Once outside, he came to a standstill, his booted feet planted on the cobbled stone driveway that fronted the entrance. Ignoring the two-way traffic jam of human bodies—badges heading into the museum, touristos heading out—he raised his head to the gray sky above. And prayed. Hard.
Dear Lord, help me make this right.
Boyd didn’t want to let down the colonel. He owed everything he had to Colonel Stan MacFarlane. Sometimes, when his mind wandered, he liked to imagine that the colonel was the father he never had but always wanted. Stern, but fair. Righteous. A man who’d never hit you unless he had just cause.
Like a soothing balm, the gently falling snow cooled his brow, its big fluffy flakes sticking to his eyelashes, his lips, the tip of his nose. It put him in mind of the first time he’d ever seen the snow fall from the sky during a tour of duty in Japan. A backwater kid from Pascagoula, Mississippi, he’d only seen winter snow on celluloid. He well remembered standing there, a bad-ass, two-hundred-thirty-pound jarhead, sorely tempted to lie down, flap his arms and legs like an epileptic, and make angels in the snow. Come to think of it, it’d been snowing the day he made his first kill. A Jap with an attitude had accused him of stiffing on the sake bill and had followed him into the alley, attacking him from behind while he took a piss. He killed the slant-eyed shitbird with a backward jab of the elbow, ramming his nose all the way into his skull. A ruby-red bloodstain on virgin white snow. It had been a beautiful sight. Like a silk-clad whore spreading her legs for a li’l game of peekaboo.
Reinvigorated, the blood pumping through his veins fast and furious, Boyd straightened his shoulders as he strode past the black Jeep Wrangler. The colonel said that God was a fine one for testing the faithful. Maybe that’s what all this fiddle fucking was about—he was being tested.
If that was the case, bring it on!
He was up to the challenge.
Sticking the key in the trunk of the Crown Vic, he opened it and removed a drawstring pouch. Inside the ditty bag were two spare cell phones, coiled wire, duct tape, and a small block of C-4. Everything he needed to make things right.
CHAPTER 19
Glancing at the plate glass doors that fronted the Seventh Street museum exit, Edie figured the headline story on the local newscast would be “Gunman Goes Berserk Inside the National Gallery of Art.” Particularly since the Channel 9 and Channel 4 news vans had just pulled up outside the museum and a bevy of technicians were hurriedly unloading their camera equipment.
As she continued to observe the action on the other side of the exit door, it appeared that a great many people were unloading equipment from the back of official-looking vehicles. EMTs unloading stretchers. Firefighters unloading axes and water hoses. D.C. police unloading orange traffic cones. The museum had become a scene of industrious purpose—patrons exiting one door, first responders entering through another.
Still seated in the wheelchair, she sat quietly as Caedmon rolled her over to a large Chinese vase set inside a wall niche.
“Time for milady to exit her carriage.”
Edie hurriedly extricated herself from the wheelchair, her legs so wobbly she unthinkingly grabbed the Qing dynasty vase to keep from falling.
Caedmon wrapped an arm around her shoulders, gently removing her hand from the priceless objet d’art. “Steady as she goes,” he whispered in her ear. “Deep breaths will slow your heart rate. Leastways, it always works for me.”
She nodded her thanks, surprised by the admission. Though she barely knew him, Caedmon Aisquith seemed to have been born with the proverbial stiff upper lip. No deep breaths required.
“Given the well-orchestrated attack, we must assume that our adversaries will attempt to track our movements via electronic transactions.” Removing his billfold from his pants pocket, Caedmon peered into the worn brown leather. “I’m afraid that my assets are somewhat paltry. Seventy-five dollars U.S. and three hundred euros. How much do you have?” he bluntly inquired.
The question caught Edie off guard. Her eyes suspiciously narrowing, she said, “I have three thousand dollars. What’s it to you?”
“I say! You must have cleaned out your bank account.”
“In a manner of speaking,” she mumbled, unwilling to elaborate.
“Very well, then. I suggest we assume two aliases, Mister and Missus Smythe-Jones, or some such rot, and check into a hotel.”
“The two of us? In a hotel?” Edie had given no thought as to what would happen once they left the museum, having assumed they’d go their separate ways. She’d come to the National Gallery of Art only to warn him of the danger, not to hook up with him.
Although she supposed there might be some truth in the old adage about safety in numbers.
“Yes, a hotel,” Caedmon reiterated. “I don’t know about you, but I’m in dire need of a soft bed and a stiff drink.”
“Bed and booze. Okay, I’m in.”
Caedmon motioned to the throng of people lined up to exit the museum. “Shall we join the multitude?”
As they approached the line of people being searched by museum guards, Edie surveyed the crowd of museum goers, most of whom were excitedly chatting about what they’d seen, what they knew, or what they’d heard.
She nudged Caedmon in the arm. “Did you hear what that man just—” She stopped suddenly, catching sight of a familiar face out of the corner of her eye.
It was the dirty cop she’d seen in the alley behind the Hopkins Museum.
“To your left! It’s the killer’s cop buddy!” she hissed out of the corner of her mouth.
Without so much as turning his head, Caedmon swerved his gaze to the left. “The bloke with sandy blond hair?” When she nodded, he said, “Did he catch sight of you at the Hopkins?”
“No. But they have my driver’s license photo. They know what I look like.”
“Right.”
An absentminded look on his face, Caedmon patted his breast pocket, giving every appearance of a man searching for a pen or a pair of reading glasses. It took a moment for Edie to realize that he was very carefully casing the joint, his eyes moving from left to right and back again.
“In a few seconds there’s going to be a frightful stampede toward the door,” he said in a low voice, taking her firmly by the upper arm as he spoke. “Be ready to run for your life.”
Edie nodded, knowing he spoke literally, not figuratively.
“Good God!” Caedmon suddenly boomed in a loud, forceful tone of voice. “There’s the gunman! That man standing by the elevator doors!”
At hearing Caedmon’s commanding voice—which sounded an awful lot like a trained Shakespearean actor bellowing about kingdoms and horses—every head in the lobby abruptly turned.
A second of shocked silence ensued.
Then, in a tremendous burst of explosive energy, the façade of order gave way, there being utter disorder in the ranks.
Like rats jumping ship, the museum patrons closest to the plate glass doors rushed outside. All four museum guards and every policeman in sight charged in the opposite direction toward the elevators.
That being their cue, Edie and Caedmon ran to the door, elbowing their way to the head of the pack.
Several seconds later, they burst free of the building.
“Hurry!” Caedmon ordered, taking her by the hand as he descended the portico steps that fronted the museum. “I suspect we fooled everyone save the man searching for us. What is that across the street?” He pointed beyond the traffic jam of news vans and patrol cars to the grove of leafless trees on the other side of Seventh Street.