“Are you sure it’s the right one?” John asked.
“It was in the file, and the Africans said the doc confirmed it.” Toby touched the artificial limb. “And it’s a good thing I was able to find this used. They don’t even make this model anymore.”
“Used is better,” John said. “It’ll look natural.” But looks were only part of the equation. Function was another. That they would start with immediately. “We’ve got work to do.”
“In the garage, Pop?”
John headed that way. “That’s where the tools are.”
While his father and brother toiled with the work of the hand, Stanley Barrish availed himself of a more cerebral activity a hundred and fifty miles to the east. Namely, reading the paper.
The Wednesday Washington Post carried the information he’d been waiting for on page five, in a little blurb that barely used two column inches to explain. The Secretary of State. Well… Stanley had read enough about the ways of appearance-conscious Washington — far more than his older brother — to know that having the secretary of state not attend the State of the Union address deserved more exposition in the capital’s paper. Maybe that would come in the days ahead. It was only two days after Christmas, and this little tidbit had obviously been released by the White House to be buried while most of official Washington was away enjoying a long winter break. That might be so, but Stanley had all he needed to get started.
The first question to be answered was where? Where would the secretary of state be the evening in question? Would he watch the speech from the State Department? Probably not. It was too close to the actual event. From a secret location somewhere? If that was the case, there would be little he could do to find it. Stanley knew he had a talent for subterfuge, but he wasn’t a magician. So he had to focus on what he could do, on what he could glean from sources available to him. It might take time. It might not. But he wasn’t going to find the answer in the Virginia capital.
He left Richmond, where he’d stayed the night before, experimenting with the pleasures of a pretty young girl, and drove north to Washington after reading the morning Post. The trip on Interstate 95 took two hours to the beltway, then another forty minutes before Stanley crossed the Roosevelt Bridge to reach the District of Columbia proper. His first destination was a somewhat random choice. Almost anywhere with a public building would do, but there was one place not far that at least held some interest. A short jaunt up the Rock Creek and Potomac Parkway, past the Kennedy Center, brought him to that place: the Watergate. It was home to a dark chapter in American political history.
It was also home to banks of public phones.
Stanley Barrish parked and entered the Watergate with the Post folded under his arm and chose a phone at the end of a line of three. The two to his right were empty. He opened the Post to its listing of phone numbers and editors and circled the number for the city desk, dialing after checking that no one was in earshot.
“Editorial, city desk.”
“Yeah, this is Paulie Schwartz. Litton advanced optics. One of your photo crews needed a low-light lens, and I’m supposed to deliver it to the shoot site. But I don’t know where that is. Do you have the photo assignment desk number?”
“I’ll transfer you.”
Simple enough, Stanley thought. But that was the easy lie. The next one would require more guile.
“Assignment desk.”
Stanley looked to the photo credit under the largest photo on page five, reading the name into memory before speaking. “Yes, is…uh…Mr. Heidell in?”
“Chuck Heidell? Hold on.”
It was a chancy shot, to be sure, but Stanley was banking on the supposition that most photographers for a big city paper probably spent little time in the office. They didn’t take pictures of colleagues at their desks, after all. Out and about was their business. Or so he hoped.
“Chuck’s out. You want to leave a message?”
“Uh, this is Billy in research. Mr. Heidell wanted me to pull any stories on a specific address for him. He wanted to see any accompanying photos, I guess. But I don’t know where the house is.”
“Billy…are you new here?”
“Yes…”
“I thought so, because if Chuck ever heard you calling him mister he’d eat you for lunch.”
“Oh. Okay. I didn’t—”
“Yeah, all right. So you need, what, an address?”
“Yes. He said it’s the secretary of state’s house.”
“Hang on.”
It was that simple? Stanley wondered if he could bluff his way into the White House. His dad would love that. Probably.
“You got a pen.”
“Yeah,” said “Billy.” Stanley copied the address onto the margin of the Post and thanked the photo desk. He was back in his car and heading across the Roosevelt Bridge ten minutes later, this time going north on the GW Parkway to the Lee Highway. Falls Church, Virginia, was eight miles distant.
Hillsborough Drive curved off of Lee Highway just past the Leesburg Pike. Stanley slowed the cream-colored Toyota as he entered the residential street, both because of the speed limit and to admire the beautiful homes. Fashionable, they were called, but the younger Barrish boy had no point of reference for comparison. He’d never lived in, or near, houses like those he was passing. They were huge, many with red brick facades that seemed calming somehow. At least he thought so.
He was not there to admire, though, and such idle thoughts would only remove focus from his task. He was there to look for one house. Just one.
But he almost missed it, the address placard blocked by a phone company truck parked facing the wrong way. Stanley passed the address, noticed he’d skipped a number, then backed up, stopping just feet from a phone company worker at the back of the open van. Phone Company? He looked up at the fine Tudor-style house beyond the natural carpet of green. Number 695. Mr. Secretary’s house. And some phone trouble to boot… Or, maybe…
“Hey, buddy.”
The phone worker looked left to Stanley. “Yeah.”
“My folks live down the street,” Stanley lied. At least this one didn’t require that a false name be used. “Is there phone trouble?”
“Nah. Just adding some lines here.”
Stanley nodded, and as he did a second workman emerged from number 695 Hillsborough Drive, coming down the meandering walk to the truck. A smile joined the nod. “Great. Thanks a lot.”
Adding lines? I wonder why they’re doing that? Stanley asked himself as he steered the Toyota back toward Lee Highway. He didn’t have to think long to convince himself of the answer.
TWENTY FOUR
Function
Almost two weeks it had taken. Now, though, they were ready for final assembly.
“Give me the cylinder,” John said.
Toby handed the small tank of destruction to his father with one hand. John accepted it with two and slid it into the padded skeletal frame he’d carefully constructed from the lightest, strongest metal he could get his hands on: titanium.
Weight. That had been the determining factor in how to do it. The plan was simple enough; get the cylinder of VZ into Vorhees’s leg and he’d unknowingly get it into the State of the Union for them. A timer would do the rest after that. Predicting when a speech would start and end was not that difficult in the era of network television. The president would start at a certain time, or reasonably close to it, and word had already leaked out that the chief executive, a debater from his college days, was going to break the one-hour mark with this speech. It was backwards determination. Pick a time somewhere in the window of opportunity and subtract a hundred hours — the maximum length of the digital timer they’d chosen — and the “package” would go off at the appointed minute. There were other considerations, such as how to get the good congressman to switch limbs, but that had been taken care of…or would be very soon. All would work as planned.