The drivers of these vehicles, an unexceptional lot of reasonably well dressed, middle-aged men, seemed to be the least excited people in all of Washington. They ignored the honking horns and shouted obscenities from the instant traffic jam that had materialized behind their roadblock. With the calm self-possession of a combat veteran, each driver strolled around his vehicle and jabbed a knife into each of the four tires before turning his back on his crippled vehicle and sauntering into the park.
If any of the furious drivers in the traffic jam had bothered to look up at the Four Seasons, which stood at the intersection of M and Pennsylvania like the cornerstone of the whole neighborhood, they would have seen Cy Ogle looking back at them from the window of his suite.
He had just received a telephone call from the man on duty in the closest GODS truck, informing him that a sudden burst of microwave noise had broken their link with Cozzano, and that they were unable to reestablish the connection. "Argus is not receiving any inputs," the man said. "Repeat: Argus is on his own."
The stream channel was shallow and lined with large blocks of brown rock. As soon as they got past the "homeless" men, the Cozzanos plunged into it, picking up their knees as they ran, Walter Payton style, to keep them up out of the icy water, and forded Rock Creek. Far above their heads was another bridge, much larger and higher: Pennsylvania Avenue. As soon as they got past the buttresses of the bridge they scrambled up on to the eastern bank, which even in winter was covered with a mixture of bamboo, ivy, and reeds. This was difficult territory, but William and Mary Catherine had been training hard for this and they didn't object to getting wet. Mary Catherine had been using all the slings and arrows of sibling rivalry to get James to whip himself into shape; he couldn't really keep up with them, but he had the minor advantage of being in a state of shock.
Rock Creek now ran between them and the parkway. This side of the park was more heavily wooded and had no road or bicycle path, just a little footpath paralleling the bank. All of them were still running as hard as they could, Mary Catherine leading the way, James bringing up the rear, still trying to gasp out questions when he wasn't sucking wind. His confusion was only deepened when he noticed that his father and sister had begun to rip off their clothes as they ran, dropping a trail of sweatshirts and tank tops in his path. Mary Catherine looked over her shoulder, into his eyes, and he knew that he was supposed to do the same. The world had gone crazy anyhow, why not run around Washington D.C., stark naked?
They paused somewhere between N and P streets. Mary Catherine and William had gotten all the way down to gym shorts and running shoes, and James was able to catch up as soon as they stopped running.
William crashed down the bank. A cube of solid masonry projected from the bank and into the stream, carrying a storm sewer outfall a couple of feet in diameter. William A. Cozzano, thigh-deep in icy water, leaned into it for a moment with his left arm and shoulder, and emerged carrying a couple of plastic garbage bags weighted with stones. He threw them up on to the bank and then climbed up after them.
Mary Catherine was stark naked by this point. She ripped open one of the bags to expose folds of dark green cloth, and a few pairs of running shoes. The shoes were labelled in magic markers: WILLY, M.C., and JAMES. She tossed the appropriate pairs to James and William, then hauled the clothing out: three identical sweatsuits.
The change of clothes ate up about thirty seconds and then they were running down the footpath again. Mary Catherine was carrying a small black plastic box in her hand; the blazing red light on one end danced up and down as she pumped her arms. She had dropped to a slower, sustainable pace. They passed under several more towering stone bridges, at one point fording the creek again in order to keep it between them and the Parkway.
The path dead-ended at the fence of Oak Hill Cemetery, which ran downhill from Georgetown and all the way to the creek's edge. They made a left and ran parallel to the fence, following a footpath in the red, rocky soil, terraced by innumerable exposed tree roots. A few stray gravestones poked askew from the carpet of ivy.
Cemetery gates loomed on their right and they had emerged into the city again. They were in Montrose Park. It was two blocks long and a couple of hundred feet wide, bordered on one side by the woods and on the other by an alley that ran behind a row of old four-story red brick apartments. This was a bad stretch of blacktop, patches on top of older patches, covered with mud, leaf litter, and parked cars with the usual odd D.C. mixture of license plates. A delivery van, painted with the logo of a ubiquitous local diaper service, was sitting there with its motor running.
Mary Catherine ran up to it, hauled open the back doors, and motioned James and William in. They climbed in the back and she followed, pulling the doors shut behind them. They all collapsed, unable to do much more than suck in oxygen. But Mary Catherine was laughing, James was sputtering and starting to ask questions, and William's mind was elsewhere.
Mary Catherine was thinking that, no matter what else happened today, they had all gone out for a vigorous run together, just like the old days, and they had gotten wet and messy and enjoyed themselves. Now she was ready for all hell to break loose. She caught her father's eye for a moment and realized he was thinking the same thing.
They drive for fifteen or twenty minutes, not really knowing where they were, and then the truck stopped, and they could hear a garage door grinding shut behind them.
They staggered upstairs and found themselves in an old town house with plywood windowpanes. Mattresses and a few pieces of junk furniture were scattered around. But it had a few touches that made them feel at home: a coffeemaker on the floor, its red light shining cheerfully, and a sack of bagels next to a stack of paper plates, and, sitting on the floor in the middle of the room, chewing on a bagel and going over some papers, one Mel Meyer.
"Willy, if you can hear me, get your left hand over here and grab this pen. You have a hell of a lot of papers to sign before we get you dressed," Mel said.
"James," Mary Catherine said, "grab some coffee. I have a few things to tell you."
59
In downtown Rosslyn, Virginia, a man in a nice suit and a trench coat, wearing a neatly trimmed beard, and hair so short that his scalp almost showed through, emerged from a Metro station and walked up the street to a mailbox. He removed a standard legal-sized envelope from his breast pocket, held it between his hands, and contemplated it for a few moments. Then he dropped it into the mailbox. He continued down the street, turned a corner, and walked downhill toward Key Bridge. Ahead of him, on the far side of the Potomac, he could see Dixie Liquors, which was on M Street, which would take him through the center of Georgetown and on to Pennsylvania. You could fire a bullet straight down the centerline of Pennsylvania and it would pass through the middle of the White House and continue down to the presidential lectern on the reviewing stand on the Capitol steps.
Unfortunately Floyd Wayne Vishniak's Fleischacker was not quite powerful or accurate enough for that. He would have to follow much the same route on foot. But that was okay. He had planned this thing pretty well, had left himself plenty of time to get there. As he walked across Key Bridge, pounded by a cold crosswind that found every leak in his trench coat, he mentally reviewed the contents of the letter, which he had written at one o'clock this morning in the front seat of his pickup truck, parked in the holler in West Virginia.