He found Hoagland’s Volvo station wagon two blocks from the Hirshhorn. As he clicked Hoagland’s remote and opened the doors, a police cruiser rolled up the block. Fighting the instinct to hurry, Thornton lowered himself onto the driver’s seat.
He drove the Volvo up 9th to Pennsylvania, where he turned left at the boxy concrete Hoover Building, the headquarters of the FBI. Of all places. He continued driving, right beneath the Bureau’s nose.
A few blocks later, he found a parking spot in front of Pershing Park, just across from the Willard Hotel. The twelve-story beaux arts palace had been a hive of activity for well over a century — its lobby largely responsible for the term lobbyist—making it a textbook dead drop location.
Walking across Pennsylvania Avenue, Thornton felt exposed. Other than Hoagland’s trench coat, his disguise now consisted only of a pair of tortoiseshell glasses he’d found in the Volvo. The lenses distorted his vision to the extent that he couldn’t be sure whether it was his imagination or not that the doorman was staring at him.
He entered the soaring lobby, the ornate ceiling and its plethora of crystal chandeliers supported by six massive Ionic columns. Guests wandered in and out of shops and restaurants.
Two of the giant room’s four corners had radiators, waist-high units with clawed feet, every last cast-iron pipe adorned with as many flourishes as could fit. Behind the second radiator he checked, Thornton found where the envelope had been: Now there was just a torn corner of a manila envelope held against the back of a pipe by a magnet the size of a silver dollar. He suspected the magnet was made from an alloy of iron, boron, and rare-earth neodymium, explaining why the scrap of paper remained. Such magnets were popular for dead drops because the document couldn’t be loosed by a gale-force wind.
Thornton used both hands and all his strength to pry the magnet free, absorbing a lightning bolt of pain to his bruised rib cage. To avoid drawing the attention of the pair of men in kaftans and kaffiyehs who were chatting on the sofa six feet away, he looked away, pretending to be captivated by something outside the window. Then, in fact, he was truly captivated. A swarthy young man was hurrying up the sidewalk, sliding on a pair of sunglasses although the hotel’s shadow made the block nearly dark. He wore a black overcoat and held a manila envelope under his arm.
53
“Excuse me, sir,” said the doorman with a smile suggesting that he held Thornton in high esteem, or, more likely, he’d recognized him from a photograph e-blasted around town by the FBI.
Before the man could say any more, Thornton, pretending not to have heard him, took several strides toward the side exit.
“Sir?”
Thornton kept on toward the door. Perhaps not the best play, he thought. Sidestepping a luggage cart, he shoved his way through the revolving door and onto the sidewalk. Spotting the man in the black overcoat near the intersection, Thornton accelerated.
The man took a hasty left onto F Street. By the time Thornton turned the corner, the guy was gone, too quickly to have been picked up or to have gotten into a parked car. Into a store? No, down the ramp to the Willard’s underground parking garage: Thornton caught sight of his overcoat.
Adrenaline acted like rocket fuel. Thornton flew past an office furniture store and onto the ramp leading down to the garage. It was so dark that he failed to discern the black overcoat, not until the man appeared in front of him, pointing a polymer Beretta Storm with steel inserts. It was a lightweight gun, yet capable of blowing sizable holes in someone.
Thornton held up his hands and said, “It’s okay. I’m with Canning. You forgot this.” He turned his left hand to reveal the neodymium magnet. The disk flashed pink in the wash of the illuminated exit sign.
“Bullshit, you the journalist,” said the man, his accent Middle Eastern, heavy on the vowels. Maybe Iraqi or Kuwaiti — Thornton couldn’t tell.
The guy shot a quick look at the entrance, then another to the base of the ramp. No one was coming. He raised the Beretta to within inches of Thornton’s chest.
“Wait, there’s something else you need to know,” Thornton said, inching his hand toward the Beretta.
The magnet rose out of his palm, clicked against the steel barrel, and stuck there — just as he’d hoped. If the guy pulled the trigger now, Thornton thought, he risked a KB — shooter shorthand for kaboom: A bullet traveling near the speed of sound with nowhere to go could cause the barrel to explode.
The gunman seemed aware of the danger. He backed away, trying to pry the disk off the muzzle. Thornton lunged, hammering his right shoulder into the man’s stomach, knocking him backward, yanking his legs from beneath him. The rugby coach who’d taught Thornton the “dump tackle” would have been proud. The back of the gunman’s head struck the sidewalk. Thornton landed on top of him, then rolled left, snaring the gun with no resistance from its owner.
Thornton sprang to his knees, then banged the gun against the curb, knocking off the magnet. Then he plunged the muzzle into the guy’s belly. “Who are you?” he asked.
“Mossad,” the guy said, too quickly.
“Okay, so we can rule out Mossad. One more wrong answer and I’m going to find out if it’s true that a bullet can pass through the spleen—” Thornton stopped short, noting the manila envelope lying on the cement.
As he plucked it up, a cell phone protruded from the hole at the corner. He suspected it was a remote detonator. In which case, was an E-bomb close by?
“Where’s the bomb?” he asked.
The guy shook his head. “Fuck you.”
“He had to have gone this way,” came a familiar voice.
Thornton glanced over his shoulder and, through the glare from F Street, made out the Willard doorman leading two policemen along the sidewalk.
Turning back to the man lying beside him, Thornton whispered, “There’s a key difference between me and them: After you tell me where the E-bomb is, I’ll let you go.”
The man groaned. “How would I know where it is?”
Which suggested that there was indeed an E-bomb. But a foot soldier servicing a dead drop probably wouldn’t be told the weapon’s whereabouts.
Glancing at the angled mirror atop the ramp, Thornton saw the doorman and policemen hurrying past. As he turned back to his captive, a black Mercedes sedan sped down the ramp. He saw a gun poking out from the driver’s window.
Thornton dove for the pavement, placing his captive between himself and the gun. The gun flashed and a blast shook the tunnel. The bullet snapped the foot soldier’s head sideways, apparently for good.
The Mercedes braked a few feet from Thornton. The driver leaned out the window for another shot, revealing a bull neck and bald head. Thornton aimed the slain foot soldier’s Beretta and fired three times, pausing only when the Mercedes began to roll forward. It picked up speed, heading straight ahead when the ramp turned, the hood impacting the wall with an ominous thud. The horn went off, resounding in the tunnel. Thornton recognized the rear license plate’s distinctive red, white, and blue stripes — diplomatic tag issued to a foreign mission or embassy by the State Department. The two-letter prefix, which indicated the country, was DM — Israel. As if a Mossad operative would be foolish enough to show up in an embassy car, Thornton thought.
Figuring that he would learn the impostors’ true identities soon enough, he gathered up the manila envelope and sprinted for F Street. Finding it clear, he jogged toward 14th before ducking into the office supply store. Reflected in the glass door, he saw the doorman and two policemen doubling back from the far corner.