He realized he was screaming. He stopped and looked up. The gas station guy was looking at him from around the corner, appalled and afraid and frozen to the spot.
Grimacing, his breath snorting through his nose, Larison stalked over to him, the hammer dangling from his hand like a war club. The guy’s eyes widened and his face went pale.
Larison stopped an arm’s length from the guy. He looked at him for a long moment, grinning with hate. He held out the hammer. “Thanks,” he said.
The guy took it without a word or even a nod. Larison went back to the bus stop. He left the bag where he’d dropped it.
Another bus pulled up. The doors opened with a pneumatic hiss. He got on. He didn’t even know where it was going.
It didn’t matter. What mattered was that even through his rage and his nausea, his horror at how close he’d been and at how badly he’d blown it, he understood what he was going to do.
Accept Hort’s offer.
Take the money.
And when he was ready, when he had regrouped and resettled and refocused, get to Hort. He thought the courier, the blond guy from the unit, might be the right place to start. He was good, Larison could see that much. But he saw something else, too: The guy wasn’t happy. He knew he was being manipulated, and was looking for a way out. Maybe Larison could give him one.
He smiled grimly. Because when he found Hort, he would do things to him, do everything to him, until he made the sound Larison could never get out of his ears.
This time, it would be like music.
37. A Drink
Ulrich’s secure line buzzed. He looked at the phone, wondering if it would be better to just not answer. It was never good news. Never.
Still.
“Ulrich.”
“Clements. Okay to talk?”
“Why do you always ask me that? Yes, it’s okay. It’s always okay. This is a fucking secure line, do you not know that?”
There was a pause. “Are you watching CNN?”
“No.”
“There was a shooting in Arlington. Two dead.”
Ulrich clenched his jaw. “Theirs or ours?”
“Ours.”
Ulrich didn’t say anything. He felt numb. The numbness wasn’t unpleasant. At the moment, he much preferred it to whatever sensation it must have been blocking.
“We can still turn this around,” Clements said.
Ulrich laughed. It started slowly and built to a cackle. He thought of these idiots, blundering about, thinking they had a clue, relentlessly ruining his life. It wouldn’t last, he knew, but for now, he relished the humor element in the whole thing.
“You want to know how you can tell when a war is lost?” he said, wiping his eyes. “When people describe it as ‘still winnable.’ Well, that’s what I’ve been doing with myself all along on this. I keep telling myself it’s still winnable. But it’s not. It’s just not. There are too many idiots. I can’t keep fighting them. I can’t keep fighting you.”
He set the phone back in the cradle and put his face in his hands. He laughed again. And then he was crying.
People wouldn’t understand. He’d worked so hard to keep the country safe. Yes, he’d authorized some difficult things, some questionable things. But what looked questionable now didn’t look at all that way after 9/11. Back then, no one was questioning anything. They all just wanted to be safe, never mind how. So what, he was going to be hanged now for refusing to let a bunch of rules and procedures and bureaucracy prevent him from keeping people safe? What was the alternative? Dot his I’s and dash his T’s and just let the next attack happen? That would have been the real crime.
He blew out a long breath. It didn’t matter. He’d known the risks, hadn’t he? He’d never been in the military, but he’d performed his own kind of service. Soldiers risked life and limb defending America. He’d risked his job, his reputation, his own freedom in the same cause. How many people could make that claim? No matter what happened, he had every reason to be proud of what he’d done. And his family did, too. Even if no one else could understand, they would.
He thought about getting a drink. It was a simple thing, really, a man stopping by a bar on the way home from work. He wished he’d done it more often.
He really ought to do it now. It might be a nice memory later.
38. Property of the U.S. Government
On the platform at the West Falls Church Metro station, Ben used the iPhone to find Ulrich’s particulars. The former vice presidential chief of staff was now a “special policy adviser” for a lobbying outfit called Daschle, Davis, Baishun, one of the K Street giants, just as Larison had said. An Orange Line train would take him to Farragut West Station, a few blocks from Daschle, Davis’s headquarters.
On the ride in, Ben considered a number of stratagems for getting into Ulrich’s office. A back entrance, the roof, an elevator shaft, a maintenance stairwell. Or, having seen Ulrich’s picture on his firm’s website, just set up and wait for him in the parking garage under the building. Or outside the front door, if he used the Metro. But any of those would require reconnaissance, and reconnaissance required time. He didn’t want to wait. He wanted knowledge. And he wanted it tonight.
Besides, he thought he had a better way.
When he emerged aboveground from Farragut West Station, it was dark. Commuters flowed past him down the station escalators, car headlights illuminated the street. The air was warm and soggy and smelled like Washington, a city built on a swamp. He walked a block north to K Street and found the Daschle, Davis building, an expensive-looking glass-and-chrome square dominating the entire block.
He went through the revolving doors, and instantly the sounds of outside traffic were erased, replaced by a quiet hush and cool, dry air. The expansive lobby mirrored the exterior-glass, chrome, a polished granite floor. A rent-a-security-guard, a black guy in a blue uniform, sat behind a station in front of the elevators. Ben walked over, his footfalls echoing in the cavernous silence.
“I’m here to see David Ulrich.”
“Do you have an appointment?”
“I don’t.”
“Who should I tell him is here?”
Ben could almost have smiled. He took out his credentials and set them in front of the guard. “Dan Froomkin. FBI.”
The guard picked up a phone. Explained who was here. Paused. Said, Yes, sir. Yes, sir, I have. Hung up the phone. Gestured to a sign-in sheet on the stand in front of him.
“Just need you to sign in, Mr. Froomkin.”
This time, Ben did smile. “Happy to,” he said.
He rode the elevator to the fourth floor and took the stairs from there. He didn’t consider Ulrich a threat, but using the unexpected route was a habit that had always served him well before. He mentally patted himself on the back for thinking to arrive as Froomkin. He might have dropped Hort’s name, or mentioned JSOC, but he expected that if Ulrich met him under a pretext like that, he would have come down to the lobby and kept Ben away from his inner sanctum. A possible interview by the FBI, though, was something you’d want conducted in private. And privacy was a funny thing. The same kind of space that could make a person feel confident could also make him feel exposed and vulnerable. Another kernel of wisdom from the Farm.
A smiling, pantsuited receptionist led him down a hushed, thickly carpeted hallway past a series of closed mahogany doors. Discretion, the place seemed to say. Quiet influence. Compartmentalization.
At the end of the hallway was a single open door. The receptionist gestured to it and went back the way they’d come. Ben went inside and closed the door behind him.
Ulrich was sitting behind a dark, massive desk. All these guys, compensating with their furniture. To the side was an ego wall covered by photos of Ulrich with the former vice president and various other political luminaries and insiders.