They lowered the roll-up gate, climbed back into the truck’s cab, and drove off.
7 THE J. EDGAR HOOVER BUILDING
Supervisory Special Agent Christie stood in one corner of his new office space, looking out its single, narrow window. It really was just a half a window. The other half was on the other side of the partition that separated his cramped space from the one next door. Christie’s office was furnished in what he called Government Gothic; standard issue even at his pay grade.
He looked out at the midmorning bleakness of a cold, wet, January day in Washington and thought about the Case murder. Was it a terrorist act? Was it simply a random act of violence? That wouldn’t be unusual for the nation’s capitol. Or was it something else entirely? The person who drove the Jeep knew the answer, but who was he and where was he?
He shook the bottle of antacid in his right hand, and then slowly unscrewed the cap. Raising it to his lips, he emptied the contents in a single gulp. Hurry, he thought, trying to speed the relief. Subconsciously, his left hand rubbed at his abdomen as if trying to reach the pain and pull it from his body.
A soft knock came from his open door and he turned to see Jim Franconia, the CIA’s liaison to the Bureau, standing in the doorway. “You wanted to see me?” Franconia said.
“Yeah, Jim. Come in, please. Have a seat.” Christie nodded toward the two chairs in front of his desk.
“Does this have something to do with Harold Case’s death?” Franconia dropped into the chair. He was a shade less than six feet with close-cropped brown hair and a long, angular face. Christie had known him for several years and had worked with him in the past. He knew him to be competent, and instinctively liked the man.
Franconia spotted the empty antacid bottle in Christie’s hand. “Things that bad?”
Christie shook his head wearily. “It’s a long story, and not worth the telling. My wife says I’m not spending enough time with her and the kids. Says I’m ruining my health. She wants me to resign. Maybe get some cushy office job with a security company in the private sector.” He paused pensively. “She’s probably right.”
He lowered his lanky frame into his desk chair and tossed the empty anta
cid bottle into the trash basket beneath his desk. “What can you tell me about Case?” he said.
“He was considered something of a pain in the ass at the Agency, a lifer who rose to mid-senior level by convincing anyone who would listen that he was the best thing since sliced bread.”
“Was he?”
“Not as far as I can tell, but in the government, ass-kissing and non-stop self-promotion can do wonders for a career. You’ve seen that at the Bureau.”
“Man, have I,” Christie said. “So what was Case doing in a limo in Georgetown at three o’clock this morning escorted by three illegals with lengthy Interpol rap sheets?”
“You do know he was working for that dick-head senator from New York?”
“Yeah. Nice to know his subcommittee has taxpayer money to burn.”
“We both know that their budgets aren’t a matter of public record,” Franconia said. “Maybe you should take your wife’s advice and resign. Run for the senate. Get the cushiest office job on the planet and throw away the antacid for good.”
“Christ! I couldn’t stand it,” said Christie. “I’d end up strangling one or more of my posturing, self-important, overpaid, underachieving fellow senators.”
“That would be the patriotic thing,” Franconia said.
Christie could feel his stomach beginning to burn again. He took a long, deep breath. “What was Case doing for this special subcommittee?”
“Why? You think maybe there’s a tie between that and his murder?”
“Hell, I don’t know, but